Chapter 13
Naomi floated into Roxie's Bar as if washed off the street by the wind and rain. Her presence seemed to punctuate the pleasant rumble of conversation within a period. Bartender and customers alike turned to look her over as she stood near the door. Then with shrugs of contempt, they turned and ignored her. Their snubs were too obvious to be snubs. They were more like insults.
Standing there, Naomi's eyes darted off the hunched backs of the customers slouched over the bar stools. She knew most of them, because this used to be one of her favorite hangouts.
Nervously, she weighed her choice, stay or go. Memory of the telephone call and of the empty apartment tilted the scales in favor of staying.
Jutting her chin out defiantly, she walked toward the empty seat at the end of the bar.
"How's it going, Mac?" she asked of the bartender when he finally came over to her. "Long time no see."
He shrugged indifferently, his hands on his side of the bar as he waited for her to order. The look on his brown face was nondescript. Emotionless. Like she was a stranger instead of a customer for the past five years.
"I'll have the usual, Mac," Naomi finally said.
"What's that?" he asked.
"You ought to know! I've been ordering it long enough."
He shook his head.
"Customers come and go. Some you remember, and some you don't. Especially those who think they're too good for old friends!"
It was an inference and she knew there was nothing she could do about it except to either ignore it or go to another bar. She chose to ignore it.
"Scotch and water," she said in a low tone.
She watched him walk to the end of the bar and prepare the drink. Someone leaned across to him and said something that caused him to laugh. They both looked down at her. And she knew what they were talking about.
They don't want me here. I'm not one of them anymore. It hurts their pride to think I'm shacking up with a white man. So they're going to give me the treatment. As if I'd broken some major code or something! Well, they won't break me. I know what I am. They can think what they want.
The bartender brought back her drink and slopped it carelessly on the bar before her.
"That'll be seventy-five cents!" he said looking her in the face. Naomi looked at him in surprise.
"What's the matter. Can't I run a tab here like I always do?"
He shook his head.
"That's only for regular customers and people I trust. If you don't like our rules, why don't you go someplace else!"
Naomi's pride kept her glued to the seat. Slowly and deliberately she found a dollar bill in her handbag, then slapped it on the bar in front of him.
"Keep the change," she said sarcastically.
He rang the amount on the cash register and brought back the silver quarter and plunked it down in front of her.
"I don't want money like that," his words came slowly. "It smells bad."
He turned his back on her and walked away.
Naomi clutched her raincoat tightly about her, shivering with anger and walked out.
Turning blindly down the street she nearly collided with Line.
"Hello, Naomi."
"Why, Hi, Line. How are you. It's been a long time."
He ignored her words.
"What are you doing down here with us poor folk? Slumming?"
"Why shouldn't I come down and visit?" she said gaily, ignoring the insult. "My friends live here."
"Friends? You ain't got any friends." he snarled with an abrupt laugh. "The only friend you got must've deserted you or you wouldn't be here. What'sa matter. Not treatin' you good no more?"
She flicked open her raincoat under the flashing neon sign.
"What does it look like?"
She displayed her new red outfit of expensive shantung.
"And I've got a whole closet full of clothes like this, Line. This happens to be the cheapest of them. Wore it special to come down here in."
The muscles of his cheeks quivered. And she felt a smile of satisfaction spreading on her own lips.
"What did you come down here for, Naomi? Not to see old friends. You ain't got any here now."
She looked up at him, her chin thrust forward.
"Either your ofay isn't treatin' you right, or you've come looking for a man. Isn't what you thought he'd be? Come back for some real loving like you used to get from me?" he sneered.
"You wouldn't begin to know what real loving is, Line," she seethed. "I never got a taste of it until I found Randy. You're still in nursery school compared to his techniques. You couldn't begin to catch up!"
"No?" he breathed regarding her slyly in the cold liquid blue of the flashing sign.
Naomi returned his look firmly and smiled.
"No. Now I've got to run along before he misses me. Be seeing you ... maybe."
And she turned on her heel and clacked off into the darkness of the rain-soaked night. A feeling of satisfaction went with her. Guess I've shown him, she thought to herself. Maybe I'll see him again? Ha! I should give a damn.
There were rapid heavy footsteps behind her.
Why did her heart skip a beat? There was nothing to fear. She'd shown that over-sized nigger baby she didn't need him. All she wanted was Randy. Love and Randy. But he wasn't home. He was at a party or somewhere. Somewhere she couldn't go.
The footsteps approached quickly, steadily. Clap. Clap. Slap into a puddle. They kept coming. Intent and purposeful.
