Chapter 5
HALF AWAKE EDDIE ROLLED OVER, trying to find a more comfortable position on the blanket, but it was no go. The floor was hard as a rock everywhere he looked. Everything was hard except the soft flesh his arm was resting against. Turning his head that way, long hair tickled his nose.
Opening his eyes, he found that he was looking at the back of Selma's head. Remembrance of the past night came back to him then and he awoke completely though his head was fogged with lack of sleep.
They hadn't done much sleeping.
Selma slept on her side, her face pressed against her arm. The coarse brown blanket was wrapped around her waist and legs. Running his hand down the shallow valley of her spine, he watched her squirm in her sleep, causing the blanket to slip away from her trim waist.
Stretching, he found that just about every muscle and bone in his body was aching and sore. A good rub-down should fix him up. Pulling the blanket off Selma, he put his hand on her bare hip and shook her until she groaned awake.
"Oh, my aching back! Sleeping on the floor was one hell of a stupid idea," she said, rolling over on her back. Even with her eyes purled with lack of sleep, she was something you'd enjoy finding in bed with you in the morning. Eddie did.
Gently he began rubbing the small of her back. Stretching out flat on her stomach, she let him knead her well-used flesh, looking back at him over her shoulder.
"Hmmm, that's nice. You really gave me a work-out last night. It's times like this I wish I could afford a bed."
"I'll have to buy you one."
"That'd be nice."
"No kidding, what do you say I move in here? We get along pretty good and I'd rather help you out with the rent than give my dough to that damned hotel. We could have a lot of laughs, living together for a while, Selma."
"I I don't know," she said, looking away.
"Oh come on, don't foul things up. It's a good idea. You need some help paying the rent and I need a place to stay," he said, dropping his hands down lower where he could get a better grip.
"Hey, easy with the hands there! I'm trying to think."
"What's there to think about? Anyway, why should my hands bother you? You must be a little sore from the floor last night. Ah, that's soft. I should have used it for a pillow."
"Stop it," she said in the tone of voice women usually use when they don't really mean what they're saying.
"Why not, Selma? Why not let me move in," he said, continuing to squeeze her buttocks.
"Because damn you, I said to stop that! because there's a fat chance I'll get any work done with you around."
"Oh, I won't bother you that much, Selma. Just think of it, a big double bed."
"Mmmmmmnn."
"Thick, juicy steaks."
"OK, OK, you can come in for a few weeks."
"Ah, that makes me very happy."
"Yes, I can see."
"Roll over and I'll show you how happy I am. That way there'll be two of us."
"Oh, no! Not after last night. I wasn't kidding when I talked about my back bothering me. We go through that business again and they'll take me out of here on a stretcher," she said, sitting up and drawing her legs up under her.
"Come on, don't be a fink," he grinned, playfully tweaking one of her soft, pink nipples.
"I'm a working girl, or at least I'm trying to be one. And I can't afford letting myself get laid-up," she said, not trying to stop him from fondling her breasts.
"Sure you can. It's the best thing you can do," he replied, tracing a crooked trail with his forefinger from the base of one out-thrust breast all the way down her body to the warm meeting place of her thighs.
"I think we'd better wait a bit, Eddie."
"What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, exasperated. "Take a look at me! Hell, you think I turn it on and off like that? Come on Honey, let's stop wasting time," he said, resting his hands on her white shoulders.
"Yes, I can see that you have a problem."
"Selma, Baby, if you keep doing that, my problem's going to explode all over the place."
"That would be a shame. I'll tell you what, Eddie.
What do you say we try something a little ... different?"
"Well, now.... What do you have in mind?"
"Just lie down on your back, Eddie. You'll find out," she said, her black eyes glittering.
His hands clasped behind his head, Eddie watched her kneel over him. Maybe she was planning something of a dual nature. If she was, he would do his share.
Her fingers were nimble and gentle and Eddie began moving his body against the uncomfortable floor, straining higher and higher while she looked back at him, grinning. Then she bent her head and he felt her tongue caressing him. He reached down and caught her leg in his hand and squeezed it, hard.
Just as he thought it was going to be over she lifted up and swung one leg over him, the two white columns of her legs astride him.
"I've never done it this way before, Selma."
"Neither have I," she giggled.
Holding her by the upper arms, he felt her slide down his propped up thighs, her hair falling in wisps in front of her face.
"Easy, easy, steady as you go."
