Chapter 9
Rick woke bright and early the next morning. The orgy on Fisherman's Walk had taken most of the starch out of, him and his morning erection went away as soon as he took a leak. He felt only mildly horny thinking of Emma and Donna. Especially Donna, he thought. Their bodies had done him a lot of good, banging his belly against their tight little frames, feeling their firm and strong thighs grasping his hips had given him back his own strength.
They had given his youth back to him.
And he chuckled to himself when he thought of the crisp new ten-dollar bill the skinny maid had slipped into his hand as he pulled on his clothes. It seemed to him that the less you did as a gigolo the more you were paid, and the better the fucking the more meager the money.
Before breakfast he walked down to the beach. Walking along the edge of the ocean, barefoot, his feet splashing in the cold, gentle waves that washed ashore, he thought about his future, about his career as a gigolo for old ladies. He imagined rows of them waiting on satin sheets, four-poster beds in expensive Miami hotels and New York apartments, on the Riviera and the Mediterranean shores of Greece. Widows of oil magnates, men who had polluted the very ocean he now waded in. He would plunge into holes those men had plunged into until their deaths. He would please women whose men had never been able to please them. He would reap the benefits of all their collected wealth. Speculators in slum real estate. He would let their widows gum on his cock, suck his come out of his balls. He would get rich in the baths of women whose husbands had made fortunes by raising the price of bread.
And occasionally, when he needed it, he would seek out their grand-daughters in their virgin beds and take a young sleek and firm body, a tight cunt and a virgin mouth. It would revive him so he could plunge once more into the peculiar, inventory the minds of old ladies could think up for him to do.
He gave his classes in the morning and by noon he remembered the promise that Mrs. Witherdine might do more for him than she ever had. He felt horny for her mouth. He was greedy. He wanted to see if she would really suck him off and swallow his come and he thought if she did he could make an easy hundred, plus perhaps a bonus if he shot off hard against the back of her throat. And he could be back at the club in time for his two o'clock class.
Marie was surprised to see him at the front door.
"You'd better come around back," she gasped. "Missus don't like for you to be coming in the front."
Rick stepped past her. He wished he had worn a hat so he could have handed it to her and reminded her that she was the maid and he the guest. The honored guest. "She won't mind this time," he said. "Don't worry about it, Marie. I'll handle the Missus for you."
Marie's exasperation turned to surprise. "You will? Mr. Temple, I'd like to see that. That's something that I just don't think can happen."
Rick waited while Marie struggled up the main stairway to inform Missus that her lover was on the premises.
He thought it was much nicer and more formal coming in the front door.
A tall pier mirror with carved walnut frame stood beside the entrance to the parlor. Rick looked through the wide door and saw plush, soft furniture that had been reupholstered probably every twenty-five years of its existence. A fireplace with a carved marble mantel stood against the far wall and over it was another pier mirror, this one mahogany. He thought that these people had really know how to live in the '70s and '80s, and that their descendants had had more than common sense to be able to hold onto the wealth all that time since.
Marie gestured from the top of the ornate staircase. She wore a smile of vindication on her face. "Missus said for you to come right on in, Mr. Temple."
Rick grinned up at her, then took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he paused beside the maid to pinch her black soft cheek. "You're all right, Marie, you know that?"
"Sure I do. Always knew that. It's you that has the problem."
Rick studied her a moment trying to understand what she meant. He decided it was hopeless, that she was as fathomless as others of her race and that she had meanings in her speech that no one without the precise experience of her kind could ever hope to understand.
He knocked on the door of Mrs. Witherdine's office-bedroom-sitting room.
"Come in," she said.
He stepped in and closed the door behind him. He walked quickly to her side and kissed her, before she could get to her feet.
She pushed her light-weight chair behind her and rose. "Goodness," she said, "you don't even let Marie show you in anymore?"
"Well, I'm in kind of a rush, Mrs. Witherdine. I have to be back at the resort for a two o'clock class."
"You'd better hurry." Mrs. Witherdine looked at a very small, very expensive watch hanging between her breasts on a very tiny and frail gold chain. "It's already a few minutes after twelve."
"I wasn't able to come by last night, like I said I would." He kissed her lips again, but she did not respond.
"I was really hung up yesterday," he said, laughing a little and shaking his head. "Took three kids in my class out in the bay to show them how to set a spinnaker in the wind and wouldn't you know it the damn wind died on me. We didn't get back in until way after dark, then because it was so late I had to take them home." He paused to see how his story was going over, then pressed ahead. "One of them lives way up the other side of the city and I didn't get back until after midnight and I thought that was too late to come over."
