Chapter 7
Thereafter, Al was a regular visitor to apartment 4c whenever Sandra was out of the way. Meanwhile Mavis spent much of her time making the rounds of theatrical agents and producers, and her education progressed speedily and considerably. There was, she discovered, no shortage of men willing and able to advance her Broadway aspirations and set her up for a career-for certain inducements and considerations. Talent, apparently, was a secondary requirement. What mattered most was a girl's shape, her personality, and of course, her willingness to cooperate....
The most important item of furniture in the majority of agents' offices was, Mavis learned, the sofa, and while she didn't object to mixing business with pleasure, there was a limit, even to her capacity for indulgence. Some of the agents she met were genuinely interested in booking new talent, and put her name in their books at face value. But she had no stage experience beyond small parts in a couple of high school plays, and if she'd been as quick to exercise her brains as she was her fanny she would have seen that most of the plum jobs that were dangled so temptingly before her existed only in the agile imagination of the character whose interest in her went no further than the couch.
She almost wore out a pair of shoes among other things far more essential, before she got wise to the phonies and became selective and more discriminating in her choice of agencies. Thereafter she lied about her background and her experience or lack of it. She promised much but gave virtually nothing except provocation calculated to maintain interest, and assurances that she was available-once she had secured the job in question.
This strategy proved more successful, and by holding out she eventually landed a minor part in a new comedy. The job lasted exactly two nights. During the next six weeks she was given eleven other parts ranging from straight acting to stooging for a Chinese magician, and failed miserably in all of them.
Ultimately even she had to face facts and admit that she was no actress and had no talent whatsoever insofar as legitimate theatre was concerned. But there were other angles.
The morning she walked into Cash Morgan's office she knew she'd found just the niche for her. The basic decor motif in Moran's layout was comprised of glamour photographs and pin-ups, mostly nudes that left little to the imagination. Mavis realized right away that she had been fishing in the wrong pond. Here was an opening for the special kind of talent she did possess and knew how to exploit.
Half an hour after entering Morgan's office she straightened her clothing, repaired her make-up job, and swaggered out with a signed copy of a six month contract in her bag and her arm linked with Moran's. Over an expensive lunch he explained some of the finer points and detail connected with her 'star" billing. She didn't have to act, or sing, or do anything except look attractive-and take off her clothes twice nightly for the benefit of the jaded customers patronizing a sleazy night-spot named, appropriately, the Jive Dive. The job paid a hundred and fifty dollars a week with the promise of a further fifty if she made a hit, rising to five hundred a week if she really drew the customers.
The fact that Cash Moran was impotent bothered Mavis not at all after the disappointment of the initial discovery. She knew other ways, and what she hadn't already learned from Phil Benton and Al Grant she picked up from Moran himself. What Cash Moran lacked Al amply compensated for....
So far as Sandra knew to the contrary, Mavis worked nights in the chorus of a sparking reveue, though somehow there was always some reason why Sandra couldn't take in the show and see Mavis go through her dance routine. The break, Mavis figured, would come soon enough, and for all Sandra's faults Mavis knew that she would miss her if the unpredictable blonde walked out as she was quite likely to do if she found out that her friend and lover was performing a twice nightly strip for gaping men.
Sandra meanwhile was getting ahead in her library job, and liking it. There was, she speedily discovered, a woman named Phyllis Maxwell working in the reference department who had similar tastes and peculiarities of her own, a fact disclosed to Sandra one afternoon when they both chanced to visit the powder-room at the same time. Sandra, torn between loyalty to Mavis-who had been neglecting her of late, and her need for self-expression and an outlet for dark, turbulent desires, tried to resist the compelling forces. But she was weak-the older woman very persuasive. Phyllis Maxwell had a good figure, and no scruples. When she took the initiative, Sandra was lost.
Afterwards, she felt a deep sense of guilt and shame that preyed on her mind until she looked, and felt, positively ill. Eventually she couldn't endure it any onlger and asked to be allowed to leave early, having made up her mind to confess her lapse to Mavis and beg her forgiveness. Shortly after the lunch hour she arrived back at the delapidated apartment building. In her present agitated state of mind the place was even more depressing than usual. Her footsteps echoed hollowly on the worn stairs. When she reached the third landing her leg muscles were aching and she paused for a while before tackling the final flight. Leaning against the wall, she heard sounds of what appeared to be scuffling from upstairs on the next floor. At least, she thought, Mavis was home.
Then she heard a series of heavy thurhping noises followed by a scraping sound and a low cry. Alarmed, she ran up the remaining treads, taking them two at a time, and flung open the apartment door, blurting Mavis name. She hauled up then, suddenly, as if she'd run slap into a stone wall, and stood staring blankly, stunned, shocked, transfixed by the sight of Mavis sprawled on the bed in the clutching arms of a naked man....
