Chapter 5
When Eddie had phoned and stated that he was coming by in a car to taken her out riding, Alice completely dismissed Frieta's predicament. She dressed quickly and hurried downstairs to the lower hallway to wait for Eddie. It was a blessing that he should show up at a particular time when she was about to explode on her daughter. She loved Frieta, and did not want her to be the type of girl which she had become. While she felt that she wasn't to blame for the type of life she had to live, there was some way which she could stop it. It always seemed that the fellows she always met were those with no ambition, regular ass hunters, she guessed.
She smoked as she waited for Eddie, and felt mentally disturbed for slapping Frieta so hard. She did not put too much confidence in her child. Now days the kids were subject to do just about anything if the parents were not there to watch carefully, or to at least offer them the best of corrections. She had failed in correcting Frieta. While she wanted to be decent and five according to the moral standards, she definitely couldn't. She supposed she was just a weakened degenerate who couldn't be helped.
The moment Alice saw the green Ford pull up before the apartment building, she knew it was Eddie. She clutched the collar of her spring coat round her neck, shoved the hallway door open and hurried out to the car.
It had clouded up again. Rain threatened. A stiff wind blew from the north. The weather had hardly warmed up any while the sun had fingered. It was very cool and unpleasant for the month of June.
Eddie smiled when Alice opened the front door and climbed in the car beside of him.
"Where's Frieta?" he wanted to know. "I thought she was home?"
Alice leaned and kissed him on the lips. As she sat back, staring hard at his handsome features, feeling her throbbing heart, she tried to control herself as best she could. Desire surged into her soul. Her stomach felt warm, intensified with a lust for fulfillment.
"Frieta is home," she told him.
He waited, thinking that Frieta must be slow in coming. His own conscience hardly bothered him. A girl was a girl to him. Mother or daughter, what was the difference? He wasn't married to either of them. A man had to take what he could get, now days.
Alice looked at him, then shifted over snugly against him. "Frieta ain't comin', honey," she informed him, tenderly. She was as blind as ever to her daughter and the man's sensual affair. Not once did she suspect that he could be wanting her daughter instead of her.
"Why isn't she comin'?" he asked, giving her a hard, inquisitive stare.
"We had a fallin' out. I struck her. So just drive of and leave her here."
He started the car, drove on down Kansas Avenue.
"What's goin' on between you two?" he asked. He thought for a moment that it might have been what he wanted to tell her. Then he decided that it wasn't. Alice was acting too gentle, too self-composed in his company.
"She's all dolled up," Alice said. "She's makin' a go for that Charley Boyles, I guess. At least that's what she told me. He give her enough dough to start a small bank, from the way she's gone on a buyin' spree."
Eddie nodded, but did not respond. He was contemplating the affair between the daughter and mother. It did not bother him too much. He didn't really give a damn. Certainly he did not intend to marry Alice or her daughter. He only pleasured them for his own kicks. After them there would be others. Still he was very fond of Frieta. She was something special, real nice, damn good!
"Hey, where've you been?" Alice wanted to know. "I haven't seen you for three days or more. Don't you know we're engaged, or had you forgotten that you proposed to me and give me a ring to wear?"
He grinned at her. His dark, deceiving eyes roved over her open collar, the pink blouse she wore disturbed him. Made him think of Frieta. He longed for the tenderness of Frieta's kisses again.
"Gamblin', babe," he said. "Can't just idle round. Can't do that. Makes me jumpy. I'd think of killin' myself. I'm th' nervous type of monkey who can't stand bein' a sittin' duck. Where you wanna go for a ride?"
"I don't want to go for no ride," she said. "You ought to know where I want to go. Or do you?" She placed a hand on his flank nearest her, and caressed him tenderly.
He looked down at her and nodded. He knew very well what she wanted with him. Alice was oversexed, and she did not hesitate to let herself go begging when she was starved.
"I've got some liquor in the back seat," he said. "Three fifths. That ought to be plenty."
"That's too damn much," she said. "I've got to go to work tomorrow. I don't want to go on a damn drunk, honey. Frieta's outa my hands now."
He nodded but did not speak. He was contemplating a scheme to drown her out, fix the pleasure for Frieta and himself for a while. He knew Alice was a sop, a complete dipsomaniac when the drinks were placed before her. He would fix her good and proper. He didn't give a damn. Maybe he'd give her enough to kill her. Then he would be free to have Frieta anytime he chose. The kid was weak for him, crazy, a dope. She was young and green. He would have a dinner with her every day. What a pair of hot-fish he had found on his line.
They crossed the state-line into the Missouri side, and Eddie started looking around on Main street for a cheap hotel to take her to.
"Say, where'd you get money to buy this rattletrap?" Alice questioned him.
"Dice was loaded," he grinned. "I hit and hit, so I win myself a car. How's that?"
"I didn't reckon you stole it," she remarked dryly. "When we gonna get married, Eddie? Or are we?"
"Sure, I reckon," he said. He did not wish to discuss marrying her any longer. It was a sickening thought, now that he had tasted Frieta. Maybe if he was to prolong her, she would become disgusted and break her own engagement, realizing that he had been lying to her all along.
