Easy To Get Evette

That evening, a little before eight o'clock, Peter Wilson was on his way to Evette Warwick's home. He was dressed in his blue cheviot, suit, white shirt, and plain necktie that was tied a little crookedly because he always made a poor knot in a necktie. He wanted to look well-dressed tonight and failed as he always failed. He looked like one of the young farmers who came to town with his girl and necked at the movies, but he lacked the animal quickness and animal bodiness that the farmer men always had. He had never castrated a sheep with his teeth; perhaps that was why he failed. No, it was more than that. He could never haved lived the rough, sun-hardened, strong-forearmed life of the valley farmer.

Peter Wilson was a product of a soft, civilized culture, the one the crossbow, gunpowder, and the atomic bomb had been invented for because the men were too weak to use a spear. But that was the culture that always won, wasn't it? Their heads grew too large, so large they could not balance properly, and their arms and legs withered. But they won because of their brains.

Peter had never felt like a winner; to himself, he was always one of the weakling castoffs. It probably was not true but, up to now, life had been moving faster than he was capable of moving.

At noon today his life had changed. Evette Warwick had asked him to have lunch with her, the Evette Warwick. She had been the girl friend of every important guy in school ... and the older man, Paul Moran, who worked for the newspaper. Moran must have been almost thirty. She had been interested in a mature man like Moran and now she was interested in Peter!

The idea awakened a whole new area of his life that so far had been untapped. It was an area of tremendous potential that needed an enzyme to activate it and Evette was doing that to him.

He had hit the cop this afternoon after he had swung at him. Before today he never would have had the courage; but today he had lunged out as one of his cavemen ancestors would have done, before the crossbow, gunpowder, or the atomic bomb. And it pleased him to know there was an animal part to him.

His punch had been light, but it could have been much heavier. The next time he lashed out, it would be quicker, harder, deadlier, because he now knew he had the capacity for violence.

Joy surged through his body with the realization of the animal in him.

Peter Wilson was happier tonight than he could ever remember, and he was on his way to meet a woman. How many crazy ideas he had about women when he was alone!

But Evette was far more than he had ever invented in his imagination; her breasts were greater than any he had dreamed about, her hips were wider, her mouth warmer, her hand stronger, her breath quicker.

However, he was afraid of her. He had always been afraid of girls, but this was even more acute fear. When he had talked to her today, when she had talked to him, he felt the shrinking of his organs. During his life when he had been scared, truly afraid, this always happened to him, and it was sharply uncomfortable. He was afraid he might lose his members when this happened.

Castration fear, he mumbled to himself.

He remembered the prof last year, talking about children, who had had a funny explanation for it; all the little boys in the world were standing around afraid they would be castrated and all the little girls were waiting, afraid they already had been.

Peter Wilson laughed aloud and it made him feel better. He hurried on towards her house. He had asked his father for the family car tonight but his father had to drive into San Francisco for a meeting. Peter had planned to take Evette to a drive-in movie; now he would have to settle for the movie house in town, although he would have prefered going out to the drive-in. He hoped she would be satisfied to walk; otherwise cab fare would dent his finances seriously.

Peter walked down Union Street on his way to Evette's home. He passed Otto's and glanced in. The thick, stocky German was wiping off the back counter behind the cash register. Otto was always rubbing, wiping hard somewhere. As far back as he could remember, Otto had always been here. But he could not always have been in Thornton. No one had the ability to have been always anywhere. Every man was only temporary; that was what living was ... a transient thing that only lasted for a little while. And after that, what? Peter did not pretend to know. He did not accept the religious answers, nor did he fully reject them. Perhaps he could have accepted the Roman Catholic faith if it had not been for ... for the model airplanes, for the gun, for what he knew, for what he feared, for what he hoped.

As Peter moved down Union Street he saw Paul Moran with another man, a few years younger and a little heavy. They were standing in front of the drugstore and talking. Peter, though almost a block away, stared toward Moran-he could see the hollowness in his cheeks and the sharpness about his mouth. Peter did not know him personally, but he had known who he was as long as he had been in Thornton. Peter, although he had never really known him, had always liked Moran. Perhaps it was because one day, when he was still in high school, he had walked out of the variety store after purchasing a model airplane kit and came face to face with Paul Moran.

Moran had said, "Hello, Peter. How are you?"

And Peter answered, "Hi ... Mr. Moran."

He had been flattered when the older man had greeted him and called him by his first name. He felt the older, thin, leathery man was a kind person who wanted to say hello to him.

Now, as he approached him, thinking of his meeting with Evette, knowing Paul Moran had been her lover, not understanding why she would be interested in him after once having been Moran's paramour, he felt another new sureness in himself. If she could have loved a man like Moran and now be interested in him, he knew that he was not one of the world's rejects.

Peter moved closer to Moran and the other man. The slightly fat young man worked for the paper, too, but he wasn't on the editorial staff. Peter had seen him around town often; he was probably in advertising. He was not well---liked but seemed to carry a certain amount of success and respect about him. Peter had heard him talking to local merchants.

Peter was actually a little surprised that Paul Moran would be talking with the other man. Were they friends? This man was superficial and a little gross; Moran was different.

Peter was ready to pass them now.

"Hi, Pete," Moran said casually, as if he had been a close friend.

"Good evening, Mr. Moran."

"Hi, kid," the overweight man said.

"Hello." Peter moved away from them now, liking the other man less than ever. What did he think he would gain by calling him kid? In the past he would have been hurt by what the man had said and he would have gathered his personal hatred together into one small lump and nurtured it. Now he wanted to go back and hit him as hard as he could in his little fat face.

Peter wanted to cry out as he moved down the sidewalk by himself. He wanted to scream, "Oh my God, I am a man. I am a man." But he did not.

It was not that he was uncertain of it; it was because he was civilized and an individual of taste. He was able to handle a victory and the emotion that accompanied an important win. It surprised him because he had never been able to control anything in his life previously.

The cognizance of it made him a little drunk as he walked towards Evette's home.

When he arrived there he wasn't certain what he should do when the door opened after he rang the bell. Would they have a butler? He knew that Harry McPherson was well-to-do, but he didn't know if he was that rich or if he even liked the idea of a butler. McPherson had more money than Peter's father and belonged to better clubs generally, even though they were both in Lions and Rotary. McPherson did not belong to the gun club where his father was the most important member, but his father was not a member of the Thornton Country Club, as McPherson was. Well, that was the club to belong to, no question about that.

Peter touched to doorbell button and waited for something to happen.

After a little while the door swung open and Harry McPherson stood there with a cocktail glass between his fingers that was so full of brownish liquid that it appeared ready to overflow.

"Hello there," McPherson said. "I suppose you're Wilson."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm trying to have my first drink of the evening. Would you mind awfully if I just took a sip off the top to keep from spilling it?"

"No, sir."

Harry McPherson sipped and brought the liquid level down a quarter of an inch from the edge of the glass. "Thank you," he said and held out his right hand.

Peter was surprised by the quick sharp strength in the man's hand, which was really only a little larger than his own. He himself could never have gripped that hard. Harry McPherson was thin in the chest and shoulders and was not nearly as heavy as Peter, but he had a big hand for a man his size and he was very strong.

Peter glanced down at McPherson's hand as it was withdrawn and noted that it was big-boned and thinly fleshed, covered with dark hair across the back.

"Evette said you were coming by tonight," McPherson said. "You're classmates at the college, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Come in. I don't suppose she's ready, but then they never are, are they?"

"I guess not."

"Of course they aren't." McPherson put his arm around Peter as they went inside the house.

The house was very nice, Peter thought, but not pretentious. Probably the drink McPherson held in one hand was more important to him than whether the furniture and drapes had come from the very best shops in San Francisco.

They walked together down the hallway and into the living room. It was empty of people; Evette was not there, as McPherson had said. Somehow or other, Peter thought she would be waiting for him.

"Can I fix you a drink, old fellow?" McPherson said.

Peter Wilson was flattered. "Maybe a beer, sir."

"You aren't of drinking age, are you?"

"No, sir."

"You're an intelligent boy. I'll get you a beer."

Harry McPherson got him a beer and handed it to him in an opened bottle, without a glass. "I hope I'm not contributing to...."

"No, sir. I drink beer. My father and I drink beer out of a bottle."

"That makes me feel better," Harry McPherson said.

"In two years I'll be twenty-one. I shoot." Peter stopped. "I've been shooting since I was fourteen."

"That's right. Your dad is treasurer of the gun club, isn't he?"

"Yes, sir."

"I have thought," McPherson said, turning his glass in his hand, "I have thought of joining the gun club ... but nobody ever asked me."

"I'll tell my dad."

"Isn't that funny?" McPherson said. "I've never been asked."

"It is, sir. I think they would consider it an honor if you were a member. Perhaps they are afraid to ask you."

"You are your father's son," McPherson said, laughing. "I think you are perhaps one up on your father. But you can tell him if I am invited I will jump at the invitation."

"Do you shoot, sir?"

"I can shoot both eyes out of a quail at a hundred yards ... if he's standing in profile. Is that any good?"

"That's pretty good."

"I might be a quarter of an inch off ... if I really had to do it."

