Chapter 1

The two small boys had crept into the shadowy darkness between the tenement buildings. They were unaware that they were witnessing a medical miracle or its beginning knowing only that in a few minutes Rita Lyons would climb into the window of her dress shop and undress the manikins. This was a considerable thrill to their inexperienced eyes. Seeing a naked dummy was almost as good as seeing your sister undress for a bath, they agreed, and if they were lucky Miss Lyons might get careless climbing around in that window and they would see more than they bargained for.

Their wait was a short one; tonight Miss Lyons seemed like she was in a hurry. She dismissed the sales clerks, checked out the register, and locked the front door and all in less than ten minutes.

The boys witnessed these perfunctory chores with a detachment common to their years. They were too young to fully appreciate Rita Lyons' striking dark-haired loveliness, the litheness of her walk, and the lushness of her body. To the boys, she was just a woman with clothes on; and what good was that? There was nothing to see. Not a damn thing.

Nevertheless, the older of the two boys was prompted to voice an observation.

"You know who has bumps like her?"

"Who?"

"That cashier lady."

"Who?"

"The one at the movies, stupid!" The other boy neither confirmed nor denied his friend's comment; however, his eyes quickly darted in the direction of the dress lady's breasts. He gazed intently at her as she moved from the cash register to the back counter, noting that her breasts were not only large, but that they also bounced. His sister's were like that, he thought. But not as large.

And now, as he dwelled on the image of his young sister, also the woman across the street; pondered as to why they were called "boobies', a pleasurable sensation spread through him. Unconsciously, his hands stole to his pockets.

Inside the dress shop, Rita was unaware of the boys' scrutiny, nor that she was precipitating such a tide of excitement in the darkness across the street. She was, however, aware that Henry's phone call was overdue. She had phoned his office earlier this afternoon, asked his secretary to have him phone her at five-thirty. It was now nearly six o'clock and the bastard still hadn't phoned.

Suddenly, Rita caught herself. A bastard? Henry Ridgewood? What had possessed her even in thought to call him a bastard? He was nothing better than that, but what gave her the sudden guts to think of him in that manner? Dr. Grossman had explained that his pills would bring about some changes in her. Was this what he meant?

The phone rang and broke her thoughts. She closed the register drawer and hurried to the curtained back room. It was Ridgewood and he was angry; but strangely, Rita was no longer frightened.

"Rita, I've asked you and asked you not to call my office. Not for any reason. Yet you deliberately chose to disobey my instructions. Why?"

Rita assumed a stormy silence. She envisioned Henry Ridgewood huddled in some isolated outside phone booth, his. head drawn down into the collar of his overcoat: a turtle withdrawing to its shell.

"Do you realize what would happen if it became known that you and I had had an...." He broke off the rest of the sentence, his indigenous caution telling him that the word "affair" was not only unsavory, but that it was also dynamite. "...and the least you could do," he said, continuing his whining tirade, "is to respect my wishes...."

Rita patiently awaited Henry to complete his mentor-to-pupil scolding. She was willing to concede that the city's able Law Director was entitled to some discretion in his dalliance with other women, but wasn't Henry overdoing it? Did the aura of respectability that pervaded his political life have to also follow him in his personal affairs? Must he be so frigging high and mighty?

"Henry," she broke in angrily, "all I did was phone you, and I wouldn't have done that if it wasn't important." She paused. Then, in whispered urgency, she said, "I have to see you. And tonight!"

"That's impossible," he said with brusqueness. "My wife is having some friends over for dinner. I'm late now."

Suddenly fury rushed into Rita's body. She was gripped by an anger and strength she had never known. And she wasn't afraid of Henry the way she had been. Not in the least. She said:

"You dried-up old prune! Who do you think you're talking to?"

He gasped. "Have you been drinking?"

"No!" she snapped hotly. "I haven't been drinking."

"Then what's come over you?"

"Not a damn thing," she said, giving a sudden thought to Dr. Grossman's pills. "I'm just tired of being pushed around. And that means I want to see you."

"But I can't get away."

