Chapter 2
Bleary eyed and sleepy, her psyche all the more unbalanced since her unsatisfactory love-making with Gordon the night before, Sharon closed the front door of their apartment behind her. It was self-locking and since Gordon was still inside sleeping anyway, she didn't bother to double lock it. She didn't know quite how she was going to face the dreadful dullness of the day's work ahead of her, but face it she must if she and Gordon were going to be able to afford to put some money aside for the VW camper that they hoped to buy one day, and if they were going to live just the slightest bit above sub-standard level.
She wore her glasses already because, even though they were not tinted, they made her feel a little bit more secure in the outside world, and their heavy tortoise shell frames covered a good part of her delicate features. Her fine auburn hair was brushed back and pinned so that it would never come undone involuntarily, and she wore a sensible cotton jumper of a dark blue, the kind that didn't show dirt. Added to this, her low-heeled shoes, flatties, she used to call them in high school, made walking very comfortable indeed, and her big imitation leather bag held her lunch for that afternoon. Sometimes she made herself a sandwich and took a pear or an apple along to save money. She found that she couldn't even get out of Woolworth's without paying over $1.75 for a lunch that was still unsatisfactory in some deep underlying way.
She started down the hall of the apartment building, feeling the longing in her loins with each step that she took. She didn't even want to think ahead to the evening, her disappointment had been so great! As she walked briskly toward the front door, the door of the apartment directly next to Sharon and Gordon's opened, and a well dressed business man stepped out. He smiled when he saw Sharon, and she coolly acknowledged his presence and stood bristling with anger as he opened the front door for her, ushering her out into the pale summer morning. She walked quickly down the steps and hurried up the hill toward Broadway and her office. All the while she thought she could feel the man's eyes on her, watching her progress up the hill on "A" street.
"That Carolyn!" Sharon fumed, hardly watching where she was going. "It's getting disgusting! Every night a different man . . . and most of them old enough to be her father!"
Sharon had heard her giggling with them right through the wall, and sometimes she heard even more! "That frightful girl!" she said out loud, and several people turned to see who she was talking to.
Carolyn Carswell smiled to herself and rolled over in bed. It was a big brass bed and the springs were bouncy and uneven, but Carolyn felt infinitely comfortable in it and was still pleased that she had bought it at the second hand store over near the railroad tracks. The 19-year-old's pale blonde hair was all that stuck out above the sheet. Even in hot weather she liked to be covered, but underneath her golden tanned body luxuriated, nakedly rolling to the cooler parts of the rumpled bed.
"MMmmmmm ..." Carolyn moaned softly to herself. "He was NICE!" Her previous night's lover was someone she had never met before, and Carolyn had already found that some of her most exciting evenings were spent with total strangers. She had long since stopped explaining, even to herself, just why she had a penchant for new lovers . . . always new ones. "I just dig sex!" she had said often enough, to friends, to the person she happened to be with at the time, or to her shocked and dismayed mother, who still waited in Gary, Indiana for some word from her daughter who had gone east a full year before.
Her bronzed skin still prickled with excitement as she remembered each thrilling touch of her unknown lover's hands along the smooth hot surfaces of her naked body. Her breasts still hurt a bit from his mouth. How he had sucked her nipples .. . sucked them and sucked them until she had thought she would go out of her mind, but then he had made up for that with his deft sucking and licking down between her legs. Her golden curled pussy felt just slightly raw and she knew she was a bit swollen but she felt, Oh, so satisfied! "There's nothing like a man who knows how to suck pussy!" she thought briefly to herself as she began to think about getting up. It was still early, she knew, but she liked to take long walks in the morning, to breathe the fresh air that surrounded the small town and to take in all the interesting sights to be seen. She usually met someone nice, too, during her long walks, and she liked talking with new people as well as taking them home to her bed with her.
Carolyn's full round face gave the appearance of being nothing more than a child's, and her clothing did not accentuate the loveliness of her firm little breasts, or her soft, flat belly and well curved hips and thighs, but anyone who watched the young girl move, could divine a sensual nature beneath the self-styled fringes and folds of her dresses and pants.
