Chapter 3
JOEL HANKINS LOOKED llP AT THE CLOCK on the library wall and sighed. Almost four. He'd have to be getting back to his room before long if he was going to keep that date with Kaye.
He turned his eyes back to the huge tome that lay before him, his gaze racing across the pages, trying to take it all in before leaving, but he knew even as he started that it wouldn't work. He wasn't like Travis or some of the others who could get top grades without even seeming to work at it. Things came hard for Joel.
Therefore, he reflected grimly, I should appreciate them more, but somehow it all seemed just that much crap. Travis would appreciate his law degree every bit as much, and God knows he spent one hell of a lot of time appreciating everything in skirts while Joel was boning up on torts and counter suits into the early hours of the morning.
No, nothing came easy for Joel. He could still remember his family doctor reassuring his mother, "Well, Mrs. Hankins, it looks like you won't have to worry about him getting an elbow in the eye under the basket." Then, as everyone else grew taller, and he just grew older, it was, "Really, Mrs. Baaktos, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Lots of boys do all their growing late." And, finally, at seventeen, came the final comment from the medical profession, "You're in fine shape, Joel. Healthy as a bull ... Ah, by the way, I see that Willie Shoemaker and Bill Hartack made more than five million dollars between them last year."
Joel thanked him for the diagnosis, overlooked the stupid attempt at subtlety, and took some faint joy at the fact that the army didn't need serious-minded young men who towered five feet and two inches above the ground.
Then there had been the thing with Blanche. It was strange to begin with. After all, who ever heard of a Blanche except in A Streetcar Named Desire? And to find a Blanche who was just aching for it, who would give him five minutes to get her bra off in the car and if he was a little slow would do it for him-he could hardly believe his luck.
And it was precisely that luck that led to his temporary undoing. Because one night, in the back seat of the car, Blanche decided she didn't feel like stopping at their mutually-drawn line, and began fumbling with the zipper of his pants.
"No," he had mumbled. "No, I ... I can't."
"Sure you can, baby," she whispered, lowering her lips to his erect organ.
"That's not what I mean," said Joel. "I mean I won't."
"What are you talking about?" she demanded, straightening up.
"Look," he stammered, sweat pouring down his face, "I'm no prude or anything, and if you want to go around screwing every guy you know, I'm not going to tell you not to. But ... what the hell, I'm waiting for...."
"Marriage?" she asked contemptuously.
"Not necessarily. Just for someone I think I love," he had answered, and immediately felt like an infantile fool for saying it.
"Oh, God," said Blanche, to nobody in particular. "A religious nut."
"That's not true," he said softly. "I just got to do what I think is right."
"Why don't you help me out and do what I think is right, just for tonight?" she asked him, rubbing his pecker vigorously.
He couldn't explain why, but he was young then, and he thought it wouldn't do any harm to go back to petting, to kind of console her for the disappointing evening.
Well, he grinned wryly, it was a noble enough motive, but of course she hadn't begun to understand it before she assumed he had given in to her. In another second she had torn all her clothes off.
"I told you," he had repeated, "I can't, or won't, or any way you want to put it. Would you like me to take you home?"
"Shove it in me first," she had panted, "then you can take me anywhere you want."
He moved over to the wheel and started the engine.
"You get between my legs right now," she had threatened, "or I'm screaming rape!"
"Scream all you want," Joel had said, and stepped on the gas, heading off in the direction of Blanche's house.
She had grudgingly put on her clothes during the ride, and left him at her door without uttering another word.
And that, he had thought grimly as he drove away, was that.
But of course he was wrong.
He was lying in bed in his room that night when his mother told him that he had a phone call. When he picked up the receiver, it was Paul, his best friend.
"Hey, buddy," Paul had said, sounding a little nervous, "I got a huge exam coming up in solid geometry tomorrow, and I got problems. Can you let me take a look at your notes?"
"Why sure," he had said. "Wait 'til get my clothes on and I'll bring them over."
"Uh ... I'm at Rosembloom's Drug Store," said Paul.
"Out kind of late, aren't you?"
"I didn't have the guts to go home until I was sure I could pass," said Paul.
"See you in ten minutes," Joel had said, and hung up the phone. He threw on a shirt, a pair of shorts, and some dungarees. Then, slipping into his loafers, he headed off for the drug store, his notebook under his arm.
