Chapter 10
Rita pinched out the cigarette stub carefully. It was her last butt. She was flat broke and sullenly resentful. Even the inclination for cock had left her. Hilda was beginning to get on her nerves. Finally, Rita called Caufield. He didn't want to know. She'd had her chance. She rang Tony Carlotti and he told her to get lost. In desperation she wrote to Father O'Leary in Belfast. He had always shown considerable interest in her when, as a child, she sang in the church choir. She didn't really expect an answer, certainly not the reply she did get—a message of hope and comfort enclosing her fare back to Belfast. Her old job at Fagen's Store was waiting for her, the priest wrote. Nothing had changed. There had been no news from her family.
Rita burned the letter, then went to the cafe on the corner and got her first square meal in days. For most of the afternoon she loitered around Soho, in bars and amusement dives. By evening her mind was made up. She caught the night train to Liverpool, and arrived in Belfast on the following Tuesday. She hadn't acknowledged Father O'Leary's letter, or the money. She didn't call him like he'd suggested, or go anywhere near the Catholic church, no nearer than Casey's Yard. She wanted to see the old place, re-live former associations, especially those connected with Mike; but she came away feeling even more depressed. She didn't really know why she had returned to Belfast. It had been a sudden impulse, an instinctive longing. The idea of going back to Fagen's Store was irritatingly absurd. Fuck Fagen's, and Father O'Leary. She hadn't forgotten the feel of his flabby hand on her chubby arse one day behind the organ pipes. He'd wanted her even then, and there had been other times, other incidents.
Rita rented a room in a tenement off Shanklin Road, put a card in the local newsagent's shop window and waited for something to happen. She had plenty of clothes, but the few small items of jewelry she had acquired had long since been sold or pawned. Her cunt was her only negotiable asset. She intended to put it to work again.
Within twenty-four hours word got around and she had more business than she could handle. She felt more secure on her home ground, as if she belonged. But nothing could alleviate the loneliness.It was early December. Rita squatted on an old mattress in front of a small electric fire. Her bed had collapsed and she preferred to sleep on the floor rather than risk another shaking up. She wore a pair of the expensive pajamas Matt had paid for, and a heavy coat slung round her shoulders. The room was so cold her breath misted in the thin air. She had picked up a guitar cheaply in Pentonville Road. She strummed it now, softly crooning a favorite number.
Suddenly she twanged the strings violently, then hurled the instrument across the room. Damn Caufield. She could have made it. She had the voice. He had conned her and she had let him, instead of shoving her foot in his fat face. Silly cow! Why had she believed him? What did he know? There were other agents, hundreds in London, and at least a score in the Belfast phone book. She need never have left Ireland. There was plenty of opportunity right there. She could sing, and she would sing. All she had to do was pick up a phone and— Suddenly she was angry, appalled by her own stupidity. She hadn't given herself a chance. Shagging herself ragged, and for what? It would have been different if Mike— She sighed. Regrets were no fucking good. She had to get out and convince somebody, the whole cocksucking world.
She tried. A week later she was still trying and the landlord was still waiting for his rent. She spent Sunday in bed, nursing a cold. Next day, she decided, she would go to Dublin Somebody knocked. Rita frowned. She wasn't in the mood but she needed the money.
"It's open," she called, and inwardly blasphemed when a tall, stoop-shouldered, unkempt type entered, dressed like a seaman in gum-boots and reefer jacket, a battered cap tipped to the back of his head. He stank of fish, and was so drunk he could hardly stand. Rita shuddered. She detected a strangeness in his manner, a furtive slyness, but dismissed it as unimportant.
"Shut the door," she told him curtly. "And I'll tell you now, sailor, I'm not in the mood for conversation, so get on with whatever you've come for, then get out. Payment in advance."
He lurched into the room. "That's no way to talk," he complained. "You're not doin' me any favor, you little cow. I can always dip my wick somewhere else."
He turned to leave. Rita, remembering the unpaid rent, grabbed his arm. She forced a smile.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've had it rough lately. Don't go."
The man shrugged and flipped his cap onto a chair.
"All right," he muttered. "But you'd better earn your bread, kid."
He reached for her. His hands were enormous, the backs covered with coarse black hair. A bald swathe extended across the middle of his domed head. Rita swayed toward him, and was totally unprepared for the suddenness and violence of his assault, the slashing snatch that ripped the buttons from her pajama top, and the vindictive fury aroused by the sight of her soaring breasts. He seized her throat and threw her heavily to the floor, clawed at her pale boobs, slapping them viciously from side to side, tweaking the nipples. His knees were jammed under her armpits, pressing against her ribs.
