Chapter 6
The dirt-fouled pavement seemed a regal carpet under Rita Danilov's feet. As she hurried back toward the market the garish neons and squalid tenements took on a night-muted loveliness, a mistiness, that she had never noticed before.
Again and again she dwelled on Fontaine's features. His cleanly-chiseled grown-man's face. His virility.
Of course she'd taken advantage of him. No doubt of it. But her reward had been eminently worth it. He had transformed a mechanical act into something beautiful, something far more satisfying than mere temporary relief.
She found herself almost wishing Fontaine had not touched her at all. Because how could she be content with any of the gang kids now that she had experienced a man's caresses?
Fontaine was a good man, a decent man. She might never get a chance to have him again. But he'd blessed her with a priceless treasure and she loved him for it. She found herself praying fervently that his work at the Peabody House would succeed. She re-lived every trembling moment of their time together as she hurried along, every intimate caress-"Hey, Rita! Wait a sec."
Rita turned, surprised to see Mae Lazar appear under a streetlamp's glow.
Rita lit a cigarette, apprehensive. Mae was no friend. Mae had always been a dangerous rival for Whitey's affections. Mae was wholly a child of the streets, lacking even a tyrannical father like Simon Danilov to shield her slightly from the harsh realities of Hell's Half Mile.
As Mae approached gaudily dressed in a sweater and toreadors, she linked her arm with Rita's. The girls started in the direction of the produce market. This section of Hamilton Street was comprised chiefly of tenements. Most of the inhabitants had returned indoors. Against the brittle, falsely-warm sound of Mae's voice came a crackle of shouts and a thud of hoofs from a television.
"Where you been, Rita?"
"Oh, just walking," Rita returned carefully. "Just out walking."
Mae laughed, bumping her hip against Rita's in a knowing way.
"Don't kid me. Your cheeks are all red. You've had yourself a man."
Rita thought better of it. Why dignify the disgusting little bitch with an answer?
"What do you care, Mae? Let go of my arm. I'm late at the store and Pop will raise hell."
Mae laughed.
"What do you think he'll do when he finds out it was the new director of the welfare joint giving it to you?"
Eyes black with anger, Rita spun around. "What did you, say?"
Mae's painted lips peeled back from her teeth.
"I guess you heard me okay."
Rila was contemptuous:
"What were you doing, Mae? Watching?"
"I saw you come out smiling. You only smile that way when you just had a man."
Mae's eyes grew crafty. "Wonder how Whitey will like-"
"Stop wondering so much, Mae, and take off. It's my business."
"The crap it is!" Mae spat, pushing Rita roughly..
The two girls stood near the mouth of an alley. The nearest streetlamp was a good half of a block away.
"I saw that big stud tonight when he walked from the bus, Rita. I tried to get him to take me but he wouldn't. So I decided to see what luck I'd have at the House. I'm warning you, Rita. You've already got Whitey-"
"Makes you jealous, does it?" Rita was defiant, unwilling to be backed down. "Maybe he wouldn't touch you because you're such a whore, Mae, always peddling yourself for money-"
Like an enraged cat, Mae hissed:
"I'm going to get that big stud at the House for myself! Leave him be! Leave him be or I swear to Christ I'll hurt you bad."
Frightened suddenly, but angry too, Rita turned her back on Mae and laughed.
Mae leaped like an alley cat, driving Rita forward into the shadows, ripping at her clothes, trying to ruin her sweater.
"Leave him alone!" Mae shrieked. "Leave him alone or I'll kill you!"
"The hell you will!" Rita slapped her. "The hell!" Mae's face was livid. "I'll tear you to pieces!"
She attacked, kicking and biting and gouging. Rita slapped her again. Mae slapped back. Mae aimed a kick between Rita's legs. Rita caught Mae's toreador pants and ripped from the waist. Mae responded by pulling Rita's hair and scratching her cheeks and shredding her sweater with a savagery that left the garment in tatters.
Rita stumbled, tried to catch herself. She slipped in a patch of grease, landing on her ripe buttocks. Mae leaped atop her, fumbling for the belt of Rita's pants, trying to rip her belly bare as she wedged a knee into Rita's groin to hold her down.
"I'll kill you, Rita! I'll ruin you so nobody can ever have you again!"
Rita threw her off. As Mae scrabbled on her back, hurling epithet after filthy epithet, Rita got both hands on Mae's clothes and ripped her breasts naked.
Mae howled and stumbled up the alley, nursing the outraged nipple between her palms. Rita straightened, panting. She smoothed her hair as best she could. Her face ghastly in its fury, Mae called:
"You'll be sorry you hurt me, Rita."
"I wish I'd bitten it all the way off!" Rita snarled back.
For the better part of two minutes the girls confronted one another, trading every conceivable vile epithet of the street. Finally, flushed with victory, Rita saw that she was safe from further attack, had beaten Mae at her own no-holds-barred game. Finding the strength to laugh at the defeated girl, Rita turned and strolled off down Hamilton Street, refusing to even respond to Mae's continuing obscene tirade:
"Fix you! Fix you good, you dirty louse-" Gradually Mae's voice was lost in the dark.
Too late, she tried to stay her hand on the front knob of the market.
Absorbed in thoughts of Fontaine, Rita had started into the store without realizing no lights glowed inside. Had it gotten that late? She'd promised Pop to return in a very few moments, with bread. If she'd been wise, she would have surveyed the darkened store and gone around to the rear stairway. Even as she realized with alarm that she'd remained away much too long, the light in the rear room blinked on.
