Chapter 8
After our safari ended I took a short nap. I guess I was still under the influence of that hangover, at least a little. I found a warm rock and stretched out. It seemed that I had only just closed my eyes when she shook me roughly to awaken me.
"Come and eat," she said. "Everything is ready."
I was surprised to discover that I was quite hungry and I guess those packages couldn't have been that heavy after all. We finished the last scrap of food between us and then luxuriated, full bellied, under the bright afternoon sun.
I took off my shut and used it as a ground cloth under my back. Connie lay beside me, her head in the crook of my shoulder. We smoked and watched the white clouds, like ships, scudding across the sky. I wasn't asleep and I wasn't quite awake as we lay there digesting our food. I felt like a huge, sleepy, well-fed boa constrictor sunning myself on a rock in the wilds of the jungle.
Alone there I had the feeling that civilization was a horrible figment of my imagination, that the stress of living among a hundred and eighty million other people was merely a bad dream. With my eyes closed and the warmth of Connie's body beside me, only the whisper of the trees and the tiny splashes of the lake reminded me of reality.
We lay quietly for about an hour and then I became restless. Connie must have been dozing for she mumbled when I moved away from her. I walked along the edge of the lake for a few yards and it struck me that my interlude was over. I was no longer between lives. The old life was finished and I was already involved with the new.
If I let my mind wander I could picture my life with Connie as it would be a few years from then. We would be married. I would be established in some kind of business. We might even have a child or two. The pleasure we knew now would be gone, of course, destroyed by the steady intimacy of living together. The feeling of contentment and peace I now knew when I was with her would return on only rare occasions, if at all. Our lives would be filled with the tiny thousand-and-one problems of daily existence. There would be arguments, fights, long periods of bitterness, sulking, recriminations.
Such things seemed completely out of line with our feelings right then, but I knew they were inevitable. If we stayed together they would come as surely as the moonrise. The thoughts were disquieting. I knew I would end up in the same situation as I had with Juney; except that this time I was sure the love would last.
But would it necessarily last? Might I not discover something about her, or she something about me, which would choke off the tenderness, kill it, destroy it in the same way the news of Juney's barrenness had destroyed that love? There was no guarantee of permanence.
This time, of course, I would be better able to face those problems. I would be forearmed by experience. I gave the lake a wry grin when I remembered my determination to wait a while before remarrying. Yet here I was, divorced a couple of hours and ready to stick my foot in my mouth again when I opened it to say, "I do."
And what did I know about this girl, this beautiful little Mexican with the deep brown eyes and black hair? I refused to listen to any of her stories about herself, sure that it would be easier if I knew none of the details. But what did I know about her as a person? What kind of woman was she? What were her likes, her quirks, her twitches?
I only knew she was beautiful, and that she evoked a great feeling of tenderness and protectiveness in me. I suppose that's all you can expect to know about anybody.
Two hands clamped down over my eyes from behind and a voice said, "Guess who?"
"Martha Washington?" A giggle.
"Margaret Truman?"
Another giggle.
"Jackie Kennedy?"
"I am not as skinny as she."
"I give up then. I can't guess who it would be far out here in the woods."
She ruffled my hair and gave me a playful shove. "Silly, you know who it is."
She came around and sat down at my feet. "Let's go swimming," she said.
"We have no suits."
"It won't be something you have never seen," she told me.
I wanted to swim, too, but I also wanted to tease her a little. "What if someone were to come along and catch us running around without any pants on?"
"No one ever comes here. And what if they did? I am not ashamed of my body."
"I was thinking about what might be happening after our swim."
Her eyes lit up and her lips spread in a wide smile. "If they watch that I am sure they will learn something."
She stood up and her fingers moved to the buttons of her blouse. One by one she pushed those buttons through until the blouse hung open from her shoulders and the inner curves of her bare breasts were exposed to the sun and my gaze. Her shoulders shrugged and the blouse dropped to the ground.
Her flesh was smooth and evenly colored, the breasts a shade or two lighter than the shoulders. They stood proudly out from her chest, their pear shaoes calling to be caressed.
I reached out toward her and she danced a few steps away like a nervous filly. Her breasts jiggled when she moved and her nipples, hardening from the caress of the sun and air, wove crazy patterns before my eyes.
Now her hands went to the button of her loose-fitting skirt, and it dropped away from her hips. Only a pair of transparent panties covered her now. Those panties hid nothing; instead they served as a frame for the perfect picture of her lean, ripe womanhood.
She waggled her hips at me and her fingers hooked under the elastic of the panties. Down they came, slowly passed the navel, the elastic stretching tightly as it passed over the wideness of her hips. And then the panties were gone, dropped to her foot and kicked away."
