When You Dance With The Devil

by Gwynne Forster

  “Thanks for the drink and the company,” she said after a few minutes. “I want to see my room and unpack. I hope I have a good view.”

  “You have a wonderful view, ma’am,” Rodger said, picking up her bags and heading up the stairs with her.

  “So that’s the new boarder. Ought to liven things up around here,” Judd said. “She’s really something to look at, but I see you’re aware of that.”

  He hated it when he let others divine his private reactions and especially his responses to women. “Yeah. She’s good looking, all right, and she’s also a no-nonsense person. Pity the poor bloke who hits on her thinking she’s just another pretty dame.”

  “I noticed she got your attention.”

  Richard jerked his left shoulder in a quick, dismissive shrug. “Oh, I knew she was there. I appreciate an occasional reminder that women are the greatest source of pleasure on the Lord’s good earth. But man, not at breakfast every morning.”

  Judd’s laughter carried a cynical ring. “I have a feeling that you’re not ready for this one. She’ll be good for you, though. It’s time you got your nose out of the air and settled down here with the rest of us.”

  Among the crowd in which he’d traveled all of his professional life, his behavior was more or less standard for a man in his position, but these people probably saw him as standoffish and smug. “Look, Judd, I’m not arrogant.”

  “Not quite as much as you were when you came here, but you still need to loosen up some.”

  Richard changed the subject. He had yet to influence Judd’s opinion about anything. “What do you think of Percy Lucas?”

  “Percy? Humph! A weak man with practically nothing going for him.”

  “I used to think of such men as weak and feckless,” Richard said, “but for some reason, I pity Lucas.”

  Leaning forward with his hands bracing his knees, Judd shook his head as if perplexed. Then, he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Maybe you feel sorry for him because you have everything that he doesn’t have. You may yet develop into a humanitarian. I wonder what Jolene saw in him.”

  “Jolene?” So his guess had been right. “Something happen between Percy and Jolene?”

  Judd ran his fingers through his few remaining strands of hair. “The way I figure it, Percy’s problem is that nothing happened. But you never can tell.”

  The picture of Jolene standing a foot from Percy and making up to him floated through Richard’s mind’s eye. He didn’t want to develop a hard crust about women who left men hanging, for his bad luck with Estelle was his own doing. He knew that his empathy for Percy sprang from his own experience with the pain of rejection. He had to work at dispelling that pain, ridding himself of his constant loneliness and finding another focus before his need for Estelle became an affliction.

  Chapter Five

  “Everybody, this is our new boarder, Francine Spaldwood, who arrived this morning,” Fannie announced at supper. “Introduce yourselves, beginning with Judd at table one. It would be nice if we all gathered in the lounge after supper to make Francine feel welcome.”

  “Like in high school,” Jolene murmured.

  “Won’t hurt none,” Joe Tucker said, surprising her, for she hadn’t thought he heard her.

  With no means of avoiding it, Jolene spent twenty minutes in the lounge, said goodnight, and rushed up the stairs to iron a pink blouse for the next day and to finish reading Obsession. To her mind, Francine was okay but, with her stunning looks, every man in the house would probably be after her. She didn’t think a woman who looked like Francine Spaldwood would make friends with another female. A tall woman with flawless ebony skin, rich brown almond-shaped eyes, thin facial features, and a curvaceous body. Her full breasts jutted out from beneath her lavender-colored T-shirt, and her slacks looked as if she’d been poured into them. Jolene sucked her teeth, disgusted with Joe and Percy who ogled Francine like starving men eyeing a choice steak. Nobody had to tell her that the boarding house was about to change.

  The next morning, Jolene ran a full two blocks to avoid missing the bus and hopped on out of breath. “I like you in pink,” Harper Masterson told her when she boarded, covering the fare box with his hand. “In fact, I like you, period. What’ll we do Sunday?”