It was two blocks to the drugstore and he stopped outside the house to pull a forbidden cigarette out of his shirt pocket to light up. His mother knew about them, of course, but as long as he didn't smoke inside the house, she was willing to feign ignorance.
He inhaled deeply, reveling in the feel of the smoke in his lungs, then blew out two thin streams of smoke through his nostrils.
He was getting close now. Just one more corner, an alley, and then there was the drugstore thirty feet beyond, the huge neon sign lighting up the side walk for blocks in each direction. He got as far as the alley.
Then a hand reached out, grabbed him by the neck, and jerked him out of the light.
Fists began pummeling his body. The cigarette fell from his lips as he doubled over, trying to catch his breath, to collect his wits about him.
Another blow fell upon his temple, and he struck out blindly. His fist hit flesh, bruised itself on bone, came away sticky with wet, warm blood.
Three more blows came down upon him, and again he lashed out, clutching in the darkness. His hands came into contact with hair and, grabbing it, he drove his knee into where he thought the groin would be. He was rewarded by a groan of anguish.
"Hey!" laughed somebody. "Hold onto the little bastard! He thinks he's Willy Pep or someone!"
Then they had his hands behind him, and blow after blow after blow rained down upon him. He opened his eyes after blacking out for a minute and saw Blanche, her face contorted by some obscene combination of pleasure and rage, urging half a dozen beardless warriors on.
Then he was on the ground, but still the blows continued, falling one after another across his kidneys.
"Turn him over," snapped one of them, wiping some blood from his lips with the sleeve of his leather jacket. "We'll cut the damned thing off."
They began turning him then, but not before he had jammed a thumb into one of their eyes (and gotten it back in both his eyes in return).
"Ahhh, don't bother," spat Blanche, "He never uses the damned thing anyway."
She walked off then, stepping over him, grinding her spiked hell into his shoulder as she did so.
The boys followed her, but one hung back for a moment.
"Just to square accounts, kid," he grated, and smashed his foot into Joel's groin.
The next thing Joel felt was water, tons of water, pouring over his face, flooding his nostrils, choking him.
He coughed and turned over, groaning from the pain of his movements.
Then a pair of hands were on him, helping him to turn back and sit up. It was Paul. His face was white with horror, and his hands shook. I
"Are you all right?" he babbled. "Can you hear me?"
Joel nodded, closing one eye as the blood poured into it from a gash on his forehead.
"They held a knife on me and made me call," sobbed Paul, trying to wipe some of the blood from Joel's face.
"They would have killed me if I...." His voice broke. "Oh God, Joel, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
He still winced at the memory of the next ten hours, of having Paul help him walk to the hospital because he didn't want to upset his mother, of calling her and trying to keep from fainting as he explained that he was spending the night at Paul's, of sneaking out of the emergency ward the next morningand trying to stagger home and pretend nothing had happened, only to find an ambulance parked in his parents' driveway and a doctor waiting to take him back to the hospital.
After that, he had decided to go as far away as possible from home, as far from the memory of that night as he could.
He had also avoided women for a while, no sense sticking your neck out when you're full of scars, to say nothing of being the next best thing to a midget. Then his folks had gone deep into debt, and he had to quit school for a year to get some money together. He blew half of it on a girl who ran off with a trumpet player, and worked another four months to get it back.
He still didn't know why he'd chosen law, though if he were painfully honest with himself, he would venture to guess that he didn't have the guts to go out into the world after getting his bachelor's degree. The decision having been made, he determined to be as good a lawyer as he possibly could, which was why he was hurrying home now, late as usual for his dinner date with Kaye.
Though to call it a dinner date was perhaps pushing it a little. It was, more accurately worded, a visit to the kitchen of Kate's dormitory, where he (and those other charity cases who could induce their girls' to give them a handout) went to eat whenever possible.
Kay was more than a soft touch for a meal, however. In fact Joel had the feeling that one of these days he might even ask her to marry him. They had a lot in common-they both liked the same books, they dug the same records, they were both broke.
And they both had a hard time keeping their passions in check.
Kaye was a hell of a girl, fun to be with and hell on wheels as far as looks were concerned. For the first few dates, they just enjoyed each other's company, but it became increasingly harder to keep his hands off her each time. And when he gave in, it became harder to keep his hands out of her. And when he gave in to that, too, it became harder to keep only his hands in her.
