Chapter 4
Evelyn's nerves were drawn taut and pressed to the breaking point as the interval extended over a period of several hours and the tangled bodies in the rear seat still remained coiled in their terrible compulsive writhing. Intermittently, without pause or cessation in his erotic ministrations, Matt would raise his voice to give her directions to slow down, speed up, or switch to another road. When it seemed to her that another few moments would surely snap the last brittle thread of her reserve, Estelle cried out like a woman in labor and delivered herself in one horrendous upsurge, driving her feet in a kicking staccato up against the car ceiling, of the stifled burden of her passion. For a long time after that, she clung to Matt, weeping and grateful for the release of her enslaving desire. Presently she sat up, wiping her face, which now shone with a strange innocence like that of a well-scrubbed child's. She leaned over the seat back alongside Evelyn and smiled. "How you doing?"
Evelyn, still sullen, disdained an answer. Unperturbed, Estelle continued, "Gee, you were a doll to take over and let Matt do me like that. If he didn't I would just about have died. You know, nobody in my life has ever been able to get me come off except for Matt," she said. "I'll bet you can't believe that. I mean, I'll bet I've had at least five thousand guys work me over since I was a kid. Gee, I'll bet it was twice that. I've been jabbed ever since I was eight, and I'm twenty-four now."
Evelyn continued listening without response, but her interest was sharpened now by Estelle's surprising admission. Evelyn had never given any thought to her failure to achieve a climax in her previous sexual experience, which was limited entirely to her marital relations. These were of a casual, never intense, nature, the instances becoming increasingly fewer and farther between as she made evident her discomfiture to Harry at what she had always felt an undesirable personal invasion. But she had witnessed, since her abduction as a hostage, the wild desire and driving intensity of sexual need in others, the supreme ecstasy and the fertile profusiveness, and this gave her cause to consider her own responses comparatively.
Her father had always told her, even before puberty, that, "Some people are of a passionate physical nature which is really quite animalistic and vulgar and, I believe, a retardation in development. And some are of a more refined character with pious sensibilities, such as you, Evelyn, and myself. Sex and lust are signs of bestiality. Sexuality in a woman is vulgar and intolerable." The words, repeated so many times over the years, resounded in her inner ear. Even now, her father's presence at her elbow, long after he had died, prompted her always to keep her eyes shielded from the grosser side of human passions. That Estelle, apparently the most oversexed of creatures, was unable to satisfy her desires with the thousands of men whom she had known, except for Matt-one man among many thousands-struck her as strangely anomalous. She found herself wanting to learn more of this particular response or failure of response which they seemed to have in common. But Evelyn did not dare voice her interest in Matt's presence. She kept silent until Estelle remarked, "I'm glad he stretched out and went to sleep. He hurt himself back there somehow, you know, and he didn't look too good to me." It was then that Evelyn glanced back and saw that Matt was indeed outstretched and in a deep sleep.
"Why do you think that of all the men you've been with," Evelyn now ventured, "that he has been the only one to make you feel like that?"
"You mean, come loose?"
Evelyn nodded.
"Matt helped me figure that one out once," Estelle said. "Isn't it amazing how he knows just about every damn thing? I guess it's from all that reading he's always doing."
Evelyn registered surprise, and Estelle explained, "Not while we're on the road like this, I don't mean. I mean, that's when he gets some money together by knocking over some gas stations, supermarkets, out-of-the-way movie theaters, places like that. Then, we go somewhere and hole up for months. Last time, it was almost a whole year. We got a great place, a whole house. It was in Nova Scotia, right on the water. He practically filled that place up with books. That's about all he'd do-reading all the time and going for long walks or swimming a lot or boating. We got us a neat boat. We lived like that, just the three of us, until the money ran out."
"Three?"
"Oh, you wouldn't know about that. I mean, Ma, Matt's ma was with us. He always takes her along. That's where we'll be going now, to get her, before we find another place to hole up at. Then he'll start reading all them books again. But I don't mind. He treats me good and keeps me happy so I'm not going out of my head half the time like you've been seeing, when we move around like this."
