Chapter 3
The girl's name was Katrina Nadie, and she was what the columnists like to refer to as a raven-haired beauty. Katrina, in her late twenties, had the kind of looks that would last, without any kind of beauty aids, for the next twenty years. An aristocratic face, punctuated by deep, dark eyes and a full, sensuous mouth, held itself loftily on her shoulders in a frame of swirling black hair. The hair itself tumbled to her shoulders--the beginning of her magnificent body.
It was the kind of body men would be distracted by, pausing to carefully evaluate the terrain that rippled under the light sun-dress. The kind of body most men never saw with high, thrusting breasts which pushed out against the flimsy bodice, emphasizing the sharp rake the dress made as it angled in to hug her willowy waist and the planes of her hips. Katrina's body was so startlingly proportioned that it made her look shorter than she actually was her tight little rounded behind and perfect, tapering legs creating the visual impression that she was more elfin than amazon.
Katrina had used her body discreetly in her early past. For she hadn't needed to exploit its commanding powers as some women might have. At one time she had money, some position, an excellent background, and the single-minded independence that superior schooling and connections could give a young woman.
But she had been tempted, once, to avail herself of her considerable endowments, postponing the many careers that had been offered to her in favor of following up a lead to Hollywood from an old actor-friend. From that one decision had come two years of disenchantment and heartbreak, as Katrina discovered that whenever a person sought success on a level that was for the most part populated by the unprincipled and unscrupulous, one sank to that level. And so she had, winding it all up by falling foolishly in love with a European who claimed to have both money and production talents.
It was during her short marriage to this most typical of frauds that she learned just how real degradation could be. And it had taken all her pull and all the penitence she could muster before old family friends to break loose of the disastrous arrangement. Finally, she had finished it, with a plane trip to El Paso, a secret taxi ride to Juarez, and a numbing trip back with her divorce certificate clutched in her hand.
Take a trip, her friends urged her, those few she had not alienated by her antics. And it seemed like a good idea, a trip that would get her away from phony people and the brittle, scheming world she had let herself be dragged into. Thus, when it was her turn to enter the booth at the travel agency and the tour guide asked her what she did for a living, Katrina lied and said she was a schoolteacher. And was relieved when the bright young thing had described just the place for a vacationing schoolteacher.
She hadn't been fooling, either, Katrina had thought, as she looked over the cruise-boat's population en route to the Caribbean. Everybody on it looked either like rejects from a chamber of commerce golfing tournament or like the young soda-fountain attendants she had seen arrive in Hollywood by the busload coming straight out of Iowa on their last forty dollars looking for a glamorous career as model or starlet.
There was one exception. The handsome but sad-looking man that Katrina had made a point of smiling at whenever their paths crossed. He looked interesting, too interesting almost, to be on this shipful of little, lonely people.. And it was obvious to her that he, like herself, was no more interested in their tour companions than in a PTA convention. She resolved to meet him and make him speak to her, and hoped he wasn't with the blonde girl who sat at his table and wore that vacant, moody expression on her attractive face.
Clint remembered Katrina from the boat. And as he dressed for an afternoon on the beach, he found himself hoping to meet her. It was the second day since they had arrived on this godforsaken little island, with its swarm of yammering tourists and crowds of wretched, underfed natives.
Two days and only one incident from Shirley, and that had turned out better than he could have hoped. He had come up from breakfast, after brushing aside the polite overtures of a hotel staffer, who acted as though Clint needed an artificial friend to get through his vacation.
But when he came into his room, he heard the sounds of a male voice protesting something or other. Opening the door that separated his room from Shirley's, Clint saw his sister standing with uncombed hair, dressed only in a short bathrobe. The robe, as usual, hung partly open, each side of it suspended from a darkly studded breast. It was Shirley's standard posture of intimidation. This time she was intimidating a young native bellhop who had brought a breakfast cart up to her room. Clint laughed to himself as he took in the picture of the youth flattened against his sister's door, the dark eyes at once terrified and appealing to him.
"Lo siento mucho, senor," the bellhop babbled. "Por favor la senora..." he tried to explain, spreading his hands in a terrified appeal to Clint.
"It's okay," Clint assured him, letting him out the door. "Traigame el doctor del hotel," he asked the youth, who nodded and fled down the carpeted hall.
