Chapter 4
Dinner was a leisurely affair, with lots of conversation about the celebrities who had visited Nick's third-floor whorehouse. Clan couldn't care less about the strange and intimate sexual perversions of the high and the mighty. Besides, the constant reference to things sexual unnerved her.
Nick would often turn to the girl and tender a personal question. Clara managed to field most of them, giving him a capsulated story of her life.
She was the daughter of an Episcopalian priest and a former model who sometimes acted. She had gone to school in Montreal and studied music for awhile in New York. She had a brief affair with a concert violinist when she was younger. It had ended tragically and, in remorse, she had joined the group she was now with. She had been with them for three years trying to preserve her independence without touching the very large trust left to her by her father and mother after they had died doing missionary work in the Congo.
Clara paused at the end of her monologue and toyed with her food. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nick smile.
"I believe," he said, lifting his wine glass to his lips, "that there is a lesson to be learned here." He drained his glass. "For instance," he continued, "that dress you have on is lovely. And you, my dear, are lovely in it. Do you like it?"
Clara looked down at the dress and then back at him. "Yes... very much."
"Good. Gertie, how much did that dress cost me?"
"About three hundred and fifty dollars... give or take," Gertie replied, totally engrossed in her salad.
"That is a great deal of money. Yet, because it cost so much, one should respect it if one respects the money that bought it. But value, you see, is relative to respect. And even though I value money and what it can buy, there is a point. I value that dress just about as much as I value the story of your life. Erg..."
He reached across the table and poured the remainder of the wine into her lap.
"Jesus Christ!" Clara said, leaping to her feet.
"Your story is bullshit. Now, would you care to tell me the truth?"
"That was a stupid way to make your point," she hissed.
"It was, copy," Nick said, "and what's copied once can be copied twice. It can be replaced. Now sit your ass back in that chair and talk straight with me!"
"I'm going upstairs to change."
"The fuck you are. Now sit down!"
"The dress is wet. It's uncomfortable."
"Then take it off."
"Right here? I don't have anything on underneath it."
"I know," Nick said, smiling up at her.
She sat down. "I was born in Montreal. I never knew my old man. He took off before I was born. My old lady was a hooker. She overdosed when I was about fourteen. I met a guy with a group going into the States, traveled with him for a year, got pregnant and married him."
"Where's the kid?" Nick asked.
"I aborted it just in time. The asshole I was married to started bringing other guys home to sleep with us. I thought for a while it was for kicks, but I found out real quick that he wanted them more than he did me."
"Happens," Nick said, puffing on the cigar. "Go on."
"I was broke... fucked up. I turned a couple of tricks and got caught."
"And deported."
"Yes."
"That's what I wanted to hear about. Do you have a record?"
"Yes."
"No problem," he said, leaning back again in his arm.
"You mean you can get rid of it?" she asked. "The arrest record?"
"Not exactly," Nick said, glancing at Gertie. "You just become somebody else. That's all." Nick turned back to Clara. "You went back to Canada?"
"Yeah."
"You trick up there?"
"No. I got a job and worked it into modeling."
"You?"
"I modeled bras," she said. "For us full-figured girls!"
"Figures," Nick said. "So you decided on show business, found out you had a voice, and found another group?"
"That's about it," she said.
"And no relatives. You didn't have any sisters or brothers, did you?"
She started to speak, then paused. Would he check? She shouldn't have pissed. "One... a sister... four years older then me."
"Where's she?"
"She died... a few years ago."
"Good," he mused. "That should make it easier."
Clara barely suppressed the desire to scream. But she remained still.
"You can go change now," he said, dismissing her with a wave of his cigar. "We'll be having brandy in the den."
She left the table.
Nick and Gertie slid back their chairs, linked arms, and strolled into the adjoining room.
"We'll, of course, go with the priest, missionary, Congo, bullshit story," Gertie said.
"Of course," Nick replied, pouring the brandy. "If we go."
He handed Gertie a glass of brandy and she moved to a chair by the fireplace.
Nick leaned against the bar. "You know, there's something about her."
"I know a sweet ass and beautiful tits."
"No more than that," he continued, moving to a chair and sitting down.
"What else is there?" Gertie said.
"I mean, when I look at her there's something... I just can't put my finger on it."
"My God," Gertie exclaimed. "He's in love." Nick laughed. "Only with you, you bitch," he said, sliding his hand down the front of her dress to cup one swaying breast. He felt the fleshy globe ooze out around his hand as he mashed it against her ribs. "She does have a fine frame," he mused.
"You should see it naked," Gertie said.
He looked straight into her laughing eyes, then removed his hand from her tit. "That's just what I was thinking about doing," he said. "Excuse me."
"You're excused," she said. "Lucky dog." He took his time going up the stain and down the hall. Just outside her door he pound the cigar out in an ashtray on one of the hall tables. He glanced at the painting on the wall above the table.
It was a nude, a fat nude. Her tits hung to her navel. The nude's wispy dark patch of pubic hair was almost obscured by the fleshy thighs.
The nude was white. But Nick thought of Genie. "Someday," he whispered, "Just for the hell of it, someday."
Then he compared the painting on the wall to the flesh and blood on the other side of the door. He turned the knob and entered the room.
