Pulling A Train

by Harlan Ellison

  Arthur dragged a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and lit it. The trouble seemed to be—as far as he could tell—she didn’t consider him Bohemian enough. He wasn’t unwashed and barefoot, bearded and unkempt. Nor was he bristling with esoteric knowledge and/or egomania. He was just a nice, average guy who wanted a short snort roll in the hay.

  For the whole summer.

  And to get it, he was going to have to cultivate Christie Mayland. Who didn’t seem to want this particular farmer to cultivate her.

  He sank back in the chair, dejected, and waited for the gorgeous hunka flesh on the bed to get sober enough for reasoning.

  About three A.M. Christie came to. Not sober, just conscious. Arthur was huddled in the chair…he had never much liked the idea of assaulting an unconscious woman. She sat up, her eyes asparkle, and grinned at him widely.

  “My li’l conformisht baby!” she cried, and struggled out of bed toward him. The rest of the apartment had settled into silence hours before, and the pat-pat of her feet was the only sound in the place.

  Arthur watched her archly as she came toward him, and grunted half in pleasure, half in weariness as she plopped into his lap. “You ain’t musch,” she mumbled, “but you’re all I got tonight…”

  She lowered her face to his, took his head between her slim fingers, and kissed him full on the mouth, her hot tongue darting in like a firebrand, and her lips working on his.

  Instinctively he let his arms slide about her waist, but before she could be fully circled, she was off his lap, standing in the middle of the room, yawning, stretching till her sweater strained; she raised on tip-toe.

  “Oh! A radio,” Christie bubbled, seeing a portable on the vanity table. “I wanna finish my dansh!”

  She turned it on, and the insistent beat of a popular rock ’n’ roll melody filled the room. She took up her dance, just where she had left off before. With her skirt.

  She danced a few rocking steps, her walk more a burley switch than a step-movement, then with one violent movement she pulled up the hem of her skirt; above her knees, clinging to her thighs, holding it there with one hand wrapped tightly in the fabric. Her legs were suntanned and supple, colored by the sheer nylon of her hose. Delicate feet and full rich thighs, moving whitely and quickly.

  The nylons were held up by garters, and as she moved, she took prancing steps, lifting her leg high, bending the knee quickly, and bringing the foot down hard. The nylons started to slip at her movements, and she paused to run her cupped hands up the extreme length of the leg, tightening the hose. It drew a sharp breath from the sweating Arthur Archer.

  She had gotten to a point where dancing still clothed was confining, and Arthur waited expectantly. She was used to semi-nudity on the stage…and she had lost the habit of underthings. It was a fantastic picture—a study in blue-black and white. Arthur felt himself sinking into the mood, going down and around and inward with the sight of gorgeous Christie Mayland.

  The drums’ insistent beat started Christie bumping her stomach, grinding her hips. Abruptly, the dress seemed horribly confining, and she pulled it up over her head, throwing the ponytail from its clasp, letting the hair fall full and blue-black around her face and shoulders.

  Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. She was, indeed, stark-naked, save her black lace brassiere, which held her high, full breasts closely and tightly.

  Vibrating to the rhythms, Christie spun and ducked, her legs wide, her arms high. She continually wetted her lips, looking toward Arthur with hunger and passion.

  Her hands slid slowly up her legs, across her thighs, over her belly, and under her breasts. She encountered the slight material of the bra with her fingers and instantly divested herself of the garment. It was one that fastened in front, and it came away with a sibilant whiss! and she was uncovered, save the high-heels and nylons.

  Then she finished the movement interrupted by the bra. Her hands lovingly, gently, tenderly, then more tightly, more ferociously, cupped the breasts, pulled them up, and her hand swept away, up to her face, where they ran palms-flat across the planes of her cheeks, back to lift her hair away in a wild movement.

  Her breasts quivered, and the tiny pink nipples rose from her burning touch. She strained toward the blond boy in the chair, and Arthur could feel molten slag coursing up and down his body, drenching his thighs in sweat.

  With a little moan she leaped in the air, came down spinning, her breasts moving with every action, the nipples alert and standing forth.