Peter Wilson knew McPherson was joking but he did not doubt the truth of his statement. He could probably knock both eyes of a quail at a hundred yards. People almost invariably joked about subjects in which inwardly they were deadly serious.

McPherson laughed. "I'm not a bad shot. But I could get to be a hell of a lot better if I belonged to the club. Ask your dad about it."

"Yes, sir, I...."

Evette walked into the living room, wearing a skirt and sweater that seemed very casual and a little too young for her. Peter was disappointed.

"Hello, Peter," she said.

"Hi," he said awkwardly.

"Why don't we go?" Evette said.

"He hasn't finished his beer," McPherson said.

"Oh, yeah. Finish your beer."

Peter drank quickly from the bottle. He didn't like beer very much and he never drank it very fast, but she seemed to be in a hurry ... and it was all right with him.

"Your mother would like to meet Peter, too," McPherson said.

"She won't be down for an hour," Evette said quickly and harshly.

Peter was surprised at the way she talked to her stepfather.

"You can wait for her," McPherson said.

"I'm of age, Basil," Evette spit. "I don't have to wait for anybody."

Peter watched Harry McPherson maintain control of himself. He saw anger in his eyes, in his flushed face, in his hands with their tightened fingers. She was humiliating him in front of a stranger, but if he shouted at her or struck her would he not be more humiliated?

McPherson did neither. He turned towards Peter and held out his hand. "It's been awfully good meeting you. I hope you'll excuse me."

"It's been my pleasure, sir."

Harry McPherson turned around and walked crisply out of the room, almost as if he had stepped out of the pages of Gunga Din, Peter thought. He hadn't known McPherson was British.

"Come on, let's go," Evette said.

"I'd like to meet your mother. Really, I would."

"What in hell for? Do you want to take her out or me?"

"I don't know your mother. I...."

Evette began moving from the room and Peter followed her. They went down the long hall together and Peter opened the front door for her.

Outside Evette looked around and then back to Peter. "Didn't you bring a car?"

"My father had to take it to San Francisco for a meeting tonight. I thought we could walk over to the Downtown or take a cab."

"I don't want to go to the dopey Downtown. If we're going to the movies, let's go to a drive-in."

Peter felt helpless and a little impotent. "I'm sorry. I just don't have the car tonight."

"We can take my mother's car." She turned and started down the driveway toward the garages in back of the house. Then she stopped and turned back to Peter. "Well, what are you standing there for? The party's this way." She pointed down the driveway.

"Don't you think you ought to ask her first?"

"What for? She never uses it. They always go in good old Harry's Mercedes."

Peter did not move for a moment. He felt that they would be doing wrong if they took the car without permission, but Evette was so sure of herself.

He stepped down and walked towards Evette. She held her hand out to him and he grasped it eagerly, almost grotesquely desirous. He didn't really care about Evette's mother and her car.

The car in the garage that sat next to Harry McPherson's black Mercedes-Benz was a year-old, green, two-door, standard model Chevrolet. It was immaculately clean on the outside and Peter felt that Evette had told the truth when she said her mother never used it.

Evette moved to the driver's side and Peter opened the door for her. He had hoped that she would ask him to drive, but she didn't. She slipped into the car, smoothly and without effort, almost cat-like, and it was surprising because of her body's thickness. Her breasts touched the steering wheel and he saw the impression the wheel made against her sweater and against her softness. The flesh seemed to move about the body of the steering apparatus beneath the protection of the wool garment.

I want to kiss them! he cried to himself ... and he felt shame for his lasciviousness.

Evette slid on across to the passenger side of the front seat.

"What are you standing there for?" she said. "Drive it."

Peter stood firm, fighting the almost overwhelming urge of his manhood.

"You want me to drive?" he said vaguely, still thinking of her breasts pressed against the steering wheel of the Chevy.

"I don't like to drive," she said. "I never do it unless I have to. I always leave it up to the man."

Peter dropped into the seat and slipped his hands easily around the steering wheel. He put the Chevrolet into reverse and backed it out the driveway past the big house.

As he hooked backward into the street, he noted a deep scratch across the dashboard enamel, as though someone had viciously stuck a match against it, letting the heat of the friction cut into the finish. It was a wanton thing to do to a clean car like this, but someone had done it anyway.

Peter wondered if Evette had committed the vandalism. There was a viciousness within her; he saw it in they way she had spoken to Harry McPherson. He could not possibly have defended himself in front of a stranger. (And could he ever have against her under any circumstance?)

Peter pointed the green car down the street and stepped down slowly on the accelerator. It moved out easily and gently. He glanced toward Evette and saw boredom on her face. He would rather be the target for her wrath, as McPherson had been, then to elicit boredom in her.

He tromped heavily on the foot feed and Chevrolet lunged forward, as though it were a greyhound released from its box to the track.

"Go get 'em, Peter," Evette said.

Peter turned sharply at the corner, losing little speed, and burned rubber acridly.

"You're coming on, Pete," Evette said.

Peter had never driven in this fashion before. He was surprised by his bravado, but the act itself excited him. He stamped sharply again on the accelerator. He would never have driven this recklessly with his father's car.

Suddenly a late-model pink Ford with a middle-aged woman at the wheel pulled out from a stop sign, directly into their path.

Peter hit the brakes, flipped the steering wheel slightly, missing the rear bumper of the Ford by a quarter of an inch, and slammed his foot down against the foot feed again.

His heart did not pound, his breath did not come faster, there was no dryness in his mouth. It didn't frighten him ... and this amazed him.

His eyes moved a little and he saw Evette vaguely from the perimeter of his vision. She showed no fear, as he had expected, but he saw admiration on her face ... and now his pulse began to pound in the cords of his throat.

He felt her hand touch his arm and move down slowly, carefully, until it touched the back of his right hand on the steering wheel. Her fingers tightened hard and he felt joyous pain from the strength of her grip.

"You drive good, Pete," she said. "You're real good."

He did not answer and he did not look towards her. There had never been more satisfaction in his life"; not even when he had struck out at the big, stupid cop in the tight pants that afternoon. His life was coming to a climax and he was drinking the juices of success for the first time.

He had narrowly missed the car a moment before, but he knew he would miss it. Now there was no limit to his confidence. Evette had given him more than he had ever had before. There had never been anything in his life before except model airplanes, pistol practice, and ... hate!

Now there was confidence, even braggadocio, even lack of judgment ... but he had lost hate. At least for a little while.

Unfortunately, it was almost like ugly people who were able to forget for a short time that they were ill-shapen.

"I didn't think you could cut her that close," Evette said.

Peter shrugged.

"You're being modest. You took a chance, didn't you? You didn't know you could brush up like that without touching."

"I knew I wasn't going to hit her," Peter said quietly.

"I didn't think you were up to that, Pete."

"Don't ever try to estimate someone you don't know."

"Yeah, I guess so," she said.

Peter drove on. It was early twilight, not yet dark enough for headlights because of daylight saving time, but it was past seven o'clock. It was still far too early for a drive-in movie to begin, but they were going there anyway. Peter did not know what was playing and did not care. He wanted to neck with a girl in a car.

Paul Moran casually tied his necktie into a neat, lean four-in-hand knot and let the fabric drop from his hands down to his fresh blue oxford-cloth shirt.

He wore solid-colored shirts (never white) because he could get two days out of them unless, of course, he ran into trouble in the composition room. He had a knack for getting dirty even when he didn't touch anything.

He went to the kitchen table in the corner of his room and sat down. He unscrewed the cap from a nearly full bottle of whisky on the table and poured two fingers' worth into a glass. Then he picked up the glass and sipped some of the brown liquid. It was a blend from Canada which was his kind of drink.

Actually, there was no "his kind of whisky." Moran was the sort of man who would drink anything and probably enjoy it. He was not a connoisseur.

He had let the clerk in the liquor store talk him into the Canadian whisky because he had said over and over again how smooth it was. Paul wanted something "smooth" tonight after suffering through a hangover in the earlier part of the day.

He rolled some whisky around in his mouth and shot air in to stir it about, to give it mouthwash effect. Then he swallowed. He smiled a little. His boss, Gerald Pierce, always treated whisky as though it were mouthwash; he probably secretly felt it helped defeat tooth decay. Paul could remember when Gerry had held a sip from a shot glass for a long time in one spot in his mouth and had later admitted that he had a cavity on that side that was giving him trouble.

Paul liked Gerry. Gerry was more disorganized than Paul would have liked, and his weekly column was generally misunderstood, but in the end, he was a man who made sense, who had purpose, and who stood for something.

Gerald Pierce could have been his own father, at least age-wise. They both had many things in common, certainly. Paul's father, when he had been alive, was sincere, as Gerry was sincere. They both had an exaggerated sense of justice. They were both often wrong but were always wrong in a medium-grand sense.

But there was a difference, Paul thought; when Gerry was getting a kicking around he would sit and suck on his pipe and say something full of hidden invective-witty, hard, clever, and to the point. He could strip the pants off an adversary.

When his father became angry, truly teed off, he hit somebody.

Paul had always wanted Gerald Pierce to strike out with his hands, with his fists. You could carry civilization a little too far.

Paul himself was a very quiet man. He had never really been a street-fighter as a boy. He had always tried to talk his way out of every altercation. But when everything else failed, he had enjoyed fighting with his fists, even though he often came out second in a two-horse race. But even in defeat he had enjoyed the jarring, bone-jamming sensation of hitting another man with his fists.

