He didn’t have any place else to go, unless he wanted to head back to the Ruskin and call it an evening. Somehow that didn’t appeal in the least. He gave up trying to think straight and sat down on the stoop waiting for something to happen.
Something happened.
She said: “Hello, Johnny Wells.”
He looked up and saw her. It took him a minute to recognize her, mainly because he didn’t believe his eyes. She was wearing a black skirt that was tight on her hips and a white sweater that was even tighter on her breasts. A splash of lipstick reddened her mouth.
It was Linda.
“Let’s go someplace,” she said. “I don’t like to hang around the building if I can help it. I don’t want to run into the old lady. She’s worse than ever.”
“I saw her a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah? How come?”
“I was looking for you.”
“I suppose I should be flattered,” she said. “One night with me and you disappear for four months. Then you come looking for me and I should be flattered.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. You had things to do. I know all about it.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “You’ve been making the gigolo scene. Doing good at it according to what I hear.”
“How did you find out?”
“I didn’t put detectives on you. You hang around this neighborhood long enough and you hear everything about everybody. You know that. Somebody saw you and told somebody else. The word spread. Congratulations.”
“Look,” he said, “about that night. I’m sorry I left that way. It was a rotten thing to do.”
“Forget it.”
“I mean — ”
“You were the first,” she told him. “You weren’t the last. So forget it.”
He didn’t say anything. They were walking east on 98th Street by now and she was holding his arm. He tried to figure her out. She was still fourteen, he remembered, but she wasn’t the way he remembered her. She seemed at least several years older. He wondered what had happened to her.
“You don’t live with your mother,” he said finally.
“Good thinking.”
“When did you leave?”
“Three weeks ago. I couldn’t take it any more. She got worse every day, drinking like a fish and hollering all the time. If I brought a guy up she raised hell. I couldn’t stand it so I cut out on my own.”
“Where do you live?”
“Another block the way we’re heading. I got a room to myself. It’s not much but it’s better than the other dump.”
“How do you make money?”
“How do you think?”
Her eyes challenged him and he turned away. It seemed somehow inconceivable, but there was one answer and only one. No wonder she seemed so much older than before.
“You hustle,” he said.
“Sure. I’m not a professional or anything. I turn a trick when I’m broke. It pays the rent and keeps me eating and that’s about all. I don’t turn more than a trick a night and I don’t work all the time. I’m not a full-fledged whore yet, is what I’m trying to say.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that. Somehow it seemed very wrong to him that she was playing the prostitute, even on a part-time semi-pro basis. He wondered what kind of a double standard he was dreaming up. If it was all right for him to make love for money, why was it wrong for her?
“Here’s where I live,” she said. “Why don’t you come up for a while?”
“Well — ”
“Come on,” she said. “It’s a clean place. You won’t get your clothes dirty or anything. And if we wind up in bed I won’t charge you a penny. Old times sake and all.”
He felt that she was laughing at him. Well, maybe she had a right to. He followed her into the brownstone and up one flight of stairs to her room.
“Better than 99th Street,” she said. “No smell here. And only one flight of stairs to climb.”
She opened the door. It was a small room but she had it fixed up nice. The furniture was old but presentable.
“Nice place,” he said.
“You like it?”
“Sure.”
“But your place is nicer, isn’t it? I’m sure it is. Where are you living now, Johnny?”
He told her.
She whistled. “Fancy,” she said. “What does it cost you to hang out there?”
“Thirty-five a week.”
“It costs me ten. I guess your place must be pretty slick, huh? ’Cause this isn’t bad and yours is three and a half times as much.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Can I make you some coffee? I’m not supposed to cook here but I got a hot plate and I can make instant coffee. You want a cup?”
“If you’re having some.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll just put a pot of water up. Wait a minute.”
They talked about nothing in particular while the water boiled. She spooned coffee into two white china cups, poured the boiling water into each cup and stirred with a tin spoon. She handed one of the cups to him and kept the other for herself.
“No cream or sugar. You mind?”
“I like it black.”
“Me too. You been gone a long time, Johnny. What have you been doing with yourself? You act different. You don’t fit in around here any more.”
“I know.”
“Tell me all about it,” she said. “About the places you been and the things you did.”
“It’s not much of a story.”
“But I’m interested.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you.”
He hesitated, then started to tell her what he’d done, the plans he had made and the way he had carried them out. He started out intending to summarize everything briefly and get it over with in a hurry, but something stopped him from carrying this plan to completion.