  Then she moved toward Arthur. “I’m gonna regret thish in the mornin’, but right now I don’t give a damn!” she said, running her tongue over his lips, leaving them shining.

  Arthur had almost forgotten he was smoking; the cigarette had burned so close to his face as he watched, hardly realizing it was there, that it sent smoke into his eyes, bringing tears, charring his lips.

  He yanked the butt from his mouth and crushed it under his heel, standing to meet her as he did it. She came to him, and her body was a live thing, all flame and silk, thrust against him. He felt every ridge and depression of her. The smoldering twin fires of her breasts, the matted heat of her lower body, the smooth expanse of her stomach, and he felt like screaming. It was all the women he had ever bedded and more—it was all the women he had ever dreamed of bedding.

  His hands started low, cupped, and moved over her buttocks, into the small of her back, up and around, and winding, till her had her breasts in his hands, and he lowered his perspiring face to them.

  The soft nipples tautened under his lips, and suction brought them standing again, with the passion of what was to come building up from her bowels, enveloping them both.

  Then she leaped away.

  He stood there panting, watching her. She stepped toward him again, and he grabbed her, pulling her close by her hair. She wrapped one long leg around his, and ground herself into him. And her lips were mad, insane things, demanding to be bruised, bloodied.

  Then he felt her working on the buttons of his shirt, and eased back. She caught one of them, and in his anxiety he brushed her hand away, ripped the shirt loose. The button bounced to the floor, but he didn’t hear it. In a matter of seconds she had him naked also, and they moved carefully, closely, hotly together.

  The song ended suddenly, and they stood staring at each other, their breath coming hard and deep. He stared down the entire length of her, perspiration giving her suntanned flesh a gloss that brought water to his mouth.

  He moved in on her, put his lips to her bare shoulder and sucked, biting slightly. When he drew away, a red patch had been left, and she stood there, head thrown back, mouth open, and eyes shut, breathing deeply.

  The silence of the room became oppressive for a moment, and then, as naturally, as logically, as if they had known each other since the dawn of time, they were on the bed, moving in a tight motion.

  Then they were deep into each other, their limbs entwined, and the act began. The heaving and tossing of boats on stormy seas, the crack of lightning, the smashing of the Great Wall of China, all were there, locked in them as they moaned in each other’s ears.

  The next number on the radio was a quiet love song, but it didn’t quite fit the mood of action in the room.

  “Oh, Great God, no! Of all the creeps I could’ve shacked-up with…I had to wind up with you!”

  Arthur turned over, feeling muggy but contented, and saw the outraged and rumpled face of Christie Mayland, hair tumbled and eyes bright, staring down at him. She was propped on one hand, and her eyes spat vehemence. “That’ll teach me to get plastered!”

  “What’s the matter, Christie?” he asked, hoping she wouldn’t remember she didn’t like him.

  “Don’t call me Christie, you goddam jerk of a conformist!” She spat the word “conformist” as though it were “leprosy” or “dog catcher.” This was the problem to end all problems. A Bohemian stripper, who didn’t like him—good lay though he had been—because he wasn’t stinking, barefoot, and loaded
with arcane minutiae.

  So Arthur Archer, uncomfortable being in the Village to begin with, lay there for an hour listening to Christie’s tirade against him. It seemed she wasn’t disturbed because he had made her, it was just that he was such a schloonk of a bourgeois conformist—no Bohemianism to him at all—she couldn’t face her friends, the artists and authors.

  “So I’ll become a Bohemian,” Arthur interrupted, just saying it so she might lay off him.

  “You? You a Bohemian. Don’t make me vomit!”

  “But, I…”

  “I never want to see you again…you, you, you creep!” she concluded, her rage mounting till it moved her hand. The fist slammed around, belted a beaut into Arthur’s jaw, and Christie was long-legged out of bed.

  “Ooooh,” she moaned, looking down. “And with the nylons on yet! My last pair!”

  He nursed his jaw, watching her dress quickly (and she still was the sexiest animal he’d ever met!), and then tried a timorous, “So long, Christie baby. See you soon,” as she flounced out the door.

