Chapter 9
Monday morning, he phoned Jack Donovan, asked to have lunch with him.
"Anything special on your mind," Donovan asked.
"Nothing having to do with business," Markell said. "No hints?"
"No. Will you meet me at noon at the Coach and Four?"
"Okay," Donovan said. "It's a date. The Coach and Pour, noon today."
Markell was there on the dot of noon, but Donovan bad already arrived. That was a little odd, Markell thought, because Donovan wasn't usually a particularly punctual man. But there he was. He was waiting just inside the door, leaning against a pillar. His expression was a thoughtful preoccupied one.
"Hello, Jack!"
Donovan gave a half-smile. "Guess I beat you here, Fred."
"Guess you did."
A table was waiting for them. They settled into it, ordered drinks. There was a moment of uneasy silence, and Markell wondered why Donovan was so restless-looking, so apprehensive. Was something amiss in Donovan's investments? Or had he had trouble with one of his many mistresses? Or had he simply had five or six drinks too many last night?
Donovan broke the silence. "You still seeing Anita?" he asked abruptly.
Markell nodded. "A couple of times a week."
"Great girl, isn't she?"
"Tremendous." Markell said. He saw a leer appear on the other man's face, and resented it. He had never quite been able to forget the fact that Donovan had recommended Anita to him, that Donovan had sampled her wares first. An unwanted image drifted into his mind: Donovan's heavy, gross body topping Anita. Donovan's hands grasping the pale melons of Anita's bosom. Anita's legs sticking out on either side of Donovan's fleshy form. Two bodies twisting in love, groaning in passion-
Donovan was staring levelly at him. He said, "You're pretty hipped on that girl, aren't you, Fred? I mean, not just as a call girl, but something beyond that. Is that how it is?"
"Maybe."
"You ought to watch out for that," Donovan said. He twirled the stem of his martini glass casually. "These girls, they try to get you to fall in love with them, they try to make you think they love you, only you. That you're the special man in their life. Meanwhile they're sleeping with half of New York and maybe part of Connecticut too, but they tell you, you're special. And they soak you. Bought her any gifts yet?"
"A few," Markell said, tight-lipped. He didn't like Donovan's cynical approach. He wished the subject of Anita hadn't arisen at all. It was a profanity to hear her name on Donovan's fleshy lips.
"Like what? Anything big?"
"No," Markell said. "Just trinkets. And some perfume. I'm not giving her any Cadillacs yet."
"It doesn't matter. It begins small. A ring, a pair of pearl earrings. Then it works up. An ermine wrap, a sports car. Next thing you know, you'll be thinking about marrying her. There's always some damn fool who wants to marry a call girl. Men never learn. A girl like that, once a slut, always a slut, and pity the poor goof who tries to reform her."
Markell ran his tongue nervously around his lips. He didn't like this conversation in the slightest. It was coming much too close to home, and Donovan was scoring a direct hit at every step of the way, probably without realizing at all how barbed his words were.
Markell said, "Listen, let's get off the subject and onto a different one. The subject I invited you down to talk about."
Donovan looked a little tense. "Okay?"
"I want to talk about next weekend."
"What about it?"
"You said your wife and kids would be visiting her parents in California next weekend, remember? So I was talking with Janet, and she suggested we invite you to stay with us. We wouldn't want you to spend a lonely bachelor weekend all by yourself."
Donovan's tension seemed to vanish. He grinned broadly and said, "That's damn nice of you, Fred."
"Did you have any plans for the weekend?"
"Well, as a matter-of-fact," Donovan said, "I was thinking of lining up a little companionship for myself for that weekend. But I hadn't arranged anything yet. And now I guess I don't have to."
"Good. Come on up to our place. We can discuss that Long Island deal, for one thing. And you can just relax in front of our fireplace and help reduce our liquor supply. Janet will love to see you. You know how fond she's always been of you."
"Yes," Donovan said drily. There was an odd look in his eye. Markell knew what Donovan had been interested in Janet for years and years, quietly letching after her. But Donovan had had so little opportunity to be alone with her.
Markell was determined to give Donovan that opportunity next weekend.
"Is it a date for the weekend?" Markell asked. "Sure," Donovan said. "It's a date."
When he saw Anita the following Tuesday, Markell let her know that he wouldn't be free for their regular Friday evening meeting.
"We're having a weekend guest," he told her. "He's coming up Friday night. So we'll just have to skip seeing each other this Friday."
