Chapter 2
Eleanor Landers lit a cigarette and walked slowly about the spacious room feeling that spicy tang which a call girl might experience at her very first assignation. Playing up to Martha Dowdale had paid off; this was the best room on the three floors of the dormitory. A big round desk and comfortable upholstered chair, a wide armchair, a low wide couch, and, in the far corner opposite the door, an old-fashioned but extremely comfortable bed with brass head and foot rails. And a bathroom all to herself, and all this for $110 a month, which was chickenfeed. Old Mrs. Dowdale went to sleep at ten, so there wouldn't be any problem when Tom Jenkins performed his heroic and spectacular feat of shinnying up the drainpipe.
She had nothing to lose. If he slid down or couldn't make it, and somebody found out, he would just look foolish and be reprimanded for the outrageous idea of trying to get into the girls' dormitory. If he did make it, nobody would find out. And when she finished with him, he wouldn't dare tell his cronies, because, first, there'd be nothing to tell, and second, he'd be laughed off campus if he told the truth about what she planned to do.
After that escapade with Henri, the spurious French count, Eleanor had decided to be a demi-vierge, or, in the parlance, a teaser. She would do it out of revenge, because suave handsome Henri had actually duped her into going to bed with him and she'd thought it was true love, not guessing that all he wanted was to marry a girl with a big dowry. Oh, sure, he'd been a marvelous lover; but the fact was, sex didn't mean all that much to her. She was too selfish and narcissistic, and, as often happens with females of that genre, she was rather more frigid than her breathtaking red-haired beauty would possibly suggest to a covetous male who saw her walk along the shady paths.
Men were really so doltishly simple. Here Suzy Mersh had been building up the big football hero and senior and power on campus to her, and it had taken just one meeting and after that one surreptitious date (and that really couldn't be called much of a date, meeting under the bleachers and doing a bit of imagine necking) to wean him away from his angelic, pure sweetheart. Oh, she didn't want him, even on a permanent basis; this was a kind of test of her own powers, which Eleanor Landers needed to restore her self-confidence after that fiasco in Paris. But once that test had come off brilliantly, as she knew it would, she'd be the envy of all the other girls. Getting into DGT would be lead pipe cinch, and she could have her pick of men. And all that attention and excitement would ease the hurt of being sent away from Chicago by her parents, because she knew very well it was a punitive measure, at least on Dad's part, old fuddy-duddy that he was. Mom wasn't so bad, though when it came down to basic issues, she was really spineless. Mom ought, for instance, to have stood up for her and made Dad give in on sending her to Illinois Extension or the U. of Chicago or even Roosevelt, just so she could be in town and available for all the gay nightlife of the Windy City. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad, because there was a lot of compensation in being a big frog in a small pond instead of the other way around.
She eyed herself a last time in the bathroom mirror and deftly adjusted the top of the green satin robe to show off a little more of her creamy chest and the spellbinding cleft between her firm breasts. It was for sure that Tom Jenkins had probably never seen his darling little four-eyed Elly Douglas in anything less than a fully clothed condition, so that was why it had been so easy to entice him with the promise of her own verdantly sensual, ripe body. That was what the psych profs called sublimation; Tom Jenkins probably was going to pretend it was Elly by closing his eyes and trying to make love to her...the only catch was, he wasn't going to get even that far.
Just to make sure that her exploit didn't go unnoticed, she had already tipped off six or seven of the more venturesome girls at Comstock Hall, ones she knew wouldn't blab to old Mrs. Dowdale, but who would spread the news around of how she'd lured Tom Jenkins up to her dorm room in front of God and everybody. She had also let them in on how she was going to turn him down, and they'd thought it an hilarious prank. Yes, by tomorrow, her stock would be soaring at Marwell. And that would put her a few steps ahead of Kathy Edwards.
Imagine that frumpy girl coming here to Marwell, of all places! Eleanor Landers frowned at her image in the mirror. She and Kathy had grown up on the same block, gone to Gale Grammar School together, and for a time been the closest of friends. Till, of course, Dad had started to make a killing in the stock market and moved them all away to Briarwood Terrace. Kathy's folks couldn't keep up with that change, that was for sure. Kathy's father was a mild-mannered, self-effacing little man who worked as a radio engineer in a North Side 2500-watt station. It was a steady job with fair pay, but it had no future and it was awfully dull. Eleanor didn't see how a man could be content to sit in front of a panel and watch the needles of dials move this way and that and record their movements in a log, year after year. And Kathy's mother wasn't much brighter, in her book anyway. Imagine not having servants and doing the lawn yourself and actually washing the car with a hose on Saturdays! No society woman ever did a thing like that.
