Chapter 1
He stood by the side of the road nonchalantly. The cars passed by him at great speeds along the great highway. Sometimes he watched them approach. In the distance the sun bouncing off their chrome bumpers made them look like great silver stars. And then he would play a game with himself, naming the brand of the car and working his knowledge of the highways to see if he could guess their speed. He crooked his thumb, as if his hand were begging for a ride that the rest of him never would ask for. It might have been his superior attitude about hitchhiking that had kept him standing in the hot sun all morning. Or maybe it was because all the cars that morning had been driven by men.
He stared off in the distance. It was a damn straight road. He could see it draw together in a vee far, far off. When he was a boy he had thought it would be possible to reach that point where the lines meet. He had spent years trying.
A new convertible streaked past him. The brakes slammed on after it had passed, as if the driver had changed his mind after seeing him. It skidded to a stop several feet down the road. The young man walked to the car, slowly as if daring the driver to become impatient and drive off before he reached it.
The woman driving the car was well dressed. He noticed that at first glance. Her clothes were smart, if a little young for her. Aind they were expensive. She might as well have worn the price tag of each article around her neck. Her hair was streaked with hairdresser's blonde and curled pettishly around her face. The corners of her eyes were just beginning to show the strain of opening and closing so many times. Here I am, her appearance proclaimed, forty-but I don't feel it and if you ask me, HI deny it.
Her eyes were a lusterless brown.
The young man leaned, his arms crossed, on the side of the car.
She sighed and smiled at him, then shifted her eyes back on the road. Her thoughts embarrassed her. He was used to that. "What a day. Do you want a lift?" Her voice was a little too gay.
"Maybe," he said slowly. "Where are you going?" He smiled broadly.
"To Chicago."
"That's a long way off."
"Not far enough."
He opened the door and slouched easily in the front seat. It felt good to sit down, to lean his back against the thick leather upholstery and stretch his his legs as much as possible. He almost sighed with relaxation. Almost. He didn't want her to know how great it was to sit down in a fast moving car. Somehow he knew that showing his gratitude would lose him the game.
The car was strictly a luxury job. Leather swam on the dashboard. White leather is only for people who plan to keep their cars only until the next new model hits the racks. It stains too easily for most people. A white dashboard and white seats, but the rug on the floor was bright red. He knew without looking that a fifth of very expensive Scotch was standard glove compartment equipment for this car.
And this woman.
She pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the car roared off to the east. He reached out and flicked on the radio. It was an FM. He switched the dial up and back along the station range, coming finally to the sweet sound of jazz.
"Where are you going?" she asked pleasantly.
"Not as far as Chicago."
"Have you ever been to Chicago?"
"It's a dull town. And ugly. I was there a couple of years ago. It's a real ugly town." He blinked his eyes to rest them. He remembered Chicago all right. What the hell was the name of that chick, his roommate in Chicago? It was getting harder and harder to remember names. He closed his eyes to help him concentrate. It began to come back to him. The cold and the wind and him walking down this empty street in Chicago. Yeah, that street only looked familiar in winter. He'd never be able to recognize it in any other season. His memory led him down that street and into the Victorian palace of an apartment house with the doorman who refused to remember the young man even after it became obvious that he was living there. Then into the elevator and up to the top floor where she lived. Now he remembered.
Her hair was auburn and hung softly down her back, almost to her buttocks. She was long and thin, with neat little pear-shaped breasts and practically no rear at all. Her body had been muscular and when she made love with him, that had always been a battle. Yeah.
He could remember everything about her-everything but her name.
The woman sitting next to him was restlessly searching the radio for another station. She was uncomfortable. What she was thinking had made her very comfortable.
"Turn it off if it bothers you," he suggested.
"There's no decent music on this thing." She turned it off impatiently.
He noticed the ring on her finger. Expensive like the rest of her. It looked as if he had hit an interesting jackpot this trip. Too bad he wouldn't be able to take full advantage of his find.
He looked off to the side of the car, at the scenery repeating itself monotonously. Fields and fields without change. He turned back to her. "What's your name?" he asked, his eyes on her abundant bosom.
"Jane Cartwright, or Mrs. Robert Cartwright. I keep forgetting."
"What?"
"Whether you still use your husband's name if you're not married any more."
"You coming from Reno?"