The puzzling enigma that was Matt became even more mysterious in Estelle's ingenuous descriptions. "What did he explain to you about . . . making you come?" Evelyn returned to the same disturbing question.
"Oh, you would have to know something about that bastard of an old man who raised me up. There was six of us, six kids, my four brothers, Mike, Andy, Charlie and Steve. Steve was my oldest brother and the only decent one of the lot. There was two girls, my sister Rose and myself, but she was next to the oldest and I was the youngest. I was like a little kid compared to her. She really was a knockout. All the guys chasing her tail around the house as long as I can remember. And my old man like near busted a gut each time he'd catch her making out with any guy. Him and my brothers would gang up on him and like to kill him. That just about happened to Gus. He was running with my sister. Lots of times I would see them. I would push open the door a little bit and watch him, or sometimes I'd hide in the closet and get a good look. It made me real hot, and I used to rub myself like the dickens while watching them. Then my sister Rose got knocked up, and boy, what happened when my old man found out about that. You know, we come from Pennsy and I grew up in coal-mining towns. My father and brothers always worked the mines. That's where they'd be during the day when Rose and Gus were making out.
"Gus was a real sharp character. I mean, he was always up somebody's skirts, but he and Rose had something going together. Then this one night, my father had a look at her little belly, grabbed her and shook the hell out of her until she admitted that she was knocked up and that it was Gus that did it but that she wanted to have the baby.
"Well," Estelle said, grimly, compressing her lips, "you would of had to have seen my old man to believe it. When he lost his temper, he was like somebody out of his head. He just began slapping Rose until she fell down and then he was hollering that he wasn't going to have any bastards dropping in his house, and then he whipped the hell right out of her. And then while she was laying there, he kicked her right in the middle. She was bent over double, screaming, moaning and everything. I was just a kid and I remember how my ma went at him, cursing and beating at him and then trying to help Rose, but he wouldn't let her. He just slapped her around and blamed it all on her that Rose was so quick and easy.
"It was true that my ma would be cheating on him every time she got a chance. Especially when she did a lot of ginning herself, and then some trade people or insurance men or salesmen would come to the door. She'd be walking around half the time with one of them wraparounds that she was always wearing, with nothing underneath. I don't even remember her looking young or pretty, you know, in the face I mean. But she sure had a sexy shape with big boobs that weren't sloppy and real neat legs that she was always shaving and rubbing cold cream on. She'd do the nails on her feet some bright color and then put on those showy mules with spikes and then it was just a question of who happened to ring the doorbell first. She knew she had a gorgeous body. She couldn't wait to show it. She made a big thing out of standing there in front of whoever the guy was and just letting that wraparound drop off her. She'd stand there, watching their eyes pop.
"I remember one time that some salesman-I think he was one of those fellows who works in a crew selling magazine subscriptions, he was young, a college type. Well, he was in there jabbing Ma for maybe a half-hour, and after he left, he came back no more than fifteen minutes later. He had two other guys with him, and all he did was ask Ma to drop her wraparound so they could have a look. He told them what a great body she had and he just wanted them to see it for themselves. Ma, she was beaming like crazy, and turning this way and that way, showing herself like some model. That's all they did, believe it or not. For a long time after they left, Ma stood up in front of one of those full-length mirrors that was on the inside of her closet door, naked, and admiring herself. She didn't give a damn if I saw what was going on. She used to say that sex never ended up killing any woman. But many is the one who's gotten dried up as a stalk from not having those feelings. She used to tell me that the sooner I learned to do a man, the better off I was going to be and the more enjoyment out of life I would get. That's how come she would just carry on with my being around, and later on getting me to go down on them. By the time I was ten or eleven, I could do that so good that she used to brag about it and have me do it just to show them. When I got them all sticking up high enough to raise a flag, she'd take over."
