Chapter 6
At ten-fifteen P.M. there wasn't a soul on Main Street.
There were people awake and aboard, of course. The Four Star had been gradually filing up as the evening progressed, the lights were still burning in the shoe repair shop of Sal Lambino, and behind the drawn curtain of Giacomo Carella's barber shop. If anyone had been standing in the middle of Main Street around ten-fifteen, he would have heard plenty of evidence that people were still up and enjoying themselves.
But there wasn't anybody in the middle of Main Street, so no one in town saw the fantastic thing happen.
Out of the dark maw of Greene Street stepped Gully Fry with a strange woman at his side. He stopped and looked around for a moment. Then, satisfied, he nodded to the woman and turned the corner onto Main, heading toward the offices of the Weekly Herald and keeping very close to the walls. The woman followed.
Behind her followed a girl. Then another, and yet another, all pouring around the corner in one sinuous flow, like a gigantic snake-or perhaps a train, with Gully Fry as its engine, the fat woman playing the part of the tender, and twenty incredible girls in a row, all followed by a baldheaded caboose wearing a bus driver's hat.
If there had been anyone to see, it would have been the girls who really stopped him. Nowhere in the town's history had there been such a display of feminine flesh, on Main Street or any other street. Twenty girls, all wearing clinging, low-cut dresses, not a one of them wearing a bra. Forty luscious breasts, bouncing and swinging with every movement of forty lithe calves, twenty jutting butts, forty pretty cheeks going two by two, jiggling and flexing and working from side to side. Forty solid and practiced thighs molding themselves against thin skirts, hinting wantonly at the lustful V they would form to welcome any man.
If anyone had seen it, he probably would have dropped dead of a heart attack.
But there wasn't a soul.
And so the Big Parade passed unnoticed from the corner of Greene and Main down to the Weekly Herald, and through the door and out of sight. When the lights went on a moment later inside the newspaper office, all the blinds were drawn. And before the hands of the town clocks touched ten-twenty, the show on Main Street was over.
But there was plenty of activity elsewhere.
"Again?" asked Abbie incredulously.
"Yes, George replied. His voice was hoarse with exertion.
"Oh crap," said the girl. "I don't believe you got another one in you. That's three times already."
"Try me," said George.
"No thanks. Three is enough for me. More than enough. Get off me, George, let me up."
"No sir. I want you again, Abbie."
"George, that's too much. It ain't any fun after twice. I don't even feel it after twice."
"I do," George said. "You ain't leaving here until you open up again, Abbie."
"Look you," Abbie said, her eyes going hard with anger. "Just because you gave me that there cream don't mean you bought me outright. I still got a privilege to say no to you, 'specially after I already let you take me three times tonight. I want to quit now, George-it's getting late, and my folks are going to be wondering. Besides, my legs are getting sore. You got me all worn out."
"You ain't going nowhere until after Number Four," said George.
"I'll scream," she said. "I'll bring the neighbors in here and yell rape."
"Sure-you do that." He smiled. "Tell them how you just happened to be walking through the hayloft here without no brassiere or panties on, and how I flung you down and had you three times in a row before you decided to start screaming. Wouldn't that make a pretty story?"
She sighed, and her breasts shifted against his chest. "All right! I swear, I never seen anybody with such a case of the hots. The way you act, you'd think sex was the most important thing in the world."
His body lifted, supported by his hands, and all of a sudden he was swinging against her once more, driving with a fury that took her completely by surprise. She felt her shoulders slide in the hay as the impact of his pounding abdomen beat at her.
"George, take it easy," she cried. Her breasts were dancing painfully all over her chest, and she had to reach up and hold them as the boy nailed her to the hayloft floor.
"It is so...." George said, gritting his teeth with exertion. "It is so the most important thing in the world. Don't you ever say it ain't, you hear me? Not ever!"
She gave up trying to argue with him. Boys were like this sometimes;. It had happened to her many times before. When a boy got a case of the crazy hots, there was nothing to do but just lie there and let him work it off.
She rolled her head in the straw and looked out the window while George rutted and snorted on top of her. The moon had climbed well up into the sky. She could see only a tiny bit of it beneath the upper edge of the window.
It was ten o'clock already-maybe even later-and that meant she was missing Perils of the G-Men, her favorite program.
Honestly-these men....
Giacomo Carella heard a knock at the back door of his barber shop.
For an instant he remained frozen in place, his eyes staring in shock at the door, his hands stopping dead in their solitary work.
The knock sounded again.
"Just-just a minute," he called. His voice sounded thin and boyish, and he imagined that the nature of what he had been doing could be detected in his voice. The conviction filled him with dread.
He made himself decent quickly, pulled open the drawer of the table at which he sat, and swept all the glossy photographs into it. The drawer wasn't a very safe place for the photos, but there was no time to return them to their customary spot in the mental box beneath the floorboard. If he took too long to answer the door, his visitor might begin to wonder what was wrong, and that would never do.