So that was it. Her problem was due to a newly acquired freedom as well as to the timber line of forty. She was wanting all right, the way she kept glancing nervously at him, never meeting his eyes, looking away as soon as she saw him watching. He looked again at her bosom. A man could lose himself against that. Her waist was so thin it exaggerated the size of her boobs, but he guessed that would change as soon as he got her out of the damned girdle she was obviously wearing. He bet himself that she would try to back down at the last moment. God! When you get to the point where you know exactly what's going to happen before the scene ever begins, you might as well retire to a monastery, he thought. Well, he still liked loving even if that was no longer the surprise that had been when he learned all about that behind his uncle's barn. He liked loving even if that was going to be with a tired old woman like the one beside him.
"Why did you break it up?"
"My marriage?" There was a short silence while she decided whether to commit herself. Then, "None of your business."
He grinned. "That means it was broken up by him. Probably carried on with his secretary, eh?"
She bit her lip nervously. Score a bull's eye he said to himself and laughed out loud. She is wondering how much she should take, he thought. She is trying to decide whether to plunk me right back on the side of the road or whether to pretend that I haven't gotten to her at all. In anticipation of the night.
She'd manage to endure him. Her kind always did. He resisted an impulse to reach out and tweak the end of her breast. He decided that if he touched her, she'd drive the car right up a tree.
The silence that fell between them amused him even more. She's waiting for me to get a new conversation going, he thought. It amused him to play with her. He said nothing.
"And you," she finally. "Where are you going?"
"Back to my home town." he didn't know why he was telling her the truth. "To make the crumbs pay."
He looked at the clock. One o'clock. He was suddenly anxious to get where he was going, do what he had to do, and then clear out for South America or anywhere far away. At the speed this dame was driving he was three hours away from his destination. It could be cut down to two, if he could drive her car. And that last hour was not in the direction of Chicago. That didn't matter. If he played her right, she would drive him all the way. And buy him a meal in the bargain.
"What did they do to you?"
"Plenty." He wanted to get going. He had two scores to settle, two big ones, and a grudge against the whole town a mile wide. "I was the town problem. And my mother was a dirty joke in the bars. She wasn't made to be a tramp. But one mistake and they never let her out of the gutter." He laughed. He hadn't meant to tell her, hadn't meant to tell this foolish middle-aged disaster area on the make. So he had to laugh.
She looked at him again. It was almost embarrassing to look at him. He was too good looking. Not in any pretty boy way either. His features weren't perfect, weren't regular like those of the models in the body building magazines. He had a face that was carved from a rock-granite. He had eyes that were blue not like the sky, but like ice, and glittered calculatingly out of his tanned face. There was a small scar over his eye.
"How long has it been since you've eaten?" She wanted to make him ask for something.
"I don't know. A while."
"Shall we stop and get something to eat?"
He watched her reactions carefully. It was important to earn your meal-ticket, and the kind of control she was working for made the print of her emotions fine and subtle. Desire. That had been there from the beginning. Indignation. Surprise at herself. And shame.
"Will you get into trouble? At home, I mean." She was swinging at him without even thinking, aiming her blows at the only possible vulnerable spot. "Will you get put into jail?"
"I don't plan to machine-gun anybody if that's what you mean. But I'll get them. I'll find out where they hurt and I'll get them good."
A gas station and restaurant stood dully up ahead of them, baking in the sun, smothering in the dust.
"Stop here. I gotta go."
Smiling ruefully, she pulled the car into the lot without comment. He got out and sauntered across the lot to the washroom. She watched him swagger. He carried his manhood like an emblem. Or an advertisement. Stud for hire.
She laughed bitterly. Of course, it would be her luck to pick up the one hitchhiker between Reno and Chicago who had known more women than she had men. More women like her? It was her type of luck.
Luck! It was destiny. She had known as soon as she laid eyes on him that she wanted him for one purpose. And not for company. Well what of it? She had been in Reno for the required time and she had turned down all the offers of all the fake cowboys who lived off panicky divorcees. Why not admit the truth? Why not admit she wanted this hustler? Who was she saving herself for?
Jane Cartwright felt better after she had admitted the truth to herself. She even believed she would be able to let him know that she wasn't afraid to admit what she wanted. And she would let him direct the traffic; he obviously knew how to.
She lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. She rested her head wearily on the steering wheel, staring down at the red carpeting on the floor of the car. He would make her pay for what she wanted; he would take her for as much as he thought he could get. Well what of that? She was lonely on an empty bed. Besides, in this world, everthing had a price on it. Nothing is for free or for ever.
He opened the door of the car. "C'mon. Buy me a cup of coffee."
