I didn't want to be one of them. It wasn't her fault. A man raped her and gave her a baby. I had to imagine what a rape would be like, how horrible it was to be forced to accept a man against your will.
Your loving stunned me but the things that followed were gentle, a sort of intimate kindness that was new to me. We were two girls and there didn't seem to be any harm in anything that we did together but-"
"Stop worrying Laura. Forget it."
"I can't help it, I wonder what I'm becoming."
"So he's going to work on your place?"
"Yes."
"And live here?"
"He wouldn't take the job otherwise."
"Then you stay away from him. Look at him if it pleases you but make the guy keep his grasping hands off of you. I've given up trying with men and I won't share someone I love."
Then she stopped talking and I could see that they were both naked and Norma was lying on top of Laura's body.
CHAPTER ONE
"You have any objections to homos at this party?"
"Nope," the old man replied. "When I want a good time, everything goes. Pull the plug out, we'll try everything." They called him old man, but he wasn't really, being in his early fifties.
This wouldn't be his first wild party that his business associates had thrown for him. His word was law, even here in another state, at his Boston branch of his various business interests.
As we had stated, he had been to some really wild orgies, but never with male whores. If they were to be here, okay by him. He wanted to try everything.
The party started out with the usual booze, nothing like the free passing liquor to oil the festivities, and it did....
In due time, with the help of some really wild stag films which were greeted with cries of glee and encouragement, by the guests and cries of happy awe at the lovemaking powers of the male loves by some of the faggots at the party everything shifted into high.
Clothes were beginning to fly and soon here and there women's breasts and bodies began to appear in naked abundance, and loving began to bust out all over the place as couples began to neck and pet. Not all couples were man and woman paring off by any means, there were woman and woman and man and man couples, here and there and deep in the arms of naked lust.
The old man felt himself being undressed by a pair of big soft bobbing naked bosomed beauties, who pressed against his naked front and rear when his duds were shed.
From this, he found himself on top of one of the full blown girls and his physical excitement was aroused and eagerly guided into his target by the other girl who connected him with her eager naked companion and she happily watched as the old man pounded away buried within the lying girl's charms. When this one happily let them know she had crossed the climactic threshhold, he was removed from her sated body and deeply plunged into her happy friend's target with deft smoothness. But by this time he reached his own peak and the second girl hit the jackpot as he exploded his release into her happy receptacle.
Afterwards, he lay there panting as he rested his return to normal. He turned away from his two love babies who were in the throes of loving each other. At first he was curious but he heard deep groans of passion and he turned around and saw two naked men, young, in their twenties, embracing, their hands stroking and fondling each other's buttocks.
They felt him watching them, and turning to him, they smiled, and separating from their embrace, they came over to him and lay down with him, one on each side of his outsprawled body. One of them reached out and took him, and began to stroke him excitingly as he smiled at the old man. His hand wandered about searching, toying. Then the other fag hunched over on his elbows and knees, his naked butt arched up lewdly at the old man's middle. There was no mistaking what he wanted. And the old man complied. Heavily he hovered over the upthrust buttocks, and lowered his body then he slammed his immense powers into the kneeling man who squeeled with pleasure-pain as the fiery battering ran throbbed harshly to his eager body like the beasts in the fields, and his body was mercilessly violated by the old man's harsh pistoning actions, who was that way in everything he did. In due time, the panting grunting, drooling heavy tones of the old man reached his peak and he snorted and groaned as his reaction boiled out and entered the harshly violated body of the man kneeling before him, as the boy's lover companion watched and even stroking the old man's heavy buttocks as he reached his completion even reaching between the bodies and cupping the old man intimately in his last lap.
The old man pulled away from the ravished man and lay back once again beginning to feel the physical exertions now.
But he was not to rest long. The companion of the assaulted man knelt between the heavy parted legs of the old man and lay his cheek on his groin, the old man looked down when he suddenly felt the man kissing his belly, and lower, and he grunted when the man's eager warm lips found him. By now, he had forgotten his recent exertions at this new sensation of intense pleasure as the kneeling man loved his body with deft experience and the old man's physical powers, in spite of his years and his recent erotic efforts found himself aroused as never before by this new form of lovemaking and it didn't take long for this intense sensation to cause his physical powers to boil over into an ecstatic finish, his whole body arched and stiffened as his forces drained from him in ecstatic flow. This fantastic scene being witnessed by the two girls who seduced him and themselves and the homo's approving lover-mate.
Yes indeed, the old man thought as he lay limp and sated, my staff in this town really knows how to please me. They'd better, or they get the ax.
* * *
They just weren't biting, so I walked away from the stream in disgust, and walked over to where Laura Craig lay napping out on a blanket. She was twenty three years younger than me, dark hair, lovely eyes, a stubby nose that tilted just a trifle and full, red lips. Her breasts under the white halter were prominent, thrusting to a find hefty forty inches that had been about the best in the local beauty contest which she had lost because a judge with wandering hands had had his face soundly smacked. Her bare stomach was smooth and creamy, exposed as she lay there, but her white shorts were rich in roundness. She had sensual thighs and gorgeous legs. I needn't add that she was extremely beautiful but I can't be too emphatic that she failed to give any indication of being willing to sleep with me.
"Fish didn't bite?" she asked. She had a low voice, a husky bedroom voice that always got to me.
"You can't fish in a barrel," I explained. "Fishing in a bathtub makes as much sense as trying it here."
She yawned.
"Who cares, Clint? It's Saturday, both of us free, and we've got fresh air and the country all around. When you live on Shore Avenue as I do you think you're trapped in a cage."
Her parents were both gone and she had inherited a big house from them in a somewhat below average section of town. She worked in a department store with weekends off, and she rented out her available rooms to various workers. I had only met her because my father had stuck her on a refrigerator as he stuck most people in everything, and she had come to me to find out if it could be made right. I did what I could but even so the refrigerator wasn't worth the price of the gunpowder to blow up the appliance. My father among other things was an appliance dealer in town. Although he sold hundreds of appliances every year, he made his big money off of used junk and clinkers. I managed the agency for him, because he was too busy with his other affairs, but he held the whip, and for my salary of eighteen thousand a year he never let me forget he was the real boss.
"Yeah, Saturday," I said. "Tomorrow he comes back home with her."
"How do you feel about that?"
"What do you think?"
"I guess so."
"How would any fellow my age feel when his father who in his fifties marries a girl only twenty four?"
"Clint, you can't judge her. You've never met the girl. There's such a thing as a father complex and some girls have it. For all you know she's a very sweet girl."
I lit a cigarette for us and I had to bend down a long way to give her one. I'm over six feet and I weigh a hundred and eighty. I didn't play football in high school but I earned my letter in college. Actually, I had hoped to be a musician to play piano as my mother had but my father insisted upon me studying business administration. Now I had my degree but it was as useless as my last year's calendar. He didn't want honest administration. The yen to cheat was in his soul. How 'Reed's" Appliances kept increasing wasn't hard to figure, however. He financed the stuff through his investment firm and while his credit terms were easy for qualification his interest rate and hidden charges were high. One and one half percent a month was eighteen percent a year. He did the same thing with his building firm, building houses cheaply, selling high on a no down payment basis, then slugging the poor suckers with a lump sum at the end of five years. Respect him? No, I didn't respect him, any more than my divorced and sick mother had respected him, but where else could I make eighteen thousand a year in this town? My job was secure, I managed to be honest rather frequently, although he didn't approve of it and, as anybody might, I had to consider the potential of his estate. I thought that eventually I would be able to do good with some of the money he had practically stolen but this new wife he had taken, altered the situation. My mother was living in the southern part of the country for her health.
"No, I can't judge her," I admitted and sat down. "She might be okay, only I can't see how he could meet a really nice girl at a convention. Most of those girls...."
"We met," she reminded me.
"And it took me a month of phone calls before you'd date. I thought I had a disease or something."
"It wasn't you personally, Clint. It was the name of Reed."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"You live in Leffer Heights, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"That's a rich section so what would you want with me except-"
"Yes?"
Her face flushed as I looked at her, grinning slightly. "Please Clint. You know."
I knew all right. Lots of fellows went down to Shore Avenue with one thing on their minds and they get their ashes overhauled. Once in a while it was for money, if the girl was poor, but generally pure sex relations was in payment for a ride in a new car or a few drinks.
I won't ever die from an overdose of virtue but I had visited the area several times since the year after high school. You made it with a single girl, probably a factory worker, or a wife who was unhappy and felt she was being neglected by her husband. I had never dated steadily, not even in college, until meeting Laura a few weeks before. I felt a peculair sympathy for her because she was alone but, quite naturally, my interest in her extended considerably beyond that. My father, aware of our dating, didn't approve, which to be honest, wasn't unusual. Harry Reed seldom approved of anything.
"I've got beer in the car," I said. "It's in a tub of ice."
"Yes. Somehow it always tastes better outdoors than it does inside of a bar."
I left her and walked up to the station wagon. She wasn't much of a drinker but she liked to dance, when she did dance she came in against me tight and alive, without shame, and on the nights that we didn't dance we talked. She had barely finished high school, scrambling through the last two months while living with a sick aunt, because both her parents were gone, but she had hopes of becoming an author. I didn't see her every night during the week and on her free nights she created. I hadn't seen anything that she'd done but I wasn't a judge of literature anyway. When it came to the work of a musician the situation reversed itself.
To those who knew us, and I'm sure Laura shared this attitude, we had a relationship that was sweet. I kissed her when we parted, felt her cling to me briefly, but all of this was a surface illusion and nothing more. I was a healthy male and I had the instincts of one. I didn't want a streetwalker who would permit me to take her on any old bed. I wanted Laura naked on the blanket, her body frantic as she accepted me and needed me as much as I needed her.
"Cold," I said as I returned with the beers.
"Swell."
She sat up. Her boobs were lush. Her breasts hidden only by the tight halter which fought to conceal them.
"Luck," I said and sat down beside her. Her smile was open and frank.
"You don't need luck, Clint. Not with the money you have."
"That bothers you?"
"Some."
"Why?"
"I don't know exactly but when you like a person-"
"Which I hope is me."
She laughed low, the echo of it dying into the woods along the stream.
"I guess I'm being too forward."
"No. His money has nothing to do with us. I'm impressed with his wealth but that's all. He started on nothing and he built his fortune on sheer guts and stealing."
"Why do you keep working for him?"
"There's a simple explanation about that. The salary he pays me is excellent but I like to believe that it's secondary or in a class below second. Some men mellow as they grow older, become absolutely different than what they were formerly, and I'm trying to bring this about. If some charity calls on him for a donation he gives five dollars. It isn't a gift. He squeezes it out of the next person who does business with him. And he does business. The whole country has gone on a credit binge, some of it reckless, and he offers them that. I try to get a thrid down on the appliance because I think if a person can't afford that they shouldn't buy the thing. So he steps in and takes a chattle on everything personal they own, throws the finance papers in their faces and sits back to count his profits."
We emptied our beer cans and I brought more for us. Her halter had slipped a little and I had the hungry desire to remove it from her lovely body, to put my hands upon her and bend her to my will. Yet, for the moment, I did nothing.
"I think I might sell my house," she said tossing a stone into the water.
"Really?"
"Possibly. I'm tired of it and it's too much for me to take care of in addition to working in the store. One of the men drinks too much, gets sick and it's a mess. Then there's a girl who's always finding a way of having a man in her room."
Maybe I had considered marriage but I hadn't come right out and said anything to her about it. She was a good, steady date, a lot of fun when some dull mood didn't hit her, but marriage was a horse with another harness. Some people marry and let it go apart at the seams but I had an idea that I wanted whatever I did to last. I don't suppose there was any strong reason for me to avoid making her my wife. My salary was adequate and even though my father might disagree I was pretty sure he'd get over it. Since college I had lived with him in our big house, at one time sleeping with a voluptuous maid who was anxious, and we had gotten along about as well as could be expected. I had a degree and he didn't. He was a legal thief and I fought against cheating. He-yes, these were the basic differences between us. Now, however, he had married again and it would change for me at home. My stepmother was younger than me and that wasn't a healthy factor. How could I respect such a girl? And if he started a family with her it would be worse.
"Hell," I snarled.
"Now, Clint."
I threw the can into the bushes. You weren't supposed to do that but everybody did. There were all sorts of things to be found along the banks of the stream.
Bras. Girdles, some of those whatchamacallits that guys use to keep girls from becoming pregnant, lots of those.
"He's a nut, the old man," I decided. "There was that widow he was going with-didn't I tell you?-and she was a nice person. She'd come to dinner on Sunday and while he raved over some details of business she'd just smile and act as though he wasn't talking. I thought they'd make a match and I was for it. She balanced out his meanness and he might have it solid with her."
"A man marries the woman he wants," she said. She tossed another stone into the water. "That is, if the girl or the woman is willing. Probably he needs somebody this girl's age to make him feel alive. Lots of men are afraid of growing old. I think a woman can accept growing old if she's loved but he must not had anybody to love until this new wife came along."
I lit a cigarette. There was a hill opposite us and the afternoon sun began to spill across it, covering the trees in a golden aura of light. This was the type of landscape scene that appealed to me but it took days of effort to compose it to music. I simply didn't have the time to bother with such a thing. I did do some drawing also, I had talent there, nudes. I'd like that, from a photograph if you wanted to be cheap about the whole thing, but I didn't know of any agency in town that supplied nudes. Of course there were any number of girls from town who might pose. The trouble is that if you paint the way I do you have to believe in the beauty of the model and see it yourself or you can't accomplish much. Laura would be ideal to sketch if she would consent, but I had the vague notion that I didn't wish to share her charms with anybody else. They may be an odd feeling to apply to a girl who is attractive to you but that's the way I felt about her.
Like a woodchuck in a garden, I kept going to the car for more beer during the next couple of hours. We didn't say much, somehow satisfied to be together on the blanket. I thought I knew what she wanted from me-marriage-and I'm very sure I knew what I wanted from her.
"This is more beer than I usually drink," she said once.
"It's okay."
"But it seems-natural."
"Yes, it does."
"I mean, you hear the cars up there on the highway racing by, everybody rushing, maybe smashing up at the next turn, and here we are fully relaxed and enjoying ourselves. Clint, I think I'd like to live in the country. Really I work in that crowded store to walk down Shore Avenue, even drive through it, and I can't seem to find a sense of values. Out here, like this, they come to me. I can see life more than the empty challenge of making money. Sure, you need money but there are other things just as important. You need to belong to somebody, to be able to take from that person but to also have it within you to give in return. Do you follow me, Clint?"
"Sort of."
"Well, if isn't complicated."
"No, of course it isn't."
She was getting a little high, higher than I'd ever seen her get before, and while I can generally drink a lot of beer I wasn't exactly sober. We weren't so loaded that our senses were dulled or anything of that sort, but we were at the pleasant point where past convictions can easily slip and become mistakes.
"Perhaps I shouldn't," she said as she moved over closer to me.
"Shouldn't what?" Despite the beer my body became suddenly aroused, I could feel it.
"Shouldn't be thinking the way I am."
"And how are you thinking?"
"That we're right for each other and that anything we do is right because it's us."
I slid my arm around her and cupped the fullness of one plump breast with my hand. Her head turned sharply and her eyes widened. I saw the instant protest in her eyes and I realized I had misunderstood her. She was talking about marriage, assuring me we could overcome any difficulty with my father, but as a man, I had taken it quite another way.
My mouth found her lips, crushed down over them fiercely, made her stiffen instantly as the kiss flamed through her body and told her of a longing inside of me that was sheer desperation.
"No. Please, Clint."
"Why not? You said-"
"Yes, but that was to be for always."
"Doesn't the man usually ask?"
"Maybe but can't the girl hint?" Her lips met mine hotly for a moment. They were wet, almost demanding in spite of herself. "Clint, when there's a wide gulf between a girl and a fellow and when it gets so a girl can't sleep at night, hoping wondering, praying, why-"
She gasped as I found the knot on her halter and removed the thing. A cry of sadness escaped her as I pushed her back onto the blanket. Her naked breasts rose and fell under her quick breathing. They were full and proud, hers were big and soft yet lovely and not flabby.
"You won't be sorry," I promised, my whole body aroused, my turgid malehood stark and pulsating, beating and probing her softness.
"Please, don't!"
I made one last try for sanity, seeking to preserve the decency we'd known together.
"Laura." I kissed her. "Look, honey, if this is no good, it's no with you, then that's how it is. But if-"
She sobbed deep in her throat and responded wildly to my kiss.
"It's all right," she whispered.
Her shorts came off, and I took off my own clothes, and we brought our naked bodies together as one. I gently entered her parted womanhood and soon buried my organ to the hilt in her warm moist passage and she rose to engulf my offering. It was like a flame in the sheath of her core, and when I knew she was about to release, I did also and she welcomed the jetting pulsating fires of my love seed, drenching her with volcanic ecstasy. Now I knew what she did.
I wasn't the first man to have sex with her. And I was so considerate of her.
CHAPTER TWO
I sat in my room, composing for my own pleasure when my old man arrived home the next day. It was a big room and I used one corner for my piano and part as a drawing studio now and then spending time with the brushes as a hobby.
He was a large man, about five-eleven and he weighed over two hundred pounds. The former flatness of his middle had long since given away to the passing of years and his face was so heavy that he had a double chin. You might think there was nothing impressive about him but once you looked into his eyes you were likely to change your previous opinion. His eyes were cold and calculating, the kind of hard eyes that bored into you until you had the feeling that he was shooting holes through you with them. Maybe the fact that he was bald added to the effect. I don't know because as long as I could remember he had always lacked hair which, he claimed, was the result of an early bout with some illness.
"Turn that damned thing off," he said. I was playing the T.V. set to kill time.
He didn't care much for T.V. and I turned it off. Nights, if he happened to be upstairs, I had to keep the tone so low I could barely hear it.
"Did you have a good trip?" I asked him.
"Why shouldn't I have one?"
"I only asked."
"And I've got a question for you."
"Go on."
"What were your total sales at the agency last week?" I shrugged and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'll let you have the figure in the morning."
"Why not now? Can't you carry figures in your head?"
"Sure, but I was away yesterday afternoon."
He grunted his dissatisfaction.
"With that tramp from Shore Avenue?"
"It's the only time during the day when I can see her. On Sunday she has to clean her house and she's too busy with that."
"She's busy? Well, damnit, you'd better get busy."
"Okay."
"And on Saturday. You move more items on Saturday than you do any other day of the week. Why? I'll tell you why. The suckers have their pay, they've got the time to shop and they're hot. What if you have got salesmen? They set up the slobs, give them an option on the world, but the financial close is your pitch. Be out with some tramp, let the buyer wait until Mondday and he's apt to be colder than snow. This is impulsive buying, Clint. You have to ride the horse when he's in trim."
I'd heard all of this before and I was tired of it. We had good help at the agency and there wasn't a great deal I could do that was beyond them. The whole problem arose from his lack of confidence in others and this also included me.
"We're having trouble with that one new automatic washer I said, ignoring his statement. "Adjust one this week and next week the guy is back again."
"That's fine." He chuckled. "Charge the man for service."
"How can you when the thing is guaranteed for a certain length of time?"
"Simple. Blame him."
"Is that fair?"
"It's money in our pocket."
"Sure. And next time he buys something he won't come back."
"You're wrong, Clint. He will. Who gives out credit the way I do? Nobody, that's who."
"Not if they're in their right mind."
"Shut up." He scowled. "I'm going through this world once and after I leave it people will remember I was here. Did you ever work for a dollar a day?"
"No."
"Well, I did. During that miserable depression. Then I cashed in some insurance policies and loaned out the dough at high rates of interest. When a guy didn't pay I took what he had and sold it. I busted my back for years and nobody, dumb or smart, is going to tell me what is right or wrong. What kind of baloney did they teach you in college?"
"Nothing that you'll let me use."
"No, and I never will." He turned toward the door. "Now come downstairs and meet my new wife."
I lit a cigarette.
"Later," I said.
"Later? Why later?" He was annoyed.
"Simple. I have to get used to the whole idea. How can I treat a girl younger than I am as my mother? First, she isn't, and, secondly, the thought I can treat her on such a basis is absolutely ridiculous."
Those eyes of his challenged me.
"Clint, I pay you eighteen thousand a year."
"I know. You remind me of it often enough."
"You could belong to some big clubs."
"Sorry but they don't interest me."
"I can see they don't. Instead of putting the old hook to some girl who's got society in her family you bum it on Shore Avenue. You-"
"That's not necessary," I said shortly.
"Naturally, because you don't know what you're letting yourself in for. Those people down there have the morals of cats. When you aren't giving her what she wants some other guy is. What if she gets herself knocked up? Who do you think she's going to blame? A guy who makes fifty a week or one who earns eighteen thousand a year? I see it coming, just as you know you're in for a storm when the leaves on the trees fall on their butts. Except that it'll be her belly and not one of some leaf."
He went out and I tried to read the weekend papers. I couldn't. Maybe he was right. Laura hadn't explained anything about her past, at least her physical past, and I hadn't asked. Still, I didn't regard the traditional double standard as a blueprint for living. I'd slept with the girl and probably she'd had a few men. Those things happen and it's no reason to be critical unless they persist after marriage. Anyway I didn't think it was a reason. We are humans, all of us, and we all have our weak moments.
I walked over to the window and looked down at the pool. A swimming pool? Certainly, nothing but the best-all of it paid for by exploiting others. Maybe I was weak or I wouldn't tolerate him. I had mentioned the money factor to Laura but it was a poor excuse, far from being right. I had excellent training in a fine field and I could probably get another job. I didn't have to sit quietly and watch this ruthless display of financial trickery. They'd bury him the same as anybody and what good would his success do him after that? Yet it wasn't difficult to understand why he conducted himself in such a way. When he matched his money bags with others he was superior but he had to be able to do this to overcome the nagging inferiority which he must feel inside of himself. He had a burning ambition to prove himself as an equal of others and to do this he had to dominate them with money. Strange? I didn't think so. The man who brags over a bar about his two hundred dollar a week salary, when in reality it's closer to one hundred and he earns no more than those who will listen to him, has pretty much the same objective in mind.
I don't know just when I started to go downstairs but I know that I had every intention of quitting him. Until I stepped out into the hall. Then the idea faded. Something else began to live.
She was there almost as confused as I was, but she had nothing in her hands with which to cover herself. She was naked, still wet from her bath. Her sensual mouth pouted for a second, then parted in a brief smile.
You've seen these girlie magazines but few of those girls had what belonged to her. She was all of forty two inches upstairs where it counted in the boob department and her lovely full breasts were pear shaped and jutting, their centers a glorious pinkish red. Her middle was lovely and softly curved, her navel deep and mysterious, and the generous hips of a woman curved down to become rich thighs and creamy, perfect legs, her mound of venus, exposed, dark and moist.
"Well," I said and could say no more for the moment.
"Excuse me," she murmured in a soft voice. "I knew somebody was up here but I thought-"
"Yes?"
"He had a phone call." She didn't seem to be disturbed about being stark naked but I didn't share her obvious composure. "He had to go out. Business. He said you'd probably stay in your room and-you're Clint, aren't you?"