She threw him a mocking laugh. He could get away, as he put it, when his aging body had demanded the satisfaction of hers and that was just two short years ago. Did the bastard now think she could be callously cast aside? "You'll have to get away, Henry. Just call your wife and tell her that something came up, that you'll be late."

"I can't do that."

"The hell you can't!" she snapped, surprised at her own words. "Furthermore, you will."

"Is that a threat?" he asked.

Once again, a mysterious conversion of personality flooded Rita's body. Hidden strength rose to the surface. She snapped:

"You're goddamn right it's a threat!"

Henry Ridgewood fell into a shocked and stony silence. With but a single well directed statement, Rita had knocked the officialdom out of his manner and left him stripped to his weaknesses. He couldn't risk public exposure of his extramarital affairs; it would ruin him. Furthermore, wasn't it a fact that Henry Ridgewood secretly yearned for female domination. Hadn't he, when Rita was fresh out of high school and trying to hold down her job, forced her to go to a motel with him? And hadn't he forced Rita to strip him of his clothes and whip him because that was the only way that he could get his sexual kicks? Wouldn't that make beautiful copy for the morning paper?

"Where do you want me to meet you?" he said resignedly.

There was no need for a pause. Rita had thought it all out. "How "bout the place you used to take me to .when I didn't know any better?"

"You mean...."

"Yes, Henry. The Flyaway Motel. You said if I wanted to keep my job, I'd go. Do you remember?"

"Rita, that was two whole years ago."

"Yes, and I was young and foolish and too afraid to say no."

"Rita, I don't understand you. You've changed and you're...."

"You're damn right I've changed," she said, again thinking of Dr. Grossman's jills. "And you can't scare me any longer, Henry. So don't try."

"Rita...."

"The Flyaway Motel, Henry. Be there!"

When Rita hung up, she couldn't believe that she'd actually had the nerve to say these things to Henry. It was as if some other person had invaded her body and did the talking. And that same weird feeling was now again filling her body, propelling her toward the motel.

She arrived there a full thirty minutes ahead of Henry, rented suite # ll, leaving her car outside for Henry to find. A month ago she would have blushed at the very word 'motel', but now ... was it those damn pills?

She shrugged it off and prepared for Henry's arrival. Evil swam through her evil forces more compelling than gravity. But with evil came excitement. She was anxious for Henry's arrival, anxious to show him a night he wouldn't soon forget. But more important, she was anxious to reveal her new plans to him plans that not only included him, but required him. And he wouldn't refuse. He wouldn't dare. But, my God, where was she getting such strength of purpose? Was this really her?

She lit a cigarette and thought: He doesn't control me any longer. I control him! And now, no longer questioning this strength, accepting it, she prepared for his arrival.

He had a yen for teenagers a weakness that Rita readily remembered and it was but little effort for her to conform to that same role. She had only to comb out her long dark hair, pin it with a ribbon, and then don the white go-go boots that all the kids were wearing.

Her dress she'd bought it especially for the occasion was a teenager's sailor outfit, and she had altered it until it suited her purpose, shortening the hemline until it was a full five inches above her knees; and then she had removed the detachable dickey from inside the outfit's middy blouse.

Now, and with inordinate self-approval, she gazed at her reflection in the motel's bathroom mirror. All that was lacking, she mused, was a lollipop. She resembled a wretched orphan child disembarking from the boat, lost in the crowds, frantically searching for "Papa". And because she had also removed her underclothes, made the creaminess of her breasts so readily apparent, she seemed as naively vulnerable as any other 13-year-old maybe more so.

Twenty minutes later, Henry Ridgewood arrived. His rap at the door was feeble, his entrance humorously furtive. And he came with the brief case and dark glasses; Henry Ridgewood without these artifices was bread without butter.

She helped him remove his coat, thinking of him as a sickly overaged James Bond. Commercial hair dyes might have forestalled the onset of his years to some degree, but there was no denying the wrinkles that grew from the comers of his eyes, nor the ghastly paleness of his mouth. And he had lost some poundage in recent months, she noted; and the slump of his shoulders was more apparent because of it; so, in summation, she could have said that the pressures of public office had taken their toll. But naturally, she said nothing of the kind. She hung his overcoat in the hallway closet, confronted him with a nervous shy smile, and said, "You're looking well, Henry. Better than I've ever seen you."