"Okay." She got out of the car and walked beside' him. He was twenty or twenty-two years younger than she Was. She ground out her cigarette in the dust. Well, she didn't look forty-five, she told herself, and besides what the hell did she care what other people thought?
The restaurant was done in orange and speckled black Formica with the repulsive taste of chain restaurants. It was virtually empty.
They sat down at the table in the corner. It was the only thing they'd done by mutual consent since they met. There were different reasons though. He went to the rear because the place disgusted him and she, because she wanted to hide in spite of her resolution. It was the first time she had had a chance to examine him closely.
"How did you get that scar?"
"T don't remember. I know the other guy looks worse now and that's enough. When a thing is finished you don't have to remember it any more. Now that's a gas-the end qf something. Two hot dogs and a cup of coffee." He smiled at the waitress, making her blush.
"Coffee," Mrs. Cartwright tried to keep her voice light. "It must be wonderful to live that way, forgetting everything as soon as it happens."
"Not everything. Only the things that are finished." He slouched in his seat. "I'm out of cigarettes," he said.
She opened her purse and threw her pack on the table. She watched him light one. He was graceful, and it was an odd kind of animal grace. He never wasted a motion, but moved only enough to complete the action. His movements were lean and brutal.
"What do you mean, finished?"
"Even." He laughed sharply. "Well, maybe not even, but just so nobody's put anything over on me. Just so I'm ahead."
"It is always. It's you against the world and nobody else. And you've got to see that you always come out ahead if you want to keep your self-respected. Like those lousy crumbs back home. They got to me when I was a kid, and they didn't care. So even though I go where I want, and all, and it's been a lot of years, I can't forget it. The thought of them keeps me awake nights, and it gets in the sunlight on the road. So I don't have a choice. I have got to go hack there and get the score card evened up. Then I won't care; they won't matter." , "And you can forget."
"Yeah. And be free."
"What will you do then?"
"Is that an offer?"
"Will you travel?" He shrugged his shoulders.
His shoulders were broad, she noticed and his chest and his arms were strong. She almost reached out to stroke his hard lean body. Talk, she told herself. Talk. Cover up.
"Aaah-do you travel much?"
"I keep moving. That's important. If I stay in one place too long I don't like it. You know what happens to me?"
She shook her head. His shoulders were broad and his hands were slender with thin tapering fingers. Odd, that he should have such delicate sensitive hands, a stud like him.
"It's funny. I get scared. This creeping frightened feeling goes in and out of my brain." He smiled as he said it. It was as if he grew stronger talking about his weakness. "So when that happens, I move. Quick. And if I can't, I fight. With anybody."
She giggled nervously. "With women?"
He sneered contemptously. "Why not?" What he really meant was "What a stupid thing to say." He shook his head scornfully. She didn't have a chance to redeem herself. His opinion of her was established.
She had to make him like her. "What do you think of me?"
"Oh, for God's sake, let's not start on that too." He got up from the seat. "C'mon let's get back to driving."
"I'm not finished with my coffee." He couldn't push her around like that.
He sat down again. She played with the top button on her dress, fastening and unfastening it. He watched her silently. She can't meet my eyes, he thought. Dumb broad. So she doesn't want to leave yet. Maybe I'll hurry her up.
"I'm getting some cigarettes."
He got up and swaggered to the cashier's desk in the front of the restaurant. The waitress rushed from behind the counter to serve him. Jane Cartwright turned around in her seat to watch him. He was leaning on the desk, smiling and talking intimately to that girl. She reached into the cigar counter and extracted a pack of cigarettes. He didn't pay. He reached out and rested his hand on the girl's shoulder. She giggled shrilly. Jane Cartwright couldn't hear what they were saying but she could imagine. Maybe he's staying here tonight with that little girl.
She got up and walked toward them. When he saw her coming, his grin broadened. She opened her purse and extracted both her wallet and the car keys. She threw them to him and he saluted her in the manner of a bell boy and left the restaurant.
Jane noticed that the pack of cigarettes had been added to her bill. She extracted two bills from her full wallet. Then she looked at the young girl, looked her over carefully. She was pretty in a rather bland way. She probably lived on a nearby farm, and working in the Formica fun house was probably the most glamorous job in town. The little tramp didn't know any more about life than she could learn in a haystack.
The girl fidgeted under Jane's sarcastic scrutiny. It was obvious she had lost her concentration and couldn't figure the change. Her face was red, and her coverup not very good. As she handed the change to the older woman, she said, "You must be very proud of your son."
So that was what he'd told her. And that was his way of staying on top, of teaching her a lesson. Of taking revenge.
