Chapter 1
It was a four-story building on the lower end OF Manhattan. The streets were narrow, so narrow that even with one-way traffic the trucks and cars were parked with their curb wheels upon the sidewalk. From eight o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the evening the entire district was bedlam. The air was filled with the flatulence of the exhausts of the big trucks, with the deep, threatening growl of air horns and with the high, shrill protests of automobile horns. Behind these noises rumbled the steady thunder of heavy machinery. The pace was frantic. Everyone, everything seemed to be scrambling. Even the unmoving vehicles in a traffic jam seemed to be scrambling to make that extra nickel or dime.
Francie Jordan stood on the corner of Gardner Avenue and West Willoughby Street. She wasn't lost. She knew where she was and how to get back where she'd come from. like all out-of-towners, Francie had discovered that there really did exist a predictable pattern in this confusing maze of a city. In fact, what made the whole thing so confusing was that there were so many patterns for naming and numbering streets and houses. The whole system could change within three blocks.
Willoughby Street carried traffic across the lower end of the rock-based island called Manhattan. On one side of the island it was called East Willoughby Street and on the other side, West Willoughby Street. Somewhere between, there was a demarcation line. There was one avenue which divided the East Side from the West Side.
This East-West separation was without political overtones at least of an international nature. The problem obtained in that dividing line, the no-man's land, the line of demarcation, changed several times as you went north along the length of the island. Streets and avenues were not straight lines. They cut back and forth across one another. They ended, then continued again half a mile further on with solid masses of buildings between.
Because this was West Willoughby Street Francie knew she was on the other side of the line of demarcation. Willoughby was one-way from east to west, from the Lower East Side to the Holland Tunnel. The other street was Gardner Avenue. This was a big, wide street which carried five lanes of traffic and still left two parking lanes, one on either side. But Gardner was one-way, too. It was one-way south, toward the lower tip of island. The five lanes of traffic all moved in the same direction and it was almost frightening. And despite the ample room for parking at both curbs, there was no parking allowed. There were tremendous signs proclaiming this fact, both on the wide thoroughfares and on the narrow side streets, and it was funny to see so many vehicles parked everywhere that many of them were stacked three deep out into the traffic lanes; which practice caused innumerable hardship to those vehicles whose intention it was to use the streets as roadways.
Francie stood on the corner and checked her watch against the electric clock visible through the dirty plate glass window of the luncheonette. She was early. There was still more than half an hour before her appointment This was the first time she'd been in this part of the city and her eyes took in everything.
Along the wide street were store fronts at ground level. Above the stores were offices and lofts. Most of the stores dealt in new and second-hand office furniture. There were a couple of small eating places. And that was about it. This was a business district.
While Francie looked around she was also being looked at. That wasn't surprising. Every male in viewing distance threw her a second look. Truck drivers jerked their eyes away from the snarling mesh of traffic for a dangerous instant. Delivery men momentarily forgot the addresses they were seeking. Behind the windows of the buildings there was the tiniest pause in the frantic business of the day.
Francie was neither too tall, nor too short. In her spiked heels she stood five feet six inches. Her hair was raven black and tumbled down to her shoulders in a shimmering, ebony cascade. Her skin was fair and smooth, without the slightest visible blemish. She did have a strawberry birthmark but it wasn't located where it would normally be seen, even in the most revealing bikini.
She was dressed in a knit three-piece outfit. The skirt tightly molded the shafts of her strong full upper legs, pulled tight across the wide point of her hips, and lovingly hugged the double contours of her rear. The hem of the skirt came just to the center of the joint of her knee. Above the skirt she wore a lighter-colored sweater whose synthetic material developed a strong static electrical charge and clung to her body. The sweater swept in and out and around her bounteous curves, molding the twin basketballs of her breasts, bumping over the straps of the heavy brassiere required to support those twin weights. On top of the sweater Francie wore a waist-length, long-sleeved jacket the same color as the skirt and opened in the front.
