The Jaded Sex

by Fletcher Bennett

  Private, personal fury. That was the sum of it.

  And what, he wondered, could be more attractive than that?

  If there had been a telephone in his apartment, he would have called the number on the card right away. But he didn’t have a phone. Even though the message on the card excited him, he was too fatigued to get dressed and leave his apartment. The call, he decided, would have to wait till morning.

  But he was going to call. There was no question of that in his mind. Nor was there any question of the meaning of that card, or the sort of service it was offering.

  It never occurred to Morton to doubt the card’s promise. The idea that it might be an advertisement for some perfectly legitimate business never crossed his mind.

  Madam Fury couldn’t possibly be a hairdresser, or the manager of a shop, or the name of a product. Madam Fury could only be what her name implied.

  The word Madam wasn’t used very often these days as a gesture of respect to a woman. Usually, it referred to only one kind of woman, and never respectfully.

  Madam meant a Mistress of Whores.

  And when you added to that the word Fury, you got an image of pleasure that was intoxicating in its intensity.

  Day or Night, said the card. Private, Personal, Madam Fury. Morton read the words over and over again until he had finished his drink. When he went to bed, he carried with him the visions of pleasures to come.

  That night, his dreams were red as blood.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE PHONE RANG.

  The woman looked up from the magazine she had been reading. Across the room, the man also looked up. The two of them stared at each other for a few moments while the phone continued to ring.

  “Don’t you think you better get it?” asked the man.

  The woman shook her head. “Five times,” she said. “Let it ring five times. I don’t want to be too easy for. them. That wouldn’t seem right.”

  “All right.” The man shrugged. “Have it your way.”

  The phone rang a second time. Then a third. The woman got up from her chair and left the magazine folded on the seat. She crossed to the phone and put her hand on the receiver as it rang a fourth time.

  She was tall. Her face was long and aristocratic, and she wore her jet-black hair drawn in a-severe bun at the nape of her neck. Her body was just as slim and elegant as her face. The flesh was tightly molded against the gleaming red satin gown she wore. Her breasts were twin hard mounds like upended teacups hugging her chest. Her waist was slender, her hips angular, her belly a concavity. From under the hem of the gown, her slender legs swept down to her feet, solid as the legs of a dancer, symmetrical without being muscular, hard without being unfeminine.

  She was a beautiful woman.

  The phone rang a fifth time. When the last trill of the bell had died, she lifted the receiver.

  “Yes?” She glanced sidelong at the man. He was leaning forward in the chair.

  “Hello,” said the voice on the other end.

  The woman looked at the man and silently mouth the word girl. The man nodded, then settled back in his chair and returned his attention to his newspaper.

  “Is this . . .” began the voice of the girl. “I—I have this card.”

  “To whom did you wish to speak?” asked the woman. She smiled toward the man, saw he was no longer paying attention, and let her smile fall.

  “There’s a name on this card I have,” said the girl. “I mean, this card I found. It was in my pocket. I didn’t know how it got there.”

  The woman thought back over the evening. Card in the pocket—that would be the girl on the subway, the one dressed for the Village who’d looked so much like a butch.

  The woman nodded to herself. “Are you calling for Madam Fury?”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “That’s the name on the card.”

  “This is Madame Fury,” said the woman. “May I help you?”

  A long silence followed on the other side of the line, and the woman grinned. She could remember the girl clearly now—she’d been dozing on the train when the card had been slipped to her—and her features had been twitching and moving in expressions of such naked lust it was a miracle she hadn’t been arrested. The woman recalled spotting the girl immersed in her private dreams, and realizing she was a perfect subject. Now, she could picture vividly the girl sitting in a phone booth somewhere, stammering and sweating, unable to ask for what she wanted, unwilling to give up until she had it.

  The woman wasn’t going to do a thing to help her. She was enjoying it too much.

  “I want—” The girl paused. “I want to talk to you,” she finished lamely.

  “Concerning what?” asked the woman.

  “Your service. It says on the card—well, that’s the trouble. It doesn’t say enough on the card. It doesn’t tell what your service is.”

  “My service,” said the woman, “is really quite simple.”

  The girl’s voice grew eager. “It is?”

  “Yes. My only service is to provide my customers with whatever they want.”

  The girl paused again. “What they want?”

  “Whatever they want,” corrected the woman.

  “I see,” said the girl. “I thought, when I saw your card, that . . .”

  “What do you want?” asked the woman.

  The girl didn’t reply.

  “Whatever you wish can be yours,” the woman said. “You have but to name it.”

  “I don’t know . . .” said the girl slowly. Her voice seemed to be losing its self-confidence and slipping back into the earlier stammering and uncertainty.

  The woman decided the cat-and-mouse game should end, much as she was enjoying it. She didn’t want to lose this girl by tormenting and embarrassing her for too long a time.

  “Whatever delights you crave,” she said, “Madam Fury will provide.”

  “Delights?” repeated the girl stupidly.