He deplored this part of himself on one level and gloried in it on another. A man could not appreciate the tenderness of a woman's love it he did not somewhere in himself love the aches of physical contact, of viciousness to and from another human being.

Paul poured himself another drink.

Was this healthy thinking? It bothered him and it did not bother him. He had a great deal of faith in himself, but there were always the borderline doubts. When he had been captured in the hills of Korea, he could have died fighting instead. Even though he was wounded and bleeding. But he was captured and had to live with guilt and shame from then on.

Paul Moran stared down at the glass between his fingers. "This is very cornball," he said to himself, "but you are fighting for your sanity ... and you aren't exactly on top right now."

There was no comment from the empty room. He had almost expected the partly sick, injured other half of himself to come back with a rejoinder, but there had been none. This fight had gone on for a lot of years and there had never been a comment ... but he was still waiting for the first feedback.

Then he wondered why he had to bother himself tonight with his "problem."

Paul stood up from the table, slipped into his jacket, and left. The place was beginning to depress him. It often did, but most times not so much. And that was probably why he had kept it through five years in Thornton. It was like all things in his life, not altogether bad and not altogether good. Nothing was ever absolute.

Outside, the world seemed empty of people, empty of things, and it should not have felt this way on a spring evening. There was a nuance of fall in the air instead of the vernal season.

His thoughts had been too morbid tonight. He should not have let them wander. Spring was for the youth that was left in a man, and he should let nothing interfere with this.

He walked down the sidewalk toward Union Street. He had the drinks at his place to unwind him a little, but they had not done him a favor tonight.

Why did he have to fear that he was mentally ill? He had a date with a girl who was perhaps the most important girl in town. Perhaps she was not the sex symbol that Evette had been in his life, but he felt that she could probably hold her own in any competition.

No one particularly understood Margaret but everyone liked her more or less. She was a nonconformist without being a rebel; people thought her a little flat (but not too flat) and they regarded her as a little too intellectual to have both feet on the ground.

Probably she was the girl meant for him. Her money was not important to him, but her cognizance was. Her understanding of him was important and he wondered why she understood him.

He wondered if perhaps he wasn't in love with Margaret Carlson. If he were in love with a woman, he knew that she must be intelligent; he knew that she must be more than a copulating apparatus; she had to be more than that.

Margaret could excite him, even when she talked about a movie they were going to see. Oftentimes at night, when he was alone, he thought about her.

She was a lot like him (give or take her daddy's money). Paul marveled at having been able to find this kind of a woman.

But the attraction of the opposite, with Evette, had been strong in his life. He had needed someone that gross to have made his life complete; but he did not need Evette now.

Paul hadn't bothered taking the car tonight. It wasn't a long walk to Margaret's home, even though there were perhaps a million dollars between the neighborhood in which he lived and the Carlson home. He felt like walking. Margaret always liked to walk when they went out together, if they weren't going too far.

Paul passed Otto's Ice Cream Parlor and waved to Otto inside. The older man saw him and waved back, smiling. Otto was always there, night and day. Paul sometimes wondered when he had any time to spend with Hilde. After twelve or fourteen hours in the store, did he still feel like slipping between the sheets and raising a little connubial hell with his old woman?

The front door of Amsterdam's across the street opened and Clinton B. Bowers, the sheriff, and two tall, well-dressed, middle-aged men came out onto the sidewalk. The men with Bowers were political string-pullers from San Francisco whom Paul recognized. He had heard both of them speak at one time or another at service clubs in Thornton, and he wondered if they had come to see Bowers to promise him the presidency of the United States if he just kept his number-one deputy out of brawls with the local people. The thought of Clinton B. Bowers as president struck Paul with its full ludicrousness, and it raised his spirits suddenly.

Bowers saw him across the street and raised his hand immediately in recognition. "Hello there, Paul."

Paul raised his hand in answering salute and wondered if perhaps it would not be appropriate to cry out, "Bowers for president!" But he restrained himself and walked on down the street, choking down a silly laugh in the back of his throat.

He traveled nearly half a block before a chuckle coughed forth. Then he laughed aloud, but not very loud. It would have been bad manners to have laughed loud enough for Bowers and his friends to hear and it would have gained nothing. But "Bowers for president" nearly convulsed him.

But why laugh? Bigger idiots than Bowers had already slept in the White House for extended periods. And one thing he had to give Bowers credit for. He had been shrewd enough to remain the county sheriff for a good many years.

As Paul walked on, forgetting Bowers, the depression of the evening returned to him, and he wondered again why the night had to feel so much like fall instead of spring.

A little later, Peter and Evette sat in the Chevrolet at the Tower Drive-In Movie. They both ate popcorn from cardboard boxes which Peter had bought from the concession stand twenty yards from where they were parked.

Peter ate popcorn, watched the huge movie screen through the tinted glass of the car (making the picture seem somewhat darker than it should have been) and glanced toward Evette every few seconds.

He didn't want to be at the drive-in movie ... and he wanted to be there. The contradiction of the situation stuck in his mind but he did not bother trying to understand it. The nearness of Evette, just a few feet from him on the front seat, excited him; he wanted to be with her, but he would have preferred that they be alone.

The drive-in seemed not only lewd and in bad taste, but gauche as well. But on the other hand, he desparately wanted to feel his own lust and libido.

Why did these words have to come to his mind? He only wanted to free his capacity to love, and it didn't have to be lecherous.

And he had freed his ability to love and he was exercising that talent now; he was in love with Evette. He doubted that he had ever been able to love anyone or anything completely. Perhaps the pistol; but was he certain of this?

His right hand slowly moved across the seat towards Evette. It stopped once, halfway there, and remained still for several seconds, then moved forward again.

A few inches from her it stopped once more. It would not touch her because he lacked to courage in his mind to force the hand a few remaining inches to brush her person.

Evette rolled down her window and tossed the popcorn box out unconcernedly, and wiped her hands on a napkin. She glanced toward the screen but did not seem particularly interested in the action taking place there.

She turned her head and her gaze met Peter's. There was a slight question in her deep brown eyes as she looked at him, perhaps registering the change in him.

She glanced down to the seat and saw his hand, still dormant but very near her.

"Why, Peter," she said and grabbed his hand. She held it up to her face for a moment, looking at it, seeing its smallness, Peter thought. Then she brought it down slowly to her soft lower belly and rubbed it back and forth, carefully. He felt the yielding, submissive lines of her woman's stomach and was surprised that she did not wear a girdle. He didn't know why, but he thought all women wore them.

The blood rushed through his body and the heat of it hammered in the sides of his head. He lurched sideways toward her, bumping the steering wheel.

She released his hand and opened her arms to him, bringing her hands up to his neck. He came to her and he kissed her clumsily, crookedly across the mouth.

"No, silly," she whispered. "Like this." She opened her mouth roundly and proffered it to him.

He opened his mouth and their lips came together at first gently, then hard. His grip around her body tightened more and he drew her firmly to him.

After that moment, he eased his hold on her and their faces came apart. He panted from his emotion and from his lack of oxygen.

"You learn in a hurry." she said, her breath a little short.

He did not answer. He only gazed into her eyes.

She ran her hands up and down the back of his neck, touching the short hair there, arousing him even more ... if this were possible.

He was not in complete control of his erotic senses now. He knew this and there was nothing he could do about it.

"You learned so quick," she said; "maybe you deserve a little bonus, Pete."

He did not understand. He did not....

She brought her hands together behind his neck and snapped his head down sharply, burying his face against her breasts.

A short muffled cry crossed Peter's lips as his senses exploded.

In town, Paul had arrived at the home of Samuel Carlson and was standing on the front porch, ringing the doorbell. When the door opened he faced a familiar person, the serving man who always opened the Carlson front door. He was not in truth a butler, because he performed more sundry duties than would be expected of a butler. He was probably not actually anything in particular, but specifically a servant of the Carlson family.

"Good evening, Mr. Moran," he said, opening the door.

"Hello, Paul." It was awkward for Paul to be addressed as mister and reply with the other man's first name. His world was not really ready for this; he had spent most of his life addressing others as mister or sir and being called Paul in return, the same name the serving man bore.

Moran knew that he could never have servants, even if he reached a point in life when he could afford them.

Paul, the servant, led Paul, the caller, into the living room. Margaret was seated on the long couch with a book in her lap. She looked up and a long smile moved across her face; her mouth was too big, really, but it was a very good smile; it was the kind of smile the girl he had always wanted had to have. She was awfully good, he thought.

Margaret pushed the book out of her lap, stood up, and kissed him on the mouth.

It surprised him. He looked towards the serving man and noted that he was looking toward the fireplace.

Moran slipped his hands around her and they dropped down over the upper area of her hips. His fingers squeezed a little.

"That's the nicest thing you've ever done to me," she said.

"You just wait," Paul said. "Just wait."

"If I cannot be of any service, may I take my leave?" Paul, the serving man, said.

Margaret laughed. "I'm awfully sorry, Paul. Please, don't mind us. We ... we love each other."

"Yes, miss. I thought probably you did." He started to leave. "If you'll pardon me, Mr. Moran, I think you are a very lucky fellow."