She carried a small purse and a large, imitation alligator hatbox. Her stomach was a tight knot of apprehension. With a half hour to kill she decided on a cup of coffee and turned into the luncheonette. It was past the noon hour now and the place was virtually empty. There was only a pockmarked, dark-skinned counterman. He was busily scraping the blackened surface of his grill and he looked around at the sound of the opening door.
Francie put her hatbox and purse on one counter stool and sat down on the one next to it. She looked around the place with distaste. The few small tables were still littered with the debris of the lunch hour crowd. The counter had been cleared of dishes and glasses and cups, but had not yet been wiped clean of the spills and smears and crumbs of a hundred hurried sandwiches and a thousand gulped cups of coffee.
The counterman shuffled down to where she sat. He wore a badly soiled white apron, a T-shirt with a dark ring at the neck and sweat stains at the armpits, and a pair of baggy, creased trousers. His back was bent, one shoulder dipped, and one arm was withered.
"Yeah, what'll ya have?"
"Coffee," she said, not really wanting the coffee any more.
The man turned away, shuffled a few steps, then came back with a cup of coffee. He set it down before her without looking down. His eyes stared at her body. He was trying to see right through her clothes and he gave her a crawly feeling.
When he didn't move away she grabbed her purse and rummaged through it until she found a dime. She dropped the dime on the counter and pulled the cup and saucer closer to her to add sugar and milk. She kept her eyes on the cup but her ears were tuned toward the counterman. She could hear the asthmatic wheeze of his breath as he stared a few moments longer before picking up the dime and shuffling off. The coffee was lousy.
She took three sips, pushed the cup away, and lit a cigarette. She wished she had had a drink instead of a cup of coffee; and that was funny because she wasn't exactly sure what good a drink would do. She only knew that in all the movies and television programs she'd ever seen, when the character was nervous or afraid, he always wanted a drink.
She'd had drinks before in her nineteen years of living if you could call it living. And she was familiar with the effects of alcohol on her body. First there was a warmth in the pit of her stomach which spread slowly through her until it flushed her face. Then there was some light-headedness and a kind of sticky feeling in the hinges of her jaws and in her tongue. After four drinks she began to get a headache and after six she inevitably became ill.
The only time her own reaction to alcohol had even remotely approached the fictionalized reaction was that one time when she was seventeen. She'd been a junior in high school and her date had been a senior. They'd gone to a drive-in movie and after the first half hour her date had offered her a drink from a pint bottle which he produced from the glove compartment.
She'd accepted the drink, then a second. The liquor seemed to give her the courage she'd needed to permit the boy full freedom with her body. She'd wanted to do those things for a long time now, but she'd always been afraid.
That time the liquor really helped.
And that time had been so good that she didn't need any bottled courage the next time. Or any time after that.
But now the thing she felt was not the same kind of fright. This was like being scared without being afraid if that made any sense at all. This was her first modeling job and she had every right to be nervous, she decided.
Eight whole months in this city and this was her first modeling job. And in those eight months she'd met no one, nor made any permanent friendships. The first month, when she was living in that cockroach-farm of a hotel, should have been the worst.
Day after day she'd tramped around the city; from one modeling agency to the next, and from one producer's office to another. By the end of every day she had just enough energy to take a light supper and tumble into bed. And as the days passed she saw her savings dwindle away.
Finally, when the money was all gone, she'd had to make a choice. Either give up and go back home, or take a job. Her pride wouldn't let her go back home and admit she'd failed. She couldn't fail I She was too beautiful and had too much talent to fail. Everyone back home had been telling her for years how much prettier she was than the women they saw on television or in the movies or in the magazines.
She found a job. It wasn't much.
Hell, it wasn't anything. Counter girl in a five-and-ten. But the steady salary afforded her the opportunity to move out of that flea-bag hotel and take a tiny apartment. There she'd been lucky, too. She'd found a one and one-half room apartment one large room with a sleeping alcove in a renovated building within walking distance of her job.
On her small salary she didn't save any money, but there was enough to pay her expenses and to keep her in medium-quality clothing.
