Chapter 3

Friday finally came. The hours had ticked by leadenly all day Thursday, but now it was Friday, now it was Anita-Day. Markell bubbled with scarcely suppressible excitement all morning. He felt like a kid about to have his first really hot date. He kept looking at his watch, trying to urge the minutes to move along.

At noon, he left his office and walked quickly uptown and eastward through the lunchtime crowds, stopping at 52nd Street. There was a hotel at 52nd just east of Third, a shiny new building that hadn't been open more than a few months. Markell straightened his tie, adjusted the brim of his hat, went inside.

A desk clerk eyed him respectfully. Markell glanced around the lobby. It was flamboyant, Miami Beach style, with glitter and glare everywhere.

He said, in his best top-executive voice, "I'd like a room for this evening."

"Certainly, sir. A single?"

"Make it a double."

"Certainly, sir. Private bath, television set. Eighteen dollars. Would you sign here, please?"

He signed in under the first name that came to his mind-Edward T. Connally-and beamed at the clerk. The clerk beamed back and handed him his key. Since he had no luggage, the clerk tactfully-he must have been used to such situations-suggested that he pay in advance for the room, and Markell found no objections to that.

"Checkout time is noon tomorrow, Mr. Connally. If you'd like an extension, just notify us at the desk."

"That's all right, thanks. I doubt that I'll be staying past breakfast time."

The clerk favored him with a knowing smile. Markell wasn't fooling anybody, he realized. These hotel people knew damn well that this was a local businessman who needed a room for a short while for a very specific purpose.

But they didn't give a damn, Markell knew. They weren't in the morality business. They were just interested in selling their rooms, and if two people were going to occupy the room, what he did in the room was strictly his own business, as far as the hotel management was concerned.

From a pay telephone in the hotel lobby, he called Anita's answering service and gave the operator the name of the hotel, the number of the room, and the time. The rest was up to Anita.

He had a quick light lunch. Somehow, he didn't seem to have much of an appetite today. Returning to his office around one, he put through a call to his home.

Janet took her time about answering. The phone rang seven times, and Markell was just ready to conclude she had gone out, when she finally picked it up, with her nonchalant "Hello."

Markell moistened his dry lips and said, "I'm going to be home late tonight, Jan."

"Oh?" she said languidly. She hardly seemed to care at all.

"Yes, there's a conference that just came up. It'll keep me busy pretty late. We're all going out for dinner, one of those things. I guess I won't be home till after eleven."

"All right, Fred. I've got some U.N. work to do this evening, anyway. Don't wake me when you come in, if I'm asleep."

"I wouldn't dream of waking you, dear," he said tightly. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Janet put down the phone. "It was Fred," she said. "He won't be home till late, he told me. It seems he has an important conference tonight." She giggled. "He sounded so sincere, too."

"What did I tell you?" Jack Donovan asked. "Tonight's his night with the call girl. I wasn't making it up."

"Poor Fred. He didn't need to lie to me," Janet said. "He could have simply told me how he was spending his evening. I wouldn't have minded."

"He didn't know that."

"No," Janet said. "He didn't. Will you have another martini, Jack?"

"Don't mind if I do. I'll help myself."

"Of course."

Donovan had arrived at the Markell house half an hour earlier, having left his office at noon and driven straight there. His car was parked in the driveway. In a quiet neighborhood like this, nobody was around to notice whether or not Mrs. Markell was entertaining male visitors in the middle of the day when her husband was at work. And if someone did notice, what of it? This wasn't a tattletale kind of neighborhood. Everybody was sophisticated, upper bracket here.

Even so, she was a little tense about Donovan's coming here. Yesterday, at her visit to her analyst, she had brought the subject up, had explained how Donovan had phoned and crudely propostioned her.

"And how do you feel about it?" Gerber had asked her.

"I feel that I want to sleep with him."

"Even though he's an old friend of the family?"

"I don't care. For the first time in ages, I'm excited about something. I'm breaking out of this boredom that's gripped me. I think maybe if I have an affair, I'll snap out of my depression."

Gerber hadn't said it would be a good idea to go to bed with Jack Donovan. But he hadn't said it was exactly a bad idea, either. The analyst hadn't committed himself. He never did.

Janet took his attitude as an unspoken blessing. Gerber clearly wanted her to be unfaithful, but wouldn't come right out and say it-

Well, okay. She would be unfaithful, then. As a kind of therapy.

And now Jack Donovan was actually in the house, looking big and natty in his $250 Italian silk suit. And suddenly Janet was afraid.

Donovan was someone she had known for years and years-Fred's oldest friend, practically a brother. Could she sleep with him? He was just fat, pudgy Jack Donovan. Could she see him in a framework of sexual desire?

