Chapter 5
Joe Rudin was thin, full-lipped, good-looking young man in his middle twenties. Before he began working for Marc Ferris Enterprises, Inc., he had been a dance instructor in a studio that was part of a well known nationwide chain. As a dancer he had poise, grace, and an instinctive knowledge of the ways of women. He had personality-the kind needed to open them up, overcome their bashfulness and make them feel flattered, so that they came back for more lessons. It seldom took more than three lessons before they were ready to go to bed with him, but Joe was very selective and a lot of them he just flirted with, playing them along. When he found one he really liked, he would teach them everything that wasn't in the book of dancing instructions.
New steps. Old steps.
Vertical and horizontal motions. All kinds of things.
Joe Rudin knew the book so well, as far as women were concerned, that he had thrown it away long ago and written several of his own. He had been around, mostly around women, ranging from fourteen to forty. He had all the love techniques and lore of an Italian beach boy, a Hong Kong gigolo. He was having a lot of fun as a low-pay dance instructor, and it had never occurred to him to convert his store of knowledge to profit in the form of regular paychecks. Then he read this ad in the paper for dancing instructors in some new kind of charm school or something like that. The advertised starting pay was better than he was getting in the studio he was working for, and the qualifications seemed strict, so out of a desire to improve his lot a bit, personal pride, and curiosity, he went to the address given in the ad to be interviewed.
The address, of course, was that of Marc Ferris Enterprises, Inc.
There were six other guys waiting ahead of him in the office that day, but Joe wasn't worried. Talent will out, he thought-he had a lot of confidence in his ability as a dance instructor.
Naturally. He was a perfectionist.
He was also younger than any of the men anxiously waiting for interviews, but this didn't bother him either. Youth has an edge, he figured-an advantage. Youth is cool. You didn't have to wait till you were fifty to be President any more. All you needed was brains and a good smile. He had both.
To kill time while he waited, he went to the men's room down the hall and smoked part of a marijuana cigarette. He always carried a joint or two around with him for occasions like these, when you got hung-up waiting for somebody or something. And he knew how to pace a smoke, so that he would be detached and yet in full possession of his faculties. In other words, cool.
He was cool when his turn came and he walked into the office of Marc Ferris. He had on a neat gray sharkskin suit hand tailored, a shiny pair of black patent leather dancing pumps with pointed toes, an off-white Brooks Brothers shirt and a charcoal gray five dollar imported silk tie. A matching handkerchief hung at a carelessly correct angle of the jacket breast pocket. The pumps shone like the zircon on his ring finger. His hair was black and wavy. His teeth gleamed and his dark eyes sparkled with youthful animation, ready to please and impress.
He stopped about ten feet from the desk in the inner office, wondering if he had made a mistake. Marc Ferris couldn't have been a woman. Could she?
No-not a gorgeous blonde with a pair of headlights big enough to blind you, a face from a magazine cover.
"Please sit down, Mr. Rudin," the face said.
He walked the remaining ten feet and sat down.
The face put on a pair of glasses and in a very business-like manner went over item by item the application form he filled out a couple of hours ago, checking on his personal history and employment record. Her voice was brisk and efficient and no-fooling-around; he found himself answering the questions in like manner, and dropped the smile he had been wearing for a more studied, serious look Finally the glasses came off again and she looked at him, a long, coldly appraising look, as though she were trying to stare right through him. Her eyes were like ice, he thought. Or the eyes of a Persian cat. But since she was only a broad, he returned the stare without wavering.
"You're very young," she said at last.
He allowed a faint curt of the lips upward. "I consider that an advantage. And there was no age stipulation in the ad."
Her face relaxed just a bit; he felt he might be getting through to this strange female, whoever she was.
"No, there wasn't," she said. "But we're not looking for immature types either, whether they're eighteen or eighty."
He let that one go.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" he said.
"No. Have one of these." She pointed to a silver tray on the desk. He took one from it and lit it with a matching lighter.
