The girl stopped talking. She was sighing softly now, obviously excited at the memory. And Susan shared her excitement. Her own sister—it was a new twist on the idea of sisterly love, all right. A brand new approach.

  “Sue—” The girl’s eyes were smoking. “If you’d like to—”

  “I would.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The first bedroom they came to was empty. They entered and locked the door. The girl threw her arms around Sue and kissed her, thrusting her hot little tongue into Sue’s mouth.

  “Let’s pretend we’re sisters,” the girl murmured. “We’re both alone together and we’re sisters, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “And let’s really drive each other crazy, darling. Let’s do it until we can’t even move.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  AT TEN-THIRTY THEY threw him out of Mac’s. He started a fight with one of the regulars, and the bartender picked up a sawed-off baseball bat that he kept behind the bar for such contingencies and let Matt have it across the base of the skull. He went down and out in a flash. They picked him up and carried him to the door and tossed him outside and he lay there for half an hour without moving.

  When he came to he tried to go back in, but this time the bartender showed him the business end of a forty-five and told him to take his business elsewhere. He tried to get into three parked cars before he wound up in his own. Then he started driving drunkenly without knowing where the hell he was going. He just drove, and his head ached like hell from the drinking and the sex and the sawed-off baseball bat. He didn’t know where he was going. He wound up in the worst part of Springfield’s small Negro district. He parked the car next to a fire hydrant and started going from bar to bar.

  In one bar, a dark-skinned whore approached him and offered to do anything he wanted for five dollars. He checked his pockets. He only had a dollar and thirty-five cents left, but he didn’t tell her this. She walked out of the bar, her slinky hips making lustful side-to-side movements, and he followed her.

  She never got the five dollars. He told her he didn’t want to go to her room, that a quiet alley would be fine. She went along with it. In the first alley they came to, he grabbed her and shoved her hard against the side of a building. She bounced off it and ran at him with fear in her eyes, and the sight of her fear got to him and drove him insane.

  Literally insane.

  “Black witch!” he shrieked. He grabbed her by the breasts and ran straight at the wall with her, hard. Her back hit the wall full force and she sagged like a rag doll. He squeezed her breasts, then brought up a knee hard into her groin. She sprawled on the ground.

  He propped her up against the brick wall again, let go of her, and kicked her in the groin with his foot, hard as he could manage it. She gave a shrill little cry. He grabbed her by the ears, yanked her head close, then slammed it back violently against the firm brick wall.

  There was a sickening sound. The back of her head caved in neatly. He stepped back, let go of her.

  She was dead.

  Dead.

  Dead—

  He ran like a wild man. He ran without knowing where he was going, ran as though the whole earth was chasing him. Somehow he found his car. Somehow he was driving out of town at ninety miles an hour, swerving crazily from lane to lane, racing at top speed with terror striking at his heart and sweat pouring off his face like flood waters. He drove wildly.

  Nobody chased him. No one noticed him. He drove for half an hour without having any idea where he was going, then pulled the car to the side of the road and killed the motor and slumped in his seat and slept.

  He kept dreaming of the Negro whore. He kept reliving that moment when he cracked her skull and she died. He kept waking up with a scream on his lips, then sighing desperately and falling back once again to sleep.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  IT WAS A nice motel.

  That was the first thing Jan noticed. It was really a nice motel, just as Raymond Heeney had said it would be. She kept telling him this, and he kept trying to figure the broad out. She was nutty, he decided. Hot as a pistol and ready to go like a rabbit. Good luck finding her, he thought. A real stroke of luck.

  Until then he had not found anything worthwhile. He had rambled around, trying to pick a broad to make that night, and thinking off and on about Felicia’s heartbroken reaction to the news that he didn’t want to have anything more to do with her. A real nut, that Felicia. He had given it to her once, and once was enough. Well, actually he had balled her twice, but he had just spent the one evening with her. So he had been the first one to get to her—what the hell difference did that make to him? Someone would have made her sooner or later. He had done the world a favor, had taught her to love it and now she would be willing to spread it around. He had made her, and now the whole campus could have a shot at her.

  So the hell with her.

  But this Jan was a nut. He had paid out six bucks to the motel owner, and they were in the room together, and all she could talk about was what a nice clean place it was. Maybe she wasn’t used to clean places, he thought reasonably. Maybe she was used to getting banged in gutters, or pigsties, or something like that.

  “I like it here,” she said.

  He grabbed her and kissed her. She gave him a little tongue action, then stepped back and pulled her blouse over her head. He lunged for her breasts and she stepped back, giggling.

  “You like them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then you can touch them.”

  He grabbed her, hauled her over to the bed. She lay on the bed and he leaned over her and kissed her breasts. She went crazy, panting wildly and yelling for him to do everything to her. He slid a hand under her skirt, reaching for her panties. But he didn’t find her panties. She wasn’t wearing any panties, so he found something else instead.

  He wasn’t about to complain.

  Not at all.

  Not for the world.

