"Jill," Madame Petrovna whispered, "if I can't have you I don't want to live."
Jill Braddock felt a wild sensation of pure power as she stretched wantonly and squirmed beneath Madame's eager, fondling hands.
For a moment she permitted the older woman to freely caress her satin-smooth flesh, then she sprang from the bed. A cry of anguish escaped Madame's lips and she moaned, "You were just leading me on."
"Well," said Jill coldly, "you keep talking about how you suffer, so I tried to figure out a way to increase the pain." She undulated toward the door and added tauntingly over her shoulder, "Good night, Madame. I'm going to Mark Rid-digger now to see what a man can do for me....
Author's Profile
Stuart Friedman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, traveled extensively through the United States and now makes his home in San Francisco.
Before turning to writing for a career, he worked with a foundry maintenance gang, sold advertising, managed a real estate company and conducted a labor-industry counselling service.
He started writing in 1938, published a history of Indiana, then switched to fiction, making a number of sales to magazines. Among his well-known books are FREE AND THE DEAD and the current Monarch Fiction Hit, NIKKI.
CHAPTER ONE
The beauty of Jill's slim young dancer's body disturbed Madame Petrovna and Jill knew she shouldn't have been naked when Madame entered the dressing room.
Jill was leaning toward the mirror, her left hand on the table top, the long outspread fingers of her right hand deftly applying grease-paint smears of color and lines of accent to her excitingly pretty face.
She was in a casually graceful pose of balanced tensions: her left leg raised forward and resting on the bench, the point of her knee forming an easy angle, the round of her hip and buttock describing a rich, sweeping curve; her right leg extended back full length in a down-sloping fine-tapered line, the toes and ball of her long shapely foot, in a white cotton sock, braced against the floor.
Her skin, tinted with recent sun tan, was smooth and fair and there was a clean healthy glow, like a fresh bloom, about her superbly conditioned body. The flood of light from the mirror washed over her exquisitely formed breasts and Jill saw without turning that Madame, after a brief stroking gaze along her back, was staring at her naked breasts. For a tight instant their eyes met in the mirror, then Madame swung her attention to the other dancers who were already in costume.
For several moments Jill remained motionless, undecided; to remain naked knowing how she affected Madame was a nasty form of teasing; but to snatch her robe and cover herself would be an insult to a woman she loved and respected profoundly as artist and teacher and as directress of their little ballet company. All that really mattered was the dance, Jill decided, and resumed the careful preparation of her face.
She had a valentine face with the spike of a widow's peak making the top indentation in the center of her forehead, the outer roundings of her wide, full cheeks forming the bulges and tapering down to the narrowness of her short chin. What gave her prettiness the quality of excitement were the excesses of her features; her lips were full to the point of poutiness; the tissue structure around her lower eyelids gave her brown eyes a slightly puffy look as if she were sleepy and ready for bed. Though Jill Braddock's face at 24 was larger, its proportions were almost exactly what they had been when she was a lovely little five-year-old dancing in her first recital. This blend of child-sweet lines with adult female sensuality had disturbed dark taboo areas in many a male and female other than Madame Petrovna, and Jill was vaguely aware of it.
Madame Serena Petrovna was anything but serene; and though she affected simple clothing such as the greenish tweed suit with white blouse she wore now, she couldn't resist such gypsy touches as the enormous gold hoops that swung from her ears. She was tall and, though fuller, her figure retained the supple lines of her active days as a dancer. She had a broad, Slavic face with a low forehead and jet-black hair center-parted and combed helmet-tight to her skull. Her highly expressive mouth was lovely, whether curved with sweetness or thinned with scorn. She was approaching forty.... from one direction or another, as Karen waspishly put it, and while there wasn't and never had been any candy-box prettiness about her she was dynamically attractive. She had teethed on her mother's toe shoes and begun her own classic training in ballet at four and, as a child, she'd circled the globe with a variety of dance companies, picking up many of the vital impressions that gave her choreography its flavor and uniqueness. At twenty she had risen to first soloist with an important European company and before she hung up her shoes she had danced with seven of the world's best companies, here in the U.S.A. and on the continent. When she turned her back on the stifling traditions of classic ballet it had not been a retreat, but an advance. Jill herself had left the classic ballet field for reasons that Madame understood thoroughly and the bond between them was pride and dedication to Le Ballet Unique.
The company headquarters was in a school-theater in the East Fifties in New York. Le Ballet Unique was a blend of every style of dance in the world, not easily classified since it was neither "modern" nor, as some scoffed, just another arty little "barefoot ballet" group. Its standards were its own and they were high and for the most part people stayed away in droves.
That a Las Vegas booking agent from the swank Desert Eagle Hotel should have strayed off his Broadway nightclub beat and found them at all was incredible enough. That he should have offered them four weeks at $5,000 a week, plus travel expenses, food and accommodations in a luxurious suite, verged on the fantastic. They simply did not belong in this citadel of flashy, popular entertainment.
But here they were, performing three times a night in the elegant Orbit Room, one of the most brilliant theater-restaurants on the dazzling little stretch of Highway 91 known as the Las Vegas Strip; an eye-popping conglomeration of glamorous living in the middle of a desert, where ten million people a year heard the siren song of beautiful girls and spinning roulette wheels and gaudy swimming pools and blackjack tables and rowdy high-rolling crap games and armies of nickel-to-dollar slot machines. Action was guaranteed twenty-four hours a day, every day. There was always music, gambling and a show somewhere.
It was a Hollywood suburb and a favorite watering place for the real rich or the expense-account rich, ranging from oil billionaires to industrial tycoons and foreign playboys. The loose big-money atmosphere affected everyone. Since her hands had got the silver-dollar habit, a half-dollar, which had once been fairly important in Jill's budget, had the feel of a button. Beyond the attractions of the casinos and restaurants and sumptuous lounges were dude ranches and a zillion motels. Within easy-driving distance were a mountain ski resort, the fabulously strange desert scenery, the atomic testing grounds at Frenchman's Flat, and giant Boulder Dam with its immense Mead Lake where Jill spent too many afternoons boating and waterskiing. There were too many lusty, urgent men to tempt the girls in the company, not excluding Jill herself, and not excluding two of the boys in the company, since the Strip was a magnet attracting and catering to every taste; boys, girls, boy-girls and girl-boys. The distractions were so many that Jill sometimes wondered if they weren't losing their serious intent as a company. They had almost two more weeks to go and, in a way, the going became rougher every night. The setting, the general tone of excitement, and the release from reality had affected Madame Petrovna especially, and her sexual cravings for Jill, never too easy to handle, were flowering boldly-too boldly.
Jill, three other girls, and three male dancers, about one-third of the whole Le Ballet Unique personnel, had made the trip. In the number they performed here in Las Vegas, the girls, including Jill, wore identical costumes. Except for Jill, the girls were ready for the stage, their hair fixed in simple Grecian style, with the high back-buns lightly pinned since it must come down wantonly during the dance; their make-up on, including the leg make-up which Karen had been applying with obvious enjoyment to the backs of the pretty thighs of her little friend Viola. The costumes were cut to accentuate the simple loveliness of their bodies; short white sateen tunics baring one shoulder, their slender arms, and the long lovely lines of their pretty young legs.
Renee, a soft, doe-like little thing, with brown hair and sweet violet eyes in a frame of black lacy eyelashes, was Jill's best friend, her roommate here in the Las Vegas suite, and apartment mate, with another girl, in New York. Renee had been sick for years as a child and she wasn't too strong. She had never danced in a major company as Jill had, and she was unsure of herself and terribly dependent on Jill's approval and encouragement.
Karen, whose face was pretty, though too thin, had a figure as long-lined as Jill's but boyishly hipless. She was a rowdy tomboy offstage, with a jeering attitude toward her dancing, alternating with impassioned dedication to work. She was an excellent dancer at her best, but spotty, and though she sometimes adored Jill to the point of fawning, at other times she made a great show of not speaking to her, requiring that Jill come and "make up." She had a slashing tongue and got furious and wept at the most ordinary correction of technique. She taunted Madame behind her back and yet was afraid of her. Karen was Jill's age and Jill had known her longest; they'd been in the corps of the same company in their first professional season, but Karen, with a literary taste for gory comic books, could be vicious and there was no closeness between them.
Viola had a perfectly round face, and gray eyes, pretty but too bland, and although she was a technically precise and sure studio dancer she didn't project well from the stage. Her figure was pretty, her breasts and buttocks nicely plumped and her legs, though a trifle short in the thigh for a perfect line, were quite nice. She was Karen's little buddy; they roomed together and fussed at each other with an exclusiveness that made everyone wonder just exactly how close the relationship was. Karen bossed her around and poked fun at her and had the arrogance to break dates for her ... all of which Viola accepted with little protest. They were always wrestling, and Karen enjoyed rolling her around and sitting on her and tweaking her nose till she begged to get up.
To one degree or another, all three of the girls were intimidated by Madame; it was not only a respect they felt they owed her as head of the school and company and creator of most of the works they performed, but it was also the force of her personality, and the fear of her sometimes scathing criticism. As Madame inspected them from hair-do to toes, standing by while they turned around for her, their whole bodies took on a submissiveness which lent their loveliness an ultrafeminine charm and Jill, glancing now and then at them, felt warmly close to them all. Madame made a ritualistic spitting gesture toward her hand, went along the line and, hiking their tiny sateen skirts, she smacked each of them solidly on the bulge of their snug white panties and said:
"Get to the stage and begin your warm-ups."
"But, Madame," Renee said timidly, her lovely violet eyes shifting to Jill. "Shouldn't we ... I mean ... to the STAGE? Alone? Without the boys ... without JILL...?"
Madame's mouth turned scornful and she lifted her head, the gold hoops swing-flashing from her ears. "My, dear child, you may save the pitiful look for your role in The Fawn, which unfortunately we are not presenting at this time. Are your feet GLUED?"
"No, Madame."
"And you, Karen, get into your robe and leave the pouts to Mile. Braddock, you haven't the mouth for it."
"Yes, Madame."
"And dear little Viola, out, out, out, and while we're about it no more of that ghastly other-worldly daintiness of yours onstage. You're supposed to be a vital, charming young virgin, not an illustration of a TV toilet-paper ad. All of you out and to the stage. Hop! Hop!"
Jill had finished her face and was standing up, cleaning the grease paint from her fingers before touching her costume. The other girls gave Jill quick, pleading looks and she glanced at Madame Petrovna who was lighting a cigarette and expelling smoke puffs to screen the feverish concentration of her dark bright eyes on the voluptuous hip area of Jill's naked body in profile. A little too obviously she wanted privacy and the pleasure of helping her little prima into her costume. It was a privilege that Jill sometimes granted, but she definitely was not going to be pressured. She gazed expressionlessly across her shoulder at Madame and said quietly:
"There's no hurry. We will all go to the stage together."
"I won't put up with such insolence," Madame cried. "Not even from the Mile. Braddock!"
Jill raised her brows, shrugged her bare shoulders and turned away quietly to the other girls: "Madame is upset tonight. We will all go to the stage together."
Madame made an angry shooing motion. "At least they will wait outside!"
The girls looked helplessly from Madame to Jill and back to Madame but didn't move.
"Wait outside," Jill said, reaching for her costume on the overhead rack. She added casually. "But we will all go to the stage together. Is that what Madame wishes?"
"We will all go to the stage together."
When they were alone Madame jabbed out her cigarette, and as Jill prepared to step into her costume-a brief white sateen tunic with attached high-cut panties-she attempted to take the garment.
"I'll assist you."
"Madame is too kind," she said, with soft mockery. She moved away and stepped into the garment.
"You enjoy humiliating me," Madame said.
Writhing her hips slightly to work snugly into the costume, Jill ignored her.
"I find this distressing in an artist of your sensitivity," Madame continued.
Jill finished fastening her costume, turned, regarded herself in the mirror, reached for her pink toweling robe and put it on, covering herself from throat to ankle. She got the sandals she wore from dressing room to stage. Madame, who had given up trying to involve her in an argument and had simply been watching her, dropped suddenly to one knee before her. Jill jerked back her foot angrily as Madame reached for it, then she shrugged and allowed her to strip off her socks and guide her feet lovingly into her sandals. Madame's gaze lifted, and she stared at the theatrically accented pout of Jill's lush mouth and looked away, taking a long breath. She suddenly burst out in an anguished voice.
"You were with that wild horse-racer between shows!"
"I wasn't."
"Please, please don't lie to me!"
Jill stood up and pushed past her in annoyance. "I was playing roulette. I know it's silly, but I like it and that's what I was doing."
Madame got to her feet, shaking her head. "I looked through all the casinos in the hotel; you weren't playing roulette."
"It just so happens that the Desert Eagle isn't the only hotel on the Las Vegas Strip. I was at the Dunes."
"You were? You really were?"
"Yes. If you think I was with Mark Riddiger, relieve your mind. He had a horse running at Santa Anita today. He flew to Los Angeles this morning."
"If so, he flew back. I saw him in the audience at the last show. Staring at you like....like...." Madame's fists clenched. "The way he stares at you...."
The day they'd arrived in Vegas, Joe Glay, the intense, ulcerous little booking agent who had discovered Le Ballet Unique, was taking the whole company through one of the casinos on a tour. A shouting, high-spirited, good-looking man was having a high time at one of the dice tables and some of his excitement touched her. Jill asked Joe Glay to introduce him.
"That bum!" Joe Glay had exploded, getting out his jeweled pill-case. "Never, Miss Braddock. I got respect for you. I got responsibility bringing fine artists to such envir'ment like the Strip. What makes such envir'ment worse is Mark Riddigger types. Always another dame he shows up with. Always brawls some place if he's there.... troublemaker, bum.... No!"
But an hour later, sweating with apologies, sure he had offended her, Joe Glay came tapping at the door of her suite. He would produce Mark Riddigger.
Immediately they met, Mark asked her for a date, and immediately she said "yes."
Back in New York, the few dates Jill had were a refuge from full, vigorous manhood. Mostly she saw fellow dancers who had little romantic interest in girls, young composers, set designers, or elderly admirers of the esoteric dance whom she met through Madame Petrovna. Two of these latter had gotten urgent, wanting to become her patron, to set her up in her own apartment, with her own school and company, but most of them simply felt privileged to pay public court, happy to be seen at theaters, restaurants, and symphony concerts with a pretty young artiste, expecting no more than affection and perhaps a daughterly goodnight kiss in return.
At first, Mark Riddigger, with his courtly manners and general tone of deference-as though she had charmed him to the point where he existed only to please her-seemed little different from the older men, though he was only 31.
He had a well-balanced, fairly tall body, a long, nicely shaped head, with thick, slightly wavy brown hair. Against the neat offset of his white dinner jacket his reddish tan glowed with a new-scrubbed look. She liked the precision of his features, the sharply defined angle at the juncture of his temples and forehead, the straight thick line of his brows and the straight thin line of his mouth. He made a pleasant but bland impression during the first half hour of that first date, dining at the Tropicana. Then midway through a luscious steak he said abruptly:
"What's the first number you can think of?"
Grinning with surprise, she shook her head. "I can't think of any...."
"From one to thirty-six or zero or double zero!" He snapped his fingers and fantastically his whole face seemed subtly to clench, dissolving the blandness and giving his features a brief ugly distortion. She blinked and the impression of ugliness was gone, and he was saying:
"Think of the enormous odds against our ever meeting. Yet we met. Tell me the number ... the first one you think of."
"Twenty-two," she said.
"Twenty-two. Two two. Same as tutu. Ballet tutu. That's you. Now I KNOW.... C'mon, it'll have to be a wheel in your hotel."
He was in a sudden resistless fever of excitement, and she found herself being rushed, hungry, away from a sumptuous meal, outside to a cab, and then they were back at the Desert Eagle Hotel.
He stationed her by a roulette wheel and strode off, to the casino manager's office where, she supposed, he was going to cash a check.
Three or four players with more money than sense, Jill remembered thinking prissily, sat at the long table beside the wheel putting various colored chips on numbered squares, after which they would sit, dumbly, until the silly little ball running around the edge of the bright, turning wheel should decide their fate. Disdainfully she turned her back. At least the mindless slaves of the slot machines got some exercise pulling levers. The man running the game said "thirty-six" and a while later he said "thirty-six" again, not that she was interested, and then he said "twenty-t-" and Jill felt a tiny crawling on the nape of her neck and forgot to breathe till the "-three" came out. She shook her head, turned and edged toward the wheel thinking it would be sickening if 22 happened to come up before Mark had a chance to play. He didn't come and he didn't come as one after another number came up, and she wanted to stop the game. Then her fingers were teasing the clasp of her purse ... she should get SOMETHING bet ... buy some chips and....Then Mark was back with the manager, who went over behind the wheel and took over from the other man, and Mark was pressing money into her hand and saying, "Bet it, doll ... and we split fifty-fifty" ... and she was leaning out and putting the money ... a $100 bill ... on 22, and the manager gave the ball a very fast, whip-like spin so that it rolled a long long time before coming down the slope. The ball dropped into a slot, and arced out and dropped again and it was ... she shrieked and jumped, clapping her hands ... 22 ... and her babyish heart-shaped face was bursting with smiles and she looked dazed as she babbled, asking how much, how much did we win and he said thirty-five hundred dollars and she kept saying oh ... oh ... oh ... until she saw that his face was pale and stonily joyless as he explained in a rushed undertone that the table limit was a thousand on a single bet but that he had arranged for a parlay bet, and the thirty-five-hundred plus the original hundred was now the bet and if they won the total sum would be ... the mere memory of it made her giddy ... $129,600 ... and the second spin had begun and she wanted to tell him that numbers did repeat, that 36 had repeated a minute ago, but she couldn't say a word, couldn't do anything but stand there with cold fingers and pounding heart watching that little ball....
It had been dreadful and wonderful and when it was done and they'd lost he laughed and demanded to know where she could get such a kick for a paltry hundred dollars and he'd had her laughing too after a few minutes.
Before the evening was over they'd been in the El Rancho and the Thunderbird and the Sands and the Stardust and the Desert Inn and again the Tropicana and back to the Desert Eagle. There was a rush about him, a greedy lust for gobs and gobs of pleasure and he'd carried her like a vast frothy surf up and down the Strip, skimming the cream off a half dozen lavishly mounted, stunningly costumed, bright, racy shows with armies of pretty girls, and smaller, intimate shows with squads of harem-, and hula-, and Egyptian belly-dancers. Aside from the professionally displayed beauties, the audiences and high-spirited, on-the-move crowds in the casinos were bright-stippled with every variety of striking girls, ranging from statuesque blondes to dainty oriental exotiques, from flashy flamboyant redheads to dark, sultry smolderers. There were stars, starlets, models, society playgirls, and, Jill supposed, mistresses and call girls, perfumed silky pets showing great expanses of pampered flesh in their lustrous gowns, displaying ornamental dazzles of real as well as costume jewelry. Everything about the architecture and decor of the clean, spacious multimillion-dollar hotels from the roof clubs to the swimming pools and gardens to the rows of limousines and low-lined, high-powered sports cars in the parking lots had an air of opulence and dedication to pleasure. Underlying it all, and giving the Las Vegas Strip its special vaguely frantic pulse-beat, was the gambling.
The new show Jill was in hadn't opened yet and there had been a solid six hours with him that first evening. She had shot craps and played blackjack and roulette and had a race at the slot machines with him, to see who could empty a sack of silver dollars quickest, and she'd lost by hitting a jackpot ... twenty dollars from the machines, which set up a noisily bawling klaxon, whereupon a change girl and a casino floorman had come over, checked the machine to see if it had been gimicked, and then gave her a hundred and thirty dollars. They marked batches of Keno slips with a Chinese ink brush and played chuckaluck and she wanted to play in a $25,000 bingo game, but Mark wouldn't sit still that long. They danced in several places, but she as well as he preferred gambling, and she'd never eaten so much or stayed continually hungry in her life, or as thirsty. Whether it was the dry climate or the nervous excitement she didn't know but she drank a gallon of coke. Waitresses moved around the casinos offering the players free drinks from the bar and Mark seldom refused. They slowed down around two a.m. and sat with platters of steak and eggs in the Eyrie, the roof casino of the Desert Eagle, where an orchestra was playing for a sprinkling of dancers and the wheels and deals and slots were going full blast for the crowd of players.
"There's a nice quiet nook I know about," Mark said. He was a little drunk, his eyes murky and bloodshot. She didn't know she braced herself so obviously against the pass she knew he was going to make until he laughed aloud and said: "Relax, it's not a warm nook. You'll need your coat."
He helped her into it and they went out to the promenade that surrounded the roof casino. It was winter weather, in spite of the daytime blaze of sunlight and the air was sharp. There were lines of round tables and chairs set along the balustrade, all of them empty. They walked down near the corner where the music and noise from the main section of the casino was muted, and stood leaning against the parapet.
They talked impersonally about the clear brilliance of the stars and the vastness of the desert and then, a mood of loneliness came over her.
She was aware that he'd turned his head and was quietly looking down at her profile. "Feeling a long way from home, Jill?" he asked in a soft and surprisingly tender voice.
She turned her face and looked at him, noting again the fine precision of his features. "No. It's not that. I didn't mean to look mopey. You've given me a wonderful time." She turned, and rising against him so that her body brushed his, she raised her soft, pouty mouth to his. He put an arm around her upper back and drew her close to him and kissed her lightly, then smilingly released her.
"Thank you, baby face; that's the sweetest good-night kiss I think I ever had. Now, just relax, it's all over ... I'm not planning any passes, if that's what you were looking so unhappy about," he said good-naturedly.
"Oh, it wasn't that."
"You're not scared of me?"
"Well ... you get so furious so fast ... like when the man checked the slot machine after I hit that jackpot ... you were just quivering at the idea that he'd dare think I'd cheated...."
"But I immediately realized he was just doing a job; the mechanics take these casinos for thousands. I did control myself."
"You see, you're angry this very minute."
"Just emphatic."
"No. Mad."
"Well, not at YOU. As that slabhead. Any damned fool who can't see at a glance that a girl like you is totally above fraud of any sort is-" He broke off and walked angrily away and stiffly back again, expelling a long breath. "There I go proving your point." He stood gripping the parapet, staring down blankly at the parking lot. Jill stood with her stomach muscles tight as a well, and her voice sounded hollow when she spoke.
"We're both nervous and tired and if you don't mind I'd like to say good-night."
"You mean good-bye, but wait. Traveling with that pack of pansies you don't know what a man really is...."
"I meant good night, but now I do mean good-bye," she told him, standing furiously erect. "It's none of your damned business what the private life of my friends and fellow artists is or is not; I won't let you sneer at them. I'd slap your face off your head if I wasn't afraid you'd beat me up and throw me off this roof...." She'd turned and started to move off. He caught her.
"Beat you up and throw you off the roof?" he exploded. "You think I'm crazy?"
"Let go of me!"
"You must be crazy yourself to go out with a man you think like that about." His shadow-lit face poised, close and menacing, above her and there was an edge of pain in the anger of his hands pinioning her arms by the elbows. She could feel her coat glide down, baring her warm shoulders to the sharp chill. "You're terrified!" he said hoarsely and abruptly one of his hands dropped to the small of her back, and, stepping in, he bent her toward him so that her pelvis collided painfully with him.
"That hurt," she said in a faint voice.
"You're not on the moon; you could scream!"
His deep-socketed eyes stared darkly, ravenously, and he tried to kiss her mouth, but she weaved to one side, then to the other, as he tried again. He let his face mash against her bare shoulder, kissing it till she had to clench herself to fight off the thrill-waves that hot-brushed up and down her body. He breathed heavily, "I want you!"
"You can't have me!" She moistened her throbbing lips and grinned tauntingly. She evaded his kiss again. "Now, let me loose, and tell me all about what a mild person you really are or I sure as hell WILL scream."
He released her and turned away with a nervous shrug, saying: "Run back to the nest. I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself." She got her coat up around her bare shoulders and said calmly:
"You didn't want to help yourself."
He was lighting a cigarette, and she could see the drawn, pained lines of his vital face.
"Did you?" she persisted. "And you're not really sorry."
"Of course I'm sorry. I'm crazy about you, and everything I say or do shows me up as a crude mug. Not that you needed any proof ... considering all the rumors about me around this town."
"False rumors, of course."
He peered at her with one eye half-shut. "Why are you still here, Jill?" he said, half-hopefully.
"For the worst possible reason. You excite me. You're the wrongest man for me that I can imagine."
"No. No, I'm not. First, you've got to know that the fight I was in last week was distorted in the papers. I didn't pick the fight-I was goaded. I'd never continue beating a downed man any more than I'd kick him. He was down and lunged at my legs and I had to fight free or he'd have crippled me ... he was trying to slug upward ... maybe you understand. They blab it around that I put him in the hospital ... we both went to emergency and we were both released in an hour ... he got the worst of it and so some of his pals spread it around that I attacked from behind and inflicted the damage while he was unconscious. All a damned lie! Not that I won't alley-fight if I have to; not that I'm not too explosive and aggressive at times, but I'm neither brutal nor vicious....I want you to believe that, Jill ... you've got to believe that. And the remark I made about the men dancers in your company ... accept my apologies, and you've got my word I'll never talk that way again...."
'All right."
"Besides, you see, the thing that motivates my occasional violence is something quite surprising ... always there's something of high value, some principle, some quality involved. I suppose," he said, his voice softening almost to the point of a whisper, "I suppose I'm essentially a romantic, an idealist ... as an example: let me tell you what I wanted to do to that mug who checked to see that you hadn't gimmicked that slot machine. My reason told me strongly that it was no slur on your virtue, nothing but an impersonal job. Yet...." Holding his cigarette in his lips he smacked his fist against his palm, " ... I wanted to beat him senseless ... just for you...."
"That thrills me!" she said with cool derision, but this air of hushed intensity gripped her.
"Of course you'd have hated it. I wouldn't have wanted to do it for the kind of girl who'd have liked it. You've told me about the dancing you do, and I understand exactly what your Madame Petrovitch...."
"Petrovna...."
"Petrovna is driving at in casting you as the incorruptible spirit of innocence and purity...."
She blinked, shook her head and fanned at her face, then laughed softly. "Oh, that line. I'm disappointed in you. You don't know just how common that approach is. It's never the curve of my derriere or the tilt of my breasts or the shape of my legs ... just soul, pure, pure soul...."
He looked at her as if she'd sloshed water on him, then grinned slowly: "I really should have thrown you off the roof...."
"It was a tricky shift of line, wasn't it?"
He laughed and admitted, "There are many approaches to the same goal. On the other hand, I'm just romantic enough to knock myself out just to get you liking me. I'd even pick on somebody bigger than me. The beaten underdog is a very powerful line with a girl like you. Don't be surprised if I show up at your bedside on a stretcher."
"You'll have lots more chances with me if you behave yourself."
"How about breakfast?"
"I always eat with the gang ... and everybody already feels everything's so strange around here that they'd be upset if I wasn't with them."
"Do you think it's really good for you ... understand, I'm not criticizing, just wanted to know ... to confine yourself too narrowly? I mean...." he gestured vaguely at the Strip, the surrounding desert, " ... all this new atmosphere; wouldn't it be to an artist's advantage to absorb as many new impressions to enrich herself ... the breakfast is out, I'm not still bucking for that...."
"It's a problem. I just don't know the answer ... anyway, it's a good question ... it makes me feel closer to you. So I'll tell you what I was really disturbed about when you asked if I was feeling a long way from home. What I was was scared, but not so much of you. Of gambling. The grip it took on me immediately! I was caught so easily. I thought gambling was a sort of frantic shallow triviality. But ... it's like ... alcoholism ... or drugs...."
"Nonsense. Liquor and drugs dull you. Gambling sharpens you, brings you alert and alive. It's good for you; it's no aberration; it's an instinct. Especially when you get the full impact of it by risking more than you can afford, or risking everything. It's pure truth. It's the jungle; it's the feel of life stripped of all the false fronts and pretenses of security. It takes you back in evolution to the time when we were in danger every minute."
"But we live now, not then...."
"That's not what the instinct says ... we're equipped to do battle for survival, but everywhere you look except in war, a man is chained and fenced in, and instead of being able to strike out, he strikes inside and corrodes himself into ulcers and heart troubles and lunacy ... gambling gives him an outlet ... no wonder you were scared; you stuck your little foot out Qf that cozy hothouse world you live in and felt the nip of reality...."
"But I liked it! Loved it. And that's what scared me. I didn't think I could ever get so totally involved with anything outside the dance ... but, well, the feel of it was so intense...." she broke off, shaking her head. "I'm really awfully tired."
"Dinner tomorrow?"
"Yes."
On their several dates since he had seen her dance he had become more and more insistent sexually, and she'd had to dilute his force by dating several other men. Yet he remained the strongest temptation she had ever known, and last night Jill had had a showdown with him.
It had been after the last show, almost four in the morning. He got her into his suite on the pretext that he wanted to phone his brother at home on their horse farm in Kentucky and had to catch him at breakfast before he went out to the barns. Jill, who had run through her two, and Renee's two, evening gowns and refused to waste money on new ones, was dressed in a simple blouse and trim, leather-belted skirt, and she had sat on a straight chair, her hands folded schoolgirlishly on her knees while he walked up and down with the phone, talking over some technical matters having to do with horses.
Then she heard him saying: "Dan, I want you to meet the girl I'm going to marry," and he was carrying the phone over to her, an impish grin on his face. "Say hello to your upcoming brother-in-law...."
He put the handset to her ear and mouth, and she pinched her lips tight and gave him a flashing look.
After a long, humming silence Mark took the handset and told his brother laughingly: "Temperament I You know these artists. Nonetheless I love her and you're going to, too....Tell Nelia hello." He hung up and said: "Nelia's his wife. I wish you hadn't embarrassed me ... we are more-or-less engaged, aren't we ...?" He bent and picked her up by the waist. Jill kept her sitting position in the air, and grinned defiantly:
"Let's see how long you can maintain this lift."
"You got me ... not very long ... Whew!" He plunked her down on a table and she relaxed her legs, laughing. Before she knew it, he stepped in between her knees and moved forward, carrying her skirt up her thighs. A hand at her back slid her in tightly to him and she hauled off with her left and her right and her left hand again, slapping his face, her own face flushing hotly.
"Of all the nasty-"
He stepped back, laughing at her: "Forgive me. I'm head-hung ashamed."
"You're a liar. Now, listen to me. I've decided. I won't go to bed with you. You're just not for me, and I won't go on teasing you and letting you imagine something will come of it. It won't."
"We could get married. I'm really that gone, doll face!"
She stood huffily, smoothing her skirt, and flashing him angry glances. "I'm not."
"So I've had it. All I'm going to get. Nothing I might have known. Listen, I'm scared of showing how corny I really am, that's why I made a joke of the preacher stuff. I want to marry you, because I love you."
"I'm sorry you do."
"You love me, too."
"No."
"Yes. You're just scared to get out of that little hothouse you live in...."
"I love my dancing ... you can't begin to know what it means to me. More than you or any man ever could. Now, that's straight enough."
"You mean it. Well, so do I. I've got a horse running at Santa Anita today. I'm flying there. And when I fly back in this direction, there'll be no stopover here. You understand?
She nodded slowly. "I'm sorry, Mark, more than you know ... but that's the way it should be and ... well, good luck."
"Oh, to hell with that! I guess you can get back to your nest alone."
But here he was back in Vegas, Jill thought ,and stifled the tiny sensation of gloating she felt.
CHAPTER TWO
Renee tapped and opened the dressing-room door, announcing hesitantly: "The caller just came ... we're due on stage...."
"We're coming," Jill said, then told Madame in undertone: "Surely you know that the audience barely exists for me when I dance ... I certainly didn't see him. He's meaningless. I have only one life, one world." Jill felt a sudden ache in her breast and gave Madame's hand a quick, affectionate squeeze before going out to join the other girls and the three men dancers.
They assembled, bracing for the ordeal of getting through the hostile backstage atmosphere to the stage and moved out in a tight group like a small, weaponless army in enemy territory, with Jill on point, Madame on their flank, the three ferociously helmeted but timid men at the rear.
The men were of medium height, wide of shoulder and narrow of hip and flank. Their bodies were distinctly male with strong, full articulation of their highly developed arm, shoulder and leg muscles. Nor was there anything especially effeminate about their faces. Paul, in particular, had a rather grim face, and his beard was of the blue-black, five-o'clock-shadow variety. He had a good masculine brow with deep, serious intelligent eyes and almost all women thought he was handsome. His homosexuality was a matter of esthetics, and when he was in the mood he could make a woman cringe with his particular slant on her "charms." He could prove by geometry that the male body was scientifically and esthetically superior. As to the male mind and character ... versus the female ... he could pause dramatically and look fixedly at Viola and at Renee, shrug and laugh as if no further proof need be offered.
He loved Jill as a dancer and he even thought she had interesting ideas, but her female body outraged him, and his role in this ballet, where he must finally and humiliatingly lose his mind with craving for that body, made him grind his teeth ... although, of course, he was far too fine a performer ever to let it show anywhere except in rehearsals. One time he came from a session in which he'd felt the flick of both Madame's and Jill's female criticism and walked in on Jill stark naked, and demanded: "You've seen he-men. You tell me, objectively, if I am a man or not in the stupid physical sense? You think I can't and don't make women moan with pleasure?" She'd turned away and told him disgustedly to get out, but she understood his attitude. He was militant about his preference for his own sex.
Charlie was just a dull reflection of Paul. He had never made any choice at all, he'd just been that way since he was a boy, but he parroted Paul's arguments when the subject came up ... which it seldom did.
Actually she suspected that Vincent, who exhibited the wan "fairy" mannerisms much more than either of the others, was nonsexual rather than homo. Totally unimaginative and not a very good dancer, he didn't seem to respond to much of anything or anybody. If a big rough man dragged him off and used him, all right; if none did, all right. He was passive and vague ... if things happened, they happened ... if they didn't, they didn't. Except when onstage, he never seemed to be all there; lacking the vitality to be anything but a blob.
But they were all a part of the company, and Jill's loyalty to them against the outside world was absolute.