Estelle raced on animatedly, with details of the past, bringing a wide diversity of expressions to her face-amusement, sadness, pained recollection. The emotions of her still young lifetime, flowing through her. "My ma sounds like a real pig in the trough, doesn't she? My old man used to call her that. But really, she was a great person. People liked her right off.
Women, old ladies, kids. And she wasn't lazy or anything like that. She kept the house clean and had meals on time, and that kind of thing, no matter how much she would ball around during the afternoon."
Estelle drew a deep sigh and considered the next comment thoughtfully. "Even with all of the things he said and the way he slugged her around, my old man had feelings for her. One day, he came in the house and caught her bouncing away on top of some guy in the bedroom, and he-he hit her in the head, I think it was with an ashtray he'd picked up from the table. She was never the same after that. She'd just go blank and sit there for hours, not moving or even seeing anything around her. Finally, he had to put her away. But like clockwork, every Saturday, he would go up to this institution to see her, sometimes bring her something. I don't think the old bastard ever got over it.
"But he was such a damned hypocrite. All the time he'd be using the word 'decent' and be screwing about whory women catting around. But it'd be okay for him to be going around ripping off panties and balling around every time he got the chance. Lots of times he and the boys, I mean my brothers, would go up to the cat house in town. Then they'd come back grinning and nudging each other like a bunch of butting goats. But to Rose and me, small as I was, that kind of doings was 'dragging yourselves straight down to hell.' And if any neighborhood gossip involved some girl getting herself a bellyful, it was 'the little bastard that was going to pollute her life.' It seemed we were never going to hear the end of it.
"But if I'd get to look like I was too shook up, my ma would step in and tell him to come around with his sermons when he was ready to follow his own preaching. Then he would turn on her right in front of us, calling her foul names. She would just stand up to him and say that she had to know she was still living and breathing in this world for some reason. It was only when he looked like he was going to blow his stack that she would just take me into the other room and close the door. All that talk about getting knocked up used to scare the hell out of me, but my ma told me there was ways of looking out for that. It was when I was almost twelve, about three months' short of it. I had started having my period when I was eleven. I was developed and all. I mean I had something to tuck in a bra. I muzzled around with the kids in the neighborhood and would let them stick their fingers up, but I was afraid to do any more. Of course, I knew what it was all about. I told you that my ma used to make a big show of me taking full-grown men, but always with my mouth.
"It was one day when I stayed home from school because I had a cold and my ma kept me in bed that it happened for the first time. Some kid, he was about nineteen but he was no kid to my ma, came to the door selling brushes and things like that. As soon as she brought him into the house, I looked out the bedroom door and saw that he was cute and everything. I kept on watching, hoping she would get him undressed and all. I wanted to see-well, you know what I mean," Estelle said, her eyes bright with desire, even as she recalled a sexual episode dating back to her childhood.
"It didn't take her long before she was standing in front of him all naked and taking his hands and putting them on her breasts and bringing them down. I wanted to go out into the room and show myself in the chance that she would start bragging to him about what an expert I was and all that, and get me to show him, just for kicks. But I didn't because she was usually ginned up to the gills when she'd get me to do that. But now she was sober. That's why I was surprised when she called my name and told me to come in the room. He was standing there in front of her and he had his clothes on, still, but you could see him standing there like it was going to bust through his pants. 'Pull your pajamas off, Estelle,' she said, 'and show this handsome boy how pretty you are everywhere.' I could see he was all nervous and tense and everything, not knowing what was going on. She had him so hot and bothered that she could have done anything to him. He had red-brown hair all combed nice and a real straight nose and a sharp suit.
"I didn't need any coaxing. I took the top of my pajamas off, just letting it slip off my shoulders, the way I'd often seem my ma do it. And then I pulled the strings of my pajama pants. They slid off my hips and down over my belly. He didn't try to stop her when she pulled his coat and the rest of his clothes off. I got real nervous when she began stroking him and took my hand and put it on his body. It was like she was leading us every step of the way. 'Isn't he handsome, Estelle?' she was saying. 'Isn't he just meant for pleasing the girls?' I bent down over him, expecting it to be like all the other times. But Ma said to me, 'No, Stell, not this time. Go over on the couch.' I sure wanted to do that, but I was terrified about getting a baby. But Ma, she knew that by the tense way I was acting. 'I'm going to show you how to pleasure yourself without having any fears of getting in trouble. It's only when the juices get mixed that a woman can get herself in a family way.'
