by Troy Conway
The big room went dark, the projector lit up and I hit the FORWARD switch. At long last, the show was really on the road.
My show.
The one that was calculated to save the world for peace talks. And rid the conference of the big threat of Red Chinese nuclear chop suey.
I hoped.
It was a charming little film. Charming by all heterosexual standards. Not a work of art, surely nothing for an Oscar or even the Late Late Show. But it was all it had to be and more. A raw, unabashed, free-swinging sex movie whose plot and cast of characters were also no more than they had to be. The star had all the requirements. A twelve-inch slab of swinging, sizzling meat and a willingness to take on all the sex-hungry broads in the picture. Which meant one blonde, one redhead and one brunette outrageously built, beyond the realm of belief, posing as farmer’s daughters out to please the city slicker whose car broke down beside the meadow where they were supposed to be sunbathing in the lake. Pretty soon, sunbathing was the last thing the picture was about. The movie hero was the Eighth Wonder of the Man World. What he did to those three broads during one half hour of smoking film would have set an asbestos curtain on fire. What it did to my houseguests more than compensated.
In the dark, I heard giggles, then moans, then those harsh intakes of breath which clearly tell how much the breather has been impressed. Cocktail glasses tinkled. Somebody yelled out: “Ooolala!” followed by a chorus of Bravos, Magnifiques and Encores!
It was, very obviously, their kind of cinema.
The dirty film, and the dirty LSD, were combining to do their very nice piece of dirty work. When I slipped another film into the projector, without turning up the lights, the damage was already being done. Somebody was on the floor next to the projector, trying to pull my pants down. It was Wan Lo. “Oh, please,” he whimpered in a girlish voice. “Nobody will see. . . .”
I wondered what Monsieur Rene Rolfe the great cinematographer thought of the smoker film from his wall niche behind the tapestry. Or was he working up a sweat too?
Wan Lo started to tug on me in earnest. I did him a great favor. I slugged him, smack on the mouth and he went down, laughing merrily. I was beginning to sweat myself. All around us in the darkness, the craziest medley of noises and sounds could be heard. I took a chance. Maybe the time I wanted was right now. I batted the projector lever to STOP, found the wall switch and turned on the lights.
Again, I had hit the jackpot. A double jackpot.
In the flood of exposure, the room was chaos. Not so much sex as a roomful of drugged, worn-out specimens that once were people. Only Viviane Fresnay and Mady Morrow were on their feet. They gawked along with me at the spectacle of the room. It was a mess.
The LSD had hit them hard, all of them. They were flying* reeling, staggering, slobbering. Francoise Marnay and Mei Ling High, for whom no one else was alive, had their skirts pulled high and were going at it like it was their last chance on earth. Madame Annette was tearing her fur-trimmed dress off, babbling incoherently for a whipping. The weird assortment of gays and gjrls from her club were rolling on the floor, rolling and moaning. And poor dear Madame Lilly de Jussac had both her escorts where she wanted them. Twirling their hairdos and panting like puppies as they scampered around her naked thighs. For a long merry moment, the tableau held like something in a stop-action motion picture still. Andy Warhol, hooey. This was a little bit of Olson and Johnson, a lot of Marx Brothers madness and a ton of perversion in action.
Michel-Duval Fountainbleau, his eyes two flaming balls of bull fever, was riding his broomstick around the big room, yelling like a Comanche, trying to stab anything in sight that was open. Bare-assed broads parted before him like the sea did for Moses. The whooping, whomping gays from Les Deuces transformed into a horde of simpering maniacs, begging for some stud power. I saw Fountainbleau go down to the floor, taking about a half-dozen fans with him. Fans of both sexes.
The Vietcong and Viet Nam diplomats were ringing around the rosie with Madame Kingston and that gallant old girl was doing her best to show them what the Open Door policy really meant. In a trice, the three of them were tearing at each other in a frenzy or arms, legs and tongues.
Madame Annette had gotten down to the buff and was battering and ramming herself away at a tall statue of Adonis in one corner of the room who she must have thought was Michel-Duval Fountainbleau. Poor whore.
