Chapter 1
She awoke at daybreak in a shabby room in the Garlic Belt with a man sleeping beside her on the cotton stuffed mattress. The mattress lay on the splintered floor at an angle to the wall, another of Martin Dietrich's rebellions against conformity. If the squares all lived in box houses and slept in symmetrical rooms with beds parallel to the wall, then it had to be wrong. Martin had even pulled away the plaster to form a niche in one corner-knocking the edges off the square of the room.
Elaine still could not observe these minor insurrections of Martin's without a smile of amusement. For Martin life was so serious. Yet he was almost comical with his uncut hair and his barren room where his books were piled in the corner like a careless pyramid. To stack them would create symmetry.
Martin's poetry was so unorthodox that it sounded like nonsense to her. Though she didn't admit this to anyone but herself, for there was just the chance that it contained great abstract meanings which were beyond her ability to comprehend.
Some things that were supposed to be art she understood. Or she had a gut-feeling for them. Martin said we never think with our heads but with our guts. We only know if a thing is good or bad by the way it affects our digestion.
She smiled and shook her head as she stared up at the ceiling, which was not a square but a diamond because of the angle of her vision from the off-center mattress.
Maybe this gut-feel was a joke that Martin was playing on her and everyone he told it to. Or was there really something she lacked? Brenda seemed to comprehend. But Brenda had taken to everything with widened frenzy the moment they arrived in Sausalito.
They had decided to come here, she and Brenda and Lola, a year ago at the end of the spring semester. They had come only for the summer, but they had stayed on, unwilling to return to the grinding monotony of Newton College of Liberal Arts and an antiquated art department that was as stuffy as a hothouse.
As she lay with her back against the hard mattress, feeling the press of Martin's nude leg against her own, Elaine sensed the sudden return of excitement like a tingle at the base of her skull. She realized in that moment that she was in a cheap Sausalito room with her bearded lover and a jug of wine ... not in Laurel, North Dakota where the days slip away with the monotony of flies escaping a bottle and the nights echo like the sound of pebbles thrown into a well.
Nice images, she thought. She should tell them to Martin. But Martin was still asleep and he didn't write poems of imagery. Only poems of sound. Mad litanys that he mumbled and whined while he gazed into his crystal ball. The source of all gut-feeling. A round, sea-carved rock that he had picked up on the point below Fort Baker.
She looked at the dark drooping beard that circled his mouth, the cynical, drawn muscles of his lips that were forever spitting and rejecting.
It had been cool in the night and they had held fast beneath the scratchy wool blanket while he moved against her legs. The wine had made it crazy. The wine and the candlelight and the magic incantations in his whining voice as he kneeled near her, bending like a Muslim on his prayer rug.
She had liked him in the night while he crushed her in an hours-long marathon that grew more frantic as they mounted up to each scorching finish.
She was satisfied. She was lazy and content this morning. She felt no need for him. No affection. No fear of his going away from her. He was useful now and then as he had been last night. A dispensing machine. Instant ecstasy. Fast service for relieving an internal demand.
It wasn't love, but it was a hell of a kick.
She formed a cynical shape with her lips. But deep down somewhere inside she felt a faint quick stab of anxiety. The reflex of a prim indoctrination.
Would she ever escape the last clinging threads of her childhood? Clean starched dresses. Pigtails and cotton stockings. Antiseptic living in an antiseptic house. Mouthwash and laxatives every night before bed. Sunday school class. A gold star for attendance beside her name.
From a background like this it was a wonder she had ever allowed herself to give in to a man, let alone enjoy him. But there was no denying that there was a primitive wantonness deep inside her that made her respond lustfully to a man's caresses, that filled her with a delicious, uncontrollable warmth.
As fragments and details of last night's near-orgy came back to her she began to twist her hips involuntarily. Martin was still sleeping soundly, but she was wishing that he would waken and love her again.
She decided that if he didn't open his eyes in another five minutes, she would see to it that he did, despite the fact that he was often angry at being awakened rudely from a sound sleep.
There was a smoldering fire in her body that was ready to leap into flames, a craving that had to be soothed. And there was only one way-to have a man.
And it seemed as though Martin were the chosen one. At least he was the only man handy at the moment. She wasn't really particular who took care of her. She'd bad other lovers, and she'd have more after Martin.
Damn, she thought, I really have become a little tramp. But after all, wasn't that part of the Bohemian life? She remembered Lola's arguments in support of free love. There really were some very convincing ideas on the subject.
It was part of the artist's life, after all. A girl with a creative spirit was different, in many ways superior to the clods she had been raised among back home in North Dakota.
Just because the greater part of humanity led dull lives of monotony was no reason why she should. This was what she had told herself when the three of them came west to live in an honest-to-goodness artist colony.
It was obviously a different life from the one she had led in Laurel. One that appealed to her more. So, when in Sausalito do as the artists do....
Yet now and then this stab of conscience would hit her, leaving her gloomy and uncertain. The mood was descending upon her again. It was compounded of fear and remorse, and maybe even a touch of homesickness.
But she couldn't allow it to get the best of her. There was only one way to combat it, and that was by defiance.
Sliding her hand under the cover, along Martin's nude body, she reached for and found him.
Martin raised his head, blinking the sleep from his eyes. His hair and beard were tangled. His mouth was gaping with a half-yawn, a half-angry grimace.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Elaine slid up close to him and touched her bare middle to his leg.
"Wake up," she said. "I'm warm all over. I need you again."
Martin yawned. He sat up further on the mattress and the cover slid down below his waist, revealing her hand, the fingers clamped tight.
Slowly she began to move her hand while he watched with a numb expression on his face.