Except for the scuff of the girls' sandals, the militant thump of Madame's walking shoes, the company was silent as they left the corridor. They entered the long court-like area surrounded by two floors of dressing rooms where performers on the galleries and stairs and in doorways exchanged talk and banter.
Five paces later the ape chorus of hoots, jeers, catcalls, laughter and yoo-hooing began. The other acts in the big splashy show were standard Vegas fare: approximately a ton of naked chorus girls, comics who told old slot-machine and bathroom jokes, mawkish pop singers and the like. The resentment toward their little group hadn't been lessened any by Madame's announcement to one and all that they were not "show biz" but art and that she would not permit Le Ballet Unique to appear onstage with all those flabby bare behinds in the big gaudy finale. Jill walked swiftly with a figurative thumb at her nose, carrying her pretty head with uncompromising hauteur, her long, slender bare legs flashing through the slit of her thick pink robe. She could feel the wave-like motion of her long, flat abdominal muscles as she physically resisted the assault and tried her best to ignore them, but there was a tiny acid taste at the base of her tongue and, but the time she reached the dim sanctuary outside the stage wings, her heart was drumming violently. The men and the other girls began at once to warm up but Jill stood massaging her throat and stared at Madame.
"How could you have wanted to send the girls alone through that? How could you, Madame?" She felt sudden tears and dug frantically for a tissue to save her make-up. She spun and went to one after the other of the dancers, girls and men, embracing them quickly, a fierce necessity in her to bind them all tightly and safely together in this horrible place which threatened everything they represented.
"Oh, God," she said passionately, "I wish we were back in New York in our own studio with audiences who know and care about what we are doing. I hate this stupid, surfacey, hysterical spot in the middle of nowhere with all its drunks and gambling and crude, coarse...."
"Calm yourself, please!" Madame said. "I am ashamed of you!"
"Sorry, Madame," Jill said, grateful for Madame's strong reassertion of authority. She went to the wall and began a series of leg bends, body bends, extensions.
Madame should have been ashamed of her; the company looked up to her, depended on her and she had had no right to break up emotionally in front of them. As leading dancer and Madame's assistant in the school, she had a responsibility to them. The money they were earning would give them a chance to improve the school, repair the stage of their little theater, create new ballets. Actually this Las Vegas engagement was helping to preserve, not destroy, their little world, which must remain intact wherever they might be geographically. No outside distractions must threaten in. As a first step she must stop her own frivolity ... her silly fascination with gambling, her dating of violent, flashy men like Mark Riddigger.
Abruptly Jill remembered something from her early teens ... at a Sunday breakfast in either her mother's or father's house ... she couldn't be sure ... there'd been pancakes and hot syrup and she'd spilled the syrup and it had run down her dress from navel to crotch in a hot sticky mess. They'd all thought it was her general fastidiousness that had upset her so badly, but actually it had been the guiltily joyous sexual sensation. Right at this moment, thinking of Mark Riddigger, a hot syrup was gliding down over her lower belly and genitals and she clamped her knees together and shut her eyes and stood motionless till Madame tapped her. The preceding act came offstage and the M. C. out front would soon be announcing Le Ballet Unique. Jill stepped out of her robe and sandals, and moved on bare feet to the wings. She stood staring blankly and nudged backwards sharply with her elbow as Madame crept close and attempted to fondle her.
The area beyond the footlights, with the hundreds of people at the tables watching like some strange, mute tribe, existed for Jill only as a sort of remote jungle. The tribe was powerful, but Jill knew she could reach out with beauty from her superior world and render it harmless.
The music was dominated by violins, the choreography was a soft weaving of light melodic curve lines and circles into a lyric, flowing pattern. Dancing in a lavendar twilight as one of Four Virgins in identical white tunics, she was a study in pure grace. Her tunic bared one shoulder, followed the taper to her narrow waist in a caressing line and, flaring lightly, ended at the hip. She moved with deceptive simplicity, the precision of her carefree turns and light unex-tended leaps giving an effect of pure, unrehearsed spontaneity.
She had natural rhythm and musicianship; her line was long and clean, her balance, through continually shifting patterns of motion, was superb. A lifetime's dedication to the discipline of her beautiful body, together with complete awareness of its visual effect on spectators, gave her a supreme confidence. Her resilience, and her talent for quick improvisation, always gave the other girls confidence, too; they knew she could cover any of their serious flubs, and was never ruffled by inevitable minor mistakes, theirs or her own. She'd long since accepted the fact that she had the style, personality and looks to "carry" an audience. She'd known many girls through the years who had worked just as hard; who had developed technically into even better dancers than she, but who, through no fault of their own, simply did not have that "something," and never would have it.
There was an abrupt cannonading by the bass drum, a rasp of snare, and a raucous blare of brasses, and the stage lights blazed with a sinister tint of green as the three male dancers came on, moving in arrogant strut-rhythms. There was an agitation in the flowlines of the virginal mood, and the dainty unextended leaps of three of the girls stretched out as they took flight in one direction and another, and Jill, dancing downstage as though totally indifferent to the rapish intrusion, could sense the tightening in the audience.
Upstage, the three stomping males trapped one of the fleeing girls in a closing circle. The dance became a jerky struggle until the girl hung, limply surrendering, in a semicircular backbend. Then, the rough thrusting music, the jutting angularities of the men's steps symbolized rape. The ravished girl then danced to the rhythms of the males as they went swiftly to the other girls and mass-raped them in succession.
Against the masculine brass and percussion the feminine theme persisted, the violins playing the original melodies-though louder and at a quickened tempo-and Jill, at the foot-lights, concentrating intensely to retain the sound and beat of her own music, danced on in a girlish mood, her face maintaining an air of sweet innocence.
This passage, with a near-chaos of sound and divided theatrical interest, was the ballet's greatest strength, Madame insisted passionately, while Jill felt, when she was outside her dance world and thinking about it, that it was downright silly for her to try competing with the flamboyance in the background. The theme of innocence could have been maintained by the music while she remained offstage. Nobody contemplated a pretty flower on the slope of an erupting volcano. But now she knew absolutely that the sheer force of beauty was supreme over all brutality and she forced that awareness with her whole soul.
Jill was the next victim. The males came leaping forward triumphantly, their captive females alongside. Jill turned on them. They came to an abrupt halt; the music stopped. There was a gap of dead silence and Jill counted inwardly, one-two-three-four. Then, as the music surged again, she began a dazzlingly swift display of virtuosity, her style ranging from classic to Spanish to modern ballet, as the males made repeated assaults and were driven back en masse. Then the girls were sent at her, and one after another they were won back, sinking to their kness and caressing her thighs. Turning then, she singled out the men and assaulted them one by one, the music and style of her dance shifting to Oriental sinuosity. She became supple and seductive, crouching and advancing, cat-like, as she-caressed her own body and rolled her hips with a slinky sensuality until the first male fell and attempted to crawl after her. She kicked back and flaunted her hip and spat and went to the next male whom she disposed of and left with high scorn. The final male retreated but did not submit, and then she went into a furious jazzy jungle dance including grinds, bumps and nakedly sensual, open-thighed voluptuousness, the feverish intensity of which, the blase night-club crowd had seldom seen. Her concentrated dedication to primitive sex as the final weapon had an elemental impact that made the average stripper seem tepid. When finally the strongest male was moving after her in a squatting half-crouch like an animal on a leash, she stood with legs spread and arms uplifted and the applause began to roll at her and she became aware of herself, panting, her sensual pouty mouth half open, her long brown hair in disorder around her shoulders. She saw Mark Riddigger pounding his palms out there at a front table. Drinks weren't served during the show and he had three lined up on his table. He took one in each hand and drank them off, then downed the third and let out a violent rebel yell.
The rest of the company was beside her taking their bows when the yell triggered off waves of laughter and other yells and for just a moment she couldn't help grinning at him.
Lines of chorines, nude showgirls and the other acts were assembling along either side of the court for entrances in the finale and paid no attention to them as they hurried back to the dressing room. Renee, a soft, doe-like little thing, let out a long O-o-o-o-h when she saw the gaudy basket of red roses. Viola and Karen clustered around, gushing and inhaling the flowers and turning bright, excited eyes to Jill, who took the card.
She pushed a strand of loose hair back from her flushed, high-rounded cheek, and took a stance with her supple midsection swung sideward, a fist resting lightly on the jut of her hip while she read the card:
"Hi, Beauty. The Beast Returns. Tame. Meet me in the Eyrie in half an hour. Mark."
The riot he had set off in the audience had turned it into something like a stag smoker, she thought resentfully, her toes moving nervously, bringing the delicate bones along the slope of her instep into flickering play. As always after a performance her over-stimulated body was moist and, she told herself, the little shiver she felt came from the fact that her robe was open; she pulled it shut, and patted, blotting her hot, slim thighs. Her glance flicked to the mirror as Madame appeared hesitantly in the open doorway. Madame saw the flowers and wobbled vaguely like a slugged fighter, and the trouble was, Jill thought, the poor thing had little left to hold her with. She had already given her just about her whole life. When she managed to bring up a gallant smile and say how pretty the roses were Jill felt a deep pity.
"I was going to suggest," Madame said hopelessly, "that we all have a little supper up in the suite ... but I suppose you have other plans, Jill?"
"None!" Jill took careful aim and flung the card at the wastebasket.
The gratitude lighting Madame's tired face was embarrassing. She was so dangerously close to tears that Jill cried: "Damn ... missed that wastebasket. Why am I such a bad shot, I who am so absolutely PERFECT ...?"
"Perfect!" Madame exploded with scornful laughter. "The day you reach perfection, my child ... well, won't that be the day I live for! ... but in vain."
Madame was suddenly squealing and giggling like a girl as Paul came up behind her, seized her around the waist and lifted her off her feet.
"You fool, put me down!" Madame cried, laughing and flushing prettily.
"But, I laaaaav you ... look what you have done for my career. You have rescued me from classic ballet where the male dancer is but the ballerina's third leg and made of me an eleventh toe." He put Madame down and dodged a roundhouse slap she laughingly aimed at his head.
"Paul," Madame said, "we're going to have a little party in the suite for the whole company."
"Can't make it. Vinnie's got a date with a pair of blue jeans and Charlie's been invited out to some ranch house and I'm going to gamble just as soon as I borrow twenty bucks from...." he looked around calculatingly, advancing on Viola. "Dearest, did I tell you how exquisite you looked tonight?"
"I'm not going to loan you another cent."
"Don't we always split fifty-fifty?" he said reaching around I and patting her bottom. "Don't we, when we win ...?"
"We never win ... Madame, make him quit being fresh."
"I'm merely seducing you, lover...."
"Here," Jill said, getting money out of her purse.
Paul came, snatched the money, reached around and pinch-patted her bottom. "Yum-yum, if I was only a MAN, dearie ... bye-bye...."
"My isn't he in a cute mood," Renee giggled. "He's so nice sometimes I wish he WAS a man."
"What say we shower upstairs and then just get into pajamas," Jill said.
The unexpected little party in the suite was just for Madame and her girls, and they gathered around her, full-bellied and content, and asked for stories of her triumphs as a dancer. Looking her prettiest in a green satin robe and paler green pajamas, her black hair down loose around her shoulders, her dark eyes glowing, her lovely mouth sweet with her pleasure, Madame kept giving Jill adoring little glances, making Jill feel lovely and wonderful, and the bond with her own precious little world was strong and tight. When, an hour later, Mark telephoned and got urgent and demanding, Jill was pleased to tell him off in front of them in no uncertain terms.
It was as though she had strayed and returned to the fold and the other girls had become downright gooey, and just before they went to bed they had all had a good cry ... except for Madame who watched with indulgent eyes and scoffed lightly. Madame came into the room where Jill and Renee slept in twin beds and sat on the edge of the bed, looking into her eyes. Then, touching Jill's flannel-covered young shoulders lightly, Madame had kissed the center of her forehead with a chasteness that renounced all sexual intention, and then Madame left for her own room as though she had vowed that she would never again violate the real, deep love she felt for her.
Renee dropped lamb-like into sleep almost at once and Jill lay flooded with a sense of virtue and renewed dedication, already planning to use tomorrow's free hours in extra rehearsals, and perhaps in work on other ballets in the repertoire, shunning the disloyal pull of this gaudy Strip, these rapacious males.
She dozed until a banging awakened her and she lay listening, staring at the strip of light under the door, thinking he had come to batter it down. Outside, on the Strip, she heard shouting and laughter, a roaring car; but there was no sound from the hall; and she dozed again, and again the knocking awakened her, and she ran alertly on bare feet to the door and stood listening-there was nothing. She turned the key cautiously and let the door open to the end of the chain and saw no one, then slipped the chain and crept out, breathing through her open lips, her hair shadowy around her babyish cheeks, her sleepy sensual-looking eyes sharp with anxiety, her heart hammering. There was no one, and no one had run away or she would have heard, and she knew the pounding had been a dream. She locked the door carefully and went back to bed and lay rigid, more frightened by the bodiless nightmarishness of the sound than she would have been by the real Mark Riddigger. Her lips felt dry and hot and she licked them. Her stomach cramped and she slid her long fingers under the waistband of her pajama pants and aimlessly stroked the smooth shallow curve of her lower belly. Then she opened the tops of her pajamas and slowly stroked her upper body and it relaxed her.
Her sister, she remembered with an aching sense of loss, used to do that when they were both very young. She, three or four, and Phyllis, six or seven. The sounds of violence from their parents' bedroom had wakened them often, especially after a drinking party, and Jill could remember lying stone-rigid, her breath coming in tiny, shallow gasps, her open lips quivering, and Phyllis stroking her body very softly and kissing her on the chest and neck and cheeks saying "Baby ... baby ... don't be scared, baby, sister loves you, don't be scared ... please don't be sick ... even if we have to we'll have lots of fun and ... don't cry, Jilly...."
Phyllis would be almost as scared as she was and they would wait and wait through the thumpings and curses and shrill cries, knowing that at any moment their mother would burst in like a terror, her face red, her hair stringy around the shoulders of her nightgown, and order them to get up and dress in a snappish voice and then rush out again, her mules skidding and hammering the floor.
Phyllis and she would lie under the covers clinging to the warm bed and pretending to be asleep while their necks tensed with listening to the voices racing against each other like trains, and the crashing of doors, and banging of drawers and thudding of suitcases coming out of closets, and the chaotic rushing up and down the stairs and sometimes their father would come in quietly and pet them and sometimes he would go down and smash dishes and overturn the davenport. Their mother would storm back in and clap her hands and go out, and again Jill and Phyllis would get out onto the cold floor, feeling stupid and slow, and start to dress, and Jill would discover that she couldn't bend or remember how to get out of her nightgown or into her shoes.
Standing, frozen, on the sidewalk while a cab driver stowed suitcases and toys, she would think the other thing could still happen and she'd watch the dark porch, even if her father had already driven away in the car, and it wasn't till the cab was driving through the ugly dark streets toward their grandmother's that she ever quite gave up hope.
When the other thing happened their mother wouldn't even come into the room. The loud fighting sounds would soften and there would be little giggles and chuckles, and a sweet, lullaby sound in her mother's voice, and then calm and peace; and she and Phyllis would giggle and squirm and hug and sometimes Jill would roll on her back and be Mommy and have Phyllis mash her and they would bounce up and down and then drop safely back to sleep while Daddy was doing his magic and making Mommy good.
She had known what that magic was. One rainy Sunday afternoon she and Phyllis had been playing upstairs in their room and their parents had been downstairs.
Phyllis had been sitting primly on a grownup chair playing teacher and Jill had been sitting on her feet in front of her looking at a picture book as if doing a "lesson." Jill looked up and Phyllis had her head tilted and she put her finger to her lips, and Jill had frowned and been real quiet. Phyllis's face, then as later, had been the same heart shape as Jill's with the same little widow's peak like a tiny spike in her forehead, and she had been the prettiest thing in the world in Jill's eyes. However, there were differences in their faces, then, as through their lives.
Phyllis had got up, tiptoed to the door and Jill had tagged after her, catching at once her breathless mood. The whole thing had had the secret tingly feel like when they went in somebody's garage for a show party. They had tiptoed downstairs and to the edge of the living room doorway and seen that the magic was going on on the davenport.
Jill recalled the race of impressions that had gone through her mind. When she herself was naughty her mother could force her to sit quietly or to lie in bed, and she'd sensed that her father, bigger and stronger than everybody, was imposing his magic discipline on the mother. Jill wasn't surprised that, afterwards, her mother was in a sunny, singing mood, just as Jill, when her punishment was done and she was nice again, felt dancey. When the magic failed she had no home and she couldn't dance. Things moved very fast, but there was a slow, tight feeling about those stays at her grandmother's or at one of the aunt's houses. It was time that didn't count; she couldn't bear anyone saying she or Phyllis were getting bigger or prettier; she refused to change in any way and determined not to like any of the new dresses, games, toys, treats, surprises, or little parties with which they bombarded her. When, finally, she was back home again she would be in an almost hysterical rush to catch up on everything ... and in particular her dancing, to the piano or phonograph or radio, or just to the music which was there again in her mind.
Jill sat up, turning the bedcovers down and buttoned her pajamas top, making a disdainful face. She swung her feet out to the floor and sat moodily with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands. What could have made her cling so passionately to that first home? What had been so precious about it? Maybe it had just seemed precious because of the fear that it might be shattered in the night-any night. She sat upright and rolled her shoulders and massaged the back of her neck, then slumped again.
She remembered one night when supper had been late again and her father had taken her and Phyllis on his lap and told them a bedtime story while their mother and a skillet sizzled over by the stove.
"Once upon a time there was a house that ran itself in a helter-skelter fashion...."
"What's helter-skelter?" Phyllis asked.
He kissed her forehead and said: "It's a mess, like your room with the toys scattered all over."
"I don't know helter-skelter either," Jill said, pushing her forehead up to his mouth. He kissed her and went on:
"And in this helter-skelter house were four children. And the biggest and the handsomest one was called Crane David Braddock," and she and Phyllis giggled because that was his name, "who was tall and wise and noble and could play chopsticks on the piano, and the second biggest child was called Annette Warfield Braddock who...."
"Who what?" their mother said, coming over to the table with bowls of food, frowning, then suddenly grinning at him.
"Who was of course the princess fair and no scullery maid she...."
"It's really too bad about you.... Who were the other two children in this wonderful house?"
"I forgot who they were...."
"Phyllis and Jill," Jill cried, "Phyllis and Jill!"
"No!"
"Yes! It's us! And I know what, you play chopsticks and Mommy and Phyllis and me sing and dance and stay up all night."
"That's a deal. We'll all stay up all night. Now you hop down, girls, and send your mommy over here and tell her I'll let her kiss me. If she says please."
In a way it was a children's paradise of a house. Their mother had been a music teacher and she was a better-than-fair pianist and she scorned housework. Before a party their mother would attack the place with vigor; otherwise the house sort of ran itself and often her parents were as childish as they were and if they were all having fun there was no bedtime for the children.
They were both tall and good-looking. Her mother was quite thin and her face was vividly pretty ... the image, widow's peak and all, which Jill and Phyllis both reflected. Their father was strongly made, with an especially well-shaped long head and thick auburn hair. At the time he'd been a junior in the law firm he now headed and he often brought work home nights, but he did it late, because their mother, if they weren't going out, liked to have him around. She'd think up something to distract him. She'd play something he didn't like on the piano or start a noisy game with the children or carry a snack in to him and presently he'd come out of his den, grinning and shaking his head with exasperation, and next thing they knew he'd be on the floor roughousing with the childen.
He had begun to get interested in boats and they often went on Lake Erie excursions, and for a while he affected a yachting cap and swaggered around in it, taking himself half-seriously, which put their mother in stitches of merriment and she was forever thinking up ways of teasing him about it. She bought little sailor caps for the girls and lined them up at the door when he came home and had them pipe out a "Welcome aboard, Skipper," until this got on his nerves.
He would sometimes sprawl out on his back for a nap on Sunday afternoon, at just about the moment their mother would want to go somewhere. One time he lay there with his mouth open, that yachting cap over one eye, fast asleep, and Phyllis, Jill and their mother tiptoed over beside him with a glass of water. She poured it in his mouth, which was the cue for them all to shout: "Ship's sinking, Admiral." It said something for his easygoing nature that he thought it was almost as funny as they did. He turned them all up, including their mother, for a couple of spanks, and a minute later he was kissing their mother and hugging her and they were laughing in each other's arms.
There were sweet-soft moods, too, many of them, when her mother had played the piano in the evening and none of them said anything, just listened together to ... Jill couldn't quite remember ... Chopin, she thought. Things, she supposed, had been far more complex than she had felt them as a child ... perhaps both of them had played around; the speed with which they'd both remarried after the divorce seemed to point toward something of that sort. But she had never found out, nor wanted to find out exactly why the marriage ended.
Just two years ago her father, speaking in the mushy pious tone of the maturity he had begun to acquire just after the divorce, had said: "Were you terribly afraid of me, Jill?" She hadn't been. "It's kind of you to deny it. But it was a great injustice to you children, subjecting you to such a life...."
At about the same time, her mother reminisced: "The chief trouble was that we were too much in love. We had no right to think life was a party. We were too much alike ... all I needed was the right partner to give me balance, and it's all he needed, too ... the only thing that keeps me awake nights...."
"Please, Mother," Jill had protested, "don't begin beating your breast about how you ruined our lives. Do I look unhappy ... does Phyllis ...?"
"Oh, I know, I know. And there's no malice in you; you always were good girls, so spunky and bright ... oh, if only I'd known then what I know now, what a beautiful home I could have made for you and kept secure for you...."
"He talks just like that, too, and I get so TIRED of it. He begs me not to hold you to blame, because nothing was ever your fault ... and in a minute you're going to assure me that you goaded him into all his explosions and that he was really only sound and fury and...."
"But, Jill, that's true....He wrecked things, but he was no wife beater, and he handled both of you like DOLLS, he simply adored you! Can you remember that he EVER spanked you...?"
"I know all this...." Jill stamped her foot and hissed in exasperation. "As many times as I tell you, Mother, you keep misunderstanding. We, neither of us, lived in terror ... we were the freest, happiest children in Toledo or Ohio or the world ... both of us understood that you loved us even if you hated each other sometimes. We weren't abused, if anything we were SPOILED ... it wasn't any concentration camp we lived in, it was paradise, and what scared us was that it would come to an end ... which," Jill finished with a wry grin, "it did." She didn't add "in spite of Phyllis' and my combined virtues."
It would make her mother feel terrible to hear about that; and besides, her and Phyllis's vows of secrecy, no matter what had since happened between them, had been sacred and eternal.
Jill got nervously out of bed and went to the bathroom and came out again, shaking her head as if to be rid of the childish sentimentality. It embarrassed her to remember the details, but the feel and meaning of that occasion was stamped deeply, and no matter how she tried to rid herself of it, to call it infantile, at the time it had been vital.
Phyllis, of course, initiated the whole scheme. She thought of herself as "the little mother" and of Jill as her very own, always petting and kissing her and showing her off. She'd begun marching her around to dance for the neighbors when she was only two, and she was always staging penny-shows to star herself and the dancing doll, long before Jill had so much as heard of a dancing school. Phyllis considered both of them pretty and even the secret show parties in the garages were mainly to prove how completely prettier they were than any other little girls. Jill had fallen into the habit of waking just after she had fallen asleep, and of lying rigid with terror ... anticipating trouble ... and this worried Phyllis. One night she had suddenly stopped the stroking which relaxed Jill back to sleep and whispered urgently:
"Sit up, baby. I know what."
"What?" Jill sat up, peering very closely at her sister. "If Mommy and Daddy don't fight we don't have to go to grandma's."
"We sure don't."
"Jilly, you know how everybody is smiling and loving and happy while we dance and sing for them?"
Jill grinned and squirmed excitedly, scooching closer to her sister. "They just look at me and like to kiss and hug me."
"Hush up, and listen to sister....Now, what we'll do is be good and pretty all the time LIKE singing and dancing. Now, you promise and cross your heart and hope to die that you'll mind, and be clean, and not play with yourself naughty, and not steal from Mommy's purse...."
"You did first."
"Hush up and mind sister ... and not do anything bad ever ... I'll cross my heart and hope to die and promise, too ... and Jilly, we'll be so good and Mommy and Daddy will be so glad that they CAN'T feel mad and we'll always live right here, forever...."
She had responded to the solemn intensity and they had vowed and believed with all their hearts, and then they'd kissed and hugged and Jill had fallen asleep awed by the immensity of this thing, and profoundly happy that finally the threat of trouble had been forever banished. Day after day they shared this secret joy, as night after night nothing happened, and they had swollen with a sense of their own virtue and power over fate.
When the inevitable happened Jill was shocked by the guilty truth that it had happened because she was not really good and pretty, but ugly.
Jill got out of bed, tiptoed past Renee's sleeping figure, and stood for a moment at the door into the next bedroom where the other two girls and Madame had beds. Finally, she opened the door. Madame Petrovna was a light sleeper, and as Jill passed through to the sitting room of the big suite, she heard a break in the rhythm of her breathing. Jill passed on through, and lay down on the long sofa before the mock fireplace, her long legs widely sprawled, one heel on the floor, the calf of her other leg resting up on the sofa back. Jill lay, commanding Madame to come creeping in to her, and presently a draft from the stealthily opening door touched her legs, which were bare to the knee. At the edge of her vision Jill could see the motionless silhouette of Madame's upper body hovering above the back of the sofa.
CHAPTER THREE
"Jill...?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"Do you want a light?"
"Did I turn one on?" She put a sting in her voice. Madame had inched close and put her hand hesitantly on Jill's foot. Jill allowed it. She could feel the trembling of Madame's fingers as she stroked a little more boldly.
"Is there anything wrong, Jill ... dearest ...?"
Jill considered carefully, then said slowly: "Yes. I need a lover."
Let Madame interpret it as an invitation and excite herself; or else take it the other way and suffer ... Madame would win either way, Jill decided, thinking of that ballet they were performing here in Vegas. Madame had begun it as a study in rhythms and then turned it into a vehicle exalting Jill. The only thing Madame liked better than to see all the other dancers at Jill's feet, surrendered, subservient and totally enslaved, would have been that condition for herself. As it was, she was forever trying to start arguments in which she would, knowingly, take the weaker side just so that she might enjoy the humiliation of being beaten in front of the other dancers. Even in front of the younger students Madame tried to make a fool of herself. She would come into a class Jill was teaching and demonstrate to them that Jill was mistaken in some step or position, and it would be necessary for Jill to show that it was Madame who was wrong ... and often grotesquely. She sought humiliation from Jill's hands in a hundred ways and at this moment Jill was in the mood to inflict it.
"A lover?" Madame's voice quivered.
"Perhaps Mark Riddigger...."
"But you told me you were through with him ... you told HIM that...."
"And you gave me to believe that you wouldn't be trying anything ... you were going to very, very virtuous," Jill said derisively. "And here you are caressing my foot....
I shouldn't let you...." She wagged her foot, but loosely, and didn't withdraw it. "I want you to try a small exercise in imagination ... you've a vivid one ... this might be good for you...."
"I lie on my back on a bed ... come around on this side, Madame ... sit by me...." Madame came around and started to sit on the edge of the sofa. "On the floor, at a little distance, please." Jill placed her feet on the sofa, apart, her knees lifted and open. Madame sat on the floor, staring at her face in the half-dark. "I am lying in this position and my eyes are closed and my lips are open, like this, and I am breathing rapidly ... and note the expression on my face...."
Madame seized and kissed her hand.
Jill let her hand be kissed. "But you're not watching and imagining....I haven't finished describing the situation...." situation...."
Madame kissed her palm, her fingers. "Go on ... the beauty of your face tortures me...."
"Listen! I am in this position and I am naked and my hips are moving this way...."
"Don't!"
Jill stopped the motion. "You may imagine the rest for yourself....I am surrendered to his will, I am mastered; he imposes his will on me ... just as I impose it on you ... think of that!"
"He hasn't been your lover!" Madame came upright on he knees so that she was above Jill's supine body. "Say he hasn't!"
Jill half-sat, propped on an elbow, her legs stretched out straight, and peered closely at Madame. There was a trickle of tears gliding down her cheeks. Jill felt a wildly pleasurable sensation of pure power.
"Remember," Jill said, "how I made Paul weep at that rehearsal last week? How he hates a woman's body and he must squat and crawl like an animal, worshipping my body. Oh, how you enjoyed seeing him weep with rage....Why are you weeping, Madame?"
"Don't mock me, dearest. I'm helpless."
Jill stared at her for a long time, her heart beating rapidly. Madame sat, her black hair shadowed around her face, her lovely mouth quivering.
"No, Madame," Jill whispered." You're not helpless.
You can go back to your bed. Please, why don't you do that?"
"It's come to the point, Jill that if I can't have you I don't want to live."
"You do have me. You do. In the only way you can have me. God, what's happened to you ... you promised me you weren't a bull, you promised me nothing like this would ever happen, that your feeling for me was esthetic appreciation ... you PROMISED me that. Now, please, Madame, I love you and look up to you and cherish the beautiful things you represent ... don't break us up Madame, please."
"It was true, dearest; I didn't lie to you; there's never been anything like that in my life. Not till you. And you've become a compulsion ... it's tearing me apart wanting you the way I do. Nothing else exists. I've fought it ... I can't stand it any more, Jill." She covered her face with her hands, her head lowered with shame.
Jill bit her underlip, shaking her head slowly, and reached out to touch the bent head.
"Jill," Madame whispered, "if once, just once I could find a little release, a little satisfaction ... it would never happen again ... it would never threaten to pervert and corrupt you. God, don't you know I'd die before seeing you corrupted by anything or anyone? Do you think I'd ask you if I thought it would hurt you, dearest child ... but I'm afraid ... afraid I'll lose my mind!"
Jill lay back slowly and closed her eyes, and began to unbutton her pajama top. She felt Madame's fingers shaking faintly and cold-tipped, as they brushed aside the cloth and bared her stomach and breasts. For some moments she only stroked her with infinite delicacy, and then there was a satiny rustle of cloth as Madame moved up, and there was a warm breath against the sensitive flesh of Jill's stomach, against the tightening nipples of her breasts. She opened her eyes sleepily and Madame's eyes were staring brightly at her as her lovely lips shaped themselves to embrace her nipple. Jill breathed deeply, slowly.
She could feel Madame move and kiss a soft little path down the furrow of her stomach, to her navel. Jill shifted restlessly and lay one hand, the fingers spread flower-like, across her navel and the upper edges of her pajama pants. Madame kissed her fingers as though beseeching permission and then Madame moved her hand away and began to open her pajama pants.
Jill suddenly pulled her pajamas up and tied them tightly around her waist and sat up, pushing roughly at Madame's head.
Madame gave a cry of anguish and tried to cling to her body, but Jill got to her feet and looked down scornfully, trying to think of the crudest thing she could say:
"Well, you told me how you'd been suffering and I tried to figure out something to increase the pain. How'd I do?" she said coldly and started out of the room. She called back "Nitey nite, Madame!" That had been unnecessarily vicious, she thought, back in her own bed.
She had learned too well to play Madame's ugly little game. A little more of such unnatural joys and there would be no turning back. She would become completely perverted and sadistic. She slipped the handset off the phone base and got Mark's room number from the desk and called his room.
The phone rang once, twice, three times; then he answered nastily. "This is Jill."
"Jill! Well, what the hell do you want?"
"What do you want?"
"You called....I'm sleepy and mean...."
"What do you want?" she repeated in a husky voice. "Well, so do I...."
"Oh ... Oh....I get you ... ,"
"Are you alone?"
"Am I alone! SWEETHEART, you know I'm one-hundred percent true to you, and that's retroactive through my whole life ... I never knew another girl....When?"
"Five minutes!"
She dressed quickly and went down in the elevator of her wing and hurried through the arcade of expensive shops and through the lobby and main casino. The color and motion and sound of the gambling crowds and the swift rowdy beat of the piped music felt like a peppering of warm sleet against her already over-stimulated body. She hurried to the elevator in his wing and into the corridor and along the dead-end El to the door of his suite. She stopped. She felt a light stimulating dizziness in her head and there was a churning of excitement in her stomach and she tried to sober her cheeks, but they kept jerking up irrepressibly in gleeful little smiles. He would be standing one inch away on the other side of the door, waiting, tight with hot impatience. She tickled the door with her fingernails like a playful kit-j ten, imaging the door would yank open and he would pitch out and seize her. He didn't hear. She rapped sharply.
"It's unlocked!" he yelled from somewhere inside.
She bit her underlip, her eyes widening uncertainly. She hesitated, shrugged nervously and opened the door. There was no light on in the big sitting room. The wings of the Desert Eagle Hotel's sign sent a stuttering rhythm of golden light waves through the picture window. Through the doorway in the left wall she could see that a lamp was on somewhere in the bedroom. She had let the door click shut behind her before she realized the implications of his not even coming to the door, of his just lying in there and expecting her to come directly in to the bed. She stood numbed, holding her pouty underlip in her teeth and nipping lightly at it, her upper lip curving out like a soft, babyish beak; she began to blink rapidly, wanting to cry.
"Why don't you turn on the light?" he called, and she could hear him hurrying across the bedroom. He snapped on the sitting-room lights and stood in the doorway in a pair of pajama pants, holding a bottle of after shaving lotion.
"You! You really meant five minutes....I thought it was the waiter; I sent for champagne....Hey I" He looked down at himself. "This isn't the way I meant to look ... hold it a minute...." He vanished, calling: "If the waiter comes, you duck in here...." He came out again in a handsome silver-piped gray robe and blue and white pajamas. "This is a little more presentable."
His outfit was lustrous, she thought as he came to her with an eager, springy stride, whereas she, dressed in her glamorless winter wool coat, blouse, skirt, was without plumage, and this was right; the peacock, not the hen had the plumage. As he put his arms around her, she bowed her stomach forward to fit the forward bend of his body and let her mouth move in a soft, whispering motion against his lips. While his hands, under her coat, caressed the slim lines of her upper back through her blouse, she stroked lightly upward, relishing the mass and width of his masculine back. But the slickness of his material was too voluptuous, and his whole outfit impressed her unpleasantly as a male equivalent of feminine black-lace underthings. She remembered snugging into her pink panties and thinking it would be a small loss if ... when! ... he ripped them off of her. During the kiss she couldn't identify the after shave lotion, but the mouthwash was Listerine.