"You sure don't tell me anythin', do you?" she said suspenseful-like. "I don't think you love me like you used to. Do you?"
"Of course, Alice. I'm tryin' to see myself hooked and tryin' to live true to you. After ah, that's th' only way marriage has to work."
"Well, you're th' one who proposed, I didn't."
"Can't you give a guy time to think how he's gonna manage?"
"I don't wanna be dead and buried before you make up your mind," she said. She wanted to mention about his arrests which McShane had told her about, but she dare not. She didn't want him to get nervous, or angry with her.
"How much this car cost you?" she asked, as he applied the breaks, stopping before the Hotel Muzzo on Main street.
"Five-hundred bucks," he answered.
"By the way, just how much did you win, gambling?"
"A thousand or so." He looked at her as if he felt she was trying to place a clinch on him and the money which had been given to Frieta. "Why?" he asked.
"You never offered me nothin'," she said. "I'm broke. I need some dough. We're engaged, aren't we."
"I'll give you a hundred bucks when we get inside the hotel," he told her. "That okay, Alice?"
"Suits me," she giggled, climbing out the car. When they were together on the sidewalk, she caught his arm and hurried inside the hotel.
The hotel lobby was no more than ten by twenty feet, with a two-by-four desk just to the left of the stairway. There wasn't a chair or lounge in the small remaining space before the desk. An old man sat behind the desk, and the moment he looked up and saw them before the counter he knew why they had come for a room.
Eddie paid the room rent for one night, but cautioned the old man that he might stay a couple more nights if the young lady persisted. Alice giggled, but hurried up the stairs with her lover.
When they were inside the room, Eddie locked the door, then carried the package of liquor, which he had brought along, to the dresser. Alice crossed over to the window and drew the blinds. The room was dusky dark, and they didn't need to turn on a light.
In some other room down the hall a radio was playing. Alice turned back to the bed and started snapping her fingers and humming the tune to herself. She pulled back the sheet and spread, while Eddie stood at the dresser opening one of the fifths of liquor.
Alice didn't need to be coaxed. She knew why they were there, and she certainly knew what she needed. Her sensual starvation made her nearly desperate, and she could hardly wait for him to feed her, relieve her savage appetite.
She dropped down on the bed and kicked off both her slippers. As Eddie turned widi a glass and the liquor bottle, she was standing beside the bed pulling her skirt down and unfastening her blouse.
"Did I tell you I wanted a drink first?" she smiled sweetly.
"Don't you?"
"Wait until we get in bed. I want to rest a while. I don't want to get drunk, I said. I've had some toddies already, and I'm hopin' to go to work in the mornin'."
He placed the whiskies on the table by the bed, and as she unfastened her brassiere, she found his arms round her, fondling her, pawing her thrusting nipples. An uncontrollable desire besieged him The madness intensified as his lips found hers. He was so brutal until she shoved him away.
"Take it easy, honey," she said, breathlessly. "You'll crush the breath outa me."
He dropped his hands, and his breath, which had mounted, deceased again. He stepped back and flung off his jacket, tore a woolen jersey over his head and watched her standing naked before him. He dropped his trousers, unfastened his shorts. He was a massive man, and Alice realized what she would miss if she didn't get him for her bedmate permanently. His slender frame bulged near the shoulders, and he could have been a young Tarzan.
"My, you're handsome, Eddie," Alice sighed. "Come here and let me feel you. Oh, gee, oh, my!"
As he crossed over to her she saw his flesh. Her lips 'parted. Her eyes blinked with a mad lust which she had never felt before.
When he was beside the bed, she caught him round the hips, gingerly caressed him.
"Oh, how I need it," she crooned, as she fell over on the bed and he came upon her.
For a moment he kissed her tenderly, and then the madness developed in him again. Alice clung to him des perately, knowing that she would be really satisfied thi evening, above all others. It looked to her as if Eddie had been conserving himself especially for her.
"My head's been killin' me," she said. "I've had nasty dreams. I'm crazy I guess. I can't do without it. Not yet, honey. Not yet."
He was kissing her throat, then both breasts, and his lips moved down to her stomach. She intwined her fingers in his hair, and felt herself growing emotional, fierce for his contact.
Her left hand crawled down past his stomach and she massaged him until he was kissing her madly.
"Not yet," she murmured, wanting to prolong the sweetness, the savage bliss.
He rolled her over on her back and moved between her.
"Give, babe. Give," he moaned anxiously.
Her fingers clawed, her lips parted. Her teeth clamped on one shoulder and held tight.
Alice shuddered as she felt the sudden sweetness of his contact. Her lower self burned and sloshed from his friction. Her legs hung gradually free from him, then as the thrill gripped her soul, her flanks reached desperately after the ceiling.
He was more primitive than ever this evening. He was a demon, and she found herself plunged wildly into a chasm of bliss which made rivulets of sweat pour from her body. Her skin was flushed with waves of dimpled sweat bubbles like blood on her raging flesh. She plunged on and on, wilder and breathless into a gratification of heathenly sensation.
At last she uttered a harsh outcry of delight and breathless passion, then flung herself outwards, gasping for breath, and completely satisfied. She relaxed with closed eyes, smiling inwardly of the pleasant aftermath of sexual gratification.