  She appeared to think about it, although she had already made up her mind that the date would cost him a movie and a dinner in a good restaurant. “I want to see that new Will Smith movie, and ever since I came here I wanted to eat at Ocean Grove.” He raised one eyebrow at her preference for the most expensive restaurant within a twenty-mile radius of Ocean City and pulled away from the curb. “My pleasure. Don’t be late this afternoon. You hear?”

  He could bet she wouldn’t, not when he’d indicated that he’d let her ride free of charge. “I’ll catch the six o’clock,” she said. “My girlfriend wants me to keep her two children for an hour while she runs a few errands.”

  He nodded. “See you at six.”

  That afternoon, she went directly from work to Vida’s apartment, where the three-year-old twins tested her patience until they learned that she wouldn’t yield to them. “Come over here and sit beside me. I’m going to read to you,” she announced after she got them to settle down, and they sat quietly and starry-eyed while she read the story of Little Bo Peep.

  “How’d you do that?” Vida wanted to know when she arrived at fourteen minutes to six, her face red and her ample bosom heaving as if running had robbed her of her breath. On her first visit to the beauty parlor, Jolene had thought that Vida and the three other operators were white but had learned subsequently that her boss preferred African-American women who had large breasts, full hips, and who could pass for white. She couldn’t pass for white, but she wasn’t dark dark, and she met his other criteria.

  She didn’t feel nice, so she didn’t smile. “How’d I do it?” she asked, her anger almost suffocating her. “By letting them know who’s the adult and who’s the child,” she flung over her shoulder as she raced out of the house to the bus stop. She stepped on board, and Harper closed the door and drove off.

  “You sure you were with a girlfriend?”

  “I was keeping her kids, and she promised to be home at five-thirty,” Jolene said between her teeth, showing her vexation at Vida.

  “Don’t promise to help her out Sunday.”

  “I won’t.” He asked her again where she’d like to go for dinner. “The Ocean Grove restaurant in Ocean Pines,” she answered, repeating what she told him that morning. She thought he grimaced, but she wasn’t sure. And why should he? If a man liked a woman, he also liked to please her. Didn’t he?

  “I had a nice time,” she told him when he brought her home Sunday night. “Maybe next time, we can go to some nice places in Ocean City. Good night.”

  She turned to leave, but he grabbed her shoulders and pressed his mouth to hers, startling her and exciting her with the force of his kiss. “See you in the morning,” he said, in guttural a tone that she couldn’t fathom, unsure whether she had annoyed him or pleased him.

  Wednesday evening, she missed her bus and her supper when Vida didn’t get home until six-thirty. “I missed my bus and my supper, Vida. Now, I’ll have to wait for the eight o’clock bus and buy my supper because I missed the one I already paid for.”

  “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it.”

  Jolene stared at her for a minute when she realized that was all the explanation she’d get. It occurred to her that Vida might think herself superior, but she dismissed the thought. After purchasing fried catfish, hush puppies, and cole slaw at a fast-food shop, she boarded the eight o’clock bus and ate her dinner during the ride home. Thank God, she had her fare. At the boarding house, she slipped up the stairs to her room unnoticed, or so she thought.

  Minutes later, she opened her door in response to Fannie’s knock. “You’re supposed to call if you’re skipping a meal. I waited fifteen minutes for you.”

  “I missed my bus.”

>   “You could still have called. You have a cell phone, don’t you?”

  Jolene braced her hands on her hips and looked at Fannie. “I’m sorry, and I’m tired. I’d appreciate it if you’d excuse me.”

  Fannie’s tone softened, and she spoke without the stridency evident in her earlier words. “Just don’t make it a habit. If you break your routine and don’t tell anybody, we’ll think you’re in trouble somewhere.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She watched Fannie leave, dropped herself to the edge of her bed, folded her arms, pressed them to her middle and rocked herself.

  Memories of her mama’s tongue lashings lapped at her as waves lap at the shore. Ugly, hate-filled reminders of a time she longed to forget. If she does it again, I’m going to tell her off. Why didn’t anybody understand her loneliness, how she longed to have someone care for her? She got ready for bed, opened her latest treasure, Obsession, crawled in, and began to read.

