Lover

Chapter Four

She was much prettier than he’d ever realized before. Her hair was softly blonde and she wore it in a pony tail that trailed halfway down her back. Her eyes were a very bright blue, her skin a very healthy pink. The towel was yellow, just a shade brighter than her hair. She was barefoot. He noticed that her feet were very small and daintily formed.

“I took another shower,” she said. “I take a lot of showers. Especially when it gets warm. In the summer I take three or four showers a day.”

He could smell the sweet after-bath smell of her. She smelled of soap and water and young beauty. He looked at her and saw how alive she was with youth. But, Christ, she was so damned young! She looked like the sister he had never had. She was young, far too young, to be in his room in the middle of the night.

“What do you want?”

She pouted. “That’s not a nice way to talk, Johnny,” she said. “You could at least invite me in.”

“Close the door,” he said.

She came in and closed the door behind herself “Does it have a lock?”

He took a breath. “The two-by-four,” he said, pointing to it. “The hunk of wood. You jam it under the knob and it locks the door.”

“I know how it works,” she said. She locked the door with the two-by-four and turned to face him again.

“Now what do you want?”

“I got lonely. I thought maybe we could sit and talk for a few minutes.”

“Lonely?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your old lady out?”

The girl’s face darkened “She’s drunk as a pig.” she said. “Every night wine. She drinks this cruddy muscatel. It’s so sweet you could puke. You ever taste it?”

He shook his head. He didn’t like wine.

“I had some one time. I got, you know, dragged, sort of. So I drank a few glasses of her cruddy wine. She never missed it. It tasted rotten but it made me feel all funny.”

“I can imagine,” he said.

“All warm,” she said. “All funny inside.”

He took a deep breath. “Look,” he said, “I don’t get it. I’m sorry I walked in on you when you were in the shower. It was a mistake. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So you can split now. I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “But I want to stay.”

“Linda.”

Very nonchalantly she sat down on the edge of his cot, her eyes on his face. She crossed one leg over the other, and he got a momentary glimpse of the interior of her warm young thighs. He swallowed.

Easy, he told himself. You don’t want this one. Tomorrow you get out, you start a new life. Complications you don’t need. Fourteen year old girls you don’t need.

“And you want me to stay,” she went on.

“Like hell I do.”

“Maybe you don’t now,” she said softly. “But you will, in a minute or two.”

The towel slipped a little lower on her breasts. They showed halfway to the nipple. It seemed impossible for a girl her age to have such large breasts. They were a pale pink and they looked as firm as melons.

He tried to remember what it was like with a younger girl. Dammit he’d spent too much time with older broads. It was hard to think of what it was like with something nice and young. But Linda was just plain too young.

Wasn’t she?

She smiled. She reached out one hand and began to stroke his chest through the sheet. The sheet was all that covered him and she stroked his chest slowly. Steady he told himself. Steady. Just relax and maybe she’ll go away.

But in spite of himself he found himself responding to her. He was losing ground and she was gaining, and he knew now that it was only a matter of time. He saw the hunger building in her eyes and guessed that it was inevitable.

But such a young girl! Hell, she was a virgin, too — he was sure of it. And if there was one thing he didn’t need, it was a fourteen-year-old virgin. He needed her like he needed a fractured skull.

“Nice Johnny,” she cooed. “You don’t know what it did to me when I was in the shower and you were in the room. I could tell you were watching me. I thought you were going to take off your clothes and come into the shower with me. I was hoping you would. I wanted you so bad that after you left I was practically shaking in the shower.”

The mental picture was too exciting for words.

His opinion of her was beginning to change. If this was a virgin, he thought, then so was he. This didn’t talk like a virgin or act like a virgin.

And, he went on, if she wasn’t a virgin it didn’t matter how young she was. If somebody else had already copped her, he might as well take advantage of the situation.

Why not?

“It’s warm in here,” she said. “I don’t really need this towel any more.”

And she dropped the towel.

The full sight of her bare young body was almost too much for him. Her breasts were large and they swelled outward with all the zest of full-blown youth.

His eyes followed the lines of her body. Her waist was slender, her stomach gently and perfectly rounded. Her thighs columns of pink marble.

