Chapter 6

The phone woke me and the switchboard operator intoned, "Two o'clock, Mr. Bell."

I rolled out of bed and sprinkled cold water on my face. Ten minutes later I was dressed and standing in front of the door to room five twenty-two.

"Who is it?" The muffled voice came in answer to my knock.

"Herb Bell."

"The door's open."

I turned the knob and walked into the room. It was much smaller than the one I had; the single bed, dresser, night table, and easy chair cramped the place. Laurie was in the bathroom. The door was open a crack and I caught glimpses of pink as she moved back and forth.

"Grab a chair," she said. "You're early."

"I got tired of waiting."

"I'll only be a few minutes. There are some magazines around somewhere. Look around. I just have to finish my make-up and put on some clothes."

"If you need any help I'll be right here."

"Thanks a lot," she said dryly. "I've been dressing myself for quite a while. My mother insisted on it when I got to be five."

"Too bad, but it just proves what I've always said."

"And what is it that you've always said?"

"Today's mothers are ruining it for the young men of the world. They over-train their daughters.

And then those daughters turn around and become mothers."

"Nasty, isn't it?" she said.

"Not really. As a matter-of-fact I kind of like the idea."

"I'm not talking about becoming mothers, I'm talking about the over-training."

"Oh, that."

"Yes, that. Now find a magazine, will you? I can't talk and put on makeup at the same time."

I turned my eyes away from the crack in the doorway and its glimpses of naked flesh, very fleeting glimpses, and looked around the room. It was probably the cheapest room-and-bath in the hotel. Its color scheme and cheap furniture were completely anonymous. I knew that behind the closet door and in the drawers were Laurie's clothes and affects, yet the room might just as well have been echoingly empty. The room was in absolute contrast to the vibrant and flamboyant girl who slept there.

Idly I wondered how many men had shared the narrow perimeter of that twin-sized bed with her. I forced my mind away from such thoughts and to a stack of magazines on the open lower half of the bedside table. They were all movie fan magazines, and I picked one at random. On the cover was a picture of Hollywood's latest heart throb, a handsome young man with dark curly hair cascading over his forehead. He had an impossibly phony name, Tattered Shirt, or something, and an impossibly phony biography.

I scanned the lead story and then flipped through the rest of the magazine, stopping to inspect the pictures of the almost naked starlets. Los Angeles was my home town and I knew the truth behind these pictures. Most of these girls earned a meager living hustling hamburgers in one of the innumerable drive-ins scattered through the area. Some of them, the hungrier ones, prefer to sell their bodies to the girlie magazines and pornography makers. It's easier than spending eight hours a day running around between cars and dodging the grasping hands of seventeen-year-old lotharios.

The second magazine had as its lead a picture story about Elizabeth Taylor and her escapades while filming Cleopatra. The pictures were designed to show as much of Elizabeth as the law would allow, and the accompanying story slyly hinted at her sexual indiscretions, if there were any. She was a wildly beautiful woman who sacrificed her life for the adulation, jealousy, and admiration of a hundred and eighty million Americans, and now she had to live the lies the studios made up about her.

"Hey," Laurie called. "Are you still out there?"

"Sitting and waiting."

"That's what I was afraid of. I didn't expect you so I left my bra and panties out there."

'Come and get them. I won't mind."

"I'm sure you won't, but I'm not coming out there. Hand them through the door, please."

"Where are they?"

"In the top dresser drawer you'll find piles of them."

I opened the drawer. Inside was. a rainbow of feminine underwear. There were panties in pink, blue, mauve, white, gold, flaming red, black. There must have been thirty pairs, and tumbled among them were three black net brassieres.

"What color do you want?" I asked.

"Pick anything you like. This is the only chance you'll get to see them."

I picked the red ones and stuck my arm through the partially opened door. She took the panties from me.

"Okay, where's the bra?"

