Chapter 2
Elaine rolled away from Martin's slack body and sat up slowly, looking through her stringing hair for the rest of the wine they had drank last night.
The bottle lay open on its side with a dark puddle visible through the smoky green glass. She picked it up and discovered that there was a mouthful. Swallowing it, she felt the acid bite of Chianti on her tongue.
There was a hint of bright day upon the window, soft blue shadows of morning and the pale yellow filtered light of the sun through a hanging fog.
She felt the need to get out and breathe the early freshness of the air.
It was morning on Frisco Bay.
It represented a life of enchantment after the ordeal of years on the flat Dakota plains.
Martin didn't stir when she stood up from the mattress on the floor and went like a cat across the room to pick up her gray sweatshirt and paint-spattered Levis.
She pulled them on over her bare white skin. The coarse cloth of her sweatshirt rubbed her nipples, which were like a raw wound from the ceaseless attention Martin had given them last night and this morning.
She felt a sensuous pleasure as she pulled the tight Levis up her legs, buttoning them, feeling them clinging to her bare waist and legs.
She smiled at the remembered pleasure she had received from Martin, who was a fairly able lover despite the fact that he was probably a little psychotic.
He had taken care of her well enough, and now she felt calm and depleated. She gave a sigh of satisfaction and hooked her toes in a pair of clogs.
She was totally dressed. No underwear and no socks. In the eyes of the folks back home in Laurel, North Dakota she would be a hopeless degenerate. Yet she knew that deep in their conservative little hearts they were envious of her and the life she dared to lead.
There was a wicker-covered demijohn beside the door from which Elaine drained the last swallow of bitter wine dregs before she slipped out the door.
It was a beautiful morning.
There were birds flickering in the treetops. Looking back toward Hurricane Gulch she saw the glint of sun on brown earth where the fog had blown away.
Quickly she went down the hill, her legs running from the momentum of the steep descent.
The sun floated low across the bay behind the fog shroud. The water was calm, torn by a few tide ripples. A gull wheeled and cried overhead, went flapping through the blurred mist toward Angel Island.
Beyond Juanita's, the old ferry boat, a single fisherman drifted in a flat-bottomed skiff, trailing a taut fishing line in the water. As Elaine watched, the man stood up and moved a metallic thing in the bottom of the boat, sending a muted cry across the blue-gray morning.
Elaine crossed through the park and stepped around a mashed banana oozing from its skin. She walked by the stone elephant, down to the docks where the barge was tied in a nest of barges on the steaming surface of the bay.
An empty beer can rolled on the slanting deck. Elaine kicked it over the side and climbed through the door, stooping beneath the low frame.
Lola and her newest lover, a sculptor with pale eyes and a thin sandy beard, were rolled into one on the bottom bunk with a blanket tucked around their chins. It was often cool in the mornings on the bay, and blankets were almost a necessity if there was no heating stove. And a heating stove was a luxury they didn't possess.
At first Lola and her lover seemed to be asleep, but then Elaine noticed a languid twisting of their legs, the coiling of muscle against the taut olive-green army blanket.
A quiet meeting.
Lola began picking her nose and wiping her finger on the mattress of the bunk above. The red-haired sculptor, who's name was Stew, buried his face against Lola's pale throat and gave a low dog bark. Lola gasped and fluttered her eyes.
Elaine watched the movement of hands beneath the blanket and saw the dazed expression it created on both their faces. Both of them were breathing heavily.
They kissed for a moment, and then with a slithering motion Stew's head disappeared beneath the blanket.
It became a lump beneath the olive cloth, somewhere in the vicinity of Lola's breasts. Elaine knew what was happening to Lola because her eyes shut tight and her mouth came open in a pained oval.
She began to hiss and breathe through clenched teeth while Stew caressed her breasts.
The sight began to affect Elaine as well, and she felt a slow stirring of desire in her blood. It had been only a short while ago that the same thing had happened to her.
