Chapter 7
As Earl drank he thought, thoughts about the night before, thoughts about a lot of things, mostly about the pleasure, the hot tight, throbbing pleasure, the climax, the indescribable finish.
"I hope you did it," Valerie had whispered in the darkness."
"What's that?"
"Gave me your baby."
He had taken no precautions when he did it to her.
He ordered another beer and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Well, he was a fool taking chances with her and not worrying about it until the next day. Not paying any attention to what he did as long as he satisfied himself. If he continued sleeping with her like that she would find herself in trouble and if that happened he didn't know what he'd do.
"Nice day," the waiter said.
"Yeah, for a change."
"You from around here?"
"No, I'm with the traveling show."
"Thought maybe you might be." The bartender rinsed a glass in water. "Heard they've got girlies out there where they go down to bare bottoms and all. Any truth in it?"
"You heard right."
"Maybe I'll take it in."
"Why not? It's worth your dough."
He had another drink and he knew that he ought to be out at the lot. There were always things to do and he should be making plans for their next move. The only hitch in this was that he didn't know if they were going to move. The fair was a hundred miles away and it took money to get there, plus the fact that workers had to be paid. And there wasn't any money. Money was something that they didn't have. It was a challenge that he didn't know how to meet.
At least, he thought, the weather had changed in their favor. They had three nights left here and if the breaks were with them they could do a lot in three nights. He could count on a cut from the admission fees and he had the Big Revue show running hot. If he only had another girl it would balance out and they'd be able to draw a bigger crowd.
He thought about May Hardwicke and whenever he thought of May his stomach tied itself in knots, the knots growing tighter as he thought about her, about those wonderful breasts of hers and how those nubs had shown through the dress the day before. That had been up in Ben's room at the hospital and he'd have been willing to take her on there. On the way out of the room he had sort of brushed against her, his arm lightly touching the side of one breast and she didn't say anything much except smile wickedly. "It's real," she had said.
He thought, too, about finding Valerie with Dave Moore in the trailer and he didn't like that. He might not be in love with Valerie but he wasn't quite ready to share her with anybody. If a girl put out to too many men one of them was bound to fix her up but good. And Dave was capable of doing that.
About noon he left the bar and drove to see Ben. The weight of the trailer was too much for an ordinary car and he ought to have a truck he thought as he drove on wearily.
There were only a tew cars in the parking lot and he went inside. Just as he entered the medic who was taking care of Ben entered along the hall. THE HALL.
"He's sleeping," the man said. "And I've cut out any visitors."
"What about his daughter?"
"I don't think he should see anybody today. I know it may sound cruel but its best for him. He needs to be quiet and he can't be that way when people are around him."
"What are his chances?"
The medic shrugged.
"Your guess is as good as mine. We doctors know some things but we don't know everything. These attacks often come one right on top of the other and at other times they're years apart. But even if he gets out of here he'll have to watch his movements on stairs, anything like that. I can give him pills that will help him. I can't give anything like a cure."
Earl felt sorry for Ben as he left. It would tear Ben apart not to be able to be with the show but there wasn't much that could be done about it. He had worn himself out on the road and now he had to sit around and wait to die. Or he had worn himself out with that tramp of a Laura Hall.
On the way back to the grounds Earl stopped off for some more beer, telling himself that he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to be with that May Hardwicke and if she could be had he wanted to have her. Of course, Valerie would be waiting for him, probably with nothing on, but he'd had so much of her the night before that he didn't need her again until later. Later would be that night and after the show was finished she would be dying for him.
His next stop was a drug store and he bought what he had to have. He wasn't going to be a fool again.
When he reached the grounds he left the car in an open space and walked toward Ben's trailer. All of Ben's papers were in there and it would give him a good excuse to see May again. The one dark spot in his imagination was Laura being around and being high on booze. When Laura was high she didn't care what she did and most of her talk was a real pain.
He reached the door and knocked. The land rent for the concessions was due but there was no sense of trying to collect. Everybody was down on money and if he was able to get it from most of them by Saturday he'd be lucky. Ben had been easy with those who had found it tough to pay and now he was up a tree. There was a price for every location and the price should be met if the owners had the cash. To kick them out when they were broke was stupid because you cut down on the size of the exhibitors and when the people came through the gate they wanted to see something fairly big. It didn't make any difference if the wheel games were mostly the same. The wheel games didn't get a very big play from those who were smart anyway but you had to have a selection of rides, or you let the customers down. A ride operator would check over his equipment but if he was low on funds he might not make the necessary repairs. He sold tickets and trusted to luck. It only took one accident and the news traveled ahead of you.
