Chapter 5
After leaving Melanie Abbott at the bus station that night, Joe Brown had gone immediately to the apartment of his friends Rick and Susan who were living in a comfortable spacious apartment just off the campus grounds. They had invited him to stay permanently, using the spare bedroom, but after a couple of days, he had decided to leave and get a room in the men's dormitory. For one thing, Susan bore a striking resemblance to Melanie, and every time he looked at his friend's wife, she started him thinking about the girl he had met on the bus. This kept him in a continual state of depression. He had checked with the registar's office, asking for the address of a freshmen girl student named Melanie Abbott and they had informed him that there was no such person registered at the university. This had really thrown him into a turmoil.
What the hell had become of her? Had she been lying to him that day on the bus, merely pretending to be an incoming student? If so, why would anyone bother to do such a thing? And if she had not been lying, what on earth had happened to her? People don't just disappear! Yes, as a matter-of-fact, in places like Dallas, people disappear quite regularly, he reminded himself, and it was this that worried Joe most of all. If only he had not let her wander off on her own that night!
There was nothing to be done, of course. He had considered going to the police, but immediately recognized that this was foolish. More likely than not, they would laugh him out of the police station, and if the girl had really disappeared, her family and the university would all be looking for her. There was really nothing that he could do, except sit around and moon over her. That is precisely what he had spent a whole week doing, too!
Really, she had been the nicest looking girl he had ever seen and they could be having a real ball here together. Instead, he was sharing a room with two stupid guys Fred Doyle and Chuck Grant, both rich kids who were freshman students like himself. Naturally they were a few years younger than he since they were entering college fresh out of high school, and from the way they were acting they would probably remain "freshmen" throughout their entire four years of college.
They were both about equally loud and vulger, exactly the same kind of jerks Joe had learned to dislike when he was working on ships. They spent most of their evenings out carousing and drinking instead of studying, and then barged into their dorm as drunk as a pair of skunks, in the wee hours of the morning waking him up while he was trying to get a few hours sleep before an early morning class. The rest of the time, they talked about screwing girls in the most vulgar possible fashion, and in general, did everything they could think of to irritate the "old man," so they called him, who shared their room.
Now the weekend was coming up and he had two whole days staring him in the face! Two days of putting up with Fred and Chuck and their empty headed conversation about broads and booze. Rick and Susan were away for the weekend and he had a standing invitation to use their place, plus a key, so he could go there whenever he wanted, but somehow the idea of spending Friday night in an empty apartment depressed him even more than going out.
Fred was snoring noisily on the couch and Joe Brown looked at him balefully. The young man stayed up virtually all night, every night, banging in and out and disturbing Joe's sleep, and then made up for it by sleeping all the day himself and complaining bitterly whenever Joe snapped his pen. Chuck was out someplace, lining up dates for the night, and Joe longed for the moment when the two of them would take off for their evening's entertainment and leave him alone with his melancholy.
Damn! He thought angrily. If things had worked out properly, he could be headed out for an evening on the town with Melanie at his side. Maybe, if their romance had prospered, the two of them could have set up housekeeping together with Rick and Susan, who had, in fact, suggested that he find himself a girl and move in with them to share the expenses.
He heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall, and groaned inwardly, knowing that this was Chuck coming back to get his friend for their evening's adventures. Now there would be two hour's of commotion while the two of them shaved, changed their clothes, and bragged about all the wild sex they were going to get tonight. Then, finally, they would disappear and drink themselves into a stupor after it was all over.
"Wake up! Up!" proclaimed Chuck coming through the door with his customary crash. "I have something for ya that you are going to be wild about!"
"You'll have to excuse him," explained Fred, looking up sleepily from his couch. "The pressures getting to him, he's gone out of his mind!"
"Come on, up, up. I have made the greatest discovery ever made!"
"What is he talking about?" grumbled Joe, in no mood to listen to Chuck's nonsense.
"He's telling us we're going to get laid, I think," suggested Fred. "Alright, what the hell are you talking about."