  She got crazy when he touched her. She told him to hurt her there, to poke her, and he did. She jumped up, danced away from him, and took off her skirt. He pulled his shirt out from his pants and tore it off. A few buttons popped. He got out of his pants and his underwear, kicked off his shoes and peeled off his socks.

  “Come here,” he yelled.

  “No!” She laughed. “You have to catch me!”

  He ran after her, feeling ridiculously naked, chasing her around the room. She dodged him for awhile, then made a run for the bathroom. He raced after her and tackled her and they went sprawling onto the floor in a tangle of lustful young flesh. He grabbed her breasts and squeezed them. She writhed in his grasp, laughing and gasping at once.

  He picked her up and carried her to the bed. He dropped her and she was ready for him and he fell on her like a tree, burying himself in the sweet, moist warmth of her hungry body, plunging again and again into her sweet flesh until the world boiled over in an ecstasy of crazy joy.

  When it was over he nearly blacked out. He closed his eyes and felt all warm and drowsy. What a woman, he thought. What a wild and wonderful little piece! She was great, he told himself, and he didn’t have to rush, didn’t have to hurry. They had all night. He could have her as many times as he wanted, and the way things looked he was going to want her a great many times.

  She was great.

  Perfect.

  Terrific.

  He was lying on his back, his head nestled on a foam rubber pillow, his eyes closed, his arms spread out at his sides. For a few moments it was almost as though he was alone there. She did not exist just then. He was all by himself, floating through heaven on a fuzzy pink cloud; all alone and all happy and all warm and all secure and all satisfied, wondrously satisfied.

  Then he wasn’t alone any more.

  Because she was touching him.

  He felt her soft little hands on his chest, massaging the gentle achiness of his flesh, touching him gently and yet purposefully. Something began to spread through his body. It was not desire, not really. It was more a warm and pleasant awareness of her presence, a feeling of closeness to a passionate young woman.

  You great stud, he told himself. You wild lover. You can get any woman you want, Raymond. You can have all the women in the world, one after another, and you can drive them all crazy.

  Then Jan kissed him. Her lips touched his, briefly and chastely, and her tongue washed over his lips. He opened his mouth for a deeper kiss but by then her lips were gone. For a moment they were completely alone, and then they touched him again, leaving a warm wet kiss at the base of his throat.

  Then his chest.

  His navel.

  She said: “My little, lover. I am going to do something wonderful for you, my lover. Something wonderful.”

  What did she mean?

  Her warm wet tongue washed over his belly, leaving a trial of subtle fire in its wake. What did she mean? What was she going to do?

  And then, of course, he guessed.

  No. It didn’t seem possible. Everybody knew that a regular girl wouldn’t do it that way for you. If you wanted to get it that way you had to go to a prostitute or something. Girls you met at college—they didn’t do it. In fact there had been a bull session in the dorm one time, and all the guys had tried to decide whether after they were married they would want their wives to do it that way, and most of them had decided that they wouldn’t.

  But—

  Her hands got there first. She had the sweetest and gentlest hands in the world, so soft, so sure of themselves. She was kissing his legs now. The muscles in his calves and thighs were knotted up tight. She kissed his legs and massaged them, and the muscles relaxed and his whole body was alive with the warmest and sweetest flush of passion he had ever experienced.

  And then—

  Then—

  Then—

  It was unbelievable. Up to the last minute he had not actually dared to think that she would actually do it, but he was wrong and she was doing it, she was actually doing it, and it was like nothing he had ever had before. The sensation was utterly indescribable, so thrilling that he could not have imagined it in a million years of constant imagination.

  God!

  Her cheeks were silken-soft against his thighs. His hands tangled themselves in her yellow hair. His breathing came faster and faster. It was like dying and going to heaven, it was like happiness and dreams, it was—

  God!

  Don’t stop, he begged her silently. Don’t stop, oh baby, don’t stop, don’t ever stop, please don’t stop please, baby, Jan, sugar baby, don’t ever stop—

  She didn’t stop.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  SHE LOOKED AT Raymond Heeney through sleepy eyes. She had never seen a boy or man look happier. It had been just the thing to do, she thought to herself. Just the thing to make him happy with her. She asked him if he was happy and he sighed.

  “Am I good?” she asked.

  “The best in the world.”

  “I like to be good. I like to make men happy.”

  “You sure know how,” he said.

  “Do I?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “ls that the best way?”

  “One of the best.”

  “I love to learn new ways,” she told him earnestly. “I had a wonderful teacher, I really did. And I love to learn new ways. Do you know any new ways?”

  “A few. Only I don’t know if they’re new or not.”

  “Are they good?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Will you show me?’

  “Sure.”

  “Now?”

  “Well, in a few minutes.”

  She moved to him. found him. I don’t want to wait a few minutes, she thought. Her hand tightened, caressed him.

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  She smiled, pleased. He was a fine boy, she decided. And the two of them were going to have a lot of fun together. It could have been messy after Matthew dropped her. She could have gone all to pieces, but that wasn’t what was happening.

  She was having a wonderful time for herself.