Yes.

Yes.

Donovan grinned at her. "You know," he said, '"I've been dreaming about going to bed with you practically since the day Fred came around with you and said you were the girl he was going to marry. Did you know that?"

"I gathered it."

"Fred knows it too, doesn't he?"

"Janet shrugged. "I suppose he does. But he doesn't care. I don't think he thinks anyone would really seriously want to go to bed with me."

"He's wrong."

"I hope he's wrong," Janet said.

"He's dead wrong."

"But what made you finally call me up, after wafting all these years?"

Donovan shrugged. He swirled his martini around, took a deep sip. "That conversation I had with Fred," he said. "He told me in just about so many words that you and he had stopped sleeping together. I figured it was a damned shame that a beautiful girl like you had to be deprived of sex. So I figured I'd offer my services."

Janet's eyes sparkled. "I'm glad you did," she said. "I was going wild with boredom."

"Maybe I can fix that," Donovan said.

"Maybe you can."

She finished her drink. Her heart was racing. She felt terribly wicked, terribly sinful.

She had never been unfaithful to Fred. Not once. There had been temptations, but they had been repressed. The last time she had slept with anyone but Fred was before their marriage. Ten, eleven, twelve years ago.

And suddenly she was on fire. Suddenly she craved exotic sins.

"Come on," she said. "We've done enough talking. It's time for action."

Donovan nodded. He was smiling strangely. He came over to her, stood next to her, tall, broad-shouldered, big, heavy. He looked down.

His hand slid out, and Janet caught her breath as he cupped her breasts through her light frock. He squeezed them-hard.

Very hard.

Painfully

"Hey, that hurt," she said.

"Did it?" He laughed. Then he slapped her in the face. And laughed again. "Did that hurt, too, Jan?" He slapped her again.

It was nine o'clock, now.

Fred Markell sat hunched tensely on the edge of the bed in his hotel room. It was a fancy room, complete with modern furniture, bright-colored walls, gay wall-to-wall carpeting, low ceilings. He had gone to the room at half past eight, after a skimpy dinner and an hour of tensely wandering around Manhattan.

He was on his way through his third cigarette in the past half hour. He had ordered a bottle of Scotch and some mix sent up from room service, and he had already gulped down two drinks, with a third half gone. And now, finally, it was nine o'clock.

Any minute, Anita would make her appearance.

Markell wondered how things like this were supposed to go. He had had no experience at all in buying sex before. Would she be expecting him to be undressed and ready for her, or would that be too blunt and un-subtle and gauche, he wondered?

Did he pay her before? After? They hadn't even discussed fees. Donovan had told him it was $25, but that might just be her rate for some people, not all. He didn't know. He realized that for all his forty years, for all his success in the business world, he was terribly inexperienced about some things.

No time like the present for learning, he thought. It's never too late to learn.

One minute after nine, now. Was she going to be late? It wasn't likely, considering the business-like way she had set up the appointment, but-

There was a knock at the door.

He sprang up, half tripping over himself in his nervous haste, and then, with a scowl of angry self-contempt, he halted and moved at a more composed pace toward the door.

He opened it.

"Hi," a girl said in a soft, husky voice. "I'm Anita."

The first sight of her was like a cold sword being slipped between Markell's ribs. He caught his breath sharply, wincing at the impact of it.

She was beautiful.

She was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.

She made the dream-Anita he had envisioned look tawdry and coarse and second-rate.

There was nothing cheap, nothing vulgar, nothing in the least trollopy and whorish about her. She was dressed elegantly, her gleaming blonde hair was done in a stylish bouffant coiffure, a few small pieces of simple jewelry were her only ornaments. She looked like nothing so much as a young, wealthy Sutton Place wife out for the evening.

She was only a girl, too, he saw. Her complexion was clear, her eyes wide and blue and shining, her expression somehow an innocent one. His heart pounding fiercely, Markell invited her into the room.

"Sorry I'm a few minutes late," she said with a shy smile. "I'll make it up to you, though," Markell indicated the bottle of Scotch. "Care for a drink?"

"A weak one, please."

She moved across the room, fluidly, gliding rather than walking, and Markell saw the motion of her buttocks in the tight sheath of her dress, and his throat went dry and coppery-tasting at the thought that all he had to do was say the word and she would pull off that dress and everything else, and show him the pink perfection of those buttocks, and the hard-tipped pouting beauty of those round breasts, and all the rest.

She settled in the chair near the television set, crossing her legs and displaying a breathtaking stretch of flawless leg. Her ankles were thin and tapered, her calves full, spectacular. Markell fixed a drink for her. His hands were trembling.

