Chapter 6

When Paul got to the Miramar shortly after five, the bar was moderately busy. While he was sipping his first Scotch, he gathered from the conversation around him that he was surrounded by broadcast people from the radio station across the street. From the window you could see the station's call letters mounted large in stainless steel above the entrance of the building directly across from the bar. It was hard not to now that they were broadcast people. Like the actors and assorted show people he had met among his mother's friends, they were always on; but they needed no microphones. Their voice level carried clearly from one end of the bar to the other, and back again. Most of their conversation was anecdotal, and very "in," about what Walter B. said to Henry, but it was amusing, even out of context. He was on his second Scotch and enjoying himself when the little redhead appeared, perky and smiling, at his shoulder. He realized for the first time that he didn't know her name.

"You're one up on me," he said, getting off the stool "You know my name."

"And you don't know mine," she said. "I wondered about that Eileen's my name. Eileen Fahey. And don't laugh."

"Why should I laugh?"

"People usually do, the first time they hear the name Fahey. Then they start singing 'Danny Boy' or go into some lousy Erin Go Blah accent."

"Not me," Paul said. He remembered something. "Anyway, Mr. Wycliffe told me not to do any singing."

"Why?"

It's a long story," he said. "Shall we sit down?"

"If you want to," she said. "But sitting at the bar's fine with me. I like to sit at bars."

"That's because your name's Fahey."

"There you go," she said.

"Let's sit down," he said. "These radio guys will be going on full network in a little while."

A waiter led them toward the back, and sat them side by side, again, at a table against the wall.

"I'll have a Martini," she told the waiter, while they were sitting down. "Straight up. No vegetables."

Jesus, he thought. It was some kind of occupational monkey they had on their backs.

"Scotch and water," he said.

"Don't you like Martinis?" she asked him.

"Sure," he said. "But it looks to me like some kind of conformity, and I'm not nuts about that. Besides, I have seen a lot of Martini drinkers on my mother's side of the family. I think they corrode the brain."

She laughed.

Then there's a lot of corroded brains lurching up and down Madison Avenue," she said. "So I've heard." The drinks arrived.

"Do you think you'll like this business?" she said, sipping.

"I know I will. Especially since you're in it"

"Oh, put a lid on that" she said.

"I mean it. You're the first unphony I've met all day. The other people I've talked to up at the agency are so goddamn down-to-earth that they just plain reek phony."

She was quiet for a minute, turning the stem of her glass. She seemed to be thinking. She also seemed pleased.

"How old are you, Paul," she asked. Twenty-two."

"Bullshit," she said. "How old are you, then?"

"You're never supposed to ask a woman her age."

"You're not supposed to only if it's apparent that they're over twenty-one. And you're not."

I'll be twenty in three months."

Hot damn, he thought. Practically what they call a contemporary.

"I was just twenty last month," he said.

"All right" she said. That, I'll buy."

She seemed unaffected by the first two drinks, but on the third one he noticed that she was slipping fast. For the second time that day the thought came to him that these girls were in over their depth when they started drinking Martinis.

Eileen was getting affectionate, in a clean sort of way-it was his hand she squeezed, not his cock-and it disturbed him. In his code of behavior, if he had any code of behavior, plying women with liquor had gone out with the mandolin. Not because he thought it was wrong to use liquor to get laid, but because he had found it totally unnecessary, and because he did not like drunken females, especially drunken young females. They had a tendency to pick fights, to vomit on your shoes, to pass out, or, at best, to be unresponsive when the time came. So, when Eileen got near the bottom of her third Martini, he motioned for the check.

"No," she said. I'd like another one, please."

"Well, all right But let's order some dinner along with It"

I'm not hungry."

It was the second time today he'd heard that "After this drink," he said, "I better get you home." Jesus, he thought you're a noble bastard, all of a sudden.

"I don't have to go home so soon," she said. "I called my folks and said I'd be staying in town for dinner."

In town for dinner? He'd assumed all working girls had apartments in New York. His plans for the future were now all shot full of holes.

"You live with your parents?"

"Yes, if you can call it living."

"Where?"

"Bronxville."

