Chapter 2

Peggy lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, her hand over her little box, one finger playing with her clit, that little knob she had recently discovered. Playing with that made fingering all the more exciting and added to the thrill of watching the man and the young whore screw and come.

Lying there, Peggy could gasp and writhe and twist, enjoying the tensions of sex, but even so, she sensed it wasn't the same. There was something missing. A man's prick. If she was ever going to know what sex really meant, there would have to be a man's prick rammed in her.

Peggy mentally listed the grown men she knew. There was the postman, of course, but he was usually tired and always complained his feet hurt. And anyway, he had to "go his appointed rounds." He was always kidding with Peggy and some of the women in the apartment who came down to stand around waiting for alimony checks or relief checks or just waiting, hopefully. He'd joke about the "swift completion of his rounds" and how nothing was supposed to stop the mailman, not "snow nor sleet nor hail nor dark of night."

And then he'd cackle. "But the motto don't say nothing about dogs that want to chase you or beautiful women that try to lure you up to their apartments," and wink at some of the "beautiful women" who were mostly tired old bags, lots of 'em as old as Grandma-but sober. Or reasonably so.

They thought the postman was funny and giggled and bridled, like he really meant they were beautiful and luring him up to their apartments. And maybe some of them wished they were and could.

Sometimes Peggy would catch him looking at her legs or the way her bubbies poked out her blouse. That made her get hot flashes and wonder-just a little-did he really mean that about getting lured up to an apartment?

Only of course she never could do any luring. Why, the old biddies hanging around for their relief and social security checks would be scandalized. And there was Grandma. She might be drunk and passed out or she might be up and prowling, looking for the gin bottle she had hid from herself the night before and forgotten where. Grandma wasn't what you'd call a stable character.

And, of course, maybe the mailman didn't mean it at all. Maybe it was just talk, to make the old biddies giggle and bridle and think themselves beautiful and young again, when guys really would want them to lure 'em up to their apartments.

No, the mailman was out.

And there was the cop who patrolled that beat, stout, amiable and suffering from bunions. He'd have come up to the apartment, but just to take his shoes off and wiggle his toes. There were a couple of places along the block where he did drop in like that, and Peggy was sure it was just to take off his shoes. Or maybe borrow the John.

His name was Mister Mulhaney and he always patted Peggy on the head and said he had a whole troop of 'em like her at home. Only sometimes he'd look at her bubbies pushing out her blouse or catch himself staring at her legs and he'd get red in the face, and walk off, swinging his nightstick.

Peggy never quite understood why they called it a nightstick, since he carried it in the day time. Not that it really made any difference. She couldn't get the policeman up the apartment, either.

For one thing, he'd spot the two whores, the old bag and the young one. And he'd most likely have to arrest them. So Peggy would feel responsible. And she liked the two women. Without ever knowing them, since their apartments opened on to the next street. They provided her with a rich source of entertainment, of which Peggy had very little.

So the policeman was out.

There was the youngish man in the tobacco and candy store down the block who always leered at her and was forever offering her candy, just so she'd come to the gap in the counter where he'd hand it to her, and put an arm around her, feeling her breasts if he could.

Now he was somebody who might do. He had a room back of the store-he was always mentioning it-just in case she needed a little rest after playing. Or on her way home from school.

He wasn't as young as he liked to make out he was because Peggy saw that his eyes were pouchy and sort of oyster-white, not real clear, and he had to brush his hair from the back to cover his bald spot. Only it didn't. Not very well. And looked a little freaky toward the end of the day when it got dry and curled off his scalp.

