Why? The girl was cooperative enough. Their little game of the bad little girl being punished by her angry mother had gone along nicely for some time now, and each time the punishments themselves had been more extreme and consequently more exciting to Stella. At one time or other she had struck every surface of Maria’s shapely body with harsh blows until the little girl was black and blue all over. She had devised many different exotic methods for causing Maria to sob and quiver with pain, each method more stimulating to both of them than the last.
Maria never called her by name any more. She referred to her always as Mummy and demanded punishment constantly. Idly Stella wondered what event deep in Maria’s childhood had brought on this unnatural craving for punishment and pain. What had the girl done?
It didn’t matter. What mattered right now, Stella decided, was finding some way to calm herself down. Whatever the reason, Maria had been unable to still her hunger and she felt a desperate need for something more, something that would enable her to relax. Mentally she went over the men and women that she could call up for an evening’s diversion.
There were none she could think of that interested her in the least.
Where was Ralph? She had been seeing less and less of him lately, but what was even more aggravating was the fact that he seemed to be slipping away from her. She needed Ralph. She needed someone permanent, someone she could hold onto.
Was there something between him and the little dyke who was posing for him? It didn’t seem likely. If any girl had impressed her as an obvious lesbian, Susan Rivers had. But Ralph was obviously interested in the girl — and he was spending plenty of time with her.
Christ, maybe she had hit the nail on the head that time when the two of them had breakfast together! Suppose Ralph had fallen for the girl. It was just the sort of bonehead maneuver the guy was capable of, and with her posing for him every day it was more than possible.
If that was the case—
She smiled, her lips curling into a vicious grin. If that was the case her own course of action was clear. She could utterly crush Ralph and enjoy herself at the same time. It would all be quite perfect.
She left the apartment and closed the door behind her. Then, very deliberately she climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. She found Susan Rivers’ door and knocked gently on it.
She waited impatiently, shifting her weight from foot to foot until the door opened.
Susan was standing there. She was dressed in a blue kimono. Her feet were bare.
Stella let her eyes run impudently from Susan’s face all the way to her bare feet and back again. Then a smile appeared on her face.
“My name is Stella James,” she said slowly. “Could I come inside for a minute?”
Ralph’s fingers closed around the shot glass. He tried to remember how many drinks he had had so far but couldn’t. Then he tried to remember how many drinks he had poured down his throat since he stopped bothering with beer chasers.
He couldn’t remember that either.
He stared into the liquor. A face swam on top of the liquor. The face had short dark brown hair and no make-up. The face was not smiling. The face was also very beautiful.
The face looked familiar. It was, of course, the face of Susan Rivers. And a very lovely face it was.
He drained the glass and set it down gently on the top of the bar. The face was gone.
The liquor hadn’t burned his throat on the way down. That was one of the good things about a drinking bout — after a few drinks the bilge didn’t taste vile anymore. As a matter of fact it didn’t have any taste whatsoever. It just worked its way down his throat and into his stomach, and the alcohol seeped into his stomach and nothing seemed to matter as much as it did when he was sober.
There was, he reflected, very little point in being sober. When you were sober you could see things quite clearly, much too clearly for your own good. And there was very little point in seeing things clearly. No point, actually. No point at all, not when your name was Ralph Lambert and you lived with a bitch named Stella and loved a lesbian named Susan Rivers. No point at all.
The bartender, whose name happened to be Charlie, came over and looked at Ralph with a puzzled expression on his flat face.
“Ya wanna nudder?” Charlie demanded.
“Ah,” Ralph said. “Hello, Charlie.”
“Hello.”
“You don’t mind if I call you Charlie, do you?”
“It’s my name.”
“Some people might mind.”
“Live a little,” Charlie suggested. “Call me anything you damn please.”
“In that case I’ll have another.”
“Another double?”
Ralph nodded drunkenly.
“You drink like a goddamn fish,” Charlie said.
“That’s nothing. I swim like an alcoholic.”
“Huh?”
“I drink like a fish and swim like a drunk.”
“Oh,” said Charlie. “I get it. Better it should be the other way around.”
Ralph nodded.
“You do this often? Not that it’s any of my business. I just wondered.”
“Only when I fall in love with a lesbian.”
“Huh?”
“A lesbian,” Ralph explained, waving one hand at no one in particular. “I fell in love with a lesbian.”
“That’s a female fairy?”
“Precisely.”
“Jeez,” Charlie said. “And you’re really in love with the broad?”
“Precisely.”
“Ain’t it a bitch. What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to have another drink.”
“That sounds like a wise move,” Charlie said. “I mean what the hell else can you do?”
“Precisely.”
“Jeez,” Charlie repeated. “A lesbian.”
Ralph nodded.
“She good-looking?”
“She’s the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You getting anything?”
“Not a thing.”
Charlie poured a double shot of the bar whiskey and pushed it across to Ralph. “Live a little,” he said. “This one’s on the house. This don’t happen every day.”
Ralph gulped the drink. “I should hope not,” he said. “It would kill me.”
Susan sat alone in her room. Stella had just left, a haunting smile on her lips and a provocative swing to her hips as she walked out of the room.
Susan was afraid again.
She stood up and began pacing the floor, up and down, back and forth. Her breath came in quick, short gasps. She walked from the living room to the bathroom to the kitchen, looking vaguely for something but unsure what it was that she was looking for.
Fear.
It seemed as though she was going to live her entire life immersed in a sea of fear. There was no getting away from it. There was nothing she could do, no way out that was open to her.
She had been afraid of Stella from the first time they met on the stoop. That was bad enough, but with the passage of time her fear had begun to fade away. Even Ralph’s descriptions of Stella, his explanation of the type of woman she was — even this had not truly shaken her.
But one conversation with Stella James had her shaking. She could hardly think straight anymore.
The funny thing was that Stella hadn’t actually done anything. She simply came in and sat down and started an extremely innocent conversation about how she had seen Susan from time to time and how she wanted to meet her. That was all.
It was what went unsaid that set the girl on edge. Stella made it obvious that she was ready and willing to play, that she was more than game for a hot little dose of lesbian love. She didn’t have to say anything to get her point across. It was obvious in every act, every word, every gesture and every glance.