"Thank you, sir," Paul said, forgetting that the other man was a servant. Paul was basically a gentleman, even though he was prone to involving himself in a barroom brawl if he felt like it.

Paul, the serving man, left the room.

Margaret wore a plain black dress with only an ordinary string of pearls for decoration. With some women, this could have been either a very conservative outfit or a very cornball one, but with Margaret it was neither. The clothes were subordinate to the woman; the girl was far more important than anything she would ever wear.

Margaret's hand moved out and touched his cheek.

She moved her body close to his and kissed him quickly on the mouth again. He desired her very much; he wanted her slim body, he loved her black hair and pale white skin. Her deep-red lips and dark eyes (were they really black or only deepbrown?) would trap him. He would fall in love with her; this he knew.

Paul looked down into her eyes. "You're putting me on."

"You don't want to be had, do you?"

"Yes," he said carefully. "I want to be had very much."

"I don't want to be the one to clip your bachelor wings. Really, I don't. I don't want to be the one to put a ring in your nose. But I want you ... and if I have to cut your bachelor cords, I will. I hate myself for taking something from you, but just being engaged, just being married to a man isn't enough for me. I'll have to have all of you. I'm a tough old bastard, Moran, to quote a great American-you."

Paul laughed shortly.

"I'm sorry, Paul, but I am a tough old bastard. That's the kind of person you respect. Well, I am; I have a hard nose. I want you. Is that too much for a girl to want?"

"No."

"Well, I demand everything; I won't settle for part." Paul kissed her quickly.

"You're just playing," she said. "What I need is you."

Paul dropped his head and kissed her throat. "Flattery will get you nowhere." Margaret said. He touched her.

"Exciting me sexually is only a cheap trick," she said.

"I'd rather have you than anything in the world," he said.

"Well, that is pretty good ... but I need a man who will love my soul."

"Souls, I know nothing about," he cried, as he touched her again.

She bit him on the lobe of the ear, not hard enough to bring blood, but sharply enough to make Paul feel it. "I suppose that will do for now," she said.

"Thirty seconds more and you are compromised."

"I know," she said, "and I have lost. I only wanted you to love me."

"I love you."

"But those are only words. Your touching me is only more words."

Paul's hands dropped from her body.

"You didn't have to lose interest completely," she said.

"Perhaps I'm not the man for you," Paul said. "You are," she said. "You are if...."

"If what?"

"If you really want me. If you really want to be married to me."

"I want to be married to you," he said.

"When you say it that way, I believe."

His hands came up and gripped her arms. "I am a very screwed-up guy, but I don't lie. At least I don't lie to you."

"Sometimes I nearly believe you, Moran," Margaret said.

"I know. Nothing worthwhile is ever very simple, it it? You understand a lot for someone as young as you are. What you have to come to know is that I am your man. I've already made up my mind to that. But you can't expect too much; if I am to be your man, there will always be certain drawbacks."

"That's the way girls get pregnant."

"Well, we want a family, don't we?"

He kissed her now delicately, gently. She was such a very soft girl. He was probably already in love with her; if he were not it was because he was a cautious man.

"Are you going to take me to the movies tonight?" she said.

"Yes."

"Good. I'd hate to miss Reinhardt Mason. He arouses me."

"And I don't?"

She smiled and touched his chin with her fingers. "You are touchy, aren't you?"

"Yes. I am jealous of Reinhardt Mason."

"He is a fine young stud."

"He's not young," Paul said. "He is getting on."

"Nymphs like older satyrs."

"B.S.," he said.

Paul's life was a confused one, and he knew it. But he was trying to play out his life, taking each task as it came, and making the most of it. The "problem" could only be solved this way. It was what the doctors at the veterans' hospital had told him and it was what he knew instinctively.

Paul remembered Evette Warwick again, and he could not recall why he had ever had any fondness for her, or been attracted to her.

Paul and Margaret left the house together. As they were leaving, he did not see Paul, the serving man, and it pleased him. He picked up his hat from the hall seat and was glad that it had not been handed to him.

As the young couple walked across town, with Margaret's hand hooked into the crook of Paul's arm, they could have been sweethearts from another time, perhaps 1894. There would have been horses in the street and no automobiles in Thornton, California, but the young couple would have been the same. Young couples in history have changed less than any other thing.

Paul and Margaret walked slowly over toward lower Union Street, where the Downtown Theater was located. They joked as they walked, and people who saw them nudged each other and winked, knowing that they were young lovers.

"If good old Reinhardt kisses the heroine on the earlobe, I'm going to puke in the aisle," Paul said.

"You've been know to be an earlobe kisser."

"I'm younger than Reinhardt."

"Let's not talk about age," she said. "That doesn't count anyway."

"I suppose not. It must be-"

"You're just jealous."

"Sure. I'm jealous."

"You don't have to be," she said.

"I know, but I enjoy it. I get a kick out of being jealous of you. It makes the juices run in my body."

"I suppose a man has to have that, doesn't he?"

"Not all men," Paul said. "I wouldn't want to be truly jealous. I only want to be jealous of Reinhardt Mason; I wouldn't want to be jealous of a real man; I'm too selfish."

"If you think you can make me mad talking that way, you're crazy." Margaret laughed and nudged her head against his shoulder.

As they walked together, Paul could no longer feel the depression of fall in the air. It was truly spring and the new things that were coming into life sprung in his body ... and he was a happy man.

At the Tower Drive-In, Peter had held Evette in his arms, he had kissed her, even though he had never really understood the term "necking."

They sat apart now because another car had pulled up alongside on Peter's side. There was a middle-aged couple in it who had obviously come only to see the double feature, cartoon, and short subject.

When they had first pulled in, Peter had been infuriated, but he contained himself and managed to force his desires back into the psychic trunk they had occupied through his whole life. He didn't want to suppress his desires again, as he had so often in the past, but there had been no alternative.

Peter and Evette stared through the tinted glass of the Chevrolet at the big screen. Peter glanced toward her time and again and she seemed to be watching the movie; then her eyes came about, saw him facing her, and she winked. His hand moved across the seat quickly and her hand met it and clutched it.

He wanted to bring her into his arms again, he wanted to touch her with his hands. He wanted to....

Oh, damn, why had the other people parked right next to them? The avidity within his body was ready to burn its way through his body wall ... but he could not let it. The pain was upon him and he bore it because there was nothing else he could do. If he had only been more worldly-wise, more sophisticated; if he had only been a little like Mr. Moran.

Peter would have given half the years of his life to have a little maturity of Paul Moran. He wore vests but was still a young man. He usually wore a hat, but he was not old. Peter had seen him many times with older men as they walked down the street and went into Amsterdam's. Moran had been talking and the older men had listened.

Older people never listened to Peter when he talked; they were always busy with something else. Who wanted to listen to a child?

Peter was cursed and he knew that he was.

Another car pulled alongside them, on Evette's side, and Peter's spirits dropped even more. They might as well be parked on the fifty-yard line at Kezar Stadium, on the Sunday the Forty-niner football team was playing the Cleveland Browns.

A young man no older than himself, with a large tattoo on his left forearm which hung out the window, was at the wheel. He looked over toward them and perused them carefully.

"Hi, Evette," he called out in a voice that was simultaneously tough and falsetto in the same breath.

"Hi, Clint," Evette said and raised her right hand.

Peter immediately hated this newcomer; he hated him because he knew Evette and because she had called him by his first name as though they were friends.

The car driven by the young man was full of people in their late teens. There were three other boys and two girls besides Clint. That meant that they had a shortage of girls, Peter thought, and they wanted to correct that. If they could add Evette to their number, they would only be one short, then.

Peter wished desperately that he had his target pistol. He could even up their number in no time at all. He could put a bullet into the temple of the one Evette had called Clint very easily.

However, they had a gas chamber in California for those who resorted to this, although he could not remember a single man to enter the death room at San Quentin who had the social position of his father (even though his father was not at the social top in Thornton). Only the poor and friendless were ever ushered in there.

Perhaps he did wish he had his pistol with him. (This was really only fantasy.) He was a boy who daydreamed a great deal and he was always the central character, the hero, of his daydreams. He knew this and it was bitter arsenic to his tongue.

"We're throwing a little party after a while," Clint called out to Evette. "You want to come?"

"Sure," she said. "Where?"

"Over at the White Withers Motel on the Alamitos highway. You know where it is. We rented cabin six; it's a big one."

"Sure, I know where it is. When does the party start?"

"'Bout an hour or so. We just bombed over to see some of the movie and smoke a little."

Evette turned towards Peter. "They've got some pot with them. They're going to smoke it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Peter said.

"Marijuana. You know, marijuana cigarettes."

"Marijuana?" Peter said incredulously. He had seen all the narcotics movies his senior year in high school and he had even seen one shown in Men's P.E. at the Junior College. Young people copulated freely after having smoked them and were very sorry afterward.

Copulated freely, he thought to himself; venereal love. Oh, God. Would a puff or two make him lose his fears and anxieties?

"You want to go to the party, Pete?" Evette said.

"I don't know," he said, pretending casualness. "Why not?"

Evette seemed a little surprised. "I didn't think you'd want to go."