His name was Ladd. At least everybody called him "Ladd" and that was the name on the front of the store: "Ladd's Candy and Tobacco." Actually his name was Jules Suliman, a part Turk, part Armenian with maybe an Irishman somewhere in the background, from the time the British Tommies had occupied parts of Teheran and Armenia. Jules had bought out the original Mister Ladd some years back, only nobody remembered. In New York, neighborhoods change and the neighbors with them. Jules Suliman lived alone in the room just back of the tobacco shop. It was really four rooms and he had fitted two of them up with a third generation American's idea of what his homeland harems had looked like. And done it on a miniscule budget, since Mister Ladd had disposed of the store for a fat price just as the neighborhood had started down into being a tenement district. And Jules had never really taken a decent living out of the store. And suspected now that he never would.

So he made a lot of being a Turk when he talked to waitresses and bar girls and how he had a harem room, making out he was quite a potent fellow. Maybe he overdid it and scared them off. But none of the girls he tried to get ever came. Sometimes he'd get a whore in there. Once he got the young whore from around the block-the one Peggy watched-but she didn't come back for a second round. She pronounced him kooky, with a kink in his skull.

He had once got one of the neighborhood's multitude of little girls in there, telling her all about his harem room. And showed her his prick, hoping she'd get excited.

She hadn't. She had just stared at his open trousers and looked embarrassed. Maybe waiting for him to do something, since most boys were always trying to seduce her. And a lot of them succeeded.

But not Jules. He didn't have the courage to reach out and grab her. He was too afraid she'd scream. And he had visions of being dragged into the streets and beaten by her father. And harrowing days in jail and the vast ignominy of a trial, with everybody staring at him, the fiend who lured and raped young girls.

Of course, sometimes in these fantasies he was the hero. He'd turn up in court in a smart suit (he didn't own one) and confound all the judges and the jury and the prosecuting attorney by turning up some obscure law that not only set him free but won an indemnity from the city. Which they paid, in gratitude for showing the flaw in the law.

So Jules had just wearily rezipped his trousers and taken the little girl out and given her an inordinate amount of candy. Which naturally made her mother suspicious. So she had railed at her small, hen-pecked husband and driven him out of the house to go down to beat up that fiend who attacked children.

Mister Zaparte had listened, nodding, hearing just enough of his wife's tirade to get the drift, then turned down his mental hearing aid. He did understand he was to leave the apartment and tackle some brute. For what? Seducing that lump of suet? He had glanced at his daughter, already overly pudgy and adding to it by munching on a mouthful of candy that bulged one cheek.

She took after her mother, who had gone from a cute pudgy to a grossly fat woman, of whom it was said-and not always in whispers because she wasn't popular on the block-there was plenty of good fucking all around it.

Not that Mister Zaparte knew, or could recall. It had been so long since he had had an opportunity to discover. Madam Zaparte had an obscure ailment that prevented her satisfying her husband but did not extend to the dinner table, where she continued to stuff herself. There were those in the neighborhood who said that she also satisfied other appetites with other men, but these had never been identified, largely because they were imaginary, the inflamed opinion of a neighborhood that didn't like the shrill-voiced harridan:

All Emanuel Zaparte really heard, before clamping down mentally, was that he was to go out and beat up somebody. Just who wasn't clear and Emanuel wasn't interested in finding out, since he had no intention of beating up anyone. He was interested in the proposition that he go out, since his usual status was that of hobbled pony, strictly limited in his sphere of action, lest he meet and like some other woman.

Madam Zaparte may have been fat and foolish and a harridan, but she wasn't going to let go of that meal ticket, Mister Zaparte-not that he was that good a meal ticket but he was all she had. And Madam Zaparte like to eat.

So Mister Emanuel Zaparte, released from thralldom for the first time in years, headed for the nearest bar and dug out that ten dollar bill he had been concealing in hopes of just such a freedom, however brief.

Emanuel Zaparte proceeded to get monumentally drunk, talking wildly about how he was going to mangle the man who had raped his daughter-whiskey had accelerated the processes and accomplished what Jules Suliman had only dreamed of-and rather mildly at that.

He also got into a fight with a perfectly respectable insurance man from New Jersey who had stopped in the bar to ask directions to the George Washington bridge. Into the resulting melee waded Mister Mulhaney, eventually arresting the New Jersey insurance man for rape, since that was what Emanuel Zaparte was screaming about.

