Never Enough

by Harold Robbins

  “I can’t take money, Mr. Musgrave.”

  “So they say. That’s the rule. But who has to know and what’s the harm if from time to time I slip you a little cash?”

  “If it’s found out—”

  “Why should it be found out? I’ve helped out a lot of players before. Hell … nobody ever found out. Let’s start with this. Suppose one of my guys goes to see your dad and says, ‘Hey, man, I can put you in a brand-new car for—’ Whatever. A goddamned good deal.”

  Dave smiled and shook his head. “I’m not sure my dad would have the smarts to understand it.”

  “My guy says, ‘We wanta do this for you because your son is such a credit to Rutgers.’”

  “I don’t know …”

  “What’s your dad’s car payment now?”

  “About eighty dollars a month, I think.”

  “Suppose I said to him I can put him in a new Buick for fifty dollars a month.”

  “Jesus—”

  “You can’t turn it down, Dave.”

  Dave nodded. “I can’t turn it down.”

  “Okay! Now. For you. When we leave here tonight you’ll be wearing my hat. You live in the jocks’ dorm, right? When you get there, check the inside hatband. There’s something there for you. I’ll see you again. There’ll always be something for you. And all you have to do is go out there and play your heart out for our school.”

  “Well, I—”

  “And let me tell you something else. When you graduate, if you’ve got nothing else waiting, you got a job with me. Man! A football guy like you! You start off as a salesman. Two, three years you’ll be … Who knows?”

  Dave left the restaurant wearing Musgrave’s hat and feeling foolish under it. In his room in the dorm he looked inside the hatband and found four hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. An athlete was not supposed to take money. It was a serious offense. He unloaded the money into his foot locker and put the hat on a shelf in his closet.

  “Hey, Shea! You got a phone call.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Some guy named Bill Morris. Wants you to call him. Says it’s urgent.”

  With a stack of quarters at hand, Dave dialed Bill’s number on the pay phone.

  “Hey, Shea! For Christ’s sake! You heard about Sally?”

  “What about Sally?”

  “She jumped off the roof of the hospital. She’s dead!”

  During the following week he received in the mail envelopes containing four sets of the Sally photographs.

  “Damnit, it’s not our fault,” he said to Bill Morris.

  “Christ, everybody loved the way she looked!” Dave said with no expression. “She had a future.”

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 10, 1977

  “The Buick is the finest car I ever owned,” said Dave’s father. “Mr. Musgrave is an honest dealer. I believe you know him.”

  “I’ve met him,” said Dave.

  “All these years driving Chevys and Plymouths … All I could afford. Now this. My! What a turn of good fortune.”

  “I hope you don’t talk it around,” said Dave.

  “Oh, no. Mr. Musgrave said I shouldn’t talk it around. Everybody would want the same deal. But, you know, it even makes my work easier. People are impressed when I come to see them in a beautiful new Buick.”

  “That’s great.”

  They sat around a table scarred with cigarette burns, in the kitchen of their family home. Dave’s parents smoked heavily, as did his brother. As a grocery salesman handling cigarettes, the elder Shea was able to lift several cartons of cigarettes a week, nobody wiser. They smoked whatever he could get: free samples, odd cartons from broken cases, and so on—often Marlboros, their favorites, but also Kools, L & Ms, Camels, Luckys, Chesterfields … Dave did not smoke and thought the house reeked.

  “You’ll be seeing Amy this afternoon?” said his mother.

  Dave nodded.

  “You treat that girl with respect, Dave,” his father said. “She comes from a fine family.”

  “I treat all girls with respect.”

  “That’s the ticket. I never knew a successful man who didn’t treat women with respect.”

  “Key to success … ?”

  “One of the keys.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to play a decent game of football,” his brother said sarcastically.

  “Dave plays football well because he devotes himself to it. You should take note of that.”

  The brother grinned at Dave. “Oh, I do, I do.”