"Here, let me help you out of your coat."
"Thank you."
"You were absolutely gorgeous dancing tonight, Jill!"
"That's very nice of you," she said primly. "What's wrong? ... you do understand why I didn't come to the door."
"Of course."
"I don't know what you could have thought when I just yelled out that way...."
She grinned suddenly. "I thought I was going to bawl."
"But not now?"
"Not now."
"You know how glad I am to see you ... or, maybe you don't ... you can't imagine. I had one of our best horses running in a stake today, and of course I was damned anxious to win...."
"Did he?"
"Yes ... yes ... and a sixteen-thousand-dollar purse at that ... but all I could think of was getting back to you. Then I waited and waited upstairs in the casino and you didn't come and I phoned you and you chopped me dead and ... baby, you don't KNOW how happy I am to see you here...." He kissed the back of her neck. The sensation was so sudden and exquisite that she spun and locked her arms around him and lifted her mouth, her lips tingling and hot, and shut her eyes, and he kissed her His tongue began to thrust at once, and she opened to him, while her body molded itself sinuously to his. She moved herself subtly against him, the muscles of her lower abdomen relaxing. When they broke free she looked up at him stuporously, a nervous little smile trembling on her lips. He grinned, then laughed abruptly.
"You are in a hurry ... WHEW! ... Jesus, if that waiter wasn't coming...."
"Cancel the order!"
"But if he's on the way...."
"At least go to the phone and see." She said peevishly.
He went to the phone. She began to walk in an aimless zigzag, her steps short and quick, her knees lifting sharply and tossing her skirt. She scratched her breast, and went frowningly to the picture window and yanked the Venetian blind cord, closing the slats.
"It's on its way," he began, hanging up the phone. There was a knock at the door. "There ... that's it!"
Jill went fretfully into the bedroom and untied the blue ribbon that bound her hair loosely and shook her hair out around her shoulders, swaying her hips from side to side while she unbuttoned her little white blouse and flung it on a chair. She heard him bantering with the waiter and muttered "Yak, yak, yak," her eyes smoldering. She zipped her skirt open and stepped out of it and skinned off the panties-, stroking down along the silky side of her hips, smiling a little at the vein, like a tiny wobbly brush-stroke on the glossy paleness of her lustrous skin. The door was shutting in there and she heard the champagne cork pop and grinned, thinking his eyes would pop when he saw her like this.
"Jill...?"
"What?"
"Are you all right?"
"Am I!" she thought, strutting in front of the mirror. "Bring me a glass in here."
She waited, her sleepy-sensual eyes sparkling, her lush pouty mouth half-smiling.
Her naked young breasts were high and thrusting and shivering as she danced in place, the motion of her legs and bare feet light and delicate.
He came in, stopped and gaped.
"Subtle?" she teased. She moved quickly to him, took one of the two glasses he was holding and danced back, out of reach. She drank hers off, spun and took a belly dive onto the bed. She rolled onto her back and lifted her arms and kicked her legs and let out a long, soft sigh. She twisted around, peered toward him, her hair falling half across her cheek. "Where are you?"
"Coming!" he said huskily.
Then he was crawling onto the bed, staring intensely at her, and she scooted down and wrapped her arms around him and hugged his head to her breasts.
"Kiss them ... kiss them," she whispered feverishly.
As he began to kiss her body hungrily she lay flat on her back, her lovely arms flung passively out at her sides. As the stimulation mounted, she sat up abruptly and began pulling off his robe. "Get out of those things ... hurry ... hurry...."
He left the bed, breathing heavily, and stripped himself in a flurry of motion and then he was coming at her, virile and hot. She tensed herself bracing her feet apart and composing her body to accommodate him. She began to undulate her belly and hips in a supple wave-like motion, her eyes closed, her lips apart and throbbing. "Now ... now ... now ... take me, lover." She stifled a small piercing sound in her throat as his contact sent an unbearably intense thrill from her scalp to her curving, suddenly flexed toes.
She lay under him, feeling the ecstasy of his focused male violence on her hot, yielding flesh, and afterward she wound her strong arms around him, holding him close, feeling pleasurably mastered and drunk with pleasure.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jill was lying with her eyes, closed, a soft smile on her lips and feeling a lazy bliss when Mark said:
"What're you thinking? I can't tell what that little smile means."
She opened her eyes, rolled her head toward him. The intentness of his features, the alert scrutiny of his eyes, made her uneasy.
"I didn't know you were watching me," she said squirming a little with self-consciousness.
"Did I make you happy?" His earnestness verged on anxiety. She was surprised, and a moment later deeply touched.
"Of course," she said very softly. She stroked his cheek and combed her finger into his hair, ruffling it affectionately. "You're so manly, so vigorous ... so handsome." Her voice was low and musical, her smile tender. "Did I make you happy?"
He chuckled with pleasure. "What a damn fool question!" He kissed her mouth enthusiastically, bounced out of bed, put on his robe, rushed into the next room and came back with the champagne. He flourished the bottle and pranced, showing off for her as he decanted some of the wine. His ebullience made her smile and feel guilty at the same time, because he really seemed to care a lot more about her than she did about him. In fact, the rush and feel of violence about him were his only attractions, and she wasn't proud of the element in her that responded. And he was so happy that she had come and actually she hadn't come to him, but away from the situation with Madame Petrovna.
When he was about to pour champagne for her she said: "Not for me," then, wanting to give him something she added: "Should you drink so much, Mark?"
"Ah, now, let's not start reforming me," he said, blustering a little but delighted with her concern.
He came to the bed, lay cigarettes, matches, ashtray within reach and seated himself cross-legged beside her with his glass of champagne. He sipped and smirked happily at her. He reached out and patted her belly.
"You know where if your pumps weren't open-toed, I'd drink this from?"
"You are romantic, aren't you?"
His eyes lighted: "Better yet," he began, and bent forward toward her navel.
Jill squirmed and giggled and put her hand on her stomach. "No....PLEASE...."
"Promise...." He drank off the champagne, reached around and set the glass aside, then, when she was off guard, he doubled forward and put his lips on her navel and tickled it with his tongue.
Jill whispered, "Stop, stop, stop," writhing from side to side and making no effort to push him away. He sat up, laughing, and lit a cigarette. He sat smoking and gazing at her naked body.
"God, you're a beauty....I could sit and look at you for hours...."
"That'd be one way of keeping you still for a while ... but it gets chilly...."
He arched up and across her and tugged the heavy mid-night-blue silk spread loose from the side of the bed and drew it across her. He watched it hover and settle over her figure, the deflating little pockets of air carrying the warm scent of her body. The material outlined the slack rounds of her breasts and defined the oval within the V of her lower stomach and, with the careful assistance of his stroking fingers formed a valley between the rolls of her upper thighs.
She packed a pillow under her head, watching him with sensual pleasure, her mouth pushed out in a suppressed smile.
He smirked and stroked her: "Just making you comfy. Kindness to chilly girls is in my character."
"Oh, the goodness of you ... but I mustn't impose. Enough's plenty ... light a cigarette or something, and tell me what you were doing after the second show ... kindness to other chilly girls?"
"You saw me." He laughed happily. "And you told me you had never seen anybody from the stage."
"Madame saw you. Now, Mark, don't mistake this for jealousy ... but if you had to rush back from Los Angeles to see me ... Well," she shrugged.
He frowned, lit another cigarette. "Don't get me wrong. It was business. I spotted this man I wanted to see about a horse...." He broke off as she grinned tauntingly at him. "No, really. I swear."
"A man about a horse!" She giggled.
He grinned. "You claim you're not jealous."
"I'm not. Oh, maybe my vanity's a little piqued, but I'm really glad....It takes a weight off me to know you're not as serious about me as ... well, that talk about marriage on the phone to your brother...."
"I am that serious."
"I don't want you to be, and you proved you're not. What's she like?"
"What," he said in a calm, slow voice, articulating each word separately: "I ... was ... doing ... was , ... seeing ... a ... man ... about ... a ... horse. A mare, a six-year-old mare. This mare won a few small stakes as a two-three-four-year-old. At five she wasn't much and she's showing nothing this year; but, she has quality. Her blood lines are splendid. She'd make a marvelous brood mare. I wanted to offer the owner free stud service to one of our stallions."
"Stud service?"
"When a foal ... a baby horse ... is born, it means that about eleven months ago something happened to the mama.
Stud service by a papa horse, a stallion. We own seven stallions ... who command stud fees ranging from a thousand to twenty-five-hundred dollars. I'm angling to buy a certain stallion whose fee is five-thousand."
"Fee of five-thousand for what?"
"I told you. It's a stud fee. A fee for servicing a mare ... getting her settled with a foal...."
"A male horse gets paid?"
"Some of these fashionable sires like Nashua-you've heard of him?" She shook her head. "Well, he won over a million on the tracks and he was bought by a syndicate and put to stud and his fee must be over ten-thousand."
"Ten-thousand dollars just for one time ... of servicing?" servicing?"
"Sometimes it's only once, sometimes it takes two or three services before a mare's pregnant. The idea is to get her pregnant. Most contracts call for a live foal before the full fee is paid."
She shook her head, half smiling. "You wouldn't be pulling my leg?"
"Any horseman knows it." He grinned. "We got things fixed right in my world. None of this queen-bee stuff with male drones crawling around and practically licking her feet."
She looked embarrassed. "Well, the ballet we're doing here is...." she fumbled, "isn't typical of most of our repertoire, and, naturally it's not supposed to be taken too literally ... it's symbolic...."
"I know ... I know ... the symbolic triumph of female ... nothing against you, sweetheart, you can walk all over me any time you take the notion ... just for fun ... but, for real, that stuff doesn't set very well with a man."
"Mark, it isn't even the triumph of the female ... but the triumph of a certain spirit; the binding love-force as opposed to the destructive. I know that it gets very sexy in the end ... but that's true, too, because sex is the root of love and creation. It's not that a woman, as such, is superior in possessing a greater love-force; men have it too ... Paul, he's the leading male dancer, hates this ballet ... he, too, says it degrades maleness ... he says it's a cheap morality tale spiced with rape and perversion. I suppose it could be interpreted that way ... but, Mark, I don't personally despise males. I love a man being a man ... Go on and tell me all about your world ... why would you let that mare owner have free service?"
"Well, the stallion we want her to stand to is young; his track record wasn't impressive. His bloodlines include Man O' War ... if you ever heard of him...."
"Yes ... I've heard of him."
"Our stallion has the bloodlines, and he'll make a prize stallion. The way to make a stallion's reputation is for him to produce foals who go out and win good races. But before he can produce race winners he's got to have good mares under him and the competition among stallions is rough. Unless a stud has made a sensational race record on his own, the owners of good mares don't want to breed to him. The saying is, breed the best to the best and hope for the best. A lot of these wonder studs produce crops of clinkers, and stallions nobody ever heard of come up with Triple Crown winners. After one of their crops cops the Triple Crown ... that's Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont ... the father of the winner is in demand and up go his stud fees. See?"
"It's fascinating! Is he going to use your stallion, this mare owner?"
Mark sighed. "He still thinks she can run. Besides, he doesn't want to ship east."
"Oh. Any chance of his changing his mind....?"
"No."
"I suppose it would cost too much to bring your stallion here."
"We couldn't do that. He's booked to eleven mares back home; they'll be coming to his court as we call it. The breeding season's on right now, in fact. Jill, you'd love the farm. Over a thousand acres, new foals coming all the time, the yearlings learning their manners for the sales ring, older horses getting ready for starting gates....Have you ever been to the track?" When she shook her head he said: "Let's fly over to Santa Anita this morning; have you back in time for the first show!"
"I'd better not. Is one of your horses running?"
"No; but say, you're off Tuesdays. We've got a horse going then. After the races we could drop down to the Border and take in Tia Juana. Ever see the Jai Alai games? No?"
"But I've heard they're very exciting."
"We'd have till Wednesday night. Leave here by the first plane Tuesday morning-I've got an even better idea. Dan and Nelia could fly out for the race and a little trip across the Border. The kid needs some relaxation....I'll phone him right now...."
"Don't!" she cried. "I'd be embarrassed."
"We-e-e-ll, it would put a crimp on our being together ... besides, it's the busiest season and he'd refuse to come and give me hell for asking him, too." Mark grinned.
She smiled affectionately. "He's somebody you'd let give you hell, h'm?"
"Any time I got it coming. I made a good man out of that kid, if I do say it myself, and he's got brains. Hell, I think more of him than...." He shrugged. "Y'see, our folks died. Uncles came in and tried to run the farm and take it over into their control. Dan and I stuck together and booted 'em out as quick as I came of legal age. We blew that farm up from less than four-hundred acres to over a thousand, and upgraded our Thoroughbred stock till we've really got something to be proud of. I'm always reaching out and trying to expand this way and that and the bank's on our fences. Still, we've got the fences. It puts a big work load on Dan's shoulders to solidify the gains and keep the operation running right. It's a wonder he doesn't hate my guts...."
"But he doesn't, does he?"
"The crazy dumb bastard thinks I'm a hero....I play around too much, waste too much money. To tell you the truth I just can't stand the goddamn aggravation of the million details and all the plain drudgery of that farm....I just want to get the hell away from it, let him have it all." He laughed wryly at himself. "All the work. But you know, with the right woman I could settle down there and love it. Build us a fine new house of our own, so there wouldn't be any problem of you two women under the same roof. ... Jill, take me seriously."
"But, Mark, I'm not domestic or rural or whatever it would take....Away from my dancing I'd just WITHER...."
"I wouldn't let you get bored."
"I didn't say BORED...."
"You could dance for ME! As a matter-of-fact, Jill, I had something all dreamed out but we didn't have time for it....I want you to dance for me ... that dance you do down in the club ... just for me, private...."
Her face shadowed briefly. "It's been a long day for me, Mark ... and, it just looks easy...."
"I don't mean now....I know it's work ... but sometime you will do it for me, just for me, in private...?"
She shook her head slowly, her face distressed. "I couldn't, Mark."
He looked at her, confused.
"Sure you could ... it excites me tremendously; you've just GOT to, baby ... it would make me damned happy I You'd like to make me happy, wouldn't you?"
"I would. Yes ... but I couldn't dance like that in private...."
"If it's the music you'd need...."
She shook her head abruptly. "My dancing has nothing to do with this ... with a private thing like this...." She stared intently at him and raised herself on her elbows so that the dark-blue silk spread slipped away from her breasts. "Try to understand."
"Well, I don't," he said flatly, watching her.
She pushed annoyedly back at her loose hair and sat erect. She said earnestly, looking closely into his face. "When I dance, there's no connection with anybody. I'm not...." She gestured with one hand, clutching the spread over the front of her body with the other. "Not involved...."
He gave her a sharp, angry look, then lowered his eyelids and lit a cigarette very slowly, his hands shaking a little. He looked up with a little grin and playfully but roughly yanked downward at the section of the spread she held over her. She started nervously to lift it.
"Don't be suddenly coy, sweetheart," he chuckled. She made a plucking motion at the material, saw the warning edge of violence about his watchfulness, left herself naked from the lower curve of her belly upward. Mark relaxed a trifle, affected a jovial tone: "You can't possibly mean that you can dance with such powerful effects and not feel anything, not be involved...."
"I feel. I'm involved, yes ... but not with any person...."
He gave her a thin, tense grin. "A stripper once told me she enjoyed the power of moving men like puppets, without being moved herself ... she gloated over making them sweat with desire when they'd never be able to touch her...."
"It's not that. It's that I'm in another world...."
"A pure world which mustn't be sullied by a low thing like me, or this bed. It's not that you couldn't dance for me, privately, but that you wouldn't. Correct?"
"No."
"You must protect it from my touch."
"Maybe it's you I'm protecting from it, did you ever think it might be that way, tool Do you think I want to be self-conscious about a personal thing like this? No, I want to lose myself in this sort of thing, not have the two things...." She broke off, said tightly. "Well, I'm not going to talk about it any more. That's how it is." He sat mashing his lips together and staring into her eyes. He dragged from his cigarette with such force that it crackled, then carefully rolled off the ash into the tray, leaving the ember a clear, bright orange. He held the cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger and the direction of his gaze slid down along her body. Jill sat, motionless, her breath beginning to quicken slightly. Unconsciously she had drawn her knees up a few inches. In that position there was a circular creasing in the soft flesh of her belly at her waist, so that the tiny oval cup of her navel was tilted upward. She realized he was concentrating on her navel and sensed his intention. When his hand began a swift downward motion with the point of that burning cigarette aimed right at her navel, Jill rolled wildly away, falling to the floor. He was crouched over her, his hands clutching her shoulders. The cigarette was gone.
"What's wrong with you?" he said huskily.
"You were going to...." her lips were dry, trembling, and she stared up at him, tranced with fright, " ... going to mash that cigarette into my navel....Weren't you?"
He shook his head violently. "No....No...."
"You hated me...." she said quiveringly.
"Only for an instant ... I wouldn't really have...."
She shut her eyes, imagining the feel of an ember in the flesh of her navel and the agony of it set her skin shuddering in horrid waves, and she could feel the nervous, strong pulsing of his fingers on her shoulders and the light pressure of his knee against one of her hips and the hairiness of his thick leg against her slim thigh and she opened her eyes and saw him above her, his face intent, his eyes piercing her and the sight of him made her heart beat frenziedly. Again the feel of that cigarette ember was in her flesh and the pain waves shivered through her, and there was a hot rise of sensation in her genitals. His robe was open and she could see that his body was fiercely passionate for her again. As he prepared to possess her there on the floor she reached for him instinctively, a craving so strong in her that only his man body had the power to ease it.
Afterward he lifted her like a child and put her under the covers. She lay backed up against his body, her bottom against his groin, the backs of her thighs on his legs as though sitting on his lap, and while his strong hands gently fondled her breasts, she fell asleep.
She awoke in an hour with a tight, breathless feeling. She carefully disengaged her warm body from his embrace and dressed.
Hurrying back to her bed, in her own wing of the hotel, Jill thought unhappily that the very thing that drew her to him, his rush and violence, cut him off from any real understanding of what the dance meant to her. He considered her attitude only as an outrage to his ego, something neurotic standing in the way of his getting just what he wanted, precisely when he wanted it, and on his exact terms. She was sorry, really sorry, she thought, as she crawled into her own bed.
CHAPTER FIVE
The phone rang and she could hear Renee move on hurrying tiptoe and say "Hello...." in a hushed voice...."she's still sleeping...."
Holding her eyes shut, her head burrowed in the pillow, Jill extended a bare arm and wigged her fingers. She took the handset in under the covers.
"Hello."
"Why'd you sneak off?" It was Mark.
"Had to come home," she said groggily. "What time is it?"
"Noon. Let's have breakfast."
"Oh, I can't."
"You mean you always breakfast with the company?"
"Mm-hm....I explained it."
"Then we'll both have breakfast with the company."
"That wouldn't work."
"You can't hide me; I'm part of your life, now."
"Oh, you are?" She sat up, frowning, and sharply awake.
"Yes. And after we breakfast, alone together, or with the company, we'll get you an engagement ring, a mink coat and," he ended with a laugh, "a bikini." Which will it be....? You and me, or me with you and the company?"
"Neither," she said as calmly as possible. "I'll have to be with the company....I've got a serious dance problem to discuss ... you wouldn't be interested...."
"I'm interested in everything about you."
"I could meet you for a while afterward ... say, one-thirty."
"I know where you all eat, and I'll be there."
"Please don't do that, Mark," she said in a trembling voice. "I understand your wanting to be possessive....I like you that way ... in a way ... but, it wouldn't work, your joining us; it would put me under a strain...."
He laughed, teasingly: "So there you are ... the only way to spare yourself is to breakfast with me alone."
She flung the covers back and jumped out of bed, tense with anger. When finally she could speak her voice was low, fervent. "I won't have it. I've had it all my life and I WON'T HAVE IT....I won't be torn this way and that way and this way and ... I told you no and no and NO. Now if you have the least bit of feeling for me you'll do as I say and meet me at one-thirty in the lobby ... or never!"
"Your way or none?" he said with an edgy laugh.
"Don't put it that way. Now, please promise me that you won't come bulling into things and making me sick ... it would make me sick, literally sick...."
"That's just temperament."
"Just temperament! You and all the other dolts think real emotion's a fraud, do you? Temperament's something a performer dreams up, you think?" She stopped herself, shrugged. "Oh, go to hell." She hung up. She took a long breath and grinned shakily at Renee. "I'll have to snap into it dressing ... have the others gone down?" When Renee nodded Jill said: "You don't have to wait for me. Go on down, maybe there's mail from your ever faithful ... order me coffee, huh?"
When Renee was gone Jill thought about Madame Petdona and shook her head unhappily. She'd contributed as much as Madame to this ugly situation, but together, on another, truer plane, they could banish it. The feeling in both of them for the dance itself transcended everything.
Dancing was more than a career. It was an inner world, stronger and larger than all the outer forces; within it there was never a demand for divided loyalties, and it had the power to overcome emotional pain. When the outer world confused her senses and made her as helpless as in a nightmare, she could come exultantly awake by stepping into her own world.
She clearly remembered the conscious beginnings of her power to shield herself by dancing away from the bad dream to her own inner reality:
All their suitcases and dolls and toys were waiting out on the porch and their grandmother kept walking in and out and smiling at them while Jill, five then, danced and watched herself in the foyer mirror and whispered instructions to herself: "Heel-toe left and heel-toe right and hop and hop and dip...."
Jill danced to keep herself from thinking about the facts. There had been a divorce. They had two daddies now and two mommies. Phyllis kept saying they never would go home again, but Jill tried desperately to believe that they were leaving grandmother's house to go back where they always went after the fights were all over and forgotten a long time.
Their Mommy came alone, just as she always did, and they all drove toward where they always drove ... but it wasn't the same place. And there was the other Daddy and HE carried their things in, and it was the wrong house, the wrong bedroom for Phyllis and her, with everything new and different, and by the time they actually went to bed for the night Jill knew it wasn't another party and she fell asleep thinking about the great big fat pink beautiful costume she would be wearing as she danced out in front of all the other little girls "heel-toe, left, and heel-toe right ... and hop and hop...."
Her mother was shaking her by the shoulders and talking in a rush. Jill stood "swallowing her mouth," her babyish lips rolled in. Her throat was choked and she couldn't talk except with her eyes and she pushed them out of her head, shouting at Mommy who couldn't hear, and who just kept saying: "You've got to ... you're going to ... you've got to...." Phyllis said in a scared voice: "She just don't know how, Mommy."
"Well, she'd better know how by the time he gets home for dinner. You understand that, my stubborn little miss, don't you? You're going to be right there with your sister, glad to see him. GLAD! Or, you know what?"
When their mother went out Jill stood knowing what: it would be the end of dancing lessons and she might even be sent to live alone at grandmother's.
Then he was coming and coming and coming and Phyllis went with Mommy to the door and Mommy said: "Jill!" and she started to the door and then she was flying upstairs in terror.
He wouldn't let Mommy spank her and he said she never, never had to come to him if she didn't feel like it and was scared of him. She wasn't scared of him; he was nice and he was fun; and she loved him, but she didn't LOVE him, and if she did, this wrong home would be always, and their real home wouldn't ever come back.
Sometimes Phyllis got mad and called her silly, and at other times she came in, giggling into her hand, to tell her that he was complaining and very, very SAD. "You're dumb! He'd get you anything you wanted if you acted glad to get it. He's going to get me a bicycle because I love him so nice....You know what? You aren't never going to be a real dancer because you don't even know how to put on a show."
Then one Saturday after dancing class he brought her home and nobody was around and he had a doll for her and she said thank you and didn't like the doll and went to her room to put her dancing clothes away and she thought how nobody loved him and her eyes began to sting, and if he got sick in bed and was dying ... she rushed down the stairs, carrying the doll, her eyes enormous, and she took a few more steps and hugged the doll and petted it and said: "Would you cry if I die?" Then he was out of the chair picking her up and she sat on his lap, hugging and kissing him.
When it came time to go into her father's and stepmother's house to live she knew their real home was never coming back ... and that it wasn't her other Mommy's fault, and she loved being loved and loving.
Their two homes were within a mile of each other in the same school district and they lived alternate semesters at one and then the other house. One had six rooms, the other seven, and they came to feel equally at home in both and in neither of them. The competition between hosts for the good will of the guests was subtle, nothing gross in the way of too-lavish gifts, no direct request for statements of preference of one home over the other. But the competition was there at all times.
The shift from one place to another involved a shedding of little habit patterns which they might have picked up from that other household. Then at the end of a stay there would be a growing peckishness about everybody, even a sort of accusation from their elders as if they were deserting them. All in all the emotional requirements were too much.
By the time they had reached high school, and there were younger half brothers and sisters in each household, the shiftings had become easier and easier, and neither she nor Phyllis felt any strong bond to either home. Jill's own loyalty was fixed on dancing almost exclusively. It was a world in which she had some control, and she was, with the best of reasons, confident of a career in dancing.
Year after year, teacher after teacher, she had advanced steadily. Her classical ballet training began when she was eight; she was on her points at twelve, though she hadn't the strength for sustained work. She gained stage presence, not only in the many annual dancing-school recitals but in a hundred semi-professional appearances at lodges and clubs. What she lacked in technical finish, she more than compensated for in pure charm and loveliness.
At twelve she began to concentrate on serious work in the studio of a former prima ballerina, who proceeded caustically to strip away all the pretty, arty little dancing-school affectations and flutterings and "feeling." Jill took four formal lessons per week and practiced two and three hours a night, and worked at the studio all day Saturday, and when she wasn't absolutely forbidden, all day Sunday, too. She could feel herself emerging, strong and clean-lined, and beginning to be capable of true expression, and she relished the sense of striving. Her teacher's demands were stern, and Jill's own requirements for herself were even sterner, and the day came when she was fourteen and her teacher said: "When you're sixteen we'll go to New York for auditions. If you had the strength to get through a full program you'd be ready for the corps in a major company right now. All we have to do is build the stamina. You're the best pupil I've ever had...."
Phyllis, by then, was a senior in high school and as remote from her as a stranger.
When Phyllis was eleven, Jill had been confident that there was no real separation between them except age. A person in the sixth grade, which was right on the edge of junior high and high and practically college, just couldn't take a third-grader seriously, any more than she herself could discuss anything important with the little things in kindergarten or the baby class at dancing school.
When Phyllis began wearing brassieres and having periods Jill was awed and expectant, thinking Phyllis would tell her the secret feeling of being a woman and the bond would again be tightened between them.
"I'm so skinny and flat," Jill said, scratching her own chest and eyeing the little puffs under Phyllis' blouse admiringly, "do you think I'll ever develop?"
"Who knows?" she said indifferently, concentrated on painting her fingernails.
"Well, but what do you think?"
"You'll never be any Jane Russell, I can tell you that right now ... fact is, dancers never have anything."
"Why, they certainly do so; Miss Lucienne sticks out three times farther than you. I think you're just MEAN ... I just don't know what's happened to you ... all you ever think about is that dumb bunch of stupid friends of yours that's always jiterbugging around and listening to that corny music...."
Phyllis, sitting on the edge of her bed, began to sway her body from side to side, waving her arms and hands in a mockery of ballet.
Jill's face flushed. "You stop that."
"I'm drying my nail polish, dear."
"I don't know why you'd associate with persons that made fun of your own sister. You don't even like them, anyway."
"So?"
"See ... you admit it. You just run around with them because they're the crowd. You know what you are, Phyllis Braddock. Insincere!"
"Just nuts get themselves all steamed up about things," Phyllis insisted. "That's the whole trouble with you. Like that bawling the other night in Papa Two's and Momma One's house...."
Jill hopped to her feet, her face reddening angrily: "I do wish you would abandon that REVOLTINGLY DISGUSTING way of referring to them, and I didn't bawl....Maybe I sniffled a little. My goodness, it was our last night with them and they DO love us....You know what I think?" She marched over and shook her finger in her face. "You don't care one real SMIDGEN about them, and you putting on that sick-cow face for them, it's ... it's insincere...."
"To relieve your mind, little sister," Phyllis said coolly, getting up aad going to the bureau for a lipstick, "I care quite as much for Papa Two and Momma One as I do for Papa One and Mamma Two, our current loving parents."
Jill hurried over to the bureau. "But, Phyll, honest, they are loving ... we're their first children and ... and ... well, I mean, it's like us, underneath it all, we're sisters and we love each other...."
Phyllis turned to her and cheek-smiled, and her eyes remained calm and cool and her voice had just the correct dose of warmth, no more, no less, and she said: "Of course sisters love each other." That is the proper thing to do, therefore I do it ... that's what she was really saying. She spared a few more seconds and then went out and down, singing out gaily to Papa One and Momma Two and there was a lot of happy laughter for awhile, then her date came and she was gone and Jill thought she was never, never coming back, any more than the home they had once known was ever coming back.
Everybody seemed to like Phyllis; she was pretty, though not as strikingly as Jill; whatever the occasion, she had the appropriate response. She was unfailingly courteous with elders, she was always agreeable to the plans of her own group; she liked or disliked whatever was currently fashionable, her clothes were carefully sloppy when that was the phase, and dressy when neatness became a fetish. She seemed never to be out of uniform, physically or emotionally, and Jill finally became convinced that whatever she had been, she was now pure fake. They disliked and disapproved of each other completely.
CHAPTER SIX
The year Phyllis was a high-school senior, and Jill was fourteen, technically a woman since thirteen, the boy in Phyllis' life was Chaz (for Charles) Lelfer. He was a Senior Class officer and girls, according to Phyllis, considered him dreamy; his father provided him with a good car and a big allowance, and he had a so-so ability in several sports. He was tall and well-built, with blond hair, dark eyebrows, blue eyes and a cleft in his chin. He had some vague feeling that the cleft in his chin somehow went with Phyllis' widow's peak. When, after a few months, he discovered that this peculiarity of the hairline was shared by Phyllis' mother, sister and younger half-sister, Chaz pointed the phenomenon out to them with the air of an intellectual Columbus and rose to heights of speculation by wondering if maybe it kind of might run in the family.
His father owned a highly profitable building-supply business which Chaz expected to take over painlessly after an easy glide through some college. He once wandered from the gang and stood in the doorway of Jill's practice room and watched her with the air of a man at a zoo, remarked that it looked hard and slouched away again shaking his head and grinning over the nuttiness of all that effort. He was so smug and there was such a slackness about him that she thought he was disgusting.
He was close to eighteen and subject to the draft and the Korean War was on and although his indifferent scholastic record entitled him to no deferment, he had casually assumed that benevolent papa would just pull some strings and that would be that. When the strings were pulled they seemed to be attached to fishhooks in Chaz's intestines. The slack went out of his attitudes and the bland handsomeness of his face drew tight, while pain and wonder replaced the dull, incurious expression of his eyes.
He began practically to live at their house as though by involving himself in all their affairs he could anchor himself. He concerned himself over the younger children and really listened to their stepfather's analysis of the war. He ran errands and painted the playroom and put up screens and cleaned out the garage as though he were already married into the family. Once he pulled Jill down on his lap right beside Phyllis and assured her solemnly that he loved her like a brother, and another time he came into her practice room and told her she must keep on with her dancing, that he would be thinking about her becoming a great ballerina while he was away.
And gradually he was transformed in her eyes into a hero, a doomed and tragic hero, and she could see him on some stark, ugly terrain, with bombs and cannons and fire and terrifying explosions all around him, lying torn and bleeding, in agony and alone and dying with no one to heal his pain and love him and repay him for this great thing he had done for them ... for her and for Phyllis and for all the world. Sometimes, there in her practice room, hearing him upstairs so safe and happy with them, she would turn her music up and lie down on her mat and cry out loud.
When Jill had accidentally seen Chaz and Phyllis hot-necking on the playroom couch one afternoon when her mother was out and she had come home unexpectedly because a dancing class had been canceled, she had crept away blushing. But her eyes shone and there'd been a bursting sense of exaltation in her breast. She had been very proud of Phyllis for outwitting all the forces that opposed true love. They seldom had time alone. Phyllis was on strict curfew and she dated with a crowd and he couldn't come in when he brought her home late at night. When they had a sit-home date somebody was always up and around till he left. Afternoons their mother occasionally went away with the younger children, but more often if she went out she left them around. When Phyllis baby-sat the younger children at night she could have two friends in, a male and a female, but not a boy alone. Not even Chaz. Especially not Chaz.
After seeing them on the playroom couch Jill suspected Phyllis found other opportunities to be good to poor Chaz. And, checking on it, she discovered that on baby-sitting nights Chaz and a girl friend would come, but the girl would leave directly after the parents did. Several nights Jill crept out stealthily to peek for a while, then guiltily went back to bed ... but soon she would be out again. They kissed and kissed and sprawled against each other and Chaz would put his hand in under Phyllis' blouse and also he would push her skirt up and play with her legs. Something would be just about to really happen and then they would get up ... then down, they'd start up again ... and then ... and then ... nothing. Jill would stay awake until the parents were home, and she knew nothing ever happened. The idea of it turned her alternately seething and icy with anger and outrage.
One night she waited, trembling, and when Phyllis came into the bedroom she said fiercely: "You quit treating Chaz like you do. You're terrible ... that poor boy!"
"I'll take care of my life ... go do a fooey-etty or whatever you call it."
"I'm warning you! You stop doing what you are to him! Either you quit letting him neck you that way till he gets all miserable or give him what he wants."
"Sneak! I just ought to tell on you, you nasty little SPY...."
"We could both tell plenty if you want to start in ratting. Boy, the way you get your dress clear up to your bellybutton, practically ... it's disgusting. And you act like you're so NICETY NICE ... Huh!"
"I didn't do a thing wrong ... every girl in our crowd lets a boy pet her."
"It's dirty. I'm ashamed of you."
"I don't do a thing worse than any other girl. I'd never let a boy really do anything to me before I'm married."
"It's mean to a boy!"
