Escapades of an Erotic Spy - Part 1 A Spy is Born

by Lexington Manheim

  I felt a stirring in my loins. Then bubbling. Then boiling heat. I was on the verge of an eruption beyond anything I had ever known. I heard myself moaning. Then groaning. Then screaming. I was on the very brink—

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

  I came with the thunder of a thousand stallions stampeding. Like ten thousand cannons firing simultaneously. Like the gods had packed into one solitary orgasm the power of a million earthly pleasures. I writhed beneath my golden lover, twitching every muscle without the ability to cease or care. And then, as I lay there, a pool of spent energy, I felt my boy give way to his own explosion. Beau came inside me, and it pleased me all the more to know that he had. I was a woman—a newly eighteen-year-old woman—who had made her man come.

  Ah, rapture! Thy name is Beau!

  * * * *

  I left the house alone while the early morning sky was yet undisturbed by the rising sun. It was just safer that way. Had a neighbor spotted me leaving, it could have caused immeasurable problems for both Beau and me. Better to go under cover of full darkness. Beau said he'd stay in the McMahon house just long enough to make sure everything was straightened up and that there would be no remaining evidence to incriminate the uninvited lovers. I trusted him to do that. At that moment, I'd have trusted him to do anything.

  Leaving that early meant not only a cold walk to the trolley stop, but, also, a bone-chilling wait for the trolley, the first of which wasn't due for at least a couple of hours. However, that didn't trouble me. Not a bit. I had been with Beau. I had made love with him. I was, without the slightest doubt, his lover. And he was mine. Nothing could change that now. What's more, I derived a sense of warmth from the piece of paper I now carried in my pocket. That paper contained Beau's address at college. He said I could write him there, and he'd write to me. We'd still be separated by the miles, but while he was away, I'd no longer have to suffer in the silence of deprived communications that had tainted the autumn. Through written words, Beau and I would remain connected, no matter what.

  Our correspondence grew even more personal—more emotional—more evocative. Letter salutations changed from "Dear" to "Dearest." Signatures that previously were preceded by the words "Fondly" or "Warmly" progressed to the point where they unfalteringly followed the word "Love."

  Valentine's Day:

  It was early February when Beau wrote to invite me to come visit him in Charlottesville. He had never done that before. Wouldn't that be dangerous? Surely, it would. But Beau wrote how much he missed me and how much he wanted to be with me on Valentine's Day.

  "When that special day arrives, we should be together," he wrote. "There's no one on this planet I could wish more strongly to hold when the sun is setting on that day."

  Valentine's Day in 1918 fell on a Thursday. It would mean my having to beg off of two workdays, and it would also cost me the loss of those days' wages in order to be with him that evening. But, of course, I couldn't refuse him. My body ached for his touch. Anything was worth that. So, when he sent the money for my train ticket, I wrote that I would be there on the afternoon of the 14th.

  Beau gave me instructions that, once I arrived in Charlottesville, I should go from the station to a small hotel located on outskirts of town. I couldn't meet him on the university campus as that might spill the beans about us to too many people who knew him there, and we weren't ready to make our relationship public knowledge. Even going to a hotel was too risky if we entered it together. There was no telling who might see us and gossip to the wrong people. So the plan was to travel separately and rendezvous at the hotel when we were certain no one was looking.

  The walk to the hotel was a little far, but, although it was a cloudy, gray afternoon, the weather wasn't terrible for a winter's day, and I got to the out-of-the-way three-story inn without any trouble. There was a stone fence across the street and just down the road about a hundred feet from the hotel. That's where Beau said I should wait for him. So as not to arouse suspicion, he'd go alone into the hotel to register for the room. Then he'd signal me when it was safe to come join him.