Very nonchalantly she crossed and recrossed her legs. Once again his blood began to pound in his veins.

“You’re sweating,” she whispered. “I guess you don’t really need that sheet at all.”

And she drew the sheet from his body.

He saw the way she looked at him. This was no virgin. The eyes that studied him were not the eyes of an unexperienced girl.

Not by a long shot.

“That’s better,” she said. “Cooler. In fact it’s too cool now, Johnny. Maybe we ought to huddle together for warmth. Do you think that would be all right?”

He reached for her.

She drew away, her eyes twinkling. “You’re very impatient,” she said. “Don’t you think I ought to turn out the light?”

There were so many times when he wished the lights were off. So many women were not worth looking at, and with the lights out you had a chance to forget what they looked like.

Linda was different.

He caught her arm. “Leave the lights on,” he said. “I want to look at you. I want to watch your face.”

She giggled.

“And come here,” he said “Now.”

She came into his arms at once. She wasn’t giggling any more and he knew she wouldn’t be giggling until after they were done. She pressed her body to him and he held her tight.

Her skin was moist and warm from the shower. She felt unbelievably clean and she smelled marvellously sweet. He ran a hand through her silky hair, then took her face between both of his hands and kissed her.

She knew how to kiss. Her tongue crept into his mouth and she drove her body against him, pushing him down on the bed. The kiss lasted a long time. Then she leaned over him, supporting herself on her arms and gazing down into his eyes.

He reached up, took hold of her pony tail and snapped the rubber band that held the strands of golden hair together. “To hell with this,” he said. “Your hair’s nice. I like it down. Loose, like. It’s good like this.”

She spread her hair out. It flowed over her shoulders and she looked a little older. But that didn’t matter. Right now he didn’t give a damn how old or young she was. He knew only that he wanted her very much.

She continued to press against him, her eyes dreamy. “Johnny,” she said softly, “do you like my breasts?”

He smiled. “Nice,” he said.

“You like them?”

He nodded.

“Then show me how you like them.”

His hand went to her breast and cupped it gently. He didn’t even move his fingers before she started to shiver. He liked the way her breast felt. It was the firmest he had ever had his hand on.

“That’s nice,” she purred. “They’re a big pair of knobs, aren’t they? I was flat as a pancake until a year ago. Then they started to sprout and they didn’t stop. This last month was the real sprouting time. They grew an inch a day, I swear to God. But I think they’ve stopped growing by now.”

“I like them this way.”

“I hope they don’t get any bigger.”

“They’re perfect now.”

She smiled happily. She leaned forward. “Go ahead,” she teased. “Kiss them.”

He took a breast between his hands and put it to his lips. His hands went around her then, touching the smooth skin of her shoulders, moving down over her back to her buttocks.

Melons, he thought. She’s a collection of melons. Melons in front, and melons behind.

His fingers moved and teased her. She wriggled, her face flushed, her eyes wild. He could see the heat building in her, could see how much she wanted it.

She raised her body, squirming crazily and small animalistic sounds came from her mouth. He nipped at her nipple with his teeth, then drew his lips away and looked at her face. Her lips were very red and she was not wearing any lipstick. Her eyes were shining, her forehead dotted with fine points of perspiration.

“You like to play games,” she breathed. “I can play games too. Nice games.”

He reached for her and she pulled away.

“Lie still, Johnny.”

He lay still. Then she dropped on top of him again, her lips busy with his neck.

Her lips moved over his body and he grew so tense that he could barely see straight. This was fourteen years old? She acted more like an experienced waterfront prostitute than a schoolgirl. She knew more tricks than Houdini.

He was trembling.

Then she was sitting up, her hair tossed angrily over her shoulders and her breasts rampant.

“No more games,” she moaned. “No more getting ready. Now, Johnny. Now!”

She rolled over and he took her. She cried out and moaned from start to finish. It did not take long — they were both too keyed-up to go on for long. It was fast and it was furious. It began and it raced forward with blinding speed, until the top was reached.

They both cried out at once into the night, cried out clearly and sharply in a single voice, cried out and were silent.

Then it was over.

