Chapter 5
Under the looming wall of a warehouse, a wall chalked with a score of obscene epithets and invitations, Rita Danilov waited. Her whole body was afire.
Half an hour or more she'd lurked there in the shadows. She had been stopped from entering Peabody House by the sight of an expensive gray foreign auto parked at the curb.
Who was inside with the guy?
Some of those uptown people who sent their representatives to Hamilton Street thinking they were doing the residents a favor? Why the hell didn't whoever was inside hurry? Rita couldn't wait much longer. If she didn't get what she wanted from the big guy-he must be the new settlement house director, she'd realized with a start, watching him go inside-if she didn't get it here, she'd have to hurry to the river dump and somehow locate Whitey, wherever he might be hiding.
Rolling her head from side to side against the brick wall, Rita Danilov thought again of the doctor at high school.
So she was a nympho. So that meant she had to be taken care of several times a week. So she couldn't help it.
She loathed feeling like a degraded beggar, crouching in the fetid dark waiting to find a guy in pants to do what needed to be done. At such times, though, she was incapable of rational thought. She was more like a machine running out of control.
God, if only Simon had been the kind of father to understand and help-
She really didn't like this burning torment that assailed her. But she was at its mercy. And it had been too long since the session on the floor of the Roxy the night Pepe died.
Rita accepted death and knives and gang trouble as part of the pattern of Hamilton Street life. She had been inured to such violence early. But the belly-torment, the thigh-fire-she never became accustomed to that.
Her body stood out in black relief against a dim streetlamp at the alley mouth. Her calves and thighs were tightly sheathed in scarlet slacks. Her sweater, deliberately chosen several sizes too small, brought her breasts into vivid prominence.
Rita was a pretty girl, but tonight the passion stirring her lent her features a certain ugliness. She jammed her buttocks tight against the bricks, bumping them a couple of times to see whether that would help.
It did not. It merely made the urge all the more demanding.
How long was the visitor going to remain behind that lighted blind?
The big guy had looked nice. Rather clean and tough. But not the depraved toughness of the kids in the Cobras. She knew he'd serve her royally if she could only talk him into it. And why should she have much trouble, if he was any kind of a man?
Still, unless the visitor departed soon she knew she'd have to find another man, any man. Quick jets of ecstasy and pain were beginning to shoot up inside her legs. The tighter she pressed her legs together, the worse the spasms became.
A rustle and scrape back in the alley made Rita Danilov turn, take several steps into the darkness. Her soft hands shaped themselves to claws. Who was in the alley? A bum? Kids from another gang from another part of town?
Rita watched, listened. Nothing stirred.
An engine purred to life. Rita turned again, dismissing her suspicions as foolish. With a little exclamation of joy she saw the big gray auto roll away along Hamilton Street. The visitor, whoever it might have been, had departed.
Rita looked both ways to make sure no one like that bastard Kreeg lurked near. Then her sneakers carried her across the street and up to the main door of Pea-body House. Far on the right, the jeweled chain of the interstate bridge cut the night toward the river's opposite shore.
In the hall Rita had to stop again, sliding against the wall. A crack of light showed beneath the door. With trembling hands Rita reached out and twisted the knob.
The mere touch of the hard metal excited her anew. Her dark hair fell into her eyes. She tried to get the knob to turn, but she was shaking so badly her hands would not coordinate. Sobbing, she knocked instead.
The door opened. The big guy stood there, blinking.
Rita leaned against the jamb, breath hissing in and out between her teeth. In her excited state the big guy looked more like a god than ever, older than the punks she usually had. Older and stronger-perfection.
Rita was no longer a girl but a slave, a drunken slave of the impossible yearnings of her belly-flesh. In a vague sort of way she recognized the sharp reek of bourbon floating around the big guy, and another, more subtle scent.
Before the big guy could express surprise at finding a voluptuous teenager at his door, Rita drove herself forward, rubbed herself against him like a female cat, languorously.
"Please, mister, help me."
"Who the hell are-wait a second!"
One of his hard hands lifted her chin. His eyes gleamed with recognition.
"The girl in the grocery store?"
"That's right. I followed you here. Please help me!"
"If you'll come in-cut out this stuff. I mean-"
He blinked, almost stumbled. Rita realized dimly that the big guy had belted a lot of booze in a short time. His eyes were slightly glazed. His words were not clearly enunciated.
