Chapter 4
Valley Center, where territory residents bought things they didn't have time to drive to the city for, slept with one eye open of the time. About four thousand people lived there, just enough so the town couldn't disintegrate or grow either.
It was the closest trade center to Roy and Ellen Carver's farm. Among other things in it were two banks, both solid financial institutions, and Ellen parked in front of one of them on a Thursday morning, a little over two weeks after her affair with Jesse Wilson. Ellen was tastefully dressed in a two-piece Summer suit, heels, and with her hair freshly done at the beauty shop, she drew admiring looks from the men who say her get out of the car and go in the bank. At the teller's window, she presented a government check to the young man inside the cage. "I want cash for this one," she smiled.
Harold Fortenberry glanced at the reverse side, and recognized Roy Carver's endorsement. Slowly, he reached for his rubber stamp. "Don't tell me Roy's begun paying cash for what he buys." Here, he referred to Carver's longstanding habit of writing checks for everything he bought, even if the purchase amounted to less than a dollar. He rarely carried cash, and Ellen never did because he never gave her any. Roy Carver didn't cash his government checks. He deposited them, invariably.
"He made me a birthday present of this one," Ellen smiled pleasantly. "I need some clothes. He told me to use the money to buy them."
The check was for seventy-nine dollars. "How do you want it, Mrs. Carver?"
"Twenty's will be fine."
Converted to currency, the amount seemed inadequate when Ellen opened her purse to put it away. "By the way, Harold," she said brightly, "make out a check on our account for another fifty dollars and I'll sign it."
Fortenberry hesitated. Carver, not Ellen, signed the checks in their family. But he couldn't question her prerogative, even if theirs wasn't a joint checking account. Ellen was his wife. Quickly, he made out the check, and Ellen signed as Mrs. Roy Carver. With what she already had, Ellen's capital now amounted to nearly a hundred and fifty dollars. "Thank you, Harold," she said sweetly, and went outside, feeling his eyes on her hips all the way.
Next, she stopped at the cooperative elevator where Roy bought all his feeds, fertilizer, gasoline, oil, lubricants, everything imaginable to be used in farming with the exception of machinery and parts. When she got waited on, Ellen ordered a five-gallon can of a gun-grease Roy liked, gave the man the key, and asked him to put it in the trunk of her car. When he returned, he said, "Put it on Roy's ticket, Mrs. Carver?" Usually, when she ran errands for Roy, it was done this way.
"No, I'll write a check because I need some grocery money. Make it out for fifteen dollars extra, please. That should be enough," was her thoughtful evaluation.
The clerk also hesitated, because he knew Roy's habits as well as anyone. "Fifteen dollars, Mrs. Carver?" he asked doubtfully.
Ellen had courage now, having done well at the bank, and rewarded the man's hesitancy with an icy stare. "Isn't that what I said?"
"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, and filled out the check for her to sign.
Stops at a hardware store, the grocery store, and a pharmacy counter yielded an additional thirty-four dollars. She wrote a check for the exact amount of her luggage at the department store, then charged a hundred and six dollars worth of clothes at a dress shop to put in it. By then, Ellen was feeling rather elated. She had one more call to make, however.
Ellen counted seven other patients waiting in the room as she presented herself to the receptionist. Two were children, one a boy who didn't look at all sick. There for shots, she supposed. Two pregnant girls, both old enough to be married and evidently were. A worried couple who whispered to one another, and an old man who stared hard at Ellen. She gave her name, added, "I want to see Doctor Sanders."
The receptionist recorded her name in precise backhand. "Address?"
"Route Four, Jayton."
"Please have a seat. The doctor will see you in a moment."
Ellen took the most comfortable chair she saw, crossed her legs for the old man's benefit because he didn't have many years left to stare. His eyes twinkled gratefully when he looked at her face, and Ellen smiled back and picked up a magazine.
The moment was forty minutes old when the nurse called her name, and Ellen followed a tiled, antiseptic corridor down to a side door, where a capable and competent-looking man about thirty-five years old looked up from the desk inside. "Hi, Mrs. Carver," he said informally. "What seems to be the trouble?" Sanders wore a sports coat, bow tie, and could have been an insurance salesman, a golf pro, an engineer, or anything professional from the indications of his appearance. He was distinctly the kind of man who recognized the fact he was both masculine and good-looking, and he conducted himself accordingly.
Ellen was taking off the top of her suit, a sleeveless cotton caught at the waist by a matching belt. She smiled weakly. "I have this lump in my left breast, Doctor. I've been worried sick about it."
He stood in front of her, waiting for the bra to come off. "We'll hope it's nothing, of course. The breast tissue is pretty good breeding-grounds for all kinds of non-malignant things that swell up and go away. Is there any pain with this?"
She moved forward expectantly, and felt her nipple harden as a big hand began a gentle search for the swelling she complained of. Ellen stood very still, watching his eyes, feeling the nipple get harder and harder, knowing he couldn't help but feel it too.