Ouch.
My dear Madame Lilly de Jussac was in the French version of Seventh Heaven. Her two acolytes were in flames now. Slavering away on the floor at her feet, both trying to get their mouths into working position. The Madame had a sappy grin on her face and her mouth was forming obscene words. Risseur and Blondelle were foaming.
As for Gaston Corbeau and the Orientals, all of them had the same idea. They were chasing poor Madame Kingston all around the sofas and chairs, hands on their tools, ready to use them. There was no time to lose. I signaled to Viviane and Mady and we went into action like a team. Michel-Duval Fountainbleau came up from the floor, bolting for me, so I kicked him again. Down he went and before he could gather himself together, I and my two helpers had quickly, firmly, guided Corbeau and the men of South East Asia and Madame Kingston out of the horn parlor. The leering men came because Viviane and Mady showed them some skin and promised all sorts of pleasures in low, lilting voices. Within a quick minute, we were outside the suite and the plan was working without a hitch. I took a leather billy out of my back pocket and put the slug on all of the VIPs. They went down without a murmur and fell asleep on the tiled floor of the room. Again I clapped my hands and Viviane and Mady had no idea what was coming next. How could they?
From the next room, summoned by my signal, trooped a veritable horde of prostitutes. Veterans of the foreign wars. I had recruited that afternoon a dozen of the hoariest, henna-haired whores who roamed the Paris streets. They too would work for France, but the one hundred bucks I gave each of them and their own natural desires would take care of the rest. I had picked aceys and acey-deuceys.
“Remember!” I shouted, pushing the dirty dozen into the room. “Pour la belle France!”
Giggling, shrieking, pawing like so many alleycats they spilled into the room. I slammed the doors shut and double-bolted them. I leaned against the barrier and waited. I didn’t mop my face with a handkerchief until the great war cry went up and from behind the doors came literal frenzy of cries, yells and screams as each of the ladies of the evening picked out a sex partner.
“And now, Renà Rolfe,” I said with a prayer. “Do your stuff.”
Mady Morrow and Viviane Fresnay exchanged glances. I was grateful to them for their help and later I would show them how grateful. But not just yet. We still had work to do. Though the worst of it was over.
“What’s going on in there, Rod?” Mady Morrow said sullenly. “It sounds like a lot of fun.”
“Yes,” Viviane tittered. “Even Madame will not be safe.”
“Don’t you believe it,” I said. “It’s the sort of ball when put on highly directed and edited film that will make all those worms in there crawl back into the ground and stop messing up the peace talks.”
Mady laughed and crouched at the keyholes. She didn’t come up for air for a full two minutes. She looked dazed. The shouting had loudened.
“And my mother used to wallop me for sucking my thumb. Take a look, Viviane. You won’t believe what the Madame is up to.”
Viviane looked. When she turned away, she crossed herself.
“She has reached the very limit. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
I rubbed my hands. If René Rolfe was all he said he was, we would have a lulu of a film. A hit picture. A very hit picture.
“You girls can go home now. I promise I’ll be along in an hour or two. I want to wrap this up. If it’s okay with you, we can ménage à trois.”
“Why leave the building?” Mady asked. “Where’s your room?”
“Yes,” Viviane said in
a dreamy voice. “I think I would like that too. The film was rather—ah—stimulating.”
I knew what she meant, but Brigitte Lebeau was in my room. At the last second, I had put a sleeping pill in her coffee because I’d been afraid she’d louse things up by going for Madame Lilly de Jussac like a lovesick cow. I had wanted no interference.
“Ah—okay. What the hell. Room Seven. Just down the hall. Dany’s mother is in there, but you three can kind of talk it over, huh? Now, please beat it.”
From behind the locked doors, tigerish, unearthly growls and moans emanated. Mady Morrow and Viviane Fresnay delayed no longer. “You hurry!” they chimed in unison and raced out of the room. They left in a flurry of skirts and bared legs. They smelled nice too.
Ten minutes later, Walrus-moustache entered from the hallway, his face drawn and bloodless. He actually staggered toward me, gasping.
“S’matter?” I said. “Can’t take any more?”