After a moment Elaine saw the shape which was Stew's head slide down lower on Lola's body until it rested on her legs. At the same time Stew's bare legs came out from beneath the edge of the blanket.
All at once the old disgust swept over Elaine, and she had a hard time convincing herself that Stew wasn't somehow depraved. To escape the anxiety that was building in her she went to the galley. She sloshed water from the bucket in the bottom of the coffee pot and tossed the brown dregs over the side. She knocked out the grounds from the strainer on the window sill, heard them chunk into the bay.
While the coffee boiled she sat on a box and watched Lola and Stew form shapes beneath the blanket. Now they were a community of snakes, and then a humpbacked beast. Lola's bare ankle burst beneath the blank-ket and rested on the wooden edge of the bunk.
Brenda had not come home last night. It was the second day now that she had been with Warren Lass-well. Elaine couldn't ignore it. Yet why should she be so concerned? Brenda was a big girl and knew her way around.
But Warren Lasswell had her worried. He wasn't like anybody else she had ever known. He was more like a toad than a man, and she had a feeling that his blood would be cold and inky.
He lived in a big old mansion in the Banana Belt where he dabbled with paint in a long, empty studio. Elaine had heard whispered stories about the man that frightened her, despite the fact that she tried very hard not to be shocked or amazed by anything.
She was still afraid for Brenda, who was only nineteen, two years younger than herself. It wasn't just her age though, because Brenda had always been the wild, crazy sister who seemed to have no caution about anything. As though life were too trivial to be worthy of concern.
A little rebellion was fine and healthy, but you had to keep your feet on the ground. Elaine still kept her hopes of being a good artist someday. She worked at it, much harder than Brenda or Lola would ever work.
But of course a talent couldn't flourish in the wastelands of North Dakota. Coming to California had been the first step toward an art career. And it had been exciting, full of new experiences.
They had tasted the fruit of Bohemian life as all the great painters had done in their youth, and now there was nothing to return to at home but dull respectability.
Elaine had always been a sceptic. She had found it easy to break with the middle class morals she'd been raised on, and substitute a philosophy that was sensual and lazy and sexually indiscreet.
Their mother had been unable to recapture them by flying out to the coast after she and Brenda had failed to return to college in the fall.
It had been a victory concluded when Brenda walked nude onto the barge deck before their mother and waved to a trio of passing boys. Her mother had gone away then after a wild scene of crying and pleading and final cursing rage. They were unable to believe for a day or two that they had actually carried it off.
Lola hadn't experienced the same opposition from her family because they were too busy at home taking care of four younger kids. Her father even mailed her money now and then and her mother sent boxes of food.
The three of them managed to pay the rent and eat enough to stay alive on the money they made occasionally from painting calendars and greeting cards and a few other odd jobs. It was commercialism, but it allowed them to live in the kind of surroundings that stimulated art.
The coffee was done, strong and black. Elaine searched the cups on the table and found one that was relatively clean. The holes punched in the milk can had hardened over. She poked them open with a matchstick.
There was one dried doughnut left in the sack on the table. Elaine went with it onto the deck and sat on a box facing the bay. The fog had begun to roll away and now she could see the faint outline of Alcatraz.
It was a beautiful morning. Sunshine floated above the blue haze overhead. By noon the sky would be crystal clear. Each hour of the day this same scene from the barge was new and different. She had hopes someday of painting a series as Monet had done at Rheims. She had already begun.
Finishing her coffee, she went to the studio, a cramped room with a north light of dirty glass panels. With three easels and a table for mixing paints, there was little room left for standing.
Elaine looked at the big rectangle of masonite on her easel, a pattern of gray and blue and white. The first view of the bay.
It was a morning scene in which she had tried to capture the essence of fog and water and jutting island rocks.
She stood for several minutes and then she squeezed some burnt umber on the window glass she used for a pallet. She spread in oil and turpentine. Then with the pallet knife she stroked it raw on a ledge of rock.
