“Aye, lass.” He pulled up a handful of turf and began go arrange it artistically on her palpitating and naked body.
“Be careful!” she exclaimed, jerking away suddenly. “There’s been a dog by here! ”
“Agghh!” he grunted his disgust, selecting a large turd from the handful of mud ‘and flinging it into the darkness. “An’ they call themselves civilized! Sullying God’s good earth wi’ their damned poodles’ puddles an’ suchlike. Why do they no’ teach their pets to let go o’er their own foul cement tombs?”
“Hush, darling. Forget it.” She pulled some leaves from a bush, arranged them into a garland and twined them around his manhood to pacify him.
“Damn ye, Constance, will ye no remember to be careful o’ the thorns? Or are ye like all the others? Is it that ye wish to unman me, ye bloody bitch?”
“No! No! It was an accident, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
“Well, all ri’ then, but take more care, will ye?” Mollified, he entwined a garland of his own making about her low-slung woman’s breasts. “Aye, lass, I’ll clothe ye for love ri’ enough.” He placed his hands on her milk-white thighs, gently forcing them apart, and inserted a twig of pussy-willow. “Turn ye o’er now,” he instructed. When she obeyed, he began stripping a nearby patch of vegetation and arranging the small leaves to cover her bare derriere. “You can turn back now,” he said after a while.
Constance followed his instructions and sat up. She took some part of the left-over leafs, fashioned a sheath for his manhood and clothed the now-quivering, frighteningly large instrument of his sex in it. “Will you take me now?” she whispered.
“Aye! Thee be ready for the lovin’, an’ so be I!” He swooped down on her then, shy no longer, eager to have it done.
And Constance was as eager as he. She felt him to her very bowels and all but fainted at the exquisite thrill which swept over her as he moved. They moved together now, locked together as Nature meant them to be, pushing, pulling, panting, palpitating, pressing on towards passion’s heights. They’d almost reached them when Thoreau suddenly stopped.
“What’s the matter, darling?” Constance asked.
“Do ye no feel somethin’ qui’ strange?”
“Like what, my darling?”
“A terrible itchin’, it be. Down here, where the man be lodged.”
“No, not there.” Constance suddenly became aware that she did feel an itching, though. Not where he’d indicated, but rather on her hindquarters. It was suddenly agonizingly fierce. She reached for the sheath she’d placed around his manhood, pulled off one of the leaves still clinging there, held it up to the moonlight and examined it. “Darling,” she said, squirming free of the leaves twined ’round her bottom, “this is poison ivy!”
“Damn!” He pulled the vegetation from his body and flung it savagely from him. “Why do they no’ defoliate this bloody park?”
“Well, I asked you to come up to my place so we could do it in bed like normal people, but you’re so hipped on nature and all—- Ahh, well, it’s done. The question is, what do we do about it now?”
“When thee itches, thee scratches,” Thoreau philosophized. He resumed making love to her.
Constance forgot her discomfort in his fierce embrace. Soon their bodies were once again straining toward the peak of mutual ecstasy.
But they never reached it. It was at that moment that Penny, cramped from her perch on the tree-limb, tried to change position. The branch gave way under her and she hurtled toward the ground. The darling girl must surely have been badly hurt had not she been so fortunate as to have Thoreau and Constance break her fall.
“WOW! Do that again!” Such was Constance’s first reaction before her mind was able to take in what had happened.
“OOF!” Having caught Penny’s full weight, his response was more natural. The wind went out of his body and it was a moment before he could speak. But when he did, it was with a vast explosion of the accumulated rage of one who feels that finally society has gone too far in its madness, or one who feels—-unconcerned with rationality-—that imposing on one’s sex is the final indignity, and the one which no man should willingly suffer. He got slowly to his feet, red with this rage, and started for Penny the way a berserk animal closes in on its prey.
The darling girl knew madness when she saw it. She recognized vengeance when it stalked her. She realized that her fall had been the last straw to him and that the accumulation of his anger and frustration was about to be unleashed against her. It would be no use trying to reason with him. The only thing to do was run. She ran.
It wasn’t until she was sure that he had stopped pursuing her that Penny stopped running. She was more lost than ever now. She had no idea where she was. Then she once again heard the roar of an animal, placed the direction from which it was coming, and struck out for what she presumed to be the Central Park zoo.
As she drew nearer, the sounds the animal was making grew more and more terrifying. Now stop being silly, Penny told herself. It’s just an animal in a zoo. You’ve seen them lots of times before. It’s silly to think it might just he running around loose!
It was good, common-sense thinking. There was only one thing wrong with it, rational as it was. Penny found out what it was when she emerged from the trees into another clearing.
There, in the middle of the clearing, was a large, ferocious-appearing tigress! And it wasn’t in a cage!
From the mall, in the distance, floated the sounds of the band playing something by Ravel.
Penny stood stock still. She was afraid to move. She was afraid to scream. The animal hadn’t seen her—yet. All Penny could think was that the slightest motion on her part might attract its attention and then she’d be a goner. So she just stared, horror-struck, as the beast bayed at the moon.
Suddenly a man appeared from the other side of the clearing, as if in response to the noises the creature was making. He was wearing a uniform, the same sort of uniform Penny had seen lying under the tree before. He must be another zoo-keeper.
“Did you call, cherie?” he sang out jollily as the beast bounded over to meet him. He had a pronounced French accent. “Are you growing lonely for Pierre?”
The tigress licked his hand, then nuzzled its nose between his legs.
“Ahh, my passion-flower. Do not be impatient. I am here now. Pierre, who loves you, my savage beauty, he is here. Cry for me no longer. I am here.” He sat down and took the beast’s head in his lap.
The tigress whimpered and looked up at him with soulful eyes.
“Ahh, how naughty of you to doubt me. Did you think I would not come? I was detained by my wife. Merde! What a bitch that one ees. But then so are all women, eh, cherie? But I don’t need her. I don’t need them, any of them. I have you, no? My little cub zat I have nurture to your full flower. Oui, my own savage passion flower. How lucky I am. Lucky Pierre! Yours ees ze only true love. You could rip me in two if you wanted to, but no, you won’t. You love me. Ahh, cherie, and I love you, too.”
The tigress purred and licked its lips at him. He bent and kissed her.
“Yes, I love you. See what I have brought you. For your sweet tooth, my own.” He held up a bakery box and the tigress sniffed at it. “Oui, zat ees right, my own. Chocolate mousse. Your favorite.” He unwrapped it and set it out on the grass.
The tigress began lapping it up. When she’d finished about half of it, she looked up at Pierre and purred again. Then she rolled over on her back with her hind legs wide apart. Inadvertently, the lightly waving tail caught up what was left of the mousse.
“Ho-ho!” Pierre chuckled. “Like zat, eh? Passion in the dessert! Oh, but how brazen we are tonight. How female! How anxious. Very well, for I am as anxious as you.” He dropped his pants and sprawled over the tigress. “Come now, and show me how well I taught you, cherie,” he panted.