Chapter 12
I wake and stare blankly around the cluttered room, the events of the night before coalescing slowly in my mind, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle until I know where I am and how I got here. The sun is slanting almost horizontally across the room through the parted drapes of the window and I realize with a start that it's late afternoon or early evening. I'm also startled to find that Eduardo isn't there beside me, that I'm alone. I stand up and stretch myself until the drowsiness of my long sleep disappears, then I hunt for my clothes from among the clutter of clothes strewn about the floor and dress. I tiptoe to the door and listen; there is no sound from the other room. Quietly I open the door and peep through the crack; the room is empty. I go into it and peer into the little kitchen off the room, then look into the bathroom. The apartment is deserted. I breathe a sigh of relief, go back into the bedroom for my purse, then quickly walk to the door. When I try to open it it's locked. I fiddle with the locks until I realize that the door is fitted with a third lock that is set opposite the other two, so that the door can lock people in as well as out. Trapped still, I think dismally, and I plunk myself down on the couch to wait for my jailor's return, hoping it will be Eduardo and not Manolo or Lupe. I realize that I would like to see Eduardo again.
I wait about an hour before I hear footsteps on the stairs and a key in the lock. The door opens and Eduardo walks in carrying a bag of groceries and a bottle of wine. He closes the door, locks it, and smiles at me.
"You wake up," he says.
"Yes," I smile at him. In the daylight he looks even more boyish and young. I remember his strong cock and look down at his crotch and can barely see its outline against his tight pants. He takes the groceries into the kitchen and returns to stare at me.
"Can I leave now?" I ask cheerfully.
He shakes his head.
"Why not?"
"Manolo hasn't said so."
"Oh," I sigh. "Where is Manolo?"
"Gone."
"But where?"
"Don't know. He'll be at bar tonight." "Well, I'm hungry."
I fix the two of us dinner and we eat, sipping wine and talking. Eduardo is shy and quietly charming and being in jail this way isn't so bad. I would like to make love with him again. As long as I'm being held prisoner I might as well enjoy myself, make the most of it so to speak.
"Eduardo, I'm going to take a shower," I tell him and waltz into the bathroom, leaving the door open a few inches, certain he will follow. I undress and turn the water on, adjust the temperature, and step in. The water flows over my body and revives me completely. I soap my crotch good to wash away the last of last night's lovemaking and think about another shower in my past, the shower that ended with Bill breaking my cherry. It seems so long ago, another lifetime, an event in the life of someone else, another Jenny. It's amazing how a couple months in New York will change a girl. During that other shower I was scared stiff that a man might come in after me; now I purposely leave the door open so one will come in. Yet I'm the same girl basically. Only the morals have changed, broadened. Sex is no longer immoral, it's just sex, and it's great, fantastic, the only way to live, the more the better. I really enjoyed both Manolo and Eduardo last night; if Manolo hadn't pulled that whore bit he would have been fine. I know from what Eduardo said about Lupe that Manolo did it out of a guilty conscience for not really hurting me as Lupe wanted, did it as a concession to Lupe, and it really didn't hurt me so much as it hurt my pride. I suppose I got off easy compared to what it would have been like if Lupe had really gotten her way with me.
I finish washing myself and Eduardo still hasn't come in. It strikes me as ironic that when I want a man to bust in on my shower I end up with a perfect gentleman, and Eduardo is just that. It seems so strange that I should find a gentleman in a situation like this, in a shabby apartment where I am a virtual prisoner. I smile to myself as I remember last night and how he wasn't going to even touch me until I asked him to, even though I was naked and had just been screwed by his brother.
"Hey, Eduardo," I stick my head out of the shower and yell.
"Yes?" he answers from the other room. "Do you always treat your prisoners with so little concern for their well being?" "What?"
'My back needs scrubbing, you idiot." His head appears at the door. He looks at me questioningly.
"Yeah, you. Come in here and wash my back for me. There's some things a woman just can't manage by herself."
