She said: “Can’t you guess?”

  “Oh.”

  “You know now, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Why, you sweet little thing. What’s your name, dear?”

  “Sue.”

  “Have you been with many girls, Sue?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Then why—”

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask me to explain. Do you want me? Would you like to—”

  “Oh, Lord, yes.” Maggie’s hand settled on her arm, holding her rather firmly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve given lessons to virgins, dear. And you’re an awfully pretty thing. I’ve an apartment upstairs. I’ll close the shop, we can go there, we can be together. Do you like wine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chianti?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a bottle in the refrigerator. I like it cold. We’ll drink the wine and I’ll teach you what a beautiful thing love can be, Susan.”

  She waited while Maggie turned out lights, locked the front door. Then the woman came back and took her by the arm once more. They walked through the back, up a flight of stairs.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve given lessons to virgins—Maggie had said that. And, Sue thought, it had been a long time since anyone had thought of her as a virgin.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  JAN WASN’T SURE where they were now. They were in Matthew’s car, of course, and they were somewhere out of town in a countryish area, but she didn’t know the roads around Clifton and wasn’t sure where they were.

  Nor did she care.

  She had other things to concern herself with. She had Matthew Boulton sitting beside her, his hands locked on the wheel, his foot heavy on the accelerator pedal. The car, old but capable, sped forward. Matthew Boulton’s brow was clotted with beads of sweat. When he glanced at her, she saw naked hunger in his eyes.

  She had won.

  That was what it amounted to. A day or two ago he had not known that she was alive. Now, after the little exhibition she had put on in his office, he was very much aware of her existence. Because of the way she had smiled at him, had looked at him, had offered her breasts to him, and had finally told him of her own feelings, he was so hot to get to her that he couldn’t control himself.

  So she had won.

  Now, soon, she would taste the fruits of victory. In not too many minutes they would be together somewhere and he would take off all her clothes and she would find out at last what it was like to have the throbbing essence of a man inside of her. The thoughts were driving her crazy. She wanted him more now than she had ever wanted him before, wanted him so badly that she could not stand it, could not bear it.

  Soon.

  Very soon.

  She moved closer to him on the seat, closer, until their bodies were touching lightly. He glanced at her. “Easy,” he said.

  “Put your arm around me.”

  “I need both hands to drive with, kitten.”

  “Drive with one hand,” she said. “Put your arm around me. Please.”

  He did.

  “Now put your hand down the front of my blouse,” she breathed. “Touch my breasts.”

  When his hand moved from her shoulder down into her blouse, when his fingers closed around the plump, swollen meatiness of her breast, it was as though she had plugged her nipple into a live electrical socket. A lovely stream of pure pleasure jolted through her body, thrilling her, heating her up, making her impatient for more. His hand was strong with her breast, the fingers pulling and tugging at her rigid nipple, kneading the flesh like a lump of dough, teasing her and exciting her as she had never been teased and excited before.

  Men were different from boys. Boys did things slowly and haltingly, and you always knew what they were going to do, and because you were prepared for it, you never really went crazy from it. You liked it, but it didn’t drive you crazy. But men did things suddenly, and powerfully, and you didn’t expect it and it got to you and you went out of your mind.

  She put her left hand on Matthew. And squeezed, gently.

  Before she knew what was happening, before she was ready for it, he yanked the wheel and slammed on the brakes and pulled to a jarring, rattling, shaking stop at the side of the road. They were in sparsely wooded land now. He drove slowly between trees, driving until the car was about forty yards from the side of the road. Then he killed the ignition, pulled on the emergency brake, and turned to her.

  And she went to him.

  His mouth tasted manly. Coffee, tobacco, the aftertaste of last night’s liquor. He kissed her harshly, cruelly, and his hands moved quickly and insistently all over her body. He kissed her again, harder than before, and then he pushed her away.

  “Get out of the car,” he said,

  She got out of the car, waited uncertainly beside it while he opened the trunk and brought out an old brown blanket. He carried it a few yards further into the woods. She followed him. He stopped, spread the blanket on the ground.

  “Get undressed,” he said. “I don’t want to rip your clothes.”

  Other boys undressed you. They did it slowly and gently, albeit awkwardly, making it part of the seduction act. Matthew was a man, and he did not operate that way. In the first place, he took the seduction part for granted. Obviously, if she hadn’t been ready for him to make love to her, she wouldn’t have been with him at all. And he wasn’t the type to fool around undressing a girl. She would strip herself, or he would be unintentionally rough with her and her clothes would be ripped.

  She took off her clothes.

  When she stood naked before him with her arms at her sides and her breath drawn in and her breasts firm and rigid and her thighs slightly apart, she could see the combination of hunger and admiration in his eyes. He wanted her. He thought she was beautiful. She was pleased and proud.

  He undressed in a hurry. She saw the thick mat of hair on his chest, the wiry arms and legs. She saw something else, and she trembled in anticipation.

  He walked to her, took her in his arms. His chest pressed against the sweet softness of her breasts and set them on fire. He kissed her, then lowered her gently but firmly to the blanket. She stretched out on the blanket and closed her eyes, waiting.

