by Orrie Hitt
“You can’t think of a good thing about her, can you?”
“Could you, in my place?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I can see why you might resent her. If anything happens to your father she gets part of the estate which, I imagine, is quite big.”
“Four or five million, Eddie.”
He let out a low whistle.
“And you want it all for yourself, don’t you?” he asked. “With her out of the way there wouldn’t be anybody else.”
She took a deep breath and her breasts filled up like a couple of balloons at a birthday party.
“It isn’t the money,” she replied. “For my part I hope he lives to be a hundred. But I know what she is and he doesn’t. Like the animal in most men he fell in love with her body and he can’t get over it.”
“He can’t do much about her body now,” Eddie said.
“No, but he can dream. I’ve read that half the thrill of sex is the anticipation of the act. You can’t take that away from him in spite of the fact that he isn’t — well, man enough for her. Which makes what I want you to do very easy. You’re handsome and big, and she must be lonely in a physical way. I’m sure that Jim was taking care of her, but he wouldn’t admit it. He never went to town very much but he was always reading girlie magazines. So he must have been interested in sex.”
Eddie lit a cigarette.
“You’d do anything to get rid of her, wouldn’t you?”
“Just about. I’d even kill her if I could get away with it, but I’d much rather do it the way I plan. If she sleeps with you he’d hate her for it, and he could get a divorce in New York State. He’d be rid of her, I’d be rid of her, and you’d have your five thousand dollars.”
She uncrossed her legs and straightened them out. The bottom part of the suit was tight, fabric digging into her flesh. It was low enough to show off her flat, trim belly.
“How do I know you would pay me, Carole?”
“Because I said I would.”
“And how do I know you’ve got that kind of money?”
“I’ve got it — and more. But I think five thousand is plenty for what I’m asking you to do.”
“I’d have to appear against her, wouldn’t I?”
“Yes, but it would be a quiet hearing. There wouldn’t be anything in the papers. Roger is pretty good with a camera and we might arrange to break in on the two of you when you’re together. She couldn’t lie against a photo.”
He leaned closer to her and the woman smell around her made his head throb.
“You said you’d be nice to me,” he reminded her, pulling the smoke down into his lungs and holding it there.
“Did I?”
“That’s what you said.” He looked down inside the front of her suit, seeing the beginning swells of her breasts. “I’ll bet it could be good.” He laughed. “Good? I’ll bet it would be out of this world.”
Her face colored slightly.
“I didn’t mean it quite the way you took it,” she said. “Most men, even Roger, take things the wrong way and a girl should be more careful about what she says.”
“Now you’re backing down.”
“Not on the five thousand.”
“But on the rest of it you are. You led me to believe — ”
“I never have,” she said earnestly. “Honest. That’s the truth, Eddie. I’ve gone out with boys and I’ve parked with them and I’ve kissed them but — well, I never did anything else.”
“What about Roger?”
“We’re just good friends and he understands me.”
“Don’t tell me he hasn’t ever tried. I won’t swallow that one.”
“Yes, he’s tried. He says when he sees me in the raw he flips his lid. I don’t see why. I look at him that way, too, and it doesn’t bother me any.”
Eddie was sweating now, a great big drop on the end of his nose, hanging there a second and then dropping down to strike him on the back of one hand. He could hardly believe it. She couldn’t have gone through twenty-one years a virgin. Girls just didn’t live that way any more. The girls he had known started in high school. But probably he hadn’t known the best girls. The girls on the farms saw a lot of sex with the animals around them and they became curious to the extent that they tried it themselves.
“You’re handing me a line,” Eddie said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Oh, come on. You didn’t go to no nudist camp and not have some man after you. And you don’t strip down in front of this Roger and not get the blocks thrown to you. You think I was born yesterday, huh?”
“I think you’re pretty blunt in what you say.”
“Sure, I’m blunt. With the shape you’ve got some man had to make the grade. If you were some skinny little babe without those headlights I might fall for it, but not the way you look. Any guy goes for a pair of knockers and — ”
“Eddie, shut your rotten mouth.”
“The hell I will. You want me to do something for you, something that isn’t right, and I want something from you if I do it.” He flipped the cigarette into the water. “And I don’t mean just the money. The money is okay but I want what else goes along with it.”
She got up and walked around restlessly. Then she came back.
“You drive a hard bargain,” Carole said, sitting down beside him, a few inches closer than before.
“I’m out for all I can get.” He was more sure of himself now. “If I do a job on Kitty I want you and I want the money.”
“What if I made it another thousand?”
“I’d still want you. I wanted you the second you got off that bus, and I want you more this very minute.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“Does there have to be another one?”
She removed her sneakers and wiggled her toes in the sand.
“Why are all men alike?” she demanded. “Why do they all want the same thing from a girl?”
“Why did you make out that you sprained your ankle yesterday? You knew that I liked you and that I wouldn’t carry you back to the house without giving it a try.”
