Chapter 4

I sat down in a creaky old armchair with the stuffing leaking out. I felt like a patient in a goddam dentist's office, waiting for his turn. Chuck went into the bedroom and shut the door. Damn discreet of him to shut the door.

I crossed my legs and fidgeted and stared at the baby, who woke up and stared malevolently back at me. The brat didn't start crying, which was one good thing. If he had, I would probably have busted out bawling myself, I was so keyed up.

Maybe five minutes went by, crawling, and then the bedroom door opened. I could hear water running in a sink inside.

Chuck came out. He was smiling, a pleasant tranquil smile. "Okay, Burnside. Your turn."

"Was it-okay?"

"I don't think you'll have any complaints."

I got up, nearly fell flat on my face from sheer funk, and walked around him. I kept telling myself, Pull yourself together, Burnside. This is the night you become a man. At long last.

I walked into the bedroom. Chiquita was lying on the unmade bed, her arms behind her back. She was naked all over. I took a good long slow look. It was the first time I had ever seen a naked woman close up, in the flesh, and I was curious.

She was on the slim side, and built small, fine-boned. I doubt that she was much more than five feet tall. Her breasts were small but perfect, high and round and jutting forward, and the little dark tips stood up stiffly. I was a little surprised-I don't know why I should have been-to see an appendectomy scar on her side.

I must have been standing there an awfully long time, staring at those breasts and bare hips and slim thighs, because finally she grinned at me and said, with a touch of impatience, "Five dollar?"

"Oh-yeah. Sure."

I snapped out of my daze and took the crumpled-up bill from my pocket, putting it on the dresser next to another fiver which must have been Chuck's. Then I advanced on wobbly legs toward the bed. Feeling about as self-conscious as I ever want to feel, I dropped my trousers and lay down.

For an instant nothing happened. A shaft of fear and panic ran through me and, horror-stricken, I thought it was going to be a total fiasco. But I guess it was just nerves. I felt Chiquita's fingers touching me, expertly, professionally, and then everything was all right. She drew me to her. She whispered in heavily accented English, "Don't be afraid." I wondered if Chuck had coached her to say something like that.

It was over almost before I knew what was happening. I felt her stiff-tipped breasts poking into my chest, felt her warm thighs gripping my body. Then our bodies moved rhythmically for a few moments, and I felt a quick delicious shuddering in my vitals, and that was it. I closed my eyes. I wanted to go to sleep pillowed on those warm breasts. I felt cheated because it was over so quickly.

Chiquita grasped my shoulder. "Ees all," she said.

I realized that if I stuck around any longer I'd be preventing her from earning her living. I got up, unsteadily; my legs were shaking. She pointed to an adjoining bathroom. I nodded, went in, and washed up. Coming out, buttoning up my trousers, I saw that Chiquita was already getting dressed. She still looked pretty and petite, but now I saw something new I hadn't noticed before-her face was hard, sullen, commercial. She was nothing but a whore, and a cheap one at that-though not half so cheap as she should have been, in these days of inflation. She was into her bra already.

I walked toward the bedroom door, wondering if I was supposed to say good-by. I decided not to say anything. I turned around and smiled, but Chiquita was too busy getting dressed to smile back. She was in a hurry to get out to her street corner again and solicit the next patron.

Chuck didn't say a word to me until we were out on the street. Then he said, "Well? You didn't have any complications, did you?" No.

"And was it all it's cracked up to be?"

I hesitated a moment. "No," I finally said.

"It never is, the first time. Especially when it happens that way. But it get's better. It's better when it's free, and better when it's a girl you know. And better when you can take your time."

"I suppose," I said. I felt very tired, and tremendously let down. But at least now I was a man. I wondered if it showed on my face-if the people walking past us as we headed northbound back to Metropolitan could read at a glance that I had just been made for the first time.

"It gets so you can't do without it," Chuck was going on. "Me, I start to go crazy a little bit if I don't every other night. My body's all toned up, you see. It's just as important as eating or breathing, to me."

"And you do every other night?"

"Of course."

I blinked at the idea of getting made three or four nights a week, every week. It was a kind of sexual activity that seemed utterly impossible to attain.

"How do you do it?" I asked naively. "I mean-you must spend half your time finding girls--"

"It's an art and a science both, Burnside," he said. "But you'd be surprised how much is sitting around waiting to be had. You'd be amazed at some of the things that go on all around you."

