Chapter 7
Nina Lyman's sex sophistication had turned the tables on him, Ramey reflected as they found their way back to the Moratta mansion. Far from having put the laughing, attractive babe walking with him into a trance, she had managed to get him to shoot his wad-and then some. He felt somewhat drained and exhausted, but sampling Nina's cock-sucking technique was worth it. She apparently went for his cock and this made him feel reasonably sure of getting her into trance and getting her to reveal what he" wanted the next time they were alone. He'd just have to use a little more self-control-she was an exceedingly attractive cunt.
As they approached the house, Nina said, "Goodbye for now, Dr. Ramey. I'm going to wake my husband up for dinner, but we'll get a chance to be alone later tonight, dear."
After she left him, Ramey drifted over to an open patio where a generously laden table had delicious looking buffet delicacies-roast beef, game birds and rare wines. He took a plate and helped himself as he saw the other guests were doing. More people had come for the week-end and Ralph Ramey observed them as they all mingled informally.
He took his plate and sought a secluded chair in the patio from where he could study the bizarre people into whose company he had been thrown.
They were new to him and thus intensely interesting.
They came from a world which he was totally unfamiliar.
But, being a realist by nature and by sensitivity, he did not doubt that particular world's existence. He did not turn away from it and its people as being too fantastic to believe.
Women who gave no thought whatever to modesty in any sense-to whom casual fucking was a way of life. Men who lived with brutality; men to whom anything expedient was justified.
And he made his rationalization: They were children. They were ruled by egos that had never grown up. They were children with adult bodies in an adult society and were controlled only by fear of punishment.
Also, it appeared, these weekends provided by Mike Moratta were occasions for wide-open recklessness. Ramey could feel the tension, the excitement, the waiting. The fight, perhaps, was merely the prologue to the play itself.
Left alone, he began studying the individuals. A tall blonde he had not seen before was the most blatant exhibitionist. Her legs were long and exquisitely sculptured. Her hips undulated with a kind of liquid self-consciousness as she entered the patio through the French doors and moved toward the buffet. Her ass was beautifully shaped and her over-large breasts were not freakish because the nipples were in proportion.
In respect to these, Ramey heard a comment from one of the male guests. A snicker and then, "How about those?"
This vulgarism set the tenor of the occasion for Ramey; as much so as the manner in which the blonde goddess was dressed-or rather, undressed. She wore a bikini that was so skimpy she was practically naked.
The girl looked the assemblage over and smiled, and something in the smile revealed the grim truth to Ramey. This was no festive weekend for the females involved. It was work, effort. It was deadly serious.
They were on sexual display. He munched a hot roll and wondered why he hadn't seen the divisions here before. The attached females-the ones who already had a man-were more sedately clad than the cunts on the prowl for a meal ticket.
This was obvious to him now. The blonde was unattached. The girls who were relatively secure in having a man regarded her with open hostility. She was a menace. She was after one of their men, any man she could get and no holds barred.
A humorous aspect of this hit Ramey. He wondered how Lee would have reacted as the blonde moved in his direction. He had little time to wonder, however, because the blonde arrived with a brilliant smile and the question:
"Mind if I drop in that chair next to you?"
"Do sit down," Ramey said.
She used the chair as a display case, drawing it a little closer and leaning in his direction until he could smell her perfume.
"Wonderful party," she said.
"Delightful."
"I didn't expect to be able to make it. Some friends almost roped me to get me to go to Puerto Rico with them. But Mike is such a sweetheart and begged so hard I didn't have the will power to turn him down."
Ramey chalked up another shortcoming of these new people. They had no skill at lying. The obvious deceit she tried to impress upon him was not deceit at all. It was too transparently false.
"I'm Iris Cameron," the blonde said. "I don't think we got introduced."
Ramey thought, somewhat puckishly, that if they had he'd certainly have remembered it.
"I'm Ralph Ramey," he said.
"I'm delighted. Your date won't be angry at me for sitting here, will she?"
"I have no date."
Iris Cameron leaned in Ramey's direction. 'This pate is divine," she said. "Try it."