The door opened and May stood there looking out at him. She was wearing a dress that met every curve in the best places and it had a nice low front. The material was thin, nothing much to it, and he could see the outline of her bra.
"Come in," she said. "I was just going out to look for you."
He went in, closing the door behind him, knowing that she could smell beer on his breath and wishing that he hadn't had it. Drinking didn't solve anything. Drinking just made it worse.
"Where's Laura?" he asked.
"Well, she said she was going in to see my father out I think she just wanted to roam around the bars. If you ask me she's just out for her-self."
"I hope she stays sober. She can't dance much but she can't even bump or grind. That's a big part of it. Only walking up and down the platform in the raw isn't what the men pay for."
SEX TRYST pg 71 thru 80 LR
ARCHIVE NOTE: The above line appeared at this point in the original hardcopy pocketbook. There was no indication what the cryptic note refers to.
He was close to her, real close, smelling her perfume and womanliness and he wanted to grab what he shouldn't grab and he wanted to do what he shouldn't do.
"She won't get in to see him," he said. "They won't let anybody in. I was to the hospital a little while ago."
Her face grew tense, her eyes worried.
"Why? Is he worse?"
"No. I don't think so. They're just being careful. I guess they do that with a lot of patients keeping the excitement from them."
She walked over to the desk, picked up a pile of papers and then dropped them.
"I'm going to sell my car," she announced.
"Huh?"
"It ought to be worth a few thousand and I can drive my father's car. I have been sitting here all morning going over it and I don't see any other way. We have to pay Saturday night and we have to move. You can't keep them if you don't pay them, can you?"
"Too bad to have to sell such a nice auto,"
Earl said.
She turned her head, looking at him, and her smile flashed.
"Don't feel sorry for me, Earl. It was his money that bought it to begin with and if we hit it lucky I'll get another one. And the money had to come from somewhere, doesn't it?"
"I suppose so but I was counting heavily on the girlie snow to turn the trick for us."
She came across the small room toward him, all of her female, every movement of her body in that tight dress a movement that started the rockets exploding in his head as he watched her breasts bouncing at every step.
"Laura's no good," she said.
"You don't have to tell me."
"She even brought a man in here night before last. And for money. It was disgusting."
"I'd think so," he said.
"Last night she was in town picking them up wherever she could. She didn't tell me but I know. I'm not stupid. A girl doesn't stay out until four o'clock in die morning and not have a guy grabbing her."
"How do you know?"
"Because I'm human, too. I'm no virgin and I don't mind saying so. You go out with a man and if he's nice to you, you kind of lose your head. But I don't see it for money, I never did. Maybe you don't love the man afterward but it's nice to love somebody just a little while."
Ben always kept a couple of bottles in a closet and he wished that he had a drink, a big drink that would numb his brain. She was being frank enough about herself and from what she had said other men had scored. For no reason at all he more or less hated them. They had probably seen her naked body waiting for them upon a bed, her breasts twin mountains of flesh, her stomach sinking in to nothing and her hips wide enough to drive a man out of his skin as she gyrated.
"Anything else?" he asked, still thinking about the men and wishing that he had been one of them, that he had experienced her rising to him in a moment of frenzy.
"Maybe we should have a drink first?"
"Whatever you say."
"There's scotch."
"I know. Your father liked his scotch. They told him to drink a little brandy now and then but he hated the stuff."
She went to get the bottle and while she was gone he sat down on one of the chairs. She had something on her mind and he hoped it was the same that he had. All he had to do was to close his eyes and he saw a bed with her on it, expecting what he was going to do to her and telling him that she couldn't wait.
"You like it with ice?" she called out.
"If you please."
"Coming up."
She brought him the drink a couple of minutes later and it was just right. As she sat down opposite him and crossed her legs he could see all the way up her legs. It was only a second that it lasted but it was a good look and he got frantic all over and his head began to throb. Who, he asked himself, was she kidding? A man didn't have to rape her to get her. All he had to do was time right and make the proper moves.
