So Willing

by Lawrence Block

  “Look what I’ve got,” she said. “All for you. And more, all for you. Anything you want, and it’s all for you, Vince. Don’t keep me waiting.”

  You’re not afraid of me, are you?

  Hell, no. Not him. He wasn’t afraid. He was going to pick her up, and take her for a drive, and give her a workout that would keep her happy for the next hundred years. And then he would get back in the car and point the car away from Brighton and that would be that. Afraid? What in hell was there to be afraid of?

  He was scared stiff.

  He didn’t taste dinner. But he finished it, somehow, and by seven-fifteen he was in the car. He drove to the gas station, put a couple bucks worth in the tank, and headed toward Schwerner Street. He drove along Schwerner to Second, and then to Third, and all the way he kept half-hoping that he would get to Fourth and she wouldn’t be there.

  She was, of course. He stopped the car and she was sitting next to him at once, her lips already parted for a kiss. His tongue darted between the lips and her arms wound around him and that chest of hers pressed tight against him. And then he wasn’t scared any more.

  “I couldn’t wait,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t come and I thought somebody might see us and I thought I would go out of my mind. But you came and nobody saw us and it’s all right now. Take a right turn, there’s an old road a few miles up. Nobody ever goes there. We’ll be all right.”

  He couldn’t talk. He just drove, finding the old road, wondering absently how many other guys had taken her there, then stopping the car and not wondering or caring about anything but Saralee.

  The chase was gone, but there was something far more exciting in its own way than the chase. There was a woman, a woman born for love, and there was Vince, and the two of them were getting along fine.

  The old awkwardness of seduction in an automobile didn’t come into the picture, not when the girl involved was so eager to be seduced. He was happily surprised when Saralee scampered over the seat and into the back the minute the brakes were on.

  From there on it was ideal. He didn’t have to undress her because she began tearing her own clothes off instantly. He had all he could do to get his own clothes off fast enough. Then she was in his arms, and she was kissing him again, and all of her was next to all of him.

  “Sooooooo good, Vince. Touch me here and here and here. Touch me all over, touch me, kiss me, bite me, do everything to me. Don’t ever stop, Vince. Please don’t stop. I don’t want it to stop. I want it to go on forever. Please, Vince. Oh, it’s so good. So good, Vince, and I need it so much, and yes I need it, Vince, yes it’s so good don’t yes don’t stop keep going yes I love it yes I love it yes I love it I need it I want it oh yes yes yes yes YES!”

  It was over, suddenly, and the uncomfortable feeling of having been seduced was overridden by the joy of having been seduced so expertly. There was no getting around it—some girls were a lot better at it than other girls. And when a girl was good at it, and wanted it, it made a difference. One hell of a difference.

  Of course, the car wasn’t the best place in the world. It was cramped, even an old boat of a car like his father’s. And it must have inhibited her performance, as good old Rhonda would have put it. Not that Saralee seemed at all inhibited, not in the least. But the poor girl didn’t have enough room to move around in.

  And she loved to move. Oh, how she loved to move. And she moved so nicely.

  “Vince—”

  He cupped one of her breasts and gave it a friendly squeeze.

  “Vince, I needed that. You have no idea how much I needed that. It’s been so long.”

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to get personal, but what the hell’s wrong with your husband? Is he dead or something?”

  “He’s no good.”

  “Well…doesn’t he even try?”

  She giggled. “Once a night,” she said. “Once a night, every goddamned night of the year.”

  He gaped. “Isn’t once a night enough for you?”

  “Well,” she said, giggling, “to begin with, it isn’t. Not tonight, anyway, because we’re going to do it again as soon as I get my wind back.”

  “But—”

  “Ordinarily, once a night would be enough. Once with you, for example, would be plenty. But Brad gets through before I even get started. All he does is get me the least bit hot and it’s over and I have to crawl up the walls.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “And I can’t stand it, because I need it, and you came along and I knew you’d be good. And you are good, Vince. You’re wonderful. You’re the best ever.”

