“Couldn't you get them to come back some other time?” Gretchen asked.
“Oh, this won't take too long,” Jack assured her. “I'll just go out now and talk to them for a while, and they'll probably be gone before people start arriving.” Gretchen turned back to her preparations, and Jack went out to where Cindy, Janice, and Joan had seated themselves in the living room.
“O.K.,” Jack said, “all we have to do is pretend to be talking about one of my books, and hold on until people start getting here. Mark should be here just a little after seven, and he knows what to do. There's just one thing I forgot to tell you. There will be a couple here tonight—Art and Marge Kipling—who are a little uptight about the whole thing. Art inherited a hell of a lot of money, and he stuck in high society— you know, chairman of this, president of that. If some of his snooty friends found out he and his wife frequented parties like this, it would be sort of a mess. I called them up and told them you would be here, and told them the whole story. I also told them we could rely on you never to say a word about their having been here. Still, if they look you over sort of oddly, don't be surprised.”
“No sweat,” Joan said. “We'll put them at ease.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Jack and the girls pretended to be engaged in an earnest discussion over the techniques of writing dirty books. Gretchen eventually emerged from the bedroom and Jack could tell she was somewhat uneasy about the girls' presence, but she said nothing as she went about placing hors d'oeuvres on tables, filling ice buckets, and setting out glasses. Finally, at a few minutes after seven, the doorbell rang again, and Gretchen ushered Mark into the apartment. She was somewhat surprised to see Mark bringing his camera equipment as well as the usual cans of film and projector, but she simply assumed that Mark had got it in his head that it was time to make another addition to their movie collection. After Mark had thrown his equipment on the floor and gone over to sit with Jack and the girls, Gretchen walked over to Jack and whispered in his ear that she wanted to talk with him. Jack followed her into the bedroom.
“Don't you think it would be a good idea to get those girls to leave before the rest of the people show up?” Gretchen asked.
Jack shrugged his shoulders. “I don't see what harm it would do for them to stick around for a while,” he told her. “They're talking to Mark now, and they all seem to be having a good time. When the rest of the people begin to arrive, I think they'll go.”
“O.K.,” Gretchen said, “but you know that if the Kiplings arrive before they leave, they're going to be uptight.”
“I guess you're right,” Jack said, “but they usually don't arrive until late, so I don't think we have to worry about it.” Jack and Gretchen returned to the living room, where Jack took orders for drinks, and— somewhat to Gretchen's surprise, since it would only keep them around longer—made drinks for the girls. By this time, Mark and Joan were talking about Mark's movie equipment, and Mark, talking loud enough so that Gretchen would be sure to hear, explained to Joan that every once in a while he took his equipment to parties, because he liked to be able to film all his friends when they were drunk and show them what they looked like afterwards. Joan professed to be interested in the equipment, and for her benefit Mark unpacked his camera, set up his tripod, put up a couple of lights, and began explaining to Joan how it all worked.
The doorbell rang again, and Jack opened it to greet Al and Candy Fredrickson. Al was a painter from down in the Village, and Candy ran a small leather shop. As usual, Candy had worn a see-through dress, with no bra and only the briefest of bikini panties underneath, which she had covered with a long vest for the trip up to Riverside Drive. Jack could see Gretchen wince as Candy removed the vest and casually wandered into the bedroom to throw it across their bed. Jack could see Gretchen's mind working, and he knew that she knew that the girls would be wondering exactly what kind of parties they had. Cindy had joined Joan and Mark around the camera equipment, and meanwhile Al had sat down next to Janice and started a conversation. The girls were now thoroughly mixed in with the regulars, and Jack could plainly see there was no way that Gretchen was going to get them out now. So he relaxed and went over to talk to Candy. Candy's pert little breasts protruded beneath the all-but-transparent cloth of her dress, and as she shifted her weight back and forth, they swung loosely and invitingly like pendulums before Jack's eyes. Candy was several years younger than Al's thirty-two, and she had a lively sense of humor that one would not suspect upon first meeting her. The initial impression she made, with her jet black hair piled in tight curls upon her head, her sharp, dark eyes, and her olive skin, was of a hyper-tense, hard driving, uncompromising woman. Jack knew she could be that, because he had seen her operate in business situations, and he also knew enough to get out of the way when her temper flared. But at the moment, since Jack had told them about the plot he had worked out with the girls from upstairs, she was glancing back and forth from Gretchen to Joan and Cindy, and giggling under her breath at Gretchen's obvious discomfiture.
