Chapter 11

Steve drove up Sixteenth Street. He peered carefully at the signs, for he had never actually been in Washington, D. C. before and the street he sought was a tiny one, out of the way and tucked snugly into an area that was like a medieval rural pocket in the heart of the nation's capital. He liked the feel of the .38 in the shoulder holster as it nestled in weighty security against his chest. Another almost equally heavy lump filled his breast pocket. He reached inside and touched his wallet. It was crammed with big bills and two cashier checks for five thousand dollars each. The New York run had been successful. The movies Lorna had made with him and a couple of other well-hung studs had paid off handsomely, and the painting studio turned over a good little income while it lasted, too.

It was now time for bigger fish. At last Steve was going to realize his dream. Just as another man might long for a high society medical practice or a chance to plead his first Supreme Court case, Steve wanted a stable of girls for a Washington gash house. It was an ideal city for such a business; Washington was full of men who were away from home, at least part of the time, and men away from home did things that they wouldn't do near the hearth rug.

A Washington call girl had to be classy, and Lorna fit the bill. He frowned, angry at himself for using the telltale word, even to himself. People who had class never referred to it as such; they called it "breeding". He would have to remember that.

"There it is," she said, pointing to a winding street.

He made a left and drove up the incline. It was an elegant rich-looking little street lined with what had once undoubtedly been townhouses. The street was horseshoe in shape, curving into another just like it

They got out of the car and walked into an old building whose thick old-fashioned walls made it ideal for the land of party that would take place there. Steve's contact had sublet the place for them.

He explained to her on the drive from New York, "It's a street lived in by rich old ladies with gold-headed canes. They've been there since the Flood. There's also an international student reception house there, which means all lands of people in all lands of get-ups come and go all the time. The kind of customers you're going to have will fit in perfectly in that neighborhood. They'll look very respectable, diplomatic-foreign-service with velvet collars types. They might even help the little old ladies across the street on their way in to see you."

She looked down at her hands and stared at the wedding ring-Dan's ring-which she was now wearing once again, at Steve's command. They were supposed to be man and wife, should anyone ask. Suddenly, she wondered what Dan was doing, what had happened to him since she had left. She was astounded that she should think about him now. Her only thoughts of her husband in the last five months had been negative and hateful. Now, though she did not want to go back to Maine, or even see Dan ever again, she still thought about him. She neither loved him nor hated him; she just wondered how he was.

She pushed the thoughts out of her mind. The ring felt heavy on her finger. It was a very thick band, plain gold and old-fashioned, but noticeable because of its size, the kind of grandmother's wedding ring that had been in style when she married him. It would have to be worn when she masqueraded as the wife of a Washington foundation executive, and removed when she carried out her real duties as a Washington call girl.

Divide and conquer.. . .

She looked at Steve's profile as they walked up the stairs. He wore just such a velvet collar as he had just mentioned, and looked the part of a diplomat himself. He bore no resemblance to the man in prison blue-gray that she had first seen. Now he was just as much of a sartorial outsider in another way. He had bought himself a lot of clothes since they had made money, but he refused to go mod. He needed only a morning coat and striped pants to complete his conservative style. Lorna could not understand it, he even wore a homburg and no one but very old men seemed to wear any hat at all nowadays. She had not seen a standard hat-a hat hat-on a man for years, except her father-in-law. For warmth as well as style, from Maine to Manhattan, all the men wore those curly black or gray Russian things. The working-class men wore caps of various sorts, something like Sherlock Holmes. Only very elderly men wore hats. Even detectives had discarded them-as she now knew very well.

And now the man in the woods without a woman wore a homburg and a black overcoat with a velvet collar. He did look like a member of the diplomatic corps, she decided. He could have been an Argentine or Chilean first secretary of something or other. He was as dressy as a . . . as a pimp, she thought reluctantly, except that a pimp was always flashy, prone to the latest fashions. She knew why Steve wanted nothing to do with the latest fashions. The pants had visible buttons on them, and he swore that he would never button another fly as long as he lived. He even had a pair of shoes that zipped up the front. As dressy as a pimp.

"Remember, if anybody asks you where your husband works, say RaeTrak."

She nodded. He had picked the name from a combination of HeadStart and ReTread, two minority help organizations. It did not exist, but it sounded so much like the ones that did that no one in Washington, he said, would doubt it. His Limousine Liberal wardrobe would certainly ward off any suspicions; he looked just like a Lindsay Democrat who worked for a well-funded government agency.

When they were safely upstairs and in the apartment, his words of warning jarred with his image.

"I don't want you wandering around this neighborhood," he ordered. "It's full of razorblade shines. And keep out of that park across the street. That's Meridian Hill and anybody who sets foot in it is either a hophead, a pusher or a narc. Order any groceries from this store here," he said, riffling through a notebook. "Charlie gave me the number. Ditto for the drugstore. If you want some air walk only on this block, and in the daytime. When the sun sets in this town the eight balls rise."

