Chapter 12
Dr. Paul Stone III returned to his office before three-thirty, although he hardly noticed the time. He hardly noticed anything around him. He whirled dizzily, crazily in his own world, caught up in a floating fantasy that moved with him.
Joan Cushing had broken something in him. A previously undiscovered vein-an insatiable lust for young flesh that became increasingly inflamed as he thought of Joan's body, submitting-and of his own inexplicable feelings of tenderness afterward. But the tenderness had not lasted more than several moments. Almost as soon as he had been out in the street, walking toward his car, the choking desire had returned within him.
Our man Paul was a veritable lion in the streets.
He was a lion who couldn't explain himself. It didn't even occur to him that he should attempt to explain the newly discovered phenomenon. Now he sat in his office, figeting restlessly. Energy surged through him. It was energy he could neither explain nor control, but which definitely did exasperate him beyond endurance.
He rang for his secretary, who came in immediate ly.
"Yes, Doctor Stone?"
"Put through the following announcement: Doctor Paul Stone has chosen Doctor Lee Cushing as newest Associate Professor of the English Department. During Doctor Stone's absence, Doctor Cushing will no doubt be acting Department Chairman. Today's date, and put it right through."
"Yes, sir."
"I think that does it...."
"Then there is nothing else?"
"No, that's all. Except I want no phone calls," he snapped. "I don't exist." The secretary smiled wanly, uttered another yessir, but seemingly forgot the salute and about-face, and walked out. He was alone. He was trying to think, while energy and indefinable lust raged inside his academic breast.
Lee was stopped in his busy progress down the hallway by Bill Holloway. He had returned to school just in time for his two o'clock class, which had just ended. Heading toward his office, Bill's imposing bulk stopped him.
"Doctor Cushing? We have some talking to do, I believe." His face was quiet, contained, but Lee noticed the eyes snapping. Contained rage.
"Oh? I wasn't aware of it, Bill, but come to the office." They walked the short distance together, and the hollow, steady thud of their footsteps reminded Lee of a movie he had once seen concerning a prisoner walking to the gas chamber.
Inside the office, now.
"Well, Bill?"
"Congratulations on your new promotion."
"My what?" Lee asked, his heart stopping. "What did you say?"
"Didn't you see the big announcement? You're an Associate Prof, old buddy and next year you will probably be Acting Department Chairman. That is, you would have been."
"I wasn't aware of it," Lee said hollowly. He tried extremely hard to ignore the last few things Bill had told him.
"It doesn't matter, anyway. You're going to have to resign, decline, or give up whatever it is you brain-boys do."
"I don't understand."
"You don't? That's amazing, Professor, truly amazing! Seven years of college, and you don't understand a simple little concept that any idiot could. Where have our institutions gone wrong?" he asked with a mocking sigh.
"I'll spell it out for you, then, like you jerks spell it out for us! You've wrecked the engagement to the girl I was going to marry by taking her to that motel last Saturday, not to mention her emotional stability. You're really quite a jerk, Doctor. You get a girl who you know damned well worships the ground you walk on, and take advantage. Is that one of the fringe benefits of your job?"
How did he know?
It didn't matter, Lee decided. It was evident that he did know, and that that look he had received from Bill previously had meant something very ominous, after all. There was no point in trying to deny it To do so would be to give up the remaining shreds of manhood and self-respect.
"In case you're interested in how I found out, Brenda broke down and told me. She's really quite a decent girl, you know, even if she does go off the deep end with venerable profs from time to time."
Lee nodded. Of course, she would tell Bill. She owed it to him, and was the kind of person who would live up to her obligations.
"So you're going to resign, Doctor, or I'm going to make a big ugly mess. The ugliest mess imaginable. I have hardly anything to lose that I haven't lost already.
Again, Lee nodded.
"All right, Bill. I'll do it."
"You're damn right, you'll do it, doc. And you'll do it today, by five o'clock."
For Lee Cushing, B.A., M.A., Ph. D., the game was over. Funny, he thought. He had never compromised his academic principles. He had clung tenaciously to his ideals concerning teaching, about devoting his time to students rather than to hollow, meaningless literary criticism. The only thing he had forgotten was how to conduct himself as an ethical human being.