Anita pouted. "Is it anybody I know?" she asked playfully.
Markell ducked the question. "Somebody I do business with some of the time," he said evasively. He stood by the window of her apartment, looking at her as she sprawled nude on the bed. It was snowing again, a light powdery fall. Winter was moving in fast.
Anita said, "I'm going to miss you Friday night, Freddy."
"I'll miss you too. But well be able to see each other more often than twice a week, soon. A lot more often, Anita."
"Oh?"
"I'm planning ... I'm planning some changes," he said. "Big changes."
She smiled and propped herself up on her elbows, her breasts swaying and jiggling enticingly. "Tell me all about it, lover."
He shook his head. "I don't dare. You'll find out when the time comes. But I tell you one thing. I'll be able to see a lot more of you after it happens. Would you like that, Anita?"
"Of course, Freddy."
"Would you like to see me a whole lot?" he asked carefully. "Like every day?"
"Why not?" she asked. She left the bed, crossed the room in that marvelous flowing walk of hers, moved up against him. She ran her fingers fondly through his hair. "I like you, Freddy," she murmured. "I like you plenty."
He left the matter at that.
He didn't want to do too much talking ahead of the fact, too much bridge-crossing in advance. Just so long as Anita was fond of him, so long as she seemed to want him, he could go through with the thing he had planned, knowing that when he finally did get to the other side of the bridge he would possess the kind of happiness he had never dreamed it was possible for him to attain.
Holding her tight, he ran his hands down her body, ripped the taut mounds of her buttocks, savored the fullness of them, the lush abundance. Her body was hot against his. Her mouth sought his, and her tongue was like a living thing with intelligence of its own, darting, entering, probing.
She drew toward the bed.
She slid his clothes from him with all her practiced skill.
"Anita," he murmured. "Anita, Anita, Anita-" She writhed against him. He sighed, pressed forward, and their linked bodies trembled in passion. He cupped her breasts lest they sway. The stiff nipples stared blindly up at him. Her muscles spasmed deliriously, rested, spasmed again.
Higher and higher they climbed. Right up to the summit of ecstasy.
They hovered there a long, wonderful moment. Then with furious slamming force Markell complete the act, and the two of them went spinning off into the ecstatic exhaustion of fulfillment.
Afterward, Markell looked at her face. Her eyes were closed. She was smiling.
It was, he thought, the face of a woman in love.
Markell was right. Anita was in love. Only not with him.
The great passion of her life had begun only a few days earlier, the previous Friday, to be precise. Anita had gone through her day's routine, finishing up at the town house of J. Edward Coleridge, and then, as was her nightly won't, she had gone to that certain little bar on the East Side to see what pickings were available for her own particular brand of amusement.
The pickings had been excellent that night. There was a new girl in the bar, apparently a fresh recruit to the sisterhood. She was already six deep in proposidoners, but Anita took one look, thought, That's for me, and cut her way deftly through the competition to emerge with the prize.
The new girl's name was Joyce. She was a redhead from Miami, a lively, athletic-looking girl with wide-awake eyes and an offbeat way of doing things. Anita realized that the moment she heard that the new girl was from Miami.
"And you came north in December?"
"Sure," Joyce said. "Miami's full of cruds now. Winter people. Fat-bellied insurance men getting away from the snow. Nuts to 'em. I mean, let someone else have 'em. I figured I'd come up here, where the real people are. I can go back south in the spring."
"But are you accustomed to cold weather?" Anita asked.
"I'll live," Joyce said, "The thing is, winter is so goddamn beautiful. Especially if you live down where the seasons never change. To see the trees without any leaves, just like skeletons-and to feel a real cold wind rip into your guts-and to see snow! Snow! I was seventeen before I ever saw snow. Except in pictures in the National Geographic." Joyce's eyes glowed. "You know what I want to do, Anita? And don't tell me I'm crazy. I want to walk naked in the snow. I want to feel it all over me. Brand-new snow, like a white blanket!"
Anita grinned. "Wow!"
"You don't think I'll do it? You just wait and see," Joyce said.
That night, Anita took her home with her. And discovered that Joyce was as passionate as she was kookie, a live wire who knew all the tricks. They made love, and then they sat up talking till dawn, Joyce telling Anita of her adventures in various Caribbean islands and in Miami Beach hostelries, and then they made love again, and again, and again, since it was the weekend and Anita did not have to worry about the calls of clients.