This was the hardest part, those first few months of working behind the counter. She came to know some of the other employees well enough so that there was at least some warmth when she was at work. But that was the limit of her relationships. She passed her evenings in loneliness in the apartment, trying to lose herself in the flickering image of the tiny television set she'd bought. It was one of the Japanese-made things, all transistors and printed circuits and a seven-inch screen.
When the emptiness of her apartment became unbearable she went out to neighborhood movies, but that really wasn't much different. Several times a week she spent her lunch hour in the phone booth with a handful of dimes. She called all the agencies at which she'd registered in the faint hope that one of them might have some modeling work for her.
Life became a little more bearable after the assistant manager of the place asked her for that first date.
He took her to dinner at a good restaurant, then to a first-run movie house in Times Square, and finally to a couple of night clubs.
Of course he expected her to invite him in when he took her home. And she did invite him in. She asked him in because the empty apartment seemed all the more horrible after such a wonderful evening of companionship. His expectations reached far beyond the one nightcap he'd asked for. And she'd complied willingly, even eagerly.
The assistant manager dated her a few more times. Each time the date finished in her apartment, in the dark, with the sleeper sofa opened. After all, Francie was a healthy young girl and the assistant manager was not repulsive. He was also possessed of sufficient skill in the arts of love-making to make the whole thing a satisfying affair for both parties.
And she even got a raise out of the deal! It was only five dollars a week but it was a raise. Then the assistant manager moved on to one of the other girls and Francie's loneliness returned.
She stood it for as long as she could until, finally, it became absolutely unbearable. One night, after work, she ate a quick supper, showered, and dressed in her best clothes. She spent the early part of the evening in a mid-town movie. When the movie let out she strolled over to the Upper East Side and found a quiet bar. Fifteen minutes later a man was buying her drinks and telling her how pretty she was.
She let him take her to his apartment in one of the luxurious apartment buildings nearby. Afterward she was ashamed of herself, but that shame lasted only until her loneliness and desire built up again. Soon she was going out almost every night of the week.
The first time one of the men tried to pay her she spit in his face, kicked him in the leg, and ran away. She wasn't a professional! But what was the real difference between what she was doing and professionalism? The pro gave herself for money. Francie was giving herself in return for the easing of her loneliness.
Of course, Francie only went with men she liked. But, then, she liked most men, especially after two or three drinks. And if she was going with them anyway, they wouldn't really be paying her for her services. It was like a present, a gift from an admirer.
So, the next time an offer was made she accepted. Sometimes there were real gifts instead of cash, and sometimes no gifts at all. She'd given a few of the men her phone number and they called now and then for dates. The others were only pickups. And most of her night life continued to be this pickup routine.
There was something very satisfying about being selected from among many choices as she sat at a bar. In the dimly lit places she could almost feel the men's eyes search out the rich contours of her body, and when they approached her she could look into their eyes and see herself naked there in their minds.
And then, just four days ago, had come the letter. It was from a man, a photographer, who wrote that he'd seen her file at one of the modeling agencies and was interested in using her for a series of pictures.
She was puzzled.
Shouldn't the call have come from the agency? Wasn't the man supposed to deal through them? But she was too inexperienced to be sure. In fact, she was so inexperienced she didn't even know what it was that models were supposed to carry around in their hatboxes. In hers was a light smock and a small, but complete make-up kit.
And everything seemed legitimate. The letter was on business stationery with a corporation name and address. The photographer gave her his phone number and asked that she call for an appointment.
She called the next day during her lunch hour. He wanted to see her that afternoon. It was impossible. She had to work. She explained and the man on the other end of the line agreed to an appointment for Saturday afternoon.
"Hey, you ain't drunk your coffee."
Francie looked up out of the depths of her thoughts to see the counterman. She checked her watch. It was time!
"Nobody could drink that slop," she said, as she picked up her things and left the lunchroom.
The address was on the narrow side street. It was in the middle of the block and as she walked toward it she got several whistles and a couple of honks from truck horns. That made her feel better and in return she exaggerated the sensuous sway of her hips for the lookers.
