Chapter 2
My mother had died when I was nine, of a sudden and unexpected cerebral hemorrhage. My father brought me up himself, along with an occasional buxom housekeeper. Whenever he could find a woman in her late thirties or early forties who was still good in bed and of not too low a moral character, he hired her. When she had some free time out of bed-for my father was a demanding cocksmith even late in life-, she looked after me. There were about six housekeepers that I can remember between my ninth and my seventeenth year, and they invariably left because my father was just too much for them. As a European, he was accustomed to being treated like a king in his own house, and woe betide a broad if she didn't give him the red carpet treatment, which included kneeling down and putting her tongue and lips to his vigorous staff of life and the balls which held the wine of life as well.
Anyhow to get you up to the present time, I had just about decided that there wasn't anything in Fresno for me when I met Sally Jeffries. I was about twenty-three, I'd been working for a year in San Francisco for a real estate firm and learning the ropes, commuting in my Thunderbird back to Fresno for the weekend when my father wasn't in too sour a mood to welcome me back and offer me the fattened calf the way it says in the Bible they did the prodigal son.
Sally Jeffries had just moved to Fresno with her widowed mother, who had got a small pension because her dead husband had been a pretty good baker back in the Midwest. Sally was twenty, black-haired, slinky, with almond-shaped green eyes like a cat's, and she had an olive skin and a figure that gave me a hard-on every time I looked at her.
I happened to see her as I was driving down Broadway enroute to my father's house at the other end of that street, and there she was walking out of a little bungalow in a white cotton dress, bare legs and thong sandals, her black hair tumbling in a glossy cascade to her shoulderblades, her proud pear-shaped titties thrusting forward like the prow of a ship that was cleaving a fierce avalanche of waves and knew it could get through them. I pulled the car over to the curb, gulped, took a long look, and then another, and then I got out of the car and called to her, "Excuse me, Miss, I'm lost, I wonder if you can help give me directions."
That was the start. That was the start of what was to estrange my father and me for what turned out to be five long boring years. And once I got back to Fresno, you'd better believe that fate had decided to make it up to me for all that boredom and to put me through the wringer. But I'm getting ahead of my story.
Sally Jeffries knew I was a fresh-face, all right, but it didn't seem to faze her any. She turned back to look at me, gave me a jaunty little smile, and then walked slowly back to where I was standing beside my white Thunderbird. She looked me up and down, decided she liked what she saw, and said saucily, with a deliciously husky accent, "You mean to tell me you don't know where you're going in a car like that? You could ask a policeman, you know."
"I happen to be an oddball, honey," I told her. "I like girls any time, even asking questions from."
"Well, I'm glad to hear you're normal in at least one respect. Now where did you want to go?"
I didn't tell her right then, but it was on the tip of my tongue. Where I wanted to go was to bed with Sally Jeffries and as fast as her consent or the law would allow it. I was staring at her titties when I told her that I was looking for my father's house and I gave the address. She told me that I was in the right direction but all I had to do was to go about five miles further on and I'd find it.
"Wait a minute, honey, I don't even know your name," I called out to her as she started to walk away.
"It's Sally Jeffries. I live here with my mother."
"Mine's Carl Venturi."
"Then your father must make wine," she said as she turned back and smiled at me.
I told her that he did, and I asked if I might take her to dinner some evening and have a bottle of Venturi wine on the table for her sampling. She blushed a little at this, and then she said, "Maybe, we'll see. I'm in the phone book-that is, under my mother's name of Lena. Do call me. Nice talking to you, Mr. Venturi."
Like I say, that was a start. I called her the very next day, and we went to dinner that night. I brought along a bottle of good Pinot Chardonnay, which has always been one of the coveted white wines which every good vintner tries to produce at its peak, bottle under his own label, and have recognized as a superior brand. This is the real way to profits in the wine business.
