Chapter 4

Reality is quite a bit different from day dreams. Peggy slumped on the stairs, her skirt hiked up and then smoothed out, as if she had tried to pull it down to give modest covering. And the top sweater button popped obligingly on its own, exposing one small, pink-and-amber breast-just barely, but enough to demonstrate it was there.

Having attended to these details, Peggy leaned her forehead against the rickety railing and let go with one of the more pathetic howls in her repertoire.

Instead of the door of James Brewster Atwood bursting open and that tousled, handsome young man emerging, to recognize instantly the virginal purity of the body so careful exposed to view, the door at the top of the stairs banged back and the raucous voice of the manageress, a lady with a large bosom and a small mustache, grated down the stairs. "Whatcher do, kid? Hurt yourself? I toldja not to run up'n down these yere stairs. Ain't my fault..."

Peggy turned a pathetic face up, pouting prettily. "I'm not hurt. I lost my money. Ten whole dollars!"

The manageress paused. The loss of ten dollars was a tragedy in that neighborhood. But replacement was, of course, no part of a manageress' duties. And rather than get entangled further, she withdrew.

Peggy once more composed herself, so that anyone opening James Brewster Atwood's door would get the full effect of tattered and revealing panties and one exposed bubbie-with the easy assumption that there was another one around. Having settled her properties to what she considered their best advantage, Peggy let go another howl of agony and squeezed out more tears, since the others had unaccountably dried up during the session with the manageress.

The photographer's door banged back against the wall and James Brewster Atwood strode out. He was an angry young man-angry even before Peggy's howls aroused him-and he appeared in the doorway outraged, his hair looking as if it had lost an argument with an electric mixer.

"Cut out that caterwauling!"

Astonished at discovering her ruse had actually produced a living breathing James Brewster Atwood, Peggy gawped. "What's caterwauling?"

"It's what you're doing. So shut up! I've got enough problems without some brat shrieking her pointy little head off..." Jim Atwood, who was lots more human than his rather formidable full name indicated, frowned at Peggy. "What were you crying for?"

It took Peggy a long, shuddering moment to re-adjust to reality. Somehow she had never really expected this ruse to work, to evoke the genuine, unmistakable and very attractive Jim Atwood. Any more than she had really expected an Oriental rug or a helicopter. The scene was playing wrong.

Still, she went into her prepared story, managing, from sheer astonishment and indignation at the combined success and failure of her scheme, to make it sound real. It was certainly gulpy enough.

"I lost all our money. For Grandma's gin and for dinner and all next week. A whole ten dollars!" Peggy didn't even wait to see how this was affecting the young man who was staring at her, frowning. She hurried on. "Granny will beat me for losing all that money..."

Jim Atwood nodded, scowling. "Your granny is that old lush up on the fourth floor? What does she do? Catch toads by the dark of the moon? Grab bats out of the attic? Snag newts when they're not looking? Grow vervain in a window box?"

She shook her head. "I tried to grow geraniums in the window box but they didn't..."

"Naturally. Geraniums won't grow with a witch around."

This was such a new concept of Grandma that Peggy had to stop to give it thought. In doing it, she eased up on the artful pose and relaxed against the open bannister, peering down at Jim Atwood. "You mean-Granny's a witch?"

"Having seen her, it's a natural assumption. So tell her to conjure up another ten dollar bill and not send a little girl down here to weep ten dollars out of me. Or if she does, to put some clothes on her. You're practically naked."

Jim Atwood's casual contempt for nudity and his attitude toward Peggy practically in the nude triggered some natural small-girl modesty in her, and she huddled on the stairs, tugging at her mini-skirt and clutching the edges of the sweater. And it also triggered indignation -mostly at having her superb plot attributed to Granny. "She did not! I came down on my own. Granny doesn't even know yet that I..."

"Scram, kid! I got problems of my own. My best lousy model didn't show up and I've got a series to finish up for... Just beat it, will you?" Jim Atwood started back into the studio, leaning to reach for the door handle, looking up at Peggy.

It gave him a perfect and, so far as Peggy was concerned, unexpected view up her legs, to her little cunt and beyond. He hung there, leaning out, peering up. And then raised his eyes to study the exposed tit and finally up to her face. Very slowly he straightened, coming toward the stairs, his eyes at about the level of Peggy's knees, so she knew he was getting the full effect of the tattered panties and her little box.