This was one weapon he had now over Shirley, he realized. His Spanish, flawed as it was, could give him some amount of control over his errant sister.
When the hotel doctor arrived, Clint explained that his sister needed a sedative. Shirley just sulked and sat on her bed, the robe still open, revealing a long vertical scroll of female flesh. She offered no resistance to the needle, which, the doctor assured Clint, would put her out like a light for most of the rest of the day.
So this gave him a free day. And since he had already sized up the attractions and lack of virtues of San Dozes, Clint had decided to make the most of it. That meant seeking out the striking girl he remembered from the boat. She'd be a vacation in herself, Clint thought, particularly if she was as much on the lam as she seemed to be. It would be impossible, of course, to try and meet her with Shirley around. Her greatest horror shows in the last few years had been thrown when she suspected or knew that her brother was trying to carry on with a girlfriend when her sick jealousy inspired her to the most shameless and flagrant exhibitions of wantonness or addiction.
Things have a way of happening right on a vacation, Clint thought when, after walking the length of the beach, he spied a figure he thought resembled the girl he was looking for. Typical, he smiled to himself, as he squinted in the sun up at the rocks where she lay out of sound and almost out of sight of the stockyard-like beach.
He circled back up the beach road, trotting along for nearly a mile in his bathing trunks and sport shirt. Then, figuring where she would be, he left the road and started down the rocky bluffs which overhung the blue-satin Caribbean sea.
His judgment was still good as good as it had been in the Marines, where his patrol had always come out of the war games untouched. He dropped lightly down the rocks and stopped on a ledge that overhung hers by about twelve feet.
Peering over cautiously, he nearly swallowed his breath. There she was, stretched out on a pad of several hotel towels she had pitched on the rocks. In spite of the height of her chosen spot from the beach below there were small pools of sea water in the crevices around her. And Clint could see the jagged ravine which had tossed the surf-spray up to these heights. But what really took his breath away was the sight of her luscious back and legs, turned to the sun like a pagan flesh-offering for solar roasting.
He admired the sight of her long, beautifully muscled legs and tawny back for as long as he dared. She lay still, melting under the hot sun, her hands folded under her face and the straps of her bikini halter lying out to either side of her. Clint took a small stone and flicked it down into one of the tide pools. Drawing back, he heard the plop and her simultaneous startled breath as the warm salt water spattered her glistening body. He waited until she had settled down again and then, like a small boy, lobbed another pebble into a different pool. This time he pushed forward through the scrub to watch her reaction.
She stiffened when the water hit her, but lay without moving for a minute. Clint almost imagined he could see her ears working, and he tried to suppress his breathing. Then her hands swung behind her and quickly knotted the halter around her back. One of her arms delved into a straw beach-bag. Clint couldn't quite figure it. Leaning forward to see more of the scene, he inadvertently rustled the brush that marked his hiding place.
In one swift motion, the girl swung into a sitting position, jerking her hand from the beach-bag. Clint found himself simultaneously staring into her beautiful, blazing eyes, and into the muzzle end of a short professional-looking pistol.
"Whoa," he cried, coming out of the bushes above her. "I surrender. Let's not declare war."
The gun dropped from its aim on him. The girl's brown face tossed the silky black hair out of its eyes and broke into a broad grin. Clint clambered down the rocks and jumped the final few feet to her rock roost.
"Didn't mean to interrupt," he joked. "You always pull that thing when a low-flying bird comes by?"
"Only when I suspect that it might be a bird of prey," answered Katrina, snapping the safety and putting the gun away. "I don't know why, but I've been kind of expecting that I'd see you before long," she said, digging further into the beach-bag. "Like a drink cold gin? It's a bargain down here."
"Great," Clint nodded. "Looks as though you were expecting someone."
"Anyone with the guts to come along and relieve my boredom," she smiled. "It's only been two days, but I feel like I've spent half my life on this island for East Village rejects."
"My sympathies exactly," Clint toasted her, clacking his plastic cup with the cool liquid in it against hers.
"Take your shirt off and get some sun," she offered, shifting her sumptuously sculptured body on the towel to make room for him. She saw his eyes flick over her and knew how hard it was for him to be polite. Not many men kept their cool completely when confronted with a body like hers. This much she knew from the last few years of company with professional lechers.