  She was not disappointed.

  Very little time was wasted with preliminaries. He did not seem to want to touch her, or stroke her, or kiss her as much as he wanted simply to possess her. He touched her breasts briefly, ran his hands over her body, touched her.

  And then—

  Just before he took her, she opened her eyes and saw him. He was ready, and the sight of him was awesome. But she was not frightened. She did not worry that he would hurt her, knowing that she would not mind the pain. She wanted him too much to care about a relatively trivial thing like pain.

  And then—

  Then he touched her.

  And joined her.

  At first it hurt like nothing had ever hurt before, like nothing on earth could possibly hurt. He was a sword, a sword heated in a white-hot forge, a sword thrust rudely into her tender body. The sword pierced her, withdrew, stabbed again.

  And pain screamed through, shrieked its wild song into the stillness of the afternoon. The pain was everywhere. There was nothing but pain, huge and all-embracing, encompassing the whole world as she knew it. She writhed in torment as he flailed again and again at her. Her body moaned and twisted and she wanted to scream her lungs out.

  The pain was unbearable.

  But it did not last.

  It did not go away at once. Instead, it gradually lessened and diminished and died. And, as it grew dimmer, a different force rose up to take its place.

  Passion grew, enlarged. The passion was greater than the pain. And bit by bit her body began to respond to that passion, began to be captivated by it. She rolled and thrust, her breasts swelled with excitement, her arms locked around him and pressed him close.

  Before, when she had dreamed of this, when she had thought about it, when she had attempted to duplicate it by herself, she had never imagined it as it really was. She had never had any idea of the way her whole body could get so completely bound up in the act, the way everything else could cease to be.

  It was fantastic.

  Amazing.

  Incredible.

  Her sensory responses were confined to the act in progress. She could smell nothing but the warm man smell of Matthew Boulton, could feel nothing but his hands on her body, his chest on her big breasts, his body surging to and from her own body. She could no longer feel the fresh air on her skin, the blanket beneath her back and buttocks. The air still existed and the blanket was still there, but she could sense nothing that was not a part of the sexual experience. Because nothing else mattered.

  And her body was doing impossible things, and her passion was mounting at an impossible rate. Her heart pounded frenetically against her rib cage, speeding at an unlikely pace. Her lungs gasped for air and couldn’t get enough.

  Toward the end, everything began to speed onward toward a peak. Before her legs had been bent at the knee. Now they were extended straight up, toes pointed at the sky, forming a right angle to her body. Her legs were wide apart, and his body was between them, rising and falling faster and faster. He was driving so deeply that she thought she would die, but she wanted to draw him in as deeply as she possibly could, wanted to swallow him and drown him and keep him inside of her until the very end of time.

  Her nails raked his back and drew blood. His big strong hands found her breasts and squeezed them so hard they ached.

  More.

  More.

  More.

  Until the whole earth was spinning dizzily, going into a new and unbelievable orbit. Her heart was shaking and her bones were turning to jelly and her eyes couldn’t see and her ears couldn’t hear and her mouth couldn’t taste and her nose couldn’t smell and her skin couldn’t feel. Her whole body was turning inside-out and upside-down, spinning and sailing and shrieking and diving and plunging and soaring.

  At the moment of truth—a second moment of truth, really; the first had come when he plunged into her—at the moment of truth, the world stopped. The world stopped but they went on, and there was a crash, an echo, and there was stillness.

  It was like death, except less permanent.

  For at least ten minutes neither of them moved at all. She lay still, on her back, with her legs raised high, and he lay upon and within her. Slowly she lowered her legs. Slowly he left her and rolled away.

  Silence.

  He found cigarettes, lit two of them, gave one to her. She smoked hers. It tasted better than any cigarette had ever tasted.

  He said: “You should have told me you were a virgin.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d have been gentler with you.”

  “I didn’t want you to be gentle.”

  He smiled softly. He reached out a hand and his fingers touched her, played with her. She sighed.

  He said: “I’d like to do it again. Slowly, this time. Would you like that?”

  “Yes.”

  He took her cigarette and put it out. He put out his cigarette. He reached for her, and she moaned and went to him.

  Chapter Five

  KITTY BOULTON WAS looking at herself in the mirror. The mirror was in her bedroom on Pickford Street. The mirror revealed the image of a girl who was far more attractive than Kitty Boulton had ever realized.

  It had been a good idea, the beauty parlor visit. Not only because Maggie had been a pleasure to talk to, but because she now looked like a million dollars instead of thirty-seven cents. Whether they could afford the six dollars she had paid Maggie was something else again, but it was something Matt could worry about. She was sick of worrying about money. If he didn’t like it, he could just go to hell for himself.

  She looked at the mirror, smiled with pleasure. You look stunning, she told herself.

  And what you need, she went on, is a drink.

  Not a whole quart—that was Matt’s speed. Just a pleasant drink, crisp and cool, something to relax you a little and perk you up a little, something to complement your new-found beauty.

  Just a little drink.

