So Willing

by Lawrence Block

  So Willing

  Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR

  A BIOGRAPHY OF LAWRENCE BLOCK

  ONE

  Vince parked his father’s car in front of Betty’s house, checked in the glove compartment to be sure he hadn’t forgotten the “necessary equipment,” smoothed his hair on the left side, where the wind coming in the window had mussed it, and stepped out of the car.

  Betty’s father was sitting on the porch in his undershirt. It was seven-thirty of an evening late in June, and just twilight. Betty’s father was an indistinct figure seen from the street, an expanse of white undershirt and a glowing cigarette, that was all.

  Vince frowned. Betty’d told him her parents were going to be out tonight, and he’d planned to bring her back here after the movies. A bed had it all over a backseat any day, particularly with a virgin. Well, the hell with it. The backseat would have to do.

  Erasing the frown and replacing it with an easy, deferential smile, Vince walked around the car, across the sidewalk and up the walk. “Hi, Mister Baxter,” he said, as he went up the stoop.

  “Good evening, Vince.”

  “Betty ready yet?”

  “I don’t suppose so. You know how women are.”

  Mister Baxter chuckled. He had an asinine habit of trying to get on a pals relationship with Betty’s dates. It made Vince uncomfortable, but he managed not to show it. If you wanted to get anywhere with a girl you had to get along with her parents. That was rule number one.

  Mister Baxter motioned at the screen door. “You might just go on in and see,” he said.

  “Thanks, Mister Baxter,” Vince said. It hadn’t taken long with the Baxters, not long at all. He’d taken Betty out three times, and already he was at the stage with her parents where he could just walk into the house. The fact that Mister Baxter worked so damn hard to make everybody like him had helped, of course. Mister Baxter was a sales manager for Modnoc Products, the local plastic company. He’d started as a commission salesman and learned to treat everybody like a long-lost buddy. He still had the habit, combined with an obsession to get along with the younger generation just to prove he wasn’t old yet. So Vince hadn’t had to work hard to make Mister Baxter like him at all. He’d just shown up that first evening, three weeks ago, smiling politely, a conservatively dressed, good-looking young man of seventeen, and Mister Baxter had fallen all over himself to be chums.

  As for Mrs. Baxter, it didn’t matter a bit what she thought. Mrs. Baxter was the closest thing to being invisible of anyone Vince had ever met. Not physically invisible—she was about five foot four and weighed nearly two hundred pounds, topped by stringy tight-curled, gray hair and a simpering fat face—but her personality was invisible. Her voice was so faint it was almost non-existent, and if she had any opinions or beliefs or thoughts about anything, she kept them to herself. She inevitably stood around in the background somewhere, smiling her please-don’t-hurt-me smile and fumbling with her faded apron. Vince had given her about thirty seconds worth of charm the first time he’d come to the house, and had ignored her ever since.

  He ignored her now. He opened the screen door and stepped into the foyer of the house. The stairs to the second floor bedrooms were straight ahead, the living room off to the left. Mrs. Baxter was in the living room, watching some stupid television program, and when she heard the screen door close she looked over, smiling as usual, and in her faded voice said, “Good evening, Vince.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Baxter,” Vince said. He returned her smile for a tenth of a second, and then went forward to the foot of the stairs. “Hey, Betty!” he shouted.

  “In a minute!” came the answering shout.

  “Sure,” Vince said, under his breath. Betty, in her own sweet way, was as bad as her parents.

  Mrs. Baxter leaned forward in her chair to say, “Why don’t you come in and watch television with me while you wait, Vince?”

  The prospect sickened. Vince thought it over for a second. If he went back out on the porch, Mister Baxter, who was convinced that everybody in the whole United States of America was as psycho about baseball as he was, would start jabbering about who did what on the ballfield this afternoon, and Vince couldn’t have named three major league ballplayers if his life depended on it. He might even have had trouble naming three major league teams. At least there wouldn’t be any conversation with invisible Mrs. Baxter.

  “Sure,” he said politely. “Thanks a lot.”

  He went into the living room and sat down facing the television set. His eyes were aimed at the set, but he didn’t pay any attention to the blue-gray shadows flitting back and forth across the screen. He spent his time thinking about Betty, who was sixteen and good-looking and well-built and a virgin. His first virgin, by God!

  Vince had been fifteen when he had first discovered how easy it was for him to get a girl to go the limit with him. He’d made another discovery at the same time. He discovered why it was that people spent so much of their time thinking about sex and talking about sex and planning for sex and having sex and chasing after sex. It was because sex was the greatest thing since rings with secret compartments. Girls, he had discovered, had secret compartments, too, and they contained a map to paradise. It was farewell Captain Marvel, a new marvel has been found.

  Sex was great. Sex was great before, when you were leading up to it, working around like the coolest strategist who ever lived, like a band of Indians sneaking up on the fort, ready to crash through the wall the minute they were close enough. And it was great during, which went without saying. And it was great after, when the girl would look at you like you were God and you knew she’d give anything to have you do it to her again. And it was great even later, when you got together with the other guys, and everybody has sex on the mind, trying to figure out how to get some for themselves, and you could tell them you’ve had it, and this is what it was like.