"Well, do you want to see me execute a few steps, Miss-"
"My name isn't important to you. I'm merely doing the interviews; you'll be dealing with Mr. Ferris if we should decide to hire you. Since your application indicates three years experience as an instructor in a nationally known studio, it won't be necessary for a demonstration, Mr. Rudin."
Joe Rudin was surprised at that, but even more surprised by the next question.
"Have you ever been busted, Mr. Rudin?"
The familiar slang word for arrest sounded so strange coming from her lips that his jaw fell momentarily open.
"You mean arrested?" he said, just to make sure he had heard right.
"That is correct, Mr. Rudin. If you have any kind of a record, you'd better tell me right now."
He contemplated lying to her for only a brief moment-something in her voice made him certain that it would pay in the long run.
"I ran with a gang once when I was sixteen. Got picked up a couple of times on suspicion, that's all."
"No convictions?"
"None."
"You dress well. How do you afford such clothes on the sixty dollars a week you were making on your last job?"
He smiled. She wanted to get cute; okay, he'd get cute.
"Women like me," he said. "They often give me things."
To his surprise, she simply nodded at this fact without any expression at all.
"In other words, you're something of a small-time gigolo."
That got him angry, the way she said it. "Hey listen sister-"
"Sit down, if you wish this interview to continue."
"But-"
"Mr. Rudin!"
He sat down, both cowed and curious.
"Now then," she proceeded. "You say women like you-that's good. Precisely what types of women?"
"Oh, all kinds. Young, old, rich and poor. You get all kinds coming into a good studio. Not just dried-up high school teacher virgins, either. Rich broads looking for a quick easy affair, stuff like that. Say, what kind of an interview is this?"
She ignored the question and shot him another: "Why do women like you, Mr. Rudin?"
His eyes widened wonderingly, but the answer came easily enough: "They like the way I make love to them."
Again she nodded. "And they give you money?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes clothes, jewelry, a watch-sometimes just themselves." He thought she was crazy, but now he was interested.
"I see. You must be fairly good at satisfying them, then."
"I am."
"How good?"
His face slipped into an easy grin.
"Very good. What they don't know, I teach them." He gave her an insolent leer, which she ignored.
"You're not very modest," she commented.
He sat forward in his chair. "Look, sister, what kind of a deal is this? I can be modest as hell, but not when you ask questions like that."
"Questions like that," said the interviewer, "are precisely what I have to ask in order to determine your qualifications for this job."
"As a dance instructor?"
"That's what the ad said, Mr. Rudin. But there's more to it, as you may have guessed. Are you still interested?"
He sat back, the smile returning to his lips. "I certainly am," he said.
"Very well," she said, and pressed a button built into the top of the desk.
A door in the side of the room opened and another woman walked out. Joe turned to look at her. His jaw fell slack for the second time that afternoon. She had jet black hair, a pretty, red-lipped oval face, and a wild, wild little body.
She was absolutely naked.
"This," the blonde said, "is Miss Asher."
Joe Rudin swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.
"How do you do," he said weakly.
Miss Asher just nodded, standing there in all her five-foot five naked glory. She had small, upturned breasts, a tiny waist, wide flaring hips and enticingly curved legs.
"Miss Asher is the second part of the interview," the blonde woman informed him. "So far you are the first candidate to have gotten this far, Mr. Rudin. If you should be successful with this portion of the interview, the job will be yours."
What job? he thought wildly-but it wasn't the time to ask the question.
"I'm ready," he said, convinced by now that he had gotten mixed up with a completely screwball operation. But the naked fact of Miss Asher was not to be met with any quibbling. He got to his feet. "Just tell me where."
"In that room. You will find the proper facilities with which to prove your eligibility for the position I have in mind in there. I can inform you now that the pay is slightly higher than that we advertised-approximately twice the amount, in fact, to start. Shall we proceed?"
The question was hardly necessary. He was already following the brunette into the room she had come from. And his future employer was bringing up the rear.
