Zelda made us a couple of olive sandwiches with a pickle on the side and a gin tonic for desert. We were happy together and laughed a lot. She brought a down-to-earth plainness with a slight hint of smoldering sensuality. A hell of a combination, I thought. As she spoke to me, I was still picturing her lovely naked body leaning over me, wiping me down after the bath that morning. Yeah, the little babe had a lot going for her.
About eight o’clock she helped me into her bed. I owned only one pair of pajamas, so I crawled in naked. Zelda turned the radio on for me and sat at the edge of the bed. There was a nice sentimental version of A Ghost of a Chance playing and suddenly my little plant lady looked sad.
“What is it, babe? A memory?”
“No, it’s just the way I feel about you, Cable. I know I don’t stand a ghost of a chance with you, just like the song says. You know, it’s funny…a girl gets stuck in a place…somewhere inside of her, a long time ago, when she idealized a man she was attracted to. Then, if she’s not careful, she gets frozen in time. She watches her life go by. She doesn’t go out with other guys because in her heart she doesn’t want to. And in my case, no one would even look at me twice to care, anyhow.”
“I wouldn’t say that, kid. After all, didn’t you have a serious guy hanging around for a while?”
“He turned out to be queer, Cable—remember? That’s how bad my judgment in men is.” The tune ended and a bouncy little song came on the radio entitled “Let's Do it, Let’s Fall in Love.”
“Damn, Zelda, we can’t always fly the minute we jump out of the nest—be patient with yourself!”
“I’m going to be twenty-six in December! Do you know what that means for a girl? No husband, no house, no children?”
“Hell, if it’s children you want, doll, just hop into your bed with me—I’ll pump as many kids as you want into you,” I crackled, probably for the shock value of jolting her out of her lethargy.
“Cable! That’s crude!” Then she checked my eyes out. “Damn, I know you’re joking. But to me it’s serious. Plus I really need to love someone—not just lay down and spread my legs like Jacqueline Conklin used to do. And she did end up pregnant. To this day, I still don’t think she knows who the father is. I can’t be like that.”
“Nobody says you have to be. Just be you.” I had a slight headache. “I—I, uh, need to get some shut-eye, hon. You can leave the radio on for a while. It kind of soothes me. Where are you sleeping?”
“Out on the love seat. It’s pretty comfortable.”
“Well, then, good-night babe, and thanks for everything today. You’ve been a lifesaver, Zelda Blodgett.”
“Don't mention it, Cable,” she said softly.
She started out of the room. Her gait was listless and I knew she didn’t really want to leave and maybe would've liked to chat a while longer. I didn’t feel really great about kicking the babe out of her own bed either. “Oh, Zelda?” I called after her.
She came back into the room. “Yes?”
“I’m a bit cold, a little shaky. Do you think you could warm me up a bit before I fall asleep?” I said, knowing she would jump at the chance.
She lit up like a Christmas tree. “Gees, Cable, really? I’d love that.” Unabashedly I watched as Zelda Blodgett, the bookworm from Plant World, took off her clothes and slipped under the covers next to me. She sidled in close until our skin was touching. Actually, it felt good. “This is the second time today I’ve been naked with you. Who would have thought?” She snuggled closer to me. Then she shocked me. “Can I touch you? I’ve never touched a man before. I promise to be gentle. Think of it as an educational process for me—if you can see it that way.”
“Educational? Come on, Zelda, you just want to get laid, admit it.”
“Well, yes, but not exactly like that. So, is it okay with you?”
“Sure…but do be gentle…all of me hurts right now. And don’t expect anything else. Even if I wanted to, it’d be impossible tonight.”
“I promise.” I closed my eyes and smiled to myself as I felt Zelda’s tentative hand carefully take up my balls and massage them. Then she stroked my other member warmly and gently, getting a little rise as blood surged into it. “Am I doing something wrong?” she asked.