  All he got for his trouble was a “Humphh!” and the door slammed. Arthur felt like the very hell.

  That was the Stuff-For-The-Entire-Summer: walking away.

  Then he remembered what he had said, groping for a way to keep Christie handy. He had said, “So I’ll become a Bohemian…”

  It had only been an idle thought, but suddenly everything dawned, and he saw how he could capture Christie. How he could keep that Summer Stock for himself.

  It was a nauseating idea, but he knew he could be a great actor when the case demanded.

  But first he had to do some research.

  He had gotten her address from Deidre. He had gotten briefed and directed by Bert…who was utterly confused by the entire affair. He had done the reading (almost twenty-five books in one week). He had gone down to the Village night after night, sitting in Rienzi’s and Nick’s, and picked up the local color, the manner of speech, the topics of discussion. He had gotten in with a fellow at a record shop, and painfully absorbed the music. He had bought the necessary attire for the situation. And now he was ready.

  His head burst with Hemingway and Mencken and Proust and T.S. Eliot and Colette and Tolkien and de Tocqueville and Kafka and Strindberg and Cassirer and Sartre. Plus a hundred others whose work he had nibbled and sampled and scanned. His whistling now ran to Ives and Bach and Bartok and Mahler and Berlioz and Vivaldi and Orff and Scarlatti. He could spot a Brueghel or a Monet or a Dufy or a Kandinsky or a Wyeth or a Picasso at eighty paces. He knew the plot of every play, off- and on-Broadway, for the last five years.

  He was, in memories and thought, a Bohemian.

  He could spout with the best of them.

  And when he appeared at the door of Christie Mayland’s fourth floor walkup apartment, he looked like this:

  He wore Bermuda walking shorts, sandals, a green beret, a beard of two weeks growth, no shirt but a rep tie knotted carefully about his throat.

  Christie opened the door. Arthur was about to say, “Well, am I Bohemian enough now?”

  “You’re ridiculous!” Christie spat, and slammed the door in his face.

  It had been a round of parties, one after another, with the hope he’d see Christie. But after the thirteenth one, he had become so involved with the groups of Bohemians in the Village, so taken with their discussions, he wasn’t particularly interested anymore. At first he went to them with Bert, but then Bert began staring at him oddly—and also, Bert wasn’t really anything more than a conformist—so he went alone. After a short time, the company of the buck-toothed, ponytailed, black turtleneck sweatered, unkempt Bohemians seemed to be natural.

  He moved out of Bert’s home, got himself a furnished room in the Village—determined to make it with Christie; and after all, somehow enjoying this Bohemian life of sitting around Rienzi’s, drinking cappuccino, smoking Turkish cigarettes, discussing the significance of Robert Graves or the worthwhileness of Redgrave in Tiger at the Gate. It was beginning to be a pleasure.

  And finally, Christie showed up. He was in the midst of a group of younger Villagers, explaining how his novel—the one in progress—was to be a scathing denunciation of the ironclad mind of the conformist college man.

  She saw him, and her jaw dropped. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she came toward them, and as he watched her long-legged stride, the subtle whispering of nylon against nylon, flesh against flesh, he suddenly realized the past month or so had wrought a great change in him. The pleasures of the flesh were important, of course, but they were secondary, actually. His pleasure could be taken with any one of these interesting horned-rim glasses and dark girls clustered about his feet.

  He wasn’t really any longer interested in Christie. She was beautiful, all right, but that was more for the conformist…for the college man. She wasn’t…she just wasn’t…

  He couldn’t quite put it into words.

  He was talking to a short, dumpy, curly headed girl, and fished his cigarette holder from his pocket, took a butt from behind his ear, leaned toward the girl for a light.

  Abruptly, Christie’s hand jutted over the head of one of the acolytes, and she was offering him the flame of her lighter.

  He accepted it without looking around, and when she said huskily, “Hello…Art…I heard you were living down here now.”

  He looked up at her. Beautiful. That was all. Just absolutely luscious gorgeous without-comparison beautiful. Such a pity.