C'est la vive, Lee.
Cook was appointed in Lee's place, and of course he accepted the appointment. It was fitting enough. The scholar, critic and sometime-teacher had played the game all the way down the line. If anyone deserved the post, it was good old Dr. Cook. Shakespeare himself would benefit immensely from the elevation of the appointment.
When Lee came home that evening, Joan sobbingly told him what she had done. Lee listened, but reacted numbly. It didn't matter, nothing mattered.
"It's okay," he said, patting her shoulder, which she took for a comforting gesture, but Lee's mind was away from her and everything connected with her. Yon played the game and lost, he thought.
After dinner, Dr. Stone did something entirely unprecedented. He went out alone.
"I'm taking a ride downtown," he told Peggy, who sullenly nodded. She was still thinking about her encounter with Lee, and what had taken place afterward. She knew that he hated her now, as much as she hated herself. Sex seemed so unimportant. It was such a minor issue, really. Bathroom sessions with Ovid, at least, did not have the painful aftermath that this afternoon had had.
She watched him throw on his overcoat and hat, and walk outside toward the garage. He had been fitful, behaving quite strangely. She wondered if he suspected this afternoon's activities, and surmised that she did not care one way or the other.
Stone headed the car downtown. It was dark, so he drove slowly, while he looked for Huron Street, which is a street that offers virtually anything in the way of illegal activities. He was not a frequenter of Huron Street. In fact, he had never before had any desire to see it, even in the daytime. But students talked about it, and the university had several addresses and names of "undesirable characters," whom the students were urged to avoid at all costs. One name stuck in his mind, and that was the particular name he was seeking now.
Paul Jones III seemed to know just exactly what he wanted.
Nicholas Kalvatinos was his best bet, in fact, his only bet, and Kalvatinos was the man whom he had to find.
Kalvatinos was a man who made certain that he could be found, and Stone found him at home, which was an astonishingly plush apartment (inside) over a somewhat shabby-looking book store. Stone knocked, Kalvatinos answered.
"Yes?" he asked inquiringly. A black-haired, oily man, who with a haircut could be handsome, but was not. "What do you want?"
"I need one of your girls."
"Ah? And who are you, my friend? A cop, perhaps, from the vice squad?"
"No. Danny Faber sent me." Faber was a student who had been bounced out of school for dealing with Kalvatinos.
"Ah yes. Well, sir, won't you sit down?"
Paul sat.
"I need someone very, very young. Young and tender."
"Ah." Kalvatinos smiled with a long-coined expression of understanding. "That will be easy. The price of such pleasures are high, sir. Can you, will you pay it?"
"How much?" Paul asked. Something wild was clawing at the inside of his stomach.
"Two hundred dollars for the night. I will give you the address. The name you are to ask for is Leslie."
Paul paid it.
Gladly. With trembling hands.
"And now, sir, here is the address. Remember, the name is Leslie."
"Yes, yes, thank you." Paul took the address and hurried out of the apartment, down onto the street where he had left his car.
The address was located on the waterfront, amidst the dismal, lonely honks of the Lake Erie barges. Looking out into the water, he felt the chill and filth of the place. Yet, this was the end of the road, the beginning of what he really wanted.
Leslie was the sweetest, tenderest thing he had ever seen. Leslie was soft, with gentle nut-brown eyes and flowing dark blonde hair. Leslie made his heart leap into his throat.
"Leslie, a Mr. Kalvatinos sent me," he stammered, looking at a definite answer, the final answer, to his dreams.
"Yes, my dear, come in." Paul went inside. This apartment, too, was lush, with seductive lighting and low-slung, modern furniture, and expensive carpetings. Paintings on the wall, all masterpieces, all treating sensual subject matter. Beautiful. A perfect backdrop for a sweet young thing like Leslie.
Exceedingly young.
Scrumptuously soft and very tender and extremely pleasing.
"Leslie, darling," Paul Stone crooned, "you're so good to me." Leslie stroked him intimately, fondled him until he saw bright, explosive lights going off in his brain, before his eyes. So much better than Joan, so much nicer, so soft a voice, so tender, such a delightful touch.
