Chapter 9

Evette Warwick sat by herself on the bench that curved in a circle around the big elm tree on the campus of Thornton Junior College. She sat there with her book next to her, waiting for a boy. He was a boy, not a man. It should have been a man at the junior college, but she liked the idea of boy; it was something that pleased her this week. There was a boy who was afraid of her, and nothing could have fascinated her as much. She had to see more of him, touch him again. She wanted to tease him again, as she had; perhaps it was the most important thing in her life now.

She had reached out with her hand and grabbed him in the library and he had reacted differently from any boy or man she had ever known. It would not have been that way with Paul; he wasn't afraid of anything. If there had been one thing wrong with him it had been his intenseness. That s.o.b. was always one-up. He was a skinny, weak-looking guy, but you always worried about his strength. He could pull a bull out of the cellar when he needed it ... and Evette had always been a little afraid of Paul. She wasn't afraid of him now; he was fair game for a little razzing, since she had heard about his engagement to Margaret Carlson.

But he was a guy you kept your eye on. You didn't push him too far. He looked scrawny, but he was hard and strong. His skinny arms were all muscle and his thin legs were like iron when you touched them, and she had touched them. As a lover he had been-there was one word-indestructible.

But his very intenseness had cooled her quickly with him. Whatever he did was done in complete seriousness, and she did not like seriousness. Love was made for fun, not because you had to or because you must. But she had never met a man as good as he was. His body had been like good steel; smooth but a little burning to the touch. And he did not tire. Every man she had ever known got tired quickly, but not Paul Moran. He was a crazy kind of stallion with all the funny things he said, but he was a stallion. No doubt about that.

But Peter Wilson was the person she was interested in now. She hadn't ever known a boy like him, someone so withdrawn, so shy, so attractive. His introversion drew her toward him, not because it should have, but probably because' it should have not. Evette was a girl who was fascinated by opposites; perhaps that was why she had dropped Paul Moran. He had been too much like her, too much like the part of her that she knew so well and did not like. Paul could be hard and deadly, she thought; he had the capacity to kill, as she had. She could not stay interested too long in a person that much like herself.

Evette wanted to shake up Peter Wilson's life. He was weak and involved in himself, but he could be stronger, quicker, and even more deadly than either herself or Paul Moran. Peter was a person she could never learn to trust, and that was more interesting than anything else; a weak man who could suddenly thrust forth strength because he was treacherous.

Classes let out and several hundred students began to pour onto the side campus where Evette waited under a tree. The girls didn't look toward her but nearly all the boys did. Some of them greeted her but she answered shortly and looked away, not wanting any of them to join her. She pretended to have an appointment, to be waiting for someone (which she was), but there had been no prearrangement.

She waited for ten minutes, eleven minutes, but did not see Peter Wilson. He always came out the side door when the eleven o'clock classes were over at noon. She could not remember if he came late or not; she had only noticed him casually, with no interest, until she had touched him in the library and had registered his bewildering response.

Other students sat down on the bench that encircled the tree and carried on their conversations. After a little while, Evette stood up; she did not want to listen to them or be bored by their presence. She could wait another day or two before she met Peter Wilson, although she didn't want to.

As she moved across the side campus with a single book in her hand, a book she never intended opening-something on the Russian revolution by a writer whose name she couldn't pronounce-she saw Peter come out of the side door into the sunshine.

As Evette watched the boy came down the steps, she wondered why she was interested in him. No one else could possibly be. No girl would be interested in him. He was strictly Joe Pimento from Sacramento. He even seemed a little effeminate; not so much that he was a fruit or anything like that but he fell a hell of a lot short in the man department.

But she was attracted to Peter Wilson anyway.

As he approached her, he was looking in the other direction, whether by chance or on purpose she didn't know.

"Hello, Peter," she said warmly and in a deeper tone than was her normal speaking voice.

He hesitated for a moment before he turned his head. Then he brought it around.

"Uh ... hello."

"Are you going for some lunch?" she said. "I was-I just left class."

"Why don't we have lunch together over at the drugstore?"

"I-I-" Peter stammered. "I don't have enough money."

"I have plenty of money, and besides, I can pay for mine and loan you yours if you want."

