Chapter 6
"WELL, YOU SURE TOOK YOUR TIME," Selma said when he came back into their room.
"We got to talking," Eddie said, sinking wearily into one of the chairs.
"What did your friend do, stay there the night?"
"Uh, no, he wasn't around. What do you say we let that shopping expedition go until tomorrow and just lay around today?"
"So your friend wasn't there," Selma said, looking at Eddie shrewdly. "Who were you talking to?"
"Strang. He was telling me about what a hell of a student Chuck used to be. Got any of that coffee left?" Eddie asked, looking up. If he got careless, this was going to be the shortest shack-up job on record.
"Talks a lot, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, he sure chews your ear," he answered, drinking the luke-warm remnants of the spiked coffee from the card-board container.
"What do you think of his wife?"
"His wife? Not bad-looking, I guess."
"Not bad-looking? Why, she's one of the most beautiful women in New York!"
"I didn't notice. I just saw her for a few seconds before I left," Eddie lied desperately.
"Eddie Chase, you're a hell of a lousy liar," Selma said, laughing merrily.
"Hey, what are you laughing about?"
"You. Tell me, Eddie, was she as good as she looks? I've always heard that those extravagantly beautiful women were lousy when it came to bed."
"Well, you're a good looking woman and you're damn good in bed, or would be if we had a bed here," he leered, trying to change the subject.
"Uh-uh, Eddie. I'm all right, but I'm not in her class and I know it. Come on, Eddie, tell me. How was she?"
"What makes you certain that I laid her? Hell, I just met the woman."
"That doesn't matter. I've seen too many delivery boys coming down those steps with the same silly grin you had when you came in. Kathy Strang is the fastest push-over in the Village and that's saying a lot. believe me."
"You should know."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You didn't waste much time last night."
"No, Eddie, I didn't. I'm a push-over and I admit it. When I see a man I like, I don't waste any time. I doc't take them on in platoons like Kathy does, though."
"OK, OK, I admit it, I grabbed her. What could I do when she started parading it in front of me like that? Hell, Selma, I'm only human."
"I don't know about that. After last night and this morning, I thought it'd be safe to let you go up there but I underestimated you. Are you that hungry all the time?"
"Well hell, Selma, what could I do? She was just too much to pass by."
"I know, she made a pass at me when I first moved in here a few months ago."
"You?"
"Yes, the lovely Mrs. Strang is a very sick woman, Eddie. I'm not a dike but I have to admit there was a little bit of temptation there."
"I guess there's a lot I don't know about you," Eddie said, looking at her with a bemused expression.
"There is. That's one of the few real advantages to living in the Village. You can admit things like that. Do I shock you?"
"You do."
"Want to call this whole bit off?"
"No, I figure you really need a man, now," he said. The idea of Selma sleeping with another woman seemed like an affront to his male pride.
"Because of what I said about Kathy? Believe me, Eddie, as long as there's men like you around, I won't go gay. There's just one other thing. As long as you're living with me, I expect you to leave other women alone. I'm a jealous bitch when it comes to sharing my men."
"OK, Selma, the same goes with me."
"I told you we were both alike."
They went out that afternoon and Selma took him to a run-down shop where she bought a second hand sofa that unfolded into a bed. Eddie wanted to buy a new one but she wouldn't hear of it. She called up some friends of hers and several men and their girls came and helped him move the sofa up to her apartment. Eddie was surprised and a little disappointed at the matter-of-fact way they accepted his living with Selma. He really was a small-town boy at heart, felt that half the fun of living in sin was in shocking people. He couldn't help wondering if any of the others had slept with Selma.
They were a typical Village group. Most of them were gonna be artists of one kind or another. They were gonna write a book, gonna act, or gonna paint some time in the far-off future. In the meantime they devoted their energy to criticizing people who actually were doing something.
Sitting around on the floor of Selma's apartment, they emptied a case of beer and bounced conversation off the white-washed walls. Dear God, could they talk talk! Three quarters of the time Eddie didn't have the faintest idea what they were saying, and he doubted that they did. Selma and he were the only ones who kept quiet. Every once in awhile she would glance in his direction and wink at him.
Finally, when he was ready to drown in a turgid sea of words, once of them suggested they go to a bar. Eddie seconded the idea with alacrity and they left in a noisy, trampling herd to Paul's Place, that month's favorite drinking place.
"Good Lord, Selma, I thought I could run off at the mouth. But these characters never stop!" he said as they walked along behind the rest of the group.