"They like it."
"I don't. And I'm warning you, if you do that to Chaz again I'll treat him decent my-own-self." Phyllis made a sneering sound.
"You think I'd be scared to be a woman, a REAL woman?"
"I don't want any more talk like this out of you. You get in that bed and go to sleep and mind your own business."
"He loves us, and he's going to go off and be killed and it is my business if you abuse him."
"You couldn't get him anyway. You know what he says you look like? All legs and arms like one of those dolls made out of pipe cleaners."
"I got more shape than THAT; we'll just see whether he thinks I'm so undesirable as all that, we'll just SEE!"
The minute she'd said it she thought: "What did I get myself into?" but she merely climbed into bed, her babyish lips thrust out stubbornly. She woke thinking she wasn't actually into anything, and she'd just forget it. She couldn't forget it. She checked and what Phyllis was still doing to the boy who was going to be sent off to die for her was abusing him.
Jill decided. She was going to give him the love he needed, and it would be a beautiful thing she did, an act of mercy and a solace for the future pain of the dreadful war, and she would be mystically exalted and touched with purity and grace. The fine, high sweet mood of it made her tremble; it had the feel of the most equisite passages in the loveliest of ballets. She didn't, at first, think about the flesh-to-flesh reality of it.
In the first place, Chaz 'never looked close enough at her to see that she didn't have pipe-cleaner legs, really. The lines of her inner thighs were stick-straight, but the outer lines were pretty and flaring. Maybe her hips were narrow, but they were rounded, and so was her firm bottom, and when she put her palms under her breasts and pushed up, there was more than baby fat there. He said she had a juicy little mouth, but he never made a move to kiss it. He did not realize, Jill thought, her sleepy-sensual brown eyes moody and deep, that she was no mere child, but hundreds of woman-years old, with the mystery and power of all femaleness right there between her hipbones, capable of absorbing all his maleness. Her scalp crawled with the sudden memory of the horror story of the girl in the eighth grade last year who had been a virgin and she had lain on a bed all one afternoon with a boy, trying and trying and nothing happened.
For a thing like that to happen to her beautiful inspiration would be ... would be worse than getting a chance to dance Swanhilda in Coppelia or Giselle in front of a New York audience and then going out and taking a big pratfall. She shuddered.
The really first thing she'd have to do was break her maidenhead so Chaz wouldn't have any trouble. She proceeded to do so many fast splits that she thought the tendons of her inner thighs would rip loose from her crotch, and she limped upstairs, her leg muscles throbbing and trembling weakly, her virginity intact. It was up to Chaz now. He would have to perform his own role.
Now all she needed to do was get him alone, and that proved surprisingly easy.
She didn't even have to plan. It just began to happen magically as if Chaz heard his music cue and started to dance his role. Maybe she hadn't really thought it up in the first place but had just started responding to music that was unhearable to anybody but her and Chaz. It was like ... like a dog whistle that people couldn't hear but was there anyway. She squirmed at the inartistic comparison but that's what it was like. For the first few minutes she didn't even know that everything was underway.
It was a Friday afternoon a few days before Chaz and Phyllis would be graduating. They had no date that night since Phyllis was going to an all-night girl party. Phyllis and her mother and the younger children had gone to get new pajamas for the girl party and she was alone in the house. The parents had a card date that night and Jill would be baby-sitting, so she was getting in some time on her dancing before dinner. About five o'clock she was down in her practice room in black leotard and ballet shoes doing some entrechats to a metronome and watching herself intently and critically in the mirror. She heard footsteps in the kitchen and Chaz opened the door to the basement and called down:
"Hi. Anybody home?"
"No," she called, without missing a beat.
"Where's everybody at?" he said, coming down the stairs.
"Shopping center."
He called from the playroom. "What'd they go over there for?"
"PJ's for Phyll's hen party."
"She finally pestered your mom into it, huh?"
"Hm hm." She paused to increase the tempo of the metronome on the floor. In the process she transformed an essentially graceless squat into charm, her body folding like oiled hinges, her thin upper body and arms tilting into the V spraddle of her legs; then she unfolded effortlessly erect and resumed her springy, quickened leaps, the beat and flutter of her feminine young legs immeasurably delicate.
She continued working and ignored his loud guess from somewhere in the playroom that Patsy and Donny had gone to the shopping center, too. She heard his footsteps coming toward her practice room, then his voice from the doorway.
"Is that what you call a fooey-etty?"
Flexed for a leap she straightened slowly and gazed smolderingly down at the swinging-tick-ticking metronome pendulum and aligned her body toward it and said sweetly without looking at him. "No. But this is what we call a grand battetnent."
Her left leg swung forward from the hip, her knee rigid, her foot extended, arch thrusting; the swift-rising arc of her slippered toes caught the peak of the metronome and sent it clattering end over end. "A kick from the hip," she said casually, "although the beat should have been on the downstroke. This is what is known to half-wits as a fooey-etty." She yanked her hair, held in a pigtail with rubber bands, across her shoulder and took the end in her teeth like a knife. She started revolving on her left leg, propelling herself with whip-like motions of her right leg.
She slammed her right foot down to come to a precise halt, but she hurt her foot and the stop was wobbly. She went over to the poor metronome ticking on its back, picked it up, seated the pendulum and carried it to the shelf above her phonograph table; keeping her back to Chaz. There was a scatter of sugar cube packets on the shelf and she stood with her back to the doorway, her chin dropped nearly to her chest, her underlip quivering, and slit open the sugar with a thumbnail and put the two cubes in her mouth. She opened another packet, thinking fooey-etty and crunching sugar and hurting all over.
"What'd I do? I guess I shouldn't have come bothering you while you're trying to work."
"If a person doesn't know a word like fouette is poetry, well, what difference does it make? I didn't think YOU would be like that any more."
He came over to her side and she turned away. "Jill, honey, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Tell me how you say it ... foo-ay-tay, like that?"
"Yes."
"Did Phyll give you the sugar?" She frowned. "What sugar?"
"I guess she forgot. I gathered a whole sackful from a bunch of joints we went to. For you. You know, you're always eating it, so I got it for you. I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world."
"Well, gee, thanks, Chaz, that was awfully nice of you." Her face was suddenly radiant. She chewed swiftly, dissolving and swallowing the rest of the sugar. She giggled softly. "Sugar in my throat and you putting word-sugar in my ears; I'm all sweet now. I didn't mean to be so mean." She suddenly exclaimed. "Well, just LOOK at you." She skipped back away from him for a fuller view. He had on a suit, a tan gabardine, and two-tone shoes and a white shirt and tie, and his cropped blond hair and tanned face and pink ears looked so clean and nice I She smiled, her eyes glowing with admiration. "You're all dressed up, aren't you? Oh, my, but you look nice. It's just a shame they're not here...." She was moved suddenly to go and pat his cheek. "Poor Chaz. All dressed up and then nobody here to see you. Just wait till they see you ... they ought to be back any minute, now. Meantime," she said, nodding decisively, "I'll entertain you if I can find Gaiete Parisienne ... it's just darling ... and even if you don't like ballet, it's fun and witty and ... you'll see."
"I like ballet, Jill. I like it fine, honey."
"I know you do because of me, but not really-but anyway, you'll learn to. It's got every kind of a mood. Mad, sad, glad, dreamy," she said, frowning as she crouched down, pawing through her records. She remembered that on last week's visit to her father-stepmother's house she'd taken the record over to dance for them. "Oh, I left Gaiete over at the other house. Oh, well I" She dropped back into a comfortable sitting position wrapping her arms around her knees, smiling up at him sitting on the bench. "That sugar was very thoughtful of you; you're really a very kind and thoughtful person, Chaz ... everybody is going to miss you terribly."
It was the wrong thing to do, reminding him; his blue eyes clouded and he suddenly looked so sad and lonesome that she scrambled up and kissed him quickly on the lips and tried to think of something funny. "You know what I do down at dancing school sometimes? I'll be exhausted and I'll just stuff my mouth with sugar cubes. Maybe we'll be doing something dreamy and here's me crunch-cronk-honk-crunch." She demonstrated rapidly and giggled. "Miss Lucienne will stop everything and glare at me and I'll look at her innocent...." she widened her eyes, "and crunch real slow till it's all gone. It drives her out of her mind!"
She got him laughing, then she skipped away, thinking rapidly that she would begin at the beginnings of herself as a ballet dancer and illustrate and explain everything from the basic foot positions on, and carrying him through to an understanding, and she would give him the poetry language to carry somewhere in his mind to connect him always with beauty and some ... but there wasn't time for it.
She was quickened by the awareness of his steady gaze on her body as she moved about, her feet light and graceful, her knees quick-lifting, her whole slim body vital and taut, her long legs glowing with recent exertion. In profile to him she tightened her stomach and defined the sharp in-curve of the small of her back to accent the thrust and roundings of her small but finely formed buttocks. The cut of her leotard was high, elongating the line of her leg, revealing the sleek flare of her pale hip. She moved over to him.
"Ate they really pipe-cleaner legs?" she said huskily, looking down gravely into his eyes, her full-cheeked, pouty-mouthed babyish face compelling.
He frowned, half shaking his head, then his eyes lighted. "Oh, that! I said doll ... a leggy doll, that was main thing I meant ... your legs are so long...."
She reached down and took his hand and lay it on her upper thigh. "Slide your hand down and see how it narrows." He dropped his eyes from her earnest gaze and stroked his hand down, then up, gingerly.
"They're so warm and soft ... and very pretty." His hand paused at the edge of her leotard. She turned in quarter profile to him, clenched her buttocks. "Feel how firm my bottom is ... you can hit it with your fist, it's that firm ... but it's not shaped like any boy's, is it?"
He laughed nervously, patted her bottom, started to withdraw. She caught his wrist, looking intently down across her shoulder, and said huskily: "No, I mean, really feel me...."
He stroked, fitting his hand to her contours, his face pinking slightly.
"They'd happen to walk in they'd kill me, fooling around with you."
"Come over here," she said, moving away. "I want you to stretch me."
She backed up to the wall, waited, her eyes sultry, watching him. He hesitated, then came. She lifted one leg, pointed at it.
"Bend it clear up over my head till my foot touches the wall."
"This is an exercise you need, I guess."
"Do it," she said. "Not too fast. Just push a little at a time ... don't rush is all ... you're so strong!"
He grasped her ankle and carried her leg up almost vertically. "A little more ... a little harder...." She bit her lip. She felt the cold of the wall against her warm instep. "There!" she grinned. "Now, the other leg!"
When he had the other leg up, she grinned shyly up at him. "I feel like just nothing against you ... you're so big and handsome. No, don't let my leg down. Just hold me pinned here ... and...." she wet her suddenly throbbing lips. "And step in close to my body...."
He stared dumbly down at her and worked his lips. "Maybe I shouldn't...."
"I'm not sweaty, and this is a clean leotard, I won't get you dirty...." She reached out and unbuttoned his suit coat, opened it a little. His face reddened as she glanced down. She giggled with excitement. He knew she was a woman. He KNEW it for sure. She whispered. "Come in against me and show me how to French-kiss...."
He thrust himself hard against her, pinning her to the wall, hurting her a little. He lowered his face to hers. She wet her lips and kept them open and his mouth came down and she began to dart her hot little tongue rapidly in and out of his mouth.
He pulled away, his eyes bugging. "Teach you ... whew!"
"Again."
"Oh, no!"
He turned, releasing her and walked across the room and stood in the corner faced away from her.
"A little girl like you shouldn't know how to kiss like that."
She slipped up behind him, hugged him around the waist and giggled. "But I DO know how."
He pulled her locker fingers loose, turned on her, shaking his head. "A little baby like you shouldn't fool around that way. Why, you're just a kid."
"I got you hot."
"Just don't do that with a guy."
"Don't you like doing it with me? Wouldn't you like to neck a lot with me? I'll let you feel me naked all over. Wouldn't you LIKE to, Chaz? Here.... She pulled the low neckline of her leotard out a few inches. "Just see how soft and warm they are."
He swayed, tried to look past her, then dropped his eyes and looked into the opening. A grin tickled his mouth, then he sobered, then he frowned. "I oughtn't to."
"Cross my heart if I ever tell. Don't be scared, Chaz...." She looked at him tenderly. "I wouldn't ever do anything to get you in trouble."
He began to fondle her breasts slowly and lovingly. She danced her legs up and down and crooned softly, feeling delicious. He took her into his arms and held her firm and tight against him and kissed her on the mouth time and again, his hands feverisly caressing her body so that she felt so beautiful she wanted to die. He drew away, his handsome face dead sober, and stared at her face, loving her with his eyes, and suddenly he kissed her again.
Finally, he shook his head, pushing her away. "I gotta go ... I can't stand it ... I neck plenty and I can stop, but I know just one more minute with you and I won't be able to stop." He fled to the door. She ran and caught him.
"Chaz ... I'll be here alone tonight. Come over."
He spun, his eyes blazing. "No. I TOLD you, I couldn't stop with you."
"You won't have to. I'm going to make you happy, Chaz. You come, Chaz, and we'll be lovers. Wouldn't that make you happy, Chaz?"
They could hear the car in the drive. He paused, took a long breath, his eyes calculating something. "I can get away ... yes ... I'll be here ... at nine." He went upstairs.
After dinner, when everything was hectic upstairs with Phyllis and the folks getting ready to go out, Jill shampooed her hair in the basement. She stood drying her hair, gazing at nothing and thinking how it was going to hurt her and feeling how wonderful it was to be a woman and able to take all the suffering for her man so everything would be joy and healing for him.
Although Donny and Patsy, surprisingly, were in bed, Phyllis and the folks didn't get away till 8:20. Jill started her tub and scurried to the bedroom to select her costume. She got out the adorable blue-velvet, silver-brocaded Turkish bedroom slippers with the little curling toes, then gnawed her underlip. That was it. The slippers were the only sexy thing she had. She would smell nice with bubble bath and bath salts and body powder and she'd brush her hair out very fluffy and shadowy around her cheeks and lace a ribbon through it, but her robe was just a plain, straight-cut thing, and she had no pajamas but white and faded pink flannelette things about as inspiring as Donny's and Patsy's sleeper suits. The only colored one had bunnies or ... she whimpered ... clpwn faces printed on them. There was just nothing to do but steal Phyllis' red-satin, gold-flowered ones.
She was standing reed-naked by the tub, a pair of fat bottles at the ends of her agitating thin arms and watching the pink snowstorm of bubble-bath flakes and the green sleetstorm of bath crystals falling into the water when in marched Donny and Patsy, brightly awake and grinning.
"If you don't get back to bed this instant," she told them grimly, "I'll murder you."
They leaped and giggled. When she hustled them back to their beds, paddling them as they went, they howled with joy. They minded Phyllis, but they never took her seriously; she could be made to sing and tell stories and in general turn things into a party when she baby-sat them, and half the time she had to go to sleep with them before they'd settle down. More than once ... she cringed at the thought ... they had insisted on going to sleep on the davenport.
She waited in the bathroom, listening, and they stayed in bed. When she was in the tub they marched in, their sleeper suits off, prepared to climb in with her.
They pestered and pestered and they were wide awake at five of nine and she didn't dare put on Phyllis' pajamas because they would want to know why and she thought she would scream. She got them into their room and was rapidly brushing her hair and trying not to think about the faded pink flannelette pajamas she was wearing. At one minute to nine she went down and opened the door a little and turned all but one lamp off and went to the davenport and Donny and Patsy were lying there I They shrieked with laughter. Chaz wouldn't dare come in ... if he did he'd just have to say he'd dropped by and he'd have to leave because they'd blab it all over and there'd be endless explanations, and Phyllis would know why he had just happened in.
She heard Chaz on the porch and she went to the door and whispered out...."I'll have to get them to sleep."
"I'll wait," he whispered.
She was so nervous she wanted to cry but she took the kids in her arms and lay with them on the davenport and started to sing and there was a chokiness in her throat and her voice was very soft and they rolled warmly against her, soothed and content. She wondered if Chaz could see her and them and if he could hear her song, and maybe ... maybe ... he would not be impatient and angry but soothed too and feel a woman-mother flavor about her.
At last they were asleep, heavily asleep, and she tried to hoist them both and she couldn't. She got Donny up and carried him upstairs and came down for Patsy and Chaz was coming up with her and he looked up into Jill's face soberly, as if he did know her for wife and mother.
It was nothing like she'd planned it, but maybe even better because they were both nervous about the kids waking and coming down. So they went up into her room and shut the door and they both got undressed very fast and then they were under the covers, naked, their arms around each other, feeling each other's bodies while they kissed.
He kept kissing her harder and harder, very warm and she could feel his manhood, very warm and thrusting, and his hands stroked her privately and her desire was like a warm flood deep inside her. If Phyllis and all four of her parents had come into the house and into the room and turned on the lights and thrown back the covers on their naked, intertwined bodies she would not have cared. He was making animal sounds, words too husky and excited to understand and he was slowly turning her over onto her back and her heart was driving clear through her chest and shivers of delicious sensation ran over her flushed skin. In the depth of her belly was a rhythmic tightening and relaxing like a great pulse, and then the focus point of his virile fever touched her there and as he came driving she braced and thrust to meet him. A tiny cry of pain burst involuntarily from her throat, a cry he didn't hear, and her pain vanished under the feel and drive of his powerful excitement and she clung and adjusted her rhythm totally to his and she was gone ... gone ... gone....
They lay together quivering and cooling and she rolled over and kissed his face and shoulders and chest and crouched over him tears in her eyes and stared into his shadowy face and he smiled and was happy and she hugged him close, crying against his shoulder and suddenly everything seemed so good and wonderful.
He phoned home saying he was staying at a friend's, and hid when her parents came home and then stayed till almost dawn and loved her twice again and for the three weeks till his induction he found ways and places to come to her every day, twice a day, and the night before his induction he needed her desperately and she got permission to sleep in the playroom and she left the basement door open for him and they used her practice room and they could not get enough of each other.
And then he was gone and she wrote him every day and then twice a week and then once a week ... then finally not at all. She had understood that he couldn't acknowledge her publicly; but he didn't even write to her. On his short furlough before going overseas he took Phyllis every place, never even once inviting her along, not even for a soda. He wanted to love Jill, but there wasn't any opportunity in the other house, and Phyllis was suspicious and watchful. He wrote Phyllis all the time and included big-brother messages for her, but he only wrote directly to her once. A funny post-card from San Francisco just before he went overseas.
It was a year after Miss Lucienne assured her she was the star pupil that Jill walked into her office one Saturday morning.
Miss Lucienne looked up peevishly. "I've asked you girls a hundred times to knock before entering...."
"I only remember ninety-seven," Jill said flippantly.
"Why aren't you dressed for class? And what are you doing in that ridiculous sweater ... are you wearing falsies?"
"Art's exaggeration, isn't it?"
Miss Lucienne bit back a grin. "Up to a point. Then it gets grotesque ... such as your mouth at this moment. Go wash off a few layers and get into practice clothes."
"Ballet's a bore."
"Worse than that, it's work. Now, scoot, you minx."
"You know what I always really wanted to be...? One of the bunch, a wow-belle ... and I got permission from all my parents to kick this long-hair habit of mine before it gets me."
"You're not amusing me any more, Jill."
"Slip me five, Miss Lucienne ... meaning shake hands and let's call it quits while we both got all our hair."
"Just what is this role, Jill?"
"They been sendin' but I ain't been receiving ... but I got the message to get normal and that's what I'm gonna get ... zoof-kaput ... it zings and swings, real life. I ain't no abnormal eccentric little snob ... I'm with it...."
"Well, be with it, then. The last thing in the world I want to do is interfere with anyone's strivings toward mediocrity. Be just as cheap as you please ... but get out of my sight!"
"See ya later, alligator!"
Jill flipped her hips and turned to go out and Miss Lucienne came out of the chair and yanked her around and slapped her face, her own face white and quivering:
"Damned if I'll let you! If they've gotten to you, I'm going to get you back. Now, you listen to me, listen to me, dear...."
"Don't call me dear!"
"You sit down in that chair ... I shouldn't have slapped you, but ... now, listen to me."
"It comes out exactly what you are, Miss Lucienne ... the instant I DARE to be the real me, you despise me and we're enemies. I just thought I'd show you the real me and see if you really cared enough to want me anyway ... and ... and you don't, and we're enemies ... we're just basically WORLDS APART, and that's the way it is. For my part I'm just too damned mad at you to be hurt for a single instant!"
Miss Lucienne stared at her dumbly.
"And you wanted to make me so mad I couldn't feel hurt," she said slowly. "That's it. I see. Do you have to quit? Is that it, have you been ordered to stop your lessons, is that it? Tell me, dear, please ... is it money ...?"
Jill suddenly crumpled. "You see, I'm no artist ... or you couldn't see through me...."
"I know you. I know you couldn't be quitting of your own accord. If it's the cost of your lessons, you're on full scholarships from now on. Understand?"
"It's punishment. A year. One full year. And I'm not allowed to discuss it."
"I'll speak to your parents."
"It won't do any good. They thought you'd try and speak to them and they warned me it wouldn't do any good."
"I'm sure nothing you could have done merits such a punishment as this."
"What I did happened months ago and they just found out last week and they've been after me to admit how wrong I was. If I'd have admitted how wrong it was they wouldn't have punished me. They said it's either-or ... and I've just been going CRAZY, Miss Lucienne. You see, I KNOW that I did a GOOD and not a bad thing ... and I kept thinking all I have to do is say what they want to hear and I wouldn't have to give up my dancing ... I thought if I have to give up dancing I want to die, and all I have to do to keep my dancing is just to say something beautiful was really ugly. It would just be words and I wouldn't mean them and they wouldn't count and I could save my dancing, but I couldn't do it. And I turned against my d-dancing...." Her voice suddenly wailed and she burst into sobs. While Miss Lucienne was comforting her, Jill kept thinking that if she'd had it to do over she'd have lied, that nobody really cared if a thing was true or not, all they wanted was pretenses to make themselves feel good....
Within three months her parents, all four of them, relented, and she resumed her dancing with redoubled effort. She said to Phyllis: "It was wrong to hurt you, and I apologize ... I'm sorry I hurt you. But hurting you was the only wrong thing about it."
"And I apologize for ever saying," Phyllis told her coolly, "that you should get out of your arty world. That's where you belong. You're immoral."
"Well, anyway I'm not a fake."
She went to New York with Miss Lucienne when she was seventeen. At that time there were three major companies. She auditioned and was accepted in the company with which Miss Lucienne had been associated for several years. Her sense of arrival began to disintegrate early in the first season. The company's policy had shifted since Miss Lucienne's time. The emphasis was on glamor-name "guest stars" for the sake of box office draw. There was a subordination of the company's own top dancers and failure to develop its many fine soloists, and the neglect extended down to the corps where Jill, with most of the other girls, came to feel that they were just filling costumes. The morale was very bad and it was reflected in the corps, the real backbone of any company. They knew their work was sloppy and, worse, that nobody seemed to care. So that while the ballerina of the evening was taking a dozen curtain calls to roaring, bravo-splashed ovations, the rest of the company sulked inwardly.
Jill auditioned for another company and was accepted. Her salary was less but she soon came to feel that it was the finest ballet company that had ever existed. It was a little skimpy on top, boasting only one dancer of prima rank, and it was constantly short of good male dancers, but the spirit that bound them all together was unique. Every dancer in the corps was capable of solo work, and every dancer knew she'd get a chance. In one production a girl might have second or third feature role and in the next she would be working just as hard as an inconspicuous member of the corps. She had been given chances at solo variations her first season, and she had featured roles in her second and third seasons. Then, as if following some immutable law of fate, the perfection began to disintegrate. The other companies began to pick off key dancers and though they were quickly replaced, and though the corps was kept vital with fresh new talents from the large school which was run in conjunction with the company, the mood was lost. Finances were always a problem and costumes and sets had begun to show signs of dowdiness and some of the new ballets which they were always presenting got bad pannings. A new management came in and "organized" everything. The costumes got brighter, the new works fewer and less original, tight lines of hierarchy were drawn, publicity mills began to "build" two or three "names" ... public opinion engineers advised a shift in programming toward more "Saturday night" fare, with I the happy intention of eliminating all the works with undue subtlety or abstract themes.
The director made a breezy "good guy" speech: " ... ballet is now a popular art form. We belong to the people, and as a good rule of thumb we must ask ourselves ... Does Joe Blow like this, does he understand it, does he approve? If not, it's out!"
"Me, too," Jill murmured. , "What're you, a snob?" one of the girls asked her resentfully. "Yes."
And so was Madame Petrovna, if snob meant trying to hold to high standards. Jill had worked herself into such a seething resentment that she had hung up her dancing shoes and taken a clerking job in a Fifth Avenue dress shop. She had caught Madame with a sketch pad.
"The management would throw you out if they caught you stealing that pattern," Jill had said, grinning.
"But you're on my side, eh? I can see you know what makes this a seven-hundred-dollar dress. Five dollars material, ten dollars workmanship, six-hundred-eighty-five-dollars publicity ... I've seen you, haven't I? Second violin in Concerto Barocco ... Jill Braddock?"
"Mm-hm."
"What are you doing in this place? Did you injure yourself, poor girl?"
"Not where it shows. I just got sick of what's happening in ballet ... and tired, tired of dancing the same old stuff...."
"Ah! So that's it! Jill Braddock, I love you. You're going to dance with us. Here ... here's my card...."
"Le Ballet Unique?" Jill read. "What is it ... not one of those barefoot ballet outfits ...?"
Madame was amused. "Well, now, before you dismiss us with a ready-made sneer, come and see for yourself. We're performing Friday night. Here, let me write you out a pass." Handing her the pass Madame said: "Incidentally, my girls rarely dance barefoot ... and never in those clumsy torture-box toe shoes."
The atmosphere in the little school-theater where Madame then had quarters was stark almost to the point of hostility to the audience. At a generous estimate there were fifty spectators scattered around on the rows of straight chairs. All the works listed on the mimeographed program were by Serena Petrovna. There was a stage area, but no stage or curtain, no settings, no special lighting effects. A piano provided the music for two of the works, a tape recorder served for the third. The total company seemed to consist of no more than twelve dancers. They came through a door in one wall, like students coming in for a gym class, took positions and began to dance. It was so absurd and amateurish that Jill stayed through the whole program only out of professional courtesy. Afterwards, she met the dancers, none of whom made any impression on her and she fled quickly.
On the street she laughed and shook her head pityingly, then she became angry at the thought of innocent students, some of whom had revealed flashes of ability, in the hands of the old charlatan. Going to bed she remembered and couldn't understand the dedicated mood of the dancers. She hoped the old fool showed herself at the dress shop again, but she didn't come. Jill put the whole affair out of mind. But the performance kept coming back, ... like a bad taste, she told herself.
There had been a few interesting uses of the body, and quite a number of unusual steps. She found herself trying some of them. The choreographic patterns had been interesting and imaginative with very few banalities. The treatment had originality. Each work, she began to sense, formed a distinct whole, and it hadn't violated the music as badly as Jill had first thought. Yes, once she got away from conventional balletic language as she had learned it, she had to admit that what the ballet had set out to do, it had done in its own terms.
She had had to go to another performance. What the miserable little company and the impossible old woman were trying to achieve, and sometimes really achieving, was pure beauty.
She stayed late after that performance to tell Madame Petrovna what she thought of her. Madame was as pleased as a child. "Jill, you must join us."
"I think I'd like to. But...."
"You must. Do you know what I said when I first saw you in Concerto Barocco? 'How can that sweet foolish face understand Bach? No one so pretty can possibly have had the will to achieve such flawless technique. But here she is. The perfect dancer'!"
"The perfect dancer! Please," Jill laughed.
"Yes, of course. An emotional judgment. I even thought, thank God she didn't come to me for her first lessons. I'd have ruined you. I couldn't have borne imposing the necessary discipline."
"You could have." Jill smiled at her, admiringly. "From what I've seen of your work, I know."
"After seeing you and knowing how impossible it would be to get you I came back here to the studio feeling sick. I wanted to close the school and give up."
Jill looked at her uneasily, shifted her eyes and said, "I'm afraid your personal reaction to me is stronger than I would like. I'm sorry."
"Wait. Sit back, child. I'm not an old bull, I promise you. Nothing like that," she said earnestly. "It would be un-esthetic for me to love you in that way. Lesbianism, except between near-equals in beauty, is revolting. My intense reaction was to you as a dancer, and to the dance itself. That particular ballet is exquisite, and though recent it's in the classical tradition. Half my strength has come from opposing the classical in ballet. Yet my own dancing was in that tradition and while I fight it I loved it deeply. To see so beautiful an example of the thing I'm opposing in my own work shook my confidence deeply. And to have seen you, a pure, fresh talent there in the other camp ... well, we barely survive here at best ... and it seemed suddenly hopeless. The direction I'm going seemed wrong or meaningless...."
"Well, it's not meaningless," Jill told her with conviction. "It's vital. And it's going somewhere ... I don't know where, but that not-knowing-where is going to be its greatest challenge...."
"Then you'll come in with us! Jill, Jill, this gives me life. And you, my precious, I'll do everything in my power to gain the highest recognition for you. Together, Jill...." She broke off, emotionally distraught, and just smiled with dumb joy, and Jill embraced her.
The years with her had been vital. There was a steady ferment of new ideas, a constant sense of achievement and stimulation in shaping the ideas into new realities of dance. They had begun to receive more critical attention and in two Town Hall concerts they'd got excellent reviews from three highly-regarded critics. None Of the artistic recognition translated itself into general popularity and the struggle for money was constant. They seemed always on the verge of collapse, but far from demoralizing them it had fused them more closely.
All the dancers, including Jill, were on $100 a week salary and here in Las Vegas the surplus went into the school-theater new-works fund. That was the kind of company Le Ballet Unique was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jill finished dressing and left the suite to go down to breakfast with the company, resolved that neither Mark nor any of the other false fevers of the Vegas Strip could divide her loyalties. The expression on her valentine face deliberately stated her inner mood of dedication. Leaving the elevator and crossing the lobby, noisy and surging with aimless people, she was only remotely aware of the usual oglers and when a half-drunk lout in tight jeans and cowboy boots moved toward her with a "Hello, there," she veered away and continued imperturbably. At the large round table reserved for them at a window beside one of the hotel's swimming pools, Madame and Renee and Vincent were reading mail, the others were chatting and having coffee. Greeting everyone pleasantly she took her place, pushed aside a stack of mash notes and sipped at the coffee, now lukewarm, that had been ordered for her. Madame, whose gypsyish gold-hoop earrings belied the plainness of her suit and simple blouse, smiled at her cautiously. Jill gave her a frank, steady smile.
"What I think we should do," Jill said, shifting her attention easily to the others, "is go light on breakfast, get a rehearsal room and do a little work on something beside this thing we're doing here. Performing the same thing over and over three times a day is beginning to distort our total viewpoint and to stale us." She noticed a little twist around Paul's mouth, and frowned: "All right ... what?"
"You get a hangover and everybody else has to go on the wagon. Vince and Charlie and I were going to take an excursion up to Hoover Dam, and Viola's got a date with a viola player."
"HORN player ... that gag gets a LEEETLE unfunny after about five years."
Jill turned her palms up and lifted her shoulders. "You have a point, Paul. I'm fed up with all the distractions around here ... so I want to spoil everybody else's fun."
"Still and all," Paul said, "you're probably right."
"I really haven't got anything important to do," Renee said.
After a few moments all of them began to enthuse about getting back to serious work. Jill was appalled to realize that she'd expected and wanted them to protest, leaving her free for Mark.
"Well, then," Jill said, "it's settled. If we can't get a rehearsal room we'll use the suite."
"Great! Meantime," Viola said happily, "can we go through your fan mail? Maybe there's another oil billionaire."
Jill parceled the mash notes out to the three girls. She glanced toward the restaurant entrance thinking she saw Mark ... but it wasn't he.
"This one," Renee cried, waving the letter, "wants you to marry him. How many's that make, now ... eight, nine?"
"You marry that one," Jill said distractedly.
Karen squealed: "Listen to this! Oh, I can't read it out LOUD. Look, Jill."
Jill pushed the note away. "I don't even want to see it ... throw it away!"
"HEY," Charlie protested.
Jill shrugged. "Pass them around, then, then throw them away."
A waitress took the orders and Jill found herself looking out at the brightly sunlighted pool where some men and girls were cavorting and scores of other people drank and ate at the poolside tables. Why, she thought idly, did women with figures like that choose the skimpiest bikinis? She bit her inner cheek to keep from smiling at Mark's proposing to get her an engagement ring, mink coat, bikini.
"I'll read this letter from the school out loud," Madame Petrovna announced. Jill, along with the others became attentive. It was a report of affairs in the various classes from Joyce Caylee, who wrote in the same droning, almost grim style in which she talked. A really stupid girl, Jill reflected, although, until she'd injured herself she'd been a splendid dancer. To face it, Karen and Viola, and even Renee, sometimes made her think of the saying that children and dancers should be seen and not heard. They read practically nothing ... even dance magazines had no interest except for the pictures. Karen felt intellectual after a session with the gory comic books she liked. Aside from herself Paul was the only one of them who even read newspapers and magazines, and like Jill he had read every volume in Madame's library of dance literature ... and in truce periods she could discuss the dance in abstraction with him as well as ideas outside the dance. But, to face it, he was the only one, Jill realized guiltily, there wasn't one of them she'd have chosen for a personal friend. Only as dancers did she like any of them.
"You dope," Paul was saying to Viola, "this isn't a pash note, it's a personal letter. Here, Jill."
Frowning, she took the letter:
Dear Jill:
Long time no see, like they say. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the home town paper way out here in L. A. where I am out on a convention, to see that none other than the leggy-doll-with-pipe-cleaner-legs ... boy, you didn't like that crack, ha ha, though meant in the best intentions ... is making good in a great big way over in the Entertainment Capital of the U.S.A., and being this close, kid, I don't want to pass up seeing you. My old man died, I guess you know, and I got the whole biz. I'm fixed real good and can show you a good time right up with the best of the big-shot wolves that you're probably (word crossed out) got on a string now. Remember ... ha ha ... I'm you're big brother, so will see you, little sis, this Sunday. Your everloving Chaz. P. S. Phyllis got your letter Christmas and will get around to answering soon, she is just fine, but could not make the trip here ... I thought she'd like it if I dropped in to say hello. Just a joke, of course, about showing you a good time in the wolf way. Best regards, Chaz (Charles) Lelfer.