  Occasionally, people passed along the street. They paid little to no mind to the girl sitting on the fence. That was good. I certainly wasn't trying to call attention to myself. I just sat there patiently, huddled within my winter coat. Beside me was a small bag that held a few personal effects and a new pretty green dress with a burgundy sash I had bought especially for the occasion. I planned to wear it for Beau later that evening, perhaps while we had dinner. We wouldn't be eating at a restaurant, of course. That, too, would be pushing our luck. Rather, Beau said he'd bring some food with him so we could eat in the room. Perhaps it was less than ideal, but, to me, an intimate dinner with my love sounded romantic, and I was looking forward to it.

  Beau's timing was pretty good. He showed up at the hotel within fifteen minutes of my arrival. After giving a quick glance up and down the street to see if anyone was looking, he flashed me a smile and a rapid head nod. All was well. He ducked into the hotel as I waited at my post. About ten minutes later, he reemerged from the front door, checked the street again, and held up first six fingers, then two fingers. That meant we had Room Number 6 on the second floor. I knew where to go. Now I just needed to get there—unseen.

  Beau disappeared back into the hotel. According to the plan, I was to wait about five minutes, and then, if the coast was clear, wander over to the hotel and go through an alley to the back wall of the building where Beau would let me in through a service entrance. He had scouted out the building in advance and knew exactly what to do. I bided my time, as the scheme dictated. Then, seeing no one in sight, I picked up my bag and sauntered toward the inn. I was extra cautious when I reached the alley, pausing to look in both directions—twice. Seeing no one, I darted down that passageway and rounded the corner at the back of the building. There was Beau, peeking out from behind a tiny crack in the door he promised would be there. He swung the door wide and let me in.

  The stairway to the upper floors was in the front of the building, next to the registration desk where the clerk worked. Beau's task was to distract the clerk while I snuck upstairs. I stayed behind in a small back corridor while Beau made his way to the front desk. I heard an exchange of voices. One was clearly Beau's. The other I presumed to be the clerk's. Then I heard the front door open and the voices became muffled. Beau said he'd devise some ruse to get the clerk to step outside with him. Whatever that ruse was, it must have worked. I peeked round a corner and saw the registration desk was empty. With the opportunity at hand, I silently stole past the desk and up the stairs. Fortunately, there was no one coming down those stairs. No need to explain myself to anyone. I emerged on the second floor landing and saw a number 6 on a door right before me. Beau had left the door unlocked, so I plunged into the room.

  I did it. I'm inside. No one saw me.

  The tiny room was rather stark. The walls were a pale blue, and the floor was bare wood. There was one purely functional chair, a small wooden table with a pitcher on it, and the bed covered with whitish sheets and a sand colored blanket. I sat on the bed's edge, too afraid to move, too afraid even to take off my coat. If the clerk suddenly burst through that door, I think I might have tried to jump out the window. That's how scared I was.

  Dear God, please don't let us get caught.

  I flinched when the door opened. It was Beau. Thank God, it was just Beau! He shut the door behind himself and turned toward me, his mouth displaying a triumphant grin.

  "Here at last," he said.

  His beaming face made everything all right. I stood to receive him, and he practically jumped to embrace me.

  It was no more than a few minutes before we were both nude, on the bed, and pawing each other madly. The waiting since our first encounter had been interminable. Now was the opportunity to make up for lost time, and we went at it with abandon. I longed to experience every delight of the flesh with Beau. To that end, we were without limits—fondling, groping, sucking, fuckin
g.

  Oh, my precious one! Yes! Fuck me! Fuck your everlasting lover! Fuck my cunt with your gorgeous, huge cock! Make me come like a ravished woman! Don't stop! I'm yours forever!

  We were lying under the covers, holding each other in the afterglow of our love-making—perfectly content, profoundly happy—when it happened. The unexpected sound of a key in a lock. The door bursting open. The rush of heavy footsteps. We were under attack.

  Four men charged into the room, three of them wearing sheriff's deputies' uniforms. Someone must have seen me sneaking in and called the cops. I shrieked and pulled the covers tight against my naked body. Beau shot out of bed, nude but ready to defend against who-knows-what. However, there was no defense available. One of the deputies—a fat man with a chaw of tobacco in his mouth—gave a look of disgust first to me then to Beau.

