Chapter 6
"Do the words twenty years in the state pen strike terror into your heart?"
The raven-haired girl, her pigtails askew, bit her Up and stared at her roommate. After a moment, she gulped. "I don't believe you said that. You're some friend, Vivian, you know that?"
"Well, maybe you don't know that prostitution is illegal!"
"Stop grilling me, what do you think you are, Scotland Yard? You're so fucking worried about my breaking the law, think what would happen if I broke my parents' hearts by flunking out of school my first semester!! ! ! "
Annie was pounding the table now. She didn't often do that, but she felt it necessary to make her point. So she wasn't lily. Neither was anyone else involved in the whole charade. Including Dr. Kyle Witherspoon.
"How in the world did you ever let yourself"
"Oh, shut up with that shit. I needed a passing grade from Dr. Granger. He held the key to save my ass. If I passed Drama History, I figured I was safe."
"What the hell does that have to do with shaved pussy and butt fucking for crying out loud?"
"Vivian," Annie said, trying to sound mature. The situation called for it. After all, everybody else around here was losing their heads and acting like juvenile idiots. Best she maintain an air of dignity. "Dr. Granger assured me that if . ... uh ... saw Dr. Witherspoon in this rather ... uh ... shady house of ill repute ... I ... uh ... would not flunk out of Bayes University."
Annie shook her head and took another sip of the coffee from the mug in front of her.
"God, there's enough intrigue here for a soap opera ... an X-rated one!! ! ! "
"If you don't like it, Vivian," Annie said, crossing her legs and feeling nothing of the old hair filling that used to make her thigh sandwich complete, "you can just move out of our dorm room."
"If you keep up this insane behavior, I won't have to move out. You'll be thrown out!! "
"Please don't say that," Annie warbled uncertainly, "have you ever been inside a Grossbinger Shoe Store?"
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"My father manages one of them. If I flunk out of here, I go straight to the stock room."
"You're gonna go straight to a home for delinquent girls if you keep up the kind of behavior I caught you in last night."
"For shit's sake, Vivian, it takes two to tango."
"Who was doing the tango?"
"I know how it looked, Vivian. But please don't forget your precious Advanced Trigonometry professor had agreed to every moment of it."
"Ex-Advanced Trigonometry professor. I'm dropping the course."
"That's real nice of you."
"Somebody has to do something around here. Christ, Annie, did you leave your brains in a train station locker somewhere?"
"Easy for you to talk; you're facing a straight four point grade average. I'm facing early retirement in a home for delinquent girls."
For some reason, Annie began to cry. Just softly at first, but the tears got bigger and the sobs grew louder. And everything suddenly took on a liquid appearance.
It pissed her off, really. Things had begun to look so rosy. The possibility of staying on at Bayes University, getting to know and blow Dr. Horton Granger: Dreamboat of All Time, and even sitting on Dr. Witherspoon's face had been fun enough. Why did it all have to come tumbling down so abruptly?
"I think you should take those pigtails out of your hair," Vivian said at last. "Why don't we go downstairs for some supper? It's country fried meat loaf."
"It's Swiss steak."
Vivian thought it over. "Why don't we go out somewhere and pick up a pizza?"
"You'd leave your studies for a night?" Annie said, wiping a tear away.
"Well, it's a whole lot easier now that I haven't got Advanced Trigonometry any longer."
"You sure you wanted to drop that course?"
"You bet. How could I go into that man's classroom one more day and even look him in the eye after he porked my best friend and roommate up the crap hole?"
"That's putting it mildly."
Vivian stood up and grabbed her trench coat. She threw Annie one and the girls headed outside. The night was cool and crisp.
Vivian sunk her hands in her pockets and stared at her roommate, who looked more like herself now with her naturally curly hair trailing down her back.
"You think they'll ever speak to you again?"
"Dr. Granger will. If he fails me, he has to hand me the flunk slip. I don't suppose Doreen will ever want to see me again. Old Witherspoon might, but I don't know. He was pretty sore when he found out I wasn't under-age.
"Thanks to my entrance."
"Don't sound too proud of yourself."
"I didn't mean to sound that way. But I got so worried when I didn't see you here after supper last night. Then, when I looked out the window and saw you heading toward town ... "
"You followed me."
"I was worried."
"I'm not sure, Vivian," Annie said, trying for that philosophical note, "but I think we blew it."
"Maybe not. Granger still-likes you. Hey, I like you."
Annie hooked her arms in her friends and turned into the Greaseless Spoon, a favorite hamburger hangout off campus. The place was jammed.