"Yes. And you're-"
"Your father's wife. I'm-"
On stiff legs I entered my room. It was cool enough in the house but a drench of sweat poured out of my skin and my head throbbed. I lit a cigarette but I lit the wrong end and had to throw it away. Weakly, I slumped into a chair. My loins were twisted into knots, my hands shaking.
For some reason I cursed, not in bitterness but because of frustration.
My old man's wife.
I cursed again.
I had just seen her once but could I live with her-or without her?
How had he met her actually? What, other than money, could he possibly have that she might want? Oh, he had his sex life, I knew that. Even our maid would put out for him. She wasn't too bad, possibly a little heavy set. If it wasn't my father she went to one of the bars. Two beers and she had an idea. Four beers and her panties came off for the man who picked her up.
I got up and paced the room. This, I decided, wasn't so good. Why should a girl be able to hit you so hard and so fast? How could I, a fairly mature adult, look at her only once and forget there were other girls in the world? But it was true and the shock stunned me.
Laura.
Sweet Laura, yielding her femininity to me upon that blanket, afraid that I would learn of somebody else and knowing that I did. Yes, Laura, her body mine, her initial pain the product of my manhood, her satisfaction complete and without restraint on her part. Laura....
Somebody knocked on the door. I went to open it, knowing who it was, afraid of what I might attempt to do, yet determined that it wouldn't.
"Busy?" she inquired, smiling.
She was dressed. Her sweater was tight over breasts, her skirt tight. And she was wearing a wedding ring. My old man's ring.
"Not too," I admitted.
May I come in?"
"By all means."
She sat on the edge of the bed. The skirt was in style, and the hem of it crept up over her nylons, exposing delightful thigh flesh above the nylons.
"I must have upset you," she said.
"No," I lied.
"I'm Mona."
"Pleased to meet you, Mona." I wasn't too intelligent just then. My old man had spoken of a storm, how you could tell when it was coming. To me, I had a tornado in my room. "Mona Reed."
"You're resentful."
"It doesn't matter."
"You're wrong, Clint. It does."
"So?"
"We should be-friends."
I thirsted for a drink. Friends? We should be more than that. My father was out, she was with me and there was nothing to stop us. For a moment my eyes roamed over her lush body then I looked away from her. How nuts, I asked myself, could I get? Thinking about her like the way I thought about Laura. With her it almost seemed right, the sex and petting that a lover might do, but my intentions about this girl, my yearnings, were dirty and evil. It was the same as going to a strip show, becoming inflamed by one of the girls, sending her a note and, later, waiting for her with the attempt to screw her.
"Yeah," I replied. "Friends."
She laughed. I looked back at her just as she crossed one leg over the other. The inside of one thigh appeared clearly, only to return under the skirt. There was more shiny nylon knee now, a lot of it.
"Friends," she repeated. "I'm too young to be your mother."
"But old enough to be my father's wife."
She frowned.
"You do resent me."
"No." I merely resented the fact that he owned her, that all of what she had belonged to him, that I'd never be able to touch her and feel right afterward. "He married you," I said. "And he's old enough to know what he's doing."
"Yes," she agreed. "Old enough to be my father and then some."
"You should have thought of that before." She shook her head.
"I'm not sorry, Clint. Why should I be? It's a tough life for a girl on her own and he fell in love with me. Fast. The pitch wasn't the usual one a young girl might use if she was hunting for an older man. In fact, it wasn't a pitch at all. He was at his convention, one of the speakers, and since they wanted some decorations at the head table they sent four of us from the agency. I could have sat next to almost anybody but it so happens they put me alongside him. My job was to be friendly, a companion to him for the meeting, and I thought nothing more of it than that. But he did. Is that my fault?"
"No," I admitted. "Except that his age-"
"Look, Clint. You have to understand. I didn't know whether he was worth a dime or a million, but it didn't matter because I was used to older men. Most kids grow up when their parents are fairly young. I didn't. My mother was forty when I was born, my father was years older. I'm the only child they ever had and he paid a lot of attention to me. Even in high school I didn't date much because the boys bored me. Now my people are in California retired. So-well, maybe I saw something in your father that reminded me of mine."
I got out a cigarette. The pattern wasn't too new. Many girls had a sort of father complex. It's tough competition for a guy.
"That explains a lot," I said. Laura had guessed it anyway.
"And we're friends?"
"Sure."
She smiled and got up from the bed.
"What's that in the corner?" she asked me.
"Sometimes I dabble in the arts."
"Really?" her eyebrows arched. "Harry didn't say anything about you being an artist, though he said you played."
"He wouldn't. He doesn't approve but as long as I do my work at the agency he skips the complaints. I've never sold anything. I just do it to relax."
"I'd love for you to play for me," she said.
She moved toward the door.
"Yes, when I'm in the mood."
"I mentioned an agency," she said. "It was a model agency and we drew all kinds of assignments. A few of the girls posed in the nude for magazines, but I never tried that-except once. The kook began pawing me as soon as I walked into his studio and I hit him. That ended it and almost killed me with the agency.
A car came into the drive, probably my father, and she left.
For a while I stood still, the palms of my hands wet with sweat, staring at the door which had closed upon her swaying hips and plump rear.
She'd make a good model.
What a wonderful body to have pose for me.
And I'd make studies putting her beautiful figure upon paper.
Nothing else.
But she would be there, available.
CHAPTER THREE
My old man was very late the next day. His being late set a furnace inside of me. I knew what he was doing all right-with her and him, both naked, her lovely thighs spread for him.
The morning was slow as far as buyers were concerned but we were kept busy in the repair shop doing as little work as possible on some maintenance and trying to make them work long enough so they could be sold. Two trucks came in with more models and these were unloaded. They checked the new ones as they came off the line but once in a while they made mistakes. In the selling business you can't always trust the other guy. Sometimes you can't even trust yourself.
My office wasn't a fancy one but it was sufficient to meet my requirements. I had a desk, a phone and a few office chairs. If a salesman came across a hard customer to sell he brought the person in and I'd eventually chop the price. Of course this was made up through the financing arrangement but the customer seldom realized it. Used appliances are easier to play with in our state than new ones. You get as much as you can on a traded lemon, maybe juggle the figures, but it's tougher when dealing with a new appliance. However, not all people are greedy, accepting your offer as being fair, and I hate to see them burned. That's why I'd rather finance through a bank than do business with Dad's investment firm but whenever I did this it led to a fight.
"Some man was just yelling at me over the phone," Norma Klone said as she entered my office. "He wanted to pull his loan from Reed's Investment Firm and float it through his bank but they're asking more in settlement than he owed in the first place. And that after four monthly payments already made."
Norma was my private secretary. She was a lush bodied doll with a trim figure, and she had a young son from a man who left her. A couple of my male help said she was great in bed, but I never gave her more than a passing thought.
"It's the old cry," I told her. "Once they're in the water they take a bath. What's his name?"
"Mike Rimmer."
"I remember him. Dad closed the sale that day I went to Hartford-I'll talk to the old man and see what can be done."
"Okay. I'll close my ears when he starts yelling."
I had lunch in a grill and found my old man waiting for me when I returned. I had shed my coat out of respect to the heat but he stood there in a neat business suit.
"You met Mona, didn't you, Clint?" I smiled. I'd met her and that was for sure, naked in the hall, all of her lovely. "Yes, I did."
"Nice if you two can get along."
"Why not? There's no reason for us to fight. You made your choice and I'll keep my nose out of your personal business."
"Plus all my other business."
"Of course."
I followed him into my office. Usually I sat behind the desk but when he was in the office that's where he sat. I often thought it should be a throne of some sort so I could kneel before it.
"Those refrigerators aren't moving like they ought to," he said.
"No. We aren't pushing them."
"Why?"
"Because they're so much junk. I keep asking you to let me wholesale them out. Give the grief to somebody else."
"Knock down the prices."
"They're still lemons."
"So what? You sell somebody a lemon for a few hundred, finance him crazy, and he comes in with his tale of sorrow. He cries and you cry with him. Then you work him up to a better model, stick him worse than before. Eventually he gets sick of his problems with a used model and he's hot for a new one. Progressive selling, my boy. Move ahead, never stop, get out the prong and shove it to them. They love it."
He lit a cigar. He always smoked cigars when he felt good but if he was up in the air over something he'd sit and chew one without lighting a match to the thing.
"This Mike Rimmer," I said. "Is the name familiar to you?"
It wasn't and I explained the situation, refreshing his memory.
"A crumb," he declared, refusing to give the man a break. "You're in the city one day and he comes in here. Busted. Flat, no job and he had the weeps. He couldn't have written a check for five bucks and made it stick at his bank. I even financed the license plates and liability insurance for a car for him. He liked me then, didn't he? You bet he did. I was a great guy. So now he has a job, makes a few bucks and wants to welch out. He can go to hell and take his misery with him. I should waste my breath and time on a crumb like that."
I looked up at the faded ceiling. Maybe he was right. Some customers did come in who were unable to get credit anywhere else and we helped them. If the man was honest and sincere it didn't do us any harm to help him out. We made our money and he got his break. Still, I didn't believe it gave us the privilege of riding him into the ground.
"You're the boss," I said.
"You stay until nine tonight. Until closing."
"But I'd planned-"
"Forget about your plans boy. Norma had the figures for last week. Damnit, I want more business. Sell stuff and float the paper, huh? Being here for the evening makes up for Saturday afternoon. You're an executive aren't you? How many executives have regular hours? They may be home but they're thinking all the time, looking down the sights of their guns at the marks. And if you hoped to see that slut, take off her clothes and-"
"All right," I said harshly. "You hardly know the girl so why sling mud at her? Do I try to pick your friends?"
His eyes grew dark with rage.
"I'm your dad, and don't ever miss that fact. There's eighteen grand a year for you while you're with me and maybe ten or fifteen from somebody else. Take your choice and stop bleating."
I stared at him, recalling the nights he hadn't taken the time to visit my mother in the hospital, the people he had used and discarded for his own personal advantage. His blood was my blood and, I wanted to like him, but I couldn't. And he had that young wife. A ripe wife with an even riper shape. At his age he wouldn't be all the man she needed and I had an idea she required a lot of male loving.
"You're the boss," I said again.
"And you're smart," he told me. "You just have to learn that it takes guts in this world. I'd kill a man if he expected me to do something for him and get nothing out of it. Slobs I can do without."
He couldn't leave until after he'd bragged about his construction program. The men who built the project for him used anything that would hold a nail, installed sewage systems which were inadequate. Some of the foundations of earlier homes were already cracked and while the people complained he did nothing about it. He had them under his heel and he stomped on them. I could only regard him as an out and out crook who didn't need a gun. He robbed the public with a mountain of lies and a fast scheme.
About four that afternoon Laura phoned me from the store. I hadn't heard from her since Saturday and I hadn't tried to reach her.
"Drive me home after work?" she asked.
"I'm on until nine."
"Aw, golly," she was disappointed but, in addition her voice indicated she felt more than just that alone. "A shame. Where's your car?"
"Home. It started this morning, made a terrible noise and then it stopped. One of my roomers said it sounded as though I'd thrown a rod."
I sat silent, thinking. That would mean a motor job, maybe another motor, and doing such an amount of work was expensive.
"Well, okay," I said. "I guess I can get away long enough to haul you home."
"Clint, I don't want to cause you any trouble, only-"
"You won't."
The store closed at five thirty but I parked near it a few minutes early. Heat rays from the sun lifted from the pavement and women were charging into the stores as though it was their last chance to buy anything on earth. Over the entrance a sign featured items from a nickel to a dollar but the sign was out of place with progress. Some of their things sold for as high as ten dollars.
She was late coming down the street and she looked nice in a cool lovely dress that clung to her voluptuous shape. The frenzy of our sex intercourse on the blanket returned to me and I wondered if she'd mention it.
She did, after about two blocks.
"I'm scared, Clint. That's why I had to see you. I couldn't even clean the house yesterday and I prayed you'd call and say-"
Her voice trailed off.
"There's nothing to be scared of," I assured her. "No, you don't have to be scared."
"What do you mean?"
"This. Supposing I had a baby? You didn't use any protection. Would you want me at all if I was pregnant?"
"Well, if it was mine-"
"Clint!"
"All right. All right. Why should I hurt you?"
"Please. Do you believe that I-"
"No."
I took the street bordering the park. It was faster and cooler and the fumes weren't so heavy in the air. "It-Clint, that was only the second time for me." Once or a dozen-how could a man know? "Forget it, Laura."
I glanced at her but she avoided my eyes.
"No girl forgets," she said slowly, "if it's clean and you're willing maybe it becomes a beautiful memory. This-wasn't. Dirty, far worse than you find on Shore Avenue. That's pretty bad, yes, but if the girl agrees what is a fellow supposed to do? This-Clint, this was the last month I was with my aunt. She had me staying with her and a man there was a roomer. He worked in a woman's wear plant. He'd steal things from the plant and give them to me. I didn't want what he stole but my aunt claimed he'd be offended if I refused his gifts, maybe get mad and move out. He was steady pay so I took what he gave me but I never used any of it. Then one night she splurged and went to the movies, which she hadn't been able to see before. It's a long movie and I was alone in the house with this man. About nine he started hollering for somebody and because I knew he had to take pills and there was nobody else around I went to his room. He was in bed, a sheet over him. He asked for some water and I got that. Just as I handed him the glass he grabbed my wrist, dumping the water, and pulled me down onto the bed. Part of the bed was soaked and I screamed but the windows were closed and I couldn't make myself heard outside.
He threw the sheet aside and tore at my dress. He was naked, a lust maddened crumb, and the sight of him made me sick. He pulled my legs apart and before I could even prepare for his insertion he rammed his huge hot hard thing and he almost ripped me apart, and he quickly had his own pleasure, and he did it inside me without any precautions, he just didn't care. He left afterward, Clint. Moved out that night. Of course I told my aunt when she got home but she blamed me, said I'd probably teased him and that I'd cost her a boarder. I-wanted to have you think you were the only one but we both knew and I had to set it straight between us. That was why it took me so long to give you a date. I liked you but I couldn't believe that any man could ever be important to me."
I swung off onto a narrow street and slowed the car because I had to watch out for kids. Some girls lie about their pasts but I didn't think she had. It explained why she was of a hesitant nature and why she had to feel confident in me.
"If that bastard was here I'd pound him into a jelly," I said.
She sighed.
"Do you despise me, Clint?"
"Laura, be reasonable. There's no reason to despise you. How can a girl defend herself against a beast? She has to fight from the gutter to even have a chance and you're not the type."
"I'm thinking more about this place," she said as I parked in front of it. "I'll never be able to sell it for what it's worth in this section and I have no desire to go on living here. If I borrowed the money and turned it into apartments I could repay the loan and have an extra income."
"It's a thought," I said. "Real estate that shows a profit is a solid investment. Rents might go down but that would be after everything else dropped in price. The only way to get hurt is to buy high and get caught in the middle."
"Yes, but try and tell a banker that."
"Every bank has a different policy."
"Like the one I saw on my lunch hour? The man didn't laugh at me but he cut me off rather quickly. They seem to be afraid to loan to a single girl. If she got sick who would pay the mortgage?"
"They have to protect their depositors."
"What about your father, Clint? Would he be interested?"
"Yes, but talking to him would be like a cobra having a mongoose in its cage."
"I don't think it would take too much money."
"Old houses always do and he'd get his. Either that or he'd swindle you out of the house. Also-"
"Yes?"
"That would be personal with him, because of us." She hesitated.
"Well, we'll see. Are you coming in?"
"Cripes, I can't. He's up in the air and when he's that way he's nobody to fool with. If I had-hell, if I had enough money saved I'd chuck it. There are jobs in business administration but why should I work for somebody else: I could use the training in my own business and I kind of like this selling-as long as it's honest. There's a fellow I met who's selling out and he has a fairly decent stock of used cars and trucks. The trouble is I'd need a floor plan to swing the purchase."
"What's a floor plan?"
"That's money from a lender, say a finance company. When you see a dealer who has a lot of cars on display you can be pretty sure that all of the cash put out isn't his. He pays interest on his loan and he moves what he can as fast as possible. My old man has his own plan, using his own finance company, but he's one of the very few."
It was a dream, having my own business, one of those things which most men think about. New appliances are handled on a franchise basis and a line of only used ones is a risk. You buy on the open market and you're just as apt to get stuck as the customer.
"Thanks, Clint," she said and got out of the car. "And don t apologize for Saturday. The fault was mine as much as yours. No, more. You asked and I had to know if it was good. It was."
I drove back to my office, talked to a couple of salesmen and told them to push the stuff onto anybody who needed them. They agreed but I knew they weren't happy about it, not a bit more happy than I was. My dislike for cheating unsuspecting people was based upon ethics. Their dislike was due to a simple economic factor. They were on a commission basis and sometimes they worked harder to sell a cheap item than they did one that cost many hundreds.
Finally, I entered my office and sat down behind the desk, thinking.
Of course I wasn't thinking about the agency. Or Laura.
I only thought of my new mother.
And I was thinking of putting the meat to mother. Sort of incestuous, I thought.
CHAPTER FOUR
One evening, I mentioned to the old man about the possibility of moving out of the house and taking an apartment.
"Somewhere closer to the business," I explained, every word a lie, trying not to admit to myself that I was afraid of his wife and my own animal desires. "It's time I shifted for myself."
He glared at me across the table.
"You're staying here, boy." It wasn't his idea and I didn't expect him to agree with me. "I won't have you renting a place just so you can sleep with that tramp. One of these days you'll head my organization. If you manage to wake up before I die. And no slum tramp is going to live off of what I've created."
Disgusted, I turned away.
"There's another thing," Mona said. "Your father has to go away on business once in a while and I don't care for traveling. What if the servants are off and he isn't here? Shouldn't I have a man in the house for protection?"
"You've got a phone," I said.
"Still," she said and lapsed into silence.
The old man raved, cursed me because I didn't appreciate anything he did for me. I resented his abuse but I tried not to get sore. However, it was impossible not to get angry or to feel my dislike for him to grow.
Yes, he had given me a great deal, more than most fathers could hand to their sons, but I would rather be able to respect him than listen to his speech about how much loot he had. Guts. It was always that with him. Kick the other person in the gut and run with all that you could grab.
I had avoided looking at his wife. All through dinner which is a long time to be in the presence of a beautiful girl and not pay attention to her. The lovely dress she wore was strapless, snug over the fullness of her lush breasts and it revealed a couple of inches of the cleft of boob between them. Her perfume was imported and the odor belonged more in a bedroom than it did at the dinner table.
The maid came in for the plates. She was a pretty thing who didn't have an urge capable of controlling her body.
"You need an anchor to go with that wiggle" my father told her.
He was a blunt man, often too blunt, but she wasn't offended by what he said. Her pay was above average and he had slept with her at various times in an effort to get the most for his wages. She knew him for what he was, a demanding male who cared for no one except himself.
"A million," he said while we were having our coffee. "This slug comes into my office and want to sell me twenty five thousand of life insurance." He glanced at his wife. "A fast buck getter, baby. I know the type because I'm one myself. Every minute that you waste is money that you'll never have. Swell. A guy like that appeals to me but you know what I told him? I told him to write me a million dollar policy or take a job digging foundations for one of my buildings. So he's clobbered by the size of the policy and he starts shaking like an idiot in court. I say for him to call his rotten company and he does. Check on my name, I say, because either this is big or Harry Reed will have nothing to do with the mess."
"And?" she inquired.
He laughed.
"Everybody in that office must have fainted and they had to hire a doctor to get them back on their feet. He stands there, looking at me as though I just dumped a load of garbage in his front yard-you know?-and then he puts me onto the phone with this clown who's lucky to have his job. Boston. That's where I got to go. For a whole day just to jazz around with a flock of doctors." He laughed again and slapped one hand down on top of the table. "You think they'll find anything wrong with me?" he asked her. "Didn't I pass with you and get top ratings?"
"No, they won't find anything wrong with you," she said. "Anyway, I hope they don't, but if they insure your life for that much money there won't be any guessing about it."
"You need the protection. For taxes, after they start digging the hole I'll be planted in."
"I'd cut out my drinking then."
"To hell with that." He hollered at the maid. "Cocktails, will you? And strong. I've gotten sick from all the baloney they sling."
I apologized for leaving the table so early and went upstairs. I'd worked at the agency every night since Monday and I'd simply taken this night off. I didn't know why. Laura was trying to finish one of her short novels and there wasn't anything to do other than play the piano or draw or wander from bar to bar.
I decided to draw.
The picture I was finishing could be classed as all right but it would never make me famous. All of the natural beauty was out in the country and when you work in a room, from memory, the feel you should have is very likely to escape you. Still it was a hobby. better than drinking too much and possibly having an accident as the result of it. Any concern I had about the appliance agency left me when I had a pencil in my hand.
Just one thing disturbed me as I worked over to make the barn real. I wasn't, in my own mind, creating an ancient barn with the boards falling off one side of it where a bull had tried out his horns. The red door simply wasn't a door. The red was close to the color of the large tips of her beautiful breasts, the sunlight which spilled across the door, the warmth of her soft body beneath them. The post where the mail box was supposed to be was one of her legs, muscles and tissue that were vitally alive, one of her legs that brought my father closer to her in the darkness of the night and the darkness of her sex passage, dark and moist.
There were pleasant things to think about, to imagine that she was mine, but my imagination, running wild, only served to ruin an effort which had required hours of working over. This should indicate that I'm not a professional, that my mind in this direction is not highly developed. Yet it may be due to the fact that I wish to create beauty, the ultimate of loveliness. Oh, there's nothing wrong about landscapes? They are fine to hang on a wall in a home and they may remind us of things we have seen and known. Yes, they have a place, prominent and desirable, but to me the final beauty belongs to the female body. Otherwise, I get all my pleasure from my composing. The old artists, if they didn't share the thought, they probed what were the basic issues of life. Per haps they didn't fully understand how a child could live from the offerings of a mother's welcome breasts and they explored the mystery so others could speculate about this very wonderful thing. Whatever the motive, however, my objective was to express myself in a similar manner although, I was sure, in not quite so competent fashion.
I forgot my work and dismissed the loss as being a minor one. Interesting scenery was available to anybody who sought it but when it came to a girl like Mona, his wife and receiving end for his big male offering-
His car roared as he powered the big butt out of the drive. With all of that power thrust under the hood and half a dozen cocktails in his stomach it was a wonder he didn't plow into one of the trees and kill himself. But you couldn't talk to him about it, warn him. He would forget what you said within minutes and have another drink. A hard drinker, a hard liver, a hard man. Since I was big and rugged myself I suppose it would be logical for me to feel as he did but I couldn't bring myself to do that.
I lit a cigarette and sat down, waiting for her. Something told me that she would come to my room but I didn't know what it was that caused me to think this way. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, the little sparkle of light I had seen in them as I left the table.
And she came to me. Shortly after.
She still wore the dress. The material hugged her lush hips in a tight embrace strained against the swells of her breasts. She had a couple of cans of beer.
"I guess you like it," she said.
"I guess I do." She didn't know what I meant, couldn't have any way of knowing just what it was I wanted from her.
"He's always busy." It wasn't a question but a statement of fact.
"All the time," I agreed.
"Making money."
"Yeah. He puts every dollar on a pedestal and worships it. If he could sell blood for five dollars a pint and stay alive afterward he'd drain himself dry."