Sanders commented on this. "The only swollen tissue I feel is entirely natural, Mrs. Carver. Are you always so sensitive?"
She swayed toward him. "Maybe it's the other one," she whispered. "Feel it."
Sanders permitted himself a faint smile. "I will, but I'm doubtful of your case already." He touched her right breast, but studiously avoided contact with the nipple until Ellen caught his hand with hers and pressed it hard against the nubby acorn crowning what she knew was superior tissue to ninety-eight out of a hundred young female patients. "There!" she sighed, and waited.
The doctor shared her opinion. He closed and locked the door. Very primly he said, "You'll have to undress for the rest of the examination."
Ellen's heart leaped as she began undressing from the waist down. It was to be her first experience with a doctor, and she was interested to note that he watched her undress very closely. She was beginning to wonder if he would too, when Sanders removed his coat, his bow tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and then slipped out of his trousers so he stood in pale green boxer shorts and expensive-looking hand-boarded shoes with brown orlon socks. Smiling easily, he said, "I forgot to mention that occasionally, I'm unethical, especially when a tidbit like you walks in with phony breast cancer. Any particular reason why?"
Ellen stretched out on the examination table, set her feet one at a time in the stirrups he used for gynecologic examinations. "I'm leaving my husband, leaving the country, and I've had the hots for you too long to miss the chance," she purred, and stretched luxuriously so her breasts stood high and inviting.
Sanders missed none of it. First, he kissed her very completely, as if he'd had the laboratory course in medical school. Next, he trailed his big, strong hands up and down her body over the breasts, down her belly, over her flanks, and with thumbs riding the inside track, down her groins to probe expertly at her clitoris, then the genital lips, with just the right amount of pressure to titillate her into moaning desire. Again and again, Sanders made this arousing pass with his hands, then sucked at her nipples until Ellen was beside herself with wanting him. When she was ready to scream, Sanders, without hurrying, adjusted the height of the table, removed his pale green shorts, and rubbed the head of an enormous prick into her genital crease. Brusquely, he shoved in, and Ellen came with the entry.
The doctor permitted her three more orgasms, then purposefully rode his thick shaft in and out of the sleek vaginal barrel until he too sucked in his breath, gripped her flanks tightly, then gasped through his emission. Professionally, he washed his penis with soap in the lavatory, pissed a great deal, then fixed up Ellen with a warm-water douche in his private toilet facilities. He was already dressed when she came out.
He kissed her lightly at the door, murmured, "No charge," then followed her down the corridor to the waiting room, where he got the name of the next patient from his nurse and didn't look Ellen's way again.
She had lunch at the drug store, a tuna salad and a vanilla malt. When she checked the gas gauge on the car, she decided there was enough, and left Valley Center on the Interstate headed East. At four o'clock, she parked at the airport at Verbanna, got her new piece of Samsonite out of the trunk, and walked inside to the ticket counter. When she finished there, Ellen bought a picture-postcard of a sleek jetliner parked on the airport runway, and wrote a few lines to Roy explaining where she left the car, and she hoped he'd go ahead and file for the divorce because she'd never come back to him. She signed it Ellen, licked a six-cent stamp and put it on the corner, and dropped it in the letter-slot. Next, she bought a paper backed copy of a former bestseller, and selected a quiet corner to sit down and read while she waited on her six-thirty flight.
She had opportunities to do something besides read. The first one smelled like at least four highballs. He was well-dressed, very obviously on the make, but he wore a pencil-line moustache and Ellen hated them. "You look lonely," he said by way of beginning.
Ellen glanced up. "Look again," she suggested, coldly, and returned to her reading.
At a disadvantage in age, confidence, and courage, he walked away.
The second fellow was younger, not much older than Ellen. He had long hair and a brush moustache, very cocky and confident of himself. "The six thirty-three?" he inquired brightly.
"Yes," she replied noncommittally.
"Mine, too." He sat down beside her. "It's late."
"How much?"
"A half-hour so far, which gives us a full hour, you might say."
"Please do. To do what?"
"Harmonize, Baby. What else?" He was leering now.
"I'd like that," she decided, then turned her full smile on him. "It takes more than a couple of drinks, though, Buster."
The knowing smile froze, began fading. "How much?"
"Just a hundred dollars."
He looked her over carefully while he shook his head, a little regretfully. "The world's too full of it to start paying now, Baby. Not that you won't find plenty who will, but when I walked up, this little special spermatozoa I've got, the one that talks to me, was saying, Charlie, here is a truly loving girl who likes the things you do, namely harmonizing and instrumentation. I still don't think you charge. I think you just don't want to."
"Try me," challenged Ellen, and waved her lashes at him.
He got up and slouched off.
The next surprised her most of all. She was tall, about six feet, mannishly featured and big-footed. She had freckles and wore no makeup. She sat down by Ellen and lit a cigarette. "I watched you move those two clowns along, and I tell you very frankly it was a relief to me when you sent them slinking off. God, but I hate a masher."