Slowly, gradually, the world came back into focus. Johnny Wells lay on his back, his eyes open again now, his breathing and heartbeat back to normal. He was bathed in sweat from head to foot, sweat that was half his and half hers. He reached for a pack of cigarettes, found them, then fumbled around for matches. He shook two cigarettes loose from the pack, lit them both at once with a single match, and passed one to her.

She took it without a word, and he thought for a split-second that she wasn’t really old enough to smoke, and then he remembered what they had just finished doing, and he decided that he was wrong, she was old enough to do anything in the world — and do it damn well.

He broke the silence.

“Tired?”

“A little.”

“That was good, Linda. Real good.”

“Uh-huh.”

Suddenly he wanted to look at her. What the hell — he was never going to see her again. It would be nice to remember what she looked like.

He turned, saw her lying on her side with a warm satiated grin on her face, and he thought that maybe he would see her again. What the hell, he thought. He could always drop back once in a while to see what the neighborhood looked like. And he could give her the benefit of a quick fling while he was around. Sort of for old time’s sake.

He leaned back, settled down again and looked at the ceiling. He flicked ashes from his cigarette to the floor. Then he remembered something he had half-seen before when he had talked to her. There had been something, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

He turned on his side.

He saw the red stains.

His mind reeled. His first thought was that somehow he had hurt her. Then and only then did it dawn on him. The possibility had seemed so far-fetched that he didn’t think of it for several seconds. When he did he realized it was the only explanation.

She had been a virgin.

He touched her shoulder, shook her, then pointed wordlessly. She looked and blushed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry, Johnny.”

“I didn’t think... I mean—”

“I was afraid to tell you,” she said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to with somebody who never did it before. And I thought you would be able to tell anyway once we got started. You know.”

“Did it hurt much?”

“Just at first and only a little. And then everything started to get so good that I didn’t care, and then it didn’t hurt at all and I thought I was going to die from being so happy.”

“You should have told me.”

She shrugged. “I suppose so. But I was afraid you wouldn’t want to do it. I mean, I’m pretty young.”

“Fourteen?”

“Fourteen and two months. And you were thinking I was too young all along, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I could tell. So I figured I shouldn’t tell you because I wanted you so bad it was hurting me and I didn’t want you to kick me out. Besides, it’s not like I never did anything with a boy before. I never went all the way but I came close a few times.”

They lapsed into silence. He’d never been one to place much of a premium on copping a girl’s honor. It was more a public service than anything else at least as far as he was concerned.

But now, surprisingly, he was strangely pleased that he had been the first with her. He didn’t know exactly why he felt the way he did. It didn’t make any sense, not when he added it all up and worked it out in his mind. But when all was said and done he was still glad that he had been first with her, happy that things had gone as they had.

It wasn’t pride that he had seduced her. What the hell — if anything, it had been the other way around. He hadn’t seduced her; she had in fact seduced him.

Still, he was pleased.

“Johnny?”

He rolled over again and dropped an arm over her. Maybe she was ready again. He wondered if she felt like a second round.

“You like me, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

“Would you like it if I came to your apartment every once in a while? So we can do this again?”

He dropped a hand to her breast.

“Oh,” she said happily. “Oh, I get it. You want to do it again now!”

“Yeah,” he said. “Why not?”

The second time was at least as good as the first. And after it was over she rested in his arms, a smile on her face.

“I asked you a question,” she said.

“I forget.”

“If you’d want me to come bother you like this every once in a while. If you want for us to do this again. Or if you don’t want to see me any more.”

He took a deep breath. “Linda,” he said, “I like you. And I like to make it with you.”

She was smiling. Well, he thought, let her smile her head off. It wouldn’t hurt him.

“You come over any time you want,” he told her. “Any time. I’ll always be glad to see you.”

“I was hoping you would say that.”

“I mean it.”

She grinned, then got up from the bed and picked her yellow towel up from the floor. She wrapped it easily around her body.

“I better go now,” she said. “Back to my own place. My mother would be teed off if I wasn’t there when she woke up. She needs me so she can send me out for more wine.”

He watched her as she took the two-by-four from its place, opened the door, blew him a kiss and departed. For a fourteen year old kid she was hell on wheels. There was no arguing about it — she was a bomb.