She found the right building. It was narrow and grimy and seemed to be right in the center of the thunder of all the machines in the district. The sidewalk out front trembled rhythmically each time some heavy machine somewhere nearby thumped.
There was a narrow stairway crowded into the front corner of the building. The names of four companies were painted right onto the wall at the foot of the stairs. The one she wanted Brooks Novelties was, of course, on the fourth floor. And there didn't seem to be any sort of elevator.
She walked.
At the top floor she was puffing for breath and she stopped outside the door to wipe away the beads of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. She gathered her courage, reached for the doorknob, and went in.
She found herself in a tremendous room. The ceiling was at least twenty feet above her head and the wall opposite the door was all the way at the other end of the building. Toward the back an area had been walled off and there was a door. Except for that space this one huge room took up the entire width and depth of the building.
There were floor-to-ceiling windows in front and they were coated with a five-year accumulation of soot and dirt so thick it was almost opaque. Inside the room it didn't seem to be much cleaner. The floor was dirty and littered with crumpled coffee containers and shreds of paper. There were clumps of things spotted around the room: light stands, furniture, reflectors, oddly-shaped piles covered with canvases and blankets. In several places light bulbs hung down from the ceiling on long bare cords and a little more light filtered down through a soot-covered skylight.
There didn't seem to be anyone there.
"Hello!" Francie shouted.
There was a click and a loud voice echoed in the big room. Francie jumped, startled.
"I'm in the darkroom," the voice said. "Please take a seat. I'll be with you in a few moments."
Francie looked around. Shoved against one wall was a desk and beside it was a chair. She walked over. There was a rag lying on the floor nearby and she used that to wipe off the seat of the chair. She set her hat-box and purse down beside the chair and sat down, sua was nervous and fidgety and fumbled in her purse for another cigarette.
On the wall above the desk were several framed photographs. One was a shot of a nude girl, her hip and back turned toward the camera, her lean body bent in an awkward pose. Another was a shot of a misty city street seen at night. Still another seemed to be an early morning shot of driftwood on a beach. And the last one looked for all the world exactly like a picture of a tenement roof taken against a setting sun.
Beneath the four pictures was a framed plaque. A gold disk was set in the center and beneath was written an award of first prize to Burton Schiller for the Best Picture of the Year. The award was from the American Photography Association. The date on the plaque was 1938. That was seven years before Francie had been born.
The ash on her cigarette grew long and she looked around for an ash tray. She rummaged among the papers on the desk, holding the cigarette at an awkward angle as she did so. Finally she gave up her search and flicked her ashes on the floor. The place was already filthy and cluttered and littered with ground-out cigarette butts and soggy coffee containers. A few more ashes certainly weren't going to make much difference.
Her nervousness betrayed itself when she heard a door open somewhere behind and to the right of her. She started so violently she almost came right out of the chair.
Burton Schiller looked like he was in make-up and costume for the role of Svengali. He was tall, cadaverously lean, and stoop-shouldered. His face was covered by a scraggly and unkempt beard of grizzled gray and black hairs. The hair on his head was of the same mixed hues; it was long, matted, curling at the temples and over his ears and collar. In front a great tangled lock of it hung down before his eyes. The effort to push those strands back out of his way had become an almost constant, nervous gesture. His cheeks were hollowed and gaunt.
His eyes were most startling of all.
They were black, glowing orbs in the center of his face heated by some feverish light. There were wrinkles and squint marks at the corners of his eyes and on his forehead. And beneath his eyes were the unhealthy-looking pouches of a man who has had too little sleep for too long a time. Those pouches were soft and puffy and black.
He looked like he belonged in a hospital-preferably one for the criminally insane!
Francie was frightened and it must have shown in her face and bearing, for the man walked past her and sank into the chair before the desk he smiled and spoke. His teeth were uneven and yellowed from too little attention with a toothbrush and too much smoking.
"Relax, Miss Jordan," he told her. "I'm not as bad ac I look. You'll get used to my appearance."
His voice was deep and rich and smooth and his diction was excellent. There was something about him-an aura, a feeling, a flavor-that bespoke a European background. It might only have been the Germanic name combined with the too-precise speech. In any case, the voice did not match the appearance and Francie was a little more at ease.
