Chapter 4
"Martha-wake up! Hey, snap out of it, honey!"
Martha's eyes flew open. She looked with a startled expression at the girl sitting beside her. She still heard the alligator's hiss, and she saw that the origin of the sound was a small air nozzle in the panel overhead. She became conscious of the thin, strong hand shaking her shoulder, and the clamminess-she was bathed with sweat inside her blouse. Her heart pounded under her breast as if the running had been real.
"Are you all right?" the girl asked.
Martha looked into the dark, almond-shaped eyes and finally completed the transition from dream to reality.
"Yes...I'm all right now. Thanks, Alva."
"For what? All I did was wake you up. I let you whimper and toss around a little, but the way you were yelling just now, it seemed like the right time. That must have been one hell of a dream."
"It was," she said firmly, still breathing hard. The cabin seemed stuffy, as if there weren't enough oxygen in the thin air.
Alva laughed lightly and settled into the high-backed seat with the sleek grace of a jungle cat. The supple curving of spine and neck and the athletic movement of muscles in fine tone gave Martha the odd impression that if she'd possessed Alva's lithe power just now, her dream would have ended differently.
"We should land in another hour or so," Alva said, glancing at the expensive watch adorning her slim wrist. "First time to Colombia?"
"Yes," she said softly. Her breathing came more easily now, as if Alva's presence had the power to calm her.
Martha studied the angular face next to her again, wondering what there had been about it that had drawn her to the Peruvian girl a short time ago. Out of all the empty seats on the jet when she'd boarded in Miami, she'd chosen the one next to Alva, making straight for it as if compelled-as if drawn there by some mysterious power behind the dark eyes that had picked her out of the crowd in the aisle.
Martha saw the texture and color of Alva's skin again. It was creamy and smooth, its beauty heightened by the merest hint of Indian blood. She saw the straight, black, glossy hair, enriched by a fine sheen, like a wild animal's pelt. She noticed the lips that were a little too thin to be soft, the sharp nose and chin, the angular planes of high cheeks and long jaw.
She decided the face wasn't especially pretty-not in the doll-like sense of rosy cheeks and round innocence. It was a striking face, intense-magnetic, even. And behind it, giving it vibrant power, was the strange inner fire that had made Martha respond at first sight on a startlingly elemental level, as if the flames might erupt at any moment and consume her in a blaze of raw passion.
When Alva became aware of Martha's appraisal, she returned it, and the fire burned more brightly behind the dark eyes, until Martha slid her gaze away to the small window and the cloudless expanse of eerie, blue-black sky outside.
"You still look shaken, honey," she said finally. "Are you sure you're all right?"
Martha smiled, feeling a disquieting vulnerability and self-consciousness before her. She brushed gold strands from her face and noticed that her fingers trembled.
"Fm sure," she said.
"Tell me about it," Alva urged. "You shouldn't keep a nightmare like that to yourself."
Martha felt strange under her forceful gaze. "Oh...it wasn't...really, I couldn't."
"I want to hear."
Her eyes were luminous, commanding. Martha looked into them and felt lost in their depths. They were like the pools of black water where her father had taken her fishing in the cypress swamps, full of mystery and the secrets of life, which only now and then would flash to the surface to be revealed.
Alva's presence was compellingly intimate. Her teeth gleamed white and strong between her lips, and there was that exciting sense of sexuality radiating from her again-that primitive rawness that made her more magnetic than her looks alone would merit, as if she were about to unveil some of those secrets that Martha needed to see.
She watched Alva twist her torso around to face her, moving in a completely uninhibited way so that her small, impertinent breasts pushed forth with an eagerness to be cupped. She saw the short skirt rise high on the creamy thighs as if there were no consciousness or care that the shadowy folds of her naked pussy showed.
Martha was shocked by the unexpected sight at first. She was unable to keep from glancing back and forth rapidly several times before she realized that for Alva to hide the source of her passion with the nylon cover of panties would be a bit of false modesty entirely out of agreement with the open invitation in her liquid eyes. Martha stared under the shaded awning of Alva's skirt into the dark grotto of coiling pubes and fixed her sight on the mysterious slit there as if it were a door, swollen shut by soft flesh, beyond which, in the slippery recesses of the dark tunnel it concealed, would lie the answers Martha sought.
