Chapter 11
Denise Wrigley was insistent.
"I want to see you," she said again ... tonight. Can you come over?"
Leonard Felton was both surprised and puzzled. He had no idea why the Wrigley girl would want to see him. In the past, she had always seemed to find Victor more appealing and hardly gave him a second glance. Now, all at once, she wanted to see him. His mind raced back over the period of their acquaintance, trying to remember the few times he had seen her, the very few times he had been able to talk to her. His memory refused to give him a clue.
He stalled for time, trying to think. "Why?" he asked, hoping it was something unimportant.
"I can't tell you-not over the phone-come over tonight, will you?"
"I'll try," Leonard said, wishing she would drop dead and he wouldn't have to. It had been a rough day with the fight at the College and all and he couldn't even collect the five bucks.
"The folks are supposed to be in tonight," he said into the phone. "I'm to meet them at the airport." That was a lie but he knew Denise couldn't know it.
"Please come if you can-It's important, very important."
"Why?" Leonard asked again. "Does it have something to do with the party?" Everything had something to do with the party. The memory of it was a nightmare and more repercussions could still come.
"Alright," he promised. "I'll be there about seven-thirty. I have to do the front lawn first-it's kind of messed up."
Her voice sounded anxious in the phone. "Please don't say anything to anyone about it-not just yet."
"OK ... What should I do? Come on in or do we go somewhere?"
She sounded relieved, like she was pleased he had agreed to come. "Maybe just a short ride ... I have to talk to you."
"I won't have any money," Leonard said suspiciously, " ... any thing we do will have to be Dutch!"
Denise completely ignored his statement. "I'll be looking for you," she said and hung up. Leonard stared at the phone, wiped his forehead on a short sleeve and sighed deeply. What now? He was beginning to perspire and wasn't certain if it was the heat or the conversation which was making him feel so much warmer.
Going to see Denise Wrigley right now wasn't his idea of a good time. His car was still torn down in the garage and there were those two horrible black ruts across the center of the lawn. He could fill them up with dirt, strip some cod from around the edge of the lawn and hope for the best ... if he could only get rid of this damn headache.
The ruts in the yard, the horrible pain behind his eyes and that shapeless something that he felt he should be able to remember. Something about Denise's voice made him feel there might be a connection between that illusive something and what she wanted to talk about. He probed his mind, trying to think back for the item which bothered him, the something which happened and he couldn't remember. It only made his headache worse.
He placed the phone back on the table and walked into the garage. His Corvette stood in the spot usually taken up by his mother's compact and it stared at him accusingly with its forlorn headlights. It should have been finished by now. It could have if he had saved some of his allowance instead of spending it on beer and copulation.
The lawn rake hung from a hook in the corner and his mother's spade stood in the rack his father had made for it. He picked up the spade, grasped the rake and shuffled to the button beside the huge mechanical door. As it rose in the guide, he whistled a tuneless tone as a morale booster.
How long had they been gone? How much time did he have to make the house and grounds resemble something approaching normal? Was this Tuesday or Wednesday? It should be Wednesday ... they would be back tomorrow and then if he didn't have everything as it should be....
Edith should be in tomorrow to do her weekly cleaning. If he could get her before the folks arrived ... Maybe he could coax her to help out with the remaining work and not tell his mother. Edith usually did what he wanted her to. Sometimes a five dollar bill would work wonders, like the time he had coaxed her to help him take a bath ... with both of them in the tub, and the fun they had afterward ... Then he had found Bunny and didn't need to call on Edith for help anymore ... He would have to remember to ask her tomorrow ... He was getting so horny from thinking of what he was missing that he ... Where did Victor get the cigarettes? The little brown ones with the strong taste that made you feel like you were flying ... That was what he was trying to remember! The little brown cigarettes!
He remembered now, Victor had brought them. He, Leonard, had furnished the beer and some of the booze. They had really lived it up until ... The cigarettes had lifted him into a state of being which he had never experienced before. It was like walking through a layer of clouds and all about you were girls ... girls ... girls ... and they were all ... all ... NAKED!
He remembered a door ... but what door! Was it the door to his room ... the bathroom? Which was it? He tried again to remember and also why it was so important. He remembered a girl, a girl who went with a boy into a room and disrobed. She had taken off all her clothes until ... until ... That was that door again! That blackness which shut out the vision of the girl ... closed down over the eyes of the boy so he could no longer see her nudity or enjoy whatever it was they had come here to do....
Leonard wiped his forehead again and ground the shovel into the dirt. He wanted to see Bunny, wanted to see her more than anything. To tell her he wanted to go out with her again and have fun like they used to. Then it dawned on him that Bunny had a steady ... a new somebody who sounded mean and was too big for him to cope with.