"What do you want to do now? You know I work through the day unless I call you."
"Yes, but since I had a little time free, a couple hours, and since I haven't seen you in over a week, well. And our last two appointments I haven't been able to keep."
"Why did you lie?"
Rick was taken by surprise. "What do you mean? I was out in the boat."
"Now you are lying again. Don't keep it up, it's only foolish."
"What do you mean?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean. Stop lying to me."
"I haven't been. I was caught with no wind.. . . "
Mrs. Witherdine moved away abruptly. She made a cutting motion with her hand, forcing Rick to swallow the rest of his sentence.
"I did not invite you here today," she began. "I especially did not invite you here today to lie to me. I can-` not abide liars. You not only failed to appear for our last two appointments, you have stood here today and lied to me three times about what happened to you last night. Until you lied to me, I did not care a whit where you were or what you did last night. The fact that I had expected you and you did not appear was disappointing to me, of course, but I understand that being your age you cannot be expected to be punctual, remember appointments, or resist greater temptations. You haven't had the upbringing for that, nor do you have the experience or background to submit to your responsibilities. I excuse that."
She paused for a mere moment to allow Rick to blink his eyes.
Then she continued. "What I cannot abide, or excuse, is your lying to me. I cannot abide a liar. I have no time to waste on a liar."
"Why do you.. . . " Rick could not finish the sentence. It seemed to him that his tongue was filling his throat.
She said, "You looked very handsome in your white silk breechcloth."
Rick felt weak from his knees to his chin.
"You performed very well. My hostess informed me that the four of you performed for only ten dollars apiece. Is that true?"
Rick raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and hopelessness. He thought he still might be able to bluff it through. "It wasn't really what I wanted to do last night, but I got talked into it."
"It shouldn't have taken much talking. The girls were very young and exceptionally beautiful. And I must say it was exciting to watch the twins perform, though I confess I watched you most of the time."
"I'm sorry I lied to you."
"So am I. I'm also sorry you did not appear last night. You were to have been my guest "
"It would have been a good show," Rick said bravely, "but they'd have been short one actor, wouldn't they."
"I doubt if they would have had trouble finding someone to take your place. The streets are full of summer kids who would perform like that, or try to, for ten dollars."
Rick realized his case was nearly hopeless. He said again, "Well, I am sorry I lied."
"So am I," she said, "as I said before. It seems we are covering ground we have already covered." Her voice was cold.
Rick looked at her body. She wore the same light-weight silk robe she had worn the first time he had come to her house. He thought again how pleasant she was in bed, how grateful, how experienced. He desired her, he thought with surprise. She stood silently before him, until he asked, "What would you like me to do?"
"Get out. Don't come back."
He blinked. "Do you mean that?"
"I have never said anything I did not mean." She pressed a hidden button under the leaf of the frail antique French desk.
Marie came inside from where she obviously had been waiting just the other side of the door, waiting to aid in the expulsion.
Rick held out his hand to Mrs. Witherdine, but she did not accept it. "Good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye," she said.
Marie showed Rick down the back stairs. He followed without a complaint.
In the kitchen, he said, "You were right, Marie. She is pissed off beyond belief. It was my problem."
Marie stopped him at the back door. "The only mistake you made was lying to her. She actually got a kick out of watching you fuck them little girls, once she thought about it."
"How can you be in this business, Marie, and not lie?"
"You can't, so maybe you ought to get out of the business." She stood near him. "You remember you once said you might have something for me? Well, let me see what it might have been."
Rick decided what the hell. He might as well let the maid have it, now that he was finished forever with the mistress. He unhappily thought of all the others he would have to deal with: Mrs. Simpson and her bath tub, all the other crazy ones. Mrs. Witherdine had been the only one who liked her screwing straight and Rick had envisioned hundreds more just like her waiting along the shores of the finest oceans in the world.
He stood still as Marie worked down his zipper. Her eyes were ready to feast on all his equipment, her heavy lips parted, and the red tip of her tongue slid between them. Rick remembered the black girl on the campus lawn and how grateful she had been to be allowed to suck on his white cock and later stuff it up what she claimed was her virgin cunt. Marie reached inside his pants with expert fingers and fished out his penis.
It flopped outside, hung down long but not hard as if ashamed to show its head.
Marie stroked it, pulled on it. Nothing happened to it. She said, "I haven't seen a nice white one like that for a long time. And I bet it's real nice when it's standing up, but it doesn't look like it's going to get up today."
Rick thought Mrs. Witherdine had really done it for him. He thought he might never get another hard-on again. His balls felt shrivelled.