It was pretty horrible.
The reddish gash jumped at you and broke the painting's repose. She wiped it away and threw down the rag. A pang of doubt began to grow in her. Did she really have talent as she had been told by a few second-rate artists? Or was she fooling herself like so many of the dilettantes and psuedo-artists you could find in colonies like Sausalito?
She knew that there was only one way to prove to herself that she wasn't just another one of the clowns or beatniks, and that was by hard work. She knew she should work this morning, yet she couldn't seem to get in the mood because Brenda was on her mind. Brenda and Warren Lasswell. Maybe their mother had reason to fear after all....
Throwing down the pallet knife, she wandered aimlessly through the barge. This morning she should feel relaxed and carefree, and yet there was a great unrest building inside her. A feeling of approaching tragedy.
All at once she realized she was standing in the doorway watching Stew and Lola naked on the bunk. The blanket had slid to the floor, revealing them in an intimate embrace.
They were locked in each other's arms, their bodies entwined, their mouths crushed together.
Elaine felt her face redden with shock from the sudden confrontation. She felt a moment of embarrassment, a reflex that was the result of years of training in a rigid middle-class home.
For a moment she thought of turning away, and yet she was held by a kind of fascination that she couldn't explain. It wouldn't matter to either Stew or Lola if she watched. In fact they knew she was on the barge, and they might even have tossed away the blanket, inviting her to spy on them, adding a different kind of spice to their lovemaking.
In the end she stayed in the doorway in a kind of hypnotic trance, staring at the glazed look of excitement in Lola's eyes, the deep flush on her face, imagining that she was there in Lola's place and Stew was making love to her.
As Elaine watched, dry-mouthed and trembling with inner excitement, Stew moved out of Lola's embrace and raised his body above hers, supporting himself with his arms outspread and his palms against the mattress.
Then, raising one hand, he touched it upon Lola's seething breast. Elaine felt a wild shock at the contact, beginning in her own breasts and coursing through her body like molten fire through her veins.
Lola's eyes closed, her passionate mouth formed a carmine gash. Her pink-tipped breasts rose and fell rapidly from the excitement.
Stew began to squeeze Lola's breast, tightening his fingers in the soft, yielding flesh. He pushed the point of his index finger against the hardened nipple and teased it, moving it back and forth. , There was a sharp intake of air as Lola drew in her breath. She reached up in a kind of delirious movement and clamped her fingers in Stew's arms.
Then Lola laid her hand on her own breast, the one Stew was not toying with, and began to caress it vigorously.
They were each caressing a breast, and Lola was in such a frenzy of desire that she commenced to squirm and twist upon the bed.
Stew's fingers bit deeper into the softness as he held Lola's breast. He covered the whole mound with his hand, massaging it with his palm, and then he pinched and teased the nipple with his fingertips.
They had evidently been making love all night, so there was no haste now. This was a time when they could torment each other until they both reached a fever pitch.
And that was exactly what they were doing, for now Lola had reached down and grasped Stew. She began a rhythmic motion with her clamped fingers, making him twist excitedly.
They were holding each other, building their passion, and as they did so they began to kiss again. Their mouths came together. Their lips touched, very delicately at first, and then with crushing violence.
Their gasping and panting reached a high pitch, sounding loud in the small cabin.
Stew lowered his body, pulling his hand away from Lola's breast. He pressed to her and caressed slowly while she tossed beneath him.
Lola's arms went around Stew's neck and she clung with a fiery desperation, seeking him with her body.
But Stew had other plans, because he slid lower on the bunk, kissing Lola's pale flesh wherever his lips found contact.
His feverish kiss touched her neck and then moved lower. When he reached one jutting breast, a visible shudder went through Lola's body.
Elaine felt it too, and experienced a kind of electric shock up and down her spine.
Lola tossed her head on the pillow, and when she turned it toward the door she discovered Elaine standing there. She gave a kind of fierce animal grunt and hissed through her teeth. And then she smiled at Elaine, a wild abandoned grin of pure passion.