  For some guys it was tough to get some. For Vince it was the easiest thing in the world. You just had to have the right attitude for it, that was all. You had to see it as a kind of war, with the girl and her parents and adults everywhere as the enemy. First, you had to play sheepdog and break the girl loose from the pack, get her off by herself. Then you had to play the strategist, and that was where Vince had a natural talent.

  The thing was, every girl had a Dream Man. Usually, he was some movie star, or maybe a combination of movie stars, or singers, or something like that. You found out who the Dream Man was, what his qualities were, what he was like—and the girl never got tired of talking about her Dream Man, once you got her started—and then you simply showed her you had the exact same qualities the Dream Man had, plus one more quality: You were flesh and blood, and available. And she’d be on her back before you could say, “Unzip.”

  For two years now, Vince had been sharpening his form, going with girl after girl, and he hadn’t grown bored with the game yet. Nor did he think he ever would grow bored with it. But tonight was the first time with a virgin. Every other girl he’d ever had had come to him at least second. And a girl who already knew what sex was all about would naturally be more eager than a girl who’d never had any at all.

  He’d tried a couple of virgins, two years ago, shortly after losing his own virginity, and had gotten nowhere. So he’d given up virgins as being more trouble than they were worth, and this was the first time he’d purposely gone after a virgin since.

  A virgin, by God, a certified virgin. H
e’d noticed Betty in school, and had talked with a few guys who had taken her out. According to them, it was impossible to get anywhere at all with Betty. You couldn’t even cop a feel without her getting all upset and mad.

  She was the one. He knew her casually, from school, and two days before he was due to graduate, he asked her for a date. She’d accepted, as he knew she would, and that first date he’d been as sexless as a spayed cat. They’d gone to the movies, and they’d talked, and they’d had hamburgers, and they’d driven around for a while, and then he’d taken her home, being sure to get her home fifteen minutes before the one o’clock deadline her parents had set. Get along with the parents and you’ll get the girl.

  The second date had run pretty much like the first, except that they’d parked for a while up at High Point, and necked. He’d kissed her, but he’d kept his hands to himself, and he got her home ahead of schedule again, with a chaste goodnight kiss on her front porch.

  The third date, they’d necked at the movies, and she’d responded nicely. By now, he knew a lot about Betty’s Dream Man. He was polite and gentlemanly, but he was also the outdoorsy type, the kind who goes off to the woods and lives in a tent, hunting and fishing, every once in a while. And he was frank, outspoken, and sincere

  So that’s the way Vince played it. He necked with her in the theater, and then they went back to High Point again and necked some more, and he could feel her getting excited, and at just the right moment he’d pulled away from her and said, “I think we ought to go for a walk and cool off, Betty. I’m having trouble keeping my hands to myself.” And he’d gotten out of the car before she could answer and walked around to open the door on her side.

  Theirs was the only car at High Point that night, and so they had strolled around for a while, hand in hand, looking down at the scattered lights of the town below them. Vince had talked about the cabin his family owned at a lake in the mountains, upstate, and he had played it as outdoorsy as he possibly could. He had also talked about the trouble he was having keeping his hands off her, and he was very honest and sincere—and flattering—about it. By the time they got back into the car, she knew he was her Dream Man, and she knew he wanted her.

  He didn’t even have to make the first move. When he kissed her, she reached out and took his hand and laid it against her breast, and whispered, “It’s all right, Vince, it really is.”

  Maybe he could have had her that night. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure, and he hadn’t tried. He had the program set up, and he was following it. That night, he had gotten her blouse open and her bra off. He had touched her breasts—lovely full breasts for a sixteen-year-old, pink-tipped and firm—and kissed them. He had slid his hand up the inside of her leg and touched her with slow, lingering fingers, and she had closed her eyes and sighed, and her hands had been taut on his back.

  But he’d stopped. He’d played it sincere and gentlemanly, he’d been the original Square Shooter, and he had shot not. And he even got her home by curfew time. The goodnight kiss on the front porch that night had been combined with two busy hands, and he had left her to go to bed with the hot memory of his left hand on her breast and his right hand up under her skirt.

  And tonight was the night the program culminated. Tonight, Vince was going to get himself a certified virgin. Already he had gone farther with her than anyone he knew—and the guys he knew weren’t reticent about their conquests or near-conquests—and tonight he would finish the job. He was leaving for the cabin by the lake soon, and this would be just about the last chance.

  Betty had told him that her parents were going to be out tonight, and he’d planned on coming back to the house early. He’d checked the TV listings and found out what movie was going to be on the Midnight Show, and he would have told her how much he had been looking forward to seeing this movie. It was some old World War Two movie about counterspies and Gestapo agents and all that jazz, which he wanted to see like he wanted to fall down a manhole, but he didn’t plan on watching much of it.

