“That made me tired,” Jane said.
Ruth kissed her and wiped her mouth clean on the other girl's tits; and they got up from the bed and smoothed the wrinkles out of it.
“Shall I go downstairs now?” Jane asked.
Ruth told her to stay. When we went to bed the girls fell asleep very soon. But I lay awake between them for a long while.
Chapter VII
Ruth's voice. The bed moving away under me, and then throwing me up again. I pulled a pillow over my head, but it was no use. I sat up. It was light outside, but the sun had not yet come up.
“Why the hell don't you come to bed?” I said. “It's almost morning.”
Jane was lying across the bed, partly on my ankles, and Ruth was bending over her.
“We're getting up,” Ruth said. “Jane doesn't think it would be nice for her to come down from our bedroom in pajamas, so we decided that we would both get up before he does.”
Then I remembered Jackson. Jane reached over and patted my prick. I had a hard on, as usual. A hard hard on.
“Don't pay it the slightest attention,” Ruth said. “He always has a hard on in the morning. Those hard ons don't really count. They don't mean anything.”
I watched her doing something to Jane's cunt. She was lifting her legs. “Oh, not there!”
“Yes, your asshole too,” Ruth said.
I saw that she had a lipstick. Jane's nipples and navel were crimson.
“Write 'MINE' on my belly, too.”
Ruth did, and then Jane took the lipstick and Ruth lay across the bed.
“It's harder to do it to yours,” said Jane. “You've got the most hair.”
“Don't forget my asshole,” Ruth said. “Do a good job on that.”
Jane giggled. I looked at her.
“I don't see how that can look accidental. I'd like to see you work that,” she said.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Jane and I are going to see who can get an improper proposition out of my father first,” Ruth said. “Youth versus experience; and I'm spotting her a part of my experience.”
“You both look enchanting,” I said. “Are you going downstairs like that?”
“Nothing so crude. This is going to be done cleverly. I might even say adroitly.”
“So I understand. You're going to show him your asshole, but in a very lady-like manner.”
“Something like that.”
“I don't think I'll stay around today. I'm going to take my lunch and go for a walk.”
Jane put on her pajamas and then she looked out the door and tip-toed out.
“Are you going to do that?” I asked Ruth.
“I don't know. I guess I am. Does it matter very much?”
“I suppose it doesn't.”
I put my head under the pillow and tried to go back to sleep, and in a few minutes Ruth came and kissed me and then went out. It was very still in the room when she had gone, and I tried very hard to go back to sleep, but I couldn't, and after I had lain there for a half hour longer I got up.
I met Jackson on the stairs as I was going down. He backed down again.
“A man outside wants to know if you want some eggs.”
“Aren't the girls around?” I said. “I haven't seen them. I just got up myself.”
“Well, I guess we want some eggs.” Afterward we found the dishes that were left from the girls' breakfast, and we started to make breakfast for ourselves.
“Let me make it,” Jackson said. “I've lived alone more than you have. I'm used to this.”
I wasn't so sure about that. We got the meal together and it all came out and was ready at the same time, which was pretty good, it seemed to me. The morning mail hadn't come, so we didn't have any paper to read.
“I was thinking of taking a little trip today,” Jackson told me. “Matter of business. Not anything that the girls would be interested in, but I thought you might want to come along with me.
I was surprised at the invitation. But I was interested in anything that had to do with Jackson's business.
“We ought to get started right away,” he said. “That is, if you're coming.”
“I'll tail along,” I said.
After we had finished our breakfast the girls still had not come back from wherever they were, so I left a note saying that we would be gone all day and Jackson rolled the Buick out of the barn and we left.
He hadn't said where we were going, and I hadn't asked. I took one of his cigars as a form of protection against the one he was smoking, and we purred along with the needle somewhere near ninety most of the time. Jackson made what talk there was, not much about himself, and I answered yes and no, and we drove like that for about two hours.
Where we were going turned out to be a resort town, a kind of miniature Saratoga, but without the spas and without the track. One of those places that, without any very definite attraction, doubles its population in the summer months. As soon as we got there Jackson forgot that he was in a hurry and we drove around and looked at a battle monument and parked for a while by the golf course and watched the play before we drove into the center of the town.
Jackson put the car in a parking lot and we walked down along the street. Then Jackson stepped into a pool room for a couple of minutes while I stayed outside wondering what this was all about, and when he came out we walked down the street some more until we came to this cigar store.
“I guess this is it,” Jackson said. We went inside and I followed him past the counter and through a small door into a back room. The clerk looked up, but he didn't say a word. Then I saw what it was back there.
“They're all the same in that back room. Blackboards on the side wall with the prices and the early results. The iron cage up front and the man with the eyeshade taking the bets. Folding chairs.
There were about twenty men in the place and almost all of them looked like people who had come up from the city on their vacations. There was a faro game going on, but the table looked pretty slow. I sat down and Jackson went up to the cage. He came back with a form sheet.
We stayed in that place for two hours before we went out to find a restaurant and have lunch, and when we were eating, Jackson showed me an envelope covered with figures showing how his play had gone. He was in about three hundred dollars.
“This morning was just for fun,” he said. “I have something big on for this afternoon. But I wish we were at the track.”
After lunch we took a walk around town and then went back to the place. There were a lot more people there then had been around in the morning.
“Why don't you try one?” Jackson asked me.
I told him that I didn't know my way around, because I had never liked the horses. But I finally picked a name and put ten dollars on it. A local fellow who looked like a factory hand or a mechanic asked me if I had ever played the horses before. When I told him I hadn't he said that he'd like to follow my play and so he went up and put ten on the same horse. In a little while the result of that race came in and we had sixty dollars instead of ten.
“Try it again,” Jackson said.
I put the sixty on the first horse on the sheet and then I looked at the odds. That horse was paying four to one. The fellow who had won with me put his money on it too.
I won two hundred and forty dollars. “Chinese money,” I said. “I might as well get rid of it.”
When the next race was over I had six hundred dollars instead of the ten I started on. The fellow who had been riding with me punched me on the shoulder.
“What's good this time, pal?” he said.
“I'm off them now,” I said. “I'm all through.”
“Well, give me a horse.” he said. “Just give me one more. I'll break the damned place!”