"You are Mr. Schiller, aren't you?" she asked.
He nodded, fumbled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, straightened it, and lit it with a kitchen match which he struck on the side of the desk, adding one more scar to the already numerous ones there. He shook out the flame and tossed the match, still smoking, carelessly over his shoulder. Throughout the entire procedure his eyes had never left her. They were squinted against the blue-gray smoke curling from the end of the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth; and they carefully inspected every part of her.
The intensity of his searching look made her uncomfortable for a moment and she squirmed. Then she sensed a subtle difference between his look and the hungry look of a lustful man. Despite the febrile brightness of his eyes there was only cool, calm professionalism. He didn't say another word until he'd finished with his evaluation.
"Yes," he said then. "I think you'll do perfectly."
Francie wasn't as sure as he was. This wasn't at all what she'd expected. Models were supposed to work in glamorous surroundings; wearing beautiful clothes and posed against exotic backgrounds.
"How come this wasn't handled through the agency?" she asked Schiller.
"I couldn't see any need to pay their exorbitant commission," he answered candidly.
"Well then, how did you get my name and address? And how did you know what I looked like?"
Schiller leaned back in the chair until it creaked and put his feet up on the edge of the littered desk.
"You are very cautious, my dear. Perhaps that is a good thing. Let me explain from the beginning. You can ask any questions you wish when I have finished."
She nodded, and felt some of the tension flow out of her. His tone gave her assurance as it reverberated inside her. As he spoke it was almost as though she felt, rather than heard the words.
"I have a contact at the Mayfair Agency," he explained. "When I have the need of a model I give my requirements to my contact. He goes through the files there and gives me a name and address."
"That's a funny way to do business."
"Please, let me finish."
"I'm sorry. Go ahead."
"What I have in mind is not just a few hours' work at an hourly rate. Your most important qualification is that you've never been seen before. I need an absolutely fresh face and figure. I can tell you no more about the job until you answer some questions for me. I can, however, tell you that if you're right for the job and if you consent to it you will receive surprisingly generous recompense."
"This is getting weirder by the second. But I'm here, so go ahead with your questions."
"You seem to be quite generously endowed," he said. "Is all that flesh your own?"
"I'm not padded," she said proudly, arching her back slightly to make her breasts more prominent.
"Good. And your figure, it is ... ah, youthful and firm?"
"Well, I don't droop or sag, if that's what you mean."
"Exactly, my dear. Exactly. Would you mind removing your clothes so I can get a better idea of how you'll photograph?"
"Wait just one minute! What kind of job is this?"
"I assure you, my dear, I didn't lure you up here just to trick you into undressing for me. That is necessary for the job I have in mind."
Curiously enough, she believed him. But she still was not about to strip before she heard more of the details. She shook her head.
"Let's discuss the job first," she told him. "If I decide I'm interested we can work from there."
"All right, Miss Jordan. I'll lay my cards on the table. This is no ordinary modeling job. I'm not taking pictures for some advertising campaign. I have it in mind to take an eight-shot series of nude studies of you. We'll start off with one group of pictures, distribute them, and see how they sell. If the response is good-that is, if you become popular with the aficionados there will be many, many more. For the first series, perhaps two hour's work, you will receive one hundred dollars. Later on we can work out a royalty arrangement on the number of sets sold."
"You mean dirty pictures?"
Burton Schiller laughed. "That is a very ambiguous term, Miss Jordan. There are some who claim there is no such thing. There are others, on the other hand, who would call a Reubens dirty. Within the limits of the legal definition of the category the pictures I have in mind are not dirty."
"I'm not even sure I know what you're talking about now, Francie said.
"Just a minute."
Schiller took his legs down from the desk top, swiveled around in the chair, and opened one of the desk drawers. He removed a sheaf of glossy photos and handed them to her.
"This is the kind of thing I'm talking about."