Clara was facing away from him, looking into the mirror. It took her a few seconds to see his reflection. She whirled around and pulled the bra she'd just started to put on closer to her; the bra only half covered her enormous breasts. She stood, wide-eyed and naked, save for sheer pink panties that outlined her triangle of blonde fluff.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I thought you said you didn't have anything on under that dress."
"I didn't. I brought up another box with me... what do you want?"
"That should be fairly obvious," he said, moving toward her and gently running his hand across the rapidly rising bulge in the front of his tight pants.
She watched his hand. "No way," she said, pulling the now overflowing cups closer to her breasts and cupping them in place with her hands.
It was her face... no, her eyes, he thought, stopping directly in front of her. There was a look, a mannerism, a feeling that he recognized and knew.
But it dwindled away as his gaze moved down over the perfection of her body. Her tits were large. A shadow ran deeply between her tits. The light also high-lighted the large crescents of darkness where her nipples strained against the cloth.
Her soft, full thighs were gleaming columns of invitation that sent a wave of desire through his body. A kind of desire he hadn't felt in years. Beyond, in the mirror, he could see the pink-covered cheeks of her ass proudly jutting outward.
He thought she had the most beautiful body he had ever seen. Again he felt that uncontrollable attraction that had made him feel so uncomfortable.
"Win you get out of here?"
He smiled. He grasped the strap of her bra and he pulled it out of her clutching fingers. Her big breasts popped straight forward. He noted with satisfaction that the swollen brown nipples were hard and throbbing.
He stood back and surveyed her breasts openly, watching them rise and fall with her heavy breathing, the nipples flashing her desire.
"You're beautiful."
The soft, gentle, almost yearning way he said the words gave her back the strength and resolve she needed. The open adoration in his eyes told her that if she didn't relent now, the ante and the subsequent treasure would be much higher later.
"I know I am," she said calmly.
He stepped forward and slipped his fingers under the band of her panties. His hand jerked back and the panties parted down the middle. He dropped them on the floor and licked his lips. He moved forward and placed his hands on the marks made by the panties where they had dug into her flesh.
He felt her fist pound on his chest as his lips settled on hers. At first, her lips were unyielding, but as his hands moved on her buttocks, rubbing her against the hardness that had formed in the front of his pants, her lips parted slowly.
Her tongue lashed out to meet his. Her arms were around his neck, hugging him tightly.
They fell back onto the bed. She landed beneath him and broke the kiss. "Do you want me to work for you? Sing for you?"
"Right now," he replied, his voice husky with passion, "that's about the second most important thing I want in the world."
"And the first?"
"You," he said, trying to control his breathing, watching her reaction.
He took one of her hands and moved it down to his swollen, throbbing cock. She closed her fingers over his prick, squeezing first and then moving her hand in a slow up and down rhythm on the shaft.
"You're huge," she said. But instead of wonder or desire in her voice, she said it with a matter of factness that bothered and rankled him. It was as if she were weighing a pound of hamburger against the price.
"And I'll say it again, you're beautiful. Think what we'd be together."
"I don't come with the bargain."
He rolled on top of her, moving between her legs and positioning the bulge in his pants over the hairy mat of her slit. He massaged one full, fat breast. Sensing an unwilling coldness in her that he had never experienced before, he tried to melt it by sheer force of will. He crushed his lips against hers, driving his tongue between her teeth.
For just a moment he taught he felt a flicker of desire in her, a slight arching of the back, a tiny forward thrust of her breast, her own tongue returned the ardor of his. But it was quickly I extinguished.
He raised up. "I'm going to fuck you."
"And I'm going to fight like hell. If you make me blow you, I'll try to bite your cock off. If you forget and spread your legs a little, I'll mash your balls clear up into your belly, and if I get the chance, when you're off-guard I'll tear your fucking eyes out."
"You know," he smiled, "I almost believe you."
"And if none of that does any good, you'll probably go ahead and fuck me. But if you do, you be fucking a corpse."
He lifted his body above her and looked down at her. He feasted his eyes on the smoothness of her skin and the golden curls that covered the pink slit between her thighs. Her legs were spread wide and he could see the juices from her cunt running in glistening streams down into the dark crease between her buttocks.
He smiled and pulled himself to his feet.
"I'll wait," he said, then walked out the door, without looking back.
If he had looked back, he would have seen her body break out in a cold sweat as her hands moved to the wetness between her thighs.
Downstairs Nick drained the glass of brandy in one long swallow.
"Don't tell me she wouldn't swing?" Gertie asked.
"What's it look like?" Nick said, following her eyes down to the still-protruding bulge in the front of his pants.
"It looks like she wouldn't," Gertie said. "Oh, well, there's another one around the corner. Like you say, they're like buses, two bits a ride and you get one on the next corner. I'll give her a little bread and get rid of her in the morning."
Gertie stood and pulled her coat around her.
"What?"
"No. Sign her! A good tight contract and start right away on getting her a new identity."
"You're crazy. You just said..."
"Gertie!"
"Okay... okay," she said, moving past him and stopping. "You're the boss."
"There's something about her," he said, more to himself and the room in general than to h.
"Hey."
"Huh?"
She reached down and gently wrapped her fingers around his cock. "You want me to take care of that for you?"
"Between your legs?"
She looked into his eyes, almost wavered, and then shook her head.
"Good night, Gertie," he said, kissing her lightly on the lips.