In the steady drizzle the street lights blurred. An early drunk staggered against a telephone pole and some ragged old man pawed in a garbage pail for scraps outside a bar and grill. Distantly she heard the sound of laughter. Somewhere something funny was being said. People were amused. But they were too far away to hear her. Too far away to know her need. And they wouldn't help or understand her if she could find them in one of those dimly lit-blue-fumed rooms with cigarettes burning over half-empty bottles of gin and whisky.
The footsteps stamped abreast of her and she could hear the heavy breathing of an angered man.
She looked up and saw Line regarding her hotly from the corner of his eye. One strong hand gripped her arm and pulled her along with him down the street and into an alley way.
"Wh ... what, Line!" she cried, pulling back. "Stop! Let go!"
But her protests and resistance went unheeded.
"Line! Let me go. I'll scream!"
"Scream, baby," he hissed. "Who's gonna help? Who's gonna give a damn?"
"HELP!" she cried. "Someone, HELP!"
There were only the drunk and garbage scrounger to hear. The first was oblivious to his surroundings and the old man looked up vaguely from his ash can. Naomi waved to him and cried once more and he just waved back.
Line laughed, "Your friend really cared."
"Line, be reasonable!" she hollered beating his chest and arms with her fists as her feet dragged the ground.
He picked her up bodily, turning off into the narrow alley while she screamed.
One or two people appeared at the door of an old cellar apartment behind a rubbish heap, but withdrew in spite of Naomi's pleas. They knew better than to get mixed up in someone else's trouble. It meant police, newspaper reporters, inquisitive "do-gooders" and other trouble makers.
When Line finally put her down, Naomi found herself in a dirty store room with one naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She could hear the clatter of falling pins and rumbling bowling balls on the other side of one thin wall. On the other side of the room she could hear laughter, chatter, and calling voices above the thunder of a juke box and the wail of mumbled words from a popular protest singer.
She carefully surveyed the crowded room of boxes, mice, and filth. There were only two doors of escape and Line was carefully testing the locks, depositing their keys in his hip pocket.
"So you think I'm just kid stuff, huh?" he queried, turning to her.
Naomi didn't answer. She just watched him as he slowly came towards her, almost dragging his feet as he caught her eyes' fall to them. A grin etched his dark face as he saw her squirm against a tall pile of boxes watching the steady approach of his huge, motorcycle-booted feet.
"Think I don't know how to make love!" his voice echoed deeply through the passage of boxes he passed.
Naomi inched her way backward through the wooden cases, tripping among the small broken cardboard containers strewn under her feet.
"Ha! Ha!" he laughed boisterously at her.
"Line!" she screamed stopping to stare at him. "Goddamn it! What do you want?"
"Me?" he asked increduously, pausing only a moment. "Since when did you give a shit about what I want? What your mother wants? What your friends want?"
"I'm talking about here and now, Line!" she shouted. "Not what you think about the past."
"Think? Know!" he shouted. "You haven't given a damn about anyone but Naomi Douglas since you found you could get a few goodies by screwing with an ofay. Isn't that so? Since you've been fucking with that white bastard and getting fancy clothes and jewelry, you've forgotten who raised and fed you, slaved to give you whatever was available for a nigger kid! You've ignored and denied your old friends because they weren't good enough for you. Couldn't give you what your ofay cock's wallet could, huh?"
"No, Line. No!"
"Yes! Naomi, you haven't given a shit for anyone except those who could give you the white man's luxuries for the use of your little mulatto pussy!"
"Line, please!" she begged as he came full upon her.
"Slut, Whore!" he shouted at her, his heavy, massive brown hand swung down and cracked against her jaw, snapping her head to one side.
"Bitch! Fucking black bitch!" he rasped, watching her clasp the throbbing jaw. "When I get through with you, you'll know who can screw."
Naomi stared at him defiantly, her shoulders squared, and let her hand drop from the pulsating fire of her jaw. She only hoped he could not hear the pounding fear of her heart.
He viewed her coolly. His eyes were burning coals, spitting out all the unspoken words that said he despised everything she stood for.
"Well, whore?" he demanded. "Don't you know how to undress? You like to make love so much! Get that hungry little cunt of yours filled with a prick. Then strip, nigger baby. STRIP!"
"No, Line!" she whispered hoarsely. "You got it all wrong!"
"Me? Unh-unnh, baby. You that's got it wrong," his words seared her. "We tried to treat you like a lady, but you didn't want it. Wanted to be a whore. So's now we gonna treat you like one. Got the picture? You think you're a lady from the upper crust of Boston Society now and was nothing but a nigger girl before? I got news for you, doll. You was never nothin' but a black pussy to be fucked and handled. 'N yawh worse now, bitch. 'Cause now you can be bought and sold like a two-cent lollipop to be sucked, eaten, and forgotten. Like that, huh?"