  Amy Sclafani’s family had two cars. Dave was welcome to drive the older, which was a Chevy station wagon. He almost never drove his father’s car. That car was his father’s living. The station wagon—an olive-green car without wooden sides, dented and with fading paint—was Amy’s mother’s, and Amy’s.

  Dave and Amy liked to drive west, into the high country and among the lakes of northwestern New Jersey. People who thought of the state as metropolitan New Jersey didn’t always realize there was a rustic New Jersey. Sometimes Dave and Amy drove as far as Kittatinny Mountain, but more often they stopped somewhere short of that and spread a picnic on the ground near a lake.

  They had developed a habit. Dave sat behind the wheel. Amy sat naked from the waist down on the passenger side of the seat. He could glance over and see her exposed crotch. What is more, she always wore a sweatshirt or sweater she could pull up and bare her breasts. If another car came close to them, she could snatch down the sweatshirt and skirt in a second.

  That afternoon they were driving on country roads they had come to know—never the main highways—toward one of the lakes.

  “My father says I should treat you with respect.”

  “Oh, you do, Dave. You do.”

  She was a girl framed for sex and for motherhood. He fucked her often. She loved it. She took The Pill and threw herself into their lovemaking without reservation. She was proud of her body and was glad to show it. To him. She was … reluctant about anyone else.

  “If it wasn’t you, honey … I wouldn’t. I love you, Dave,” she said.

  God! She was slippery. She was always well lubricated. He could have wished she were a little less. But he could easily plunge his hard cock into her, every last inch. And she loved it! After the first time or two, when she moaned and said he hurt her, she never again complained.

  They reached the lake. He pulled the station wagon to a spot where they could sit and talk, where they could sit on the grass and munch the snacks she had brought, drink the Bloody Marys he had mixed and poured into a Thermos. No other cars were parked within fifty yards, but still they would not have the privacy to fuck, either in the car or outside. He kneaded her breasts and nipples. She lifted her shoulders and arched her back to shove her breasts forward, but her arousal was not enough to prevent conversation—

  “You still acing everything?” she asked. She meant was he still an all-A student.

  “I’m on my way to make Phi Beta Kappa by my senior year,” he said.

  “You son of a bitch,” she said, shaking her head.

  Amy was a student at Ramapo College and did not live on campus. She drove the station wagon to and from her classes. She was a year younger than Dave and was a sophomore.

  “We can’t make out here, baby,” Dave said, nodding toward cars parked too close for them to put down the rear seats of the station wagon and lie down in the open space.

  “I know, and I know what you want,” she said.

  She unbuckled his belt, and unzipped his pants, and pulled out his stiffly engorged penis. She glanced around to satisfy herself that no one could see, then lowered her head to his lap. The trouble with doing it in these circumstances was that she could not easily lick his scrotum, but he would accept what she gave, no matter. She worked on him. She sucked him into her mouth and massaged him with her tongue. When he came, she swallowed. That had been at first a little difficult, but she had grown to love the taste of him.

  She did it on his repeated solemn
assurance that no other girl had ever done it for him. That was not true, but she had no way to know otherwise.

  THREE

  I

  FALL, 1977

  Cole entered the hospital room hesitantly. He expected to see and hear nothing good.

  “Hi, Shea.”

  “Hi, Jennings.”

  They still followed the teenage habit of calling each other by their last names.

  “Can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  “Can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  In the West Virginia game Dave had suffered a broken leg. No matter how it healed, his football career was over. It would have been anyway at the close of the season, but—But there had been talk that he might be drafted as a pro. That was over now. Never a top candidate for the draft, he now had a reputation for being “brittle.”

  “Well … you’re going to graduate with an awesome academic record.”

  Dave shrugged. “Which gets me what?”

  “A hell of a lot, damnit. It’s your entree into just about anything you might want to do.”

  “Mr. Musgrave wants me to sell cars.”

