Lover

Chapter Two

He laughed, remembering the first time with Joan Barber. Christ, what a green punk he’d been! Well, there had to be a first time for everything. And that had been the first time for him. There was a lot of water over the dam since then.

His stomach reminded him that he was hungry. He sat upright on the bed, kneading his stomach with strong fingers. He guessed that it was about seven o’clock. It was late April and the air was warm out. He got up from the bed and left the room. He didn’t even bother shutting the door after him. There was nothing there for anybody to steal.

He hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time again and passing in rapid succession the smells of alcohol and garlic and cabbage. He left the building and felt in his pockets for a cigarette. There was only one Lucky left in the pack. He took it out and put it between his lips, then crumpled the pack and flipped it into 99th Street.

A cleaner New York is up to you, he thought scornfully. Cast your ballot here for a cleaner New York. And did you make New York dirty today?

Nuts, he thought. He found a pack of matches in another pocket, yanked one out and scratched it into flame, cupping his hands for the light. He sucked smoke into his lungs and exhaled. He left the cigarette between his lips and headed down the street, his hands plunged into the pockets of his dungarees, his body loping easily as he walked.

Food.

A meal.

Money.

And their source: a woman.

He remembered the last woman and grimaced distastefully. She’d been old, with breasts that sagged to her waist. And she barely had a waist. It was almost as wide as her hips.

And that wasn’t all that was too wide.

He hawked and spat. The woman wasn’t the worst of it: She lived in a ratty apartment on Amsterdam and her brats were squalling away in the other room while they were going at it. The whole place reeked of cooking smells. And afterward, when she’d had the decency to go to sleep so he could go through her pocketbook, all he’d gotten for his trouble was a lousy five bucks.

That was the trouble with being broke, he thought. If he had enough dough saved up he could buy himself a front — a decent suit, a couple of shirts, a good pair of shoes. When you could come on fairly strong you weren’t stuck with the neighborhood and old broken-down wives of longshoremen and truck-drivers. You could go where the good pickings were.

59th Street, for example. He ran into a guy named Bernie a while back, a smoothie who dressed sharp and had a line you could hang your wash on. Bernie told him about the bars on 59th Street just south of the park. The classy East Side broads went there when they had an itch and needed somebody to scratch it for them. You sat down at the bar and ordered a drink. They’d give you the eye and you’d carry your drink to where they were and they’d slip you money for the next round. Then you played footsie and kneesie until the gal made up her mind that she was warm for your form and ready to play.

And you didn’t go back to a dump on Columbus Avenue. If the broad didn’t have a husband, or if the husband was out of town, you went to the broad’s apartment. You banged the broad in a bed with silk sheets and you lapped up twenty-year old brandy between sets. And the broad might not be classy, but she wouldn’t be a mess. She’d have the best beauticians in the world taking care of her, and she’d look good even if she didn’t have much to begin with.

He spat again. On top of that, you made money in the deal. Twenty bucks for a night was the minimum and Bernie said he got as much as fifty or a hundred from the right broad. And you didn’t have to go through her purse for it. She slipped it to you just as cute as could be.

That wasn’t all Bernie had had to say. Sometimes a broad would go nuts over a guy and want him around steady. Then he’d move in with her and she’d buy him hundred-dollar suits and twenty-dollar shoes and pick up all the tabs, with a little spending money thrown in. And the broads weren’t necessarily pigs, not by any means. Or eighty years old. A friend of Bernie’s had managed to latch onto a twenty-nine year old divorcee with red hair and a trim shape and the biggest pair of boobs in captivity. A good face, too. And she was keeping him. She’d even given him a Thunderbird to drive her around in. The car was in his name, too. It was his to keep, even if they split up.

Johnny threw his cigarette into the gutter. He could stand something like that. You could get sick of living on the bottom all the time. To hell with the skim milk. It was too damned thin. It was about time he started lapping up some of the cream.

But first he needed money.

He walked the streets, looking for the woman who would buy him a meal. He wasn’t looking for just any woman. It had to be one who was ready to play. Not just a broad who would let him give her a toss in the hay, but one who’d pay for the privilege.

He found her on Broadway between 100th and 101st Streets. He saw her coming the other way walking toward him, and he stopped walking toward her and leaned up against a lamp post, one foot crossed over the other and his arms hanging free and easy at his sides.

She looked at him. At once he raised his eyes to meet hers. He gazed very intently at her. He did not smile. He simply stared at her, telling her with his eyes that he knew everything there was to know about her and that he was ready to give her everything she needed.