Lola's head lifted and she looked down at Stew, who had slid lower on her body. His lips moved caressingly over the underside of her breasts.
And then he moved lower, his lips moving continuously.
Lola closed her eyes once more and jutted her chin, baring the pale whiteness of her throat. She groaned harshly and made a gurgling noise.
Stew glanced upward with glazed eyes and ran his tongue along his feverish lips.
"How is it, love?" he rasped hoarsely. "Am I getting through to you?"
"Oh, baby-" Lola moaned.
"How's about a little more of the same?"
"Oh, yes, daddy," Lola said with a wicked, throaty growl.
Stew laughed and turned his face toward Elaine. A self-satisfied grin split his lips. "Join the party, gorgeous?"
Elaine stood motionless without replying. Yet she was seething inside, for his words had sent a sudden pulse of wild excitement into the depths of her insides.
When she said nothing, Stew turned back to Lola. He moved downward again, kissing the hollows and n raised contours of her middle.
On the tangled bunk Lola's body twisted and squirmed with increasing desire.
"Oh, baby. Oh, baby," she whimpered. "Go on, go on, baby...."
Stew moved lower, taking his time about it, touching his lips against Lola's white, shimmering flesh.
Lola began to moan loudly.
Stew's kiss reached her navel, and then trailed downward, leaving a caressed path toward the final goal.
"Oh, baby-you're good," Lola cried, a fierce scream that split the calm.
Stew kissed with devouring ardor, spurred on by the response he was receiving from Lola. He remained there for a long while as Lola clutched his head in her trembling hands.
Then he sat up with a quick movement, stared at Lola and gasped to catch his breath. But Lola didn't remain quiet. Instead she moved down the bed toward Stew and dropped her head to him. Her matted blonde hair covered his waist for a moment as her lips began to caress him.
"That's good, love," Stew cried in a tremulous voice, "Go, baby. Go. That's what I like...."
Lola looked up for a moment through her fallen hair.
"Do you really like me?"
"You're driving me crazy, love."
"I'll love you more...."
Lola dropped her head and continued what she had been doing while Stew tossed and rolled on the bed, too far gone to control himself.
"Oh, damn," he cried. "You're too much, love. Too much."
Elaine realized that she was breathing as heavily as the two people on the bed. She'd seen enough. She felt dirty inside. With a feeling of revulsion mixed with excitement, she forced herself to turn away.
She went back to the studio and once more tried to paint. But the feeling of vague unrest had made it impossible for her to work. After a futile ten minutes she gave it up.
When she went to the galley Lola and Stew were at the cluttered table with coffee cups and cigarettes. Stew had put on a pair of shorts and Lola was wearing a dirty shirt she had found in a box of paint rags they'd bought at a rummage sale. It was too large for her and the tails covered her legs to the kneecaps.
Elaine poured herself more coffee and sat down in a rickety chair that tilted beneath her weight.
"Has Brenda been back?"
Lola shrugged.
There was a jar of pig's knuckles on the table looking like bleached jelly with streaks of pink. Lola dug into the jar and licked her fingers.
"Brenda was here last night with Warren," Lola said.
"What was she doing?"
"She got out some old paintings of hers she wanted to show him, and then they left."
"Is she still with him?" Elaine said.
They both caught the note of concern in her voice.
"Don't sweat it," Lola said. "She's in good hands."
"I don't like him."
Lola turned the pig's knuckle jar over in the palm of her hand and shoved a blob of jelly into her mouth. She scratched the top of her head, which was matted with dirty yellow ringlets.
"He's a little creepy, but he's got a lot of connections. He says he's going to sponsor a show for Brenda."
"That chick's hung up on Lasswell," Stew said. "He'll straighten her out. She's got a few love problems, but he's an old veteran...."
"You're projecting now," Lola said with a mildly haughty sniff. "Lasswell isn't interested in her body. Only her sainted soul."