The shadowed mystery at the juncture of her thighs was the center of focus of her body. Below were the columns of her legs, smooth, tapering, muscled. Above was the flaring out-curve of her hips, then the sharp indentation of her tiny waist. In the center of her belly the dimple of her navel winked at me. Under the sheen of her fine skin I could see the outlines of her rib cage. And in the middle of her chest the dark fruit of her nipples seemed to beg for a kiss. Her shoulders and arms were smooth and slim and the column of her throat led upward to her head and face.
The face alone had its special attraction. Her jaw was strong and her lips full. Above those lips her nose, with flaring nostrils, wrinkled as she made a face at me. The cheekbones stretched her skin over hollow cheeks and her brown eyes seemed to be a thousand miles deep.
She raised her arms above her head in a pretty pose and turned slowly around. Her back was flawless with wide smooth shoulder blades that swept down to her narrow waist and flaring hips. For the first time I saw that even though she was a small woman, she was no weakling. Along her spine in the center of her back there was a deep indentation as her back muscles flowed out and away from the spine itself, dividing the back into two symmetrical halves.
The division and symmetry were picked up and carried on by her hard, rounded, dimpled buttocks, each a perfect sphere in itself. They were like ripe apples ready to be picked from the tree. She raised herself up on her toes and the movement caused a ripple all along the muscles of her legs. I saw those muscles pull against the confining skin, and her buttocks jiggled.
Ambivalent emotions flooded through me. I saw her as a desirable woman and I wanted her. At the same time I was awed by the sheer perfection of her body and I felt as if I was viewing a work of art, perfect and untouchable. She completed her turn and came down from tiptoe facing me again. Her impish grin disappeared when she saw the feelings registered on my face.
She took a half step toward me, then spun around to run into the lake. I came up off the rock on which I was sitting and chased her as far as the edge of the water, my arms reaching for her. She hit it in a long flat dive and I winced when I thought of the hard surface of the water punishing that perfect body.
When the splash died away I had a moment of panic. She was still under water. My fingers tore at the fastenings of my clothes and I was almost naked when she came up for air twenty or thirty yards from shore. She came up blowing and splashing and waving her arm at me. I was relieved when I saw she was all right.
She swam like a young playful seal, diving under and then sliding up and back into the water again, her body glistening in the sun. I dove in and gasped at the surprising coldness of the water. I swam rapidly for fifteen strokes and my body warmed up. When I looked up she was nowhere to be seen.
A hand, her hand, closed around my ankle and I was perked beneath the surface. The water was clear and tinged with green from some fresh water algae.
For a minute she looked like some strange underwater monster. Little clusters of bubbles were caught against her body as she jackknifed and swam away through the water.
I surfaced, caught a deep breath and went down again. Below and to the right I caught a glimpse of her as she swam behind a crusted rock. My feet scissored and my arms pulled me through the water toward her. Her head came oVer the edge of the rock, she saw me, and took off again with her feet and legs flailing the water.
I caught her when she ran out of air and shot towards the surface. I came up underneath her, goosed her, and laughed so hard at her startled reaction that I almost swallowed the lake.
Her indignation was evident. "Dammit, that was not nice," she said as we trod water.
"But it was fun," I countered.
"Some fun. How would you like it if I did that to you?"
"I don't know. Think you're fast enough?"
We were about six feet apart and she shot towards me. I backpedaled and put my hand against the top of her head, forcing her down deeper into the water. Her hand brushed across my thigh, locked behind my knee. I gulped a quick mouthful of air just before she pulled me under and then let it all out when her finger struck home.
I was laughing and coughing and spitting all at the same time.
"There," she said. "How do you like it?"
I was laughing too hard to answer.
Her serious and indignant face started to break up into a smile and she tried to suppress it. It didn't work and in a moment she was laughing along with me. There we were, two naked people treading water in a lake God knows where in Mexico, laughing like a couple of idiots.
I took her in my arms and our laughter stopped suddenly as our water-slick bodies touched. The water seemed to magnify the incredible smoothness of her flesh and she gasped when we touched. Our mouths locked in a flaming kiss and our eager bodies strained together.
Slowly we sank beneath the surface of the water as our hands fluttered over each other's body. I caught her buttocks and kneaded the firm flesh while her hands slipped between us to grasp me as though I were a life-line.
Her thighs locked tightly around my hips and I thrust hard into the secret flesh of her body. Far above us I could see the surface of the water like a crazy mirror and we were almost to the bottom. Her muscles tightened around me and our passion soared. My hips thrust eagerly and I could feel the passionate response of her.