It was the jazziest washroom he had ever seen, complete with shower, sink, clothes closet, and, lastly but not leastly, a broad flat and backless leather couch with a pronounced convex curve to it. He had never seen one quite like it, but it was built for an obvious purpose.
A very obvious purpose.
And if there was any doubt at all about this purpose in his mind, it was dispelled when the lovely Miss Asher reclined on its handsome length, arranging herself in a relaxed but ready-for-anything position.
He stood there a minute, feeling his palms sweating. Making love was one thing, but making love on instant order to pass a job qualification test was something new to his experience.
"I, uh, guess I better get undressed," he said, feeling very foolish immediately after he said it.
"I would say that's rather necessary, wouldn't you Mr. Rudin?" the blonde said, twisting the needle a little. And to his amazement she took a clipboard hanging from a near wall and a pencil and sat down with them-in a chair placed not three feet away from the couch where the model reclined.
My God, Joe Rudin thought; the crazy dame's going to take notes.
In fact, that was precisely what she was preparing to do, the glasses back on her face now and the pencil poised over the clipboard.
Joe Rudin had a headful of questions. All kinds of questions concerning this unbelievable deal, as he carefully removed and hung on hangers in the closet his tie, jacket, short and pants. Shoes, socks and underwear came last, and though he worked quickly he made sure to arrange his things so as not to wrinkle them, not wanting to spoil a good first impression just in case this deal turned out to be for real. That, of course, was hard to believe-and he didn't really believe it, for that matter. But he was certainly going through with the second part of the interview, no matter what.
He wouldn't have missed that for the world.
Not by a long shot.
When he was finished undressing, he was ready. When he turned around he made sure his blonde critic took note of that.
She did.
She looked at him with an inscrutable expression, but the pencil trembled a little as it moved on the sheet of lined paper clipped to the clipboard. And then Joe moved to the foot of the couch.
Miss Asher looked up at him admiringly, a new shine to her eyes. Joe turned and looked at Cynthia Lockhart. His face was now absolutely deadpan.
"What would you like to see first, ma'am?" he said politely.
It was the first time he had managed to get any rise out of her at all-she turned definitely pink about the ears and throat. But the face still withheld any expression.
"Whatever you prefer, Mr. Rudin," she said coolly.
And that was when Joe Rudin decided to show her something he had learned from an immigrant Chinese girl who had worked in a Shanghai pleasure palace since the age of twelve.
To do so, he had to shove the couch against the wall. And then he grasped the model by the leg and waist and began to arrange her using the wall as a prop for her feet. The girl yelped with surprise, but when she saw what was going to happen she grew interested.
"I'm not an acrobat," she breathed.
"I'll make you one," he grinned, and, holding her, he began to caress and stimulate her.
She sighed and her heels began kicking in a staccato series of thumps.
"Oh, oh, oh! Oh please, please-"
He climbed up on the couch then, and took her.
Miss Asher turned into a thrasher. The wall became a sounding board for the intense rhythm of his practiced ardor, and the model's face began turning bright red, both from the peculiar manner in which he was stimulating her and from the fact that her blood was rushing to her face.
He made that last for a long time, and when he felt the mounting wave of her desire break over the retaining wall, he let go. She slid down the wall, sighing.
After that, he did other things. Just about everything you could do on a couch, in fact, and he was ready to demonstrate his athleticism in other places, such as on the floor or seated in a chair-but the interviewer finally called a halt.
"That will be quite enough, Mr. Rudin. You may use the shower and get dressed now. Can you be here at nine o'clock tomorrow morning?"
He told her he could.
When she closed the door he turned to Miss Asher and gave her a wink.
"You were great, baby! Want to go one more round?"
"You're out of your mind, man," she groaned. "I'm going home, and take me a nice warm bath to get the knots out of my arms and legs!"
"Mad?"
"God no, honey!"
"How about supper at your place then.-"Well ... If you promise to behave yourself."
"I will-till after supper."
She smiled, turning to him as she hooked her bra in front of the mirror. "We'll eat late, then. But come on-and my name's Lillie."