"Such as?"

He shook his head. "Better not ask. When the time comes, I'll tell you. If you're interested, that is. But it's all hush-hush."

"You're mystifying me," I said.

"I mean to. Burnside, I take an almost paternal interest in you. I hope you appreciate that. Do you?"

"Sure, Chuck. But-"

"And I have great delights planned out for you. Only don't rush things, hear me? I've got to talk to certain people, make certain arrangements. Meantime you do the same."

"I wish I knew what the hell you were talking about," I said irritatedly.

"Bide your time, bide your time. Meanwhile just find yourself a nice co-operative Chesley girl who puts out. Like Marge Halloran. You know her?"

"Yes."

"Make a date with Marge. Call her up right now, maybe. Get to know her better."

I realized I had promised to call Marge anyway sometime tonight. It was curious that Gordon should have suggested her. We stopped in a candy store on 210th Street, and I phoned the Chesley dorms number, asked for seventh floor Morton Hall, then asked for Marge.

"Hold the wire, please," a Chesley broad with a phony Oxford accent told me.

I waited and Marge came to the phone. I reminded her who I was, but she hadn't forgotten, and we batted some talk around for a while before I got to the main point. What about Saturday night? It turned out she was busy Saturday night. What about Friday, then. She was free on Friday. I could call for her around eight, she said.

When I was through, I hung up and left the phone booth. Chuck was thumbing through some science-fiction magazines in the rack. I said, "I've got a date with her for Friday night."

"Good going. Now hustle and get yourself a room off-campus so you'll have a place to bring her."

I gawped. "You mean I'm supposed to make her on the first date?"

He smiled paternally. "Any man who doesn't score with Marge Halloran on the first try ought to throw in his towel. You get that girl in bed Friday night, and then try to date her for a week from Saturday. If you do, let me know and I'll arrange something."

"What are you cooking up?"

"Never mind that. Just leave it to me." . We fell silent and walked along until we came to the campus. It was about ten o'clock now, but there were still plenty of goofers in the dorm lobbies. I said goodnight to Chuck, thanked him for his help, and pushed the elevator button. A couple of freshmen were standing next to me-kids about seventeen or eighteen, with soft pink cheeks. They didn't look as if they had been shaving more than once a month yet. I sneered quietly at them. Obviously virgins. Inexperienced. I puffed my chest out, glorying in my new devirginized status, and felt tempted to tell them that I knew the name of a good five-buck girl I could personally recommend, if they were interested. But they didn't look like the type to be interested, and anyway I knew I was acting like a damned fool. I went upstairs to my room, studied without much enthusiasm for an hour, and fell into the deepest, most dreamless sleep I had had in years.

The alarm went off at eight. It was an electric clock, the kind that rings forever if you don't get up to shut it off, and it buzzed for ten minutes before I finally gave up and got out of bed. I felt bushed, but I threw cold water in my face and got dressed and got downstairs not too much later. My first class was at ten, but I had something to take care of before that.

I went over to the dorm office in the lobby of Davis Hall and announced that I was leaving to five off campus. They gave me a battle. There was no reason why they should have been sore, since there's a waiting list a mile long for single rooms of the type I was giving up, but I guess they felt they ought to hassle with me just for the sheer fun of it. After about fifteen minutes of conferring, they decided that it was all right if I moved out, and agreed to give me a refund on the rest of my year's board. If I'd been a freshman, I would have needed a note from home and the permission of the dean, but as a sophomore I could pull out on my own say-so. That gave me a fine adult feeling, let me tell you.

So it was arranged that I would quit the dorms no later than Sunday night, and earlier if it was possible for me to find accommodation before that.

I had a quick breakfast in the cafeteria, killed some time in the Quad with some classmates of mine-I wore a superior glow that was intended to tell them subtly that I was a Great Big Man now-and at ten minutes to ten I ambled over to Michaels Hall for my first class of the day, Contemporary Civilization.

C.C. had been a bore in my frosh year, and I didn't figure it would be any better in its second half. And it was all I could do to keep from falling asleep. The bell rang finally, and I got out, hop-skipping it five blocks up the campus to Stone Hall, at the extreme northern end of the university, for a Zoology session. My mind was not exactly focused on Zoology. I was more or less concentrating partly on the way that Chiquita had looked on top of the bed with nothing on, and partly on the way I conjectured Marge Halloran would look under the same circumstances.