She laughed a little and sat down on the edge of the bed. Her legs were nice and shapely as she sat there but I wished she wouldn't do it. Probably she loved him and she only wanted to be friendly with me but she didn't realize how her beauty ripped at my loins. Yet it didn't matter what her objective was. I had the instinct of the male and nobody could change that.
It was all I could do to react physically to her. That would be something as I stood there at stiff attention in my pants. What would she do then?
"You don't like him?" she asked.
"We don't get along."
"Because of me?"
"No. We never did. When I reached my twelfth birthday he bought me some expensive fishing equipment. I was proud, sure, because none of the other kids had anything nearly as good. But that's where it ended. I didn't know how to manage the reel or cast out the line or how to bait it. Even on weekends I couldn't get him to go to the river or a lake with me. He was too busy plotting how to make money, day and night, whenever he was awake. It was my mother who went with me and the rest of the kids laughed. Just this tiny thing began to separate me from him but in later years the incidents became more serious. Friends of mine whose parents got burned by him in business deals quit me. I was glad when I was old enough to go to college. At least nobody knew me there and I could make friendships that weren't destroyed by him."
"All very interesting," she said.
"It's the truth."
"But in spite of all this you still work for him. Isn't that surrender on your part?"
"Maybe it is now but that wasn't the reason when I began running the agency. I'm convinced that you can make as much profit by being honest as you can through cheating and I had hoped to prove it to him. ()f course I've never had the chance to do so. The double deal is the only one he knows. Sometimes I think-"
"Goon."
"It doesn't matter."
That was a lie. What I was thinking mattered a great deal. If I hadn't met her I would have left him. I had a little money and I had soaked up enough of his abuse, seen his greed destroy the innocent too often in the past.
"What about that girl he mentioned?" Mona asked. "Isn't she good?"
"Laura is a very fine girl. Her only crime is in not having money."
"That's strange," she mused. "He married me and I didn't have too much money."
"He didn't marry you for your money."
"Oh."
"He has two sets of rules. The set he has for himself permits him to do anything to anybody. Cross him and hell wreck you but let him do the same thing to you and he just laughs at your suffering."
"You'd rather be a composer than an executive, wouldn't you?"
"Maybe, but I'm not that clever with the arts. My mother had considerable talent and I have only a portion of what belonged to her. I feel what I want to do inside of me but to get it to come out, to put it to music, is the major problem. It's simply a hobby and I have to be practical about it. I don't go for this starving in the attic theory that you read of sometimes. My field is business." I paused. "If I had my own company-"
"He's of the opinion you might try and he said-"
"Look, I know what he said. He said he'd ruin me and he would. Even if I applied for just a job I'd need a reference. He'd throw the shaft into me and break it off."
"So you don't give his name as a reference."
"Then how do I explain the three years I've been out of college? Claim that I went on a long trip and just got back?"
She smiled and stood up.
"Kind of has his claws into you, doesn't he, Clint?"
"Yes, he does."
She walked over to where I did my last painting What happened to the landscape?" she inquired. I made a mess out of it."
"Is that a habit with you?"
"Not usually."
She was a thoughtful for a moment. The top of her dress had slid down about an inch and I could tell that she wasn't wearing a bra. I thought of her belly, small now, but later getting bigger because of the old man sticking his business in her and leaving a souvenir in.
"You're looking at me kind of funny," she said.
"Sorry. Seeing you in the hall that way must be the cause of it."
She laughed.
"Now be reasonable. I'm only another female and I am your father's wife."
"Of course. You're his woman, giving your youth so that he can-"
"He's good to me. He's kind. He may run over others but I can have anything that I want. Except a car."
"Know how he got his car? He didn't buy it, Mona. He made a loan on it and then took the car away from the man. The poor fellow was in the hospital at the time. He ought to be proud of himself, taking advantage of a man who was sick."
"That's life, Clint."
"No. It's him."
"Well-"
I knew it was going to happen because it was something that had to happen. I had seen her nude in the hall and now we were in this room, the two of us, standing close together.
Her lips were warm and soft but unresponsive beneath mine. At first she struggled in my arms, trying to pull away. Finally the struggle ceased and I brought her in hard and tight against me. The zipper was at the back of her dress and I slid it all the way down, then pushed it out of the way so the palm of one hand could discover the thrill of her smooth back. I brought my other hand in front, worked it up between us and the top of her dress. I tugged at it, yanking it away from her and her boobs spilled outside.
I don't know how soon after that she drove her knee into me but I know, big as I was, that it hurt. With a groan I let go of her and doubled up, grabbing at my middle. But the pain didn't last very long and I straightened, angry at her, sweat covering my face. She had done nothing to fix the dress and she was still exposed, her bared breasts heaving. She laughed and brought her hands up to them, tormenting me.
"You had to try for your fun, didn't you, Clint?"
I was ashamed and confused.
"Please, Mona, I-"
"What kind of a tramp do you think I am?"
"How do I know?" I demanded savagely, unfairly.
Her quick slap stung me. Sure, I could have slugged her but I don't do that with girls or my father's wife. Yes, his wife, a piece of tail for a man his age.
"I was wrong at dinner, Clint. About us."
"S-o it would seem."
"If he knew how you acted-"
"Go ahead and tell him."
"Don't you care?" She was surprised.
"Not particularly. I'm done here anyway. This house is big but it isn't big enough for both of us."
She walked past me and opened the door.
"That's right," she said. "It isn't."
A few minutes later I began to pack.
It would have been a matter of time before I grabbed her and forced my tool into that lovely creature.
CHAPTER FIVE
Then Laura lost her job.
This was about the middle of the following week and she hadn't yet seen my new apartment. We only came up for a drink and a quick tour but the drinks piled one on top of the other and the tour slowed down to a dead stop in the bedroom.
"Some bed," she said and threw herself upon it, her dress high up on her thighs and a smile of invitation curving lips. "Why did we drink? We're both stoned, Clint."
"Do you want to go home?"
"No. Kiss me, Clint I want to do what you want."
"Say yes."
"Not yes. Please."
It was wonderful with her that night, the merging of our male and femaleness into one a final overpowering satisfaction my completion scorching her passage into a frenzy of ecstasy.
"Eleven," she said the next morning. "You know what that means, don't you?"
"No."
"I don't even have to go to the store to find out that I'm fired. You have to call in or they mark you off. That's because you have two counters and they need time to dig up an extra girl to cover your job."
I rolled over, sat on the side of the bed and yawned. "Cheer up. The old man may drop me just as fast. Then we'll both be jobless."
"That isn't funny."
"I know."
She showered in the bathroom while I shaved. She didn't pull the curtain and she was a lovely sight, the beautiful boobs and soft round belly glistening, the dark patch of her womanhood moist and a stream of shower water from it looking so erotic and exciting.
"This is crazy," she said as she showered then toweled herself dry.
She threw the towel up on the rack and offered her lips.
"Let's get married, Clint."
"I guess we should."
"Yes, but when?"
"As soon as I can get on my feet."
She turned her back to me.
"That's only stalling."
"Or looking at the situation sensibly."
"No. When people marry they can't be certain they will always have the same measure of security. You take things as they come and make the most of them." She stepped stark naked out into the bedroom. "You have to think of me if I mean anything to you at all.
"Just be patient."
"What else am I?"
We dressed in the bedroom, talking some, the talk friendly, but I could somehow feel the tension building up between us. I respected her concern over our affair but the memory of my father's wife was strong.
Of course I was late, but I drove her home before
"Now I have to get another job," she said.
"For a while unless I pay your bills."
"No. You'll never do that until after we're married-if we do."
"Do you have doubts?"
"Some."
"My apology, Laura."
"Do you think that helps, Clint?"
"I don't know. I'm trying to be sincere with you."
"Is that a fact?"
"Yes." I didn't know whether or not it was the truth. I made a turn onto Shore Avenue. "What are you going to do?"
"About work? I can't tell you. If I could sell a story to a magazine-who knows?"
"Nobody."
"Are you being critical? You've no right to be. Nights you shut yourself up in that apartment and play the piano or draw. What does it prove?"
"Nothing that would buy you a cup of coffee but I sent for some nude photos and I may do better when I get onto them.
"Couldn't I pose for you?"
"Hardly. You know what we'd do. I wouldn't accomplish a thing."
She was cool when we parted in front of her house and we didn't make another date. It seems as though that after you've had some girl it's either all the way with them, a ring on their finger, or they deeply resent what they have given you. Not being a girl, I couldn't understand her attitude but I was able to appreciate it on the basis of what being decent meant to her.
I found a note from my father and a check on my desk as soon as I entered the office. The note was my dismissal from the agency and the check my final pay. Immediately I put in a call to the house.
"He isn't here," Mona said. "This is the day he gets examined for that life insurance policy in Boston."
"You should be pleased with yourself. I'm fired."
"I had nothing to do with it."
"The hell you didn't."
"Honest, Clint. He was very angry and he did it after taking on a load of highballs. I did my best but I couldn't reason with him."
I swore and slammed the phone down. She was a liar. Now I was all the way out and she was in.
"Too bad," Norma said as I left the office.
"Yes, but it was coming. The smell got stronger every day."
"It was Mike Rimmer who did it."
"Rimmer?"
"Yes. You signed with him on a bank loan and your father lost the account."
"Yes, that could be the reason," I acknowledged. "But it was a fair shake for Rimmer. He'll save money with the bank, his kid is sick and he's working hard to pay his bills. If you can't be human in business you should stay out of it."
"Your father sees it in another way."
"It'll come up to him one of these days."
I got out of the agency and drove over to see the man who had one of the used car lots. He was a small man, close to sixty, and he had sold cars all of his adult life.
I lit a cigarette. He worked alone, did his own selling and was never in a hurry. He bought fair and sold the same way. While he didn't employ a mechanic of his own he had an agreement with a garage to make whatever repairs were required.
"I'm all done with him, Mr. Dana. He canned me."
"A likely story to get into this location."
"Well, think it over. If I had him behind me would I ask for financing?"
"You've got a point, Reed, only it could be a clever swindle. His money is as good as the next fellows but I'm thinking of my customers. I don't have to advertise and they keep coming back. They get a square deal and they tell their friends. I have a duty to protect them."
"Fine. I feel the same way about it," I turned to look across the street. "Who owns the vacant lot over there?"
"You don't know?"
"Obviously I don't or I wouldn't put the question to you."
"Your father owns it."
"What would he want with that lot?"
"Speculation, I suppose. The neighborhood is growing and it's a good spot for a shopping center. Somebody will get taken by him."
We discussed arrangement for about an hour and the note and check from my father tended to convince him that I was on the level. He seemed willing to go along with me and he promised to think it over.
"You won't get rich," he said.
"I don't expect to."
"Most of the customers are working people, steady and honest. I insist on a third down but how they get the money is none of my affair. Most of the banks would demand this. If you sign a note with a buyer you want protection and so do they."
Somebody came in to look at a car and I drove off. On the way to the apartment I stopped at the bank where I had my account and talked to the man in charge of loans. He was interested in floating clean paper and I had to assure him that I had nothing more to do with my old man.
"It all depends on the deal you can make with Dana," he said. "He could floor plan the deal for you because he's got the cash and you can straighten up with him as you sell. You have a fairly nice balance with us and you can use that for working capital. Use your head and you shouldn't have too many difficulties."
He made some phone calls to some of the directors of the bank, reaching them at their places of business, and he got a favorable response. He couldn't give me a guarantee that they'd do everything I might ask but they were willing to handle my loans if the credit reports on those buying stood up.
As soon as I arrived at the apartment I phoned Dana, outlining a procedure that could benefit both of us. Ten minutes later he returned the call. He was willing to go ahead with the deal and I told him to have his lawyer work out the details.
I guess it was seeing the bed that made me give Laura a call. When I looked at the bed I didn't see it as an empty thing but as a place of pleasure where our male and femaleness had churned together and had pleasured us to our climax.
At first I didn't get a chance to tell her of my lucky break.
"They bought it!" she almost shouted. "That magazine. And a check was in with the letter from the editor. For two hundred and fifty."
I congratulated her, explained about my success but when I asked her out to dinner she said the editor wanted another story, one about an unhappy mother this time, and she thought she ought to work on it. I said I'd be in touch with her again and hung up, somewhat disappointed.
At five I went downstairs and there was a package for me. It was from the firm that sold nude studies to artists and photographers-or anybody else who wanted them. I'd ordered ten sets, each of a different girl, but I wasn't sure I could use any of them. I was of the opinion that I had to feel the beauty of a female form before I could ever attempt to transfer that beauty onto paper. To me, it was like dating a girl; she either appealed to me or I rejected her, just as the girl might accept a date from me or refuse. As for whatever I might accomplish it wasn't of great importance. Some people carve wood or mold clay for pleasure. Others read or watch television. I just happened to feel the need to create with a brush and paint as a switch from my music.
I tore the package open. The sets of pictures were in envelopes and I began to go through them. I wasn't impressed immediately. All of the girls had an individual quality about them but none of their poses seemed to be right for me. No, I wasn't impressed until-
Was it the eighth or ninth set? I don't know. I Just know that I really flipped. I hunched over the photos of this pretty girl who was my father's wife.
Mona, the same as she was now, her exposed breasts tilted and full, her stomach merely a naked separation between what was above and the dark mound of her down below.
They lying tramp, how many men had taken her, used her? And I wasn't good enough for her. Was that it? Not good enough for her, huh? Lying rotten, fortune hunting tart. Down on the bed letting him put it to her every night because he was loaded. Probably avoiding having a kid because she could have it all and keep his estate out of children's court. With just one meeting at a convention, undoubtedly learning of his wealth, and she had nailed him to the wall. A trophy for her collection, never another worry in her future. And my old man-an old fool, blinded by her beauty and stumbling. She had a father complex, did she? Hell, she had a money complex, a disease that would rob him ragged.
I tried calling the house but the line was busy. I didn't start to sketch. I couldn't. I couldn't do anything except think about her, her nakedness in the hall, wanting her, hungry for the passion of her body, desperate and frantic in my animal need to possess her completely and destroy her.
My father's wife....
His woman....
Beautiful bodied tramp with her full blown body and the big bouncing boobs.
And yet I had to have her to know her body intimately, thrill to the hot band of her arms around me, experience the summit of conquest as the female of her submitted to all that was male the man thing tight and pistoning in the snug woman trap, the finish the ecstasy of my love juices jetting and pulsating in her tight warmth.
I guess it was about eight when the phone rang. I don't know the exact time but I do know it was Mona.
"What a mess," she said.
"Everything is a mess." Maybe I was slightly drunk by then. "The whole world is screwed up. Looks at the bombs they make and-"
"Oh, shut up, will you?"
"Gladly."
"Your father phoned from Boston. He-"
"Yes? He what?" She took a breath.
"Cling, I've not to see you. Right away."
I wanted to see her too. All of her.
"You know where I live," I said. My grin became evil. "Maybe I've got a surprise for you. Maybe-"
"Please, Clint! Keep quiet. This is a jolt for you as much as it is for me. They-the examination. That physical. They got to his heart. Wires. Some kind of a machine. He cried over the phone. Cried, damnit. Just like a kid."
I froze.
"Go on," I said.
"Baking soda. He didn't tell you about it but he used to take it for gas pains. He didn't have gas. He's got heart trouble. Serious. They said-well, he has to take it easy. And there's nobody except you to-"
"Yes."
"Clint, I'll be there as soon as I can. Don't be mad or anything, will you?"
"No."
I sat down on the sofa, waiting. Of course I was worried about him. What son wouldn't be worried about his old man, regardless of how the father acted?
But I also thought about Mona, his woman.
Now she needed a man.
And I knew just the man. I had the vigor and I could deliver the goods. Personal deliverly.
CHAPTER SIX
I waited-waited-
I prowled the apartment the way an animal walks back and forth behind the bars in a zoo. Twice I tried to call Dana at his place. There wasn't any answer and his home phone was an in listed number. I didn't see how I could go through with our deal now. My old man's sickness. It was a bad thing and he'd have to take it easy now. But it was far from the end. Lots of people had heart trouble and if they took care of themselves they lived a long and useful life.
I waited.
I gathered up all of the nude photos and shoved them into a drawer. Why hurt her with the truth or take advantage of her? Maybe she did care for him and she was concerned about his health. Yet if she required a man-
I was nervous and uneasy. You don't drive your father's car without his permission. You don't take money out of his wallet unless you ask for it. So what right did I have to want his wife, strip her naked and take her intimately upon my bed? I began to wish that she hadn't called, that she wasn't coming to my apartment, almost wished that she wasn't around.
My old man's lady love....
His private tramp....
I opened some beer. Myabe I was wrong about her. The nude pictures didn't prove anything. Plenty of girls, needing a buck, pose their way. It's no more than a job for them. The girl isn't wrong, exactly. Most of the blame rests with the men who buy those things. If there wasn't a market, the girls wouldn't strip and show themselves. The same goes for the prostitutes.
My door was unlocked and she didn't knock. She just came into the apartment and the door closed behind her.
I swore softly as I looked at Mona. She wore a snug skirt that struggled to conceal her full hips and the blouse was cut low in front. The blouse was as tight as her skirt and she didn't have to take it off for me to know she was naked underneath it. Her swollen breasts thrust forward, bobbled as she walked and the centers almost tore through the thin cloth.
"You were supposed to hurry," I reminded her.
She shrugged.
"I could use a brew."
I went out into the small kitchen for one. There was also a bottle on a shelf but I only glanced at it. Whiskey. That was for Laura. When she drank Laura lost all of her inhibitions. She'd twist and moan and what she gave was always good and hot and wild.
Mona was seated when I returned to the living room. Her skirt was short and most of her knees were exposed and lots of pink-white flesh.
"This is awful," she said as she accepted the beer. "About him."
"Yes, it is."
"And an insurance company won't explain to you just how serious your condition may be. He mentioned that. If they tell you, you've got something wrong with you and it turns out they're wrong, you can turn around and sue for damages. But they aren't wrong in this.
The machine showed it. It has to be right."
I sat down opposite her. The chair was a little uncomfortable but it gave me a better view of her legs and up between them when she parted her thighs.
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked.
"He's your father."
"That's true, but he fired me over a loan and because I tried to help a man. If anybody has to make an approach I think it should be him."
"How can you feel that way?"
"Well, I do. He bought it, Mona. I've tried to reason with him and I can't."
"Maybe you haven't understood him?"
"What's there to understand? You know how he worships money. We all need money but getting it doesn't have to become the only important thing in life. They say there's a price for anything you do and this is where he starts paying it"
"Money," she said thoughtfully. "Yes, you have to have more than that. You can borrow money but not a new heart. They'll want him to stop drinking so much but hell just be stubborn and he won't quit or cut down. He's probably loaded now."
"Or giving it to some broad."
Her eyes challenged my statement.
"That's not fair. I'm more woman than he can handle so why would he want another one?"
More than he could handle. Not enough man for her. Rich but he couldn't give her all that she demanded. She wouldn't be any five minute deal. It would be for an hour or all night.
"I'll talk to him," I promised. "He threw me out of the business but he's still my father. I can't overlook that."
She smiled.
"Thanks, Clint. Between the two of us we should be able to do something."
"Maybe."
"We will. No one wants to die. He ought to relax and enjoy himself. There's no reason for him to make a lot of money."
I doubted very strongly that he would listen to reason. When something upset him he became angry with the world and he took out his anger upon anybody he knew.
"This time I joined her on the sofa. The sofa was one of those sectional affairs and It came apart in the middle very easily. I guess it needed some rubber things under the legs to make it stay in place.
"It's warm in here," she said. "Haven't you got a fan?"
"No. I had one at home but I forgot to bring it."
"How can you work when it's so hot?"
"Funny, but I don't think of the heat when I'm relaxing. It's only when you think about it that the heat bothers you."
"Do you like it better here?"
"Let's say I had to make the move. If I wasn't living in this apartment I'd be somewhere else. One place is as good as another. Besides, after that incident with you-"
She broke in. "Look, Clint. Don't be too critical of yourself. Probably I led you on and then I gave it to you between the knees. It had to come, didn't it? Our ages are close and those things happen. What you wanted from me was in your eyes and you didn't have to worry. If I got a baby he'd think it was his. He wouldn't know. You wouldn't and maybe I wouldn't know for sure who did it either. He wants me to have a baby but I can't see that at his age. He'd never see the child grow up unless he was lucky and his heart sort of lessens his chances. And maybe his doctor will tell him-"
"Yes?"
"Forget it."
"Hell, you've got something on your mind."
"What it is only concerns your father and me."
I knew what she meant. A man's heart raced at the height of the sexual climax. It was almost as tough on the human body as running two blocks at top speed. Some men in bad health had to stay celibate.
"Your personal problems are your own," I told her. "And I think you did lead me on. I think you were using your body to accomplish a purpose. As far as I know, you did it."
She laughed. Her laugh was intimate and it did things to me, weird and wonderful things that clawed at my insides. It was the kind of a laugh I wanted to hear when a girl was teasing me just a little.
"How far would you have gone, Clint?"
"All the way."
"That isn't an answer."
"Why not?"
"I'm your father's wife."
"Legally, yes."
"What sort of evil crack is that?" Her tone was annoyed.
"It's simply the truth. You're too young for him and he's too old for you. Some of these marriages work out but he isn't the man for it. You're a toy that he wanted. He bought you. At your age you sold yourself. From a money angle you made a good decision. He has a big estate and he's bound to go before you do. You'll still be fairly young and a very wealthy widow. Then you can marry the man you want."
"You do resent me, Clint. You resented me from the beginning. Probably you saw me as a threat to your own future. I appreciate that. Until I came along there was just the two of you. You were making eighteen thousand a year and-""
"Hating every minute of it. Don't fool yourself about me, Mona. I believe in people getting ahead, I believe in trying to become a success, but I think a man can do it without stomping on others. I-oh, he'll change his will. I honestly don't give a damn about that. We were practically through with each other a long time ago. Today I saw a man about buying into a business. Tonight I tried to call him to say that I wouldn't. Right now I don't know what I'm going to do. If I can help my old man, I will. No son could refuse to do that, regardless of his own personal opinions. But I'm not going to become tied to him again. I want something of my own and I won't steal to get it Earning a living isn't that important to me. Only a few of the fellows at the agency made more than eight thousand a year and yet they had families and they were happy. They'd talk about bills which were over due but it didn't bother them. They pay as they can and they have homes. There's one guy and he takes his boy fishing every Sunday. He doesn't fish himself but he goes along with the kid. At least he's there and he's showing interest. I had none of that. I had anything that money could buy and I might just as well have been thirsty and owned a dry well."
She got up and went into the kitchen for a beer. Her hips swayed as madly as two pillows in a storm. She was full down there, plenty of cheek for a man to hold with his hands. At the last second she'd lift to a man, drawing him closer, her legs hot and wrapping close, her shallow breathing rapid and excited.
My old man's nookie.
"Getting hotter," she said as she came in with the beer. "And this skirt is murder. When I get a skirt to fit my waist it's too tight in the hips."
"Take it off," I suggested hopefully, thinking only of the sight of it.
"All I have on is a garter belt underneath."
"I've seen you naked before."
She sat down closer to me.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you Clint?"
"I'd force myself."
"What would your steady girl think?"
"She won't know."
"But we would."
"Sure. Just us.