After a brisk shower, Carolyn anointed her body with a special oil she had bought from the local smoke shop. "Love Oil" it said on the bottle, "To enhance your days and nights!" It smelled like strawberries and Carolyn loved it, it made her feel good, and it had seemed to please her lovers too since she'd been wearing it. It left her soft clean skin pleasantly scented, and just the least bit slippery beneath the bright orange East Indian shirt that she put on. It was a little too big for her, but the color made her feel so good that the size didn't matter too much. Her tight fitting multi-patched jeans were worn and perfect, she thought, as she slid them over her sturdy, school-girl legs.
"You're the All-American Girl!" someone had told her once, upon seeing her completely naked, leaping into the old water hole behind Farmer Joe's property. She couldn't remember quite who it was who had said it. It was either the bus driver who had given her his address once, or one of the two boys who had accompanied her home one night from the local bar, the Dug Out a few months before. But Carolyn often thought of it, and liked thinking of herself that way. She was healthy and she loved life and her body, and that included all the pleasures that life and her body could give her!
Feeling on top of the world, Carolyn left her apartment. She would spend the day at the park, she figured. She hadn't been there all week, and the animals probably missed her, she thought, especially Elfin, the deer, one of her favorites. She didn't have to go sign for her unemployment check until next week, since she'd done so the morning before, and her whole week would be gloriously free of any thought of stodgy little old ladies working away their lives behind glass windows in cubbyhole offices. The very thought of them was enough to get her depressed sometimes, but not today .. . today she was sure everything was going to go just the way she wanted it to.
She was humming as she walked out the front door, and down the steps and a bright yellow stream of sunlight struck her full on the face, illuminating it and warming her inside, as she turned up "A" street.
Guy Edwards was 17 now, and as a birthday present to himself, he had decided to leave home. Home was not so very far away at the moment, a matter of a two-hour bus drive north from Albany, but still Guy felt light-hearted and free . . . free from the stifling dark house that he had inhabited for 17 years with his mother and father. On his back, Guy had all the belongings that he thought he would need for some time. He owned two pairs of levis, one of which he was wearing, a pair of good sturdy boots, two workshirts and a levi jacket. He had only one pair of socks and a pair of jockey shorts, but he figured out that he could wash them every night. . . maybe every other night. He might just throw them away if he got tired of them. He had a horoscope book that mapped out everything for him . . . every day of the coming year, and a harmonica, with which he hoped to keep himself company if need be, for the times when he would be on the road, between stops.
Right now, he was growing a beard as quickly as he could, hoping that he wouldn't even be able to recognize himself in the mirror within a short time, and especially that his own mother, if she happened to walk past him one day, would keep on walking, never knowing that it was her darling boy who had just passed. It wasn't that he didn't love his mother ... he did, but he just couldn't stand her . . . her or his Dad either. He had never really forgiven them for not loving each other, he realized shortly before his 17th birthday, and his departure was something of a punishment. . . the child punishing the parents, even 'though he knew they would never understand it as such.
They hadn't understood it when Gordon had left home, and that had been 10 years before. Guy had been only six going on seven when his older brother was already 17. Guy could still remember the carrying on when Gordon went away, leaving Albany in search of some better place to live. It wasn't until Guy was a little older that he wondered just how Gordon had stuck it out until he was 17, but now, Guy hoped to get some answers from his big brother, and perhaps a little insight about life, since Gordon had been out in it for so long. Gordon's apartment would be Guy's first stop on what he considered the beginning of a long adventurous journey, during which he would find out all there was to know about the world beyond the dour city of Albany.
He walked slowly from the bus station glad to be out of the freezing air conditioning of the Albany-Blandings Bus. There was no rush to get to his brother's, he felt, since both Gordon and his wife worked. He didn't know that Gordon had a night shift and would be home until 3:30 p.m. So Guy decided to walk around the town and find out what the small town of Blandings was like before showing up at his brother's apartment.