  "Under the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia," the fat deputy drawled, "you're under arrest for violation of anti-miscegenation law."

  "It's not miscegenation," protested Beau. "We're not married."

  "Then it's illicit fornication, at the very least. We'll leave that to the courts." The deputy didn't blink an eye. "You should be ashamed, boy. With one o' her kind!"

  I suppose this is as good a time as any to confess that, in addition to my little tendency to occasionally embellish stories, I also sometimes neglect to include certain details, like—and this one's kind of important here—my skin color. I'm not a white girl, if that's what you were thinking. At least, not according to the definitions found in the laws that forbid the mixing of non-white races with white ones. Some states say it only takes "a single drop" of non-white blood. With me, there's more than a drop. You see, while my mother is white, my father was a black man, and my light caramel toned skin was clear indication of it. So, to the world, that made me a woman who's half white and half black. But, believe me, there in that Virginia hotel room, there was nothing halfway about anything. I was in a whole lot of trouble.

  A young, skinny deputy rooted through my bag.

  "What've we got here?" He pulled out my new green dress and held it out for display. "Ain't that purty."

  "That'd look mighty nice on my little Imogene." The fat deputy took the garment roughly in his pudgy fingers. "Too bad no white woman would wear it now. Not after it's been on her."

  Truthfully, other than trying it on in the store where I bought it, I hadn't even had a chance to wear it yet. I doubt that would have prevented the fat deputy from doing what he did next, which was hurl the dress in a heap into a corner of the room. I never did get to wear that dress. In fact, after that night, I never saw it again.

  "Both of you, get your clothes on," he sneered.

  Four days later, I sat across a narrow pine table from my mother, who had come to the jail where I was being held. Shortly after my arrest, I contacted her about my predicament by telephoning her laundry partner. She was one of the few people in the neighborhood who had a telephone. In a corner of the dingy yellow cube that served as the visiting room was a guard who passed his time mostly by reading a newspaper. He displayed no interest in our conversation.

  "I talked to the judge this morning," my mother whispered. "He's willing to go easy on you if you cooperate."

  "Cooperate how?"

  "It's the boy they're really interested in. They want to make an example of him so other college boys don't get any ideas. Apparently, the chancellor of the university is fit to be tied."

  "It wasn't just his idea. I—"

  "Shhh!" She held an index finger to her lips and glanced in the direction of the disinterested guard. "As far as anyone's concerned, you're just an impressionable girl who got swept up by the glamour of the boy. And, lucky for you, this judge is of the mind that girls have little to no self-restraint when it comes to such things. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to be released today with a summons to appear in court for trial next month. In addition to answering your own charges, they'll expect you to testify that this boy seduced you. You'll have to bring along whatever letters he sent you. I'm told they've already got the ones you sent to him. I assume you've still got his tucked away somewhere?"

  I sighed heavily.

  "Sure," she smirked without amusement. "No girl gets rid of those."

  "Do I have to?" I whimpered.

  "Play along, and you'll get a light sentence. Time served. Maybe a small fine. Like I said…you're not the one they want to make an example of."

  I started to cry. "But I love him."

  "So you came all the way to Crackertown where you could get arrested just for being in the same hotel room with him." My mother huffed and leaned back in her chair. "Has my example taught you nothing?"

  * * * *

  My mother's life was indeed a cautionary tale. As a young girl, she was living an upper-middle-class existence with her family in Washington when she met an assistant to a visiting diplomatic consul of an independent African nation. As the saying goes, one thing led to another, and soon they were sneaking about, searching for secluded spots to conduct their romantic trysts. The diplomat and his staff were recalled to their homeland, but not before the assistant left his seed inside my mother. The shame of the unmarried 19-year-old's pregnancy was eclipsed by the family's horror when the child was born. Its skin tone told the whole and, in their eyes, unspeakable story.