She didn't remove her skirt but she said something about her nylons and she lifted the skirt, standing there in front of me, and unhooked them. She rolled them down her legs, kicked off her shoes, and tossed them into one corner of the sofa. It wasn't the actions of a girl who didn't expect to accept what a man could offer her. My father was away, she was his wife and she had a need for sex satisfaction.
"Stockings," she said and sat down again. "You men are so damned lucky. You can dress in five minutes and get out of your clothes in less time. I lived with a girl once. She had to wear a girdle because she was pregnant and she didn't want it to show until after she'd finished an assignment. Golly what a fight she had getting Into it and out of it. You'd think she was a stripper doing bumps and grinds."
"Did you always room with a girl?"
"Mostly. It was cheaper and safer. You date a man because it's your job, like a convention, and he comes up to your place for a drink. Of course he has his mind on something else. He figures this is a night on the mattress and tomorrow you won't care. Then your roomie walks in and he cools it. There's nothing he can do except have his drink and leave."
"Unless you want the guy."
"Now, I'm not that kind," she protested.
"I thought most models were."
"You're wrong. Some tramps give the profession a bad name but most girls are hard working. They dream of great success and keep plugging. Only a few of the dreams ever come true. There are thousands of beautiful girls, In and out of the field. A limited number will do anything. Others won't. Why should a girl give herself to a man and never see him again? She can get pregnant and have to bring up the child. Most of the girls want marriage."
"Well, you have yours."
"Yes, and you misunderstand. He's the same as having a father but there's a different warmth in my feeling toward him. A girl either accepts or rejects a father. He may drink too much. He may gamble when he can't afford it. Or he runs with other women. This is not the way I feel about Harry Reed. My feeling-and don't laugh-is more maternal than anything else. He's so much older than I am but I get the impression sometimes that I'm mothering him. It isn't a man's mouth that kisses my mouth or breasts. It's the mouth of a boy."
I said, "How kooky can you get?"
"Please, Clint. I'm serious. He has devoted all of his life to making money. If he has a business appointment and I want him to stay home he tells me that he'll keep the appointment so that he can earn enough to pay for a new dress. This solves it for him but it doesn't for me. Any girl wants a new dress but she'd rather have her husband. So I watch television for a while and go to bed. Just when I'm almost asleep I can smell liquor on his breath. I ... Clint, I'm not complaing. He's more generous than most husbands. If he's late for dinner he sends flowers. I know he's thinking of me and yet...."
"And yet it isn't real," I added.
"No, it isn't real the way you want things to be. But again, I'm not complaining. Most married couples sit down and talk over problems. We don't. There would be nothing to talk about anyway. He makes up his mind and that's it. Everybody is supposed to do just as he wants them to do."
"With the exception of you."
She looked thoughtful as her eyes stared at my face. "I don't dig you, Clint."
"About a baby. He wants one and you don't."
She smiled.
"Is that so bad?"
"I wouldn't say it was, under the present circumstances. I suppose it's grounds for conflict in a marriage between an older man and a young girl. Probably he's disappointed in me and feels that his next child would be more like him. This is a natural thing for a man to wish. If I was dishonest like he is there wouldn't be any trouble in our relationship."
She put her head back, closing her eyes as she did so, and the blouse filled up with the lush breast meat of her. A wild pound stormed through my head as I watched her titties lift and fall with each breath.
My old man's piece....
His own wife....
I took the beer out of her hand and set the can down on the floor alongside mine. Most people drink beer out of a glass but when I'm not at a bar I'd rather have it straight from the can because it stays colder.
She only displayed a mild resistance as I kissed her. For a few moments her lips were firm, unyielding but then they began to move under the silent urging of my mouth.
"I hope you know what you're doing," she said. Her eyes were now open. "I know."
"I'm his."
"I want you." She sighed.
"I guess we can't avoid it, Clint." She ran one of her hands over the side of my face. "I like you. Maybe if I had met you first...."
My next kiss bruised her lips and she let out a little moan. She twisted toward me and my right arm held her tight. I thought of the buttons on her blouse and my left hand went to the top one. She blinked furiously as I undid the buttons but the blinking stopped and she just stared at me as my hand found her naked boobs. She was nice up there, delightfully full, every inch of her female and her mouth came all the way open. The tip of her tongue searched violently for a mate. It found mine.
I don't know when the sofa split apart but we fell to the floor. I asked her something about whether or not she was hurt and she said she was okay.
As I carried her into the bedroom we kept telling each other that this was wrong, that we shouldn't be doing this at all. But our words were only words and they lacked conviction.
I didn't bother removing her skirt the first time and I hurt her some as I stuck my pulsating organ in her dark tangle and inside her. It slid deep into her sheath. I could feel the skirt up over her belly. She gasped as the pain stabbed at her but the pain didn't last and she quickly surrendered all of her body to frenzied pleasure. Her teeth sunk into my shoulder and she moaned insanely as she reached the peak of satisfaction and it carried over to my own completion and she stiffened as my completion jetted out of me and into her. She cried out at the wondrous sensation of the fiery spurts gushing in her core, long and continuous, the forces hammered and squirted inside her body.
We didn't sleep much.
The next time, we were both stark naked, and it was something, a son's sex organ buried in his father's wife's womanhood, his seed pulsating and jetting deep in her, in place of his father's which, legally should be instead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next day I phoned his house before leaving my apartment. He was home and while he was willing to talk to me I felt funny about going there. I'd see his wife and I didn't know how we would react, both father and son laying the same woman.
But there wasn't any need to worry. She was friendly when she met me at the door but that was it.
He was in the living room, stripped to the belly, a supply of booze on a small table near him.
"I knew you'd come crawling back," he said.
Mona sat on the couch and I remained standing. She wore a lovely dress which complimented her figure. Even though I had slept with her I still found her sensual curves fascinating.
"I'm not crawling anywhere," I told him. Of course Mona and I had discussed my approach and finally decided that I'd play it straight down the middle. "You upset Mona and she gave me a call yesterday." She had given me a hell of a lot more than that. "Maybe you fired me but I am interested in your health."
"Or my money?"
"No, I don't care a great deal about your money because I don't expect to get any of it." He gulped down part of a highball. "Then you won't be disappointed."
"Not at all."
"Wise, aren't you?"
"Not very."
"You and that tramp from downtown."
"Are you trying to make me sore?"
"Feel that way if you want. It's nothing to me."
He wasn't exactly drunk but he had just enough inside of him to be in an ugly frame of mind.
"What about that examination?" I asked. "If you've got trouble with your heart you ought to see a doctor."
"Why? Because of those bastards in Boston? It scared me at first, sure, but then I got to thinking it over. What can they tell with a bunch of wires and a stinking machine?"
"They're pretty accurate."
"Crap. I should go to bed and wait to die?" He glanced at her and grinned. "I'll go to bed and do something else. She doesn't want a baby but she'd going to have one. A boy. And he isn't going away to college for four years. You came home more stupid than you were before. Ethics. Who gives a crap about them? I don't. There's just so much money in circulation and you sneak away with what you can for yourself. Damnit, they ruined you, boy. I want some son of mine who isn't ruined. By the time he's out of high school he'll be able to shoot around corners and hit targets."
"There's such a thing as gaining the respect of others," I insisted. "People respect me."
"Some people do because they're afraid of you. That isn't real respect."
He slopped another shot into his glass.
"What's the difference? When I go to a store to buy something nobody asks me how I got the money. I could be the pillar in some church but if I was broke they'd throw me out on my butt. You can't pay your bills with good intentions, boy. And you can patch this up for yourself. I said you were crawling and you claim you aren't. All right. You've made me mad. I've given you everything, paid you a decent salary and you won't do like I want. That's all that's necessary. Get some guts and forget about feeling sorry for other people."
"I don't feel sorry for them," I objected.
"What about the Rimmer deal?"
"It was more a question of being fair than anything eke. Naturally, there was some sympathy for a man in such a situation. You had made more than an average profit already. Few men demand that much."
I tried to reason with him but it was hopeless. He wouldn't admit he was worried about his heart and yet it was obvious it did worry him.
"You've had too many of those highballs," Mona said at one point.
"That's exactly what I have."
"You're drinking too much."
"Hell! I'm not loaded."
"I didn't say you were, but if you don't stop you will be."
"Now I've got somebody else who's telling me what to do."
"It's for your own good."
"Like the way Clint talks, huh?"
"That's his business and I know nothing about it. You have your reasons and he had his. How you conduct your business is none of my affair. But when it comes to your health I think I have a right to be interested and concerned."
"You get yours, don't you?"
He was speaking of money but she smiled faintly as her eyes bored into mine.
"Yes, Harry. I get plenty of whatever I need."
"So, okay. So stop trying to reform me." Once more he directed his attention to me. "You're wasting your time and mine, boy. No guts. You disgust me. And don't bother me again. We aren't even friends. Just put your theories into practice and you'll find out how wrong they are. What you should have is a lesson and I hope you get it."
I left the house and Mona followed me out.
"He won't approve," I told her. "And this is making it too obvious."
"I'll pick some flowers and that's an excuse."
"Smart." I slid in behind the wheel. "Real smart."
"When will I see you?"
"I don't think you should."
She laughed.
"Was I that bad?"
"You kidding? It's only that it's dangerous."
Maybe he's right. Maybe you haven't got any guts."
'Mona, I'm trying to do the decent thing. He'd kill you if he ever found out and there's no future in it for us."
"Clint, please. There was never a night like last last night for me. I can't expect the same from him. Sometimes-most of the time-I don't feel anything at all with your father. I have to pretend. There was no pretending with you."
I started the car, mumbled a goodbye and drove off. The hunger to have her body again was almost unbearable but I assured myself that it was a hunger which could be satisfied in a more reasonable manner.
I thought of seeing Dana and decided it could wait. I turned off onto Shore Avenue instead. Some guy was sprawled out under a car, a collection of tools close to his hands. Another junker. He was probably trying to repair it himself, possibly make a botch of it and curse when the car failed to operate properly. However, a lot of people have to do the best they can on their money.
Laura was hosing off the porch when I reached her house. She wore white shorts, a halter and she had a pair of sandels on her feet.
"That man," she said as I came up the steps. "One of my roomers. He was drunk again last night."
She turned off the hose and I rolled it up for her, thinking about several things as I did so. She was a nice girl and she would make a wonderful wife. The affair with Mona didn't have to be any more than just that. To continue with it was highly improper.
"Did you finish your work?" I asked her.
"And sent it off."
"Best of luck."
"Thanks. It wasn't so hard to do. All I had to do was to imagine I was pregnant and that the man wouldn't marry me. Then I had to make a choice about putting the child up for adoption or keeping it myself. That was the hardest part because I don't know what I would do if I was in the same situation. Then I came up with a man who understood the girl and who could forgive her."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Another story, if they want it."
"And the house?"
"I have a man figuring on the cost of making it into apartments, but it's going to cost more than I figured. Kitchens and bathrooms are expensive and some of the wiring has to be changed."
She. wasn't as cool as the morning she had lost her job. I didn't inquire about this but I guessed that she had rationalized our behavior. You drink too much and you want something that you shouldn't have.
"We both lost our jobs the same day," I said. "Oh?"
"My old man fired me."
"Well, I guess it had to come eventually. Generally relatives don't get along. Most people do better when they work with strangers. Now I suppose you'd like to try composing music. I'd kind of like that. I write stores and you write music."
"I couldn't make a living at it. There's a used car lot and I'm buying it out."
"Your father will fight you."
"If he does, I'll fight back."
"Most likely his new wile-"
"No. She had nothing to do with it. He has to be able to dominate people or he has no use for them."
Some guy came out of the house. He carried a pad and a pencil and he discussed renovating costs with her. There were things about the job he could guarantee on a price basis but there were other things in which a guarantee was impossible. His explanation was logical. Old houses often presented problems which no one could anticipate in advance. At any rate, he came up with the idea of creating four apartments, none of them too large, and the rental income which she could expect seemed to make it a wise investment.
"I'll let you know," she told the guy. "I have to make arrangements to borrow the money."
"Whenever you're ready, Miss Craig."
"I'm ready now but the money has to come first."
He left and I lit up.
"Let's go somewhere and have a few drinks," I said. She frowned.
"I don't want to be used, Clint."
"I won't use you." After the previous night I wasn't certain I could take care of any girl. I'm a man but I'm no stud. "Only something to drink and dinner later on if we're hungry."
"I'd have to change."
"Is that too much?" She shook her head.
"No, but I'm so comfortable the way I am that I hate to do it."
"Then we can go to Mickey's Grill. Half of the girls come in there almost naked."
"Well-all right."
It was a long, hot drive to the place. Mickey's was one of many bars and grills crowded into a couple of blocks. Some were strip joints and there was a dance joint. There was also a mid European restaurant where no liquor was served. The management of the restaurant featured beer, all of it imported. I had dined there once but I didn't care for imported beer. As for the strip shows they were only fair. Some of the girls were former carney dancers while others were just getting started. Yet men paid to see them and a few of the girls were available for dates. It was a cash proposition with them and there wasn't anything they wouldn't do for an extra few bucks. One of the places featured a strip star, but once you got to know her you learned that she was colder than a block of ice in Alaska. She was about thirty and she supported a girl a few years younger. The star was a confirmed lesbian, a jealous, lying individual who had to possess girls, preferably, girls, the younger the better. She even dug young high school girls if she could meet them. However, she put on a good show, she had an excellent body and her services were in demand. I think men were attracted to her because she was a pervert, due to their curiosity, more than anything else. It was difficult to imagine such a lovely woman being abnormal.
Mickey's was a rather small, intimate bar, almost gloomy because there were so few lights. Toward the rear there were booths, well cushioned booths which were very private. You got your own drinks from the bar and nobody bothered you. But just then I wasn't too interested in what Laura had to offer and we sat at the bar.
"Life changed," she said as the waiter set up the table for us.
"All things change."
"I know. That's why I'm worried about us."
"Why?"
"Or you anyway. It isn't money. It's what you think of me."
"You're closer to me than you ever were."
"Because I've slept with you?"
I studied her facial expression in the mirror behind the rows of booze bottles. It was somewhat strained, her eyes disturbed.
"Hell, I don't know," I replied uneasily. "How do you explain all your feelings toward somebody?"
"You simply tell the person."
"No, it isn't that simple."
"Not if you make it complicated."
She was right. That's what I was doing, telling myself one second that I would never see my old man's wife again and knowing in the next second that having her again was almost inevitable. If he was so bitter that he was determined to hurt me-hadn't he indicated that?-I'd hurt him, by robbing him of the one thing he wanted. His wife's love and affections and her glorious body. I'd share it at every opportunity, hold her naked and tight, our bodies locked and exploding in the act of sex.
"If you're sincere, we could get along," Laura went on. "I don't know how we can continue this way, Clint. I'll promise myself that nothing will happen but we both know I'm not going to keep the promise. I'll go to bed with you, always afraid that perhaps, it's all you want from me, and sooner or later I'll find myself pregnant, if I'm not already."
I gulped down my beer and banked my glass on the bar for another one. Usually I'm not impatient with a bartender, knowing that they resent such an attitude, but she had tossed a bomb in front of me and it had gone off in my mind with a frightening crash, if she got herself impregnated I'd have to marry her and I couldn't carry Laura or any other girl while I still lusted for that other woman. The family woman.
"I'll take you home," I said, suddenly.
"But, we just got here."
"I know but maybe I should see about that business I'm buying. You can stay here if you want."
"Why can't I wait for you at your place?"
"I might be a couple of hours."
"Then I'll give it a good cleaning."
I didn't wish to offend her so I drove her over there, handed her the keys and stopped at the first phone booth I saw.
"You must have recovered," Mona said when she answered the phone.
"At least I'm alive. Where are you?"
"On the extension. In our bedroom."
"And dad?"
"Wait." She shifted the receiver and I could hear him snoring. "Drunk, Clint. Butstinko."
"We can't go to the apartment but I know of a hotel-"
"No. I can't leave him. I have to be here when he wakes up."
"Hell." That was rough.
"And you made sense out at the car. Nobody can have everything they want. Once you're into a thing you're into it. I'm his wife. Somehow I have to remember that fact."
I realized she wouldn't meet me and I hung up. She was reversing everything she had said before and I didn't dig it. Disgust rose up inside of me. They were in their room. He was sleeping off the effects of those highballs and she was waiting until the old bull got ready to satisfy his body. Fire gripped my insides. She shouldn't belong to man like him. She needed a real man and I wanted her body. Needed her desperately and, perhaps, unfairly. My old man's wife. She was trying to remember that and maybe I should try to remember it, too. That is, if I could.
I didn't get over to see Dana that day. I had to pass the agency on the way, my father's place and I saw Norma Klone walking along the street. Hitting the brakes, I pulled over to the curb and opened the door for her.
"Thanks," she said as she slid in beside me. The hem of her dress slid, too-way up her legs. She didn't have bad ones.
"How come nobody gave you a lift?" I asked and shot the wagon forward.
"They offered."
"And you didn't accept?"
She lit one.
"Why should I? It's no kindness of their part. Do you think they kid me? Not for a second they don't. A ride home with one of those guys means a ride in bed. I'm sick of being shafted."
"I guess it's natural," was my only comment.
"With me it isn't."
"Well, I wouldn't know about that."
"The men talk afterward. The talk gasses me. If they get anything at all why don't they shut up about it?"
"You're the one who's doing the talking," I reminded her.
"Because I think I can trust you and because I have to talk to somebody. I'm twenty-four. Now that Isn't old but the boy makes me feel old. If I knew then what I know now I'd never have had him. It's tough getting along on my salary."
"Put the hammer on my dad for more."
"A waste of energy, and the other jobs aren't any better. If I could just cut down on my rent, get rid of the apartment and take a room. An aunt of mine would care for the boy as long as I paid his expenses. They aren't too much. A kid his age needs very little. It's the years ahead that has me worried. College. How can he go? And what can he do if he doesn't? My apartment is too expensive for me. But it's furnished and I have to stick until I can make other arrangements. I could get lower rent somewhere else but I'd have to go into debt for furniture."
I thought of the room Laura had vacant and I mentioned it to her. Of course if Laura remodeled her house the room wouldn't last very long but it was a place for Norma to go until she could get herself organized.
"We'll see," she said.
She lived on a short side street that was in a fairly good neighborhood, considerably better than Shore Avenue. I brought this up and she said she had only moved there because of the child. Her own life had known poverty and trouble and she was determined that he wouldn't experience the same thing.
"My aunt, Clint. She has a place out in the country. Clean. Fresh air. As he gets older he can fish and hunt. No street corners to stand on. None of this temptation that you find in the city. Look at me. Going on twenty and I was fresh as a weed. I knew everything. Oh, sure. I could recite the dirty things boys wrote on walls and my old man slept with other women. One woman's husband came over to our flat one day. He was a salesman, some encyclopedias, better than most of us, and I felt sorry for him and I let him lay me. After that he came whenever he could, always while I was alone. I guess I just drifted into it. I don't think I really wanted to do anything with him but he talked me into it. Then when I married and got knocked up, my husband scrammed out on me. From that moment on I've been taking it alone. Because of the boy, every man thinks it's his right. They don't know how I hate them. Nobody knows. I'm like those used appliances your father sells. Worthless."
A boy waved to us from the porch. He was a handsome little boy.
"Think about that room," I said. "You'd be better off and there's a chance that I might have a job for you."
"I know. Some man by the name of Dana called to verify that you were no longer with us. One of the salesmen says he handles cars."
"He was. I'm taking over."
"That's what I thought. Well, it's a risk. Your father won't go for it. Nobody bucks your dad without paying a price."
"He can't stop me."
"Maybe not but he'll try."
The boy came down to the car. He wanted money for an ice cream cone and I flipped him a quarter before she could get her pocketbook open. There was something about the boy's voice that was strange. It was too high pitched and girlish but this would probably change as he grew older.
"About this room you suggested," she said as the kid hurried toward a soda fountain. "Is she the girl to you go out with?"
"Yes."
"Good kid. Nice hair and innocent eyes."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Just conversation. The room sounds okay. I have to make the switch anyway. Why shouldn't I do it now?"
I promised to ask Laura about the room, to let her know, and she got out. There was no hint that I could go into the apartment with her and I didn't give any indication that I had any such desire. Apparently she was disgusted with men and any girl who feels that way can't give fully of her sex. Therefore, I didn't have any desire. All the yearning I had was for the old man's woman. Beautiful. Passionate. Bought and paid for, just the same as most men bought and paid for an appliance-on the installment plan.
I killed an hour in some bar before I drove to my apartment, sort of wishing that Laura had gotten tired of waiting and that she'd gone home. She was too much in earnest and sex relations with her was too serious. There were any number of girls in the city who were anxious to please a guy. A school friend of mind was away for weeks on business trips and his wife became lonely. Because of a previous operation, she couldn't have children so a man didn't have to worry about knocking her up. Let her go five days without a man and she'd rape a delivery man before he could open his mouth.
She was still in the apartment and she was fixing food which I had lacked the ambition to prepare. But the beer at the bar had killed my hunger and even the odor of the food didn't appeal to me.
"You men," she said when I told her I wasn't hungry. "You drink and you won't eat. My father was the same. For lunch he'd have just a slice of cheese or salami. What kind of nourishment is that?" I grinned and kissed her. "All I need is a couple of hormone shots."
"Oh, stop it."
In spite of my protests she forced me to eat something. I spoke to her about Norma and she said she didn't care as long as the girl knew she wouldn't have the room very long.
"Providing you raise the money."
"I can. Anyway I'm quite sure I'll be able to get it. I-Clint, I know you're going to be angry about this. You have to have a good job to borrow from a bank or a building and loan and there's this handicap about me being singe. There are finance companies who will take a larger risk but they only loan up to two thousand and these loans are on personal property, not real estate. So-all right. I called your father's investment company. The man I talked to was interested."
"Logan." I recalled the man, small, dedicated to theft, a rat if there ever was one. "They'll shove it into you and break it off."
"Don't be crude."
"Well. It's true. High interest, loaded charges, and if you don't pay you lose your house. On a foreclosure they'll bid it in for less than you owe. You're still responsible for the rest. They'll rob you of everything."
"I'll be getting rent money every month."
"What if the people don't pay you? Some people are laid off and they get behind. You won't be able to rent to career people on your street. They buy homes of their own. You'll get the average guys who have average problems. You need something to carry you over. If I wasn't buying that car lot-"
"I don't want your money." She was serious. "This is my own affair."
While she washed the dishes I tried to do some composing. It didn't mean anything. Horsing around.
I quit. I couldn't do it. The mood to accomplish was lost in confusion.
"Doom on Black Friday," she said when she heard my playing.
"More than that."
"I wish you wouldn't be so upset."
"I'm not."
"You are. I can tell."
"Charge!" I said and ignored her remark. "Drink. We'll shake our brains loose."
"Not tonight."
"Aw, hell," I protested. "You go through this world once, just as the old man says."
"Yes. Decently or otherwise."
"I'm not going to he about it. I won't use the excuse that I was thinking of the beautiful girl married to my father. This was true, my loins itched from the memory of her, but there were girls who didn't care and Laura did. I should have sought a girl who didn't care as the horny male of me surged to the surface. But the other girls were in bars or at the parks or in apartments and I had no time to hunt for one of them. She was there with me, fresh and alive, just a little bit of material separating me from slipping it into her.
