Miss Saint. What a name to get stuck with. Lucky Saint. God! For years she had known what her father did. The bodyguards, the alarm bells, the bars on the downstairs windows, the dogs: it all spelled out the fact that he was a man who had to be careful. But fancy having to change her name just to go to a stupid school.
What did it matter whether she was Santangelo or Saint? Who could possibly care?
In his penthouse suite at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Gino got the call to tell him that Lucky had arrived safely. He lit up a long thin Havana cigar and sighed.
The last ten years had been difficult. But he had protected his children, kept them safe, hadn’t seen them as much as he would have liked to. It was better that way, safer.
After Maria’s murder, so many killings. Personally he had taken care of Pinky Banana…. Personally…. He could still hear his screams of pain, his anguished squawks for mercy. What mercy had the animal shown Maria?
Abruptly he stood up. Walked to the window and stared out. The Strip was crowded with hotels now, neon signs shooting up into the desert blackness lighting up the night. The Boy had been right about Vegas.
A discreet knock on the door. Red ushered in a man who wished a favor. The man was florid-faced and nervous. He was part owner of a rival hotel, an important man to some. In Gino’s presence he was servile, fawning. He requested his favor in hushed conspiratorial tones. Gino said he would see that the matter was attended to.
The man backed from the living room wringing his hands with thanks.
Gino knew that the favor would be repaid tenfold. He enjoyed storing favors. It gave him a sense of tremendous power. Not that he needed to sense it. He had it. Plenty of it. Enough to keep politicians and judges and policemen right in his back pocket. Clowns on a string ready to dance for him whenever he needed them. Whenever and wherever.
He ground out the expensive cigar after only three puffs. Cigars were like women, expendable. No matter how much they cost there were always plenty more.
No more like Maria, though. No more like his dear departed wife, his love… his life.
“Lucky Saint,” the blond girl said incredulously. “What the hell kind of a name is that?”
It was Lucky’s first encounter with Olympia Stanislopoulos, a short frothy girl with piggy eyes set in a round face, cascades of the most glorious golden hair, breathtaking whiter-than-white skin, and rounded breasts that wobbled through a grubby tennis shirt.
Lucky glared. “I don’t see anyone criticizing Ringo Starr or Rip Torn or Rock Hudson,” she said defiantly.
“Oh!” jeered Oympia. “I didn’t realize I was sharing a room with a budding movie star. Soooo sorry!”
Off to a bad start, a week later they were the best of friends.
Olympia was sixteen and a half, rebellious daughter of a Greek shipowner and his American society wife. Her parents were divorced and she was shuttled back and forth between the two, each one seeing who could spoil her more. She had been thrown out of two American boarding schools, and in despair her mother had enrolled her at L’Evier. “Daddy doesn’t give a shit about my education.” Olympia giggled. “He figures I’ll marry some rich cat he picks out for me in the old homeland. Mommy thinks I should have a career. They’re both wrong. I’m going to have a good time, that’s what. Boys and booze and grass and fun! Wanna join me on my quest for the good life?”
It sounded like a marvelous idea. “Sure,” said Lucky, her sense of adventure surfacing for the first time. “But how are we going to have a good time when we’re locked up here?”
Olympia winked. “There are ways,” she murmured mysteriously. “Just watch and learn!”
It was easy. Lights out at 9:30 P.M., Lucky and Olympia out at 9:35.
Their bedroom window was conveniently situated next to a handy tree, and it was no trouble at all to shin right down and out onto the damp grass. Then a race across the grounds to the bicycle shed, borrow two bikes, and a ten-minute ride to the nearest village.
The first night they did it, the two of them sat in an outdoor cafe and drank steaming-hot coffee laced with slugs of Tia Maria.
Olympia was soon busy eyeing a group of teenage boys sitting nearby. The boys eyed her back. Soon they all joined up.
Olympia held court grandly, throwing back her golden mane of hair and sticking out sensual rounded breasts.
The boys grouped admiringly about her. “I simply must learn the language.” Olympia sighed. “It’s soooo boring not being able to understand what they’re talking about.”