Even before he responded, Elaine felt a surge of desire seize her, leaving her head spinning, her body burning with desire.
Then Martin seemed to catch the same excitement. He turned his body toward her, twisting from her grasping fingers.
His arms slid around her back, pulled her toward him. His mouth covered hers, and she felt the faintly unpleasant prickle of his beard on her face.
Elaine clawed her nails sharply into his back as his hands began to search her body. They clamped tightly around her breasts.
"Do that," she gasped in an unnatural voice.
She felt the nipples harden against his palms, felt the molten stream of passion course through her veins.
Then Martin was pushing her back upon the mattress, moving his body until it was nearer her. She began to twist wantonly as his hands continued to caress her breasts.
Both of his hands were cupped around her heaving mounds. He pinched the nipples with his fingers. She felt them grow harder, almost burst with a wild sensation that was a mingling of pleasure and pain.
He caressed her breasts for a minute or more, all the while looking down at her with a wild light in his mad poet's eyes. His mouth was open in a thick, almost contemptuous leer. He mumbled unintelligible words in the depths of his throat. Then he bent his head.
She felt the tiny pinpricks of his beard upon her flesh as his lips caressed one breast.
"Oh, good-" she gasped.
She let her legs move as she reached up and held to him tightly. Her fingers twisted in the hair on top of his head as she shoved his lips harder against her.
His kiss flickered like a point of flame.
He kneeled above her and made love to first one breast and then the other. His teeth nibbled, shooting little stabs of pain to her. His lips gaped open, trying to engulf her.
She was wild with passion now, beyond the feeling of remorse and fear. She had managed to drive them away by the willing abandonment of her body to wanton craving.
Martin lifted his head and grinned down at her. His lips hung slack, liver-colored in the midst of his black beard. He snorted.
A bearded satyr.
She half expected to see the legs of a goat as she stared down at him.
Then she saw his readiness, and she ached for him in the depths of her being.
"Hurry," she gasped.
"Be calm, little dove," he murmured with his wild poet's eyes glaring down at her. "Little dove-"
He dropped down at her again and she felt the touch of his puckered lips on one nipple and then the other. In a moment he moved lower. His beard trickled across her middle, making her flinch.
Excitement was building in her. Her nerves were jangling like loose electric wires.
"Love me now!" she cried almost desperately.
"Patience," he mumbled with his lips pressed against the roundness of her middle.
She gasped as his caress touched her.
"Now, damn it," she cried, wild with impatience to have him possess her.
Then he was moving again, mumbling a mad litany of worship as his caress searched the crevice of her body. His beard touched her legs, tickling and pricking her at the same time.
Wild desire burned inside her.
She felt his lips and then his constantly-flickering tongue. Her hands clung frantically to his head, guiding him as she twisted her body.
"Love me, Martin," she screamed at him. "I'm burning up. You're driving me crazy...."
She pulled at his hair with her tangled fingers, trying to draw him up to her. But still he continued to attack her with his tormenting caress.
She was out of her head with the frenzy of what he was doing to her. She pulled again at his hair, then beat at his head with her knotted fists.
Finally he lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were blinking and dazed as though he had been gazing too long at the sun.
"Hurry," she demanded. "Now. now ... Breathlessly she grasped his arm and drew him down to her. Her heavy breasts rose up and fell with the labor of her breathing.
He sank down and kissed her mouth. Her breasts came alive again with excitement at the touch of his bare, sweating chest.
She arched and twisted her body, moving her legs, searching for him.
On his knees, Martin reached down and drew her there to his waist. Then he dropped with a sudden urgency, and took her.
The breath caught in her throat, almost choking her. She gagged and then gave a long, husky sigh.
His body moved like magic, and she clung to his neck as his bearded face dropped down and he put his lips against her throat, kissing feverishly.
"Oh, lover," she cried, overwhelmed by a feeling of utter submission. "I've never been so ready...."
His body slanted and slanted. Stabbing pleasure-pain shot through her. Her breath was warm as he panted upon her face, ceaselessly possessing her.
She sighed from side to side upon the hard mattress, seeking to force him further. Her mouth gaped open, panting with desire. Tears of sheer ecstasy formed in her eyes and ran down her face.
"More-" she cried, spurring him on with her clawed fingertips. "Give me everythingl"
Martin was no longer the gloomy poet, but a rampant male attacking her. He was making love to her with his whole being, clamping her to his chest with his encircling arms, thrashing her violently with his legs.
Their bodies crashed again.
The sound of their wild breathing filled the room.
Her hair was wild about her face, fallen and disheveled. She climbed up Martin's back as a monkey climbing a stick.
She heard his breath quicken and sensed that he was near the peak. Her own fulfillment was near.
Martin quickened his motion, and then one last frantic effort sent her flying over the fiery top.
She screamed aloud at the top of her lungs.
"I'm there, lover!" she cried, tossing her head wildly from side to side. "I'm there ... now, lover. Now happening...."
Then she felt him reach it at the same moment and their bodies clung together for a frantic instant while the whole world seemed to dissolve about her head.
At last she lay back upon the mattress and released her tensed body, allowing Martin to move away from her. For more than a minute she could only lie exhausted and stare at the shabby ceiling.
When at last she found the strength to lift her head, she saw that Martin was asleep once more.
Almost every night the same thing happened over and over.
She would be stretched out there, fighting sleep, and he would be sleeping away, making his funny little guttural unconscious sounds, forcing her wider awake.
While the desire built higher and higher for her. Until she would start in action the exact, selfsame ritual they had just completed.
Only then, warm and relaxed and satiated, could she close her eyes and resign herself finally to sleep.