"Ah, that's it.... "
He was there and she was above him, leaning forward just barely within nibbling distance of his lips, her eyes closed and her face red and grinning as if she was being tickled to death. Eddie had never tried this before, the novelty of it excited him. He was used to just seeing the sweaty skin of a shoulder. This was different.
He could see her, all of her, naked and excited, riding him like a wild-eyed ancient goddess of sex, bouncing up and down like a puppet on a string. He tried to match her pace but the position was too awkward so he just lay back and enjoyed it. "More, Honey, more! More!"
She was jerking up and down like a mad little animal trying to escape a cloth bag. Her head was "Oh, Selma!" swinging from side to side, her breasts jumped up and down like luscious tree-fruit battered in a storm.
His hands grasped at her body, seeking a hold so that he could wrestle her down to the floor, but she had the better balance and rode him like a champ rodeo bronc rider.
Then he was straining up at her, trying to reach as far toward that torridly moving torso as possible, his fingers digging into her soft flesh wherever he could clutch her. Then she gasped, he felt her thighs and belly tremble, they were both shaking and he was pushing up, up to that lovely body. She was making moaning noises and bending over at the waist. They shuddered to a close and it was over.
Slowly she pulled up and lay beside him, the rich heady aroma of her sweat-glistening skin pungent in his nostrils. Through the white rims of half-closed eyes she regarded him steadily as a cat. Gradually her gasping breath slowed and calmed and she spoke.
"So that's how it is on top!"
"I guess it's OK for old men but I'm not that old yet. It was kind of interesting, though."
"You really mean it about moving in here."
"What do you think?"
"All right, you can. But don't go getting funny ideas and think you own me just because you're paying the rent. I'm no whore!"
"Hey, take it easy. Who called you one?"
"Well, don't even think it."
"Sure, Baby, sure," he said, kissing her. Going into the bathroom he splashed around for a quarter hour, singing loudly. It was his first real, honest-to-God shack-up deal, and he was as cocky as a rooster stalking through a flock of hens. Surprised to find a razor in her medicine cabinet, he realized that she must use it for her legs.
"Well, if I can get my face as smooth as her legs, it'll be the closest shave I've ever got," he thought as he worked soap into a thick lather and rubbed it into his day-old stubble. When he finished and came out, she had the easel set up and was sketching away once more.
"Oh, there you are. It's about time. Stand over there like you were last night and we'll get back to work. You should be a little simpler to sketch now, after that little work-out we've just had," she said, motioning for him to go back to where he had posed before sex reared its irrepressible head and disrupted the anatomy class for the night.
"Again? What about breakfast?"
"There's a piece of bread in the box that hasn't gone moldy yet, I think. There's a few tea bags left that haven't been used more than once, too. Unless you want to finish the wine."
"Is that all you have?"
"Yes. That's one of the draw-backs of this gay Bohemian life we live in exciting, romantic Greenwich Village."
"Hell, I'm hungry for some food! I'll run downstairs and pick up up some steaks and stuff."
"Steaks? For breakfast?"
"Sure, us working people have got to keep our strength up,"-he said with a grin as he pulled on his clothes.
"Work? What's your job?"
"Keeping you happy. And if you don't think that takes a lot out of a man, you're mistaken."
"OK, steak it is. Lord, it's been a long time since I've had a sirloin. I'd better go along with you and make sure we get a good one. Some of the stores around here'll gyp you silly if you give them half a chance."
"No, you stay here, Selma. I'll be back in a jiffy," he said, kissing her and patting her rump as she started to pull herself into her faded dungarees.
Grinning widely, he closed the door behind him and started down the stairs. The tenement didn't look as crummy as it did last night when he came up the stairs with Chuck. Who'd ever have thought that something that looked so dilapidated on the outside could have a jewel like Selma in it?
Where was Chuck? he wondered. He couldn't wait to see him and tell about the deal he'd fallen into. Good old Chuck had known better than to come busting into the room last night. But now that everything was settled, Eddie felt like showing off Selma to someone he knew. Maybe Chuck was sacked out upstairs in Strang's place. He'd have to check when he came back.
His stomach was growling hungrily but he put down the temptation to grab something in a restaurant, thinking of Selma waiting for him. The poor kid looked as if she could really use a meal. Finding a butcher, he ordered two huge sirloins and some bacon. Next he went to a grocery store and came out with an armful of assorted foodstuffs, picked up a quart container of coffee in a lunch-room and bought a pint of cognac to lace the coffee with.