  After an hour, she closed the book. I wish I knew why Prince, a ne’er-do-well who isn’t worth two cents, excites and thrills me and I feel nothing for Magnus, who’s strong, loving, protective, and as sexy as Prince. She put the book into the drawer of her night table, turned out the light and tried to sleep, but she couldn’t help comparing Prince to Bob Tucker and Magnus to Gregory Hicks. I wonder if something’s wrong with me. I want a man like Gregory and Magnus, but the Princes and Bobs excite and attract me.

  “What happened to you?” Harper asked when she boarded the bus Friday morning. She told him, and his facial expression changed to one of disgust. She was sure of it. “If you want to let other people run your life, go to it.”

  “But she’s my friend, and I couldn’t leave the children alone.”

  “Think she didn’t know that?” he replied and didn’t speak again until they reached her stop.

  “You coming Sunday?” she asked.

  “Didn’t I say I would?”

  “Then can we go to one of those amusement parks before we see a movie and go to dinner?”

  “Whatever you want, babe.”

  Before the week’s end, Jolene realized that she had misread Francine Spaldwood. The men who lived at Thank the Lord Boarding House treated her with the kind of respect reserved for nuns, and all but Judd and Richard gave her a wide berth.

  “You staying long?” Judd asked Francine as he and Richard sat with her in the lounge Thursday evening after supper.

  “As long as my job holds out. I work in Ocean Pines.”

  “Doing what?” Richard wanted to know. She had a manner that suggested she was accustomed to wielding authority.

  “I work for the state in the Department of Internal Affairs. Nothing special. Just nine to five drudgery.”

  He didn’t believe the last part, but he didn’t share his thoughts. She was too intelligent, too well informed to content herself with a job that bored her. “I hope you’ll be happy here with us.” He realized he meant it, and that surprised him, for ordinarily he concerned himself with other peoples’ well being only in the most abstract and impersonal sense.

  She sat forward, and her demeanor held a peculiar urgency as if life depended on his response to whatever she was about to ask. “How do you spend your days, Richard?”

  “Writing his memoirs and talking to me,” Judd said, “and he’s giving free seminars at the local library and at the high school.”

  Why did Judd find it necessary to defend him, Richard wondered, for the man’s tone and words showed his testiness.

  “That’s it, more or less,” he said to Francine and changed the subject. “If you haven’t explored Pike Hill, would you care to walk around with me after supper and before dark?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “I’d like that. All I know of this town is the route to Ocean Pines.”

  A straight shooter who didn’t beat around the bush. He’d known only one other woman of that type: Estelle Mitchell.

  Harper Masterson rang the doorbell before Jolene could get down to the front door and wait there for him. She knew he’d made a point of doing it, for he remarked on their last date that she apparently didn’t want him to meet her landlady or any of the other boarders. He took her to the amusement park, a movie starring Samuel L. Jackson, and dinner at the restaurant of her choice—the Lobster Pot in Snow Hill, the most expensive seafood restaurant in the region outside of Ocean City. When they were about to leave the restaurant, she took his hand and led him to the souvenir shop near the door.

  “I’ve always wondered how they get ships into these bottles,” she said. “They’re fascinating. I love to look at them.”

  “It’s an art. Look, it’s getting late. We’ve been to an amusement park, seen a movie, been to two museums, and had a long dinner. Let’s go. I need to stop by my place.”

  He hadn’t mentioned sex, so she had begun to think he wanted to do things for her because, as he said at first, she was beautiful and had plenty of everything in the right places. But just in case, she unbuttoned the top button of her pink linen shirtdress,

  “Okay.” She didn’t look at him. He’d spent a hundred dollars for dinner alone, so he deserved whatever he wanted. Oh, no. Not that! It occurred to her at once that Melinda didn’t have sex with Blake the first time he wanted it. Besides, if I wait till the next time he wants it, I may get that bottle with the ship in it.

  Harper parked in front of the building in which he lived, cut the motor and said, “Coming?” His question reminded her of something, but she wasn’t quite sure what.

