by L. A. Morse
“I thought your generation was supposed to be open and honest?” I said.
“Naw. That was the last generation. Mine is sly and devious.” She grinned and I laughed.
“All right, sly and devious, what do you want?”
She took a deep breath, which did nice things to her bikini, and lowered her eyes as she spoke in a small voice. “I want you to invite me in.”
What the hell, she was starting to get to me. What could I say?
“Come on in, the water’s fine,” I said.
For a second her face lit up, making her look about twelve, which was a little disconcerting considering the circumstances.
She crossed the small bathroom in a couple of steps, during which time I adjusted the water to a comfortably tepid temperature. She pulled back the curtain and stepped in.
Her eyes roamed over me and her mouth fell open slightly as her breathing slowed and deepened. Her hand reached out and very lightly touched the long scar on my ribs just below my chest, one of a number of reminders of Nam, my work, and a variety of what are known as youthful escapades. She touched several other scars, and I could see that they both frightened her and turned her on at the same time. Her hands went up to my shoulders and lightly down my arms, feeling the tautness of the biceps.
I was fully erect now, and as she looked down her lips seemed to grow puffy and her eyes seemed to cloud over. Her tongue ran over her lips, and her hand came up to the bikini top, pulled at the small bow that held it together, and it dropped off, revealing firm breasts with large brown nipples, straining and taut. Her hand dropped to her hip, untied the knots there, and the bottom triangle fell to the floor of the shower.
I cupped a breast in each hand and squeezed hard, feeling the tight young flesh. I put my thigh between her legs and she rode up and down on it, pressing her mound into my leg. Her breath was coming in harsh gasps, a low moan coming up from deep in her throat. She tensed, squeezing my thigh between both of hers, digging her fingers into my shoulders, small cries of pleasure being forced out of her. She relaxed, started to move on my thigh again, and almost immediately tensed again. This was repeated several more times. Her breasts were swelling within my grasp and were covered with goose flesh. I dipped my head and sucked hard on one of her nipples, causing her to squeal with delight.
She stepped back, looking at me with the expression of mindless animal hunger I have often seen before. She bent over and ran the tip of her tongue lightly up my penis from the base of the shaft to the head which she lightly kissed. She stood up, and with a sudden growl of urgency, she clung to me. She reached down, maneuvered my penis between her legs and settled down onto me. Her hands went around my neck, and she lifted her legs and wrapped them around my hips. Her teeth were biting into my shoulder, and she was sobbing convulsively. Putting my hand under her buttocks I stepped from the shower, turning off the water with my other hand.
I easily carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed. I got her legs over my shoulders and pressed my full weight down on her as I moved inside her. As I continued, she started to shiver and shake uncontrollably, her cries of surprise and mounting pleasure growing higher until her body sagged, totally spent. I finished off quickly, and left her lying half off the bed, tossing her head from side to side, moaning quietly under her breath.
I went back to the shower, rinsed the sweat off me and toweled down. The girl was still lying there when I went back to the bedroom to dress. I put on some clothes and looked at my gun lying on the dresser, considering whether or not I should wear it. I decided I wouldn’t need it for a while at least, and it was too goddamn hot anyway, so I’d just keep it in the glove compartment of my car. There are few things more uncomfortable than carrying a heavy piece on a scorching hot day.
By the time I was ready to leave, Lili or Lindi or whoever had entered the world of the conscious. She looked at me confusedly.
“You’re not going out, are you?”
“Things to do, kiddo,” I said as I walked from the bedroom, seeing her mouth fell open in dismay. I crossed to the front door and called back to her. “Make sure the door’s locked when you leave.”
As I shut the door I heard a wail of despair. “Ohhh, Sammm...”
I hoped she wasn’t going to turn out to be a pain in the ass.
SEVEN
I felt okay when I left my apartment, but the feeling soon deteriorated when I felt the full force of the heat. It was only a little after ten, but already things were starting to shimmer. Even the neighborhood’s stray dogs found it too hot to scavenge around the garbage cans, and lay exhausted, panting, in small patches of dusty shade.
I got in my car, put my gun in the glove compartment, started up, and backed out into the street. The part of the Valley I lived in looked particularly dismal in the heat. The lawns were all brown and dry. The trees withered and drooped. Even the plastic bushes some people used for landscaping looked limp. Maybe they’d melted. A layer of dust had settled on everything, changing all colors to a uniform gray. And this was with water. Christ! What would it be like when the tap was, turned off for good? All the natives would pack up their unsinkable Volkswagens and head across the Pacific for new lands on which to bestow the blessings of their civilization. The buildings would collapse, the pavement would crumble, the plastic palm trees would disintegrate, and it would return to the desert it originally was, where pitiful, mangy Indians dug and rooted in the hard ground for the grubs and beetles on which they survived. Looking at the endless rows of dumpy drive-in food joints broken only by the occasional used car lot, drive-in theatre, drive-in bank, drive-in supermarket, and drive-in mortuary—”Eternal Rest While-U-Wait”—I figured it couldn’t happen soon enough.