  There was a bottle of Beefeater Gin in the cupboard. They had bought it when they moved to Clifton so that they would be able to make martinis for guests. They had never had enough guests to more than crack the bottle, and Matt detested gin. He would drink it if there was no rye around, but there was always rye around, so he never drank it. She couldn’t understand it—he preferred that rotgut blend of his to good Beefeater’s.

  She started to make herself a martini, then stopped. There was something about a martini that she didn’t like. It took so long to make it—you had to make a damned ritual out of it, stirring it to avoid bruising the gin (whatever in hell that was supposed to mean) and pouring from pitcher to glass, and first chilling the glass, and all that nonsense. And no matter what you did, you wound up with too much vermouth. After the first drink it didn’t matter, because you couldn’t tell too much vermouth from too little vermouth. But why bother with any vermouth at all?

  Good question.

  She got an old-fashioned glass from the cupboard, put two ice cubes in it, and poured two or three ounces of gin on top. She swirled the ice cubes around in the glass for a moment, then took a preliminary sip.

  That, she told herself, was just the right way to make a martini. There was no chance of too much vermouth, because she hadn’t used any vermouth at all. If ever you discovered this new method of hers, she decided, the vermouth manufacturers would leap from windows like stockbrokers in 1929.

  She carried the drink into the living room and sat in Matt’s chair with it, sipping. If gin always tasted this good, she thought, she was in danger of developing a taste for it. But it wasn’t as though she was sitting and swigging the stuff, the way her simple-headed husband did.

  Not at all.

  She was just having a nice refreshing drink.

  It was amazing how soon her glass was empty. Unfortunate, too. Just as she had been getting to appreciate the taste of the gin to the Nth degree, the damn gin was gone. That was the sad thing about enjoying and savoring your liquor. It broke your heart when your glass was empty.

  Have another?

  Well, sure. I mean, one more drink is hardly going to hurt me. Just another little shot of gin—that could hardly do any harm now, could it?

  She got up, walked quickly and easily into the kitchen. She had forgotten to cap the bottle. She poured another drink—a generous one—and put the cap back on the bottle of Beefeater’s. It was somehow comforting to notice that there was a lot of gin left in the bottle. Not that she would want a third drink, but for another day.

  She carried her drink back to the living room. You are very pretty, she told herself, and you had a marvelous time at the hairdresser’s, and now you are sipping the best martini in the world, and waiting for your horrid husband to come home, and not minding if he doesn’t, and what in the world is wrong with that?

  Nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  She sat down and sipped the gin. It tasted perfect, and she kept sipping until the glass was empty.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “MORE WINE, SUE?”

  “Please.”

  Maggie reached over with the straw-covered bottle of Chianti, poured Sue’s glass full almost to the brim. The wine was icy cold, sour and full-bodied. Sue sipped it.

  “Do you like my apartment, Sue?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s too extreme for some people’s taste.”

  “I like it.”

  “Do you feel . . . comfortable here?”

  “Yes.”

  All of this was not entirely true, she thought. She was not quite sure that she liked the apartment, and she was not quite certain that she felt comfortable there. But she certainly didn’t hate the apartment, and she surely didn’t feel radically ill at ease in it, so she might as well tell Maggie Swarthout what she wanted to hear.

  One thing was certain. She had not been prepared for the apartment. It was not what you expected in Clifton, Ohio. Extreme? That was the word for it, all right.

  There were three rooms, living and bedroom and kitchen, the three arranged railroad-flat style with the living room looking out on Springfield Avenue, the bedroom in back facing out upon the backyards of people who lived on Comstock Place, and the kitchen in the middle. They were in the living room now. It was easily the most offbeat room Susan Dale had ever seen.

  The walls, to begin with, were painted. Not in a solid color, though. The walls were painted in candy stripes, alternately red and white, with the stripes running from floor to ceiling. The stripes were about four inches wide, and the effect was almost indescribable. The ceiling above was painted a deep Prussian blue, and the carpeting, laid wall-to-wall, matched the ceiling precisely.

  The furniture was all very low-slung and highly stylized. The coffee table and the two end tables were Japanese in motif, lacquered a shiny black. The couch was a brilliant gold, and there was a pair of small boudoir chairs, one striped black and white, the other a loud lime green. All of that color, all of that contrast—it could very easily have been horrible, but somehow it worked out and, after you had been in the room for a few moments, it all seemed to be functioning as a unified entity.

  But it was certainly different.

  She sipped more wine, raised her eyes to meet Maggie’s. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “By all means, dear.”

  “Last night,” she said. “If you . . . if you have this apartment, why did you go to the Tony? The motel?”

  “Because Betty is a fool.”

  “I—”

  “Betty. The girl I was with, the boobless wonder of the twentieth century. You saw her?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s a love, actually. But she’s almost paranoid about sex, sure that someone will find out that she’s gay as a jay. She won’t come to my apartment. She’s petrified that she’ll be seen. Which is ridiculous, of course. So I had to meet her at the Anthony Payne. We both arrived in separate cars, I registered, she snuck in to join me, and that was that. So she was seen there—that’s marvelous. You know what her trouble is?”