"I could help you in the show," she said, leaning back, her breasts thrusting but, the centers of them not quite as prominent as they had been the day before yet.
"I don't need anybody to sell tickets. I've got a dumb nut who does that. When he gets more than a ten dollar bill he had to count his fingers."
"I didn't mean selling tickets. I meant inside with the other two girls and really giving the men a blast for their money."
"Your father would kill me if I let you do that." Earl could almost see her going down to nothing. "He'd kill me anyway if he knew what the girls were doing. He wanted a nice show, only a little sexy, but the men don't go for that."
She uncrossed and crossed her legs again. The view wasn't so good this time but it was good enough.
"He wouldn't have to know," she said.
"Somebody might tell him."
"Who? We've only got a few more days here and then we'll be moving on." Her lips parted in a smile and her teeth were white. "What's the matter, Earl? Don't you think I've got what it takes?"
"You've got what it takes," he agreed. "Where?"
"You know where."
She looked down at herself.
"I am big, huh?"
"You're big, but you look bigger because you're so small in the belly."
"I'm only nineteen inches there."
He finished his drink and put the empty glass aside.
"The men like a girl to be flat in the gut, or a little bulge maybe, and for her to be big upstairs. The bigger you are the better it is." He was sorry that he didn't have another drink. "But I don't see you doing it, May. It just doesn't fit. You're a nice girl and nice girls don't strip and push flesh into customers faces."
"Why wouldn't a nice girl strip if she had to have the money? I wouldn't be sleeping with them or anything like that. And for all you know I may not be so nice. I've done some things that most nice girls wouldn't do. I met all kinds of girls and eight out of ten of them would get into the back seat of a car with a man if the man talked hard enough. And you know what goes on in the back seat of a car, don't you?"
He nodded and said nothing. You couldn't just pull at her dress and have your way, not too quickly. Of course there was an exception to this rule and he'd been out with a girl once who'd been an exception. She had pulled her dress apart herself, lifting her hips as she did so, and then she had told him what he could do and that she didn't have to hurry and that she had all night. She hadn't been very pretty, not as pretty as most girls, but he had taken all night with her and the last time it had been daylight.
"You need another girl in the show," May was saying. "Two girls don't look too impressive to the men. They want to see as many girls as they can for their money and I could do it. I know how to dance some and I can grind and bump even raw if it will help our income."
He didn't want her doing this, not really, but she would be a lift to the show and it would mean money in the bank.
"I'd go for another drink," he said.
She got up to fix the drinks, the same as she had fixed them before, and he wanted to see her naked right there. He wanted to see her as he could have seen Valerie and then he wanted to take her to bed. If he took her to bed and if he started a family for her it would be okay. Being married to somebody like May was about all any man could ask for.
"Let me try to get another girl," he said when she returned with the drinks.
"And where do you think you'll find one?"
"I don't know. There isn't time to go into the papers with an ad. One may show up. Sometimes you hit a town and a girl is leaving home and she needs a few bucks. I've seen some good ones found that way but the trouble is they seldom last. They either get a kid or they get sick of it and then they break away."
"Just tell me what you do while you're waiting lor this girl to come out of nowhere."
"Do with what I have. Laura hasn't got the shape that I wished she had but Valerie is okay."
"I've got more than your Valerie has got."
"She isn't my Valerie."
""Not much she isn't. A girl sleeps with a man every night and she has to belong to somebody, doesn't she? So she belongs to the man she sleeps with."
"Let's forget it, huh?"
"Oh, I don't care. What you do is your business and what I do is mine. What I want to do right now is work into the show and see some money coming in. This sickness of my father is going to cost and other things have to be paid. I went over his book and I saw that you didn't get your money last week."
"I managed to get along although I will admit that I'm a month back on my personal payments. But it isn't the first time and it won't be the last. As soon as we're on our feet I can catch up."
"As soon as I sell the car I'll straighten up with you."
"Aren't you being a little impatient about selling your car? A dealer finds out that vour close to being broke and he'll cheat you out of a thousand."
"It won't be the first time somebody cheated me."
