Chapter 5
On his way out through the reception room Paul noticed that the receptionist had taken off her suit jacket and draped it over the back of her chair. She was wearing a white sweater and against that slender, almost angular torso, her breasts were really remarkable, jutting out like pennants in a stiff breeze. She had good legs, too, Paul had noticed through the opening in the front of her desk, and all and all she was quite a good-looking girl, in an antiseptic sort of way. Paul had an uncontrollable urge to thaw that icy exterior, slide his cock into her warm interior. He walked back to her desk and stood directly in front of her.
"Would you have lunch with me today?" he asked her quietly. There were three men in the reception room, leafing through magazines, but he kept his back to them and knew they couldn't hear anything he said.
"What?" she said. For just a second, she looked startled. It was the first genuine expression he'd seen on her face.
"Lunch," he said, still speaking softly. "I have to come back this afternoon to see Mr. Gelder. I may come to work here and I thought maybe you'd be good enough to have lunch with me and tell me a little about the place."
"All right," she said. "Where?"
"You name it. I'm new in this neighborhood."
"There's Ratazzi's," she said. "But you'll probably need a reservation."
"Where's Ratazzi's?"
"Forty-eighth. Between Madison and Fifth."
"I'll be at the bar at twelve."
"Fine," she said, smiled her icy smile, and looked back at some papers on her desk. He turned and walked the length of the room without seeing anyone even look up. As he pushed through the glass doors he was aware that he was whistling, under his breath. "You Took Advantage of Me" was the tune.
He hadn't even had time to order a drink at the bar when she came through the door into the dimness of Ratazzi's. She looked much less severe out of the office. Her mouth was much fuller and softer than it had appeared behind her desk that morning.
He had reserved a table for two and the maitre d' seated them side by side in a banquette at the extreme rear of the place.
"I always feel uncomfortable, sitting like this," he said, waving away a menu. "Like I'm one of a row of birds on a fence."
"If you're trying to call me a chickadee," she said, "you can stop right now."
"Wouldn't think of it"
"I like sitting like this. You can watch people."
"Seems to me you'd get enough of looking at people, all day long."
"I never get tired of looking at people."
"What'll you drink?"
"A vodka Martini on the rocks, I guess. I don't usually drink them at lunch but it would be defying tradition not to, in this place."
The waiter had written it down, without any middle man.
"I'll have a Scotch and water," Paul told him. He turned to her in minute apology. "I don't want to fool with Martinis when I have to talk to the man named Boss this afternoon."
"You're very wise," she said. "This way, one of you will be sober, at least."
Her name was Norma and she was right about not usually drinking Martinis at lunch. Halfway through the second one, her hand was squeezing his leg. That was all right because his hand was squeezing hers, too, at a wonderfully soft, yielding spot he'd found just above her knee, on the inside. Nobody noticed anything because the tablecloth was long, but it was not long enough for what Paul had in mind. No tablecloth was that long.
"Are you getting hungry?" Paul asked her. Her hand was moving further up his leg, and any minute now she was going to strike gold.
"No," she said, and finished half of what was left in her glass. "Not at all. I always eat a big breakfast downstairs before I come into the office."
"I'm not either," Paul said.
"I hardly ever get hungry at lunch," she said. "Sometimes I don't eat at all." The edge of her hand, on its slow trip up his inner thigh, came up against the hard fist that was the head of his stiffened prick. Her hand recoiled, in a poor simulation of dismay, as she looked at him, curious about his reaction. Involuntarily, he felt himself grinning at her. She put her hand back, around the full thickness of the shaft, and her hand moved up and back, slowly, exploring the length of it. Her eyes widened in wonder.
"Now there's noontime nourishment for a growing girl," she said.
"Full of vitamins," he said, taking his hand out from between her moist upper thighs and motioning for the waiter. "Shall we go somewhere?"
"Yes."
"Where's your place?"
"On Perry Street, in the Village. It would take too long to get down there and back again and it's a mess anyway."
"On the way up from Grand Central I walked through a nice big impersonal hotel. It's only two short blocks down Madison. I'll get a room."
He paid the check and they got up and started out through the hum and the sound of ice.
"I'll call the girl who's taking my place at the desk," Norma said, "so she can send out for something before she starves to death."
"Tell her your aunt in Rochester had a heart attack."
"That's just what I'll do. I'll tell her my aunt in Rochester had a heart attack, so I'll be a little late getting back from lunch."
"Good sound thinking, all around," Paul said. "Then stay near the phone. I'll call you from the hotel as soon as I have a room number. What's your last name again?" He was a little embarrassed to have to ask, but she didn't seem to mind.
"Olsen," she said. "Can you remember it?"
"You're the one who had the Martinis," Paul said.
He had no trouble getting a room at the hotel. Without luggage, he had to pay cash in advance, but he'd known that. The bellhop insisted on escorting the key up to the room for him, to switch on the light and open a window and collect a tip. Paul called Ratazzi's two seconds after the door had closed behind him.
Norma must have been standing next to the phone booth. She answered the phone herself.
"Room 814," he told her.