He bolted the door himself, then went back to bed. Sure, he thought, she could come to his room any time she wanted. What the hell did he care? Let her come. She’d get a surprise.

He wouldn’t be there.

At two o’clock in the afternoon Johnny Wells walked into the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue just below Times Square. He was wearing his levis and his leather jacket, and his Ivy cut looked wrong with them. He carried a suitcase in each hand. The suitcases were brown top-grain cowhide and they’d cost him twenty dollars each, earlier that day, in a leather goods shop on Broadway. He also carried a shoe box under each arm since the shoes hadn’t fit into his suitcases.

He took the escalator to the terminal’s second floor. Then he walked to the men’s room. The lavatory was a very large room. It contained a row of urinals and three free public toilets. The other toilets cost ten cents. They were coin-operated.

He walked past all of them. At the back of the room there were two 25-cent booths where a person could wash and change his clothes in relative privacy. He set down his suitcases, found a quarter, and dropped it into the slot. He opened the door, hauled his suitcases and shoe boxes inside, and locked the door. Then he undressed.

He opened one suitcase and dressed himself completely in new underwear, new socks and a new shirt. He put on his gray sharkskin suit and donned one of the dozen ties he had picked up in a dollar tie store on Fifth Avenue. He dressed quickly but very carefully. Then he put on one pair of shoes and tucked the other into his suitcase. There was room for them now that he was wearing the suit.

When he was fully dressed he washed his hands and face again and dried them. Then he picked up his suitcases and left the booth, the lavatory, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He walked uptown to 42nd Street and waited for a cab.

Somebody was going to get a nice surprise, he thought. His clothes weren’t much, but the leather jacket was in good shape. It hadn’t been cheap, either. It was good leather, and in a way he was sorry to part with it. But it didn’t exactly fit into the wardrobe of a Park Avenue gigolo, so to hell with it. As far as the rest of his stuff went, he couldn’t see why anybody would want it.

He caught a cab quickly and loaded his suitcases into the back seat, then climbed in after them “Hotel Ruskin,” he said. “That’s on 37th Street.”

The cabbie nodded and the taxi pulled away from the curb. Johnny had spent most of the morning checking hotels, and the Ruskin seemed like the best bet. It was a quiet residential hotel in Murray Hill, located on 37th Street between Lexington and Park. The rates seemed reasonable enough — $35 a week for a single with full hotel services and private bath. And he had enough dough to pay two weeks rent in advance.

He had talked to some flunky on the phone and the man had assured him a room was available. He hadn’t made reservations, however. He wanted to see what the place looked like first.

The cab dropped him in front of a fairly impressive brick building. It had an old established air about it. The lobby was staid and conservative. The ceilings were high and the thick carpet was a subdued oriental pattern. Large copper cigarette urns filled with sand were here and there throughout the lobby.

He walked quickly to the desk, trying to look as confident as possible. The manager peered owlishly at him through a thick pair of glasses.

“I’d like to see a room.” he said, speaking carefully and not slurring his words together. “Do you have a single available with private bath?”

The man assured him that he did. He pressed a bell and a bellhop appeared from out of nowhere. He was dressed in a red uniform and was at least twenty years older than Johnny.

“Take this gentleman to 10-C,” the manager said. The bellhop scooped up Johnny’s bags and led him to an elevator. They left the car at the tenth floor and the bellhop led the way to a room at one end of the corridor. He opened the door with a key and motioned Johnny inside.

The room was more than adequate. The furniture was heavy and looked expensive. The bed was big. The carpet was wine-red and thick. The windows faced out on 37th Street and the view was good.

Luxury, Johnny thought. That’s the ticket. We live in style from here on in.

The bellhop went around opening windows and performing other mysterious absolutions. Finally he stood at attention in front of Johnny. Johnny handed him a crisp dollar bill and watched it disappear.

“Tell him I’ll be taking the room,” he said. “I’ll be down in a few minutes with the rent.”

The man nodded and disappeared.

Johnny unpacked his suitcases, put his clothes away, some in the spacious walk-in closet and the others in the bureau. He took out a cigarette and lit it. He relaxed.

