Chapter 2
I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT MY EYES TOLD ME was true. The sharp pain clawed at my throat and almost became a scream. But I didn't scream. I made no sound whatsoever. I merely continued to watch the unbelievable sexual tableau going on before my eyes in the room across the hall.
Joe worked his pants over his trim hips and pulled his legs out of the tangle of denim. He threw the pants carelessly aside. His T-shirt and shorts followed, and soon I was staring at his naked body. He looked even younger and more handsome than he had the last time I saw him, as if the prison life had trimmed any excess poundage from his already hard, athletic body.
The woman grinned lewdly at the sight of his youthful virility, and motioned him closer.
Joe moved to her with the swagger of the male aroused with lust.
She pulled him down to her and they wallowed on the bed for a moment, crushing their mouths together in frantic combat. Joe's hands moved instinctively to the swelling masses of her breasts, and his hand slipped inside the drape of her slip and played with her thrusting nipples.
She moaned and threw her head back in a paroxysm of pleasure as his fingers continued to excite her. Suddenly, she stood up and pulled wildly at the straps of her slip, forcing them over her shoulders and down to her flaring hips.
She raked her panties down along with the slip, and stepped out of the soft crush of garments and back into Joe's waiting arms. He massaged her enormous, flushed breasts with his fingers, teasing the gorged nipples over and over again until the pink rosettes turned into reddened welts and forced the peaks into little towers of hardening flesh.
His mouth nuzzled against her throat, tasting the forbidden scent of woman. He seemed crazed for her, ravenous to fill his need of what must drive men behind bars into nightmares of loneliness and frustration.
Despite my desperate repulsion for what I was seeing, I could understand what drove Joe to behave as he was doing. After all, he was young and healthy-and his need for sex was, if anything, greater now that he was denied it.
It was the woman I couldn't forgive.
She was older than Joe-much older, although she was obviously trying to appear young and tempting. Her hair had been rinsed a deceptive platinum blonde, and the make-up applied heavily to her face was still another ploy to roll back time.
It was equally obvious that it was she who had lured Joe to this bed of lust, and she who intended to use him to gratify her deepest, basest desires. Her hands were all over him, squeezing the muscles in his upper arms, playing with the hair on his chest, teasing along his legs toward his stiffened rod that rose throbbing between his legs.
When her fingers finally closed over him, grasping his hardened penis, Joe gasped and pulled her over on the bed. His mouth found one of her raised nipples and closed over it, sucking hard at its promise of honey.
She moved her body sensually against him as he pleased her, her hand continuing to stimulate him in the most obscene ways. When they had aroused each other to the exploding point, she threw one leg over his lean hip and drew him over her. Her eyes flashed hard with lust.
"Now, dammit...." she hissed, "You've teased me long enough! Give it to me good and fast-the way you gave it to that one you raped. Rape me, too!"
Joe's face twisted into an evil grin. "Yeah, baby," he husked. "You want it that way, don't you? Okay, I'll please you good. Just exactly the way you want it!"
He pushed her back on the bed and raised her hips with a savage movement of his hands and arms. She laughed a throaty laugh and did nothing to prevent what he was doing to her. If anything, she helped him by spreading her ample thighs wider so that he couldn't miss his mark.
He wormed between her legs and lifted his hips into position. With one lunge he buried himself into her flaming depths. She let out a ragged shout of pleasure mixed with pain.
"Beg me for it, you hot bitch," Joe muttered, fiercely. "Beg me to shove it harder and deeper in you!"
"Yes!" she moaned. "Give it to me now-treat me like a whore, you big stud!"
Joe fell over her like a wild young animal. Supporting his body with extended arms, he began to pump his lust into her insatiable body. With each thrusting mess of his hips, she moaned again, intoxicated with pleasure, delirious with passion.
There was little doubt in my mind that this lust-possessed woman who was flailing her legs and grinding her thighs upward so wantonly was anybody in the world except Stella Baker I
How could it possibly be anyone else, I raged.
When I heard the animal moans coming from deep in her throat and saw her fingernails crisscrossing
Joe's back to dig in like the claws of a vulture, I dropped my eyes from the keyhole and turned limply away. I couldn't bear to watch the finish to a sight that had filled me with such disgust and bitter disappointment.
My mind burned with anger.
What a fool I had been!
I had come hundreds of miles to be near Joe, to give him some small comfort in what I believed was a living hell for him. And not an hour after my arrival, I was watching him writhe on a bed of lust with another man's wife.
It was too monstrous ...
I stumbled back to my room and lay quietly on my bed, and waited.
It seemed hours before the bed stopped creaking. I tried to shut out of my mind, the tell-tale noises I could hear through the door, but they seemed augmented by the silence in my own room and the terrible knowledge I had already gained through the keyhole.
The animal moans of the woman grew louder and with them the increased complaint of the bed springs. The noises coupled in a kind of demented circus of lewdness, finally coming to a shrill climax and tapering at last off into a merciless quiet.
I waited, my heart pounding, to see what would happen next. It occurred to me that Stella Baker might take it upon herself to investigate this room, since the door to it had been closed by me. What would I say if they discovered me there? What would I do? It was, after all, possible to look upon me as the real intruder.