He gazed down at her sweatered breasts. They hung forward, large, fully-coned, so heavy on her they felt like rocks, begged to be free of the restrictions of her bra.
"Name's Fontaine," the big guy muttered, bracing himself on the desk with one hand and pinching the bridge of his nose with the other. His face had a strong, friendly look to it, making Rita tingle everywhere at once. "Bad. First night here, Drinking. Didn't expect any business." The big guy had difficulty with the final word, pronouncing it three times before he got it right.
He corked a pint of bourbon and stashed it inside a desk drawer. Keeping his distance while Rita dug her nails into quivering flanks, Fontaine started a cigarette.
"You in trouble or something?" he wanted to know. "What's your name?"
"Rita." She licked her lips. She had to have him. And quick. "Rita Danilov. Are you the new director? Sent down here to help us out?"
"I'll help you if I can," he responded, thickly, almost drunkenly.
Hungrily she eyed him, advancing.
"You can. Oh yes, you sure can."
Fontaine seemed taken aback.
"Could you tell me what's wrong?"
One of Rita's enamelled fingernails pointed.
"This. This is wrong. Help me."
Up shot Fontaine's eyebrows.
"Look, Rita-wait a second. The booze-"
Rita fastened her nails on his bicep.
"You want to help me, mister. Don't you?"
"Sure. That's why I came to Peabody. Hold on, though. Give me a minute."
Fontaine struck both palms against the ancient desk top, wagging his head side to side as if to clear it of whiskey fumes. Rita drew closer. Her breast-ends were a scant inch from the wrinkled white of his shirt, throbbing to their roots.
Fontaine slapped his forehead, clenched his teeth.
"God, I must have swallowed half a pint neat. My head's busting open-"
"Hurry, mister!"
Rita thrust herself against him, legs spread far enough to enable her to clasp his rugged hip between them.
"If you're not just talking, you can help me out.
Digging his arm again, brow shining with sweat, Rita shrilled in his ear:
"Don't you understand, mister? I want you. I've got to have you or I'm going to die inside."
A shocked, pitying expression fought its way onto Fontaine's face. He gripped Rita by her shoulders, watching the unnatural contortions of her pelvis as she writhed in the grip of arousal. Her tight scarlet pants hid nothing, not the stitched hem of her panties, not the tapering lines of her lower belly-nothing. Fontaine said raggedly:
"Rita, listen. I don't know anything about you. Who you are or what's making you act this way. But I can tell you're in trouble. We have a doctor who's supposed to call at the Peabody House once a week. He has a friend uptown who can handle-"
"This is all I need!" Rita screamed, grinding her hips against him.
Tears ran down her cheeks, helpless tears. He tried to comfort her, drew her clumsily into the crook of his arm. Rita's hands moved like mad things on him.
"Why can't you get it straight? I'm going to die inside if you don't take me."
"Rita-"
His face was close, rough, handsome. And confused.
"I'll be damned if I can take advantage-girl, you need help. You need-"
"I need a man!" Rita howled, ripping at his belt. "I need a man right where I live!"
Fontaine started to speak again. Before he could, frantic Rita flung her arms around him, working her body like a machine, kissing him with everything she had, kissing him with her burning breasts and her hot lips and her twisting hips.
Fontaine mumbled words at her, still too dizzy with the hastily-consumed liquor to think clearly. Rita opened her lips as wide as she could. Fontaine tried to break loose from the kiss. The frantic embrace twisted them from side to side. Rita moaned and mewed, bit his lips and dug her nails in his neck.
One last spark of sanity in her mind screamed that the big guy was right, was hideously right. She needed help. Maybe she was insane. Then Fontaine gave a choking oath, a curse, as if her working body had finally reached some hidden wellspring of masculinity. His arm shot around her waist, bending her backwards. His mouth was a furious weapon.
His lips bruised her. His tongue answered hers, hotly, wetly.
Next thing Rita knew, they were both naked on the leather couch.
"Don't fool around too long," Rita begged. "Please don't play around."
Fontaine's face disgusted and purpled with desire at the same time, loomed over her.
"Why did you come here?"
Rita laughed hysterically, wriggling herself into position.
"Want to stop?"
"Damn you-I shouldn't-damn you!"