"You haven't seen anything yet. This is the place where they have the champion BS artists in the world."
Paul's Place was an old cellar beneath a tenement cleverly made up to look like an old cellar. Dust an inch thick covered the floors and tables, which consisted of raw planks laid over barrels. Some refugees from the junkie ward on Riker's Island made halfhearted attempts to force music out of their instruments, but barely were able to make themselves heard over the shrill gabbing of the packed crowd. Clouds of thick, yellow smoke swirled over bearded and pony-tailed heads.
Pushing their way to the bar, they ordered great schooners of dark beer. Ignoring the continuing gabble around him, Eddie gratefully sank his face into the wide brim of his beer and let the nut-brown brew flow down his throat. The close heat of the jammed bodies, the aftermath of the various sexual adventures he had in the past two days, combined with the ceaseless flood of words, caused him to slide deeper and deeper info a well of somnolence.
Just as he was about to doze off the crowd stilled slightly, and Selma nudged him awake.
"You won't want to miss this, Eddie. Bill Rack is going to recite one of his poems."
"Huh? What?" Eddie said, jerking his head up in time to see a red-bearded satyr wearing a grimy pair of khakis and a sweat-shirt climb unsteadily onto the top of a table, holding a nearly empty bottle of red wine in one hand. The band gave a little ripple in acknowledgement of his feat and he waved the hand holding the bottle at the crowd.
"The Lust Game," he intoned in slurred words, wavering from side to side on his teetering perch. Gulping down another belt of wine, he tore into his poem, part of which went something like this:
"Passion Slaves! Hell-cats in Sin! Girls in khaki!
You seek passion in words, in song and in paint!
Yet find no passion
For your souls are cold and dead.
I will give you passion, bloodless whores, Squealing eunuchs, cow-brained cud-chewers!
My words will blaze in your empty heads, My hatred will burn in your dead eyes, My lust will liven your puny loins, Damn, you, damn you, cursed sin devils!"
As the wine in his bottle emptied into his gaping gullet, his language became fouler and fouler as he cursed the awed crowd. When he finished the wine, he let out a whoop and slung the bottle at the crowd. The bartender and musicians pulled him off the table then in a swirl of swinging fists and kicking feet. The battle raged from one side of the room to the other until the bartender was able to break a beer bottle over the poet's head. The crowd applauded and went back to talking.
"Old Bill wasn't in top form tonight," Selma noted. "Usually it takes them a lot longer to put him out. Hey, you listening to me, Eddie?"
His head in a pool of beer, Eddie had finally succumbed to boredom and sleep.
They woke him up, and the rest of the evening passed in a blurred morass of verbosity. Dawn was lighting the eastern skies when the party finally broke up and Selma and he had the apartment to themselves. For the first time since his discharge, Eddie spent the night chastely.
When he awoke the next morning, Selma was sketching away at her easel. Eddie watched for a half hour after his morning coffee, but soon grew bored.
"Hey, Selma, what do you say we cut out and take in a movie or something?"
"No, I don't want to waste any more time. Why don't you go by yourself?"
"OK, I'll see you later."
He walked around the Village, but it was a Sunday morning and all the bars were closed. Finding a subway, he took a train to Times Square. Forty-second Street was deserted except for some straggling tourists, its littered streets dingy in the daylight. Eddie found a movie he wanted to see and spent the afternoon there.
Leaving the movie he walked along the street, looking in at displays of fishing tackle in sporting good stores and thumbing through paperbacks in the bookstores. A reaction to the pace he'd followed in the last few days set in, making him feel listless. Buying a couple of the more gaudy books, he went back to the Village.
While riding the subway, he tried to concentrate on one of the books he'd bought, but it was long-winded and tedious. Bored, he put it into his pocket and in desperation focused his attention on the glittering advertisements set into the walls and alongside the windows. Tawny-skinned goddesses in snug bathing suits smilingly smoked cigarettes on sunny sea-shores, their laughing faces turned to grinning young men.
That wife of Strang's, he thought, looked better than any of the women in the brightly colored pictures. He found it hard to believe that he'd actually had a woman like that. Kathy, that's what Selma had called her, was one of those women you never really expected to find in bed with you.
Not that there was anything wrong with Selma. In a lot of ways, she was a better woman than Kathy. That body and face of Kathy, though, was something you just couldn't pass by.
He had to have her again.