  “Name your hungers,” said the woman. “They will be satisfied.” She smiled to herself. The girl had to be a dyke. There was no question of it. The woman hoped she would spill the truth soon, admit her tastes and her desires before the call stretched out too long. The woman was prepared to confront the girl with the truth if she refused to admit it. But she preferred the admission to come from the girl herself.

  “I’m a girl,” said the girl.

  “Yes,” said the woman, shaking her head in irritation. “I understand that.”

  “I’m not a—a regular girl, though.”

  “No?”

  “No. Not the kind of girl you think of when you think of—a girl.”

  The woman shifted her feet and made a face. “By that, I presume you mean your appetites follow rather specialized patterns?”

  “Yes,” said the girl quickly. “That’s it. That’s what I mean.”

  “Would you care to name these tastes of yours? Rest assured, they can be satisfied, whatever they might be.”

  “Girls,” she said.

  “Girls?” repeated the woman.

  “Other girls.” The pause this time was interminable, but die woman held back her words, knowing this was the crucial moment. “I like girls,” said the voice at last .

  The woman smiled. At last the ice had been broken. “I see. You are a traveler in Lesbos, then.”

  The flowery figure of speech seemed to baffle the girl. “You could say that, I guess.”

  “Am I to understand,” asked the woman, “that you wish to contact a female individual of your persuasion?” The ripeness of her words made her grin, and she glanced at the man again, looking for some reaction. He was still reading his paper.

  “I want a lesbian,” said the girl. “Like me.”

  “Yes. That can be arranged.”

  The girl sighed. “I hoped . . . Good. I need that I lost my—the girl I’ve been—”

  The woman broke into the girl’s stammering. “Personal details are unnecessary,” she said. “All the information I require
is your preference as to the nature of your partner.”

  “The nature of—I told you. A lesbian.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the woman. “But of what physical type? Of what age? Do you prefer to be dominated by your partner, or would you rather be master of the situation yourself? Or should I say mistress of the situation?”

  “Oh. I see.” The girl paused again. “I don’t know.”

  “You have no preference as to the type and personality of your partner?”

  “No—not really. The only reason I’m trying to find another—girl—is to get back at . . .”

  “Please,” said the woman. “Details of personal biography have no place in my service.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry.”

  The woman was becoming a trifle bored with the conversation. She moved to end it. “Shall we say, a young girl—youthful and innocent? Would such a partner please you?”

  “If she’ll go to bed with me,” said the girl frankly, “she’ll please me.”

  “Very well then. It’s settled.”

  “But—where? And how much? We haven’t talked about . . .”

  “Staten Island,” said the woman. “Bliss Place and Eugene Street.”

  “Bliss—I don’t know where that is.”

  “Take Richmond Terrace from the Ferry,” said the woman. “Turn right on Hylan Boulevard and follow it to Eugene Street. Turn right again a few blocks.”

  “All right. I guess I can remember that. But what do I look for? What kind of place is it?”

  “It is a house. You will know it when you see it.” The woman smiled.

  “When?” asked the girl.

  “Tomorrow, just before midnight. Be prompt.”

  “Yes. All right. And—-what about the fee?”

  “Fee?” repeated the woman.

  “Yes. You know—how much is it going to cost me?”

  The woman paused deliberately before answering. “There is no fee,” she said, “It will cost you nothing.”

  “Nothing?” The girl sounded amazed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Madam Fury,” said the woman, “accepts no fees.”

  The girl started to say something, but the woman hung up before she could speak. She stood for a moment looking at the phone, then turned and walked back to her chair. The man glanced up from his paper.

  “Lesbian?” he asked.

  “Yes,” replied the woman, picking up the magazine and seating herself. “Young red-head, if I remember correctly. Dressed very Village, very emancipated.”

  “What are you going to give her?”

  “That depends, of course . . .” The woman stroked her jaw thoughtfully with the fingers of one hand. “I offered her an innocent—a young unspoiled one.”

  “Can you get one like that?”

  “I think so. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  She shrugged. “I think you’re crazy,” he said.

  The woman smiled at him thinly. “Do you?”

  “Yes. This is never going to work, and you know it The whole idea is just plain crazy.”

  She looked away from him and off toward the shadows at the corners of the room. Her smile grew broader and more cold as she said again, “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  * * *

  Beyond the window, the dawn came up.

  The first light of it touched Ginny’s sleeping face, warming her cheek and prying in under her eyelids. She sensed it vaguely, and rolled over so that her back was to the light.

  The alarm clock on her night table was set to go off at eleven o’clock, and since she didn’t have to report for work at the diner until six o’clock in the evening, she was determined to get as much out of her sleep as possible.

  For some reason, however, she wasn’t sleeping as well as she would have liked. There was a curious surface quality to her rest, and no matter how long she lay still or what position she assumed, she could never seem to penetrate this upper layer and drop into the deep darkness of true slumber. She felt as if she were suspended halfway between sleeping and waking, in a sort of limbo.