She wondered tiredly whether his concern was for her or for his property. She looked around at the apartment. What would they do during the day? Were both of them going to stay here and look at the framed prints of "The Blue Boy" and "Pinkie?"

The apartment looked as if it belonged to an elementary school principal with a little money of her own. The dining room contained that most standard of stereotypes: a mahogany set of table and six chairs. The latter had wine and white striped seats and carved lyres in the middle of the backrests.

The entire apartment looked as prim and careful and afraid to be different as any Cape Cod in suburbia she had ever seen. Here, in this overstuffed respectable hideaway, she was supposed to be a call girl.

The apartment heightened the sense of duality she had felt since she had run away with Steve. Now she was literally two people; an executive's wife in the daytime, and a politician's lay at night. Suddenly she felt exhausted, as she often did these days. She had gotten into the habit of sleeping in the daytime like Steve, but unlike him she was not a night person. Well . . . whores were famous for lounging around all day, why should she be different? If she could escape into sleep, so much the better.

She found that she was practically under house arrest. Steve went out every morning and did not return until early evening, as befitted a hardworking young foundation executive. It was a blind, of course, but he did not kill time in the parks or libraries. He was busy making "contacts" and planning his real life's work. He returned as tired as any legitimate breadwinner.

As for Lorna, she had the choice of taking a cab downtown and wandering around in the stores or the art galleries, or she could walk up and down her own street. The neighborhood was indeed not safe; several matronly women in the building warned her of that. She dared not let them get too talkative for fear they would try to make friends. It would have been easy to cultivate their friendships, for they were housebound, too. To hear them talk, it seemed that every woman in Washington was. She would have liked to talk to them, exchange coffee visits with them, but Steve had forbidden it. She was hungry for company and it hurt her to have to cut the women but she did it. As she saw their puzzled faces in the halls she felt more lonely and alienated than ever.

She walked around the horseshoe-shaped street on the cold February mornings. One day she ventured down to the corner where a red sandstone wall enclosed a hilltop property grown over with weeds. The blood-colored blocks were menacing in the cold gray morning. There was something deadly about the place, overgrown with weeds as it was. Bits of grass and weeds sprouted out from the blocks like ancient whiskers. She reached up and touched them and shivered.

Just then, one of her matronly neighbors crept by with a shopping bag.

"That's Henderson Castle," she said. "Used to be a big red house on the hill up there but they tore it down. They say they're going to put up a retirement home."

The woman hurried away with a warning to Lorna not to cross Florida Avenue.

Lorna reluctantly turned back, but she kept looking at the castle "seat" as she walked up the hill. There was something ghostly about the empty lot on that high bluff, and the thick red wall that loomed up so suddenly from the sidewalk. Who had lived there, why was it called a castle? In the restricted area of her walks she had been allowed only one block, and in that block she had stumbled upon the past.

She returned to the apartment just in time. The phone was ringing when she opened the door. It was Steve.

"I'm bringing two guests home for dinner," he told her in their code. "Have something special for them."

Steve arrived at his usual time. The men were due in an hour. They were a Massachusetts Congressman and his special assistant. Both had grown up together, gone to the Korean War together, and had seldom been parted since.

"Asshole buddies," said Steve sardonically. "They really want to fuck each other but they haven't got the nerve, so they get their rocks off by having the same woman at the same time. They're both paying a hundred bucks, so I don't care what their motivations are."

She bathed and put on a dark green hostess robe. Excitement stirred in her as she prepared for the men. The boredom of her days in Washington was going to end now; anything was better than the tedium of sameness and inactivity she had gone through this last week.

The men arrived. Both were in their early forties; one, the congressman, was a giant of a man, six-feet-six and beefy. He had a red face and when he looked at her she could imagine an American Legion Glengarry on top of his balding head. In spite of the cold February night he was sweating. Something about his typical lecherousness and repulsiveness stirred her; by screwing him and enjoying it she could escape her house arrest amid the lyre-backed chairs. She had come to the point wherein she could not function as a single personality anymore; she had to be two women because the split in her mind had gone on too long. Now she would be a whore again.

The assistant to the congressman was prematurely white-haired and dapper with handsome, classical features. If they ever got together the way they wished they could, he would be the woman.

They were both slightly drunk. The congressman put his big hands on the tops of her hips and grinned at her.

"I'm Tom and he's Ed . . . and you're a pretty little girl. What do you have underneath here?" He pulled the robe open and breathed stentorously when he saw her gleaming patch of pussy hair. He rubbed it roughly, his fingers digging between her legs.

"Ahhhh, nice soft gash. You've got a delicious little snatch, don't you? Take off that robe and let's get going!"

She threw it aside and posed before them. Their eyes roved like ball bearings over her as they quickly got out of their clothes.

"Three's company but two's a crowd, huh?" Tom chuckled. "We can keep you happy at both ends this way, can't we Ed boy?"

The assistant grinned but said nothing. He turned her over on her belly and laid her across the bed, then stood in front of her pulling on his long thin cock.