He took out the alligator billfold again and counted his money. It came to a little under $180. He’d have $110 left after he paid two weeks rent. That would be enough. In no time at all the money would start to roll in. What the hell — if a guy like Bernie could make it he could. He had Bernie’s looks and Bernie’s sex appeal any day of the week.

And he had the drive.

He looked around the room. He stood up, walked to the bathroom and flushed the toilet. It flushed almost soundlessly. He looked at the tub and shower. The porcelain was spotless.

Nice, he thought. Very nice.

He undressed, took his suit and hung it neatly in the closet. He took a good leisurely shower and got out of it feeling like a new man. He dried himself on a hotel towel and drank a glass of ice-water from the ice-water tap on the sink.

Very nice.

He lit another cigarette. He sat in a chair with one leg crossed over the other and smoked. He got up, walked across the room to the window and looked out over 37th Street. He liked the view. It was better than staring at a goddamn brick wall.

Very nice.

At six o’clock he was dressed again. He left the room, took the elevator to the lobby and paid seventy dollars to the man at the desk. He walked outside. He had things to do. Dinner came first — he couldn’t start work on an empty stomach. Dinner. Then work.

There was a mirror in the lobby and he stopped to study himself for a moment before he left. He barely recognized himself. The haircut changed the whole shape of his face. He looked older now, and infinitely more polished, and much more like a solid citizen. The slum-kid look was gone.

That wasn’t all, he thought. Maybe they were right; maybe clothes did make the man. He looked like a million dollars now. After taxes.

It was warm out and there was a light breeze. He walked firm and easy down 37th Street with his arms swinging at his sides. He was pleased.

Nice, he thought. Very nice.

The bar was named The Vermillion Room. It was located on 59th Street across from Central Park and it was expensive. Drinks were a dollar or more.

The lighting was subdued, the carpet rich, the chairs soft and the tables small. There was no juke box. Orchestral arrangements of show tunes played continuously but unobtrusively over a well-engineered sound system. The bar itself was flat black and hyper-modern in design. The cushioned stools matched it.

Johnny Wells walked in trying to hide the fact that he was scared stiff. Act like you own the place, he thought. Walk tall. Be cool.

There were two women sitting alone at the bar toward the rear. The bartender, a portly man wearing a red cutaway jacket, was polishing a glass. The sound system played I’ll Take Manhattan. He ignored the two women and took a stool in the middle of the bar. The barman came to him and he ordered bourbon and plain water.

He didn’t want bourbon and water. What he wanted was milk, but he wasn’t silly enough to order it. The bourbon came, the barman mixed the drink, and Johnny sipped it. He didn’t like the taste. It was something he could put up with but he didn’t care for it. Eventually he would learn about drinking. He’d find something that it was right to order and that tasted good to him. For the time being bourbon seemed safe enough.

He took a cigarette from his pack and scratched a match, dragging smoke into his lungs. That was another thing, he thought. He ought to have a cigarette case. And a lighter. Plain silver and very thin, both of them. They didn’t have to cost too much to look good. But they might be important status symbols.

He smoked and sipped his drink. He listened to the music. The sound system changed to You’re The Top. He looked up and saw the barman standing in front of him.

“The one at the end,” the man said. Then he moved off.

Johnny looked down at the end. The woman was about thirty-five, trying to look twenty and managing to look thirty, which wasn’t too bad. She was dressed expensively and made up expensively. She was looking at him, and when he caught her eye she smiled.

That was his cue.

He picked up his drink, got up from his stool and walked toward her. Without a word he sat down on the stool next to her. He looked at her again, smiled.

She returned the smile.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“I think so,” she said. “I think you can buy me quite a few drinks.”

He gestured to the bartender, indicating her empty glass with a toss of his head. The bartender came and began to prepare a rather complicated cocktail for her.

Then he felt something touch his hand. He turned his hand palm up and felt her slip a bill into it. His fingers closed around the bill. It was a ten. He paid for the drinks with it and left the change on the top of the bar. He knew there was going to be more where that had come from.

“You’re a nice-looking young man,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Johnny.”

“Johnny,” she said. “That’s a nice name. I think we’ll have a good time, Johnny.”