Marie smiled and patted his cock on its soft head. She began stuffing it back into his pants but could not get it in right so Rick did it for her.
She said, "It looks like it would be very fine, but not for me today. Probably not ever. And I don't feel like trying to get it up. Man," she sighed, "what destruction that would do to my ego if I tried and it didn't work" She patted Rick's crotch, felt his cock stuffed inside, and gave it a tender squeeze. "Best not to even try. You better just keep it stuffed in there for a few days, take care of it. I heard what happened and it might take you a while to get over it. You listen to old Marie, I know. You've had a hard blow to your little solar plexus. Or somewhere down there, down around the balls. And now you better just take it slow and easy till you get it all back. The Missus has only let a few of her boys go like she did you, and from what I heard of them after-wards they did not make much of themselves. You take it easy awhile. I liked you and so did she, but you lied to her and she can't take that. You take it easy and get your head screwed on straight. You're too young and good looking to be selling yourself so cheap."
Rick was nearly out the back door, but he turned to ask, "What do you mean?"
"I mean let the middle-aged creeps have these old dames like the Missus. Do I have to spell it out for you? She does all right with them. Don't feel you're the only cock that can make her happy. You're still young and full of fuck. You get yourself some young ones now while you still can. You get all the young ones now because when you're old like me, and like the Missus, you don't get a hell of a lot of choice. You listening to me?"
Rick nodded. "Yes, I am. I like young ones, too."
Marie nodded swiftly as if that settled that. "Then by damn you just hang onto them. You get them and make them happy. Making them happy will make you happy. Now you scoot along and eat your cookies."
She shooed him out the door and shut it after him. The heavy door swinging shut, closing solidly behind him, was like an era of his life ending.
He got back, to the resort about an hour before his class was scheduled to begin.
He walked the deserted dock. He watched a solitary boy fishing off the end without a care in the world except whether or not a fish would bite. Rick decided to take one of the Sailfish out into open water, by himself, and clear his head.
He stepped down into the small rowboat used to transport people from the dock to anchored sailboats and rowed the twenty yards to where the nearest small sailboat bobbed in the water.
Once aboard, he secured the rowboat to the stern, upped the anchor and began rigging the sail. He was nearly ready to hoist the mainsail when he realized that someone was calling his name.
He looked toward the dock and saw a cleancut figure of a girl waving to him. She wore a white T-shirt and blue shorts. He waved back, thinking she was waving good-bye.
She called, "Rick! You going out?"
He recognized her voice, then her body. It was Jenny Roman.
He called back, curtly, "I'm going out." He turned back to finish hoisting the sail.
It was luffing over his arm when he glanced back to the dock and saw that she had dived into the bay and was swimming toward his boat. He did not want to talk to her. He was sure she knew he had been fired by Auntie, and that Marie had told her why. He did not want to have to share his morning with anybody who looked like Jenny Roman.
But he knew, as he listened to the smooth calm strokes of her swimming, that he would have to take her on board. He could not leave her floundering in the bay, sail off like an insulted lover.
As she reached the side of the boat, he held his hand down for her to take hold. He hauled her into the boat. He found a stack of laundered towels stowed under the tiller and handed her one.
She shook her long hair and wiped her face with the towel. Her T-shirt clung to her breasts, tight and wet over her nipples that were drawn up and erect from the cold water. She had kicked off her sandals on the dock. She wiped her long tanned legs, and finally having caught her breath she looked over at Rick and smiled. "Ready?" she asked.
"Ready," Rick said. He set sail.
In half an hour they were in open water. The resort was a tiny speck behind them on a low rise on the horizon that was all they could see of North America.
Rick had not intended to sail out this far. Now he was out too far to get back in time for his afternoon classes. But since he did not feel like giving the classes anyway, he forgot it. He wanted only to swim, sail, let the sun, sky, wind and sea relax his mind.
Jenny said, after Rick dropped the sail, "You're hard to catch, you know that?"
"I didn't want anybody with me."
"That was obvious. Why did you take me on board then?"
"I couldn't leave you to sink right off the end of the dock."
"Don't worry about me, Buster. I wouldn't have sunk."
"Well, you're nicer to look at than staring at my own knees all afternoon."
"Don't you have classes this afternoon?"
"I do, but I won't be there."
She let her head roll back on her shoulders. Her black hair was caught in the wind. Her nostrils flared as she sucked the fresh clean air down into her lungs.
She was possibly the most beautiful girl Rick had ever known. Her features seemed to have been carved in flesh, rather than allowed to grow haphazardly like most people.