“Good God, Damon, I have all the material we’ll ever need. What a carnal outrage. Shocking! Absolutely inhuman. That LSD is pure poison.”
“You bet it is. But it worked. Never knock a successful formula.” He kept shaking his head, dumbfounded by life in the raw.
Another five minutes passed and the sounds from within had abated. Some furniture had made noise crashing around but now a deathly silence ensued. I looked at my watch and decided it was time.
I opened the doors and Rene Rolfe fell into my arms. He was as white as a sheet, rolls of film in their cans dangling from his scrawny neck. I caught him in my arms and he nodded in gratitude. An unlit lipburner was stuck in one corner of his mouth, long since gone out. I was surprised he hadn’t swallowed it.
“Rolfe, you okay—?”
“Monsieur . . .” His eyes batted weakly. “I want my wife . . . my wife!”
“The film,” I snarled. “Did you take the pictures?”
“Film! Mother of the saints—diabolique!—never have I seen such carnality. I weep for mankind . . . but I must hurry home to see my wife Eloise . . . ma chere Eloise!”
We let him go but not before I had about three cans of five hundred feet each of the most explosive footage in the history of France. Maybe the world.
Walrus-moustache took one last peek through the keyhole. He straightened, shuddering and took the cans of film from me.
“Fin,” he murmured. “They all look like they’re sleeping now. What a chaos . . .”
“Good. Now all you have to do is return these four sleeping diplomats to their respective hotels without any more nonsense and then I’ll personally supervise the editing of this film and tomorrow I want you to pull another string. Arrange and set up an embassy luncheon where we can show these pictures. The difference is that we can privately shame these people into taking off and going into hiding where they won’t bother the peace talks anymore. People like Corbeau, Madame Kingston and these two Southeast Asians don’t do their countries, and the world, one lick of good.”
“Check, Damon.” He sighed again and stared at the supine ambassadors dozing on the floor. “Fools all of them. If only they’d do these intrigues and affairs of theirs with a little elan.”
“What you really mean is—keep it to themselves.”
“Check.”
He’d never know how much I agreed with him on that particular point. Sex should always be a pretty private affair.
At least, with not more than four people involved.
Which reminded me of Brigitte Lebeau, Mady Morrow and Viviane Fresnay and Room Seven. My room. I was tired. Dead-tired now. I did need some sleep, after all. The night and its tensions had worn me. The Hotel Fourchette floor plan had called for a lot of maneuvering to make sure everything went off without a hitch.
I said goodnight to Walrus-moustache and went down the hall to my room. Let the shamed-faces in the movie room sleep off their LSD nightmares. I didn’t care if all of them committed suicide and took a dive out of the hotel window. One of them was Danielle Lebeau’s actual murderer and all of them were as guilty as hell in my book.
In my room, the light was out and there was a rustle of movement on the double-bed. I lurched toward it, undoing my tie.
“Ah, it is he at last,” Brigitte Lebeau chuckled in the darkness. “The good, kind, oh so generous Monsieur Rod Damon.”
“Yes.” That was Viviane Fresnay’s dreamy little whisper. “He is a boon to all womankind.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed and immediately, three pairs of feminine arms engulfed me with caresses, tugs and pulls.
My wheel of fortune spun merrily for a time. Oh, it was a helluva thing. To be incorporated like that with three revolving partners of such solid, unquestionable assets. The mutual firm of Lebeau, Morrow and Fresnay were so very anxious to pour all their holdings into the Damon Foundation. For once I had my own Thaddeaus X. Coxe thing. My own little harvest of goodies, with me calling all the shots. Merveilleux, as they say on the Left Bank and in all good bedrooms everywhere.
Brigitte cooed in my left ear, Mady busied herself with the family jewels and that delightful little minx, Viviane, found a surprise down among my sheltering palms.
It was so easy and relaxing to forget the whole fandango of the peace talks and the mission to Paris which had brought these sexy delights into my arms. The hotel room was a bower of peace and plenty. It is my only platform, my only plank, for true Peace. If the world made more love, we wouldn’t have anything ever like Vietnam or the coming Third World War.