Peter's pale face turned a deep red. Saliva seemed to form around his teeth and he clenched his mouth against it. He was a little humiliated, a little scared, but he wanted to go with her.

"I'd like to have lunch," Peter said quickly. "I'm sorry I can't buy. I-I didn't realize I would have a date."

The gaucherie of his idea of a date struck Evette. She had grown jaded and tired of all the quick bright men she had known, or the ones like King Virdon who were clownish failures, but they were every bit as clumsy as Peter but lacked any charm whatsoever.

Evette slipped her arm through Peter's and touched her big generous breast against his elbow. She felt a movement in his arm, as if to pull away, but he did not. When he didn't, a slow excitement began to move through her body, a warm gradual liquid joy that she had never experienced before. Men, boys had always reached for her, grasped her, held her; now she could reach, hold, attain herself perhaps. She did not know.

Evette and Peter walked down to Union Street, passing Otto's, and on toward the drugstore. They crossed the street in the bright sunshine and entered the shade of the opposite side. As they walked in the warm grayness of the shade, Evette saw King Virdon walk out of the drugstore and stand in front on the sidewalk with his tightly gloved hands on his hips. The black belt with the pistol was strapped on over his hips and he stood with his stomach pulled in hard. His tight pants looked as if they might split right down the fly.

Evette and Peter approached Virdon and started to go into the drugstore.

"Hello, Evette," King Virdon said.

"Hello," she said flatly.

King looked at Peter with a blank, cold look in his pale water-wash hazel eyes.

Evette and Peter started to pass on their way into the drugstore.

"Say, I'll call you in a day or two, Evette," King said. "We ought to get out to the Jolly Boys' picnic on Sunday."

"Don't call me," she said. "I've got other plans. Pete and I are going somewhere Sunday."

King's eyes narrowed down to a thin squint.

"Maybe I don't like you running around with other guys."

"Why don't you go love yourself," Evette shot at him.

King's body snapped and his right hand came back quickly into a fist and ready to throw.

Peter Wilson dropped his books and stepped in front of Virdon. He was very pale and pimply-faced and soft-looking, but he stood between Evette and the deputy sheriff. He did not raise his hands; he did nothing. He only stood there in front of the tall muscular young man who had his fist clenched and cocked.

"Don't hit her," Peter said. "Hit me."

King stared at him for a long moment, not believing his eyes.

Evette laughed, pleased with what she saw. She enjoyed it fully; watching, appreciating. King Virdon was stymied as he would always be stymied. Inside all the muscles there was nothing; emptiness, shallowness, maybe even cowardice.

"My man isn't afraid of you, King," she said. "He's not afraid of you at all."

"I'll break you in two, punk," King cried. "I'll kill you."

Peter's pale, small hands came up. His voice quivered a little. "If you hit me, I'll hit back."

The sweat poured out into King Virdon's forehead. It leaked out around his eyes, about his ears, on his throat.

"Well, what are you going to do, doo-doo face?" Evette screamed. King's arm began to swing. "King!" a deep, masculine voice roared. King's arm stopped in the air, halfway to the target. He seemed to go into a coma, as if he had become paralyzed. He was frozen in motion and he stood there awkwardly off balance.

Peter Wilson hit him a little below the eye with a tiny fist. The blow had no force and did not change King's position.

A bulky middle-aged man with a dark mustache pushed both of them back. King staggered and stepped over the curb backwards. He stood in the street between two parked automobiles with his hands dropped down to the sides of his skin-tight trousers. His right hand was only a few inches from the service revolver in its holster. His breath came hard and deep and it seemed that his tight shirt might pop open.

"What the hell's come over you?" the older man roared. King did not answer.

The bulky man turned to Evette and Peter Wilson. "Well, what happened?" he grumbled. Peter said nothing.

"Pete and King just had a disagreement," Evette said. Then she added, "But I don't think your deputies should be allowed to hit private citizens, Mr. Bowers."

"Maybe he had his reasons," Sheriff Clinton B. Bowers said.

"Not on county time, I don't think," Evette said. "I don't think my stepfather would think so either."

Clinton Bowers looked back at King, who still stood with his hands at his sides between the parked cars. Then he looked again at Evette and Peter Wilson. He smiled one of his good political smiles and said, "Well, there was no harm done. Everything is all right."

