Chapter 14
Carl Peurter died while en route to a hospital. Behind him, the demonstration in the square disintegrated in the face of determined police efforts backed with fire hoses and tear gas. A group of male students delivered Stanley Richmond, weeping, crying hysterically, to the police along with eye witness evidence that she had been the one who stabbed Carl Peurter.
Alan Govern made his way to the police station in order to get information about Carl. He didn't even know where they'd taken his friend. When he discovered that Carl was dead it was like being hit in the gut with a baseball bat He sat down on a hard bench and tried to catch his breath. Then he walked.
In the end, he walked to the motel where he and Carl had left their things. The police had been to the room which had been occupied by Stanley and Angel and had removed all of the things there. Fortunately, there was nothing to connect the girls with Alan. In her hysterical state, Stanley had been unable to tell the police anything and Angel had disappeared. Alan thought it might be well for him to fade away.
He packed his things, wondering what to do about Carl's personal effects. He decided to leave them for the police. They already knew he was connected to Carl, so he could call and tell them that Carl's things were in the motel room. First, however, he burned the film which showed Angel and Carl screwing. Then he packed everything, including the camera and projector, into his car and only then did he call the police. They took possession of the personal effects and told Alan that, yes, it was all right for him to return to his school.
Shortly before Stanley Richmond was put on trial for the murder of Carl Peurter, Alan Govern, traveling between two mid-western universities, was subpoenaed as a witness. To stop worrying, he took a trip. He could afford to pander to his addiction to LSD, for he was well paid for being a professional organizer of student protests. While under the effects of the drug, he drove his late model convertible into the side of a moving freight train. At the moment of impact, it was estimated that he was traveling ninety miles an hour.
Angel Tomsk was unable to appear at Stanley's trial. She was in a private sanitarium. Stanley pled guilty by reason of temporary insanity and was remitted for treatment to an institution much like that in which Angel spent the better part of six months.
Toward the end of that six month period Angel was having longer and longer period of lucidity. She was allowed visitors, although no one came except a worried Igor Tomsk, who knew nothing, except that Angel had been, before her witlidrawal, taking repeated doses of LSD. Of course, it had come out at the trial of Stanley Richmond that Stanley, Angel, Carl Peurter and Alan Govern had been a foursome while at the beach. Igor Tomsk was, of course, hurt by the knowledge that his Angel would lie to him. The first knowledge he had that Angel was not in Jacksonville with Stanley Richmond's family was a telephone call from the state police, telling him that his daughter was hospitalized.
Talking with that nice fellow from South Carolina, Joe Howard, didn't make Igor Tomsk feel much better, either. Joe couldn't tell him much, except what happened that final day when Angel went into her witlidrawal.
But now, with his daughter becoming more like herself with each passing day, Igor Tomsk felt better about the while situation. So his daughter had lied to him. Ha! What young person had not lied to his parents at one time or the other? And his Angel was so cheerful these days. Oh, there were still times, and they came unexpectedly, when she would go off again into that world of unreality, a world which she was so lucky to escape even for short periods.
In response to Angel's repeated requests, Joe Howard flew to the southeast coast in the early days of Autumn. By that time, Angel was allowed to leave the sanitarium when accompanied by her parent. Excited, pleased that Joe would fly all the way down to see her, she arranged for her father to take her home, to the pleasant beach house on the sands, where Joe could visit without having to see her in her sanitarium surroundings. The visit was very important to her. Out of the curious memories of that lost weekend, Joe Howard stood out as the only good thing which had happened.
Igor Tomsk ushered him into the screen porch, where Angel, dressed in slacks and sweater, waited. She met him with restraint. It was hours before Igor Tomsk left them alone and only seconds after that before she had put herself into Joe's arms. She lifted her face, took his kiss, a curiously lack-luster kiss, she soon discovered. She drew back, looked at him.
"Is that the best you can do?" she asked.
"I wasn't sure," Joe said weakly. "After all that's happened . . . "
"You weren't sure I would want you to kiss me?"
"Yeah, I mean . . . "
"Now you can be sure," she whispered, lifting herself to stand on tiptoe, placing her warm mouth on his. He let his arms close about her. She was, he thought, a crazy one. But she was a lot of girl and the way she was climbing all over him wasn't calculated to keep him cool and collected.