He would have to go see her anyhow after he talked to Denise, maybe ... just maybe....
Harriett Wrigley was certain her world was getting out of hand Nothing nowadays retained the values it used to have and the ways of society appeared to be on a decline.
She felt Denise was becoming something of a problem. She was reaching the age when a girl should start preparing herself for the ultimate goal she would accept in life; that of being a wife, a mother and homemaker. All that kids were interested in nowdays was something called the Frug, the Watusie and a lot of noisy uninteresting music called a beat. Harriett Wrigley didn't like what the outcome might be if all this 'fadism' continued to grip the world.
Girls running around in tight fitting pants with little thought as to how they might look with their round little extremities practically exposed to the world. Girls didn't used to be like that.
In her day girls used to look forward to their first permanent and prepare for weeks for that first real hairdo, lipstick and bra. Girls nowadays start wearing the 'pre-bra' bra at thirteen, 'no lipstick' lipstick at fourteen and looking for sanitary pads in the grocery stores at the same time they shopped for gum and corn chips.
Sex had become the most predominate thing in mind at all times and life couldn't seem to progress without a shot of it from some source of media. Children were subjected to sex from the moment they started viewing television and learning the meaning of the innuendos it projected. Of course that didn't mean they would have to do away with television but it did seem that some parents were in for a great deal of trouble in raising a proper child. Now take Denise, children like her, who were trained properly, should take it all in stride the same as any other body function, or would she?
Mrs. Wrigley wasn't so sure.
Denise was seventeen. Old by her own standards but young when evaluated by the necessities of the modern world. She didn't know how to cook, couldn't sew a straight seam and had absolutely no interest in homemaking. What was the world coming to? What was the younger generation going to do to make their way in the new, comples, automation of the 'Great Society'?
Harriett Wrigley made a mental note to bring it before the next meeting of the Association of Mothers for Better Living. Something had to be done about the girls and their tight pants, the boys and their long hair and the fact that more and more time was being taken up on television by programs which taught them absolutely nothing. She would have to make a motion, get up a petition or something and then maybe....
Mrs. Wrigley pulled the car into the driveway and stopped at the closed garage door. Arthur could put it away later. Right now she would have to start thinking about dinner and what they would have for dessert. She looked into the garage noting that it was empty. Peculiar, she thought, Arthur should be home by now.
Denise Wrigley looked up from reading as she entered.
"Where were you today, Denny?" she asked, noting that her daughter was dressed in shirt and jeans rather than the mini skirt she had been wearing so much of late. "Anything exciting?"
"Not really," the girl said looking up from the latest copy of her father's pet magazine. "Out shopping with one of the girls."
"Where did you go, Dear?"
"Just around," Denise said guardedly. "The Emporium and Rhoades, then later, we went into Seventeen after Pumpers."
"At the Plaza, Dear?"
"Yes Mother."
"That's peculiar," stated Mrs. Wrigley." Alice Wilson said she saw you down by Cambrian Acres. Were you, Dear?"
"Oh! We were there too," Denise said quickly. "Donna wanted to find a gift for her boyfriends."
"A birthday?"
"Something like that!" Denise hated to tell an out and out lie to her mother, but she couldn't say what she was actually doing at the Center. She couldn't just up and say, "No Mother, I went to see Doctor James today...." Something like that would have created such an uproar there would never have been an end to it. Besides ... she didn't want to tell her mother anything just now. There would be ample time for that later.
"That's nice, dear," remarked Mrs. Wrigley and busied herself clearing the kitchen table.
"Are you going out tonight, Dear?"
"No Mother," said Denise.
"Who you asking?" inquired Mr. Wrigley appearing in the door way between the dining and living areas. "Me?"
"No, Arthur, I was asking Denise if she was going out with any of her little friends tonight."
"Why shouldn't she?" inquired Mr. Wrigley. "It's good for a girl to get around nowadays."
"I think so too," agreed Mrs. Wrigley. "There are so many nice movies to see and places they can go to have sodas and things...."
"Humph," murmured Denise and turned the page of Playboy to the picture of the young man in the Jaymar slacks.
"You're not tearing my magazine?" growled Mr. Wrigley good naturedly. "I don't want any pictures taken out of it until I see who the new playmate is...."
"I won't hurt it," responded Denise. It irritated her the way her father made over the pictures of girls in the magazine. Most of them were of kids younger than she. None of them were as good looking as her mother and five would get you ten that they were green as grass when it came to the bedroom routine.
"Just kiddin' you Baby. You look at it long as you like, OK?"
"OK Daddy."
