Chapter 1

The six o'clock evening news rattled away from the portable color television set atop the kitchen counter while the two women stood at the kitchen range. The room was warm with the smell of roasting beef and gravy bubbled in the ironware pot as Irma Decker bent over the stove jabbing at the boiling potatoes. Her eldest daughter, Sara stood at the counter tearing lettuce next to the sink.

"Shouldn't Tanya be home from school by now, Mother?"

Irma Decker glanced at the willowy blonde loveliness of her number one daughter with fond indulgence. Of course Sara knew her younger sister wouldn't be home for at least another half hour and that Sara, bless her heart, was trying her darnnest to pretend that nothing had changed since her marriage and that Tanya was still a bra-less seventh grader playing with dolls. "Don't worry, honey. She'll be along soon," sighed Irma wearily. "She's probably stopped off at the drugstore for a coke with some of her little friends."

"You mean with Terry Tucker...!"

"Oh, Terry's a nice boy. You can't blame him for his father's ways."

Irma Decker jabbed cruelly at the potatoes, the hairs prickling at the nape of her neck from her daughter's piercing blue eyes on her from behind.

"If you ask me, Mama, forcing small businessmen into becoming bookies and... and burning down their shops if they don't is pretty serious business." She chopped at the tomato bleeding on the cutting board. "How would you feel if you found out Daddy was forced into doing that after all these years of building up his appliance repair shop?"

"Now, Sara, the grand jury hasn't dismissed it yet, have they?"

"They better not or I'll lose all faith in our judicial system. I've been thinking about writing a letter to the editor of the Times Daily."

"Dear girl, don't go getting yourself messed up in other's problems."

Arguing with her eldest daughter was always a losing proposition and Mrs. Decker knew it. For all her fine feminine qualities Sara could be meddlesome at times, a trait that Irma noticed had developed only recently—since her marriage to Barry Winters. Oh, not that Irma disapproved of her son-in-law, but he was as self righteous as he was handsome, and when it came to cutting remarks he was the champ. Deep down she agreed with her daughter. Terry Tucker was rapidly developing into another rotten branch of the Tucker family tree and it hurt her to see her precocious daughter getting messed up with him. What could a mother do?

Tanya was a hard one to raise. No glee club, cheer-leading or church choir for the Decker's number two daughter. What with this staying out late at night, how could a mother rightly defend her child? And Ralph, poor tired old Ralph, had about washed his hands of the deal the second time Tanya smudged the family name by being expelled from school for cheating on exams.

"I—I didn't mean to open a can of worms, Mama."

"I know, honey. Get me a bit more flour will you?"

Irma watched the trim figure of her daughter stand on tip toes to open the cupboard door. Sara is such a gem, she mused. It's been wonderful having her and the baby here this month since Barry went to Iran to work in the oil fields... Irma whisked a bit of flour into the bubbling gravy.

"Do you think this is enough salad, Mama?"

"Plenty, dear. Your father hasn't been eating well." Poor Ralph. With all these throw-away appliances, business isn't what it used to be... and the cost of labor is so high.

"Thanks for helping, honey. Why don't you go up and check on the baby. I think I hear her crying."

Sara paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Mama?" She clamped her pearly front teeth over her beestung lower lip. "What's been bothering Daddy lately?"

Irma let out a sigh; she stirred the gravy, staring at the blank wall. "Money, I suppose. Why?"

Sara tutted, showing her affection. "He seems so... so aloof... like he's got something on his mind.

"Not yet! I told you that before, Terry!" the ripe-bodied girl in the car scowled.

"Look who's uptight! You never let a little finger-banging bother you before!"

The honey haired teenager clamped her arms over her well developed breasts and stared through the windshield at the choppy waters of Lake Michigan until, reluctantly, the boy removed his hand from beneath the hem of her skirt.

"I'm still sore from last night, Terry," she breathed softly.

The frustrated teenage boy gripped the steering wheel tightly with his sweaty palms and stared wistfully at her unflinching, pouting profile. This chick was too fucking much! A little blonder than her older sister and better developed on the top half, but with the same blue eyes and scattered crop of freckles across a pertly upturned nose.

"I can't get pills until I'm sixteen."

"Oh, brother." Terry sighed brokenly.

"... unless I'm married," she retorted, turning her face to him, beaming.

"Oh Jesus!" he rolled his eyes skyward and pounded the wheel with the heels of his hands. "Be sensible. I'm only a year older than you. What are we supposed to live on?"

"Your dad's loaded!"

Terry stared at her dumbfounded. "Your father would just as soon kill me as look at me... he'd never let you."

Tanya flashed him an indulgent smile, then faced forward and calmly began to unbutton her blouse.

"We could live with your dad... rent free."

"You dumb, dingy broad," he gulped.

"Have you seen the way your old man stared at my bust," she grinned impishly, wetting her lips, looking down at the lace covered mounds of her breasts and then up at her boy friend out of the corner of her aqua eyes. "Or the lump in his pants when I wear my bikini around your pool?"

Terry nervously fished for the tightly rolled cigarette in his shirt pocket. "I don't believe it. Now you've got the hots for my old man!"

Tanya's pink polished fingertips unfastened the last button on her blouse then, parting the thin material to expose her ripe, strawberry tipped breasts. "I like to cock tease him, that's all."

Terry lit the marijuana cigarette pinched between his sweating fingers, cupping the match protectively as he looked sideways at her. He drew long and deep, letting the acrid, sweetish smoke permeate every cell of his lungs, and then holding it deep. "You want a hit?" he stammered breathlessly, keeping the smoke down.

"Are you into underwear, Terry? I mean... like do you like me better in these sexy lace bras or bare titted?" She took the cigarette from him, emulating her boy friend's example, drawing deeply, while resting her head against the headrest of his custom, Porsche-engined Volkswagen.

"Both... why do you wanna get married?"

"I love you, idiot."

"Then let me fuck you."

Tanya took another long pull at the weed and handed the reefer over to Terry. "I'll let you fuck me if you say you'll marry me."

He turned toward her. "I think you just wanna get out of that dingy house and away from your whiny ma."

"Yeah, well how would you like to hang around that dump? Ma lets Dad treat her like shit and Sara with her asshole husband Barry."

"Still there, huh?" he put in with a forlorn grimace. He turned his head, staring fondly at her lushly exposed, pink nippled breasts. She often sat like that whenever they were alone; still he couldn't get used to it. He'd laid most every foxy chick in school, but damn it this chick had him but good! He leaned down, pulled her breasts free and gave each puffy nipple a long wet sucking kiss.

"Ol' Barry's over there in Iran running oil rigs... but I'll bet he's drilling more than oil."

"Hey! Have him send back some hash..."

"You've got to be joking! He's so straight he can't bend over."

"They got a kid... he must be doin' something right."

Tanya could feel goose pimples rising on the softly exposed flesh of her milk white breasts as her boy friend continued to kiss and suck her naked nipples. "I think she picked up the sperm from a toilet seat."

"Hey... that's not fair! Sara's a fox."

Tanya took the marijuana cigarette from her boyfriend and choked down another lungful of smoke. She stared out over the white caps of Lake Michigan, appreciating the serenity of their favorite parking spot. Idly, her fingers entwined in the hair on the nape of Terry's neck. His hair was a bit too short for her rebellious tastes, but that didn't matter because Terry's old man was loaded. Maybe Mr. Tucker was a little weird, but he did a darned good job of chiseling a living out of this crumby northeastern Wisconsin city on the bay. And if it weren't for sin, he would be as poor as her dad. Crazy... but that where it was at in this fucked-up world.

"You'd better get me home before Dad blows in," she breathed reluctantly.