Chapter 3

Dr. DON EVANS slumped behind his desk, wan and red-eyed from fatigue. It was nearly midnight. The only nourishment he had taken all day came from the score of paper Coke and coffee cups lined up on the window sill behind him. He was so weary that even the sight of Louise Pitts bending over a file cabinet, flouting her lovely derriere, no longer stirred him.

When she straightened up, he said to her, "Why don't you call it a day, Lou? They don't pay overtime here, you know."

She smiled at him. "Why don't you call it a day?"

"I will soon," he told her. "There haven't been any new plague cases for two hours now. Maybe we're over the hump." He winked at her lecherously. "Anyway, I'm not a panting newlywed like you."

The girl did not appreciate the joke. "Who's panting?" she snapped and turned away from him.

Evans frowned. Un-like most newly married girls, Louise never mentioned her marriage unless someone else brought up the subject first. Then she changed the subject as soon as possible. He knew that the reason had nothing to do with her shyness about the sexual implications of her new status as a wife. Louise had always adopted a free and breezy attitude about sex. She was a broad-minded girl who could enjoy a dirty joke or a suggestive remark as fully as any woman he had ever met. As a matter-of-fact, he had always thought of her as being a trifle salacious. When Dave Pitts was first courting her, she had talked about him a good deal. However, from the day she had arrived home from her honeymoon, she had never mentioned her groom in the office.

"Did you phone Dave to tell him you'd be late tonight?"

"No," she said. "He's probably asleep by now." Evans snorted. "A new groom? Who are you kidding?"

She ignored him. "Boy, could I use a drink. A real stiff one." She opened the top button of her blouse and blew down into the valley between her ample breasts. The act titillated his sluggish libido, and prompted him to do something he would not have done ordinarily.

"I could use a drink, too. Come on, we'll have it together."

Louise's dark eyes lit up. "Why, thank you, sir. I'd appreciate that. A girl can't go into a bar alone at this time of night."

"Tonight, she can. No holds barred in Coaltown tonight, so I understand. Paul Bowles said a teen-age girl tried to pick him up on the street while he was out for supper. He has a theory that this plague business could turn our fair city into a jungle. He could be right. Down through the ages, fear has always been a handy excuse to kick over the traces. The times of the great plagues in the Middle Ages were distinguished by inordinate immorality and licentiousness."

Louise came over to him and stood so close that the points of her breasts almost touched his chest. "Maybe this will end up in a wild bacchanal, do you think?"

Evans couldn't take his eyes off the white flesh bulging over the top of her bra, coyly visible where she had opened the button. He swallowed hard. "Ready for that drink?"

She stepped back and looked down at herself. "I'm a holy mess, aren't I?" She ran her hands over her hips and thighs, trying to smooth out the wrinkled skirt Behind, it was plastered to her legs and buttocks. Evans no longer felt tired. The thought of the firm, succulent body beneath the skirt and blouse made his loins vibrate. Dave Pitts was one lucky man, he thought. If the guy was asleep when Louise got home, as she had suggested, he was also a darned fool!

Dave Pitts was not asleep. like the other citizens of Coaltown, he, too, was affected by the macabre excitement generated by the plague and the quarantine. It was the kind of excitement that reached deep down into the core of a man, disturbing dormant yearnings which he had believed were permanently silenced when he married Louise. That had been a mistake. Marrying Louise had been a mistake. They both knew it. Only the girl was not sure what the reasons were. Dave knew, only too well.

Dave Pitts' destiny was determined the day he and his father overturned in their auto when Dave was five years old. The father was killed, and the boy was pulled screaming from the burning car. His mother went into a state of shock from which she never fully recovered. For a year after the mishap, she never let her son out of her sight for five seconds. Her cloying protectiveness never altered materially for the next ten years. When the boy was nine years old, she was still taking him into the ladies' rooms of theaters and restaurants. They slept together in the same bed until he was fourteen.

It was in his fourteenth summer that Dave and his mother rented a bungalow on a small lake in Vermont. In the bungalow next to theirs was a widower and his teen-age daughter, a dark-eyed, slim brunette of seventeen. The widower was immediately attracted to Mary Pitts.