She turned on her heels and walked out of the diner.
He was waiting for her, and the grin on his face told her that he liked his victory. She let him stay in the driver's seat, opening the door on the passenger side of the sleek car. As soon as she got in, the car accelerated. It's wheels dug into the gravel and sent-up a cloud of dust as they roared off, faster than the law allowed, down the highway.
They drove for some time in silence. She looked out of her window. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the pop music on the radio. He concentrated on driving, every bit of his attention focused on the highway. Nothing he did was mechanical. He enjoyed his body too much for that. He enjoyed setting his eyes on the" road, and directing the large powerful car where he wanted it to go. Ten miles back he'd turned off the road to Chicago, and was now bearing south in the direction of his home town.
He wondered idly if the woman sitting next to him had noticed the detour.
One more hour's worth of driving, not even that, and he'd be home. Home. His birthplace, he corrected himself. That had never been his home. Well, he'd come back to his birthplace and wouldn't they all be surprised!
He pulled the car over to the side of the road, and slowed it to a stop. Jane Cartwright turned to look at him inquringly. Her eyes glinting with the confusion of desire and fear. He smiled at her. They were very close now to where he wanted to go and he always paid his debts.
"I'm danged tired of driving," he said carelessly. "Let's get out and stretch our legs."
He watched her seize on his pretense, and go along with that. She stretched in an exaggerated way and said, "So am I. My, we've been driving a long time." She ran her hand coquetishly through her hair. "Do you know where we are?" She was unable to meet his gaze.
So she had noticed when he'd turned off the main route. Noticed and been frightened or too eager to ask him about it. He decided to see how far he could push her.
"On the road to Chicago."
She said nothing.
He surveyed her once again. How many women like her had he known? Hundreds. Attractive and insecure. If she weren't so damn busy trying to give herself away she might have been able to sell what she had for a good price. But they were all running themselves down, the Mrs. Jane Cartwrights of the world always wanting to get kicked around.
That was all right with him. He'd given her what she wanted.
All of that.
That was only fair.
He reached over and flicked the glove compartment open. There it was, just as he'd known it would be. A fifth of very expensive Scotch. Half full.
She looked at him with astonishment. How had he known that? He must have looked through the car while she was in the restaurant talking to that little hussy.
He got out of the car and, cradling the bottle in the crook of his arm, walked to her side of the car. She waited ceremoniously for him to open the door but he just leaned against the hood and waited for her to get out by herself.
"You better bring your pocketbook with you," he said.
"Oh, are we going to walk far?"
"Sure we are, baby. Sure we are."
He pulled the cork from the bottle and gulped down some Scotch. It sang in his stomach. Then he offered the bottle to her.
She smiled a little and accepting it, carefully wiped the mouth of the bottle with a tissue from her purse. Puckering her lips she let a little liquor slide into her mouth. She couldn't help coughing slightly.
There was a path off to the right. It turned quickly into the woods and lost itself from view. The grass was green and the trees were thick with summer foliage. It was a good summer-all the right proportions of wind, sun and rain-and the leaves were dark and shimmering and the good smell of country earth was heavy around them.
He supported her elbow and walked with her. Yes. It was good to be alive, to "be near what was growing with a woman by your side. A woman you didn't know, yet. He cast a sidelong glance at her breasts bobbing along beside him. They were good, full breasts. He wanted to hold them with his hands and squeeze them and touch them with his mouth.
Yeah. The feeling. That feeling that grew and grew until he exploded.
He never tired of that. No matter how often he did that and no matter who he was with, young or old, he liked that. He liked them.
She was talking nervously. He didn't listen to a word she said. He was searching the path, looking for a clearing with soft grass for a blanket. But he enjoyed the husky feminine voice that blended with his thoughts, with his expectations. He liked making love outside. Once he'd loved a tall blonde on the putting green of her private golf course. Yeah, that had been good. On one of the putting greens. He'd never learned to play golf.
He stopped and drank more from the bottle. When that was her turn, she forgot to take her sanitary precautions.
Not a clearing in sight. He scanned the ground beneath them. He didn't want to wait any longer.
Something inside him demanded, throbbed, Nov. And he always obeyed that impulse. He trusted that.
The smile was going from his face. His eyes clouded with desire, as he reached out and rested his arm on her shoulder. He looked at her mouth, then let his eyes drift lower to her breasts. Her breath was coming quick and shallow and her breasts were rising and falling with each gasp.
"Are you tired of walking?"
"Shut up."
"What do you mean talking to me like...."