“I wanted to see what you would do — if you were like the others. I — I found out. It’s funny but none of that stuff goes on in a nudist camp. We have our games and enjoy the sun and there isn’t any more to it.”
“Crap.”
“Well,” she admitted, “there may be a few who stray but they don’t make an issue over it. A man sees a girl he likes and it’s just natural to make a play for her. But you can take it from me there are more babies started outside of nudist camps than inside.”
He didn’t understand what she was talking about, and he didn’t believe her. How could a bunch of naked men and girls run around and not have desire boiling inside them? It was true that most girls looked better with half of their clothes on than they did with them off but it was still, to his way of thinking, a road to sex.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing you that way,” he blurted.
“What way?”
“Stripped. Naked as the day you were born — but with a lot more equipment.”
“I don’t get out of my clothes just to be sensational.”
He looked at her breasts, so full and alive and tempting.
“You’d be sensational all right.”
She dug her toes deeper into the sand.
“We’re getting off the subject, Eddie.”
“So we are.”
“Either you do as I want you to do or I’m going to cost you your job.” Her voice was low but firm. “Just one word to my father about you trying to touch me, and your job is finished.”
“I touched you only once yesterday, and you wanted me to.”
Her smile washed over him.
“Try and prove it,” she said.
She had him backed against the wall and she was shooting arrows on either side of him, each coming just a little closer than th
e previous one. If he agreed to her demands it didn’t mean that he had to follow through. He could keep her on the string for a week or so, and by that time he might be able to find another job.
“All right,” he said finally.
She reached out and stroked one of his arms. Her hand was soft, like so much of her would be soft.
“I thought you’d see it my way, Eddie.”
Her hand moved up his arm, under the T-shirt, pushing the material out of the way as she did so.
“Did I have a choice?” he wanted to know.
“Not much, I’m afraid.”
“Hell, none at all.”
He reached for her then, kissing her hard on the mouth and pushing her back onto the pine needles. At first there was no response, but then her mouth began to move under his. Yet when he started fumbling at her suit she fought him off.
“You know what’ll happen if I let you,” she said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want it that way. I want it nice when it happens.
I want it right and good. I don’t want it to be some cheap moment on the shore of a lake.”
“Maybe this is a time when you don’t have any choice.”
She kissed him with feeling and pulled her head away.
“That would be rape,” she said. “And you aren’t the kind to rape a girl, are you, Eddie? You do that one thing for me and I promise you a reward far beyond your five thousand dollars.”
In the end he left her. He felt like a hungry man who had sat down at a big meal and then hadn’t been able to eat. It seemed like miles back to the main house, and he was glad Jennings was on the front lawn.
“The hell with it,” Jennings said, when he asked for an advance. “It’s almost payday so I’ll pay you now and deduct the forty dollars you owe me. O.K.?”
“Fair enough.”
“You’re doing a good job.”
“Thanks.”
“But you don’t like it, do you?”
“I haven’t let that stand in my way.” He put the money in his pocket and asked for the use of the station wagon.
“Sure,” Jennings said “Just don’t get loaded and try to climb a tree with it. Me, I get loaded but I can’t do much damage with a god-damned wheel chair.”
Half an hour later Eddie was seated at the bar in The Ferns and there was a girl beside him, one of the hill girls who had a big bust and hardly any stomach. He stayed at the bar until ten bantering with the girl, but he left alone. The girl was furious at him, and she called him a four-letter word. He couldn’t help that. There were only two women he really wanted. Kitty and Carole.
But he had to take Kitty first. That much he knew. The rest, probably the best part of it, would come later. Somewhere, somehow, he had forgotten all about Joan.
7
JOAN WAS angry at Eddie for having gone out without her again and she stayed away from him the next night. He thought it might be a good thing. Just that morning Jennings had told him — just why, Eddie didn’t know — that he didn’t approve of the hired help having members of the opposite sex in their rooms.
“That doesn’t go for Wilson,” Jennings had added. “Wilson has his own house, and what he does is his affair. I think he picks up a girl three or four times a year and makes a night of it. I don’t blame him. When a man has been married and he’s used to sex it’s pretty hard for him to do without it.”
Eddie hadn’t made any retort to this. Wilson certainly seemed to have it made. He had a big power mower to ride when he mowed the lawn, and the only other thing he did was to take care of a few flowers. He didn’t even bother dumping out the boats after a rain — Eddie usually did that. Of course he didn’t know how much Wilson was paid, but he was pretty sure it was more than three hundred a month.
He got up in the morning and showered, putting on his last change of clothes and wishing he could take the day off. He couldn’t see how he would ever get a day off, unless he just forgot about the traps. He didn’t want to do that. It was bad enough to catch the animals, without making them suffer needlessly.