The aching moment Rita had been anticipating, praying for, was the most stunning, most electrifying, she had ever experienced. Her eyes flew wide in disbelief. She let herself crest on the wave of excitement bursting inside her raging loins. He was marvelous.
So gentle, so tender. Yet so lividly passionate as he gripped her body. One hand beneath her tender curving back, now laved with love-sweat, one hand muscular and stimulation on her thighs, drawing her up, ever up to new intimate togetherness.
Never had a man stimulated her so deeply. Perhaps it was because she'd never been mastered by a man before, only by pimply kids, who couldn't begin to touch the depths of true womanhood within her.
But Fontaine did, Fontaine who cursed as he took her, his mouth reeking of whiskey as he made her whole naked body light up with ecstasy.
Fontaine's teeth clenched as he loved her more stridently second by second. Never before had Rita felt so near to achieving a true end to ever-mounting excitement. With Fontaine, she felt it was possible to be truly fulfilled. She became a mad thing fighting with him against him and through him and around him to seek out that insane fulfillment-'
"Oh mister-mister-mister!...." Rita screamed in unparallelled ecstasy:
For the very first time she felt exaltation. Fontaine drove her to glory, each passing instant brought her closer to paradise, flesh-aching paradise.
She closed her mouth on his shoulder, wishing her teeth were fangs to rip him to shreds. The next instant the miracle began to happen.
Deep in her belly the miracle of unlocking blew up her mind and unleashed a golden flood of warmth that erased too many sordid years behind her, too many befouled memories, leaving only this consuming heaven, this manmmoth upheaval that made her rise from the couch in one last tormented heavenly reach for ecstasy that was suddenly there-
When she fell back, panting and nearly senseless, Rita Danilov was no longer frightened and seeking. She was a woman.
A woman who knew, in spite of the bitterness and the dark past, how it felt, how it really felt to be completely satisfied.
"Thank you. You were wonderful."
Rita spoke the words fervently. Fontaine stood with his back to her as he pulled on his trousers. Rita dressed rapidly, slipping her trembling legs into her panties, hooking her still-warm breasts back into her brassiere. At last Fontaine swung around, about to speak. Instead he yanked open the desk drawer and extracted the pint of bourbon.
Rapidly he finished half of what remained. He continued to stare at her with a tormented, disbelieving expression.
"I'll never forget you, Fontaine," Rita breathed. "Never in all my life."
"Why did you make me do it?"
She stopped his protesting lips with her fingers.
"I couldn't help myself. But for the first time-I swear this is the truth-for the first time it made me feel good."
Fontaine measured his words painfully:
"Do you understand I'm supposed to help kids like you? Not violate every law of decency by taking an under-age girl to bed."
Hurt, Rita asked. "Was it that bad?"
Fontained wiped a hand across his mouth, flashing, guilty.
"No, You're-good."
Tears welled in Rita's eyes. They were tears of gratitude.
She touched his hand, suddenly heartbroken that she had to leave.
"Maybe I'm sick like you say. I guess I am. But for the first time in my life I felt loved, I felt wanted. Is that so awful?"
Shaking his head, Fontaine replied gloomily:
"It was wrong."
Face shining with fresh tears Rita whispered, "If you can somehow help the kids on Hamilton Street half as much as you helped me tonight-"
Impulsively she give him a kiss, cool-lipped now, almost tender. Leaving him standing there with his hard chest still agleam with perspiration, Rita ran into the darkened hall.
His footsteps rapped as he came after her. He called her name. His voice still sounded confused.
A tingling warmth filled Rita as she hurried onto Hamilton Street, not knowing whether she should laugh or cry. Without rhyme or reason, hopelessly and miserably and gloriously too, Rita Danilov was suddenly in love with Fontaine.
A pair of jealous, watchful eyes surveyed Rita Danilov from the alley where Rita herself had hidden.
The eyes had seen almost everything there was to see of filth and depravity. The eyes could translate instantly a scarlet flush on a girl's cheeks as she sped along under the streetlamps, up Hamilton Street away from Peabody House.
The eyes took on a vindictive shine, cat-like, ugly.
After a final drag on a crinkly brown cigarette that made her head cloudy-light and her strength the strength of ten, Mae Lazar slipped out of the shadows and followed Rita down the street.