No need for Selma to know anything about it, though. It was nice being shacked up with someone and knowing that you were going to have a woman anytime you wanted one. Of course it was just a temporary thing, their living together. In a few weeks, he'd have to fuck off. What then?
Get a job someplace that was for sure. Visit home for awhile and then come back to the big city. That's where the big money is. The big money and the best poon. Somehow, he couldn't work up any enthusiasm over the prospect.
The train roared into West Forth Street in a blizzard of discarded candy wrappers. Pushing his way past the people who came flooding through the door, he got on the platform and made his way to the exist closest to Erwin Street.
Selma was still working when he came in. The floor around her was covered with sheets of newsprint. Not paying any attention to him, she kept marking the white expanse of paper before her with rapid strokes of charcoal.
She was a good-looking woman, all right. Maybe a little thin around the butt but that could be cured by a few meals. Thin as she was, she strained the cloth of her pants pleasantly. It would be easy to step up behind her and loosen those dungarees and slide them down. She was his woman and it would be easy.
Too damn easy.
"Why don't you knock off? Come on, we'll go out and grab some chow."
"Oh, is it that late already?"
"Late enough. We can go to some restaurant and get some Italian food and work on a bottle of wine."
'Tt'd be cheaper to buy something and bring it up here."
"Who's worrying about money? I'm loaded, remember?"
"I'm serious, Eddie. The few hundred you have won't last long if you don't watch yourself."
"I thought I told you I'm taking a vacation? Don't worry about my stake."
Shrugging her shoulders, she stepped over to the closet, slipped out of the dungarees and took out a pair of bermudas. The off-hand way she stripped before him made him catch his breath. He stepped over to her, turning her toward him and let both hands rest on the swelling curve of her rounded buttocks.
"Hey, I thought you said you wanted something to eat?" she asked, leaning back in his grip.
"We can eat later," he said, squeezing the bulging panties and pulling her against him.
"Hmmm, you're nothing but a sex-machine, Eddie. Always raring to go, aren't you?"
"That's the way it is."
"Why don't you take off my panties as long as you're holding me there?"
"Good thinking," he said, shoving his hands in between the fabric and the warm, soft mounds and walking her backwards to the waiting couch.
The short, explosive coupling was over in a few minutes. The little bout sharpened Eddie's appetite and he had a double portion of spaghetti when they got to the restaurant.
The next day, he went uptown and got his new suits from the tailor. He really felt like a civilian now, they were the sharpest clothes he'd ever bought.
Selma had gone out earlier, and when she got back she told him that the modeling job had come through. They celebrated by making the rounds of the bars in the Village. It was the wrong neighborhood for Eddie's outfit. His sharp creases and well-tailored looks stood out in glaring contrast to the Bohemian garb of most people in the bars they went to.
Selma was already out on her job when he awoke the next morning. He lay around until noon, making several attempts to read some of the books she had stacked around. But it was impossible for him to understand them. Taking out his wallet, he counted out his roll.
Two hundred and sixty-seven bucks.
Not bad, and he still had the three hundred he sent home. Damned good, as a matter-of-fact. Here he was, young, holding pretty good, shacked up with a good looking babe and in New York, the biggest town in the country. It was the kind of set-up he'd always dreamed of. But somehow it seemed flat.
He needed something to do.
Putting on his new suit, he left the room and started climbing the stairs, going where he'd know all morning he'd be going. He knocked at Strang's door but there wasn't any answer. Damn it, just his luck.
Where to now? he asked himself. Another movie? That would be a hell of a way to spend his time, going from one fool movie house to another. Drinking with some rum-dums in a local bar didn't appeal to him either. The creeps in the neighborhood got on his nerves with all of their high-flown words. He had the impression that the bunch with Selma that night were making fun of him in some kind of way.
Too bad none of the guys he knew in the Navy were around town. Of course there was Chuck. It'd be good chewing the fat with him again. He'd like to show off Selma to him, too. Half the fun in having a good shack-up going for you was bragging about it with your friends.
Maybe Chuck had liberty that night. He'd try to call him up at the RecSta and see if he could get something going. Selma should be able to fix him up without any trouble. He'd have to remember to keep mom about Kathy, Chuck might have plans for her himself and get edgy if he knew that Eddie had already jumped her. You never knew how guys were going to act when it came to women.
Calling up the RecSta from a corner drug-store, he had the usual trouble finding anyone who could help him. A Wave answered and told him to wait. She was gone from the phone so long he had to pay another dime.
"Hello, are you still there?" her voice finally asked.