Young Dave had no inkling of what sex was all about, and even had he known, he would not have regarded his mother as a sexy woman. She was his

"Mom." Truth was that the thirty-eight-year-old widow was quite fascinating to the opposite sex. She had a fragile, frightened kind of beauty, like a faun. Her eyes were enormous and luminous, her skin was pale and flawless, and her long, black hair hung down to her waist when it was undone. She had small breasts, like a girl of fifteen.

Dave was puzzled and resentful. He didn't like this tall, husky man with the big shoulders and hairy chest hanging around his mother. Sometimes, when they were on the beach, Bart Smith would come running up, looking like a naked ape in his tight bathing trunks. There seemed too much of the man for the trunks, and Dave always had the wild idea that the skimpy Lastex was going to explode, leaving Smith stark nude before his mother's shocked eyes.

Mary Pitts had exactly the same notion. She would blush in shame as her heart accelerated at the thought. She could not help wondering what he would look like. Her eyes kept focusing on the most embarrassing parts of him when he was in a bathing suit.

Before her husband's fatal accident, Mary Pitts had been a perfectly normal woman and wife. She had been an ardent woman who enjoyed conjugal relations as much as her husband did. Now nine years had gone by without any sex for her. She had never even thought about sleeping with a man, until she met Bart Smith. Her son saw the paleness gradually leaving her cheeks every day she was with Smith, and he sensed the reason why, but could not define it.

It was Betty Smith who put him straight. One sunny afternoon, he was alone in the bungalow while his mother was boating with Smith, when the girl walked into his room. Betty had a mature, woman's body sheathed with the firm, glowing flesh of youth. Her breasts, larger than his mother's, were aggressive and insolent in a thin cotton halter. Hip-hugging shorts were molded to her round buttocks and flat belly. Her legs were long and golden from the sun. The sight of the human body, male or female, made Dave uncomfortable. He didn't like to look at himself in the nude.

She looked over his shoulder at the book he was reading. "Dirty book?" she asked lightly.

The boy blushed. "It's about Lassie, a dog."

She burst out laughing. "Oh, brother! Don't you know kids your age should be thinking about other things?"

He blinked. "What kind of things?"

She studied him thoughtfully. "I believe you really are square. Or maybe you're one of the sneaky ones. Could be you have a picture of a naked girl hidden in your Lassie book."

"I do not!" he protested vehemently.

"Okay, okay!" She laughed. "I was only kidding. Don't be so touchy." She sat down on the opposite end of the couch from him and threw one leg over the backrest. The tight, binding shorts almost split.

"My dad and your mother are at it again," she said.

"What do you mean?" he said uneasily.

She winked and ran her fingers through her short brown hair. "They went out to that deserted island for a picnic."

Dave frowned. "They're always going out to that island. What's out there that's so interesting?"

Her dark eyes regarded him with incredulous amusement. "Don't you know anything about the birds and the bees at all?"

"Birds and bees?"

She sat up suddenly and moved closer to him. Her face was flushed with excitement. "You know the difference between boys and girls, don't you?"

His eyes avoided her penetrating gaze. "Sure I do," he said hesitantly. It was partially true. He knew, for instance, that women had breasts. He knew, too, that there were other vague differences between their bodies from whispered talk among his classmates. Still, he had never truly experienced the pleasurable curiosity about sex that was normal fcr a youth his age. His mother was a female. His mother was a shining saint, first, though. His mother was everything that was good and pure and clean.

"I don't believe you know anything," the girl said. She reached behind her and undid her halter, shrugging it off her shoulders. Dave's eyes widened on her bare breasts. They were as firm and round as oranges. Their pink tips fascinated him.

She giggled. "Don't you like them?"

He was speechless.

She took one of his hands and touched it to one breast It was warm, soft and springy, smooth as velvet under his fingertips. A sensation something akin to an electric current passed up his arm and constricted his throat Absently, he stroked the fleshy slope and touched the pink summit To his surprise, it expanded like a tiny balloon in his fingers.

