The Jet Set

by Mack Reynolds

  But Loretta said, “Marcella, I have just loads I’ve wanted to talk over with you. Simply loads. Can’t we go off into Big Bill’s study, or something? It’s so noisy in here. Really.”

  Larry wondered vaguely whether the director’s life might not be a bit more difficult than he had ever suspected. In any of Loretta Alsace’s films, he had never caught that impossible manner she had of emphasizing every third or fourth word, whether it called for emphasis or not.

  Marcella looked at her quizzically.

  Loretta swept her eyes over the Cham and the others who had been in the little circle and made with her world-renowned dazzle smile. “Do forgive us,” she murmured, turning to go.

  Muley Khalid bowed, and stood looking after them as the film celebrity led Marcella toward the interior of the house.

  Marcella said, “Come along, Larry.”

  Larry followed into the hall, which evidently led to the library or Big Bill’s study, or wherever. He said by way of demurral, “If you ladies want to let down your hair, I can’t — ”

  “Hush up, honey, Loretta Alsace never wanted to gossip with me in her life.”

  The movie star pushed open a door or two along the way, peered in and then continued. She finally found what she evidently was looking for. Marcella clipped, “In the name of Allah, the kitchen. What in hell do you want with the kitchen?”

  Loretta Alsace snorted her disgust. “A back door, dahling. Some way of getting away from that overgrown schoolboy movie fan. The Cham of the Ismailian Shiahs! Ha!”

  Marcella Loraine grunted. “You’d better not let him hear you say that. Muley would probably buy up Metro, Twentieth Century and Arthur Rank to boot and have you blacklisted.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m escaping in this manner,” Loretta tittered. “I haven’t any desire to antagonize the little jerk, only get away from him.”

  Larry said in deprecation, “I was just getting to the point where I was enjoying myself.”

  Marcella patted his arm as they hurried down the back steps behind the servants’ quarters and made their way toward the parking area of Big Bill’s villa. “There, there, honey. We’ll continue the party at my place. I know what you like.”

  He grunted inwardly. The hell she did.

  Loretta Alsace drove a 220S Mercedes. The three of them crowded into the front seat, and she said brightly. “Made the getaway. Now, where to, dahlings? After this valiant escape from the nomads, I could use a drink. Marcella, dahling, does that priceless former hubby of yours still send that wonderful whiskey to you?”

  “All right,” Marcella said. “Keep crowding into the act. We’ll go on up to my suite. You know where the Mirasierra is, I suppose.”

  Larry felt vaguely as though he were being pushed around. However, who was he to argue? Had anyone suggested that morning that he would wind up the day in a three-way party involving internationally notorious divorcée Contessa di Loraine and the current rage of the studios of Hollywood, Rome and Madrid, he would have suggested psychiatry.

  • • •

  It turned out more of a party than he had expected.

  The suite was the same. The Scotch was the same. In fact, it was better. At least it seemed to be. At this stage, Larry Land, no bottle baby at best, had at least ten drinks in him. Marcella Loraine had possibly doubled that score — but she was a veteran. Loretta Alsace was the most nearly sober of the three, but she’d had a few herself. Alcohol wasn’t her particular interest. She was eying both Larry and her hostess now, calculatingly. She wondered what chance there was of Marcella passing out. No such luck, probably.

  They had two of the Marcella conception of a drink, which was hardly minimal, and then she muttered something to the effect of getting more comfortable and weaved her way to one of the bedrooms.

  Larry said after her, rather inanely, “Quite a girl.” He was trying to make conversation. Now that he was alone with her, he felt some of the awe which Muley Khalid must have in the presence of the woman who nightly provided erotic dreams for men and boys numbering into the millions.

  Loretta said deliberately, “We’ve made one escape this evening. Would you like to try again?”

  At first he didn’t understand. Then he did. Frankly he was flabbergasted.

  What his reply might have been, he never knew himself, since Marcella, probably suspicious of her supposed friend, came unsteadily back. She had made a change that would have done credit to an experienced legitimate actress, so far as speed was concerned. However, she had sacrificed grooming for haste. The translucent-transparent negligee she wore, she hadn’t bothered to tie around the waist, and her feet were bare.

  “Heavens to Betsy,” Loretta protested. “If I knew we were going to wind up with this kind of party, I would have brought a man along. What am I supposed to do, watch?” Her pink tongue parted her lips and darted from left to right. Her eyes were narrowed and went quickly from Marcella to Larry, and back again.

  The situation was one that Larry, in his somewhat stilted experience, had never experienced before. Perversion was unknown to him. He had never even heard of voyeurism, not to speak of practicing it. He had never performed sexually while there was a third person present, and the idea had never occurred to him.

  Marcella had run her hand down the wall, near the door through which she had entered, and now the lights had gone so dim that there was sufficient only to make each other out, enough by which to operate. He finished his drink, and put the glass aside. His mind was fuzzy, fuzzier than he could ever remember. But lust was abuilding inside him. Two of the most widely desired women in all the world. Two of them! Moses!