From somewhere behind him, Jack could tell that Mark and the girls were rapidly progressing in the right direction. He heard Joan ask when Mark was going to start making movies, and he heard Mark answer, “Right now, if you want to. I'll even make some of you.”
The doorbell rang again, and this time Gretchen answered it, greeting Hank Nemerof and Sam Fortunate-, old boyfriends of Gretchen's—and Candy's—who had been invited to fewer and fewer parties as the affairs had tended toward couples exchanges. Jack wondered briefly whether Gretchen would suspect anything, but doubted that she would suspect that Hank and Sal, and one other single male soon to arrive, had been invited for the benefit of the girls from upstairs. After all, it had been a long time since she had seen Sal or Hank, and they had once been great favorites of hers. Hank was an advertising executive on Madison Avenue, and Sal was an assistant professor of sociology at one of the colleges in New York. They had been college roommates, and Hank, at a burly six-four, had played a mean guard on the Stanford basketball team, and had just missed being drafted by the pros. Sal had been a swimmer, and had just missed qualifying for the United States Olympic team. They liked to kid each other about how they had been two almost-greats. At first sight, Hank looked as if he was too much man for any woman to handle, but Gretchen had assured Jack that he was very gentle in bed, and at the moment Jack did not notice any of the girls from upstairs being particularly overawed by him. Hank had adopted a style of life that would have made him at least recognizable to the people who had known him in college, but Sal, with a full beard, and hair that curled over his shoulders, had turned into an entirely different person. They two, naturally, had been let in on the plot, and now they wandered over to join Mark, Joan, and Cindy “on location.”
A few moments later Sid and Shirley Landau arrived, and the party was almost complete. Shirley, on the outside a typically slick east side Jewish girl, with a quick wit and a quicker tongue, went over and occupied Gretchen with small talk while her husband helped Jack pour a few drinks. Sid and Shirley were some of their oldest friends, and Jack could hear Gretchen whispering to Shirley about her concern over the three intruders from upstairs. Shirley handled things well, however, allowing that the girls seemed to be getting along well with everyone, and would undoubtedly leave before anything too risqué happened.
After he had fixed drinks for everyone, Jack went to the bookcase and took a waterpipe and a tobacco tin off the shelf, bringing it to the couch and setting it down on the coffee table in front of him. Seated next to Janice, he proceeded to open the tobacco tin, which contained several ounces of marijuana which Jack had been assured—although he hadn't tried it-was some of the best Colombian grass in existence. He had got it from a friend, and even at that had paid forty dollars an ounce for it, so he expected great things from it. Gretchen gave him a skeptical glance out of the corner of her eye, and he could tell she was wondering whether it was wise to bring out the dope when the girls were still around. But Janice
, who had come prepared, opened her pocketbook and, taking out five or six joints, threw them On the table. “Here,” Janice said, “I've got some already rolled. I always carry around a few just in case—”
Jack lit up one of the joints and passed it. As it made its way around the room, contributing a heavy blue haze to the atmosphere, Dale Henry, the last of the singles trio, arrived. Dale was black, a sculptor who sometimes worked with Al Fredrickson on projects. As usual, he had worn African dress, a rather wild looking dashiki of red and gold with matching pants.
By this time, Mark was standing behind his camera looking through the lens, and Joan was clowning around in front of it, striking various poses and making a few ridiculous faces as the marijuana started to go to her head.
“O.K.,” Mark said, “we're ready to shoot a few pictures. What kind of movie would you girls like to star in?”
“I don't know anything about movies,” Joan said, with a slight giggle, “why don't you just tell us what to do, and we'll do it.”