He stood up and went to the back door. With his hand on the bolt, he glanced down at himself, checking to make sure that the evidence of what he had been doing no longer was visible. Then he drew the bolt and pulled the door open. The girl on the back steps was young, but not very pretty. Her features were coarse, and the lumping of breasts and hips and belly inside her dress was gross. The expression on her face was even more gross and coarse than the rest of her.
Giacomo Carella closed his eyes for a moment.
It was Marge Webster, the girl who lived on the south end of Center Street, the one who palled around with Abigail Tate all the time, the one who-according to the stories-was willing to lay herself down for just about anyone, the way Abbie did.
And the only one in town who knew what Giacomo Carella did in his barbershop alone, late at night.
"Hi, Jocko," said she, coming up the last step and pushing him aside. "Mind if I come in?"
He closed the door quickly and bolted it. "What do you want?" he asked.
She strolled around the shop slowly, picking up scissors and combs and tossing them down carelessly. "Just thought I'd drop over, Jocko, and see what was cooking. You know."
Carella licked his lips. "You're crazy," he said. "You shouldn't come here. Suppose somebody saw you?"
"I don't care if somebody sees me," she said.
"Well, I care," Carella said.
Marge smiled. "I don't care about what you are, either."
She completed her circuit of the shop and turned to face him. He was forced to drop his gaze. Her expression was the same one she had worn the night she caught him, the night he made the stupid mistake of leaving the shade up a few inches on the rear window, the night her filthy laughter petrified him right in the middle of it, with his head bent over the spread of photos on the table, his hands manufacturing pleasure beneath it.
The same expression she had worn that night, and all the other nights she dropped by to spend some time with her friend Jocko. There had been many such nights.
He inhaled deeply, calming his nerves and fighting down the sourness of unfulfilled excitement in his belly. He opened his eyes.
Marge was sitting in a barber chair with her feet up on the support. She had kicked off her shoes, and her thick legs were bare. Her arms were folded under the over-ripe melons of her breasts.
"You know," she said, "Abbie Tate's getting it tonight."
"Is she?" asked Carella dully.
"From Willie Link's boy, George. Abbie stopped over a while ago and told me all about it." Carella didn't say anything. Marge grinned. "And you know what? "
"What?"
"All that talk of Abbie's-it got me in the mood, Jocko."
Carella had to clench his hands to keep the trembling from showing. He walked stiffly over to the table and started to sit down, but Marge's voice stopped him.
"Bring that chair over here, Jocko. I wanna talk some." Carella dragged the chair across the shop and sat down heavily next to the girl.
"There-ain't that better?" Marge tilted her head back and smiled at the ceiling. "Yeah, old Abbie really got me in the mood with all her talk. Got me thinking about having some fun. It's been awhile since I had any fun. So I thought of you over here all alone, and I figured I should pay you a visit."
"Why don't you leave me alone?" Carella asked. "There are plenty of young boys in town for your fun. There are even some grown-up men who would give you what you want. Why do you keep coming to me?"
She laughed. "I like you, Jocko. I think you're cute. Besides you're the first nutty man I ever met, and that gets to me, it really does."
Carella bent his head and slipped his hand over his eyes.
"Let's see them pictures, Jocko," said Marge.
Carella didn't lift his head. "They're not here," he said.
"Oh, is that right? Whereabouts are they, then?"
"I got rid of them. I burned them."
She laughed, and the sound filled him with revulsion. "Boy, that'll be the day-when crazy Jocko Carella gets rid of his pictures. You never did nothing of the kind. Why if you didn't have your pictures, you wouldn't have a thing in the world, would you, Jocko?"
So cruel, he thought, and so young to be so cruel. What would she be like when she grew to be an adult? What further cruelties would she devise when maturity had expanded the horizons of her mind? How long could he live with her always hovering at the edge of his world, jeering at him, demanding disgusting payment in exchange for her silence?
"I wanna see them pictures, Jocko. Don't try to crap me, now-they're right here, same as usual. Go get them and bring them here."
Only a child, he thought, as he arose from his chair and went slowly over to the table. Only a young girl-and yet she bore the stamp of this town as its oldest and most rotted inhabitant. The town made her what she was, just as the town made them all, sending its subtle influences up from the earth like the smell of corpses, poisoning the mind even before it had completely formed.
He' took the photos from the drawer, piled them neatly, and carried them back to Marge. Her hand was extended and her mouth was smiling wetly as he handed them over.
"Look at that," she said, examining the first of the photos. "I swear, I don't never get tired of looking at these crazy things, Jocko. They are the weirdest."
Carella didn't answer her.
"I tell you, Jocko," said Marge, putting the pictures down on the arm of the barber chair. "I think I'll get a little comfortable here, so I can really enjoy looking at these pictures. That all right with you?"
Carella didn't answer.
Marge lifted her skirt up over her white thighs and stripped down her worn panties. When she lifted her legs clear of the garment, the meat on the underside of her thighs quivered like jelly.
