“Of course not.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Then—then what’s the matter?”

  He sighed. “Look,” he said, “I boffed you last night. If you want it again, find somebody else.”

  “Wasn’t I good? You said I was good.”

  “You were fine. But we’ve had it, kid.”

  Recognition seemed to dawn. She took an involuntary step backward and stared at him with an expression of utter horror, as if he was the lowest form of life on earth.

  She said: “You just wanted me for my body!”

  He laughed. “Felicia, baby, what the hell else have you got?”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  THE FURY HAD subsided for Kitty Boulton. The hecticness of sex with Lincoln Barclay—it had all calmed down, and she was completely relaxed now. She was not in Clifton, either. She was in Xenia, at the Xenia Hotel, alone in her room with a thermos of coffee and a paperback novel.

  It was all arranged. She had seen the lawyer, and the lawyer had given her papers, and in a day or so she would get in touch with Matt and get his signature on the papers. Or, as far as that went, she would just sign them herself. He would never make a fuss over the thing. He would never see her again, and she would never see him again, and there was no real point in having him sign the papers, since the Mexican judge who granted her divorce wouldn’t care one way or another if the signature was illegitimate. He was only interested in the few dollars he would get, as in fact was the whole country of Mexico, which was why they made it so patently simple for Norteamericanos to get Mex divorces.

  And after that? After the fast flight south and the fast flight north? Then New York, she thought, and a nice little apartment all to herself on the east side, or maybe in the Village. A week or two of relaxation. Then a week or two of job hunting until she found a comfortable way to make a comfortable living. Something in advertising or publishing, maybe. Something exciting, more exciting than life in Clifton, and something that at the same time would enable her to live on a higher level than she had lived as the wife of a fifth-rate English prof.

  She would do all right, she told herself. She would get by, she would manage.

  Why not?

  She had the brains, and the determination, and the self-possession. She had stuck it out as Matt Boulton’s wife for an intolerably long period of time, and then she had exploded and had taken a lover for an evening and was now in the process of ending her marriage. The whole thing had been rather impulsive, but she had not made a lot of the usual mistakes. She got drunk, but she didn’t stay drunk. She got made, but she didn’t make a tramp of herself. And she got away, but she didn’t run off hysterically with some other man.

  She took things calmly and deliberately, and she wouldn’t have any trouble because she wasn’t making trouble for herself. Everything would be as smooth as silk. There was no reason to have trouble, no reason to hit a snag. Not so long as she knew what she was doing and didn’t let herself go off half-cocked.

  It felt funny—ending a marriage that had lasted for so long. Not long in comparison to golden-wedding types, but long when compared to the rest of her life. She had been Mrs. Matthew Boulton for quite a while. It was going to feel funny to be someone else again.

  She took a breath, then reached for a cigarette and lit it.

  So far, she thought, she was doing remarkably well, not going off half-cocked at all. She was all alone, and she had plenty of money, and she could do whatever she wanted to do. If she wanted a drink, all she had to do was get one. If she wanted a man, all she had to do was pick one up.

  But she did not want a man and she did not want a drink. She just wanted to be alone and to relax and to plan and to read a little, and that was just what she was doing.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  SUSAN DALE TINGLED all over. Her whole body was vibrating, feeling marvelously fine, finer than she had ever felt before. She had been with Betty Lubin. She had made love to Betty Lubin, and Betty had made love to her, and she had actually even learned a new way to do it, a way she had not experienced with Maggie Swarthout.

  And now she and Betty were both back in the living room, drinking and talking to people and wandering around as though nothing at all had happened, as though they had not hurried off to a bedroom for a quick tussle in the hay. It was all very natural, all perfectly acceptable to the rest of the group.

  Sue took another drink, wandered over to join another group of women. They spoke to her and she spoke to them. She could tell that they were sizing her up, appraising her. Earlier this would have made her somewhat nervous, but now it didn’t bother her in the least. She was now in full possession of herself.

  All these women, she thought. All of them interested in her, all of them available to her. Some of them she found terrifically attractive. Others did not attract her at all. But they were all there and they were all available.

  She wondered who she would have next, and when. She wondered how it would feel, and if she would have another ear-splitting, soul-striking release.

  And she was happy, happier than she could ever remember having been in her life. She had found herself, and from here on in everything would be perfectly fine. No more running from man to man. No more frustration. Just satisfaction.

  “Oh, Sue,” Maggie Swarthout was saying. “I’ve been looking for you. There’s a girl here who’s been dying to meet you. Come over here with me, Sue.”

  She went gladly, sizing up the girl-who-wanted-to-meet-her as she went, and wondering if this girl would be the next one who would take her to bed.

  Chapter Ten

  THE WOMAN WAS a real pig. She staggered into Mac’s around nine o’clock, looking like hell, and she parked her rather fat rear on a stool and ordered a whiskey sour. The bartender told her he didn’t make mixed drinks. She told the bartender that he was a fat old jerk and he should give her a glass of gin. He did, and she drank it down as though it was water.