I wanted to stay there, fifteen feet beneath the water's surface. I wanted very much to stay there at least long enough to finish what we had started.
But the need for air was making me dizzy, I was beginning to see little black spots floating in front of my eyes.
My hands pulled at the water and my legs kicked. Connie too must have run out of breath, for she unwound her legs from around my hips and shot toward the surface alongside me. We floated on our backs for a couple of minutes, catching our breath.
Our lighthearted attitudes of a few moments ago had disappeared as soon as we felt the full force of our passion.
"Come on," I said, rolling over on my stomach and stroking for shore. Behind me I heard her splashing as she followed.
As I walked out of the water I realized we didn't have a blanket with us. The shore was rocky and there was no place for us to lie down nude. The ground would slice my knees and her back to shreds.
She took my hand when she came out of the water and we walked into the grove of trees. Here it was cool and dark and the ground was covered with lush grass.
We embraced and her mouth was a cave of fire, her tongue the flame. Her hard breasts drilled into my chest and her wet belly smacked against me.
I ran my hand down from her shoulders, down along her sides to her hips, slid them around to cup her rump. She moaned deep in her throat and her hips jerked eagerly against me.
We sank to the ground and my lips tasted of the fruit of her nipples. Her flesh was cool and hard in my mouth and I let my tongue flick back and forth across the turgid bud. Her hands locked behind my head pressed me tighter to her sweet flesh.
Her belly was smooth and hot under my hand and my fingers pressed deep. Her thighs spread wide and my hand slipped between them. Her muscles clenched as my seeking fingers found the secret of her body. My teeth closed over one nipple and my fingers touched the quick of her soul.
Her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her head rammed back against the soft ground as she rolled it from side to side.
She groaned and muttered something in Spanish, her fingers clenched into fists which beat against my back. I knelt between her spread thighs and probed with my loins until I touched her body. Then I stopped.
"What is it?" she asked, gasping. "Don't stop, do it, do it now I looked down at her tiny form and was afraid I would crush her. She looked so fragile and small I was afraid I would hurt her.
She knew why I was holding back. Her hands slipped down along my back to my hips and she pulled me closer to her. "Do not be afraid," she said. "You won't hurt me."
I tried to be as gentle as I could, but there must have been a lot of pain for her anyway. Her face screwed up and she suppressed a scream. I moved slowly then, gently, and her clutching hands urged me to full knowledge of her body. Each fraction of an inch must have been sheer torture, but she refused to stop.
Slowly her face relaxed from its painful expression and her eyes opened wide. Her voice was soft and deep and our passion seemed in abeyance as she explored the full wonder of our union.
"Oh," she said softly. "This is wonderful. It's all new, like it never happened before. I can feel the throbbing of your blood in your body and the beat of your heart hits against my breast."
I let her bask in her special joy until she was ready to continue. And then we rode a flying cloud to the stars. Our passion floated us up into the sky in an effortless soaring building swoop. Her flesh clutched at me, the rhythmic contractions of her inner body thrilling me to the depths of my soul, and then we were there, at the peak. Our bodies trembled, our muscles clenched spasmodically, and we floated back down to earth.
Later, much later, she lay beside me silent and thoughtful.
"A penny," I said.
"What?"
"A penny for your thoughts."
"I was thinking how impossible this is, this thing between us."
"Stop that. I don't want to hear that kind of talk. I told you before we belong together. When we go back to the hotel you will quit your job and I'll check out, and we'll go away together. In a few days we'll get married somewhere and find a nice place to settle down."
She said nothing.
When it began to get dark we dressed and gathered up the picnic things. The walk back to the car seemed longer than the walk to the lake. At first I thought we were lost, but after a few minutes of wandering we found the cowpath and followed it until we came to the car.
She was strangely silent during the entire trip, speaking only to give me directions, and I kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eyes. Her face was an impassive mask and her lower lip was caught between her teeth. She seemed to be involved in some kind of problem and didn't respond to any of my lighthearted jokes.
I left her in the lobby of the hotel and went up to my room to pack. She was going to go to the kitchen and tell them she was quitting. I had both suitcases opened on the bed when the phone rang. It was Connie.
"I can't leave tonight," she told me. "They have asked me to work out the night shift and give them at least a little time to get another girl for tomorrow night."
"To hell with them," I said. "Let's leave now." I don't know why I was in such a hurry.
"They have been very nice to me for as long as I have been here," she said. "It wouldn't be right for me to leave them short-handed like this. I'm going to work out this one shift. When you go to bed leave your door unlocked and I'll come to you when I finish here."
Her mind was made up and I didn't have much choice. I hung up the phone and finished my packing to discover that my suit was still at the cleaners. So it was a good thing after all that we were to wait until morning..
