Chapter 10
After the advent of Joe Maroni, the entire pattern of Lil's life was drastically altered. He ordered her to quit school, leave her parent's home and move into the house on King Street with him. Guns Heimer occupied a couch in the living room, the second bedroom being reserved for the use of herself and her girls when they entertained men for money, or set them up for blackmail. The two men shared her body, although Joe seemed to seldom require her services. She spent most of her free nights in bed with Guns Heiner, who adored her. She was forbidden to continue her affair with Stanley Canfield unless she made him pay, a thing that she stubbornly refused to do. On rare occasions, Joe would allow her to visit with her mother and father, but he made no objection to her homosexual liaisons with the girls who had worked for her.
Lil put up a desperate but losing battle against her own nature. She was falling in love with Joe Maroni and still she hated him, hating herself even more for her weakness.
He gave her little satisfaction, either in bed or out. He was cold and impersonal with her, frequently beating her for the slightest infraction of the rules he imposed. He screwed all of her own girls and often brought strange ones to the house to deliberately fuck them in her presence. Yet, as the days of winter went by, Lil fell even more hopelessly in love with him.
As bad as he was, he had his own code of ethics. He was meticulously honest about the money, keeping accounts as faithfully as a bookkeeper and turning Lil's forty percent over to her with punctilious regularity. Her bank balance grew with amazing rapidity. When he sent Guns out to intimidate small business owners throughout the county, and establish a protection racket, Lil also participated in this additional revenue.
One day in early spring, Joe received a long distance call. When he had replaced the receiver in the cradle, after a conversation of mostly monosyllabic grunts, he turned to Lil. "Call your old lady and ask her if she'd like to go to Youngstown for the weekend," he directed her. "There's this John there, old fart with plenty of money, who wants a woman. He doesn't like kids, or I'd send you. Tell her there's five bills in it for her."
"Sure, honey," Lil said, eager to please. She called her mother, half afraid that Delia would refuse and put Joe in a bad humor. But Lil's mother was pleased with the offer and accepted readily.
"This'll be the first chance I've had to get out of this stupid town for years," she said excitedly into the phone.
"How about Daddy?" Lil asked anxiously. "He won't object?"
"To hell with him," Delia responded harshly. "I'm fed up with him too. Honey, this married life just isn't for me. Now that you're grown up and on your own, and doing so well, I'm tempted to split out on the whole lousy set-up."
"Whatever you think best, Momma," Lil replied doubtfully. It was the first indication that there was domestic trouble in the Nordstrom household.
Delia called Lil from Youngstown on the following Monday to tell her daughter that she wasn't coming home at all.
"This old guy is nuts about me," she confided, giggling happily. "No more small-town crap for little Delia. And he's got the dreamiest chauffeur. Come and visit with me when you get the chance. I'll share him with you."
That was to be the last communication Lil was ever to have with her mother.
A week later, her father left town with his best friend's wife, Susan Prine and he, too, dropped out of sight.
The loss of both of her parents was disturbing to Lil. Only after they were gone forever from her life did she realize to what extent she had depended on them. Their absence was as noticeable to her as a missing front tooth would have been. Despite the money she was making, more than she had ever dreamed would be possible, she was shaken by the fact that the familiar world of her girlhood was collapsing so rapidly around her. To escape the depressed mood into which she had fallen, she indulged her insatiable appetite for sex even more furiously than before, wearing the willing Guns down to the point where he begged for mercy, and spending every spare moment in wild orgies of passion with the Barstow twins, Sissy Prine and Dora Harmon. She made frequent trips into the psychedelic other-world of LSD and smoked marijuana continuously.
"You're getting so jumpy you bug me," Joe told her. "One thing I can't stand is a nervous whore. What you need is a shot of H."
Lil was afraid of the heavy drugs, but after Joe had beaten her nearly senseless, she tearfully submitted to the needle in her vein. She felt wonderful almost immediately, and although the reaction when the drug wore off was unpleasant, she willingly acquiesced to another fix, ready to risk being hooked to regain the marvelous feeling of euphoria. Within a month she had become a heroin addict and couldn't imagine how she had ever existed without it. With the typical user's compulsion to share her mixture of elation and misery, she soon saw to it that her girls also became addicts.
It was one of the rare evenings when Lil was not working as a prostitute. Joe was busy with his interminable bookkeeping and in one of his usually sullen moods. Guns Heimer was out of town.