She looked at the pictures. The one on top was a shot of a generously endowed blonde girl. The blonde was completely naked. She was smiling and looking straight out from the picture. Her hands were cupped beneath her breasts, holding them out, offering them to the camera. She was posed with her hips twisted to one side to hide part of her body and to show one hollow-cheeked buttock. The blonde's smile, the excited state of the nipples of her full breasts, the glint in her eyes all indicated a kind of physical excitement. It was as though the girl in the picture was inviting the beholder to join her in all kinds of fun and bed games.
The rest of the pictures were much the same. There were different girls in different poses. There were some pictures of two women posed together. Not all of the women were completely naked. Sometimes panties were worn, sometimes black lingerie.
They weren't really dirty pictures, Francie decided. They were very much like the shots in the magazines the boys back home used to buy and pass around among themselves. Objectively, no more of the girls in these pictures was revealed than was shown in the gatefold photos which appeared regularly in major magazines.
"What magazines are these pictures from?" she asked when she was finished looking at them.
Schiller shook his head. "These were not sold to publications," he explained. "As I told you before, they were sold simply as sets of pictures. I believe the current retail price here in this city is two dollars for a set of eight different poses."
"You mean people actually buy just pictures?"
He grinned and nodded. "Some men need the excuse of a magazine to look at pictures of an undressed female. Other men are more honest. They like to look at pictures of woman so they buy pictures of woman. It's that simple."
"But if they only cost two dollars a set how can you afford to pay me a hundred dollars?"
"My dear, I'll take perhaps ten or twelve shots, from which I will select the best eight. From those eight masters will be approximately three thousand copies. We'll begin with a small run until we find out how well you are accepted by the public. Those three thousand sets of pictures will be distributed right here in this city. I receive seventy-five cents a set. It costs me slightly less than half that sum to make those pictures. Now do you understand?"
Francie nodded. She was beginning to see the light. Her brain was rapidly making some calculations. Three thousand sets at seventy-five cents a set came to twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars, approximately eleven hundred and twenty-five dollars of which was profit.
Schiller went on. "Now, if there is a good response that is, if your pictures sell well we increase the size of the run and the profit is greater. The pictures go into national distribution at a run of about fifty thousand sets."
Francie almost fell out of her chair. Fifty thousand sets at seventy-five cents a set was close to forty thousand dollars! With a bigger margin of profit, yet! That was a fortune! It was unbelievable!
"I know that sounds impossible," Schiller said, reading her mind. "But it's true. And to make the whole thing even better there are a couple of side angles we can use to pick up even more money from each set of pictures."
"What-what would be my share of all that money?" Francie asked, holding her breath, hardly daring to hope that any sizable percentage of Schiller's great profit would be hers, should she accept his offer and take this strange, exciting job.
"As I said," Schiller answered her, "we would have to test the customers' response to you first, In the beginning, perhaps, you could expect to receive a few hundred dollars' royalty for a set of pictures."
"And then--? " she pressed.
"And then," Schiller shifted in his chair, readjusted his feet on the desk, gazing at them thoughtfully, and then he raised his remarkable eyes to hers for a moment "And then, I would suppose, if we continued to increase the size of the runs, your share could easily come to a minimum of a thousand dollars for a set."
A minimum of a thousand dollars for a few hours work. It staggered the imagination. Why; if she only worked a few hours every two months she could earn enough to live very comfortably. Six sets a year would be a minimum of six thousand dollars per year. And it would be more if you added in the percentage.
Her thoughts must have been written on her forehead.
"You are interested then?" Schiller said.
"Interested! I I ... "
Suddenly her face darkened. A terrible thought came to her mind. The pictures would be sold across the country. Probably even in her home town. What it someone who knew her were to see them? There was less eagerness in her tone when she spoke again.
"I'm interested, all right. But I have to think about it a while. Could I have a few days to make up my mind?"
Schiller nodded. "I can give you the week end to consider," he told her. "But you must decide by Monday to give me time to look for another girl."
She nodded and handed him back the pictures. "Monday will be plenty of time."
She rose and started for the door. "I'll call before noon."
"Wait!" he called.
She turned back.
"You've forgotten something."