"I'm glad it isn't 969 or something like that," she said. 1 would think you made it up."
"Eight-fourteen," he repeated distinctly. "Can you remember it?"
"The Martinis have worn off," she said. "But nothing else has."
He undressed quickly, down to his shorts, and had just finished hanging his suit in the closet when he heard her tap at the door.
She looked him over for a long minute after the door was closed behind her.
"You're beautiful," she said.
"So're you," he said, and put his arms around her and kissed her. She didn't open her mouth, and felt stiff in his arms. It seemed somehow depraved, standing there almost naked with his arms around a girl all dressed up in her good office clothes. It was probably bothering her, too, he figured.
"Why don't we get you into something more comfortable?" he said.
"You're full of good ideas," she said, and took off her jacket. He put it on a hanger and hung it in the closet. She slipped out of her sweater while he watched, stepped out of her skirt, and kicked off her shoes, and stood before him in only a bra and a half-slip.
Without the bra, her breasts still stood out like pennants, only now they jiggled, just with her breathing. Ha stepped forward, cupping them in his hands, and sucked each petulant pink bud of a nipple in turn. They came erect, pointing upward, two tight little wrinkled roses. She was staring down at the grotesque extension of the throbbing left leg of his shorts.
He hooked his thumbs into her half-slip and slid it to the floor. She stepped out of it and sat down on the edge of the bed, raising her long slender legs and pulling of her pants. Her cunt was a wet open gash in the brown silken curls.
"You've forgotten my lunch," she said, and reached out to pull his shorts to the floor. Without hesitation, she leaned forward, opened her mouth wide, and gulped in the head of his cock.
He put his hands behind her head and drove it back into her throat. She choked, and rolled her eyes up at him.
"Let's not waste it," he said, and tumbled her back into the middle of the bed. He kissed her, hard, and her mouth opened and her tongue met his. He drew away and kissed her throat, moved down, licked her nipples, pinching the hard buds with his lips. He put his tongue in her navel, and his hands wandered in a random caress all over the length of her long, neat body, surprisingly soft to the touch. He licked his way across her flat belly, down to the mound of fur at the base. There was just the hint of hipbones framing the belly. Slash you to ribbons, he thought, if you're not careful.
He tongued her cunt open and licked her swelling clitoris. He felt no discernible response but she was sopping wet. He'd stay away from those stabbing hipbones, he thought.
He stretched out at right angles to her and raised the slender white leg nearest him. His thighs clamped above and beneath the upper part of her other leg as he brought his hips up and in under her raised knee. The swollen purple glistening head of his great throbbing prick found the soft open lips of her cunt mouth without guidance.
His lips drove the stiff shaft inward with a powerful thrust, and it slid in easily, deeply, with the first stroke. He withdrew, to the very tip of the spear, and plunged it in again, to the hilt. His pubic mound jammed hard against her yielding twat lips. Her hips did not move.
Angered, he began to fuck her with long, plunging strokes, driving his cock deep, withdrawing it to the head, driving it in again, with a furious, pounding rhythm. There was no response from her hips, no sound from her lips. He stopped in mid-stroke.
"What's wrong?" he said, looking up at her face. She turned her head on the pillow, a pleading look in her eyes.
"Put it in the other way," she said. "Please?"
"What other way?"
"You know," she said. "Up my ass."
It won't fit"
"It'll fit."
"Roll over."
"We don't have to do it that way," she said, and reached up and pulled the other pillow down. She arched her back upwards, raising her hips, and settled the pillow under the round white mounds of her buttocks.
The soft wet lips of her cunt made a tiny plopping sound as he withdrew.
"Try it now," she said. "It'll fit."
He pushed, gently, and watched in amazement as his swollen prick head sank in and disappeared. It was as if a drawstring had loosened, and now tightened again around his oaken shaft. God, it was tight. But it would take more than a tight asshole to choke the life out of it.
He plunged it in, wonderingly, and the thick base of his shaft came to rest between the welcoming fleshy globes of her ass.
"Don't stop," she said, and he noticed that her teeth were clenched. "Fuck me hard, all the way up the ass."
Anything to please, he thought. He fucked her, hard, all the way up the ass, just as she asked. He plunged his prong deep, as deep as it would go, his pelvic bone slamming into her welcoming bottom, again, and again, and again. She was gasping and groaning now, her hands given over to a convulsive clutching of the sheet. He raised one hand and found her twat opening. His two middle fingers slid into the soft dampness, and he began fingerfucking her in time with the pounding of his prick.
A long, quivering, continuing moan came from her throat.
"That's it, baby," she said. "All the way up. Fuck me all the way up. I'll do anything for you. I'll suck you off any time. I'll lick you. I'll ream your ass with my tongue."
She was gasping now, her hips squirming and bouncing as he drove his long, piercing rod faster and faster, deeper and deeper, into the tight clutching channel of her anus. His fingers worked furiously in the moist quivering cave of her cunt, and suddenly she began to shudder, and a muffled scream started somewhere in her throat. He pumped his cock up into her ass with lightning strokes, and as she stiffened and began to flail her legs in orgasm, he came with her, squirting his juices up inside her, his belly glued tight against the wet globes of her grateful ass.