Fortunately, that problem was solved for me quickly. I heard a few muffled and frantic whispers out in the hallway and then the heavy footsteps of a man-Joe, of course-moving away from the hall.
I waited until I heard a shower going and then very quietly and quickly I got up and closed my suitcase. I slipped out into the hall and down it to the front door. I looked through the curtains. Joe was nowhere in sight. Then I slipped out the door. I stood uncertainly on the porch for a few moments-and then I pressed the doorbell.
I pressed again and again nervously and in a few moments the door squeaked open a foot. Stella Baker stood with her hair damp over her forehead and a large bath towel draped around her body. She looked older than I had thought. Her eyes were dark and liquid, still bright with satiated desire. The lipstick and mascara had been washed from her face, leaving a plump, plain, middle-aged woman revealed.
"Yes ... what is it?" she demanded.
"Are you Stella Baker."
"Yes, who are you?"
"I'm Mary Gray. Your husband said I was to come here, that you...."
"Oh, sure. He said something about your showing up pretty soon. Come on in. I was just taking a shower. I ... uh ... been working in the garden ... just got in."
Stella Baker pushed the door open wide for me and I stepped into the same hall I had only recently sneaked out of. I hoped my guilt-and my vague anger and humiliation-weren't showing too much in my face.
Stella shifted the towel closer around her body, and her swollen breasts joggled like melons. I thought how they had been teased and kissed only minutes before by Joe-the man I loved heart and soul-and resentment surged through my heart again. I wasn't sure how long I could keep my anger in check. We chatted small talk for a few moments before Stella Baker gave me a curiously cold glance and said: "Funny you should wanta come here, being young and all, like you. I'd think you'd rather be someplace where there's a chance of-well, meeting a nice young man. You won't meet anything but criminal types around here."
"I suppose some of them are not so bad," I said, making the words a little sharper than was necessary.
"I don't have anything to do with them myself," she insisted. She stopped in front of the bedroom that I knew was mine. "This is where Ben said you were to stay." She didn't sound too enthusiastic.
"I hope I'm not ... disturbing your routine too much," I said.
"I got no routine. To tell you the truth, Miss Gray ... you mind if I call you Mary? ... to tell you the truth, the life here bores me to death."
"Is that so?"
"I guess you have your work and all ... and maybe that will keep you busy. Otherwise, it's a terrible place for a comparatively young woman like myself to be. You don't know how...."
"But, of course, you're married, Mrs. Baker. That should make some difference."
She made a low grunt of contempt deep in her throat which surprised me-both surprised and enlightened me. I saw it all then. She was married to Ben Baker, but she wasn't happy. And I saw more than that, too. She saw in me a threat. I wondered suddenly if she knew even more about me than that. I didn't have to wait long to learn.
"You know Joe Phillips?" she said, looking at me again with a kind of half-smile stitching up the corners of her mouth. She dug a cigarette out of a deep pocket in her robe.
"Well, I...."
I didn't know exactly what to say, and I-was very angry with myself for letting my confusion show.
She grinned wider now. "Sure, you know Joe. It's why you're here, isn't it?"
"Your husband told you that?" I stammered.
"He didn't have to, honey. Joe told me himself."
"Joe?"
"You don't think anything goes on around here that we don't know about, do you?"
I wasn't quite sure who was included in the 'we', so I said nothing. I waited. I was sure she would grind the axe good and sharp.
"Sure," she husked, her voice cutting and hard. "Sure, you know Joe. He was the guy you saw me with about ten minutes ago."
I was almost too stunned to move. In a moment I found my voice.
"I ... I don't know what...."
"Don't lie to me, kiddo. You were right in that room-more than--likely with your little blue eyes glued to that damned keyhole-watching everything we did. Might as well confess it."
I stared at her. I couldn't believe my ears. But the pieces were beginning to fit together-and the picture wasn't pretty. Not at all.
I felt fresh anger at being tricked. "Let me get this straight, Mrs. Baker," I said, my own voice growing as hard as hers. "Do you mean that you knew I was in that room-and that you deliberately staged that scene too...."
"You catch on fast, Miss Gray. Real fast. I thought you might get a kick out of seeing that Joe hasn't lost his touch."
"You're a beast."
She laughed throatily and her eyes flashed. "And what about you-dragging yourself half way across the country just to get in his pants. Don't you think I know why you're here ... don't you know I know you'd have given your soul to have been sprawled naked on that bed instead of me? C'mon-say it. IVs true, isn't it?"
"No, it isn't true! If you think I came to Mason just so I could bed down with Joe like some ... some cheap...."
"Whore?"
I glared at her. "You said it," I snapped. "I didn't."
"No, but that's what you meant, isn't it?" ' I shrugged, my mind spinning angrily. "I really don't know what else you would call it, now that you mention it, Mrs. Baker. At least I don't have a husband to betray."
Her mouth drew down in another quick line of contempt. "You call that thing I'm married to a husband! Boy, you must be blind as well as silly. A cripple, that's what I'm married to. An old man ... a character who couldn't begin to give me what Joe...."