He brushed the compliment aside. "I don't think this was a wise idea," he opined. "Not wise at all."

She raised herself on her tiptoes and kissed the end of his nose. Then she affected a look of hurt. "Uncle Henry, you don't even seem glad to see me." And she rendered this in a baby voice that was nearly a whine. He was not her 'uncle' but something possessed her to play the nymphet and she played it well.

He removed his dark glasses and his face brightened considerably. Some of his haughty consternation disappeared; his features registered a tacit approval of her moppet-like costume; and then he was gripping her forearms, holding her at length as if to admire her, then saying:

"But anything for my little Rita...."

Inwardly, she glowed. And she knew how to glance shyly to the carpet, how to milk this moment for all it was worth; how to remain bashfully indifferent to desire until, torn by compassion, he drew her into his arms and patted her gently across her backside the loving touch of father to daughter, but not quite.

He did this very thing now and she was equal to the task, pressing her firm young breasts against his shirt front, holding herself to him like a reprimanded child pleading for forgiveness. And it worked!

Henry Ridgewood accepted the role of "father" with compassionate fervor. Childless, he excitedly welcomed the opportunity to play the incestuous parent. His hands found the curvy warmth of her backside, and he patted and stroked the cheeks of her buttocks with reverent tenderness. But his pseudo-concern was not without self-reward. Rita felt the quickening pulse of his desire: the surprising throb of desire. Strangely, it did not frighten her.

And why am I not frightened? she wondered. Did the pills do this to me? Is that why I feel so different?

Suddenly, Henry's hands began to roam. Rita giggled. She slid out of his embrace and ran toward the couch. There were things to settle, she thought, and it would be less difficult to have her way if she held Henry off for a while.

"Henry," she said, deploring the need for sudden maturity, "I have a favor to ask of you."

He was unhappy because she had so artfully wriggled out of his arms the sagging lines of his mouth reflected this dismay but now that she had uttered the word "favor", his countenance changed again this time to one of suspicion. His watery blue eyes narrowed. He was not her lover now; he was the stern, craggy-faced Law Director of Temple City.

"What land of favor?" he asked cautiously.

She affected a warm smile, the same kind that Henry Ridgewood bestowed upon his voters. "You needn't be so worried, Henry. It won't be that bad." She watched him sit down, begin fumbling with his hands. She called attention to his nervousness; he did not deny it, reiterating what he had said earlier: that being seen in the company of another woman, and in a motel at that, would be his political ruination.

"Then I won't keep you too long," she said, "but I've had the most brilliant idea and it has to be told."

He was not impressed, nor did he search her face for an explanation.

"What would you say," she gushed with a clasp of her hands, "if I told you that I was closing out my dress shop and opening up a new one? One that was just for teens."

He shrugged his shoulders, unimpressed. "What's wrong with the shop you have?"

"It's for the birds!" And again she was surprised by the expressions that came from her lips. "There's no real money in that shop, Henry. I want the big money and a shop that was just for teens

"Would be no better than what you have," he finished.

"And that's where you're wrong," she beamed. And now, exulting greater and greater confidence, she said, "Henry, this teen dress shop will be the biggest success since the advent of the hula hoop. Money will roll in like it's equipped with wheels. Why with the line I'm going to handle and the way this operation will be run...."

"Rita, I-I don't even know you."

"Know me?"

"Y-You're so ... so different." He stared at her as though he were seeing her for the first time. "You were always so quiet and meek and...."

"That's all over with," she said briskly, wondering whether Dr. Grossman's pills could be doing this to her. "From now on, I'm taking the world by the tail." And then she excitedly ran on about her dress shop for teens.

"Just what do you propose?" he asked.

"Propose?" Her excitement brimmed over. She sat on the edge of the couch. "Henry, I'm going to give this city's teenagers the kind of clothes that no other store in town has the guts to sell them: Bikini bathing suits, spike-heeled shoes, lacy under things, French bras...."