Holy Christ, he thought. A neighbor, practically. Now he'd have to get this crocked young broad on the train with all those goddamn commuters and take her out to where his car was parked at the Scarsdale station, and drive her back to Bronxville. And hold her up while he delivered her to her parents. He thought he'd graduated from all that middle-class suburban shit when he graduated from high school.

The drinks came, and she finished half of her Martini in one long swallow. She looked up at him with deep affection. The pupils of her eyes were swimming. Out of her depth, Paul thought. For God's sake, the girl was drowning. She leaned her head against her shoulder. Please don't pass out here, he thought. Please.

Then he had a thought. A noble thought. An honest-to-God noble thought. Jesus, but he was thinking like a gentleman tonight. Maybe the thought of being respectable and employed was too much for him.

"Eileen," he said softly. Her eyes were closed. She opened them.

"What?"

"How do you feel?"

"Woozy. Very woozy. I guess I'm drunk."

"I guess you are," he said. "Now listen to me. Carefully."

"I'm listening," she said. Her eyes closed, slowly, and she leaned her head more deeply into his shoulder. There was a smile of utter serenity on her face.

He raised her head upright, gently, with his shoulder. She opened her eyes. He was reassured to see that she recognized him. She reached out and took another long sip of her Martini. Big help that would be, he thought But it seemed to revive her, somewhat "Please listen," he said.

"I'm listening," she said again, but this time she kept her eyes open and her head up.

"I was planning to stay in town tonight," he said. "My hotel is only a block from here."

She stiffened abruptly, and sat rigidly upright. Her eyes widened and the pupils seemed to stop swimming for a moment

"Oh, boy," she said. "I should have known."

"It's not like that at all," he said. "What do I look like, Jack the Ripper or something?"

She looked at him woodenly.

"No," she said. "Not exactly." She squinted, to see him better.

"Try to understand me," he said, speaking distinctly, as if she were wearing a hearing aid he didn't have any confidence in. "I can't take you home the way you are. You're pretty loaded."

"Yes, I am," she said, attempting a haughty sort of dignity. She was starting to hiccup. Don't get sick, he thought Please don't get sick.

"But if you'll just go up to the room now and take a nap, you'll be fine in a couple of hours. Then we can go out and have some dinner and I'll take you home. My car's at the Scarsdale station."

"Scarsdale?" she said. There was too much to think about all at once. She was confused.

"I five there," he said. "Sort of. We're like neighbors."

The name Scarsdale seemed to reassure her. The poor naive girl, he thought. She doesn't know old Screwsdale.

"That's all you want me to do?" she asked, in a little voice. "Take a nap so I sober up?" She sounded six years old.

"That's all," he said, "so help me." So help him, that's all he did want, now. Two hours ago he had been planning to con her up to the room and fuck the belly off her, but now she wasn't fair game any more. His whole plan had gone up in smoke. Or in gin.

Well, hell, he thought, there'll be other times. I'll keep her on sarsaparilla.

"I guess it's a good idea," she said, and swallowed what was left of her Martini. "All right, you can take me up to the room for a nap. For a nap."

"For a nap," he said. "Scout's honor. Physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight."

It was a hollow joke; he felt a little sick.

"Just in case on your honor you're not morally whatever," she said, hiccuping gently, "there's something you ought to know."

"What is it?"

I'm a virgin."

He took a deep swallow of Scotch and looked at the ceiling. The ceiling was real. He looked around him. The waiters were real, the people were real. He pinched himself, and looked at her.

"You're a what?" he said tonelessly.

"A virgin." She hiccuped again.

"Where'd you learn that word?"

"I read it somewhere," she said. "In an old book."

"You shouldn't read so much," he said. "You fantasize."

"Not fantasizing," she said, having trouble with the word, and drew a vague cross with her finger in the area of her left breast. "Cross my heart. Absolutely the truth." She had trouble with "absolutely," too.

"I'll be damned," he said. "You're the strangest girl I've ever met."

"What's so strange?" Her hiccups were getting worse.

"Nothing," he said, and motioned for the waiter. "I think it's time for your nap."

"Maybe I ought to have another drink to get rid of these hiccups."

"No. Please. Let's go."

"All right," she said. She was almost contrite. He paid the check and helped her out from behind the table.