"Line," her voice trembled.
"No, Naomi. You can't talk to me anymore. Can't twist me around your li'l fingah! Now I'm takin' what's rightfully mine. Takin' what was promised and then snatched back."
"Please," Naomi pleaded. "Line, PLEASE!"
"Oh, ho, looka the Boston bitch o' Society shake and grovel! She's askeered. O what, babe? You seen a prick befo'. You had one fill your hot little cunt. You ain't no virgin. Why you was took early. Seen them pluck your cherry myself and tasted it not long after. "Membeh, huh?"
"Line, it's not right. Not this way. Please-!"
"Not this way?" he belched furiously. "Then how? Offered you marriage. Legal and propah! Security, a home-me to watch over you. And you chose to sell your pussy to an ofay with some dough and a title in uptown social circles. If I can't have you legal and nice, and I can't buy you like the cheap prostitute that you are, how should I take you?"
Naomi swallowed loudly. How in hell did she ever get into this mess, she wondered? What did I do? First Randy deserts me in the library. Then he goes off to have a good time and leaves me home miserable and alone. Now Line. Only Line is going to hurt me, himself, if he can. He's going to hurt me bad because he's loved me and I couldn't love him back. Why didn't he understand? Why the hell couldn't anyone understand!
"Start stripping or I'll do it myself!" he ordered.
"Line, don't you love me anymore? Don't you care?"
"You should talk of love and caring! You who's nothin' but a prostitute, a cunt to be picked up off the streets and-!"
"Line! Stop! Stop! I can't stand your accusations!"
"There's more than accusations, baby," he snorted and waited no longer.
His huge hands began to tear at her. Ripping the expensive cloth from her bosom, down over her hips. Mad with fury, his strength was multiplied.
Naomi struggled against his force, but that great dark paw slashed at her face again and left it raw and bleeding. His claws raked at her slip and brassiere, wrenching them from her rich, lustrous breasts. And Naomi found herself collapsing weakly from fear and exhaustion under his brute force as he shredded the thin wisp of nylon bikini panties from her hips.
She lay there naked in the bright puddle of her clothes, blood drying at her lower lip and down her chin. Her honey-gold flesh rippled with chill shivers from her nudeness and the fear that sounded frantically in her breast.
Lust drooling from his mouth, and loathing and hatred in his black orbs, he came down atop her. His black muscled bulk like a monstrous shadow engulfing her.
"Aaannnggghhh!" Naomi shrieked.
But his mouth came down over hers, muting and choking her so that her cry was lost in the prison of his arms and flesh.
His mouth levered open her lips, their teeth gnashing with the fury of their struggle. And the warm wet invasion of his tongue bathed her mouth and pressed at her tonsils.
Her jaws ached with his bruising hold and in answer to her efforts to clamp her teeth upon his tender organ his teeth cut into the fragile skin of her lips.
"Mmmpppfff! Mmmpppfff!" she mumbled against him, pushing at his vast shoulders with all her might.
He was pleased with her struggle. Glad at her pain. He was going to make her know all the pain and humiliation she'd caused him. She would suffer for abandoning of her mother, her friends, the man she was to have married. In the manner in which she had denied herself, chosen to forsake her friends, he would make her pay a small token for lack of love, lack of humanity, her own egoism and self-preservation at the cost of loved ones.
Naomi Douglas was about to learn what it meant to be a lost and fallen woman. About to know what became of a woman who sacrificed friends and loyalty for her own enrichment. She would know the cost of selling her Negro-nurtured body to a white man for less than a black soul's worth.
Animal-like claws ravaged the rich swells of her soft, tawny breasts. They pawed and raked at her soft, silken flesh, leaving it with the dark prints of blood vessels crushed and broken under the pressure of merciless fingers.
Naomi panted with pain and exhaustion under the onslaught. Her breasts heaved in the vise-like grip of his fists and her lungs fought for oxygen in the suffocating mastication of his mouth, her throat giving sharp, rasping rattles as she strained for fresh air.
Her fists and legs flailed vainly, pinned beneath Line's heavy weight. And her mind began to reel, her senses intermittently sharp with pain and numb with gray oblivion.
Line finally released her mouth and she gasped, coughing and sputtering for the oxygen that would restore her fading senses. But he didn't wait for her to regain her powers of defense. Satisfaction at her state of fragility drove him on, and he fell to her breasts once more, his hands manipulating and crushing the sensitive flesh into golden marble streaked with black and blue swirls of merging bruises. His teeth chewed upon her swollen nipples, leaving them torn and masticated, a bleeding pulp of brown-crested thumbs.