"Yeah, go ahead."
"Is that Huzak, Charles, quartermaster second."
"That's him."
"I'm awfully sorry, but he's not here anymore."
"Hell, you mean he's shipped out already?"
"No, they transferred him to St. Albans Naval Hospital two days ago, according to the records."
"What? What happened to him?"
"I'm sorry, I don't have that information. You'll have to check with the hospital. I have the number here, if you want it."
"Yeah, give it to me. Damn it, no wonder I never heard from him."
Calling the number the Wave gave him, he found out that Chuck was under observation for possible skull concussions occasioned in a mugging on Saturday night. Yes, he could have visitors, the hospital said and gave Eddie directions to get there.
On his way to the subway, Eddie sensed a new air of danger lurking in the buildings and behind the blank stares of the people he passed. New York was a tough town and you forgot that at your peril. Chuck was no sap and knew how to handle himself, but that hadn't helped him.
St. Alban was way to hell and gone out in Queens. Eddie rode the subway to the end of the line, and took a bus. It was three o'clock before he got to the front gate. The wards were laid out in long, single-story barrack-type structures. He found Chuck sitting next to his bed in a Navy bathrobe, his head wrapped in bandages, looking vacantly out the window at the grass-lined walks.
"Hey, hello, Chuck," Eddie said.
"Oh, Eddie. What are you doing here?"
"I just found out what happened. How do you feel? What do the docs say about you?"
"They say I'm pretty lucky. The cops who found me said I was pretty lucky too. I guess I must be a lucky guy."
"How long are they going to keep you here?"
"A couple of weeks. I'll be all right then, they say."
"What happened, anyway?"
"Oh, I got smashed and somebody rolled me."
"The dirty bastards! Did they get them?"
"The cops have an idea. They think the bartender fingered me in the last joint I was in, but they can't prove anything."
"Yeah? Listen, Chuck, tell me where the joint is and I'll look the son of a bitch up."
"Forget it, Eddie. It was my own damn-fool fault. It doesn't really matter."
"Look, Eddie, you're a good kid and all that, but don't go getting involved in my business."
"OK, if that's the way you want it," Eddie said a little angrily. Where did Chuck get off calling him a kid?
"Take it easy, don't go getting mad. How'd you do that night?"
"Terrific! I'm shacking up with that broad we met. Remember, the one you asked about Strang?"
"You're living in that same house!" Chuck said, jerking his head up with surprise.
"Yeah, crazy deal, ain't it? Say, I moved in there like nothing at all. That free love business is great stuff. That's a nice looking piece when you get her out of that crummy outfit she wears. I'll have her fix you up with something when you get out of here."
"Say, uh, did you see Strang's--I mean the girl that's up in his place?"
"Sure did. One hell of a hot-looking broad, ain't she?"
"She's no broad! Don't you go talking about Kathy that way?" Chuck said, flushing red with anger. "Hey, take it easy!"
"She's not that way, she's straight and clean and decent!" Chuck shouted, rising to his feet, his eyes desperate. A corpsman a few beds down came hurrying toward them.
"Yeah, sure, Chuck. Don't get excited, I didn't mean anything when I said that," Eddie said. Jeez, he thought, that crack on the head may have really screwed him up. Damn good thing he didn't mention that little bout he had with Kathy or he'd have started climbing the walls for sure.
"Calm down, Huzak," the corpsman said, taking out a needle and pushing Chuck down to the bed. "You'd better take off, Mac. You're just getting him excited, and with that knock on the head he can't afford getting shook up."
The spurt of emotion was over and Chuck allowed the corpsman to roll up his sleeve and make the injection.
"She's a good woman. It isn't true, isn't true," he muttered, his vacant eyes staring into nothingness.
Troubled, Eddie left. Chuck must have been hit pretty hard. There wasn't anything that he could do, it was up to the medics. He'd come again next week, maybe Chuck'd be feeling better by that time.
The trip back seemed even longer than it had coming out. Finally they left the hinterlands of Queens and the train burrowed beneath the East River. Eddie got out at the Times Square station and found himself in a squirming, sweating, pushing mass of foul-tempered, impatient people.
It was five o'clock and the rush hour was in full swing.
Even the most hardened New Yorker blanches at the thought of that miserable time. The giant buildings vomit out streams of homeward bound employees like ants deserting their nests. Pressing together haunch to haunch, they scurry through the streets and disappear into the subways like water running into a drain.