After a long while, he withdrew his limp pecker from the tight grip of her sphincter and lay back, wishing for a cigarette. She got up, shaking her head like a dog coming out of water; and, almost as if she were reading his mind, she padded over to the dresser and came back to the bed with his cigarettes. He thanked her, mutely, with his eyes.
She turned toward him from the open door to the bathroom.
"We must have lunch again some time," she said. "We will," he said. "I expect to be working there soon, you know."
"You might even come down to Perry Street It isn't so far to go, after work."
She closed the door behind her, and he heard the shower running. He looked at his watch. Quarter to two. That gave him time to eat before he saw Gelder.
Maybe this Norma girl didn't care about eating lunch, but he did. Paul was hungry.
He walked into Bob Gelder's office feeling totally relaxed, well-fed, and filled with confidence. If Gelder was loaded, as Sam Wycliffe had predicted, it didn't show, except maybe a little around the eyes. Gelder, like Wycliffe, was a big man, but older, and softer. His hair was pure silver; Paul wondered if he had it touched up. He looked almost distinguished, except that there was a cruel toughness balancing the weakness in his features. He'd never make it in politics, Paul thought Nobody over voting age would trust him.
But he was downright jovial when he got up and came around the desk to shake hands.
"Sam Wycliffe is damn impressed with you, Paul," he said. "Knows your family, but he says he never knew you'd turn out so good."
"He knows my mother," Paul said. "Or did."
"That figures," Gelder said, and looked out the window. "How old are you? Sam didn't say."
Twenty-two," he said easily. He knew damn well Sam did say.
"Ha," Gelder said, and looked out the window again. "You're a healthy looking specimen, I'll say that for you."
Too much clean living," Paul said.
"We'll soon put an end to that," Gelder said, looking back at him and smiling. He was a charmer when he smiled.
"Does that mean I'm going to work for you?" Paul asked.
"Sure. You look as if you could carry the ball for us."
"Great," Paul said. He meant it. All those fringe benefits he'd seen, bouncing around the place.
"You'll be working with Harold Dingman for a while, at least until you learn your way around. He's a good man and a nice guy. You'll get along fine."
"Mr. Wycliffe mentioned him," Paul said.
"You'll have a lot to do with Sam Wycliffe, too. And you'll get along with him, as you stay alert of his one overwhelming trait"
"What is it?"
"He's a fucken idiot."
"I'll try to remember," Paul said.
They talked about salary, and Paul hadn't the faintest idea how much to ask for. But Gelder took him off the hook, and when he told Paul what he thought would be a reasonable salary for him, just for openers, Paul was more than just pleased. He was close to ecstatic, but he tried not to show it.
"When do you want to start?"
Paul hadn't thought about that, either.
"Monday," he said.
"Fine," Gelder said, and they shook hands. "See you then."
He headed straight for Sam Wycliffe's office, and stuck his head in the door. Wycliffe was behind his desk, staring straight ahead at nothing. He looked as loaded as he'd predicted Gelder would be.
"I start Monday," Paul said. Wycliffe focused on him, then got up and came around the desk, motioning Paul inside. He shook hands.
"Fine," he said. "Fine. Gelder say anything about carrying the ball for us?"
"I think he did."
"Fucken idiot," Wycliffe said.
"He seemed like a nice guy."
"He always does. The first time you meet him. Paul?"
"Yes?"
Wycliffe lowered his voice.
"Around the office here," he said, "keep it in your pants, will you? At least during working hours."
"I'll take the vows."
"No need to overdo it," Wycliffe said. "Maybe a little, what the girls call a noonsie, once in a while, can't do any harm."
Paul felt a flush rising to his face, and was helpless to stop it
"What's the matter with you?" Wycliffe asked.
"Nothing," Paul said, and affected a strangled cough. "I got something caught in my throat."
"Drink some water," Wycliffe said. I'm due at his goddamn meeting." He left Paul standing in his office, coughing.
As soon as Wycliffe was out of sight, Paul stopped coughing. He reached into his side pocket for his cigarettes, and his hand touched the hotel room key. Shame to waste it, he thought He was enormously elated.
Wycliffe's little redheaded secretary looked up when he came out of the office. She smiled at him. She had a wonderful smile.
"I'm starting work here Monday," he told her.
"Congratulations," she said. "You'll like this place."
"I know I will." He had a thought It had been there all along.
"Will you have a drink with me after work? Sort of a celebration drink?"
"Well." She thought a minute. "Sure. Where?"
Paul thought for a long moment Not Ratazzi's. That might be a hangout of Norma Olsen's.
"The Miramar, on Forty-Sixth Street?" He'd met his mother there for lunch, a number of times. Back when he was young.
"Fine."
"What time do you finish work?"
"Depends on Mr. Wycliffe. I'm usually out of here by half past five."
"All right," he said. "I'll be at the bar at five-thirty."
"See you there," she said, and turned to her typewriter.
On his way to the elevators, he became aware that he was whistling again, under his breath. "World on a String," this time.