"Sing for your cocktail," she offered. "Let's find out about each other. We might be the only hope for each other on this whole bloody island."
"Fair enough," Clint grinned, stripping off his shirt and exposing his lean but well-muscled chest and arms. Who knows, he thought to himself as they fell to talking and joking, it might really turn out to be a vacation after all. Anything that took Shirley's problems off his mind qualified! And in the course of the afternoon, Katrina's company abstracted Clint from his entire world of worries.
Not that they weren't developing. For Shirley had come out of the sedative by early afternoon. And she was restless. The heat bothered her, made her itch all over, made her, in fact, want to sweat more. Sweat the restlessness and itching right out of her body.
like a sleepwalker she got out of bed and paraded around her room for a while, admiring her body in the hotel's thoughtfully provided full-length mirrors. Then she sat on a stool in front of one of them, brushing her long honey hair. This ritual always stimulated her slightly, and she playfully pushed and pinched her breasts until their dusky tips hardened and pulsed. But before she got further into her special private ceremony, Shirley's mind flicked back to the bellhop that morning. How that young brown body had excited her. Not that she hadn't had them before in the course of her New York slumming.
But she wanted a body like that now! A boyish, brown body dressed in starchy white linen. Shirley got off the stool and crossed to her dressing table. With trembling hands she smeared some lipstick on, disfiguring her lovely face. Then she emptied a palmful of cheap perfume, which she kept hidden from Clint, into her hand and rubbed it over her breasts and body. She opened a suitcase and took out a hot-weather dress, slipping it over her body without stopping to apply underclothing first. She slithered into a pair of sandals and, taking one last look at how good she looked, whirled out of the room.
The hotel was virtually deserted, all the guests having sought relief from the heat on the beaches and the help having returned to their siestas. Shirley wandered from the lobby through the dining room, taking some fruit from a sideboard. Cautiously, she peered into the kitchen and then entered. All the cooks were at the other end, preparing the evening meal, and she slipped between the high aluminum tables toward a back door.
Then she was outside, in a great walled yard full of delivery trucks and mountains of garbage, which buzzed with the droning of a million fattened flies.
Shirley walked along the exterior wall of the hotel, pushing through the tropical undergrowth, where apparently no one ever came, except to pick up rubbish dropped from the upper-story windows. Then she stopped. She heard what sounded like a woman's voice expressing great excitement. The noises came from a window just above her head.
Shirley raced instinctively back to the kitchen yard. She grabbed a metal garbage can and dragged it back through the brush to where she had been. Inverting it and positioning it under the window, she clambered up on its dented metal bottom. This brought her eyes a few inches higher than the sill of the open window, and her eyes grew saucer-shaped with what they saw.
For she was looking into Boulo's office. And true to his afternoon routine, Boulo was playing his sadistic game with his special staffer, Alya.
Shirley's excited eyes drank in the sight of the native girl bending over the arm of the sofa, her legs spread apart to reveal from a rear view what Shirley could only inspect in herself from the front, before a mirror. She licked her lips, noting the welts that covered the victim's brown buttocks, and her eyes darted to the sweating fat man who danced from one foot to the other, dressed only in his b.v.d.'s, slashing at the hunched-over figure with his whistling leather strap.
The noise of his curses, mingled with his victim's entreaties and cries of pleasure, was music to Shirley's ears. She hoisted herself up on tiptoe, straining her body and thrusting her face through the window in an effort to get closer to the twisted, carnal performance. She could feel each stinging, lacerating blow of the strap as if it were landing on her own buttocks, and her mouth watered as she fed off the spectacle of the girl's writhing body her wriggling legs and sobbing back, which met in the crowning sacrifice of the upended brown buttocks.
Shirley's body began burning and her breath became heavier, as the spectacle of lust ignited the fires of her own, which were always waiting for the stirring. She forced herself against the rough wood of the window-sill, mashing her breasts in an effort to quiet their excited throbbing. Her hips threatened to betray her as her legs squirmed against each other.
One of her hands flew to her mouth, where she bit it hard with her teeth to keep from betraying herself by a moan of desire. More than anything, she wanted to be a part of the scene being staged in Boulo's office.