"Sure, I'm game for 'most anything," he said foolishly. People like Peter should never play the bon vivant; he knew this but he had done it anyway, regardless of the consequences or the fact he might sound ridiculous. "Yeah, I think a party is fine."

"We could have a real good time," Evette said. "I always have a good time at a party."

"Swell," Peter said, "let's go." He was apprehensive of the party but the lure of freedom from his own self-consciousness, the promise of relief from his neurotic, driven, walled-in world was more than he could resist. He distrusted the strange people, as he distrusted nearly everyone, but he was going to go. And he had been afraid Evette would have gone without him if he had resisted or turned down the invitation. He could not have endured her leaving him and going off with the others.

Marijuana! Did he want that? He did and he did not and he didn't know which part of himself clamored the loudest. He didn't have to go; he could retreat back to his room and build another model airplane.

And a newborn child could cease to breathe and go back to the blackness and deadness of the world of the unliving, the other world of the dead and the nonexistent. Never. Life cried out to be had, to be lived, even if it meant suffering, unhappiness, disaster, dishonor, and complete failure.

Peter was confronted with a new phase of his life. He knew that it was not completely right (perhaps not even partly so), but he looked at it with anticipation because it offered more than the old one. Perhaps he could lose his hatred of other men j if he could only be released from his personal prison. Peter knew that he was neurotic and he did not desire such a fate; it had been forced upon him through circumstance and not through his own doing. If he had his personal wishes fulfilled, he would be an athlete of some ability, and a popular boy among the girls in his school. But he was liked by no one. He had even heard one of the girls, who wore tight sweaters to attract boys, call him "The Mole."

If he had been castrated at that moment with a dull sickle he could not have suffered more. He wondered if the girl were so stupid as not to realize that he was within hearing distance. It had been a cruel thing to endure, but he had endured.

Now he wanted out of his cage!

"When do they want to take off?" he said quickly to Evette.

"In a little while. They want to watch the show for a few minutes."

Peter was staring straight ahead through the tinted glass at the subdued picture screen. His teeth were clenched. "I'm in the mood for a party."

At another party, given by the T. Emmet Folgers, in the best district of San Jose, California, Harry McPherson was at the punch bowl filling his little glass cup. He'd had three already and hadn't seen any results, which left him in a poor state of mind because he hated parties when he was sober. He knew he could halfway bear up when he was three-quarters stiff. At that time he always had a semi-moronic smile on his face and could accept almost anything that was said to him without disputing it.

The only time Harry McPherson got laid at a party occurred when he was totally smashed, and when things like that happen to you, Harry thought, you must be doing something right.

Harry had been single then, a dashing figure whose dry wit and continental good looks made him a welcome addition to parties in the San Francisco area.

That night, so long ago, Harry had decided to tie one on. His business affairs had suffered a setback and he found that business problems were beginning to nag him. He didn't want to think about business night and day, and he had found that the best remedy for getting your mind off business was a good heavy drunk.

He decided to start his binge at a dinner party, and after the meal, when brandy was served, Harry saw the lithe blonde across the room, eying him in a very direct manner.

He walked over and introduced himself. Her name was Samantha Perkins, and she was recently arrived from London. He loved it. His infatuation with the English was every bit as strong then as it was now, and even though Harry was suddenly conscious of the fact that he was bombed, he was determined to make time with the lovely English lady.

He walked her around the party, meanwhile casing the place for a secluded spot. Finally, entering a dark hallway, he ran his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. Their mouths met and he was thrilled by the heated kiss that she gave him. Obviously, her cool British exterior concealed a core of molten passion.

Harry moved fast. He checked out the rooms that gave onto the hallway and found a deserted bedroom at the far end. "In here," he said, and Samantha dodged into the room with a giggle.

While he was closing the door she pulled her dress off over her head and when Harry turned around, she was naked, her arms out to him.

He led her to the bed and she sat on the edge while he stripped, and when she wrapped her hand around his throbbing shaft and then sank down on it, lips first, he groaned with pleasure and held her lovely blonde head between his hands.

Then he was on his knees and she had a leg draped over each of his shoulders and he was tasting her and delighting in it. She was totally uninhibited, a quality that he much admired in beautiful women.

She let him have his fill, experiencing several powerful orgasms along the way, then tumbled back onto the bed and once again extended her hands to him.

He was in her in a flash, sinking into her soft, hot flesh like a hot knife through butter. She gave in totally, wrapping her long legs around his back, moving him to orgasm so quickly that he was surprised and somewhat apologetic.

But she laughed and told him that he was wonderful, especially as he was an unexpected surprise that enabled her to enjoy an otherwise dull dinner party.

Harry's head was reeling as he escorted Samantha back to the party. He continued to drink and didn't sober up for four days.

But that was a long time ago, Harry thought.

Harry McPherson was basically an honest man. He talked with a British accent because he had always liked the English language better than the American variety. He had been accused many times (a thousand times by his stepdaughter) of being affected. Well, he did it on purpose, he admitted, but not on purpose the way Evette had accused him. He liked a broad "a" because it sounded better and he used it, too, because it was easier for him to pronounce. As a child, he had been a stutterer, although he would not have admitted it, and the clipped British way of speaking (which he had heard at a botany lecture in school) appealed to him because it wasn't all strung together and gave the speaker time to think and time not to stutter. If he didn't speak in the fashion he used today, he would still be a stutterer.

It was strange, he thought, that he had stuttered. He had always been very quick in class (got almost all A's, even through college) and had been a good athlete, even though slender. He had been first-string halfback on the grammar-school pickup football team, second string in high school, and even managed to make the squad in college, when his school had been notorious for recruiting good football players and paying them for playing. Even as a sub, he had run for the winning touchdown against U.S.C. his senior year, and the team gave him the game ball.

He wondered where it was now. He thought he had probably given it to one of his uncles who was a sports nut, but now he could not remember exactly which one. Scoring the winning touchdown in a big game had not meant much to him because he had never really been interested in games. He was more intelligent than the others on the team, although he never let them know it, and the game had never been very important to him. No doubt, the coach had never known, but Harry McPherson had never actually been concerned as to whether his team won or lost. His basic interest had been getting into the game, running the ball a few times, and perhaps throwing a pass or two. With all the preparation he was forced to go through (training, scrimmaging, calisthenics), he wanted to get something out of it that was fun.

He had only weighed one hundred fifty-five pounds then, two less than now, and he had been nearly six feet tall. If he had been twenty pounds heavier, he would have been an All-American.

Harry McPherson knew this, as he sipped from his punch cup, and it didn't mean a damned thing to him. He had always taken his good sound reflexes for granted. That he had managed to make money, a lot of money, wasn't important to him either. He accepted this as matter-of-fact. He knew that he was capable of making money, even as he had always known he would have been the first-string tailback in college if he hadn't been too thin.

Possibly the most ridiculous thing in his life was the most important to him: his marriage. It was ridiculous and he knew that Ann did not understand. She wanted to be free, she wanted to go to parties, she didn't much want to be a wife. Perhaps, underneath the outer layer, she simply wanted an escort to take her to parties and more parties.

Harry, on the other hand, had not married until he was middle-aged. He had spent a lot of time with cheap women and he had laid a lot whom no one had declared cheap (outside of himself, privately), but none of these had ever satisfied him. He had been on the verge of marriage a dozen times but something had always spoiled the match ... until he met Ann Warwick.

He didn't want a woman younger than himself, and he hadn't actually desired a divorcee, but he married a divorced woman who was nearly the same age as he because he fell in love with her.

And the woman he married was frigid. In the beginning he thought things would work them selves out (anything worthwhile takes time), but nothing worked itself out.

This troubled him; if he had been a younger man, it would have troubled him far more, but his sex drive was not what it had been twenty years before. Although he had to admit on occasions that there was no difference in the present man from the man of twenty years earlier. And at these times he would have preferred being a blind leper rather than having a wife who could not or would not respond to his advances.

Though few would have given him credit for this, Harry McPherson was a man of moral convictions. He had not always been completely honest or completely honorable, but he had always been a man of moral fiber. Since he had stayed unmarried through most of his life, he was a sincere believer in the familia connubium and had not gone to other women, since his marriage, to relieve his sexual compulsions.

Harry McPherson's marriage was complex, even though he had never allowed any single facet of his life to become so before. He had not been able to cope with it because he had mostly been accustomed to having things go his way.

He had been dropped into a quagmire and he did not know whether to try to swim or walk to escape being engulfed. On the one hand, he did not want to leave, and on the other, he would not allow himself to be destroyed.

During World War II he had been second mate on a freighter, and she had just taken two torpedoes. Men were leaping over the sides, forgetting about lifeboats or rafts, but Harry didn't follow them. The captain ordered him off and Harry told him to go fornicate himself.

"You're nuts," the captain said.

"Well, you're still here," McPherson answered.

"I'm the master of this ship. I'll go down with her."

"That's corny as hell, Matt."

"You're insubordinate. You don't have any right to address me by my first name. Particularly in the diminutive."

"Oh hell," Harry said. "This scow will be under in half an hour and we'll be with it."

"Then jump."

"I'm scared to jump," Harry said. "I'd rather go down with the old bitch than rat out."

The master of the ship held his hand out and Harry took it.

"Don't get me wrong," Harry said. "The only reason I'm staying aboard is because I'm too loving chicken to abandon."