"That's just the way she done it," Estelle said, somewhat wonderingly, "stroking him and talking all the while just like she was giving a lesson in school.
"She warned me how it was easy to get excited and forget about protecting yourself, and when my sister Rose got her belly, I figured that's what she and Gus had done. Anyway, what I started to tell you-my sister went to the hospital and she lost the baby. But she never come home after that. My pa, he blamed the whole thing on Gus, and he and the boys went out and they done him in. They beat him up something terrible and they did something worse than that, but I didn't know just what it was until a long time after, about two years, maybe three. I was sexy as hell by then. The boys in the street would whistle and stop and go the route when I'd go by shaking up my can, in skirts so tight you could see the line right down the middle. I used to put on a lot of clothes that Rose had left, black stockings and them nifty high spikes and blouses open down to where you could see my boobs bunching up.
"My ma was in the institution by then and so I used to have my fun during the day, banging away like sixty even though at night, when my old man was home, I had to do the chores, cook dinner and watch my step. But after my ma was sent away, I didn't have anything to do with grown men, just kid stuff around the neighborhood, until one day Gus got onto me. I was in the street and he came alongside me in one of them white convertibles with red plush upholstery. He was always a real sharp guy. He used to gamble a lot, and he'd always be winning money at cards even when he was going with Rose. But later on, he became sort of a professional, setting up games, poker, craps.
"He stopped the car alongside me and told me to get in. He wanted to talk to me. When he looked me up and down, he stuck his tongue out like wetting his lips. I laughed, like I felt real complimented, you know. You'd often see Gus around town with real gorgeous dolls, like real actresses and models. They weren't even from our town. He told me he wanted me to come up to his place for a little talk. Then when we got there, he poured me a big slug of Scotch and then sat down alongside me to tell me how gorgeous I was, just as sexy as Rose, even sexier, and he started unbuttoning my blouse as he kept on talking. 'Let's see if you got the nips that she had,' he said and reached out to unsnap my bra.
"I always wanted to grow up to be just as beautiful as Rose, and it meant a lot to me to hear him say things like that. He traced little circles with his fingers on the nipples of my boobs until they stuck out like two little corks about to pop off the top of me. Then he put his mouth on them, nibbling at them with just the slightest edge of his teeth, with his hand coming down my belly and slipping down under the elastic band on my silk panties at the same time. His fingers, like a lot of little dancing toes, pressed into my warm, moist folds, lingering there.
"I tried to unzip him, but he grabbed my hands hard, and I thought he wasn't going to go no further, but he did it by himself. I thought it was kind of crazy that he didn't take any of his clothes off, all dressed up and pumping away at me like that. I found out after that that was always his way. He never took his clothes off. Anyway, when we took a break to light up and finish our drinks, he went all sad and didn't say anything for a while. At first, I thought he was disappointed, but he said, 'You're every bit as good a lay, kid. It's just that, you know the way it was with me and Rose.' The muscles worked in his jaw, and then the words came out, 'We decided we really wanted to have that kid. Your old man--' His face darkened with anger. He turned around and never finished his thought. And he never talked to me about Rose or my old man after that first time, even though I began to see him all the time.
"That's when I found out the reason that he had those gorgeous dolls around him. He wasn't only gambling, but he was pimping too, and he told me that I was such a great piece that we could make out real good in a strictly business deal, fifty-fifty. He would fix me up with the guys. He said I could make myself easy a hundred and fifty bucks a week and I could get wild clothes, a car of my own, and have a ball at the same time.
"I wanted to do it all right, but the thing of it was that we didn't have that big a town. I was afraid that my old man would find out what I was doing and just about kill me. Gus told me that he wasn't about to have my old man on his back himself. 'I work four other towns in this county and I'll make sure I keep you balling in the right spots.'