Betty shivered. "Now you're learning. Doesn't that do anything to you?"

"It feels nice," he said.

"Where?"

"I mean you're nice to feel," he said, expressing himself with difficulty. The electrical current had passed down into his body as he touched one breast and then the other. There was an unfamiliar heaviness deep in his belly, as if warm water were collecting there in a pool.

"Take off your clothes," she instructed him.

The boy recoiled in mortification. "No, that's dirty."

"Don't be silly. Here, I'll go first." She fumbled at the buttons at the side of her shorts and stood up, facing him. Wriggling her slim hips sensuously, she pulled down the shorts and stepped out of them. She posed for him, naked except for her filmy, peach-colored panties. Dave's blush deepened as she began to roll the panties down over her hips and tummy.

"Peek-a-boo!" she said, bumping her hips at him.

The boy was becoming genuinely excited. The curiosity about sex, repressed so long, gushed forth. He could feel something happening to his body that bad never happened to him before. It was frightening, but at the same time, very pleasant He began to undress as Betty slipped the panties down over her thighs and knees.

The glow in her eyes brightened when she saw him. "Well, you're quite a little man, after all," she simpered.

Dave stared at himself in confusion. This debut of his incipient masculinity was a wondrous thing. The girl pressed herself against him, and the shock of her bare flesh against him took his breath away. Her nipples burned into his thin chest. Her belly pulsed hotly against his loins, welcoming the bold thrust of his flesh.

Her arms went around his neck, and she rolled up her eyes. "Oh, sweetie, you are a quick study, as they say in the movies," she said dreamily.

Suddenly, Dave felt as if a tornado were whirling inside of him, sucking up all of his vital organs into a turbulent vortex. He clutched the girl by the buttocks, holding her tight as he moved against her in uncontrollable convulsions. Excruciating pleasure exploded in his loins, and he cried out.

Betty laughed. "You are a quick study. Too quick. Now what am I going to do?"

The shattering experience had dazed him. He let her push him down on the couch and lay there as her slim hands worked on him with teasing caresses. "Got to prime the old pump, Davey boy. Now that you've got that one out of your system, everything will be fine."

In no time at all, the wondrous fire was roaring up again inside of him. The physical phenomenon of his desire was miraculous to the inexperienced boy. His eyes widened as the girl straddled his hips.

The sight of her woman's body somewhat intimidated him. There was a fierce, ominous mystery about it. He felt as he did standing at the edge of a thick, dark forest, peering into the unknown shadows in its depths.

"What are you going to do?" he asked timidly.

"Second lesson," she said. "This is where they separate the men from the boys. What happened to you before was strictly for the boys. Fasten your seat belt, kiddies. The fun is about to begin."

Dave felt himself sliding down a steep, slippery slope into a bottomless pit. The quick descent left him giddy and breathless. It was at that precise moment that his mother's scream exploded on his ears.

Betty tumbled off of him and rolled on the floor. Dave leaped up and covered himself with his hands as best as he could. The last time he had read such horror and shock in Mary Pitts' eyes had been right after his father's fatal accident. In her bathing suit, she looked far less frail than she did in clothing. Today she looked positively gargantuan to Dave. Her disbelieving gaze flitted from boy to girl, and, finally, settled on the girl. Her black eyes glittered with a snake's hatred. Her voice hissed.

"You harlot! You unspeakable little slut." She cursed the Smith girl with words he had never heard her use before.

Betty was white-faced and scared. She bent and gathered up her dotbing from the floor. "I'd better get out of here," she muttered.

Mary Pitts stared around the room wildly. Her hands were convulsing, the fingers itching to punish the strumpet in a fitting fashion. Then her eyes lit on the thin, hickory walking stick standing in a corner. With a cry of angry exultation, she picked it up and rushed at the girl. Betty was struggling into her panties, but in her haste they were tangled low on her thighs. Her buttocks were thrust out prominently, an inviting target for the enraged mother.