As she held a cracker to his lips, she bent her elbow rather than extending her arm. This brought her body so close that Ramey could see the pores in the small arc of brown nipple and tit that was visible above the bra of the bikini. The unsubtle allure of her body was fascinating, heady, even to a man of Ramey's control.
Fine golden hairs glowed over her warm, healthy skin, and Ramey could hear the terse comment Lee would have made:
Okay-she's a natural blonde. Is that so important?
Lee was not a natural redhead.
Ramey appreciated Iris Cameron's show-case body and thought warmly of Lee at the same time. Seeing these women made him appreciate Lee more. Lee was sophisticated and broad-minded. There was nothing in the realm of fucking that daunted her.
But there was a difference. She had too much personal pride to cheapen herself as these women did.
He thought, I'm beginning to react like an old married man.
Iris Cameron went back to her dinner. Her appetite was as earthy as her body and her approach. A more sedately dressed girl moved'past them; sedately dressed in that she wore a one-piece bathing suit that was quite decent. The only exposure she'd managed to achieve was in back. She'd pulled the legs so high up that half her creamy asscheeks were exposed.
"Having fun, sweetie?" she asked.
She'd drifted by before Iris Cameron had a chance to reply. But Iris' lip curled in contempt.
"That cocksucker!" she hissed. "I was in Vegas once, at a party she was at. The man she was with got sick of her and invited me to Lake Tahoe with him. She never got over it."
The girl who'd called the blonde, "sweetie", turned and threw a venomous glance over her shoulder. The blonde smiled acidly. "Maybe we'll have some fun before the party's over," she said.
It occurred to Ramey that there had been plenty of "fun" already. He wondered if Iris Cameron had anything in mind that would top the battle of the gladiators on the lawn under his window.
He saw the other girl, a petite little brunette, sit down on the arm of a chair occupied by one of the men who'd been a witness at the fight. He grinned at her and seized her in a familiar hand. The girl winced, but she managed to smile and took the man's attention off one of his appetites by tempting another with a forkful of potato salad. The man wolfed the bit and went back to his own food.
Animals in a zoo?
Ramey considered the question and decided he was being a little smug. They could have examined his background and found flaws they might have considered greater than theirs.
"Are you from Manhattan?" Iris asked.
"I'm staying there temporarily," Ramey said.
"What's your line?"
"I travel for a man's hat band company," Ramey said soberly.
The girl gave him a quick look, wondering whether to believe him. "Is there money in men's hat bands? I thought they came with the hats."
"Oh, they do, but somebody's got to put them on the hats. So they have to be bought." He waved a careless hand. "There's pretty good money in selling them. A carload of hat bands in nothing."
"But hardly anybody wears a hat any more-men that is."
"A lot of men keep a hat for special occasions, though."
"I see."
Obviously, the girl had no sense of humor whatever. She knew when she was being insulted but not when she was being kidded.
They finished their meal and Ramey became aware of a new under tone in the gathering. The little brunette wasn't the only one who hated the blonde. Evidently there had been other incidents wherein Iris had appropriated someone else's man.
Two girls discussed Iris, in whispers, their hostile eyes on her. In several other directions, expressions changed as glances came her way.
But Iris couldn't have cared less. She asked, "Do you get to Puerto Rico much, Ralph? They've got some fabulous hotels down that way."
Direct and to the point. Ramey had the uneasy feeling he was supposed to say, I'm leaving for Puerto Rico right away. How soon can you be ready?
He said, "I seldom get time for vacations."
If he'd been trying to avoid Iris Cameron's assault, he succeeded. She lost interest in him immediately, and went into the house.
I've been jilted, he mused to himself. The shortest romance on record.
He was not ignored long however. A matter of scant minutes and Dee Redding took the chair beside him. The girl's sullenness had not abated, so Ramey set it down as a facet of her character and personality rather than a temporary mood. And he thought of this as regrettable. It was a shame that a classic type of beauty-the kind Dee had-should be ruined by the sullen, hostile mood that clouded and distorted it.
Her eyes turned toward the door through which Iris Cameron had vanished.
"She's in trouble," Dee said.
"I'm sorry."
The sneer became more pronounced. "Don't be. She's got it coming."
"No one deserves trouble."