"The way it was," Estelle said, "he really had a neat thing going. He had deals with all the clubs. Not the nightclubs and that kind of thing. Organizations-you know, men's clubs. He would arrange a gambling session and get a piece out of that and have several girls going on the side and go through the whole routine for twenty bucks. But for special membership events, when there were thirty, fifty, sometimes a hundred guys, Gus would work a deal called Blind Man's Bluff. He put a couple of us on cots in a room with the lights out and every guy got five minutes and the tab only five bucks. In that deal, the guys couldn't pick or choose or anything. In and out, that was the whole bit. But it worked out for five bucks because each girl could handle a dozen guys an hour, and these things would go two, three hours, sometimes four."
Estelle's voice dropped, softly saddened. "It was one of those Blind Man's Bluff deals that really loused me up, but good. I didn't know just how much Gus had it in for my old man. I shouldn't of been so stupid when one time I found out what my old man and brothers did to Gus. I told you that every time he came to me, he always wore his clothes. Well, this one time, after a big night at one of the clubs, he took me back to his place. He was half crocked at that point, and when we got to his apartment, he had about six or seven shots and he flaked out on the bed, dead to the world. I stripped down and crawled in beside him and began to feel him around. That's the way it was with me. Besides, now that he'd conked out, I had a chance to strip him down and I was curious, I guess, because he'd never let me.
"Well, I got his pants and jockey shorts down to his knees, and I saw something weird right off. He had some kind of contraption, made of black leather, that held up the rest of him. At least, that's what I thought when I first looked at it. I figured maybe he had some kind of rupture. But then, when I got a closer look, I could see that it wasn't holding up anything. It was just a couple of balls of leather hitched up with a few straps." Estelle gasped at the horrifying disclosure. "My old man and brothers had slashed them off. That was the last time in his life he was ever going to knock anybody up. I remember I-I got sick to my stomach and I went into the John and spilled out my guts. I pulled his pants back up and I never let him know what I had seen. I wondered after that that he didn't mention my old man out of hate for him. It seemed impossible to believe that it was the type of thing he could just put out of his mind.
"Well, as it turned out, he hadn't. When he picked me up and banged my pants, he was getting back at my old man. When he got me to agree to peddle, he was getting back at my old man. I think he planned the whole damn thing from the minute he spotted me. You see, what happened was this: one night, he told me he wanted me for Blind Man's Bluff deal at one of the clubs. Usually there was two, sometimes three girls, you know, that kind of routine. This time, he got me in the room, took my clothes when I stripped, and fixed me up on a cot and put the lights out. He told me the other girls he had booked had conked out on him and couldn't get another one, so I'd have to handle the whole bit. I didn't say anything because this way it wasn't bad since I'm make double take. I pulled a tube of jelly out of my purse and stretched out, ready to go. It didn't really make any difference, another twenty guys or so, if you kept yourself from drying up inside. It's only then that you get the soreness deep inside.
"So he started letting them into the dark room, one at a time. And then he yanked the door open in five minutes when it was time for one Joe to leave and another to jump in the saddle. I don't know how many I had. It seemed like a hell of a lot because it was a lousy cot and my can was getting awful sore from bouncing around. Then I got somebody going on me when, all of a sudden, the lights go on-and there is my old man. He looked at me as if somebody had jammed a shiv into his craw. He stumbled back, like he couldn't believe his own eyes. Then he let out this cry and went for Gus's throat. Gus shoved a gun into his belly and pulled the trigger. I saw my old man drop to his knees, blood spurting from his mouth and nose. The whole place went into an uproar. My brothers got into it, and there were more shots. I didn't wait to find out what had happened. I grabbed my clothes. I didn't even take time to put them on. I just went right out one of the back fire exits, chasing down those stairs like as naked as a jaybird. Downstairs, in one of the back alleys, I slipped into my things, hailed a cab out on the street and rode straight out of town. And I haven't been back since."