"There we go." she said. "That's much better," She took her feet from the foot rest of the chair and slid her knees open. "Now, how about you let this here chair back, so I can really get all comfy? What do you say?"
He pulled the handle which allowed the chair to recline, and watched silently as she let herself down into it.
"That's just fine," she said. She had the pictures in her hand again, and she held them up over her face. "Oh, and just one more little thing, Jocko. Long as I'm here visiting with you and all, don't you think you ought to entertain me some? I mean you're the host and I'm the guest, and you want your guest to enjoy herself while she's visiting, don't you?"
Carella didn't answer her.
"Why don't you come sit here on this foot rest and take care of your visitor. Jocko?"
He arose tiredly from the chair and swung his leg over the leather-padded rest. When he had seated himself, her knees were on either side of his face. Still he didn't answer her.
"These crazy pictures," said Marge. "I get such a charge out of these things. One of these days, maybe I'll tell Abbie about these great pictures you got, Jocko. Might tell her tomorrow unless you treat me right. I guess you wouldn't like that much, would you? "
He didn't answer her. The pivoting foot rest creaked as he leaned forward. His face was blank and stony, and his eyes looked as if they been painted on his face.
Why did things have to be this way? he wondered. Wasn't it bad enough to be what he was? Why did fate keep singling him out for pain and torment-twisting his mind into perverted paths, denying him the courage to follow the perversion, forcing him into sickening intimacy with all the things that repelled him most?
Why couldn't they leave him alone to rot as he pleased?
"That's fine Jocko-that's just fine. You just keep doing that, do it as if you liked it, and everything's going to be just fine." The girl sprawled contentedly in the chair and thumbed through the photos in fascination. "Hey, Jocko you ever do it with a man like these two guys is doing it? Do queers really do it like it is in these pictures? I always wondered what queers did-couldn't never figure it out till I got a look at your pictures, Jocko. You ever do it like this, Jocko? Huh?"
Carella didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Simon Tate was naked.
He stood in the center of the second-floor bedroom of his house, his body white and slug-like in the light from the overhead fixture.
Across from him stood Nora, her thin body as naked as his own. She was trembling, and the small hard apples of her breasts jiggled on her thin torso.
She looked so damn small when she was naked, thought Simon. She looked half as big as she looked in clothes.
The effect pleased him. The trembling pleased him even more. He was really in the mood for the game tonight.
"Ready, Nora?"
She inhaled with a shudder. "Yes, Simon."
"Simon says, hands on hips." She put her hands on her hips. "Simon says, hands on head." Nora put her hands on her head.
He smiled, and began to speed up his chatter. "Simon says, hands on shoulders; Simon says hands on hips; Simon says, hand straight out, hands on shoulders...."
He watched with delight as her hands started toward her shoulders, then stopped and hung trembling in mid-air.
"Oh, that's a pity, Nora. Why, I caught you right off the bat. I didn't say 'Simon says' that last time, and you know you shouldn't move unless I say 'Simon says'. Right? Are those the rules or aren't they?"
"Yes, Simon," Nora said faintly.
"Oh, well-we're only just getting started. Maybe you'll get better after we play for a while. Okay, now turn around and take your penalty like a good girl."
She let her hands fall at her sides and closed her eyes. She stood quite still for a moment, and he let his gaze roam over her body.
Thin and small as she was, she still looked good. It was as if the years had been shrinking her without subtracting from her mass-as if the flesh of her body was compressing. Her small breasts were hard and capped with tight tiny nipples; her abdomen was concave, framed by the tiny bones of her slender hips; her legs were alive with small, delicate muscles; even the joints of her knees and the bone-work of her feet made patterns which always fascinated him.
Like a little rubber doll, he thought but not just any old rubber. Hard rubber. Good rubber. Rubber that could really take punishment, and spring right back for more.
Rubber like the solid length of garden hose that he held in his right hand.
Nora turned. The bureau they shared was behind her. She put her palms on it, then bent her body and let her head down between her hands. The neat globes of her buttocks drew up tightly.
He crossed the room and stood behind her.
Yes, sir! Things were fine. What man in the world could argue with a life like this? Excitement was right in front of your nose, if you knew how to look for it.
Simon lifted the hose and lashed it brutally across his wife's hard buttocks. She didn't make a sound, but he noticed with satisfaction that the muscles in her thighs jumped and trembled in response to the pain. A dull red stroke slowly painted itself across the track of the blow.
Simon felt his lust growing. He could hardly wait to get Nora into bed.
But of course the game had to be played out first.
The moon dropped below the horizon at three a.m., and a vast darkness settled over the town. The only light showing was the neon sign in the window of the Four Star Grill. Garfield Smith liked to leave that sign burning all night; it was a whim.
Aside from this patch of neon, there wasn't a stir of life anywhere.
But after all, at three o'clock in the morning, most good little towns are usually tucked away.