In another moment Simon Danilov, burly and swag-bellied, wearing only stained trousers and a grimy undershirt, unlatched the front door.
He dragged Rita inside. He latched the door again and pulled down the cracked shade. His face in the dim light from the back his face was mottled. He surveyed Rita's face and her disarrayed clothing.
One of his sausage-fingered hands tore the belt from his trousers.
Rita raised her hands as he shoved her toward the back room. "No, poppa! Poppa, I met some kids I know down at Olivetti's and forgot what time-"
"Forgot, hell! It's way past Olivetti's closing time too."
Caught in the lie, Rita tried to stammer another excuse. Danilov interrupted:
"Been out letting more of them filthy street boys in your pants, huh?"
"Poppa, I told you that was over. I don't do it any-"
Simon's hand levered her arm cruelly.
"Undress! I wanna see you."
"You shouldn't be looking at me, poppa. I'm a grown woman now. I'm-"
"Shut up. Take off them panties!"
Danilov thrust her through the curtain into the back room. Hoping to placate him, Rita peeled off her toreadors and stood exposed through the sheerness of her panties. Danilov's eyes slipped to her navel, then downward.
"All the way," he grunted. "Show me everything. Then I tell what you been doing, hanging around with the kids at Olivetti's or getting yourself dirtied inside."
Helplessly Rita pressed her palms on herself for protection.
"Poppa, I won't-"
"Strip for your father!" Danilov cried, ripping the front of her panties away.
Rita fought him, vainly. In spite of his age and his tendency to fat, a tremendous amount of strength remained in his thick arms. Danilov forced her to the floor. With one meaty hand he ripped away the last shred of pantie fabric.
Rita lay sobbing with the white silk in shreds around her knees. Danilov jammed his elbow between her thighs and subjected her to a thorough, cruel investigation. Then, licking his lips, eyes shining oddly as he caressed the palm of his hand with the curled belt, he stood up.
"Turn over and show me your butt," he said. "I'm gonna whip you for playing whore with a dirty man:
"Poppa, I swear it was an accident. I didn't mean-Poppa!"
Danilov kicked her, doubled her over so that her twin white buttocks lay exposed, everything lay exposed as she bent over, trying to rub the hurt from her belly.
Danilov smelled of sweat as he raised the belt and brought it whistling down. The leather cut and stung her right cheek. Rita tried to twitch away from him across the wooden floor. Danilov placed a heel on her right hip and gave her another stroke.
Rita moaned. A thin welt of blood oozed to the tender surface of her left cheek. Twisting her head around, she watched with horror as Danilov raised the belt, licking his lips.
God protect her-Danilov was enjoying himself!
Lash after lash after lash struck her buttocks until there was not an inch betwen her waist and the backs of her knees that had not tasted the flicking abuse of his belt, the belt he wielded faster and faster as sickness twisted him, made him grunt and finally, at the last, smile as he laid on the final stroke.
He dropped the belt, huge greasy rings of sweat showing under his armpits where the perspiration had soaked his undershirt. Half-conscious, Rita touched the base of her spine, probed her buttocks and brought her fingers back to her face. Through tears of pain and degradation she saw the moist blood gleaming on the tips of those fingers.
In an excited voice Danilov said:
"Sleep down here with the crates, bitch. Tomorrow you get back to your proper place, upstairs. But tonight-sleep in the dirt where you belong."
Resting her head on her arm, Rita heard him clump up the rear stairs. The crash of the flat door closed with a crash. A terrified sob of relief tore out between her lips. Why hadn't she realized it before? Poppa was a maniac-far worse than she'd ever been in her worst periods of craving. She was lucky he hadn't raped her.
As an antidote for her terror, Rita closed her eyes and thought of her brief bliss with Fontaine.
The heavenly passion of him; The cool and blessed balm of his hands stirring on her flanks, caressing, toying with her breasts, making her limpid with desire.
How good it had been, she thought. How terrific, after the unpleasantness of her years growing up on Hamilton Street.
In the dazed torment of her mind, Rita tried to create Fontaine in her mine's eye:
The two of them lying together, body to body, caressing.
Her breasts upthrust and eager for his lips, those same lips that roamed her flesh intimately. Kissing and kissing and kissing.
The masterfulness of him, the proudness as he threw himself into the frantic union. Rita could practically feel the excitement tearing her apart. In her imagination she rose to ecstasy again, swaying this way and that way, backwards, forwards....
Lying on the floor of the market's back room, Rita whimpered softly and touched herself, experiencing again an echo of a delicious tingle. But the slopes of her white buttocks were so full of hurt that the dream receded, became no more than a ghostly vision of male and female bodies on a couch, impossible to remember as they became dimmer-dimmer-
Tottering to her feet, she pulled a wisp of pantie fabric over the bruised tenderness of herself. She took a look at the storeroom.
The rickety orange crates.
The browned, fallen lettuce leaves.
A half-dozen grimy chicken feathers in one corner.
And the belt Simon Danilov had dropped, evilly black and stained with her own blood.
Rita laughed, emptily.
Love Fontaine? Love the big guy! Have him love her? What a cheap little fool she was. There was nothing for her but cruelty and hopeless despair.
Holding her clothes together as best she could, facing reality again, Rita moved with stealthy quiet through the storeroom, doing what she had realized she must.