He could tell that she understood the look. She was frightened at first — he saw that instantly — but the fear died quickly enough. She returned his glance, and her eyes said that she was accepting his challenge and ready to meet it. There was anger in her eyes, and fury, and hatred. But more than anything else there was desire.

He made his move with the simple assurance that was the product of long experience. He stepped forward, a false smile in his face, and called to her.

“Hi! I just got here myself. Didn’t expect you’d be on time.”

No one watching would have realized that they had never seen one another before in their lives.

She only hesitated for an instant. Then her face relaxed into a smile that was as painfully artificial as his own. “I’m glad I didn’t keep you waiting,” she said. He held out his arm for her and she took it. They started walking down Broadway together.

“That was cute,” she said. “Very clever.”

He shrugged.

“How could you tell? You must get your face slapped ten times a day.”

“I don’t come on like that unless I’m sure.”

“And you were that certain of me?”

He shrugged again. Hell, he thought but didn’t say, you had bang me scrawled on your forehead in letters an inch high. You’re hotter than an old stove.

“Suppose you were wrong,” she said. “Suppose I changed my mind. I almost did, you know. Suppose I got angry.”

He turned his palms up. “Then I made a mistake. I thought you were somebody else. No sweat.”

She didn’t say anything. He turned his eyes and studied her. She was in her thirties, a fairly attractive woman not badly dressed. She was wearing a wedding ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. It was just a plain gold band, nothing fancy. He smiled, thinking that almost all the women he picked up wore wedding rings. And all the husbands wore horns.

“Where do we go?”

“Your place.” he said. “That okay?”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“Where do you live?”

“On 68th Street.” she said “Near Central Park West.”

He whistled. “That’s a distance,” he said “What are you doing way the hell up there?”

“I work at Columbia University. In the library.”

“That’s up by 116th,” he said. “You walk home every day?”

She colored. “I had nothing to do,” she said. “I wanted to walk a ways. It helps me relax.”

He didn’t say anything.

“We don’t have to walk,” she said. “We could take a taxi.”

“I’m hungry.”

She looked at him.

“I’m hungry,” he repeated. “Let’s stop and have dinner first. Then we go to your place.”

She didn’t say anything. She looked away from him and he added, “You pay for dinner.”

“Of course,” she said, her voice tense. “I pay for dinner. I pay for everything, don’t I?”

“That’s the general idea.”

She didn’t say anything to that. He led her to a good medium-priced restaurant, the Blue Boar. It had been a much better restaurant twenty or thirty years ago when the Upper West Side had been an infinitely more desirable neighborhood than it was now. The restaurant was still good, with good food and pleasant surroundings. But the prices were lower.

“Is this all right?”

“Should be,” he said. “I never ate here before.”

They went inside. The manager’s face said he was surprised to see a woman like her with a blue-jeaned leather-jacketed teen-ager. But he didn’t say anything, leading them to a table in the rear.

“He gave us a look,” she said

“Probably thinks you’re my mother.”

She blushed and bit her lip. He grinned inwardly. This was a live one, he thought. He’d even managed to work her for dinner in a restaurant. She could have offered to cook for him at her place, but she didn’t even seem to think of it. She might be good for a nice piece of change if he played his cards right. She lived in a pretty decent neighborhood and she dressed well.

Hell, he thought, she might even be a little fun in the rack. She’s not too old. It might be a kick to give her a good one. She probably couldn’t even remember what a real one felt like.

She ordered liver and bacon and he ordered a very rare sirloin. She didn’t even balk when he picked the most expensive item on the menu. $4.95 and she didn’t put up a squawk. This was going to be good. Even if all he got was the steak, it was worth it. He was starving.

He finished the steak before she was half-finished with her liver and bacon. He wolfed it down, gobbled his baked potato, emptied the glass of milk.

Then he asked her for a cigarette. She told him she didn’t smoke and gave him thirty cents for the cigarette machine. He bought a pack and lit one, tucking the pack into his pocket.

She pushed her plate away. “Let’s go,” she said.

“You left half your food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

The hell you’re not, he thought. You’re hungry, but not for liver and bacon. You’re hungry for me.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

“Hell,” he said, “I’m hungry.” He took her plate and finished her food in a few seconds, stuffing it into his mouth. It wasn’t as good as the steak, but it was decent food. And when you were used to eating when you could, you didn’t let anything go to waste. It was all energy. The more you ate, the longer it would be until you got hungry again.

She paid the check, leaving a dollar and a half for the waiter. When she had turned the other way he scooped up the bill and slipped it deftly into his pocket. Fifty cents, he thought, was plenty for the waiter. The other dollar was a dividend for Johnny Wells.