"Your father . . . " He whispered.
"Has gone to his laboratory at the school," she said. "We're all alone. Does that frighten you?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'm afraid it might not last."
"It will last long enough," she said.
It was clear to him that she was offering herself. Every move of her body told him. She was lifting herself, pushing her taut stomach against the growing hardness of his manhood. She could feel it, he knew.
But a thought came to him. What if the kid thought she was in love with him? After all, she'd had a rough time up there, what with those kooks giving her the junk and all.
"Angel," he said, "I think we'd better do some talking."
"Here, or inside, where we can be comfortable?"
"Here. Look, it's nice to see you and all that, but I don't want you to get the idea . . . I mean, well, I've got a lot of years of school ahead of me and then I wanta thy pro ball . . . "
"Silly," she said. "I know."
"And all that happened up there last Easter," Joe said. "You being forced to take that LSD stuff . . . "
"I wasn't under the influence that day in your room, Joe."
Lightening flashes of erotic memory sent the blood surging through his veins. "And you're not now," he said.
"No."
"Where inside do you want to go to be comfortable?" he asked.
She led him to her bedroom, a very feminine room with a queen sized bed and lace curtains. She turned, but herself into his arms. "Be tender with me, Joe."
His need was great. He undressed her carefully, gently. She had the most wondrously beautiful body. It was his, and no strings seemed to be attached. Her need, he could see, was as great as his. Her body burned. Her breath came in short gasps. She trembled.
But not from passion. Angel Tomsk trembled with dread. She was doing something she had to do, but she feared what would happen. For in her mind, sexual desire had become linked with the horrible feeling of fantasy which came with the acid. In her mind, for six long months, they had been one and the same and she had to find out, once and for all, if she had ceased to be a woman out of fear.
Before she took the Easter weekend trip with Stanley, sex was an important part of her life and she had thought at that time that she was handling it fairly well. Before she went to the beach, she'd slept with three boys. Then, during a three day period, she had indulged in excess, sleeping with as many boys in that three day period as she had slept with up to that time. And the sexual excess had been a direct result of the hallucinations brought about by LSD. Even now, up until recent weeks at least, a sexual urge, however minor, brought back the eerie feeling of horrible unreality.
Now, when the doctors had pronounced her normal again, she had one final thing to prove to herself. With Joe's hungry mouth at her breast and her heart beating from fear, not lust, she had to find out if her mind had repaired the damage done by the drug.
She tried to feel his kiss, arching her body up to push her pert breast deeper into his mouth. She tried to tell her body to relax, enjoy it, but she was tense and fearful as Joe, in his need, mounted her, pushing aside her soft thighs to go between with his muscular body. Then there was the first tentative touch of hardness there at the soft gateway to her body and, with a pounding heart, she lifted her loins to take his push, feeling it go and go and fill her and she wanted to scream with fear, for there was no joy in it for her. She fought it. She pretended passion, lifting her softness to take more of him, feeling his great need in his trembling, plunging loins.
It was too late for her. The horror was there, a greyness which was almost covering her, almost sending her back into that half world in which she had spent so much time. She wanted to push him away and then, like a great, lunging engine of lust, he possessed her totally with one huge squeeze of his arms and she felt his bliss explode deep inside her.
"Joe?"
"Oh, sweet," he whispered. "Oh, you're so lovely."
Horrible? No. It was Joe. She'd made him feel wonderful and there wasn't anything horrible about it. Down there, brought out by his big finish, was a little feel of trembling excitement. She moved her loins tentatively. It was there and she was in Joe's arms, lubricated by his passion.
"You didn't go?" he asked her.
"Yes," she lied. But it was there and it was going to be all right. Never again would she go out into that gray world of unreality.
"Good?" he whispered.
"Good," she said, pushing him away, falling down to use her lips to bring him back to life.
"As they say on the record," she said, herself again, in control of her life again, "one more time," Mr. Howard." She crawled up on his body, seated herself in a long, sliding moment of blissfulingress.
"One more time," she whispered, as the joy began.