Lucky understood. She spoke fluent German, Italian, and French—private tutors were good for some things. She wondered if she should tell Olympia that in quick asides to each other the boys were saying, “Fantastic titties!” “I sure hope she screws!” “Or sucks!” “Or both!”
Drunk as she was, Lucky knew that they should be getting on their bicycles and getting the hell out. Boys only ever wanted one thing. Nanny after nanny had taught her that much. And now it seemed they were right. “Let’s go,” she suggested.
“Why?” pouted Olympia. “I’m having fun. Aren’t you?”
It would have been perfectly obvious to anyone not as self-absorbed as Olympia that, no, she was not having fun. She was sitting at the end of the table, ignored, while the boys all buzzed around Olympia and her magic tits.
“I want to go,” Lucky hissed, “and I think you should too.”
“So go,” Olympia said airily. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
And nobody was.
She got up, collected her bicycle, and cycled off. Halfway back to school she stopped and was sick by the side of the road. Had it been fair of her to leave her friend?
Quite fair, she decided. Olympia was obviously no slouch when it came to looking after herself.
Climbing back through the window, she fell onto her bed fully dressed and was asleep within five minutes.
She never heard Olympia return three hours later. She was too busy dreaming of Marco.
“Hi,” said Marabelle Blue in a soft breathy voice. “I’ve been dying to meet you. Tiny often talks about you.”
Marabelle Blue. Latest contender for the famous Monroe throne.
Gino stared. Only for a moment. She was something.
Tiny Martino laughed. “I’ve been wanting to get you two together for some time, but Marabelle never stops working. She goes from movie to movie. She’s hot on the trail of nonstop stardom.” He laughed some more. “And what a crock of shit that is—I can tell you.”
Marabelle gave a low throaty chuckle. She was wearing a gray chiffon dress with specks of a diamante; it clung tighter than foil, barely covering her large tempting breasts.
Gino felt a stirring in a place where he didn’t often feel a stirring any more. Since Maria… nobody permanent… no woman who held his interest past a week or two, no woman he wanted to wake up with. Ten years of being alone was a long time.
“Do you ever go to the movies, Mr. Santangelo?” husked Marabelle. She was exuding a strong perfume. Heady…. exotic…. A very womanly smell.
Gino shrugged. “Not much, but I will. Tell me the name of your last film.”
“Bad Girl she purred.
Her eyes were blue. He had always had a weakness for blue eyes. “Bad Girl, huh?”
“Yes.” She lowered her eyes in a surprisingly demure way. “Silly title, don’t you think?” She raised her eyes to look straight at him. A strangely disconcerting move.
Here was a broad with everything on show, sex oozing out of every pore, and yet she had a vulnerable little-girl quality. He cleared his throat. “Yeh. I guess so.”
He wondered how he looked to her. He was fifty-nine years old, but he didn’t look it. He was fit and tanned. He had all his hair and teeth. Worked out religiously. He could pass for forty, forty-two. Not that he wanted to. Growing older was all right. But still, who wanted to look old?
“My next movie is called Womanly Wiles. Even sillier, don’t you think?” She giggled and b
rought her hand up to cover her mouth.
He noticed her hands were workworn, with nails bitten down to the quick. They didn’t match the rest of her: the lush body, the sexual face, the fall of platinum-blond hair loosely waved.
“Where you shooting it?” he asked casually.
“L.A.,” she replied, licking her full glossed lips with a snaky pink tongue. “Why don’t you come and visit on the set one day?”
Lucky dragged herself awake the next morning, shoved Olympia, and silently and hurriedly they dressed, making it to assembly with only seconds to spare.
It was the lunch break before they got a chance to speak. Then they collected plates of salad and flopped out on the grass.
“Why did you run off?” Olympia inquired languidly. “You missed all the fun.”
“What fun?”
“Fun, kid, fun. You know—groping and petting and getting felt up. Ummm….” Olympia closed her eyes and smiled. “It was delicious!”