"What's that?"
"I still have to be sure, myself. I want to get an idea of how you'll photograph."
"Oh yes, that. Well ... uh . . .I thought we'd wait until I made up my own mind one way or the other I mean, if I decided not to take the job there would be no point in ... in what you want."
"Miss Jordan, if the mere idea of removing your clothes in my presence causes you this much difficulty perhaps we'd better forget the whole thing. I can find someone else, I'm sure."
"Oh no, it's not that. . Well, I guess it was. It's just that this is the first time I've ever done anything like this."
"Perhaps the experience will help you make your decision."
She shrugged. "Where do you want me?"
"Right where you are will do just fine. It really doesn't make any difference."
She glanced nervously around her and gnawed at the corner of her lower lip as her hands moved to the lapels of the short jacket of her outfit. "The door." she said. "It's unlocked. Anyone could walk in."
"Miss Jordan," Schiller said with a sigh, "there is nothing beneath your clothes that I, or any other man for that matter, haven't seen a hundred times before. If the idea of one man looking at your naked body upsets you, what will happen when it occurs to you that there will be fifty thousand men looking at you in the privacy of their bedrooms?"
Francie gathered her courage. What Schiller said made sense. She didn't have anything that every other women in the world didn't also have. It was a body, a commodity.
She pulled off the jacket and the sweater and looked around for a clean place to put them down. Schiller shoved a chair over to her and she draped the two garments across the back. Then came the skirt. The button at her side opened, the zipper went down, and she shifted her hips from side to side as she forced the garment down past her hips.
Now she was wearing only her bra, panties, and garter belt and stockings. And suddenly she was again aware of the machinery noises in the building Those noises indicated the presence of men, and she had the fleeting thought that the moment she was naked a great horde of slavering workmen would come rushing in through the door.
Schiller tried to make things easier for her. "You have no need to wonder about me," he said softly. "I've been in this business a long time. My tastes are somewhat dulled. Love long ago ceased to be a source of pleasure to me, at least love as you know that."
Francie stopped with her hands bent up behind her back and the hooks of her bra opened. She looked at him quizzically.
He laughed. "No. Nothing like that. When I do take my pleasure with women, the only way I can find any thrill is through a particular variant of loveplay."
"Oh! I think I know what you mean."
Francie had in mind an activity which had been requested of her by several of her gentlemen friends. She'd always refused that request. The idea nauseated her.
Schiller was reading her mind again. "I don't think you do know what I mean," he told her softly. "It is only through taking the role of the active performer that I receive any pleasure at all Don't try to understand. I don't. That's just the way things are."
His statement only confused her instead of clearing things up. But she couldn't bring herself to form her question into words. Instead she shrugged out of the bra and placed the harness on top of her sweater and jacket.
Schiller's face didn't change when she bared her breasts. "Stand straight," he told her. "Turn around ... slowly."
She did as he ordered.
"Good," he murmured. "Excellent! Now the rest, please."
She hooked her thumbs in the elastic of her panties and shoved down, bending forward to strip away the lacy garment. Then she put one foot up on the seat of the chair, unhooked the stocking from the garters, and rolled the nylon casing down the full, rounded column of her leg. When the other stocking had been removed the unhooked the garter belt and stood completely nude before him.
She stood straight and proud, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. Schiller said nothing for a long time. His eyes moved slowly over her opulent flesh, taking in every single square inch of her, every curve, every fold, every crease. He made a motion with his hand and she turned slowly around.
"Stop!" he said when her back was toward him.
She stopped, feeling the intensity of his gaze prickle her bare skin. Her ears were tuned behind her, listening for the slightest sound which would betray movement toward her. There was no sound and after a moment she relaxed.
"Lean to the left," he said. "Now the right. Move your feet apart and put your hands on your hips ... that's right. Twist your shoulders around toward me. Bend over and touch the floor with the tips of your lingers."
She did everything he said as the feeling of being watched grew stronger and stronger. That wasn't a bad feeling, either exciting somehow. She could feel light shudders run through her. Her nipples hardened to the fullest and her breasts seemed to ache. There was a warmth in the pit of her stomach exactly like when she had a drink of straight liquor. That warmth seemed to seep completely through her.
