The pair continued up the aisle and into the next car. Penny’s assailant was poised to complete the rape now, but just as he lunged the subway lurched and he lost his perch. As he scrambled to regain it, the train ground to a halt at a station platform. Penny called to a burly-looking man who had just risen from his seat. “Help me! I’m being assaulted.”
“Sorry, lady. I’m getting off here.” He really did look sorry as he stepped through the just opening doors.
Another man, younger, but equally burly, stepped around him and entered the car. He carried a book under his arm. Karate Made Easy was the title on the cover.
“Help!” Penny’s scream was hoarse by now.
“Trouble, lady?”
“Yes. I’m being mugged!”
“Mugged? Well, we’ll just see about that. Just a minute, now!” He opened the book and began thumbing through it quickly.
“Hurry!” Penny wailed as the weight of her assailant fell on her again.
“I’m coming. Don’t you worry. I’ll be right there.”
“Please hurry.”
“Yeah. Sure. Ah, here we are. Mugging. Umm . . . Chop from the wrist in the number two position . . . If the enemy is armed, then—Is he armed?” he asked Penny.
“He has a knife.”
“A knife . . . Ah, here we are. Feint with a forearm slice and counter with opposing elbow to disarm knife-wielding opponent. Bring knee up at same time as chopping with elbow from number five position . . . Number five position? . . . Now let me see . . . Ah, I’ve got it! All right, you! Unhand that woman!” He struck the classic pose of the karate fighter.
“Look heah naow. You-all jes butt out!” the mugger told him.
“Butt out? Never! I’ve been studying karate for two years, just waiting for a chance to use it. I’ve got my black belt,” he announced proudly. “Now, unhand that woman.”
“You jes’ stay ’way from the black belt, we wouldn’t be havin’ this heah trouble now. Heah me? Yankee, go home!”
“Stand up and fight!”
“Sho nuf? All right. You askin’ foah it!” The subway mugger got to his feet, the knife clutched in his right fist.
The karate expert stole a quick glance at the book, shrugged off the fact that his opponent wasn’t wielding the knife in the proscribed manner, quickly put the book back in his jacket pocket, and once again froze in the recommended position. The attacker approached slowly, arms held out at his side. Suddenly he lunged, and at the same moment he tossed the knife from his right hand to his left. The knife moved like greased lightning toward the belly of Penny’s would-be rescuer.
Only the fact that he got his feet twisted trying to reverse from a right to a left-hand defense saved him. He tripped and fell backward, away from the knife. Without even consulting the book, he launched a beautifully styled karate kick from his prone position—and then emitted a yelp of pain as he barked his shin on the pole running up the center of the subway car. The attacker managed to control his laughter and lunged downward for the kill.
He had hesitated an instant too long. Before he could complete the stabbing motion, a heavily weighted woman’s handbag crashed down over his head, sending him spinning. It descended again, full-swing, and the mugger dropped to the floor like a stone. He was out cold.
Penny brushed the tears from her eyes and looked up at the face of the girl who had saved her. She found herself looking into the deep black eyes of none other than Sappho Kuntzentookis, the Greek girl who was her assistant at Pussycat Publications. “Penny, are you all right?” Sappho asked.
“Yes. N-now I am. Thanks to you. How will I ever thank you?”
“Don’t worry about that now. You look all shook up. Come on. Let’s get off here and grab a cab. You don’t live too far from here, do you? No. I thought not. Come on, we’ll get you home and into a nice dry martini.”
Still shaking, Penny followed Sappho off the train. There was a cab outside the subway exit and it wasn’t long before Penny was leading the way into her apartment. “You go change,” Sappho told her. “Meanwhile I’ll mix us a couple of drinks.
When Penny returned, she drained off half her martini at a gulp and felt the tension ease out of her tired, bruised body. “What were you doing on the subway all alone at this hour of the morning?” she asked Sappho.
“I might ask you the same question.”
“Sorry. I really didn’t mean to pry.”
“No offense taken. If you really want to know, I was coming from an oddball orgy,” Sappho told her.
“An oddball orgy?”
“Yes.”
“How does that differ from a plain old garden-variety orgy?”
“In more ways than you’d ever imagine.” Sappho smiled reminiscently.
“Tell me about it.” Penny couldn’t help being curious.
“Wow! That’s a tall order. I’m not sure I know where to begin.”
“Well, where was it held?” Penny prompted her.
“In Brooklyn. The Bay Ridge section.”
“In Brooklyn? That seems an odd place for an orgy.”
“Well, I told you, it was an oddball orgy. This place where it was held, it’s one of these old mansions. Looks kind of run-down from the outside. But once you get past the front door, it out-Waldorfs the Waldorf—and with almost as many rooms.”
“Whose house is it?” Penny asked.
“I won’t tell you that. You’d recognize the name, and that wouldn’t be cricket. He’s the kind of guy who hobnobs with presidents and prime ministers. But he’s got his tastes-—-bizarre by most standards, I suppose — and he likes his fun, which is why he keeps the house in Brooklyn.”
“Is he married?”
“Oh, sure. His wife was there tonight.”
“She was?” Penny was shocked.
“Yep. She’s a real swinger. Everybody there was—in one way or another. And lots of them were married couples.”
“What did they do?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you,” Sappho pointed out. “But you keep interrupting with so many questions that I can’t get down to the meat of it.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll keep quiet. Go ahead.”
“Okay. Well, first of all, everybody there has some particular bit that he or she is hung up on. Whatever it is, the host does his best to provide whatever’s necessary so everybody can get satisfaction. In a way, I suppose that’s his hang-up—or what’s at the bottom of his hang-up, anyway. You see, he gets his kicks running around with a Polaroid camera and snapping shots of what everybody else is doing.”
“What are they doing?”
“That depends. For instance, one small bunch of them tonight were shoe-sniffers.”
“Shoe-sniffers?” Penny was uncomprehending.
“Yep. They get themselves all worked up sniffing each other’s shoes. The men sniff the women’s shoes; the women sniff the men’s shoes. It’s not as uncommon a fetish as you might think.”
“I don’t understand what they get out of it,” Penny remarked.
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“Have you tried it?”
“Well, no. But the truth is I gag over changing my stockings. One of the fellows there tonight, one of the shoe-sniffers, was trying to convince me that I’m too inhibited. Could be he’s right.”
“It still seems just too far out to me.”
“You have to look at it from their point of view,” Sappho told her. “They have a whole sort of mystique about it. For example, the older and more worn the shoes the sniffer sniffs, the more status he has in the group. That’s the whole thing, really. The shoes are like a sort of sexual status symbol.”
“How about slippers and socks, things like that? Do they sniff them, too?”
“Sometimes. But it’s frowned upon. It’s sort of considered being a fringe-sniffer. Slippers are looked down on the way people who appreciate a good wine look down on a beer drinker. The bouquet is all wrong. And with socks the bouquet is considered vulgar. It’s like the difference between cheap perfume and Chanel Number Five. A sock-sniffer would go to a two-dollar whore. The bonafide shoe sniffer is the kind of discriminating fellow who might have an affair with a high-class courtesan, a lady of culture and taste. Still, the principle is the same. Both types get their sexual arousal out of the aroma of feet.”