"I wanted to talk to you," she said. "Seriously, I want you to knock off all this nonsense with the old ladies, including my aunt. I want you to go back to school."
Rick was relieved that she did not know yet that he had been fired. He decided not to lie to her, but he would not yet tell her the whole truth.
"Jane and I spent a lot of time together last night. We know where you went, and what happened there. It's pretty crumby, you know. It's almost like being a whore, going to that place and letting people you don't even know watch you."
Rick let the anchor over the side and felt the boat slow when the heavy weight reached the end of the rope. The boat bobbed' and drifted easily in the gentle, deep-water rolls of the ocean.
Rick stood up and stripped off his shirt. He didn't care what Jenny thought of him. He only wanted to be in the water, cooled from the hot sun, away from everyone's voice telling him what to do and who to be. He dropped his pants. He let her look briefly at his cock, then he dove off the side and swam out a few yards.
His body cooled right away. He felt better, cleaner. The water between his legs lifted his cock and he felt cleansed, as if the ocean was baptizing him in some mysterious manner. He turned in the water, his bare ass flashing against the surface, and looked back at the boat in time to see Jenny poised naked, her young firm breasts pointing at the sun.
He saw the darker patch at her crotch, the long lines of her legs. She looked like a sacrifice that would appease the cruellest god.
Her ass flashed in the sun as she turned. Her legs moved sharply as she dove off the other side of the Sail-fish.
Rick thrust himself out of the water and dove down, forcing. himself deeper until his lungs hurt. Then he stroked his way to the surface and burst into the blinding sun and he felt he could see everything he would ever need to see.
When they were both back on the boat, they lay side by side on the deck. The sail flapped overhead, luffing gently in the sea breeze. Jenny's T-shirt and shorts hung from the mainstay.
Rick lay on his stomach and looked down Jenny's body. She lay on her back, and her breasts were smaller than when she stood. The nipples were erect. A pool of water was caught in her belly button, and raindrops shone in her curly pubic hair. In the sunlight, Rick saw faint, soft hairs on her thighs; Jenny was one of the lucky girls who never had to shave her legs. Her body hair was so soft, invisible, impossible to touch. She looked tender along her thighs, as if she had never been misused and still had all the hopes of a virgin.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Twenty."
"I'm nineteen." Her voice was deeper because she was lying on her back. She sounded more serious, as indeed she felt. "We're both old enough to be past the kid-stage of screwing, don't you think."
"Tell me what you are talking about."
"All right. You lay still and let me do the talking. We're both old enough to be past the kid-stage of screwing. What I mean, by that is that we're old enough that it doesn't scare us anymore. We don't have to do it in a hurry anymore, in a back seat or wherever we can get it. But we're not old enough to settle down to one thing, either. Neither one of us. And what I mean by that is that you are throwing your life away if you stick with the plan you told Jane about, that you are looking for Easy Street and you're going to screw old ladies to get there. You're going to follow them to Florida when the season here ends. It's going to be your life. Well, how long do you think you can keep it up, and I don't mean your dick. What kind of life is that? You're too young and too smart and too damn good looking to spend your young life screwing old ladies. There's a lot of young stuff that would like to get into your pants, and all you have to do is give it away free. Stop selling it like some fifty-dollar whore. I guess that' what I'm saying. Don't be a whore. Stop wasting yourself on old ladies, even for money."
She waited, and when Rick said nothing she continued. "Now here is my sad story: "I was a virgin when I left home for college. Plenty had tried to get into me but they never got anywhere, especially the old men who used to hang around hoping Auntie would drop some money on them. But I damn near lost my cherry to one of her gigolos, and therein lies my story.
"I was fifteen at the time. It was at our place in Florida and I had been swimming at night in the pool. When I came into my room it was dark and I only turned on a single light by my mirror. I took off my suit and started looking at myself, you know how kids do. I examined my breasts, pinched my nipples until they stood up, turned around . to see how my ass was rounding out. I probably checked to see how thick my pubic hair was, and I might even have parted my vagina to look up it. Anyway, you know kids. I don't know what all I did in front of the mirror. Anyway, the first I knew anybody else was in the room was when I heard him get up from my bed.