  “Well,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “And we’re going to do it again,” she said. “Right here and right now, but we’ll have to hurry a little so he doesn’t get suspicious. We’ll have to start right now, so get set, honey. Because we’re going to do it and it’s going to be great.

  “Now,” she said. “Now, yes, now, Vince, now!”

  It was too soon, and he was tired, but she was persuasive.

  Very persuasive.

  And very skillful.

  So skillful, in fact, that when in the course of things he pulled a small muscle in his back he didn’t even notice it until later.

  And it was worth it, anyway.

  There was always the smart thing and the dumb thing, and it was beginning to seem as though the dumb thing was whatever he did. Or, rather, whatever the dumb thing was, he picked it.

  Maybe he was just dumb.

  Because, if he was smart, he would have gotten the hell out of Brighton the minute he dropped Saralee on the corner of Schwerner and Fourth. The game was won, the trophy would look good on the wall, and that was that.

  But he wasn’t smart.

  He stayed the night at Mrs. Sharp’s. That was dumb, of course, but it was also natural. He was just too damned tired to drive all the way back to the lake without a good night’s sleep first. Besides, he’d paid up for a whole week. He might as well collect a night’s sleep there and breakfast in the morning before he left.

  Sure.

  That, he told himself in the morning, was not exactly the truth. Vince, boy, you’re not being honest with yourself. You don’t give a lily-white damn about breakfast in the morning. You’re wondering what Sexy Saralee would be like in a real bed.

  Which was something he didn’t have any right to think about.

  For one thing, once with Saralee was enough. Twice with Saralee had almost been fatal, albeit wonderful, and a third time would be dangerous.

  On the way to the drugstore, he told himself it was just to see her, to say good-bye. No sense running out without even telling her so long.

  Uh-huh.

  “Tonight,” she said. “Tonight, Vince. Again tonight, and not in the car because it’s better in a bed. Tonight we’ll do it in a bed, Vince.

  “Brad works late tonight,” she went on. “You come over to my house and we’ll do it and it’ll be perfect, just perfect. In my bed. It’s a big double bed and we’ll have loads of room. You’ll like it, Vince.”

  That sounded entirely possible.

  “169 Hayes Street,” she said. “Right on the corner of Fifth. Come up at eight o’clock and it’ll give us two hours before he gets home. You come right up, Vince. You understand?”

  He understood. Boy, did he understand. He understood so well he wanted to crawl in a hole.

  “Look,” he said, “Saralee, I mean, I have to get back home and—”

  “Hush up,” she said. “You better go now. I’ll see you tonight.”

  So I’m stupid, he thought. So I’m a damned fool who ought to know better. So I’m a low-grade moron with a rock for a head. So what?

  He parked the car around the corner from her house, then listened to his knees banging together on the way to her door. He rang the bell once, wondering what in God’s name he would do if her husband answered the door, and then listened to his teeth chattering until she came to the door and opened it. She was st
ark naked.

  He stood there, just staring, and then he managed to step inside and get the door shut.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I mean, that’s pretty stupid, Saralee. Suppose it wasn’t me at the door, for God’s sake. Suppose—”

  “I saw you,” she said. “From the window.”

  “But—”

  “So I knew it was you and not somebody else. I didn’t want to waste any time. I still don’t want to waste any time. I want to get started, because we only have two hours, and I want to make the most of both of them. What’s the matter? Don’t you like the way I look?”

  He couldn’t answer. All he could do was look at her. Most girls, he had learned long ago, look a lot better with some clothes on. And a naked girl who was just sort of lying down looked a lot better than one walking around. But Saralee was an exception. She was perfect naked, perfect the way she wandered around without seeming conscious of the fact that she was nude.

  She was lovely.

  “Hurry,” she was saying. “The bedroom is upstairs, and we want to go there right away, and you’d better hurry.”

  They hurried.

