by Boris Vian
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about ten o'clock, and I went down again right after to get a book. I didn't feel like going at it again with Jean, and I wasn't sleepy enough to go to bed right away.
And then, when I got back to my room, I found Lou sitting on my bed. She had on the same nightgown as the night before, but different panties. I didn't touch her. I locked my door and also the door to the bathroom, and I lay down without even looking at her. I heard her breath come quickly while I was taking off my clothes. After I got in bed, I decided to talk to her.
"Not sleepy tonight, Lou? Can I do something for you?"
"I'm just making sure you don't go to Jean's room tonight," she said.
"Where'd you get the idea I went there last night?"
"I heard you," she said.
"That's funny. I don't think I made any noise," I said mockingly.
"Why did you lock the doors?"
"I always lock the doors when I go to sleep," I said. "I don't want to wake up and find anybody lying next to me."
She must have put perfume on every square inch of her skin. You could have smelt her miles away. Her make up was just right
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too. She had her hair done up like the night before and all I'd have to do to pluck her like a ripe plum was stretch out my hand. However, I had an account to straighten out with her first.
"You were in Jean's room," she repeated.
"Well all I can remember is that you kicked me out," I replied.
"I don't think much of your manners at all," she said.
"I don't see that there was anything wrong with them tonight," I said. "I apologize for having undressed before you, but I'm sure you didn't look, so that's alright."
"Just what did you do to Jean?" she wanted to know.
"Listen," I said. "I am going to give you a big surprise and tell you the exact truth. I think you should know. I kissed her the other day, and ever since then she won't let me alone."
"When?"
"The time I sobered her up at Jicky's house."
"I knew it!"
"She almost forced me to. You know I was a little drunk myself."
"Did you really kiss her...?"
"What do you mean, really?"
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"Like you did me," she murmured.
"No," I said with a tone of frankness that I felt very proud of. "Your sister gets on my nerves. You're the one I really want, Lou. I kissed Jean the way..., well, the way I'd kiss my mother, and she got the wrong idea. I don't know how I can get her off of me now — I'm afraid I just won't be able to. She'll probably tell you we're going to get married. She got that idea in her head this morning in Dex's car. She's pretty, alright, but I just don't go for her. I think she's a little silly myself."
"But I saw you kiss her since."
"She was the one who kissed me. You know that if you take care of somebody that's drunk, he'll always be grateful to you."
"Are you sorry you kissed her?"
"No," I said, "There's only one thing I'm sorry and that's the fact that it wasn't you that was drunk instead of her."
"You can kiss me now," she said.
She didn't move but, just looked straight in front of her. It must have required quite an effort of will for her to say that.
"I can't kiss you, Lou," I said. "With Jean it didn't matter very much. But with you it's different. I don't want to touch you until..."
I didn't finish and, uttering a discour-
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aged sigh, I turned over on my side with my back to her.
"Until what?" Lou asked.
She had spun around and put her hand on my arm.
"It's crazy," I said. "It just impossible."
"Tell me."
"I meant... until we were married. You and me, Lou. But you're too young, and besides I could never be free of Jean,—she'd never let us alone."
"Do you seriously mean you'd do that."
"Do what?'
"Marry me?"
"I can't say I'm serious about something that just couldn't be,' I replied. "But if you mean, is that what I really want and desire, I swear that I am."
She got up from the bed. I lay there with my back to her. She didn't say a word. I didn't either, and then I felt her lie down on the bed.
"Lee," she said after a while.
My heart was beating so strongly I thought I heard it pound on the bed. I turned around. She'd taken off her dressing-gown and everything else and was lying on her back with her eyes closed. I think Howard Hughes would have been inspired to a dozen pictures
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if he had seen her breasts. I didn't touch her.
"I don't want to with you," I said. "I find this business about Jean just disgusting. Before you met me, you two got along swell together. I don't want to be coming between you."
The way I felt then I didn't want to do anything but screw her until the cows came home, but I managed to control myself.
"Jean is in love with you," Lou said. "You can't help notice it."
"I can't do anything about it."
She was as smooth and slender as a blade of grass, and as fragrant as a perfume-shop. I sat down and bent over her and kissed her between her thighs on the little ridges where a woman's flesh is as soft as eiderdown. She drew her legs together, but spread them again almost at once, and I again bent down, but a bit higher this time. Her shiny, curly muff caressed my cheek and I began to lick it tenderly. Her vagina was hot and moist, the lips thick under my tongue,—I wanted very much to bite it, but I straightened up. She got up suddenly and grasped my head to put it back. I tried to release myself.