Arms burdened with food, he walked back to the house and kicked at Selma's door until she opened it. Her eyes wide with eagerness she led him to the table and helped him lay out the food. Taking the container of coffee, he poured a few ounces of cognac into it and fixed up two cups of coffee royal while she bustled with the steaks.
"Here, have some." He proffered her one of the chipped cups with the spiked brew.
"Thanks, I've been going crazy, thinking about those steaks while I've been waiting. God, am I hungry!" Taking a gulp of the coffee, she nearly choked on it.
"Good that way, ain't it?" Eddie asked.
"Lord, why didn't you give me some kind of warning! What did you put into it?" she sputtered.
"Cognac. If you don't like it, give it to me. I'll finish it for you."
"No, thanks, I didn't say that I didn't like it. This is what I need to keep me going until that steak's ready. How do you want yours? Rare?"
"OK with me."
"Good, we won't have to wait long then."
The room was filled with the aroma of frying meat. Selma kept cramming her mouth with bread, watching the steaks cook. When they were just past the stage of being raw she pulled them out of the pan onto plates and tore into hers without speaking.
She hadn't been kidding about being hungry, Eddie realized. It kind of surprised him that a girl as good-looking and smart as she was could be so poor in New York in this time and age. He felt protective and tender towards her, even though she didn't look too ladylike stoking pieces of red meat into her mouth. When they finished eating she leaned back in her seat and lit one of the cigarettes he had bought for her.
"I guess you must think you've been sleeping with a cannibal or something after that little exhibition. I hope you aren't dismayed by my table manners. God! I was hungry!"
"Naw, that's all right. It seems kind of funny, a girl like you being broke. I always figured a girl could pick up something pretty easy."
"Oh? Well, I've had some offers, but I'll have to be a lot more desperate before I sell myself!"
"I didn't mean that. I mean, get a regular job in an office or something. You shouldn't have any trouble with your looks and brains."
"Oh, you mean the nine-to-five bit. The trouble with that is it takes me away from my real work too much," waving an arm at her paintings.
"This art stuff is OK, I guess. But don't you think you should be a little more practical?"
"You still don't see what I'm trying for, do you, Eddie? To you all this is nothing but a game, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't say it's a game, but it's sure not practical. Why can't you get a regular job and kid around with this at nights after you get through working?"
"Because I'm not just kidding around! Listen, Eddie, in this life you have to have something you want, and want hard enough to devote everything you have to it. If you don't have something like that, you're nothing! You're just a piece of driftwood being shoved around by the tide. Nothing and nobody is going to shove me around!" she said, her black eyes gleaming.
"Whew! OK, Selma, I won't say anything else. Forget it. If you want to be a great artist, that's all right with me."
"Well, as long as we've started this, what is it you want, Eddie? That money you got in the Navy isn't going to last forever, you know. What are your plans?"
"Oh, I guess I'll knock around for a while, then visit my old home town or pick up something someplace," Eddie said, lamely. In truth he hadn't the vaguest idea what he would do for a living. All his plans had been how he would enjoy himself with the money he'd make. When he bothered thinking about a job, he imagined some executive position in an office filled with nubile secretaries squealing happily as he pinched their pliant bottoms.
"Now who's being impractical?" Selma laughed.
"Hell, I don't have to worry, I've still got plenty of dough. I'll start sweating it when my bank roll goes."
"That's silly, Eddie darling. The time to start looking for work is while you still have money. If you wait 'til you're broke, you'll have to take the first idiotic thing that comes along. Whatever you do, don't end up being a Village ass like so many of the guys around here."
"I've got plenty of time. Besides, it's too early for such serious conversation. What do you think we should do today?"
"I'd like to do some more sketching the rest of the morning. This afternoon I'm going to have to call up the school and see if a modeling job is open."
"What do you want to take that job for? Take a break, I'll pay the rent."
"Listen to my Sugar Daddy talk! Diamond Jim himself. Just two minutes ago you were lecturing me about getting a job; now you're suddenly against it."
"Yeah, I know. But that modeling bit, I just don't go for all those guys looking at you."
"So that's what's bothering you. You needn't worry about my virtue, battered though it is. An art class is really so respectable it's disgusting."
"All right, all right," he laughed. "What do you say we go out on the town today, do the tourist bit?"
"Hmmm, maybe tonight. Besides, if you're going to move in you'll have to get your things from the hotel."