Ellen recognized what she thought the type must resemble, and she was interested enough to display friendship and prolong the conversation. "Men are so bold anymore," she complained gently. "Even in daylight, a girl has to be so very careful to keep from getting in trouble."
She was about thirty, Ellen thought, and severely dressed, like a girl-scout troop-leader shunning the appearance of femininity. A plain suit, hose and flats. But she was intensely interested in Ellen. "You shouldn't travel alone," she chided gently.
Sadly, the younger woman smiled, "I know. But when one has been betrayed by the man she loves, then one has no choice but to travel alone, perhaps through all the rest of life."
Hope, mixed with conveniently acquired compassion, glowed in the taller girl's eyes. "He left you for someone else," she said knowingly, not wanting to gloat.
Another sad smile. "If only I didn't love him so desperately. She was one of my best friends, too. In fact, I brought her home with me and introduced them to each other. How cruel life sometimes is."
"They're all alike," the girl said disgustedly. "Men are simply bastards, and I know, because I married one."
"Did your husband leave you, too?"
"Without even a goodbye note. Luckily, we didn't have kids. I've hated men since, all of them!"
Ellen was blinking. "But what's left for us to love if we can't have men? I'm too old for dolls."
A strong, understanding hand covered hers. "You are lonely, aren't you." It was a statement of fact.
"I miss him so," sniffed Ellen.
The grip tightened. The strong, mannish face came nearer. Gray-green eyes with hazel flecks probed Ellen's soul. "Let me make you forget!" she whispered fiercely.
Innocently, the blue eyes widened "You ... mean?"
A comforting arm now, around her shoulders. "Don't say it, because you don't understand yet. Only let me show you," she pleaded.
"Here?"
"No. I have a place we can go. Come on!" she was up, tugging persuasively at reluctant hands.
Thoughtfully, Ellen frowned. "I'm really not very lonely here at the airport. The nights are what bother me. Besides, I have a flight leaving at six-thirty."
"Cancel it!" came the immediate suggestion. "Here! Give me your ticket. I'll take care of everything."
Ellen hadn't gotten up yet. Closely, she scanned the hopeful, desperate face "You know, I think you're pretty hard-up yourself, propositioning me at an airport. Do you always go for pickups?"
"My girlfriend quit me," the dyke admitted miserably, "I've got to salve my soul. I need wanting, badly. And believe me, Darling, after ten minutes, you'll want me worse than you ever wanted that rotten, filthy man of yours."
Ellen nodded. "That's possible, alright. I could probably go for you. I'm pretty open-minded about sex. Would you pay a hundred dollars to drink from my heavenly cup?"
The lesbian recoiled, then caught the faint, amused smile that revealed Ellen's true feelings. The flecked eyes blazed with fury. "Shitty slut! I wouldn't touch you for all the money in the world."
"Sorry about that, Chief. Some other time. Okay?"
"Clappy bitch!" slurred the dyke, over her shoulder, and marched off to look for another prospect. Ellen picked up her book again.
Another potential flight passenger had observed all this. Now, he came over. He sat down comfortably, shifted his cigar considerately to the side of his mouth away from Ellen. He was short, hard, muscular, and darkly good-looking in a tough Mediterranean way. His suit was obviously expensive. So was everything else he wore, and he wasn't at all bashful.
"For once, I'm doin' nothing but settin' and watchin' which for me is plain loafin' because I'm usually a very busy gent, but I'm watchin' when those two dudes come up for a make, then that bull just left with a look which said she didn't make no time either. Just what is it you gotta have, Curie?" Cold, brown eyes had already taken her measure, as if he'd looked into a thousand women and knew them every one.
But he was a type she didn't know, had never been confronted by. Ellen didn't recognize his passive, emotionless disposition, except to know it was totally foreign and unresponsive to everything except cold logic. No impulses, ever. Just facts.
When she didn't reply, the cigar came out of his mouth. It hardened. "Huh?" he grunted demandingly.
Ellen, in a single movement, got her purse and book under control and got up as if to go, but a rough hand shot out like a striking snake and seized her wrist. She looked down into a smile to temperature of snow. "Don't go walkin off on me , Curie. I know a hustler when I see one. I wanna talk some."
He was puffing energetically, positive of victory, when the swinging handbag crushed the cigar directly into his face, coal and all. The hand let go immediately. He doubled up in the chair, moaning hoarsely. Ellen saw this much as she walked rapidly away, and found sanctuary with a married couple and three children in a cluster of seats near the ticket counter. She looked back after she got settled and saw the short, dark man walking hurriedly toward the men with a handkerchief held over his face. She read undisturbed the rest of the time until their flight was announced.
One of the first passengers to load, Ellen took a seat next to the window and up front, and therefore didn't see the man with the inflamed left eye who sat in back until she got up to go to the ladies room after dinner. By then she was so thrilled with the novelty of air travel she stopped at his seat and apologized. "I didn't mean to hurt your eye, Mister. I got excited when you grabbed me. I'm sorry."
The good eye merely blazed with hatred.
Ellen shrugged and went back to her seat.