There was no dividend in the cab. She paid and tipped the driver herself when he let them off in front of her building, a brownstone a few doors from Central Park West. It was a brownstone like the one he lived in, but there the similarity ended. It wasn’t the Ritz but it was fine. The building was very clean and in good repair. The hallway didn’t smell of six different kinds of cooking. The stairs and hallways were carpeted.

Her apartment was one flight up on the second floor. A small brass nameplate on the door said Mr. and Mrs. David Nugent. He wondered idly where old Dave was. He hoped he was out for the evening. It would be a pain in the rear if he walked in at the wrong time.

That had happened once. Fortunately the irate hubby in that instance was a little punk with water on the brain. He had lunged at Johnny, furious, and Johnny had stopped what he was doing, bopped the guy calmly on the button and knocked him cold. Then the goddamned broad had hauled him back down on top of her and they had taken up where they’d left off.

Mrs. David Nugent now opened the door with her key. They entered the apartment and she closed and bolted the door. The apartment was a nice one. The floor was carpeted from wall to wall and the furniture matched.

“Nice pad,” he said.

“I’m glad you approve.”

Her tone was icy and he knew that she hated him almost as much as she wanted him, maybe even more. He had to reverse the balance. He had to melt the ice, or all he was going to get for his trouble was the dinner. If they kept talking she was going to get control of herself and tell him to get out. He didn’t want that to happen.

He could have made his play in the cab, but it might have been clumsy. Now, however, he was on sure ground.

He reached for her.

She started to back away but she was too slow. He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her close. When she tried to turn her head away he grabbed her brown hair with one hand while he held onto her with the other. He brought his mouth down on hers and ground a kiss against her lips.

At least the boobs are all hers, he thought. That was one thing. You could always tell padding as soon as you got up against it. Whatever this one had, this Mrs. David Nugent, it was all her own.

He held the kiss a long time. At first she fought him without much success. Then she relaxed and accepted the kiss but did not return it. It was like kissing a pillow.

Then she began to change. Very suddenly she sighed and he knew the battle was all over. She began to breathe more rapidly. Her mouth opened and his tongue entered it. Now she was returning his kiss. Instead of fighting him or trying to pull away she was pressing up against him, rubbing her body against his. She was no cold fish now. She was ready to go.

And he didn’t have to pretend his own passion. It was good when they put up a battle, when you had to work on them and use a little bit of force. They were fun then. Now, for the first time, he really wanted her. It was a hell of a lot better when you really wanted a woman. Just going through the motions was an awful drag, but enjoying it was the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.

He let go of her in the middle of the kiss and stepped away from her. He saw the look in her eyes, the way her mouth was open, the way she was breathing.

He smiled.

“Damn you,” she said. Her voice was very bitter. “God damn you to hell.”

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

She turned away. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him again. He was purposely a little rougher than he had to be with her.

“Well?” he demanded. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I wanted.”

“I do.”

“What?”

“Bed,” he said. “You want bed.”

She clenched her teeth, closed her eyes for a moment, then forced herself to relax. “You know everything,” she said. “You just know everything in the world. Damn you.”

He pulled her close to him again and took her breast in his hand. He squeezed gently, then relaxed, then squeezed again.

“Go ahead,” he said to her. “Tell me you don’t want it.”

She shuddered and said nothing.

“Now get your clothes off,” he said. “Strip. In a hurry. Then we go to bed.”

He stood with his hands on his hips while she wavered for a moment or two. He remained in that position and she began to remove her clothing. Her hands went behind her back to undo the zipper of her dress and the movement outlined her breasts against the fabric of the dress. She struggled with the zipper for a few seconds, then mastered it. The dress fell to her waist. She slipped out of it, then carried it to a wing chair and folded it neatly over the arm of the chair.

Then she came back and stood in front of him again. Now she was wearing a full slip, bra, stockings and shoes and panties. The slip was the first to go. It was a frilly white affair and he wanted to rip it from her body and tear it into a hundred pieces of soft fluff. But he restrained himself while she pulled the slip over her head and carried it to the wing chair.

She came back and took off her bra. She started to carry it to the chair.

“Hold it,” he said. “I want to look at ’em.”

She stopped, blushing, and he studied her breasts. They were much better than he expected. They were not large but they were perfectly formed, ivory mounds with saucy red tips. They looked to him like scoops of ice cream with maraschino cherries on top. There was no sag at all to them.

“Okay,” he said. “Keep going.”