She felt Alva's slim hand cover hers again, and squeeze firmly. The fingers were warm and slender, and the animal excitement racing through her body spilled over into Martha's and suffused her with a disturbing sensation. It was like a reawakening for her, a rebirth. The touch and the sight had the effect of taking her back through the years to the time when she had been happy and free-spirited-as she'd been with her father and at the beginning of her dream. She had the feeling that if Alva could go on touching her this way and sharing the animal power that ran through her, then everything in her life would become good again, and the troubles tormenting her mind would sink into the black water depths and vanish forever. She felt there was something in the sleek, sexual, animal grace of Alva that had been snuffed out of her own life just at the time of its budding-the something her father had been trying to place there when she was a girl and that she needed now to face Ken.
Martha stared into the dark eyes and felt herself being drawn deeply into them, falling more under whatever spell of magic Alva was working on her, and she didn't know whether to be frightened or not. The words seemed to swim up from inside her against her will, as if the magnetic power of Alva's presence left her no choice.
"Everything was confused," she began haltingly, hearing her voice come hollowly, as if from a distance. "Real and yet not-as if valid memories and sights had been taken away from my childhood, tossed into a barrel, and spilled out, all blown out of proportion."
"Go on," Alva urged, leaning closer. Her soft eyes wrapped Martha in a dark, magic cloth that was warm.
Martha recounted the dream, knowing that she'd seen all the elements of it before somewhere, but not in one place-all but the farmhouse and the man in the dream who had dragged her mother into it. She'd never seen such a man before.
"Are you certain, Martha?"
She closed her eyes, trying to remember. She couldn't even recall the man's face, and she knew he'd been no specific man-only a conglomeration of impressions her mother had beaten into her young mind day in and day out for years. A balled mixture of notions and parts that had sprouted arms and legs in her dream and become her mother's kind of man-all bad.
"And there was the alligator, Alva," she whispered tensely. "God, it was biting the side of my neck and trying to get me to roll up to meet him. Then the horrible beast-it turned into Ken. Or maybe Ken turned into it, I don't know. Then my mother screamed and... oh, God," she cried, covering her face with her hands.
Alva's arm went about her shoulders, and she felt herself yielding to the slim strength of the girl until she was calm again.
"Have you watched alligators mate before?" Alva asked with curiosity.
"I don't know," Martha said hollowly. "I don't think so."
"Then how would you know what they do?"
"Alva, I can't remember! The musk-that thick, male stench of musk they spray to attract the female-it was so strong it nearly choked me. I must have smelled it before somewhere...." She looked up intently. "Alva, why can't I accept Ken? Why did my dream confuse him with that hideous beast?"
"I don't know, Martha. I wish we could talk about it more. I wish we could be together longer, and I'd show you how to conquer your fear of men." She gave a sensual laugh. "If I taught you the things I know, you'd never be afraid of them again. I'd teach you how to take their pricks into your body and make them give you the pleasure they always want for themselves. I'd show you how to make your virginal pussy so ravenous for meat that the men would be afraid of you for a change. I would teach you all about sex if I were staying with you longer."
Martha looked at Alva, unable to keep from glancing into the shadowy area between her thighs again. She saw that the puffy doors of Alva's slit were swelling open, as if the gleaming tissues of the pussy behind them were getting ready to reveal the tantalizing secrets she sought. She suddenly wanted to stay with Alva and be guided by her sexual strength until all the mysteries and fears were gone.
"But we will be together, won't we-for the next two weeks?"
Alva looked at her in question. "I don't see how. You're stopping off in Bogota, and I'm going on."
"No, I'm on the tour. We stop there for a day and go on to Quito and... aren't you on the tour?"
Alva laughed suddenly and smiled. "My God," she said. "I thought I was the only one on board doing that-the Inca thing?"