"She does. She's a rat. She's stolen so many men from other girls that she can't even remember half of them. She's been lucky so far. But she's got a payoff corning and this may be it."
Was Dee forecasting more violence? Ramey wondered. It wasn't important to him, though, and he wished she'd go away. He would have preferred that Nina Lyman replace her.
Nina was business. He'd allowed himself enough abstract observation of the people around him. It was time to look toward the ten thousand he'd been promised and to go about earning it.
"I understand Nina Lyman is a friend of yours."
Dee Redding nodded. Ramey had been afraid that she would resent the question and tell him it was none of his business. When she did not, he was gratified and proceeded with his questions.
"She's an interesting person. Dynamic."
"If you mean she rolls over you, you're right."
"Extroverts sometimes do that. Also, people with positive personalities usually marry opposites." This wasn't true but the observation served as a subject of conversation and he felt Dee Redding wouldn't be perceptive enough to see his erroneous psychology.
"Steve is pretty rough himself," Dee said. "He cut a few throats coming up."
Her eyes were restless-covering the party-turning here and there-and she was answering Ramey without giving too much thought to his questions.
"He seems such a quiet, inoffensive little man."
"It depends on what you mean by inoffensive. He'd as soon cut your-cut your heart out as look at you."
"He seems to get along all right with Nina." Dee shrugged. "He likes her brand of fucking. I hear she's pretty good in bed." Dee's tone turned venomous. 'They say once you've fucked Nina, there's no place else to go. Again, the key-bastions upon which this society was built were casually spotlighted for Ramey. Love, violence, greed. Ramey was honest enough to admit his fascination with this structure arose from a need of his own a need to find someone he could look down on. Compulsively forced to be honest with himself, he admitted his own moral level put most of society above him. But here was a group even he could regard with contempt. And his ego was making the most of it; even to the point of teasing Dee. "I doubt if she's in your class."
"How do you know? You never laid me."
"That's true, but what has Nina Lyman got that you haven't?"
"She's had more experience fucking for one thing."
"She's still young."
"That doesn't matter. It's when you start. She got raped when she was twelve."
"I'd think an experience such as that would drive her away from screwing."
"Not if you like it."
"Uh-huh. She arranged to get herself raped pretty often after that."
"You're joking! A girl doesn't arrange to get herself raped."
Dee regarded him curiously. She was taking his question as a reflection of naivete on his part. "Are you kidding? When you find something that's fun, you want more."
"That's very interesting."
She looked at him suriously. "For a head-shrinker, you don't seem to know much."
"You may be right. I'm always learning."
"All you guys know are a lot of big words. You don't really know anything about how people's minds work."
"We try to find out."
"But you ought to know that people have to talk themselves into things."
"You mean Nina had to talk herself into-"
"Into getting fucked. What else?"
There was a point here that surprised Ramey. Of course it was not news to him that people turn automatically in conversation to the subject that fills their subconscious. Thus, Dee would veer to screwing by whatever route. But her knowledge of motivation was amazingly accurate. He assumed that truth such as she had out-lined would have been blocked out of her mind and distorted by rationalizations of her ego.
"Wouldn't it be simpler to tell the man, pointblank, that you're willing to hump?"
"That's okay for later, but in the beginning maybe you're not sure of yourself. Maybe a girl has to be forced into fucking until it gets to be a habit?"
"What else?" Her face turned bitter. "Men make fucking a habit for a girl. They only want one thing. You give in to them and they want your cunt again and again 'til they're tired of you and want a new broad."
"AH men aren't that way."
"Show me one that isn't!"
"Do you mean you never met a man who didn't want to go to screw you?"
"Sure," Dee sneered. "I met one. The first guy I ever went out with. He only wanted my company until he got me out in the country one night where nobody could hear me yell. Then he wanted something else." Dee sighed. "I tried to talk him out of it all but that didn't help. He fucked me ... real good."
Ramey realized that in a weird way. Dee's ego was an exhibitionist. It wanted to dwell on her exploits. Her ego wanted to stand naked and abscene before whoever would listen. With a little encouragement, Dee would have given him the most intimate details of what happened while she was getting fucked.