Involuntarily a groan escaped her lips, but neither Boulo nor his mistress-victim heard it. For Boulo had flung away the strap and, like a great tortoise, was struggling out of his shorts. Leaning against the window, she sought with one hand, pushing up her dress as she tottered on top of the garbage can.
She was being driven to animal madness by desire. Because now, Boulo, giving a shrill cry of conquest, had leapt naked across his office and flung himself on the girl, who was prostrated over the sofa. Shirley closed her eyes momentarily, feeling with anguished empathy the pain of the brown-skinned girl as Boulo landed on her back and drove himself between her tautly braced legs. Furiously, she abused herself, grinding her teeth to keep from moaning as she kept her eyes riveted on the fat man, who bounced up and down on the brown body, which writhed like a fish under his bizarre punishment.
Then, just when she thought she'd collapse, Shirley was distracted by a noise next to her. Whipping her head around, she saw a native boy standing transfixed next to her, his ferret-like eyes shooting from the garbage can he had come to recover to the incredible sight of Shirley herself.
She didn't pause for an instant. But whinnying through her teeth, her nostrils flaring with excitement, practically bounded off the garbage can, even as the youth started to backtrack. By the time he had turned to run away through the brush, Shirley was on him, dragging him to the ground in an improvised but frenzied tackle. Her hands tore at his cotton trousers as he protested wildly but mutely.
And then she rolled back on the ground, sinking her claw-like fingers into his flesh and dragging him over on top of her. Before he knew what had happened, the youth found himself clutched between the frantic woman's legs, found himself on a pitching, bucking volcano of want.
Abruptly a change came over him as his body came into contact with her molten flesh. He wriggled out of his white beach pants, and Shirley relaxed her hold and pulled her dress up, giving him an unobstructed path to pleasure. She grabbed him and pulled him to her, thrusting herself up to the ministrations that her body clamored for.
And then he came to her. Was knotted in her arms and legs, pumping away with youthful fortitude as her nails and teeth sank into him. United only by their passion and mounting lust, the American tourist and native kitchen boy rolled and writhed in their dank, tropical bed of leaves and undergrowth, each desperately striving to fulfill the tempestuous drive they had spurred in the other.
Clint sang lustily in the shower as he readied himself for dinner. What a great day! "Everything's turning out fine," he bellowed to the tiled walls, scrubbing off the salt and suntan oil from the afternoon's activity.
What a find that Katrina was, he thought dizzily, shaking the water out of his ears and looking at himself in the mirror. And you deserve her too, if anybody does, you hapless son-of-a-bitch, he told himself gleefully.
For the first time in years, he had really enjoyed himself. Not only was Katrina a living doll, and he had come pretty close to some pretty amazing women, but she was just about everything he thought he'd always wanted in a woman.
Yeah, mon, he hummed, after the island fashion. She could hold her liquor, talk intelligently without hang-ups, tell a good joke, and was athletic besides. It had been great, and he was looking forward to tomorrow.
That afternoon, after sunbathing and getting to know each other over the icy thermos of gin, they had walked along the cliffs until they were well out of town and then rented a native boat for a pack of cigarettes and gone rowing further around the island, until they found a secluded beach to swim from. Oddly enough, even watching her graceful body, with its dolphin-like muscles, arch over the side of the boat into the jewel-like water, Clint had not felt that aroused. More like awed, in the presence of a female who was not only sexy, but a hell of a lot more besides.
He had actually had fun, he reflected, and for a while forgotten about Shirley. Who was God knows where? Which was just as well. Katrina, or Kat as he was already calling her, had asked him who that blonde was he had seemed to be with on the boat, and Clint had shrugged it off. She was no one, he explained, just some mixed-up girl he had run into somehow.
Katrina hadn't looked all that convinced. But she had admitted, at the end of the afternoon, that she was glad to hear it. "I could really grow awfully fond of a guy like you, Clint," she had said without any coyness. "But I'm never going to let a man screw me up or put me on again!"
Maybe it would have been better to have explained about Shirley right then and there, he thought now. But maybe Katrina wouldn't have understood, or, if he had really explained the whole truth, that might have ended the whole thing right there. Clint had been around enough to know that women had a low tolerance in general for behavior such as Shirley's. He'd have to work it out, somehow Katrina was just too terrific to let slip through his fingers. Clint had tried to walk this tight wire before, without much success. And he saw it stretched before him again now.