It was a very short walk to the hotel. She wobbled badly on her heels but nobody seemed to notice. She was a small girl, not more than five feet three, and he kept a tight grip on her and had no real trouble at all. They were the only ones on the elevator going up to the room.

He switched on a lamp on the dresser when they were inside, and when he turned around, saw the rumpled twin bed.

"I took a nap at noontime" he said, "when I got the room." But she was beyond noticing. She sat at the side of the rumpled bed, concentrating intensely on getting her shoes off by pushing the heel of one shoe against the other. He took them off for her and turned down the spread on the other bed. Take off your dress," he said.

"No," she said, and looked at him fiercely. Her hiccups were gone.

"For Christ's sake, you don't want to go home all wrinkled. Here, I'll help you."

She held her arms meekly over her head, and got to her feet, stepping on one of her shoes and starting to fall sideways. He caught her, and tugged the dress off over her head and hung it in the closet.

Like Norma Olsen at noontime, she was wearing a bra and a half-slip. Same goddamn sorority, Paul thought Martinis and half-slips. Her breasts in the white net bra were lovely-firmly independent, perky, pouting young globes. Not too big. Not too small. Just right. The most perfect breasts he'd ever seen, he thought. He couldn't bring himself to call them tits. The nipples winked pinkly through the white net.

He took her elbow and led her to the bed he'd just turned down, and she tumbled into it, gratefully. He couldn't help staring at her smooth bare legs, still tanned from the summer sun, as she swung them under the sheet. The firm smooth calves swelled symmetrically, the knees were exquisite. He felt his pecker start to stir.

Down, boy, he thought. Noble is the word.

She pulled the sheet to her chin and held it there, clutching it, only her face and her fingers showing as she looked up at him, trying to focus.

"What are you going to do," she said fuzzily, "while I'm out of it?"

"I could go out somewhere, if you'll feel safer."

"No. Don't leave me alone here."

"Then I'll take a nap too. I'm a little pooped myself."

"That's good," she said. He sat down on the side of the rumpled bed and took off his shoes, watching her eyelids slowly close.

He had been lying on his back on the other twin bed, looking up at the ceiling, and was just drifting off to sleep when he became aware of a weight on the bed beside him. She was sliding in beside him, drawing the sheet over herself. He was abruptly wide awake. She was shivering.

"I'm cold," she said. I'm so cold."

"It's the gin wearing off," he said, and raised his arm along the pillow to make room for her head on his shoulder. She lay her head down, half on his shoulder, half on his chest, and moved close to him, her arm across his stomach. Gradually, the shivering subsided, and she lay still. With his cock swelling and rising, he turned on the pillow to loss her.

She was asleep. God damn all women, he thought. God damn gin. Then he reminded himself, noble was the word. He had to laugh. His swelling went down, and soon he was asleep, too.

As he came slowly awake, he thought he was in the throes of a wet dream, being blown under a blanket at a football game. Woke up just in time, he thought, before I gum up the sheets. He raised his left hand and opened one eye and squinted at his watch. He'd been asleep almost three hours.

Then it seemed to him that his wet dream was still going on, so he opened both eyes. Looking down, he saw the sheet down at the foot of the bed. His cock was poking upright through the opening in his shorts, and redheaded Edeen, propped on one elbow, her ankles on the pillow beside his head, was running the tip of her tongue up and down the underside of his shaft.

He went traditional, for the second time that evening. He pinched himself.

He wasn't dreaming.

She saw that he was awake, and stopped what she was doing long enough to smile at him. It was an impish smile.

"This is a wonderful way to wake up," he said, making conversation.

"I wanted to do something for you," she said seriously. "I know it must have been hard for you. You've been such a ... a," she looked for the word, "gentleman."

"It's hard for both of us," he said, nodding toward his rigid, red-tipped cock. "Think of it that way."

"No," she said. "Not for both of us. I told you what I am." She seemed embarrassed now to say the word.

"An honest-to-God virgin," he said.

"It's true." She was all wide-eyed serious, her fingers around the base of his skyscraper of a cock as she looked steadily past the swollen purple head into his eyes. She was sober now, he saw. Cold sober.

"Do virgins ever take their clothes off?" he asked. "I haven't had much experience with the species."

"Why don't you take yours off?" she said, begging the question. "Your shorts get in my way."