She reread it, feeling vaguely sick at her stomach at his change of tone in the P. S....as if he'd had the cagey little thought that she might forward the letter to Phyllis.
"My brother-in-law," she explained, looking around at the others and pocketing the letter. "He's at a convention in Los Angeles and he's coming over Sunday."
"Is he the terribly handsome one?"
"Oh, he's good-looking...." She stopped talking and her face became tight-cheeked as she stared up at Mark. He stood grinning beside her and holding a large cardboard box on his arms, a pair of smaller boxes on top of it.
"Good-looking?" he said. "All bridegrooms are beautiful...."
"Mark," she said coolly, "I asked you not to come here. Go away."
Madame stared up at him with pale fury, her mouth compressed, her dark eyes burning.
"She asked you to leave. If you don't, I shall have you thrown out."
He bowed slightly from the waist. "It would be a great show, I assure you. And much publicity for Le Ballet Unique."
Madame flushed and dropped her eyes. Mark, aware of the other girls watching him expectantly, made a hammy, flourishing bow toward Jill, flipped open the small jeweler's box and set it before her, announcing: "The ring." She snapped the box shut.
He got the large box open and started to lift out the coat, saying: "The mink coat."
Jill jumped to her feet, pushed roughly against him and left the restaurant. She could feel him at her heels. The restaurant manager stepped forward, frowning. "Is he bothering you, Miss Braddock?"
"Y-No ... No ... I know him."
"A lover's spat," Mark said with an airy smile. "Relax."
Crossing to the elevators with him beside her she peered up into his grinning face. "Have you got any idea how you look, following me this way with that coat wadded into that box under your arm with a sleeve hanging out?"
"Grotesque?"
"Yes. So why don't you stop it?"
"Tiger by the tail. At this stage all I can do is grin and hang on. Couldn't you laugh it up gaily or something?"
"Help you fake it up to look like a gay party? I'm glad everybody in the place is laughing at you."
"No pity, baby?" he said, still grinning, but less confidently.
"Pity I I begged you not to come. You came. I asked you to go. Madame told you to go. You threatened to make a big commotion that would smear us all with bad publicity if we called for help. You cheap bully I Well, if you try following me into the elevator we'll just see how big a man you are against the swarm of casino guards I'm going to scream for. We'll see if you can just steamroller your way...."
"Good lord, Jill, baby ... I told you I had a tiger by the tail ... I didn't know where to stop...."
"Before you began. You knew your coming would upset me...."
"Sure ... sure, I knew you'd be sore, but I thought I could make you laugh ... and then the thing soured and I kept trying to right it, and it kept getting worse. Can't you see? Didn't you ever have a performance get off to a bad start and you couldn't get it right and you couldn't quit? Let me go up with you."
She stopped short of the elevators and looked at him gravely for several moments. "Well," she said, finally, "maybe I'm too harsh with you ... ride up with me." She reached over and put her hand in his.
Stepping off the elevator with her he said, "I'll wait here and take a car down in a few minutes."
"You needn't do that." She reached up and patted his cheek. "Come to the suite with me ... I think you're more upset than I am."
They went along the corridor silently. He stood by as she unlocked the door of the suite. Leading him inside she took the big coat box, and opened it on the sofa.
"I'll fold this up right and shut the box. These boxes are tricky ... and if you'd like I'll go with you to return it to the shop."
"I won't be embarrassed taking it back. But thanks. It wasn't the people laughing at me down there that got me. : It's what you think of me. Jill, I'm bucking hard for your j approval."
"I know," she said sympathetically. She sat replacing the coat, her slim, quick hands deftly folding, shifting, tamping, smoothing the fur. She was aware of him standing watching her.
"Everything you do is a pleasure to watch."
She smiled up across her shoulder, "I come on too strong all the time. Mess everything up. Wrong time, wrong place...."
He frowned, lit a cigarette. "I dreamed it up that it would overwhelm you, disarm you, melt you down. But of course it was all wrong. Instead of happy, I made you miserable."
She finished the packaging, set the box on the floor and stood up. She patted her jumper pocket, slipped the edge of Chaz's letter out for a moment. "This letter I just got had a lot to do with it. It wasn't all your fault ... maybe I would have melted. Not," she added hastily, "that I'd have accepted the ring."
"But you might except for the fact that I asked you to give up dancing. Well, I'll back-pedal, Jill. We've got eastern racing operations; I could easily headquarter in New York. Dancing and marriage aren't irreconciliable."
"No ... of course not ... but even that. No."
He paced away, saying: "I knew, of course, you weren't saying 'he's good-looking' about me down at the table." He came back, flipped her pocket. "Is he who?"
She nodded. "I was talking about him, but he's my brother-in-law, not a suitor." She frowned, walked away. "He's coming here Sunday and ... and I don't want to see him...." She swung around, suddenly laughing, "Which does not mean, hero, that you're to order him out of the state." She sobered abruptly, her babyish face distressed, her eyes distant and unhappy. "You know, Mark, my sister Phyllis is just about as much older than I am as you are older than Dan ... and Phyllis and I weren't friends at all, not close and loving the way it was with you and your brother ... that's one thing I like terribly about you Mark, the way you feel about him ... the tender way your eyes and voice get when you speak of him ... I...."
She pushed her knuckles against her breast very hard and took a long breath, her face looking drained. Her throat began to choke and before she realized it her eyes had flooded and Mark came quickly to her.
"No, don't let me cry," she said, turning and blotting at her eyes.
He stood by, his hands light on her shoulders. He watched her profile gravely, then bent and kissed her cheek and stroked the soft rounding of her temple. She gave him a grateful, shaky smile. "You've told me so much about your life ... and I've just never given you anything of myself, have I, just the now-me, the purely physical. And the one thing I did just tell you about my non-dancing background is a lie. Phyllis and I were close and loving; she thought I was wonderful and I loved her more than anyone in the world. Then our parents divorced and remarried and there was a joint-custody agreement and from the time I was five we lived in two homes, with two sets of parents. It was hard to adjust, and the hardest part was to feel the proper way about everybody. Both our stepparents were good to us. But still, neither of the new homes were ours. Maybe it wasn't true, but we felt we had to fit in or get thrown out altogether."
"There was always a ... a...." she gestured uncertainly, "a constraint ... a sense of being dressed up. You had to gauge things emotionally; never get too fervent in any direction....I knew girls who thought nothing of wild shrieking fights with their parents. They could hate them all-out, just as they could love them all-out ... and at worst they'd get punishments. They had relationships that COULDN'T be broken. Our homes were really pleasanter than most ... like ads in magazines ... or some of these nice fake TV pictures of life. The real, deep-down truths stayed under careful wraps, unexpressed. You'd think that Phyllis and I would have drawn instinctively closer together and cherished and guarded and built the honest feelings we had for each other. It should have been Phyllis and I loyal to our deepest feelings for each other, loyal against the whole world."
She stopped and stared at Mark dumbly: "I didn't know that," she said tonelessly. "I don't think I ever before realized just how deeply I loved her and how terribly I've felt the loss."
"Loss? You don't mean she's dead ... you don't mean that?"
She shook her head vigorously. "The trouble is we always blamed each other for what we became. She loved my dancing ... then it began to claim all my real feelings ... and she began to hate it and nearly hate me. And I saw her as false in her attitudes toward everybody and everything. Neither of us knew, clearly, that we became what we were as ... as defenses ... as reactions against. Instead of turning against the things that had separated us we turned against ... ea...." Her hands flew to her face as she began to sob brokenly. Her chest and shoulders began to heave. She recoiled from his touch as if burned. When he came again and embraced her strongly, quieting the agitation of her body, she struggled and shook her head violently. "Don't love me," she gasped. "I'm hateful, hateful." Her Voice rose and broke in a wail. "Please go. Leave me alone."
He held her more firmly, stroking and patting her shoulders, murmuring endearments.
She relaxed against him, crying comfortably, and mumbling, "I can't see him, I can't see him." Her body became abruptly rigid. "I CAN'T!"
She pushed free, stared at him with wet eyes. "You've got to take me away, Mark."
"Yes. Whenever you say."
She moved with brittle, stiff-kneed steps toward the first bedroom. "Right now. Somewhere."
"Anywhere."
She came back to him, wiped her cheeks with one sleeve then the other. "You know I have to stay with the company and dance. I can't go any place. Don't cater to me. Say 'Don't be a fool, Jill, don't be a fool.' "
"If you want to be a fool, you be it, baby, hear?"
She nodded distractedly, drew one of her braids across her shoulder and pulled off the pink bow. "I ought to get in rehearsal clothes ... the company's expecting to work a little this afternoon." She laughed shakily and said, "Know how we used to keep our hair from slapping us when we were doing fast turns? Like this." She put her hair in her teeth, placed her feet in preparation for a turn, and executed a spin. Her other braid swung around and slapped her and she bent forward, holding her stomach and giggling. "I forgot that one." She stood upright and found she was trembling all over. Mark stepped to her sympathetically, but she moved away, shaking her head.
He watched her unhappily. "This is how he wallops you, is it!" There was a tight little edge to his voice.
"Oh, Mark, I told you he's my brother-in-law; he's not a suitor ... I've known him since forever."
"And had a crush on him that you never outgrew, from the looks of it." He was looking at her with that clenched expression that distorted his features, and his lips were washed together so tightly that there was a little yellowish rim around his mouth.
His bristling jealousy quickened her. She smiled nervously. "I never had a crush on Chaz. Believe that, Mark."
"Then," he said, visibly relieved, "it's only his connection with your sister? Only because he reminds you of what happened between you and her?"
"That's it," Jill said, and it was almost the truth. "Listen, I hear Madame and the others coming. We'll only work an hour or so. Afterwards we can be together ... play some roulette or whatever we feel like doing till the nine o'clock show." She went over, kissed him and stroked his cheek. "Now go get your money back on that coat."
He grinned wryly. "I couldn't afford it anyway. I tell you ... I'll rent a car and meet you at two-thirty."
"Three'd be better."
"Fine." He picked up the coat box and then waited, watching the door which was being opened.
Madame and the other girls came in. Madame stopped, stared at Mark, at Jill, at Mark again. "How dared you make her cry?" she said in a low, venomous voice.
"He didn't!" Jill said peevishly.
Mark looked seriously at Madame. "Something else made her cry," he said, courteously. "I admit I'm enough to, but as she says, I'm innocent this time. And, Madame Petrovna, and you girls," he included Karen, Renee, Viola, "I want to apologize for the situation I caused downstairs."
"Accepted" Madame said with a terse nod. She turned and moved toward Jill, opening her arms. Jill sidestepped and looked at her warningly. Madame laughed indulgently, looking at Mark. "Isn't she pretty when she sulks?"
"She is that!"
Madame stepped in close beside Jill, locked an arm around her waist and kissed her temple. "I think she's punishing me because she imagines she wants a man in her life and I simply can't share her ... you do understand, Mr. Riddigger?"
Karen and Viola looked embarrassingly at each other and stood rooted; Renee looked ready to faint. Jill, her face slowly reddening, could feel Madame's fingers clawed possessively into the flesh under her ribs. Mark was the only one in the room who didn't know just what it was Madame was trying to tell him.
"I think I can prove to you in time, Madame Petrovna, that my influence on her will be beneficial rather than...."
"Not to Madame," Jill said rapidly. "No one can prove to her that we're not children whose whole lives should consist of dancing classes and performances ... fortunately we don't pay any attention to her. Now, we really must get into work clothes, Mark. See you at three."
When he was gone Jill said, "Girls, I'll be right in ... if you want to start getting changed...."
"And I'd better get out the tapes and recorder," Madame said busily, avoiding Jill's eyes. "We'll be using the suite here."
The moment they were alone Jill seized the lapels of Madame's suit in both fists and shook her violently. "I could kill you for that," she hissed. She stared at her with hard, implacable eyes, her babyish mouth tightening. "What a loathsome thing you tried to do to me. I'll never forgive you, Madame."
"I know," Madame said in a sick tone, her eyes lowered.
"What have you come to that you could do that to me."
"I don't know, I swear I don't know. I'm crazy. I need you now, Jill. Oh, God, doesn't this prove how desperately I need you ... don't abandon me. I'm ill. You're my whole life! If you don't stand by me now I'll kill...."
Jill mashed her hand across Madame's mouth. "Don't you dare threaten me that way!" She took her hand away. "Aren't you ashamed?"
"I didn't mean that. Listen, Jill. It's not so bad. He didn't understand. Nothing's been ruined for you. It was wicked of me. Ugly. But I shall be everything I ever was. I'll bring out the finest in me ... for you...."
"Not for me. For your own dignity! Please, Madame Petrovna."
"Yes. For me. For its own sake. Jill, it wasn't so that you can never forgive me, was it? Say it."
"No," she said unhappily. "It wasn't so."
"I know how I hurt you, how I disappoint you. But from now on ... will you believe me, trust me?" She smiled coaxingly.
Jill laughed. "All right." She went through to her room to change clothes. She was a little feverish and shaky, tired before the day really began.
When Jill opened the door of the second bedroom she saw Karen brandishing a cloth belt and swaggering, thin and leggy, in high heels, bra and panties, while Viola, barefoot and wearing only a wide green skirt, backed away, giggling excitedly and holding her naked breasts ... protectively but with her fingers outspread to reveal them teasingly. Renee, fully dressed and pink in the face, was loooking modestly away. Jill slammed the door, and glared at Karen who gave her a defiant grin.
"I was showing her how I'd handle Madame if she was my slave. Why the hell didn't you smack her around? She's got no right to advertise your private life with her."
"There is no private life," Jill said coldly.
"No kidding?" Karen said, peering suspiciously at Jill. She twisted her arms up her back, unhooked her bra. She glanced over at Renee. "Not even with HER?"
"With nobody."
Karen took off the bra, rolled her palms on her small breasts, looked interestedly at Jill's face. Her gaze dropped to her feet and came up again slowly. Jill was suddenly aware that it was a stroking, sensual gaze. Karen glanced over at Renee and grinned. "Forgive me, forgive me, Renee. I've chopped off your breasts and tail and arms and legs and head; I've murdered you slowly at least fifty times for sleeping in here right next to the honeypot, and...." she began to laugh hilariously, "all the time that's all you were doing ... sleeping. Renee, what's your psychiatrist say about you, anyhow?"
Viola, whose face had gradually been crumpling, leaped at Karen. She locked her arms around her and hurling herself backward onto the bed pulled Karen down on top of her. Viola's bare legs came out of her skirt in a wide split, then wrapped themselves up around the thinner girl. She got fistfuls of Karen's hair and pulled her face down to her own. There was a long, clinging kiss. Karen, her knees partially under her, her bottom aloft, gradually let herself down into the fork of Viola's thighs.
Renee turned scarlet and gasped: "Get off my bed!"
Karen turned her face, flushed and grinning. "Jealous?" She dropped her lips to Viola's open mouth, again.
Jill ran into the bathroom, came back with a glass of icewater and sloshed it at the sides of their faces.
They broke and got up. Karen spoke laughingly. "C'mon, Vi, we're getting these lovers too pashy!"
Jill seized her arm, yanked her around and double-slapped her face with palm and back of her right hand while she slammed her left palm against Karen's chest, pushing her back. She kept pushing her roughly back till she thudded against the wall, then in a blaze of fury she pummeled her belly and ribs with her fists. Jill stepped back, her lovely face flushed, her lush mouth open and trembling, her little fists tight, threatening. The fierceness of her eyes seemed to rivet Karen to the wall, stunned. "I told you we're not lovers." Karen dodged to one side as Jill feinted with one fist. "Apologize to Renee."
"Just a gag. But ... sorry!"
"Now to me."
"Sorry."
"I ought to...." She reached, fingers poised, claw-like, for one of Karen's breasts. As Karen twisted away, shielding herself, Jill dropped her hands. "Oh, this is no good." She walked away, then back to Karen. "Did I hurt you?"
Karen jerked her shoulders, her mouth trembling.
"Not much."
"Let's see." She took her gently by the arm, walked with her into the bathroom. She peered closely at her, touched her ribs gingerly. "Hurt?"
Karen shook her head, blinking back tears. She laughed, pointed to the door where Viola and Renee stood watching. "Get them ... God, I'm not dead ... nothing broken ... maybe it'll bruise a little but no place the costume doesn't cover. All's well, gang. Let's not be mad, Jill. I know I got way out of line...."
"I shouldn't have lost my head either."
"If we didn't fight a little we wouldn't be human. We better get going, I guess. What're you going to wear, leotard and tights, or sweat suit?"
"Leotard and tights."
Karen started out, turned and said casually. "Uh ... Vi and me just horse around a little. It's nothing. Nothing, really."
"Sure not," Jill said, smiling. Alone with Renee she shook her head dismally.
"Nothing!" Renee said disgustedly. "Boy, they're across the line if anybody ever was." She shuddered and looked at Jill who had taken off her jumper and was standing in panties and blouse. "You've got the prettiest legs I ever saw, and the sweetest mouth; and naked you're just gorgeous. So, the next thing I know I'm going to be lying in that bed and think like she said ... 'I'm right next to the honeypot' ... Madame can't stay away ... now it's Karen...." She shuddered again. "Is that what's going to happen to ME?"
"Don't be silly, Renee. Aren't you going to change?"
"I don't want to dance. I wish I'd never THOUGHT of becoming a dancer. I hate it! I HATE IT."
"You're all upset. But you mustn't be hysterical."
"Hysterical. Oh, that's a laugh. I see something as clear as that sunshine out there and you think that's hysterical! If I shut my eyes and quit seeing what I see, that will be sound, calm good sense. You know what I think? You really want to know what I think about this company?"
"Don't say it! We can't let ourselves think it, we mustn't let ourselves think it."
"Jill, you can positively hypnotize everybody into anything, but you know who I think is the worst hypnotized of all of us? You. That Mark Riddigger is utterly insane about you, but you try to chase him away ... and for what? Le Ballet Unique ... some ballet company!"
"You'll feel better after we work."
"That's the hell of it. I'll get all enthused again ... and again and again, and all the while it'll be sucking me in deeper and deeper till I'm as queer as Madame and Paul and Vinnie and Vi and Karen. Maybe it's already got you, too, from the way you're chasing off a real man. Don't you even want to sleep with him?"
Jill laughed. "Oh, you sweet innocent."
"Really!" She blinked happily. "When?"
"No details!"
"Purty please, Jill. Aren't I your best friend? You told me about your brother-in-law."
"Not so LOUD! Good lord, if one of them heard it and it ever got around to Mark ... he mustn't ever know I had anything to do with Chaz. There'd be real trouble Sunday."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Chaz's arrival was almost an anticlimax. On Friday the Las Vegas Sun ran a rave review about Jill. The Desert Eagle Hotel management emblazoned her name in the feature spot and the displays all over the lobby, and everywhere she looked, showed her picture, captured at the most wanton part of her dance in the finale.
Mr. Dolver, a bald pudgy Hollywood scout who, after her first show in Vegas had offered her a screen test with a prospective $500 a week contract, reappeared. It was Saturday afternoon. Jill came up the ladder out of the swimming pool in the bikini she had finally accepted from Mark. It was little more than a pair of pink ribbons, the lower one dropping in front into a lustrous triangle in the center. There were tiny side ties that left most of her hips exposed and as she came out of the pool, her lovely bare body gleaming in the brilliant sunshine, scores of eyes were on her, foremost among them Mark's. She posed briefly, her fingers resting lightly on the handholds at her side, a knee bent gracefully, and one hip higher than the other so that there was an enticing slant to her pelvis and a cute little tilt to her navel.
"The slobs have ogled enough," Mark said, moving to her and putting her robe around her. Dropping to one knee, he slipped her sandals on, then stood smirking with possessiveness. He started her back to their table for a drink, when Mr. Dolver approached.
"Miss Braddock, you remember me?"
Jill paused and nodded. Mark looked at him impatiently.
"You know your show here was filmed." She knew. "I had them roll your act for me. I have authorization to offer you a contract without any further screen test."
"As I told you," she began, shaking her head....
"Not five hundred a week," he said. "Two thousand. A week."
Mark frowned at him, then looked quizzically at Jill.
"It's not the money ... I'm just not interested...."
Not an inch of her body showed, but as he stared, his eyes, enormous behind thick glasses, fixed on her face, his breathing quickened. His mouth opened slightly and his tongue lay near the opening like an obscene third lip.
"Not interested? Two thousand a week? What you got----"
"Movies aren't in my plans at all."
"Wait. What you got for the American public, little lady, it's special...."
"Thank you, but my medium is the stage, the dance."
"And now, Mr. uh-," Mark said, "she's told you movies aren't in her plans ... and if it's money she's after, I'm in spitting distance of twenty millionaires she could get just by wiggling a toe."
"Sure, sure, but what you got, Miss Braddock...." he wet his lips...."that exciting gorgeous baby face you've got ... it's like, it's better than Lolita."
"Sorry...."
"What are your plans, Miss Braddock....?"
"None of your goddamned business. If you don't quit bothering her I'll throw you in the pool...."
At the table she said: "Are you going to be like that tomorrow? With Chaz?"
"I promised not to."
"You'll let us be alone without being suspicious?"
"Without being suspicious? I don't care who he is, even if he was your brother instead of brother-in-law, I'd be suspicious of him alone with you." He waved at the surrounding tables. "There's not two men here would could be trusted alone with you! Hell, you're the hottest thing in the hottest town in the country."
"Oh, hot." She said disgustedly. "Do you trust me?"
"Well...." He looked uncertainly at her. "I should, shouldn't I?"
"Listen, would it relieve your mind if I put that ring on?"
"Jill!" He blossomed. "Babeeee...."
"I'll put it on. Consider myself engaged to you. About marriage, I'm not ready to say, but I'll accept the ring, Mark. That should assure you that I don't intend to...." she broke off with a wry grin. "Does it assure you?"
"Yes, of course, darling," he said happily. "Let's go up to the room and get the ring...."
"Oh, you can just bring it down," she teased. "If that's all you'll be wanting to do."
He grinned lecherously, Jill got up.
"Promenade slowly, baby," he whispered, "I want all these bastards that ain't got you to suffer hard. Like you make 'em suffer while you're up on that stage and they can't get at you."
Waiting for the hotel limousine to bring Chaz in from' the airport she sat playing roulette.
"Cash in!" Mark said. "That calm of yours makes me nervous."
She sighed, stood up, stacking her chips. "Cash me in," she said, smiling across at the dealer. While he was counting her chips she stood twisting her engagement ring around and around on her finger. Mark, who had been pacing endlessly out to the lobby and back to the roulette table, had gone over to a row of idle slot machines.
Jill spilled her payoff in silver dollars into her purse and went over to Mark feeding three half-dollar slots as fast as he could get the coins in and the levers pulled.
"What makes you nervous is Chaz's coming."
He reached over and took one of her hands, shuffled his thumb across her fingertips, released her hand. "Cold. I knew the calm was fake." He fed the machines, ignoring the coin clatter of a small payoff. "And every time I walked away from that table and came back, you had the stone of the ring turned down out of sight."
He looked squarely at her, his straight thick brows and straight thin mouth mask-like, immobile.
"You consider that significant?" she said, dropping her gaze, stroking noisily at her taffeta skirt, a modified knee-length bubble, in bold black and white blocks. It was new, new for Chaz, she realized guiltily. Just as were the delicate high-heel bareback sandals with the pair of crossed silver laces across the base of her toes. She rarely wore colored polish, but her toenails shone a vivid red through expensively sheer new nylons. The bodice of the dress was a black clinging knit material and she wore no bra so that each breast with its round base and perfect conical tapering was fully and sensually outlined. Mark's glance touched each breast and his mouth tightened at one corner as if they might give a bitter milk.
"That's a nasty look," she said resentfully.
"Suddenly you don't seem to want to hide much ... except my diamond. That isn't significant?"
"If we're going in for interpretations, it may mean I want a plain band," Jill said airily. "A wedding band. Maybe that's what I wish it was."
"Well...." he was uncertain. " ... maybe it does ... but WHOSE wedding ring?"
She let her breath in exasperation, spun and walked away from him, her long-waisted upper body stretching high. She glanced at her hair-do in a mirror, fluffed it with a dainty fluttering of her long fingers. She flicked a glance over at a nearby display case advertising the Orbit Room show, and there, half lifesize, was her picture, her face compelling and overpoweringly bitchy. She moved on and began an aimless promenade, aware of the honed elegance of her lower legs, the heightened allure of her feet in delicate bareback high-heel sandals. Old and young, fat and thin, dry and robust men watched and wanted her; and women, thkk and reed-like, plain and pretty, in slacks and swim suits and jeans and mink and tailored suits and sloppy shirts, glanced at her and glanced again, admiring or envious or secretly lusting. Mark fell in beside her.
"You really do know you're something now, don't you?" Mark said, tightly.
"They know it, you know it, why shouldn't I know it?"
"It's his coming that throws you, Jill," he accused.
She paused, took a stance with a square, fluted gold column as background.
"Oh, how nice and simple. Didn't you wonder why I had breakfast with you today and yesterday, you alone, not with the company? No, naturally. Just your massive allure, you assumed. Well, Ballet Unique is dead. I'm completely alienated. It's all friction and pulling apart and turning ugly ... I can't explain it all to you ... but every relationship is going to pieces and...." She drew a long breath, looked with angry scorn at the nearest of the gawkers who had clotted nearby to eavesdrop. She turned and walked out of the lobby, around to the side of the hotel and into the bright, sunlit floral gardens. Mark came along, remaining a pace behind, saying nothing. She stopped at a vacant bench, didn't sit. Her eyes gazed aimlessly out over the opulent setting. "I knew from the beginning this place would kill us...." she said calmly. "I'm glad to know the truth. If we had been all I thought we were, no outside force could have broken us."
"You mean you're really breaking it up?"
"No ... no. I don't know what I mean." She pressed her hand flat to her abdomen. "I just feel it, that it's gone, the thing we were, the meaning we had ... whether we'll ever get it back...." she broke off, shaking her head. "Maybe," she added hopefully, "I'm just tired. As far as being personally thrown, I'm not. I'm just waking up to what I am. If you have any questions about what I am, look at the lobby displays, read the article in the Vegas Sun ... and did you see the write-up and the pictures in the Los Angeles Herald this morning? There's only one part of the production that anybody sees and that's the abandoned, wanton, all-out sex. No other value, no other meaning matters ... it's just build-up for that hot-bitch-super-strip-teaser dance." For a moment her face was stark. Then she grinned. "Well, so, once I was a dancer that I was proud to be ... once I was ... but my only smash success WOW is as a fraudulent whore who excites 'em and gives 'em nothing. As you put it, I make 'em suffer. Well, that's the way to be, I know from experience, that's the way to be, wherever you go, whatever you do, that's the way to be. Ask Chaz when he arrives...."
"You didn't give him 'nothing', I take it," Mark said stiffly.
"All right. I lied. He was my lover. The first. I thought it meant something. He was going away to Korea to be killed and I thought it meant something and I loved him and loved him with all my heart ... and my body. She didn't. Phyllis teased and gave nothing. But ask him which of us was the good girl."
He looked away from her. "I was right," he said in an almost inaudible voice. "I was right, all right." He looked gravely into her eyes. "I think you should give me the ring back, Jill, not because this makes me reject you; not because of that at all."
She blinked dumbly at him, then her face flattened and she began to pull the ring off, her cheeks red, her breath quickening. "Here!" She slapped the ring into his hand, spun away. He danced rapidly sideward, turned, blocking her.
"What I mean," he said earnestly, "is that the ring's no good. Wearing it, you'll be loyal to me. I know you will, darling. But will it be true, that loyalty? Or just a shield. I'll risk it all ... if your feelings are such that ... that you still want to go to bed with him...."
"I don't. Never. But you have your ring. It's none of your business."
"You understand me, Jill; stop the fake martyred pose. You know what I mean."
"I don't love him. I despise him."
"Then it'll be easy to prove it to yourself. You'd never be happy with me or anybody else if your real feelings...."
"All right." She cut him off. "If you're not scared, I'm not."
"I am scared." He laughed. He took a handkerchief and touched his eyes without trying to hide it. "I'm scared as HELL, baby."
She caught his hands in hers and squeezed, gazing intently at him. "You love me to death, don't you?"
"You genius!"
"
"And I'll tell you the truth, I know now that I love you...."
"Don't lie to yourself. Selling yourself on that is the same as wearing the ring ... there, I think that's the airport limousine. Go to him. Jill, I want you to KNOW."
"Where will you be?"
"Gambling. Drinking."
"But not crazy. Don't be romantic!"
"Moderation is my motto."
She laughed and kissed him quickly. "This is what I want to do, to find out. I was scared to. Lover," she said caressingly, "you give me guts." She walked away.
CHAPTER NINE
Chaz was ... her breath caught ... handsomer than ever. He wore tooled leather loafers, tan slacks and a Hawaiian shirt. He moved with a casual, nearly slouchy ease and his hair, cropped in the same way but a shade less blond, shone dazzling in the sunlight and his ears still had that nice pink clean look and the cleft in his chin that somehow went with a girl's widow's peak was ingratiating, and his smile when he saw her was bright with pleasure. They hurried toward each other, wordless and grinning, their arms reaching. They came to a stop a foot apart and his hands fitted warmly to the curve of her ribs and stroke-patted, and she put her hands on him in the same way. He grinned down, his eyes washed-blue and affectionate.
"Hi, leggy doll."
"Hi, Chaz."
He gave her a little peck on the lips. "You're looking luscious."
"You, too." She giggled.
The visual impact of him roused the total sweetness, pure and isolated from whatever had later soured it, and again an impulse surged in her breast to surround him with a magic of beauty and love that would protect him from every shadow and pain and ugliness in the world. He saw and felt her intensity and laughed, fleeing from it. He spoke to the gold-uniformed bellman about his luggage.
Entering the lobby he saw her picture, blinked, looked at her, at it. Under the picture was an excerpt from the Sun review. It was simple. "WOW!"
Chaz grinned. "Wow. And you knew what else? I cut out a picture of you from the L. A. paper and the write-up there. The guy drooled." He sandwiched her hand in his palms, tickled her palm.
"I hate that habit," she said quietly. "I always hated it and you know it."
He leered, and jeered softly: "And how you hated it. Wow! Let's not kid big daddy who was there fustest with the mostest...."
"Anyway the fustest," she said stingingly.
He colored, then laughed. "O.K. You're calling the tune these days. If I have to take some lip, fine; what goes with it's worth it."
"Let's understand something, Chaz...."
"Not now, not now. I gotta register. You girl. Me boy. We friends, Sugar Face."
At the desk, registering, he asked about a table in the Orbit Room. "I heard you're sold out, owing to the star of the show here ... but I am none other than the brother-in-law of this famous person."
"We'll see what can be done, Mr. Lelfer."
"I've got a table reserved."
Jill turned to see Mark ambling up, smiling widely. "He's free to use it this evening, Miss Braddock." Mark explained blandly as Chaz turned, "I'm an admirer of Miss Brad-dock's. My table is as close as a man can get. Really ringside."
"Say, that's decent of you," Chaz smiled at him.
"Mr. Riddigger, a friend of mine ... and this is my brother-in-law ... Chaz Lelfer."
Mark put out his hand and while the two men shook hands Mark looked him over with a sort of easy contempt which amused and infuriated her; Chaz didn't seem to notice.
"Miss Braddock has spoken of her family and of you and I'm very pleased to have had a chance to meet you." And to see, he clearly meant, that you've got nothing for her. "I've got to take a run up to Reno ... so if I don't see you before you go ... well, enjoy the show."
She went up to Chaz's room with him and the instant they were alone he started to make love to her. She pushed him away. "I've got shows to do, Chaz ... let's just spend the rest of the afternoon in the casinos, and have a little something to eat, and...."
"After the show?"
"Shows, plural. Three of them."
"Well ... then?" His eyes lighted.
"We'll see."
Mark's sweeping style carried her, but she sensed, as she had when she first knew him, a dullness of spirit about Chaz, a total contentment with himself. He'd never seen any of the places, but he tried to give the smug impression that they were old stuff. Vegas was ugly, she thought, essentially ugly, but old stuff, never. It crackled and pulsed, but she felt his drag and it fatigued her. She was relieved to have to go and get into costume for the first show.
The backstage atmosphere had changed since she had become the "wow" draw. Fines now threatened any performer bothering them and as she led the little company with her head proudly erect, Madame on the flank, Karen, Viola, Renee, Paul, Charles and Vinnie following, she was stripped of her anger and defiance of the outside world, and there was a painful aching in its place. Because just as it had been a war, an outside enemy, that had given Chaz a quality of tragic beauty, these enemies of Le Ballet Unique had bound the company together. Now it was disintegrating.
Onstage, for the first time that she could remember in many years, she was aware of an audience. Not as a remote mute jungle tribe but a force capable of distorting her spirit and bending her will to its own. As she went into the wanton finale of the dance she found herself overemphasizing, consciously catering to lust; lust separated and isolated from any meaning before or after or outside itself. And chief of the tribe, at Mark's front table, sat Chaz, his eyes ravenous....The beautiful meaning that he had once had had been a fantasy of her own. Worse, perhaps, only a romantic-childish rationalization, prettily hiding the fact that she had wanted simply to sex with a boy. Worse, worse, it had not even been clean lust which was at least connected with love, but disguised hate, an ugly striking at Phyllis, the person she had once loved more than anyone.
She got half drunk with Chaz between the second and third shows. After the last show she dressed and, as she had almost-promised, went to Chaz's room. He grabbed her in his arms and kissed her. She let him. His tongue jabbed at her lips but she kept them closed.
When he withdrew she said composedly: "How's Phyllis?"
"You didn't say 'how's Phyllis' when you were double-crossing her ten years ago."
"Takes two to tango."