I grinned at the blank door. "I don't believe in bras," I told her. "In fact I come from a long line of non-bra believers. They're no good. They cover everything up, and constrict the blood circulation, and they're no good for the muscles. I don't think you ought to wear a bra."

"Yah, you and your father and your grandfather. But if I don't wear a bra I draw crowds quicker than flies to fresh garbage. Now be a good guy and get me a bra."

I took a bra from the drawer. They were all black so I had no decision to make. Of course it wouldn't match the red panties, but the contrast would be nice, red mesh around the loins with white flesh pepping through, tanned belly between, and then black mesh, again with white skin showing.

"Here," I said shoving the thing through the door. "I hope the damned thing doesn't fit."

"It won't, if that'll make you feel any better. None of them do. They just don't come large enough. But it's the best I can do."

I heard her grunting and struggling as she put the things on, and then, "Hey, Charlie ... "

"It's Herb," I corrected.

"Yeah. Hey Charlie," she was showing me her opinion of my teasing. "Now you can hand me the black outfit from behind the closet door."

"You've got clothes on now. Come out and get it yourself."

"Look," she said, temper edging her voice. "At this rate we'll be here till morning. Maybe if you wouldn't try so damned hard you'd make out better in the long run."

That convinced me.

I took the hangar down from behind the closet door. It was a two piece outfit, kind of a suit. Black and severely tailored-a skirt that would come to her knees, and a jacket-like top that would cover her from shoulders to skirt top. The neckline of the top was cut in a generous vee.

I handed it through the door and two minutes later she was out of the bathroom, black of suit, tan of flesh, and marvelous gold of hair. She was more beautiful than any woman had a right to be, and yet it was the kind of beauty found in a marble statue-cold, regal, imposing. For all her sexual attractiveness she seemed a flat two-dimensional person. Well, I was only interested on one of those dimensions-the physical one.

She wore eye shadow and lipstick and face powder, just exactly the right amount of each, never too much, and the whole picture was alluring.

"Well?" She said after my eyes had run up and down her body a couple of times.

"Beautiful," I told her. "But I didn't expect anything less."

She gave me a smile in return for the compliment and sat down on the edge of the bed. With her knees bent like that, her skirt seemed to crawl halfway up her thighs. She grabbed a pair of stockings from the foot of the bed and slipped them on one at a time, her hands smoothing and working the nylon until it lay flat and untwisted against her skin. Then she reached up under her skirt and pulled down an elasticized garter. This she clipped to the stocking top and her hand disappeared under the skirt again to search for another garter.

I watched, marveling at the perfect symmetry of her legs and at the promise of the shadow under her skirt. Despite her talk to the contrary, I had no doubt that I would make love with this woman some time before noon tomorrow. And thus assured I was in no hurry. It didn't matter when.

She finished with the last garter and stood to let her skirt fall over her thighs. Pit)'. Her shoes were under the bed and her handbag on the dresser top. In thirty seconds she was ready.

Out in the corridor as we walked toward the elevator I offered her my arm. She slipped her arm under and around mine and drew herself close to me. I expected to feel the ridges of her bra against the outer edge of my bicep, but there was only firm softness.

She giggled when she felt my muscle stiffen. "I decided to give you a break," she said. "But make sure you don't get trampled in the rush."

"Baby, I'll be close enough to be first in line. That's all that really counts."

The elevator whisked us down to the lobby and the parking lot attendant roared up to the steps with the Healey. I opened the door for her and she looked at it for a long minute. "Do you wear it or drive it?"

I smiled. "I don't allow women, even pretty women, to talk that way about my British mistress. I don't just drive her, I love her."

"Maybe you ought to take her out tonight instead of me."

"I don't think they'd let her in any of the places I want to go."

"Oh well," she said slipping into the car and flashing her thighs as she pulled her legs in after her. "I guess I'll have to settle for being second choice."