"Yes, but...I thought everybody..." She gestured with her arm to indicate the rest of the passengers in the cabin.
"Oh, no," Alva said. "Honey, this is only a normal flight from Miami to Bogota. The tour really starts there, and everything will be different. Did you really expect this kind of luxury all the way for the price you paid?"
"It did seem awfully cheap," Martha admitted. "But the brochure didn't say anything about...."
"You didn't read the small print. I didn't either, but it's probably full of clever wording that made you think the tour had legal recognition in the States. It doesn't, I've seen these outfits come and go like the ice cubes at a party. You can be sure we'll take off tomorrow in some milk bucket with wings and flap all the way to Lima, which is where I'm getting off. If they don't run out of hotel money and if the pilot they've pulled out of whatever long-dead rubber town in the jungle they found him in doesn't go on a drunk, then you might make it across to the east coast and up again. It depends on how many passengers and crates of God knows what they can pick up along the way. A friend of mine has already tried it, and that's the way it goes. His planeload of Yankees crashed into a mountain in Bolivia, and the jungle swallowed it up."
"You're kidding!" Martha exclaimed. She felt stunned. But for some reason, she believed Alva-or wanted to believe her. Then the prospect of an uncertain journey through South America began to seem adventurous instead of bad. She had felt already that two weeks away from Ken wouldn't be long enough. Now, if there was a chance to be stranded down here anyway, then she should be with Alva. She thought recklessly of leaving the tour just to accomplish that.
"Don't let it worry you, honey," Alva said. "If anything happens before we get to Lima, I'll take good care of you."
"But I don't understand, Alva-why would you take a tour like this, living here already, knowing what it's like, knowing that you might not get to Lima? Why didn't you take a regular flight?"
Alva laughed again, and her hand tightened on Martha's. "Because I planned it this way," she said. "The later the better. It was the longest trip I could find to get home without being too obvious about taking my time and without wasting the extra money on some other slow way. I got a wire, you see. I've been at one school or another in the States for the last five years, learning how to become an educated lady the way my father wants me to be, and I got a wire telling me to fly home for the first time because my father has had a stroke, and he may be dying. They sent me lots of money to come by jet, first class, so I took this stinking Inca special, which... who knows? Maybe it will get to Lima sometime this week." She smiled oddly, lifting her shoulders. "Maybe not at all."
"Alva, that doesn't make any sense," Martha cried. "If your father might be dying, then why are you doing this?"
She laughed sharply. Her lips thinned out, and the angles of her face grew sharper. Her eyes glinted with a brittle light.
"He never worries about me," she said. "He sends me away to get rid of me because he doesn't like what I do with his men. All he thinks about is his money, his businesses. Why should I worry about him when he hasn't let me come home in five years? Do you know what my father's big business is that made him get so rich? It's guano. Do you know what that is? It's shit-acres and acres of birdshit that he pays handsome men cheap wages to scoop into bags for sale. Would you think a man could be so rich from selling shit?" She laughed strangely. "Well, my father is. My father can do anything when it comes to making money, because that's all he ever thinks about. Now he has cattle and tin and maybe some other things since the last time he let me come home."
She twisted in her seat and put her face close to Martha's. Her eyes were bright with an inner fever that was nearly orgasmic in its intensity.
"Now he's going to think about something else for once. Now he's going to think about me. The last time he thought about me was when he found me lying on my back on his precious bags of shit getting a white-crusted prick stuffed into me by one of his shovelers. But did that really make him notice me? Oh, no-it made him send me away so that he wouldn't have to be bothered with me any more except when he chose. So now he's going to think about me again-where I am, what's taking me so long to get to his bedside to watch him die. When my father beckons with his little finger, everybody runs to see what he wants. He'll be mad because I didn't run with the rest of them. He'll be so mad he won't die until I get there, even if it takes a month. That's the way my father is. Now we'll be even. Now he'll know what it feels like to need me, instead of the other way around."
She bit off the words and clutched Martha's hand tightly as if in the midst of sexual release. Her breathing finally slowed, and her eyes lost their brittle shine.