“That could be dangerous,” Mark warned her with a laugh.
“Dangerous is like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, or walking in Central Park after dark,” Cindy said. “I don't see anything dangerous around here.
“O.K.,” Mark said, “there are a limited number of things you can do in an apartment. Let's see. Shall we try to make some kind of plot?”
“That sounds like fun,” Joan said. Cindy joined her in front of the camera. “I've got an idea,” said Cindy, reminding Jack that it had been Cindy who had had the idea last time. “Let's do a typical New York scene,” she suggested.
“What's a typical New York scene?” Mark asked.
“Well...” Cindy mused, knitting her brows, “how about a robbery?”
“Great,” said Mark, “but whose going to rob who?”
Cindy stood for a moment before the camera, thinking. The girls had all dressed rather conservatively, Cindy in a dark pants suit, Joan in a frilly white blouse with a skirt that reached nearly to her knees, and Janice in a loose, swirling dress that flowed to her ankles. Their dress gave Cindy an inspiration. “I'll tell you what,” she said, to Joan, “since I'm wearing the pants, I'll be the robber. I'm going to hold you up. Now you have to pretend that I'm a big tough guy, and you're a sweet defenseless little girl.”
Joan looked up at her and smirked. “That won't be easy,” she said, “but I'll try.”
“That sounds good to me,” Mark said. “Now where do you want this event to take place?”
“How about in the subway?” Cindy said. “We can turn the couch around so it looks like one of those bench seats, and have a bunch of people sitting in it. Joan can be holding her pocketbook, and I'll come along and rip it off. Then we can see what the other people do about it.”
“If it's a real New York movie,” Mark said, “they won't do anything.”
“Or,” Jack said, “they'll help in the robbery.”
“That just gave me an idea,” Mark said. “But let's start the action, and see what happens.” With Mark sighting through the camera and directing them, Sal and Hank moved the sofa around to simulate a subway bench, so that the camera was looking as if down the isle of the subway car, with the bench on the left. Candy and Shirley were drafted to sit on the bench alone with Hank, Al, and Joan. Cindy was waiting toward the back of the “car.” The whole thing was so ridiculous that the group, already fairly stoned, stumbled over each other and giggled as they put things into place. Gretchen stood in the kitchen, her hands on her hips, talking intermittently to Dale, and shaking her head now and then. Jack could hardly wait. He had a fairly good idea of what Mark had in mind.
“That's good,” Mark said, when all the furniture was in place. “Now, I'm going to start the camera, and direct you as you go along. It won't be the most professional thing in the world, but it ought to be pretty outrageous.”
Without further warning, the lights that Mark had set up flashed on, and the camera started grinding slowly. “O.K.,” Mark said, “now Cindy, you just casually stroll down the isle, and then suddenly reach out—with sort of an exaggerated motion, like a scene from an old time silent movie—and latch on to Joan's pocketbook. For now, everyone else sort of sit on their seat bouncing up and down, making subway motions, maybe lurching around a little bit, staring straight ahead as if nothing was happening.”
Cindy began sauntering down the isle, with her elbows stuck out, her shoulders hunched up, and a mean looking sneer on her face. She glanced right, then left, and when she caught sight of Joan, took a half step backward and threw open her arms, like a villain in an old time movie discovering his victim. She glanced at the ceiling and pointed one finger up in the air, as if to say “Ahaha!”, and then, after a brief pause, lunged at Joan's pocketbook. She caught it by one strap, and leaned backward as if to tear it away from Joan. But the victim held onto it tenaciously, and soon the two were engaged in a tug of war, lunging back and forth, making exclamations and jostling the people around them. Al, sitting on one side of Joan, looked indignantly at her when she bumped into him, brushed off his sleeve and then turned again to stare straight ahead. Candy, on Joan's other side, contributed a few typical New York looks of disgust, then moved a few inches away, all the while pretending to be bounced up and down and back and forth by the action of the subway. This had gone on for a few seconds, when Al suddenly pretended to take more notice of the purse snatching. He stared intently at Joan, then at Cindy, and finally got up from his seat. He walked around behind Cindy, and grabbed her around the waist pulling backwards and adding his weight to Cindy's side of the tug of war. While this was going on, Hank, who had been sitting next to Al, got up and walked over to look at the pocketbook. As it swayed back and forth between the two warring factions, he opened it, removed its contents, including a wallet, brush, comb, compact, and a few other things, put them on the floor and gradually started to go through them. Seeing this, Candy got up and, sitting on the other side of the tug of war which was still raging over the pocketbook, began to divide up the money with Hank. At this, Al joined the three on the floor and began fighting with them over the money. That left Joan and Cindy still in their tug of war over the now empty pocketbook.