Lucky couldn’t help it, but she was shocked. “With all of them?” she gasped.
Olympia laughed. “Of course not, dumbo. I picked out the one I liked best.” She looked concerned. “Didn’t you like any of them?”
Lucky bit on her lower lip. Actually she had liked the look of one of them, but he hadn’t even glanced in her direction. All eyes had been firmly focused on Olympia.
Anyway, what did she, Lucky, know about boys and sex and all that stuff? Exactly nothing. Oh, she knew the technical details—what went where and all that jazz. But as far as experience was concerned, one big zero. She had never even been kissed.
“Well?” demanded Olympia.
“Oh!” Lucky jumped. “Er… I don’t know….”
“Have you ever done it?” Olympia asked suddenly.
“I’ve been around,” Lucky replied coolly.
“Have you ever screwed a boy?” Olympia asked matter-of-factly.
Lucky threw it right back at her. “Have you?”
“Almost,” replied Olympia mysteriously. “Almost is much more fun.” She stuffed some potato salad in her mouth. “If you like, I’ll teach you how to do Almost.”
Lucky nodded quickly. She didn’t know what Almost was, but it sounded interesting.
Instruction from Olympia was a hit-or-miss affair. Ideas and thoughts came to her at the most inopportune times, and when they came she insisted on passing them on there and then. In the middle of a cooking class she might whisper, “Always start off with kissing. Make it last; that way you can get to enjoy it. If boys had their way they’d stick it in, whip it out, and that would be that!”
During science: “If he goes for your tits let him—it’s the most fun. By the way, where are your tits?”
A day of thought, and then, “The best way to develop tits is to get a boy to work on ’em. How do you think I got mine?”
As the week passed by, instruction hotted up. “If a boy says he just wants to lie next to you and he won’t do anything—forget it! He’s lying.”
“If he wants to kiss you down there, let him.”
And finally, the piece de resistance: “Sucking a boy can be fun. Only don’t let him come in your mouth. It’s worse than onions—you’ll taste it for days!”
Fully instructed on sex, Olympia decided the next thing Lucky had to get together was her look.
“You know, you’re really quite a knockout,” Olympia exclaimed one day, after she had made Lucky up and back-combed her hair.
Looking in the mirror, Lucky felt a tingle of excitement. She did look terrific, at least eighteen or nineteen. What would Marco say if he saw her now?
“I think it’s time we sashayed our fine young asses down to the village again,” Olympia said with a wicked grin. “Let’s see if everything I’ve taught you works!”
It wasn’t long before Gino Santangelo was a regular visitor on the set of Marabelle Blue’s new film. He would be driven onto the lot in his sleek black Cadillac—rumor had it that the entire car was reinforced with an inner steel lining and that the dark tinted windows were bulletproof—and would emerge from the car, flanked by two bodyguards, to sit stiffly in a special chair on the set watching Miss Blue at work.
She was quite a sight. She fluffed take after take, but when she got it right she was magic.
Marabelle Blue. Christened Mary Belmont. Came to Hollywood at sixteen, having won a talent contest. Starved for a year. Got wise and used her God-given talents to survive. Met and married a veteran Hollywood stuntman who guided and helped her, saved her from becoming just another hooker working the casting couches.
Then the sudden bright meteoric rise to fame. Husband pushed into the background. Bad for her image. Marabelle understood. She had been around. She was just twenty years old.
Gino took her to bed on their second date. She was every bit as good as he had known she would be.
He felt fine. Here he was fucking a broad that half the males in the world would give their left ball for. Maybe even the right one too.
Marabelle Blue.
He didn’t love her, but she was permanent.
Lucky felt strange wearing Olympia’s clothes. The skirt was too short, the white boots tight, the sweater clinging.
The two girls cycled into the village, having used their usual escape route. And this time Lucky was getting attention too. Oh, the power of clothes and makeup!
Ursi was the name of the boy she liked. He was eighteen and spoke some English. After a decent interval of coffee and small talk he invited her, very politely, to go for a walk.
Olympia gave her a wink and a nod. This was the big time! Let’s see if she could do Almost too!