He sat up and pulled off his T-shirt, then lay back, raised his hips, shoved his shorts down to his feet, and kicked them to the floor. She raised herself on one elbow and surveyed him, from head to foot.

"You have a beautiful body," she said.

"Not one tenth as beautiful as yours," he said. "Ifs a crying shame to conceal it."

"Well," she said. She leaned forward and took a long, slow lick with the flat of her tongue on the soft skin of the underside of his cock, from base to tip. He shivered, then sat up.

He reached out to the elastic of her mini-slip, at her waist, and drew it slowly down past her ankles and dropped it on the floor beside the bed. Her hips and belly flowed flawlessly into the soft curving lines of her upper thighs. Between her thighs, at the V, a faintly reddish shadow showed through the thin white silk of her pants.

He leaned further forward and reached around her. She didn't resist as he unsnapped her bra and took it off. She sat up in the middle of the bed, and he couldn't have talked if he had to. His throat wouldn't let him.

Her breasts were absolute perfection, the soft white upper slopes curving upward to the crowning pink tender buds of her nipples. He bent forward and kissed them softly, then sucked them gently. The tiny buds swelled and stiffened and rose to meet the touch of his tongue. His fingers traveled down across the smooth curving white softness of her belly, under the yielding elastic of her pants.

"No," she said, and rolled quickly away from him.

"I wasn't going to do anything," he said.

"Well that's enough anyway. I just wanted to do something for you."

"Don't let me be selfish," he said. "Let me do something for you first."

"What?"

"You'll see."

"No."

"You'll still be a virgin. Come sit on the edge of the bed."

He slid over, swung his feet down, and turned to kneel on the floor, looking up at her. He still had a rampant hard-on, but it could wait. Forever, if necessary.

Slowly, hesitantly, she inched her way to the edge of the bed and swung her legs down. She kept her lovely knees together.

"Let me take your pants off," he said.

"No," she said, for the third time. He caressed the smooth swell of her calves with the back of one hand. Her knees moved slightly apart, and he bent forward and kissed her just above one knee, on the inside.

"How're you going to learn about love if you stay dressed like a Puritan?" he said. The word "Puritan" made him think of Mrs. Halsted, and, involuntarily he made a face. She noticed it. She didn't miss much, this girl.

"If you don't like what you're going to do," she said, "don't do it." .

So she wasn't so naive after all, he thought. At least she'd heard of this activity.

He reached up with both hands, slid his thumbs under the snug elastic at both sides, and tugged gently. She didn't resist. She raised her buttocks, almost imperceptibly, and he pulled the panties off easily and dropped them to the carpet.

He was conscious of her wide-open eyes on him as he looked at her. The soft silken nest around her little opening slit matched the rich dark red of the hair on her head. Maybe it was a shade lighter, he thought, studying it. A tiny pink fold peeped through, between the tender swelling lips of her pouting, perfect little pussy, like the tip of an exploring tongue.

She opened her legs, instinctively, and he leaned forward and touched the delicate escaping fold of soft membrane with the very tip of his tongue. Then he opened his mouth wide, leaned forward further, and found that he could cover her entire cunt with his mouth.

He began to lick it, with long, slow, gentle strokes. Every few licks he would stop, and probe with his stiffened tongue, pushing it into the tight tiny entrance between her inner cunt lips. Her hips quivered, and she raised her legs and hugged his head with her thighs.

"Oh, golly," she said.

He reached both hands up, around the outside of her thighs, and reached back down. With his middle fingers, he carefully opened the tender pink outer lips of her cunt, and began to lick the sweet, moist, glistening playground of pinkness his fingers had exposed.

He increased the pressure of his tongue, and began to lick harder, faster. Every now and then he paused, stiffened his tongue, and plunged it into her tight little twat, as deep as it would go, out again, in again, swiftly, and then returned to his licking.

She was groaning and gasping, and writhing so much that sometimes his tongue found itself between the delicious round globes of her ass, sometimes his mouth was filled with nothing but hair. He held her hips then, to quiet her bucking, fitted his mouth squarely over her cunt, and began to suck and gobble in earnest

"Oh, golly," she moaned, the sound strained through clenched teeth. "I can't stand any more. Please come up here with me."

