Chapter 6
I drove Madge Fryburg in my Thunderbird out to the Hacienda Motel, and we'd had a reasonably tasty steak, a good salad, some giant shrimp with a tasty sauce to start the meal off, and an ice cream parfait and little cakes for desert. I had asked for a bottle of Venturi Pinot Chardonnay, but the waitress looked at me as if I had started talking Swahili. So I had to settle for a bottle of Beringer's good red Burgundy, which wasn't a bad wine either.
As we were finishing dinner, who should I see walk through the dining room on her way out than Mrs. Maynard, the goldenhaired, blue eyed, melon-tittied and ripe-hipped broad who had been conferring with Charlie Karogian earlier this afternoon. She paused to look at me, flashed me a dazzling smile with those full red lips of hers, and showed me that she had no cause for dental alarm. She gave Madge Fryburg a glance which wasn't half so cordial, and then continued on her way out. Madge was still wearing her nurse's uniform. When nobody had been looking, I'd sneaked a cushion from a chair in the hotel lobby, hidden it under my sports jacket, and slipped it under Madge's chair just before she'd sat down. She'd gone down very warily, inch by inch, and when she hit the cushion, her eyes had widened and then her mouth had opened, and then she had glared at me, and then blushed. She was really a nice kid.
It felt better on a night like this to look across the table at a good looking broad. I think that's maybe why some guys get a kick out of screwing girls in cemeteries, just to defy Old Man Death and prove that they're still full of hell before they actually get down there. Death is an immensity that nobody likes to think about in spite of its inevitability. But I felt the way my old man had; after all, he was seventy-nine, he had a good rich life, he'd made something of it, and so there wasn't any need to shed tears and tear clothes and go into hibernation. If anything, my father would have preferred that I tear some clothes off broads and get to work on his posthumous grandson. That would be a good way to remember him, too.
But I had a few other things to think about besides pussy. One of them was an interview with that new foreman, Tulio Verduga. He'd been handling the vineyard for two years now. And Dad had been a little suspicious about him. It was up to me to find out why. Also, I wanted to know why Dad had turned half his land away from grape production.
However, Madge Fryburg noticed the undressing look I had managed to give Mrs. Maynard. In a low voice, she murmured, "I'll bet you'd like to spank her too, Mr. Venturi."
I did a double take, because in a way she had been reading my mind. Much as I had enjoyed fantailing Madge's pantie-girdle-sheathed behind this afternoon, I had already remarked that the honeyhaired broad in old Charlie Karogian's office had one of the most spankable tails I had ever glimpsed. I think its time for a brief word on why I seem to notice a woman's bottom first of all her charms. I've already told you I was just about a virgin until I hit San Francisco, apart from that unfortunate coitus interuptis with the Greek Coed on the steps of the house of the dean of men. Now long before that I had become very pussy-conscious, probably around the age of thirteen or fourteen. But my father was the cocksmith of the hour, and you don't think his gorgeous grape-treading girl workers in the vineyard were going to pass him up in favor of a little snotnose like me. I used to play with a couple of boys and girls my own age down the block, and I had a secret yen for one chick who was about fourteen then, as I recall. Her name was Angie Lavolla, and she had long black hair down to her waist, and a Madonna-like face and a very delicious body even then. But she was actually a little devil and a teaser, and she was also something of a tomboy. There were times when we would wrestle, or play touch football, and I always wound up scuffling with her until one day I got mad at her because she kicked and bit, and I pulled her over my lap and spanked her saucy bottom, and I felt myself getting a hard-on and all of a sudden my pants got wet.
I think she had a pretty fair idea of what was happening to me, because she kept teasing me after that, and I did spank her a couple more times, and I invariably stained my trousers, until I might have got brains enough to open my fly and do something about the stain before it was lost in the wrong place, when Angie and her folks up and moved out of Fresno to Modesto.