She was in no hurry. She sat and talked for ten minutes or more, completely poised and sure of herself. They chatted about the weather, about politics, the international situation. She didn't ask him his last name, but with deft ease she found out almost everything else there was to know about him-the kind of business he was in, his approximate financial status, his age, and his troubles with his wife.

Especially his troubles with his wife.

She was terribly sympathetic about that. She was kind and understanding and seemingly sincere.

"So many wives cut their own throats that way," she said, in that soft, throaty, little-girl voice of hers. "They think that once they've got their man on the hook, they can sit back and live off him the rest of their lives without giving anything in return." She smiled dazzlinery. "Which is the whole reason for my profession, I sometimes think. If there were less frigid, neurotic wives around, there wouldn't be a call girl industry."

"I agree," Markell said thickly. "I agree one hundred per cent."

He had had four highballs by now, and he was starting to feel just a trifle lightheaded. He wondered when Anita was going to get around to the business at hand. Did she always talk first? Was that part of the standard routine? Or was she simply sitting here waiting for him to make the first pass?

She seemed to notice his impatience, seemed almost to be reading his mind. For, when she finished her drink, she stood up, stretched lithely-

And began to undress.

All the while she did it, she favored him with a warm, loving, you're-a-very-special-man-in-my-life kind of smile. Markell had to admit that it was a tremendous act. She was a really polished pro. There was nothing sordid or whorish about the way she was undressing. She was doing it as though they had been lovers for years, as though it was the most utterly natural thing in the world that she should be standing her, taking her clothes off in front of him, He watched her.

Hungrily.

He watched her peel away the bolero jacket and the tight sheath, and the slip, and he watched her as she carefully hung things up so they wouldn't get creased or wrinkled-she had to look nice and fresh for her next client, after all!-and he watched her in her bra and panties and garter-belt and stockings, and then she casually unclipped the bra and swung it away from the high hillocks of her breasts, and, still clad in panties, she lifted her flawless legs one at a time to open the garters and roll the stockings down, and when they were off she blithely peeled away her panties and then the garter-belt with its dangling straps, and then she was nude.

Her body was stunning, a thing of pink and gold, with incredibly lovely full firm breasts and excitingly contoured buttocks, with pale beautiful hips and thighs. She seemed to gleam. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, and the tiny red nipples stood up steeply, and her eyes were alive and bright, and her smile was brilliant. The lighting from overhead gave a special glamour to her nakedness.

She stood before him, glorying in her taut-fleshed young nudity, in her twenty-year-old vitality and newness, and Markell felt a pang of sadness come over him at the realization that this was all pretense, that her beauty did not belong to him and never would.

An hour ago she had been sleeping with somebody else a few blocks from here.

An hour from now she would be standing nude in front of another man in another hotel room.

Over the past months she had been had by hundreds and hundreds of men; fat ones, skinny ones, ugly ones, drunken ones, shy ones, brutal ones-men whose only common denominators were the facts that they had her telephone number and they had her price.

There was nothing to be proud of, Markell knew, in the thought of being privileged to feast his eyes on such wonderful naked beauty. Anybody with the right number in his little black book and some loose cash could have the same privilege.

Still, she was here. And-for the moment, at least-she was his.

He advanced toward her.

Her breasts more than filled his trembling hands. The hard nipples pressed like little rocks against his palms. The heat of her body burned his cold skin.

She was smiling tenderly. She pressed herself up against him. Her moist, parted lips grazed his cheek, wandered down along the line of his collar. He slid his hands over her back her skin like satin, as his hands traveled down, down to her buttocks.

They kissed.

It was a sizzling kiss. Markell hadn't kissed his wife that way, or been kissed that way by her, for five years or more. Her lips went tight against his, and the warm softness of her tongue burrowed into his mouth, and she flattened her body against him and twisted ecstatically from side to side. Markell gripped her tightly.

When they parted, coming up for air long minutes later, Markell was flushed and excited. And so was she. Was it only a tart's pretense, he wondered? Was she faking it, giving him a skillfull professional imitation of passion?

Somehow he didn't think so. Maybe he was being naive, he knew, but it seemed to him that there was real passion in her face, that her nostrils were flaring and her nipples were hard and her breasts were churning because she was genuinely attracted to him, and not just putting on an act for a new client-

He stepped back and looked at her.

"Well?" she asked gaily.

"You're marvelous," he whispered. "You're incredible. I've never seen anything so beautiful."

"I also do tricks," she said.

She drifted close to him. Her deft fingers began to work on his clothing. Markell filled his nostrils with the sweet smell of her, and relaxed, letting her remove his garments. He gave himself up to her completely, surrendering to the hypnotic spell of her flawless body, and she gathered him in, carried him off to a realm of utter delight