  In the bedroom, with the door shut, she helped him get his clothes off. She really wasn’t much help. Every time she touched him he got confused and fumbled with his clothing, but finally he managed it and they were both naked.

  And both on the bed.

  She was telling him to hurry up, that she couldn’t wait, that she’d been going out of her mind all day waiting for him.

  But this time he was going to play it the way he wanted to.

  “You’re going to wait,” he told her. “I’m going to drive you out of your mind.”

  And he spent a lot of time kissing and touching her, and pretty soon she was squirming and moaning for him, making strange sounds from somewhere in the depths of her throat and begging him to hurry, for God’s sake, to get the main event started and stop wasting time on the preliminaries, to hurry up because she was going mad.

  It was time. His point was proved, and she had learned her lesson, and now he did not feel that he was the one being seduced. This time it would be good, and when he finally did get the hell out of Brighton this would be something to remember.

  “Come on,” she said. “Vince, please. I’ll kill you, Vince. I’ll kill myself. I’ll go mad. I can’t take it, you better start doing it and stop fooling around. I want it, Vince, I need it. Vince, please—”

  He got ready, and was about to begin, and then he noticed that she wasn’t talking any more, that she wasn’t saying a word, that she was looking past him with something horrible in her eyes.

  So he looked around.

  And there, big as life, was Bradley Jenkins.

  FIVE

  It was quite a tableau. There was Saralee Jenkins, flat upon her lovely back and reaching up with curving fingers for Vince. And there was Vince, naked as a jaybird, lowering himself to those waiting arms.

  And there was Bradley Jenkins, standing in the doorway and staring at them both.

  The next second just went on and on, while everybody stared at everybody else. And then that second was over, the next second had started, and everybody was in motion. Saralee gave a shriek and squirmed into a little ball, in a silly attempt to cover herself. Vince dove for his pants, on the chair beside the bed.

  And Bradley Jenkins fell over in a faint.

  That surprised Vince so much he missed the chair and went sailing into the wall. He clambered around, knocking things over, and when he got his balance and his footing back, he looked over at the door to be sure he’d seen right. Because he couldn’t possibly have seen right. The husband who catches his wife in bed with another guy can do any number of things, from gunning the two of them down on the spot, through beating the guy up, to racing for his lawyer. But the one thing he doesn’t do is faint.

  But there was Bradley Jenkins on his face, passed out cold.

  Vince thought fast. That was one thing he could do at least, he could think fast. And it was a good thing, because one thing he couldn’t do was stay out of trouble.

  The thoughts went flashing through his mind as he pulled his pants on. Number one, the husband was unconscious. Number two, he’d seen Vince for only a second, while in a state of shock, and while looking primarily at his wife, so he probably wouldn’t even remember very clearly what Vince looked like. Not his face, anyway. Number three, if he moved fast enough he could get the hell out of here before the husband woke up again, and be out of town before Bradley Jenkins could figure out just what the hell was going on. Number four, Saralee knew his name, but she didn’t know where he was from. Nobody in town did, not even Mrs. Sharp.

  Which meant, number five, that with a little bit of luck and a lot of speed, he could get away with nothing worse than a bad scare.

  Pants, shirt and shoes went on, and the rest of his clothes got stuffed into pockets. Then he jumped over the unconscious hubby and headed for the door.

  Saralee grabbed him by the elbow as he was going through the doorway, swinging him around and practically slamming his nose into the jamb. She’d been busy, too, and was wearing blouse and skirt and loafers. “Take me with you!” she cried, and her eyes were wide with desperation.

  “But—but—” He tried to slow down long enough to figure out the question, and the answer to it. “Your husband,” he said.

  “I’m through with him,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to get out of this town for years. Take me with you.”

  “But—I’m only going home.” The thought of going back to the lake, walking in to his mother and father, pointing to Saralee and saying, “She followed me home, can I keep her?” was a very strange one indeed.