I found that paperback book I had started the other night and settled down to finish it. I was just getting into the good part, the part where the hero makes love to the beautiful spy from Russia, when a knock at the door disturbed me.
"Who is it?" I called.
"It's me, Laurie. Can I come in?"
"The door's opened."
She came in and closed the door behind her, her lustiness seeming to flow effortlessly across the room toward me.
"Aren't you working tonight?" I asked.
"Uh uh, this is the day after tomorrow, remember? My night off."
"Oh. I forgot all about it. Listen, I'm sorry if I spoiled an evening for you, but I don't feel much like going out."
She looked surprised. And I don't blame her. Even I was surprised. It didn't happen very often that I turned down a dish like this one.
"That isn't exactly what I came to talk to you about."
"Then what do you want?"
For an answer she reached into her purse and drew out a brown manila envelope. She handed the envelope to me.
"Look at these," she told me.
I opened the envelope and drew out a sheaf of twenty snapshots. For a minute my shocked brain refused to accept the evidence of my eyes. The shots were pictures of me taken at various times during our evening together at the place in Mexico. There were shots of me at the gambling tables with my arm around Laurie. There were shots of us at the bar drinking together. There were shots of us together on the double lounge chair in the third floor room. And there were shots of me and some of the other guests in that room.
Some of the shots were of things I had forgotten by the time I woke up. I looked through the sheaf of pictures and then up at Laurie.
"So?" I said.
"So they want five thousand dollars for the negatives of those pictures."
I let that sink in for a minute.
"How do you figure in this deal?"
"I work for them. They have pictures of me which would ruin my career if they were ever to let them get into circulation. They threaten to make a few hundred, copies and mail them to every newspaper in the country if I don't cooperate with them."
"And what happens if I don't pay."
"They'll send copies to your wife and your boss. They'll ruin your life." I smiled then.
"How do they even know where I live? All I put down on the hotel register card was California."
"They're not stupid," she: said. "When you left your clothes on the hook they went through your wallet. They know all about you, where you live and where you work."
I smiled even broader this time. It was really getting good. "It's a little too late to ruin my marriage. I just got my divorce."
She was getting nervous. I wasn't acting like any of the others she'd probably pulled this little game on. "There's still your job, your reputation in the community." She said it hopefully.
I shook my head to show her there was no hope. "It's no good. I don't even know where I'm going when I leave here. I have no job or reputation to protect."
"Are you saying you won't pay?"
"I'll give you five dollars for this set of prints for my scrapbook, but that's about as high as I'll go." She shook her head disbelievingly. "They'll ruin you.
"I just told you there is nothing they can do to me. And even if there were, I wouldn't pay them. If I paid them once I'd be on their list for life, I'd be hooked just the way you are. If you'd refused to help them the first time you wouldn't be in the predicament you're in now."
"If I'd refused to help them my name would have been mud in every agent's office from The Village to Hollywood. Once those pictures got into circulation I'd have ended up just like Candy Band. Making stag films and taking heroin."
"What happens when you go back and tell them it won't work?"
"I don't know. They'll be surprised. It never happened before. I'm not sure what they'll do."
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, why did you go along with them in the first place?"
"To protect my career."
"Good. And what kind of a career have you got now? Better yet, what kind of career can you ever have? Even if you make it big you'll always have mem on your neck. You're hooked."
Her eyes widened as she saw this aspect of it for the first time.
"Why don't you go to the police?"
She shook her head. "The whole thing happens in Mexico. They have all the cops over there on the payroll."
"But the place is run by Americans. They blackmail American citizens. And I don't think the police would bring a case against you if you helped them break up the ring."
The idea appealed to her but she was still afraid.
"You're better off than just going on this way. The deeper you get involved the harder it will be to break away. And suppose your big break came tomorrow. Suppose some producer saw you and offered you a contract. Do you think they'd let you go? Hell no. You're worth too much to them as a steerer bringing sheep into their joint to be fleeced. I'll bet they don't even pay you."
She shook her head again.
"Why should they?" I went on. "They've got you by the short hairs. When they pull you jump."
She was a pretty miserable kid when she left my room. She even forgot her pictures. I looked through them again and stuck them in a corner of the suitcase.
I felt good, kind of righteous, like a big daddy. The opportunity to sit back and moralize and give advice had lifted my spirits. I suppose it was foolish. I picked up my book again and returned to the big scene. The hero was just about to take the spy in his arms.
I must have read myself to sleep. I remember waking up sometime later with the light still on. The bed beside me was empty. I shut off the light, crawled under the sheet and went back to sleep.