"I don't even think we can get a seat in here," Vivian said, scouting over the tops of crew cuts and beanies and pony tails.
"Why don't we sit up at the bar?"
Vivian shrugged her shoulders and the two stepped up to a long, curving mahogany runway. Several hard-bitten patrons of the place eyed them strangely.
"What'll it be?" the bartender said.
"Could we have two pizzaburgers with everything except anchovies?"
The bartender regarded them like aliens from the planet Glutonn.
Just when Vivian was beginning to think they might need a translator, a handsome intellectual type with a goatee and piercing brown eyes turned to the bartender.
"Just bring them their food, Jacko. They're my guests."
"Ah, right away, Dr. Pugh."
"Thanks," Vivian said and sat down on the nearest stool.
"You saved my stomach one hell of a hard night, Mr . ... uh ... Dr."
"Call me Brent."
The guy shook hands and both girls noted he had a grip like a Russian bear.
"You teach at the university?" Annie said, trying not to make it too obvious that she was staring at the guy's groin.
He had a most arresting bulge down there, and she had never been one to hide her admiration for such things, especially when they appeared on such handsome men as the guy sitting between them just now.
Dinner was served with style, and the girls ate and listened to the guy. He was an outdoorsy type, according to his conversation, but he was definitely a professor. The kind who really enjoyed his summers off.
"What do you teach here?" Vivian finally asked when she got up the nerve.
"Post-History Consciousness."
"Is that a required course?" Annie said and wiggled her hips against the flat leather of the bar stool. She did that when she was unsure of herself conversationally.
"Only if you think that studying about the future of the planet is important," the charming gentleman said and lit his pipe.
"We both think so," Annie assured him.
"I find that fascinating," Vivian said and looked the big guy up and down with growing admiration. Her eyes happened to land on his crotch, and her admiration swelled a bit more.
Hanging out with Annie was certainly causing her to change her value system. Maybe that was all to the good. Advanced Trig could be mundane. And the professor had turned out to be a real schmuck, come to think of it.
"Perhaps you two lovely young ladies would like to come up to my study and watch me do some experimentations some evening ... like tonight."
"Oh, I don't think we" Vivian started to say, but Annie cut her off. Then, Vivian realized that she felt glad her roommate had done that.
"Why the hell not?" Annie said and took a slug of Dr. Pugh's beer. She gagged and set it back down onto the counter. "Life's to experiment with."
"My sentiments exactly."
The ride over to Dr. Pugh's study was noteworthy for two reasons. First off, the man was exceptionally kind and friendly. Second and more importantly, he drove a rather small sports car. All three sat in front and the jostling around together proved a real ice breaker.
"Just reach around me if you want to shift or anything," Annie said as she scrunched up her face. She had to or there would have been no room. As it was there was no room to smile.
The professor seemed to find everything they did delightful or charming or funny or both. Vivian had all but forgotten why the guy even wanted them up there. They were too busy laughing and pointing out oddities along the way and having a wild guffaw over them.
But at last, the tobacco-colored car pulled up in back of a huge brick building and the guy out with them. He led them directly to the elevator and hit the button for the top floor.
"I didn't know this place even had a top floor," Annie said as they soared upwards. "I've never even had a class up here."
"It's only offices."
"Yours?" Vivian said, pointing to the suite with Dr. Pugh's name etched on the frosted glass door.
"Mine."
The girls followed the man down the quiet hall, and they waited patiently while he slipped a key into the door. Then, they strolled in.
Dr. Pugh turned on the light and opened another door. The girls walked into a bedroom, complete with taffeta comforter, nightlight, bedside stack of girlie magazines, and overhead mylar mural.
"Some set up!" Annie nodded as she looked the place over.
"What did you say you taught again?" Vivian asked, trying to fight the timbre of suspicion her voice had picked up suddenly.
"Post-History Consciousness, but I do research for Carmichael and Hughes on the side. They're sexual therapists, perhaps you've heard of them."
"The ones who wrote 'It's Your Body; Do It' about two years ago?"
"The same."
"Wow!" Annie sighed, "a real sexual therapist."
"Well, they've not done much in the last couple of years except appear on the Milo Douglas Show or lecture at colleges."
"What the hell are these?" Annie said, and she pointed to a batch of electrical cords sticking out of a machine on the opposite side of the bed.
"Ah, electrodes. They plug them into the brain and various sexual organs and measure human sexual responses."