  Inside his small, neat apartment, she didn’t get a chance to see her surroundings before he put one hand on her buttocks, the other at the back of her head and fastened her body to his.

  “Mmm . . . wait a—”

  “I’ve waited as long as I’m going to. Open up to me. I want you here and now.”

  The hard length of him pressed against her belly, and excitement shot through her, sending blood hot and fast to her vagina. Visions of herself exploding in orgasm while he pounded into her had her twisting and rubbing against him in a frenzy to experience the pleasure of which she had read in her books. Recklessly, she unbuttoned her dress and exposed her high, rounded breasts.

  “My Lord, I never dreamed you were so hot,” he said and sucked her right nipple into his warm mouth. When, acting out her fantasies, her hand grabbed his penis and squeezed it, his groans matched her loud cries. He slipped her dress to the floor, ripped off her bikini panties, sat her in a chair, got on his knees and plowed his tongue into her. She howled as he worked at her. Unable to bear it longer, she twisted her hips and squeezed her nipple, locked her ankles across his back, and screamed as she burst into orgasm. He dragged her off the chair and on to the zebra rug that covered a part of the floor.

  “Don’t make me pregnant,” she pleaded.

  “No way, baby.” He slipped on a condom and drove himself into her. Immediately the pumping and squeezing resumed and she raised her body to him with such force that she nearly threw the two-hundred-pound man off her. He gripped her hips and accelerated his pace. It seemed to her that a thousand strange images darted before her, her nerve endings burned, and she thought she’d die if whatever he built inside of her wouldn’t let itself loose. At last, he held her still and rode her mercilessly as her hips ceased to slither over the zebra rug.

  “Oh, Lord,” she screamed and sank into a vortex of oblivion. He sucked a nipple into his mouth, pumped hard a few more times, and collapsed into her arms.

  Several minutes passed before he raised his head, looked down at her and said, “You came so hard. I never knew a woman to come that hard.”

  Shocked by what she believed to be an inadequacy, she apologized. “I’m sorry if I disappointed you. I . . . uh . . . haven’t had much experience.”

  He stared at her in what was clearly disbelief. “You sure as hell don’t need any lessons, baby.” He left her, went to the bathroom and returned fully dressed.

  Embarrassed because, hoping for more of what she had just e
xperienced, she had remained as he left her. She looked around for her dress, but didn’t see it. “May I please have a towel?” He threw her a towel and left the room while she dressed.

  “When am . . . are we going to see each other again?” she asked as he walked with her to the front door of the boarding house.

  “We’ll see.”

  Oh Lord, she’d made a big mistake. She should have told him to take her home. Fear streaked through her. He couldn’t drop her after making her feel like that. “What do you mean?” she asked him.

  He put his hands in his trouser pockets and kicked at the wooden floor of the porch. “I was liking you a whole lot, but you don’t have any real feelings for a man. You’re just after what you can get.”

  Cringing, she stepped away from him. “How can you—”

  He continued as if she hadn’t attempted to speak. “You were getting to a place deep inside of me, but if I hang out with you, I’ll be broke before I know it. I don’t like women who’re only out for what they can get from a man. I’m a bus driver, and you know it. I spent over two hundred dollars on this date, and that’s twenty percent of what I made last week. On top of that, you wanted a hundred and fifty dollar model ship. Last Sunday, you also wanted to go to museums, a movie and have dinner at the most expensive restaurant you’d heard about. I’m looking for a woman to build my life with. Be seeing you.”

  She didn’t bother to wipe the tears that bathed her face, but ran into the house and up the stairs to her room. At last she had found a man who could do the things the men in her books did, and she’d mishandled the relationship. She didn’t know what to do or how to do it. She had never had a girlfriend, never talked with any girl or woman about boys and men and had no idea how you got a man to love you and care for you. All she had were her books, and those women were so perfect, they were educated and knew so much. She wasn’t like them and couldn’t be. She had thought that Harper cared for her, but he hadn’t.