  Matt bought her the next drink, another glass of gin, and started fooling around with her thigh. The woman was too drunk to pay much attention to him. He touched her for awhile, then grabbed her around the waist and dragged her out the door. She was too stoned to walk by then. When he let go of her she took two staggering steps and fell on her face. He picked her up and she fell down again. He let her lie there.

  “Stupid pig,” he said.

  She looked at him, a drunken leer on her face. No point in wasting money on a cabin, he thought. He was pretty well broke to begin with, and the old sow wouldn’t know the difference between the bed and the ground anyway. Might as well just plow her right there in the middle of Mac’s parking lot.

  She started to get up and then fell down again. A real pig, he thought. Somehow the fact that she was such a sloppy slut appealed to him, even excited him. But he didn’t just want to make her. He wanted to knock her around a little first.

  He hauled her to her feet. She swayed, uncertainly, and he hit her full force in the face.

  She went down like a ton of bricks. A trickle of blood welled forth from her nose. A current of excitement ran through him. He was really going to pound the hell out of her, really going to let her know where she stood.

  He used his feet. He kicked her viciously in the belly, in the breasts. She didn’t seem to feel most of it, because somewhere along the line she passed out and it was like kicking a mannequin. But she would know about it after she slept it off, he told himself. She would be black and blue for a week.

  When he was ready, he didn’t even bother stripping her. He bunched her dress up over her hips, ripped her panties off, and gave it to her fast and quick. She was unconscious. It was like coupling with a corpse, and even that aspect of it somehow made the whole thing that much more appealing. As if he craved the sordid and the squalid, as if the grimier the sex, the more of a hoot he got of it.

  It didn’t take long. He finished with her, lay for a moment on top of the pig, then struggled to his feet. His bladder was full and he had to go to the john or burst.

  He emptied his bladder upon the unconscious woman. Then, laughing an imbecilic laugh, he staggered back to the bar for another drink or two. The woman lay in the parking lot, damp and filthy. Just as he went through the door to Mac’s he heard her beginning to snore like a sleeping sow.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  IT WAS QUITE a night for Jan Cameron.

  The first boy she had found was Herbie White. Dear Herbie—who had wanted to seduce her but who hadn’t tried hard enough, who had wanted to go steady with her and then get engaged and someday marry her and live in a little white house with green shutters and the standard 2.76 children.

  Good old Herbie.

  She got him to take her for a ride. She told him to pull over off the road and park. She grabbed him and kissed him and whispered in his ear that they would have a lot more fun in the back seat. He didn’t know what to make of it. He was obviously staggered, because instead of letting him seduce her a little at a time she was taking the lead, placing his hands on her body, opening his fly and reaching for him, and then, almost before he knew what was happening, pulling him upon her and taking him.

  He wasn’t at all like Matt, she discovered. He was just a kid, his experience undoubtedly limited, and he was so tremendously excited that he was finished seconds after he got started, and it wasn’t much fun for her. But she didn’t say anything. She just held him on top of her and told him not to worry, that they could do it again in a minute. And in a minute they did it again, and this time it was a little bit better.

  But afterward it was a tremendously awkward scene. He tried to be quite cavalier about the whole experience, but he was obviously shocked and jarred and he couldn’t bring the act off with much skill. He was embarrassed. She wasn’t. She had gone out to get herself laid, and she had done just that, and the only feeling she had was one of quiet triumph.

  “Well,” he said.

  She said: “Was I any good?”

  “I—”

  “I had a good teacher,” she said. “I’m going to be the hottest little piece this campus ever saw.”

  After she said that, he didn’t say anything at all. He just drove her back to campus without saying a word. He was obviously willing to take her to the tavern for a beer, or something like that, but she told him just to drop her off.

  The next boy was name d Ed Glick. He had a car, too, and when she simply went up to him and told him she felt like going and parking somewhere, he didn’t ask any questions. He had had a little more experience than Herbie and he was less awkward than Herbie but he didn’t know some of the wild stunts Matt had taught her. She showed him one weird position that had him gasping like a fish on dry land. It was really something.

  And then, after that, she picked up Raymond Heeney.

  She hardly knew him. But she was sitting on front campus, under a tree, and she saw him walking by and she knew intuitively that he was looking for a girl. Something about his catlike walk, something in his eyes—never mind, she knew.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He came over. He had a sharpness in his eyes, an air of knowing what it was all about. He looked her up and down and she glowed under his gaze, knowing that this one would be good. She wouldn’t have to lead him by the hand. He was sharp, he was sexually hip, and it was entirely possible that he would even teach her a thing or two, maybe even dream up something that Matthew Boulton had not taught her already. She was willing to learn, anxious to learn.

  “My name’s Jan,” she said. “Jan Cameron.”

  “Ray Heeney.”

  “Are you looking for someone, Ray?”

  “I think I found her.”

  “You mean me?”

  “That’s the idea,” he said. He sat down next to her, put his arm around her. The second his hand settled on her bare shoulder she got as hot as a pot-bellied stove. She wanted to do it right there and she didn’t care if the whole world watched.