  She came up against him like a vibrating pad, jabbing him with the controls. “You don’t have to go home,” she said, seductively. “You can go anywhere you want, with that car of yours. And you could take me with you. We could go to New York.” She vibrated some more. “We’d have a great time, Vince.”

  “But—I don’t have any money. I don’t have enough money to go to New York.”

  “Don’t you worry about money, Vince,” she said. She smiled and kissed him, and the vibrations got stronger and stronger. “Don’t you worry about a thing, baby.”

  So there they were in Vince’s car, driving hell for leather out of town. Saralee Jenkins, shed of her husband, sat very close beside him on the front seat. Vince’s suitcase was in back, and so was Saralee’s hastily packed overnight bag, and so was Saralee’s bulging purse. The purse was stuffed with bills, ones and fives and tens and an occasional twenty, taken from hiding places all over the Jenkins house. “He didn’t think I knew where he hid all this stuff,” she’d said, grinning wickedly. “Brad underestimated me in every way, he did.”

  And now they were heading southeast in Vince’s car, and Vince was having some second thoughts. Some very gloomy second thoughts.

  What the hell is the use, he wondered, of being able to think fast in an emergency, if all of your thinking simply throws you pell-mell swell-hell into another emergency? No use, that’s what use.

  Question: Is it better to be caught by a husband with that husband’s wife, or is it better to be caught by the police with the husband’s wife and the husband’s money? Don’t answer.

  It had all seemed so easy at the time, so simple and clear. Vince wasn’t in any hurry to go back to Lake Lousy, and here was a chance for a trip to New York, all expenses paid, with a hot and willing female tossed in as an extra premium. Not an offer to pass up. That’s the way it had seemed at the time.

  So now Vince drove southeast through the night, and every pair of headlights reflected in the rear-view mirror shouted COP and every pair of headlights that shone through the windshield shouted TROOPER and Vince was beginning to get very very nervous.

  Not Saralee, though. She wasn’t worried at all. In fact, she was snuggling beside him and telling him all about her life in Brighton, and how she had happened to get tied up
with a clunk like Bradley Jenkins.

  “It seemed like such a good idea at the time,” she was saying. “Mom was always after me about security, about how I shouldn’t marry some randy bum who wouldn’t support me. I should find some nice steady guy. And Brad had had the hots for me from the time I was fourteen and just beginning to push out my sweaters. So when I found out I was pregnant, two summers ago, and I wasn’t sure who’d done it—and none of the possibilities would have made very good husbands—it seemed like a hell of a good idea to marry Brad. Security, you know, and a steady income, and a name for the kid.”

  “I didn’t know you had a kid,” Vince said. More complications, he thought. I’m not only stealing a wife from her husband, I’m stealing a mother from her child.

  But Saralee said, “I don’t.” She curled her lip. “That’s what made me so goddam mad,” she said. “I had a miscarriage two months after I got married. So I didn’t even have to marry the old jerk after all.”

  “Oh,” Vince said. Well, that was a relief. Vince felt he was due for some relief.

  Apparently, so did Saralee, for she suddenly said, “You know, we never did finish what we set out to do.”

  “I know,” said Vince. At the moment, he wasn’t thinking about things like that. He was thinking that the more distance he put between himself and Brighton, the better off he was going to be.

  “Boy, you know how to get a girl ready.” She rubbed herself against him, and nibbled on his earlobe a little.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m driving.”

  “Well, stop driving,” she said, reasonably.

  “I don’t know if we ought to take the chance.”

  “Don’t be silly. Brad doesn’t know who you are, or what kind of car you’ve got, or where we’re going or anything.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “You know,” she said, “I got dressed so fast back there I didn’t even have time to put on a bra or panties or anything. See?” She pulled her skirt up.

  He saw. And he saw the light gleaming in her eyes, and he saw her hand reaching out for him, and he knew if he didn’t stop the car pretty soon he’d run it off the road and into a tree. “Hold on,” he said desperately. “Wait’ll I find a side road or something.”