"No," she gasped as I ripped at the halter.
I dropped the halter on the floor and grabbed her in front. Pain seized her and she trembled, her lips moving but saying nothing. Of course she wasn't my old man's wife but she was female and right then I needed her. She could hate me afterward or shoot me, but lust, once let go, knows no bounds. To me, she was the same as the other one, eager to live, anxious to know.
"Clint!"
Her mouth, as I kissed her, was a fire pit that pumped pleasure into my loneliness, but a well that soon dried up as she resisted and fought my attempts, but it didn't help. I opened my pants and my malehood leaped out, turgid and inflamed and the touch of the excited object upon her took the fight from her. Soon I was in her outsprawled body gasping and pounding away and I reached my peak without her climax. I couldn't hold back but exploded my needs in a fiery of volcanic streeks of white fire into her outsprawled body. She was limp but I didn't care. I plunged in and I conquered her. This wasn't Laura, hinting at marriage, wanting the things that were right. This was Mona, my old man's nooky married to a man who didn't deserve her, accepting from me what was socially wrong because she was so much woman there wasn't any limit to her desires.
"You're nothing but an animal," she said bitterly after I finally lifted myself from her.
"Laura, I'm very sorry." And I was, but I couldn't hold back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We arranged for the sale and transfer of my new concern, but it was a wait. Several times I reached for the phone to call Laura but as far as I got was dialing her number and then hanging up before she could answer. What could I say to her? What could any man say to a girl he had abused with a violence of a beast? Being sorry didn't change matters, couldn't erase what I had done to her in the bedroom.
Late the second afternoon Norma phoned me. I knew she wasn't at the agency because I could hear music in the background.
"Can I see you Clint?" she asked.
"Sure. Where are you?"
"No, not here. This is just a dive. I meant at your place."
"Okay. The door is unlocked."
"Thanks, Clint."
I returned the nude I was attempting to put on a canvas. A nude photo of Mona lay beside me but I wasn't having a great deal of luck capturing her charms. The lines of her body weren't right, lacking the fullness which I remembered. Most professional artists wouldn't have this difficulty but her wonderful curves were so personal to me that I hesitated to exploit them. I suppose that's why most artists treat their models on a highly professional basis, thereby avoiding any emotional conflicts. In a way, it's a little like hunting. You can shoot an animal in the wild but you can hardly shoot your own cow. Still, the thing had some merit, if only because I had managed to catch the sensual fullness of her lips, the look in her eyes.
When Norma came in I covered it and turned the picture over. There was no sense of her seeing anything that didn't concern her.
"Your father would murder me if he knew I was here," she said.
"What you do in private isn't his affair."
She wore a plain cotton dress with a belt around the middle. The front of the dress was conservative, the pattern of the material quite plain. It struck me as being odd that some of the men at the agency had gotten to her and yet she didn't promote her physical features extensively.
"This concerns you, Clint."
"Sit down and I'll get us some beer."
Upon my return to the living room I found her over in the corner, looking at the painting. This disturbed me at first but then I realized she didn't know who it was.
"She's enchanting," Norma said.
"Yes she is."
She replaced the cover and accepted the glass of beer from me.
"You're frustrated, Clint. You wouldn't be drawing a thing like that if you weren't."
"Maybe. Now that's this about my dad?"
"He heard you were buying out Dana."
"News gets around."
"Yes, but you should have heard him. He was like a raving nut In the office. You were too damned good to take orders from him but he taught you the works and you show your appreciation by trying to cut into his business.
"He fired me. I didn't quit."
"But you saw Dana before you were fired, didn't you?"
"Yes. Once."
"That's the thing. Clint, if I were you I wouldn't do it. There are other towns where he couldn't bother you but as long as you stay here in town-"
"Look," I said. "I think your intentions are sincere but I have to make the break here. This is where my credit is fairly well established. I'd be a stranger somewhere else and regardless of where I went I wouldn't be able to get a better deal than the one Dana is offering. He's made his pile and he isn't anxious to take advantage of anybody. I don't see how it can end in failure. I'll use his name until he's paid off and he has regular customers. It's an honest, straight across the table operation."
We walked over to the sofa and sat down.
"I moved in with Laura Craig," she said. "What a darling creature she is."
"Your boy is up in the country?"
"Yes. My relatives came for him. He didn't want to go, but he's going to like it."
"You must miss him."
She shrugged.
"It's an awful thing to say but I don't. I never really saw him as a child of mine. He was unwanted from the beginning, a burden. Of course the burden is still there but hell get more love where he is than I would offer him."
To me, this was a strange way for a mother to talk but I suppose there are parents who don't actually care about their children. They are a nuisance which must be tolerated, an accident of love and lust.
"How is Laura?" I asked.
"Busy with her plans for the house but when she isn't busy she's awfully lonely. And when I bring your name up, she just seems to freeze. I get the feeling that she resents you."
"Probably."
"But of course you don't understand. That's the trouble with men. They can't understand that a girl needs sympathy and tenderness. For some reason they have to prove they are men and they can think of only one way to do it."
I was unable to figure this girl. She had a boy, there were times when she was available and yet there was an evident underlying disgust directed at all men. Possibly her unhappy marriage had convinced her there wasn't any male capable of love.
The phone rang and it was Dana. His attorney had completed the necessary papers and we could sign them in the morning at nine. I could take over immediately.
"The North woods, Maine," he said. "I'm going up there fishing for a few weeks. You can play with business. I'm done."
Norma left soon after. I would have driven her but there was a chance I'd see Laura and I didn't want to have that. There's nothing worse than feeling guilty and of being tortured by the memory of an act of lust.
At six my old man phoned. He was drunk and mean.
"I saw your Shore Avenue tart, today," he said. "If you're calling to insult either one of us you're wasting your time." He laughed.
"Got a nice pair of knockers, hasn't she?"
"Shut your dirty trap."
"Borrowing dough to fix up her house. So where does she came? to me. They all come to me. They get down on their knees and beg."
"Do her a favor and reject her."
"Why should I? It's money. I'd loan to a dead man as long as he could send me his payments from the grave. But that isn't the reason I bothered talking to you. I'm giving you a warning, boy. You buy out Dana and I'll bury you in that lot."
"There's no cause for you to be alarmed. I can't touch the kind of trade you have."
"listen, you could swing this big-my way. I back you from behind the scenes and you shove the finance papers my way. He has some pretty solid people who buy from him and they can be milked."
"No," I said. "I'm a loner in this deal."
"You'll be all alone when I get through with you. Nobody is going to laugh at me because I can't hold my boy in fine. You aren't making a sucker out of me, for free. You'll earn the hard way. You met a lot of people at my agency and you 're bound to aim for some of them. I won't stand for that. Even if I have to pound you with a club I'll make a man out of you."
I tried to assure him that my only ambition was to have a business of my own but he refused to believe me. I was a crumb, a guy who slept with a tramp, a dumb jerk who belonged up in the hills. I took in everything that he said, growing angry, hating him as much as I had ever hated anybody. This was not my father on the other end of the phone. He was a slob who either had to rule or destroy.
"I never clobbered anybody the way I'll clobber you," he thundered.
"It's your right to try."
"Try? I don't only try. I do."
We were both yelling when we hung up. He'd destory me. He promised me that. He'd get me and there wasn't any sensible reason for it. I began to think of him as an evil man who lacked all normal human regard for others. He wanted a son who was a cheat and if he couldn't have his wish he didn't want one. Unless he had one by her.
Mona....
I looked at the sketch of her again and a river of excitement became a flood of longing in my loins. She was his wife and although she claimed to try and remember this I was sure her loyalty would disappear in my arms, melt away as the snow left us in spring. And it wasn't only what she offered that drove me to the phone. It was because of him, the bitter feeling I had toward him. If I possessed her I would take some of what was his and violate it.
I changed the tone of my voice, introduced myself as a representative of a charity and the maid called her to the phone.
"Combined Charities?" she asked. "That would be up to my-"
"Sure," I said. It's just what it means. One man has too much of something so another guy claims his reward."
"Clint!"
"Who else? You alone?"
"Except for the maid, yes."
"What about him?"
"Going to a meeting if he stays sober that long."
"Then he is at the house."
"No. Downtown. Logan is treating him to dinner."
"That rat. Always pressing. When they filled up his veins they used vinegar instead of blood."
I could hear her fast breathing over the phone.
"It's tough to keep a promise," she said. "I look at him and I promise that I won't-"
"But you will."
"Please, Clint. Help me."
"I'll help you all right. I'll give you what you need and as often as you need it."
"Must you be obscene?"
"No. Sorry."
"If he ever suspected."
"He won't. You can always say you're going to the theatre."
"Well-"
"For us."
There was only a dim hope that she'd come to the apartment but I went out to pick up what was required. A liquor store was down the next block. I entered the liquor store first and ordered a bottle of bourbon-I also ordered a bottle of scotch. The owner was getting to know me and his conversation was always the same. It was too hot. Business smelled because people went to the beaches or into the country for picnics and they drank beer. He couldn't understand why beer was an accepted outdoor drink. I guess he thought somebody should put on a campaign that would outlaw beer and drive drinkers to the hard stuff.
The bar was small, a neighborhood convenience, and a girl with fat breasts worked behind it. She needed at least one bra, maybe two of them, but she never wore one. A thin blouse over a full slip appeared to please her. And of course it was something when she bent over for something. A man, although not actually interested in her, could become somewhat fascinated with those immense balloons. "Beer," I said.
She wiped her hands dry on a towel and looked at the bag I had placed on the bar. "Shopping?" she inquired. "Booze." She frowned.
"I've got a feeling one of those liquor board inspectors is about due. What would he say if you have the stuff in front of you? He'd say I sold it and that's against the law. You want I should get fired?"
"No. I just want a beer. And don't worry about the bottles. I can prove where I bought them."
She drew a beer for me and one for herself. I had seen her several times before but until then I hadn't noticed a weding band on her hand. Somebody had said she wasn't married and that she was a hotel date. I wasn't curious. A few of the married girls are just as willing as the single ones. They overspend the family budget and it's a way to earn enough to cover up their error. Naturally, it isn't a good situation but those things do take place.
I finished the beer and paid for some to carry out. The bag she put the packs in was a used one from a supermarket.
A soon as I reached the apartment I put my bottles away, left the door unlocked, had a belt from a bottle of bourbon already open and showered quickly. The cold water felt fine. Just as I stepped from the shower somebody rang my bell and I yelled out that the door was unlocked. I toweled and put on clean shorts. I didn't have anything else in the bathroom to wear but when it came to Mona I wasn't modest.
She was standing at one of the windows as I emerged from the bathroom, looking down at the street.
"Guess what I got," she said without turning her head.
I walked over to her and saw the car at the curb. It was a new convertible. The top was down.
"A present," I decided.
"Yes. From him to me."
There was a small toy dog hanging from the mirror and this to me, separated them in ages more than anything. Kids, young folks, went for that jazz. A man as old as he was wouldn't be bothered. He'd claim it was a nuisance and get rid of it.
"Neat," I agreed. "Class to go with class."
She laughed and crossed the room, hesitated for a second and flipped on the radio. She wore a tight dress, the kind a girl might wear to a funeral except for a funeral a girl wouldn't select a number that didn't have any back to it and not to cup snug over her pair of bazooms. If you discounted the narrow shoulder straps she was bare to the waist. A girl had to have a shape to even consider that type of dress. There was no place for anything except her.
"This is some local radio station," she said, disgusted. "They couldn't program music if somebody gave them a blueprint."
"Nobody has to listen to it."
But the music wasn't too bad and she swung around. The dress wasn't quite as low in front. Daring, inviting, clinging to the swells of her jutting out breasts and yet you couldn't say it was vulgar. At least, it wasn't vulgar to me. As long as she was beautiful she had a right to display her lovely melons. In another twenty years she'd want to hide the by then fat melons.
"I'm a little disappointed in your father," she declared. "A club meeting? My foot."
"He belongs to several clubs. It's a prestige factor with him and once in a while he does business with various members. I doubt if he appreciates it. Most of the deals are for cash and he makes his money, the big money, out of financing and loaded charges."
Anger showed in her eyes, a smoking anger that caused her to breathe rapidly.
"This is no club meeting, Clint. Some man called for him. Probably your father did have dinner with that Logan but he mentioned a club meeting later and that was a lie. The fellow who phoned for him-I guess he thought I was the maid because I answered, figuring it was you again-and he said Harry shouldn't be late because nobody could get in once the girls began to perform. What is he? A sadist?"
"A man sometimes goes to those things," I explained. "It doesn't mean much. He's just curious." There was no reason for me to defend him so I shifted into another gear. "But why he should be curious I don't know. These girls come through the city about twice a year and none of them can show him better than he's got at home." I grinned. "Providing you were home which you aren't."
"That was what chased me out, actually."
"Keep running."
"Into trouble."
I asked her about drinks, giving her a choice, and she said she'd just as soon have beer. I don't know why people have to pry when they're left alone but it seems to be a habit with many. Anyway she had the habit. When I brought in the beer she was over at the painting. She had also discovered the photograph and she held it in her hand. Her face was drained of all color and even her lips were pale.
"Where did you get this?" she demanded, obviously dismayed.
"In a pile of nude studies I bought through the mail."
"Does your father know?"
"Of course not."
"He'd despise me."
"Maybe. It shocked me at first but I don't hate you for it. If I don't hate the other girls why should I hate you?"
She forced a smile.
"That's nice of you."
"No. Fair. Why distinguish between two people? And dozens of girls pose naked."
She put the picture down and accepted the beer from me.
"All right, Clint. So maybe I lied to you. What girl with any self-respect wouldn't refuse to admit this sort of thing unless it stared her in the face? That was when I first began to pose. Some outfits would hire me because they wanted somebody with smaller breasts. Then a friend of mine told me about this man. The fee was lower than average, but I was broke. It was either that or lose my flat."
"Wrong. There was a choice. A girl can get jobs in the city but I wanted to become a model. The man didn't like me very well at first. I was too nervous. He solved that with liquor. Once that took hold of me I just didn't give a damn." She paused and glanced at the painting. "What you're doing is good but something is missing."
"Such as?"
"I don't know. It just is. I look at myself but I don't really see myself."
"That's because of the picture. I need personal inspiration and a photo isn't very personal. You want to catch a mood but you can't talk to a photo and have it respond."
She moved over to the sofa and I joined her. We sat close together with just the odor of her perfume separating us.
Stunning, her hair was long. More curves than a country road designed by a drunk. Body fantastic. A lovely flower blooming alone in a garden of desire.
"Don't you want your work to be good?"
"As good as I can make it. But I'm not a professional."
"That's no reason why you shouldn't do your best."
"No, I suppose not."
She slid one strap down from her shoulder as far as her elbow. This action shifted the front of her dress somewhat and the breast on that side fluffed out against the material.
"You'll think I'm awful."
"Not so."
"Your father would like a painting of me."
"Sure." I dropped the empty beer can on the floor and clenched my fists. "The scum."
"He's your father."
"You wouldn't know it." She nodded her agreement.
"Or that I'm his wife, that he cares. Drunk mostly, pawing me, talking about a kid and money and the damned world."
"I have nothing to do with that."
The other strap came down this one all the way off her arm. My loins began to twitch and brim.
"Paint me," she said and got out of the dress.
She was naked except for her shoes-she didn't wear stockings-as vital to me as the sunrise is to the crops growing.
I tried as she posed for me, the lines of her figure natural and flowing, the brush unsteady and uncertain in my hands. Her face began to approach reality on the canvas but when I looked into her eyes, knowing that it had to go beyond this, I was hopelessly lost in my attempt to bring her silent promise to life. And it was this expression in her eyes that tore me away from the easel.
"You won't get ahead this way," she said, teasing, as my arms encircled her.
"There's always tomorrow."
"And tomorrow will be the same."
"If you want it to be."
"But right now there's only one thing you want?"
"Terribly."
She avoided my mouth for the moment.
"You're trespassing on your dad's property."
"Isn't that why you're here?"
"You're smart, Clint."
"Not very."
"And we're both weak."
"That depends on what you mean by weakness. If we care for each other there's no chance of being strong. Besides, where is he?"
"Drunk and watching some tramp perform obscene dances and maybe paying her a few dollars later because it doesn't matter to the girl. Running the risk of being arrested for going to such a thing, thinking that money buys anybody or all that he wants. Then he'll come home, still loaded waking me up, trying to find out if "I'm better than the other girl was sexually."
"Refuse him."
She pressed in closer, threw her head back and offered her lips.
"I might just do that."
I kissed her as the pressure of my arms drove the air out of her body. She clung to me, moving her hips some, straining against me with all her strength.
She was furiously passionate in the bedroom, assuring me that this was right, begging me to hurry as she lay anxious and waiting upon the bed.
"Ours," she cried.
"Married to him but wanting me, wanting my child inside of her rather than a child that belonged to him.
I fell down to the bed with her, a hungry man with only one hunger.
I thought I knew all about love but I had never known this kind of pleasure before, not even with her. Thoughtful, eager hands, all restraint gone, a union that rejected the usual and brought the walls of the room crashing in around us, our bodies finally belonging in a frenzy which was so complete that anything beyond was impossible.
My old man's wife....
But all the regret I felt when she had to leave was the fact that it was necessary.
She spread for me, her legs parted and her knees high. The dark patch of her womanhood was lividly exposed to me, throbbing male organs for now I was also naked and ready. Her loins throbbed and her moistness prepared her for the insertion of my flaming pulsating love muscle. Her soft snug heat engulfed my male spear and her sex muscles played sweet music on my turged organ buried to the hilt in her. And when I was about to peak she reached between us and cupped my maleness that was exposed as I stiffened and drenched her target with a violent explosion of fiery love seed.
CHAPTER NINE
There was excitement across the street the next day after I took over the lot from Dana.
"Shopping center," Dana thought "I felt sure one would go up eventually. That's an asset for you. You'll get more traffic than usual here and people will see your stuff. Most of the customers will be in your bracket."
He sounded convincing but it didn't look to me like any shopping center. They had to have a foundation for one of those and there was nothing being done in that direction. All of the work being done was the setting of poles across the front of the lot, a guy on a bulldozer was moving grass and about noon a small house trailer was left on the site.
Dana left immediately for his Maine vacation loaded down with gear, suitcases and a stout bosomed woman who was his wife.
About one that afternoon a fellow of twenty-two or so came in and wandered between the vehicles. He was interested in building a rod and the majority of guys don't go for the later models. There's a cost price and insurance factor. You have to have liability insurance in this State and if the driver is a male under twenty-five he has to pay close to three times the normal rate. A girl can get insurance at the usual charge but that's because they say girls have fewer accidents. This may be so. Most boys behind a wheel have to blast or they feel cheated.
"I'd suggest a standard model," I told him.
"Yeah, you can get more parts for a standard. But nothing newer than a fifty-five."
"Is the thing a bomb?"
"I wouldn't know but I'd guess now. When you go back that far you have a lot of mileage behind the car. At any rate, I couldn't guarantee it."
"While he examined the car I consulted Dana's listed price in the office. A hundred and forty five. Cash, of course. Most banks wouldn't consider such a loan. My father would because of his profit margin but a bank operated otherwise.
"Pretty steep," the fellow said when I told him the price of the car.
"How does it run?"
"About as good as you can expect. The inside is clean and there are dual exhausts on it."
"Which you have to consider, don't you?"
He kicked one of the tires. People do that. I don't know why. I wondered.
"Well, the mufflers are stock. I want blasters. She has to sound off or I don't want it."
"Make up your mind."
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was kind of a skinny kid and he had pimples on his face. As soon as the weather cooled he's probably the kind to wear a leather jacket and his girl would take pride in being sloppy. It was a form of rebellion against authority, typical of many people.
"How much for cash?"
"Maybe I'd knock off twenty."
"Can't you give some more ground?"
"Sorry."
He reached for his wallet and came up with the money. We went inside to write up the transfer papers.
Shortly before five I discovered what was actually going on at the lot across the street. Somebody had worked fast on painting a big sign and the electricians were stringing up lights. "Redd's Discount Cars-BUY NOW AND PAY LATER. NO PAYMENTS FOR SIXTY DAYS." Yes, that was the sign. Discount cars. No down payment. I swore and held an unlighted cigarette in my mouth. People, no matter how honest they are, search for a bargain and I didn't have the financial backing to fight that sort of war. Dana had priced his inventory fairly but when I sold I had to make a profit. If I went down too low I'd soon awaken to the fact that I was broke.
When his help from one of his agencies moved the cars in I knew what most of them were. The exteriors looked fine but most of the cars were a foolish investment for anybody. A large percentage were rebuilt wrecks or they had automatic transmissions, an expensive replacement, which were on their way out. Many people wonder why a dealer will salvage a wrecked car, doing a considerable amount of work as a general rule, but the answer is very simple. A body shop isn't always busy and you have to pay the help anyway. During these intervals the men restore heaps. Labor, since the money would be spent anyhow, isn't a factor and the dealer buys needed parts wholesale. Of course the state requires a yearly inspection for safety but the guy who sells isn't always as careful as a mechanic at a corner filling station.
They brought in far more cars than I had on my lot, parking the best looking heaps near the street and the kounks to the rear. Along about the last car my old man arrived. I didn't think he would come over to see me but he did. He looked like an executive on his way to a board meeting and his liquor sodden breath reminded me of a wino.
"So you have to learn the hard way, huh, boy?" he asked.
"Maybe."
"You don't have to wait. I can tell right now. If I have to drop thirty grand over there to get you on your knees I will. Then you can work for me at ten thousand a year, not eighteen, and pay it back."
"You'll never see the day."
"Won't I? Nobody in my family does what I don't want them to do. Nobody. You, my wife, nobody."
I laughed. He didn't even know the name of the horse he was riding. She no longer belong to him physically. She was mine for as long as I wanted her. And I wanted her body all right.
"Ungrateful creep," he said, sore because I had laughed. "You and your fancy ideas. You should throw them on the slop wagon and get rid of everything they taught you. I made a mistake sending you to school. I thought you would come home with some angles that I didn't know about but instead of angles they pound your skull full of ethics. I ought to hire somebody to burn down the crummy college or make them send my money back. Where you needed to be was greasing some car and not sitting at a stupid desk. You lousy kids have no appreciation today. Where's your lousy guts? You never had many, but you lost all you had left in bed with that whore. Maybe it's all right to slip her a couple of bucks and use her for a quick screw but if you don't pay the whore she can grab you where it hurts."
"I'm sick of this," I said wearily. "Sick of the way you talk and especially of you. But I'm not as sick as you are. You're a sick man only you won't accept the facts and try to correct yourself."
"Listen now, boy, you listen!" He yelled. "You're no son of mine. You're nothing."
He stormed off and I cursed him. I was ashamed of the curses. He was my father and I wanted to like him but I couldn't. There was nothing about him to like. I admitted his right to compete with me in business but it was a competition arising out of hate and not the desire to make money.
I was discouraged when I closed up that day. He had men working his lot, talking to customers, and I couldn't afford help. Dana's record indicated a steady movement of cars and I had to depend on that. Part of my down payment was a demand note, which kept my cash fund intact, and I counted on sales to cover it.