"I don't want to," I said. "I just don't want to as long as I 'm not sure I'm free of Jean. I can't marry both of you."
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I nibbled at her nipples. She still held my head and kept her eyes closed.
"Jean wants to marry me," I continued. "But why should she? And if I say no, she'll surely fix things up so that we won't be able to see each other."
She arched her back in response to my caresses, and didn't reply. My right hand ran up and down her thighs. She opened them swiftly each time I touched the right spot.
"There's only one way to get out of it," I said. "I can marry Jean and you'll come along with us, and we'll manage to get together."
"I don't want to that," Lou murmured.
Her voice rose and fell unevenly. I felt I could have played it like a musical instrument.. She changed in tone as I touched her different-
"I don't want you to do that to her."
"There's nothing to oblige me to do it to her," I said.
"Oh, do it to me," Lou cried. "Do it right away."
She trembled, and each time that my hand rose she withered in response. I slipped my head in between her legs, and then turned her over with her back to me. I lifted her leg and moved my mouth in between her thighs
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and I took her vagina in my lips. She suddenly stiffened and then relaxed immediately. I sucked for a moment and then withdrew. She was lying flat on her face.
"Lou," I murmured. "I don't want to screw you. I just don't want to screw you until we can feel sure of ourselves. I'm going to marry Jean and then we'll manage. You'll help me."
She rolled over on her back quickly and kissed me in a sort of furor. Her teeth struck mine and with my hands I caressed her back. And then I took her by the waist and stood her up.
"Go back to bed," I said to her. "We've said a lot of silly things. Be a good girl and go back to bed."
I got up too and kissed her eyes. I was glad I'd kept my jockey shorts on under my pajama tops and could preserve my dignity.
I put her bra and panties back on and I wiped her thighs with the sheet and then I put on her negligee. S
he let me do as I pleased in silence. She was soft and warm in my arms.
"To bed, my dear," I said. "I'm going away tomorrow. Try to be up for breakfast, I'd like to see you again then."
And then I let her outside and closed the door again. I now felt that I had both of
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them hooked. I felt very good inside of me and I'm sure my kid brother was happy in his grave. I stretched out my hand to him. It's nice to be able to shake your brother's hand.
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XVI
I got a letter from Tom a couple of day later. He didn't tell me much about what he was doing. I deduced that he'd found a not to wonderful job in a school in Harlem, and he cited a passage from the Scriptures, giving me the exact chapter and verse, because he knew I wasn't very well up on that stuff. It was a passage from the book of Job, 13:14, which said : "Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand."
I guess the way Tom interpreted it, it meant that he was playing his trump card, shooting the works for big stakes, and I thought it was a pretty involved way of saying something as simple as that. I could see that Tom hadn't changed much in that respect. But he was a god guy anyhow. I wrote him and told him that everything was fine with me, and I put in a money order for fifty bucks, because I suspected he wasn't eating too well.
As for the rest, there wasn't much to tell. Books and more books. I got some special Christmas stuff and also some offers from other outfits not hooked up with our company, from salesmen working on their own account. My contract forbade any such purchases and I
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didn't feel like jeopardizing my position that way. At times I had to kick out some other characters, specialists in pornography. I wasn't too harsh with them however : they were often colored men of all shades and I knew they didn't have too easy a time of it. I usually took one or two items from them and gave them to the bunch. Judy in particular liked such stuff.
They still hung around in the drug-store and came to see me, and I still laid the girls regularly, every other day for the most part. They were just dumb rather than vicious. Except for Judy.
Both Jean and Lou were going to come through Buckton sometime during the week. I made dates with both of them. Then I got a call from Jean and found out that Lou couldn't come. Then Jean wanted to invite me up to their place for the weekend instead, but I told her I couldn't come. I wasn't going to let myself be ordered around by her like a hired hand. She said that made her very sorry and she really wanted me to come, but I told her I had a lot of work to catch up on. She then promised to come on Monday around five o'clock. That way we'd have plenty of time to talk.
I didn't do anything special till next
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Monday. Saturday night I took the place of the guitarist at the Stork Club. I got fifteen bucks for the night, and drinks on the house, which wasn't bad for that town. At home I read or practiced on the guitar. I'd more or less dropped tap-dancing—I was popular enough without that. I thought I'd go back to that a little after I'd gotten rid of the Asquith girls. I bought myself some bullets for the kid's little gun, and I also got an assortment of drugs. I took my car to the garage for a checkup and the mechanic took care of some things that weren't in Al condition.
There wasn't a sign of life from Dex all this time. I 'd tried to see him Saturday morning, but he'd just left for the weekend, they didn't know just where. I guessed that he'd been back with his ten year old kids at Anna's place, because the rest of the bunch didn't know where he'd been all week either.