"Besides," she said, "I was running out of money again. It gave me a pain to think of spending all they sent me on jet tickets, so I spent the rest left over from this tour. Nobody will know the difference, and if they do, to hell with them. Money is to be spent, isn't it? Besides, what good will all his money do me when he's dead, and he gives it all to my mother and his foreman and his stupid brother? He won't give me any of it. He wouldn't remember to think of me, and if he did, it wouldn't be with the thought of giving me his precious, stinking money."
She looked at Martha. "I bet you think I'm crazy now, huh? You think I'm sick? Maybe I am. Maybe that's why we should stick together, because we're both sick in different ways, and together we'll be well. What do you say to that?"
"I don't know what to say," Martha stammered.
Alva laughed again. "Now I've shocked you," she said. "You love your father, and you can't understand how I can hate mine, is that it?"
"I don't see how you could really hate him. I think...."
"Yes, I know what you think already," Alva said, making a sharp gesture. "How many times have I heard that? I go to bed and fuck with anything that walks, and things that don't walk, because I want his attention. I want him to discover me and get angry and fuck me himself. That's all crap. Why can't anyone believe I have real contempt for him? You don't know him, or you would see. He's like the man in your dream, only the woman who was your mother is a bag of money he's dragging inside to make love to. I wish the bag were me," she said, her eyes focusing far into the distance. "I would show my sniveling mother how to take care of him right. I would show her how a man like him needs to be fucked. Just as I will show you how to take care of your Ken." She looked straight at Martha, and her face radiated with strong, primitive vibrations of lust. "Perhaps I will even fuck with you. Would you like that, Martha?"
Martha gasped. She was shocked at the thought. Yet a strange thrill shot through her at the same time and made the tips of her breasts throb.
"I...."
Alva laughed again. "You've never thought of that, huh? You've never thought if you don't like a man, then maybe you would like a woman."
"I think I've heard about all I want to, Alva," Martha said. "No, you haven't heard anything yet! You stay with me. We will become very close friends, and then you will be able to go back to your Ken and marry him and love him to pieces. I'll put the spark of life back in you. I will show you the jungle and let you feel the power of life that surges under your feet. Your Everglades are nothing to the Amazon-a mere dot in the sea of the great jungle."
"Alva...."
"Fuck the tour," Alva said. "We'll go over the mountains ourselves. I've decided you must learn what life is. You don't know what it is until you've been in the vast womb of the jungle. The jungle reaches always toward the god of the sun, in crowning majesty over your head. It reaches and blooms without pause and strives again, layer upon layer, three canopies, five... it teems with life that is a billion times more plentiful than the stars at night. It is green, like your eyes, like life itself. The sun bursts through with the color of your hair and makes clear pools dance with the color of your eyes. You are like the jungle. You are like life itself. Only you are afraid of life, and the jungle is not. I'm not. I want to show it to you and let you feel it grow inside you and make you swell."
Martha felt her blood pounding through her with excitement. She couldn't resist the compelling tone of voice, the soft eyes, the sexual power of Alva's movements. In spite of the bad things she'd thought about Alva, she saw with sudden clarity that the girl held the key to the answers she sought. She knew that the things Alva spoke of were the things she'd wanted to find again-that Alva would give her the reason for taking the tour in the first place.
She felt the thrill of anticipation make her cunt swell and grow soft and moist. She felt the warm, fluid sensation of her pussy. She felt the surge of vibrancies and yearning that had been dead in her for so long come alive, and she knew that, with Alva, she would be born again.
"Yes...yes!" she cried.
"I will show you the cities we stop in, too-the native markets where you can see all the beautiful flowers the Amazon has to offer. We will walk down the streets and sample the granadillas and other fruits of the passion flower, and the delicate little oritas, which are bananas the size of your thumb but which taste nothing like the yellow things you eat at home. I will show you the animals and the exotic birds of the jungle and emeralds as big and green as your eyes. You stay with me, Martha, and I will show you life! And you-you, my sweet virgin-perhaps you will show me love!"