Noontime at last. And two hours free until the Psych class at two-ten.

Chuck had recommended a couple of residence hotels that he said weren't too bad to live in. He himself lived in a fraternity house across the street from the Library on 214th Street, but he said he had been in these hotels often.

The first one he had mentioned was on 213th Street. I walked in and walked out right away. One look at that bug-crawling lobby told me I didn't want to live there.

I went up to 214th Street. The hotel he suggested there was at the end of the block. I walked in. There was a little cubicle of an office just to the left of the front door. A bald-headed man in his fifties or sixties looked up owlishly at me.

"You have any rooms?" I asked. "A few. You from the college?" I nodded.

"Interested in a single or a double?"

"Single," I said.

He took a key from a rack and said, "Come on. I'll show you the best we've got."

We rode upstairs in a slow-moving elevator to the fourth floor. We got out and he led me to a big metal door, which he unlocked. Within were a whole lot of smaller doors. He opened one of these.

"You see, we've got these outer doors for protection, and then there are seven or eight rooms in each section." I understood why. Once, years ago, this had been a fancy apartment house. The management had simply chopped each of the big apartments into a cluster of singles.

He opened the inner door. I saw a room, tolerably clean, containing a single bed, a lamp, a desk, and a small bookcase.

"No sink?" I said.

"You won't find sinks in these rooms. There are two washrooms in each section."

I frowned. At least I had had a sink in my room back in the dorms.

But the room seemed more spacious than the one I had left, cozy and private-looking. Life in the dorms was like living in a goldfish bowl. Always characters running up and down the halls playing touch football in the middle of the night, and you never knew who was going to come busting into your room to say hello or borrow a textbook or maybe to cadge a tube of shaving cream. And, of course, you couldn't bring a girl into your room.

"Let me show you the kitchen," he said. He led me down the hall to a largish room with a refrigerator, a sink, a table, cupboards. The linoleum on the floor was worn and faded. "This is a community kitchen. You'll have your own cupboard space and your own shelf in the refrigerator. Naturally, you won't be allowed to leave messes here-you got to co-operate."

"Naturally," I said. "What's the rent, by the way?"

"Eleven-fifty a week."

I frowned. That threw Chuck's figures some fifty-odd bucks off right at the start. "I was figuring on paying around ten," I said wistfully.

'Sorry. We don't bargain. Take it or leave it."

"Okay. I take."

He grinned, showing worn yellow teeth. "Sometimes when you college boys move in here you ask me if we have any rules about overnight guests in your room."

'Well-do you?"

He nodded solemnly. "It's against the law for two people to spend the night in a hotel room registered for only one. Therefore if you want to do any sleeping around, do it quietly so you don't bring the cops. We have some fussy old ladies living here."

He winked. I knew that he knew what my purpose in moving in here was. I reddened faintly.

"What's your name?" he said.

"Burnside, Jeff Burnside."

"Okay, Burnside. Do you want the room today?"

"How about tomorrow morning?"

"You start paying rent from one o'clock this afternoon," he said. "I don't care when you move m.

We went downstairs and I registered. I gave him eleven-fifty that I had drawn from the dorm office as an advance against the refund I would be getting.

I went back to the dorms, told them I'd be pulling out as soon as I could move, and went for lunch. I met Chuck Gordon in the restaurant.

"I have a room in that place on 214th Street," I told him.

"Good deal. Watch out for the manager, though-he's an old lecher. Likes to make passes at pretty girls who come to visit the tenants."

"He seems harmless enough," I said.

"When are you moving over?"

"I'll pack up this afternoon after Psych," I said.

"Need some help?"

"Wouldn't mind, Chuck." Suddenly I felt tremendously good about things. I was no longer a virgin, I had an apartment all my own where I could bring girls for the purposes of seduction, and in a couple of days I would have a date with a Chesley girl of reputedly easy virtue. I was certainly off to a lightning start in my sophomore year. Everything was going jim-dandy.

I could almost picture the lower classmen whispering behind my back, six months or a year from now. 'That's Jeff Burnside," they would say. "Biggest makeout man on campus. A different girl every night." I was certainly starting off the right way.