Monday, about twenty after four, Jean's car pulled up outside the door. She didn't give a hang what people might say. She got out and came into the store. We were alone. She came over to me and gave me a kiss she must have been saving up for a long time, and I asked her to sit down. I purposely didn't close the Venetian blinds so she could see I didn't like her coming ahead of time. She didn't look
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good in spite of her make up, and she had black circles under her eyes. As usual she was dressed in the very latest and most expensive clothes—her hat very definitely didn't come from Macy's ground floor. It made her look somewhat older, incidentally.
"Have a nice ride?" I asked her.
"It's very close," she answered. "I'd thought it was farther away."
"You're early," I remarked.
"She looked at her diamond-studded watch.
"Not very. It's twenty-five to."
"Twenty-nine after four," I corrected. "You're fast."
"Are you sorry?"
She'd adopted a coy manner that got on my nerves.
"Of course. I've got other things to do besides fool around."
"Lee," she murmured, "Be nice."
"I'm nice when I haven't got any work to do."
"Be nice, Lee," she said again. "I'm going to have... I'm..."
She paused. I knew what she was going to say but I wanted her to say it.
"What do you mean?" I said.
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"I'm going to have a baby, Lee."
"You've been letting some man take advantage of you," I said, wagging my finger at her.
She laughed, but her face remained drawn and tense.
"Lee, you've got to marry me right away, otherwise there'll be a terrible scandal."
"Of course not," I said. "Things like that happen every day."
I had now assumed a bantering air. Still I didn't want her to run off before I'd arranged everything. Never can tell what a woman in her condition would do. I went over to her and stroked her shoulders.
"Sit there a minute," I said. "I'll lock up the store and then we'll be more at ease."
Now that she was going to have a baby it oughtn't be too hard to get rid of her. She now had a good reason for wanting to kill herself. I locked the door and went over the window to draw the Venetian blinds to screen us. I let them down easy with only a slight screeching sound as the rope pulled through.
When I came back to her, Jean had taken off her hat, and was stroking her hair to bring back its glossiness. She looked lot better that way, a real pretty girl in any language.
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"When are we going to leave?" she asked suddenly. "You've got to take me away as soon as possible."
"We could go towards the end of this week. My business here is in good order. But I'd have to find another job down there."
"I'll take along enough money."
I certainly didn't intend to let myself be supported, even by a girl I expected to kill.
"That makes no difference to me," I said. "I can never take your money. Let's have that understood once and for all."
She didn't answer. She squirmed in her seat as though she was afraid to say something.
"Go ahead,' I said to encourage her. "Spill it. What've you done without telling me?"
"I wrote down there," she said. "I saw an address in the ads, they said it's a rather deserted place, for people who like to be alone, for newly weds who want to have privacy for their honeymoon."
"If all the newlyweds who want to be alone went down there," I muttered, "It ought to look like Union Station."
She laughed. She looked relieved. She wasn't the kind that could keep a secret.
"They answered my letter," she said.
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"We'll have a separate cabin to sleep in, and we'll eat at the hotel itself."
"The best thing you could do is to go as soon as you can, and I'll come later. That way I'll be able to finish everything."
"I'd rather go with you."
"Can't do it. You better go home and don't pack your things till the last minute so as not to arouse suspicion. You won't have to take many things along. And don't leave any note telling where you're goi
ng. Your parents don't have to know."
"When will you come?"
"Next Monday. I'll leave Sunday night."
If I left Sunday night it wouldn't be noticed. But I still had to arrange about Lou.
"Of course," I added, "you've told your sister about it."
"Not yet."
"She must suspect something. Anyhow I think it's a good idea to let her know. She can act as go-between. You understand each other, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then tell her, but not till the day you leave. Leave her your address, but in such a way that she won't know until after you've gone."
"How can I do that?"
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"You can put it in an envelope and mail it after you're a couple of hundred miles away from home. Or you can leave it in her room. There are lots of ways."
"I don't like all these complications. Oh, Lee, can't we just go away, the two of us, telling everybody that we just want to be alone."
"I can't do that," I said. "Maybe you can, but I haven't got any money."
"It makes no difference to me."
"Take a look at yourself," I said. "You can say that now because you have money."
"I don't dare tell Lou about it. She's only fifteen."
I laughed.
"Do you think she's just a baby in dia- . pers? You ought to know that in a family where there are several sisters, the youngest learns everything at about the same time as the oldest. If you had a little sister ten years old, she'd know as much as Lou."
"But Lou is just a kid."