"Yeah, I forgot all about that. We have to buy that bed I promised you last night, too. I don't want to spend another night on the floor, my back won't take it."
"That'd be fine! We should be able to get a folding couch pretty cheap. I'll put on my dress and join you."
"Yeah, you do that," he said, lighting up a stogie and following her to the tiny closet.
"Say, don't you ever get enough? Maybe you'd better wait outside or we'll never get out of here," she said.
"Just trying to keep my hand in, that's all."
"Try giving it a rest instead, will you?"
"Say, wait here a second, I'm going to find out what happened to Chuck, the guy who came in with me last night. I ought to thank him. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have run into you."
"Who's that, the sailor?"
"Yeah. He's a pretty good guy. If I can get hold of him, maybe you can fix him up with something, eh?"
"Sure, if you want me to. If he's anything like Strang, I'm not too certain I want to meet him, though."
"Chuck's all right. Smart, too."
Eddie climbed up the steps until he reached the fifth floor. Searching the doorbells, he finally found Strang's name. Two oddly sharp notes sounded when he pressed the bell.
"Yes, who is it?" a woman's voice asked through the closed door.
"I'm a friend of Chuck Huzak. I understand he came up here last night and I'm wondering if he's still around, or if you know where he's staying now."
"Oh, just a second."
There was a sound of chains and bolts and then the door opened. Eddie found himself looking at the most extravagantly beautiful blonde he had ever seen. She was tall and most of that superb length was in her long, shapely legs which appeared abruptly, bare and pink, under the crotch-high hem of the filmy baby-doll pajamas she wore.
Baby doll pajamas! On some women they look ridiculous. But on her, with her terrific legs, out-jutting breasts with nipples that showed pale red through the transparent material, and rounded hips, the garment was the sexiest item in the world. It took some time for Eddie to work his way up to her face, and he wasn't disappointed when he got there.
*** Archive Note: At this point in the hard-copy pocketbook, the text became garbled, some text was printed on subsequent lines, etc. The following was reconstructed as best as could be done.***
A trifle broad at cheek and mouth, with wide-set blue eyes as cool and distant as Arctic ice, her face this way was the most ordinary thing in the world. She was shaped like the fevered dream of an adolescent who has looked at too many center-spreads in the men's magazines. She was completely without expression, as if meeting him on the street. Eddie exhaled mightily, making his cigar-tip burn a fiery red.
"Won't you come in, please," she said in low, dulcet tones.
Like a man in a dream Eddie stepped in and followed her swaying hips into the living room. The pajamas were so transparent you could even make out the ridges on her spinal column, if anyone was interested in the ridges of her spinal column.
Eddie's attention was focused lower.
Meekly sitting in the arm-chair she offered, he watched goggle-eyed as she bent over a coffee table for a pack of cigarettes. The rim of cloth rode up, up, up over her hips, he was looking at the whitest, most perfect female behind his connoisseur's eye had lit on in some time.
True, he thought, Selma's was first class; but this was really a work of art, he'd have to give it the palm. He rose from his seat to give it the palm, but she turned around. Ignoring his outstretched hand she sat on a couch opposite him, pulling those lovely legs beneath her and resting one arm along the top of the head-rest, looking as if she were posing for a cheesecake photo.
"Are you in the Navy too?" she asked in a conversational tone.
The gambit, he could see, was to be cool and sophisticated about the whole thing. Well, if that was the way she wanted it, he could play the game. He carefully flicked his cigar ash into a convenient ash tray before answering.
"No, I just got out. I used to be on the same ship with Chuck."
"Really? You must tell me about it."
"Is Chuck around now?"
"No, he came in for a few minutes last night and then ran off. He's very good at that, you know. Running off."
"Do you expect him back?"
"Eventually. He originally came to see my husband, Doctor Strang. He didn't know that I'd married him."
"Oh, you're married!"
"Yes, but you needn't be so glum about it. My husband and I have a working arrangement. What's your name?"
"Eddie, Eddie Chase."
"Glad to meet you, Eddie. I hope you don't mind my going around like this."
"Mind? Hell, no."
"I'm really lucky to be wearing this silly thing. Usually Harold, my husband, insists that I go about in the nude. It flatters his male ego."
"I don't blame him. If you were my wife, I think I'd do the same."
"That's very gallant of you, Eddie. Chuck used to be gallant to me, too, when I first met him. He's the first man who ever had me, you know."
