He knew his business. I could feel the tension easing out of my muscles, one by one, as he manipulated them. My skin began to glow with some sort of fragrant oil he was kneading into it. I dozed off after a few moments.
I woke when he turned me over on my back; but his soothing hands soon had me snoozing again. When I woke the second time, it was to find him sprinkling talcum powder over my groin. He dusted it in with some sort of feathery thingamajig, repeating this process four or five times until my crotch was as soothed as that of a freshly diapered baby. The talcum powder made the area feel relaxed and cool, smoothed and clean.
I went back to my stateroom, put on some fresh clothes, and then went down to the cocktail lounge for a drink. Dr. Quotabusta was standing at the bar. He beckoned to me to join him.
“What’s up, Doc?” Not having had my Scotch yet, I wasn’t up to being original by way of greeting.
“Six new cases yesterday,” he told me glumly.
“What about today?” I ordered a drink from the bartender.
“Nothing. But people are too busy being seasick to notice, probably. I’ve spent all morning and half the afternoon consoling passengers with the dry heaves.”
“Maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s really stopped spreading.”
“Maybe.” Dr. Quotabusta looked at me, his black face glum. “But if that’s true, then why, Mr. Victor, are you scratching your groin?”
I hadn’t realized I was until he mentioned it. “It’s nothing. My jockey shorts are a little too tight. That’s all. Gee, Doc, you’re getting paranoid about this thing.” I made myself stop scratching.
“Paranoid!” He snorted. “Like Dr. Ehrlich7 !”
“You really think it’s venereal disease?”
“What else could it be?”
He had me there. If it was spreading the way he said it was, then this groin-scratching disease certainly would seem to be caused by some bug or other. I finished my drink, had a refill, and then left Dr. Quotabusta to his gloom. I went back to my cabin and caught a nap before dinner.
I woke up scratching!
It was the damnedest thing! It didn’t burn, or anything like that. It wasn’t painful. It was just a steady itching, not really too unpleasant, but summoning my hands crotchwards to provide a steady scratching.
Many of those passengers who’d overcome their seasickness enough to stagger in to dinner were suflering from the same malady. Throughout the meal, hands were as busy under the table as they were atop it. The scene was like a flea circus in a kennel.
After dinner there was a movie. With the weather still on the nasty side, I didn’t have anything better to do than watch it. When it was over, I took a turn around the deck. I scratched as I strolled.
The porthole was open and the light was on inside Cabin B-47 as I approached it. I was neither in the mood for geriatric sex, nor for senile rejection from Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot, so I almost turned around and went back the way I’d come. What stopped me was the sight of the Breast framed in the porthole.
Damn! Miss Amanda must have had one helluva talented plastic surgeon! The Breast was as impressively round and firm as when I’d first glimpsed it upon my arrival aboard the Lascivia.
“Hello there.” The Breast had seen me.
“You’re talking to me again?”
“Why not?”
“Search me. But you slammed the porthole cover in my face the last time, so I thought you were mad.”
“Did I do that?” The tone was teasing.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Poor boy. Don’t feel rejected.”
“Well, in that case—” I marched boldly up to the porthole.
“No-no! I don’t have time. I have to dress.”
“It’s bedtime. Time to undress.”
“You’d better go away now.”
“Make up your mind! I’m not a yo-yo, you know! Age doesn’t give you the right to jerk me around!”
“ ‘Age’?”
“No disrespect. But just because you’re on in years doesn’t mean you can turn me on and oft whenever you feel like it.”
“On in years?”
“Over the hill!” I exploded.
“‘Over the hill’!” The Breast was indignant. “I’m at least ten years younger than you are! Stick your head in here and I’ll prove it!”
I stuck my head through the porthole. “You’re not Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot!” I exclaimed.
“Of course not!”
“But this is her cabin.” I was confused.
“That’s right.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’m her maid, Magda.”
I stared. She stood brazenly nude and stared back. Skipping over the Breast, its mate, and the Derriere, Magda was as well put together a lady’s maid to be found this side of Fanny Hill8 . Medium height, narrow waist, ball-bearing hips, strong, graceful legs, and a face like a mischievous Circe promising hot ecstasies with her deep, dark, liquid eyes, and threatening retribution with the almost cruel curl of her pursed lips. The visage was framed by a cloud of blue-black hair, long and tumbling in a wild disarray that would have hinted to me of her lack of inhibitions—if I hadn’t already had sufficient reason to be well aware of them.
“Why don’t I come inside and--” I started to suggest.
“You can’t come in! Miss Amanda’s in the next room.”
“I didn’t know there was a next room.”
“It’s a suite. There are four rooms, not counting the bathroom.”
“Which you share with her,” I remembered.
“Then it was you again that first night before sailing. I heard the commotion when I was in the bathroom, but I wasn’t sure.”
“It was me,” I admitted. “And is Miss Amanda the reason you wouldn’t let me in the cabin that first night in New York?”
“In a way. You see, I’d come on ahead to arrange her things. I wasn’t sure if she was going to arrive late that night, or the next morning.” Magda giggled. “Besides, it was more fun that way. I was sort of proving something to myself.”
“Like what?”
“Like that when a man is aroused, he’s completely out of control. As long as he can get satisfaction, he’ll stick it any place. And he doesn’t even have to know, doesn’t really care, what’s attached to where he shoves it.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the point?”
“Power,” she told me sweetly. “In the world today men have the power. But if women can control the men with the power, well, then—-” She left it hanging, but her soft lips were curling more ominously than ever.
“Magda.” A voice came from another part of the suite.
Magda quickly slipped on the uniform dress of a maid. “Coming, Miss Amanda,” she called back. “I have to go now,” she hissed to me. “Look in on me again if you happen to be passing.” She closed the shutter of the porthole in my face.
I resumed scratching and continued up the deck. Turning the corner, I was attracted by soft giggles from the shadows beside one of the bulkheads. Peering through the darkness, I made out Blaze Buxhocks and Mister Jewish. The way they were wrapped around each other, there was no point in disturbing them. I sighed to myself and kept going.
My scratchy wanderings took me past Captain Maldemerde’s cabin. His porthole was also open. The cabin was dark, but standing at the rail, I could hear voices coming from inside. They belonged to Maldemerde and Zelda Poppins.
“It must be an awfully big responsibility,” Zelda was saying, “a boat like this.”
“Ship.” The Captain corrected her. Click-click.
“Ship. . . . I was terrified during that hurricane. Weren’t you scared even a teensy bit?”
“Tornado!” He corrected her again. Click-click. “In a crisis, the master of the vessel doesn’t have time to be scared. He has to keep his head. Everything depends on him.” Somehow Maldemerde managed to get modesty into his voice “Could you help me with this?”