  Sex, she thought. Nothing but sex. Sex in the morning and sex in the afternoon and sex at night, all night, all night long with just an occasional hour to sleep and rest up for more sex. Nothing but sex sex sex, over and over in every way you could find, over and over and over and over.

  What could be better?

  Nothing could. Nothing at all. Matthew Boulton had showed her the way to live. Now he was through with her, but she was not through with sex.

  She was only getting started.

  Chapter Eleven

  SUNDAY MORNING.

  Sunday morning is all things to all men. If you are the type of person for whom a weekend is a time for restful contemplation, and Saturday night is a time to knock off your once-a-week piece with your frigid witch of a wife, then Sunday morning is the day when you sleep late—until eight-fifteen, say—and then shower and shave and eat a hearty breakfast and read the Sunday supplement and dress up and take the family to church.

  As you may have figured out by this point, none of the characters in this book are like that.

  Sunday morning is a different proposition for them. Sunday morning is a time that, if you are very lucky, you sleep through completely. If you are not lucky, you wake up with a hangover. No matter how you work it, Sunday morning is no cause for joy.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, Jan Cameron and Raymond Heeney woke up around ten. They were in bed at the Anthony Payne motel. The sunlight came through their window and woke them, and they grabbed hotly at each other and played a few desperate little games, and then Jan lay on her back and Ray slipped between her warm breasts and they rolled together in ecstasy until the explosion came. Then Jan went into the bathroom and washed her face, and then they fell back on the bed and went to sleep again.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, Kitty Boulton woke up in her room at the Xenia Hotel at around a quarter after nine. She stretched luxuriously, filled her lungs with air, and snuggled back under the sheet and sank her face in the pillow. At ten-fifteen she got up and spent an hour soaking in the tub. She called Room Service and they sent up a meal, and then she went out and saw a movie.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, Susan Dale opened her eyes and saw two other girls making love in the same bed with her. One was Jennifer Rose, the hostess. The other was Maggie Swarthout. The way they were involved, she could see Jennifer’s body from face to waist, and she could see the back of Maggie’s head. She watched them for a few minutes, and then she rolled over and sat on Jennifer’s face.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, Matthew Boulton woke up wearing somebody else’s head. He woke up in his car, his whole body shaking and shivering violently. His hands trembled and every muscle in his body ached. He had trouble getting the car started. Finally he pulled back onto the road and drove, looking for a bar. No bars were open. A gas station attendant offered to sell him a pint of ’shine for three dollars. He only had a dollar and some change. He wound up swapping his spare tire for the pint of moonshine and he drained the bottle in four swallows and threw it out the car window. The gas station attendant gave him directions and he started driving the seventy miles back to the town of Clifton. A few times he had to pull off the road and rest when his heart began to pound too violently. Just as he reached the Clifton outskirts he suddenly remembered the whore in Springfield, remembered that he had murdered her by beating her head against a brick wall. When the memory hit him he almost drove the car off the road and into a tree.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, Herbie White thought about what he had done with Jan Cameron, how she had changed, and decided that he didn’t understand women.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, Felica Kraft thought about what Raymond Heeney had done and said, how he had acted toward her, and decided that she didn’t understand anything.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, Lincoln Barclay broke away from his slump and produced forty-three pages of manuscript.

  This particular morning, this particular Sunday morning, was one for the books.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  BETTY, THE BLONDE with the flat chest, gave Sue a ride back to the dormitory. She stood on the pavement for a moment, watching Betty’s big car pull away from the curb. She felt funny now, very funny. It was a strange, lazy afternoon. She tried to analyze her reactions and couldn’t figure things out too clearly.

  The party first of all. A fine party, a very enjoyable party, a party in which she had developed an actual sense of belonging, a genuine feeling of kinship with the other girls who were there. A party which had certainly come off sexually, as far as that went. All that hopping from bed to bed—

  That was it, she realized. That was what had her on edge right now, that was what gave her that funny feeling. Oh, the sex hadn’t been the desperate sort of striving she had always had with men. But it had not been entirely perfect either. Satisfying, yes, but . . . oh, what was it?

  She lit a cigarette, started walking—not toward her room but away from it across the campus. She had an idea now. It was as though she had ceased to be a heterosexual tramp and had only succeeded in becoming a lesbian tramp. The essential sluttiness did not seem to have gone away at all. She was still in approximately the same boat, and it was a leaky canoe at best, and she didn’t have a paddle. And she was in damned deep water, too.

  She was still as promiscuous as ever. She felt at ease, but only because all of the other girls in the gay set were as bad as she was and her behavior was comparable to theirs. She didn’t feel like an outcast. Instead, she felt like a member-in-good-standing of a whole gang of outcasts.

  Was she better off?

  Sexually, she was much better off. No more being an outcast. No more trying so hard and failing.

  But she was still promiscuous. And, damnit, she still couldn’t stop wanting it. All the time. At first, at the party, she had tried kidding herself, saying to herself that she could take it or leave it alone, that she wasn’t driven any more from one bed to the next. That was what she had told herself, and there was only one thing wrong with it.