When the door to his car opened, a phalanx of sweating people came surging into him like the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers, driving Eddie back in. Through adroit use of his elbows and shoulders, he managed to bull his way out.
A sign said to follow the overhead green lights. Swinging into place in a thick column of people going his way, he made his way down the steps to a platform packed with slack-jawed subway riders waiting to be herded into their trains.
The dips and perverts in the mob were the only ones who enjoyed the situation. Eddie felt like turning and going topside to some bar where he could wait until the subways were less crowded, but it was impossible to escape the current of the throng behind him. A downtown train pulled up at the station, and when its doors opened Eddie was swept in as if he had an avalanche at his back.
Except for the few feet of tepid air at the top of the train, every cubic inch was crammed full with struggling humanity. Freeing one arm, he managed to get a grip on a sweat-moistened pole in the center. A young, light-skinned Negress was wedged between him and the pole, her sharp pointed breasts pressing against him like twin torpedo heads. The thick, glossy black hair on the top of her head came to just beneath his nose. A musty, sultry odor seemed to pervade the area around her.
Better watch your step, Eddie, he told himself. No sense in taking a chance on starting some kind of race riot. She might be one of those Black Muslims he'd been hearing about who were supposed to kill a white man a day for their religion or something.
He tried to concentrate on the ads and ignore the fact that her legs were touching his and that her belly was pressed against him just beneath his belt-buckle as the doors closed and the train jerked to a start, impelling him even closer.
The train traveled about a hundred feet past the station and shuddered to a halt. Everyone groaned and swayed together. After a few minutes, the train moved ahead a couple of dozen feet and ground to another long halt.
Eddie could feel sweat gathering at his arm pits and along the flanks of his legs. The Negress moved her shoulders restlessly, making both breasts rub against him. Above them, the fans lazily rotated, making the only sound in the filled car.
It was a ridiculous situation. He tried to think of something else but that was impossible. His desire was mounting and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
She must have been aware of his problem, but she gave no sign of it. Lord, all he needed now was for her to start yelling. They'd call a cop and drag him off to the brig. Maybe she'd pull a knife or something. These thoughts helped ease the situation somewhat.
Then the train started moving again. Lurching against her, he felt every inch of her hot body plastered against his. She began moving her loins and belly in a short up and down movement, leaving no doubt that she was aware of his desire and welcomed it. Gritting his teeth, he felt the situation grow more and more desperate. Looking down, he could see that she was shaking with silent laughter at his awkward predicament.
Damn the little black bitch! She knew he wouldn't be able to take much more of this!
The train finally made Thirty-fourth Street. Some of the people got off but more got on.
At Fourteenth Street, she decided to take a hand and hurry things along. Her back arched against the pole and the men nearby them were looking askance, thinking of the fun they would have telling their wives about this when they got home.
"Disgusting, disgusting," some old biddy dressed in what looked like Tugboat Annie's cast-off clothes said.
When the train came jolted to a stop at the West Fourth station, the girl darted out of the door. For a second he stood there, his embarassment obvious to the leering riders, then he ran through the door as it started closing.
He could see her bright red dress climbing the stairs at the end of the station. Shoving his way through the crowd with a single-mindedness that would have been a credit to a native New Yorker, he kept her in sight. She was about fifty feet ahead of him, walking with a hip-swinging gait on her spiked shoes that made passing men snap their heads around like owls.
Eddie had been too close to pay much attention to her looks in the subway but now he could see that she had a small but voluptuous body shaped for sex. Her waist was tiny, her hips big and round and her legs slim. He was already familiar with the front of her body.
"Hey, hold on there," Eddie said, grabbing her by the elbow and walking beside her.
"Hold on? What you want me to hold on, Man? Ain't I been doing enough of that?" she chuckled, baring the gold tooth set in the front of her mouth.
"How about finishing what you started?"
"You complaining? What you expect for a fifteen cent subway token?"
"I ain't complaining but that's a hell of a way to leave somebody. Let's continue the bit."
"I don't know. Maybe."
"I mean like what's it worth to you?"
Just another hustler, like he figured. If he was smart, he'd leave her flat. What the hell, why should he pay for it when he had a steady piece with Selma back in the apartment.
"What'll five get me?"
"Five! The sweat off my butt, that's what it'll get you. Ten and I'll finish the job."
"OK. Where'll we go?"
"This looks like as good a spot as any," she said, turning into a tenement. "You have a room here?" he asked, following her inside.
"Ten bucks, you ain't getting no bed, boy."