And by the end of the weekend, Anita knew that she was in love, that this was the real thing, that she wanted to spend all her time with Joyce.
That was impossible, of course. There was the matter of earning a living. Neither girl could live on love alone. Joyce, like Anita, was smart about her retirement plans, and worked hard, peddling herself strenuously five days a week, five hours a night, the same schedule as Anita. And they both agreed not to let anything come between them and the earning of the precious grubstake that would stave off hardships in the years to come.
But the hours after midnight belonged to them.
On this particular Tuesday, after Fred Markell had left her, Anita phoned her answering service and found out about the engagements that were lined up for her for the day. After fifteen minutes on the telephone with various prospects, she had her schedule made out. A round at seven, one at nine, one at ten, one at midnight. Four clients, and a probable income of about $110 for the night, plus Markell's earlier $25.
She went through her tasks diligently and enthusiastically at each stop, and one in the morning saw her meeting Joyce at the bar. Joyce was already there. Her last client had been through with her at midnight, and she was sitting at the bar sipping a daiquiri, while a host of hangers-on vainly tried to make time with her.
The moment Anita entered, the other women scattered.
"Hello, hon." Joyce grinned. "Been waiting for yon an hour."
"Couldn't help it."
"Rough night?"
"Four tricks," she said. "And one this afternoon."
"You'll get too rich," Joyce laughed.
"Hard times a'coming," Anita said. "I want to be prepared for them." She glanced at the bartender. "Let's have a martini, huh?"
Anita sipped her drink. Joyce said, "I've been fending off the wolves for an hour. Look at them! Those witches would sell their souls to get into bed with either of us!"
"And we're selfish enough to want each other," Anita said. "That's real nasty of us."
"Isn't it, though."
They pressed their bodies close. They grinned at each other, and winked.
"Let's get out of here," Anita said, finishing her martini and dropping a bill on the bar. "We can find better places to be together."
Arm in arm, they left. It was cold, down in the thirties, but there was no wind, and a strange stillness had settled over the city. The cold hardly mattered. And it was beginning to snow. Big flakes were floating down, covering the hard deposits of the earlier snowfalls of the month, and the streets were turning white.
"Beautiful," Joyce breathed. "Absolutely beautiful."
She hugged Anita tight. Slowly, they walked through the falling snow.
When they reached 59th Street, Joyce said, "You know what I want to do now? What I told you the other night. I want to run naked through the snow."
"You'll get arrested."
"Oh, don't be square! It's practically two in the morning, and all the cops are asleep. We'll go into Central Park. Well be safe there. Even the rapists are afraid to go into Central Park, so it's absolutely empty."
Anita shrugged. It was a kookie idea, but what the hell, they were in love, and who gave a damn if they got arrested or caught pneumonia?
They headed for the park.
A blanket of white covered everything. The accumulation of snow was six inches deep in most parts of the park, higher where the drifts had mounded up. Only on the roadway itself was the snow cleared away, and the new snow was rapidly doing its work there.
They trudged hand in hand through the snow, leaving a deep trail behind them, until they came to a quiet place ten blocks to the north, a tranquil area of trees and boulders, all coated with white.
Joyce's eyes were gleaming. A strange excitement glittered in her eyes.
She began to pull off her clothing.
Anita watched in astonishment. Here it was, thirty degrees above zero, and this girl from Florida was stripping in the snow. Already her sweater and bra were off, and she stood there bare-chested, snow falling on the luscious, heavy mounds of her breasts. Joyce had big breasts, bigger even than Anita's, high and firm and round as melons. They were tanned-Joyce loved to romp in the nude under the Florida sun.
But there was no sun now. It was two in the morning in Central Park, and flakes of snow were turning to ice-water as they struck Joyce's bare flesh.
"Come on!" Joyce cried. "It feels great, Anita!"
Puppet-like, Anita began to open her coat. She let it drop to the snow. A chill went through her, but she was surprised to find that as she removed her garments she grew more accustomed to the cold, hardly noticed it at all after a moment. Off came her dress, her slip, her bra. Her bare breasts rose and fell rapidly. Her breath was a white cloud in the snow.
Joyce was completely nude, now. She was capering in the snow, running around wildly, a gleaming, jiggling-breasted figure, laughing and hurling handfuls of snow into the air. Anita hurriedly finished stripping, her fingers fumbling with her garters, pulling off her stockings, dropping her panties and adding them to the pile.