"I like you, Paul," Leslie's sweet voice said. The hands touched him, then left altogether, and Paul felt hot breath where the hands had been. He lay back dreamily, tremulously to enjoy the most sublime of kisses.
"Ummmm, darling, you are magnificent!" Leslie squealed, and went about the business of sending Paul into new dimensions of pleasure.
Leslie was young.
Tender.
Neat appearing.
Sweet-breathed, sympathetic, understanding, and above all a delightful lover, one who could titillate his flesh as it never had been.
Oh, my God, he sighed inside himself.
His peak rose and fell, and Leslie licked satisfied, sensuous lips.
"Did I please you, darling lover?"
"Yes, Leslie, you did, as I have never been pleased before."
"You must come back often, then."
"I will, I will," Paul sobbed. He knew what was in store for him, now. Repeated trips back to Leslie, his new, his only lover, and eventual exposure. It would be the end of his precious career, the end of his marriage, the end of everything that he had ever worked for. But Leslie was worth it. Leslie was one who could make a man forget, who could please a man, inflame his mind, make a raging beast of him. So tender. So young!
Paul stroked the flesh gently, and said, "next time, darling, I'll bring you a gift of some sort."
Leslie giggled delightedly.
"That would be wonderful, darling, but you don't have to, you know.
"But I want to, lover."
Leslie smiled seductively, ran a tender, knowing hand tenderly over Paul, arousing him again to heights unknown.
Soothed him again, more deliciously than before, and Paul knew that he had at last found that understanding, that tenderness, that source of inspiration he had always sought blindly, without really knowing. But he knew now, and would cling to it preciously, even though it virtually spelled the very end of everything else.
It didn't seem to matter to him at all, that Leslie was a boy.
Two months later.
Lee could awaken in the morning, silently acknowledge that Joan was no longer living in the same house with him, and look at it with something like acceptance. In another month, the Reno divorce would be final.
Now he had no wife, a wife whom he loved very much.
He had altogether resigned his position at the University, as Hanley had launched him into a literary career. His publisher had bought the book, giving a 7,000 dollar advance with a low, very low royalty schedule, explaining to Lee that as a new writer he needed quick operating cash as a new writer. And, there was an option for two other novels, to be completed at the end of two years' time.
He was a writer. There was so much to write about. Hanley and he were close friends now, part of the same fraternity. When all the vicious scandal had broken loose, Hanley and his wife, Naomi, had been the only ones to see him through it all, and to remain his unconditional friends.
So you might say that Lee Cushing had everything while he had virtually nothing. It would be a long time before he himself was to know whether he had what he truly wanted. But he did go on to become one of the most successful authors on the contemporary scene, and he did go on to remain a close friend, perhaps the best friend, the Hanleys had.
Brenda Wood finished up the year, graduated, and went on a very long trip. She did not go alone. Now she leaned back in the comfortable bucket seat of the newly renovated Triumph, and hummed softly to herself.
"Pray tell me, what's the name of that one?" Bill asked.
"I don't know. Just sort of made it up; maybe I heard it somewhere before."
"Umm."
"Bill? Do you mind if I read Lee Cushing's new novel? It's received tremendous reviews."
"Honey, you can read anything you want. Why ask?"
"You know."
"We hashed it all out, didn't we? It's all settled, right?" He reached across with his hand, and laid it on her bare knee. "Hell, let's knock off and stop. We've been going for over nine hours."
"Yes, let's do. And tonight, please don't drop so many quarters into the mattress-massager."
Bill grinned.
"It was a kick, wasn't it?"
"Yes darling, but you must have used at least five quarters."
"We won't use any today, baby. We'll do it all manually." His hand slid up her knee, touched bare, moist thigh. "And we'll stop right now," he added, pulling into a motel parking lot.
Brenda trembled.
It had been a delightful trip.
The north country was far behind, and they were in South Carolina now. Soon, perhaps the day after tomorrow, they would be in the Florida Keys, where Bill would do his work, and they would live, as the old corny jargon goes, happily ever after.
But since they had reconciled the past, and had decided to work hard at shaping the future, it looked very much as they would. Though the lessons had been painful, they had both learned well and knew they would be able to resolve any future problems. Particularly because they would face those problems together.