  According to my mother's account of it, she gave birth to me in her bedroom. The doctor left the room shortly after I was delivered, and thirty seconds later my grandfather, ashen and perspiring, charged in and saw me lying in a crib that had been prepared for my arrival. He pushed aside a midwife, whom the family had retained, and went directly to the crib to stare at his new granddaughter. There was a lit kerosene lamp on some nearby table. He grabbed it by its base and shoved it dangerously close to me. The illumination gave him the conclusive evidence that turned his stomach. He stormed out a few seconds later, and my mother said she heard him bellow, "As soon as she can walk, she goes!"

  My mother was banished from the family home and left to make a life for herself and her daughter anyway she could. It wasn't easy. She was forced to sell everything she owned just to be able to afford the rent of a dilapidated little apartment. White society shunned this girl with her mixed race child. So she could find a place to live only by going into Washington's black neighborhoods. Sadly, even there, her acceptance was only marginal. As a white woman, she wasn't really seen as one of their community.

  * * * *

  "I won't do it." I folded my arms in determination. "I won't testify against Beau."

  "You're being foolish!"

  "Even if I did, his family would never allow anything bad to happen to him. They'll fight it. They've got money."

  "His family won't lift a finger." My mother leaned in. "This is their ultimate humiliation. They've publicly disowned that boy. He's on his own."

  "How do you know?"

  "The judge was very informative. We had a long talk. Fortunately, he's a man who can be reasoned with."

  "Would you like me to tell you what you can do with your reason, Mama?" I squinted, fire practically shooting from my eyes.

  "Shhh!"

  "Did you think you could just decide all this for everyone?"

  "Well, you can see how well your decision-making skills have worked out."

  "Oh!—and you've been such a stunning role model! Haven't you, Mama? What?—did you tell the judge how close you and I are, and how you couldn't live knowing I was in jail? We both know what bushwa that is! Or did you promise him you'd do his laundry for a year? Or share your booze with him? Tell me, Mama. What's the going rate for reasoning with a judge?"

  "I sucked his dick."

  The words stung when I heard my mother speak them. What's more, the way she said it—sharp, businesslike, cold, cruel. I shivered.

  "That's right," she continued with a breathy quiver in her voice, "it's come to that. I did it so my daughter wouldn't have to rot in some prison where white guards would met
e out whatever treatment they think deserving of a… And, well, you're welcome." She was practically spitting the words. "There's a memory for you. May it bring you pleasant dreams when you're sleeping in your own bed rather than some prison cot."

  She dabbed at her eyes with a discolored handkerchief.

  As for me, I felt sick. I didn't know what to say. What can you possibly say to your mother after hearing something like that?

  "I know I haven't given you much of a life," she went on. "I've barely had one for myself. But as far as I'm concerned, we're even now." She tucked the handkerchief into her sleeve. "They should be letting you out pretty soon. I'll wait for you outside."

  I was released within the hour, a summons in my hand. My mother and I rode home silently on the train. We had nothing to say to each other. The silence continued once we got back to our apartment. It wasn't all that late when we reached home, but I went to bed immediately. I had no energy, no appetite, no spirit. I barely had the stamina to cry myself to sleep.

  The next morning, I went to the bank and withdrew all my savings. Then I proceeded directly to Union Station where I bought a train ticket to New York. I stopped at a trash basket and deposited the tiny bits of paper that had once been my cherished correspondence from Beau. Though it absolutely killed me to do it, I tore the pages into the teeniest of pieces rather than leave them to be used as evidence against my love. I couldn't take a chance they'd fall into the wrong hands. The authorities would have neither me nor those letters to use against him.

  I boarded the train at 10:30 a.m. and set out for my destination. I had never been to New York, but I wasn't going to be there long enough to see the sites. I was just passing through. Somewhere in that city's harbor was a ship I'd be taking, although I didn't yet know which ship that would be.

  I had left behind in the apartment a short note of explanation for my mother. In spite of everything, I didn't want to worry her further. But, of course, my mind's real focus wasn't on her. It was on Beau. My beautiful, beautiful Beau. The last I had seen of him, he was being roughly ushered out of the hotel room by two of the deputies. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I thought about never seeing him again.