"So all right, I was a heel then, and still am, so what? We know what we want with each other. Come off of it. A gal's first guy is always the guy for her. That's a known fact."
"Oh?"
"I don't care how many of these guys you're tossing with, including that shifty-eyed Riddigger ... now there's a guy with no character ... a man who won't look you in the eye ... I don't care how many other bums you lay, I'm it for you and always will be."
"You're so sweet. It makes me so proud to remember how I felt about you," she said sickly. "You thought it was just sex, didn't you?"
"You mean I thought you were a little slut?"
"That's what you thought."
"Doll face, you've got me wrong. I thought you were a very sweet kid. A little screwy about thinking dancing was the whole world, but a real nice little kid. Outside of jazzing all over the place you were a helluva nice kid."
"But the 'jazzing all over the place' was dirty stuff."
"I was eighteen, you were only fourteen; if you want me to admit it was my fault, I will. It's true; I was at fault ... it took plenty of eating crow to your folks and Phyll before they forgave me after I got back home ... you know that. So, I was to blame for giving in when you got hot pants for me ... but you were a real little doll, Jill, even then, a real hottie ... I warned you I couldn't stop. You didn't have the same strength of character that Phyllis always had so you couldn't stop us....
"If you want me to say I'm sorry, I will. Still I'm a damned liar if I say I didn't like it and so are you if you say you didn't. Now be a good girl and take off your pants...."
"No."
"Remember the time we went down to the dance school and I laid down on my back and made you do the splits, letting yourself down to me ... boy, that banged me!"
Her face turned scarlet.
"And remember that time in front of the mirror when ... "
"Oh,, shut up," she said tiredly. "I didn't like you before you were worried about going to war and I didn't like you afterwards; the only time you had a meaning for me was when I thought you might die."
"Goddamn, you say that like you wish I had."
"Do I?" She looked at him solemnly, and nodded slowly. "That could be."
"You give me the creeps! Why, goddamn you I won't take any lip from you. I'm going to have you right this damned minute, you cheap, vicious little slut!"
Chaz lunged and shot his arms at her, his hands open to seize. Then there was a time skip, a split-second break in sequence and she was watching his hands close in fierce, strangling motions in the air ... just where her upper arms would have been except that her body, if not her mind, saw the rape in him and reflex had yanked her in a back leap. She stood tautly motionless and didn't act till he took an abrupt step and grabbed again. She felt unsynchronized, her wits lagging a hemisemidemiquaver, a mere 64th of a lusical beat ... but this wasn't music.
She jumped to one side while her head turned toward the ther shoulder. She shook her head in faint, short arcs, her gaze so steady on his face that her head seemed to move from the fixed position of her eyes. His lids were narrowed, shadowing the clearness of his blue eyes, and invisible cords seemed to run from the hinging of his jaws to the corners of his mouth, changing the contour of his mouth and cheeks subtly, as if he wore a transparent mask which didn't quite fit.
But he was, after all, Chaz, with his clean pink-eared boyish good-looks and his need of love. Her eyes pierced the mask and she moved her lips and said "ChazI" and smiled pleadingly, and he leaped savagely at her.
She dipped, spinning away and ran to the door, twisted the knob and tugged. The door was locked. He seized her by the wrist and brought her around in a winding motion and tried to twist her arm up her back. With dazzling speed she unwound herself to the length of her arm and hurled her body backward, tugging to break his grip. She crouched on one leg and brought the other up in a kick to his elbow. He released her and she fell, her bottom hitting the floor with a thud, her skirt flying up to her hips. She bounced and rolled onto hands and knees and was up, spinning to face him warily. Her trembling fingers made jerky smoothing motions on her skirt for an instant.
She stood on the balls of her feet, weaving imperceptibly from side to side, her eyes crackling alert. One of her bareback sandals lay on its side on the floor between them. He kicked it and came toward her and she felt a quivering run of tension in the muscle and flesh of her legs and thighs and belly and buttocks. He was rubbing his elbow and looking childishly, disarmingly petulant. She laughed nervously, a voiceless little release of tension, for, after all, he was Chaz and he could never really be her enemy.
He dropped, the arm she'd kicked and it hung at his side for an instant while he stared coldly. Then it came up, his fist like a swung weight, and she didn't dodge fast enough and she could feel his knuckles plow against her cheek and he drove his other fist into her stomach with such force that she was picked up off her feet. Her arms flailed and her feet pawed frantically for the floor, and her weight came down heavily on one leg, snapping the heel of her sandal and twisting her ankle. She hit the floor, sprawled, and clutching her stomach, one leg twisted back under her, she sat breathing heavily, her head down, her hair, which had been loosely ribboned, spilling around her face. She winced as a needle seemed to drive into the bone of her ankle. Like a reverberation, there were a sudden thousand tiny needles in her scalp and she felt sweat dampen her forehead.
She rubbed her ankle. "You hurt me, Chaz." She pushed her hair back and looked up at him. "Let's cut it out, huh, Chaz?" He stood over her, staring down coldly. She dropped her head, feeling ugly and ashamed, and nipped her underlip to keep from crying. She moved to get up. His hands slipped under her arms from behind and he hoisted her. "Let me try w-w-walking." She took a step gingerly, and another. She lifted her foot, rotated it around the ankle.
"Nothing much." She laughed, stopped abruptly, and walked, limping slightly, to the bathroom. She took a thick towel and ran cold water on it and put it to her ankle. A little wrench, she'd danced with worse, nothing wrong ... nothing wrong....She heard him come in and she hoped he wouldn't tell her what she knew, that he was sorry, because if he said one single tender word she'd bawl....
He locked his arm suddenly around her stomach from behind and started to drag her and she expelled her breath and sucked her lungs full and dropped her head back and opened her mouth wide and SCREAMED.
He ripped the towel from her hands and wadded it suffocatingly over her mouth and nose and dragged her backward into the room and toward the bed. She twisted and struck back with her fists and banged the floor with her heels and kicked back at his legs. She pitched wildly forward, lurched frenziedly to the right, the left, right, then dove headlong and broke his hold. She started to cry out and his fist smashed into her temple, jolting her eyes out of focus and sprawling her on her back. Then he was crouched beside her, panting and flushed, holding the wadded towel, a threat of suffocation.
"Don't make a sound!" he warned, his eyes venomous.
He got to his feet, motioned her up, and she stood slowly, trembling, and looked at him, her eyes filling with tears. She blinked and they filled again. He jabbed the small of her back, heading her toward the bed. She came up to the edge and stood with her knees against the side of the bed and he slammed his palm against her shoulders, so that she tumbled forward. He came onto the bed, straddling her back and could feel him pull her dress up and rip down at her panties.
He moved aside, and levering her crossed arms, turned her on her back. She lay, torpid, watching him. He got off the bed. Slowly, arrogantly, he stripped himself naked, glancing now and then at her with triumph and ... and contempt. She lay with her skirt bunched high, her naked legs passive, crossed at the ankles.
He took her ankles and tried to separate them. He got them a few inches apart when the muscles of her back, thighs, calves and feet locked. She lay challenging his strength, her eyes dull.
"Do I have to beat you?" he demanded. "You act like getting laid was torture. Damn you, you know you'll love it!"
And maybe, she thought, staring dully at his impassioned male nakedness, she would. She rolled her head to one side weakly, feeling defeated, and the resisting tension went out of her limbs. He came onto the bed and raised her knees and moved between them and Jill thought tiredly, yes, enjoy it, enjoy it stripped bare of its costuming of childish romanticism. Let this act of Chaz's hate complete a circle, from joy in what she had believed to be beautiful to joy in this ugliness.
No!
She reached him before he reached her and she hurt him, suddenly, shockingly.
He cried out in agony and nursed himself and she was off the bed. She fumbled and got the door unlocked. Then she was out in the corridor, running to the elevator.
She hurried shoeless through the crowded, noisy lobby, a shock glaze over her eyes, her hair tangled.
"Jill, for God's sake, what happened to you?"
She stopped, stared unrecognizingly at Mark, her face strained. She moved her feet together, trying to hide them as his glance dropped.
"Where're your shoes? Are you drunk, sweetheart?"
She shook her head from side to side, then circularly, then she nodded. "Drunk!" She gave him a silly, wavering grin, her eyes watching his face in terror.
His gaze moved anxiously over her, stopped focused on her temple. She put her fingers up, felt a little lump.
Her mouth began to quiver, and she tried to turn from him as she felt the sting and overflow of tears.
He gripped her shoulders. "Tell me, sweetheart," he said urgently.
Her face crumpled. "He tried to ... to....Oh, everybody's staring!"
Then he was leading her, unprotesting. They entered an elevator.
"Are we going to your suite?" she asked nervously. "Three," he told the operator.
She stood frozen as they rode up. They got off on three, Chaz's floor. She dragged, shaking her head.
Mark shrugged angrily. "I know his room number," he said and walked on without her. She caught up, swung around, walking backward in front of him, slowing him.
"He didn't have me," she whispered. Her reddened eyes shone, urging the truth on him. "I swear it. I stopped him. I hurt him."
"Not enough."
"He wouldn't let you in ... he'd phone the desk and they'd send up guards or police."
"You'll knock and ask for your shoes. He won't see me."
"Mark, what are you going to do?"
"You just get him to open that door," he said flatly.
She was suddenly chilly all over. Her teeth began to chatter. "I've already gone th-through...."
"On the losing end, baby, on the losing end!"
They were at Chaz's door. Mark stepped aside, looked at her bleak little smile and waited. She rubbed her chest and took a long breath and worked her fingers, then rapped on the door.
"Who is it?"
"Me. Jill."
There was a pause. She turned her face, listening tensely, staring sightlessly in Mark's direction. When Chaz spoke again, he was close to the door.
"What do you want?"
Her heart began to thrum heavily. She put a hand to her diaphragm and lifted her chest, drawing in air. She pushed back at her hair.
"I w-want my shoes."
"Beat it. You've got no shoes."
Her eyes hazed. "You listen to me, Chaz!" she said in a thin furious voice. "You hand me out those shoes and also my little jacket before I count three or you're going to be headed for jail on an attempted rape charge. Now. One ... two...."
Mark motioned her sharply away. He stepped close and when the door opened an inch he slammed into it with his shoulder and drove his fist up into Chaz's chin so hard his teeth clacked and his head snapped back.
Chaz reeled backward, his arms swimming the air, the turquoise dressing robe he had put on flying out from his naked body. Mark hurled himself like a javelin, his feet leaving the floor, the whole force of his catapulted body was behind his fist. The blow struck with a sickening, bone-bruising thud, square in Chaz's face. Chaz's light blue eyes widened as if he'd seen a vision and his hands came up as if about to make an obeisance, then all the bones in his body dissolved and he started to sink. Mark swung and missed his head as it was going down.
Chaz lay on his back and Mark stood looking at him speculatively. Mark saw the towel, flung it over Chaz's exposed genitals. Mark's glittering eyes moved to the broken heel of the sandal, the little white nylon puff of her torn panties. He swung his gaze to her, fished out a cigarette, lit it and said:
"Get your stuff."
She broke her trance and moved to him on soundless tiptoe. "Thank you, Mark," she said fervently. "You were wonderful."
"Get your stuff."
She scurried away, snatched up her sandals, her short coat. She thrust the panties in the coat pocket. He smoked and watched her, his glance shuttling now and then to Chaz's supine figure. She started for the door. He just stood.
"Here," he said. He held out the key to his suite. "Wait for me."
"But aren't you coming?"
"You go on," he said tersely.
"And what are you....?" she began. She broke off, came close to him, her eyes tender. "No more. Please. He had it coming. And you gave it to him, and I'm so proud of you ... so grateful, Mark." She eased her body warmly against him and looked up, her face softly surrendered. She whispered, "I want to love you. I want to love you very much.
Come. Please come. Let me be done with it ... lover...."
"As soon as the yellow dog laying down there playing possum can get the guts to get off his back I'm going to work on him...." he said in a casual voice and took off his jacket. He carried it to a chair, walked back and stood over Chaz and took a long drag from his cigarette. He let the cigarette drop onto Chaz's bare chest. There was a tiny crackling of hairs, then Chaz's whole body quaked and he swept the cigarette off his chest, rolled to his side and came upright, his face livid. Mark started to slug and Chaz flung his arms around him in a bear hug and Mark suddenly grunted as Chaz's knee drove up into his groin.
Mark broke free and backed rapidly, his upper body bent forward, almost forming a right angle with his legs, his fists shooting out like darting tongues, mere fending blows to keep Chaz off, Jill sensed, while he recovered. She backed hastily out of their path. Chaz, on the offensive, leaped agilely to one side and landed a blow in Mark's ribs, and as Mark instinctively swung his arm back to shield himself, Chaz clubbed the side of his head, one, two, three strong, punishing blows that made Mark stumble awkwardly.
Chaz hooked a foot behind Mark's legs and Jill mashed her forearm into her mouth to keep from screaming as Mark went down and Chaz leaped on him and began to slug his head and face, right, left, right, left. She searched wildly for something to smash on Chaz's head, then Mark was rolling onto his stomach and when Chaz came down on Mark's back hitting the sides of his face, Mark reached up and clamped some sort of a lock on his head. He got to his knees, his grip tight on Chaz's head, and it looked as if he was pulling his neck out of his body.
Chaz's blows stopped and his hands clawed to break the hold. He broke it and they were both up, tense and wary and circling, their eyes fixed murderously on each other. Jill found her own fists clenched, her arm-muscles tight, and when Mark's body suddenly pivoted and his left fist buried into Chaz's gut she was mentally striking with him. Chaz jack-knifed forward from the force of the blow and Mark's fist came up to meet his downswinging face. The blow squashed flesh and broke skin and there was a gory smear around Chaz's mouth, nose and one cheek. Mark slugged his face again and Chaz bawled with pain and covered his face with one arm and tried to back away. Mark rushed him, slugging, clubbing, slashing at his body, smashing up at his head and Chaz was stumbling, his legs trying disjointedly to run backward to catch his falling upper body. This time as he went down Mark beat him every inch of the way, just standing spread-legged and slugging as fast and hard as he could and Chaz was bleeding from the face and chest, and he hit the floor, holding his arms over his head. He rolled onto his side and drew his knees up and Mark, panting and muttering, walked behind him and kicked him in the back, rage carrying him senselessly. Mark kicked with one foot and the other and moved from Chaz's buttocks to his head, and then he put his feet together and prepared to stomp his head and Jill screamed....
"Mark ... Mark ... Mark...." and ran at him. He looked at her blindly, and began to blink and then his mouth dropped open and he stood panting and tried to grin and his mouth shook out of control.
"Drink...." he said hoarsely. "See if he's gotta...."
She searched around, pawed through Chaz's suitcase.
"Here...." She brought a pint of Bourbon.
He uncapped it, turned it up, drank lengthily. He capped the bottle, tried again to grin, then shifted his eyes away. "I didn't," he said, shakily, "I didn't do anything very bad, did I?" He looked down at Chaz, hurriedly away. He looked back at her face, his eyes frightened. "Did I?"
She shook her head, blinking her eyes, the tears streaming. "Not very...." She reached out and patted him.
"Sometimes I...." He turned his face, shuddered. "I should NEVER fight ... I didn't," he said, "I didn't scare you, did I?" He looked at her anxiously.
"No." She smiled, but shifted her eyes.
"If I did, I'm sorry. I get lost ... I ... I shouldn't ever fight. ... He looked down, shook his head, frowning. "Maybe ... maybe you'd better give the son-of-a-bitch a little drink."
She nodded dumbly, crouched with the bottle, patted Chaz's shoulder. "Chaz ...?"
He stirred, groaning a little.
"It's all over, honey ... do you think you could take a little drink ... if you could sit up a little...."
He took the drink, half unconsciously. Then he looked at her with his bloodied face and she shut her eyes.
"Send a doctor," he mumbled.
"Yes."
"And get out ... get out ... get out...."
"Yes, Chaz."
She got up, hurried to the door where Mark stood shakily waiting, trying to light a cigarette. She took his lighter and held it steady for him. He moved around her toward Chaz.
"I couldn't stand it," she begged, seizing his arm, holding onto him as he crossed the room.
"It's done, it's done," he assured her. "What I wanted to say, Chaz," he said, stopping over him. "We'll send a doctor. But it was an unknown assailant. Get it? Otherwise she slaps you with a rape charge and I'LL SEE TO IT THAT IT STICKS. Remember. C'mon, Jill."
The wall separating her from Le Ballet Unique had grown, invisible but strong, and no one, not even emotional little Renee weeping on her shoulder in the privacy of the room was surprised that Jill had decided to take a trip with Mark instead of going back to New York with the company.
Alone with Madame in the sitting room of the suite just before the last performance of the Las Vegas engagement, Madame stood off, erectly, her mouth scornful.
"Do you wish to withdraw your money from the new works and improvement fund at this time? I believe it amounts to some three or four thousand."
"We'll talk about that when I return to New York," Jill said, turning her face.
"If you return."
"If."
"You're going to that farm of his, that horse breeding farm...."
"Yes. Madame, I'm tired and out of perspective and sick, and I need...."
Suddenly Madame melted and stepped quickly to her, embracing her. "Of course, dearest child ... of course you do....Have a glorious time....You'd better say goodbye to the boys before we go down. You know they'll miss you, Jill."
Paul hugged her strongly. "Kid, you know what Charlie and Vinnie and my gambling syndicate did last night? It won, and lookee what we got you ... the girls pitched in a little bit, too, but just with money ... now fircrissake, don't bawl ... but look it over and think about us once in awhile...." He broke away with the others before she could get the package unwrapped. It was a book she'd wanted for years, a superb volume of dance prints, and if she hadn't been in a rush for the show she'd have bawled for sure.
During the final dance she was aware that all her things were packed, the reservations were made and the break was definite, and for her there was no audience that night, just an expanse of grayness.
They flew to Los Angeles and checked into the Biltmore, and for three days they went to the race track in the afternoons and the clubs at night. They moved down to the U. S. Grant in San Diego, just across the border from Tia Juana and took in more races on Saturday and Sunday and the Jai Alai games at night. It was all fun, but they were only marking time, and she was immensely relieved finally to be on the plane headed for the Riddigger Horse Farms across the continent.
CHAPTER TEN
The Los Angeles-Chicago leg of the trip had been in a four-engine stratocruiser, the Chicago-Kentucky flight in a two-engine plane; the final half-hour hop in a cozy single-engine plane flying low enough for her to see clearly the pastures and white-fenced paddocks and rolling fields and silos and barns and cattle and horses, horses, horses.
There was a rising excitement in Jill at the Riddigger Horse Farms became nearer and realer. She was fairly shivering with anticipation as the plane set down at the airport near the village of Greek Land ... a century or so ago the founders had meant to call it Green Land, but there'd been a slip somewhere ... and taxied across to the little yellow airport terminal.
Mark and the pilot gave her a hand down from the wing-step and she hit ground with a springy bounce and smiled at the mercifully sunless slate-gray sky and treated her lungs to air with the flavor of growing things in it instead of the dust of Vegas.
From a corner of her eye she saw a leathery, long-striding girl in mink hat, mink coat, mink galoshes, swooping out to the plane from the terminal. Fortunately, Mark had a split second just before the mink seized him to explain, "Dan's wife, Nelia," or she might have been confused about just whose woman she was.
Nelia kissed him and stood hugged comfortably against him, smiling up into his face, telling him how GOOD he looked, how wonderful to have him home. Mark cuffed her head playfully and broke free to introduce them, but Nelia swung around to his side and stood with one arm laced possessively around his. As she looked at Jill, who was casual in slacks, loafers and wraparound coat, her face fresh and eager and uncommonly pert under a little black-velvet tam, Nelia's long, narrow and rather flat face seemed to starch. The smile on her orange-lipsticked mouth became rigid as a sickle and the scrutiny of her greenish-gray eyes was corrosive.
Mark said, "This is, for the time being, Jill Braddock. Jill, this is Nelia, Buddy's wife."
"I feel," Nelia said in a sugary voice, "we know each other already. Mark has told us so much about you, and I suppose," she said, flinging an arch glance up at him, "he's just pounded your ear about me. I must say I didn't know what to expect; you never know what Mark's going to be dragging home."
"Cut the claws, Nelia !"
"Silly!" Nelia laughed and slapped at him. "I was about to say she's ADORABLE." She reached over and squeezed Jill's hand. "Just a darling little thing ... Dan didn't want me to have this new outfit, but what do you think of it?" She stepped out and turned.
"It's...." Jill began pleasantly, but Nelia was asking Mark.
"Nice," he said, scanning the terminal and the line of small cars dominated by a mile-long red-and-silver station wagon. "How come Dan's not here? What came up?"
"Oh," Nelia shrugged. "Something. He's got to foreman everything as if nothing could run without him."
"It couldn't," he said flatly, giving her a warning look. "How about running the car over here and saving my lazy arms?"
When Nelia strode away Mark came over and teased Jill's cheek with a finger. "Don't mind her...."
"I don't."
"Or anything she says about Buddy." He went over to help the pilot with the luggage and loaded it in as Nelia brought the big silver-and-red station wagon. Mark opened the door for Jill and helped her in, then went around to the driver's side, thumbed Nelia over. "I'll drive."
Nelia scooted over, looking smug, and Jill sensed that she felt she had scored a triumph in getting between them.
To Nelia a triumph, to Jill it was a trifle. The larger thing between them was the image of Chaz's gory, defeated face; every time Mark made love to her it was there like a bloody rip in her mind and she couldn't banish it. It was unjust to Mark, as though he, who had fought and avenged her, had been responsible for converting something deep and sweet in her into brutal ugliness. Her mind told her the facts clearly, and there was no romantic clinging to anything about Chaz, but the pain of it all remained fixed. She wanted to be able to banish that image and be able to return some of the love he honestly felt for her. She couldn't. Right now, for the sake of his pride, she had the impulse to show a little pique of jealousy but it froze, unexpressed. He didn't know about that bloody image he roused in her, but he knew she didn't love him and was hoping ... and so was she ... that this total relaxation from the dance, in a new, fascinating world, would bring her around.
Mark started the car in a hurry and turned with a tire-whine onto a two-lane road.
"I like your to-hell-with-it driving," Nelia said. "Dan's never cracked up a car in his life." Her tone was derisive.
"That's bad?" Mark snapped.
"Jill," Nelia said cozily, "let that be a warning ... never a peep against Danny boy, or Mark won't love you any more."
"I think loyalty between two brothers is absolutely marvelous.
"It is, but they're grim about it; they lose their sense of humor...." she squirmed and giggled, turning to Mark. "Is oo mad at oo itty sissy 'cause she likes to tease oo? Baby talk makes him retch. I adore making him furious. Mark's more fun because he boils quicker, but once in a while Dan can be terrif, too. Fact, he used to be part of Mark's army. They'd rip around to all the bars and roadhouses and pick fights and clean out the whole joint between 'em. Dan was still steamy when I met him down in the capital at Frankfort; I was working for a senator and I ran around with a red-neck, red-eye-drinking crowd and Mark and Dan came down to bribe the legislature or something and Dan and I spotted each other and WHAM, we were headed for a preacher before we said hello; he gave me the eye and I gave it back. I was with four guys and I just thought, well, what's he got? So I told these guys this character is bothering me and they started to rough him up."
"You set them on him?" Jill gasped.
"What's so bad? He wasn't minding his own business but letching for me despite I was accompanied, so he was looking for trouble and he wasn't any runt. I figured to find how his tail hung ... up or between his legs. If he put up a man's fight, O.K., he's in, I thought. But peel my hide and call me skinless if he didn't whup them." She sighed. "Them wuz the days. But he lost all his excitement. Don't get me wrong, you or Mark, that I don't still love my husband. I do."
"She knows that already," Mark said stiffly.
"Of course," Jill said uncomfortably.
Nelia laughed quietly. "What Dan finally said about my getting this gorgeous head-to-toe mink ensemble was that if the playboy big shot could afford to gamble and live it up in glamor-town and run up toll charges raving about his girl...." she patted Jill's knee. " ... not that I blame him, you're DARLING....Anyway, Dan said after all he owns fifty percent of the farm and does all the work so he guessed he could afford some luxuries for his girl, too"
"It's all true," Mark called over to Jill, "except she's the one who pointed out what an extravagant bum I am and nagged him into finally saying: 'Ferchrissakes, get the goddamn coat.' " He laughed. "Isn't that how it REALLY was, Nelia?"
Nelia pushed at him. "We understand each other, you bum. Maybe I did remind him he can afford to live like a rich man, too. And of course," she said coyly, "when we really want something we girls have private assets to barter with." She laughed shrilly, repeated. "Yes, we have our assets to barter with ... don't we Jill?
"We?" Jill turned her head and looked at her coolly, then turned away disdainfully. Mark muttered angrily and Nelia said hastily:
"Speaking of assets, you know the yearlings you ordered "-into the stalls to start fattening for the summer sales? Well, slow down and turn off at the next road and have a look."
Mark decelerated abruptly, aimed the car, still too fast, into a left turn onto a blacktop road between white board fences enclosing expansive fields.
"This," Mark said, leaning out to look at Jill, "is Riddigger land, this is a Riddigger private road ... and those," he pointed through his left window at several horses scattered through the field grazing, "are a few of our mares ... there's a lot more of them pregnant up by the foaling barns. And out there on your side," slowing the car to a crawl, "are yearling fillies ... girls, that is ... the colts have to be separated from them early....What do you think?"
There were seven or eight of them, long-legged browns and chestnuts, and as they saw the car slowing they came running gracefully to the fence, young, high-spirited and curious, and trotted along beside the car, their round shining eyes bright, their slender, tapering faces utterly beautiful. She cried out with pleasure and opened her window and reached out her hand and they spun and took off, tails and manes flying. They capered and played all over the field, leaping and prancing and kicking up their hind legs. Mark drove on past several other fenced enclosures to a pair side by side, with three young horses in each of them.
"In these paddocks are yearling colts. We have to put three together or they pair off and fight. Good-looking boys, aren't they?"
"Just wonderful!"
The colts were even prettier, she thought, snortier and more clownish. She was immensely glad she'd come here.
"Wait'll you see the new foals, still nursing ... nineteen of them, and twenty-odd more to come in the next couple of weeks."
"And, of course, the big boys!" Nelia put in. "The stallions. They're the men in the family and you can bet you know it the minute you look at them. Rough, arching manes and powerful quarters, and that, you know, stud look. Glorious! Are you going to let her see a cover?"
"Cover?" Jill said, her attention swinging from right to left over the farm.
"A mating," Mark said. "Would you like to see a twenty-five-hundred-dollar-fee stud in action?"
US
"Oh, yes!"
"Better break her in on one of the better-mannered boys," Nelia said. "That Riggidig's too rough. He lunges and rears and has to be muzzled to keep from biting hell out of his mare. Even with two men controlling him he must scar" hell out of some of these maiden mares that've never been in a breeding stall ... rougher lover even than the Riddigger boys...."
Mark instantly changed the subject. "So Buddy turned the yearlings out. He told me over the phone he was going to."
"I told him not to. I told him to keep them in those stalls and fatten 'em up, like you said, and not let them run all the meat off out there on that winter grass. Mark, you'll just have to set him straight. He's not smart about such things," Nelia said indignantly and turned to Jill. "Mark wants to fatten them so they'll bring fifteen to twenty thousand apiece at the summer sales. But Dan insists on having them in the kind of condition the buyers won't bid on. His way we'll get seven or eight thousand. Instead of maybe twenty. Can you imagine?"
Jill shook her head wonderingly. "I never heard of such a thing."
"He's not insane," Mark assured Jill, laughingly. "He's got reason. Starry-eyed, but they're reasons."
"He's got his chin set; you'll have to lay down the law and that's all there is to it, Mark."
"You leave that all to Buddy and me...."
"I've some say, a lot of say, and I'm on your side, so don't give me that keep-your-nose-out...."
"Cut it, Nelia. Jill's very tired; she's had a hard schedule and a lot of trouble and I promised her if she'd come she'd have a vacation, a rest. Pleasure...."
"I could use some pleasure, too."
"Knock it off!"
The main barns came into sight, long white one-story affairs with aluminum shingle roofs, two-story barns, sheds, high, circular-roofed silos, a barrack line of houses for workers, a cottage, another larger cottage, a small building with an OFFICE sign, a long, large barn with several paddocks leading out from open stalls ... the stallion barn, she thought ... she couldn't absorb the mass of details and explanations Mark rattled off in passing while they cruised along the blacktop roads. There was a large purebred beef-herd; in another section a few acres to tobacco, tobacco barn, and the operation included along with a program of grass crops, corn and oat crops, partly for feed, partly for cash. Here and there she glimpsed a tractor plowing, harrowing or sowing, and everywhere there were horses.
"Most of these are Thoroughbreds, race horses. A few standardbreds, and a few quarter horses. Some of them are in training. The half-mile track I told you about is on a flat over on the west end of the property-past that woods over there. Of course the brood mares and stallions are done with racing. Several of the mares you see are outsiders; we board a few for other owners, but most of the outside mares are here for service. At this season they're vanning in every day."
"....and night," Nelia added sourly.
"Yes, this is the busy season. Puts a big load on our stallions. They have runs where for three and four days one stallion will be booked to two and three mares a day. The doubling-up's bad for them....By the way, are they holding up?"
"Ask Dan. He reads the lab fertility reports. He thinks you're overloading them, though, I can tell you that. I told him, well, hell, Mark lost a bet or wrapped some chorus cutie's wrist in diamonds and had to hustle up a couple of new jobs for Riggidig."
"You didn't!"
"The hell I didn't."
"I suppose he does think all I do is play around, but ... What'd he say?"
"He said shut up. Are you finding this restful, Jill?"
"J'y suis, j'y reste," Jill said, "meaning here I am, and here I stay, in case you've been trying to tell me something as a little sideline in your knife act."
Mark laughed loudly, appreciatively. Nelia turned her flat face to Jill and stared blankly, her jaw twitching from side to side. She opened her mouth, but something in the sudden angry intensity of Jill's face made her change her mind. She shrugged.
Mark began to blast the horn repeatedly and to brake the car.
"There's Buddy now, in that jeep." He stopped and got out, waving his arms, grinning joyously.
The jeep, coming along an intersecting blacktop road, slowed, stopped. There were two men in it, a middle-aged man in a business suit, overcoat and pearl Stetson, and a brawny young man in an open fleece-lined canvas mackinaw, plaid wool shirt and matching visored cap. He was Mark's brother all right; the same straight thick brows, the same distinct articulation of bone at the angle of his forehead and temple. Whether or not his mouth was the same straight thin line was impossible to tell because it was stretched in a big happy grin. He was just as glad to see Mark as Mark was to see him, and that bond, that strong, deep, wonderful bond, like this splendid farmland and these proud buildings and fine Thoroughbred horses, moved her profoundly. The pleasure she felt in the sight of it swept her like symphonic music and made her chest lift and her lungs reach for breath; it made her vital and happy and she could not bear the confinement of the car and the company of this venomous spiteful orange-lipped flat-faced mink beside her. She got out of the car, smiling, a radiance in her reaching toward this vital pair, and Mark saw her and came back, flushed and jaunty in his snap brim and smart topcoat and slipped a proudly possessive arm around her waist and walked her to the jeep. Dan looked at her with a set, warm smile on his handsome, weathered, virile face and got out of the car, stretching himself tall above her and looking down at her with such pleasure that she wanted to cry ... because ... because ... the fragment of something that had first attracted her to Mark was here embodied, rich and whole in Dan, and she knew instantly that she not only could but already did love this Riddigger.
"So this is Jill," he said. "This is a real pleasure. We're going to see to it that you have a wonderful time...." Then she was being introduced to the other man, a horse owner who had come to look over one of the stallions for possible bookings, and then she was back in the car and both cars were heading for the large Riddigger house which came into view as they rounded a stand of trees.
The blacktop road curved in through an opening in a low stone fence that ran circularly around an acre of yard. The yard was dark bare earth showing the furrow pattern of recent discing and planting, and there in the front yard were two heavy-trunk wide-branching leafless trees and several gray-bark saplings like fragile skeletons showing pale green early spring buds. The face of the big, two-story house was a wide rectangle of white clapboard with a balanced pattern of four pairs of high narrow, blue-shuttered windows and a blue shingled high-slope roof. There was a one-story, columned, roofed, square entrance porch in the front center and an unroofed side entrance, where Mark pulled up behind the jeep, from which the visiting horseman was alighting.
A windscreen of narrow fan-like trees stood beyond one edge of the yard, and on the other side, past the end of a 4-car garage she could see a creek with sheets and cottony patches of snow caught in the brush along its banks; the water was low in the creek bed and swift-running and in the grayish, late-afternoon light it looked forbiddingly icy.
She saw and felt herself falling naked into that creek, the icy water shocking her warm flesh and then numbing it and a stranger leaped in to save her and the instant he touched her he forgot everything except the fact she was a beautiful female. There was a stalliony assertion of his manhood and he impregnated her, and all the heat in her whole body focused, doubly intense and exquisite because all the rest of her flesh was frozen.
The instant Jill realized the fire-bearing stranger was Dan Riddigger the image vanished.
But while he and Mark got the luggage, talking and laughing with her and each other, and escorting her like a prize between them into the house, the fever persisted, changing subtly into a swift-dropping sensation in her lower stomach as on the downswoop of a playground swing after she had been pushed too deliciously high.
She met the housekeeper-cook and two maids, briefly, in the large, opulently equipped and lardered kitchen. She went through to the dim, comfortably sprawling high-ceilinged sitting room with its squat dark leather chairs and rocking chairs and heavy tables; and into the bright lamp-lit modernly furnished second sitting room; and through the dining room, inelegant with its bulky tables and solid chairs, but equipped to feed a threshing crew; and to the large hi-fi-and piano-equipped music room and into a liniment-and leather-smelling room with desk and chairs, its library shelves glutted with breeding and racing books and magazines; and into a pretty, glassed-in back porch with summery tube chairs and lounges.