"I knew right away who he was so I wasn't really afraid. But I was embarrassed at having been caught naked like that. But he crossed the room and started to touch me. I knew he was Auntie's lover, and I thought I'd let him go as far as I wanted him to. I was pretty sure I could turn him off if he got too serious. I let him touch my shoulders, my nipples, he squeezed my breasts. He touched my stomach and my hips. I let him touch my pubic hair. He was the first man who ever touched that. He stepped a little closer and I could smell the mints on his breath. He used to chew mints all day to cover up the fact that he was always raiding Auntie's gin closet. He pushed his hand between my legs and when I felt him trying to get a finger into my vagina I spread my legs to help him. He almost made it. He took my hand with his other hand and brought it to his own crotch. That was the first time I noticed that his penis was out. He had his pants open. He wrapped my hand around his cock. It was hard, but not very long. I liked touching it and he slipped his finger further up me and he knew how to work a finger. Then he made his mistake. He said, with that minty breath coming all over me, `I want to fuck you. Please let me fuck you.'
"Let me tell you he turned me off. I always knew I could stop him whenever I wanted just by making a little noise. Gigolos are only in it for the money and he knew he'd be out of the house fast if Auntie knew he was fooling around with me. So when he said that, `Please let me fuck you,' I just called out, `Marie, oh Marie, are you there?' He still had his finger in me but he pulled it out fast and disappeared. He literally just disappeared. He was afraid of Marie, and of Auntie, too. Naturally Marie wasn't anywhere around, she was out in the kitchen cleaning a chicken for the next day.
"That's the kind of men gigolos become. Beggars. If he had had any sense he could have made me easily. I had wanted him, and I had thought about him a lot, being Auntie's lover and all. And he really could have had my cherry. But he was too old, and he had lost his nerve. He was jaded, worn out from screwing grateful old ladies half his life. And he was only about thirty. It was tragic. He could have had me, but he didn't have it anymore for girls.
"I've been around a lot of Auntie's gigolos, and not one has been able to make me. A lot have tried, but they just don't have it."
Rick looked down her body again. He watched her nipples rise and fall with her breath. He had an erection lying hard under his stomach, but it was only a bodily reaction from lying naked with Jenny Roman. He knew that if he was going to make love to her it had to be on a finer plane than a simple bodily reaction.
"What would I have to do to make you?" he asked. She waited a few seconds. "Quit."
"Just like that? Is it so important to you that I quit being a gigolo that you would screw the?"
"I didn't say I would screw you. But the only way you are going to be able to have a possibility of screwing anybody like me is to quit. Right now."
"Why should I make a right turn off Easy Street just to have a virgin?"
"Not a right turn, a U-turn. And not just for some virgin, you fool. Virgins. Plural. With an S. And not only virgins. Of which I am not one, I might add. You'll not only get virgins, but girls. And women. Teen-agers and girls in their twenties. Thirty-year-old women with a yen for a young man. But don't ever tie yourself up with old ladies just for money. If old ladies are your thing, go to it. It's fine if you get more kicks balling old ladies. If that's true, stop me right now." She waited for him to stop her and when he did not she said, `Because if you tie yourself down with them, man, you'll cut yourself off at the knees. In a few months you won't even know how to get a young girl again, and if you get close you'll get so excited you'll be saying `please, please let me,' and she'll clamp her legs together so tight you'd never be able to pry them open."
Rick said, "All right. I quit. Shall we fuck?"
She sat up. Her breasts filled out on her chest. They sloped down gradually to the nipples, then tucked under in a round curve to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her knees and laid her head down to look at Rick sideways.
He rolled over and she looked at his cock lying long and hard against his stomach. She eyed the tight sac that held his balls.
"I don't want to fuck right now. I don't think I want to fuck today. Can you stand it? Is it all right?"
"No," Rick said, "but I can stand it."
"I can jack you off, if you want me to."
"Thanks, but I'd rather lie here with all my brains in my cock. If you don't mind."
"Sorry," she said, a laugh tickling the pretty corner of her mouth. She was a happy girl. "I don't feel like fucking with you right now. I feel more motherly, or sisterly is more like it."
"Incest happens in the best of families."
"Not in mine."
Rick enjoyed her watching him. After a while he got up and set the sail and they tacked to and fro across the ocean naked, the wind against their young sweet bodies, the sun shining on them as it never had before.
Jenny told Rick about the poet-in-residence at her college who had seduced her willing body. He had filled her mind with rhymes and her cunt with his cock. He had fucked her the first time until she fell asleep with his hard-on still inside her and they woke early in the morning, their hips pumping automatically, and fucked until sunrise. She told him all that a young person could learn from someone older, and why it was necessary to learn that but once having learned it you had to go on to other people. And how because of what the poet had taught her she had gone on to fuck three members of the college football team at the same time until their cocks would simply not rise again.
Rick's erection subsided and he was finally able to listen to her and to watch her naked body with only faint wishes pulsating through his loins.