Most men, I imagine, have something on their mind that bugs them. It can be business, which naturally concerned me, but as I drove away from the lot I thought about Laura. I was troubled about what I had done to her and I knew I wouldn't feel right unless I made an honest attempt to correct a most unfortunate incident.
Laura was on the porch, talking to some man who held a hammer in his hand. He was describing a partition, the difficulties he was having. It had to be removed and a beam installed to suport. She mentioned that she hadn't counted on the expense, that she would let him know tomorrow.
She didn't pay any attention to me while I waited. I doubt If she talked to the man for more than five minutes but it seemed far more than an hour to me. I lit a cigarette.
The man started down the steps and she turned to enter the house. "Laura," I said.
She swung about slowly. She looked tired and worried. Her glance wandered past me and into the street.
"We have nothing to talk about, Clint. If you were a decent boy-"
"Doesn't coming here prove that?"
She stared into my face.
"No. But you proved something else."
"Yes, I know. I was a lousy rat."
"Must we discuss it?"
"We should."
"And solve nothing."
"Maybe we can."
"Clint, don't be foolish. You can't repair what is already destroyed."
I flipped the cigarette into the gutter.
"You have to be reasonable," I said, contradiciting her. "What happened to me could happen to almost any man who had known a girl before. There are instances-well, they may not be justified but they do exist. All of us are human and in some cases we are more animal than human. I can't excuse my conduct but, as a man, I think I should apologize for it."
Unconvinced, her shoulders lifted and fell.
"There are other things in life, Clint."
"Of course."
"I feel that you took advantage of me. If-had you taken a more patient attitude I might-"
"Yes. That was wrong. I just don't want you to hate me."
"I don't hate you Clint. I don't hate you but-I can't love you. I-sometimes I hate myself more than anybody. We-all of us have to live our own lives. Mine isn't yours and yours isn't mine."
"It was once."
Tears came to her eyes.
"Yes. Once. A million years ago. Or longer. The days sweep you up and you change. It isn't the tinsel of a person that changes but the inside, what you are and what you must be."
I couldn't make any sense out of this except that she longed to tell me something, in language which I could savvy, but that she was unable to haul whatever it was out into the open. This, I assumed, was not unusual. Many of us carry burdens which we feel we must carry alone. Maybe if she trusted me-but that was gone. I had ripped that from between us.
"Are you still writing?" I asked.
"No." It was a flat, positive statement and I thought her tone was evidence of another disappointment. "Didn't they buy your last one?" Yes. They considered it better than the first one."
"That should inspire you."
"Really? It doesn't. Maybe later on-"
"You'll start writing again?"
"Maybe if they'll take what I want to write."
"And what is that?"
"-Nothing."
She disappeared inside the house and all I could do after that was walk down to the car. Frankly, I was upset. She was too aloof, too uncertain and that wasn't her nature at all. I had regarded her as a fairly outspoken person, dedicated to an objective, frankly sincere. Now she gave every indication of being confused and unsure of herself, troubled by something which she felt necessary to hide in a cloak of secrecy. No doubt out last encounter had a great deal to do with her attitude but I was helpless to come to any conclusion.
I didn't go directly to my apartment. Instead of this I drove over toe Mickey's Grill. I sat at one of the booths, ordered a plate of roast beef and beer.
It was time thrown to the four winds because when I reached my apartment Mona was waiting for me out front in her new car.
I kissed her and opened the door for her.
"Another movie?" I asked.
"No. He drove to Boston."
"Business?" This wasn't unusual.
"So he said but he intended to go in the morning. He left tonight instead. He was as sore as thought I'd burned him."
"Most likely he's sore at me."
"Both of us."
"No reason for him to be with you." She laughed and took my arm.
"He had a reason all right. He comes home reeking of liquor and I'm in our bedroom. Flat on your back, he says. I was robbed last night so now you settle up. To hell with you, I tell him. Take a shower and sober up. Then wash your mouth out with soap so I can't taste the booze when you kiss me. He was raving. He yelled at the maid for a bottle and swallowed it almost before she let go of it. He must have hit the end of the driveway doing sixty."
I guess you can dislike your father but still worry about him. Not just behind the wheel of a powerful car. You have to think of anybody he might hit. Maybe he assumed he owned every road in town. I don't know. There were times when he acted that way. If he came to a piece of construction he swore at the man who directed traffic. After he got onto the detour he wouldn't slow up and the next day he'd tell of his experience and scream because the car didn't ride the way it should.
"He's barreling into me," I said once we were inside of the apartment
"Yes, and you should hear him boast about it."
Now that we were alone I seared her lips with a kiss. The dress she wore was very thin and I could feel the heat of her underneath it.
"He may get me but I get his wife," I told her.
"You've got me, Clint"
"For how long?"
"As long as you want me."
"And where does it take us?"
"Wherever you go."
"Even if I was poor?"
"Money is nice."
"I know something better."
"Yes, but when you get pregnant you have to pay for it."
"Which means you want one."
"Yours. Ours. I want your love child, the baby you give me. Nights you can put your hand on me where you can feel the baby kick. Funny, isn't it? They 're so small when they start, but they grow."
We didn't have anything to drink in the apartment that night. We just had each other and even when it began to rain we didn't do anything about the lowered top of the convertible. The loving was ours, the rain ignored, each moment more necessary and tremendous than the one before it.
"Quitter," she laughed as I lay beside her after the first one. "This is union work and you get time and a half."
The second was better. We lay there, her on top of me, her nakedness burning and pressing against mine. She wanted to have me completely and she bent over my outsprawled body and her lips found my newly awakened excitement. It was a thrill undescribable. It was so wonderful, I felt I had to reutrn the pleasure and I twisted her body about so I could return her intimate loving and we gave our bodies mutual pleasure, and we didn't part even when our bodies erupted into ecstatic explosions of our intense loving.
CHAPTER TEN
I was pretty shot the next morning when the phone awakened me.
"Yes?" I said into the mouthpiece.
"Clint Reed?" the voice was stern, official."
"Yes."
"This is the police."
I sat up suddenly, now fully awake. Mona stirred behind me and said something about how early it was and why didn't the rain stop. I didn't reply. All I could think of was my old man, his drinking and the wild way in which he drove. Probably a curve. Passing on a hill. Anything.
"I'm listening."
"You bought out Dana's Auto lot?"
"Yesterday."
"Well you'd better get over there. I think some one put you out of business."
"Out of business?" I froze. "How is that possible?"
"Slashed tires. Broken glass. Acid on the paint or something of the sort. Heads on many of the cars cracked with a hammer. And other things."
"Oh, no!" I was cold, shaking. "Are you positive?"
"I wouldn't call you if I want. We patrol the street but whoever did it must have watched and timed our patrols. An officer on foot discovered the whole mess and a man in the neighborhood said the lot belonged to you."
I hung up. For a brief moment tears filled my eyes-tears of anger. Then a soft, warm hand touched my back.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "Everything."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"At least I've still got you."
"That is even less of an answer."
I got up from the bed and walked to the window. The rain had stopped and a red sun poked through the over cast. The water ran along the gutter.
"He ruined me," I said and cursed bitterly. "He told me he would and he did. But I thought he'd beat me down with his prices. I never guessed he would destory all of it so I had nothing left. I-"
"Clint!"
I heard her come up behind me and I repeated the conversation I'd had on the phone. Her arms slipped around me and her naked body came in snug against mine.
"He's awful," she declared.
"You an say that again."
"Will you be able to prove anything?"
"I don't know."
"I know what you don't have to prove. You don't have to prove you 're a man."
She was trying to be nice but I was too concerned just then to be tender with her. I got free of her arms, crossed to the bed and began dressing.
"What can I say," I murmured.
"It's all right, dear. This is a blow and a blow isn't easy to take. He hit low but that's his nature."
I needed a shave and my head hurt. I only took time to gulp down an aspirin in the bathroom.
When I came out of the bathroom she was waiting for me, all beautiful and naked.
"You can't stay here," I said.
"No. I wish I could. After this, I don't want to see him, ever."
"This is my problem."
"Clint, when you're hurt so am I."
She was so lovely I kissed her. For a second she hung onto me and I didn't want to leave her. We belonged together, making love, perhaps creating a new life, but for the present all of that had to wait.
I promised to see her soon, closed the door of the apartment behind me and hurried down to the street. A man sat on a porch reading a paper. A woman swept a sidewalk. From somewhere a baby cried. Life was everywhere except in my mind. As I started the car I was miserable.
There was a police officer at the lot when I arrived.
"This is some mess," he observed. "I don't see what you've got left except junk."
A tour of the lot verified this. Every tire was slashed and not one windshield was intact. In most of the cars the upholstery was a complete loss. Wires were riped loose and a number of expensive motors were damaged. Paint peeled off in long strips on many of the cars. Most of the instrument panels were smashed.
As we approached the last car I got sick to my stomach. There was nothing down there to throw up and I just gagged. Pain shot from my guts.
"Can I get you anything, Reed?"
"No. But don't call me that. Call me Clint. I'm ashamed of my last name."
"Whatever you say."
My belly muscles began to relax.
"Did anybody see anything?" I asked.
"Not that we know of. We figure it must have taken three guys to do this. You're about three blocks away from the nearest house and they probably put blankets over the wind-shields to deaden the noise. That's probably why more motors weren't destroyed. If they used a big hammer there was bound to be much more racket."
We walked back to the office. I was certain my father had ordered this but I didn't have the proof. It would be foolish to accuse him. The fact that we hadn't gotten along wasn't any evidence that he had gone beyond threats.
"This wipes me out," I said to the officer.
I'll
"What about Insurance?"
"On some of the cars but not all of them. A settlement will take weeks and I don't have that long to wait. The tires alone represent a considerable amount of my money."
"Have you got any enemeies?"
"Who doesn't?"
"True. Any in particular?"
"No," I lied, feeling that I had to take care of this myself.
"So how does that help us?"
"Or me either."
We talked for a while. He said the police would continue with their investigation but that they couldn't guarantee much. Some people might have criticized the police and I suppose he appreciated it when I didn't. They couldn't be everywhere at once and it's impossible to solve a mystery without a clue.
After he left a couple of newspapermen with cameras showed up. They took pictures and asked questions, but explained they knew as little as I did.
I stayed in the office that morning calling Dana's attorneys and my insurance agent. All I received for my trouble was the sympathy of the lawyers and a promise from the agent that he would do all he could. His main problem was the fact that I owed Dana a vast sum of money and this made Dana the victim. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell him where Dana was, only that it was some place in Maine, and when he returned my call, after speaking with one of the lawyers, he said he had gotten the address.
My father's joint across the street was busy. They had a big sign in front of each car and they were selling dirt cheap. People arrived in clunkers, made deals and drove off in other ones.
The trade-ins were cleaned quickly, priced and shoved onto the line. I didn't understand why they should continue losing money when I was no longer in business. Nor could I understand why he had gone to so much trouble stocking the place in the first place unless it was to make it appear as though somebody else had carried out the previous night. It was the only explanation I could uncover.
"I heard about this on the radio," the man said. "This may not mean anything but I was out walking my dog shortly after midnight. We always come by here and circle the block. There wasn't any noise that I remember and I didn't see anybody. All I saw was a car with a Massachusetts license plate parked up the street. Only it wasn't on the street exactly. Whoever owned it backed it up over the sidewalk and into some bushes, headed out. I only recall the first part of the license number and I know it was from Boston because I have a son who lives there and his has the same letters."
"That's strange," I decided.
"We can't trace it," the officer told me. "I was only wondering if you knew anybody in Boston."
"Just a few fellows I met in school."
"Would one of them do this?"
"No. I doubt if they even knew my address or how to find me."
The policeman and the man left me. The parked car didn't mean much to me. Some local people got their license plates in the city simply because they wanted to be different. If the car faced the street the man might not have noticed anyone in the back seat. Some young fellow could have gotten anxious and parked to take a fast hum of his girl. Still, there were more private places and my father had gone to Boston. He was acquainted with a lot of people down there so it was possible he had hired the men to do the job.
Mona phoned me from his house and I described the wreckage. She said she would meet me if she could that night but the maid knew she hadn't slept at home and it might not be possible.
"Give her money," I suggested.
"She wouldn't take it. She'd rather have what your father gives her."
"Then you know about that?"
"Clint, I'm not stupid."
"No. you're lovely." She laughed. "Repeat it"
"You're lovely."
"Am I good to you?"
"The best"
The insurance man stopped in at three. He was amazed by all the damage and he was unhappy because it meant a great deal of work for him.
"I contacted Dana," he said. "He had just arrived at the vacation lodge and he's on his way back home."
"Was he sore?"
"Well, he wasn't happy."
"Then that makes two of us."
He went about his job and I tried to juggle a plan so I could pick up a few cars in a hurry. It was impossible. All the money I had was owed to Dana and I didn't have working capital. The man at the bank was shocked and disturbed when I called him and he informed me the air had to be clear before they could consider any type of loan. I felt dead as I hung up.
I was surprised to see my father fly to a halt in front of the office and get out of his car. His face was grim as he came inside. He was chewing on an unlighted cigar and that was silent evidence of his anger. There was no reason for him to be angry. I was the one who should feel that way.
"What happened here?" he demanded.
"You ought to know." Every word was filled with hate.
"But I don't know."
"The hell you don't, you rotten-'"' "You wait!"
"I've got all I can do to hold back from belting you senseless."
"I'm your father, boy."
"Don't remind me."
There was a chair used by customers and he sat down on it.
"This doesn't add," he said. "You're not going to believe me but it just doesn't add."
"It adds. You did it quick." He shook his head.
"No, boy. I was fighting you with money. Why would I need more than that? In two weeks you would have gone under and you'd come around to seeing things as I do. Now you'd rip my guts out if there wasn't a law against it"
"You may be right. I trusted you about as much as I'd trust the weather but I didn't think you would go this low."
"You go to work for me, son, do what I say and I'll bail you out of this."
"Do I have to tell you what you can do with that idea?"
"I'm trying to help."
"Trying will get you nowhere."
"What makes you certain I was behind this?"
"Things. The more I study them the better they fit. There was a City car parked near the lot last night, off the street. You were in Boston. You've always bought anything you wanted with money and you bought my failure. Maybe you figured it was cheaper than a price war or maybe you couldn't wait. How am I supposed to guess what goes on inside that skull of yours?"
"I wish you'd let me explain."
"You can't explain anything except that you're so greedy that nobody else counts."
"Son, you take what you can where you can get it."
"Naturally," I sneered, remembering his wife and the ripe feel of her that he might not ever know again.
"There's a lot wrong about this city trip," he said thoughtfully. "I had a call up at the investment company yesterday. The call was from my broker and it wasn't an ordinary call. I wasn't there at the time so I only had a message to guide me. It said for me to meet him at a hotel about eleven last night. The whole thing seemed odd to me but I thought it had something to do with a change in the market coming up. So I drove down but I didn't see anything of him. This morning I phoned his office and he said he hadn't been in touch with me at all."
"That's a lie."
"It isn't a lie. Ask him if it'll satisfy you."
"Which it wouldn't. You set up a gimmick to be out of town. I'm in the dumps all right. Eight feet down and going deeper." My fists clenched and unclenched. "Get out of here before I hammer you through the wall. You spun the wheel this trip but the next turn is mine. Your number is thirteen and it pays off in trouble. You've torn enough people apart. It's about time some body cut you down to size"
The color drained from his face and he stood up.
"What I told you was the truth, son."
"Horse apples. You're a liar and a cheat. You'd rob a grave and take the gold fillings out of corpses' teeth. I doubt if there is anything you wouldn't do."
He walked to the door, spoke as he kept his back to me.
"That girl on Shore Avenue did this to you," he said. "She gave you big ideas so you'd have a wad of cash in the bank when you knocked her up. Well, you won't have the money. You'll be stripped of every dime. You'll get nothing from me now or ever. You'll-"
"Beat it fast."
"With pleasure."
Rage seized me as I watched him drive off. Everything was very obvious to me. He had me down and he'd keep stomping me. Only I wouldn't stay down. I'd rip aside the power of his money and settle the issue between us. We were no longer father and son. This was a war fought by two individuals, a vicious war that could only lead to suffering.
I phoned the renting agent for the apartment building and he knew of a couple who would be glad to move in. After I talked with him I thought some more about a furnished room. As a temporary measure a room would be satisfactory but as soon as I could afford it I wanted an apartment where I could take Mona. I was still thinking about this, trying to plot ahead as far into the distance as eventual marriage, when the phone rang.
"The boy just delivered my paper," Laura said. "I read about your trouble, Clint, I'm very sorry."
"Thanks. It finished me."
"Find a cheap room and get a job for the present. Tomorrow will have to take care of itself. Worry about tomorrow and you might as well put a bullet in your head."
"Depressed, aren't you?"
"You aren't kidding."
"Maybe you could compose music or draw."
"I'd starve to death."
"I-could you paint a house?"
"Hell, I don't know."
"I'm serious."
I considered this.
"I don't know," I said. "I imagine you simply need the paint, a brush and a ladder."
"The man who was going to do my house can't get here for weeks."
It was a rather surprising hint but it did have advantages. Any job that I took would require regular hours and I might have to work during the periods when I could see Mona. If I agreed to paint the house for Laura almost any excuse at all would be acceptable. As soon as she was finished with the apartments I'd move into one and get a decent job. By that time Mona ought to be free and we would live together.
"I don't have a ladder," I said.
"People rent them."
"Okay."
"I'll pay what I can."
"Going in over your head?"
"A little. Everything is shot in this old place and the work takes more time. It's all torn up downstairs and the only roomer I've got left is Norma. The others said there was too much noise and too much junk to stumble over."
"Then you must have an empty room for me."
"I-I don't think that would be wise."
"Suit yourself. Throw a room in with the job or forget it."
She finally consented but I knew she didn't regard the arrangement an ideal one. I didn't myself but it also had some merit. I could live at her house and take a cheap room somewhere else. Mona and I could rent the room as man and wife and pretend that we traveled frequently and our schedule varied. This would avoid gossip, allowing us to love in privacy. All the people we met would regard us as a decent, hard working couple who were merely trying to get along on a modest budget. Then, too, I had a guilt complex about my relationship with Laura which bothered me whenever I thought of her. Perhaps if I was close to her and I renewed our former friendship she would come to accept what we did as a mistake. And experience like that could change a girl, cause her to pull a shell around herself, shut herself off from the world. She was too nice a person to go through this or to take a negative attitude toward love. As an author she might tend to magnify the incident beyond the point of what had really happened, an abnormal but rather common desire of the male for a female. Once a desirable girl is taken by a man he wants to take her again. To me, it has nothing to do with morals because at the time of taking the man does not consider morals. He is interested in himself and even though he is in love with the girl, that interest, centered around his own desires, is tremendous. But, quite naturally, I no longer thought of her in this light. I had in Mona as much pussy as I could handle and I was well aware of it.
I closed up the office before six. There was nothing to sell anyway and only a few people wandered about, viewing my diaster.
"That Buick," one man said to me while I was on my way to my car. I can shape up the motor, buy an adaptor plate and drop it into my Plymouth."
"Sorry, but I can't talk deal. The insurance company would yell as well as Dana. Whatever is here doesn't belong to me. It's up for grabs."
"Let me know when I can grab. A Plymouth with an Buick power plant is a bear on the road. Pour the fuel to her and she roars."
I drove to the apartment and began to pack. Several times I paused to look at the nude drawing of Mona. If she divorced my father and we married what could I hope to do for her? Not a great deal at the start. For all I knew I'd still owe a debt to Dana and my actual experience in business administration was practically nil. A divorce meant that we would both lose our grip on his money-I'd lose mine first-and I was beginning to think about that. If I had to pay for that affair at Dana's, and he had caused it, why shouldn't he pay? It was like one man looting somebody and an innocent man going to the chair for it.
At eight I tried reaching her at the house but he answered the phone and I hung up without saying a word. He sounded drunk as usual. I supposed he was after her and she wouldn't give what he wanted. I grinned, thinking of his frustration, no longer a big shot in the bedroom but a pleading slob who couldn't possess his own wife's body.
It took me half an hour to load the wagon. I wrapped the painting of Mona carefully and placed it on the front seat. Of course I hadn't told Laura I was moving in that night but I doubted if it made any difference. With the downstairs of the house in a state of repair she'd be in her room and all she had to tell me was where I was to sleep.
Darkness was closing rapidly as I parked on her street. A few couples were walking toward the river where the bank would soon be plunged into the dark of night. These were couples who had nowhere else to go, possibly married to others or unable to lay each other at home. A fisherman staggered along the sidewalk, coming up from the river. He was talking to himself and he had several fish on a string. They were soft during the warm weather and most people wouldn't eat them unless they were broke and hungry. A man could almost do better picking through garbage cans on the block.
The front door of the house was unlocked and I went inside. The smells of fresh lumber and plaster hit me in the face. A light shown at the top of the stairs.
My shoes have soft rubber soles, the thick type, and I didn't make any noise going up. I suppose I should have called out but I saw no reason for doing so. It was one of the biggest errors I ever made in my life.
She had never taken me into her room and I had to guess as to its location. Another light led me down the hall, the faint glow from it splashing across an old carpet.
I heard them then, talking.
I stopped, embarrassed now to reveal my presence. "This Is real love." That was the voice of Norma. "Sometimes I wonder." Laura didn't sound convinced.
"Look at me. I got pregnant with a kid that I didn't want. Then the other men, trying to double the score with a full count and the bases loaded. I flaked. I'm done with that. A man does nothing for me, at least nothing that compares as to how it is with you. And you don't have to worry about getting into trouble. Maybe it isn't a love that lasts forever but it's good while it's with you. And there are times when it does last for a long time."
Laura spoke unhappily.
"I wish I could find myself," she sighed. "I-oh, it wasn't Clint's fault entirely. It was beautiful until then, but it was me giving in the first time that caused the whole thing. If I gave in once, why shouldn't he expect the same right after that? But I was afraid. I wrote a story about a girl in trouble and I didn't want to be one of them. It wasn't her fault. A man raped her and gave her the baby. I had to imagine what a rape would be like, how horrible it was to be forced to accept a man against your will. Then-that last time I placed honor above any desires. I had and he put his maleness into me anyhow. And yet I still cared. He was awful but I cared just the same. I don't know why. I cared and at the same instant I hated him. I got home and looked at my body in the mirror and I hated that, too. After you took a room-well we had those drinks together. Your loving stunned me but the things that followed were gentle, a sort of Intimate kindness that was new to me. We were two girls and there didn't seem to be any harm in anything that we did together but-"
"Stop worrying, Laura. Forget it."
"I can't help it. I wonder what I'm becoming."
"Unfortunately, you are letting me make love to you, but you're not a lesbian. Maybe I'm not either. Who knows. But we like it, and it's fun, and no male pollution to make us pregnant.
"I can't look at Clint any more. I'm doing worse than he ever did to me. But I have to look at him. Don't you understand? He's the only man I ever liked and he's the only man who can help me."
"So he's going to work on your place?"
"Yes."
"And live here?"
"He wouldn't take the job otherwise."