“Oh, no…you see the—the, uh, penis normally responds to touch, if it likes someone. Of course, since it has a mind of its own, I can’t control these things,” I answered with tongue-in-cheek.
“Then he likes me—I think,” she said, her voice sounding like that lethal combination of little girl and a young woman exploring her own sexuality. She continued to massage me until I was at half-mast. “Gees, Cable, he’s growing so big—do you want me to stop?”
“Well, maybe for tonight. I don’t want us to start something we can’t finish, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes…but now that I felt it—I like it. Crazy, isn’t it? It’s like touching me down there, or on my breasts. I just know I’d respond with a lot of—of good feelings…”
“I think we should try to sleep, Zelda. Please…give me a couple of aspirin, if you will, and let me drift away.”
“Sure.” She got up out of bed immediately and came back with two aspirin and a glass of water. “Here you are…”
As she handed them to me, I took her hand. “You know what, lady? You’re a warrior in this world. I’m glad I know you, Zelda Blodgett.”
“I love you, Cable Denning…and that’s all there is to it.”
CHAPTER 13
TENDER IS THE NIGHT
It was July 6th before I was up and around sufficiently to go see Jedediah Penn. Miraculously, Zelda and I had slept together for a few days without having sexual intercourse, before my returning to the office living quarters. She was a trooper and we laughed a lot. She had become a companion of mine. So finally my sheets were clean and my bed aired out, and I resumed life as usual. Well, sort of. Usual for me was the next surprise around the corner, the next gun in my ribs, the next babe walking into my office whose problems resemble the national debt, or the little boy lost, seeking love and shelter.
“So, Zelda, when is that appointment with Dr. Penn?”
“Wednesday. Today’s Tuesday, Cable,” she said with her head in an account book. “Mr. Richelle owes you eighty dollars, by my accounting. Should I bill him?”
“Always try the personal touch first, Zelda. Phone him.”
“Okay.”
That’s sort of how our days went. Zelda was fast, efficient and learned the ropes quick. Every once in a while when she bent over and she was wearing a particular white blouse, I got an unsolicited full-blown view of her marvelous tits. Some days it was hard not to touch them. But then I knew that would open up a whole can of worms. But now and then I wondered how she might be when the both of us meant business in the bedroom. I had a good feeling about it.
It was a slow Tuesday night and after I sent Zelda home, I decided to go and catch Misty’s act. The place wasn’t as crowded as usual. It was predicted by some that 1933 would be the lowest economic year in modern U.S. history. The Depression had hit everyone, except the rich and powerful. But the little guy like me got it in the shorts and business was hard to beat out of the bushes. I barely had enough to pay Zelda let alone my own meager bills.
When I walked in around 9:30 p.m., Misty was singing a medium version of I Cried for You and maybe she was telling me it’s my turn to cry over her. I don’t know. Dames live in another sphere of thought, I conjectured. When she finished the song she spotted me at the bar and came over and greeted me. “Well, well, well, the one-time invalid. How are you feeling—all pasted together?” She hugged me, but it was a so-so hug, perfunctory and without much feeling.
“Okay, babe. I’m walking around with most of my head together, no headaches and a slight limp. How about you?”
“I’m on a break. Can we find a table and talk?”
“Sure.”
She led me to the very table Zelda and I shared the night I brought her her
e. We sat. “I’m sorry, Cable, I’ve been aloof lately, haven’t I?”
“Aloof? I’d try totally absent, living on another planet for starters. Am I not worth a phone call now and then anymore? What ever happened to ‘I think we can be the best of friends’?”
“I run when I’m afraid, Cable. I ran after that Sunday we took you back to your place and I knew your little plant lady would be there to adore you and look after you. But it wasn’t just that. You really scared me about those people dear to you ending up dead. I’m too young to suffer that fate, or even walk in that direction. There’s something else. If we became lovers—I really wanted you, Cable, and I still think about it—I realize I would be on pins and needles day and night worrying if I’d ever see you alive again, or be waiting for the next knock on my door that some terrible person you offended would be out for revenge on me.” She licked her lips and reached across the table for my folded hands. “And…I’ve gone back to Edie. I felt she was right. Not just because I owe her so much for the sacrifices she made to get me where I am today, but because she’s safe. And now we have a little boy at home with us. Dickie Overton is a delight. No one ever claimed him and the authorities are too jammed to even consider providing for him at this point. So Edie and I are going to adopt him.”
