Chapter 3
Peggy fanned her fanny and her box with the hem of her skirt, feeling mildly cheated that the young woman and her man had had a climax which she had missed. Still, playing with herself had been fun. More fun than listening to Grandma's grumbling-or her snoring.
She sat, half propped in her cot, watching the panel of light disappear when the young whore went out, turning off the lights. There wouldn't be any more show until the young one got herself another man. Sometimes she didn't get two an evening. Or sometimes maybe one would stay all night. That wasn't so good. The all-nighters seemed to prefer the lights out, so Peggy missed her show.
So she needed to think seriously about her own man. James Brewster Atwood was a nice, mouth-filling name. And it looked quite elegant, even in cracked and peeling gilt letters.
It was serious thinking for a thirteen-year-old. Mostly fantasizing, of course. But then all the happiest moments she had known were fantasies-and even those hadn't been so many.
Sometimes she pretended she thought she was a princess left with a wicked old woman who kept her from her rightful heritage because of the weekly checks Grandma received, enough to keep her in gin and a desolate apartment house. So one day, a prince would come riding up-not on a white horse but in a black Jaguar. She would like to have made it a Rolls Royce but she had never seen a Rolls Royce, not to know it.
The prince would instantly recognize a princess and carry her away to a palace that blended very conveniently the best points of the Ansonia Hotel-a once-elegant place only a few blocks away-and the Castle Lichtenstein, of which she had a post-card picture. What happened afterward always got slightly blurry, since she wasn't precisely sure of the details.
It would be something like the screwing scenes she had witnessed across the area way, only much more elegant. And somehow, in these scenes, Peggy always wound up watching a man and girl doing almost exactly the same things she could see across the way. And never actually participating. Never really being the girl lying there on the elegant bed with silken sheets while the prince-he even wore his crown to bed in Peggy's fantasies-leaned over the figure on the bed, his prick out, ready to ram the princess.
This never quite satisfied, since a prince should have something very remarkable in the way of a dong. Immensely long, or very pointed, or maybe gold plated. And the only pricks she could conjure up looked remarkably like those of the men across the way. These were not always so long but they all had curious bulbs on the end.
Sometimes, abandoning the lost princess, Peggy was simply a girl whose extraordinary beauty and figure attracted the attention of a movie producer, who whisked her right off to Hollywood and a bed oddly like Grandma's, except instead of brass, the knobs were gold. And the sheets, instead of being gray and grimy and just a little gritty, were smooth, made of something that almost glittered they were so shiny.
And the man stood over the girl and aimed his prick right at her little hot box. And there again the fantasy blurred.
Just because she had watched the old bag and the young whore across the way when they screwed men didn't somehow produce the exciting climax Peggy expected. Even diddling with her clit while she day-dreamed didn't make the image any clearer. Only a vague excitement swelled at the ending.
So, she told herself, she really needed to know.
Which brought her back to the men available -the butcher, the baker, the photograph maker.... So it really did come down to James Brewster Atwood, who was certainly available -if being in the same building was any indication. Except Mister James Brewster Atwood paid little heed to the occupants of the tenement in which he worked, in the half-basement studio with an apartment.
He had models who came to pose, presumably for the "And Commercials" since obviously his portrait business in that neighborhood would not support the Jaguar he occasionally brought around and loaded with equipment for some location shooting, as he condescendingly explained to a group that invariably gathered around the Jaguar. And rode off, usually with at least two girls-very pretty girls, too-crowded among his cameras, boxes and tripods.
The illusion was almost perfect-a photographer shooting pictures for commercial advertising. But not quite. For Atwood only took pictures of ladies in the buff-which he sold to magazines and to calendar makers. He also made up a series of specials for a clientele of men and women who like their nudes with a touch of raunch.
Peggy, an alert and inquiring thirteen-year-old with few restrictions put on her by her alcoholic grandmother and only sketchy supervision of a rather lax school system, had ferreted out James Brewster Atwood's secret. She knew-by an adroit system of spying developed by a series of thirteen-year-olds extending back to the childhood of Methuselah-that James Brewster Atwood photographed the models in the buff, often with the assistance of some males. Occasionally with himself. And that the poses were reminiscent of what went on across the areaway. Sort of stop-motion fucking. And other curiosa.
To Peggy this was an interesting phenomenon. People actually got their pictures taken doing the things the old bag and the young whore did across the way. And someone obviously made money out of the proceedings. She wasn't that naive. Somebody was making a buck. But she wasn't well enough grounded in economics to understand the cash flow. Except that undoubtedly the models got paid for all that very intriguing work. Just as the old bag and the young whore got paid. The very idea gave Peggy hot flashes-right in her cunt.