"Joe, Lillie. I'll buy the steaks on the way. You can tell me what this crazy deal's all about, then."
She laughed, breasts jiggling. "Man, I think you just got a job as a teacher in a very private school for call girls."
"You mean it's not all just a big put-on?"
"No, baby-it's strictly a top-level deal. Let's go; I'll tell you about it on the way."
"I'm all ears."
And that was how he got the job.
Marsha Kinsted awoke at eleven-thirty on the morning following her Village debauch with her friend and fellow call girl, Jerri Thornton.
She was alarmed at the lateness of the hour. Somebody or other named Mr. Rudin was supposed to drop in to see her some time before noon, and here she was with her head feeling as though it were full of wet sawdust.
She struggled out of bed, slipped into a bathrobe and went into the bathroom.
She yawned in the mirror, squirted paste half on her toothbrush and jammed it into her mouth, almost losing an incisor. Her head ached dully and even toothpaste couldn't remove all the fur from her tongue and mouth. She had to splash cold water in her face to get her eyes permanently open, whereupon she searched the medicine cabinet. Mercifully, someone had left a bottle with a few aspirins there. She grabbed it and swallowed three of them.
It was a hell of a way to begin the first day of school, no matter how you looked at it.
Damn, she thought. Why did I take those last ten drinks last night?
But that was only begging the fact of her hangover. She didn't have time, but she had to take a shower anyway; her body felt stale and sweaty, and she needed it to get the circulation going. Better to be caught in a shower than this way, she thought-and then laughed at the thought.
She wondered if it would matter.
A few minutes later she was in the tub, taking a piping hot shower and lathering herself with scented soap from head to toe, the plastic shower cap over her hair tightly to protect it from getting wet.
The warm water excited her breasts, particularly the nipples, which she lathered with her fingers, enjoying the pleasing sensation. Her breasts felt good in her hands-she squeezed them, teasing the nipples erect and examining them fondly. They were damn good breasts by any standard, she thought proudly. And so was 'he rest of her, she thought as she soaped her legs, massaging the muscles alive under the hot stream.
Thoroughly rinsed, she switched the water abruptly to cold. She yelped with the sensation, doing a little dance under the hard stream of cold water, which nearly took her breath away. After a minute of this, she shut off the tap and stepped out.
A few minutes later, she had toweled and powdered and was sitting in front of her vanity mirror wearing a pale green silk dressing robe, making up her face and brushing out her chestnut locks. She felt much better, and when her downstairs buzzer rang, it was with a more normal sort of panic that she jumped up to give an answering buzz.
That will be Mr. Rudin, she thought. He'll see me like this, in a dressing robe-but after all, isn't that a correct outfit to wear?
It seemed so to her, and since she had no time to squeeze into anything more formal anyway, she concentrated on shaping the outline of her lips with a lipstick brush, making sure they were perfect, a deep darkish red.
Then she was up and answering the tap on her door.
Joe Rudin was younger then she had expected and at first glance seemed just a shade out of character for a representative of the Ferris caliber of instructors. But he was handsomely dressed in a lightweight olive-colored Dacron summer suit, cream shirt and black slim tie, and he removed his matching short brim straw deferentially as he stood in the doorway.
"Miss Kinsted?"
"Yes-come in please, Mr. Rudin." Inside, she found herself nervously edgy, not knowing what to expect. But he soon put her at her ease. "Call me Joe, honey. Just get up?" She blushed a bit. "Yes-I know it's terrible, but I did a bit of celebrating last night. The name's Marsha."
"Marsha. Fine; don't feel guilty about it. In this profession you won't be getting up much before noon anyway." He tossed his hat on the sofa and sat down. "You're a lovely girl, Marsha. As your instructor I'm supposed to be more stiff and formal, but I thought I'd get that remark out of the way. Mind walking around a bit?"
"Like this?" She paced back and forth in front of the sofa where he sat, appraising her.
"That's beautiful. They said you'd been a model, but even some of them don't walk right-they put it on a little too much. How's your dancing?"