I winced at the thought of losing Misty Sheridan. “That…makes me happy. I always thought the kid needed a break. As far as we go, you and I….hell, I gave you the options and you took one of them. It’s okay. We nipped it in the bud before it even got started. Now I can admire you from afar and always wonder what it would have been like. That’s enough in itself to keep a guy’s libido active, isn’t it?”
“I guess…putting it crudely. I guess I’ve always told my life stories in song, haven’t I? When I sang That’s My Desire that night for you, I really meant it. I had been aching for you all day. I don’t know why frightening statements like the ones you made later, threw a bucket of ice water on me. I guess I was also afraid that I wouldn’t satisfy you—or be satisfied by you intimately.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well…when you’re with a woman, certain nerves and parts of a woman’s genitals get—get, uh, ‘trained’ and used to a certain stimulation. To be blunt, vaginal intercourse would do nothing for me, I’m afraid.”
“Have you tried it?”
“No…I mean, not since I’ve been with Edie.”
“Then you really don’t know now, do you?”
She seemed flustered. “I don’t want to talk about it, Cable. I’m sorry…please…let’s be good friends…I’ll always be happy to see you come into the club. I love singing to you.”
I gave her a weak smile. “And I love hearing you sing to me. So, toots, I guess that’s it. I’m glad I came tonight. Do you have another song for me—I was thinking, if you knew I'm Getting Sentimental Over You—that’d be swell. I thought that might be a good song to remember you by on a rainy night. One never knows when a special evening comes along and you can tear open the wrapper on an old memory.”
Her eyes were misting. “Yes…I do know that song…I’ll sing it for you. I warn you, though, my arrangement might be a little too sexy for Hollywood private detectives.”
I laughed. “I like sexy—I think I can handle it.”
She excused herself and I meandered back to the bar. She was wearing a red sequined gown and with her reddish hair and blue eyes, topped off with a thin, black choker, she looked like a million. The spotlight hit her and she launched into the song. As she was singing, I was wondering just how many storms love affairs can weather. Life has a way of twisting the plot so what you thought you had ends up sawdust in your hands one day. Nothing holds together forever. Lives are lost by crossing a street, love is lost through the wrong words at the wrong time, fortunes are lost by bad judgment and nations are lost through greed for money and the self-serving of a few despots. None of us get out of this world alive. Misty’s safe decision to mend things with Edie Clason was right for her. For me? I had the hots for her, sure enough, but would it have lasted very long? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? That kind of passion usually comes with a short fuse and desire explodes the two of you into smithereens, and by the time you’re able to gather your pieces back together, it’s over. It’s almost as if, where love's concerned, there’s a third party in love…when it decides to leave, that part is missing and neither of the remaining parties can fill the gap. So people either limp on with the emptiness, or leave the relationship. Heartache is a crippling disease. I was still doing flip-flops in my stomach when I thought about Adora Moreno—or precious times with Honey Combes. All the might-have-beens in the world can’t compensate for what you lost, that can’t be regained.
I went over and thanked Misty for the song. She took my hand and led me into the shadows behind the stage curtain. She put her arms around me and kissed me deeply. As once before, that kiss zoomed from my shoes up to my head and on the way back, hit my groin at two-hundred miles an hour. “What was that all about?” I asked, quite puzzled.
“Desire…it’s what I always have for you. Even if I can’t find love, I just realized as I finished my song and looked at you standing at that bar, I’ll always find desire with you. Maybe love hangs you up, and desire doesn’t. What do you think?”