Ursi walked her as far as the woods; then he took off his jacket, laid it on the ground, and without a word they sat down. Immediately he pounced, groping hands everywhere.
She nearly panicked, but then she remembered Olympia’s words of advice. She pushed him away and said calmly, “What’s the hurry? Take it easy.”
The promise in the words soothed him, and he began to kiss her on the mouth, wet sucking kisses which she couldn’t help finding a bit disgusting. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped that things would improve. They did. When his hands strayed to her budding breasts, things got better immediately. It was true what Olympia had said—this was fun.
Ursi had her sweater pushed up, but he was obviously disappointed with her lack of curves, because after a few minutes his hands were already fiddling with the catch on her skirt.
“No!” She stopped him sharply. “I want to see you.”
Happily he fiddled with his trousers and extracted his erection.
Lucky held it carefully. He was a well-developed boy. “Oh, my!” she said in awe. “Wow!”
Her words excited Ursi into a frenzy of passion, and before she knew what was happening he was thrusting himself back and forth against her hand and coming in a series of triumphant spurts.
She leaped away from him. “Hey,” she complained, “watch out for my skirt.”
“Oh, honey,” he sighed in his careful English, “you is nice nice girl!”
Lucky grinned. She felt the power. She wanted more.
Steven
1965
“The trouble with you, Steven, my dear, is that you have no real sense of what it means to be black. You have no black consciousness.” So spoke Dina Mgumba, fiercely radical wife of Zoona Mgumba. Yes, Zoona had settled down. After years of jacking off in every possible direction he had met Dina at a civil rights demonstration, fallen in love, and become a changed man overnight.
Lounging on the couch, Zizi gave a loud obvious yawn.
Dina shot a steely look in her direction. “What’s the matter, dear?” she inquired coldly. “Are we boring you?”
“You are boring me, Dina dear,” Zizi replied, equally coldly. There was no love lost between the two of them.
“I think it’s time to go home,” Jerry Meyerson said, raising his lanky frame from an easy chair. “Come along, pet.”
&
nbsp; Pet was the name he gave to all his girl friends, which was good, because only a computer would have been able to remember their names. Jerry’s girls changed weekly, sometimes daily. And they all looked the same. Pretty, mousy little blondes who Jerry claimed were “Dynamite in the old sackarooney.”
Halfheartedly Steven said, “No. Stay. Have another drink.”
Jerry laughed ruefully. “Wouldn’t I just love to. But I’ve got a real hot whiplash case first thing in the morning, and I’m going for big damages.”
Zizi yawned again and rolled off the couch. “Good night, Jerry, everyone.” She walked toward the bedroom in the small apartment and paused by the door, “Hurry up.” She directed the words at Steven. “I feel reeeal horny tonight. Don’t keep me waiting, lover.” She slammed the bedroom door behind her.
Dina pursed her lips disapprovingly. She didn’t say anything, but her expression said it all.
Steven knew the expression. His mother gave it to him constantly.
“How about dinner next week?” he asked, falsely enthusiastic, because he knew that however hard he tried, Zizi and Dina would never get along. “We could take in a movie first. I’d like to see the new Polanski film Cul-de-Sac.”
“That’s what you’re in, man,” muttered Dina.
Zoona gave her a look. Dina was not a girl to be silenced with a look. “We can’t make it anyway,” she said. “We’ll be goin’ down to Alabama for the march. I imagine you won’t be joining us?”
Steven shook his head. He had worked hard in the civil rights movement. In 1963 it had taken up most of his time. He had been in Birmingham when the riots and beatings culminating in the arrest of Martin Luther King took place. He had marched with 200,000 freedom marchers on Washington. He had felt the need to be involved, but not perhaps as deeply as a black man who had lived the deprivations and humiliations of being born and living out his life in the South.
Carrie had finally convinced him that he could do more good for the black race by becoming a successful and respected lawyer. When he had met Zizi that clinched it. No more traveling around the country on marches and demonstrations and sit-ins.
Chances Page 46