She flipped the pages to the double fold in the center and smoothed it out. She felt like sticking out her tongue just to show her contempt for the figure looking back from the color spread.
The playmate was typical, she thought, young, childish and showing nothing but breasts. That is, nothing really worth looking at. Hell! Her mother had a better looking set of boobs than that and she was an old lady.
The girl traced her finger down the nose, across the chin and along the front between the two mounds being displayed so prominently. The figure was partially disrobed, wearing a pair of Levi's, which were open at the flap and showing the navel and a lot of skin through the vee. She wasn't pretty, in fact, she wasn't even cute and Denise couldn't understand what her father could see in the skinny frame with a crease across the neck and another just below the point of the vee.
"Men!" she said in disgust. They always knew what they wanted but sure as hell didn't know the best place to get it!
Rump Cunicheck wasn't thinking about Playboy magazines or Playmate pictures. What he had in mind was something a little more substantial and inviting. He hadn't expected too much of the evening but was rather happy the way it was turning out. There was only one fly in his ointment, he felt very ill at ease.
In spite of the smooth flow of conversation during dinner and the ease with which he was moving in on the little blue eyed blonde, he was still irritated by the boo boo he had pulled at the college. Inspector Hamilton would be up in fits when he found out he had lost his gun.
He had found it rather inconvenient to mention the mishap to the Inspector and decided to put it off until tomorrow. He was positive his superior would have put him on report, probably given him a suspension for being so careless and detained him so long at the office filling out papers that he would have been unable to keep this date.
Now as he fitted the key into the lock of the girl's apartment he was wrapped up in the thoughts of what his excuse could be on the morrow after he had gathered up enough courage to even mention the subject of the gun.
He twisted the key, removed it, dropped it into the girl's hand and absentmindedly turned to go away. Bunny Harris frowned and looked to see if she really understood his actions. Never before had she been treated so indifferently. Always, in her experience with men, they had almost forced their way into the apartment in quest of a very suddenly necessary cup of coffee, a glass of water, or just and out and out demand for a moment along to 'talk'. The Sergeant's attitude was one she couldn't anticipate and it caught her completely off guard.
"Don't you want to come in?" she asked anxiously and then bit her lip for saying it. She hadn't intended to encourage him because sometimes the police can become rather obnoxious and cause a girl a great deal of trouble. Now that she had said it, there was only one thing she could do ... follow through with as much sincerity as possible.
"Sure do!" blurted the Sergeant and his face lighted up like a go-go sign. He followed her into the apartment and appraising her figure as she removed her jacket and hung it in the little closet by the door.
"Would you like a drink, Mr. Cunicheck?"
"Yes I would," he smiled at her and turned on all the charm at his command. "Call me Rump," he pleaded. "I would feel so much better if you did."
"Rump? Isn't that a funny name for a man?"
"It's a nickname," he explained. "It was tagged on me as a kid and I've still got it."
"What does it mean?"
"Its short for the gnome in the fairy tale Rum-plestilskin. You remember?"
"I'm afraid not," she said. "I didn't get to do much reading."
"That's too bad," he said. "It gives a youngster an opportunity to build his own dream world. It's something to fall back on when you get into trouble." He looked at her and wondered if he was supposed to walk over, take her in his arms and try to kiss her. The thought of doing it pleased him very much but he couldn't make his feet or hands do what his brain was commanding.
"Is that what you did?" she asked and there was a puzzled look on her face.
"Sure," the sergeant gave up the idea of taking hold of her. Something about the way she stood told him it wasn't a very good idea and she just might scream if he made any unasked advances. He would have to wait and let her make the first move. Surely she would do something. Any doll who had been out on the town had sense enough to know that there came a time for payment. "When I felt things were getting just a little too rough," he said so that she could see he was being very casual about the whole thing. "Then I would think 'Sergeant, you are Rumplestilskin and you can do about anything you want to,' they would get up and do it."
"Hard things?"
"Sometimes."
Bunny motioned him to a seat and placed cushions on the davenport so he could be comfortable. "Bourbon or vodka, Sergeant?"
"Anything," he said. "Call me Rump."
"Water or mix, Rump?"
"Water," the sergeant said and dropped to the pillows on the davenport. "This is great," he sighed. "Absolutely great!"
The girl disappeared into the kitchen while he stared casually about the apartment. It was a nice little place. Clean, comfortable looking and the type usually found in the low income group. Nice pictures, decent furniture and reasonably good looking carpet. Good place for a young couple just getting started. He could imagine himself in a place like this with a girl of his own, maybe someone even like Bunny Harris.
"You didn't finish your story," Bunny said coming back with two glasses. "You were going to tell me how your nickname helped you out."
"Oh that," the Sergeant said and looked a little embarrassed.