The hickory stick whistled down in a wide arc, cracking Betty squarely across the plumpest portion of her buttocks. She leaped a foot off the ground, arms and legs flailing in torment It felt as though a hot poker had been drawn across her tender, pink flesh. The pain rocketed around in her belly and shot up her spine and down into her toes. She tripped over the tangled panties and went down on hands and knees, with her bare bottom stall offering a vulnerable target for Mrs. Pitts. She swung the stick again, branding a second thick, red welt across the plump cheeks just below the first one. Betty screamed in agony and pitched forward on her face. She clutched at her buttocks, trying to calm the screaming flesh. This time when Mary Pitts swurig the stick, it smashed Betty's hands and fingers. The girl moaned and fainted. She was lying on the floor as if she were dead when

Bart Smith burst into the room. A towel was knotted around his waist. "What's going on here?" he demanded. "I was in the shower when I heard someone screaming." Abruptly he spotted his daughter's abused body on the rug. His heavy, square face was stricken. "My baby! What have you done to her?"

Mary Pitts lifted the stick to strike the prostrate girl again, but Smith was on top of her like an angry bull. "You sadistic witch! I ought to kill you!" He wrested the stick away from her.

Yowling like a cat, she clawed at his face. "She seduced my little boy," she cried. "She's evil and lecherous. He's just a child."

As her nails raked his one cheek, Smith hit her with the flat of his powerful hand on the side of the head. Mary went crashing into the wall with a jolt that shook the rafters. Stunned, and with blood seeping from one nostril, she collapsed on the floor.

The big, angry man turned to young Dave, who was rooted to the same spot he had been in when he first got off the couch. He blinked at the naked boy and then looked at his daughter who was coming out of her swoon. "Seduced?" he said vaguely, as the import of what Mary Pitts had charged sunk into his brain. His face was swollen and red with fury as he examined the boy.

By some perverse alcherny of emotion, his tumescence had not been the least bit affected by his mother's unceremonious arrival or by his growing terror for the raging father who confronted him now. It was not passion. It was more like paralysis. His body was in a state of suspended animation occasioned by shock and fright. Bart Smith misinterpreted what he saw.

"You brazen little bantam rooster. Seduced you, did she? More like it that you raped her! I'll put a dent in your hide that you won't soon forget." He slashed the stick across the boy's nude loins.

Dave howled in agony. It felt as if his body had been cut in half by a scimitar. As he staggered around the room doubled over and coddling his smarting flesh, Smith flailed him on the buttocks and the backs of his legs with the cruel hickory stick. He might have killed the boy if his daughter had not restrained him.

Grabbing his arms, she cried, "Don't hit him any more! Please, it wasn't his fault."

The words finally registered, and Smith slumped. The stick clattered to the floor. He covered his eyes with his hands. "She was right then?" he groaned. "You did seduce him."

Bursting into tears, Betty ran from the house, naked.

Eyes glazed, her father followed her with leaden steps.

By this time, Mary Pitts had recovered from the stunning blow he had dealt her. With tears streaming from her eyes, she rushed over to her son and embraced him.

"My little boy," she sobbed. "Oh, I'm so ashamed! This is my fault for neglecting you while we've been up here. I was weak. I fell victim to the sins of the flesh, and this is my punishment. All of your life I've protected you from things like this. What could you know about such things? You're so innocent. That terrible girl took advantage of your goodness and innocence. Still, they say that everything has its purpose. Maybe what happened is for the best It's a good lesson, and you must never forget it. When you sin, you must suffer for it Oh, my poor lamb." She stroked his bruised buttocks and thighs gently. "As soon as Mama puts some soothing lotion on you, we'll get out of this vile place."

Just before they left in a taxi for the station, Dave spied a peach-colored pile of fluff underneath the couch. He retrieved Betty's panties and held them up. In the scuffling they had been kicked out of sight. They were soft and fragrant with the perfume of her body. A twinge of sweet remembrance stirred in the boy's loins, even though his flesh still ached from the beating her father had given him. Looking around furtively, to make sure his mother wasn't watching, he jammed the panties into his pocket

It was the first fetish in a collection that would grow to almost a hundred items of intimate feminine lingerie in the space of the next ten years.