"Please ... I don't want to hear it."
"Well, you're going to hear it, sister, because I intend to set you straight on how things are around here. Joe Phillips isn't yours anymore. That's the simple truth of the matter. And the sooner you get that firmly ground in your little doll head, the better. When Joe finds out you're here, he...."
"So he didn't know I was in that room."
She glared at me, biting her lip. "Well, what I meant was...."
I smiled. She had trapped herself. "Joe didn't know anything at all about what you were doing this afternoon," I insisted. "He had no idea I was watching that little seduction scene. It was all your idea!"
"So what ... you saw what happened didn't you? You saw how he...."
"I saw a cheap, middle-aged woman making use of a young, sex-starved man. You can't dangle meat in front of a starved animal and expect him to walk away. Joe doesn't care anything at all about you!"
She leered at me. "Is that really the way it looked to you? Honey, you need glasses. Joe's told me a thousand times that he loves me."
"You poor, sick woman...."
"Goddamn it, don't patronize me! You think I'm too old to get a man like that. You think I don't still have a body that can drive men wild. Well, you don't know half of what goes on around here!"
"I'll bet I don't. Who's on your list for tomorrow? Monk?"
Her hand lashed out at me and I pulled back just in time to prevent her savage slap from making contact. She was breathing in ragged, panting gasps. "Now you listen to me, you fine-haired little bitch," she snarled. "You're not going to come in here and ruin my party. I've got things just exactly the way I want ' em here. And no damn little set of hot tits is going to ruin them for me...."
I shuddered.
"How in God's name could a fine man like Ben Baker have married you? What gutter did he find you in...."
Her glare snarled up in my own. "You want to know how it happened?" she wailed. "I'll tell you sometime. All you need to know now is that that fine man you call Ben Baker was once as degenerate as the rest of them. like all horny males! Animals rutting and snatching and taking what they can get from any female in sight. Ben Baker was no better than the most hardened rapist inside these walls.
The only difference is, he was too smart to get sent to jail for it. Now he's too damned old and tired to bother!"
"How can you speak of your own husband like that?" I protested.
"Because that's what he is-that's what all men are. They take what they can get. And just because you have a few silly words said over you by a preacher don't mean that it's any prettier."
"I'm sure Warden Baker will be happy to hear what you think of him," I snapped.
Her face went suddenly white. "What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded.
"I'm talking about the fact that I intend to tell him everything you've just said about him. I'm going to tell him the minute he gets to this house."
"You wouldn't dare!"
"Oh, and why not? Don't you think two can play your nasty little game? You didn't invent cruelty, Mrs. Baker-you don't have a corner on the market."
"You are a little bitch!" she yelped.
I smiled contemptuously, hoping this act would convince her that I meant business. "That's right. I am a bitch. And I intend to repay you in coin for what you tried to do to me this afternoon with Joe." I pushed the advantage. "And I emphasize the word tried-because you haven't got to first base in convincing me that Joe means anything to you. And I certainly don't believe you mean anything to him anything, that is, except the most degrading kind of sexual relief!"
"You oughta get out of here," she whined, her voice quavering and frantic. "You ought to count yourself lucky that you saw Joe Phillips for what he is...."
"I know what he is, and I love him just the same. I don't have to be told that he is a man. But I can tell you one thing: You're going to leave him alone from now on! Do you understand that? You're going to leave him alone or I'll spill the whole pot of beans right in your husband's lap!"
We stared at each other for a long moment, two fiery females in the heat of a human jungle. I could see hatred for me boiling in her eyes. I was frightened, but I stood my ground.
I could see the wheels going around in her head. She softened a little, for my benefit. Her mouth twitched convulsively. "Now, look, honey," she husked, painfully. "Okay, so maybe I flew off the handle a little bit-maybe I did the wrong thing setting up that little show. But I figured you ought to know how it is...."
"I know how it is. You thought I'd take one look and run screaming back to civilization. You use your body to taunt and tease men. I'm sure Joe is just one of many. I think it's despicable what you're doing-and even worse that you do it behind your husband's back. He probably needs you, trusts you even!"
"Sure, sure, he trusts me-and that's the way it's got to stay." Her eyes narrowed feverishly on me. "And it can stay that way ... if you let it."
"I told you my terms," I said, coldly.
"Okay, okay, the terms are fine. I stay away from Joe. Who needs him, anyway. He's too damned young. There's somebody else-more important I couldn't leave here-not without Monk."
The weakness for the sullen guard rode into her face. I almost felt sorry for her-and I would have if it hadn't been for the vicious thing she had tried to do to me. And the callous way in which she used Joe and probably others. And I thought, too, of Ben Baker: The poor man, deceived and certainly laughed at behind his back.
"I'll leave Joe alone," she whispered. "I'll do that, if you promise...."
I sighed, and turned away in disgust. "I promise," I said. "I have no desire to hurt Warden Baker."
She stuck out her hand to seal the bargain, but I ignored it. I picked up my suitcase and opened the door of the bedroom.
I left her standing alone in the hallway, her cheap body draped in the gaudy bathrobe, the cigarette dangling at her lips-like a whore.