He licked his lips as he remembered the taste of her breasts, the feel of her erect nipples floating around in his mouth, throbbing and trembling and growing beneath his tongue. He shook his head vigorously in an attempt to erase the memory from his mind.
He would stack her up against any woman on campus too, he decided, hoping that if he couldn't get her out of his mind, he could at least think of something besides her body. Even Sue Ellen Bland, who had laid almost every male student on campus as well as half the faculty, wasn't one whit better-looking than Kaye. And Frank Durham's wife-what was her name? Mona?-didn't have any more class, bright as she was.
He tried very hard to think of Kaye's intellect and intrinsic class all the way home, but his fingers kept twitching spasmodically, anticipating the moist, warm passages they would be exploring before he returned to his books.
Frank Durham strolled slowly across the campus, nose buried properly in the huge law book he held in his gloveless hands. Somehow, though, concentration came hard.
Maybe he had been working too hard. Maybe he ought to take it a little easy for a day or two, just relax before a fire and let the heat melt all the tensions from his lead-hard, masculine body.
Yes, he had to admit it: He was tired. There had been just too many long hours put in on the books. Thank God he had the interest from his father's estate for him and Mona to live on. Otherwise they'd never have a chance of making it.
And Frank was determined to make it.
Not that he had any great love of the law, or even a moral inclination to defend it or practice it. He personally couldn't give less of a damn if people wanted to go around stealing and raping and killing, as long as they left him alone and sought their twisted kicks elsewhere.
No, law held no fatal fascination for him. But becoming a lawyer took considerably less time than becoming a doctor, and after living in a middleclass home and associating with middle-class friends all his life, he intended to make the most of what he had.
And what he had was a fertile mind-and his father's estate. Maybe it was cruel and heartless, but he felt like celebrating the day he learned that his parents had died when their car struck a lamppost and folded up like an accordion while they were on their way home from an orgy. The papers had called it an orgy, but the papers didn't know Frank's parents and he did. Besides, the orgy was at Jim Cuthbert's house, and Jim was worth a million a year in advertisements. And newspapers don't throw a million bucks out the window for the sake of a detailed story.
So Frank had gone to college and had gotten his degree, and when he discovered he could support a wife on his income, he married Mona.
It had been all right for a couple of years, too. Sure, she never seemed like she was living in paradise, and it was her fault that he got a little on the side from time to time (after all, a fellow can't feel guilty all the time), but still, it hadn't been too bad a marriage. No kids-not until he setup practice-but certainly there were enough things on campus to keep Mona occupied; lectures, concerts, and the likes.
Of course, they weren't quite enough to keep Frank occupied. Not all the time, anyway. Not like Mona. For instance, there was little Sue Ellen Bland, the hottest little bit of fluff to twitch across the campus in years. He hadn't taken her yet. Travis was always around when he wanted to make his play. But someday he would. Someday soon.
What would she be? Number thirty-five? Thirty-ix?
He had lost count months ago. He used to keep a diary enumerating his conquests in vivid detail, but it seemed like a good idea to burn the damned thing when he got married. After all, Mona was just a little too proper to understand something like that. She had gone to an all-girl finishing school, and hadn't had a chance to start dating in college before he took one look at her and decided to make her number something-or-another.
He was amazed when she gave in to him that first night in the car. Probably she thought it was the only way to have a social life in college-and in a way she was right. Just the same, he felt guilty about it, guilty and somehow ashamed.
So he dated her again, and then again, and before he quite knew what had happened, he was a married man.
Funny, he reflected, that Mona was the only girl he ever went back to. Oh, sure, her body was great and nobody could ever forget those bare burgeoning breasts and taut, erect nipples-and that something else down lower that so few women had-but he'd known lots of girls with great bodies-bodies every bit as soft and yielding and eager and willing as Mona's. And yet, one roll in the hay, one night in a car or a shack, was always enough. Something was always missing afterward, some sense of total satisfaction. He sensed its absence, and he was pretty sure the girls' sensed it too.
So he kept looking, searching, seeking the girl who could give him what he wanted, whom he could give what she wanted. He hadn't found her yet, Mona included, but he was still looking. Someday she'd turn up, someday ecstasy would be more than just a word in a dictionary-and until then, the searching was enough fun to keep his interest up.
Once in a while he'd think of telling Mona his problem, but he always rejected it. She was too innocent, too sheltered. It would be beyond her ability to understand.