I closed the door after her. "You'll get to love her once you know her," I said as I walked around the car and got in behind the wheel. I started the engine and took off in a burst of speed all out of proportion to the Healey's size and reputation. Under the hood the big Corvette engine throbbed and roared as I tickled the carbs with my toe.

"Where are we going?" I asked once we were on the empty road.

"Juarez," she shouted over the noise of the engine and the rush of air past the open cockpit.

I worked the car through the curves of the road and the turns from street to street, whipping past the tired sentinels of the traffic lights, giving Laurie the thrill of a four-wheel power-slide into a ninety-degree right-hand turn.

Her eyes were wide and her mouth was split in a sickly grin as the tone of the engine changed whenever I shifted gears. The speedometer needle stayed near eighty all the way to the bridge and only the tachometer registered the change in engine speed.

I slowed down about two blocks from the bridge and drove the rest of the way at a sedate pace. When I dropped down to thirty she relaxed in her seat.

"Do you always drive like that?"

"Didn't you like it?"

"I don't know. But you better not drive like that in Juarez. The cops there shoot at speeders because they can't catch them in the old rattletraps they drive."

Once across the bridge she directed me to a part of town where I had never been. Here the homes were set on large plots of ground, well landscaped, with plenty of trees. The homes were magnificent ten and twenty-room places with lattice-work windows and green-corroded copper roofs. It had never occurred to me that there might be rich Mexicans, and now the irrefutable proof was before my eyes.

We drove through this section and the houses got bigger and further apart. Five minutes more and there were long stretches when we didn't see any houses, only trees and open fields and the road before us.

"Where the hell are you taking me?"

"It's only a little farther," she said.

We came around a bend in the road and the Healey s lights flashed across an iron gate set in a very high stone wall.

"Stop here!"

I pulled up to the gate and stopped. Beyond I could see only the black shadows of trees and the dusty white of a moonlit gravelled drive. Laurie got out of the car and walked to one of the stone pillars flanking the gate. She opened a metal plate in the pillar and took out a telephone reciever. I was too far away to hear what she said, but a moment later the gate swung noiselessly back and she got in the car.

In the rear-view mirror I saw the gates swing shut again and heard the loud clank of the lock. The drive wound through the trees, doubling back on itself many times. I drove slowly, unsure of the road, and it took five full minutes before we pulled up in front of a huge three-story mansion. Every window in the place was ablaze and music spilled out into the night.

"I haven't been here in a long time," Laurie said. "I don't know too many men who can afford it."

"What do you mean?"

"It'll cost you a hundred dollars for each of us just to get past the front door."

Two hundred dollars! I winced at the sum.

"You wanted a wild night and this is the place," Laurie went on. "Don't worry. It's worth the money."

I left the keys in the ignition. If they charged so much to get in they wouldn't fool around with chickenfeed like car-stealing. Besides, there were no other cars in front of the house so I imagined someone would take the Healey and park it somewhere.

We went up to the front door and Laurie rang the bell. A peephole in the door opened and two eyes peered out at us. For a minute I thought we were lost on the shooting set of the Untouchables. I expected to see a machinegun when the door was opened and we walked inside. There was no gun, but the hulking man who opened the door looked like he wouldn't need one if he went into action.

I'm big, but this guy was bigger in all directions-taller, wider. He looked like a bull on two legs.

"Wait here," he growled, shutting the door behind us and disappearing into another room.

He came back a moment later preceded by a short, tuxedoed, hair-slicked-down man with a pockmarked face. The man smiled when he saw Laurie.

"Hello Miss Yost. We haven't seen you here in quite a while."

"I've been busy, Frank. And broke. This place could get to be an expensive habit."

"Well, we're glad to see you whenever you come around. Who did you bring along tonight?"

"Frank, this is Mr. Bell. He's a friend of mine."

Frank looked me over carefully before extending his hand and I'm sure his cold eyes missed no detail of my dress. His grip was quick and loose and he let me go immediately. I had the feeling I was holding a dead mackerel when I shook his hand.