"You're out of your mind!"

Rita ignored his blatant comment and rushed on: "Imagine, Henry. A shop just for teens. And I could have teenage models and teenage sales clerks ... and we could have style shows ... style shows with teenage models and the fathers could come ... Henry, don't tell me that grown men don't like looking at teenage girls. It just isn't so!"

Rita had obviously raised his interest; no doubt, he was seeing himself in that audience. But there were objections logical ones and he was obliged to state them:

"But what about their parents? No parent is going to allow their daughter to buy these ... these bizarre clothes. Why if I had a daughter and she brought home a pair of those spike-heeled shoes, I'd...."

"You'd what?"

His face colored; he was going to say "spank", she reasoned, but the word struck too close to the very perversion for which he thrived. "It just won't work," he stated flatly.

"It will!" she snapped back. "I just know it will." Rita's conviction failed to raise Henry's interest. But, still, she rushed on: She'd done a lot of market research, learned that most of these bizarre goods were handled by west coast mail order houses. They did a brisk business, but their trade was confined to adult females.

"And that's just it," she said excitedly. "No one has thought of today's teenager. She spends millions and millions of dollars on clothes, but no one has given her access to the something she wants the most: Sex with a ribbon on it!" She paused briefly. "I, Henry, am going to give it to her!"

For the next several minutes, Henry Ridgewood was transfixed in brooding silence. His own position was not immediately clear, but when it did occur to him, as she knew it must, his eyes filled with abject horror.

"What about the law?" he snapped at her.

"What about it? Am I breaking the law? Is it against the law to sell a minor a bikini? Is it?"

"W-well ... I-I don't know ... I'd have to study the books. But, good God, Rita, the public indignation, the outcry of the do-gooders, the irate parents ... the whole works would fall flat on my doorstep. I'm the Law Director...." He paused. He had witnessed the sudden broadening of Rita's smile. His face filled with scorn. "No! I know what you're thinking, and I won't do it. I won't!"

"The hell you won't!"

His shaggy eyebrows arched with surprise. "Rita, what on earth has happened to you. You never talked this way before."

"That's right, Henry. I didn't. When I worked for you, I was the sweet little nothing that you could goose when I was bent over the water fountain. And you could drag into the storeroom after work and do whatever you damn well pleased. And Rita wouldn't say anything. Rita was scared of losing her job and scared of you, scared of the whole world. But that's over with, Henry. There's a new Rita."

No one was more convinced of this fact than Henry. He squinted; he was afraid.

"And don't tell me I can't open up this new dress shop."

"Well you can't!"

A cagey smile broke from her mouth. She said, "You're forgetting something, Henry. You're forgetting that if the sweet little Law Director doesn't give his sweet little of permission, sweet little Rita is gonna shoot her mouth off to the newspapers. And you wouldn't want that, now would you?" She breathed rapidly, wondering if she'd actually spoken these words, frightened by her own strength, but too elated to question it.

Henry's complexion grew ashen. During his political career, he had never tasted defeat; but he was tasting it now and his remorse could never be keener. His mouth trembled. He failed dismally in his efforts to light a cigarette, finally threw the burnt match and unlit cigarette into a tray; and when he spoke, his voice was barely audible.

"You're a fiend, Rita! An incorrigible fiend!"

She said, "Isn't it rather late for unpleasantries? Aren't you also being a poor loser?"

He started to say something, but changed his mind. Eita leaned back on the couch. Her short little-girl skirt slid up her legs. Her ivory thighs beckoned to Henry. A sudden wickedness gripped her. Then, obeying an evil compulsion that came from deep inside her, she parted her knees.

Henry's eyes glassed. He stole glances at the darkness between her legs. Rita tried to clamp her knees together, but it was if some hidden power were now preventing this; and now her thighs parted to an even bolder width. She heard herself say:

"You see, Henry. I have changed. And being the loser isn't so bad." She proffered a smile. "Not when you get used to it."

"Rita...."

"Come here, Henry...."