Mavis was still partly dressed but her bra was displaced, baring her firm, large breasts, and her raised skirt exposed her eager limbs and the quivering of her leg muscles. It was Al Grant, grunting, sweating, gasping, hairy buttocks taut with effort. His face was pressed firmly into the hollow between Mavis' breasts, and with every impassioned movement she moaned with animal pleasure and dug her long, slender fingers deeper into his hard back. Her legs were crossed over his hips, her knees clamped around his ribs.
Sandra, horrified, betrayed, stood as if petrified, unable to move. A crazy desire to laugh struggled for mastery over the tears that welled into her wide, accusing eyes. In that moment her whole flimsy world toppled. The meaning went from her young, distorted life, all trust, love, and reason. The shuddering pain, her anguish and cm el disillusionment, poured out in a wild, pitiful cry: "NO! MAVIS! Oh, God-no!"
If Mavis heard she gave no sign. Al swore. Startled, he twisted his head round with some difficulty and favored Sandra with a savage glare.
"Get the hell outa here!" he yelled. His eyes were bloodshot, horrible, inflamed with passion. When Sandra didn't move he paused in his violent love making just long enough to snatch up a heavy glass ashtray from the bedside table and throw it at her. His aim was bad. The missile shattered against the wall and the sound of it breaking snapped Sandra out of her trance.
Her brain seemed numb.
A red haze clouded her reasoning, and she saw things through a mist of brimming tears. As Mavis, vaguely aware of something wrong and irritated by Al's faltering response, half raised herself so that her breasts were flattened against his shoulder, Sandra whirled round and stumbled blindly from the room. Mavis caught only a fleeting glimpse of the distressed figure. She wasn't certain whether or not she had heard Sandra shouting, but now, brief though the glimpse of her friend's plump shape was, she realized instantly what had happened and she called to her by name, at the same time trying to push Al away. But he would not be denied.
Mavis heard Sandra's feet pattering on the landing, then a sudden splintering of wood followed by a ghastly shriek that tailed off and ended abruptly with a soggy thumping sound ... Fear stabbed through Mavis. An ice-cold fist seemed to clamp around her thudding heart. With strength prompted by desperation she flung Al's bulk off and ran out onto the landing, and almost spilled through the gap in the rails where a large section of the rotten woodwork had broken away, permitting a sheer drop to the ground floor....
Sandra Mathis lay sprawled out like a disjointed doll on the hallway floor, her limbs bent at grotesque angles, tongue protruding, swollen, bitten almost thought. Her head was bleeding, and her staring eyeballs bulged horribly....Mavis screamed.
A fat, bedraggled blonde woman emerged cautiously from a doorway across the hall and stood staring down at the broken body. The faded robe she wore hung open to reveal a flabby stomach that bulged over the tight waistband of soiled blue panties. Her enormous breasts were bare, blue-veined, sagging. Her feet were thrust into scuffed mules. Her tousled hair looked as if it hadn't been combed for a week.
A big man, balding, unshaven, pushed past her demanding to know what the hell was going on. Seeing the still corpse he shut his loose mouth and gaped. The dead girl's clothing had hiked up sufficiently for him to see the contours of her trimly covered buttocks, and the intimate exposure fascinated him. He swore when the meaty blonde swung him round and thrust him back inside the room. She slammed the door.
Al came down the stairs scowling, adjusting his clothing. He hadn't bothered to tuck in his shirt or put on his shoes.
"What's the idea runnin' out on-" he started, then saw the broken rails and the huddled shape, and came the rest of the way down fast.
"Great day in the morning!" he exclaimed. "What's with her? She jump or somethin'?"
Mavis, crouched beside Sandra's limp body, looked up. Her eyes were brimming over with tears.
"She fell," she said brokenly. "She saw us-like ... that and she ran out. She must have fallen against those rotten railings. Oh, Al! She's dead...!"
Al swore, finished buttoning his pants. "Take it easy, kid," he said gruffly. "It was an accident. Why the hell should she act up like that just because she finds you in a clinch? She abnormal or somethin'?"
Mavis nodded miserably, fighting the panic that threatened to engulf her.
""We had a sort of-of understanding," she said. "We were sort of close. In a way I was all she had."
"You mean she was queer? I should have known."
Mavis winced. "Don't use that revolting word," she said angrily. "All right-so she was a lesbian. It's just the way she was, no worse than some of the slimy bastards propping up doorways less than a block from here most any time of the night or day. Poor Sandra. She deserved better than this. Where are you going?"
"I'm gonna call the cops. What else? And we'd best get our story straight for when they show up. Hey! Don't touch her."
Mavis ignored him and raised Sandra's bloody head. She tried to turn the body over onto its back but lacked the strength. Reaction suddenly set in and she desisted, uttered a hoarse cry, and flung herself across the inert figure and sprawled there, sobbing convulsively. Al, frowning, sighed.
"Screwy dames," he muttered. "Wacky, all of 'em." He went to the wall phone.