Nelia dropped out of the tour to have a drink with the visiting horseman and Jill went upstairs with the two men. Dan carried her luggage to the room she was to occupy and came back as Mark showed her the upstairs layout; two spare bedrooms, his own "boar's nest." The three of them looked briefly into a bedroom with an ornate canopied bed Dan shared with Nelia, and then ... her heart quickened with guilty pleasure ... into the smaller unconnected bedroom where, it was explained, he often slept so as not to disturb Nelia in case he got a night call from one of the barns.
Now and then, not always by accident, their hands had touched and the contact, she noticed, made his speech falter. Repeatedly his glance sliding past her would stop and his smile would vanish, and his warm brown eyes would settle, widening a little as if to absorb as much as possible of her.
Then ... Mark had gone on, moving lightly and anticipating the pleasure she'd take in her room ... she and Dan had a moment alone. They were standing close to each other and he was acutely aware of her lustre. She could see a ripple of muscular tension under his wool shirt as he locked his arms and shoulders against the craving for her. The flanges of his nostrils became stiff as if he had caught the scent of her sexual desire for him.
The tension literally drew their bodies taller, and there was a brilliance and flash about his eyes, a hard male tone to his features, a curbed and directed aggression ... directed at her woman flesh and unconsciously the rounded ripe sweetness of her full, pouty lips moved the fraction of an inch toward him and her eyes with the curiously exciting tissue structure under the lower lids glazed sleepily passive and she wanted to spin away her little black tarn and drop her coat and remove her blouse and fluff her hair around her naked shoulders and draw his lips to the quivering warmth of her breasts and suckle him and hold his head against her chest so that he could hear the beat of her heart and to step out of her loafers and slacks and reveal the full loveliness of her slim young dancer's body to him and absorb the aggression of his man body exultantly in her woman's flesh....Instinct, raw, pure and sweeping, made them known to each other and for a giddy, time-hung instant she thought he might seize and claim her and abolish the world. Then the world refocused around them and their bodies sagged and the brilliance died from his eyes.
He took her arm and talked in a hoarse, fake-gay voice.
"Wait till you see your nest ... nicest in the house, right, Mark?" he asked as they moved on to join Mark.
Both men were enchanted by her surge of enthusiasm, her chatter and animation. She walked up and down the long glass-enclosed, curtained sleeping porch with complete bedroom sets at each end.
"It's just gorgeous ... better than a luxury hotel ... much nicer than our suite in the Desert Eagle ... the suite our dance company had, the one the hotel provided us," she explained rather primly, as she saw Dan shoot a private smile at Mark.
"That's the suite she's talking about," Mark told him solemnly. "The suite I had was just a little old thing ... It ran a little high, but anything less would have cheapened Riddigger Farms in the eyes of some of those horsemen I had to entertain out there."
"Of course, Mark," Dan said, with only the lightest trace of mockery.
Mark was taken with a fit of laughter. "So all right, Buddy! I could've got by much cheaper."
"Forget it. Who expects you to iron your own shirts? Mark's always thought big," Dan told Jill earnestly, "he's always wanted the best. This whole farm, the way this house is fixed up, is his initiative. He's not the temperament to scrimp and fuss about details. He flies high; I plod along trying to consolidate the gains and keep things under control. We get in arguments about certain things, but if you hear any of them don't be upset. It's just surface friction, because we're a team going in the same direction." He laughed and added, "The same general direction....Right now I'd better go down and talk business...."
"I'll handle him," Mark said. "You start getting dressed up for dinner tonight, Buddy, hear? Unless you don't consider this little character worth it." He came to Jill and hugged her shoulders. "I'm serious about her. Even had a ring on her for awhile."
"I know," Dan said. "Get both rings on her next time. It'll be a black day in Riddigger history if you let her get away."
She smiled with embarrassment and pulled off her tarn. "I ought to freshen up."
The men went out together. She undressed in the smartly modern bath-dressing room opening off the sleeping porch.
That cold-water sex fantasy involving Dan disgusted her with herself. What she needed....
Dancing naked under the icy shower-blast she chattered and grinned at herself over the crazy idea that sexual stimulation could possibly go with a numb-cold condition. In reality what the cold was, was cold.
It had been a very pleasant evening, just talking and loupging around in the old-fashioned sitting room. The talk had shifted to her dancing. Even Nelia was interested in details of Las Vegas shows and backstage. Dan, who had read all the clippings Mark had saved and looked at all the pictures and listened to Mark's perpetual press-agenting, kept smiling, fascinated by her grace and charm. Then at ten o'clock he fell asleep in his chair. It was so sudden and he looked so comical that she had burst into giggles. Waking, he nodded, looking ponderous and groggy and repeated her last phrase as though he hadn't missed a word.
"... never danced with such a big orchestra before...."
Afterwards, under her electric blanket, she remembered his sweet-foolish blinking and lay giggling into her pillow.
Mark slept in his own room ... a whimsical touch of conventionality since everyone assumed they were lovers ... and she was expecting him to come in. But when he touched her back she jumped as if stabbed, and her happy laugh greeted him as he got in bed with her.
He'd missed a day and his passion was intensified as he began to make love to her. She lay beneath him, her body automatically beginning to counterthrust against his thrust in an easy, pleasant rhythm. She closed her eyes and banished her mind and yielded to the sensation.
But then abruptly her mind alerted and she fought to shatter the ghostly image that began, pale and wispy, to form ... she blocked it with a montage of bright, happy images, dances, with music and costume ... and then again it began to seep through the barriers, that gory, defeated face, the colors raw and alive and insistent. Not until Mark was done and lying at her side did it fade and vanish.
She sensed a further need in Mark and she held him very close and stroked his face and murmured tenderly to him, feeling truly sorry that she couldn't love him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
During the next week the chaos of activity that was Jill's first impression of Riddigger Farms began, segment by segment, to clarify itself into a pattern, and she felt a growing calm, and an attachment to, and concern with, everything. Sometimes with Mark, sometimes alone, or with one or another of the workers or foremen, rarely with Dan, she watched the spring rites of life and growth. Grass grew and mare's bellies and udders swelled and the weanlings with enormous doe eyes and laughably long, bony-kneed legs supporting skimpy fuzzy bodies, trotted along close to the maternal teat and made sudden lurching little runs that often ended in sprawls. Sometimes they just stood swishing their tails and speculating about life; then they would decide to hop straight up in the air or run and kick up their heels; she could have watched their impish, clowning antics all day long.
The beautifully sleeked-out, tall, long two-year-olds preparing for their racing debuts were fascinating. Three boy riders and one girl rider, under the direction of a trainer down on the half-mile track, were teaching them to walk quietly in a line and abreast of each other and to back, and to enter and remain calmly in little stalls of a four-section device modeled on an official starting gate; and they learned to leave the gate like rockets. There were twenty of them, working in five sets, and it was about the only phase of activity that Mark could stand still for very long.
Her growing calm was matched by his growing discontent. The third day home he'd taken her and Nelia into Lexington for lunch, but it had been sandwiched between appointments with their accountant and a loan officer at the bank. The loan he wanted, and which Dan was reluctant to take, would come through, but he'd evidently taken a lecture or two which made him surly and bad-tempered. He'd lost his temper with a stallion groom, knocked the man down and fired him. Sorry, he'd sent Dan to rehire him. Dan had pleaded with the man, valuable and hard to replace, but they'd lost him ... and almost lost one of the barn foremen because of Mark.
Mark and Nelia were still asleep but Jill was up early the morning after the trip to Lexington, and breakfasting with Dan she badgered him into letting her watch a teasing and breeding.
"All right," he finally yielded. "Come out to the office around nine ... a little before."
The motorcade of two jeeps, a passenger car, and a wide horse-van set out for the teasing fence at a minute to nine, carrying Jill, Dan, the stallion manager and assistant, several handlers, four owners of outside mares and three horses in the van. The sun was out, a stimulating condition, Dan explained.
Three men on horseback were waiting at the gate of the pasture, where half a dozen mares were grazing near the fence when the motorcade pulled up. On a signal from Dan they entered the pasture. The mares paused in their grazing and watched the activity with mild curiosity. Jill followed Dan and the other men to the rear of the horse van.
The teaser stallion, a fine, tall, wide-chested reddish-brown horse, with a rough stalliony crest and white stripe down his face, stood between two other horses, stretching his head back out over the tail gate, his erect ears flicking, his muzzle feeling the air, his nostrils widening and narrowing with the excitement of the mare scent. When the tail gate was dropped to form a ramp he and the horses on his flank came thundering down to the ground and he nickered and tossed his head, reared up a few inches and pawed down with his front hoofs, and shook his head angrily at the restraint as the mounted riders holding long leather lines attached to his bridle brought him under control.
The mares, who had been idly curious about the activity, were suddenly wild with interest and pleasure as he danced, snorted and strained toward the fence, his lustrous coat shivering, the massive powerful muscles of his flanks rippling and straining with urgency. He nickered and whinnied and the mares flipped. That, Jill thought, was the only word for it! They danced and talked to him and came to the fence and reached for him and ran away drunkenly and came back, and as the riders controlling the stallion arranged themselves so that he could run close to the fence, they ran along with him. He stopped and stretched his neck and muzzle over the fence and one of the more fervent mares came close and turned herself so he could nuzzle her flanks and quarters. She lifted her tail and shivered, and her pelvic muscles relaxed and there was a twitching and running of her genitals. Jill turned her head with muted, embarrassed laughter.
The mounted men in the field got a halter on the first mare and dragged her away from the teaser and got her in the van. Another of the mares in the same condition was put in the van. Then for a while the teaser made love to one and another of the mares. They submitted partially, but now and then they kicked and one of them finally ran away and returned to grazing.
"That's just about it," Dan said, glancing around. He huddled for a few moments over the clipboard of charts one of the men was consulting. One owner was unsure about his mare, still in the field. She had kicked a little, but she was irregular and he didn't have a chart on her cycles and there was doubt about whether she was "coming in,"
"in," or starting to "go out." Just in case she might be "going out" of her cycle, it was decided to rush her to the stallion she was booked to, and she was loaded into the van, too.
Riding back in the jeep, alone with Jill, Dan explained the trickiness of the problem. "Only two days in a mare's cycle when she'll settle ... get pregnant. It's rough to hit it on the nose. Naturally if our stallions don't settle the mare there's no fee."
"I see ... what happens now?"
"Well, these mares that showed themselves ready for the breeding stall will be prepared ... washed and disinfected, et cetera. We'll get them to their studs in an hour or so. Meanwhile there's a hot mare waiting for Riggidig ... that's the operation I'll let you watch...."
"The teaser doesn't ever get to mate with the horses he excites, does he?" she said, shaking her head faintly.
"Oh, I know it sounds brutal. But though he looks good to the girls he's got a bum pedigree; he's just three-quarter Thoroughbred. Only Thoroughbreds are allowed to race. Don't worry about him, though, he gets all the barren mares and standard breds he needs."
Jill smiled thinly: "And a dame's a dame to him."
"Something like that. There's another teaser, too, up here at the barns which house the mares we know are ready. He stimulates them before they go to the breeding stall....Oh, oh...."
They were passing the stallion barn and a big, dark-brown, nearly black horse came bursting out into his fenced paddock at a run. "That's Riggidig...." He braked and hopped out of the jeep and vaulted the fence, shouting for men in nearby paddocks. Riggidig's groom and another man had set out after the horse. Dan headed him off, and men from nearby came on the run.
It took five minutes to catch the stallion. Dan was panting and anxious as he got back into the jeep, starting it with a jolt.
"Everything all right?" Jill asked.
"All wrong. He'll be late getting to the mare. She's ready and waiting." He shook his head violently. "It's dangerous." He parked outside the breeding barn, hurried in ahead of her.
The walkway, with windows on one side and low stall fronts on the other, was somewhat higher than the stall floor. In one of the stalls was a mare and several attendants. On the walkway in front of the stall was the mare's owner, a gray-haired man in a slouch hat, leather jacket and riding pants. He chain-lit a smoke, mashed out the discard on the floor and glared as Dan reached him.
"What the hell, Riddigger, where's your stud? I've got a hot mare standing here ready to explode!"
"He'll be another five minutes." Dan glanced at the stall. "Walk her around a little."
"Well, it's a hell of a goddamnsonofabit-" Sighting Jill he stopped, his glare melted and he said sweetly, "Hello, Miss Braddock. We've had a minor delay ... these things happen." He walked toward her, a perky bounce to his stride. "Don't believe I've had the opportunity of remarking upon how enchanting you look this morning. Fine day, isn't it?"
Dan laughed out loud. "She put the molasses in your mash, all right. Jill, from now on you're in charge of all the snorty old curmudgeons that come around here."
"A bluegrass man that don't cater to a fine filly ought to just turn up his toes, because he's dead. Now, if you'll excuse us, Miss Braddock...."
The two of them went out of the barn. In a few minutes she heard Dan say, "Get her back to the stall, boys,-here comes Rig, now!"
Standing in front of the stall, watching the mare come in, Jill felt the quickening of tension through the barn. The mare, despite the walking, was very nervous. The attendants in the stall, while they spoke soothingly to her, were very alert. The danger of an exploding half-ton of high-strung horseflesh was clear, even though she was hobbled with an arrangement of straps around her neck and hind legs to prevent her kicking and injuring the stallion. A man in the front of the stall with a twitch ... a cord looped around the mare's upper lip and twisted tightly by means of a narrow rod ... was able to exert a quick painful pressure to control her head, but from his manner it was clear that the twitch was far from foolproof. The mare's tail was bandaged and although her hindquarters were out of Jill's sight she had little doubt that she was in the same hot, ready condition as those mares at the teasing fence had been.
Then Riggidig was coming in along a passage at right angles to the mare's stall. There was a brass latticework muzzle strapped to his head, allowing him to breathe but not to open his mouth to bite. The mare turned her head and saw him and became agitated. The big, sweating dark stallion, his head tossing, his long coarse mane falling forward over his eyes, saw her and made an oddly chilling noise, not quite a nicker or whinny. Men trotting beside him, holding the straps attached to his bit, shouted harshly at him and yanked as he threw his head up violently. They got him down and then he was quite near the rear of the stall and the tense, shivering mare. Dan, simultaneously watching both horses, spoke in a low steady voice to the men handling them. " ... move her a little more to the left ... enough, that's fine ... watch her head....All right, give him some slack so he can get up ... don't let him swing around there and come at her straight on ... keep him at an angle to her ... that's it ... that's good ... steady...."
She had no interest in the actual mating and when the stallion reared to cover the mare Jill turned easily and walked away. She waited outside, comfortably leaning against a white fence, her face lifted, smiling in the sunlight, her eyes bright-flecked. She didn't know how long she had been standing there, lost in a vague sort of contentment, when the stallion and then the mare were led out, and Dan came over to the fence, moving hesitantly, his eyes anxious.
"I saw you go, but I couldn't leave ... pretty bad for you?"
"Bad?" She frowned, then smiled and shook her head.
"I mean ugly. For a girl like you."
She laughed aloud. "Ugly? That stallion was superb. The articulation of those great flank muscles, the grace and balance of his line, the vigor and purity of his drive toward his goal, his projection of the mood of an intense, fundamental theme ... why, it was art. As a dancer I wouldn't have missed it for the world ... of course I'd have found the actual mating distasteful and ugly ... especially with the mare held prisoner."
"That of course is to prevent her injuring herself and the stallion ... if left to themselves they'd mate all right, but they often do a lot of damage to themselves and each other."
"Of course I understand it's a commercial breeding operation," she said, as they went to the jeep, "and not art or pure nature ... nonetheless the feel of it was there."
In this setting, away from the feverish atmosphere of Vegas, Mark paled; his lack of control and inability to cope with obstacles showed up badly against Dan's easy competence.
On three successive nights Dan was called to the foaling barn, losing hours of sleep; yet he was on the go all day long, supervising the mare-teasing and stallion-servicing handling the incoming and outgoing mares, discussing the detailed problems with owners and veterinarian, running the office, inspecting supplies and equipment, handling purchases of certified seed and grain, chemicals and fertilizers for the fields. Mark drank too much and overslept and even his virility began to have a nervous, exhausting quality about it instead of the feel of vital abundance.
His love-making was no longer accompanied in Jill's mind with that ugly gory image, but it was this farm, her growing sense of attachment to it, rather than Mark himself, that had banished the image. She knew, when she let herself know, that she wanted Dan, yet, for the most part, she avoided specific thoughts about him ... and personal contacts.
But Dan was the whole farm, his meaning and touch were inseparable from it; instead of a narrowly sexual interest he roused a breadth and depth of feeling. Nothing, of course, could come of it; he would no more touch Mark's woman than Mark would touch his.
As far as Nelia was concerned, Jill believed, Mark would only have to point to a bed and she'd be out of her panties and on her back before he could get his hand down. But the sort of affair Nelia and Mark were having wasn't sexual ... it was just a mating of viewpoints and personalities, and it focused on the matter of those yearlings.
Mark wanted them force-fed in their stalls, Dan grimly insisted they forage in the pastures with only a supplement of oats. Jill understood the issue by now and she had, repeatedly, to clamp her jaw to keep from sailing to Dan's defense. Any meal-breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack-when they were together and there were no guests, the argument renewed; two against one, wrong against right, the Nelia-Mark team battering at his senses when he was bone-tired and overworked. Instead of his wife standing by him, or at least considering that he was beset by endless other problems and tired out in general, she showed her bitch instinct, even making veiled threats about withdrawing her sexual favors entirely. Jill hated her, and this dirty battle outraged her. But when he flushed with humiliation or anger and looked around with a sort of anguish, or when he began at the beginning once again and, point by calm point, tried to build his own case and they didn't budge and she wanted to fly in to his defense, she merely looked down or away. So long as she was Mark's woman she couldn't go against him.
But one night, eight days after she'd come, she couldn't contain herself. There had been two mare-owning horsemen for dinner and they'd stayed late, discussing pedigrees, breeding stall and teasing techniques, and horse problems in general in a Bourbon-flavored atmosphere. The horsemen found her, as well as her absorbed interest, enchanting. They spoke, in her presence, with a slow, courtly caution, dancing verbal minuets around the rough, frank barn terms, as if to shield her tender ears, which made Nelia fume. When they were gone Nelia marched on Dan, square-hipped and graceless, and said nastily:
"Don't try to crawl off to bed; we're going to have it out about those yearlings right now. Mark and I are sick of your bullheadedness."
Mark poured himself a drink and nodded. "You're outvoted, Buddy. So, are you going to order them into the stalls or do I have to?"
"I'm hungry," Jill said. She started for the kitchen. She came back. She was wearing wide-legged black-velvet slacks and a long-sleeve silver-satin blouse, and she put her legs apart and her fists on her hips and looked down at Dan sprawled in a leather chair, a whisky and water in hand. He looked at Mark and at Nelia and then grinned up at Jill.
"What do you think?"
"It's none of her goddamned business," Nelia sizzled, twisting her head and staring with a cold flat expression at Jill.
Dan sat forward, slammed his whisky glass on the side table and got to his feet. "I wouldn't say it's none of her business ... would you,, Mark?"
"No. Don't let Nelia bother you, Jill."
"I can handle her," Jill said, her chin thrusting. "Any time. She doesn't bother me. My opinion is that those yearlings have to grow naturally, be free to run and play and build their muscles solidly and slowly. They won't be as sleek and big and beautiful, by the time of the sales, but they'll be sound. The force-fed ones are weak in the feet and legs and they have to have the fat dieted off of them for training and they break down on the tracks."
"You've got the statistics!" Nelia sneered.
"Dan's got them. It's phony merchandise you'd be selling."
"At twice the money! You and star-eyes over here don't care about the money, eh? Well, I do, and Mark does, and the buyers are supposed to be horsemen; let 'em beware."
"If," Jill said in a soft little voice, "you want to be honest enough to pin a 'let the buyer beware' sign on yourself, bravo. But don't try to pin one on Riddigger Farms!"
"Why you little...." Nelia lunged, hissing, and Dan hooked an arm out around her waist and yanked her back to him. She writhed against him.
Jill kicked off her shoes and danced on the balls of her feet. "Let her come ... let her come...." she cried excitedly. "Let her loose...." She extended one arched foot, drew an invisible line on the carpet with her toes. "Come across that line, I dare you!"
Mark put his hands around her slim waist, lifted her high in the air and carried her across the room, laughing.
"Let me down!" she cried, kicking her legs and glaring toward Nelia who was struggling against Dan and kicking back at his shins. Dan flopped in the chair, pulling her down on his lap. Mark, holding Jill aloft, laughed up delightedly into her face, then growled and burrowed his face against her stomach.
She began to laugh. He grinned up at her, turned her a little from side to side and lowered her to the floor. "Cooled off?"
"I guess."
"Dan," he called, "your fighter ready to call it a draw?"
"Done, Nelia?"
"Oh, all right!" She got up, walked over, scowling and poured herself a drink.
"Where was I?" Jill said, pushing back at her hair. "Oh ... answer me this, truthfully, Mark. If you were going to keep those yearlings and race them in your own stable when they're two-year-olds, which way would you do it? Dan's way? Or yours?"
The brothers looked at each other and laughed. "Speaking of one-track minds," Dan said.
"Which?" she insisted.
"Well, of course, Buddy's way, but...."
"So there you are!"
"Where?" Mark jeered affectionately.
"Mark, don't tease me, because this is vital. I know you've worked for years to make the name Riddigger Farms a proud one. Together, you and Dan have worked to build this farm and to improve the quality of your horses, and to make reputations for your stallions and you want the yearlings that come from your mares to be first-rate racing prospects.
"Keeping them idle and fattening them up for a pretty appearance hurts their future prospects; they'll not be as sound as they should be; you've admitted the way you'd condition them if they were yours. You can't do anything less for anybody that buys from you than give them sound horses that won't break bown at the tracks. If that sounds starry-eyed, be realistic; if a man pays a lot of money for a race horse that can't race, how will he remember the Riddibger product the next time he sees one at the sales? It's a shame, a terrible shame to compromise your quality and standards, Mark. It's a crime!" she ended.
There was an explosion of muffled laughter from Nelia across the room. Jill ignored it, watched Mark anxiously.
"When you give them sound horses," Mark said, looking at her earnestly, "they pay half what they would for the sleeked-up, overgrown ones."
She swung her glance questioningly at Dan. He nodded.
"True. They claim they want a sound, honest horse, but when you let them grow, at this stage, at their natural pace, solid and firm and tough, they're runty compared with the stall-fed beauties. On a basis of pure good-looks, Jill, there's no contest. Horsemen should know better, but we don't, half the time. We see a little character with a sunburned coat and maybe scuffed up from knocking around and his manners are bad and we think maybe he's sick and undernourished and hard to handle and the nice, big, juicy, overvitamized one over there looks wonderful and strong and sound ... everything he's not. It's hell. More and more, though, I've noticed, horsemen are turning back to the honest product, and it's as Jill says, Mark, if we're building a reputation and a future we don't want a lot of buyers with broken-down horses on their hands that they've bought from us. It's better to take less, for the sake of the future."
"Surely, Mark, with every stallion booked to forty or fifty or more mares at fees of a thousand or two-thousand or twenty-five-hundred dollars, you can afford...."
"The fee's based on a live foal. If we run eighty-five percent foals we're batting high. We refunded thousands in last season's fees because some mares didn't settle, others slipped, others had stillbirths."
"Even eighty-five percent's a huge fortune."
"Money goes out as well as in," he said with growing annoyance. "As to the future of Riddigger Farms, there may not be any unless we take care of the NOW. The now requires plenty of income from those summer sales. The stud fees you so naively imagine to be rolling in every day aren't due till September first. You're out of your depth, dear."
"No use to speak to her that way, Mark," Dan said with a sudden flash of anger. "None at all. Here's a girl who cares enough to get herself sympathetically involved, and you cut at her that way."
"Listen, Buddy, don't bother yourself about how I treat her or don't treat her."
"I bother myself. Don't hurt her that way. Don't tell her she's out of her depth; she understands ... better than you do, I'm beginning to think."
"We're not going to fight, Dan. Neither you and me, or me and her, or anybody. I've got to have money. I got deeper than I admitted in Vegas. Gambling. Well, all right, turn against me, turn against me. Let me sweat. I'm in trouble. But you go on, Buddy, you maintain your standards ... you go on and stay proud and high ... leave them out there in the pasture and to hell with me."
"They're going into the stalls in the morning, Mark," Dan said, turning away. "Nobody's going to let you down. You want them in the stalls, they go, no matter what the reason. You're the boss. All I know, you taught me, it's you're final say-so ... nobody's turning against you. Let's have a drink."
"I think," Jill said, "I'm not out of my depth but out of my world. Both of you, please excuse me for butting into something which does not concern me in any way."
"Jill, baby, don't say that. I'm sorry I cut you."
"Give me a drink," she said, dropping her gaze as Nelia wandered over, smirking with triumph.
"Congratulations," Nelia said, laughing into Mark's eyes. She turned to her husband, hugged an arm around him. "That was being smart, Danny boy. Let's celebrate over at the country club."
"This time of night?" Dan protested. He fixed Jill a drink, gave it to her.
"Let's not consider this anybody's triumph or defeat. We break clean, no grudges. That goes for you girls. That's an order. Hear me, girls?" He got their hands and put their palms together. "Shake."
They shook, withdrew their hands at once, turning away. Jill drank off her whisky and water, sucked her breath, fanned her face. She caught Dan smiling fondly at her, and grinned at him.
Mark said: "I want it understood all around that I know that Dan's right on the long-run basis. This is only a temporary compromise of standards."
Nelia pulled her lips flat against her teeth with exasperation. "Are we going to get into the sermon business again;
I thought we broke clean from all that quality and standards and such-like crap. Oh, I get so sick of never DOING anything, never having any fun. Mark's bushed from too much vacation and Dan's just bushed, and the glamor-girl's idea of excitement is traipsing around the horse factory."
"There's a dance tomorrow night at the club," Dan said. "We'll go."
"II the horse barn doesn't call you tonight and put you off your feet."
"You can go in with Mark and Jill anyway," he promised. "It's a date, Mark," she said, laughing. Mark and Dan laughed with her. '"I'm tired," Jill said. "Reminding me," Dan said.
"Well, never let it be said I let you two go up to bed together," Nelia said. "I'm going up, too. Have fun, Mark. G'night."
An hour later Jill was undressing when she realized she had left the little jeweled fillet she'd been wearing in her hair downstairs. She went down lightly in soft house slippers and came to an uneasy halt at the foot of the stairs. She heard a moan and a whimper, and swinging her gaze sharply back toward the dim rectangular doorway to the enclosed back porch, she saw Dan and Nelia, upright against the doorjamb. There was a muffled thudding and a tiny yelp and in horror Jill realized Dan must be beating her. Then the figures became motionless, the male ... maybe not Dan! ... pressing Nelia to the doorframe. Their faces met in a kiss, and parted and Nelia's whisper was loud, shockingly clear. "Hit me again, lover....lover!"
Jill snapped on the light and stared back at Mark and Nelia. He was gripping the doorframe, his body mashed against hers, and her arms were up around his neck and though her skirt was down her knees were spread and bent. Nelia's face turned, stunned, her mouth, the lipstick smeary, was open and panting. Mark grinned stupidly at Jill and approached, tiptoeing, a shushing finger to his lips. Nelia followed him closely.
Mark pointed upward, whispered: "Dan might not understand us roughhousing that way."
Nelia's blouse was open, her bra loose, one breast partly exposed and showing a purplish bruise. Nelia grinned coldly, not bothering to cover herself. "But you'll understand!....
You want to see where else he's got his brand on me?"
"Shut up, for god's sake," Mark hissed, "and cover yourself, or Jill will think...."
"She understands! Quit trying to bull her ... And all I got to say to her is if she opens her mouth," she began threateningly, Jill was hurrying up the stairs. She got to the sleeping porch. Mark followed her in hastily.
"Don't try to lie!" she demanded, before he got a word out.
"Don't turn away."
"Go beat her and make love. Ugh!"
"Try to understand."
"I'm leaving."
"I've been fighting to stop this thing with her. I hate it...."
"But love it...."
"Only a part of me.... I want to break it....Help me. Don't go."
"Go to her."
"I promise I never will again.... Never...."
"But you've been to her since we've been here," Jill said, her eyes narrow and hard with accusation.
"Only because everything.... oh, HELL.... Give me a chance."
"I'll never sleep with you again."
"But don't go.... I can be straight...." he pleaded, his voice hoarse and strained.
"Just get out, now, just get out. Please!"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jill heard mark go to the front of the hall and down the stairs. A minute later a hurrying of muffled, thumping sounds sent a shiver of tension along the nape of her neck as she realized Nelia, in stockinged feet, was coming back to the sleeping porch. Jill pivoted around, one leg of her black-velvet slacks ballooning, then dropping around her slim ankle as she faced the door, her upper body, head and babyish lips thrusting, her eyes blinking rapidly.
Nelia opened the door angrily and Jill warned: "Don't come to me for your beating, it won't be fun!" Nelia faltered, surprised by Jill's readiness. She stood looking frenzied and wanton with her smeared mouth and half-open blouse. Her eye darted to the slight swaying motion of Jill's hips as Jill's supple body readied for instant action in any direction. Nelia inched toward her, her stockinged feet gliding instead of lifting, her eyes suddenly crafty, her tongue darting across her lips. Then an arm lashed out, the hand clawing toward the shimmering satin-covered slope of one of Jill's breasts. Jill turn-jumped, yanked forward on the extended arm, hurtling Nelia's moving weight forward. Jill's foot shot out across her shins. Nelia hit the floor in a bellyflop that knocked the breath out of her. She shook her head groggily. Jill circled and stood beside her. As the downed girl started to get onto her hands and knees, Jill fit the arch of her foot to the back of Nelia's neck, and pushed her face down to the floor. Nelia got her head turned just in time to save herself a broken nose. Jill held her neck under her foot for a few seconds, staring down at her, then leaped back, saying sharply:
"Get up and get out in a hurry!" Jill's glance flicked to the door where Mark was standing, his jaw dropped. Jill looked back down at Nelia, who was scowling and getting her knees under her. She looked up at Jill, dropped her glance. She got to her feet and scurried across the room, passing Mark with her head down. Jill heard Nelia's bedroom door slam.
"I told YOU to leave me alone, too," Jill said walking over to Mark. "I know about the ugly, perverted fun you get out of abusing her. I know about people like her," she said, thinking sickly of Madame Petrovna. "They ask for it, beg for it. Bring out something in you.... but I won't have that element in my life!"
"Nor I in mine, Jill...." he said, huskily, coming to her. She turned and he reached out and stroked the pert, thrusting seat of the black-velvet slacks. She struck back at his arm.
"With you, that part would never come out ... you know that. I know from the way you argued for me about those yearlings tonight that you care for me, care for the best in me."
"For you?" she said, swinging around, her face dumb with surprise. "Why, I sided with Dan."
"Yes, but you looked at me and reminded me of the good things I stood for. The thought that I was abandoning them distressed you.... because you care."
"And within the hour you were sneaking off to give yourself a sadistic bang. And furthermore, it was contemptible of you to turn on the tears to Buddy, as if you're really desperate for money!" v
"I am."
"Desperate because you're afraid there won't be a big surplus for you to blow on good times. Right? Look me in the eye and deny you stood there and took advantage of the way that kid hero-worships you."
"That's too much. It's.... scurrilous."
She laughed, a soft, bitter sound. "Such pomposity. The big-thinking, winged hero; that's who you are to him. He could see you in bed with his wife and you know what he'd do? Have himself committed to an asylum for having hallucinations. 'Buddy, are you going to let me down when I'm desperate,'" she mimicked. "'Jill, give me a chance!"
Get out, get out before I vomit...." Her eyes began to sting, and she spun away, wiping at them. "The trouble is I'll bet you really did used to be the guy he still thinks you are. Now, if you don't want me to utterly HATE you, let me ALONE!"
She locked her door, shut off the lights and paced the long sleeping-porch, dumbly, her senses scattered. She had really wanted to go home for a visit after Vegas and before returning to New York. But after that trouble with Chaz, hope of reconciliation with Phyllis was gone. She would even dread facing her, not knowing what he might have told her.
She heard Mark leave the house and a few minutes later she heard a car pulling out.
She shrugged, went in and started a warm tub. She flung off her blouse and bra and rubbed her breasts, tiredly, got out of the slacks and her panties and stook naked by the tub. Watching the roiling surface of the water she began to cry and laugh, remembering the time Donny and Patsy had tried to get in the tub with her just before she'd been with Chaz that first time. Now they were about the age she'd been, but so very different, so remote.
She slid into the water, lay slack, her eyes shut, her thoughts touching Madame Petrovna with a forgotten softness. She didn't know what the poor thing would do with herself if she didn't return to the school and company. Madame needed her. The perverted element in her was far less ugly than.... she sat up, shaking her head, hunching her shoulders. Just how long could she resist being sucked into that unnatural, unhealthy way of life?
Better to give up dancing entirely. She had an abrupt, suffocating sense of dread! Give up life? For what?.... For what? A man like Mark? A man like.... she refused even to think Dan's name. Sex was all she really wanted of him. She could get stud service anywhere. Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, she'd wire Madame that she was coming back. At once.
There was a breath of chilly air on her warm, glisteningly wet upper back and shoulders. She started to slide forward and immerse when the idiot rhythm of loud rock 'n' roll music flooded the bathroom. She flung her head around and gaped, horrified.
There stood Nelia, stark naked, her small, sac-like breasts and her long, flabby thighs and one squarish hip, blue-bruised with Mark's brands. She held a little radio and something else. Jill seized the water knobs on the front wall and hoisted herself into a crouch with such speed that the water began to rock in the tub, lapping up around her half-submerged body. Nelia, her voice pitched thinly above the radio said:
"I came to scrub you, scrub you raw, scrub the skin right off that round ass and scrub that baby face of yours CLEAN, you dirty bitch.
The brush was seven or eight inches long, and the grayish, dull-glinting inch-long bristles were.... Jill gasped.... steel wire! Nelia's arm came slashing down from an overhead swing. The bristles of the brush caught and dug into the flesh of Jill's hip the instant she was upright. She cried out as the brush scraped a wide pink patch along the wet, glistening round of her hip and upper thigh. Red pinheads of blood speckled the raw pink ilne. Jill's foot slipped on the curve of the wet tub and her arms flew out for balance and the brush swiped at the round of one buttock.