"Oh, fair."
"It's going to be perfect when I finish with you. I'm the dance pro, in case they didn't tell you. You've got to know everything from the black bottom to the latest teen-age craze."
Marsha found a smile, overcoming her nervousness. "They're really thorough, aren't they?"
"It pays-for you and for them. Social skill, you know-and you'd be surprised what they do at foreign embassy cocktail parties. They may hate Americans the world over, but they dig the dancing and the music the most. And after taking a good look at you, Baby, I'd say you're going to be entertaining at some of the best shindigs."
"You're very flattering."
"Don't get a swelled head. How's your bossa nova?"
"Primitive, I'm afraid. But I thought that went out."
"It did, for awhile. But it's a variation of the samba, and that's a basic step, been around a long time. The way I teach, you start with the toughest and work back to the simple stuff. That way you get to see where everything comes from."
"Are you my only instructor?"
"Oh, no. Would that I were, hon. There's three others who'll show you, um, other things. Older guys, you know. Ever handle a weirdo?"
Marsha thought quickly of the night before, and Mr. Foxx.
"I've seen the action," she said.
"But never handled it. Good. Hell, with your looks and movement there's going to be no sweat." He reached over and twisted the knob of a small radio on the end table. After a few moments he got some Latin dance music, and stood up.
"Can you do this?"
"I'll try."
He took her in his arms and they began moving to the rhythm. It was a fairly intricate step, and after a few moments of dancing with him she realized she was really outclassed.
"I didn't know I was so terrible," she laughed.
"You're not bad. You've got natural rhythm." He laughed too then. "You know, I used to have to say that to all my clients when I was just a dance instructor, but now I can level with a chick. Your sense of rhythm's good, honey-you just need a clearer idea of what the steps have to do with the music."
"Well teach me-I'm ready to learn."
"Not here. We go downtown for that."
"Then I'll have to change."
"Not right away."
"No?"
"No." He sat down again, smiling up at her. "You see, I sort of got ahead of myself when you opened the door and I got a look at you, Marsha. The first thing I was supposed to tell you is that you're supposed to treat all the instructors from the school exactly as though they were clients."
"Oh, I see," she said a little sarcastically.
He shrugged. k "It makes sense, honey. In the first place, you've got to know how to greet a John who calls on you in the morning, like I did."
"How interesting. And just how do I do that?"
"Depends on the John. When you get to know him, you'll know how to treat him. But I'm talking about the first time. First impression and all that, see?"
"Am I dressed wrong?"
"No-that was good. A guy calls on a girl in the morning and early afternoon. He finds her in a lovely green dressing robe, as though she might just have gotten out of bed-only her hair's combed and her face is made up and she looks beautiful-like you do. That excites him all to hell. If he's a young guy, he pictures himself getting next to a real woman of the world. An older guy simply finds it charming, and he's eager as hell already." He grinned widely. "Like me," he added.
"Well I seem to have done that right, then. What next?"
"Next you offer him a cup of coffee."
"I'm not set up for housekeeping yet."
"That's okay-I was just telling you. I had coffee-and before I fell up anyway. Now, if the John calls later than two in the afternoon, say, you offer him a drink instead. How's your mixology?"
"Even more primitive than my dancing."
"Okay, it's good you tell me these things-well have to work on that, too. You don't have to be a bartender, but you have to know how to make basic cocktails and things well. I won't show you that, but I'll leave word with Miss Ritter. She's the expert in that department."
"Miss Ritter?"
"Yeah-a female instructor. Surprised?"
"Not at anything any more."
"Good. Now, let's go into the bedroom." He got up and put his arm around her waist, tugging at the robe.
"Do I get rushed off like this by the real Johns?" she said.
"As far as you're concerned, I am a real John, honey-remember that. Now, let's go."
Since it wasn't her place to argue the matter, she let him lead her off into the bedroom. The sheets were pulled aside and there was still a little hollow where she had curled in sleep the night before.