"Welcome to the club, Mr. Bell. I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself."

I pulled out my billfold and counted out five twenties and two fifties. Frank's eyes counted the rest of my roll. He took the money and it disappeared into his pocket.

"You know your way around, Miss Yost. If you don't see what you want, don't hesitate to ask." He went back into the room from which he came and we were alone in the entrance hall.

"Well, what'll it be?" Laurie asked.

"What have you got to offer?"

"Drink and dancing, gambling, floorshow where the strippers start with a g-string and finish with company on the stage, stag movies. Take your choice."

"You pick the first attraction of the evening. I want to keep you happy."

"Let's see how the roulette wheel is running tonight," she said, her voice already tight with expectant excitement.

She led me up the stairs and down a short corridor. The doors of the big room were open and inside I saw crowds of people around half a dozen long wide tables. The room was filled with the buzz of conversation, the clack of the ball against the roulette wheel, the click of chips and the snap of cards. An almost naked girl was dealing blackjack at one of the tables, and the players were paying more attention Jo her cleavage than to their cards. At two other tables hot dice games were in progress and the exhortations of the shooters rose above the noise of the other people in the room. Two roulette wheels were in operation, the crowds around them' silent as the ball spun and settled. The only emotion these people showed was an occasional groan or grimace when the ball refused to grant them its favor. At the last table, over in the corner of the room, a poker game was-in full swing, the players grunting their bets.

I exchanged four more fifties for a stack of chips and gave Laurie half the stack. We found a place at the roulette table and Laurie watched the wheel for three plays before making her bet. She put a ten dollar chip on number thirty-six, which, if it won, would pay off at odds of thirty-six to one; and she put another thirty dollars on the red.

The wheel spun, the little ivory ball dropped, clacked around, and settled. It was red but not thirty-six. I riffled my chips and watched her slowly lose the hundred dollars I'd given her. When she was out of chips I handed her half the remaining stack but she turned away from the table.

"No more tonight," she said. "I'm too cold. I couldn't win tonight if I covered all the numbers every time. But why don't you try your luck?"

"Not at this game. I prefer craps. At least I know something about the odds in that game."

"Well, let's go." She still had the gambling excitement in her, even if she knew better than to try and win herself. She would be just as happy to stand beside me when I threw those dice.

The action at the crap table was fast and furious. The stick man flipped the dice around the table, keeping up a steady drone of chanted commentary as he moved. I used my size to shoulder us through to the table and we waited patiently for the dice to come around to us. I made three side bets against the shooters and won all three times. When the dice came around to me I had a hundred and thirty dollars in chips.

I bet thirty and rolled the ivory cubes between my palms. They were wet and sticky from the perspiration of the last shooter and I called for fresh ones. The stick man's frown as he discarded the old dice and selected a fresh pair from the stack in front of him made me uncomfortable.

I rattled the new pair in the hollow of my hand and threw them down the table hard enough so they both bounced off the felt board at the end.

"Seven. A natural," the stick man intoned.

"Let it ride," I said.

"Place your bets ... Coming out. No more bets," he hummed as I shook the dice and threw them again.

"Eleven, another natural. Pay the shooter." The stick man's sing-song litany was so well rehearsed he must mumble it in his sleep every night.

There was now a hundred and twenty dollars in front of me, including my original thirty. "Let it ride," I said.

"You're faded."

I shook the dice and flung them. They caromed crazily from the board at the end of the table and one settled immediately with a five showing. The other dice was spinning on its axis and everyone at the table waited breathlessly for it to stop.

When it came to a halt, with two spots pointing up at the ceiling, an excited buzz ran around the table.

"Another natural. Pay the shooter. Get your bets down. He's hot!"

The hundred and twenty was now two-forty. Subtracting the thirty dollars I'd started with that left two hundred and ten dollars. Still ninety dollars behind the game, including the hundred Laurie had lost and the two hundred it cost us to get in.

"Let it ride," I said.

