Chapter 6
It was a spacious book-lined room. The walls covered from floor to ceiling, all four of them, with books. One wall also held a fireplace, which was blazing like a small inferno with flaming cedar logs, crackling with the sound of burning wood. The room was furnished with several leather easy chairs in dark colors; two before the fireplaces were occupied by men who looked up as Diana and Tracy entered. One of them was an athletic-looking middle-aged man wearing a black velour jumpsuit, and the other was thirty-five or so and darkly, conspicuously handsome, his eyes like cold blue light. He was wearing a navy blue kimono robe belted at the waist.
"Hello," he said, greeting Diana and Tracy. They nodded in return and Diana said, "Not much seems to be going on in here."
"Oh, don't discount us," he retorted. "There's room for talk as well as motion."
"Newton's seventeenth law," the man in the jumpsuit said with mockerudition.
"What were you talking about?" Tracy asked the younger man.
He gave it some consideration. "Well ... many things-puzzles and mazes ... and fads and crazes."
"Good book title," the other observed. Then, after a moment, "On the other hand, maybe four monthly magazines. Yeah. Puzzles, Mazes, Fads, and Crazes."
"What wave length are you guys on?" Diana asked him, sensing the nature of a mood that was not exactly sober.
"We are, for one, stoned, quarry deep stoned," he confessed, and smiled cheerfully. "And taking a break from making the beast with two backs...."
"Not to mention the beast with three backs," the younger man put in, smiling at Diana. "How about you?"
"I'm Diana, this's Tracy," Diana said, introducing them.
"I'm Richard, that's Anton," the man in the jumpsuit said. "Will you join us?"
Anton said, "There's some brandy on one of these book shelves, if you'd like."
"Not for me, thanks," Diana said. She looked at Tracy, who shook her head. They both sat down with their legs crossed in front of the fireplace between the two men, and Tracy said, "We'll just idle our motors here for a bit, okay?"
"If you want to talk," Anton said. "This is the talk room."
"If I must," Tracy said. She smiled at him. "What's the topic?"
"Be our guests," Richard said gallantly.
"Sex in cellars," Diana proffered, her eyes playful.
"I've had most of mine in attics," Richard said. "I'm disqualified."
"I wonder," Anton said speculatively, "how many feet above sea level lovers have gone with their desire. Has, for example, Mount Everest remained virgin soil or did someone on one of those expeditions grab some quick kicks on a precipice or crag?"
"With a yeti," Diana suggested.
"That's semi-bestiality," Anton told her, "and punishable in Tibet by confinement in a snow bank for twenty-four hours."
"Weird," Tracy said, commenting on the conversation.
"Well, I write weird things for a living, so I've got an excuse," Anton said in his defense. "My mind was permanently crimped at an early age by all those pulp magazines-you know, Ghastly Odd Tales, Mind Melting Mysteries, Flabbergasting Fantasies, and so on."
"What do you write?" Diana asked him seriously. She had always been interested in writers because they were usually unusual in one way or another.
"He wrote East of Breakfast," Richard said. "Soon to be a major talkie."
"Or at least a minor one," Anton said hopefully.
"Really?" Diana said.
"A first novel. But there's another on the way." Tracy asked, "What kind of novel?" Richard smiled, thinking about it. "Well, I don't know. A wordy one, I guess. Which is probably bad.
Novels aren't too popular anymore-not as popular as when people were reading them by candlelight anyway-so I suppose the fewer words the better."
"The novel as short story," Tracy said helpfully.
"Or punch line," said Diana.
"The microscopic novel!" Richard exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "Tiny books for a society that doesn't have time to waste between the computer banks and the frozen dinners. The novel as fast food for thought."
"Well, I also write poetry," Anton pointed out in his defense.
"Poetry?" Diana smiled at him. "A poet in the twentieth century is something of a rata avis, I should think."
"Or a rara Hertz," Anto said with dry good humor.
Diana looked at him candidly, a quick glance, and tried to see him in a sexual perspective, reminding herself that even though they were in the TALK room they were at a bacchanal. But the feeling was too elusive now that they were in a different context and she released the thought for the moment, deciding to enjoy the company of the two men (since she felt a definite rapport with them) and to let circumstance take care of the rest.
Looking at Richard, Tracy said, "Incidentally, does anyone happen to know who Neon Leon is?"
Richard replied, "Ah hah. You're new guests at Neon Leon's."
"You know who he is?" Tracy asked.
Richard shrugged. "Well, I've been here before-but I don't think anyone knows for sure. How did you get your invitation? Was it the itinerant dwarf or the mysterious letter or the message in the bottle?"
"A rich nut," Diana said knowingly. "Having weird times with his money, right?" She looked at Anton for confirmation.