Uppidy bitch, he thought. If he wasn't so hungry for her--! Her round, ripe rump was swinging back and forth just in front of him so he gave it a resounding whack.
"Hey, Man! Knock off that crap!"
"How we going to do this?"
"You'll find out. We's gonna do it Harlem style."
They climbed up to the roof, staying inside the door that led out. On the floor below them, somebody was playing the radio. The tile floor hadn't seen a mop in years and was black with footsteps. She looked around and finding an empty can that had once contained tar, she set it against the wall.
"That's what we need, Boy."
"I don't get it."
"You will," she said, hitching up her dress until she had it gathered in a bunch at her waist. Her tawny skin was like burnished gold, warm and soft-looking. Slender legs mounted the can and spread apart as she propped her back against the wall. She wore nothing under the dress.
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
"Here?"
"Why not? What's the matter? Can't make it any more," she said, the gold tooth glinting. "Suppose somebody comes."
"Let 'em. Who gives a damn."
"Hell, you can't do it that way, can you."
"Sure I can."
"OK, I guess I'll try anything once," Eddie said, loosening his clothing. It was crazy as hell but the whole idea of taking the woman this way, almost in public and in that outlandish position, excited him tremendously. There was a tough city manner about her that challenged his masculinity.
"Just a second," she said, holding out her light-colored palm, a look of amused contempt in her eyes.
"I'll pay you when I'm finished."
"No dice, Man. You come across now or I haul it away. Plenty of others want this, you know."
"OK," he said, muffling his anger and taking out a ten. This black whore sure was taking him. Damn it, he couldn't pass her by at this stage of the game! Once he got between those smooth, golden thighs, he'd make her change her tune.
"OK, do your stuff," she said, placing both hands on his shoulders and pulling him to her.
"Wait a second. I'm the kind of a guy who likes to see what he's getting into," he said, unbuttoning her dress.
"Hey, cat, what you doing? I'm clean, you don't have to worry about that."
"It's these I've been thinking about." He spread the dress apart and both conical copper-hued breasts spilled out of their confines.
"You're a breast man, huh?"
"When I find a pair like these, I am." The pointed nipples looked as if they were carved out of mahogany and felt as if they were molded from natural rubber. Hunching against her, he dropped his hands to her thighs and lifted her up.
"That's it, you got the idea. Easy does it now," she said, wrapping both arms around his neck.
"Damn it, move it a little," he said, shifting her up and down in front of him.
"How's that, Honey?"
"Yeah, yeah!"
"Oh, oh. Here we go!"
She began jerking her torso rapidly, engulfing him with her body. His bent legs strained to hold her against the wall, his fingers digging into her soft fleshy thighs. There wasn't much he could do in that position but he didn't have to. The way she controlled her muscles would arouse the envy of a belly dancer.
She welded herself to him, her sharp teeth nipping his neck. The sweat was pouring off him by this time, his arms ached from holding her. Slowly he eased her down to the grimy floor, forcing her on her back.
"Hey, what-" she started to cry.
Now she was under him, squirming and twisting on the cold tiles, trying to push him off her with both hands. But he was having none of that. This was what he wanted, this tough little black whore under him, scratching and fighting even as her loins kept up their frantic motion.
"Stop it, you crazy ofay!" she gasped, sliding across the floor, impelled by his fervid drive.
Quickening his pace, he held her down and thrust again and again into her supple body, the creases of his new suit soggy with sweat and dirty from the filthy floor. None of this mattered, nothing mattered, nothing except her hot, excited body and the heady, heavy smell she exuded, and her gasping breath and feebly fighting hands beating at his shoulders.
"Oh, you white bastard, you lousy ofay!" she groaned.
Ignoring her, he drove on. Faster and faster. "Oh, more, more, you crazy stud!" He obliged.
Then they merged together in a bursting explosion of flesh that left them weak and helpless on the floor, drenched in sweat and covered with grime.
Applause broke out.
Looking up, Eddie saw that there were a bunch of people standing on the steps, apparently tenants of the building. One of them, a beatnik type complete with beard and sandals, was strumming a guitar. Eddie realized that he'd been supplying a beat to his own actions for the last few minutes without his knowing it.
"Good show, Stud," one of the girls said. Tall and red-haired, she was grinning at him with appreciation.
Hurriedly rearranging his clothing, Eddie managed a quick mock bow and ran down the stairs, face burning red with embarrassment as they gave out with another burst of applause.