He kept on sucking, running his tongue back and forth across her clitoris as he sucked.

"Please, please stop," she gasped. "That's all I can stand for now." He couldn't hear clearly what she was saying, with her soft thighs embracing his ears. She sensed that apparently, and opened her legs wide so he could hear what she said.

"Ooh," she groaned. "Please. Come up here with me. I want to do you some more."

Then he understood, and he didn't have to be told twice. He gave her tender quivering, delicious little cunt one last lingering lick, and got up on the bed, on his back, his pulsing prick straining toward the ceiling. She got to her knees and opened her mouth and gobbled in the whole head, eagerly, hungrily, her hand around the base of his shaft, as far at it would reach, her tongue sliding up and down, tickling, licking, playing a tune along the sensitive soft folds of his undercook.

Every nerve in his body was singing. He'd never had his cock sucked with such affection. Such love. Such devotion. Or such consummate skill for that matter. His hands were clasped behind his head on the pillow as he lay back and let himself wallow in ultimate lazy pleasure. He watched the tumbled mass of rich red hair bobbing up and down, and listened to the hungry sucking sounds her mouth made sliding on the rigid wet shaft

"Do you like sucking cocks?" he asked, almost idly, forgetting his manners. It was a silly question anyway. He'd never seen a girl so happy in her work.

She lifted her wet mouth from his prong tip for a moment and smiled at him.

"Yours," she said. "I like to suck yours."

He stood corrected. Or lay corrected.

"Move around here," he said, reaching down to tap her on the rounded elevation of her ass.

She didn't understand. Her head kept shuttling up and down.

"You don't have to stop," he said. "Just swing your lovely little ass up this way."

She understood, then. By instinct, he was pretty sure. She'd heard of sixty-nine, he was sure, but she'd almost certainly never tried it. He was certain she'd never had a man's mouth on her cunt before tonight.

She swung around, still keeping his cock possessively between her lips, and straddled his face. He put his hands on the round white globes above him and pressed her down. She lowered herself, willingly, until the pink moist outer lips of her cunt were against his mouth.

He began to kiss her cunt lips, softly at first, then extended his tongue up inside her still palpitating pussy to her inner lips, licking deeply, urgently. With each forward probe of his tongue, his nostrils sank between her twin white globes, into her soft secret crevice.

She began moaning again, and the urgency of her sucking increased. He could feel her tight gulping mouth sliding faster and faster, up and down the stiff pulsing pole that was now an exquisitely sensitive antenna of pure sensation. Then the pressure of her cunt lips on his mouth, light until now, became heavy, demanding, as her hips pumped, shuddering. His nose buried in the crevice of her ass, his lips mashed flat against the quivering mass of cunt membrane, he felt for a minute as if he was smothering.

Then he felt the quivering spasms of her inner cunt lips contracting about his probing tongue, with almost triphammer speed, as she came to the crest of her orgasm. He heard her moaning deep in her throat, but the scream that tried to escape from her lips was stopped by the thick hard gag of his cock deep in her mouth. He let himself come, in a series of explosive spurts into the back of her throat. He could hear her gulping as she swallowed the hot squirting flow. He gave her wet quivering warm cunt one last, long, loving lick, and rolled his head away to watch her as she sucked his diminishing prick dry.

She raised her head and squeezed his cock upwards, with both hands, milking it. One pearly drop appeared at the tip, and she licked it off with the tip of her tongue, looked into his eyes for a long moment, and smiled happily.

"You know something?" he said.

"What?"

"You're the nicest virgin I ever met."

She laughed. No, he thought, she giggled. It was a girlish giggle if he'd ever heard one.

"I wanted to be good to you. I love your cock."

"You were good, Edeen. You sure were."

"You were wonderful to me," she said. "I never felt anything like that before. Never."

"And the nice part of it is," he said, swinging his feet to the floor and padding to the dresser for his cigarettes, "is that you're still virgo intacto, or whatever the hell the phrase is. You're still a virgin."

"Yes," she said. "Isn't that nice?"

"Not particularly," he said. "You're a virgin only on a technicality."

"But still a virgin."

"We can get rid of that technicality," he said. "Any time you say the word."

"We'll see," she said. She was still smiling.