There was considerable difference between knowing what was going on and getting into the act, as many Hollywood hopefuls could say.
Peggy lay back in bed, considering methods. To give her credit, she did not think of blackmail, largely because it never occurred to her that anyone would care what James Brewster Atwood was doing. Fucking was a standard phenomenon of the neighborhood. To have it committed to the undying memory of a camera seemed foolish and extravagant but not especially reprehensible. In the back of her mind there was a hazy feeling that it was illegal- but then so was so much of what went on in the neighborhood. Even the activities of the old bag and the young whore were illegal, which Peggy, if she thought of it at all, would have considered ridiculous. Everybody fucks! Or so nearly everybody as not to make any appreciable difference.
There were exceptions, Peggy knew. Her grandmother, for one, and the old biddies who gathered like harpies, waiting for their social security checks. Age, which seemed to dry up the juices, appeared to be responsible.
At the other end of the scale were the youngsters, the neighborhood kids, some of whom did not screw. Mostly again because of age. They were too young. Their juices hadn't been awakened-Peggy knew this to be true, since it was only recently that her own had begun to function, getting her interested in the old bag and the young whore-or else, as again in her own case, opportunity hadn't knocked.
That Peggy intended to remedy. That she was already planning on, with stratagems that somehow eventually struck her as impractical. She could not, for instance, have herself, nude, wrapped in an Oriental rug and delivered to James Brewster Atwood, a la Cleopatra, of whom she had recently read. The idea made some very graphic pictures in Peggy's mind, particularly the moment at which James Atwood unwrapped the rug and beheld her lush, virginal body. And clasped it to his bosom, exclaiming, "My ideal! At last I have found you!" After that the scene got hazy.
Knowing what was supposed to happen-a man's prick in her cunt and lots of sweat-producing activity is different from having some experience on which to base day dreams.
She abandoned the rug routine as impractical, since the nearest thing to an Oriental rug she had at hand was a worn piece of linoleum in the apartment's kitchenette. If, in its present state of desiccated dryness it could be bent around her, the ragged outline and mangy holes would scarcely have covered both her bubbies and her cunt, making surprise difficult.
She also abandoned having her young, full virginal body shipped in a trunk. Her one experience with shipping had convinced her that delays were a regular part of the routine and she'd probably starve before James Brewster Atwood opened the trunk and gazed on her tiny but perfect form and exclaimed, "My ideal! At last I have found you!"
Peggy's dialogue lacked originality and scope, having been borrowed, intact, from a late, late show she had seen on television in a gin mill while trying to extract Grandma from the fumes.
She also gave up the idea of being lowered nude by helicopter; naturally, with her fair, virginal body exposed to the elements; or dropping in unexpectedly from a naked sky-diving session.
Lacking a helicopter and a plane with skydiving equipment, Peggy reluctantly gave up these day-dreams but felt she was creeping up on the solution of her problem-introducing herself nude to James Brewster Atwood, so that he could exclaim in the now familiar dialogue, "My ideal! At last I have found you!"
Somehow her closest approach to practicality, yelling "Fire!" and plunging down the stairs, nude, her fair virginal body exposed to the cruel flames, seemed more likely-at a second look-to arouse the entire tenement than just James Brewster Atwood. Which would make their meeting rather more public than Peggy would care for. Her plan was for intimacy. And it was difficult to whisper "Fire!" outside a man's door and make the whisper convincing. Convincing there's a fire, that is.
Peggy sensed, however, that there was a grain of merit in that approach, an element that could be utilized. After all, she and James Brewster Atwood were occupants of the same apartment building. There should be some simple way for them to meet so that James could exclaim his by now immortal line. Even Peggy was beginning to giggle over it.
Grandma inadvertently provided the key. Waking to a particularly vicious hangover- and she had had many in a quarter century or more of alcoholism-Grandma called out hoarsely for Peggy to get her some gin. Two bottles. This, undoubtedly, was going to be a two-bottle hangover.
Peggy, still half-swamped in sleep, trudged to the door of Grandma's room, her shortie nightgown askew on one shoulder and drooping only a little past her bellybutton. It failed to cover her entrancing little rear, where her buttocks moved in a rhythm of their own as Peggy stretched, yawned, rubbed her knuckles in her eyes and tousled her hair.
The way her shortie slid off one shoulder it revealed a remarkably nice little tit with an amber-rose nipple and small, still dim coin of slightly darker flesh around it. And at the bottom Peggy's little mound emerged, only faintly covered with a golden down, and in there, a neat and as yet virginal slit. Caught up in Peggy's stretching, the little mound seemed to twitch of its own.