And it frightened her. She hadn't expected to be frightened. That never occurred to any of the heroines of Peggy's day dreams, who were, after all, Peggy herself. They all went to their fates with happy smiles of anticipation. Not a fear among them. And now Peggy was frightened.

Part of it was the intent look on Jim Atwood's face. Later Peggy was to recognize this as his "photographer's look," when he was sizing up a subject and mentally arranging camera angles and lighting set-ups.) Another part was that she was no longer sure she could handle the situation she had created for herself.

In her daydreams, in her planned but never carried-out assignations, she had simply swooned at about this point and things, very exciting and delightful things, happened to her, involving going to bed with a man and having his prick...

Peggy stared between the bars of the bannister at Jim Atwood's crotch. There was a large bulge there, just where his prick should be. That BIG? And shuddered. And, of all embarrassing things, sniffled. A good cry was one thing, a sniffle was another. It was so-kiddish -to sniffle.

Jim Atwood turned his eyes up to her face again, pulling them reluctantly from her exposed tit and the interesting revelations below. "Poor kid. Sorry I barked at you. But I've got problems. And your caterwauling... All right! Stop bawling. You'll get soggy. Here's a handkerchief."

To Peggy the major surprise was that it was clean. Snowy clean. Handkerchiefs in this neighborhood, when that refinement did show, were invariably crumbled, gray and generally damp. Or looked it. Peggy stared so long at the handkerchief that Jim Atwood shifted from foot to foot and finally coughed.

"It's a hand-ker-chiff. You wipe your tears with it and then blow your nose. And... Quit snuffling! Use the handkerchief. All right, blow your nose first, then. Your eyes do look rather nice and somewhat larger with tears on your lashes. They'd photograph well." Jim Atwood cocked his head to one side and studied her, nodding slowly. "Yes, you'd photograph well. All of you." He turned away abruptly, heading back for the studio. "You can keep the handkerchief. I don't do that kind of photography any more. Candy box art doesn't sell, these days. Poor little match girl. Poor little violet peddler. Just plain poor little waif. You'd be great at them all. But they don't sell. So... Scram. Beat it. And keep the handkerchief. So run along, kid. I need a model who will pose in... Oh, nothing! Beat it, kid."

Peggy, her courage oozing away, spoke very softly through the handkerchief. "How do you know I won't? Pose in-nothing, I mean."

Jim Atwood turned slowly in the doorway of his studio apartment and looked at Peggy, studying the unbuttoned sweater, where one bubbie was now almost completely exposed and the other clearly delineated. He dropped his eyes to the edge of the miniskirt.

Almost automatically, in a flash of shyness, Peggy clapped her hands in her lap, pushing the skirt down to hide her cunt.

Jim Atwood, looking at her legs and right up her skirt which was just at his eye level, walked slowly back. He tore his eyes from the scene Peggy had created and stared at her.

"Your granny didn't send you down here to con ten bucks out of me for her gin?"

Peggy caught her breath and held it, unconsciously for once, accentuating her small, firm breasts. She shook her head. "No."

"You dreamed all this up? Losing the money, Granny's vengeance-the costume? Or lack of it?"

Miserably Peggy nodded, chagrined at being caught out. She even managed a whispered "Yes."

Jim Atwood, fists on hips, his tousled hair falling on his forehead, stared up at her.

"Why?"

Acutely unhappy now, Peggy huddled tighter, into a small ball of misery, clasping her knees and pulling herself in as close as possible.

"Were you planning to seduce me?"

That was far more complicated than anything Peggy had dreamed up. The seduction, if there was to have been any, would have been the other way around. Anyway, it wasn't to have been a seduction, just a matter of two people going to bed together because they both wanted to.

"I... I wanted to work for you. I wanted you to notice me, so I could work for you..."

Jim rubbed at his chin, knuckled his nose. "Oh, I've noticed you. Who could help it. In this particular gutter, you're a flower. And by God, do you flaunt it! You've got half the old boys on the block looking at you and going home to jack off... Which you probably don't understand, I hope."

"They pat my fanny," Peggy said with a very small voice, wondering just where her beautiful script had got shot to hell. This was not at all the way it should have run. By now they should have been in each other's arms, screwing. Only now she was no longer quite so sure she knew precisely what, screwing meant.

Or if she really wanted it. Upstairs, in her narrow bed, alone, it had seemed so desirable, , so earth-shakingly original. But now, with her own near nudity practically ignored, she began to have misgivings.

And yet her little box was getting hotter, just thinking about it.