"Far out!! ! ! "
"The subjects are asked to perform a series of sexual tasks on this bed with electrodes plugged into them. The research scientists, myself included, usually sit up there and watch, as well as read the subjects' responses as registered by this machine."
"Sit where?" Vivian said incredulously.
"There," Dr. Pugh said and pointed to the mylar ceiling cover.
"That's a strip of wallpaper," Annie said, not bothering to hide her confusion.
"That's a two way mirror," Dr. Pugh said, "there's a small amphitheater up top, looking straight down into this bed, of course."
"Of course," Vivian said, feeling a mite skittish all of a sudden.
"But we're on the top floor." Annie rolled her eyes and thought about that.
"That's what it says on the elevator," Dr. Pugh said slyly.
"Deception?" Vivian said aghast.
"Discovery," Dr. Pugh corrected her.
Annie flung herself down on the bed and stared up at the reflector ceiling. "I don't see anything."
"You won't. At least not up there. But our subjects were watched, believe me."
"You get off on it?"
Dr. Pugh puffed his pipe a moment and waxed philosophical. "No. I far prefer close encounters than distant scholarly studies of human sexual response."
"That why you brought us here?"
The handsome olive-skinned man set his pip down on the bedside stand. "You're bright girls, for freshmen," he said and set his hands flush against his manly, muscular hips.
The busty blonde woman grabbed the bottle of scotch and poured herself a tall, cool one ... about the tenth one of the night, too.
"Go easy on that stuff," Horton Granger said and gave her a disapproving frown.
"I need a drink," she said and bolted back the hootch.
"I need you sober."
The woman swallowed, waited a moment for the stuff to go to work on her motor reflex center and slurred a response, "What the hell have we done?"
"Now cut that shit out, Doreen," Horton said and managed to grab the bottle from her. He slammed it down on the mantelpiece. "That stays there, you hear me?"
"Witherspoon's gonna blow the whistle," the woman said with a pitying twinge to her voice. She cocked her head and sat with an expression on her face like that of a Kewpie doll. Her eyes looked like vacant windows. "He's gonna tell the other professors, of course. Smart-mouth college professors hate to be taken for a ride." She gulped down the rest of the glass.
Horton Granger reached out his whole hand and smacked her across the face one way, then the other. "Now listen to me, Doreen," he said, spitting his words into her ear. "Listen good and listen hard, you fucking bitch."
She glared at him, but as usual, she refused to acknowledge that she was in pain.
"You're always acting the tough broad, now you've got to prove it."
She set her chin defiantly.
"We've got to get those girls back here and get them back fast."
"I didn't kick them out!" she said haughtily, her blonde locks shaking.
"They ran out. We couldn't help that. But Witherspoon. We've got to get him back here, too. And we can, with the right bait."
"That fucking little cunt Annie you're so hot after?" Doreen realized that comment was good for another swat, but it was out before she could censor it.
True to form, Horton slugged her.
"Now button that shocking, pink bee-stung top hp of yours to the one under it and fucking listen to me."
Horton's voice was exploding into an angry harangue. He hated to yell at Doreen like this, but this was a desperate situation.
"Witherspoon will come back, if we explain to him that that little bitch Annie tricked us. We'll explain that, and we'll promise him a younger girl ... much younger. And she better be the real thing, or else."
Horton tightened his fist as if to make his point.
"Christ, Horton," Doreen said and sounded real edgy doing it, "it's hard enough to recruit young girls from your Drama History class, you want me to start recruiting off the playground?"
Horton briefly thought of smacking her again, but she would do him considerably little good with that gorgeous mug of hers all bruised up.
"We need pussy!" Horton shouted, "Young, hot, nubile pussy! The kind Kyle Witherspoon can dunk his stick into and not worry if she's old enough to vote."
Horton was hotter than a two-dollar pistol on Saturday night.
"Well YOU go out there and get that kind of pussy," Doreen said and pointed one wavering finger at the door, "I can't."
"Are you telling me to get lost?" Horton said under his breath.
Doreen turned to him and grinned slyly, "Why would I do a thing like that? You're one of my best clients, you know."
"And oldest," Horton said and sat down next to her.
Well, they really had been through a lot. Not much point in belaboring the fact that they needed younger girls. Problem really was how to get them. Hmmmmmmmm, Horton thought and closed his eyes a moment.
The gorgeous whore leaned over and massaged his shoulders. Then, she lowered her head and began massaging his cock. That always made him feel better.
And it helped him to think. And right now, Horton Granger had to think. He had to think and not act like the desperate man he was becoming.