Sally liked the wine, and I think she cottoned to me. We held hands on the table, I told her that I was crazy about her, and I said I wanted to see more of her. I meant just that literally. I wanted to see her bare-assed-naked, with the black crisp fur of her pussy there at the top of those lovely long thighs. She was about five feet six inches, classically proportioned, not too plump and not too lean, but maybe a little on the svelte side. And that olive complexion of hers and those mercurial green eyes and those full red lips were making my prick achingly remind me that at twenty-three I was something no good Italian boy ought to be, a guy without a regular piece of tail.
Even in San Francisco on my own, much against my father's will, I hadn't done any fucking to speak of. I guess maybe I just don't like the idea of paying for pussy, and what I don't like most of all is sticking my cock into some cunt that's had a little too much traffic there already and might have a few unpleasant and unhealthy souvenirs from it. The hookers in San Francisco can be found in various categories, from the street hustler on Mission Street to the expensive call girl who sometimes doubles in brass by working as a receptionist at a big advertising agency on Montgomery Street, or the in between kind who sometimes are owned by the syndicate and to whom a private cab company will take you once they've checked out your references and found out that you're not a cop. Sure, I'd done a little courting, and I tried to coax quite a number of fillies up into my inexpensive little apartment on Green Street, near Chinatown, but no dice. So that's why I was still a loner, and it was getting me down. What I had to do was use my hand at night, close my eyes, pretend that some gorgeous bitch was lying next to me giving me a French job and getting me ready for a fucking. And now that I had seen Sally Jeffries, instead of just a vague female image at night when I closed my eyes and pretended that I had at last found a girl to share the sweet mysteries of life with, it was Sally Jeffries's face I saw hovering above my cock, Sally Jeffries's pear-shaped bombers dangling over me as she crouched on all fours over my prone body preparatory to impaling herself on my rampant ramrod.
Anyhow, I went crazy about that broad. I spent almost every weekend with her for about three months, and I was just at the point of scoring with her, when my father sat down to the dinner table one Sunday afternoon with me and gave me a stern look and said, "Figlio mio, I've heard some bad reports about you and a whore. I want you to tell me the truth, Carl. And no lies, because I'm still strong enough to use the razor strap on your ass."
"Now wait a minute, Marcantonio," I always called him by his first name, "you just try that razor-strap stuff again and this time I'll use it on you. What's all this about a whore? There's only one girl in this town I know, and I want to marry her. Her name is Sally Jeffries."
"You idiot! That's the whore I refer to," my father said, twirling his white mustachios and giving me a flinty look out of his dark brown eyes. They were still sharp and gleaming, and they still had plenty of zing when he put them on some gorgeous female worker's legs or titties or ass out there in the fields. "I have it on good authority that she has several men, and that her mother looks the other way and even takes the money this young bitch gives her from her earnings."
"That's a Goddamned lie, Marcantonio! You've been listening to old wives' tales!" I shouted and I banged the table with my fist.
"Be sensible," he wheedled. "If you must sleep with a girl to relieve the pressure in your cock, you have here in my vineyard quite a few young bitches who would be proud and honored to have the son of Marcantonio Venturi mount them. If it is a wife you seek, there are two or three estimable families in this miserably hot town who have daughters that I would permit to accept the honored name of Venturi."
"Thanks for nothing, Marcantonio," I growled, "I'll find my own pussy and I'll find my own wife, and neither you nor anybody else is going to pass judgment on my selection, get that straight!"
"You eternal idiot," he shouted, "what do I have to do to convince you that this girl is a whore? Ask her yourself why she has so many men coming to that bungalow where she and her mother live. Ask her!"
I stormed out of the house, and I drove around in my Thunderbird until I cooled off. By then it was late, and I had to drive back to San Francisco and be at work in the real estate office at nine the next morning, because I had a date with a client who just might buy a house. So I didn't see my father again until the next weekend. At first I drove to Sally Jeffries's bungalow and rang the doorbell. She wasn't home. But her mother was. And her mother was a strikingly handsome woman, perhaps not quite forty. Of medium height, with big round titties, shapely hips and good thighs, and a still slender waist. Blue eyes, golden hair that was helped a little out of a bottle, and a sensual mouth and dark blue eyes. Also pale white skin that could make a man randy.