I made pretty good time going across to the freeway, but as often happens, traffic slowed to a bumper to bumper crawl once I got on it. None of this made any sense to me. Here was the one city in the world designed as the exclusive domain of the automobile, with an extensive and elaborate highway system, and most of the time all you could do was about twenty miles an hour going into town. Rush hour was a bit slower. Another triumph for the planners and all the other assholes who think they know the answers because some machine told them which end of the pencil to sharpen.
We were moving about as fast as shit in a clogged sewer, but there was nothing I could do about it except relax and wait. I can do that when I have to, but some red-necked turkey in the car next to me had on a quadraphonic speaker system that was playing country-and-western garbage loud enough to be heard in Oklahoma. He was wearing a Hawaiian-patterned rayon shirt and puffing on a fat cigar which he didn’t bother to remove from his mouth when he drank from a can of Lucky Lager. I scowled across at him and he laughed like he thought he was some king of the road. Since the traffic wasn’t moving and it looked like I might be next to him for some time, I asked him to turn it down. He laughed again and told me to fuck off. It was too hot to put up with something like that. I reached across, opened the glove compartment, and pulled my piece from the holster.
“Hey, asshole,” I shouted at him.
He turned and started to say something when I stretched my arm out and pointed the gun at his head. His mouth fell open and the cigar dropped out. His eyes grew wide and his lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Would you please turn it down,” I repeated.
This time I had his attention. Without taking his terrified eyes off the gun, he leaned across the car, turned something, and the sound died away with an abrupt whimper.
“Thank you.” I retracted the gun.
I turned back to the front, but I could tell that the turkey continued to stare at me, unable to believe what had just happened. What I did was, of course, grossly illegal, but who was to know. It worked, that was the main thing.
The guy suddenly gave a squawk of surprise and pain, and started bouncing around crazily. I guessed his cigar had started to burn him. Just then the traffic opened up, and I was able to pull away as the gu
y was frantically burrowing between his legs for the cigar.
About the time I got over the hill, the jam-up had thinned and I was able to make better time the rest of the way into town. I got off at Wilshire and headed for the fancy Beverly Hills building where Maycroft had his office. It was one of those prestige addresses where all goods and services cost about fifty percent more than they would have a few blocks away. They weren’t any better, they just cost more.
As soon as you walked in the entrance, you knew you were in a fancy place. You could tell because the air conditioning made it about ten degrees colder than was really comfortable. On an ordinary day it would have been unpleasantly cool, but in this weather, coming in from the stifling heat, you immediately felt chilled and clammy. But I guess money, like lettuce, wilts if it’s not refrigerated.
I took the express elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor. Music played softly above the quiet hum of the elevator. For some reason the ceiling of the car was mirrored. Before I could come up with a plausible explanation for this odd feature I had arrived at my floor.
There were only two offices on the floor. One was the Eye of God Religious Foundation, Inc. I didn’t know what they did, but they must have had access to the Purse of God to occupy this address. On the other side of the corridor, tiny raised letters on the wall spelled out spode, maycroft and burbary. If you were more than a couple of feet away, the letters would just look like specks on the wallpaper. There seems to be some sort of theory in effect that says the bigger the operation, the smaller and more discreet the sign announcing it should be. If I followed that rule, I’d have to use the whole side of my building. Of course it’s all bullshit, but jerks who are impressed by the swell address will be doubly impressed by the tiny letters.
I opened a door that seemed as heavy as the doors to some bank vaults. The reception area looked big enough to hold a small African republic, and proceeds from the sale of the furnishings would have balanced the budget for that same republic. Everything was in shades of brown, from the palest beige to a rich sienna. There were a dozen Barcelona chairs against the wall, at about $1500 per. On one wall there were four canvasses hung, each about three feet square, and each covered with a slightly different shade of brown acrylic paint that had been applied with a roller. There was a small card that identified the paintings as a work called “Progression in Brown” by a currently popular artist. Through some work I had done for a dealer, I knew that the set had cost about fifty grand. At least the paint was put on nice and evenly.
The whole appearance of the office was designed to give the impression of solidity, sobriety, and success, and anyone encouraged by the little letters outside would be completely won over by the interior decor, and would fight to leave their money here by the bucketful. I knew better, though, and I would sooner keep my money in a sock under my bed than let these frauds get their hands on it. But there’s no accounting for taste, as they say, and there are lots of people who are happy to go down the tubes while telling their friends about the swell Barcelona chairs in the reception room.
I waded through the ankle-deep, cream-colored shag carpet to the desk where the receptionist sat. She looked like she had been chosen by the decorator to harmonize with the interior. She wore an expensive beige two-piece silk outfit that too precisely coordinated with her light brown hair and brown eyes. Her skin was tightly but perfectly tanned. She had the cool, severe, thin appearance favored by high-fashion models which appeals to women, but rarely to men. She was obviously intended to contribute to the total effect of quiet elegance and superior class. The impression was spoiled slightly by the fact that she was energetically chewing gum. She was applying nail polish with the intentness and concentration of a diamond cutter working on a million-dollar gem.
“Just a minute,” she said without looking up, as she finished off one long and perfect nail.