"Well, it's up to you. It's your car and you know as much about what we have as I do. I haven't hidden anything from you. We haven't got hardly anything and by the end of the week we'll owe quite a lot."
"What would I get if we sold out?" she inquired.
"Not what it's worth at this time of the year and not with the route that we have ahead of us. Except for the fairs it isn't much good, not as good as last year. My guess is that Ben was having a ball up in his room and that anything that came up was all right so he made mistakes because of Laura."
They had four or five drinks together and he knew that he was feeling them. He guessed that she was feeling them, too, because of the way she sat on the chair. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs and she showed him more and more each time that she did it. There was a terrible pound at the back of his neck and it spread forward over his head, smashing him between the eyes. She continued to talk about working out with the show, trying to convince him, but he didn't listen to all that she said. He was too busy wondering how she would be, if she would twist and moan and perhaps bite when she reached the summit of her desires.
"I could show you," she said. I could show you how I'd do it."
The pounding between his eyes increased. That meant that she would go down to bare, letting him see all of her, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to stop himself then. He would be after her like some animal of the woods and if she fought him he would force her, bringing her naked body to him and then knowing it fully, shaking all over, hating himself for what he had done to her.
"You couldn't wear that dress," he said.
"No, I know that but I could pick up something in town, something real tight and low in front. I wouldn't wear any bra with it, not even when I was out there and you were giving them the come on."
"For the second show you wouldn't need any dress."
"I'm aware of that."
"The second time it's all skin and nothing else. We don't keep the men waiting for what they want to see and we give them a fair share of it."
"You seem to be thinking my way, Earl."
"I'm not thinking your way. I'm just talking. A girl who goes out there for the second act can't have any reservations. You have to understand that these men are really lonely, hungry to look at a girl, to think for a few minutes that the girls want them to make out."
"What man hasn't got a dirty mind?"
"Some don't."
"Sure I'm looking at you. I'm human but I'm not a savage."
"And what are you thinking about?"
The sweat ran down into his eyes and his legs felt heavy.
"If you don't know what I'm thinking I won't tell you."
"You'd like to make me, wouldn't you?"
The sweat run down and stung his eyes and blinked them rapidly.
"That's stating it mildly," he admitted.
"Do you want every girl?"
"Not every girl, say, you ask a lot of questions. "
"I'm just curious. If a man married a girl he wants to be the first one with her but if a man takes a girl out he wants to have his fun. So what chance does a girl have? If she doesn't sleep with a man she loses him and if she sleeps with him she loses him anyway. Like you and that Valerie. You won't marry her. I know very well that you won't. Why should you marry her when you get her for free?"
"She's happy enough."
"Is she? What girl can be happy that way?
Look at that Laura Hall and think of her three kids and the possibility of another one being on the way. Is she happy? I doubt it. She's so confused she hardly knows left from right. Some night she'll get so drunk or be busy with a man and she won't show up. Then where will you be?"
"I still don't like it," Earl said. "I never had any trouble. I don't want any now."
She got up from her chair.
"I tell you he won't know." She kicked off her shoes and reached for the zipper on her dress. I'm going to show you something," she said, "if I can send you I ought to be able to send the others. You've seen so many girls you've probably lost count."
"I've seen all sorts."
"But not my kind before."
"Maybe not" He hadn't realized until then that she'd been drinking a lot.
Her smile teased him and her body began to sway slightly. As she swayed she fooled with the dress, lifting it up several inches above her knees, then letting it fall down again. He leaned forward, staring at her, the sweat in his eyes and the pound in his head almost driving him insane with the awful need for her body. She toyed with the dress again, bringing it up higher, her thighs a golden and richly full. He sucked air into his lungs, breathing hard, as she went all the way up with the dress and fought to get it over her jutting breasts. Seconds later the dress had been cast aside and all she had on was the bra.
"You like?" she wanted to know.
He tried to reply but the words wouldn't come. He had never seen any girl like her before, no girl so lush and ripe, no girl with the lines that set her apart from all others. The air poured into his lungs, burning on the way down, and he let out a groan as she reached behind her for the clasp on the bra. In a few seconds she would be spilling outside, those rosy nipples only a few feet away from him, and once he saw her like that he'd have to go all the way.