"Come in, Carl," she greeted me with a cozy little smile. "I'm Lena, Sally's mother. I'm sorry Sally isn't in right now. She's out on a date, you know."
I didn't know, but I guess I couldn't really grouse about it because I hadn't yet popped the question to Sally, I was just working on her. First I had to find out if our chemistry was working properly, and then there was time enough first to screw her and, if she was a good enough lay and had other virtues, to make an honest woman out of her. And besides, I hadn't really got myself set on my job in Frisco, and even though I knew I was my father's only heir, it went against the grain to take anything from anybody that I hadn't earned myself. I was one of those proud independent sons of bitches, like all Italians, I guess.
My face showed a little disappointment, and Lena saw it, and she put her hand on my arm and said softly, "You poor guy, did Sally stand you up? Why don't you have a cup of coffee with me and I'll try to cheer you up some."
Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather when, after that cup of coffee and some homemade cake, Lena Jeffries actually made a pass at me. She was wearing just a thin housedress, and she didn't have on any stockings, and just sandals. I couldn't help noticing her pale white calves and her knees out there in the kitchen, because they were extremely shapely even for a woman of her age. And you've got to remember I was still damn near a virgin at that point in my life. Because all of a sudden as I got up, she got up too and faced me, and then she put her arm around my waist and murmured, "You're an awfully handsome guy, Carl. I wonder if any girl has ever told you that?" And then the next thing I knew, her mouth was on mine, and liquid fire was in my veins, and I felt my prick getting hard as a rock and I put out my hands and I found her big bombers, and I was just about to commit incest. Incest because I wanted to fuck her daughter, and here I was getting ready to ride Mama instead.
I suddenly pulled away, my face went red, and I mumbled something about having another engagement. And then Lena laughed at me, "Why, you poor sap, no wonder Sally won't give you a tumble! She's a good girl, a little fool, but even a good girl deserves a man who'll give her what she needs. And Don Foster, the guy she's out with right now, is going to do just that, and he's going to marry her too."
"Thanks for telling me, but maybe I can change that, Mrs. Jeffries," I said angrily.
She had her hands on her hips, and there was a taunting smile on her red lips, and her titties were thrusting out against the thin bodice of her dress as she faced me. "I don't think so. Don Foster's father happens to own KJZ-TV, and he's worth a million dollars if he's worth a nickel. And my little girl won't have to do what I've been doing to stay alive in this stupid town. You see, Carl, I married a handsome but dimwitted young baker when I was eighteen, and he got bounced off job after job because he didn't have the guts or the know-how of getting along with people. And I came out here because I've got a cousin who works at the Pink Rooster, and she showed me how to make some dough, and I'm making it, and I'm going to spend it making sure that my girl gets herself set for life, even if her mother does have to earn her keep by taking on fellows."
A great light dawned on me. My father had been right about the Jeffries clan, except his information had named the wrong bitch. It was Lena Jeffries who was the whore, not her daughter. And it sickened me. Not that I thought that I was too good for Sally Jeffries, but I just hated to have my father shout "I told you so!" if I walked in the house with Sally on my arm and told him that I was going to marry her. He'd come out with all that filthy gossip and make Sally wish to hell she'd never been born, and I wouldn't put any decent girl through that.
"You mean if I'd made a pass at you tonight, it might have been for free, Lena?" I said savagely, and I rejoiced to see her turn pale and bite her lips. "All right, I won't give your secret away, you don't have to worry. You just tell Sally I wish her well. I'm going back to San Francisco and stay there and find myself a girl whose mother isn't pushing to get her married to a millionaire."
And with that I walked out of the bungalow and back to my Thunderbird and I drove like crazy back to San Francisco. And that's where I stayed for the next five years until my father died.