Fortunately the insurance man was respectable and could prove it. And also prove he was just passing through and hadn't ever been in the neighborhood before. And Mister Mulhaney, just to be sure he wasn't a visiting rapist, so to speak, took him up to the Zaparte apartment to be identified (strictly against regulations, of course). Madam Zaparte, terrified of policemen, flatly denied the whole thing. It was absurd. She had never told her husband that their daughter had been raped. The whole thing was silly. Look at the child...

Mister Mulhaney stolidly looked at the young Maude Zaparte, pudgy, jowly and stuffed with candy, and decided Mama Zaparte was righter than she knew. That malformation had not been raped. Or if so, it might have improved her.

So Mister Mulhaney released the New Jersey insurance man, with apologies, and arrested Emanuel Zaparte, who was relieved that he didn't have to face his wife after that brouhaha. He never did. When released from jail the next morning Emanuel Zaparte disappeared.

The main result of the uproar, aside from Madam Zaparte losing her meal ticket and having to go on relief, which she did promptly, was that everybody speculated on who had raped Maude. If she had been raped. The block was divided on that, with a good eighty-two percent -if anyone had taken a pool-voting for no rape. They could point to the lumpish Maude and say, with perfect justification, "Who'd want to?"

It elevated Maude slightly among her peers, the children of the block, but only temporarily, since Maude did not know how to milk a good thing. She might have made her anomalous position a permanent mystery but she chose to tell "all" which, of course, was nothing. It did, however, make Jules Suliman an authentic bogeyman for about a week. Little girls would go in and flaunt their dresses, hoping something exciting would happen, but nothing did. Jules was terrified of the brouhaha that had developed, and its possible consequences. So he was more circumspect than ever, being very careful even to give correct change.

But at least Peggy knew he had once attempted to lure a little girl into the back room and she knew how often he had looked so hungrily at her tits and slender legs.

So Jules Suliman was on her list of possibles. He had a prick. Peggy had that word direct from Maude, who had actually seen it. So he could stick it in her.

There was only one problem. Jules was obviously not co-operating these days. He hadn't so much as glanced at Peggy's bubbies that last time she was in the candy shop. And he hadn't tried to lure her to the gap between counters for a quick feel. And there was the problem of how could a thirteen-year-old girl hint that she was available for rape?

Peggy reluctantly put Jules Suliman aside for the moment, though she would like to see the often discussed "harem rooms"-picturing them somewhat more elaborate than Jules had been able to afford.

There was Mister Saunders, the butcher, who was so fat he sat in his own lap and was therefore of little interest to Peggy. There was Jenkins, the janitor down the block who had what he called "an apartment"-actually a room for a grimy cot behind the elevator-and a distant and chilly lavatory. Jenkins-if he had another name no one in the neighborhood knew it-was as grimy as his cot and almost as gray as his sheets-with dirt and coal dust, not age. So he was off Peggy's list, especially since the "apartment" was scarcely private. Anyone going to the basement could look right in.

Peggy raised up, easing up on her masturbation to check on the progress of the man and the young whore across the areaway.

She was disappointed to see that they had finished, obviously reaching an early climax, and the young woman was almost entirely dressed, to go after her next customer.

Peggy lay down again, her own climax passing in a quick, shuddering shiver as she did. Not at all satisfactory. There just had to be a man. Somewhere.

Of course, there was the street's really distinguished gentleman, a very exalted character who had his own studio and an apartment. And right in the half-basement of the apartment-tenement where Peggy lived. A photographer. James Brewster Atwood the slightly faded sign said. "Portraits and Commercials."

But once again Peggy was stymied on an approach. Just how did a thirteen-year-old girl tell a man he could screw her. Oh, given time and propinquity, she could make it rather clear. But how to get the time-and the propinquity?