She was swaying again, faster this time, her hips moving like they were mounted on bearings, her head up high and her smile bright. Slowly she lowered her body and when she threw him a bump it nearly tore off the top of his head. Her smile washed over him and he clenched his fists. Her bra was coming off her now, her motion unhurried, and then suddenly it was all the way off, lying on the floor by the dress.
She was big up there, really bigger than a girl ought to be, but on her they looked good. They were close together, the valley between the deep and warm, and they pushed up and out, the flesh of them alive and moving as she went into a torrid grind that ended in a tremendous bump of naked desire from her.
Like a giant cat she came toward him, grinding and bumping, throwing everything she had into what she was doing. Fascinated, he watched her body knowing what she was doing to him, knowing what she could do to any man. No man could ever see this beautiful creature and not want to get at her with his hands, to arouse her to the fever pitch of excitement and then lose himself with her on one of those wild seas of passion she was creating with every bump and each breast, lovely breasts, breasts that she cupped in her hands, her face flushed, her whole being an invitation to untold pleasures, her teeth white behind her smile.
"Hell," he said thickly as she moved away from him.
"I guess I'm not much of a dancer," she said as she paused still cupping her breasts, still tormenting him.
"You don't have to be."
"Do you think the men would pay to see me?"
"A man would have to be blind or dead if he didn't."
"And they'd tell their friends?"
"Or come back again for some more of the same."
He got up from where he had been sitting and walked to the door to lock it. She had driven him beyond endurance and now there was only one thing left, the only thing that was meant for the male and the female, the one thing that would quite possibly bring life into the world.
"Come here," she said softly.
He locked the door.
"Don't ask me twice."
"I knew this would happen," she said.
"Is that why you danced for me?"
"No, because it would have happened anyway, good or bad, Valerie or no Valerie." She acted as though she was close to tears. "I put on the strip to prove to you that I could help out in the show but I shouldn't have done it. I told myself that I shouldn't but I knew that I would.' She smiled faintly. "I like you. I can't help that. And a girl shouldn't tell a guy so, should she? I mean-'
"And I shouldn't," she said thickly. He knew that he shouldn't. She was Ben's daughter and Ben was more than his boss. Ben trusted him and he didn't deserve it now. What if there had been other men for her? She had said that, hadn't she? But that didn't matter and make it right. No matter what she was, no matter what she had done, she was out of his class. The Hardwicke's might be almost broke but they were still above him. People didn't have to have money to be the best. It was what they had inside that counted.
"We shouldn't," she agreed and looked up into his face as her hands grasped his and squeezed.
"Ben would hate both of us."
Her eyes searched his face thoughtfully.
"Earl, there are some things that you have to know."
"The forbidden things?" He wished the sweat would stop.
"What ever you call them." She freed herself from his hold. She glanced toward the bottle of scotch. "Some stuff," she said.
"Yeah."
"It makes you do what isn't right. Like that dance. It wasn't decent but I telt you had to know." Once more she smiled. "But there was something else, something that I seldom feel so strongly."
"Such as?" The sight of her was driving him out of his mind, yet he did not move toward her again. He couldn't move just then. He couldn't do anything but look at her and lust for the body that he saw.
"Well, maybe two things."
"I'm listening." Even talking was difficult.
"This out fit has to keep going."
"Yes, I know."
"For Ben. It's his life, his future." The tears were gone now but the sweat clouded his eyes. "I'd do anything for him, anything at all. What else can I do but work in the show? I may hate it but it'll be money for us, money that we need. And the men won't see me again. Next week I'll be gone from this town, to another town, to more men who want to see the same thing. It'll hurt him if he finds out but it's for him." She paused. "The price is worth it, Earl. It has to be."
He dug the knuckles of one hand into his eyes, clearing them somewhat.
"And the other thing?" he inquired. She was slower in reply to his question. Their hands touched as she gave him his glass and he longed to take her.
" It's you," she said softly. "I didn't do anything." She tasted her drink.
"Earl, I try to be straight with myself and with a man. I think you have to be straight in both directions or you get all twisted up."
"All right."
She looked at him, her eyes digging into his face. It was great to see her but he wished, without any real conviction, that she'd put something on. This was so exciting that it was terrible.
"I like you," May said and once more the threat of tears were there, not only in her eyes but in her voice. "I like you and the blonde is yours."