He comes into the bathroom shyly but obviously pleased with the idea. I pull the shower curtain back and give him a good look at the front of me before I turn my back to him. I feel his hands wash over my back, feel the bar of soap slide against my skin and his fingers dig into my flesh, up at my neck then trailing down to the small of my back, hesitate, then slide down over my buttocks. I let him wash for a couple minutes then slowly I turn to face him. His hands continue to wash at me, pressing against my belly then working up to my breasts, slippery over my tits. He keeps washing and I begin to think that he would stand there washing all night if I didn't do something. I grab him by the wrists hard and drag him into the shower, clothes still on, and he laughs boyishly and presses himself against me as water sprays over him. I help him undress, pulling his shirt and pants off him and jerking his sandals off his feet. Then we are pressed into each other. I take the soap from him and reach down between his legs, soaping his genitals and coaxing his cock into a long erection. I wrap my thighs around it and let him fuck back and forth between my legs, feel his hard rod rub against my soapy cunt, and I pry into his mouth with my tongue. The steam rises from the shower but there is no suffocation this time, no feeling of panic; this is what I want, the way it should have been that time with Bill only I wasn't ready for it yet, and I take my time and enjoy every moment, every touch of it. I work my hand down and fondle his soapy balls, feel them slip and roll in my fingers, and coax him to the bursting point. Then I turn and prop my hands against the wall, sticking my ass out as I did for his brother, and Eduardo guides his cock into my cunt and begins the slow teasing rhythm that has become so much a part of my life, that will work me into an ecstasy of orgasm and wild sexual response. It builds and I feel my womanhood rising with it, rising and soaring as only sex can make it rise. When I come I'm flying and I'm taking Eduardo with me, and that is what I've learned in the time I've been in New York, that sex can make a woman fly and a woman can take a man with her, up where neither of them have been before. That's the magic of sex and that is all the justification it needs.
Suddenly the shower water turns cold and we both yell as the icy water hits us and brings us quickly back to earth. We hop out shivering and grab for towels, laughing and hugging each other like two little children caught in the rain. After we dress I comb my hair out and wait impatiently for it to dry; I've talked Eduardo into taking me down to the bar to talk with Manolo. Eduardo isn't very excited about the idea, but I point out to him that I'm still under his control in the bar as much as here and he consents, more, I think, because he doesn't really know why he's holding me himself. Every time I've asked him he simply shrugs and says Manolo told him to do it.
What I want, despite the now obvious danger, is another good hour of watching Lupe. For reason, despite the odd events of the past twenty-four hours, I'm much more relaxed than I was the night before in the bar, and I want to study Lupe's movements when I'm feeling relaxed. After all, that was the whole point of my getting involved in all this in the first place and I figure I might as well accomplish my purpose.
The bar is crowded again with what looks like the same faces as the night before. We step just inside the door and Eduardo halts and stops me with a hand around my wrist. He stares until his eyes get used to the red glare of the long room and he motions with his head toward Manolo who is sitting almost exactly in the middle of the long bar where he had been sitting the night before. Eduardo leads me toward him, and as we walk people notice us, smile and nod at Eduardo playfully, accost him with loud jabbering Spanish which I take to be some kind of obscene jokes at my expense because of the nervous way Eduardo handles them, smiling and grinning back but almost at a loss for words. I begin to wonder what I've dragged Eduardo into and wonder what Manolo's reaction will be.
Manolo watches us approach for the last several feet and I can see his eyes are dark pools with nothing reflected in them of what he is thinking. He looks so different from Eduardo; there is something like violent death hanging over him, resting on his shoulders like a cape, yet his manner is lazy, unconcerned, careless. Lupe is sitting at his side watching me as if she can't believe her eyes, as if the sight of me back in her territory after last night is too much of an insult to comprehend much less tolerate, yet there I am and with the younger brother of her man no less. I know what a predicament this must put Lupe in and I begin watching her like a hawk, her every eye movement, her every grimace, smile, slouch, step. She is why I came.
Manolo and Eduardo talk in Spanish, Manolo asking questions and Eduardo answering timidly, shyly, yet responding, holding his ground against his older brother's aggressiveness and obvious anger. Finally Manolo abruptly stops talking to Eduardo, dismisses him without saying another word, and looks curiously at me.