Standing behind her by the bed, he pulled her robe down around her shoulders and began kissing her softly about the neck and back. The music still came faintly from the other room, and though she hadn't felt a bit excited since he had appeared, she now felt the small hairs on the nape of her neck rise with the delicately sensuous sensation his lips wrought.
He turned her around in his arms then and began kissing her almost bare breasts. She began to feel a tingle, a glow, as, holding her by the waist, he bent her backward, arching her over the bed and uncovering the nipples.
He kissed them each, very gently at first, and then more and more forcefully. "Ohhh!"
She was definitely excited now, and again she wondered if this should be. But she stopped thinking about that when he firmly pulled the robe the rest of the way off her body and lowered her to the bed.
"Some guys," he said, "get embarrassed at this point-the undressing. You've got to detect that and put them at their ease by making the right kind of conversation, or touching them-whatever comes to you. Take a kid, the son of an out-of-town businessman, ior example, who's doing this for the first time. He might become all flustered and excited. He's worrying about whether or not he can satisfy a swell looking babe like you. Now maybe you feel bored as hell with the whole thing, but you've got to see this and make him think you're getting the biggest charge in the world out of him. That's not so tough, once you get used to it. If the kid turns you off, think about something else-but talk and act like you were just thrilled with him, and unless he's impotent, things won't be too bad."
There was nothing bashful about her instructor, however. Stripped, he turned and walked to the bed, and Marsha saw that there wouldn't have to be any preliminary teasing on her part.
None whatsoever.
At least he was not a grabber, she thought to herself as he lay down on the soft mattress. He kissed and caressed her breasts, cupping their ripe circumferences in his nimble fingers and squeezing them and biting at the rosy red tips until they swelled into stones of desire.
"You certainly know what you're doing," she gasped.
"Mmm. You're peaches and cream, baby. This one's for me, and to hell with the school."
He placed his flat palm against her soft back then, and with his lips still on her breast began a firm supple rotating motion, gathering her flesh in his strong fingers, that started a pulse beating for her.
The love pulse.
His hand slipped then, and began massaging her in another place.
The hand felt as though it were spinning her around like a propellor.
Faster and faster.
"Ahhhh!" she sighed. He was good, really good. He knew his business, and took care of her with the expertise of a confident artist. He was the greatest advertisement for good old American know-how going. He was fine.
She hardly noticed the rush of his taking her. He was just all of a sudden, working, stronger and stronger. Faster and faster. Better and better.
Then he slowed down just as gradually, leaving her poised at the threshold of fulfillment.
"Oh," she sighed, "is the lesson-over?"
He chuckled softly in her ear. "Not hardly, baby-I'm just beginning."
"My God-you're fantastic."
"You behave like a bunny yourself."
"I love this."
"How about a lesson in rhythm?"
"Yes, yes-anything you say, Joe!"
The music was still coming in from the other room, a Spanish speaking local station.
It was perfectly suited for the kind of lesson he wanted to give her.
He began matching its rhythms. Just the basic beat at first, firm, quick.
Then he began embellishing. Alternating with short, off-beat excursions between, catching the intricacy of the music with his body actions.
He was a professional in every sense of the word.
He swayed, moved, rotated, changed positions without missing a beat, moved her all over the wide expanse of bed just as though the two of them were dancing.
They were.
They were doing a dance of pure desire. The dance became a marathon, damn near shaking the bed apart. She felt herself rising, higher and higher and higher. Higher.
He was like the live end of a high voltage wire. She cried out as the rhythm became impossible, faster and faster.
And then the whole damn room seemed to explode and go up in smoke.
She screamed once, and then that was over.
A few minutes later they were smoking cigarettes together, in the aftermath of their furious bout.
"That was quite a lesson," she said after awhile.
"Thanks," he answered. "But you turned out to be a star pupil. A teacher's pet." And he reached over and petted her affectionately.
"Now," he said, "I think we better get dressed and go have something to eat. We've got work to do this afternoon."
"Work?", she smiled. "You know, that's a strange word for that Joe."
He nodded, agreeing.