Her breathing was shallow and rapid and she longed to smooth her own hands upward from her hips to still the aching in her bosom. She wanted to hold those two smooth, white globes of flesh and squeeze them as hard as she could.
He made her assume a hundred more poses before he was finished. And finally, when he told her she could dress once again, her legs were heavy, and warm, and numb.
Her hands trembled when she reached for her clothing and it took her a long time to dress. Through that all he continued to watch her and his watching kept her excited. At last she was slipping her arms into the knit jacket. The tightness of her bra across the sensitive tips of her breasts was agonizing torture. And her skirt, molding around her waist, hips, and buttocks, seemed to make breathing difficult.
"You'll do very nicely," he told her as she picked up her purse and hatbox. "I sincerely hope you'll decide to take my offer."
She heard him above the roaring of her blood in her ears but her tongue was too thick in her mouth to answer. She was intoxicated with the exotic sensations. Somehow she managed to make it out the door and start down the stairs.
It was such a shame he didn't have a normal appetite. She would have welcomed his advances. Hell, she needed a man. The whole thing had been very peculiar. She'd never been that excited before in her entire life. Even at the peak of love-making she'd never felt quite the same intensity of sensation.
There was a strange magic to being looked at like that. Other men had seen her. But that had always been in a situation in which she'd known that she and the man would be twined together seeking the piercing joy of release. This was entirely different.
Schiller's eyes were the eyes of fifty thousand men she would never see. Her body was the fuel which fed the flames in those eyes, the catalyst which triggered fifty thousand exciting fantasies. All the men in the world were making love to her in their minds.
Her excitement seemed to abate, at least a little, when she got down to the street. She walked the three long blocks to the subway and went down to the platform.
At midtown the train jammed up with afternoon shoppers. They were all squeezed in like sardines in the can, one pressed against another. At one point Francie felt something brush against the taut fullness of her buttocks. She looked over her shoulder. Behind her was a man reading a newspaper, his shoulder turned to her.
The train came into a station.
Passengers got off and others got on and the train was still crowded. Once the train was rolling again she felt that brushing. She leaned back against the touch, feeling now a hand cupping one buttock. That touch sent sparks shooting through her body. A red haze fell over her eyes and the roaring in her ears increased.
Her legs trembled weakly and she could hardly stand up. The hand squeezed and caressed and she began to shiver and shake. Her brassiere held points of live flame. The surface of her skin burned. From hips to shoulders her entire torso tingled. Muscles in her body shook convulsively.
Her station came up and she shouldered her way through the press of people. There was a bench on the subway platform and she sat down to fumble in her purse for a handkerchief to wipe away the beads of perspiration.
Her legs were stiff and awkward as she walked from the subway station to her apartment. Once inside the door she literally tore off her clothing and threw herself down on the bed.
Now, she thought. Oh God, I could hardly wait.
Her hands filled with the flesh of her breasts, squeezing hard, the nails digging deep at the softness and hurting so wonderfully. Her nipples brushed against the palms of her hands. She changed her grip to allow the nipples to poke out past her fingers.
First the aching tip of one breast, then the other did she raise to her lips to be soothed by her kiss. Her pulsing excitement made her want to scream and she stifled that desire by biting on the upright brown points of her breasts.
She continued her fantasy, lightly stroking her eager, sweating flesh. Her nails scraped against the skin as her hand crept slowly over her body.
She touched herself until her body went rigid.
Not yet, her mind screamed silently. Wait! Make this last!
The hand remaining at her bosom left now, reached out and picked up the receiver of the telephone. She set the receiver down on the pillow beside her and reached back again to dial a number. All the while her other hand was busy, caressing.
The phone rang six times.
Oh God, I hope he's still there.
Then, in answer to her prayer Schiller was saving, "Hello."
The sound of his voice was enough. Her body went rigid. She arched up off the bed.
"I'll pose! I'll pose!" she screamed into the receiver.