She was stark naked. Right out in the open in the middle of Manhattan.
And snow was coming down, delicious snow.
She looked around for Joyce, and saw her a hundred yards away. The crazy girl was sitting in the snow, with her knees apart. She was-what the hell?-she seemed to be stuffing snow into her!
"What are you doing?" Anita asked.
"Cleansing myself," Joyce replied. "Cleaning away the four tricks I turned today. Snow's the cleanest thing in the world. It makes me feel pure again. Like a virgin. Come down here."
Anita laughed and threw herself face down into the snow. It was almost a foot deep here, and she sank in as though throwing herself onto mud. Her breasts bored into the white fluff. She turned over, rubbed snow against her body, touched handfuls of newly fallen snow to the most intimate parts of herself. There was a strange tingle of pleasure. Joyce was right She felt clean, cleaner than ever before. Snow covered her everywhere.
Crawling through the snow, Joyce came over next to her. She picked up a handful of snow and clapped it over Anita's breasts. Both girls laughed. Anita grabbed Joyce's buttocks and forced them into the snow. They threw snow in each other's faces.
Anita was throbbing with desire now. The tips of her breasts were hard and blazing against the coldness of the snow. The same madness that gripped Joyce now infected her as well.
They grappled with each other, wrestling playfully, rolling over and over, while still the snow came down, frosting their eyelashes, lodging in their hair, coating their naked bodies. Joyce scooped up snow, clapped it against Anita's belly, rubbed it into her body. Anita shivered and cried out gaily.
Then, a moment later, both girls were intertwined and entangled. Joyce's lips were against Anita's, and her body was moving furiously, passionately. The coldness of the snow was obliterated by the raging heat of their bodies.
Passion gripped them. They rolled over and over in the snow, now Joyce on top, now Anita. Their breasts swayed and jiggled, and touched, nipples drilling into soft firmness, and they grasped each other's buttocks and breasts and thighs, and tongue touched tongue in light-hearted playfulness and then in more earnest excitement, and no part of their bodies went unkissed or untouched or unsqueezed, and all around them was snow, warm snow, clean snow, good snow, beautiful snow, and as the fires of their passion mounted the force of the snowfall doubled and redoubled, so that soon they were all but covered by it, then came the shattering moment of climax as body reared and bucked against full-breasted body, and ecstasy riddled them both and it was over. It was over.
They stood up, panting hard, sweating in the snow, their bodies red and tingling. They brushed the snow away, but more fell all the time. Anita looked at the other girl, and with eyes brimming with love took pleasure in the sight of Joyce's body.
She was beautiful. She was in every way the counterpart and match for Anita's own lush beauty.
"We'll get pneumonia," Anita said. "We'll be dead by morning."
"But at least we finished up with a bang," Joyce giggled.
They brushed the snow away and began to get dressed. They didn't bother with underwear. Then-clothes were all but buried in snow anyway. They donned only their outer clothes, stuffing panties and stockings and garters and whatnot into the pockets of their coat.
They looked at the scene of their lovemaking. For an area of several hundred square yards, wild tracks had been left in the snow, along with breast-prints, buttock-prints, the outlines of nakedness. But already the new snow was filling them in. By morning there would be no hint at all that two of the most beautiful girls in New York City had come here, had stripped away every stitch of clothing they wore, and had taken each other in a furious frenzy of perverted sex.
They grinned at each other. Arm in arm, they left the park. At 59th and Fifth, they passed a policeman standing by the plaza, but he merely stared blankly at them. They walked on. The wind had picked up, and Anita felt its cold fingers stealing under her dress, exploring her wet and chilled nakedness, her thighs, her bare breasts.
In fifteen minutes they were at Anita's apartment. It was warm, cozy there. Hurriedly they stripped away their wet clothes, towelled dry. They both looked rosy-red from frost, and their fingers were a little numb, and the tips of their breasts throbbed from frostbite.
Anita produced a bottle of brandy. "We can use this," she said.
Naked, the two girls settled down together on the couch to take their medicine.
"I love you," Joyce whispered.
"I love you," Anita answered.
By morning they had finished off the complete fifth of brandy By morning the had made love twice more, as well. It must have been a good kind of medicine, too. Despite their reckless exposure, neither girl came down with so much as a case of sniffles the next day, let alone anything so dire as pneumonia.