But maybe this one tonight would be the answer. Maybe she could deliver the goods. Maybe maybe, maybe....
Frank buried his face between Arlene's heaving breasts, nuzzling the still-soft nipples.
"Hey!" she squealed, laughing and pushing him away. "Careful there! You need a shave!"
He stopped, straightened up, and stared at her. Was she teasing? Should he stop and shave? What did she want?
"Aww," she purred, giggling in spite of her self. "Did I hurt little Frankie's feelings? Let me hold his hand."
Saying that, she took his hand and slipped it firmly between her legs, clamping them together over his probing fingers.
"That better, baby?" she cooed.
"Yeah," said Frank, sweat pouring down his face. "Yeah. Much better."
"Then do something!" she laughed, but it was only half a joke.
Something in the other half scared him.
It had been a bad scene right from the start. For one thing, Arlene was living with a guy. Not married, just living with him. He was out somewhere, studying or maybe getting a little variety in his love life, but Frank didn't like it at all. Maybe he'd have chanced being interrupted with Sue Ellen, but he hardly knew this chick, and if that joker came back too soon, he was in a bind. A bad one.
Then, too, there was Arlene herself. Maybe she wasn't quite a hippie-she said she wasn't-but she sure as hell behaved just like one.
She was naked when she met him at the door. "I don't believe in pretension," she had said. "You came here to lay me. Get on with it!"
And then there was her insistence on the light. The room was bathed in lights, and she just sat, cross-legged and open, and stared at him while he slipped out of his clothes. She had the courtesy not to simper or giggle when at last he pulled off his shorts, but that damned staring was enough to unnerve him all by itself.
Once, he recalled, Mona had awkwardly hinted that she'd like to watch it in the mirror, but Frank just assumed she was drunk and never mentioned it again. Neither did Mona, and he had preferred the guiltless anonymity of the dark ever since.
Then, after five or six minutes on the couch, she had excused herself, saying that she had to powder her nose. It had seemed so out-of-place that he had burst out laughing, his tension gone-but she had done just that; gone to her purse, pulled out a powder puff, and applied it to her nose. It was the most eloquent comment she could have made about his lovemaking methods.
"Okay, big man," she had said, replacing the powder-puff in her purse. "Everybody deserves a second chance."
It took him a few minutes to get over that, even with her help, touching, handling, kissing.
Now he was ready again, but now she had decided to tease him. She was turning him on and off like a faucet, playing him for a hick, and Frank knew it.
"If you don't do something pretty damned quick, I'm gonna have my fun without you," she laughed. "And poor little Frankie will be left all alone, out in the cold."
She lay back and spread her legs wide apart, gyrating and rotating her hips. Mad as he was, he couldn't refuse the invitation, but before he got there, the legs had closed again.
"Trying to draw blood?" she asked, rubbing her thigh-and something inside of Frank snapped.
With a roar that was more animal than human, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her head back against the pillow. Then he was on top of her, edging his knee between her legs.
He twisted his leg, forcing her thighs apart, and swung his body between them. He tried to kiss her, found her mouth tightly shut, and bit her lips, drawing blood. His hands grabbed her full, ripe breasts, squeezing them hard, rhythmically.
Then he was inside her, pushing farther and farther in. She moaned, half in pain, half in pleasure, and his body took up the rhythm on his clenching and unclenching hands.
"Is that the best you can do?" she asked levelly, licking the blood from her lips. Frank wanted to answer her, to tell her that she never had it so good, that he was more man than any woman deserved, but his orgasm was upon him, and all that escaped his lips, in rhythm with the spasmodic jerking of his hips, was "Bitch ... bitch ... bitch...."
Mona stared up guiltily at the bathroom mirror. That was Frank's key in the lock, no mistake about it. Rubbing herself against the rim of the tub one last time, squealing out one last cry of frustration, she hastily arose, wrapped her robe around her, and went out to meet him.
"Hard night, honey?" she asked, pretending to blow her nose and keeping her face buried in the handkerchief until some of the red had subsided. When the light no longer blinded her she knew her pupils had contracted to normal, and she placed the handkerchief in a pocket.
"Catch a cold today?" asked Frank.
"In a way."
"Do we have any beer? I'm thirsty enough to drink a whole keg."
"No wonder. Look at the way you're sweating."