Nelia locked her arms around Jill's off-balance body. Jill felt the contact of that brush on her bottom, reached frantically around and gripped Nelia's wrist, immobilizing it. She dug her fingernails in, puncturing the flesh, and the brush fell against her legs and splashed into the water. Nelia dropped to her knees, pawing wildly at the water and Jill caught her hair in handfuls and hauled Nelia's upper body forward across the edge of the tub. She pushed her head down under the water between her spread legs. Nelia tried to lift herself on her arms. She got the back of her head up as high as Jill's knees. Jill forced her down again and Nelia's body began to heave, her legs kicking out wildly back of her. An explosion of bubbles, reverberating with the underwater sound of her voice, broke the surface. Nelia had quit trying for the brush, and her arms hit the water with sharp splashing beats like drunken wings. Then the wings lost strength, dropped, submerging.
Jill pulled her head up. She let her breathe gaspingly, then ducked her, pulled her up, twice. The whites of Nelia's eyes showed as Jill clamped her head between her knees and crouched, glaring fiercely down at her. Nelia moved her mouth, making hoarse pleading sounds and her wet arms glided upward, clinging for life around Jill's waist. "D-don't ... d-drown m-me...." Jill released her hair, opened her gripping knees, freeing her head. She restrained the impulse to drive a knee into her vulnerable face and pushed her away.
She rolled onto the floor, face down, panting, coughing, two or three times.
Jill caught up the brush, got nimbly out of the tub and stepped across Nelia's body. She switched off the noisy music and walked back with cautious, dainty steps, her slender, graceful feet quick-lifting, the polish on her toenails a red-jewelled winking. She stood near the prone, naked girl's sopping wet head, her own head inclined forward, the hair piled high under a white shower cap, her long, sweet-curving feminine body shining wet and beautiful. She stood looking down, clenching the steel-wire brush, her firm, conical young, dark-tipped breasts moving and shimmering with light to the left and fall of her deep, open-lipped breathing. She could feel the salty stinging along the raw pink stripe of scraped skin on her hip, thigh and roundly-clenched buttocks. She lifted one knee and made a brief kicking motion, flinging water at Nelia's face. Nelia raised herself slightly, saw the brush and began to whine and plead.
Jill twisted herself, stood in profile, and swung her hip toward Nelia, looking down at her and showing the raw stripe. She turned her back, showing the injury to her buttocks.
"I'm sorry.... I'm sorry," Nelia cried. "Let me tend to you where I hurt you...." She drew her legs up under her and lifted her upper body, her eyes fixed on Jill's face. She extended one hand tremblingly toward Jill's body. "I'll never hurt you again.... I want to be friends; let me show you; let me tend you where I hurt you, honey...."
"I'll tend myself," Jill told her icily, stepping scornfully away, snatching a towel and covering herself. "And if you ever make a move toward me again, I'll.... I'll.... The next time I WILL drown you. Stand up and take your junk and get out of my sight...."
"Yes."
"Don't even LOOK at me."
Nelia was on her feet. Jill tensed, briefly, waringly. Nelia came and stood in front of her, her head lowered. "I'll do anything you tell me to. Anything," she whispered.
"Just get out."
She didn't raise her eyes. "Please don't tell Dan. Or Mark."
"We'll see how you act!"
"Tell me how to act." She looked hopefully into Jill's face, stared at her pleadingly. "Order me. Anything!"
"All right!" Jill paused, smiled contemptously. Here's the first thing I order you to do.... Go to your husband's room. Tell him I had a fight with Mark. That I am dressing and packing and I want to leave this farm in fifteen minutes. I want him to drive me. Go and tell him this INSTANT. Get moving.... and take your brush and your radio with you!"
Rid of Nelia, she hastily dried her body. She found salve in the medicine chest and smeared her injuries. She hurried to get into clothes. She was finishing packing when Dan appeared at the bedroom doorway.
"Nelia says you had a fight with Mark and want to go...."
"Yes. Will you drive me to Lexington ... or just to the nearest village?"
"Where's Mark?"
"I don't know; he drove away. Will you take me or am I a prisoner here?"
From inside the house a phone rang. "Just a minute," Dan said, and hurried down the hall. She went to the door, saw him go into his own room.
He came back saying: "Urgent call from the foaling barn.... could you wait?' '
"No. I'll go with you to the barn, anywhere, out of this house!"
Downstairs, he went across the sitting room to the whisky decanter, sloshed a stiff drink into a glass. "Drink this, Jill. You don't look good. Please drink it, baby."
"Nobody's to call me baby."
"Sorry. Please drink it."
It stung her throat and for an instant she stood so limply relaxed she thought she could sink in a heap to the floor. She roused, and hurried out to the car with him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Heading the car out along the private blacktop road toward the foaling barns Dan kept glancing at her tight profile.
"I know Mark's hard to get along with, but...."
"Defense rests," she snapped.
"All right, I won't defend him.... but would you like to tell me what happened?"
Jill suddenly opened her mouth and let out a rip of screaming sound. She shut her mouth.
"I get it. I get it," he said nervously, reaching over hastily and patting her knee. He changed the subject. "You'll never guess which mare's about to pop!"
"Obviously the one that's got the swollen udder and has been dripping milk. Humdigger. Right?"
"Wrong, because it's not her. It's the young chestnut mare, Reddirun!" He swung in in front of the single workers' barracks, tapped the horn twice, lightly. "Whitey and Cor are coming. No, that mare Reddirun hasn't showed a sign she was going to pop...." He unlatched the back door as Whitey and Cor hurried out.They got in and Dan told them, "It's Reddirun!"
"No!" Whitey exclaimed, then laughed. "Ain't she running true to form, though!"
Dan drove on toward the lighted foaling barn, glancing at Jill. "Guess you boys know Miss Braddock. Never saw a foaling. She wants to. You do, don't you?"
She nodded, staring and mute. His hand came over and patted her knee gently and suddenly both her hands caught his and she laced her chilly fingers around his big warm hand.
"Want to hear about Reddirun? Surprise mare all the way. On the track she wouldn't wake up till the stretch, then zoom! it was her nose under the wire. We won bundles on her. Right, Whitey?.... Cor?"
"The Lex bookies hated that sweet little mare. Beat good colts in her day."
"Then last season," Dan said to her, "she turned out to be a spec mare.... interested, Jill?" His low and soothing voice was concerned.
"Very interested," Jill nodded jerkily, squeezed his hand. She stared ahead. "Very interested."
"A spec mare doesn't show any response to a stallion. The vet has to use a spec-a speculum-to find out when she's ... uh ... in her breeding cycle. Outwardly she shows nothing. We were afraid Reddirun would be barren. Surprised us on the track, then a no-show mare, now she's shown no sign of foaling, and surprise again.... Here we are." He parked near the barn door.
"Go in and get washed up," he spoke toward the back seat. "Be right with you."
Alone with her he leaned close and kissed her cheek, turned her face gently in his hands and kissed her mouth softly. "Will you be all right out here? I'm afraid for you to come in."
"What? Well, I'm coming!" She flung the door open, swung her knees around and got out.
Just outside the barn door he said: "It's dirty and rough and it's liable to make you sick!"
"It won't."
"I'm liable to be very busy, but," he said in a sudden rush, "I'll be with you every minute, and very glad to have you around. Just the feel of you around this farm is...." He broke off, shook his head and entered the barn.
The older mare with the swollen udder was sweating but, aside from nervous pacing and some pawing at her straw, she showed no urgency. The assistant barn attendant stood by watching her. The bright chestnut coat of Reddirun, the younger mare, was wet and, in spots, foamy. Her bag had burst, and she hurled herself onto her side, heaved up to her feet at once, hurled herself down again. The chief attendant watched her tensely, saying to Dan:
"She's been doing that. Foal must be upside down; she's trying to turn him over.... she ain't having no luck, though.... Wish to hell Doc would get here.... she's been at it five minutes."
Dan began to strip out of jacket, shirt, undershirt. Tense, he hurried to scrub up. In five or ten more minutes there might be a dead foal and a crippled mare. He grabbed clean towels from the big supply cart of medical supplies standing in readiness, dried his hands and arms. Returning to the stall he glanced at Jill's lovely face, looking stark and frozen, understanding nothing clearly, yet sensing everything in her vitals, and he felt a profound bond of sympathy and sent her a warm, quick smile.
He stroked the mare's neck, said quietly to the other men, "Stay at her head and keep her on her feet." He went around behind her, noting the stage of relaxation of her pelvic muscles and vulva. He pushed her clean-bandaged tail aside and reached in.... if she started to bear down and trapped his arms between those massive muscles and the pelvic bone.... he banished the agonizing thought.
He located the foal's front hoofs just inside the birth canal, then the forelegs, and the foal was upside down. The mare was standing with her legs braced out to the sides and in obvious distress, and she was giving the handlers trouble holding her head as Mark gripped the foal's forelegs and crossed them, the one over the other. He began to rock the foal gently from side to side, farther and farther, and the frightened mare began to step her hindfeet around. Dan stayed with her grimly, then with a sudden, deft pressure he turned the unborn foal completely over. He guided the forelegs and muzzle into the birth canal and stepped back from the mare, his head and bare torso running with sweat.
The mare lay down, and when Dan got back after washing himself, the foal was half out, its great round eyes staring at the unfamiliar world. Jill, who'd moved up to the very edge of the stall, was staring, transfixed, and when she saw Dan grinning at her, big fat tears began to slide down her cheeks.
Then the foal was out, resting in the clean yellow straw. When the mare, after ten minutes or so, got to her feet, rupturing the umbilical cord naturally, there was a flurry of disciplined activity in the stall as the colt was attended. The vet walked in just as the other mare delivered without the slightest trouble.
When Dan got back into his clothes Jill was watching the first foal, which lay in the straw, stirring around a little, then resting tiredly. The attendant sent his assistant to make coffee, and they all settled down to wait, chatting and smoking, the men laughing in good spirits. Jill was subdued, and she held herself in the background as much as possible. Dan wandered over.
"It'll take maybe another half-hour for the foals to get to their feet. We don't help 'em ... it's tough not to give them a hand, but it's good for their character....Are you all right? Want to throw up or anything?"
"Of course not.... I think it's.... wonderful....and you are, Dan ... just wonderful...."
"Lived my life here.... Mark and I were foaled instead of born, you know. You should see him in an emergency...." She looked away; there was a clumsy silence. He said hastily: "We could go now, if you're tired.... I'm kind of sentimental; like to watch 'em get to their feet the first time.... but we could go."
"NO!"
The first foal tried to get up twenty minutes later. He fell. He rested, tried again, got halfway up and flopped, those long, knobby legs flailing. Then he had his hind legs up and stood on his front knees, switching his tail and looking around with a cocky air that set everybody laughing. Then he was up and nosing around trying to locate his first meal. The young mare munched hay and turned to watch him as if wondering if he'd ever have the gumption to make contact. When the colt finally found what he was looking for he didn't find much, since the mare's udder and teats were still very small. But he came insistently at his mother time and again until she produced a meal. Both foals were nursing when Dan and Jill left the barn.
While they were driving Whitey and Cor to the dorm Jill babbled excitedly: "Oh, that adorable, stubborn little mule of a foal. The way he kept after her and just wouldn't take no for an answer until he got what he had to havel Oh, I just know he'll be a champion!"
"Maybe Mark'll give you his half of him for a wedding present," Dan laughed.
"What'll you give me?"
"My half."
Whitey clapped his hands. "That's a deal, me and Cor witnessed it."
"We sure did.... give you a hundred-thousand for him this minute, Miss Braddock," Cor said.
"That's no bid for a triple-crown winner," she scoffed.
"Double it ... eh, Cor? Cash on the barrelhead."
He'll win more than Nashua and produce one-hundred-seventy-four stakes winners."
"We'll go to two million.... Dan, lend me and Cor a buck to put a quick bind on this deal."
After the men left the car Jill continued to laugh, gay, pretty trilling sounds. Dan started the car and cruised slowly in the general direction of the county road instead of the house. She remembered her bags were stowed in the trunk and the pretty trillings took on a shrill, hysterical edge, and she began to blink back a quick hot welling of tears.
Her upper body dropped forward as if broken and her hands flew to catch her falling face, and the laughter was abruptly a sobbing. The skin on the back of her neck crawled with self-consciousness as she became aware of the raw, squawling ugliness of her uncontrolled voice. The car had stopped and Dan's hand was on her bent back. She sat up, holding her breath and turning her face away. She felt blindly for the latch and opened the door and got out, and began to walk, very rapidly, feeling the cool sting of air on her wet face. The flood of headlights stretched her shadow over the fence into a dark pasture, then the lights cut off and she walked back toward the car, the quakings in her chest subsiding a little but threatening to overwhelm her.
Dan came toward her and, opening his fleece-lined mack-inaw, brought the edges out around her body, drawing her in against him. She stood within the warm circle, her arms passively at her sides, her left cheek and ear against the mild roughness of his wool shirt and felt the strong steady life of his heart and the vibrancy in his chest as she listened to the slow, sweet-song flow of his voice comforting her. The gaspy jerkiness of her breathing evened out and the frantic beat of her heart calmed and she felt dreamingly asleep and saf and she murmured faintly: "I love you."
He didn't hear and Jill rested there content against the warmth of him and she said it again and he didn't hear.
She turned her face and tilted her head and upper body back a little to look up at him and the circle of his arms and coat tightened as the shift of her balance bowed her lower body in more snugly and warmly against him.
"I love ... she began. She stopped. There was a sudden, breathtakingly stalliony awareness of her in his body. A shock of sensation in her lower stomach sent forked tongues of lightning up to her scalp and down to her toes and her head giddied and her feet lifted in tiny dancing spasms, and her body writhed against him. The thousand branching forks of the lightning touched and quickened every cell in her body and in the wake of the first intensity thrill, waves of hot excitement shivered over her skin.
She locked her arms around him and her face dropped back, her lips open and throbbing. His face, broad and handsomely shadowed in the night, was angled above hers and she could see the arching tension of his powerful neck and then he was kissing her hungrily, turning his face from side to side, his mouth a rolling pressure on her soft, full lips. He drew her lower lip between his teeth and nipped lightly, then his tongue thrust against the darting hot point of her tongue.
He kissed her several times, very hard, very fast. Then they stood quiveringly against each other catching their breath while his big strong arms moved with nervous possessive caresses over her upper back. The powerful bands of his tensed leg muscles moved against her and she felt a trembling weakness in the flesh of her slim thighs. He kissed her again. He whole body began alternately to numb and tingle and then all the feeling was leaving her hands and arms and feet and legs to concentrate in a tightening circle of fever at the core of her femaleness.
Then he was prying her loose and moving backward, drunkenly, shaking her head. She cried out and ran to him in a panic.
"Dearest," she whimpered, clutching his coat, her eyes wide with terror. "What's wrong?"
"We mustn't...." he said hoarsely.
"It's not your heart, is it?" she said in a rush, then looked at him dumbly. "What did you say?"
She stood gaping at him.
"Jill...." He drew breath, calmed his voice. You're only this way because of what happened in the foaling barn. There's a power about a birth, a dramatic wonder about new life. You were upset and I happened to be cast in a certain role. In the state you were in it was very impressive to you. But only by a fluke of circumstances was I the one in that role instead of Mark."
"Oh, dearest," she said softly, her hand reaching up tenderly to his face. "It's no fluke. From the instant I saw you, I loved you. More than I ever loved anyone...." She lay her palm on his lips and he kissed it. "More than I'll ever love anyone. Even more than...." there was a catch in her voice, a sudden fresh gush of tears.... "my dancing. Don't you love me, Dan?"
"Love you? Oh, my God! How could I help loving you? You make the fields bloom, you make the sun shine and now, this minute...." he said agitatedly, and made a sweeping gesture. "This minute, when the sky and the whole world is dark and drained, your beautiful face draws the light to it. The sight of you walking, or eating or just standing, brings back all the feeling I used to have for this land. Just the sound of your voice, even when I can't see you, reaches in and banishes all my tiredness and depression. When you cry it hurts me. When Mark makes you unhappy I want to kill him." He stopped. "But Jill, darling, dearest, I can't betray him. He's my brother. More than that. He did everything for me. He loves me and trusts me absolutely. You're the first woman he's ever really loved. I can't love you, Jill, I just can't."
"Dan," she said softly, "Dan, dearest. I'm not his woman, Dan. I'm sorry for him that I'm not, maybe, but I'm not, and he knows it."
"Would you want just an affair?" He spoke angrily.
"Whatever."
"I don't want that. I couldn't let you go if I ever once made love to you. I couldn't let you go.... I want all or nothing. And there's Nelia."
"You don't love her."
"I won't lie. And God knows she's become contemptuous of me. She stays for security, but a man can't just kick a woman out...."
"What an outrage, a woman contemptuous of YOU, a wonderful man like you....I love you.... I'm your woman. Claim me....Oh, dearest, take me, take me. Make love to me....Don't talk. Kiss me. Undress me, lay me down. There in the fields. Anywhere, but now. Now. RIGHT NOW." She wrapped her arms tightly about him and shut her eyes and held her mouth waiting, trembling with desire.
He pried her arms loose.
Jill flung herself away and shrilled, thrusting her wet, flushed face at him. "Oh, I hate your guts, you.... you ....LITTLE BROTHER!"
He stood for long moments staring at her speechlessly, then he turned, walked three steps toward the car, and swung back to her.
"You didn't mean that."
"I said it." She wiped at her cheeks.
"That's not like you, a sweet-flavored woman like you!"
She took a challenging feet-apart stance, pulled" the tie of her coat, sharply accenting the nip of her tiny waist, the flare of her hips. She reset her beret at a gamin angle, rammed her little fists on her hips, swayed herself from side to side and angled her chin up at him challengingly.
"What do you know about what I'm like? Teaser stallion!"
He snatched the beret off her head and threw it in a wad to the ground and yanked loose the tie-belt of her coat and spun her around pulling the coat from her shoulders. He turned her to face him again and opened her cardigan sweater and inserted his fingers between her throat and the collar of her blouse and ripped downward then sideways, tearing the blouse to shreds. She stuck out her chest, reached up and seized his ears and pulled his face down against her warm flesh.
"Taste your sweet-flavored woman." His lips quick-darted, kissing the throbbing skin below her neck, then he tickled and stroked her throat and shoulders with his tongue and she squirmed, giggling, her arms working at her bra hooks. She had the bra off when he swung her up on his arms.
At the car he lowered her and she opened the back door and bent forward to get in. He followed her closely, his cheek nuzzling against her skirt at the hip. She turned herself onto her back on the back seat, her shoulders and head wedged into one corner, feet on the cushion, her knees lifted.
His hands caressed her feet and lower legs and his eyes followed the hem of her skirt as it slid down her pale, lovely thighs from her raised knees to the edge of her panties. She braced herself and lifted her hips and stripped off her panties, forgetting in her haste the injury from the steel brush. The pain flash was brief.
She shifted herself trying to accommodate him and she became fretfully aware of the cramped space and the discomfort and of his bulk looming above her and she thought it was going to be clumsy and self-conscious and all her expectations would end in peevishness. Then he touched her and she let out a sigh of pleasure and everything but the joy of receiving her man vanished.
He was strong and rough and thrilling, rousing exquisite areas of sensitivity to such a pitch that she could have screamed. She found herself panting wildly and experiencing a height of ecstasy such as no man had ever given her. When it was done she lay limp and throbbing, a slack, delicious smile on her mouth. She pulled his face down to kiss him again and again.
He got out of the car and picked up her clothes off the road. He left her in the back seat and got in and started the car in a U turn.
"We've got to do this right."
He sped to the garage behind the main house. She put on her coat and he carried" her to the house and up the stairs and back to the sleeping porch and looked at her ravenously and began to get out of his clothes.
"You don't mean now...." she began. A second later she looked at his body and flushed with pleasure, her heart beginning to beat with excitement. She hurried over and locked the door and went to the bed.
Afterwards he rolled her on top of him and looked up at her adoringly in the dim light. "Ah, but that was good.... I still haven't had a chance to see that beautiful body."
He began to stroke her. "Don't touch me down there, I've got a cut."
"Let me see, darling. How'd you get it?"
"Skinned myself." She kissed him.
"I want to see." He rolled her away, reached for the lamp.
"No ... please, Dan ... it would embarrass me....not till it's healed.... I don't want you to see me flawed."
She tried to get a cover over her and roll onto her back. He caught her and held her on her stomach and inspected the injuries to her hip and buttocks.
"Please cover me," she said, her face turned.
"I'm going to bandage you."
He left the sleeping porch and she heard him going to another bathroom. He came back in, knelt on the bed beside her. "For this I'm going to beat hell out of him."
She flung herself over onto her back, stared at him, shaking her head.
"Who?"
"Big brother!"
"You're all wrong. He didn't do this."
"Who did? This isn't just a little skinned place. Roll over, sweetheart, I've got ointment and bandage."
"That doesn't matter now.... it's just a skin wound. It was NOT Mark." She stared at him intently. "I swear to you."
His mouth pursed, his eyes narrowed. "She hates you guts.... did she rough you up?"
"She came in on me in the bathroom with a steel-wire brush and she got in a couple of licks before I damned near killed her.... a dancer's a professional athlete and not so easy as all to handle, you know!"
There was the roar of a fast car coming toward the house and they both looked at each other.
Dan got off the bed and finished dressing. Jill got up and got into her clothes. He didn't have to tell her that he was going to put it straight to Mark.
They heard Mark come in he house and then there was a long pause before he came up the stairs. Dan began to pace and crack his knuckles. They heard Mark come up the stairs, come a few steps along the hall and open a door.
Dan looked dumbly at Jill, his mouth dropping. The door a few steps from the stairs was Nelia's room. Dan glanced at his watch, shifted from one foot to the other, looked at Jill blankly.
"What do you suppose he's doing?"
"He went in the bathroom, didn't he?" she lied.
"No."
"I think so. Or else your room. He's probably so drunk he doesn't know where he went."
Dan looked at her unrecognizingly, his eyes widened in a sort of terror. He rolled his shoulders and shook his head.
Suddenly he rushed to the door, out into the hall and down to Nelia's room at a run. Jill called: "Wait, Dan...." following him.
But he was already at Nelia's door. He flung it open and reached in and turned the light on and then he just stood, frozen.
Jill caught up with him. Mark, fully clothed, was sitting on the edge of the bed and Nelia in a bed jacket was sitting up with a frozen look. Suddenly she shrilled.
"Well, what of it, goddamn you, don't you think I know what you and that bitch've been doing all night?"
Dan paid no attention to her. He was looking at his brother, and his face had crumpled like a child's.
Mark got off the bed, his eyes overbright, his grin over-wide, and said: "Hey, now, Buddy,.... don't take on like that. The poor kid was in here bawling, the way you're messing around with Jill. I came in to comfort her....Have I got my clothes on or have I?"
A sudden smile lighted Dan's face. "Is that what you were doing?"
"Why hell, yes, you jerk, would I ever let you down? Would I ever violate the honor of your marriage? Don't be a kid. As far as your playing around with Jill, she's free, she knows that. This is a matter between you and your wife, this thing is....you owe her some sort of apology, Buddy, right in her own house ... that's not quite up to our way of doing things, kid"
"Why didn't you turn the light on?"
"Why should he?" Nelia called shrilly. "He could hear me bawling and I asked him not to look at me and...."
"You don't look bawling," said Dan tightly, his face grim. "Mark, you walked right in without knocking. Mark, you're not squaring with me. A thing like this, Mark.... Jesus, Mark, I've never cared what anybody ever said about you, because I knew what you were, down underneath it all. Straight and true. One thing you'd never do and that's...." His voice suddenly choked and in the next instant he let out an anguished cry and smashed a fist at Mark's head. Mark weaved to one side and as Dan charged him he kicked viciously at his groin.
Dan caught his leg and dumped him and pitched down at him, both fists swinging, beating Mark in the face. Mark covered his head and rolled, toppling Dan half off-balance and Mark got to his feet, dancing back as Dan came swinging at him again. Mark got a hand into his pocket and turned, shielding his head and leaning against the wall. He came out from the wall with a ripping, slashing blow and Dan bawled with pain and clutched his stomach which was spurting blood. Mark was on him, holding a pocket knife in his fist and pounding it at Dan, slashing his clothes and drawing blood.
Stunned with horror, Jill watched him turn savage and searched wildly for something to hit him with. Then Dan dropped to the floor and drew his knees up to his chest and when Mark tried to fall on him Dan's feet smashed upward into his chest with rib-cracking force that made him pitch backward, stumbling, the knife clattering from his hand. He hit the chest of drawers, overturning it with a crash, then bounced himself against the wall and dove at the floor for the knife and seized it just as Dan reached him. Mark was bent forward and Dan put both hands together and brought them clubbing down on the back of Mark's neck, flattening him. The knife was still gripped in Mark's fist and Dan moved over and deliberately stomped the fist with his foot, breaking bones. Then he reached down and picked up the knife, shut it, and walked out to a phone and called a doctor.
At dawn, two hours later, Jill walked out to the doctor's car listening to him reassure her that Dan's wounds weren't serious. She watched him drive away and walked slowly back to the house.
Light shone from nearly every window, giving the house a festive air against the slate-gray sky. From one of the fields there was a nickering and an answer and she could hear, and faintly sense, like a pulsebeat in the earth, the thrumming of hoofs somewhere in the distance. In the barns the men would be carrying feed tubs and clean water to the stalls. She could imagine the lively bright yearlings and beautiful two-year-olds in pastures and paddocks and perhaps even a shivering new foal gazing at the eastern horizon where a silvery strip of light lifted against the night, bringing new day, new life.
As she re-entered the house there was an aching heaviness in her breast. She just stood in the middle of the cold-shiny kitchen in her coat, her eyes staring, her neck straining as she listened for some sound. There was nothing from Mark's or Dan's or Nelia's rooms.
Shaking her head, she went over to the stove and felt the side of the big pot of coffee she'd made an hour ago. It was tepid. She poured a cupful into a saucepan for reheating and tiptoed across for cup and cream, oppressed by the house's silence of pain and exhaustion.
She poured her coffee, lifted the cup and scalded her upper lip. She set the cup down, clacking and sloshing. The little needle of pain was enough to pierce through to the deeper anguish she'd been fighting. To have seen the destruction of the relationship between Dan and Mark was ... was ... No, she wasn't going to cry.
With sudden vividness she visualized a combination of dance steps of such complexity and brilliance that she blinked. She did some demi-pull ups as a warm-up to try out the steps....
Then Dan was coming out of the hall, across the sitting room, the dining room and into the kitchen. He was dressed for work, but underneath his clothes his body was taped and there was a stiffness to his walk. She hurried to him, anxious little smile on her face:
"Are you all right?"
"No. But...." He shrugged, winced, then grinned. I could use some of that coffee."
She hurried to the stove and Dan followed slowly. He lit a cigarette and then they just stood near each other smiling now and then. They both alerted at the hasty sound of Nelia's coming downstairs in high heels. She came through to the kitchen and stopped just inside. She was dressed in skirt, blouse, and sweater. More quietly, Mark, his bandaged hand in the pocket of an old jacket, followed her in.
Jill could feel the run of tension through Dan's body as he turned to face them, his head thrusting forward, his fine neck arching. He began to walk in a slow, long stride toward them and came to a stop a doublearm's length away.
"Get the hell out of my sight, you slut!" said Dan to Nelia, his voice low and quivering. "You dirty, sneaking...." He made a sudden lunge, his arm going out in a roundhouse blow. Nelia shrilled and jumped back. He didn't swing again, but just stood. "Get out of my sight, I told you."
"I WON'"I ... Mark, don't let him beat me up!"
Dan didn't even look at Mark. He just turned his back and came toward Jill: "There's only one reason I won't ... Jill's seen too much ugliness." Dan turned and faced them again. This time he looked directly at Mark. "I intend to protect my woman."
"She's so precious to you!" Nelia sneered.
"I love her."
Mark, who'd been standing warily, flushed suddenly, his good fist balling. "Your woman?"
"My woman. I made her my woman tonight."
"Mark, I TOLD you he was laying the bitch."
"Shut up!" Mark told her tightly. "Dan, do you mean to stand there and tell me you betrayed-?"
Dan made a coarse, laughing sound. "You've got the guts to talk about betrayal to me!"
"I've got the guts to kill you, you son-of-a-bitch." He whirled suddenly, started at a run through the dining room....
Dan bellowed after him. "Go on, get the gun! You're a crazy man. Go on, prove it. Get the gun!"
Mark stopped, turned around, and came slowly back, his body features sagging. He dropped into a kitchen chair and looked at the floor.
"I wouldn't have, Dan. I wouldn't have. I ... but, hell, Buddy ... you did betray me ... you didn't know about Nelia and me, but you went on and undercut me with Jill...." Mark looked up pleadingly at Dan. "Admit it, Buddy."
Dan turned away. "Cut the Buddy stuff. Don't you ever call me that again, Mark."
"All right, Dan." He got to his feet, fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. He put it tremblingly between his lips. "I can't handle a match and my lighter's upstairs."
Dan lit a match, held it for him.
"Can't look at me, huh? Well, anyway I was a hero once upon a time."
Dan walked away. "It's not that ... not entirely that, Mark. You're right. I betrayed you. I didn't know you were making a goddamn fool out of me with THAT...." He glanced at Nelia. "I'm to blame, too."
"No," Jill said coolly, walking over and standing between Dan and Mark. She looked anxiously from one to the other. "I demanded he make love to me. I taunted him. He refused me and I stung him, Mark. I challenged his manhood; he couldn't have refused. But remember this, I knew about you and Nelia. I didn't tell him, but I made him love me. I loved him from the first day, Mark. No man, ever, has given me such a deep, full sense of meaning."
Mark reached for her hand. She shook her head. "Jill," he said huskily, "you loved me. I know you did. I've fought for you, I've planned my whole future around you ... God, if both of you turn completely against me! I'm not this bad; I wasn't always this way. Through you I can get back to the best in myself."
"I don't love you, Mark. I tried to; I wanted to ... but it was just physical excitement with you. With Dan it's that plus everything else a woman needs in a man. Try to understand what he's come to mean to me." Her pert features were taut with emotion, her eyes darkly shadowed.
Mark walked across to the stove, then came back. "He's better for you than I'd be. Yes, Jill, I see it. He's got the balance and strength and he's undivided. Well, I'm bowing out." A corner of his mouth quirked. "You're not mine to give, but it makes me feel noble to give you to him, and give him to you ... ah, I see it fetched a grin, Baby Face."
"Goddamn you all to hell-every damned one of you," Nelia suddenly shrieked. She walked up and stood in front of Dan, facing Jill. "Dan's MY husband and he's going to STAY my husband."
"Let's face it, Nelia," Mark said. "You and I are the natural pair, not you and Dan. It's been that way a long time...."
"Don't con me. You sit there drooling over her and begging her ... you don't care a damn about me. Well, nobody does, nobody but ME, and I'm Mrs. Dan Riddigger and that's who I stay."
ISS
"I wouldn't trust you a minute," Dan snapped.
"Haven't we all fought enough," Mark said. He came over and kissed his fingertip and put it to Nelia's nose. "Let's face it. Wouldn't you like a big, six-week ball over in Nevada getting that divorce ... with me around?" He closed an eyelid furtively in Jill's direction before adding to Nelia, "Hell, we could really make history ... no sneaking around."
"Then it'll be Mrs. Mark Riddigger?" Nelia's eyes were hard and there was an edge to her voice. "We'll see."
"I won't budge!"
"So, when Dan files for divorce right here in this county, you know who his big witness will be? Me."
"You wouldn't." Nelia's face registered shock.
He grinned flatly at her. "I don't bluff! Now, Dan ... Jill ... there's one guy who can't be around the premises when you two make it legal, and that's me. So which of us is going to buy who out?"
"There's no need to talk about that, Mark," Dan said. "This farm has been built by both of us, and-"
"And nothing could ever be the same between us again. We've got to face that. You love the place and you've given it everything you've got. I should walk out and leave the whole thing to you and Jill."
"Don't be stupid. That's just a little too noble."
"I said I should ... I don't intend to. Nelia and I are going to be headed out as fast as possible and what you and me will have to think about is details. I know there's too much horse factory for one man to handle right; I over-expanded us. What we ought to do is sell off five or six hundred acres and a percentage of the stock."
"That could be the answer, Mark. That would give me enough surplus to buy your share."
The cook and maids suddenly arrived, and the conversation broke off.
"Dan...." Jill said. "Right now I want you to drive me to the airport. My bags are all in the car and ... PLEASE don't argue about it I've got to get away ... I couldn't stand another minute."
"Go?" He looked stunned. "My God, do you think I was just talking ... I love you ... I want you ... I want to marry you as soon as possible."
"Which would be six weeks at the least."
"Of course but-"
She went over to Mark. "Good-bye ... I'm sorry about ... about everything...." He grinned briefly, then turned away.
Later, waiting in the airport terminal, Dan persisted. "You do love me, don't you?" Jill nodded, silent. "And you intend to marry me?"
"I don't know." Her breast was aching. Her eyes stung. She wiped at them. "Let's get out to the gate." They strolled slowly and she spoke hurriedly. "Mark was just a reaction from other problems I was having with my dancing, with the people I worked with. Maybe, Dan you too are something like that. I think it's love, dearest ... this minute I KNOW it ... but will I know it in a month ... will you?"
"Always." He gave her a steady, adoring look.
"As you said, you were cast in a certain role and you seemed ... and still seem to be the most wonderful man in the world, the only one for me, ever, but it's a strange world, Dan, and I come from a strange world. Whether or not I could ever really give up my dancing I don't know....And I MUST know."
"I'll be there in New York in six weeks."
"We'll see...." She went into his arms for a final lingering kiss as the barrier opened.
She walked out to the plane.
Fifteen minutes later as the plane was taking off, lifting from the ramp she could still see him, fading, fading....Then he was only a fleck, seen through a sudden gathering of tears, a splendid but not-quite-real figure from another world.