But her talk was beginning to bore him and he realized whatever Dee said would be biographical. Her observations concerning Nina Lyman were observations concerning herself.
Actually, he had more data on Nina Lyman than Dee. He'd gotten it first hand....
The buffet crowd was beginning to disperse. The big, ugly men, and the beautiful women their money bought for them, wandered off in different directions.
Ramey was about to wander off himself, in search of Nina Lyman. He hadn't seen Steve Lyman and he hoped that the fat little bastard was occupied with someone other than his wife.
But his search did not start because at that moment Joe Toder came into the patio and approached him. "The boss wants to see you."
"That so? What about?"
Joe eyed Ramey with speculation. "I don't know. But he's mad as hell."
Ramey smiled. "Hmmm. I haven't antagonized anybody in weeks. It looks as though the averages are cathing up with me...."
He passed a poker game in the living room and a crap game on the floor of the library while making for the den as per Joe Toder's directions. He knocked and entered and found Mike Moratta sprawled on a lounge in his shorts. He'd been going over what looked like business papers and now he laid them down and scowled up at Ramey.
"You been sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong."
"I don't understand you."
"My kid. Leave him the hell alone."
"I wasn't aware that I'd annoyed your son."
"He was in your room. I don't know what you said to him but you've got him all upset. Leave him alone."
"I don't know what he told you, but-"
"He started yammering about going to public school like other kids for one thing."
"What's wrong with that?"
Moratta's face darkened. "It's none of your business that's what's wrong with it. Your're here to do a job for me. And that's the only reason you're here."
Ramey surprised himself by his own stubbornness. 'That boy isn't getting a fair chance."
Moratta's eyes mirrored outrage he strove to control. "Is that so? Then something ought to be done about it. Like that cunt you were getting in shape for some guy in that hotel room. She didn't have a fair chance either. Maybe we ought to do something about her, too."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Cut out the dancing around. You're a hypocrite! If there's something wrong with my kid I'll find out what it is. I'll take him to a reliable doctor if he needs it-not a cheap trickster! You stick to your speciality, buster-taking women's pants off. Stay out of places you don't belong. Is that understood?"
Ramey tried to control his own rage. Right or wrong-fair or unfair no man talked to him in that manner.
But Moratta was talking to him in exactly that manner and was getting away with it; getting away with it because, although Ramey's ego writhed, he accepted the fact discretion was the better part of reckless valor. Moratta could send him back where he'd come from. An accounting of his activities in that hotel room would be demanded. It was much better to hate Moratta as a free man than to go to jail with the knowledge of not having let Moratta insult him.
He turned and strode toward the door. "Wait a minute."
He turned, livid from knowing Moratta was deliberately treating him like a flunky.
"How are you getting along with Nina?"
"Quite satisfactorily."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"What it's supposed to mean."
"Don't get cute with me. How soon will you have the dope I want?"
"I can't say."
"Then maybe we better call the whole thing off."
"If I could get her alone for the rest of the night I think I could promise you results by morning."
"That's better. Go ahead-handle her."
"What about her husband?"
"He just went downstairs. I'll have his drinks spiked. Hell be out of the way in an hour."
Ramey's pride and self-esteem had never before been given such a brutally effective going over. Sure, Ramey thought, he was a phony and a con man, but Moratta should have realized that he was also sincerely trying to do his son, Phil, some good. That Ramey did have some psychological knowledge and should have been taken seriously.
Moratta was a rich ignoramus who knew nothing of the medical and psychology books Ramey had devoured. Maybe Ramey didn't have a degree, but he had the ability to use hypnosis in a way that few real doctors could. It was a natural gift, a talent that was worth more than any scrap of paper from some college.
He'd show Mike Moratta what he could do with this broad, Nina Lyman. He'd get her into a trance state and then open her sexual floodgates. He could see her writhing as she fucked under him, her breasts, thighs and ass sensually dancing to any tune he called. He would cause wave after wave of sheer ecstasy to engulf her cunt at his whim while he would control himself against her physical charms and be all business. Mike Moratta would have the information he needed for his business coup and Dr. Ralph Ramey would collect the biggest fee of his career.
Ramey was sure that Moratta would regain a lot of respect for him as he handed over the ten thousand dollars.