"It was so cold I ran all the way home from the library," he lied. "Did Travis return that notebook I loaned him yesterday?"
"I haven't seen him all day," she said.
"That's a lie!" he snapped.
"How do you know?"
"Pam told me."
"Who's Pam?"
"She works in the library. A redhead."
"Oh."
"Well?" he demanded. "Well, what?"
"Aren't you going to say something?"
"What should I say?"
"Well, for God's sake, I just caught you lying to me!"
"So what? Unless the snow gave you a kiss on the way from the library, you've been lying to me, too."
"I ... uh ... had to drop something off at Tim Rothchild's, and his wife gave me a kiss. Big deal."
"I could call the Rothchild's right now," she said, placing her hand on the telephone.
"You do that!" he bellowed.
"All right. I will."
She picked up the receiver and began dialing. Frank stared dully at her for a moment, then took the receiver from her hand and replaced it.
"Was she good, Frank?" asked Mona.
"I hardly knew her. I ... Well, I just...."
"Did she come?"
"Did she what?"
"Come, damn it! I want to know if she came!" screamed Mona, tears of hysteria racing down her face and neck to be lost in the hollow between her heaving breasts. "That's what a woman always wants to know!"
"What's the matter with you?" asked Frank, dumbfounded. "You never talked that way."
"Was she pretty, Frank?" babbled Mona, her words coming so fast that they ran on top of each other. "Did you play with her nipples, Frank? Did you kiss them? Was it good and hard? Were you eager? Did you drool just a little? What did she give you that I can't? What...?"
"Look, Mona," he interrupted, "it was just one of those things. I still love you. Honest, I didn't...."
"But then, I don't really care what she gave you, Frank," continued Mona. "It doesn't matter. She can't give you anything I can't give you-anytime you want it. I don't care about that. I only want to know one thing: what did you give her?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Were you good, damn it! Did she come? Was she shaking all over until you felt like you were going to fall off? Did she scream? What did you do to her that you can't do for me?"
"What are you trying to say, Mona?"
"What's wrong with me? Why can't you make it with me, Frank? Everybody else on campus can-or didn't you know that? Hell, Travis Bland just has to look at me and I jump into bed. Sure, I jump into bed with you, too. But when Travis takes me there, I don't have to get out until morning. I don't have to lock myself in the bathroom and make love to a hairbrush?"
"You mean you and Travis...?"
"You weren't listening!" she screamed. "It's not Travis, or anyone else! It's you! It's you!"
Frank swallowed hard, then walked slowly over to the liquor cabinet. He brought out the bottle of Scotch, poured himself a double, and downed it in a single swallow.
She was still standing there, crying and moaning, her robe wide open. He poured himself another, then replaced the bottle carefully, straightened a pile of books atop the cabinet, and walked back into the living room.
He sat down in the easy chair, fumbled for his pipe, decided on a cigarette instead, and lit it with a slightly trembling hand.
"Sit down," he said slowly.
She did so, still unaware of her robe.
"Do you want a divorce?"
"God no!" she blurted, still a bit hysterical. "I don't want a divorce. I want a husband."
"All right. What do you suggest we do?"
"l don't know," she said. "If I'd known I'd have done it years ago."
"Do you intend to keep sleeping with Travis and the others?"
"There haven't been any others ... yet."
"Yet?"
"I mean I can't help myself."
"Maybe you should see a doctor...." he began slowly.
"A doctor?" she laughed harshly. "Sure, doctor, my husband keeps turning me on and then pulling the switch off. Can you make me like it?"
"Knock it off!" Frank snapped.
"Look, Frank, I'm no nympho or-anything like that. I just like sex. I've got to have it. If you can't deliver the goods, then no matter how miserable it makes me, I'll have to go elsewhere until you can. After all, you haven't exactly played the faithful husband."
"Where would you go to find it?"
"I don't know. Travis mentioned some club, a place he and Sue Ellen belong to where they.,."
"I know it. It's nothing but a goddamned swap club, Mona."
"Maybe we can go over there just once, just to see what it's like."
"Are you really serious?"
"Yes."
"What the hell," he shrugged. "Maybe I'll find it over there."
"Find what?"
"What I'm looking for," he answered softly. "Maybe you will."
She leached out, took his hand, and placed it on her breast. The nipple went erect at once, all one inch of it. But Frank was staring at the fire, an expression of infinite sadness upon his face.