"You don't have to if you don't want to." She sat down in a chair opposite him and crossed her legs. "Mind if I get rid of my shoes and stockings?" she asked.
"Be my guest," replied Rump with mounting interest and stared at the nice curves under the hose. He sipped at the drink before saying more. "You still want to hear?"
She nodded.
"Well," he said trying to avert her eyes and keep from letting her know what her nearness was doing to him. "Where was I?"
"You didn't say," Bunny said raising her skirt and unsnapping the tab of her garter. "You were going to tell me."
"Yeah, I guess I was. Well, there we were sitting about half way up a hill one night and pinned down by a group of chinks on the top of a rock. Every time we try to break out, they throw up a signal flare and start lobbing mortar fire into us. After a while, I'm getting a little put out by all this and make up my mind there must be a way out." He watched while Bunny worked the stocking down the well formed leg and over the ankle. He gulped, sipped his drink and returned to the story. "I says, 'Rumplestilskin, if you were in my shoes what would you do?' " He paused so she could absorb that much of the story and wonder about the outcome.
Bunny Harris tugged the stocking slowly over her foot and held it at arm's length. The sergeant's eyes bored holes into it.
"Then what did you do?" she asked pulling the skirt up and unfastening the tab on the other hose. "Did you go after them?"
"Nope!" grinned the sergeant, devotedly following the movements of her hands and delighting in the amount of leg uncovered by the raised skirt. "We made them come after us."
The girl paused in the operation of dropping the stocking and looked at the sergeant. "Oh?" she said.
"Yes sir!" exclaimed the sergeant. "I just says 'Rumplestilskin, if you was pinned down here and couldn't go up the hill, what would you do?' "
"And?" inquired Miss Harris depositing the hose on the side table.
"Right then, there was this vision of a little green man and he says to me, 'Rump, you go DOWN this hill! Make them come after you.' "
"Did you?" The other leg was up, the skirt lifted and a flash of white panties showed plainly. Rump swallowed hard, grinned, blinked and continued his story.
"That's just what we did," he declared with gusto. "We let out a holler, made a lot of noise and some of us lit out down the hill. When them chinks heard all that commotion going on, they just knew we were retreating and headed right down that hill after us. Then ... the boys we left behind opened up with machine guns and clobbered them but good ... They couldn't set up their mortars and we beat the liv'en hell out of them!"
"My!" remarked Miss Harris, "That must have been some fight!"
"Yeah," echoed the sergeant licking his lips and staring at the narrow strip of white panties. "Yeah ... some fight!" and he downed his drink in one long swallowing gulp.
"Damn...." he muttered under his breath and then louder, "DAMN."
"More?" inquired Miss Harris reaching for his glass. "Maybe one more?"
"Yeah, one more," nodded the sergeant. "Jeeze, it's hot in here!"
"Should I get into something more comfortable, Sergeant?"
"Gosh yes!" exclaimed Mr. Cunicheck beaming. "Something real comfortable."
The girl disappeared from sight and the sergeant leaned back on the davenport, seeking to calm his nerves and return to some degree of normalcy. He had promised not to expect anything but what he was experiencing wasn't helping his blood pressure a bit. One more drink and he would have to get the hell out of there and go take a long walk in the ocean.
"How's this?" asked Miss Harris, coming back and doing a slow turn so he could appraise the 'something comfortable.' Rump Cunicheck took one look and dissolved into jelly.
The 'something comfortable' was a thin peignoir, and revealed the fact that she had removed all of her clothing and was clad now only in some Baby Doll briefs. She settled back in the chair, raised her glass and offered a toast.
"To us," she said simply but the tone was full of meaning.
The sergeant drank deep of the renewed glass of bourbon and then sat it on the small side table. He grinned foolishly, reaching for her arm. She extended a hand to meet his, then came to her feet as he pulled her upward. His arms went around her, his lips finding hers in a kiss of passion which could be restrained no longer. His hand roved the extent of her back, then rested on the warm contours of her bottom.
The flesh beneath the negligee was warm to his touch and sent his blood racing.
"Oh Baby," he blurted. "Oh Baby ... do I need you!"
She broke away, her eyes meeting his, the deep wells of emotion showing the depth of her desire.
"Come," she said and tugged him toward the bedroom.
He followed meekly, his mind completely engulfed by the anticipation of sampling the pleasures she was offering. They reached the doorway and started through and then the girl stopped, comprehending for the first time that someone was knocking long and hard on the front door.
She paused startled, pulled the peignoir closer about her body and not quite decided what to do.
"Who the devil is that?" she asked and her eyes opened wide as realization seeped in on her.
"It's me," a voice said from the hall. "Hurry and open up!"