"Shut up. T don't want to hear that talk any longer."
He grabbed the hair at the base of her neck and tipped her head back. Her mouth opened slightly, and her teeth showed, white and shining. He ran his lips over the outlines of her mouth, against the shining whiteness of her teeth. For a second he poised beside her, just for the space of a quick intake of breath, and then he captured her lips with his.
She pushed him away, panting like a she-goat, "Get away from me," she shrieked. Her breasts were heaving with excitement but she couldn't give up pretending.
He had expected that. He knew what she wanted. His fist flashed across her jaw, throwing her back against a tree. A thin stream of blood gurgled from the edge of her mouth, and her eyes were wide with surprise.
And expectation.
He walked over to her, and reached his hand to the collar of her dress. Her very expensive dress. He ripped the front open and the tear of cloth screamed in the silence. Her breasts were ripe melons, topped with thick nipples. He grabbed one in each hand and squeezed against the soft flesh, watching that spew through the gaps between his fingers, full and rich. He was smiling with that familiar pleasure when he bit at her neck, feeling the flesh between his teeth shiver.
Her nipples were hard against his hands, standing straight and shaking like pencil points. He pinched the ends of them. Her nails were digging at his back, and her body was jumping and flapping.
She was finished pretending.
She couldn't help that. Every part of her body danced against him, begging for him.
He moved his hands lower, ripping the material of her dress away from her body until he could put his hands on the flesh of her waist.
Her knees gave way and she sloped against him. She expected him to fall to the ground with her, but he wasn't ready yet. He was turned on, there was no doubt about that. But he liked to make things last. So he let her slide against his body.
She drew back a little, then her eyes sought his. They were pleading. All he saw of her face was her mouth.
"Kiss me," he said.
She drew back a little. "You stinking...."
He pushed at her. "Shall I give you another taste of your blood?"
He held his fist directly in front of her face. "Or would you like a nice discolored eye to take to Chicago?"
Her eyes glistened with tears and something else besides-excitement. Yes, this was the way she had to have things. She had to be able to think she had been raped; she wanted to be humiliated and forced. That was the whole game with her.
The fear was joking in her eyes as she bent her willing lips to him. She knew what she was doing. She was almost too good.
He shoved her away and watched her fall backward to the grass. Her body was already working against the ground, making a frantic offering to him. He knelt beside her legs. Her hand wouldn't wait. He moved to her, and she began working, groaning.
He closed his eyes and began the familiar tattoo. He worked so hard she cried with pain.
Her cry turned to a constant relentless shriek of pleasure.
"My darling, my darling," she murmured, finally.
He didn't hear her. His mind had turned off and his heart was pumping and swelling. And he knew when she tensed with reply.
Until that final moment when all the world was silent. And her body danced with him. Vibrating.
"My darling, my darling." This time that was a scream of satisfaction. He rolled away onto his back, and lay quietly with closed eyes, listening to his body recover.
"I love you. I love you." Her lips were against his ear and her hands caressed his chest and neck.
He could go with her to Chicago if he wanted. She would set him up for all she was worth, and that was plenty. She would give him whatever he asked for. That might not be toe bad, living the high life with a dame who would be too scared of him to cramp his style much. And she wanted him around.
That was for certain.
He pushed her aside. And reached for the bottle for one last sip of heat.
"I want twenty dollars," he said. "And the car keys."
"What?"
She crawled across the grass to her pocketbook and sat there hugging that to her bosom. "You can't have anything."
"Look, lady, you know I can take whatever I want. I'm only asking to be nice to you. An old broad like you-why the hell else would I give you the works I Hand them over, dollface, and wait till I leave you before starting that tear routine."
She fished through her wallet for a twenty. For a moment he thought he really ought to take more than that. She was carrying five hundred at the very least. He decided against it.
"Please. Don't take the car. How will I get to Chicago if you take the car?"
"I'm going to take the car to give you a chance to think. I'll leave it down the road a mile or two. And while you're walking to it and thinking what a mean louse I am, you keep thinking what I'll do to you if you follow me."
"Uh?" The fear caught in her throat.
"I don't want to see that face of yours again. You hear me, sweetness?" He made his voice harsh. "If you follow me, I will stretch your frame across the highway. You dig?"
She nodded mutely.
He began to walk slowly back down the trail.
"When you follow the road, I suggest you stay on the edge of the wood. Your dress is in lousy shape."
He turned his back on her and walked away. By the time she'd finished moaning, "Don't leave me," over and over he'd forgotten what she looked like.