Chapter 11
Cue had just finished her bath when Wes came home. She was sitting nude at her vanity, powdering her breasts with a huge plush puff. The puff tickled her nipples and made them stand erect. Sue was pleased with herself. That had only been a few hours before that she and the strange boy had made passionate love on the grassy slope. But, already, she had the urge again. When Wes came into the room and saw her nakedness, he stopped and apologized.
"I'm sorry. I should have knocked."
She laughed at him in the mirror. "What for? We're married, aren't we?"
What she wanted to say, but didn't, was, "What difference does that make to you if I'm dressed or undressed? You aren't interested in my body."
He took off his shirt and tie. "Put on your finest duds tonight. We're celebrating."
Sue was truly shocked. He hadn't taken her out in months, except to faculty teas. "Celebrating what?"
It was the first time he had mentioned the new job he was up for. "Dean of Jane Richmond College. How does it sound to you?"
Sue liked it fine. It would mean a lot more money in the pay envelope each month. New clothes, maybe even a new and bigger house. "I'm very happy for you, darling," she said.
He kissed her cheek lightly. "I'll grab a quick shower, then we'll be off. I've already made a reservation at the Limbo Club."
Sue blinked. The Limbo Club! He was in a good mood! It was the most expensive place for miles around. She stood in front of the mirror and surveyed her breasts. They were nice, the boy had told her. She stood sideways and pulled back her shoulders. Obediently, they stood up and out, with the crimson summits tilting upward like twin upturned nose". Too bad, she thought, that Wes didn't teach at Harvard.
All those young boys just bursting with incipient manhood! What a shame!
The Limbo Club was dark and subterranean, with recessed red lighting along the walls that gave a bizarre effect of flickering flames. The waitresses were all young, with large busts and rears. They wore skin-tight devils' costumes, neckr-to-foot leotards of red nylon that fit their curvaceous bodies like stockings. Their close-cropped heads were adorned with skull caps sprouting little horns.
Wes tipped the headwaiter lavishly to secure a ringside table just off the small circular stage in the middle of the dining room. It was hot in the low room, and cigarette smoke was blue and heavy, enhancing the Inferno atmosphere of the place. As their waitress stood at his side, waiting for their drink order, Wes turned his eyes brazenly on her. He was almost certain she was not wearing anything under the red nylon costume. Every detail of her body stood out vividly beneath the clinging material. He had an irresistible urge to run his hand over her.
Instead, he ordered two "Volcanoes," the special drink of the house.
"It sounds potent," Sue said.
"The more potent, the better," he said.
She smiled smugly. "I'll drink to that any day in the week."
He realized she was mocking his inability to perform in bed with her, but he didn't care a fig any more. When that really counted, Wes Parker could perform and outperform any man alive! Just ogling the beautiful derrieres of the waitresses, as they bent over tables to serve, bad him vibrating.
The drinks arrived in large brandy snifters that had the look of miniature volcanoes. Powdered sugar, laced with brandy, had been sprinkled over the tops of the glasses and lit with a match. They blazed brightly. Wes was no expert on alcoholic beverages, but he detected the flavor of rum and Cointreau, in addition to the brandy. It was, indeed, a potent drink. The more he drank, the more unbearable it became to gaze on the bottoms and bosoms of the pretty waitresses. He dropped his napkin and bent down to pick it up. In doing so, he was able to look underneath the cloth of the table adjoining his. The table was occupied by a couple. The girl was tall and Nordic looking, with silver hair swirled up in a beehive on her head, and pale blue eyes. She had good breasts in a low-cut evening gown, but she had looked cold and remote, topside. Under the table, that was another matter. Her long legs were arranged so that Wes could see the tops of her stockings. Her escort's hand was lovingly caressing her. But when Wes sat up and looked into her face, she seemed detached and bored with the whole affair.
He gazed around, and there were other men and women behaving with an abandon quite unlike their normal behavior. There was a kind of magic about the place. Limbo. Land of lost souls. No future for any of them. Just the eternal, unchanging present.
You could read in their wild eyes, and flaring nostrils.
The bedlam of talk and laughter faded as the orchestra began to play a strange reedy tune, with the sound of the Far East in its labyrinthine rhythms. It came to Wes, finally. It was a tune like that piped by snake charmers.
He was right. Two stage hands carried a large wicker basket onto the raised dais and set it down carefully. It was a larger replica of the familiar basket in which fakirs house their cobras. All eyes in the audience were riveted on the basket as a tall man with a saturnine face beneath a swirled turban advanced on stage and bowed. He wore sandals and the traditional loose trousers and loose blouse of a snake charmer.