"I don't know." Anton looked blank. "We've been here twice now, Richard and I, and it was all because we found a bottle on the beach with a TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN invitation in it. I know one woman who received her invitation on a CB radio, one who found one taped to her Gucci scarf when the lights came on in a planetarium, and a hippy girl who woke up one morning with hers written on her hip with body paint. Usually, though, it's the dwarf, letter, or bottle."
"What about Leon himself?" Tracy wondered. "Doesn't he ever appear and sample the goods, so to speak? If someone buys a candy store they usually squeeze the pralines, no?"
"It sounds reasonable," Anton said, "but I don't know anyone who claims to have met him."
"Do you enjoy these scenes?" Diana asked him pointedly, trying to get a fix on his attitude.
"Like them? I think there's a time and a place for most things. I'm learning things by being here. And feeling things. It isn't dull, I can say that."
"Maybe we should all collaborate on a thesis," Tracy said with a droll smile. "Or you could do it as a novel, Anton-To Fuck a Stranger." Her remark was followed by a meditative lull in the conversation, which she finally broke herself by saying, "Then Neon Leon remains a mystery figure?"
"No less," Anton said.
"Who do you think he is?" she wanted to know.
Anton said, "I think he's a famous author and we're his laboratory society-his ant farm, that is."
"How about you?" She looked at Richard.
Richard said, "I think he's the illegitimate son of Perle Mesta and Alf Kinsey."
"Or maybe just a very imaginative voyeur," Diana said, "One who can afford to dabble with his fancies."
"As good an explanation as any," Anton nodded. "And probably is the case," he added seriously after some thought.
There was a another brief lull, then Anton looked at Diana and said, with a pleasant smile, "Incidentally, when we leave the TALK room, would you mind visiting the DREAM room with me?"
Diana was pleased and flattered by the invitation, but tried not to let it show too much. "The DREAM room?" she asked. "There's a DREAM room?" She grinned. "Yeah, well, I do like dreams. It sounds like a thing to check out."
"I could use a couple of dreams myself," Richard said. He asked Tracy, "Will you accompany me?"
"Love to," Tracy said, facing him with a warm smile. "Want to go now-or talk some more first?" She glanced questioningly at Diana and Anton.
"I'm ready to go with the consensus," Diana said, looking at Anton. "You?"
"I'm ready," he said. "I would like to know a little bit more about you first, though if you don't mind."
"About me?"
Tracy said, "Yeah, I'm kind of curious about you, too, Richard."
"You're both interesting women," Anton said earnestly. "I'd like to know a little more about both of you. Why you're here. What brought you. What you do for a living."
"Would you like to fuck us, too?" Tracy asked him with blunt candor, taking him completely by surprise with the changes in both her expression and tone.
"Well ... yeah, I would," he said slowly, his glance cautious. "Of course. I like you."
Diana and Tracy laughed together and when he saw that they were not baiting him, he laughed, too, a bit self-consciously.
"Talk, talk, talk," Tracy said, frivolously, and she reached out with one hand, slipping it so suddenly between his naked legs under his robe that the cool touch of her fingers on the flaccid conformation of his genitals made him jerk back in the chair with a mild cry of surprise. "Relax," she whispered, and she held his cock lightly in the curving of her fingers, her thumb angled up along its shaft to the bulbous head, stroking it until, within seconds, she felt an incipient surge toward erection. Then she removed her hand and turned her gaze to Richard, a capricious sprite's grin brightening her face. "What do you do, Richard?" she asked. "You a writer, too?" I think I'd love to play with two writers...."
"I install buglar alarms in chastity belts," he informed her, unsmiling.
"No. Really!"
"I'm a myrmecologist."
Tracy smiles smugly. "Ah. Well, I happen to know what a myrmecologist is. Now all I have to do is figure out whether you're being a smartass or actually telling the truth."
"You know what myrmecology is?" Richard said dubiously. "Yep."
"That makes two of us," Diana said, her tone peevish. She looked at Richard. "We are not dummies, dear. I happen to be a secretary in a publisher's office, but on the side I do a little writing myself. I published two pieces in Commentary last year-and letters to the editor in Bug World and The Journal of Underwater Technology."
"And I'm a part time shop clerk and hooker specializing in nuclear physicists," Tracy added, giving Diana a look of cameraderie, then turning to face Richard again with the kind of smile with which a confident duelist approached the opposition.
Anton and Richard did a mutual doubletake, breaking into laughter together, and then Diana and Tracy were laughing with them, neither of them eager to cultivate real contention.
Richard said, "Tracy, not many people know what a myrmecologist is. Do you really?"
"Of course, " Tracy said. "I've read the definititve work on ants. I'm fascinated by social insects. But I'm not really a hooker," she admitted. "Just an old Phi Beta Kappa who ended up clerking in a shop."
"I'm no writer, either," Diana told Anton, "but I am a hell of a reader. And, as I said, no dummy."