  “Don’t you say hello?” she asked.

  “Not too often…” he replied, and then it all summed up so clearly; for once Arthur was able to express what he meant simply, and he knew what was wrong with her:

  “You aren’t Bohemian enough!”

  He turned back to the dumpy, curlyheaded girl—who would have been happy, nay overjoyed, to go to bed with this rising light of the Village Bohemian crowd—and resumed telling her about the existentialist novel he was writing. Down here. Down here in the Village…where he belonged.

  Where a lay like Christie was just too bourgeois.

  Jeanie With The Bedroom Eyes

  HE WATCHED HER UNDRESS in the front window of the department store.

  Don Kingery had been watching her do it for almost a month now, and he wasn’t sure he could take it much longer.

  Her name was Jean Belamonte and she was a model. What they called in the trade, a “bed-warmer.” He watched the smooth play of muscles on her slim arms as she folded the dressing-gown across the bottom of the bed.

  Tossing her almost blond hair in a careless gesture, she prepared to go to bed for the day.

  He watched with a strange (but all too frequent these days) dryness in his mouth as she turned down the covers. Her body was slim and tall, yet voluptuous; a marvelous stereotype of a Grecian statue. Jean Belamonte’s skin was a rare combination of pink and gold—it fairly shone in the fluorescent glow of the overhead DayLights banked around the inside of the store window.

  He watched her raise one neatly-turned leg, the edge of her prim, but still curve-hugging, nightgown sliding up the firm calf, and clinging just below the knee. His mouth filled suddenly with saliva, and he felt his knees deliquesce beneath him, melting Popsicles. It was almost more than a normal man could take!

  “Oh, Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie…” he mumbled to himself.

  A woman in the crowd next to him turned an outraged glance his way. “You certainly don’t know that hussy, do you, young man?” she wanted to know.

  Kingery didn’t even bother looking at the woman. He knew what she would look like: thin-lipped, pale, hawk-beaked, and not even attractive enough to carry the bedpan to Jean Belamonte’s window resting-place. A sour grapes viewer who thought the show-window advertisement for ComfeeSnooze Mattresses was immoral—even though it had been okayed by the police.

  “No, ma’am,” he sighed, keeping his eyes on the inches of silk-covered loveliness disappearing beneath the sheets, “unfortunately I only know her by sigh
t.”

  Not only had Don Kingery been getting used to the sight of voluptuous Jean Belamonte taking repose in that window, but he had persuaded the general manager to keep the display going. Ten days was the usual run of a store window display. But Jean had been drawing crowds for over a month. There was just something about her. That something was causing Don Kingery’s metabolism to do odd things. Like back-flips and deep knee-bends.

  He turned away with a dejected twist of the hand and walked back into Pomeroy’s Department Store.

  In the window, the bedclothes heaved slightly over the full, thirty-eight inch bust of Jean Belamonte as she fell quickly asleep.

  Before the eyes of a large, mixed crowd.

  (55 hungrily admiring males. 26 enviously damning females.)

  Don Kingery was twenty-nine years old, was six foot two, with deep brown hair and eyes that matched. He had the build of a half back and the instincts of a predator. He had no trouble with women, for all of the above reasons—and a few more. He had his own bachelor apartment, and was second-in-command of the Pomeroy floorwalkers. He had been with Pomeroy’s almost eight years and during that time the flood of salesgirls, women buyers, lady customers (both married and single), models and just stray females that had crossed his path had not swerved him from the art of living-alone. He had been a prime purveyor of the theory of the sanctity of bachelor singularity that cried: Love ’Em, Lay ’Em and Leave ’Em.

  This he had done successfully. But the past month, this month with Jeanie Belamonte sliding down to snooze in the front window every morning at 9:30, had been the hardest he’d ever known.

  At first he’d ignored the girl. All right, perhaps she was the best “bed-warmer” in the business; perhaps she had been doing this work for six years; perhaps she was a gorgeous woman! So what? That’s what Don Kingery had wanted to know—so what?

  So he had found out. The hard way.