"Yeah," the captain said. "I know." He held onto Harry's hand. "If I'd been left alone, I might not have had the guts to stay. Thanks, Harry."

"There's a tremendous suction when they go under, isn't there?" Harry said. "I mean, even if we gave up the ghost at the last minute, we'd be pulled under anyway, wouldn't we?"

"That's what I've heard, Harry."

"Then we don't have to worry about going yellow, do we? It's already a foregone conclusion. We're dead."

They threw their arms around each other and began to laugh. They laughed hysterically and neither of them worried about it because it didn't make any difference anymore. They were men of the world, soon to become defunct; they knew it and it was so strange, so clear ... and they knew they were very unique among men to know when they were going to die.

But then a Navy minesweeper saved them. Harry McPherson could remember it well. It had been almost an anticlimax, missing his appointment with death; it would have been so damned convenient and even a little romantic. "I have a rendezvous with death" and all that. (He had read it in high school and had not forgotten, even though it was a little corny ... but the guy did die after he wrote it.) He was almost sorry the minesweeper saved them. He had been prepared for death and the captain had been ready ... and could a frail human being ever expect to bring himself to that peak again?

Three hours after they had been rescued his captain suffered a seizure and died of a heart attack. Harry McPherson was very sorry; perhaps he grieved more than when his mother had passed on. He felt the older man had more guts than anyone he had ever known; probably it was because the two of them had been one ... when there was no place to go.

One night in a Portland bar several years later, a man who had been drinking stated that the merchant marine had been a bunch of cruddy draft dodgers who were afraid to go to war.

Harry hit him on the jaw so hard the man collapsed, and the proprietor of the bar thought him dead. The policeman who rushed into the place was also astonished when he saw Harry grind his heel into the fallen man's cheek. He arrested Harry for assault and battery, but the loudmouth in the bar never pressed charges and the whole thing was forgotten.

When Harry was released the desk sergeant asked him why he had hit a stranger ... and so hard.

"Natural enemy," Harry said. "Like a mongoose, you know."

The desk sergeant didn't know, but it didn't make any difference; not any difference he would have understood, at least.

Now, Harry McPherson was standing in front of a punchbowl at a party; he was bored clear to the bottom of his bowels, but he didn't say anything to anyone about it. He was worried about his marriage. There wasn't too much wrong with Ann, if she could ever grow into their marriage. They weren't going to be starting a family, there was no fear of childbirth (he felt that Ann had already passed the menopause, even though he didn't know this for certain). There should be no fear within her about her relationship with him. He offered her a great deal of security; what the hell, he did have money.

Then he thought about children. Evette would never be his child; this he knew, but he would like to have fathered a child. He did not think it possible or feasible to have a child with Ann and he had never touched upon the subject with her. Harry McPherson had nearly been a career bachelor, and he was very glad that this had not become his final fate, even though his marriage was a failure. But he would not accept this, and because he would not accept defeat there was always the chance of victory.

He wanted to stay married to Ann, he wanted to be able to get along with Evette, even though he knew it meant more humiliation at her hands. But he did not fear her. She could embarrass him, as she had in the past many times, but he would not retaliate.

Harry McPherson was a patient man who rarely lost his temper. Almost everything he did was calculated and thought-out before he ever did it. He found that his life was better balanced that way.

And he was basically a good guy. He had cut a few corners in his life, quite a few actually, and he had many times brushed the law when he had been involved in subdivisions and tract homes. Legally (he had been a member of the bar for a long time) he had come within six inches of being disbarred in Portland, even though he had been completely innocent of the chicanery of which he was accused. He hadn't understood what his client had been up to, even though he had been suspicious and would have dropped the case if he could have afforded it. But a young attorney with only one client, a high-paying one, could not afford it.

But he had not been convicted; in fact, he made a fool of the prosecutor at the hearing and had been enthusiastically welcomed back into the fold.

Half an hour later, he met the man who had prosecuted him in the hall. He looked him straight in the eye and brought his thumb up into his mouth; he hooked it into his upper teeth and thrust it forward.

The former prosecutor stared at him, not understanding.

"Don't worry about it, Alfred," Harry said. "It doesn't mean anything here; only in Sicily. But stay out of my way. You knew damned well I wasn't involved but you prosecuted me anyway in that hearing." Harry stopped. "In my opinion, Alfred, you are fecal matter, something that should be covered under the earth to kill its stench."

Harry had walked away.

As he thought back now, Alfred (whatever his last name was) never went anywhere. The disbarment hearing had drawn a lot of publicity; Harry had emasculated his prosecutor, and no one was much interested in a badly beaten loser.

Fate of all prosecutors, Harry reflected, and smiled. He dipped his cup into the punchbowl again and sipped from it; it was damned weak punch, he thought. He intensely disliked little people who tried to be accusers; it was a job for the very strong only.

His wife moved up to where he stood and stopped next to his left elbow. She was wearing a cocktail dress that made her look very attractive. He thought it was a pity that....

"Are you trying to soak up all the punch like a bank blotter, Harry?"

"That's an interesting allusion, Ann. It must be because you married money, since you know damned well I'm not a lush."

"You've been known to hang one on a time or two."

He nodded his head. "I apologize for what I just said."

"Why do you always apologize just before I get mad at you?"

"Planning," he said.

She shrugged a little. "I know you're no drinker, Harry, but do you have to stay over here all evening? If you sat in a corner by yourself, people would notice you were sulking; but if you stand by the punch bowl they just think you're getting drunk. Does it make you this unhappy just to come to a party, Harry?"

"Yes," he said.

"What do you want out of life? You have success; what else?"

"My wife," he said flatly. "You have a wife."

"Yes, I have a wife."

"And that wife doesn't meet up to your standards, does she?"

"No," he said, "she doesn't. If she relaxed a little bit she could be a certain middle-aged man's home life, but she never relaxes."

"Oh for God's sake, Harry. Grow up."

"Crap," he said and tossed the cut-glass cup onto the table. "I'm going home. Are you going with me?"

"I'm not ready to leave yet," Ann snapped quickly, even though there was a movement about her lips that seemed to say she hadn't meant it as sharply as she had said it. But Harry couldn't be certain of this; it might only be wishful thinking.

"I'll get a cab," Harry said, "and you can have the car."

"That's a terrible waste of money." I "I can afford it, "he said.

"Please don't do it, Harry. Don't do it to me. If you leave, you'll ruin the evening for me ... and I want to have a good time tonight. I desperately need to have a good time tonight."

"I'm damned if this isn't the first time you've ever really asked anything from me or needed me," Harry said.

"Oh!" Ann whirled away from him quickly and left him at the table by himself, watching her move out of the room, through a doorway and into the next room.

"Would you like more punch, sir?" said a servant who had come up to stand behind the table on the other side of the bowl.

"Well, not exactly. I don't think so."

Harry McPherson put his hands into his trouser pockets, turned around to look at the roomful of people who had been behind him, and let a short belch pass his lips.

He was staying at the party, he supposed.

Peter and Evette were now at their party, a party held in a three-room motel unit owned by someone who had not refused a very young person the right to rent it. The one who had made the rental had to be a minor, Peter thought, since there wasn't a single person of the ten or eleven present who could be more than twenty years old. Several of them appeared to be sixteen or seventeen but he did not know for sure because he was never certain of anyone's age. Peter and Evette sat cross-legged on the floor the way all the guests were seated, ignoring the available motel furniture.

The boy who had invited them at the drive-in raced around the room with a bottle of tequila, pouring the white Mexican liquid into glasses and acting as though he were the host. Peter privately thought that the party was probably a community effort, and he felt a little guilty that he had not chipped in for the expenses.

The boy with the bottle of tequila was the one from the car. He was short and dark; his cheeks had several pockmarks on them. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, displaying forearms tattooed in several places; they were very thick and strong-looking arms for an otherwise slender body, a body that was thin in the chest and did not boast broad shoulders.

Peter did not like the small thick-armed boy with the tattoos and the bottle of tequila in his hands. There wasn't anything precisely about him that annoyed Peter, but his general attitude toward the other people there and his particular attitude toward Evette annoyed him. He was familiar to Evette. But Peter was almost certain that he had not been one of Evette's lovers, though that didn't mean that he didn't intend becoming one of those chosen.

All of the young people in the room, Peter thought, looked scabby. He didn't know why he had conjured up the word "scabby" but he had; he was not actually a snob, but he found the others in the room somehow of a lower order of animal.

They were vulgar people and the reason he held it against them was that they didn't have to be that way. He knew by watching them that they were the way they were because they wanted to be, and this had made them scabby in his mind.

They weren't part of the healthy, sun-browned, white-short-wearing crowd around Thornton that was supposed to be normal. They were different, but they weren't different the way Peter Wilson was. Peter was sensitive to people and their ways and he saw the difference in the members of the party.

He did not feel a kinship with these other young people, even though he was a member with them on the outside of everything; part of the legion of the damned, part of the rejected of the world.

What was wrong with them? Didn't they know how to build model airplanes and bury their frustration in balsa wood and glue?

Why was he here? Peter wondered. Why was he here with these people? He didn't want to be with them but he wanted to be with Evette and he wanted the chance to lose his uneasiness with marijuana; what did they call it? Pot? But where was it?

