It got better, and it got even better, and it got better yet. And still better. And then it ended.
I felt like Samson, but with a haircut. I sprawled on top of her like a sack of mashed potatoes, the sweat gushing out of me in a steady stream, my heart beating a mile and a half a minute and my eyelids weighted down with sacks of cement.
I tried to roll away from her.
But she wouldn’t let me.
“More,” she said. “Don’t stop, Ted. You can’t stop now.”
“That’s what you think.”
“More!”
She was asking the impossible. If there was one thing in the world which I did not feel like doing it was what we had just finished doing. I was exhausted. Hell, I wasn’t as young as I used to be. I couldn’t take much more.
Besides, I was out of practice. I mean, what the hell. Enough is enough.
But evidently enough was not enough. Not for her, anyhow. Her hands got busy and her mouth got busy and her whole body started performing indescribable tricks, and pretty soon we were having another go at it, as the English might put it. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help myself.
And away we went.
I was beginning to see what Carl meant when he warned me against her. Good old Carl. He knew more than drinking and cooking. He knew women, God bless him. He knew which ones to stay away from.
I should have listened to him.
For a while I strongly suspected that my death was just a few minutes ahead of me. My heart was pounding, my head was reeling and the spots in front of my eyes had spots in front of them.
And then it too was over.
This time I couldn’t move at all. I just lay there in a pool of our sweat — it was impossible at this point to tell whose sweat was whose — and when I tried to raise my arm I couldn’t. My arm knew better. It stayed right where it was.
But Rosie wasn’t finished yet.
“More,” she begged. It was ridiculous, but she actually expected me to make love to her a third time without a break. It was out of the question and I didn’t even have the strength to explain to her what a silly notion it was.
I guess explanations wouldn’t have done any good anyway. She was determined.
If I had had the strength I think I would have laughed. The whole idea now was so funny it deserved a good laugh. But I didn’t have the strength. I just stayed right where I was.
And then she did something I had heard of and read about but had never before experienced. It was the absolute ultimate in sensation and it was totally unlike anything, any time, anywhere.
It worked.
The third time was bad. That doesn’t do it justice. Actually, it was horrible.
I didn’t have my heart in it but this didn’t seem to bother Rosie in the least. I did have another portion of my anatomy in it and that was all she cared about. I went through my paces with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy for intermediate algebra and the interest of a fifty-year-old whore at the end of a busy day.
When it was over all I could think of was getting out of that room before she killed me. I was drained, utterly and totally and thoroughly and completely drained, used up and empty and exhausted. I didn’t even want to think about women. I just wanted to stay away from them.
I got up and started finding my clothes. Then I turned around, and there was Rosie.
She had that look in her eye.
That hungry look.
And, at this stage of the game, she was one hell of a lot stronger than I was.
I still don’t like to think about what might have happened if I hadn’t been lucky. I might have remained at Rosie Ryan’s posh little pad for the rest of my life, however long that may have been. I have visions of an extra room in her apartment, a room filled to overflowing with the skeletons of other men who couldn’t get away in time.
But I did get lucky. I called upon what very little strength remained and swung, and I caught her with a lucky punch from somewhere north of third base. She had a glass jaw or something — whatever it was she went down like a ton of wet bricks and made a tired little heap in the middle of the bedroom rug.
I covered her with a blanket and left her there.
Getting out of the building was a hard job. It was a good thing they had an elevator or I never would have made it. As it was I had a hell of a time, but eventually there I was, facing the early morning on West 69th Street with drawn eyes and a haggard look on my face.
A cab passed, or started to until I hailed it. Taking a taxi a scant four blocks may strike you as startlingly stupid, but then you never went three rounds with Rosie Ryan.
It was the best investment I ever made.
The meter read forty cents when we landed in front of my humble home. I gave the driver a buck and told him to keep the change, which surprised him no end, let me tell you. Then I crawled up three flights of stairs to my own little room.
For a few long seconds I just stood there and stared lovingly at my bed. What the hell, it was just a bed. Not much of one, frankly. Just a single bed, no headboard, no footboard, just a rickety spring and sagging mattress.
It looked like Paradise.
So what if it was a broken-down wreck of a bed. So what if it only got made once a week when Mrs. Murdock saw fit to change the sheets.
It was mine. All mine. Mine alone.
And on that happy note I crawled out of my clothing, fell headlong on the bed and slept like sleeping beauty for ten delicious hours.
I woke up to dark skies and a headache. Rain passed my window without a comment and made splashing noises on the street below. I slithered out of bed, wrapped up in a towel and trundled off to shave and shower.
The shower was in one of its bad moods. There was no middle ground — I had to take it either hell-hot or dry-ice-cold. There should have been a special faucet marked lukewarm, but there wasn’t. It was a shame.
I took it hell-hot first and let my life drain out of my open pores. Then I flipped the whatchamacallit and had myself an ice bath that tightened the pores up like a paranoid virgin. The combination of the two restored my soul in some incomprehensible fashion and by the time I was dried and dressed and back in my room I felt almost human again. The effects of Rosie had by no means worn off — I was beginning to wonder if a total recovery was possible within the limits of a single lifetime — but I did feel a hell of a lot better. There was no denying that much.
I sat on the bed and looked at the wall like the catatonic Dr. Strom had warned me I was likely to turn into if I didn’t watch myself. I didn’t feel catatonic, just contemplative. It seemed like a natural time to contemplate. I certainly didn’t have any sexual desires to sidetrack me. I didn’t have any sexual desires at all, not after the morning’s roll in the hay. Roll, hell. It was more like a double cartwheel in the hay. With bells on.
Contemplation.
Too many years back to think about I had read or heard or doped out the way to get your mind working in regular channels. You had to figure out and enumerate, first of all, all your immediate and future goals. Then, once they were all down on paper, you figured out steps to achieve them. You wrote those down as well, and then you went to work.
Simple, but important. More useful than it sounds, also more difficult to do. But I was determined. Life was a little too stagnant just then and Ted Lindsay was getting to the stage where he was bored with himself.
So I found a pencil and a hunk of paper and wrote at the top: Eventually I want—
Well, what did I want? Money in the bank, of course. Every red-blooded American boy wants money in the bank. If you don’t want money in the bank there’s something wrong with you. I read that somewhere, I think. It was in a booklet put out by a bank.