Finally Tiffany interrupted his rambling drunken tirade. "Listen," she said sharply. "If you really love me and want me to get out of this business, then you've got to fuck June while Gallagher films the scene. He seems to think she'll do it. Personally, I don't care if you have to rape her."
"But if you really want to get out, why can't you just quit?" Cliff plaintively wanted to know.
"What! And have Gallagher send Daddy a batch of those shots of me sucking cocks and fucking gorillas! It would kill him." Tiffany exclaimed indignantly. This was the brilliant idea she had come up with on the way home and it seemed to be working.
"But if Gallagher threatened to do that, it's blackmail. We could go to the police," Cliff pursued doggedly.
"Ha… after they saw some of those shots they'd just laugh." Tiffany shrugged. "I wasn't forced you know. I signed a contract that protects Gallagher." She changed her tone to one of appealing persuasion. "Listen, Cliff, I made a terrible mistake and I admit it. But now I just can't take it any longer, and I've got to get out of this cruddy business. I want us to go away somewhere and have a happy life together. And the only way is for you to fuck June on camera. Don't ask me why because I don't know. It's just one of Dippy Gallagher's brainstorms."
Cliff sighed and gazed forlornly at her with a sheepish hangdog took. "But you know I can't get it up any more," he reminded her pitifully.
"Brother, do I ever know it!" the young girl exclaimed contemptuously.
"Well, it's your fault!" Cliff flared back at her, knocking down a big slug of gin from his bottle. "Every time I think of what you're doing every day with those other men… it's killing me."
"It didn't used to bother you that I fucked other guys in school. Remember? You were the big shot then. The big frog in the little puddle," she mocked him mercilessly. Then changing tone again, she said more kindly, "It's the booze, Cliff. You've got to stop drinking. You should see yourself. Honest, I was ashamed to bring you in here tonight."
"Well, I'll try," the haggard man sighed despondently. "But I still don't see why it has to be me."
"Maybe Gallagher thinks you have hidden talents," Tiffany suggested sarcastically.
"I used to be as good as those guys you work with, didn't I?" Cliff asked in a pathetic tone of voice, stung by her allusion to his impotence.
"Oh, better, Cliff, much better," she reassured him. "But that's not much help right now."
"I can still suck," he said eagerly. "Can I just suck your sweet little cunt some, Tiff. Maybe my cock'll get hard." He looked longingly at the fluffy golden vee nestling up between her slender girlish thighs.
"No," she refused after just the briefest hesitation. It would be fun to just lean back on the pillows and watch him slave away down there on her pussy, the roles reversed for a change, but the dark stubble of beard on his jaw deterred her. The tender skin between her thighs had been scratched enough for one day by that Goddamned satyr costume… and she always had the vibrator one of the girls in the troupe had turned her on to. In a lot of ways it was better than a tongue. "No," she repeated firmly. "No pussy until you get me off the hook. Call me tomorrow and I'll let you know what's going on. Now, good-night, Cliff. They're shooting a big sandwich scene tomorrow, and I want to look my best."
After another long forlorn dejected look at the beautiful young body he had once possessed so completely, but which was now forbidden him, Cliff silently left the room. As soon as Tiffany had heard his footsteps plod away down the hall outside she called up Room Service to send up a bucket of ice and began to unwrap the two ice packs she had bought on the way home. That Goddamn Gallagher was a sonuvabitch liar, she decided as she carefully studied her slim but curvaceous form in the bathroom mirror. Her breasts weren't sagging at all, but maybe the ice would do them some good anyway. Why take chances…?
CHAPTER FOUR
Nina Borman was wondering what the hell her crazy wild man of a husband was up to now as she walked beside him with her hand linked under his arm along the crowded street off lower Fifth Avenue. Because he certainly was up to something, there was no doubt about that. The lithe long-legged young brunette in the cheap, poorly-cut navy blue suit they were following — at least Nina assumed they were following her, Axel refused to answer her questions — turned up the steps of another shabby brownstone house and, after scanning the names listed by the door, hesitantly rang the bottom bell. It was the sixth building she had tried and each time she came out looking more dejected and discouraged. The pure classic beauty of her profile was visible for an instant, then the door clicked and she went inside.
As usual Axel had stopped as soon as the girl turned up the steps and was pretending to examine the wares displayed in the window of a basement "head" shop. Some private eye he'd make, Nina snorted to herself. With his elegant Malacca walking cane and his perfectly tailored grey business suit he stood out like a sore thumb in the motley crowd of long-haired hippie boys and girls who were thronging the sidewalk.
It was growing dark and there was a chill nip in the autumn air that bit right through the white Angora wool coat she was wearing over her black chiffon cocktail dress. When Axel had phoned her unexpectedly that afternoon to meet him at the corner of Fifth and Eighth, she had expected to be taken to the opening of a new art show or a party, not shadowing some poor girl up and down the streets of Greenwich Village.
"Damn you, Borman!" she snapped, using his last name to indicate her exasperation, although she could hardly keep from laughing at the picture he made… the distinguished Wall Street broker staring earnestly down at the beads and sandals and other assorted junk in the window. "Damn you!" she repeated when he didn't even bother to look at her. "If you don't tell me why we're following that poor girl, I'm going home right now."
"How'd you like to suck her pussy?" he shot back at her in a low voice gangster-style out of the side of his mouth.
"Oh, is that what I'm gonna do?" Nina retorted sarcastically, feeling nevertheless a little apple of excitement in her tummy. "Well, what are we waiting for? Why don't we just take her home with us so I can get down to business?"
"Shhhhh," Borman warned her. The brunette was coming out of the door of the brownstone and behind her an enormously fat woman with her peroxided hair up in curlers and her face beet-red with fury was screaming.
"Whore! Harlot! You're all whores and harlots. Out! Out of my house before God strikes you down as he surely will. Out! Out! Out!"
The young brunette half-ran, half-stumbled, down the steps with tears streaming down her frightened face and hurried off with Nina and Borman in pursuit.
"Did you set that up, you bastard?" Nina asked when they had slowed down again. The brunette had stopped and was fumbling in the large rectangular leather pocketbook which she was carrying suspended from her shoulder by a strap. She drew out a handkerchief and began dabbing at her eyes.
"Nope," Borman replied. "But it won't hurt. Soften her up a little more…"
Just then Nina felt someone jostle past her and caught just a glimpse of a long-haired, beetle-browed man who darted between the intervening passersby, ripped the purse from the brunette's shoulder and took off at a dead run down the crowded block.
"Stop, thief! Stop, thief!" Shouting loudly and brandishing his cane like a character in an old-fashioned melodrama, Borman surged after the running figure and a second later both of them disappeared around a corner. A few people turned to stare curiously in the direction of the brunette who was standing there with an expression of bewildered consternation on her face, but no one went up to her to comfort her, just as no one had raised a finger to stop the thief.