Instead he wound up giving her a very detailed picture of his activities from the morning he had left her to the present. Somewhere in the middle of it he began talking as much to himself as to her. It was a way of looking back, a way of getting the whole picture again. He sat in a straight-backed chair and she sat on the bed. He sipped his coffee from time to time and he talked. She listened without saying a word.
He didn’t tell her that he’d been impotent lately. He left this tid-bit of information out. It was just about all he left out, however.
When he finished they sat in silence for several minutes. He could hear the wind outside. It was blowing up a storm and looked like rain.
“You happy, Johnny?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded. “I’m not,” she said. “But I don’t figure to be happy. I mean, I haven’t gotten any place or anything. I live from one day to the next and I sort of bide my time, if you know what I mean. I haven’t got any education like you do. I think a lot, but I haven’t got much to think about. And I can always tell myself that one of these days something’ll happen, a rich man’ll come and want to marry me or a million dollars’ll fall down and hit me on the head or something. You know what I mean?”
“I guess so.”
“So it must be worse for you. I mean, I haven’t got anything. If I’m not happy I can still think it’s going to be different and I’ll come out smelling like a rose. But you’ve got plenty. Just what you wanted. Don’t you?”
He nodded.
“So if you aren’t happy it’s a mess,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”
More silence. She was right, he realized. She had hit it on the nose. It was bearable when you had nothing, because then you knew that your life was ahead of you and you could only move in one direction — up. And it was better yet when you were moving and you got further along every day and you had something you were killing yourself to get.
But once you got where you were going, then it was time to watch out. Because then you were in a bind. You could only go one way
— down. And you didn’t like it so much where you were, and it was a mess.
“Johnny?”
He looked at her.
“I’m not working tonight.”
He didn’t get it.
“I’m not working tonight,” she repeated. “I only hustle when I have to. The rest of the time I just sit around. Tonight I’ll just be sitting around.”
“Oh,” he said.
And I get lonely. Do you ever get lonely, Johnny? Probably not with all the things you got going for you.”
“I get lonely.”
“Honest?”
“I don’t know anybody. Not really. Unless I’m … working … I just stay by myself.”
“It sounds like a drag.”
“It is.”
“Johnny?”
He waited.
“Would you like to stay here tonight?”
He thought about himself and thought about the fact that he wouldn’t be able to make love to her. But she hadn’t even asked that. She asked if he wanted to stay, and he did want to stay even if he had to sleep on the floor. It seemed very important for him to be with someone this night. It was not entirely a sexual thing. It was more a matter of companionship.
“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that very much.”
She smiled. “Just sit where you are,” she said. “I’ll make some more coffee. Then we can talk some more.”
It was late. They’d had many cups of coffee and they’d talked about many things. He told her some of the places he’d been to and some of the things he’d done and people he’d met. He told her about things he read in books and things he learned and she listened most receptively. She talked, too, and he was interested in what she had to say.
Then it was time for bed.
“Johnny — ”
She was standing now, a strange expression on her face.
“Johnny, sex is a business for both of us. You make more dough at it than I do but we both hustle ourselves for a living. So this is going to be silly, I guess. A busman’s holiday. But would you like to make love?”
I want to make love, he thought. It’s just a matter of communicating that desire to something that hasn’t been listening to me lately.
And he walked to her and took her in his arms.
“Let’s leave the lights on,” she said. “Like the first time. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“Then kiss me.”
He hadn’t kissed a girl and meant it in a long time. He took her in his arms, felt the incredible softness of her warm young body against him, and his tongue darted into her mouth. He tasted the sweetness of her and his arms held her very close and very tight. His heart started to pound.
“Be gentle with me,” she was whispering. “Nobody’s ever gentle any more. Nobody’s nice or sweet or anything. Be gentle with me, Johnny.”
He lifted her in his arms and put her on the bed. He stretched out beside her and kissed her again. His hands found her breasts and he held onto them and felt how soft and firm they were.
“Nice,” he said.
“Nicer than last time. They keep on growing. Are they too big?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve got too many clothes on.”
“But no bra, Johnny. Just a sweater, see? I still don’t need a bra. No matter how big they get they still stand up all by themselves.”
“You’ve still got too many clothes on.”
“Then do something about it.”
He pulled the sweater over her head, threw it to the floor. When he caught sight of her breasts he had to stop. They were the most perfect he had ever seen. She was right — they had grown since he’d first made love to her. And they were firm, rich and firm, and he couldn’t keep his hands off them. They were cool to the touch and the nipples were suffused with desire a second after his fingers touched them.
“See? They’re still sensitive.”
“Do they like to be kissed?”
“Try them and see.”
He bent to kiss her breasts.
