Chapter 12

Tina's black eyes burned with a stark vengeance as she stared around the room at the group of sprawling girls on the bed. Everything would be settled tonight. Just as she planned. Some of the girls were giggling and the smell of onion and cheese hung heavy.

"All right, girls, now listen to what I have to say," Tina began. "That girl Marilyn from the newspaper has to be silenced before she goes further. There can never be any peace in the area while she remains free to pound her lies on a typewriter and inflame the authorities against us.

The girls remained silent. Tina continued.

"We all remember the Maine, don't we, from way back when we were kids in school and...."

"I don't dig it, Tina," Leslie said, "who are we going to sink-that uptown chick or another battleship?"

Tina laughed and the group was amused.

"We're all going to remember that Marilyn girl for a long time and we are going to sink her-but good and proper. Only in a way she'll be able to talk about for the rest of her life. We all know that men and women are delighted to engage in love-soberly, passionately and blindly and mindlessly. It's the only way they can come to terms with sex and themselves." Tina paused to light a cigarette. She could sense the group was anxiously awaiting the entire scope of her plan.

"I'm going to call her and dangle some information she can use in her articles about us and the other kids. She'll jump at the bait. I'll tell her something she didn't know-that her boyfriend is involved and hooked. She couldn't resist that, I'm sure. I'll set up a meeting, we'll grab her out to the cabin in the hills and give her a night she will never forget."

Tina paused. Some of the beagle brains on the girls were begging to be filled in further. The silence was deafening. Tina laughed and clapped her hands.

"Any questions?"

The red-haired girl with tattered sweater and crazy hairdo said, "Yeh-but what about when we leave her go? She'll go screaming her head off and we'll all wind up in jail. You're not supposed to hurt cops or reporters, I once read."

Tina smiled. "Excuse me, girls, that won't happen, I assure you, because we're going to take pictures of her getting the treatment," she said happily.

"What treatment?" Leslie asked. The other girls stared dubiously at each other.

Tina felt herself sweating. "I've read about the Chinese Stud treatment-something like a torture in reverse where the girl is continually aroused by hired studs until she screams for satisfaction and begs and pleads for sexual mercy. To no avail. The studs hold out after giving her a workout she'll never forget. But actually it's the pictures that will count because we will make it look as if she is engaging in a wild orgy with nude men." A wicked grin crossed Tina's face.

"Sounds great, Tina," one of the girls said, with delight, "where did you dig it up?"

Tina walked to the table and poured a glass of wine. She gulped deeply and wiped her mouth with the tablecloth.

"I thought it up, girls, honestly I did. And I think I know where to get the studs too," she added.

"How many are you figuring on, Tina?" Leslie asked.

"I thought two would be all right."

The girls nodded in agreement. "Sounds crazy but exciting," a red-haired girl in the corner said. She shut her eyes. "I certainly wouldn't want that happening to me. You could lose your mind, I think?"

Tina paused with an inquiring scrutiny at the group. "Then it's settled, she stated flatly. "I'll start the ball rolling tomorrow with a telephone call to the lady reporter."

Lou was downstairs at the bar sharing the bedlam of noise with the heavy pall of thick smoke and sipping a drink. He stared ahead as though in a trance, his mind a portfolio of conflicting emotions. Marilyn might help him. Or Linda. Or Lora. Or even a cat in a booth. His eyes flickered. His conscience awaited explanations. He probed in vain. He thought of her column this afternoon and what she had said about Tina and her gang. His thoughts wandered to Linda. What a crummy break having her in town at this time and writing a similar series for her own magazine. The developments were too messy to tidy up. He felt a wanton confusion and the pangs of fear and uncertainty gnawed at his emotions.

He had a sudden compelling urge to quit the job and the town and go to New York with Linda. But it would solve nothing. He would still have to live with himself and at the moment he didn't even know his name, rank and serial number. Then he saw Tina walking haughtily toward him-a newspaper in her hand.

He thought she looked like a noble savage as she stopped in front of him and put the paper under his nose.

"Do you know what your girl friend said about us today, Lou?" she asked, her black eyes consumed with deep hatred.

Lou swallowed. "I don't run the paper, Tina. I only work there," he said quietly.

He felt he was skidding in a puddle of sloth. She shoved the paper against his ribs. "She wrote about how dirty and filthy we live-the men we put up with and the wierd ways we make love. That's what she wrote," she said angrily.

He swallowed his embarrassment with dignity. "I told you-I had no hand in this and you have to believe me."

She slapped the bar with the newspaper and her eyes rolled wildly. "I don't have to believe anything you say. This is my neighborhood, my bar, my way of life, selected by choice and not imposed and this is what I prefer and no lousy college chick with a flair for pounding a typewriter has a right to invade my privacy. Now beat it uptown and leave me alone. For good." She walked off in a huff.

She had ruthlessly bruised his allusions and punctured his complacency with a strange, firm bittersweet quality. He felt like a bottle with a corkscrew-going round and round-then pop and out came nothing. He tried to pour some light on the alchemy of the situation but he could think of nothing to appease his conscience.

He had seldom felt so beaten, so completely outside himself, a thing of no consequences. He thought of Linda alone in her room. He scratched in his pocket for a coin as he walked to the telephone booth.

The waiting was profound. She sounded like a cherry jubilee when she heard his voice. Her invitation to come over was like a thunderstorm kissing hilltops. He dashed from the booth, his lust tinkling like ice in a martini glass.

Idiot-damn idiot he shouted to himself as he hailed a cab.