“When I saw you Friday,” Maggie was saying, “Your breasts. I wanted you to touch me and I wanted to touch you.”
“Why, Maggie?”
“I don’t know why. Hold me close, Elly. Kiss me.”
A kiss that made her head swim. Maggie’s hands, active, clever, one hand toying tenderly with her breasts, the other stroking her legs.
“Maggie—”
“What, Ell? What, my darling?”
“Is it wrong, Maggie?”
A pause.
Then: “Do you like this, Ell?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And this? Do you like what I’m doing to you now, my darling? Do you like the way it makes you feel?”
“Yes!”
“And this?”
“Oh, yes! Yes, God, yes, yes, yes!”
“Then it can’t be wrong, Ell. It can’t be wrong.”
The door opened. Linc Barclay came through the door, his shirt unbuttoned, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles. He came through the door in a hurry, and he reached Roz just as she rose to meet him, and his arms encircled her and drew her so close to him that she gasped. He kissed her, his mouth sure and demanding, and she returned his kiss with all the passion she felt for him.
His hands roamed her body. She quivered with delight, and she went limp with lust, and his hands were clever.
He said: “Good girl. Nothing under your dress, is there?”
“Just me, Linc.”
“That’s all I’m interested in. Bed, Roz.”
No words. They raced up the stairs, and they tore off their clothes, and they were together. And the slump was over, the slump was most assuredly over, the slump was magnificently banished. He took her, needing her, wanting her, possessing her, and the world was aflame with beauty.
This made everything, all of it, worthwhile. It was the whole world, and Roz felt herself submerged in boiling waters, tossed here and there, exploding in passion that was unlike anything that had ever happened. She was with her man, the only man she had ever loved, the only man she could ever possibly love. She was with her man, and this was the way it ought to be, this was the way it had to be, this was in fact the only way it could ever be.
This justified everything. This made the world worthwhile, and it made the hard times worthwhile, and it made the dry periods and the slump bearable. This was everything, the total experience of humanity, and it was nothing short of perfect.
It lasted almost forever.
Then the end came. The end, with the world going up in bloody smoke, with bodies rising and falling, tempos increasing, everything emphatically right for once and for all. The end, and an end so perfect it was also a beginning, an end which was a promise.
They stayed in bed for a few minutes. They shared a single cigarette in the darkness, and they said no words because no words were necessary. They had no need for words; words were a commodity of Linc’s, a marketplace item which he sold at so much a throw. Words were unnecessary between lovers, between man and wife. They were unimportant.
And then he got up, finally, and dressed. He was going back to work; she knew this without having to ask. She waited while he left the house and returned to the studio. Then she went downstairs to get a fresh pot of coffee ready. He would be working all night, and he would need plenty of black coffee to keep him going.
When she paused at the door of the study she heard the typewriter going a mile a minute.
The Hasbrouck House was not far from Central Park, not far from where their driver let them out. Maggie paid him ten dollars, led Elly along the few blocks to the hotel. It was a primarily residential hotel, its prices moderate, its service quietly elegant, its rooms pleasant. Maggie had been there before, with a lesbian lover. The hotel, while not by any means specifically catering to the gay trade, cast a tolerant eye on homosexual love affairs. As such it was an obvious choice of a place to spend the evening.
Because, Maggie knew, the seduction of Elly Carr was no long-range proposition, not now. It was something to be accomplished as quickly as possible, something to be attended to that very night. Elly was drunk enough so that her inhibitions did not stand in her way, and she was hot enough so that she would love what Maggie was going to do to her. And she was beautiful and desirable and sweet, so much so that Maggie had to have her or drop dead of desire.
A bellhop showed them to their room. Maggie locked the door, and she turned to Elly, and the little brunette came into her arms at once, nuzzling her sweet face against Maggie’s big breasts.
“Let’s get out of our clothes, my darling.”
“Yes, Maggie. Oh, yes.”
“I want to see your bare breasts again. I want to touch them this time, Ell. I want to kiss them.”
“Oh, God.”
She unzipped Elly’s dress and helped her out of it. She unclasped Elly’s bra, then took off her own clothing. She watched Elly peel down her underpants and caught her breath at the sight of Elly’s beautiful naked body. The girl, stark naked, was even more lovely than Maggie had dared to imagine.
“Kiss me, Maggie.”
Maggie did not need an invitation. She took the girl close, held Elly in her arms and when their bare breasts came together both girls moaned as if they had touched a live wire. Maggie’s nipples were firm little jewels now that drilled fiery holes in Elly’s breasts. They stood up, and they drank each other in deep kisses, and then they were on the bed and in each other’s arms.
“Lie still,” Maggie whispered. “I’m going to make you feel like an angel, Elly. Ell, Ell, Ell — I’m going to make you see the other side of the moon. Hold onto your hat, darling!”
Her mouth touched Elly’s mouth. Her tongue sank in, kissing with passion. Then her lips brushed Elly’s closed eyes, nuzzled her throat. Elly was in the grip of passion. Maggie could take her time, could do everything as she wanted it to be done. There was no question of seduction. The seduction such as it was had been accomplished.
She kissed Elly’s breasts.
Maggie was a woman, and she knew what a woman’s body was, knew how to excite it, knew how to make it respond. She kissed Elly’s breasts with her lips and tongue, let her hot tongue glide over skin that was silk-soft, sucked the sweet nipples until they throbbed with passion.
Elly was moaning now.
She stroked and kissed Elly’s legs. Elly had lovely legs, lovely thighs, and she kissed them.
And then the finale. Then the moon and the stars, and life and death, and the overall end of the world.
They slept, body against body, breasts close to breasts. They slept in love.
18
Tuesday morning was traumatic. Now you might argue that morning is by definition a traumatic state for most people, and you might well be correct arguing thus. But for Elly Carr, who opened her eyes in her room at the Hasbrouck House a few minutes after seven, Tuesday morning was infinitely more traumatic than usual.
There was the hangover. That was fine for a starter. It was a hangover with bells on. Literally. Elly could hear the bells booming inside her skull, and with no effort at all she could imagine the hunchback Quasimodo doubled up somewhere in her cranial cavity, pulling a rope and giggling in hunched hysterics.
A hangover is no picnic. A hangover like Elly’s, which is as much like an ordinary morning-after headache as a nuclear explosion is like a firecracker, is even less of a festive occasion. But in this particular instance, the hangover was nothing at all. Elly barely noticed it.
Maggie eclipsed the hangover. Maggie was lying flat on her back, eyes closed, breasts pointing ceilingward, red hair sprawled out over a white pillowcase. There was Maggie, and there was Elly, and the room reeked with the pungent odors of stale sex.