He swayed back, jerking at his fly buttons, wrenched them undone and exposed a tremendous discolored penis ridged with blood vessels. The broad head swung up and pulsed close to her face and she could smell the bitter odor rising from his loins. The thick fingers clamped round her throat increased their choking pressure. Terrified, Rita struggled desperately, but he had the strength of an ape. His free hand grasped his jutting cock. He thrust the fat knob at her mouth, laughed insanely when she instinctively hauled her head back. She wasn't averse to sucking a hard prick—sometimes she enjoyed it—but the drunken moron squatting on her belly provoked an intense fear that quickly dispersed any element of sexual feeling. He released his penis and dragged her head forward, forcing the sour-smelling knob against her lips. Realizing the futility of antagonizing him. Rita opened her mouth. Immediately, the gross appendage squeezed in. Rita gagged, and he eased the pressure slightly, commenced grinding his tool ponderously, grinning, jetting semen against the roof of her mouth.
He pulled out, promptly blocked the reeking cavern by cramming a wadded handkerchief into it. He dragged Rita's arms behind her back, twisted her over and tied her wrists together with a length of cord from one of his pockets, then hauled her to the battered sofa and draped her belly down over the back with her head hanging down, almost touching the lumpy seat with her legs stiffly extended. The absurd position and the obscene protrusion of her arse was accentuated by her violent movements.
The man chuckled as he caressed her thinly covered bottom. Slowly, savoring the gradual exposure, he hauled the pajama pants down. Rita could see his reflection, and her own, in the dusty wall mirror. His penis was hugely erect, the foreskin drawn back so fiercely the strip of flesh linking penis and glans seemed about to rupture. He prolonged the exposure of her arse, eventually separated the sumptuous cheeks and brought his nose close to her arsehole, sniffed the tight cavity, tongued it, trailing saliva round the crinkled rim. He drew back, and Rita imagined him staring, contemplating his next move. When he touched his tongue to the hairy folds of her quim the dark cunt closed together like a clam.
He straightened, teeth gritted, lips drawn back, got between her legs and expertly stroked his rigid bar into her tense groove without encountering the slightest resistance, penetrating until the pressure of his crotch against her hips flattened their succulent whiteness. The swift release of vaginal juices moistened her passage and eased his solid entry—and he screwed furiously, muttering at the lack of adhesion, his cock lost in the soggy depths of her mature cunt, pulling back until his froth-encircled knob throbbed in the extreme opening, then burying the entire torrid branch in a single shafting lunge.
His frantic grip on her hips blanched the bruised flesh. His unshaven face was congested with blood. Sweat dripped from his chin. Rita's legs thrashed frantically. The sofa chafed her belly and the blood pounded in her temples. Muffled choking sounds blurted past the gag. She couldn't understand why the stupid bastard had tied her wrists. She would have co-operated voluntarily.
He was nearing orgasm, shouting, fucking desperately with thighs tautly quivering and his head thrown back, his eyeballs virtually disappearing as he spunked.
The draining spasms dwindled. Gluey sperm like watery jelly spattered her inner thighs as his hot prick emerged from its clinging sheath. He shook his diminishing cock, dragged Rita from the sofa to the floor and knelt astride her waist, prick twitching against her tits. He produced another length of cord from his jacket pocket, whipped it round her neck and drew it tight. She urinated with fear, fought the strangling strands, her eyes protruding, glassy with terror.
Footsteps sounded, clumping up the stairs. Somebody shouted, banged on the door. It swung open. Rita heard a startled yell and blurted profanity. She saw a tall, bearded youth bound across the room. The weight was abruptly removed from her prone body. There was a scuffle, the sounds of blows, the scamper of gum-booted feet hastily descending the stairs. Then strong arms lifted Rita, easing her to the floor. She stared, disbelieving, trembling with reaction. The face she was gazing up at was Mike's.
He removed the gag, slackened the cord bitin0 into her wrists, hauled her to her feet and thrust her onto a chair. He lit a cigarette and placed it between her slack lips. She gaped blankly.
"Don't look so bloody startled," he said. "And cut out the sniveling."
Rita forced an incredulous smile, but couldn't speak. Mike kicked the door shut.
"It'll save a lot of stupid questions if I tell you the score," he said. "I missed you, kid. After the bust-up I hung about. I got to thinking, what's the odds? What difference did one more randy cocksucker make in the screwy set-up? Then I read about this Stone character getting killed and I figured maybe we could pick up the pieces. Only when I went back you'd gone. I traced you through some fat whore named Hilda, to Liverpool then here."
"Mike! Oh, Mike! How did you know where to find me?"
"Just asked around. And that card you put in Donovan's window was signed Rita, you dumb bitch."
Rita massaged her wrists. The shock of seeing Mike was passing. She asked innumerable questions. Mike evaded most of them. He was going to Frankfurt in West Germany, he told her. She could go along, provided she realized what she was getting into. Why Frankfurt? Because there was profit in porno movies, in cunt and a big prick, and the krauts were really on the ball.
Rita listened, shrugged. She didn't give a damn what they did so long as they did it together. Porno or stripping, what difference did it make? And her singing prospects? Shit! Caufield had said it—she'd never make the charts so long as she had a hole in her arse. She hadn't believed him. She still didn't. But it didn't matter any more, not while she had Mike, the unpredictable bastard.