Then when I was in my last year in high school, I got an absolute itch in my balls for a simply sandy-haired blonde with a sweet face and a seraphic smile and a big pair of titties and an even juicier tail on her, who was second to me in class. I was the top student, and I wanted to stay that way. She was going out with the football captain, and I was sort of awkward and gawky and didn't even make the scrub team. So naturally she wouldn't give me a tumble. One evening I sat down and wrote a short story for my English composition class, and after I finished that, I found myself typing another story-definitely not to be turned in!-in which I was a bold Italian pirate and my privateer ship sailed into a port and my crew went out and kidnapped some twenty squealing beauties. And lo and behold one of them was Clara Brent, my sandy-haired Nemesis. In my story, Clara refused to yield the prize between her lily white thighs, so I had her stripped from the waist down and tied to the yardarm and I took a cat of nine tails and swished it gently over her bottom until she started wriggling her pussy against the rough wood of the mast and finally begged me to give it to her instead of heating up her behind so cruelly. And I did, and we were true lovers ever after.
That was my dream-fantasy. And I know that the last couple of months of relationship with that gorgeous little nurse at La Honda, I used to play spanking games with her, and she got awfully hot.
All this leaped into my mind when Madge Fryburg slyly got back at me for what I had done to her so unceremoniously at our very first meeting this afternoon. At least I had added a little fillip of amatory technique to the traditional Venturi line of fuck them and leave them happy. The only difference was that I was still on my best behavior trying to make it up to Madge for the injury and insult I had done her delectable person.
But my dad had once told me that it was just as well to be hanged for a wolf as for a sheep, and so I stared into Madge's hazel eyes and I said boldly, "Since you put it that way, yes I definitely would."
"I'm worried about you, Mr. Venturi. You just can't go round spanking girls, you know. You're likely to be arrested for indecent assault."
"There was nothing indecent about my spanking you," I protested. "I didn't give it to you on the bare, which is what I most prefer."
"You just keep your mouth shut about that, if you don't want me to walk out on you here and now," she hissed, then she got very red in the face again, and moved uneasily on the cushion I had so thoughtfully slipped over her chair before we had started dinner.
After dinner, I suggested that we go for a ride in the Thunderbird. I've always liked driving at night, because it's a kind of unreal and yet more intimate world. First of all, there are not so many people around, and on the highway you have the feeling of personal destiny, as if the world existed just for you. With the air coming at your face and the stary sky over head, you drive effortlessly past buildings, towns, long stretches of uninhabited landscape, and you tell yourself that out there everyone is asleep while you alone are left to guide the destiny of the world. This is part of what I suppose Dad would have called my romantic twaddle. But there is also a practical reason; if you're a native resident of Fresno, you swelter through the summers and at night you can look forward to some relief. And driving along in the car creates enough stir of a breeze to cool you off-unless, to be sure, a prick-whetting pussy is close beside you heating your blood in a very different and far more thrilling way.
Madge Fryburg hesitated a moment when I suggested the drive, and then with a little sigh agreed. "All right. I don't really feel sleepy anyway, and if I'm going to be uncomfortable, I might as well be in a car enjoying the ride instead of here in a hotel dining room wondering if people are watching me squirm about and wondering what's making me do it. And you know it's all your fault."
I tried to look contrite, but all I could manage was a sly grin, and that only made her blush again. It was strange, but all of a sudden her nurse's uniform didn't seem quite so sexless as it had when I'd made my dramatic entrance into my own house. My own house- those words brought me up short again. Dad was gone now and I was the only living Venturi, which meant that I would inherit everything. I didn't think of that in a greedy sense at all; I thought of the obligations I was going to inherit with the material things like the house and the vineyard. The problems that had been bothering Dad, the conversion of half his land away from the beloved grapes which made the Venturi vino, meeting all the people who had worked for Dad all the years I had been away in San Francisco trying to forget that I was the son of a vintner.
I must have looked especially soulful, because all of a sudden I heard Madge Fryburg ask me with a little concern in her voice, "What's the matter, Mr. Venturi?"
"I'm sorry, Miss Fryburg. Look, why don't I call you Madge and why don't you call me Carl? There's no need to stand on ceremony by this time is there, now that we've broken bread together?"