She was moving like an automaton now. Numbly she took the bra to the chair, placed it over the arm, and returned. She unhooked her garter belt and rolled the stockings down over her long legs. The legs were not bad — a little on the thin side, maybe, but well shaped. And when a broad was on the wrong side of thirty, it was better for her to be too skinny than too fat. The fat ones got all flabby. Once their muscle tone was gone they weren’t worth a damn.

She put the garter belt and stockings on the chair, then took off the panties. She was naked and he wanted her badly. He couldn’t wait.

Without wasting any time he took off his own clothes. He burlesqued her ritual of placing each garment on the wing chair by ripping his clothes off and tossing them to the floor. He wanted to get the disrobing process over with as quickly as possible. She looked away while he got undressed.

“Look at me.”

She turned and looked at him.

“Good enough?”

“Damn you,” she said.

He laughed easily. “Now which way’s the bedroom?”

“Through that door.”

“Then let’s go,” he said. “Come on.”

The bedroom was neat and feminine. The bed had a box-spring and an innerspring mattress and clean sheets. They lay down on it and he took her in his arms. Her teeth were clenched. She acted as though she was submitting to him because there was nothing else she could do.

He was going to change that. He was going to make her beg for it. Before he was done with her she would come on her knees to him if he wanted her to.

This was going to be good.

He held her in his arms and kissed her. Her body was cool, her skin very soft and smooth. He put one hand on her shoulder and ran it slowly and gently down her side until he was holding her bottom. She had a nice bottom, he decided, and he patted it gently.

He kissed her, still gentle, and her mouth opened for him. His tongue caressed her lips, rubbed over her teeth, dipped into her mouth. He worked very slowly, making all his movements gentle and calculating her responses meticulously. He leaned over her as he kissed her, lowering his body slowly so that his chest rubbed against her breasts for the shadow of a second. Then he raised his chest and broke contact.

After he’d kissed her mouth for several seconds he broke the kiss. He moved on the bed, then began to kiss her throat. The skin was very soft there. He kissed all over her throat, and he could feel the desire beginning to mount in her.

Mrs. Nugent, he thought, in a few minutes you’re gonna be climbing the goddamned walls.

His hand found her breast and held it. He didn’t manipulate the firm flesh, just held it in the palm of his hand. It fit perfectly.

He kissed her shoulder and his hand moved on her breast. He moved lower on the bed, leaving a trail of kisses from her shoulder to the very top of her breasts. He heard a sharp intake of breath. He was getting to her now. He was hitting home. He was finding the target.

He handled one breast as he began to kiss the other. Both his hand and his mouth were clever and skillful. The breasts were perfect and they excited him tremendously. It took effort to keep from tossing himself upon her there and then. But he wanted to take his time. He wanted to make it a good one, to drive her out of her mind with desire.

His lips kissed the underside of one breast while his thumb and forefinger played games with the nipple of the other breast. Then his mouth moved and he was kissing one pink nipple while he fingered the other one.

“Now,” she moaned. “Now!”

He wanted to laugh. Already she was asking for it. Well, she was going to have to wait until he was ready. And he wouldn’t be ready for a while yet.

“Now!”

But he wasn’t ready to take her yet. Instead he let go of her breasts and moved downward, kissing her flat little stomach. He felt her whole body go tense with desire. He planted kisses all over her stomach, kisses that set her flesh on fire.

Then he skipped to her thighs.

Now she was burning for him. She couldn’t lie still and she was squirming.

“Now! Damn you! Now!”

Not yet, he thought, not quite yet.

His lips moved, inching ever closer to their goal. The closer he got, the slower he forced himself to go until he was afraid she might go out of her mind any second, might flip completely and turn into a raving maniac.

He kissed with incredible skill while she wailed Now Now Now into his ears. He timed things flawlessly, driving her as close as he dared to the peak of passion without giving her the little push that would send her over the edge into a fit of satisfied ecstasy.

Then, when she was tottering on the brink, he let go of her and sat upright on the bed. He looked down at her, and he grinned.

Her face was a mask of pure hatred crossed with undeniable desire.

“Do it! Damn you, do it to me! Are you trying to kill me? Is that what you want?”

He laughed.

“Do it! Do it do it do it—”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Make love to me!”

“I don’t understand you,” he said carefully. “If you want it, you’ve got to ask for it right.”

She didn’t understand. So he told her the words to use, and she used them. He could have told her to do absolutely anything in the world and at that point she would have done it.

“Okay,” he said. “Here it comes.”

Then he fell on her, driving himself to her, and she gave a little moan of pleasure.

He used her cruelly and viciously and incredibly well. He sailed her to the top of the world and down again, and he took out everything upon her, using her body to give himself immeasurable pleasure.

It lasted a long time.