"How can you be so sure, love?" Stew said, scratching the red mat on his chin.
"Because he's on the stuff, and that's the real boss. He doesn't dig bodies any more."
"So he's shooting it up," Stew said. "He can get a yen for a sweet young body now and then. I would. That Brenda's a fine gone chick."
Lola shook her head knowingly.
"He's been hitting it too hard. He's got a twenty dollar habit."
"So-" Stew said. "He can afford it, with his money."
Elaine felt a chill moving up her legs and spine, raising gooseflesh.
"Do you think he's got Brenda on it?" '
"Who knows?" Lola shrugged inside the loose-hanging shirt. "Maybe she's goofing around. If that's what she wants. It's her lookout...."
"She's too young to know what she's doing," Elaine said, clutching her fingers together.
"Dig Mother Hubbard," Stew said. He peeled his lips away from his yellow teeth.
"My God, Elaine," Lola said. "Don't be a freak. The kid's got a right to live her own life."
"She's my little sister. I'm worried about her. Somebody has to watch out for her."
Stew sniffed disdainfully.
"Don't be so damn square."
"I don't care what you think," Elaine shouted at him. "I don't want Brenda to get the habit."
"Dig the vice squad," Stew said to Lola with a contemptuous movement of his head.
"Would you want to wreck your life that way?" Elaine said angrily.
"I tried the stuff, but it's not my dish. I go for chicks. The long gone crazy flesh. Those way-out honey-sweet legs. That's what hangs me up."
He reached beneath Lola's drooping shirt and squeezed her leg. She gave him a grin and wiped her fingers through her straw-colored hair.
"Why, you nasty man," she said with pretended shock.
Stew slid closer with his chair and put an arm around Lola's shoulder. She giggled when he bit her neck.
"Listen, love," he said. "I've got to set you straight. On that last round you were dead. That's not the way.
You see? This is one time in your life when you've got to move your lazy hips. When you're loving, really love. Understand? You've still got difficulties, but you'll learn."
"How could I miss?" Lola said sarcastically. "I've got a good teacher."
"The best...."
Elaine jumped up from the chair, almost tipping it over. The small, closed-in room had all at once become oppressive. She went out on the deck and filled her lungs with air.
She was disgusted with Lola, who had turned into one of the real unwashed since they'd come to Sausalito. They were all fighting conformity, but Lola was out too far. She hadn't taken a bath in over a month. And the way she talked and acted was becoming a joke.
This wasn't the Bohemian life Elaine had always imagined. The freedom of the left bank. This wasn't freedom, but the worst kind of conformity disguising itself as rebellion. The parrot talk and the costumes. Everyone accusing you of being a square if you deviated from the 'beat' pattern in any way.
And the casual acceptance of junk, which she had seen for herself could tear a person down in a matter of months.
She'd come here for freedom from the kind of restraint she'd been shackled with in North Dakota. She still wanted to paint, but in her own way. And she didn't want to close her eyes to what was happening to Brenda.
She was worried. There was a weakness in Brenda that could destroy her if a man like Warren Lasswell really got a firm hold on her.
The fog had rolled away, leaving the bay calm and blue beneath the sun. A tug pulled a long barge far out beyond Angel Island. It floated on the smooth surface with a double reflection like a too-precious Victorian seascape.
She went to the studio. One of Brenda's paintings lay against the wall. Elaine studied it solemnly. A sickly mess of muddy browns and blues. It was nothing. She had never spent enough time to develop her talent.
And Warren Lasswell had convinced her she was a genius. What was he after with his cynical flattery? Anybody could tell that he wasn't sincere. He was snowing Brenda. But why?
The old anxiety swept through her. She hurried onto the deck and looked up toward the Banana Belt where Warren Lasswell had kept Brenda for two days. What was he doing to her? She had to know.
She didn't tell Lola where she was going. She crossed the narrow plank to shore and walked quickly up the steep road away from the dock.