Well, he told himself, it was no wonder. In the past month or so he’d done one hell of a boatload of fascinating things. He had had two virgins who weren’t virgins, and then he had put the blocks to a married woman, and then the married woman turned out to be a nymphomaniac. Then he and the married woman ran off to New York, with the married woman’s husband’s hard-earned cash, and registered in a hotel and played sex marathon.
Then the gal left him, and he begged on street corners, and skipped a hotel bill, and hitchhiked to Carolina, and raped a girl on command, and found the married woman, and made her whore for him, and left her naked and penniless, and flew back to New York, and here he was.
Which was a lot of activity. And which made Modnoc seem more than ever a tasteless, lifeless, useless place to spend his life.
He thought what it would be like to spend his life in Modnoc. He would go back to school in the fall, graduate the following June, and then go to college. Four dull years at a dull college and he would be back, taking a “good job” with the Modnoc Plastics company, marrying some stupid virgin or near-virgin, raising a batch of grubby kids and playing the good old American game.
For three days in Modnoc he lay around the house waiting for time to pass. He thought about how nice it would be to leave Modnoc, to go somewhere else on his own. Hell, it wasn’t hard to be on your own. He’d managed well enough there with Saralee. She had conned him, of course, but then he turned around and conned her right back and came out of it smelling like a rose. If he left Modnoc now he would not have a car to worry about, and he would not have to come back at any set time. He could work things whatever way he wanted to work things. He would have all the room he needed to move around in. It would be a pleasure. He would go wherever he wanted, and he would do whatever he wanted, and if anybody didn’t like it, to hell with them.
It sounded good. But he spent his time thinking about it rather than doing anything about it. The days dragged by until he couldn’t stand it any longer. So Friday night he finally went out of the house, anxious to find something to do.
He found Sheila Kirk, who was slightly better than nothing.
Sheila Kirk had always been around, and Vince had been convinced that she had always been available. There were no stories about her one way or the other, but she had that “Available” look in her eyes. For some reason, he had never taken her up on it. It didn’t make any sense, really, because she was one hell of a good-looking girl.
One hell of a good-looking girl. Soft brown hair and very pale skin and a pretty face and good legs and an almost unbelievable pair of mammaries. She was good-looking, and she was available, and somehow he had never answered the door when this particular opportunity had come knocking.
Well, that would have to change.
He spotted her on the street, and he walked over to her, and he said hello, and she said hello, and from there it went according to formula. She told him how lucky he was to get to the lake because Modnoc was dead as a doornail in the summer, and he told her it couldn’t be that dead if she was around, and they went for a coke, and from there on it was pattern, pure pattern. It was as easy as rolling off a girl.
He had it all figured out in a few minutes. Two dates, and a long ride in the country, and a blanket on the grass, and Sheila Kirk would be his. He was going along with the pattern, riding it out, when something snapped. He just couldn’t stand it another minute. It was part of the Modnoc routine, the dulldom capital of the western world, and he wasn’t going to play it that way.
He broke off in the middle of a sentence, turned to her, caught her pointed chin in one hand and looked hard into her eyes. “Look,” he said to her, “how about walking over to the park and having a go at it?”
She stared. Her mouth opened, then closed again, and she went on staring some more. He felt like laughing at her.
“C’mon,” he said. “We’ll take a nice walk in the park and then I’ll take your cruddy clothes off and it’ll be good. I’m pretty great at it by now. I’ve been making a study of all the finer points and I’m an old pro already. What do you say to that, Sheila, old kid?”
She didn’t say anything. Not a thing. She just stared.
“Come on, old girl.” He took her arm and started off toward the park. She didn’t seem too enthusiastic, but at the same time she walked along with him, not pulling away, not fighting a bit. It was going to be easy.
“The direct approach,” he announced. “Nothing like the direct approach. You and me, Sheila, we don’t have to pretend for each other. We can be honest. We can both stand a little action. We don’t have to play games. We just go to the park, and lie down in the sweet-smelling grass, and we have ourselves a ball.”
Which, when you come right down to it, is what they did.
He led her to a nice private place in the park, one he had used before, and there he undressed her. He didn’t kiss her, mainly because he had no desire to kiss her. He took off her blouse, and he took off her bra, and he played around with two things that were closer to mountains than molehills. Then he took off the rest of her clothing, and played some more little games, and took off his own clothes, and got going.
She had been had before, and she had been had properly, and she was good at it. The shock of his approach seemed to have worn off because whatever state she was in now, it was not shock. She was squirming all over the place, and her nails were raking his back, and it was, by all rules, great.
Then they got dressed, and walked back to town, and he told her goodnight and left her to find her own way back to her house.
It was, by all rules, great. But somehow it wasn’t so great at all. Somehow it was lousy, and it shouldn’t have been lousy, but it was and this annoyed him. She had done a good job, and he had done a good job, and the sum total of their efforts had been highly charged monotony.
Which was a shame.
He was tired, so he went to sleep. But it took him awhile to drop off into blissful unconsciousness. He tossed around for awhile, thinking that he had to get out of Modnoc before he went out of his skull. It just wasn’t fun anymore. All Modnoc ever had to offer was female flesh, and now even that was beginning to pale. It was time to go.
“I don’t understand,” his father said. “Don’t you like it here? Don’t you like living with us?”
“Frankly,” Vince said, “no.”
“We try to make a good home for you. We try to give you everything you want. And you just want to up and leave us. Where are you going? What are you going to do?”
Vince shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Crazy,” his father said. “That’s what it is, crazy. You won’t finish high school and you won’t go to college and you won’t get a good job and—”
“Dad.”
“And you’ll be a bum. That’s a hell of a note. I don’t want a bum for a son. A thief, yes. A con man, maybe. But a bum?”
“Dad,” he said. “Dad, I’m not going to be a bum.”
“You’re not?”
He shook his head. “I’m going to be a great success,” he said. “Horatio Alger style. Spirit that made this nation the great and powerful country it is today. Young man out for success. Flash Gordon conquers the Universe. You know.”
“Really?”
“Sure,” Vince said, getting slightly carried away with himself. “No opportunities in a town like this. A young guy like me has a great chance in the world. Opportunities galore. Money, fame, power. All these things are waiting for a man with courage and initiative and imagination.”