And then, finally, they came to the peak for the last time. His timing was perfect, again, and they got there together. He let his rage and passion explode with her.

Then they both were very still.

“You can go now.”

He looked up at her, amused by her tone. It said that she was through with him, that he had served his purpose and that she was discarding him like a used napkin. He had news for her. But he dressed first before he told her about it.

She too was dressed. She had showered while he lay on the bed getting his strength back, and she looked neat and prim and proper. Only the dark circles under her eyes showed that she had spent a very energetic hour or so in bed.

When he had all his clothes on he checked his pockets, thinking that she might have slipped him some money while he was in bed. He found the dollar he had picked up from the tip, plus the pack of cigarettes. That was all he found.

“Hurrying to get-rid of me,” he said. “That’s pretty cute. Your husband coming home?”

She stared at him. “I don’t have a husband,” she managed.

He laughed at her. “I can read,” he said. “What happened to old Dave? Old Dave Nugent?”

She swallowed.

“He probably wouldn’t like this,” Johnny said. “You cheating on him like this. He’d be all upset.”

“You rotten bastard.”

“My husband died a little over a year ago,” she said. “Do you think I’d step onto the same street with you if he were alive? We loved each other. He was a man, not a phallus with a body attached to it. You despicable—”

“So I made a mistake.”

“Get out. Damn you, get out of here!”

“You owe me money.”

She stared at him.

“Money,” he said. “I don’t give a damn why you wanted to get laid, but you got it and I haven’t heard any complaints from you. So you might as well pay for it.”

Her laughter was hysterical. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “You’re not just a bastard. You’re a whore too.”

“Save the names. Just cough up the dough.”

“How much do you get, whore? Five dollars? Ten dollars? What’s your price, whore?”

He considered. He didn’t want five or ten or twenty, not from her. He wanted more than that. He wanted the dough that would buy him a front, the dough that would put him in business. Dough for a suit, a place to live, a haircut and clothes and business expenses.

He wasn’t going to get that kind of dough from her. But he could — if he was willing to take chances. How great a chance would he be taking?

“What’s your price?”

He ignored her question, calculating the risk quickly. She didn’t know his name or where he lived. She didn’t live in his neighborhood. She could describe him to the cops and tell them where he picked her up, but that was about all she could do.

And the odds were strong that she wouldn’t say a word to anybody. She’d be pretty goddamned ashamed of what she’d done, and she’d be glad to be rid of him. She might miss him a little on cold nights, but she’d be happy enough never to see him again. That much was sure.

And this way he would get his stake. This way he would have that suit and those shirts and shoes, and a place to live and a foot in the door of every bar on 59th Street.

So why not?

“Well, whore.”

The word didn’t anger him. He wasn’t at all angry when he hit her, but he couldn’t have done a better job if he’d been madder than hell.

He drove his fist into the pit of her stomach. She doubled up in pain, not making a sound, and he hit her again. The second punch was an uppercut to the jaw, not too hard because he didn’t want to knock her teeth out. Her teeth clicked together metallically and she was lifted six inches by the blow. Then she slumped to the floor and lay there in a heap. He checked her. She was unconscious, and she’d stay that way for a while.

He wasted no time at all. First he went through her purse in a hurry. He took sixty dollars in fives and tens from her wallet and found another dollar-eighty in silver plus three singles in a cloth change-purse. There were also six pennies in the change-purse but he left them there for her. He remembered the way he had thrown the nickel and eight pennies into the gutter that evening and grinned at the memory.

There was no more money in the living room bureau, but he struck paydirt in the bedroom. The top drawer of her dresser contained another hundred dollars in twenties plus a small diamond solitaire engagement ring and a flat gold wristwatch with a black suede band. He got another less expensive watch from her wrist. He tried to take her wedding ring, more for the hell of it than because it was worth anything, but gave up when he saw that it fit too tightly. He could have cut her finger off, he thought, grinning, but that would be a little too much. What the hell — she’d been lots of fun in the rack.

He went through the apartment and took anything that was small and that could be converted easily into cash. He found a table lighter, a gold charm bracelet, a man’s alligator billfold. It must have belonged to old Dave, he decided. He could use it to keep his own dough in.

He put the money in his new wallet and stuffed it into his back pocket. He hesitated at the door for a moment, then dipped into his pocket and came out with the dollar and eighty cents in silver. What the hell, he thought. So she can get to work tomorrow.

He looked at her. She was breathing normally, sound asleep and dead to the world. He jingled the coins in his hand, then tossed them underhand at her. A nickel glanced off the side of her face but she did not move.

“Live it up,” he said to her. “And thanks. You’ve been swell.”