From his pocket he removed a small flute and picked up the background melody which the orchestra was playing. The other instruments were muted now, barely audible. He sat cross-legged in front of the basket and continued to play. After a few minutes, the lid of the basket began to quiver. A gasp went up from the crowd as it toppled off and a head emerged, a serpentine head, but human. It was a young girl clad in a skin-tight costume of mottled hues and glittering rhinestones, arranged in patterns to simulate the markings of a cobra. It covered her from head to foot, with only the small oval of her face bared. She was a small, exquisite creature, no more than five feet tall. Wes decided she was Malayan. Her skin was saffron-colored, and her eyes were blacky as onyx and slanted. Her breasts were no bigger than lemons, but in perfect proportion to the rest of her perfect body. Patently, she was naked under the costume, for as she rose, undulating, from the basket, with her arms above her head, her taut nipples stood out starkly in the spotlight. She was a magnificent dancer, and she literally crawled out of the basket, curling sinuously around the sides of the wicker before flopping heavily to the boards. Her arms and legs and torso writhed and twisted like the coils of a lethargic snake.
The audience was rapt in its attention. Not a sound disturbed the act. She crawled toward the man, who played his pipe, glassy-eyed. Her head reared, her red tongue flicked out at him like a serpent's. She humped her back, and her buttocks arched high into the air. Fire licked at Wes. He was so inflamed at this point, he would have loved anyone. Even his own wife!
The spectators gasped, caught up in the illusion, as the snake-girl began to curl around the back of the man. That was a startling performance. She actually entwined herself about him as a snake would enfold a victim within its coils. The girl was a professional contortionist, Wes decided. No ordinary dancer could have twisted her body into such intricate convolutions. At the end of the act, she was hanging around his neck so that the costume strained across her, vividly defining her every contour. Wes was drooling at the mouth.
The conclusion was greeted hy an enthusiastic burst of applause from the spectators. The girl crawled back into her basket, and the stage hands carried it off. Anticlimactically, the man proceeded with the second half of his act, magical tricks done in the context of an oriental ballet, in which he was joined by two other girls, not nearly as exciting as the first little wench. t
On impulse. Wes excused himself and left the table. Sue hardly noticed. She was enraptured by the male dancer.
When he left the table, Wes only had a vague idea of what he was going to do. Of late, he had been functioning very efficiently on impulse. It was as if he operated in two separate gears, one gear for school and everyday activities, a high gear for his nocturnal activities. He shifted into high gear now, and let instinct guide him. His feet took him backstage, dim and deserted at the height of the show. Quickly, he moved past several empty dressing rooms until he came to one with sounds of activity. He opened the door a crack and peered inside. It was lighted but vacant. His eyes found a door on the opposite wall which was ajar. From beyond the door came the hiss of a shower. He went inside and closed the door behind him, carefully shooting the bolt. He sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette and waited.
She came out of the shower naked, her saffron body glistening with droplets of water. She was even lovelier than he had imagined. Her jet-black hair hung straight down her back to her tiny waist. The muscle tone of her small breasts was so amazing that the perfect globes seemed to float out of her chest like balloons. The nipples were like tiny raspberries. Her legs were short, in the fashion of oriental females, but they were shapelier than any he had ever seen. Her muscles were as sleek and powerful as a leopard's, and the woman was as imposing as any woman twice her size.
An expression of surprise, rather than alarm, crossed her sensual face when she saw the strange man sitting in her dressing room. Unhurriedly, she took a robe from her dressing table and held that in front of her.
"Get out of here," she said coldly, in a voice thick with accent.
Wes smiled. "That's hardly the way to speak to an ardent admirer."
"What you want?"
He lied glibly. "I'm a professor of Oriental culture at Harvard University, and I was intrigued with your performance. I've never seen anything quite equal to it. I'd like a private encore. Here, now."
There was amusement in her flat eyes. "Antonio no permit me to give private shows."
He nodded. "Your husband?"
She laughed harshly. "No, my boss."
"Do you sleep with him?"
She shrugged. "He sleep with all the girls in the troupe,"
"I see." This was going to be even easier than he had anticipated. "What does he pay you, my dear?"
"One hundred fifty dollars a week."
Wes sighed. "He's got a steal. Look, I'll pay you one hundred dollars for just one performance tonight."
Her eyes flickered with new interest. "Now?" He nodded. "Now."
She threw aside the robe. "Okay, we hurry." He started to undress. She smirked. "Why you do that?"
"I think we should both be naked, don't you?"
When he dropped his trousers, her eyes glittered. "You in a bad way, mister."