My kind of Coming is my answer for everything.
My plank will withstand any kind of pressure or scrutiny or examination. Ask my three little maids of whoopee.
“You—” Brigitte panted.
“Are—” Mady whispered.
“The Greatest!” Viviane exploded, departing from her sheer French expressiveness.
I do not come by my Ego easily. It is built on a solid record of success. Walrus-moustache is right. I am the greatest Coxeman of them all. For I have roamed nobly on behalf of the world’s security.
And Brigitte Lebeau wasn’t mad at me for slipping her a Mickey Finn and Viviane Fresnay was still weary of the female tongue and Mady Morrow still preferred hers straight.
So we had another party.
With one walloping difference.
Nobody was taking any pictures.
If they had, I would have crowned them.
As I happily lunged away at my work, I thought of tomorrow and the grand surprise I had planned for the embassy luncheon. As well as my last tournament with Madame Lilly de Jussac.
The poor dame didn’t know it but she had licked her last lollipop at the Academie Sexualite.
There was going to be a new order of things.
The world dances on . . . and what goes up must come down, and vice versa.
“Now me,” said Brigitte Lebeau.
“No, me,” said Viviane Fresnay.
“Me!” said Mady Morrow.
Yes, sir, it was a mad old pinwheel that last night in the Hotel Fourchette. I must admit I had a forking good time.
We went around and around in circles.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Well, that about wraps up the Paris Affair. Or affairs. If you prefer precise nomenclature.
We ran the film at the Embassy Luncheon the next day. When Rene Rolfe finally could be dragged out of his wife Eloise’s arms, he ruefully edited and looped the film for me. He had outdone himself. The man was a genius. Imagine fifteen hundred feet of the tightest shots, real close-ups, artistic compositions of all sorts of faces, legs, navels and choicer portions of the male and female anatomy. What made the film particularly effective was that the LSD had confused everybody to hell. The normals and the naturals had mixed it up like mad so that boys were doing it to boys, thinking they were girls and in reverse confusion. Rolfe’s footage was as sharp and clear as if he had used natural light. Annette, Wan Lo, the stud, Madame de Jussac, Francoise Marnay and Mei Ling High were all seen having thei
r jollies in the lewdest, most explicit ways. Of course, Madame Kingston, Gaston Cor-beau and the Southeast Asians were in the film too even if not involved in the actual obscene footage but Rolfe had lensed them chasing around the room, making fools of themselves over Viviane Fresnay and Mady Morrow and that was good enough to discredit them. I only had to show about twenty minutes of the film before a French dignitary bellowed for me to turn the projector off and then soundly and roundly denounced the guilty ambassadors. When they slunk out of the room, they were going home in disgrace, to be rapidly replaced by the sort of men who wouldn’t have their heads turned by a piece of tail. Madame Annette, of course, and her weird sadomasochistic Les Deuces, was raided that very day and put out of business. Walrus-moustache produced the murder weapon which had killed Danielle Lebeau and the French police had no trouble beating a confession out of Wan Lo. He loved every minute of the third degree, naturally. With the plot exposed, the sabotage plan was a dead dirty bird.
So the peace talks resumed without fuss or muss, and the world and the newspapers never really knew how close they came to being scuttled for all time. The Red Chinese dummied up and said no more.
When Walrus-moustache and I were on the steps of the embassy building, his eyes shone with admiration.
“My boy, I’m proud of you. You’ve covered the Coxe Foundation with glory once again.”
“How proud?”
He smiled as if he had an ace up his sleeve. As it turned out, he did.
“Proud enough to grant you an indefinite leave of absence from the Foundation. Stay in Paris, enjoy yourself. In fact”—his eyes twinkled—”how would you like to be the new head of the Academie Sexualite?”
I thought of all those leather mini-skirts, those white middie blouses and lost my head. I took the job. I thanked him warmly and he handed me one of the cans of hot film.
“Here. Take this with you and go see Madame Lilly de Jussac. And kick her out on her elegant rear end. She’s through, as of now. The Foundation cabled me this morning. The job is yours if you want it.”