All the while, his knees were gnawing at her groin, the force of his weight pushing his worn chino knees between the spreading thighs. He could feel the burning labia through the thin pant material as it oozed its hot fluids to soak his knees.
Naomi labored in the musty air, her mouth wide open and noisily rasping. She became aware of the excruiciating torture of her breasts and nipples. And she could see his coarsely-curled head pounding at them with the maniacal energy.
She tried to move and realized that her almost numb crotch was being crushed by his legs. Oh God! She wanted to scream. Would anyone hear above the rumbling thunder and crashes of the bowling alley? The strains of Line's favorite "soul music" drifted through the other wall. It was his world now. Not hers. He held rule and she was helpless to his will.
He lifted his head to look at her and she dreaded the sight of madness in his face. He wrenched at the throbbing mounds of flesh in his fists and seemed to enjoy her contorted face of torment.
"So I can't screw, eh?" he breathed hoarsely. "I'll show you!"
Naomi felt her body tossed over onto her stomach as though she were a rag doll, not the flesh and blood entity of a human being.
God! Rape. He's going to rape me! Her mind wailed in the darkening fog of her senses. Rape me!
"Always wanted to fuck you in the ass. Now I'm going to do it."
"Line," she implored him. "Please, no. It'll hurt. Hurt bad!"
His laugh of pleasure at her torment washed her with a wave of helplessness. Suddenly her entire body, every muscle and ligament, melted to liquid and she nearly disintegrated into prostration upon the floor.
The wet veil of tears blurred her vision and she resigned herself to his will. His thighs moved forward slightly and she felt the huge, pulsating head of his cock pressed tightly between the cheeks of her ass. She automatically tightened her buttocks in a hopeless attempt to keep him from entering her there, but his thumbs on either side of her anus pressed harshly outward and opened the whole of her back passage to the mercy of his unnatural de-sires. He pressed the slippery, lubricated head of his cock tightly against the tiny, puckered entrance and pressed forward, gently at first.
He'd waited too long, he mused, thinking of the soiled wet splotch on his fly front as he'd unzip-pered his trousers and pulled out the pulsing, ballooning flesh of his prick.
Nudging it tenderly between his fingers to ease the ache of waiting and watch it grow for a moment, he remembered the times when he could take her willingly, when she'd come, wanting him. But that was over now. Finished!
He thrust sharply into the tiny opening of her anus, unmercifully, careless of the tiny fragileness of the passage.
"Aaaggghhh!" she screamed as she suddenly felt the tight, unyielding muscles of her anus being forced slowly outward from the force of his relentless pressure. Her face twisted tightly in pain and she groaned like a wounded banshee down into the frothy ring of her expensive clothing. She clenched the pool of shantung to her face, muffling the desperate cry of impalement on the end of a giant spear shaft.
The scent of her Chanel flooded her nostrils from the swath of red at her face, and she realized for the first time, that she had blocked out the pungent animal odor of his male sweat and desire. Nausea welled in the pit of her stomach from the mixed fragrances of male and female bodies locked in sexual exertion and the artificial veil of her feminine perfumes.
Her body pitched forward with the lunging drive of the male at her buttocks. There was a slight pop as the tight outer ring of her anus suddenly gave way and the head of his throbbing member slipped inside. She groaned again and then the momentary pain of his initial entry passed and her rectum relaxed and opened to receive him.
He grunted behind her as the tight un-used flesh clamped around his cock like a vice, but did not ease off on the pressure he was exerting against her. He jerked forward with short, hard strokes, digging deeper and deeper into her belly until Naomi's whole behind felt stretched and distended beyond all hope of ever recovering. She felt as though her whole insides were being pushed up hard into her throat. There seemed no way in the world she could escape the cruel and relentless instrument skewering its way deep into her bowels.
His hands curved around her trembling belly and she could feel his fingers pulling the hot, wet lips of her cunt open beneath her. He thrust forward with his fingers, sinking three of them deep inside her. She moaned again, her loins feeling completely filled with the hard, thick cock tunneling into her rectum from behind and his probing fingers sunk deep in her vagina.
There was a sudden gasp from his lips and she felt his pelvis smack hard into the flaccid cheeks of her buttocks, pushing them up and out. She whimpered and felt her entire body jerk and writhe for a moment in protest and then relax in helpless acceptance as the whole of his pulsating prick lay buried deep in the confines of her widely stretched rectum. He stood still for a moment to give her time to ad-just to the unnatural invasion of her back passage, and then began a series of slow, short strokes in and out of her, his fingers probing deep in her cunt, keeping time to his cock gliding smoothly in and out of her rectum.