She carefully replaced the top of the bottle and turned to face me. Her expression of polite interest quickly faded when she saw me. Evidently she determined I was not a client, and therefore unworthy of any expenditure of charm. Just to make sure I knew my place, she very slightly wrinkled her nose, as if smelling some mildly unpleasant aroma. I sniffed loudly several times.
“Hope, it’s not me,” I said.
This caused her to sneer. She tilted back her head and looked at me from under drooping eyelids, as though my appearance was too shocking to be confronted fully.
“What do you want?” she said, barely moving her lips.
Before I could answer, the telephone rang. She announced the establishment and listened.
“I’ll see if he’s free,” she said. She depressed the hold button and stared at the ceiling for about thirty seconds. She reconnected the line. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Spode. He’s in an important conference and cannot be disturbed.” An angry rattle came over the receiver. “I’m sure I don’t know, Mrs. Spode. I’ll tell him you called.” Another angry rattle. The girl hung up the phone and looked at it as if it, too, smelled bad.
“What’s Spode doing—laying a secretary on his leather couch? Or is it a wealthy widow client?”
“Really!” She started to sputter with the shocked indignation people display when you take a stab and come close to the truth.
“And who are you having it off with?” I said. “Maycroft or Burbary?”
“Now, look you—”
“I guess it’s got to be Maycroft. Burbary has a decided preference for young boys.”
Just then the door to the inner office opened and a blond, fair-skinned, slightly pudgy young man came out carrying a stack of envelopes. He hurried across the room, walking as though he had a dime between his cheeks and he didn’t want it to drop, and went out into the corridor.
“Now that must be Burbary’s playmate,” I said.
A harsh laugh exploded from her, acknowledging the accuracy of my remark, but she quickly recovered herself and glared at me with considerable dislike.
“If you do not immediately state your business, I will call the security guards and have you thrown out.”
“Does that mean you don’t like me?”
She tried to look cool and detached—an ice princess from the pages of Vogue—but I wasn’t fooled. She had the hollow cheeks and wide mouth of the inveterate cocksucker, and she had been speculatively eying the bulge of my crotch throughout our snappy repartee. I walked around the end of her desk and stood close to her, my crotch at her eye level. It was with difficulty that she raised her eyes to my face, and with even more difficulty that she tried to maintain her composure.
“Who do you think you—”
“I’m here to see Maycroft.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Maycroft is busy and cannot be disturbed. Perhaps you would care to—”
“Maycroft is expecting me.”
“What’s your name? I’ll call—”
“Don’t bother,” I said, reaching across and stopping her before she could buzz his office. “I’ll announce myself.”
I walked to the door. She looked after me with a mixture of anger and confusion.
“You want to have lunch?” I said.
She sniffed haughtily.
I shrugged. “Too bad. I would have given you a nice lunch.”
I went through the door to the office proper, where it seemed that some work was, being done. At least there was the click and hum that is usually associated with a working office, and people were walking back and forth not completely aimlessly. The suckers that had their money there would no doubt be encouraged by this display of energy and purpose on their behalf.
I went down the hall to Ellis Maycroft’s office and went in without knocking. He was leaning back in his chair, his Gucci loafers up on the desk. All his attention was concentrated on the smoke rings he was blowing to the ceiling.
“Sorry to disturb you, Maycroft, in the middle of your busy day.”
He glanced at me without much pleasure. “Oh, Hunter.” He also wrinkled his nose before he returne
d his gaze to the smoke rings. This could give me some kind of complex. Three showers this morning, and people were still acting as if I smelled bad.
His office was sparsely but expensively furnished. The big windows provided a panoramic view of L. A. that was slightly spoiled by the layer of yellow-green slime that hung over the city. Maycroft’s desk was completely bare except for a telephone and a piece of pre-Columbian sculpture that he no doubt paid a genuine price for, but that I was sure was a fake.
The phone rang. Maycroft reluctantly lifted his feet from the desk, picked up the receiver, and listened for a moment.
“Yes, he’s here.... No, that’s all right.... That won’t be necessary. Thank you, Carla.”
He hung up and looked glumly at me. “That was the receptionist. You didn’t make much of an impression.”
“I must be losing my boyish charm.”
“She wanted to call security and have you removed.”
“The devotion of your staff is really something. Is she any good in bed? I bet she really loves to gobble you up, huh?”
He blushed—bull’s-eye!—and then looked pained. “Hunter, is it really necessary for you to be so crude... And for the record, Miss Cavelli is an employee—nothing more.”
“Fine. It’s your record. I wouldn’t want to scratch it... Look, Maycroft, I already went through a dance with the delightful Miss Carla, and I don’t want to do the same with you. I don’t like being here any more than you like having me, so just give me the info I wanted, and I’ll be on my way, farting and spitting and wrapped in my cloak of crudity.”
He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and looked every inch the successful businessman. “Look, Hunter, I’m a senior partner in a large brokerage firm, and I don’t appreciate your ordering me about when you need something.”
“Did I do that? I called you as a friend for some assistance. I thought you’d like to help.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do.”