Laurie gripped my arm excitedly. "Be careful. That's a lot of money. Maybe you ought to take some of it off."

I shook my head and picked up the dice. The other crapshooters settled into an expectant silence and I launched them down the table. They bounced and stopped.

"Six the point. The point is six. Who's betting with him? Who's betting against him?" All this as the stick man scooped up the dice in the end of the grooved stick and brought them back to me.

"No more bets," he said as I threw the dice again.

"Five. No point," he said when the dice stopped bouncing and spinning. The excitement around the table was so thick you could almost cut it with a knife. I'd made three passes in a row.

The dice went down the table again and there was a gasp from the people who saw the number first.

"Six. Pay the shooter. Four in a row. Get your money down," the stickman called.

He dropped the dice into a hole in the table and brought me a fresh pair. I hefted them, looked at the four hundred and eighty dollars worth of chips on the green baize in front of me, and passed them back to the stick man.

"Pass the dice," I told him.

He looked at me sharply as I picked up the double handful of chips, there was a disappointed murmur from the people around the table. They wanted to see me shoot again. I was hot and they wanted to see how many passes I could make. Four in a row was enough for me. Besides, I got suspicious when the stickman changed the dice.

Laurie was bubbling with excitement and she clung close to my arm as we walked away. "Now let's go get that drink I owe you," I said, smiling.

I changed the chips back into bills. Two hundred and fifty dollars profit isn't bad at all for ten minutes quick work. My arm was lost in the abundant softness of Laurie's bosom as she led me to the bar in a large alcove just off the main gambling room. I don't know about Laurie's brandy, but my bourbon was excellent. The drinks were poured from unlabeled decanters and it was impossible to tell the brand names, but the bourbon must have been at least fifteen years old. It was smooth velvety stuff that glowed pleasantly in the pit of my stomach.

Laurie sat beside me, her eyes wide and her nostrils flared with excitement, and I knew I had the key to her soul, the trigger, the panic-button of ecstasy. She was a girl who lived in a world of glib sophistication, a world of sharpies and angle players, smooth talking men who had no trouble talking their women off their feet. No amount of wooing would part her thighs for me. She was too used to that kind of thing. She responded to a kind of secondary sexual excitement, gambling. All I had to do now was to find a way to convert her excitement to the kind I wanted.

We each had another drink and the bartender informed me that there was no charge. The hundred-dollar tee covered all food, liquor and entertainment, only the gambling tables required additional cash. Since that was the case I had a third shot of the excellent bourbon and Laurie joined me with a third brandy.

"Are you going to go back and plays some more?" she asked wnen she finished her drink.

"Let's see what else they have to offer." I held out my arm and she pressed it into her bosom again. "Don't direct me," I said. "Let's just wander around and explore the joint."

We-walked back through the gaming room and out into the corridor. There were two other doors on this corridor, both closed and locked. We strolled to the opposite wing of the house and as we walked the music we'd heard as we first drove up became louder.

The room was huge, even larger than the gaming room, and it must have been three or four rooms when the old mansion was still a residence. It had been rebuilt so that the floor sloped down slightly from the door towards the blank outside of the building. The walls were hung with dark velvet drapes, double lounge chairs were spaced throughout. The double chairs were set out in checkerboard fashion so that no two chairs were side by side and there was an equal open space between each.

The music wafted into the room from some hidden orchestra, probably piped in from another room, and the only lights in the room were multi-colored spotlights. There were five of them along the back wall and they were all aimed at a raised stage area. The stage was also hung with the lustrous purple velvet drapes and at the moment we entered the room the stage was empty.

I led Laurie to one of the lounges and we sat down. A moment later the hidden orchestra struck a fanfare and. the stage draperies parted to reveal a tall black-haired woman in traditional stripper's costume. Her face was stark white and her eyes heavily made up so that she resembled every young boy's idea of a vampire.

