He finished the steak before she was half-finished with her liver and bacon. He wolfed it down, gobbled his baked potato, emptied the glass of milk.
Then he asked her for a cigarette. She told him she didn’t smoke and gave him thirty cents for the cigarette machine. He bought a pack and lit one, tucking the pack into his pocket.
She pushed her plate away. “Let’s go,” she said.
“You left half your food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The hell you’re not, he thought. You’re hungry, but not for liver and bacon. You’re hungry for me.
“You sure?”
She nodded.
“Hell,” he said, “I’m hungry.” He took her plate and finished her food in a few seconds, stuffing it into his mouth. It wasn’t as good as the steak, but it was decent food. And when you were used to eating when you could, you didn’t let anything go to waste. It was all energy. The more you ate, the longer it would be until you got hungry again.
She paid the check, leaving a dollar and a half for the waiter. When she had turned the other way he scooped up the bill and slipped it deftly into his pocket. Fifty cents, he thought, was plenty for the waiter. The other dollar was a dividend for Johnny Wells.
There was no dividend in the cab. She paid and tipped the driver herself when he let them off in front of her building, a brownstone a few doors from Central Park West. It was a brownstone like the one he lived in, but there the similarity ended. It wasn’t the Ritz but it was fine. The building was very clean and in good repair. The hallway didn’t smell of six different kinds of cooking. The stairs and hallways were carpeted.
Her apartment was one flight up on the second floor. A small brass nameplate on the door said Mr. and Mrs. David Nugent. He wondered idly where old Dave was. He hoped he was out for the evening. It would be a pain in the rear if he walked in at the wrong time.
That had happened once. Fortunately the irate hubby in that instance was a little punk with water on the brain. He had lunged at Johnny, furious, and Johnny had stopped what he was doing, bopped the guy calmly on the button and knocked him cold. Then the goddamned broad had hauled him back down on top of her and they had taken up where they’d left off.
Mrs. David Nugent now opened the door with her key. They entered the apartment and she closed and bolted the door. The apartment was a nice one. The floor was carpeted from wall to wall and the furniture matched.
“Nice pad,” he said.
“I’m glad you approve.”
Her tone was icy and he knew that she hated him almost as much as she wanted him, maybe even more. He had to reverse the balance. He had to melt the ice, or all he was going to get for his trouble was the dinner. If they kept talking she was going to get control of herself and tell him to get out. He didn’t want that to happen.
He could have made his play in the cab, but it might have been clumsy. Now, however, he was on sure ground.
He reached for her.
She started to back away but she was too slow. He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her close. When she tried to turn her head away he grabbed her brown hair with one hand while he held onto her with the other. He brought his mouth down on hers and ground a kiss against her lips.
At least the boobs are all hers, he thought. That was one thing. You could always tell padding as soon as you got up against it. Whatever this one had, this Mrs. David Nugent, it was all her own.
He held the kiss a long time. At first she fought him without much success. Then she relaxed and accepted the kiss but did not return it. It was like kissing a pillow.
Then she began to change. Very suddenly she sighed and he knew the battle was all over. She began to breathe more rapidly. Her mouth opened and his tongue entered it. Now she was returning his kiss. Instead of fighting him or trying to pull away she was pressing up against him, rubbing her body against his. She was no cold fish now. She was ready to go.
And he didn’t have to pretend his own passion. It was good when they put up a battle, when you had to work on them and use a little bit of force. They were fun then. Now, for the first time, he really wanted her. It was a hell of a lot better when you really wanted a woman. Just going through the motions was an awful drag, but enjoying it was the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.
He let go of her in the middle of the kiss and stepped away from her. He saw the look in her eyes, the way her mouth was open, the way she was breathing.
He smiled.
“Damn you,” she said. Her voice was very bitter. “God damn you to hell.”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
She turned away. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him again. He was purposely a little rougher than he had to be with her.
“Well?” he demanded. “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I wanted.”
“I do.”
“What?”
“Bed,” he said. “You want bed.”
She clenched her teeth, closed her eyes for a moment, then forced herself to relax. “You know everything,” she said. “You just know everything in the world. Damn you.”
He pulled her close to him again and took her breast in his hand. He squeezed gently, then relaxed, then squeezed again.
“Go ahead,” he said to her. “Tell me you don’t want it.”
She shuddered and said nothing.
“Now get your clothes off,” he said. “Strip. In a hurry. Then we go to bed.”
He stood with his hands on his hips while she wavered for a moment or two. He remained in that position and she began to remove her clothing. Her hands went behind her back to undo the zipper of her dress and the movement outlined her breasts against the fabric of the dress. She struggled with the zipper for a few seconds, then mastered it. The dress fell to her waist. She slipped out of it, then carried it to a wing chair and folded it neatly over the arm of the chair.
Then she came back and stood in front of him again. Now she was wearing a full slip, bra, stockings and shoes and panties. The slip was the first to go. It was a frilly white affair and he wanted to rip it from her body and tear it into a hundred pieces of soft fluff. But he restrained himself while she pulled the slip over her head and carried it to the wing chair.
She came back and took off her bra. She started to carry it to the chair.
“Hold it,” he said. “I want to look at ’em.”
She stopped, blushing, and he studied her breasts. They were much better than he expected. They were not large but they were perfectly formed, ivory mounds with saucy red tips. They looked to him like scoops of ice cream with maraschino cherries on top. There was no sag at all to them.
“Okay,” he said. “Keep going.”
She was moving like an automaton now. Numbly she took the bra to the chair, placed it over the arm, and returned. She unhooked her garter belt and rolled the stockings down over her long legs. The legs were not bad — a little on the thin side, maybe, but well shaped. And when a broad was on the wrong side of thirty, it was better for her to be too skinny than too fat. The fat ones got all flabby. Once their muscle tone was gone they weren’t worth a damn.
She put the garter belt and stockings on the chair, then took off the panties. She was naked and he wanted her badly. He couldn’t wait.
Without wasting any time he took off his own clothes. He burlesqued her ritual of placing each garment on the wing chair by ripping his clothes off and tossing them to the floor. He wanted to get the disrobing process over with as quickly as possible. She looked away while he got undressed.
“Look at me.”
She turned and looked at him.