  “I think the less said about him the better.”

  “What do you know about Musgrave?”

  “More than I want to know. And let’s forget it.”

  “What do you know about Musgrave?”

  “It was gonna come out. You’re not the first athlete he—”

  “It’s gonna come out? It’s gonna … ?”

  Cole shook his head. “No. Not to worry. But Julian Musgrave is a crook. Whatever you do in this world, don’t go to work for him.”

  “Sure. Easy to say. So, what am I supposed to do?”

  “With your education … your personality, you could sell ice cubes to Eskimos, My father invests with a broker. Think about the world of finance. Man, you could do worse.”

  Dave sighed loudly. “Better than selling groceries wholesale.”

  II

  FALL, 1978

  His first year at Harvard Law was the most challenging year Cole Jennings ever experienced. He didn’t know it, but it was the same even at second-rate law schools all over the country. Because of the expenditure of resources, medical schools accepted only the best and graduated most of them. Law schools tended to give a lot of people a chance, then flunk out a majority of those who enrolled. The course was not terribly challenging, intellectually, but there was a vast amount of material that had to be read and understood.

  In June he married Emily. They leased an apartment in Cambridge.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered in a pizza again,” sohe said. “I was at the library longer than I expected.”

  While Cole was in law school, Emily was taking graduate courses in French literature. She spoke fluent French, also some German.

  Emily was a tall, slender blond: a natural blond who used nothing on her hair. The only defect of her face was dental: her teeth were prominent. She had small breasts, soft and pear-shaped. Her pubic hair was scanty and hid little, and she had accepted Cole’s suggestion that she shave it off, which she let him do a few days after their wedding. Because her inner labia were conspicuous, like fleshy, shiny pink petals, she was reluctant to display them and usually wore panties if she wore nothing else.

  That was what she wore now, as they sat down to dinner: the pizza she had ordered. Her breasts were bare. She let him see them whenever they were at home alone.

  “Why should I care,” Cole asked, “if a guy goes into a store in the 1920s and buys a radio because the storekeeper promises him that radio will pick up Vatican radio and he can listen to the pope—and the radio won’t?”

  “So? It’s got to have something to do with—”

  “Contract law,” Cole said.

  “So? You’re going to be a lawyer, you’ve got to know contract law.”

  They sipped the red wine she had bought to go with their pizza.

  “Cole … ?”

  “What, hon?”

  “You want to get me pregnant?”

  “Yeah. I sure do. But don’t you think we ought to graduate first?”

  “Right. Well, yes, right. I guess … I guess if I get your cock in me every night I can’t complain.”

  “I do the best I can.”

  “What do you hear from Dave?”

  “Well … Something you had to figure. Amy’s pregnant. They’re getting married.”

  Emily shook her head. “She shouldn’t marry that son of a bitch. He’s going to wind up in the penitentiary.”

  “Not Dave.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s too fucking smart. He knows all the angles.”

  III

  Dave sat in a booth with Julian Musgrave, in an Italian restaurant in Patterson.

  “Look at it this way,” he said. “I took your money. And don’t think I’m not grateful. And … I lived up to my share in the bargain and played my ass off on the football field, until I got my leg broken.”

  Musgrave, now not as ebullient as he characteristically was, nodded solemnly. “I thought of you as a son, kind of,” he said. “Christ, man, with your reputation and personality, you could have sold cars for me. You’d have made a goddamned fortune!”

  “Yeah, maybe. And don’t think I scorn that. But, Julian—”

  Musgrave winced at hearing his first name used.

  “—as good as your offer was, it was limiting. I chose to go into a business where I can—”

  “You can make ten fortunes, if you can make it work.”

  “Well … It’s a chance. You’re the last guy in the world who wouldn’t take a chance.”

  Musgrave turned his fork in his pasta and lifted it to his mouth. “Football doesn’t cut any ice on this deal.”