Maybe it was going to be all right, he thought. Maybe this time it would work for him. Maybe he would get excited, and then maybe he would be able to make love to her, and then maybe he wouldn’t be impotent again for the next fifty years. Maybe she would cure everything.
He hoped so.
But he didn’t care simply because he wanted to be cured, simply because he wanted to make love to other women and grow rich in the process.
Not now.
Now only one thing was important. Now he wanted only to make love to her properly and efficiently and spectacularly. Now all that mattered was what the two of them were going to do now, in her bed, in the next hour or so.
Nothing else mattered.
He wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman in his life. He wanted her badly, so badly he would have given anything for her.
And she wanted him.
“Johnny,” she moaned. “Oh, God, there wasn’t anybody like you. The others were a waste of time, the others were nothing; there was always you and nobody else. Nobody ever made me feel like this, Johnny. Nobody ever. You’re the only man who can make me feel like this.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like a goddess.”
“That’s how you should always feel.”
“Why?”
“Because you are a goddess.”
Her hands were busy with the buttons of his sport shirt. He’d taken his jacket off earlier, when the room had grown warm, and now her hands were inside his jacket, toying with his chest. He kissed her mouth, then moved lower to kiss her breasts again. He touched her leg at the knee and his hand began to travel.
She moaned softly.
“Johnny!”
He took her skirt off.
He looked at her, saw the naked perfection of her body, saw every bit of her.
And something began to happen.
He didn’t believe it at first. He had thought that it couldn’t happen, that it perhaps would never happen again. But it was happening, and it was happening to him, and he couldn’t have been more pleased by any occurrence.
He was a man again.
He stood up, tearing his shirt off, kicking off shoes and socks and pants.
Then he was naked and she was nude and it was time.
Time to make love.
It was magnificent.
No one could tell it in detail because the details were far too subtle to be told. Everything happened, and everything happened quite flawlessly, and the experience for both of them was not only the quintessence of physical satisfaction but a mental and even spiritual experience at once.
When it was over she cried. He did not cry but wanted to, and he held her in his arms, stroked her face and loved her.
Chapter Eight
“I’M AFRAID,” SHE SAID.
He was lying on his back in her bed and she was lying in his arms, a warm bundle of soft curves. He rubbed her back with one hand while he looked up and studied the cracks in the ceiling. His mind refused to work. It was spinning dizzily. He still couldn’t fully comprehend the reality of what the two of them had experienced together. It was too large for him.
“Don’t be afraid.”
“I can’t help it. Johnny, this was like nothing in the world. It was too good, Johnny. Much too good. It was the sort of thing everybody dreams about and reads about, and it was the sort of thing that never really happens to anybody, and I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“I just am.”
“Tell me about it.”
She sighed. “Because it was too good,” she said. “Because I’ll lie here thinking it was too good and feeling wonderful about it and then we’ll fall asleep — ”
“Wrong.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep here? I thought you would. I mean, you can’t go back to the hotel — ”
“I’m sleeping here.”
“But —
”
“Before we fall asleep,” he explained. “We’re going to do it again. At least once. Maybe twice.”
“Oh. Sure, of course. I was planning on it.” She giggled, then grew sober again. “But finally we will go to sleep, you know. And then I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone and I won’t see you again. That’s the way it will happen.”
“Wrong.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You don’t have to stay, Johnny. I’m not just saying that. I mean it. And I’d like to say that if you’re not here in the morning I’ll never let you get near me again, but I can’t say that because it wouldn’t be the truth. You can have me any time you want me. All you have to do is ask.”
“I’ll stay because I want to.”
“Why? Because you like the way I behave in bed?”
“That’s one reason. You’re a tiger.”
“I’m good?”
“The best in the world.”
“I guess you ought to know, huh?”
He couldn’t help grinning. “Would you want a man who didn’t know anything about it?”
“I guess not.”
“Then shut up. Yeah, you’re good. But that’s only a small part of it. There’s more to it than that. There’s something else that’s a lot more important.”
“What’s that?”
He took a deep breath. He was about to say something he had never said to a girl, something he had never felt before. But there was no getting around it now. It was the truth — he was positive of it.
And he wanted her to know.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “Nothing complicated about it at all. I happen to be in love with you.”
“Say that again, Johnny.”
“Starting with It’s very simple?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I happen to be in love with you.”
She stared into his eyes, her own eyes very wide. “You don’t mean that. You can’t possibly mean it. You’re just talking.”
“I mean it.”
“It’s impossible — ”
“But it’s true.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “A gigolo and a whore in love. I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe anything.”
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