Clint, the short young man with the frail chest and shoulders and immense forearms, came to them with the tequila. The pants he wore were very tight on him, about as tight as the dumb cop's, King Virdon, Peter thought. But the two men weren't much alike in any other way.

Evette held her paper cup out and Clint poured two or three ounces of tequila into it. Evette laughed and let out a little squeal when some of the liquid splashed out over the top of the cup and dropped down to her bare legs.

"You're sure free with the juice, Clint," she said.

"There's plenty, doll, plenty of juice. Don't you worry about that." He tipped the bottle a little and several drops fell onto her legs again.

She squealed again. "You're putting me on, boy."

"Yeah." Clint turned towards Peter. "Where's your cup, Sam? I'll fill up your crankcase."

"I'm not interested in drinking," Peter said bitterly.

"So?" Clint held his free hand up in the air. "I'm not making you."

Peter could see that Clint didn't like him; even if he had not been with Evette, Clint would always have disliked him, even as he disliked Clint. There was a natural animosity that flowed between the two of them and it interested Peter.

It was interesting that the two young men hated each other. Peter enjoyed it because he did not fear Clint, even though he was not a match for him physically and would probably take a severe beating if he had to meet the other on that ground.

"Maybe Pete wants something else," Evette said.

Clint's eyes jumped to her and covered her body slowly, a carnal grin slipping across his face. "Who don't?"

"Don't you ever get your mind out of the sewer?" Evette said, feigning indignity. "No, Pd be too lonesome if I let it out. Everybody else's I know is there." Clint laughed.

"Maybe Pete wants to do some smoking," Evette said.

"Sure, he can do that if he wants to," Clint said slowly, changing his manner now. He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a pack of popular brand cigarettes.

"Pot, not butts," Evette said, as though he had insulted her intelligence.

"I don't know anything about any pot. What kind of pot? There's a bunch of them in the kitchen. Does he want one with a little chair...."

"Forget the comedy," Evette said sharply and a little cruelly. "He knows. Why do you think we came to this party? To drink Mexican joy juice?"

It delighted Peter to hear her cut Clint short. He smiled inside himself but he did not let it show.

"Later, doll," Clint said, jerking his head. "You know, a little later when the party gets swinging." Clint glanced down toward Peter again; this time there was more respect in his gaze, a little more unsureness.

"Sure you don't want to try some juice?" Clint said to Peter.

Peter picked up a dry empty cardboard cup someone had handed him earlier and held it up. "Thanks. I'll have some juice ... for now."

Clint poured tequila into Peter's cup and walked away from them to others seated nearby.

Evette glanced at Peter and held her cup out to him. "Let's drink to it. Better things are coming."

Peter nodded and touched his cup to hers. He looked at her lush body, her deep-red lips, her solid legs, her soft blonde hair that did not seem to possess the high sheen of bleach; he looked at her belly that was not held flat by a girdle.

He felt a wanting in his body. It was a yearning that he did not really understand but could only feel, a gnawing, grotesque pain that had carried him through one model airplane construction after another.

Peter was at the apex of his life.

He wanted, he had to have ... Evette Warwick.

Paul Moran sat with Margaret in the Downtown Theater. They had seen Reinhardt Mason in the main picture; then they saw part of a teenage rock 'n roll movie and decided to leave.

They walked outside together and laughed as they walked down the street. "One more slam and I would have thought that boy on the screen was trying to make me," Margaret said.

"One more and he would have been trying."

"Then you are protecting my honor by taking me out of that pit."

"Yes," Paul said. "I am protecting you. If you are to be violated, I think it should be done by me."

"I think you are right. Why don't you violate me? Or make overtures or something?"

"You are trying to excite me sexually," Paul said.

"Yes, I am. Probably, I want you to take me and this must be wrong. I'm sure my mother and father would think it wrong."

"Yes. This has always worried me because I think the way mothers and fathers do. I would like to take you but I always put myself into the position of the father of the girl. I am an uncertain father."

"I know how you feel and you don't have to feel that way. You carry the world's worries on your back. You're a man who represents good; it seems to be all that you know."

Paul's hand reached out, touching her. He withdrew it quickly. "If I am for good, I shouldn't be touching you."

"Please don't become over moral," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't know what I'm going to do with you," she said. "I suppose I will have to marry you or be compromised."

"Yes," he said. "At heart I am a boodler."

"What's a boodler?"

"It's a breast fondler."

"That sounds romantic."

"Well, it is, "he said.

He held his arm out and she moved inside his grasp and they walked down the street together with his arm about her.

As they passed through the poor district of town on their way home, Roy Warwick pulled his window curtain aside a little and studied them. He had recognized Paul a block away but he didn't know the girl he was with. He waited until they were near him to pull the curtain aside, recognizing the girl as Margaret Carlson when they passed under the street light.

Roy liked his young friend's taste in women. She reminded him a little of Ann when they had first been married, but he choked this thought off quickly, not trusting it. So often, if a young woman was tall and slim and had dark hair, she reminded him of Ann as she had been. And this couldn't really be true; they couldn't all look the way Ann did and they couldn't all resemble her. It was a trick of his imagination.

He wondered how Ann looked now. He had not seen her for eighteen months-or was it two years or more-and even that had been accidental as he walked down the street. He had seen her standing at the magazine rack in the drugstore, leafing through a fashion magazine, stopping from time to time, then turning on. He had stood there for several moments staring into the store, looking at his former wife. Roy wanted to go inside; he wanted to greet Ann, ask her how things were and how Evette was, but he didn't. She would probably have rebuffed him, even if he had been well-dressed, cleanly shaven and sober, which he was not then and had not been for a long time. It nearly broke his heart to see the woman who had been the girl he married so close, and still not be able to talk to her.

He had wandered off down the street and bought himself another bottle of wine, and in the heat of the wine's grasp, he tried to forget that he had seen Ann that day, but it hadn't worked very well.

Paul Moran and his Margaret were gone from Roy's view now, and he let the fabric of the curtain slip free of his fingers and fall back into the grimy position where it always stood. The dirty, cheap curtain was almost like the filter that stood between him and the rest of the world-porous enough to see through, but not enough to distinguish the sharper and more subtle lines of the world, all the things that at one time had had meaning for him and were now only vague, shapeless things.

He turned away from the window and looked toward the kitchen table in the middle of the room, beneath the light bulb that hung down from the ceiling. He saw the filth that was there and it was not a bit hazy; he could even read the printing on the label.

He crossed the room and picked up the bottle.

At the motel, Peter Wilson was sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall in a slouched position. His eyes dropped and he opened his mouth a little every few seconds, saliva forming at the corners. His nose felt stuffed and he wanted to blow it, but he never quite got his hand back to his handkerchief.

In his hand, between his fingers, was a fat brown cigarette, burning slowly. His eyes moved down and he watched the smoke that curled up in the poorly ventilated room. A grin twisted its way across his lips and he thought about the way he felt; he was here and he was not here.

Well, that was a hell of a jump from building model airplanes, anyway.

He brought his hand up to his face and pulled on the cigarette again. Funny sensation; even tobacco had always made him dizzy. Marijuana made him dizzy and a few other things thrown in.

Some sparks came off the end of the cigarette onto his hand. He tossed his hand to throw them off and waited to feel the pain of the fire, but he didn't feel a thing.

He laughed hoarsely; the way he felt now nothing hurt him. The inner ghosts that had haunted him most of his life weren't with him; his Four Horsemen had all been unseated and their mounts had run away from them to frolic in a pleasant pasture, and the dreaded four had had to walk.

"I am risen," he cried to himself, and he did not know if he were committing blasphemy or only quoting D.H. Lawrence from The Man Who Died.

Peter had never felt this way before in his lifetime; he had never known he would feel this way. "Oh God," he whispered to himself, "for a little while I can breathe." He was not sure that he really wanted to continue living; gaining a temporary release from his obsessed life of failure gave him new insights and new ideas and he was not certain he actually wanted to go on being.

Then a vague distress moved through his nebulous senses. Evette must have gone to the bathroom, but it seemed that she had been gone for a long time, too long a time. He did not now trust his judgment of time; it might have been two hours or two seconds.

"Where?" he said, looking down at his hands. "Where Evette?" He giggled at his foolishness. His immense desire for her had been dampened by the smoke of the weed and he felt cheated, even though it had released him from his own personal demons.

Why was his desire now choked down to a plastic neutrality signifying nothing? He wanted that hunger, that appetite to go on burning in his body.

He heard loud, raucous, multiple laughter from the kitchen, and somewhere above the general tone he heard a girl's laugh; it might have been Evette. His eyes turned toward the open kitchen door, straining to see through the thickness of smoke that separated him and the noise. He attempted to rise from where he slouched but his muscles would not obey the command. His whole body had grown pulpy and he could not make it work for him.

"You put that record on, Clint, and I'll show you a dance that'll scorch your sideburns," the girl's voice cried from the kitchen.

A great cheer went up from the kitchen; was everyone in there? He glanced about and saw only two other people in the room with him, a boy and a girl. They were clinging to each other tightly, apparently unconscious.

There was a mass exodus of yelling people from the kitchen into his room.

Peter saw Evette among them, holding her hands above her head and screaming little bird-like cries.