  One — Marcella, he thought — had knelt on the floor before him and was fumbling with his clothing. His mouth was suddenly dry. Ashes dry. He began ripping at buttons trying to shrug out of his clothes.

  Marcella laughed shrilly, loudly. “You don’t have to bring another man along, Loraine. We don’t need another man. Larry can take care of both of us. Both of us!”

  One was on his lap. He didn’t know which one, but she was nude, completely nude. He could feel the overpowering lust, growing within. His groin was raging. His need was growing and growing. And was all.

  He growled, low in his throat, an animal growl.

  The one who had planted herself on his lap and had crushed her lips against his, he seized and brutally rolled over onto her back. He was free of his clothing now. Sufficiently free to do that which he must do.

  He roughly parted her legs and pressed down.

  Fires of ecstasy, what was the other one doing behind him!

  • CHAPTER FOUR •

  WHEN LARRY LAND AWOKE in the morning, it was to lie there for a long moment before opening his eyes. He felt as though if it was up to him he would never have opened them. Never again. Usually, he wasn’t prone to hangover, but for that matter usually he didn’t do much drinking. An occasional beer bust. The fact of the matter was that he’d never been in a financial position to do much drinking. The day past he had put away as much as he had in the past month or more. And now he felt it.

  Nor was that the only factor contributing to his body’s depletion. The evening before came back to him. Two of them! Two of the most insatiable women he had ever met. And certainly the two most practiced. The three of them had performed acts undreamed of by Larry Land before he had come to Torremolinos. The act of love had always been a simple one so far as he was concerned. Little in the way of love play was called for. When the wave of lust flowed over him, his reaction was immediate and his tactics direct. But always in the past he had dealt with his women one at a time. He had never experienced performing with one while another impatiently awaited her turn, amusing herself the while by tantalizing him in whatever wise occurred to her. Some of the things that Marcella and Loretta had done came back to him now in shock.

  He opened his eyes at long last. He was in a bed, of course, a large double bed. There was but one fellow occupant. Her hair, jet black, proclaimed i
t to be Marcella Loraine. He wondered what had happened to the screen star. His temples throbbed and he felt nausea.

  Larry pushed back the single sheet which was their cover and swung his legs around to the floor. He was nude. He wondered vaguely where his clothes were. Probably, he decided, strewn around the suite’s living room where he had thrown them the night before.

  He gingerly made his way to the bathroom. He eyed the water tap. Was the water drinkable in Torremolinos, or would he wind up with turista? What was it they called it in Mexico? The Aztec Two Step, or, sometimes, Montezuma’s Revenge. He didn’t give a damn. He was so dehydrated now that he would have drunk sea water. He took up the glass.

  When he returned to the bedroom, Marcella was awake, her face, without makeup, showing clearly the ravages of the day and night before. She was forty, all right. At least forty, Larry told himself.

  “Allah!” she muttered. “Larry, be a darling and get me a drink, will you?”

  He started to turn back to the bath.

  “Not water, for crissake.”

  Still nude, he went back into the living room, and figured out where the kitchen might be. There was a large, American-type refrigerator. He wrestled ice from it and returned to the small bar in the living room. This was the most swank hotel suite he had ever experienced. He wondered, in passing, what it cost per night. Plenty.

  He had never seen Marcella drink anything but Scotch, so he made her a stiff one.

  He had never drunk in the morning. The few hangovers he had ever experienced he had let die away of their own free will. What was the formula he had read somewhere? After you’ve been able to get two hot meals on your stomach, the hangover is gone. However, Marcella Loraine was obviously a veteran at this, and Marcella Loraine was getting a drink down before she even left the bed. He decided he’d try her system and poured himself a highball, too.

  He went back to the bedroom with the drinks, handed her one and sat on the edge of the bed. She downed half her drink in the first try.

  “Allah preserve us!”

  Larry took a pull at his own glass. For a moment, he felt he would retch, that it would come up again, but then a warming glow began to radiate from his stomach. He took another careful sip.

  Marcella said, “Where’s that bitch Loretta?”

  Larry said, “I don’t know. Not in the suite. I don’t think.”

  “Good grief, that was a party.”

  “Yeah!”

  “Get me another, honey. I’m dying.”

  Larry went back into the living room, made her another drink, but before returning with it, gathered up his clothes. He was beginning to feel silly, running around like this. He carried them with him back to the bedroom.

  He began to dress, even as she continued to kill the hangover. She said, her voice pitched low and with the usual fuzzy edges already returned, “What’s your hurry?”

  He looked at her and grunted. “I’d almost forgotten myself, but I have to work for a living. Yesterday I took exactly zero photographs. And even though I don’t sleep in my own hotel, the rent goes on.”