"What do you want?" he asks coldly.
"The usual, vodka collins," I say, purposely pretending to have misunderstood the nature of his question, smiling innocently at him.
He looks at me and almost smiles at my nerve, then he bangs on the bar and the bartender appears instantly.
"Give the lady a vodka collins," he orders, and flips out a dollar bill onto the bar. He leaves Eduardo standing there without a drink to shame him more and the bartender senses this, I guess, and doesn't even look at Eduardo. I want to ask Eduardo what he'll have myself but I'm afraid of bringing further trouble down on him if I do, so I keep my mouth shut. Instead I look straight at Lupe and smile, trying to goad her into action. I do; she stands up, sticks her ample bosom into the air, and saunters off with her hips swinging deliciously. She stops several feet away and slouches with the bar at her back, staring at me like a picture from an old Western saloon. Hollywood sure missed when they missed her, I think, but I realize they wouldn't know what to do with her anyway, any more than they would know what to do with the real Billy the Kid, because Lupe is the real thing too, and is really dangerous.
I keep my eyes on Lupe and talk to Manolo.
"I'm tired of being held like some kind of prisoner."
"You don't look like you are being held," Manolo answers.
"Then I'm free to go any time I want from here?"
"Certainly."
"Thank you." I smile sweetly. I don't trust him at all and I look at Eduardo casually, trying to discover in his eyes if anything will happen to me if I try to leave, but Eduardo is still embarrassed and sulking and uncommunicative and won't meet my eyes. I turn back to watching Lupe who is talking with two young men and I have a feeling that they are talking about me, though I keep telling myself it's just my own paranoia. Lupe is putting on quite a show for me though; I feel like I'm watching a master mime at an acting seminar. I sip my drink and try to get Manolo and Eduardo talking but both of them have seemingly turned to stone. I get to feeling uneasy then actually frightened and I'm just finishing my drink when Lupe walks back toward us and stops in front of my stool with hatred darting out of her dark eyes like daggers.
"What you doin' here, slut?" she asks, for the first time since I've met her using English instead of Spanish.
"I'm just leaving," I say as calmly as I can. "You leave when I say, when Lupe say." "Fuck you," I hear the words come out of my mouth and immediately wish they hadn't.
Lupe's hand whacks across my face and I fall off the stool and somehow find my feet as I lean against the bar for balance. People are gathering around and I know I've got to get out of there quickly or run the risk of being killed. I look back up at her, tears in my eyes from my smarting cheek, and she is standing waiting for me to make the next move. I don't want to fight her. I slide out away from the bar keeping the stool between us, and when I get out I simply turn and start to walk for the door. I take three steps when my hair is yanked backward so viciously that I fall backwards with it onto the floor, twist, and look up into Lupe's smiling face in time to see her foot lift up at my own face. I wheel sideways and take the kick in my shoulder, scramble to my feet and dash for the door with fear written all over me and Lupe's hard smile following me, triumphant, harassing, vicious. The bar is loud with laughter behind me but I don't care; my pride isn't involved as far as I'm concerned, just my safety. Let Lupe and the rest of them live out their little code of valor in the shabby bar; I'll live mine out in another way on another kind of stage. I reach the door and burst out into the dark sidewalk, take several steps aimlessly up the block, stop and lean against the stone side of a building to gain my breath and get control of my nerves which are shattered. The street is deserted, the night colder than I would have expected. The wind whistles through the deep canyons of the buildings. I catch my breath and realize I've run the wrong way down the block after leaving the bar. I start across the street to pass on the other side but as I'm halfway across the bar door opens and three men walk out and, spotting me, halt and watch me. There is a hurried exchange in Spanish, one of them ducks back into the bar, and I don't wait to see what will happen. Abandoning my idea of changing direction I start running away from the bar, down the middle of the street, hearing their footsteps clanging on the pavement behind me. I race faster but their footfalls drum closer in my ears, welling up behind me like a wave that's about to roll over me and carry me crashing down in an avalanche of asphalt and boot heels.