  She dreamed.

  In her dream, there were men. And boys. And bedrooms. And beds with the sheets turned invitingly back.

  She was in a long corridor with rooms on either side, stretching off as far as her eyes could see. The doors were open, and there were males standing in the doorways—some young, some mature, some old.

  All the men were smiling and gesturing at her obscenely. All the men were naked.

  When she looked down at herself, she discovered she was also naked.

  She tried to cover her nakedness with her hands, but it was impossible. When she hid her breasts, her loins remained uncovered. When she shielded her loins, at least one breast remained bared for the leering men to see. And even when she clutched a forearm tightly across her bust, concealing little more than the delicate points of her nipples, and cupped the other hand over the meeting of her thighs, her buttocks were still bare, and her legs, and most of her torso.

  No matter how hard she tried, she could never cover more than a portion of her body at any one time.

  They were staring at her, all the men and the boys, all the aroused males standing in the doorways—they kept their eyes riveted on her naked charms, and they pointed at her and called to her and made filthy remarks about her. Behind them, she could see the interiors of the rooms, and the beds, just big enough to hold two.

  She was terrified. She expected at any moment for the men to leave their doorways, come and grab her and drag her first into one room, where she would be forced to do it with one of the men, and then into the next room, where the next man would do it to her, and on and on, from one side of the corridor to the other, room by room and man by man, until all of them had violated her.

  But they never made a move, and before long she realized that they weren’t going to come after her. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe they were required by some rule or other to remain in their doorways. She didn’t really know.

  But she did know that as long as she stayed in the center of the hall, out of reach of their hands, she was safe. They could stare at her, feast their eyes on her ripe young nudity, make comments and jokes about her, speculate on her talents in bed and on the softness of her flesh. But they couldn’t touch her—not unless she herself were fool enough to come within range of them.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Turning her head, she discovered a blank wall behind her. If she were ever going to get out of this corridor, away from the obscene stares of those men, the only way would be straight ahead. But the corridor seemed to go on forever from where she stood, and the doors and the naked men stretched off to infinity. Did the hall end anywhere? Was there safety and privacy at the end of it, or was there something worse than just staring men waiting for her down there? Or, worst of all in its way, did the corridor simply go on and on, doors and bedrooms and vile aroused males forever and ever?

  She wanted to run, but she was afraid to. Eventually, the coarse words and gestures of the men became too much for her to stand. She became afraid she was going to scream, and she didn’t want that to happen. She had the strange feeling that if she once screamed, once showed these males her terrible fear of them and their lusts, the spell would be broken and they would leave their doorways and capture her.

  She couldn’t scream, but she had to do something. So she ran.

  They cheered as she started to trot down the corridor, and their gestures and remarks became even more filthy. It took her several seconds to realize why this was. The motion of running was doing things to her body, emphasizing the fullness of her flesh, flexing all the curves and hollows of her torso.

  She ran faster. The men began to clap in rhythm. She felt her breasts dancing wildly with her motion, and grabbed them in her hands to hold them still. The men roared with laughter. She felt the flesh of her bottom quivering, the flesh of her thighs twitching with exertion. She released her breas
ts and reached around to cup her buttocks. This left her bust free again, and the half-spheres began to bound and sway once more. The men yelled and pointed.

  She ran and ran, switching her hands from one portion of her body to the other, trying to conceal herself. But the running revealed her. No matter what she did, she couldn’t prevent the men from seeing what they wanted to see. She could only run.

  And run.

  Her lungs felt about to burst, The muscles in her legs were drawn tight as an archer’s string. A hot thread of pain bit into her just beneath her waist. Her eyes blurred, her hair hung plastered wetly to her forehead.

  But she continued to run. If running was the only way she could prevent the men from getting her—if stopping meant yielding to their rotten lusts, giving herself to be used and abused—then she would run forever, run until she died.

  They weren’t going to get her. She was determined of that.

  After miles and years of running, she saw the end of the corridor. It was still a great distance off, and for a few terrible minutes, she was afraid it was another blank wall, like the one behind her when she had started. But as she drew closer, she saw that the wall contained a door.

  The door was closed. The doorways on either side of the corridor were open, with nude gesturing men standing in them, but the door ahead had no man near it, nor any sign of a man.

  There was something printed on that door, but she couldn’t quite make it out. Her vision was swimming from her exertion, and it was all she could do to keep on her feet, continue her dash for that door, holding her aching breasts in cupped hands, releasing them to grab her buttocks or cover her loins, trying to conceal herself from the men, from the awful rotten men.

  Then, all at once, she was at the door. She fell against it heavily, her breasts squashing up against the paneling, her smooth belly flattening on the wood. She remained that way for a moment, her body hugging up to the door. As long as she was pressed against the door this way, the front of her body was concealed, and the men could see only her back and buttocks and legs. She didn’t mind that so much.