Her dress, such as there was, was made of a black cloth which caught highlights from the glaring spots. The waistline was right up under the heavy overhang of her white breasts, and from there it flared loosely down to brush the floor at her feet. Above the waistline the dress was split into two narrow panels of cloth which reached high enough to cover the tips of her breasts. From fingertips to elbows her arms were covered with long gloves.

The fanfare died away and the music had a heavy throbbing rhythm behind it. The woman moved down to the center of the stage and began to sway in time with the rhythm. Her body had the plastic quality of a willow tree, supple, bending, swaying to the pressures of the music. Her arms floated out from her sides and she slowly stripped off first one glove then the other.

Now the music quickened slightly and the rhythm drove harder. Her two hands floated back to her body and touched a spot between her breasts. Suddenly the top part of her dress snapped away, leaving her breasts naked. They were heavy as ripe fruit on a tree at the end of the growing season, and the lower curves hung below the high waistband of the dress.

"Cigarette, sir," a voice at my side said.

I tore my eyes away from the stage and turned to see a completely naked girl, young, lean, small-breasted, hollow-thighed. A cord around her neck supported a cigarette tray. From my position on the lounge chair I was looking directly at the shadowed mystery of the apex of her thighs. The sight so startled me that for a long minute I couldn't speak.

The young girl bent forward and I looked into the tray. Instead of the usual cellophane-wrapped packages of cigars and cigarettes I saw about a hundred loose brown papered cigarettes with their ends twist-ed to keep in the loose tobacco.

I knew marijuana sticks when I saw them and I nudged Laurie. "Want a stick?"

She looked at the girl, then at me, then at the girl again. Her eyes flared when she saw my much-too-evident appreciation of the nubile beauty of the naked girl. "No," she said, shaking her head. "Send her away."

The girl turned to leave and I caught her with a hand against the bare flesh of her thigh. "Could you bring us a double bourbon and a double brandy?" I asked, hoping the liquor would come from the same supply as the stuff at the bar.

"Of course," she said, apparently surprised that I should even think such a minor request impossible.

She disappeared into the dimness and I turned my eyes back to the stage. The stripper was rolling the waistband of the lower half of her dress down along her body. First her ribcage, then her belly came into view. She paused and writhed her hips suggestively. Then her hands returned to the dress. She rolled it lower and her navel winked at me across the distance from the stage; then the dress fell to the floor around her ankles.

She was completely naked as she daintily stepped away from the pile of black cloth. I was startled to discover that the black-haired girl's natural color was blonde. Now she wore only stockings that ended half way up the hard muscles of her thighs and a diamond-like necklace around the white column of her throat.

Out of the confines of the dress she moved fluidly around the stage in time with the music and her hands hefted the swollen spheres of her breasts. The music quickened again and the driving rhythm seemed to set the very air of the room to throbbing. The girl came down front center on the stage and spread her legs wide apart. With feet motionless she kept time to the rhythm by swaying and grinding her hips while her fingers teased her nipples.

Those nipples, which before had been flat brown spots on the ends of her breasts, now suffused with blood and became cherry-red thrusting buds standing out from her flesh. She raised a breast to her mouth, kissed the nipples, and then repeated the action with the other breast. Her mouth left shiny wet spots.

Her hands moved away from her breasts to her belly, then down along the outsides of her thighs. At the knees those hands changed direction and began and upward journey, this time along the inner side of her thighs. They fluttered upwards along the taut muscles until they were stopped by the juncture of her thighs and torso. Now she took one hand away and putting it over her head, began to bend backwards, her body forming an arch with her long black hair falling down to brush the floor.

What a hell of a way to sweep the floor, I thought idly, excitement throbbing in my loins. As I watched I became aware of the sound of hoarse breathing beside me and turned to see Laurie staring at the stage with wide eyes and flared nostrils. I put my arm around her shoulder and cupped her breast through the material of her suit jacket. She groaned and her hand fell upon my lap.