"The lucky bastard!"
"Then he left me. That was a very terrible thing to do to me, Eddie. It made me lose all my confidence. I didn't think men wanted me any more, so naturally I had to prove to myself that they did. Do you want me, Eddie?"
Somewhat to his surprise, Eddie discovered that he did. When you remember that he had been doing nothing for the last day or so except hop in and out of beds (or floors, as the case might be) with various females, and had just performed quite creditably a short time before that very morning, you couldn't fault him for passing up Kathy for a little while.
However it became increasingly obvious that he was ready, willing and able to do his duty by Kathy should the occasion arise. The occasion was certainly arising, to such an extent that it was unnecessary for him to answer her somewhat rhetorical question.
"Oh yes, I see. I'm glad."
"So am I."
"What did you and Chuck do in the Navy?"
The switch in conversation took Eddie by surprise, but he felt that if she wanted to shilly-shally around that was her female privilege. Eventually she would come around, that he was certain. In order to show her how certain, he took off his shoes and started unbuttoning his shirt while he answered her. "We were quartermasters."
"Oh, like that song, 'In the corps, in the corps'. "
"Naw, that's Army. In the Navy it's the guys who navigate and steer the ship."
"You look like a good navigator."
"I am," he replied, stepping out of his skivvies.
"I'll say you are!"
"Let's play," Eddie said, tiring of the conversation. "All right."
Lying down on the couch, she pulled the pajamas up to her neck. Her large breasts looking as if they were straining to reach the ceiling, one well-rounded thigh was lifted slightly on its calf while the other rested half off the couch. Her face was as calm as a store window manikin over the ruffles around her neck. One arm was thrown back over her head, causing the creamy-white breast on that side to pull slightly higher than the other one.
Stepping over the coffee table, he knelt at her side and hovered over the two snowy, pink-tipped peaks of soft flesh. Her eyes might have been painted, they showed so little expression. She must be carved out of ice, he thought. Then he brought his hand down, closed it on a handful of living warmth and began kneading it with growing excitement.
"Lord, what a body," he breathed, laving the ruby-tinted nipple with his tongue and making it grow stiff and erect.
A faint aroma of exotic perfume assailed his nostrils as he ran his eager lips down the unblemished contours of her lovely torso. From breast to breast, down the gentle curve of her belly to her delectable thighs and gleaming legs and up again, he made his way, paying homage to each perfect part.
Eventually he worked his way up to her face again. Her expression hadn't changed. like a life-sized doll, she calmly watched him bend his head over hers and kiss her sensual lips. Her strong arms were around his shoulders, clasping him to her. Their tongues met and pressed together while he held her full-blown body close to him, kissing her hard and trying to awaken some passion in her.
Though she responded to him, it was without eagerness. He regretfully decided that she was nothing but a good-looker, and that was it. A lot of beautiful women are that way, unfortunately. Used to being worshipped and desired by men, they are unable to give of themselves in the sex act and take a passive role in the proceedings. Still, Eddie thought, perhaps he could bring some life to those luscious thighs anyway.
She lay quiescent while he maneuvered himself into position, like a bucking horse at a rodeo that stands quietly while the cowboy mounts. Then the chute pops open and all hell breaks loose as the bronc comes humping and bucking madly into the center of the arena, raising clouds of dust as it tries to split the rider in two on its back-bone.
As soon as he made the first tentative lunge she gave a stifled groan, wrapped her arms around him and went wild from the waist down. Her legs lifted and clamped around him as he pressed himself to her pulsating, throbbing body.
She was big and smooth in his arms, her thighs and belly snapping back and forth in short jerks with each thrust, her once immobile face twisted in a lustful grimace, her heated breath blasting the side of his neck and face as she screamed her need. "More, more, damn you!"
It was like coupling with a volcano or some other spectacular element of nature as he inflicted upon that voluptuous form his driving need, reaching undreamed heights of carnality in the taking of that lust-maddened body.
She was slippery and rank with sweat now, the whole length of her body from mid-thigh to moaning lips was pressed against him, urging him on and still on while the tortured springs of the couch sagged and creaked in tune to their frantic movement.
"That's good-good-good!" she moaned.
Somehow, without his being actually aware of it, they tumbled off the edge of the couch and onto the floor. There, with redoubled ardor, he thrust again and again into that torrid and willing flesh, like a surf-boat plunging into the surging waves and breaking them on its prow.