"Then you stay away from him. Look at him if it pleases you but make the guy keep his grasping hands off of you. I've given up trying with men and I won't share somebody I love. You step off the path just once and he'll damned soon know what you are. I mean it. I'd expose myself to keep you. It isn't just your body, lovely as it is. You're intelligent and I admire that. I could find any number of girls but I don't want them. The basis of any love stems from sex but a solid love goes far beyond that. You're a creative writer, or you hope to be. This interests me. My job is routine. I can't write but what you do fascinates me. You could do a story about a lesbian, why a girl becomes one, the advantages of avoiding pregnancy and the truth that it isn't new or so very strange. You could-" then she stopped talking and I could see that they were both naked and Norma was lying on top of Laura's body. She parted Laura's thighs and positioned her body between them so she could rub her lower body against Laura's in a tribodic action which caused their mounds and their sex intimacies to intermingle and the parts to press and rub together with pleasurable friction.
Laura was becoming aroused at the erotic motions, and her legs were parting further by their own actions. Her loins moistened in her excitement, and her face flushed. Norma began to kiss her hungrily and she embraced the girl, causing their naked breasts to press together, nipples digging into hardening nipples.
In spite of her reluctance, Laura was really getting carried away by her sexual excitement and she lay there waiting as Norma's lips left hers and began to travel down her body, first finding her heaving breasts, the nipples and downward in a moist trail to her soft gently curving belly, then lower.
When they found their target, Laura shrieked and her lower torso twitched and pressed against the seeking kisses, then she went into spasmodic twitches of ecstasy as she was loved so deeply.
Her body stiffened, then she dissolved into the throes of her climax under the lovemaking. When she was back to normal, Norma pulled away from her and lay back, guiding the other girl's face to her body to return her pleasures.
Reluctantly, Laura bent over the reclining body with the wide spread legs and with Norma's guidance began to do to Norma what she had done for Laura.
But after a few moments, Laura pulled away from Norma's body. She refused to carry the act any further.
But under Norma's eager begging she reached down to the woman's eager loins and gave her some massive measure of satisfaction with her hand. Norma had to settle for that.
Quietly, I sneaked away and out of the house.
I was amazed, but I wasn't going to pass judgement upon anyone. I was no angel by any means.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dana was amazed at the damage. "Somebody had a real grudge," he said to me. "Think it was your father? He lost no time, huh?"
"I'll take care of that with him."
It required a couple of hours to settle the details.
"Hell of a thing," Dama said. "A man retires and he no sooner gets away than he's back in business again."
"It's a beating all the way around," I agreed.
"Ever lose money so fast before?"
"No. I should have played the horses."
Later, I drove to Mickey's Grill. The only room I could find the night before was in that block and Mickey had been kind enough to steer me to it. I had decided that I wouldn't live in Laura's house but that I'd do the work for her. I felt responsible for her deviation and I was anxious to help.
"Settled?" Mickey asked me after he'd drawn one.
"More or less."
"How's the room?"
"Not good-not bad."
"You go and come on this street and nobody pays any attention to you. If you feel like giving the works to some dame you hit the sack with her and there's no talk."
I drank my beer and walked back to the phone booth. Reaching Mona was difficult because of the maid. This time, my mouth partly covered, I said I was calling for the electric company and what complaint did the woman of the house have. The maid didn't know, hadn't heard of any and soon I was talking to Mona.
"You must have had a night," she said. "I tried your apartment three times."
"I moved out. The dollars count now."
"Silly. I have money."
"Yes, and he'd catch you."
"Well-"
"You catch him. With the maid."
"Why?"
"For a divorce. It's sure grounds in this state. The husband has to be putting the blocks to some other woman for the wife to get free."
"In Nevada-"
"Sure. You have to take up residence for six weeks. Where do I get that kind of dough, or for that matter, either one of us?"
"There are strip clubs and-"
"Cut it out. Nobody is seeing you except me once you bust away from him." She laughed.
"All right dear. I-Hell, I can't talk much here. He's out. Where are you?"
"Mickey's Grill."
"Swell. Half an hour. I'm not dressed yet."
"Come as you are. It'll save time."
"Fresh."
I called Laura after that. I explained that I had changed my mind about the room but that I'd paint the house for her, starting tomorrow. She didn't make any comment about me not taking the room but she promised to order what I needed.
It was a long half hour waiting at the bar, closer to an hour, and oddly enough my thoughts were more about Norma and Laura than anybody else. Norma, a couple of years older than Laura, was more experienced and for all I knew most likely a confirmed lesbian. I decided that Laura was the accidental type, disappointed in normal sex, if sex outside of marriage is normal, and that she had turned to this form of love in sheer desperation. There were also some indications that Norma might be the sort of girl who went for either sex. A few girls do follow this pattern, either out of curiosity or an impulsive need which even they do not understand. And there are abnormal girls who never give up the search to prove to themselvs that they are normal. I had seen girls who were considered to be nymphos but a large percentage of them were actually frigid. Their drifting from one man to another was dictated by their ambition to find the right man to bring them pleasure. Some wives did this, and most of them were doomed to failure. Laura was right when she said that, usually, only the man who was a fault could help her.
Mona came in with a low cut sheath. Mickey took a second look at her boob separation and missed the glass with the beer on his first attempt.
"This is a wild street," Mona said.
"Wild enough."
"Is it safe?"
"Very. Everybody is a combination of the Three Monkeys. They know nothing, see nothing, say nothing."
"I know something."
"You should. You're close to the wheel."
"Not last night, Clint. He raised a stink. He's screaming all over the joint. First it's you, the things you said, how he'll clip your wings and still make you go. Then it's me. I have a duty. Whenever he wants my body it's there for him to take. So I told him no drunk is slobbering over me. Where he went after that, I don't know."
"He probably put it into the maid." I couldn't care less."
"Seconded."
Maybe it wasn't right for me to feel this way about my own dad but I did. There at the lot we had ceased to be a family as far as I was concerned and I continued to hold that opinion. I had known of him before, how ruthless he could be, but now he had gone too far. Probably he would have beaten me anyway in business, chopping prices as he had, but nothing had stopped him from being partly fair about it. Nothing except his own twisted mind, his eagerness for power and authority. But, in a sense, I could blame myself also. You can't buy a business on hot air and a string that apt to break. You need a lot of money or sound financial backing to take over an operation from somebody else. Oh, there are incidents when a buck can be made by investing a dime but those are rare. On the other hand, I'd had a chance if he had left me alone. I knew the business, I shot square with the customers and I was willing to work. The bitter taste in my mouth didn't come from the beer. It came from a mounting hate that could errupt into flames if it was fed enough fuel.
"He's changing his will," she said.
"Naturally."
"I guess you get a dollar so you would have a tough time trying to contest it."
"You can always fight."
"Would you fight me?"
I placed my left hand on her right thigh, moved it down to where I could feel her stockings and snapped her garter and it made her hop.
"You know better than that," I replied. "I wouldn't fight you. I'd marry you."
"He can't last long, considering his drinking and a bad heart."
"Sure, he drinks but we don't know his heart is bad."
"But he had that physical and-"
"Look, Mona. He said he had one. How do we know that it's true? Some men want sympathy and older men use it to keep a young girl. For anybody can tell it's a lie. He-"
"It isn't a lie. The agent called house hunting for him, and I asked about his health. Of course an agent or a life insurance company can't tell you too much but they wouldn't consider him for any kind of a policy at all."
"Then why did the agent take him time to inquire?"
"To learn if he had done anything about it."
"And he hasn't?"
"No. He's emperor. Nobody can reason with him. All he wants is a supply of booze and a load of money. He's got both. Where does he go from there?"
Mickey drew two more for us and I took a long stare into the future. If she quit him now she wouldn't get anything unless she was able to force him into a settlement and I doubted she could manage this. He'd turn on her with the fury of a grizzily bear that had escaped and he'd battle her to the ground.
"Forget it," I said.
She removed my hand from her thigh. You couldn't blame her for that. This was a dive but it was still a public place.
"What do you mean, Clint? Forget what?"
"Him."
"Oh."
"Leave him. Let somebody else take care of your furnace. Me. I'll service you. Stud fees." She laughed.
"I go on telling you that you're sweet but you're also a nut."
"Yes. About you."
"And other things, too. You're not alone. I've thought of divorce just as much as you have, probably I want one even more than you do, but we do have to be practical. You're used to a good job, fairly big money, and I want nice things. I could go without them, the same as you could live if you had an arm cut off, but we can get all that he has and I don't see why we shouldn't It's worth the wait How long? Six months or a year? Perhaps less. It could happen anytime."
"We'd be able to make our way," I said.
"With him after us? If you stole a car from him he'd hunt it down. He'd hunt us down and we'd never get out of his reach, just as he'd hunt for the car. The world is actually a small place, Clint. You bought those nude photos of me through the mail and who could have expected that? Doesn't that prove we're never really free?"
She was right. He had money enough to maintain a constant pressure upon us. If I found a decent job an untruth could spoil it. He'd want me at the bottom of the pit, working for peanuts. He'd gloat while we struggled to live in a cold water flat where the water pipes froze up in the winter and you suffocated to death during summer. All we could have was our love and from our love would come my powers in her, depositing my lust seed, and from this, from our love a baby. Poverty, real and part of our lives. Poverty that never let you stand alone Poverty when Sunday was simply a day that didn't pay you any money. Shabby clothes. Not enough food. Doctor bills. A hospital chasing you for cash. So you ran. You hid like a frightened rabbit in the woods. Another cold water flat, this one worse than the other. Garbage cans overflowing, drawing flies, rats prowling the night Hopeless.
Guts....
Hell, other people had walked away from similar situations. As long as you played it square you should be safe. Somebody ought to believe in you. But-well, if we did leave town, it would be in a cloud of defeat. It would be impossible for me to make him pay for what he had done at the used car lot. I'd have to forget and my anger wouldn't permit me to forget.
The match shook in my hand as I lit a cigarette. I was thinking of death. His death. Dead, lying in a casket, nobody really caring that he was gone. Then, afterward, his money. We wouldn't keep it all, just enough to start us off. The rest should go to a worthwhile cause, hoping that the giving of his money might make up for his abuse of the unfortunates.
Laura....
I felt lower than he was as I remembered that final possession of her femininity in my bedroom, the memory of my climax, my explosion of fire, my burning pulsating throbbing jets of me in her passage, as her muscle controls accepted me and my offering of love. If anybody could help her it was plain I was the man to do so. That much I owed to Laura. All I could do was try. It was a huge emotional wall for a man to crash through but I. had to smash my head against it and attempt to push the bricks of frustration aside.
"We have to ride it out," I said to Mona. "This is like being in a leaky boat. You bail out the water and hope you won't sink."
She smiled.
"You're right, honey. Why quit when we're ahead?"
"I'm not ahead."
"You will be. Both of us."
"It's kind of a lousy way to do it."
"No. What the father has the son gets."
"Hardly. In this case his wife."
"Well, maybe as it now stands but well share." She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "There's also something else we can share if we go up to your room."
I felt ashamed about taking her up there. Nobody ever swept the floor or the stairs and we saw a couple in the hall. The girl's back was against the wall and the man was kissing her. Half of the front of her dress was open and she was partially exposed, and so was he. Her hand was upon him and she was toying with the tip of his excited malehood, and his hand was inside her, beneath the elastic of the panties that were half way down her thighs.
"No," the man said. "At home it's free."
"Then go on home."
"It's always the same way with her."
"Please. My heart's breaking."
"Listen, I'll go as high as ten."
"Cheap. You only get what you pay for."
"And I only pay what it's worth."
We entered my room and she slammed the door. I could tell that she didn't approve of the atmosphere. I didn't either but I was known in most of the hotels and it wasn't safe for us to go to one of them.
"You can't work on her," she observed. "The room is too small."
I drew her into my arms and kissed her.
"I only rented this room for one purpose."
"But there's no telephone."
"Call Laura Craig whenever you want me. Just say that I have an appointment to keep." She pulled away from me.
"That's the girl on Shore Avenue, isn't it? The one you used to date?"
"Yes."
"So when I'm not available you sleep with her?"
"No. I'm almost out of money and she's having a little work done. It's simply a favor to me."
"Well, as long as it's no more than that I don't mind. Your father says most of the favors she wants are physical."
"He's judging by the street she lives on. And he's wrong, very wrong."
She started to say something but I stopped her with a kiss. Her mouth opened up and I shoved her toward the bed. Her knees hit the edge of it and she fell backward, her arms around my neck bringing me down on top of her, her skirt up to her belly, my hot middle hard against hers.
"Promise me something," she said as I lifted my weight from her. "What?"
"Promise me you'll do whatever I ask."
I didn't know what she meant and I didn't promise until she lay naked before me and naked I was ready to take her.
"Promise, Clint. You have to promise. If you love me you'd want to."
My Ups explored hers. The tip of her tongue darted forward.
"I promise," I gasped.
Her response to my kiss was long and savage. "That isn't all I want, Clint."
"What else?"
She laughed. Her laugh was low and husky.
"If you don't know, I won't tell you."
She didn't have to tell me. She had a secret but I discovered and I left my calling card in her secret. The second time it was no longer a secret. This time she decided to be top banana and I placed my banana inside her. It was ripe also, and it gushed a pretty stream of banana oil, but she really cooked with it.
And we did a lot of cooking that night in bed. With all burners.
We lay for a long time, saying nothing, breathing heavily, out bodies covered with satisfaction. Outside cars moved along the street. Down the hall a woman was fighting with a man. In the room next to mine a radio played.
"It has to be this way always," she said at last. "Nothing would please me more."
"Your father hates you."
"I know that."
She lifted herself up on one elbow. Her mouth was eager over mine.
"We have to end it, dear," she told me, her lips close and her breath hot.
"I don't know how."
"Because you haven't thought about it."
"Maybe."
"Nobody has to wait for what they should have. If you wait you're weak. You aren't weak. You're strong and powerful. A girl with you knows she's been taken. A man should know the same thing. When there's a grudge you take the other man, don't you?"
"I suppose so."
"Sure you do. And fast"
"Meaning?"
"That we have to do something." I lay there sprawled out as she got up to dress. After she left I dug what she was driving at. Elimination of the old man.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The work on Laura's house wasn't easy. It's hot In the sun and when you aren't used to climbing, the height annoys you. Besides, the space in which you can work is limited and you have to keep moving the ladder. Most painters use a scaffold which lowered or elevated but I didn't have any of this equipment.
Death....
I hadn't slept the night before. There are people who kill others, some with reasons which are at least understanding to the killer, but when you apply violent death to satisfy your hate for your own father it is very difficult to accept. First, you take a terrible risk and, secondly, there is the common blood that binds you even in hate. I had never felt that one man had the right to decide the death of another man-outside of the law, at any rate-and I couldn't bring myself to decide I was justified in doing that to him. There must be other sensible methods.
It wasn't until later that I saw Laura for the second time that day. She wore tight shorts and a brief halter, plus a pair of worn loafers. I had picked up a sandwich at a small diner for lunch and I sat alone, away from the other men. These were the carpenters and assorted help who cluttered up the front porch with their lunch baskets and thermos bottles.
"Your father must be a busy man," she said.
"He stays on the move."
I was seated on the grass and she remained standing, her richly tapered legs very nice.
"I have to borrow another thousand, Clint"
"So fast?"
"Just to be sure. I could run short and that would leave me hanging from a limb. Besides, the contractor is a little hard up and if I advance him cash he'll cut his price."
"The old man will probably loan it to you. That's his specialty. It gives him a stronger lever to squeeze the corpse dry."
"Where else can I go?"
"Nowhere now. Most people are cautious when it comes to a second mortgage. They're last in line and there's no great security."
"I phoned Mr. Logan but he said I'd have to talk to your father. The trouble is he's in Boston."
"Hell, he ought to move down there."
"He's coming back early. Maybe he'll stop by tonight."
This wasn't an unusual practice for my father when he loaned on real estate. He'd accept an appraisal by a qualified man but if more money was required he'd check the property himself before he'd authorize an advance. Every deal he took was a calculated one.
We talked while I ate. She made an effort to be friendly but it was difficult for her. I had the feeling she was trying to compare me with Norma and that she was inwardly disgusted about her adventure into the twisted love of lesbianism. She asked me where I was staying and I told her, adding that my room was on the street close to Mickey's joint.
"I guess a lot of girls hang around there," she said.
"Quite a few. The men who want them are welcome."
"Including you."
"No."
"Does a man want just one thing only from a girl?"
"We're getting personal."
"I realize, but a man would know and I don't. The editor of that magazine wants another story and I'm not as sure of myself as I was before."
"There's more to it than lust," I said. "Most people are pretty much occupied with it during the first year of marriage. Then a baby comes along and they have another interest. No longer is sex itself quite so important. Of course they don't avoid it but there are other matters which also concern them. They had the baby. They join organizations. A new car is needed and they have to plan for that. The husband has a job to keep, a living to earn. If his salary is limited they may live on a budget. They have responsibilities and they meet them as partners. This doesn't say they don't remain lovers. In happy marriages there is always love but there are dozens of ways of demonstrating it. Not all of this is done in the act of sex."
I tried but I didn't get through to her. The wall was there and it resisted anything I said.
She turned and walked into the house. Strangely, something inside of me went with her.
I guess it was mid afternoon when she called me to the phone. She'd had the phone moved upstairs, out of the way of the workmen, and she had a huge towel wrapped around her.
"Some man," she said. "Long distance. Sounds like your father and he wanted to know if you were here?"
"Dammit."
It was my father. His voice was thick with booze. "I've got to see you, boy. Tonight"
"No dice."
"This is serious."
I didn't believe him. I couldn't. Another gimmick, another switch. When would he ever leave me be?
"I'll have nothing to do with you, " I said. "You got your pound of flesh. Co out and sell it. Get twice what you paid. That's your deal, isn't it? Twice or more if it isn't tied down."
"Clint-"
"Can it. Maybe Laura wants to talk to you."
She accepted the phone, explained her need and asked him about the money. She thanked him before she replaced the receiver.
"He couldn't commit himself," she said.
"That's the usual pattern. Crawl. He makes you do that. You have to beg or he can't feel kingly."
"He may stop."
"That's between you and him."
"He was cursing you when we hung up."
"Naturally. It's the only way he can hurt me now. He can't take what I haven't got. He's already taken all that I had."
She started along the hall and then paused.
"It's hot, Clint. Do you want a cold beer?"
"I'm supposed to be working."
"Some of the other men have. "Well-okay."
There was a vacant bedroom and she'd had her kitchen stuff moved up into that. The bed was apart, piled against one side and I noticed she did her cooking with an electric burner.
When she opened the refrigerator to get the beer she had trouble with the towel. It slid down from her shoulders for a moment and she had to juggle the beer in order to avoid losing the towel altogether.
"That phone," she complained. "It brought me out of the shower."
"Why bother it?"
"It might have been-"
She didn't finish her statement but I knew what she was going to say. Norma. Jealous Norma, checking on her every movement, sitting in that office. Then there would be love, the tragic conquering of one female by another. Realistic? Certainly. Lonely wives sometimes turned to other women. Professional girls who made a lot of money and were afraid of losing it. Almost all of what anybody did was based on need. A bedroom. The world shut out. The path of sex which had many outlets, some repulsive, perverted, others a casual result of fate.
We sat at the kitchen table, opposite each other. The towel had slipped again but she seemed unaware of it. Once more she was looking past me, into space, her eyes seeing something or maybe nothing at all that had any meaning.
"I wish I could live some of my life over," she said. "Most of us wish that at one time or another."
"Do you?"
"Of course. I'm human. But it might have gone the same way anyhow. We are tempted and we seek. Not all things are reasonable."
Now she looked at me, just as she had on the lawn. What was she trying to discover? Herself? More than likely. But how could a man assist her? A man didn't think the same as a girl did and his emotions are different
"Clint, you can help me. I want to believe that you can and yet I know that we're lost to each other. It was a mistake for me to call you. It was only because I was hurt and so were you. And-the house. Another mistake. I thought if you were close I could-Clint, I can't-I am unable to rationalize what you did. It was-forceful lust"
"No, not that What if you had a farm? Once you turn the bull loose you know he isn't going to stand still. But I do admit that I was wrong. We weren't married. You had rights. I should have respected them. I haven't any excuse. I just wanted you so much that I couldn't wait. Maybe I was worried, I don't know. A man often turns to sex when he's troubled."
She sat there for a long time, saying nothing. The phone rang and we didn't move. Her forehead was damp, her eyes speculating as they roamed my face. She glanced down for a second then back to me. She pulled air into her lungs and held it until she had to let it out with a rush. The towel dropped a Utile more and the separation between her breasts were almost completely revealed. Her hand shook as she emptied the can of beer and she studied her hand which held the can. Then she put the empty can aside and examined her fingernails. During that moment my love for Mona was a distant thing which was almost unreal. Here was a girl trying to swim through the river of life without even knowing how to swim.
"It's terrible to be confused," she said.
"Yes, it is."
"I had this story in mind and I can't do it. When I thought of the story it was beautiful, one that should be told. But the words don't say it."
"What kind of a story are you writing?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Possibly not."
"You-the girl has a baby."
"Married?"
"No. She wants the child-and she doesn't want it. She's alone. You know? There's nobody. Just a distant relative. Then men use her. Single men, married men. She's just a receptacle where the men spend their lust, their seed. It means nothing to her. Yet she's a woman with all of the desires of a woman. She knows that there has to be more than this, that the beauty of living belongs to her as much as the next woman. She-"
"Laura...."
The words now gone, her eyes probing mine. She put her hands up to her head, both of them, as though she had a terrible headache and the towel left her breasts, letting them pop into the open with a soft jiggle. I could tell that here was her river, that she was floundering in the current, that the safety of the bank on the other side was too far for her to reach alone.
"Clint."
"Yes?"
"It's-all right"
"What's all right?"
"If we-"
But I told myself that it wasn't. None of it would be right if she forced herself. She would only hold me in greater contempt when I left her. She would feel the presence of my body, the will of the male, and she would misunderstand. As the girl in her projected story-Norma-felt used so would she feel used. It would only push her deeper into a pit of despair.
Why was I here? No man could repay a debt or mend a wrong when the sole purpose was to convince a girl she was normal. Or I didn't think that a man could. The problem was hers, deep rooted and not often recognized for what it was. She was attempting to make it a surface issue, one that simple, but her problem was more complex and beyond the surface. She believed that I had taken her in an act of forceful lust. She had no way of measuring my conduct, indecent if one wished to consider it such, as against an actual rape. The rapist cares nothing about the identity of his victim, frequently gave no consideration between life and death. I did care for her and I had wanted her, but-
I got up from the chair as the phone started ringing again.
"You'd better get another painter," I said. She put her head down, sobbing. "All right," she managed. "But-"
"I don't want to make matters worse." I answered the phone. "Yeah?"
"That you Clint?"
I didn't recognize the voice my many voices sound different over a telephone. You expect a guy with a deep voice to be big. When you meet him you discover he's two inches away from being a midget.
"It's Mickey. At the bar."
"Oh, yeah, Mickey?"
"I tried before. For the girl you were with last night. The one with the knockers."
"Stop measuring her."
He laughed.
"Who can? She's in one of my booths right now. Got the start of a package of booze hanging against her brain and begging me to reach you. Just sits and cries and drinks. Maybe she needs somebody from the meat market but if she's that bad off I could-"
"Shut up, I'm on my way."
I hanged the phone down and hit the stairs hard and fast. A carpenter at the bottom was in my way and he went piling into a pile of lumber.