"Sure, everything is fine," Evette said.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything to Mr. McPherson or your mother, Miss Warwick."

"I wouldn't consider it," Evette said, smiling eagerly and letting her eyes drift over to where King Virdon stood in the street. His boss scared him right out of his drawers, she thought.

"And I hope you will let this matter drop, too, young man," Clinton B. Bowers, county sheriff, the people's elected choice, said to Peter.

Peter said nothing for a moment. Then he said, "No, I won't say anything about it."

"Now, why don't you young people go on in and have a malt or something?" Bowers said with a big smile on his face.

"Sure," Evette said.

Bowers turned around and motioned to King with a snap of his head and started walking down the sidewalk. King began to follow him with his head down.

"You did fine, Pete," Evette said. "You made a monkey out of the big jerk. You called his bluff in a hurry."

"No," he said, "I didn't call his bluff. I just didn't want him to strike you."

She smiled and squeezed his hand hard. "That's sweet."

"Would you go out with me tonight?" he blurted.

"Sure. I thought that was all arranged."

He shook his head slowly. "I don't remember. We could go to a movie or something."

"Yeah. Let's go to a movie or something."

Pete attempted a smile that didn't quite come off, but Evette knew. She knew all about Peter. Outside, when he hit King Virdon with the little tap, his hand could have held a knife or an axe or a broken bottle. He hit King after King's punch had stopped in the air, when the sheriff had yelled at him. But he got his punch in, even though it was nothing. Peter Wilson was a screwed-up guy, but he could be dangerous. She knew men and she knew Peter. He had the impulse in him to kill; he might have put a knife into King Virdon outside if he'd had a knife. Everybody thought Peter was chicken, but she knew better. Maybe he was chicken up to a point, but after that point was passed he could be vicious.

Perhaps she knew everything about men; harlots were supposed to know the most, whether they do or not. And she was a whore, even though she had never been paid.

She left King Virdon with a parting sneer. Someday, she thought, she was going to tell King Virdon just why she wasn't interested in him. Some day when he was particularly vulnerable, like when he was standing around acting like a big shot with all of his he-men friends.

Then she would tell him.

It had happened the year before. Evette had taken a walk in the Heights, the gently rolling hills that lie to the west of town. It was beautiful there, and what little peace Evette had been able to find, she had found in the Heights.

There was a lover's lane there, a spot that Evette knew well. She decided to walk by and saw who was there, for she enjoyed watching others make love almost as much as she enjoyed doing it herself.

There was only one car parked there that day, and she recognized it immediately. It belonged to King Virdon, the strapping law officer who had been giving her a big eye lately.

He was interesting, by far the best-built man in town. But for some reason, Evette had held off with King Virdon. Now she was going to see if she had been right in her intuition. He was lying on a blanket with Sarah Thompson, a woman who worked in the diner by the railroad yards. At first she couldn't see what was going on, so Evette edged closer through the trees to get a better look.

King Virdon was forcing Sarah to suck his penis-not really forcing her physically, but telling her that if she didn't do it, he'd tell all of his buddies about her, and that would finish her in Thornton.

But what was worse, from Evette's point of view, was the size of King Virdon's penis. For all of his muscles and height, his penis was the size of young boy's.

It was perhaps four inches long, even when erect, and it took all of Evette's self-control not to burst out laughing from her vantage point in the trees.

But she watched anyway. King Virdon got Sarah to put it in her mouth and she sucked it quickly. He was so small that she was able to take his entire length into her mouth easily, and she bobbed her head on it as if it were a toy.

Then he made Sarah get on top of him while he lay on his back. He held her by the hips as she sat on his face, and then Evette saw one of his hands fondling his small organ as he orally satisfied Sarah, who rocked back and forth atop him, I obviously eager for any kind of payoff for her sexual misadventure.

I His orgasm was weak and he obviously barely felt it, Evette thought. He would be thumbs-down as a lover, obviously not suited to a strong, hot-natured woman like her.

When he was through he made Sarah lick him again, this time in places where she did not want to place her tongue. But King Virdon was insistent and Sarah was afraid of the large man's ability to ruin her life, so she did as she was told.

Someday, Evette thought as she watched, she was going to get even for Sarah. She was going to make King Virdon leave town.