There is nowhere to run except straight ahead. The street is lined with a solid facade of buildings on both sides and the block is very long. I angle across the street and keep running on the sidewalk opposite the bar side of the street, and then I see a street sign ahead, small and grimy white under a streetlamp and nothing but dark empty street beyond it. I turn and run up it only a few steps before I realize my mistake; it isn't a street, it's an alley and it dead ends in another hundred feet under a single lighted bulb hanging from a doorway at the end of the alley. I race up it anyway and as I run the footsteps dogging my own stop and all I can hear are my own clattering steps on the asphalt. I run to the very end of the alley without looking back, and when I reach the brick wall of the building that blocks the road with its three storied massive brick bulk I turn beneath the ring of light and watch as my pursuers stand watching me from the open end of the blind alley. Then slowly they walk toward me as I stand under the spotlight. They spread out the width of the alley and move as shadows of men until they reach the outer perimeter of light and form a semicircle around me. There are five of them, young and dark, Puerto Ricans from the bar, their faces strangely familiar from the red glare of the neon barroom yet now, under the dim yellow light of the naked bulb, their faces seem strange and screwed tight on their sharp skulls like masks of themselves, and there is a taunting humor in their eyes like wolves, a glint and promise of what is to come. I back against the wall of the building and wonder if they'll dare try anything in the light even though it's in an alley and late at night. Finally I can't take the suspense and I scream loudly; still they don't move, and a light goes on in a window on the second story above us. We all look up in unison at the lighted window to see what these new actors are going to do, patiently waiting as a face appears at the window and stares down at us. Then the window opens, creaking, and the heads of a man and a woman appear at the window. Anxiously I try to see what race they are and I'm relieved when I see her blonde hair and his brown hair.
"What's going on down there?" the man's voice says gruffly.
The Puerto Ricans don't answer. I look up at the window pleading with my eyes.
"Go away," the man's voice says again, ineffectually, down at us.
The wolves begin to circle and dart in at me; I take my eyes away from the window and concentrate on my own drama, my own part in the scene, and I dodge helplessly as my clothes are ripped from my body. My blouse and skirt disappear and my panties are ripped clean off and last my bra is pulled up over my breasts by snatching fingers and I'm pinned to the hard bricks of the building, spread-eagle against the wall, while my tormentors individually pull their pants down and stick their cocks up between my legs, fucking me against the bricks and feeling my thighs and breasts while they push up into me. During the attack I look up and see the two faces at the open window watching. I hear a woman's voice crying, "My God, they're raping her!"
"What do you want me to do about it?" the man's voice sounds indignantly. "They're a pack of niggers!"
"Well, call the police!"
"Lot of good that'll do. Wait, maybe they'll go away."
"I'll call the police, then."
"No you won't!" the man's voice warns. "We don't want no trouble."
The faces disappear from the window and the attack goes on until all five have had their turn and I'm sore and crumbled against the wall. They let me fall against the pavement, half-propped against the bricks, and I look up to see Eduardo standing in front of me. I remember what sex was like only two hours ago with him, how gentle and clean and fulfilling it had been, and now I look at the ring of faces around me in the naked light and see how vulgar and degrading it is, and I know how degraded I feel, how wasted. Eduardo is not smiling, not enjoying the spectacle of me being violated; yet he isn't doing anything to help me either, just watching limply.
"You mother!" I yell at him, into his limp face. 'Call them off, won't you?"
But it is too late; it's already over, and they filter back out of the alley and Eduardo goes with them. He's one of them after all, a Puerto Rican, a nigger in New York, and he has everything to lose and nothing to gain by sticking up for me.
I stagger after them down the alley with the rags of my clothes wrapped around me, skirt through the dark streets and reach my apartment house. Inside I collapse and wonder how you draw the line between lives, how you know what men to trust.
I wash my torn cunt and swear I'll never fuck another man unless I feel certain he loves me. I'm Jennifer Reynolds, not Lupe or Lilly, and street sex is for those that are born to it; I'm not. I know where my stage is and I'm staying right there in that world, my world, and to hell with the streets of Manhattan. Sex is great when it's a part of your scene, and it was best with Bill because he is a part of my scene all the way. Still, I've outgrown Bill and I don't want anything more to do with him.