It was already hot when he got outside, but the air had a sweet smell to it, the clean scent of woods surrounding a lake. He’d had a full night of sleep and he felt good. Nights Joan stayed with him he didn’t sleep much. No matter how tired they were, one of them would make an affectionate move and then they would be at it again, their sweating bodies pressed tightly together and the moans rising in her throat. When he had been rooming with Mrs. Norton in town he had eagerly looked forward to when he could be with Joan, to when they could have a few beers and then, he could slip her up to his room and enjoy her eager body. But — and this was funny — out here in the woods something had happened, something that he couldn’t explain. Perhaps Kitty had something to do with it, or Carole, and perhaps he himself was changing.
Mary was in the kitchen, bustling at the stove.
“Busy day for me,” she said, bringing him his eggs.
“How come?”
“Wednesday and Joan is off.”
He dug the fork into the eggs.
“Yeah, I forgot,” he said.
“She had a cab come out for her last night. She was going to spend the night and the day in town. I don’t blame her. These woods aren’t any place for a young girl who’s full of life. Take twenty years off my age and I wouldn’t be here ten minutes.”
Eddie ate in silence. He wondered, vaguely, what Joan had done the night before. Probably she had put up at the hotel and then gone to some bar to pick up a man. He felt a little jealous about that and a little hurt because she hadn’t told him of her plans. Yet he knew that he had no reason to be jealous or hurt. He didn’t own her any more than she owned him. They had known each other a long time and they had often slept together, but beyond that there wasn’t much else. A lot of people did the same thing and it wasn’t serious with them, not unless the girl got in a family way and then it was damned serious. The mere thought of such a thing happening to her made him cold all over, the cold creeping through his veins and causing his heart to pound heavily. He had been a fool with her, and when he talked to her again he would have to get things straightened out. If she was willing to continue their relationship as it had been, simply for the sake of sex, it would be all right but anything beyond that was out of the question. In a year or so he might change and he might want to marry her, but right then he didn’t feel that way. She was good in bed, better than anybody he had ever had, but just to have that wasn’t worth being tied down to her forever.
“You aren’t eating,” Mary said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, you men! You’re as bad as Clark Wilson. I say you should eat in the morning to keep your strength up.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my strength.”
“There will be if you don’t take care of it.” She threw a pot into the sink and it clanged loudly. “If I was a swearing woman I’d swear,” she declared.
“Don’t let me stop you. Go ahead.”
She slammed another pot into the sink.
“That Roger Swingle,” she spat disgustedly. “He’s coming up on the bus today. Now my life will be hell. He won’t eat meat like other people, and he’s always telling me how to fix his vegetables.” She sighed, and her ample bosom rose and fell. “What that Carole sees in him I don’t know. For my money he’s a snot.”
“Funny he’s coming on the bus,” Eddie said. “You’d think the guy would have a car.”
“Oh, he’s got a car all right — one of those little foreign things but he can’t drive it. He ran down a little boy last year and they took his license away. Lucky for him he had big insurance on the car and the boy wasn’t killed.”
“He’ll probably get sued.”
Mary shrugged.
“That’s his worry.”
Eddie finished his coffee and lit a cigarette, trying to remember some place at Goose Lake where he might hide and watch Carole and this Roger when they went swi
mming. Of course he wasn’t interested in Roger, but he did want to see that hot little number stripped down.
Eddie was just getting ready to leave the kitchen when Jennings came in, bare above the waist and the muscles of his arms and shoulders bulging as he pushed the wheel chair.
“Got a job for you,” Jennings said.
“Okay.”
“Take the Bentley and meet the morning bus for Roger Swingle.”
“What about my traps?”
“To hell with your traps. If you’ve got anything in them let the little bastards suffer.”
Eddie didn’t argue. When you argued with the boss, right or wrong, you were sometimes out of a job. Anyway it wouldn’t take long to meet the bus and he could make his rounds after he got back.
“Kitty will ride in with you,” Jennings said. “She knows Roger and you don’t. All I could tell you about him is that he’s the homeliest thing this side of a zoo.”
“Why doesn’t Mrs. Jennings pick him up herself?”
“Because she twisted her arm getting me out of bed this morning and it hurts her. I thought Carole would drive in, but she’s got a headache and she’s still in bed.” Jennings cursed. “She gets those headaches right along and the god-damned doctors can’t do anything about them, any more than they could about my back. Sometimes I think you could take a shoemaker and put a black bag in his hand and he’d be just as good as some of the doctors running loose.”
Jennings was still cursing doctors when he left, and Eddie lit another cigarette. He could just see Kitty horsing that slob in and out of bed. It was little wonder she had hurt herself. A man of his wealth should have a male nurse to help him, not push everything off onto his wife. But perhaps it was some form of sadistic punishment for her, dictated by the fact that she was so much woman and he was so little man.
He didn’t know where he was supposed to wait for her but he went out to wait in the Bentley, smoking a couple of cigarettes and sorry that he wasn’t out in the woods. There had been a brief rain the night before, hardly more than a shower without the usual thunder and lightning, and animals would run on a night like that. Rain also washed away any human scent around the traps. Of course he never went right up to the sets, unless something was caught, but some of the animals had sharp noses and they were afraid of any strange odor.