Grandma glared across blurred and hazy vision. "You're a slut. Just like your mother. Just like my ungrateful child! The flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood! And she done wrong! Oh, God, she done wrong. Got herself a kid by him, she did. And wouldn't marry him! She could'a made him divorce that skinny slut of a wife an' marry her. But did she? Did she think of gettin' her a rich husband who'd take care of her poor old mother in her old age? No! Nothin' but puny little child support. Pittance. Damn pittance... you still there girl? Whyn't you gone for the gin? 'Cause you're a slut, too. Letting your bubbies hang out and your privates showing! Some man'll grab you and throw it into you and we'll have another one to... ain't you gone for the gin?"
Peggy suppressed a yawn and shook her head. She scrubbed at her scalp with her knuckles. "I'll need money. The liquor store man ain't giving credit."
"Money! They all want money. All right, all right!" Grandma pawed across her scraggy bosom, withered and dingy with accumulated dirt, and came up with a small leather pouch on a long, stout string. She squinted into it, poking her shaking fingers down deep. And came up, triumphantly, with a crumpled bill.
"There, child. Git me some gin. Two bottles. Two, mind you. And don't lose the change. Hear me? Don't lose the change! Or we don't eat till next week. Don't nobody give credit." Grandma sat up suddenly, directing a fierce glare in Peggy's general direction. "And mind you don't give no credit, neither." She cackled fiendishly, at some cosmic joke. "Take cash!" And fell back on her pillow, racked with coughing, spitting and letting the spittle dribble down her chin. And then back to uneasy, alcoholic sleep.
Peggy hung on to the money without smoothing the crumpled ball, holding it tight in her fist while she struggled with socks, shoes and...
Peggy paused halfway out of her shortie, arms up and tangled in its tattered fabric. Something Grandma had said clicked.
"Lettin' your bubbies hang out and your privates showing. Some man'll grab you... and throw it into you..."
There was her sweater from last year that was too small and always threatening to pop open at the buttons, now that she had something to pop with. And a skirt. One of the wrap-arounds that came off easy. Panties? Well, if she was going to the store, panties. But did they have to be-neat? She had a pair...
Peggy skinned out of her shortie and bounced her cute, rounded little figure over to the bureau and bent to the bottom drawer, thrusting up a neatly packed rear and tightening the muscles of slim, rounded legs. Her breasts were too young and firm to dangle but they moved provocatively in rhythm to her pawing.
Peggy straightened and held up the panties for inspection. They were distinctly goat-chewed. Cheap detergents and overstrong bleaches had wrecked the flimsy material. She balanced on one foot, stepping into them gingerly, lest they disintegrate before they served their purpose.
She settled the weak elastic around her slim middle and peered down at the effect.
There was good, clear viewing from almost any angle. Her crotch, her mound, her little cunt were only sketchily covered and readily reachable by inquiring fingers. Peggy experimented gently, not wanting to destroy totally what she now considered an asset: panties with a built-in view.
Covered with a relatively modest mini-skirt she would seem to be dressed, but a little investigation... Peggy slipped into the sweater. It really was too tight. By quite a bit. In the past year Peggy had grown, particularly in the area of the sweater.
Her tits thrust out, stretching the knitting to the point where one of the nipples slipped through and poked, like an enquiring eye, through the strands. The buttons, on a quick test, proved exactly as undependable as Peggy remembered. They slid out of their buttonholes with ease, and left the whole front of the sweater open to inspection-with Peggy's cute little bubbies on view.
She consulted the bathroom mirror, standing on the broken seat of the commode for a clearer view of the extremities, swishing her skirt by flirting her slim, rounded hips. Provocatively, she hoped.
By standing on one leg and lifting the other she got a very good view of her little hot box and her rounded bottom. It wasn't nudity, but it was as near as Peggy could contrive, given the circumstances.
She smoothed out the bill and saw, with surprise, that it was a ten. Two bottles of Grandma's gin wouldn't run over five. So there should be better than five dollars change.
Outside the apartment she hid the bill under a bit of broken tile she considered safe, having used it as a cache before for small sums. And headed downstairs.
Peggy's late afternoon appearances (in the morning, around mail time, it was the old crones) among the old men was enough to stop serious business talk and bring out some mildly risque banter and a few pats on Peggy's nice little rump. Nothing that really got Peggy excited, not even the rump pats, but pleasant. An attention that demonstrated she was female.
Now, in her special costume, she was setting out to prove she was female. This time she skipped the main entrance and headed back for the stairs that led down to the half-basement and the quarters of James Brewster Atwood- and, of course, a lower exit, her legitimate excuse for using the stairs.
She was already working the sweater buttons into perilous suspension and building up a very convincing set of tears, such as only imaginative little girls of thirteen can create.
By the time she was halfway down the basement stairs she was weeping pathetically, with gulpy little howls that shook the heart.
Peggy had set her trap.