"Aha, someone," continued the student, already a little drunk. "I have discovered the address of a house of the most ill repute. They have a most delictable little cunt, just primed and ready for a good fuck. We'll have her for the night if we get our asses over there right now."
"Will you guys get out of here!" snapped Joe with poorly concealed irritation. "I got fifty pages of this book to finish."
"The hell with books," said Fred, now fully awake now. "You spend so much time with your nose buried in those text books that I'm beginning to think that you're losing your touch with the ladies!"
"Yeah, come on, Joe," urged Chuck. "We've got to stay with this guy or somebody'll kill him."
"In his present condition, that somebody, would do mankind a noble service," answered Joe, but he was considering the proposition. He had vowed to himseelf that he would never again pay for it, and he was not about to go back on his promise now. The truth of the matter was that he had spent his whole first week on campus day dreaming about Melanie and studying like hell the rest of the time, and he knew absolutely no one in Dallas except these two jerks. Was an evening in their company better or worse than an evening alone? You could always go along for the ride and make sure that neither one of them got into trouble, he told himself. It would be dull, but he had to get out of this stifling dorm or face the prospect of going clear out of his mind.
"I'll go along to make sure that the two of you get back in one piece, but you'll have to take care of this spectacular dame on your own. I don't indulge when I have to pay for it."
"Hurrah, and keys to my car is yours for the night," raved Fred, tossing him the keys to his new Jaguar sports car. "My father has threatened to disown me if I total another car and I am not in the best of condition now for safe driving."
The standard two hours of preparations were shortened into one since his roommates were both anxious to get on the road, and by ten o'clock, Joe Brown found himself at the wheel of a sleek little sports car that deserved a better owner than Chuck Grant. The two other boys, by now slightly drunk, climbed in as well and Joe took off down the street.
"16 Angeles Court, is the appointed place, my good man. It's clear across town and watch out for the red lights and the boys in blue...."
That address, Angeles Court, rang a bell in Joe's mind, but he could not quite recall where he had heard it before, and after awhile he gave up trying. The neighborhood was distinctly on the seedy side and he worried about someone grabbing the car while they were inside, so he parked it under one of the few street lights which had not been broken. He locked it carefully before slipping the keys into his pocket and followed his two friends inside of Ruby's.
It was a medium slow night at Ruby's, since in the first week of Melanie's residence there, most of the regulars had come by to pay their carnal respects to her and afterwards had gone on their way to spread the word among their friends. A steady trickle of men had been coming and going all day, and Ruby and Gerome were satisfied, knowing that any new product takes time to become established on the market.
"Hi, fellows," Gerome called in a friendly greeting as the three young men walked into the lobby. "See you've heard about our new girl, eh?"
Fortunately Fred was now too drunk to do his imitation of a Texas cowhand, or Gerome would have thrown the three of them out on the street.
"Yeah, hear you've got a little gal here who really puts up a battle before you get to do your stuff," he remarked, wondering hus much this was going to set them all back.
"Twenty-five a throw, gents, and she's all yours. Gonna tackle her all three together or one at a time?"
"I'll sit this one out, if you don't mind," Joe said, looking at the big bouncer a little nervously. "If there's a bar around, I might like a drink while my friends are here uh ... visiting the young lady."
"One of them high and mighty types, eh? Well, I don't mind selling a little booze on the side. Make yourself comfortable, sport, and I'll have somebody bring you a drink. How 'bout you boys?"
"We've had ours, friend. Just lead us to that sweet young cunt!"
"Teamwork, eh? Maybe I'll join you and we'll make it a threesome?" Gerome offered, including himself uninvited in the party because he saw a chance to show off his masculine powers in front of these confident schoolboys. Then he turned to Joe. "If you get lonesome, kid, we'll be right down the hall in that end doorway there. No need to knock 'cause we're all friends here," he said to the good looking young man who had stretched out comfortably on the couch and located an old magazine to read while he waited for his roommates and he nodded to Gerome, breathing a sigh of relief as he disappeared down the hall with Fred and Chuck.