On the stage meanwhile the dancer supported the weight of her body with two feet on the floor and the arm over her head on the floor behind her, exhibiting her most intimate charms to the audience. The hand she'd left at her loins tightened into a fist with only one finger protruding. That finger probed and touched and then dipped into her body. Her hips rocked from side to side and her belly and breasts tremble while the music built to a crashing crescendo.

The girl collapsed in a heap of white sweat-shiny flesh and the stage went dark.

I turned toward Laurie and found her mouth with my lips. Her lips were dry and her mouth hot as my tongue slipped between her teeth. She threw her other hand around my neck and mashed her face against mine, her tongue in frantic combat with my own. We were lying on our sides now, facing each other, and I slipped my hand inside the neckline of her jacket.

Her breasts seemed to swell into my palm and I felt her nipple hardening. She moaned deep in her throat and writhed closer to me so our loins rubbed. Her hand let go of my trouser front and moved to my buttocks to pull me tight against her thighs. The muscles of those thighs trembled as we writhed together.

"Your drinks, sir."

I had been about to roll Laurie over on her back and throw myself down on top of her. Instead I broke the searing kiss and looked up across her shoulder. Again I was staring right at the juncture of the naked young girl's thighs. She bent forward to bring two glasses into my field of vision.

Laurie and I sat up and took the drinks from the girl's hands. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a bill. At that point I didn't even care how large the bill was as I thrust it into her hand and waved her away. She turned to go and I watched for a moment the seductive sway of her rump and the way the spheres of her buttocks rubbed together.

I knocked back half the drink in one long gulp just before the hidden orchestra sounded another fanfare. The drapes on the stage opened again to reveal another woman in a stripper's costume. I was beyond the stage of watching a woman take her clothes off some thirty feet away. My body demanded more tactile sensations.

Laurie's hand returned to my loins and she gripped my ready flesh. I transferred my drink to my other hand and placed the inside hand on her thigh under the hem of her skirt. She brought her legs together, trapping my hand, and her own grip squeezed tighter.

We stayed that way long enough to finish the drinks, then I rolled over on my side to press my lips against the shell of her ear. "Let's get out of here," I whispered. "Let's find some privacy."

We stood on trembling legs and walked out of the room. Laurie led me to the staircase and up to the third floor of the building, the top floor. The corridor was empty and quiet. There was a single door at the end of the hall and that door was closed.

We walked to the door and Laurie opened it to lead me into a small ante-room. All around the walls of the ante room were hooks about five inches apart and at shoulder level. Half the hooks had clothes hanging from them. Laurie closed the door behind me and began to unbutton her suit jacket.

"Take your clothes off," she said hoarsely. "And hurry."

Her jacket came off and her tremendous breasts came into view. Her nipples stiffened and they stood out from her breasts like pointed accusing fingers.-I reached for her as she dropped her frantic fingers to the button and zipper at the side of her skirt.

She pushed me away. "Not now. Take your clothes off. Hurry."

I hung my jacket on one of the hooks and opened my shirt collar. My tie went into my jacket pocket and I opened the buttons along the front of my shirt. Laurie stepped in front of me, knelt down to untie my shoes. She was completely nude now and I could see a red line in the flesh of her waist where the elastic of her panties had pressed.

My fingers trembled as I looked at the fully exposed lushness of her body. Her generous hips, buttocks and thighs matched the lushness of her breasts. Her waist was amazingly tiny for so big a girl and her pink feet were small and well-formed.

I stepped out of my shoes, hung my shirt on the same hook as my suit jacket. Now there were only trousers, socks and shorts. I reached for the zipper of my fly, found her hands already there pulling the zipper down. I stepped out of the trousers. She pulled down my shorts. And then I wore only socks.

She was still on her knees before me. I raised my left foot and she pulled off my sock; then the right foot. Her hands came to my thighs and gripped hard as her eyes stared at me. Her pink tongue flicked out to moisten her lips, her head darted forward to bestow a quick kiss on my awakened and trembling body.