  “Football is history,” said Dave. “I played because I couldn’t go to college without it. You helped me a lot, and I am grateful.”

  “I don’t … You tell me this stock is gonna be okay.”

  “I’m not suggesting you put everything in it. I believe it deserves a major commitment. God knows if I had the money, I’d put a hell of a lot in it. But I’m just getting started. I do the research, Julian. I don’t fiddle around. I work hard. I look into companies. You know me. You know I don’t give less than a hundred percent to whatever I do.”

  “So you want me to put … a hundred thousand into this. Two?”

  “Whatever you can do comfortably.”

  “And your commission on the sale won’t hurt you.”

  “Understood. But let something else be understood. If I steer just one or two clients wrong, I’ll be washed up in this business. It’s not a forgiving line of work.”

  At home the hugely pregnant Amy knelt on the floor and gave Dave oral sex. Dave was bored, he was thinking about business, even though his cock was hard.

  “Well, is he gonna do it?” Amy asked later.

  “To the tune of a hundred fifty thousand.”

  “And our commission?”

  “It’ll pay the rent,” Dave said, and smiled.

  Dave was with a firm named Barnaby, Jenkins & Associates. Jenkins was the active partner.

  “Good enough, Shea,” he said to Dave. “A hundred and a half. To tell you the truth, I’m not that confident of Littleton. But I gather you are.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve done the research.”

  Robert Jenkins was a somewhat flamboyant character, given to double-breasted suits and colorful bow ties. He presided at a massive desk in a corner office in a building in Jersey City, from where he had a view of Manhattan—which was Dave’s goal; he didn’t intend to remain long in New Jersey. Over there was where it was big, and that was where he meant to go.

  Jenkins was observant. He noticed Dave staring at the towers of lower Manhattan. “When you’ve got a corner office over there, you’ll look across the water and see me. I’ll still be here.”

  “I’ll be damned lucky if I do as well as you do, sir.”

  “Cut the bu
llshit, Shea. It’ll never do you any good. And quit calling me ‘sir.’ I’m Bob.”

  “Bob …”

  “Never call a customer ‘sir.’ Never. You can call him ‘Mister Somebody’ for a while, but get on a firstname basis as soon as you can. That sets up the relationship between you. No lawyer ever calls his client ‘sir.’ No doctor calls his patient ‘sir.’ And you don’t either. You’re a professional, Dave. Act like one.”

  “Thanks, Bob.”

  IV

  FALL, 1979

  “There’s a limit,” Emily said to Cole. “Your family and mine have—have …”

  “Okay. Okay. But—”

  “Tell me for sure,” she said. “What exactly is your objection?”

  “My wife posing nude, that’s my objection.”

  “Your wife can make twenty dollars an hour. Doing not much. It won’t interfere with your classes or mine. Five hours a week, I’ve got us a hundred bucks.”

  “Emily, you—”

  “I know. I don’t like to show my cunt. But we’ve asked our families as much as—”

  “They’re not complaining.”

  “I am. Cole … we’re talking about legitimate art classes. I wouldn’t … We’re building a future! Let me contribute.”

  V

  JANUARY, 1980

  On January 3, 1980, Amy gave birth to a son that she and Dave named David Louis Shea. Amy nursed the child for several months.

  “Hey, honey baby. Go on. The little fellow is hungry. Jack has seen tits before. Hell, his wife has a couple, I suppose. Go on.”

  Jack Silver was a junior vice president of Stuyvesant Banking & Trust, where he was known as a young man in a hurry. He was a little older than Dave and had a flushed face, tense with enthusiasm. He was becoming prematurely gray.

  Amy gave the little boy a breast. Jack didn’t pretend not to watch.

  “I suppose we can talk—” said Jack.

  “In front of Amy? Whatever we say, I’ll tell her later. She’s my partner.”

  Amy smiled. She held the baby to her breast and let it suckle. Her blouse fell open and exposed her other breast. She didn’t cover it.