Eleanor Landers conveniently forgot the many times Mrs. Edwards had invited her over to have supper with Kathy and Mr. Edwards when they'd been playing together. That was ancient history, after all, when she'd been just a child, too young to know any better. But now that she was in college and twenty, she knew the score. The only people who mattered were those who had money and background and big glamorous jobs or a reputation for being smart and imaginative. Marwell was a comedown for her in a way, and that was all the more reason why she had to start her career on campus with a real bang. And Tom Jenkins was going to furnish the fireworks!
She'd left the window halfway open, just enough so that he'd have to work to push it up far enough to climb inside. No sense making things too easy for him. Then the disappointment of being told no wouldn't hurt nearly so much as if he'd had to make a real effort.
She lit a cigarette and sat down on the couch, crossing her lovely rounded legs so that the robe hiked up enough to show off the gauzy sheaths of her nylons. And she tilted the lamp beside the couch in such a way as to focus the illumination right on her calves and knees so that he couldn't help noticing them the minute he crawled on through. She was willing to bet a month's allowance that Elly Douglas hadn't shown him much more than her prim knees in all the years they'd been dating. Tom had as much as intimated that he'd never gone very far physically with Elly, and no wonder; she was the kind who burned the midnight oil and got high marks and didn't even know what perfume and a smart hairdo could do to make a man's pulses quicken. If that was the sort of girl a handsome clean-cut athlete like Tom Jenkins preferred, he was strictly minor league, for all the talk about his being B.M.O.C.
She put the glass ashtray on the floor so that she could bend down to it and show him the d‚colletage of her green satin robe. It would be amusing to see how flustered he would get when he found out that all his climb and exertion had been for nothing. She'd let him smoke a cigarette, give him one drink, maybe one brief kiss, and then send him back to the frat house a wiser and sadder hero. And he wouldn't dare smack her down for pulling a stunt like this; the girls she'd enlisted at the Hall were on her side, and they'd spread the word so fast he'd be the laughingstock of Marwell.
Sure, it was being bitchy, but what did that matter? Mady Terhune, the elegant sandy-haired tall blonde who was prexy of Delta Gamma Theta, was the sort of sorority leader who would appreciate her bid for attention. It was rumored that Mady felt that a top-notch sorority house ought to coach its girls in not being easy marks for the first fellow who offered to pin them. And Mady herself was still unpinned and playing the field.
She heard a noise outside, and giggled, tensing in expectation. Then there was nothing except the soft night breeze. September had been a hot month, with little relief even at night, except for a vagrant wind from the southeast that really didn't help cool things off much. Even the satin robe felt warm. Taking it off would make Tom Jenkins sizzle. Even if he married Elly, she was sure, the prim bespectacled senior girl wasn't the kind who would let her hubby see her in just a garter belt and high-heeled pumps and sheer hose. She would probably wear a long opaque nightie. Or pajamas. And Eleanor preferred sleeping raw herself. Not that Tom Jenkins was going to learn her preference, now or any other night.
So this was Marwell, was it? Touted as "a small but select college with full academic credits, leading to the pursuit of advanced degrees in English literature, philosophy, sociology, as well as home economics, business administration" and so on. A small stadium which housed maybe five thousand people at the most, and was packed only every November when Marwell met its traditional rival, Carthage College. Oh, they had some good names on the faculty, all right, like that Professor Leonard Wormsley, who had published two books on population explosion and was looked on as a whiz in sociology and drew foreign exchange students to his classes. One of his books had even been reprinted in paperback. Not that Eleanor Landers cared about the population explosion; at least, not studying it at Marwell. Back home in Chicago, she would have felt more at ease, and she would have had her pick of fellows to squire her to the London House for a steak and the jazz combo or down along the nightspots which mixed culture with beer and pretzels in Old Town or even the fancier rendezvous of Rush Street. Here, all there was to do was to go to the Orpheum, which changed its double features once every two weeks, and the sweet shop where she'd met Tom Jenkins and, if she felt really wicked, go into the small bar which the only decent restaurant in town offered. Only the dean of women had intimated that going unescorted wasn't proper. And besides, a hick joint like that wouldn't know how to mix a stinger or fix an authentic Gibson or a gimlet. So there was nothing to do for kicks-except what she was about to do now.
She preened herself again in the mirror, smoothed back the severe curve of the oval bun of coppery hair, and smiled at herself. She would have liked nothing better than to pose for hours on end before the mirror, altering her coiffure and makeup, her attire, so that she became a complex and many-faceted siren. Such was Eleanor Landers' narcissism; she had that peculiar bent of mind which enabled her to rationalize quickly and justify her every act. She had already forgotten the blunder with Henri de Rochembeau, and that he had bedded her, not once but several times till the liaison had been secretly obliterated with her father's money, much as a marriage might have been. So at the moment, by her own standards, Henri had never existed, therefore she was still a virgin and she knew the value of that pseudo-virginity. Wasn't it potent enough as lure to draw a perfectly respectable and reputable senior football hero to her room at this late hour?