"All your fault, sweetie." He stood naked before her. "All set. We can skip the music this time."
She fell to the floor, moving with the heavy, serpentine grace that he so marveled at. This girl really lived a part. She was a snake! Obsidian eyes glittering, she crawled across the floor to his feet. And she commenced to crawl up him, the way ivy twists about a pole. Her breasts brushed the backs of his legs, and the sharp nipples sent electricity dancing along his nerve endings. One soft arm slid over his buttocks, the hand slithering around to his front. She pressed against his hip as she went around and around his body. She was as light as a feather, but he swayed a little, dizzy from the drunken pleasure that coursed through him. He had never experienced anything like that in his life, and he knew he never would again.
In ordinary, and even extraordinary, love, he was always possessed with an unattainable goal. A man and a woman just had so many hands. There was a limit to what these hand-s could hold and caress at one time. But Wes always yearned for total possession. If possible, he would have liked to touch breasts, legs, waist, buttocks, the whole woman simultaneously. He would have liked, by some miracle, during the moments of pleasure, to be reduced in size so that the woman could possess his whole body. That was impossible, of course, but this girl brought him as near to the reality as any woman who had ever loved him. She was all over him, like a snake. She seemed to be touching him everywhere at once, exquisitely, mashing every square inch of him.
And, at last, she was hanging limply from his neck, as she had at the finish of her act before. Unmistakably, she too was aroused by the bizarre performance she was putting on. She cried out and arched her back as he sent lightning zigzagging through her small, vibrant form. And then the two of them vaporized in a gush of steam that spent itself in the sky.
Later, when he was dressed, she held out her hand. "The money," she said.
Wes grinned and adjusted his tie. "The deal is off. I didn't know that you were going to enjoy that yourself. Don't deny you did, kiddo,"
She pouted sullenly. "You stinker!"
He chucked her under the chin. "Now, now, why not look at this objectively? We both had fun. More fun than you've had in a long time, am I right?"
She sighed and shrugged philosophically.
Although Wes had been gone from the table for more than twenty minutes, Sue had not missed him. She had become aware, as had Wes earlier, that the couple next to them were playing with each other under the table. She saw the girl' reach for a napkin. The man leaned back his head with his eyes closed and his face twitching. Enviously Sue watched them, and, after a few minutes, they looked serene and happy again. Not poor Sue.
It was at that point that a stag came in from the bar and stopped at her table. "Are you alone?"
"No, I'm waiting for someone."
He smiled. "Would you care to dance while you're waiting?"
She hesitated. Two weeks ago, she would have called the headwaiter and had him thrown out for his boldness. But this was a new Sue Parker. She looked him up and down. He was quite handsome, in a blond way and reminded her of the boy she had seduced on the river bank.
She smiled. "All right, I'll be glad to dance with you."
The dance floor was dime-sized, and served as an excuse for males and females to indulge in physical contact rather than to enjoy dancing. It was impossible for anyone to maintain an attitude of modesty once a couple got into the seething mass of flesh crushed together on the floor. Sue's breasts, naked under her velvet gown, flattened out against her partner's chest. In back of her, another girl's soft buttocks were rubbing against Sue's, pressing her even closer to her partner.
Their eyes met in a smoky look of mutual understanding. "I like this," he murmured. "You do, too, I can tell. Are you naked under that dress?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"I thought so. You're burning up. Where can we go?"
Her voice quivered. "Your car? The parking lot?"
He sighed grimly. "Too many darned attendants." His eyes lit up. "I know! A phone booth!" Sue laughed. "Phone booth? Are you crazy."
"No, the phone booths in this place are roomy. And they don't have glass doors. C'mon." He took her hand and dragged her through the crowd into the lobby. In a sheltered, dark alcove, there were three phone booths. They looked around to see if they were being observed, then ducked inside one of the booths. He closed the door. Sue gathered up the long skirt of her gown.
He made a move toward her breasts, but she stopped him impatiently. "For gosh sakes! Don't beat around the bush! I'm burning up!"
He laughed, and pushed her back against the wall. "Now, just lean back."
She tipped herself back so that her shoulder blades were propped against the wall of the booth. "Can we manage this way?" she asked anxiously.
"My dear," he said sagely, "Man and woman were constructed by the master architect of them all. Infallible design. Mo matter what the circumstances, no matter how many obstacles are present, no matter what the weather or the terrain is like, the biological urge cannot be denied."
She giggled, watching in fascination as he moved to her.
Wes and Sue got back to their table at the same time. "Where were you?" she asked him.
He smiled and held her chair. "Out for some air. How about you?"
She smiled. "The same thing."
They both thought it was a very good joke!