Clint had had one masterful idea as he went down to dinner. Shirley had come in, looking like she had wrestled an army of Cossacks in a dung heap, but Clint hadn't wanted to speak to her to question her. "Come down to the bar when you're ready for chow," he said. "I'll be around." He went out of the room so fast that he didn't hear Shirley's usual "okie-dokie, brother baby."
Downstairs he summoned the head bartender and explained the idea that had just seized him. He showed the man a picture of Shirley and made him promise that he'd personally mix any drink the lady ordered. "Every time she orders another, dilute it more and add bitters anything to conceal it," he ordered. A twenty-dollar bill clinched the deal, and Clint felt relatively relieved. If Shirley turned to the bar for solace, as he hoped she would, at least she'd have a hard time getting plowed except in her mind, which really didn't matter.
He kept out of sight when Shirley came downstairs, looking ravishing in a Suzie Wong-type silk sheath. He knew the dress with one gesture, Shirley could reveal practically her whole body, and often had, the last time when Clint was being interviewed by a Reuters bureau chief, who wanted to hire him for some special assignments.
He kept himself hidden until Shirley had made it to the bar and, sure enough, after a few drinks, made a new friend. The guy looked like an encyclopedia salesman, but Clint figured she was in good hands and knew from past history that Shirley would let the guy escort her to dinner.
That left him free, once he saw them sit down for dinner, to join Katrina for dinner on the hotel terrace. There, over a long meal and champagne, which he somehow felt justified in ordering, he and Kat told each more of their lives and misfortunes. He had to give it to her, Clint thought, as Kat related her story of the last few years, including the guy who had trampled all over her. Honesty was at a premium these days, but Kat seemed to have a good stock of it, on top of all her other virtues.
For his own part, Clint left out everything about Shirley, telling Kat of his few hard-hitting successes in journalism. The evening was so perfect he couldn't think of bringing up the subject of Shirley, although it gnawed at him not to.
Glowing with good food and drink and the mild heat of the evening, Clint was becoming entranced with Katrina. He wanted to forget everything else. Where he had seen an athletic, lovely woman this afternoon, he now beheld an enchanting and deeply stimulating portrait of femininity. And he felt Katrina was responding to him in the same way. As simple a gesture as lighting a cigarette, the contact of their hands brushing briefly against one another, brought a pause to both of them.
And later, when the usual syrupy band started playing on the terrace, they rose without a word to dance. It had been a long time since Clint had danced with such a woman. Felt a warm lush body pressed lightly against his the intimacy of swelling breasts and curving thighs swishing against him as they floated around the terrace.
It seemed as if they weren't even moving after a while. Kat floated against him, the musky smell of her mingled with delicate perfume tingling in his nostrils; the wisps of silky hair at her temples trailing against his cheek; and always her body, its urgent lightness inadvertently teasing his own. Just floating, it seemed to Clint, as he held the bewitching girl in his arms. Floating out of time and out of mind.
"Clint, babeeee!" came Shirley's voice through the cloud, going down his spine like a straight razor on granite. There she was, his psychopath of a sister, wrenching the dreaming Katrina out of his arms.
"You promised me the first dance, dincha, baby?" Shirley laughed, throwing her head back crazily and laughing at the startled couple. "Lemme show this broad how a girl should really dance with a man." She grabbed Clint just as the music changed to an up tempo beat. And before he could react, she had hugged him fiercely to her, forcing him to go through the motions of dancing to keep himself from falling.
Clint looked wildly for Katrina, who stood merely straightening her dress, with all the indifference in the world. He couldn't think of anything to say and was so confused that when Shirley pointedly thrust a knee between his legs, working her leg against him in a manner that raised eyebrows all the way to the band, he hardly had the presence of mind to slap her away.
Then, all in an instant, Shirley had locked her arms around his neck, and Clint realized with horror and fury that she had pulled the flap of her sheath loose; realized that she was wearing nothing else and that to thrust her away would mean that the dress would fall away, leaving her half-naked in his arms. Impotent and confused, he grabbed her and supported her deliberately sagging body with one arm. And then Shirley had lunged up and locked her mouth to his, kissing him with a wild show of passion, even as he tried to break loose; as his eyes met Katrina's, who had given the apparently unashamed couple a last indifferent glance before walking off the terrace into the night.