Wait-what was that? A louder noise than before, startling against the faint chirping of the crickets. It made her giggle, because when crickets rubbed their wings to make that noise, it meant they were wooing each other. Only the human animal had to go through such an elaborate ritual of courtship, dates and wining and dining and then the clumsy pawing which passed for trying "to make out" which was the common code in most colleges these days. At least, Henri de Rochembeau had been an imaginative and skillful lover, and if he hadn't been after her money, she might have made a go of marriage. He had certainly been a handsome devil. She shivered now, remembering their first night...how he had undressed her, garment by garment, lingering to kiss and tongue the exquisite revelations which this gradual deshabille had brought about, and how wickedly erotic she had felt wearing just a half-slip and hose and garter belt and pumps while his dark head had bowed before the round turrets of her swelling breasts, his lips and tongue-tip saluting the rosebuds at their crests.
And from that elysian wooing in romantic Paris, she had come to exile in this hick town where there probably wasn't a single eligible male between twenty and fifty who could even begin to think up the spicily inventive ideas Henri had had in lovemaking.
At least this little stunt tonight had something racy to recommend it. Tom himself had gasped incredulity when she'd slyly proposed that he join her in her room. "But, gosh, Eleanor, a guy could get kicked out of college doing that!" She'd had to slap him playfully just before, for having called her "Elly"; it was too much like the name of his plain-jane girlfriend, and she'd whispered alluringly, "Tom honey, I'm not your Elly. I'm as different from her as night from day, and the only way you'll ever find out is by being alone with me in my room. Are you man enough to try it?"
And when he'd still hesitated, she'd slipped her satiny-firm bare arms round his neck and flicked the tip of her tongue just between his lips, whispering, "There. Did your Elly ever kiss you like that?" That had been the convincer. He would come climbing up the drainpipe drooling in anticipation-and then would come, as Henri might have said, the denouement.
There went the noise again, and it was definitely coming from the drainpipe. He was climbing up, a modern Romeo to her three-story Juliet. There wasn't much danger anybody would see him this time of night; the old watchman made his rounds at ten and again at eleven-thirty-she'd found that out from Suzy Mersh before that meeting under the bleachers with Tom.
She made sure that every light except the one on the night table beside the bed was extinguished. Then she arrayed herself carefully on the bed, propping up two thick pillows behind her and leaning back, fingers trailing along the sheets, cool and fresh and white and inviting. The drawn covers suggested an intimacy to follow. She thought it was a deft nuance. For a moment she felt sorry for the poor guy, shinnying up that narrow drainpipe, arriving out of breath and aching from the tortuous climb, expecting his ultimate reward-which he wasn't going to get. Then her eyes grew cool and hard and calculating. He was just an actor in the drama she was working up, nothing more nor else, and his feelings as such didn't matter a damn.
Now there was a pause; he was probably pausing to get his second wind and looking around to make sure nobody was watching. Then again the rasping sound, and now she could hear him grunting with the effort. He must be past the second floor.
She leaned back, again adjusting the bodice of the green satin bathrobe so that more of the valley of her creamy bosom was exposed. At least he had earned the right to a quick look. Besides, that would only excite him all the more. In a way, he ought to be grateful to her for having deluded him, because when he went back to that colorless girlfriend of his, he would have an idea of what a real woman could be to him. She could foresee that Elly Douglas was going to have a hard time holding her man because he was going to try to put those new ideas to work against her. So much the better! In a way, too, she was really contributing to his education as a man, and it was long overdue.
Then suddenly she saw an arm reach over the sill, a wiry hand grip the underpart of the window and shove it up. Then another gasp, and his curly brown hair and his widened, intensely concentrating eyes and furrowed forehead were seen. And then he was inside, in slacks and blue cotton T-shirt and sneakers, shaking his head and getting back his breath. "Boy, that was a climb. Slippery as the dickens. But I made it, Eleanor."
"Yes, you did, Tom. Go fix yourself a drink. There's a bottle of Scotch in the top drawer of my dresser, and the glasses are in the bathroom. Fix me one too, darling."
There was nothing in her affectatiously husky voice to indicate the end of this nocturnal sortie. She stared at him with her green eyes, making them as limpid as if she really meant to yield. But inside, she could hardly keep from laughing. That was the sort of girl Eleanor Landers was, deep down inside.