“That’s why guys hire whores, doll, to feel desire without love.”
Her eyes widened and she slapped me on the face, pretty hard. She walked away, leaving me there in the dark. As I said, you can never figure a dame!
I had just gotten off the streetcar at Gower and Franklin when something hit my head like an electric shock from touching a power pole. I staggered for a minute and came to rest against a building. Suddenly I knew two things. One, I had the knowing of the Fen de Fuqin back in my brain cells—and two, that Cassi had just come back from The Cave of the Seven Truths. I ran to my office just in case she had returned without knowing that her mentally disturbed father was hot on her trail, thinking she had what I had. I found no one and it looked like nothing had been touched. I sat at my desk rubbing my head when all of a sudden I heard a slight hum sound. Then through my outside window came a small brass orb. Saturnalia! She was frantically doing all kinds of movements, gyrations, spins and circles. I wasn’t an alien, so I couldn’t read her transmissions, but she was obviously agitated. Finally, I started to tune in on some of what she was pulsing to me. The orb moved my note pad in front of me and scooted a pen from the right side of the desk. I took the pen and let the orb take over my pen hand. All I could get were some letters. First, all I could distinguish were P – A – R—what the hell did that mean? Then after I quieted myself, the letters began again: ‘P – A- R- K—the park! “Is that it, Saturnalia? Bronson Park?” She weaved a big, slow circle in the air. I took it to be a yes.
I flew out of my building and as luck would have it, I spotted a taxicab without a fare, hopped in the back and had him take me to the park entrance. It was closed after dark, so I jumped a fence and went running down the trail that eventually led up to the Bronson Caves. I don’t know how I knew, but I did—she would be there somewhere. The moonlight lit my way as I stumbled up the hill. As I approached the caves I saw a figure lying on the ground. I ran up to it. It was Cassiopeia! She was face down on the dirt, so I turned her over. “Cass! Cass! It’s me, Cable! Your Mom clued me in—and I just got my head-stuff back a little while ago—can you hear me?”
She opened her eyes, recognized me and instantly reached up for my neck, bringing my face crashing down onto her lips. “Cable! Oh, Cable! I wanted to be close to you! I missed you so much…” she cried in a shaking voice. There in the semi-moonlight she held me so tightly, I couldn’t move. Then she opened her legs and put my body in between them. She reached inside my pants and pulled out my erect male member and thrust it between her legs. She let out a cry of pain and joy as I entered into a warm, blissful, mysterious and electric world. It was like a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations, as if the aliens had additio
nal powers of light and color and titillation, which was all but overwhelming to a human. She pushed on my buttocks harder and harder and I went deeper and deeper until it was as if my whole body had entered her beautiful world through her humanized vagina. She brought me to a climax and we both exploded into bits of stardust, glowing, rising and falling through a night of endless stars. It never seemed over and it was as if she wanted me to rise even higher. But human males can’t do that, for once the orgasm has released his sperm, the male requires a rest period. But not Cassiopeia! She continued to rock me until finally I had to stop.
“Cass! I’ve got to stop! You’re gonna kill me!”
Finally her body came to a trembling halt. “Oh, by the gods and eternity, Cable, I was so ready for you. I could think of nothing else except you during my absence. Did I hurt you?”
I glanced down at my wet and glistening penis, which now drooped and dripped just outside of my pants. “I don’t think so.” I cleared my throat. “So how are you? And how long can you stay?” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Was it good, Cable? Did I please you? I could feel you come with me. Your spirit was willing…you mated with me. Too bad I can’t have your child. That would absolutely complete my earth stay.”
“It was super-great, doll. I never went to so many wonderful places.” I laughed and looked up at the moon. “Do you think the man in the moon helped?”
She giggled. “I feel so good, Cable. These human nervous systems are so sensitized. I could feel all of your energies—even your confusion—but I couldn’t wait. I knew it had to be now.”
Love Me or Kill Me (The Cable Denning Mystery Series Book 2) Page 35