  She asked him if he had a car.

  “No,” he said. “There’s a place we can go, though.”

  “Where?”

  “A motel down 68. We can walk there.”

  A motel. She remembered the filthy little cabin where Matt had done horrible things to her.

  “A motel,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the name of it?”

  “The Anthony Payne,” he said. “The Tony, for short. It’s just a little way down the road.”

  “Will they let us in if we don’t even have a car?”

  “They don’t care.”

  “A motel. Is it a clean place? Because that’s very important to me. I wouldn’t want to go to a dirty motel.”

  “Clean as a whistle,” he said. “Clean sheets, clean place, nice new furniture.”

  “Oh, let’s go,” she said, grabbing at him. “Oh, let’s hurry, let’s go there, let’s go, I can’t wait—”

  He pulled her to her feet and they hurried along toward the Anthony Payne motel. On the way her heart was pounding fiercely. A motel, she kept thinking. A clean place, a nice quiet place where they could lie in bed and just do it and do it and do it all night long in a dozen different ways. She couldn’t wait. She was so excited she thought she was going to die.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  THE LESBIAN CONCLAVE at Jennifer Rose’s house was no longer anything resembling an orgy. It had cooled down, after several girls had taken turns playing bedroom games together. Now the party was somewhat settled, with girls and women gathered in little groups, drinking Manhattans and talking calmly and easily with one another. Sue knew everybody by now and everybody knew her. Things were calm and happy and she was enjoying herself.

  She belonged here.

  That was the best thing about it, the thing that made it not a sexual thing at root but something a good deal deeper. Misery, she realized, is not the only thing that loves company. When people are somehow different, sexually or otherwise, they need the companionship of people who are different in that same way. They have a common ground. They can relax with people who share their idiosyncrasies, while they always have to keep their guard up in the outside world.

  It was good to belong. Before, during her nymph days, she had never felt a sense of belonging. She was always the outsider, always a social outcast in one way or another. Girls who knew her for what she was never got along with her. Either they envied her for her sexual freedom or they despised her for her lack of morality or they feared her as a sexpot who could steal their men.

  And the boys were no better. In their eyes she was just a sexual convenience, something that could give them a little fun; but they didn’t want to soil themselves by speaking to her on an equal basis. They were glad to take her to bed, but they didn’t want to be seen with her in front of their friends or in front of other girls. She was just a wastebasket that they dumped their passion in.

  But with these lesbians, with these girls and women, it was different. Here she was an equal. Here no one could hold her in contempt, because they were all the same, all gay, all abnormal. She was on an even footing with them all.

  It made a difference.

  A big difference.

  A huge difference.

  Given their common bond, they were certainly a cosmopolitan group. Some of them, like Maggie Swarthout, had been married and had turned to lesbianism when their marriages had failed. Others had tried heterosexual relations and had gotten no joy from them, so they had become lesbians to find fulfillment much as she herself had done, albeit in a more dramatic fashion.

  Others had never had anything to do with men at all. They hated men and feared them, and had never had sex with them and never would unless they were raped. And even then some of them would fight to death to avoid it.

  A girl was talking to Susan now. “So Maggie brought you around,” the girl said. “Well, you were a lot older than I was when you first had sex with a girl. By about six years.”

  “When did you start?”

  “When I was thirteen,” the girl said.

  “God!”

  “Uh-huh. And you’ll never guess who broke me in, either. Not in a million years.”

  “A schoolteacher?”

  “Guess again.”

  “I don’t know. A friend of the family? Something like that?”

  “Nope.” The girl was grinning. “Give up?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s a hard one to guess. It was my older sister.”

  “What!”

  The girl smiled. “That’s right. She was almost three years older than I was. She was sixteen at the time. The two of us shared a bedroom and one day she said she had noticed how my breasts were growing and I was getting to be quite a little woman. I was proud that she noticed because she had a terrific figure. So this one afternoon we were home alone, nobody else was around, and we both stripped to the waist and compared breasts. She let me feel how nice and round hers were, and then she felt mine and fooled around a little. You know, feeling me up.”

  The girl sighed, remembering. “I got excited. I realized later that this was the whole idea—she wanted me to get hot before I knew what was happening. Then when I was like that she said there was a nice way the two of us could have a lot of fun, real fun, and we couldn’t get a baby or anything and nobody would have to know about it. So we got out of all our clothes and got into bed together. We used her bed.

  “And she really drove me crazy. She broke me in, all right. My own damned sister. She had me climbing up the walls before she was done, doing all the wild things to me and getting me to do them to her. I was only thirteen years old, but I had a feeling that was like an earthquake. And from that time on until she went away to college we had a regular thing going. Every night after bedtime we would get together in her bed and just carry on half the night. It was very convenient. We were sisters so we didn’t have any trouble finding an excuse to be together.

  “And one time she brought a girl friend home from school and the three of us just rolled around in bed doing it to each other, all three of us at once.”