I tried to grab her head and hold it against me but she was too quick. Her lips touched me for a fleeting muscle-wrenching second and then she was standing. Her hand reached out toward me and I thought to take it in my own. But she slid it past my hand to take hold of my body.

She led me to an inner door and opened it. Inside the room was a sight such as I have never seen. The room was decorated in the same manner as the other room on the floor below. But here the lounge chairs were filled with naked groups and couples. Some of the groups had grown so large they spilled off the chairs and onto the floor.

Everywhere around me I saw couples in various stages of sexual embrace. The variations seemed endless. On the stage at the other side of the room a young girl hung tied to a frame of crossed timbers. Her body was covered with cross-hatched whip marks. Before the girl, on the floor with her back to the audience-which didn't seem to be paying too much attention-knelt a second naked girl. Beside her lay a discarded whip. The girl on the floor was caressing the body of the girl hanging from the crossed timbers....

I was so amazed I couldn't even respond to the flagrant lust before me. My eyes stared at the stage as Laurie led me to an unoccupied lounge. Two huge, naked negro men came on stage and untied the girl. One of them stretched her out on the floor, knelt between her thighs and launched himself upon her small body.

Around me I heard empathetic groans as women watchers vicariously experienced the sensations of the young girl....

Laurie took my hand and put it between her legs. Suddenly all the liquor and lust of the evening flooded through me and I turned to her. She moaned as she came up against me and I felt myself borne up in a rising cloud of excitement. Her body was an unknown world for me and I explored it with searching hands and pursed lips.

She groaned and writhed under me as I kissed first her breasts, then her heaving belly. My fingers teased between her legs and her hips surged eagerly against my hand. When I had completely explored the front of her body I turned her over and let my lips flutter over her shoulders, down along her spine, over each trembling jutting sphere of her rump, then down along the back of her leg.

A whimpering whining sound came from deep in her chest as she turned over again and spread her thighs wide apart, feet in the air, toes reaching for the ceiling. She slid her hand between our bodies, grasped me. I found her flesh hot as flame, drove deep into the core of her.

Her muscles tightened around me in joyous combat, her thighs locked around my hips and her knees drummed against my spine as her body heaved and twisted in passion. I supported my weight on my elbows and my lips closed over the sensitive nipple of one of her breasts. Her frantic writhing doubled and her nails raked my back. I felt them digging and tearing at my flesh, but there was no pain.

The cloud of my passion floated higher. All sense of the other people in the room disappeared and I was alone with Laurie among the stars. Her body heaved as I thrust again and again and we floated through the cold of infinite space.

The heat increased as we moved faster and faster, closer and closer to the sun. I felt fear, and joy, and lust, and my skin began to burn with a fantastic flame. Laurie's body tightened convulsively around me and I felt the rhythmic gripping contractions of her muscles. Her whole body became rigid, a scream tore from her throat and echoed through the endlessness of space, her nails scored my back and shoulders. . I felt myself being swept into the blazing heat of the sun, and just as I thought I was surely going to die the whole universe exploded in a fantastic display of flashing colors and shooting stars.

Long minutes later I lay beside her and we were back in the room. My chest heaved as my lungs fought for more air. Beside me Laurie's limbs still twitched convulsively. She groaned and rolled over on her side to face me. "Thank you," she whispered.

Later we were joined by more people and I remember being entangled in a delightful endless chain of flesh. A woman's mouth was glued to my body, my hands were filled with breasts and thighs, and my face was buried in the breasts of still another woman....

Sometime during the festivities I must have passed out. When I awoke Laurie was sleeping beside me and the rest of the room was empty. I awakened her, we dressed and went downstairs. Outside the sun was already shining and we stood exhausted while we waited for the car to be brought to the front door.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when we got back to the hotel. I kissed Laurie tenderly at her door and went to my own room. Too tired even to remove my clothes, I flopped down on the bed and fell deep asleep.