Until he met his wife, Louise, Dave Pitts attempted no further sexual relations with women after that hideous afternoon at the lake. Only in his daydreams did he indulge his physical drives. In his fantasies he was safe from brutal consequences such as the kind Betty's father had inflicted upon him. Also, he was safe from his mother's prying eyes.

Through the years, Dave pursued his strange hobby diligently. He would mark the home of some desirable female and stake it out like a detective. Sooner or later, her lingerie would appear on the clothesline, and Dave would filch a brassiere or a pair of panties or a garter belt. It was his symbolic conquest of the woman herself. Another good source of his fetishes was the park and the lovers' lane on a hill overlooking Lake Erie. An evening prowling these sites was always good for a pair of panties or two. The starry-eyed girls seldom missed them.

Later, in the darkness of his room, Dave would recapitulate the passionate scenes he had seen on the park grass or on the seats of parked cars. Only, in his improvisations, the man making love to the girl would be Dave Pitts. Holding the panties, which had recently contained the vibrant buttocks and loins of a woman, against his body was almost as good as holding the live female herself. Or so he thought until he met Louise.

Dave Pitts could have had women galore before Louise. He was tall, slim and handsome with a mop of unruly, dark hair and a charming smile. At the shoe store where he worked, salesgirls and women shoppers were continually giving him the eye. Pleasant and friendly to all of them, he never snapped at the bait.

With Louise, he had no choice. She was an aggressive, uninhibited girl with a healthy animal desire for love. It was she who arranged their first date. It was she who engineered their first kiss. It was her forceful sensuality that convinced Dave that he might be able to lead a normal sex life. The deciding factor was the death of his mother. After that, Louise became a mother substitute to him. Before their marriage, she thoroughly enjoyed the role. The maternal instinct is equally as strong as the mating instinct in females.

Dave himself confused the two, lumped them together, really. He disposed of his collection, took a deep breath and proposed to Louise.

It was all perfect until their nightmarish wedding night. After hours of frantic foreplay on their wedding couch, they had given up in despair. Dave was totally impotent. The bride fell asleep, muffing her frustrated sobs in her pillow. Dave lay awake all night staring at the blank ceiling, as the horrible reality came clear to him. He loved Louise as he had loved his mother. He didn't need or want her lovely woman's body. Not in the disgusting way he had wanted the body of the girl when he was fourteen. That kind of relationship could mean nothing but pain for him. He still bore faint scars on his rump to prove it. He looked at the chair where, hours earlier, Louise had eagerly cast off her trousseau lingerie, a white lace brassiere and frilly, white lace panties. He could make them out clearly in the moonlight, as fragile and wispy as spider webs.

For the first time that night, he experienced the uncoiling of desire in his belly, the desire that all of his wife's ardent kisses and caresses had been unable to produce. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and sobbed silently to himself. Nothing had changed. His sexual responses could only be activated by the symbol, the fetish.

In daylight, he tried to deny the inevitable. He would not revert to that form of satisfaction. Time and time again, he tried to make love to his bride, but it always ended in failure. In the last few weeks, they had given up trying. He guessed it was only a matter of time before she would divorce him.

On the day the plague crippled Coaltown, his old desires nagged at him with special compulsion. The girls and young matrons who came into the store for shoes were all infected with the restless excitement that infected the city. Some of them made bold advances to the handsome young clerk in spoken innuendoes and in brazen actions. They would giggle and wiggle about when he handled their feet and legs, purposely allowing their short skirts to ride high on their silken thighs. Dave was treated to intimate glimpses of white flesh above the tops of their stockings-and much more. His head was swimming with images of lace and satin, frills and bows. By the time the day was over, his fingers were itching for the sensuous feel of a piece of lingerie.

He ate a quick supper alone in the apartment. The fact that Louise was not home from work and hadn't phoned did not concern him. She was no longer even real to him. As soon as it was dark, he left the house and headed for the park, heart beating in anticipation. He had all the excitement of a young man going to keep a date with a desirable and willing girl.