"When we were in the army together they called me Stones-for these," he said. He pulled his cock up against his belly and lifted his huge pendulous nuts. Lorna stared at the wrinkled, hair-fringed dark flesh. They were the biggest ones she had ever seen, even if his tool were on the skinny side. She knew what he wanted and opened her mouth. She sucked gently on the loose skin of his sack and drew the hard walnuts of his testes into her mouth. His legs parted, he sighed heavily and drew the heavy bag of maleness over her face.

Behind her, Tom licked ravenously under her spread thighs as he pushed her knees up for action. She rose obediently and felt his hot breath blowing like a bellows on her open crack. He rimmed her with a wet, squirming tongue and sucked loudly on her asshole while his fingers played in her gash. He fucked one of them into her vagina and circled it in deep. She felt his fingertip tickle her cervix. His big belly mashed against her naked buns and she felt his whang bob in between her spread crotch.

"Sweetheart, I'm going to bang this pretty box for you," he panted. "This team's got everything to make you happy. Ed boy has a dick that can reach your tonsils, but I've got the thick one!"

It was true. As he stuck it into her upturned cunt it felt like a fist nudging into her. She bore back on it and it screwed into her slowly, with a difficulty that both surprised and delighted her. He was stretching her almost as wide as a baby's head would and it felt wonderful!

"Ummmmm, you got a tight little nest, gorgeous. Just the kind I like. Ohhhh, that's a hot pussy!"

He forced his pistoning rod into her pussy until his jock hair brushed the back of her ass. She wriggled against his groin and pulled his dick snugly into her vaginal depths and milked it. Her thighs flexed and rippled and her creamy buns tightened as she worked on the buried prick. His hands reached under to grab her swaying boobs. As he pinched the tips and flicked his thumbs over her nipples she moaned hoarsely.

"Put your pecker in her mouth, Ed boy!" the congressman yelled. "I'll meet you in the middle!"

The slender man took her face between his hands and nestled his foot-long dick into her mouth. She opened wide for it and clasped it eagerly. Her mouth worked up and down its rigid shaft until it glistened with her saliva. It was a killer! She couldn't take it all or she'd choke to death, but he must have been used to having half of it left unfrenched. He fucked long, delectable cock strokes into her tongue, rubbing his flared tip into her soft cheeks.

It was a challenge to her that she could not take it all because she knew she was such a good french whore. Suddenly she wanted to devour it. Greedily, she pulled as much as she could into her mouth, making gustatory sounds, until it was nestled against her throat. Three inches remained outside her pinching lips but Ed looked anything but disappointed. His legs spread out until his big balls swung free.

"Go down on it, honey," he rasped. "That's the best cocksucking I've ever had!"

Triumph spiraled through her. She worked the long whang back and forth in her hungry mouth, licking his knotty head on the underside where his foreskin came together in a twisted, rubbery ring of flesh. His thighs went stiff and he threw his hips at her face. She licked the baby-smooth head and flicked the tip of her tongue over his piss slit where she tasted a briny moisture as a drop of jism dribbled out in response to her hard work.

Then she inched her pursing, squeezing lips up his shaft until it rubbed her palate again. Her teeth closed gently around it as she sucked and squeezed and swabbed it into her gums. Her head snapped back and she drew it forward, molding her lips around his foreskin as her tongue fluttered in furious abandon around the mushroomed hood.

She grunted in rapture at the feel of the hardness filling her mouth as the thick hammer of the other cock slammed without mercy into her cunt. Her cheeks expanded and hollowed . . . suck-slide-release-suck-slide-release. She panted as she jerked her head back and forth like a cat with a captured mouse, teasing, flicking, nibbling. Never had she enjoyed a prick in her mouth more than now, when she also had one banging up against her womb! They were right; three was company!

She tightened her lips over the moving rod until a grinding pain spread through her neck and jaws. Every muscle in his body went rigid; he shouted obscenities and grabbed her face as his jism spurted out of him in a hot stream. She swallowed it and sucked for more, her aching mouth weak and smeared with come. She squeezed his dong and pulled on it with long drags until she had every drop of what he had to give her.

He staggered back, his breath labored. Behind her, the big man threw himself over her and licked ravenously at the back of her neck, her ears, drooling spittle into them as he threw his massive rod against her upturned rump. He came with a loud yowl and she felt his cock quiver inside her flexing, climactic vagina.

When he let her go and climbed off her, they both got into bed, placing her in the middle.

"Well have a little break, then make a sandwich, eh, Ed boy? Well both fuck her at the same time."

As the big ruddy man loomed over her, they looked squarely into one another's faces for the first time. He had sobered up a little now and he peered sharply at her. When their eyes met and she saw his beady glance flicker over her hair, it all came back to her. He had looked at her like that once before, caught by her red-gold coloring. It had been at a party in Portsmouth, a gathering of New England politicos.

They recognized each other at exactly the same moment.