"Obviously," Anton said. Impulsively, he reached toward her face, touching her cheeks with the fingertips of both hands, and guided her mouth to his, his tongue warmly opening her lips. She accepted him with a small murmur of delight and a complete yielding that turned the kiss into an equal collaboration, her tongue surging between her lips and against his with a flickering assertive complicity that brought a sigh of extreme pleasure from him. "Kiss," she said in a voice that could barely be heard, the word neither a request or a command but merely an abstract invocation sweeting her tongue and mind with its taste and sound. She put her tongue out as far as she could and their tongues circled together, their lips not even touching. Diana spung her tongue lightly away and flashed it playfully across Tracy's mouth, urging her into the action. Smiling and nodding, Tracy cooperated, and her face appeared suddenly beside Diana's, their tongues straining out of their mouths to lick at Anton's lips. Their hands discovered his cock in the same moment, Diana's fingers touching lightly at its base, Tracy's enclosing the top half, the thickening bulk of it rising between the widening arch of her thumb and forefinger. Moving her mouth down from Anton's and away from the gustatory blend of their three tongues, Tracy absorbed the plummy tip of his cock with her mouth, Diana rising beside her to lift the presence of her tongue to his cheeks and closed eyes and into his hair. Tracy's mouth widened with the expansion of cock, her eyes squeezing shut tightly as her lips pulled and sipped, the length of cock heating her mouth.
Anton was just beginning to move his prod in Tracy's mouth, his fingers firming around the back of her neck in preparation, when Diana's hand, reaching down, hauled the throbbing shaft out of the other woman's mouth, twisting it away and inserting her middle finger and forefinger in its place. "Sorry, mustn't get carried away," she breathed into Anton's ear, tongue teasing around the lobe. "Gotta go dream a bit before we fuck, right?" she said, nodding her own confirmation. She stood up and took her fingers out of Tracy's mouth, grinning at Anton's hapless, disappointed look.
"Monster," Anton whispered, glaring back at her. He reached for her hip but she easily stepped away, laughing, and Tracy, following her example, drew back out of reach.
"I guess they want to go dream," Richard said to Anton. "So why don't we all go do it, and then maybe we can go somewhere else together."
"Bed and bedlam, Richard," Tracy said, and gave him a quick little kiss on the corner of the mouth. "Then you and I can romp a little, yeah, if I haven't already made you jealous...."
"Mostly insatiable," he said, his smile making her smile back at him.
"So I guess it's dreams then," Anton said, and stood up. He took Diana's hand and she moved close to him, intimate now, her impudence gone, Richard and Tracy linking hands and joining them.
Diana and Anton led the way out of the room and into the hallway, which was empty for the moment, and Anton indicated the next door. The plaque on it said DREAMS.
"Just exactly what goes on in here?" Diana wanted to know, hesitating.
"I haven't tried it yet," Anton said, "but someone I talked to said you take a pill and dream."
"A pill?" Tracy said. "What sort of pill?"
"I don't know."
"But you want to take it anyway?" She looked reluctant. "I like to check out my pills."
"Oh, Tracy," Diana said, "don't worry. I think we're in good hands here. This obviously isn't a cheaply or unintelligently organized scene. Come on.
"Well, uh-awright, I guess so...." Tracy nodded, and Anton tapped the door briskly three times with the back of his hand.
The door opened after a few seconds, just a crack, and a man's face looked out at them. He said, "Dreamers?"
"Four," Anton said.
"Four," the man repeated to someone behind him in a room where an aura of soft golden light, faintly glimpsed beyond his shoulders, beckoned like a mystical horizon. It was a radiance like the first dawning light of a morning or the final brightening death of twilight, splendidly lucid and white and golden. Diana tried to see past the man but could not and gave it up when he passed four pills into her hand and whispered, "Take these and come in, won't you?" clsoing the door as he finished the sentence.
Diana gave one of them to Anton, one to Richard, put one on her own tongue without looking at it, and turned to Tracy with the fourth, turning Tracy's face toward her with one hand and holding up her pill with the other. It was a pink lozenge as vivid as rose crystal. Tracy stuck her tongue out, smiling with her eyes, and Diana put the pill on the damp tip of the pad, suppressing a brief desire to suckle the tongue instead. Time for that later, she told herself. Diana swallowed her pill, gliding the fingers of one hand in a passing caress against the soft kernel of Tracy's clit, an exceptional intimacy in her touch, and Tracy swallowed hers as a chill of sensual provocation sparked up through her body from her cunt. Turning, Diana looked at Anton and took his hand in hers. Her mind was abruptly suffused with golden light, she felt herself slipping, downward, it seemed as if the floor had turned to liquid velvet under her, she was immersed in pink warmth and waves of light, sinking, and was borne away suddenly in a pink flowing menstruum, dissolving, her thoughts gyrating and dispersing as lavender depths claimed her.