You're not supposed to drive more than thirty miles an hour in town but the station wagon's motor had plenty of wallop and I fed it all the gas it would take. I had a feeling that some part of my ship had landed on a reef, high and dry. There was the old man's phone call and now Mona was putting on a load. It all came out to somebody's building blowing down. His. Hers. Or mine.
I picked up a beer from Mickey at the bar before I joined her in the booth.
"You'd better take her fingerprints," Mickey said. "Why?"
"You won't know her if you don't. If It wasn't for her chest and her hair I would have thought she was somebody else. Nice, huh? Both of them. Get your hand between those and you'd think you were in a patch of living melons. Yeah, nice pair of boobs, those."
"Dry up and give me another brew."
"You're the one who's dry. One swallow. And gone."
"It's my dough."
"Hell, I'm buying this."
He gave me the second one and I walked back to where she was sitting at the booth. She had something that looked like scotch in front of her but I didn't pay much attention to that. It was her face that made me stop abruptly. The glass of beer dropped out of my hand and crashed onto the floor.
I didn't know what had hit her but I thought somebody must have used a stick. The face I saw was really something. One eye was black and swollen and the other eye was almost the same. The worst was her right eye and that was half closed. Her left cheek had a bruise on it and there was another bruise on her chin. She smiled painfully.
"Good grief," I said and sat down.
"I didn't know where else to come, Clint."
"I guess not."
"But I didn't want you to see me this way."
Mickey was sweeping up the broken glass with a broom. A free beer and now the cost of the glass. I think I ordered another one.
"What happened?" I asked her.
"This was last night."
"When?"
She shrugged and the front of her lifted and fell. No wonder Mickey could recognize her from her boobs. Most of it was showing, peeking from under a yellow blouse. The two top buttons were missing and I could see through the material.
"Or this morning," she replied. "I guess it was this morning. What time did I leave you?"
"I don't know."
"I was in bed and asleep when he came into my room."
"Goon."
"He was loaded. It was the usual thing. Drunk and he smelled of liquor and some woman. He wasn't mad at first. At least he didn't seem to be. Just liquor, loaded and stinking. He sat on the edge of the bed, fat and naked talking about your family."
"My family?"
"Yes. About the tough years, growing big, and how he had given your mother you. He said he had gotten her pregnant during their honeymoon and that this must prove he was quite a guy. Then he was after me, sort of crazy all at once, pulling off the sheet from me and saying how he had to have another son, one with guts. I remember that. He said he'd be willing to die tomorrow if he could have a kid with guts."
"I see."
She drank most of her drink and Mickey brought me a beer. She asked for a refill and he said she'd had enough. I argued with him about that and threw a five on the table between us.
"The hell," he said. "Get her stoned. You'll have to take care of her." He picked up her glass. "Good work, taking care of some dame."
"I told him no," she explained while we were alone. "It wasn't just his age or his health but because of you. I knew he'd swear or make a speech but I didn't think he'd do anything. How wrong can you be? I'm stretched out there on the bed, only trying to reason with him, and suddenly I get his fist in my face. Not just once. A lot of times. One after the other. He'd mark me, he said. He'd cut me up. He'd leave me so that I wasn't beautiful anymore."
"The beast," I said as Mickey brought her a fresh drink. "The brutal swine."
"Then he took what he wanted. He plunged his fat thing into me and I wasn't prepared for him. It hurt terribly and he did it in me without protection. Having his way. Having what I didn't want him to have. Then he hit me again, while his thing was still in me. Then he yanked himself from me and climbed off after he had soiled me."
The anger inside of me became a ball of white heat. I couldn't taste the beer I drank and I lit the wrong end of a filter cigarette. I lit another.
"Scum," I said. "That's what he is. If-"
"Clint."
"It had to happen," I told her. "Everything was going this way and nobody could stop it. As long as you lived with him he was bound to demand what he thought was his."
"Did he have to do this to me?"
She placed her elbows on top of the table.
"What are you going to do now?"
"I don't know."
"This can't go on."
"Of course not."
"He's in Boston."
"Or on his way home."
She sat there silent for a moment, looking at me. Her beautiful face-an awful sight the torture in her eyes as terrible as her appearance. The old man and his fists, bashing away at her, not giving a damn. Then as she lay helpless, shattered by pain his organ inside her body, seeking to conceive the child that only he wanted, screwing her and heaving away his fat climax drenching her passage with pollution.
"What are you going to do?" she asked me again.
"That depends on what you want."
"You made a promise," she said simply. "Keep it."
I felt the pain and glanced at my right hand. The glass was in pieces, what little beer was left in it making a puddle upon the table. Blood dripped from the cut mixing with the beer. I swore and put the rest of the glass in an ash tray. Maybe she said something about what I had done but if so I didn't hear her.
The promise....
Well, here it was, what I had expected but sooner than I had anticipated. Reality, as naked as a baby. A decision to be reached, a decision that would be final. Not just one man against another. Worse than that. Son against father.
His woman ... We had both had sex with the same body.
"I can't," I heard myself saying.
"What do you mean you can't?"
Her laugh taunted me.
"Clint, he said you didn't have guts."
"I wiped the blood off my hand with a handkerchief. "This has nothing to do with guts. Nobody needs guts to kill someone. Where you need guts is when you have to walk away from something that isn't any good for you."
"Look," she coaxed. "It would be easy. Natural. No one would know."
"We would."
"And we'd forget."
"Could we? Besides-"
"Clint, be quiet." She was annoyed with me. "You know how he drinks. Everybody does. And you know how fast he drives. People know that, too. I've studied the roads. There's a sharp curve about five miles out of the city. On a hill and with a guard rail that wouldn't hold a bike. He has that heart condition and it's a matter of record. The combination is perfect. Sharp curve, too much to drink, bad heart."
"I know the curve," I said. "He never slows up for it especially at night. He can't seethe light and he can't tell whether or not he's got the road to himself."
She didn't say anything until after Mickey had delivered a new round to us.
"Cut yourself?" he inquired.
"Not bad."
He moved off and she leaned forward. The blouse hung open, her exposure teasing me. Her knees opened and her thighs closed around my knee. I could feel the heat of her radiating out from between her legs. Then her hand stole down to my body and I felt her hand seek and find me and toying with my malehood.
"This is how it goes, Clint. He gets in from Boston and I'm real nice to him. I don't mean I'm nice to him in bed but friendly, and in sort of a confidential mood. I feed him liquor until he doesn't know the floor from the ceiling. Then I throw the bomb. I say that you violated me, that you made me be your woman, that you're waiting out there past that hill and I'm supposed to meet you. While I'm doing this you're parked outside in your car. Hell rip out of the city with you behind him. On the curve you force him off the road. He goes down that hill."
I lit a cigarette. It would work. Only the two of us would know and even she couldn't be sure if I claimed it was an accident. I'd have the secret inside of me, to hold and live with for the rest of my life.
"Yeah." I agreed. "It fits."
"After that, we're free."
"Yeah. Free."
A horn blew outside of the bar and she got up to go home. I didn't think anything about the horn at the time and she didn't press me further. An understanding not put into words seemed to exist between us about what we were going to do.
After she had gone I moved up to the bar.
"Lose your girl?" Mickey asked.
"You can't play music all the time."
"Not with that face."
"Knock it off."
He wiped up some ashes from the bar. "I thought she had a convertible."
"She does."
"Then why is she hitching a ride in a heap?"
"I didn't see any car."
"Well, I saw it. Somebody blew a horn and she went out. She walked down the street, following the car."
Two minutes later I was at the pay phone, calling my father's house. The maid answered.
"Your father isn't here," the maid said. "He called at noon and his wife left the house as soon as she hung up. I don't know what happened."
"Forget that I phoned, will you?"
"All right."
I returned to the bar. I felt as though I was playing football and running for a touchdown in the wrong-
Two minutes later I was at the pay phone, calling my father's house. The maid answered.
"Your father isn't here," the maid said. "He called at noon and his wife left the house as soon as she hung up. I don't know what happened."
"Forget that I phoned, will you?"
"All right."
I returned to the bar. I felt as though I was playing football and running for a touchdown in the wrong direction. If the maid had seen her face she would have mentioned it. And she must have seen Mona. That put a couple of questions up in the air. Where had she gone after leaving the house and what had happened to her car?"
Of course, these were questions which I couldn't answer and I didn't try very hard. I continued to drink beer and thought of him ripping through that guard rail and plunging down the bank. I thought, too, of the disaster of my new business, how I had lost all my money and of his Inhuman treatment regarding Mona. I also thought of his money, the estate he would leave behind him, but that in itself was not the main factor. His wife and my mistress.
Soon to be mine, my arms around her as the final, blinding surge of my mingled inside the summit of her love.
And yet..
"You said something," Mickey said. "I did? What did I say?"
"That you couldn't do it. Give me one wallop at that doll and I'd do it all right."
I brooded over my beer. Probably I had made such a statement because I knew, inwardly, that the reasons I had were not strong enough to make me murder him. They were only strong enough for me to take her away from him. But I wasn't going to stop her from telling him that I had slept with her. This would finish the marriage and she ought to listen to reason. Somehow, somewhere we could have our own marriage.
Laura....
Funny, but I couldn't shake her from my thoughts. I could still see her half naked and hear her crying at the table. She had offered herself and I had refused. Possibly this was a mistake. Perhaps it wasn't. Who could say?
And then, suddenly, I didn't have to remember her tears. She was sitting beside me and her tears were real, the kind of tears that are born by tragedy.
"Clint," was all she said at first.
I ordered a beer for her but she wouldn't take it. I sat there helpless, watching her, not knowing what to do. Her hair was a mass of snarls, her lips trembling so much that she couldn't speak except that one word. My name. It had sounded like both a plea and a prayer.
"Hell, get out of here," Mickey said. "I can't stand no dame bawling. I'll be busy in a few minutes and nobody wants to listen to that.
She didn't resist as I took her up to my room. I had to put my arm around her to help her on the stairs and she leaned heavily against me. As soon as we were in the room she fell upon the bed. Her face pale. It was only then I realized she had fainted.
I tried putting a damp towel from the bathroom across her forehead but there wasn't any response. Then I bent over her and slapped her face hard. She stirred and I slapped her again. This brought her eyes open and she looked up at me.
"Oh," she said.
"I'm sorry, I had to hit you."
She managed to roll over and sit up.
"I didn't even feel it."
At least she had stopped crying.
"Why are you up here on this street?" I asked.
"I didn't know where else to go." Unsteadily, she got to her feet. "This is wrong. I'd better leave."
I stopped her.
"No," I said. "There's something that caused this." She sighed.
"I guess it doesn't matter."
"It does to me. You've never acted this way before."
She hesitated and sat down on the bed again.
"Are you my friend?" she asked.
"Of course. Why shouldn't I be?"
"Because of how I've treated you."
"I earned it, I don't deny that. I deserved every rotten thing you thought about me. When a man disregards the rights of another person he has to suffer the consequences. If a man drives on the wrong side of the street he has an accident. Nothing comes to anybody without a price tag on it. Some prices are high. Some prices are low. What I did to you rates as high."
She shook her head. She was still tense but she'd gotten a grip on herself.
"I misunderstood, Clint."
"That's decent of you." I felt a strange warmth in my feelings toward her.
"Maybe but the kindness is a little late. If I had-"
"Whatever it is you can tell me."
"That's better than telling the police."
"Police?"
"We can get to that later. Things can't get any worse than what they already are." I lit a week. "I'll wait," I said.
"When you write about somebody you have to be tolerant. Somehow I forgot that about my life. I know that nobody is all good or all bad. If I had applied this logic to you I wouldn't be sitting here and talking this way. I might have declined your next date to show you how I felt but I wasn't tolerant enough for that. Instead, I left you, thinking you were an animal, that sex with you or any other man was dirty. I-"
"You don't have to go on," I broke in.
"I want to continue. I want to get it out of my system and then I'll leave you alone. Any person has a certain amount of pressure. These pressures can become confusing, distorting what is fact. Of course what you did wasn't right but I should have realized that it could have happened with almost anybody. Yet I didn't. I felt disgraced and sorry for myself. To me it was assault. Then-well, when Norma moved into my house I turned to her because she was a girl. You-Clint, you don't know how far I turned or how easy it was to degrade myself even more."
"I know," I said, being truthful with her. "That's why I didn't take a room with you or touch you today. I heard the two of you together."
Her face flushed.
"You must think I'm a pervert."
"No. The fault was more mine than yours. I conditioned you for just that and I sent her down there without knowing what she was. You confided in her and this was all she needed. She caught you in a moment of weakness. It's what you think of the relationship that counts."
She bit her hp.
"Dump her," I said. "She can't hurt you and not hurt herself at the same time."
She lit a cigarette and I gave her one. She was very upset.
"Today changed me," she said through the smoke. "I discovered what rape is actually like. It's the most horrible experience a girl can endure."
It was a belt between the eyes and it stunned me but it didn't prevent my brain from functioning. None of the carpenters or other workmen were likely to take advantage of her. Rape was a serious offense and avoided by most men.
"My old man," I said, choking on the words.
"I won't tell you who it was. I had to come to you and you had to know some of it. It's important for me to tell you that I forgive you for what I did. It isn't a question of right or wrong. It's a simple matter of understanding that not all of us do what we should."
I begged her to tell me the guy's name but she refused. I wouldn't accept her refusal. The past closed in around me. She was too sweet and loving to suffer male abuse. My anger raced out of control as I went over to her and grabbed one of her arms. She cried as I twisted it, yelling at her for the truth. She slid off the bed and fell to her knees, whimpering, pleading. I put additional pressure onto her arm and she gasped. But I got it out of her eventually, the whole sordid story, as she sat on the floor, holding her arm, rocking back and forth.
"He came to the house," she said with effort. "Your father. He was drunk, but I let him in because he wanted to look at the rooms. The workmen were gone and I was alone. Norma had to stay late at the office. He was friendly until he got me into one of the bedrooms. Then he closed the door and became awful. He said that I was a slum tramp, that I had influenced you and that his love for you had turned into hate. He said his wife was a cheap whore, too, and that if he was married to a tramp he might as well sleep with another one. I-yes, I know what rape is now. He ripped the clothes from me and he forced me down onto the bed. It wasn't the kind of hard love you made to me, a love that had any meaning, except that I was a female and he could satisfy his lust in my body.
"Damn," I said miserably, recognizing what I had to do. "Does anybody know?"
"Norma found me."
"No, but he lost a letter with his name on it and she saw it."
"Then you came up here?"
"Yes. She went out right away."
"Where did she go?"
"She didn't say." I walked to the door.
"Don't, Clint. Please!" She struggled to her feet. "Nobody can stop me. Nobody." Sobbing, she fell upon the bed.
I lost no time In getting to the car. What Mona had suggested I do was one thing but this was quite another. This was the reason that would take the life from his body. Oh, I'd pay the penalty because I'd kill him at the house. I was too desperate to wait and I wanted him to know why he was being killed. I wouldn't use a gun. Just my hands. Around his throat, watching his face turn blue, his mouth come open and his tongue stick out. Yes I'd pay. This was murder and there was no legal defense. I wasn't insane. I was aware of what I was doing. The people of the world had to be cleansed of a criminal.
The agency was on the route to his house. His car was parked out front and I pulled in, halting beside it.
Several of the help were clustered in the showroom when I entered. Norma Klone sat in a chair apart from them.
"He's in the office you used to have," somebody said. There was a pool of blood on the floor and he lay near the desk. His white shirt was soaked with more blood and although his eyes were open and he was undoubtedly suffering he lay perfectly still.
"Who called you?" he asked. His voice was weak.
"No one."
"She got me. With a knife."
"Who?"
"Norma. Had me come here for a phony excuse and buried the knife in me. A lesbian and she nailed me for raping her lover. How was I supposed to know?"
His voice was weaker and I knelt beside him. I didn't feel anything at all as far as sympathy was concerned.
"You had it coming to you," I said. "If she had missed I'd have gotten you myself."
"You're to blame Partly, boy."
"No. You raped her."
"Not that Because you wouldn't meet me and talk. I was paying you back. Cot Into my wife, didn't you?"
For some reason I wiped the blood away from his mouth.
"Prove It," I said.
"Sure I saw her car In front of your apartment but that isn't the whole thing. That night at the smoker-there were some movie stills of nudes and she was one of the girls. I finished checking her out this morning. She's no good. She never was. A decent model agency was afraid of her. She'd date a man and shake him down. There was this one photographer and she'd shacked up with him. They were out for the big kill. I was it. I hated you because we couldn't get together and I raped your girl. Damned lesbian lover. Now I'll probably croak for it."
When the doctor arrived he gave him emergency treatment and was almost too late. But they managed to save his hide.
,I drove toward my father's house and the other things he had told me began to take shape. He hadn't hired anybody to destroy my business. He claimed he hadn't hit Mona and, suspicious of her, he hadn't changed his will. As low as he was, I doubted if he would lie when he thought he was dying. A he at that point was of no value to him. Neither was his money.
It's difficult to explain exactly how I felt about him now. A dog might bite a person but most people wouldn't want to see the dog struck by a car. And, to be frank about it, I don't suppose I could have killed him anyway. I might have given him a beating and pounded out some of his teeth but to actually kill is a long step to take. And in the long run, the shock of what happened changed his character. He retired and no longer bled people. He had a second chance and he took it Later he turned his holdings over to me as partial payment for his former evil.
By the time I reached the house Mona knew about my father's stabbing. She tried to come into my arms but I told her that I didn't want to hurt her face. This wasn't my actual excuse. I doubted if I even wanted to touch her. My interest in Laura was becoming deeper. I saw her as a wife, a mother, a fine girl. But I didn't know what she saw in me.
"Drink?" Mona asked me.
"Beer," I replied.
We didn't resume talking until we were seated in the living room with our drinks. "Norma did it," she said. "Why?"
"He raped another girl."
"And that's that." She yawned. "I'll take over while he's helpless and sell out everything."
"Really?"
"Who wants to be bothered with several business concerns? I should worry about them while I'm touring Europe? Not me."
"I guess we'll have some fun," I ventured, leading her into a trap.
"We? Oh, I don't know. We're right for each other in a number of ways but we ought to be sure."
"I see." I saw too much.
"While I take a trip you can find a job." She yawned again. Her one eye was now almost entirely closed and her face was puffed out more. She didn't look very beautiful just then. "It'll give us a chance to think about each other, Clint. After all, nobody dives into the water unless they learn to swim."
I started at her and I felt my mouth pull a little into a tight smile that was more bitter than amused. This was the girl I had loved? It seemed to be a joke. Of course her body was great, one of the best I had ever known, exciting and alive, but nobody had to tell me that this was all she offered.
"He didn't beat you," I said. "Somebody else did."
"I suppose you think you're being smart?"
"No. Your the one who's trying to be smart. He didn't hit you. He swore that when he thought he was dying. Yes, I saw him before he was taken away. He'll live. Amaze you? It shouldn't. I was going to kill him myself. But Norma got at him first. She did it to keep the woman she wanted, something which she didn't know she could never have again. He told me the truth. I believe him. You said the help are off. This isn't their night. I think you arranged it so they wouldn't be here when he got home. You intended to blame him for your face but the maid admitted to me you had a call before you went out and he might have wondered about that. I could prove I didn't do anything to you. Again, it was somebody else. Somebody who was angry with you."
"You re guessing."
"I'm not. Whoever you met slammed you around. You blamed my father. Had you seen him you would have blamed me. You were holding a string with a knot tied on either end. To him. And to me."
I felt like another beer so I got one from the kitchen. She frowned when she noticed I didn't bring one for her. She didn't need it. Probably she was still half riding in a fog of her own booze.
"Europe," she said. "Hell, I've always wanted to see it."
"Well, you'd better take a job on a boat to get there." She had trouble lighting a cigarette. She wasn't dumb and she knew I was hinting at something.
"What does that mean?"
"One thing. He knows everything."
Even the discoloration of her face faded somewhat and the blue of her eyes grew dull, searching.
"You're a lousy liar!"
"No. I'm not lying. The night he went to that smoker, he found out what you were. There were nude slides shown and one of the films was of you. It must have got him to thinking. That's why he went to Boston so often, checking on you, trying to come up with the facts. But he learned all that he needed to know. There was this photographer and-"
She hurled the empty can at me. I ducked and the can hit against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Her almost insane laughter mingled with the sounds of the tinkling can. Then all at once, the laughter stopped. She unbelted the robe, using her naked body, the only weapon she had left
"Make love to me," she said.
"Golly, no."
"I'm good for you."
"You're no good."
"Well travel together." She wouldn't quit. "London. Paris. Rome. You hated him and I've got some in my own account We can leave tonight, skip everything. Rome last. Well live there. That's where I want our kid born. We-"
I did the same thing to her that I had done to Laura except that I was more brutal. She screamed in pain as I buried her on the sofa and worked at one of her arms. She bit me twice, and I slapped her with my free hand.
"Clint!"
"All of it, you money hunting slut"
Just before her arm was ready to break she broke down. I relaxed the pressure but I continued to hold her arm, threatening force, as she talked. Yes, there was a photographer, a man who had made her do many things. Whenever he needed money and business was slow they clipped some thrill hungry guy for all he was worth. But there wasn't any future in that. The night of the convention, with all of the attending confusion, she had sneaked in-no agency had sent her-and she'd met my dad. Somebody had mentioned his money and she'd thrown her charms at him. The photographer approved of the marriage as long as he was killed and some innocent party did the killing. The relationship between my dad and me was ideal, a breeder of hate. But I went off in the wrong direction, trying to start my own business. He accused her of sleeping with me and set up his own lot to drive me broke. This, however, was too slow for Mona and her rotten lover. They hired men out of state and wrecked my cars, knowing I'd accuse the old man. This was perfect for their plan because from this point on I refused anything my dad said. Then, that morning, the photographer had learned from a friendly source of my father's inquiries into her past. Immediately, he had driven to town here, called Mona at the house and arranged to meet her in a hotel room. Now scared, she had suggested they delay the killing until I acted on my own but he had beaten her into submission. The rest I already knew.
"You'd better get dressed," I told her and let go of her arm.
She looked up at me through tears.
"But where will I go?"
"That's your problem."
"Hell be furious."
"What do you think I am?"
She moved her arm back and forth "I'm his wife."
"Fight in court. Under these circumstances, nobody would give you a dime. There's also a penalty for planning to commit murder. It was your plan, not mine and I only went after him because of what he did to Laura. I was mad enough to kill but at the last moment I doubt if I could have gone through with it. Prison, yes, but his death was not for me to decide. He wasn't any good and yet he was my dad. I could never forget that. Going to the law was the sensible answer. Now that is no longer necessary. I'm not sorry and I'm not glad. It happened but I am sorry for Norma. It's a big price to pay and get nothing except a row of bars in return."
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To see somebody I love."
"I-I don't understand."
"I didn't either until today."
My eyes were opened for the first time.
When Laura saw me, one look at my face told her everything, what I felt for her.
This time she undressed eagerly and willingly for me, and nakedly, we fell upon the bed.
She offered her sweet femininity happily, for even when at the completion of our love making, at the height of our act of completion, in the midst of our climax, it was an offering of my deepest gift to the woman who was mine always.