Her lips began to crinkle, in just a ghost of a smile. Now that I could scrutinize her up close, I had to admit that Madge Fryburg was really a dish, nurse's uniform or not. She had an interesting face, and as I've already said before it was sultry. Her hazel eyes were sort of almond-shaped, which was something I've always liked in a broad, and her cheekbones were highset, and she had a firm jaw and chin, with an adorable little dimple just at the left and near the edge of it. She had a small straight nose, with rather sensuous nostrils, very thick and short lashes, but surprisingly thick brows for a girl. And they were auburn too, just like the hair on her head which did not come out of a bottle; at least, I was pretty sure it didn't. She wore her hair, I suppose because she was a nurse and in the interest of hygiene, in a rather short bob, which left the nape of her long slim neck bare and showed off her dainty little ears. She didn't wear any jewelry at all and she didn't use too much makeup, just a pale pink for her lips, no eye shadow, and a dash of what looked like pancake makeup over her cheeks. Her skin was tawny, and there was the hint of sunburn to it, as if she tanned easily. What was I saying-I ought to have known, because I had tanned her, after all. I hadn't really considered her body, except for my awareness of her magnificent bottom. But she was across the table from me as she was, and sitting rather stiffly and uneasily in her chair for reasons made self-evident, she presented me with the thrust of high-perched conical-contoured titties which pressed very firmly against the cling of that tight uniform and even suggested that she didn't have any need for a bra.
Also, she was just about the height I liked, I'd say about five six and a half or seven. In low-heeled shoes, she came up very nicely to about my throat, which meant that she was a nice big girl for stretching out horizontally as well as for using any of the other more complex positions of love-making. Not that I expected to make love to Madge Fryburg tonight, not after insulting her dignity the way I had. What I was really on was a peace mission, not a piece mission, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, she blushed again when I asked her about going on a first name basis. Then she tartly remarked, trying to show that she was very sophisticated, "Well, I don't see any harm in calling you by your first name. You certainly know me better than any other man I've ever been with. Not even my own father did to me what you did this afternoon."
"I wonder if I'll ever be able to live that down," I ventured.
"I very much doubt it. I'm not even sure it's safe for a girl to be alone with you even in a car. Of course, if you promise to drive along the highway where there are plenty of Highway Patrol officers cruising around, I'll go for a drive with you. That way, if I scream for help, I've a fair chance of being rescued."
"I give you my word of honor as a Venturi if not a gentleman that I won't spank you in the car, Madge," I promised, as I rose, beckoned to our waitress for the check, paid it with a generous tip, and then offered her my arm. We strolled out of the restaurant like a happily domesticated couple, and I noticed that quite a few male diners at the other tables laid down their forks and knives long enough to give Madge Fryburg the eye even in that antiseptic outfit she was still wearing.
The night was wonderful. It had cooled off considerably, the stars were out and so was the moon. It was a full moon. I think some of the romanticism I've always had about the lunar planet has been taken away the last few years because of man's insatiable desire to go exploring. There's probably no man in the moon, it's not made of green cheese, and it doesn't smile down just for lovers. Just the same, its light has a prick-stirring effect on a red-blooded American male when it shines down on the expressive face of a very pretty girl. From time to time I glanced over at Madge as she leaned back beside me, her eyes closed, letting the wind play with her short bobbed curls. She had a lovely, pure, rather high-arching forehead, and it was relaxed now and not furrowed up the way it had been when she had opened the door of my own house to me and later when she had been assuming the angle over my lap and discovering that the glad hand I was giving her wasn't one of welcome.
"I've told you about myself, now why don't you tell me a little something about yourself, Carl?" she suddenly proffered.
It was the old trap. But I was careful not to overdo it and fall in all the way. If I sounded boastful, she would just conclude that I was a cocksure guy who thought he had made a conquest just by turning her over his lap and giving her behind whatfor. I very briefly cited my background as a teenager, I certainly didn't mention the episode with the Greek girl at college, and I just said that my father and I hadn't quite agreed about what my career ought to be, so I'd gone to Frisco to try to make it on my own and had been selling real estate. I also told her I wasn't married.
By the time we reached Modesto, she was sitting a little closer to me, but she was still squirming a bit. Then it was my turn to blush when our eyes met, "I'm sorry, Madge," I murmured. "I've never done a thing like that before in all my life, but I'm not going to say that I'm sorry. I liked doing it to you."
"That's what I thought," she murmured. And then, to my amazement and delight, she slipped her left arm around my waist, put her cheek against mine as we waited for a light to change, and whispered, "I just want you to see the damage you did. But I don't go in for exhibitionism in a car, so why don't you take me either back to my place or yours so I can show you just what an impression you made on me this afternoon?"