  Now, there was Mister Baxter out on the front porch, in his undershirt, and there was Mrs. Baxter, sitting across the living room in her flower-print dress and faded apron, and it seemed pretty clear that neither of them was intending to go anywhere at all. Which meant it was going to have to be the backseat of the car, or maybe on a blanket if he could find someplace secluded enough. And he had been looking forward to making his first virgin in her own bed.

  And here came the virgin now, down the stairs, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, her full breasts jutting out against an electric blue sweater, the center of interest wrapped in a hip-tight gray skirt. Vince got up, smiling at her, and she smiled back, saying something about being sorry for her lateness.

  The goodbyes were over with quickly. Mrs. Baxter had said, “Have a good time,” and Betty had answered, “You have a good time, too,” and they had gone out to the porch, where Betty had the exact same exchange with her father, and then they went down to the car, a ’57 Dodge, cream and green, with beige fins. Vince, the perfect gentleman, held the right-hand door open while Betty slid into the seat, clutching her skirt down at her knees. He closed the door once she was settled, and went around to his own side. He glanced back at the house just before getting into the car. Mister Baxter was still sitting on the porch in his undershirt, and Mrs. Baxter was standing in the doorway, her nose not quite touching the screen, her round shape framed by the living room lights behind her. Simultaneously, as though some director off in the bushes on the next-door lawn had given them a signal, they both raised their right hands and waved. Vince waved back, and got into the car.

  In that quick glance, he had also noticed again the wooden fire-escape on the side of the house. This was a residential district, all two-story one-family houses, but after a trio of bad fires in houses of this type, a town ordinance had been passed making it compulsory to have an outside stairway in any house where people lived on more than one floor. The wooden fire-escape, Vince had learned after gentle questioning, led to Betty’s bedroom. Since learning that, he had entertained idle daydreams about crawling up that fire escape and spending a few quiet hours in Betty’s bedroom and in Betty’s bed. But that was strictly daydreaming. That wasn’t the way to get her, sneaking through windows at three o’clock in the morning. The way to get her was to make her want to be gotten.

  Vince started the car and drove down to the corner, then turned left toward downtown. “I thought your parents were going out tonight,” he said, as casually as he could.

  “They are,” she answered.

  “Wearing undershirt and apron?”

  “Oh, they don’t have to leave the house till nine o’clock. And it’s only a little after seven-thirty now. They’ve got ages.”

  “Where they going?”

  “A surprise party for my Uncle George up in Votzburg. The party doesn’t start till eleven. My Aunt Edna is keeping him out of the house till then.”

  “Votzburg is forty miles away from here,” he said, surprised that Betty’s parents would be going, of their own free will, more than ten feet from the house.

  “I know,” she said disinterestedly. She couldn’t care less what her parents did.

  Vince calculated rapidly. The party was going to start at eleven o’clock. It would have to run a couple of hours anyway, until around one, maybe two. Betty’s old man would have half a bag on by the time he left the party, and the road from Votzburg was narrow, winding, hilly and two lanes wide. Forty miles of that road, at two or three o’clock in the morning, with half a bag on. They wouldn’t be home before four a.m. at the earliest.

  He smiled. “You know,” he said, “I was looking at the paper tonight, at the TV listings.” He forced enthusiasm into his voice. “And do you know what’s playing—?”

  They got back to the house at a quarter to twelve. In the movie, he had spent the first half of the double feature with his arm around Betty’s shoulders, occasionally leaning over to kiss her, his free hand clasping he
rs. The second half, he’d progressed. The arm around her shoulder had drawn in tighter, so the hand dangled down over her breast, just barely brushing the tip of it at first and then gradually touching it more insistently, holding it and stroking it and squeezing it. Their kisses had become longer and fiercer, his tongue searching and probing deeply within her mouth, and her breathing was faster, her eyes bright in the dimness of the movie theater. His other hand had touched her knee, slid under the hem of her skirt, stroked slowly up the inside of her thigh, and she squirmed in the seat, whispering, “Oh. Oh.”

  In the car, he had driven one-handed. His other arm was around her, the hand reaching around to massage her breast, as he had done in the theater. She sat close to him, her breath hot and fast in his ear, and she had begun to grow bold herself. Her hand had rested on his leg, and he knew that she wanted to touch him as he had touched her. And he also knew she was going to get the opportunity very soon.

  They got to the house at a quarter to twelve, and Vince immediately sat down on the sofa, expecting Betty to come sit beside him. But she said something about coffee and went out to the kitchen. He followed her out, saying, “Who wants coffee?”

  “I do,” she told him.

  He stood in the kitchen doorway. “Betty,” he said.

  She stopped her fussing with cups and saucers. Her back was to him, and slowly she turned to face him. Her eyes were bright, as they had been in the movie, but they showed wariness, too.

  “Come into the living room, Betty,” he said. “Come sit with me in the living room.”

  “I was—going to make coffee,” she said hesitantly.

  “Never mind the coffee. Come on in the living room.”

  She hesitated a moment longer, and then smiled and said, “All right.”

  They went back to the living room, and this time she sat down on the sofa beside him, but almost immediately moved to get up again, saying, “You didn’t turn the TV set on.”