He thought of Valerie. Why didn't he go to her? She'd be good to him and the next time he saw Ben he'd be able to look the old man in the face. Yet he knew that he wasn't going to Valerie, not just then anyway, and he knew that he couldn't go. What he wanted was in the nude right there. And he wanted her in the worst way.
"Damn," he said as he went to her. ."Oh, damn."
The glasses made a little sound as they hit the rug, rolling away, the spilled drinks staining the pile.
"My pocketbook," she said. "Let's not be too foolish."
He didn't care. "Forget the lousy-"
"You men are all the same, aren't you? You don't think you're a male unless you give a woman a kid."
"Well, a woman isn't a woman until she's had one."
She laughed nervously.
"Thanks, honey, but I'll wait a while before I prove that to the world."
The passage was narrow and he had some trouble carrying her down to the room. Possibly that was due to the fact that he kissed her along the way, her legs kicking as she wound her arms around his neck. He stumbled as he went into the room and his head ached worse than it ever ached in his life before. She was smart and he knew it.
He put her upon the bed and she smiled up at him hungrily as she saw that he was going to protect her, that her worries, if any, would be simple ones.
"This is crazy," she said turning to him so that he could take her in his arms to know what others had already known but what was strange to him.
"Be savage," he begged her. "Remember," she said. "You asked me to." Then he ran his hands around the curves of her breasts, caressing the smooth skin and the pink area which circled her nipples, and after that e came to the nipples themselves. He stroked each nipple with his forefinger for a moment, and then he took both nipples into his grasp of tore-finger and thumbs of both his hands. He began to shake both of her breasts by moving them with his fingers on her nipples, and was rewarded by her sighing gasp of excitement and smiling.
Then he slipped his hands down again onto her breasts themselves, holding them by their undersides in the palms of his hands, and shaking them that way. And after that he moved his hands together and began to rub her breasts against each other, ending by squeezing them mightly together into a soft, lovely mass of exciting warmth and passionate gasping.
The rest of her body, motionless when he had first opened her bra, was no longer that way. Her buttocks began to slide restlessly back and forth against the sheets of the bed, her uncovered middle bucking upward toward his body and then retreating and then bucking upward again a moment later, and her hands reached up to caress his hard-muscled shoulders and back. She slipped her hands forward at intervals to stroke and pinch his chest and small nipples while he was squeezing her full breasts in return, and then moved back to roam over his shoulders and arms and shoulder blades. And when she finally slid her hands all the way down and held his buttocks, clutching their roundness and extending her fingertips into the crevice between his body moved with a leap.
He bent forward quickly, then, and took her opened bra off her, hastening to lift the straps away from her arms so that she could quickly return her fingers to their position on him. Then he moved his mouth toward the naked breasts which loomed up at him so enticeingly.
The shapeliness which had made May's breasts look so lovely made them even lovelier now that they were completely naked.
The fact was that this gal really didn't need a bra at all. Her breasts stood firm and erect, despite their size, without any support at all; their beauty curved sweepingly into the air and were made to appear even more erect by the length of the deep-red nipples.
But he did not admire them for very long this time: he was so full of urgency that he wanted to taste the sweetness of her skin and her body, and he continued to move downward until his mouth had touched the stiff redness of her tight nipples. He kissed her nipple lightly, stroking it gently with his lips, and then he let the nipple move between his lips and he closed his mouth tightly against it. The taste was as sweet as he had anticipated it would be, and he moved his lips around against the nipple for a moment or two. And then he let the nipple slip deeper into his mouth and he closed his teeth on her as they went into their total passion for the needs of each other.
When he left her he was a man in a daze. She was all of the women of the world in one, her love a demanding, furious thing of complete wildness, bringing with it the ultimate of the treasures of the flesh.
He walked the carnival lot but actually he saw nothing. He thought of May and himself and what lay ahead of them. He thought of Ben. Ben whose daughter, wisely or unwisely, had yielded herself in such a wild, uncontrolled need for her release and desire.
He didn't want her in the show, didn't want other men to see her intimately, but he realized that it had to be done, that for whatever it might mean he had to accept it. As soon as she could latch onto another girl she could be replaced, perhaps belong to him alone, but for now they lived in insecurity. She had to be used for his complete sexual pleasure and satiation.