He tried to say something but no sound passed his lips; once more he attempted to rise, but his legs would not obey him. He sensed that something was going to happen and he did not want the vapors that clouded his being to exclude him from it.

"Get that phonograph going," Evette cried.

Peter saw Clint putting a record onto a portable single-play phonograph. He watched him, almost as if he were in a dream-somebody else's dream that he had intruded upon.

He saw Evette being helped up onto a table; he saw her standing there with both hands on her hips; he saw her thick, well-made body, and some of the sexual hunger that had departed him came back a little-but it was only such a little.

The music began to play and Evette twitched her body back and forth across the tabletop, rubbing her hands against the abundant part of her thighs. The music throbbed and she slapped herself sharply with the flat of her hand and they cheered.

Peter stared, once more trying to rise.

Evette moved about the tabletop, twisting her body from side to side. The indistinct crowd around her began to clap their hands in unison with the music or her movements, Peter did not know which.

Peter struggled to his knees, feeling his weight pressing down on his kneecaps. That was something; it was more than he had been able to do a moment before.

He saw her wiggling, with her arms in the air; suddenly her sweater no longer covered her upper body. All that was there was a white brassiere encasing her large breasts, whose very fatness pressed out as a swelling around the white fabric.

Peter struggled; he felt one foot on the floor, but it was ninety feet from his eyes. He fought a deep sickness that clutched at his entrails, a sickness that made him want to vomit and roll on the floor, but he fought against it.

He had another foot on the floor (how many feet did he have?). He struggled forward, fighting the denseness in his unfeeling legs. He punched at people, elbowed, swore, and he got closer to the table.

Then he saw her hands going behind her back, he saw them going up toward the snaps on the brassiere, he saw them touching the cloth, he saw them beginning to work, he heard the cries of the cheap mob in his ears....

"No!" he screamed. "No!" He lunged past people and grabbed one of her legs; he grabbed again and again until her body toppled down on him and the others. He clutched her towards him, clumsily, numbly, senselessly, but with a feeling of protection.

"No!" he shrieked.

Suddenly he was hit in the mouth by a fist. He saw part of Clint, only part-the big thick arms-and another fist struck him in the face.

He released his hold on Evette and staggered against other people. Clint hit him hard in the groin; he cried out from the pain and the crowd yelled again, not from lust this time but from the sheer joy of the kill.

Clint slammed his fist in against the side of his head and Peter felt the clear ring of a silver bell through his brain.

Then he lunged straight forward, throwing all of his weight onto the lighter man and clutching with his thin bony hands, clutching for anything that was there to grab, searching for something that would stop the beating he was taking.

Clint crumpled under his weight (Peter was a little fat and overweight) and Peter landed on top of him, at last finding a grip; his thumbs were in Clint's Adam's apple and his fingers braced against the cords of the other boy's neck.

Clint smashed his fists into Peter's ribs, but Peter hardly felt the blows; the concussion recorded itself in his brain, but that was all. Peter was too heavy for the little man with the big arms to displace and he drove his heaviness down against the perimeter of Clint's ribs, the edge of the bird cage, and he clutched his hands tighter and tighter around his throat.

"Oh ... ahhh!" Peter screamed. "Ah ... ee!" His voice shattered the fog of the room as he saw Clint's eyes stare up at him, as he saw Clint's tongue slowly come between his lips as though he was sticking it out at him in disdain of his strength. But that was not true; Clint was dying in his very grasp and he screamed his blood cry again. "Ah ... ee!"

"Stop him," a girl's voice cried from a long way off. "He's hurting Clint."

"He's a sissy. He can't hurt Clint."

"But he is, he is, he's hurting Clint. Clint's tongue is hanging out."

There was male laughter that slammed against Peter's ears; laughter or derision, laughter or insult. They didn't think he was strong enough to kill Clint; he would show them. And when he had shown them they would know him for what he was-a killer of men, a man to be feared, a man not to be laughed at.

He pulled up, bringing Clint's head up from the floor ... then smashed it down hard.

"Pete!" the girl's voice cried in his ear.

He didn't listen; he only stared at Clint's twitching face, at his eyes that leaped out of his head, at his tongue that lashed back and forth like a lizard's.

"Pete, don't!" the girl cried again. "For the love of God, Pete, you'll kill him. Everybody knows you're the best man. They know he's no match for you, Pete. You're a hard guy, Pete, you're king of the hill."

Peter's eyes moved away from Clint's twisted, whitened face and he looked at Evette's visage, only inches away from him. He glanced toward her torso and saw that the white brassiere still held her breasts within its grasp.

"Let's cut out of here, Pete," Evette said. "I want to go somewhere else. Pete," she said, "they'll put you in the gas chamber if you kill him. He didn't mean any harm; he's just gassed-up on pot. He was crazy to hit you, he didn't know who he was taking on. He should have known better than to take on a big guy like you."

Peter's hands loosened a little on Clint's throat but he did not let go.

There was a deep, sucking, imbibing gasp as Clint had his first good draught of air in a little while.

"Put your clothes on," Peter said in a flat monotone. "I won't get up if you don't have your clothes on."

"Sure, Pete, sure." She grabbed her sweater and pulled it over her head and down. "See, all dressed. There wasn't any harm meant; it was just a party."

Peter looked down at Clint's face, at the throat that was still in his grasp. Clint's tongue had gone back inside his mouth now and he was breathing in short gasps.

Peter released his fingers from the throat.

There were sounds of relief from the others who stood around them. They had wanted a kill but, when confronted with it, were willing to compro mise and let it pass, even though they still desired it deeply.

Peter raised his right hand and smashed his fist into the side of Clint's face.

"Don't ever hit me again," Peter hissed. "I won't put up with people hitting me any more. I would just as soon kill you."

"Come on, Pete," Evette said. "Come on."

Outside, the cool night air dashed at Peter's face almost as if it were smelling salts thrown from a glass tube.

"You'll be okay," Evette said.

"Oh my God."

"Everything's going to be all right."

"She shouldn't have started taking her clothes off," Peter said. "She shouldn't have...."

"I'm sorry, Pete. I just got carried away with the party. It needed something and I was going to give it a shot in the arm."

"You're Evette!"

"Sure. Who'd you think it was?"

"I don't know. I don't know why I smoked the cigarettes."

He thought about Evette, tying things together now, and he didn't understand anything of what had gone on inside. If she had wanted to take her clothes off just to give herself a thrill, why had she interfered with his killing, which should have given her another kind of thrill?

But he didn't understand about her relationships with men; he didn't understand how she had consoled the boy-child when he had been struck in his privates ... or the boy-man either. But he had some of her respect. She had stopped him when he was going to kill Clint; that had meant she had respected his violence, at least.

She helped him into the passenger side of the car; then she slid into the driver's seat and drove away from the motel grounds. As she drove, Peter leaned back in his seat and breathed deeply.

"I'm feeling better," he said."

"Pot, baby. It's always funny the first time. You scared the hell out of me back there."

"Did I?"

"I was afraid you were going to kill Clint!"

"Did you care about Clint?" he said.

"No. I don't care anything about Clint. I just didn't want to see you in trouble over him."

"Why?" he said, searching, wanting her to say that she cared for him as his head was clearing from the marijuana.

"Why? Because I planned on you making love to me tonight. Is that a wrong reason?"

Peter did not answer. Her statement shocked him, caused him alarm, as he was escaping the effects of the drug, but he did not know what to reply.

Evette turned off the main road, down a dirt side road, and shortly pulled off to the shoulder. She snapped the keys and killed the ignition.

Peter stared at her.

"Why don't you kiss me or touch me or do something?" Evette said.

"You aren't scared of me, are you? You damned near killed Clint ... and just over me. Why did you do that?"

"I didn't want you to take your clothes off in front of all of them."

"You didn't want that," she said softly, "because you wanted me to do that just for you, didn't you."

"Yes," he said past a dry throat. "Yes." His nasal passages clogged against his speech. "Yes."

Her right hand came out slowly and touched his cheek. "I'll do it for you ... and just you," she said.

"Oh, yes," he cried.

She pulled her sweater slowly over her head and dropped it. She looked into his eyes and reached forward with her hands again and cupped his face within them.

She held his face for a long time, looking into his eyes. His mind was clearing by the minute now.

She pulled her hands away and brought them behind her back. She unfastened the first snap and looked at him. She released the second and did not look at him.

He waited, painfully on edge, painfully afraid of the waiting, painfully unsure of what was expected of him, painfully unsure of what he was supposed to do ... but a thousandfold certain of what nature was driving him to. He was like a young bull addressing a cow hidden and covered by a dark sheet; he hoped there was a cow there and one with which he could cope, but one thing was certain-within a moment or two he would move forward at full tilt no matter what.

Evette's fingers released the third snap, the brassiere collapsed down over her belly, and he stared at her immense breasts.

She grabbed his head and brought his face to her, burying it against her abundant bosoms, and he felt their softness against his face.

He cried aloud and he took her.

She was taken easily and he suffered no degradation or embarrassment in the taking. He did not understand but he took her anyway. He did not understand but this meant almost nothing, because she understood.

Peter knew little but it was of no consequence that night.

The important thing neither of them understood or knew about then was: Someone was going to kill Evette Warwick.

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