“Great,” Mark said, “now Cindy, you will have to discover that the money is gone, and that your primary motives have disappeared. What does that suggest to you?”
“Well,” Cindy said, affecting a typically villainous horror-story accent, “I zeenk I vill have to rrrrape her!”
By this time Jack had filled his waterpipe with some of his own dope, and the pipe was circulating around the room, on and off stage, and everyone was acting quite strangely. Looking at Gretchen, Jack could tell she was completely confused. She was on the brink of suspecting something, but was still obviously uptight. At that point, the doorbell rang, and Art and Marge Kipling arrived. Marge, a short, flashy red head, preceded her husband into the room. She didn't quite know what to make of the scene in front of the camera, but she didn't have much time to think about it because somebody immediately offered her a joint from one side and a pipe from the other, and she soon disappeared into the haze of smoke. Art went over to talk to Gretchen, and Jack could see him carefully reinforcing her uneasiness. Jack could also tell that Art was looking the girls over himself. He seemed satisfied, and turned his attention to the action.
Mark, having heard Cindy's suggestion with approval, was just throwing in an idea of his own. “Just to make it authentic,” he said, “don't you think you ought to expose yourself before you do? It's practically mandatory in New York.”
“My goodness,” Cindy said, “how much do I have to expose?”
Mark scratched his head. “Well,” he said, “I guess that's up to you. Expose your foot if you want to— there are some pretty weird people in New York.”
“Oh well,” Cindy said, “I'll have to do the best I can with what I've got.”
“I guess you can't expose something you don't have,” Mark said.
>
Cindy turned back to Joan, who was lying in a mock faint on the couch. Beneath Cindy's feet, the subplot to the movie continued, as Candy, Art, and Hank scrambled around under, over, and through each other, stealing the few dollars that they had lifted from Joan's purse from each other again and again. Jack noticed that Candy had stuffed a bill inside her underpants, and since she had been practically naked to begin with, he could see in which direction the action on the floor was going. Now, he turned his eyes to Cindy again. She had slunk a few feet away, and turned her back to Joan. Now she was undoing her blouse and pants. Holding them together with the cloth scrunched up in her fingers, she turned back toward Joan, who was still pretending to have fainted. Cindy tried to revive Joan, with the comic effect that every time she reached to shake Joan's shoulder, she had to let go of something and her shirt and her pants constantly fell open and were closed up again. Finally Joan made signs of regaining consciousness. Cindy stood back a couple of steps, and when Joan finally looked in her direction, suddenly threw open her blouse and pulled down her pants. Hooking her thumbs into her underpants in the front, she yanked them down quickly, and thrust her cunt in Joan's direction. Then she pulled them up quickly, and fastened them with one button at the top. Pointing a finger up in the air she declaimed “I am going to rape you!” at Joan. Joan shrunk back against the sofa, pulled her knees up to her chest, and grasped them with her arms. Cindy started to move toward her. “Oh please don't rape me!” Joan whimpered, “I'm an innocent little virgin, and I want to be a nun when I grow up!”
At the word rape, the three floor scramblers picked up their heads. This drew attention to them, and Jack noticed that Hank had made a valiant effort to remove the money that Candy had shoved into her underpants. Candy's pussy was bare, and Hank's finger was just probing in its direction. However, aroused to the goings on above them by the word “rape,” they desisted for the moment and got up.
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