They slammed together in feverish haste, joined and locked together in towering, upward-spiraling release, gasping and clutching each other as he sank deeper and yet deeper into her excited body.
"Oh, Lord, yes, yes, yes!" she cried, her heated belly matching his quickened pace.
Possessed by lust, they strained their rutting bodies together in an upward mounting, towering explosion of flesh that seemed to take them up and away from the entire universe in complete and mutual surrender.
"Oh, Chuck, Chuck," she gasped, shuddering under him while he hugged her tightly in one last rigid embrace, his shoulders shaking with quick violence.
She lay limp, as if boneless, when he rolled away from her. Eyes closed and mouth half opened, she might have been asleep. Wiping the sweat out of his eyes, he wrinkled his nose at the smell of something burning. Looking around, he saw that his cigar had slipped off the ash-tray and burned a big, black hole in the rug.
Groaning, he crawled over to it and deposited the smoldering butt in the ash tray. Looking back, he saw that she was starting to rise. Pulling the sweat-soggy pajama down to her hips, she sat on the couch and looked at him peevishly.
"Couldn't you be more careful? Do you know what that rug cost?" she snapped, making the transition from passion to prosaic detail with typical female ease.
"Sorry, but what the hell could I do?"
"All right, all right," she said, stretching. "Whee, that was one hell of a ride. You're pretty good, Eddie."
"As good as Chuck?"
"Oh, you mean that little Freudian slip of mine? I always say it just about that time."
"What's your husband think of that?"
"Harold finds it very amusing. He's even made tape recordings, without my knowing about it, of course. They're good for a lot of laughs at parties."
"He sounds like he's full of laughs, that husband of yours," Eddie said, putting his head into his hands. Recent events were beginning to catch up with him, he was beginning to fear that this civilian life might be rougher than he'd anticipated.
"Did Chuck ever talk to you about me?"
"No, he's pretty close-mouthed."
"Well, you'll see him later, won't you?"
"I guess so."
"When you see him, make sure you tell him about us, won't you?"
"I don't know, it might be smarter not to. What the hell's the set-up here, anyway? Do you usually lay anybody who walks in?"
"Yes. Make sure you tell Chuck that. I want him to know," she said, lighting a cigarette.
"Yeah, sure," Eddie said, fumbling with his clothes. She was a luscious piece, but a little off up topside. He'd better get out before her old man came in.
"If you want to use the bathroom, it's in there," she said. "Just try not to awaken my husband, he didn't get to bed 'til late last night."
"Your husband! You mean he's in here?" Eddie said, looking up in surprise. He'd assumed that Strang was out someplace, now this crazy broad was saying he was right in the next room!
"Yes, I think I hear him waking up now. I guess we were a little too noisy."
Sure enough, somebody was calling "Kathy, where the hell are you?" from one of the bedrooms. Now, if there was one thing you could say about Eddie, and be certain, it was that he liked a fight and wouldn't back down from one. Every man however has a point where he'll run rather than fight, no matter how pugnacious he is.
Standing there naked, after taking another man's wife, Eddie felt very vulnerable. Things were moving a little bit too quickly for him to grasp. He didn't feel like doing battle with, some crazed husband, he wanted to go off someplace and rest awhile.
Panic-stricken he grabbed his clothes and dashed out of the apartment just as the bedroom door started to open. Fortunately, there was nobody outside and he crept up the steps to the roof. It was a bright spring day and a pigeon fancier on the next building was working his birds. He glanced at Eddie, then went back to his coops.
In Greenwich Village it doesn't pay to get involved.
Crouching behind the door, Eddie pulled on his clothes, hoping that nobody would come up the steps. These New York women were wild! When he finished dressing he crept back in and looked cautiously at the doors. They were all closed.
Slowly he walked down the stairs. When he passed Strang's door, he heard them both laughing inside. Maybe Strang didn't give a damn what his wife did, but Eddie was glad he hadn't waited to find out.
He still couldn't quite figure out what happened. He just walked in and suddenly he was wrestling on the floor with a blonde goddess, like something you read about in one of those men's magazines.
He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he almost went past the floor where Selma was waiting for him. Selma! For a while, he'd forgotten all about her. He had a hunch that he'd better not mention his bout with Strang's wife. Selma might believe in free love and all that, but she probably wouldn't go for him sleeping around while he was living with her, not if he knew women.
Living in this building was certainly going to be lively, he thought.