"Christ's sakes! I'm about to go ape around this damned morgue!" Lil exploded. "How about letting me go to a movie? I haven't seen a movie in weeks."
"Okay," Joe grunted with unexpected liberality. "Get the hell out and don't come back until you've got your cool. You're making me nervous, too. Beat it."
Feeling as though she had been released from prison, Lil grabbed her coat and rushed out of the house before he could change his mind.
The picture at the Rialto was a documentary. She hated documentaries, but it was somewhere to go, something to be doing beside sitting around the house. The cartoon was on when she went in and the place was less than half-filled with customers, but by the time the main feature had flickered onto the screen, a steady stream of people were pouring down the aisles. A young woman asked Lil's pardon and squeezed by her to occupy the adjoining seat. In the dark, Lil received an impression of long, nylon-sheathed legs and a whiff of exotic perfume. Curious, she glanced sideways at a cameo-like profile under a dark, boufant hair-do.
Lil turned her attention to the picture. Ten minutes later she heard a soft whisper.
"Is it all right to smoke in here? I'm new in town and I don't know the local rules."
"Sure," Lil told her, "as long as we're here in the back seat rows. Here, have one of mine."
In the glow of her lighter that she held for the girl, Lil saw a pair of large, brown eyes, vividly red lips and a flawless complexion. "Stinky picture, isn't it?" Lil suggested.
The girl laughed lightly. "It sure is. I wouldn't have come only I couldn't stand being alone in my room. I was about to start climbing the walls. I'm Eva Gordon. I came from Cleveland to work here in the bank. Not a very exciting place, is it?"
"That depends," Lil told her. "If you want fun in this burg you have to sort of create your own night life." She was suddenly conscious of the fact that Eva's shapely knee was touching hers. She wondered if it were accidental. To test this possibility, she pushed a little against the other knee with her own and was instantly rewarded by a corresponding pressure. Eva glanced at her, gave her a slight smile and then demurely dropped her long eyelashes.
Could it be? Lil's heart thumped and she felt a tingle of excitement start at her crotch and travel up her spine. Well, only one way to find out for sure. She rearranged her coat on her lap so that one corner of it covered Eva's knee and hid the bold movement of Lil's hand as she reached down to touch, first nylon-covered flesh and then the cool, firm skin of the girl's lower thigh. Eva gave an involuntary start of surprise but kept her eyes on the screen. She made no attempt to pull her leg away. Lil caressed the satiny flesh for a moment then leaned over to put her mouth only an inch from Eva's ear.
"Let's split out of this crumby movie," she suggested. "I'll bet you and I could find something a lot more interesting to do than this. Like in your room, maybe."
"Yes!" Eva murmured, her voice vibrant with inner excitement.
"Are you a lesbian?" Lil asked her new friend as they walked, arm in arm, through the drizzle of a spring rain.
"I suppose so," Eva replied uncertainly. "I've only had one affair with a man. It was disgusting." she shuddered. "But I lived with another girl for nearly a year in Cleveland. We broke up and I guess I took it pretty hard, although I'm over that now. I'm so glad I found you. It's terrible to be lonely."
By the time they reached Eva's room, they were like old friends, with no need for pretense between them. They both knew what they both wanted and they lost no time stripping out of their clothes. At sight of Eva's revealed body, Lil's excitement soared. The girl was dazzlingly beautiful. She was as tall as Lil, but slightly heavier. Her rounded arms and legs were entrancingly shaped. Her breasts, while only average in size, were the most perfectly formed that Lil had ever seen. They thrust forward in luscious curves and were tipped by brown nipples on magenta rosettes.
"Gosh!" Lil exclaimed in hushed wonder. "You're so beautiful I'm almost afraid to touch you."
"Don't be," Eva pleaded. "That would be terrible. You're lovely yourself. Are you very young?"
"Eighteen," Lil lied. She took a step forward and put her arms around the other girl, drawing her close and touching her lips with hers. When she felt the tip of a pink tongue timidly touching her teeth, she opened her mouth and sucked greedily, her hands avidly exploring the velvety contours of rounded hips and artfully tapered thighs.
"Oh, this is wonderful!" Eva sighed when the long kiss ended. "Let's get on the bed."
"I could eat you like a dish of ice cream," Lil said later as she drew her ljps away from one of Eva's nipples, leaving the brown nubbin erect and hard."