And then to her surprise, the driving rod and the searching caress of his fingers probing into her vagina soon aroused her in a strange masochistic way, and she began eagerly rocking her hips in the air behind her, propelled by the suddenly mounting urgency of her own passage.
No! She fought the swelling fire that caught at her loins. Mustn't. Can't. Please!
But it was there. She could feel the old familiar fire building again deep inside her belly and she rocked and rotated wildly below him. The round magnificence of her buttocks hollowing and clenching around the hardness of his cock with each hard, brutal stroke he rammed into her kindled the flames still higher.
She could hear him clucking behind her in lewd delight as he watched his thick rod of flesh disappearing deep down inside the smooth hairless mouth of her rectum, and then gasping crazily to himself as he jerked out again. The tight, pink flesh flowed with it with a wet sucking noise, clasping to it as though it didn't want to let go.
His naked lust incited her more, and she began to move in earnest now, the licking flames of her own desire almost ready to erupt. She could feel he was close to coming.
He was growing inside her, stretching the already taut walls of her rectum wider and wider until they became a boiling, liquid mass of flesh. God, she would explode. She couldn't stand it much longer.
Her eyes were dilated and bulged wide as she humped under him. The tightness of her asshole clasping and unclasping around him like a sucking fish as he fucked into her now with all his lustful might.
Then he came!
Just as the rising tide of her own passion spilled out deep inside her, she could feel the hot spurts of his sperm emptying deep inside her rectum until it felt as though he were filling her whole body with the hot, sticky fluid. Her full, rounded breasts danced between her shoulders, hardening as her kneeling form felt him break through her belly and he jumped his come into them.
She could taste it on the end of her tongue, and swirled her taste buds lasciviously around inside her mouth, savoring with delight the delicious and pungent tang.
Behind her Line cried out, his thick pulsating member spurting one last thick jet of his sperm deep into her channel, flooding her ass. With a wild cry, her whole body contracted in the final burst of her own orgasm.
Her eyes closed, and she collapsed amid her soft garments and the strewn cardboard as he withdrew with a wet sucking sound, as though he were pulling a body from quicksand. A thin string of sperm followed the tip of his cock, still connecting it to the stretched hole of her anus, an obscene reminder of the savagely crude coupling they had just gone through.
Naomi lay in a limp heap on the floor, unable to move, weary and hating herself for being caught up in the vulgar lust of his rape. Why, oh, why had ... Randy! God! Forgive me. Hate me!
Line's big body slumped beside her, one big hand on her bare and quivering shoulder.
"I'm sorry. Allah! I'm sorry, Naomi," he whispered, his breath hot on her tear-stained cheeks.
Her eyes burned and her nostrils flared at the smell of his sweat-stinking body. She looked at him briefly, her pupils hot daggers as they peered into his beaded face. His brow was furrowed with sadness and regret and the lines etched at the downward droop of his mouth were mere tracings of the gullies of unhappiness that would be ploughed there by the trials of life.
His sight repulsed her.
"Don't touch me," she spat. "Don't you ever dare touch me again!"
"Naomi, I love you," he beseeched her. "I wanted you so bad!"
"Animal. You're nothing but an animal!"
"I want to marry you, Naomi. Take care of you!"
She dragged herself to her feet. Her whole body torn with the pain of his viscious rape. Slowly, trembling with hate and shame at the wanton torment of her flesh, she dressed, pulling on the torn remnants of her attire.
He watched her, his throat constricted with guilt and remorse. Then he rose, slipping his wet and deflated prick into his pants and zippering them closed with an ominous metallic clicking.
She paused briefly at the sound and then finished her dressing, pulling her coat tightly about her. She shivered, even in the warmth of the close quarters, with the thoughts of what had just happened, what lay back at the apartment, and the unknown of what lay ahead.
"Just let me take you somewhere, at least," Line said gently, trying to make things right.
She thought of the apartment. It was a haven when Randy was there to shield her in his arms and love her. She nodded and let him lead her out the door back into the grimy wetness of the black stench-filled alley.
It was still raining. The lights shone dimly and reflected in the slick mud puddles of the street. Walking along in the darkness behind Line, Naomi still felt a sense of hopelessness.
In the front seat of his car she watched the tumble-down slums rising like ghostly silhouettes careen past her vision as Line raced like a madman through the streets, guilt tearing at his gut.
She wished he'd crash. Suddenly she wished that they'd smash somewhere, somehow. It was all so futile.