Eva giggled. "Why don't we eat each other? I have a confession to make. I was sitting in the coffee shop when you went by on your way to the show. I followed you, and that was why I sat beside you and asked about smoking in the theater. If you hadn't made the first pass, I would have. I was simply dying to go to bed with you, Lil."
"I'm glad you did follow me. Okay, let's play sixty-nine. I can't wait to get my mouth on your pussy."
Eva turned around on the bed and each girl put her head between the other's thighs.
Lil knew the moment her lips touched Eva's vulva that this affair was going to be something special, something much more important in her life than any of the casual, sexual relationships she had had with other men and women. She parted the labial portals and immersed her face in the perfumed sweetness. She pushed her tongue into the roughly soft, purplish interior of the vagina, sucking avidly the drops of fluid that were being exuded. She found the clitoris and drew it into her mouth, massaging it with her tongue.
Eva was undeniably expert herself, her tongue dancing a clever ballet on Lil's clitoris. Lil's hands moved as compulsively as her hips, stroking the delicately fleshed and tenderly formed thighs, their scented coolness on her cheeks, like summer moonlight.
The bodies of both girls began a writhing saraband as their passion mounted. As they approached a mutual climax, they tossed about on the bed as though in torture, making noises that were incoherent and blubbering because their faces were buried in each other's cunts. Those slobbering sounds were like ethereal music to Lil, increasing her passion until, in a frenzy of lust, she came, with Eva's orgasm only a moment behind hers.
This is it! Lil thought wildly. My God, but this is better than anything else! It's what I've been looking for. Then all thought was wiped out, replaced by surge after surge of sensation that blazed through her like a torch, searing her nerves and scorching her soul.
After their lust had been satisfied, the two girls continued to suck and kiss each other's cunts, neither wanting to be the first to admit that their first session of love-making had ended.
"I love you!" Eva cried when Lil finally reversed her position and they lay with their arms around each other.
"I love you, too," Lil replied and knew in her heart that, for the first time in her life, she actually did love someone, whole heartedly and without reserve. The image of Joe Maroni was wiped from her mind in that instant as completely as though he had never been.
"Why don't we take a place together?" Eva asked. "It would be so wonderful to share a house with you, or an apartment."
Lil shook her head. "I can't, Eva. At least I can't right away. I've got myself into kind of a mess and I have to get that straightened out first. And, even if I manage to do that, we could never live here. There are reasons. But we could go to Mexico, maybe, or possibly Europe. I've got close to fifty thousand in the bank."
"You have? Oh, that would be lovely. All right, I'll wait until you're ready. Do you want to make love again, Lil?"
"Yes, you darling, I sure do, but let me just do it to you this time, then you can suck me off afterward. Okay?"
Lil placed Eva on the bed so that she could kneel on the floor in front of her. She began by nibbling at the sweet flesh of her inner thighs, her lips leaving a moist trail on the creamy skin. She bit playfully at the exposed cheeks of Eva's ass and tickled her asshole with the tip of a teasing tongue until Eva squealed with joy. At last she placed her mouth on the succulent vulva, still swollen and puffy from the recently experienced orgasm. She drew the clitoris and surrounding flesh between her lips, sucking hard as she titillated the organ of love.
"Make me come, Lil darling! Oh, my God! Make me come!"
Walking through the dark streets from Eva's room to her own house, Lil had a lot to think about. She had never supposed she might someday fall in love with another girl. But now it had happened. For the first time, her dreams of going east and becoming a big shot in the world of vice seemed puerile. She knew now what organized vice meant. It meant the Syndicate. She'd had enough of the Syndicate in the person of Joe Maroni. Quite suddenly, she was aware that the life she had been leading, while exciting and remunerative, was stupid, nevertheless. All she wanted now was to go someplace with Eva Gordon where there was peace and beauty, someplace where they could live with each other and enjoy long, torrid nights of passion such as they had just known. She would kick this lousy drug habit, she promised herself virtuously. But first she had to go home and get a fix. She'd reached the point where she couldn't think or plan properly unless she was high on the H.
She went in through the back door, disturbed to see that the light was still on in the living room and that Joe was waiting for her.
"Where the hell you been?" he demanded. "We got trouble. That lousy, goddamned, little bitch of a Sissy Prine has got herself knocked up."