  She was looking at him carefully. “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. She was resting on her right elbow, her glass in her left hand. The sheet had fallen back so that her breasts, which were excellent, were bare to his view. The nipples, he couldn’t help but notice, were probably touched up with cosmetic.

  “Thinking about what?” His suit was wrinkled. However, he had a traveler’s iron in his suitcase and could touch it up. Larry Land was experienced in living the bachelor’s life on a shoestring.

  She said slowly. “See here, darling, I’ve about decided to phone my staff in Tangier, have them lock up the place there and come to Torremolinos. I’ll take a villa for at least the balance of the summer!”

  That didn’t call for comment from him. He wondered how big a staff, as she called it, Marcella Loraine maintained. Probably a chauffeur and a cook and all, besides the maids of course. He began tying his tie before the mirror of her dressing table. He decided he didn’t envy a servant working for Marcella Loraine. You’d have your work cut out for you.

  “Damn it. Listen to me!”

  “I’m listening.”

  “All right. Frankly, I’m not the sort of person who likes to be alone. I hate it. I need companionship.”

  “Well, I suppose we all do.” His shirt looked as though he had slept in it. It was a drip-dry and usually before going to bed he made a practice of washing it out, in the hotel washbowl, and hanging it up.

  “Damn it, listen to me. Theoretically, I’m still married, but actually that slob husband of mine is shacked up with some pansy or other in Positano. I’m living alone.”

  It finally came to him what she was saying. He turned and scowled at her. “Look, Marcella, this has all been fun, but I’m no gigolo.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

  He turned back to finish his tie.

  She said urgently, “You told me yesterday that you wanted to see a bit of life before settling down at your job. I’ll make a guess that you saw more life, as you call it, yesterday than you have in the rest of the time you’ve been in Europe.”

  Larry Land had to laugh.

  “Well, you did. You met more interesting people, had more fun, more experience than you could ever expect as a half-assed photographer living on peanuts in third-rate pensions.”

  He decided that Marcella Loraine was probably the most foul-mouthed woman he had ever known. Somehow she managed to do it with such an air that it wasn’t particularly repulsive.

  She held up the glass to him, and he went back to the living room and made her a third drink. He hesitated, and made himself a second, half as strong as hers. He wondered how much liquor she got down in the duration of a day, if she started like this before breakfast.

  When he returned to the bedroom, he said, “All right, granted. I still don’t relish being a kept man.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’ll be paying your way. I need an escort. I need a man around the house. You think I like to live in a house all alone with these damn spicks and gypsies all over the place? You’d have your own room and all. You could consider yourself something like a secretary.”

  Larry Land looked down at her and thought about it.

  Actually, why not? She had more money than she knew what to do with. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to pick up the bills? Here he was in Europe, seeing a bit of life, sowing some wild oats before getting into the nine-till-four rut. As a matter of fact, if he wanted to rationalize, he was a sociologist, wasn’t he? It was a priceless opportunity to see how the fast-living, high-living elements of the upper class conducted themselves. He might even do a paper on it, upon his return to California. Something about the mores of the so-called Jet Set. Lord knows, he’d have the material, if yesterday was any criterion. It was an opportunity few serious sociologists would ever have. In fact, it was unbelievable that he, Lawrence Land, had stumbled upon it.

  He said slowly, “Of course, I could always call it quits and pull out any time I wanted.”

  “Of course,” she said urgently. Allah, but the man was built!

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Think, hell. It’s all decided.” She threw the sheet back in invitation. “Get out of those clothes. They look like you’ve been rolling in them anyway. Later we’ll send a boy over to your hotel to get your luggage. And later I’ll have the hotel manager send up some of the local real estate bastards, and we’ll get hopping on finding a villa.”

  Larry began to say something, in irritation, but then the phone rang.

  “Who in the hell could that be, this time of day?” Marcella growled, reaching for it. “That’s the trouble with not having Willis. I have to do everything.”

  Larry didn’t know what she was talking about.

  She said into the phone, “What in the hell is it?” and listened for a minute or so. She put her hand over the mouthpece and said, “It’s Hamid,” and
then listened for a few moments again. “I haven’t the vaguest idea where Miss Alsace is,” she said. “Just a moment …”

  She looked up at Larry. “How would you like to take in the Pamplona feria? Muley is flying up with a party.”

  “Muley?”

  “The Cham. He’s taking over the Duque Urzáiz y Silva finca for the feria. Should we go?”

  “Look,” Larry said in exasperation. “Who’s Hamid? Who’s the Duque whatever-you-said? What’s a feria and what’s a finca?”

  Marcella laughed at him. “Hamid is Muley’s social secretary. A feria is like a festival, a carnival, you know. They hold this special one in Pamplona every year. A finca is like a ranch. The Duque Urzáiz y Silva has one of the largest in Spain. He owns half Spain, financed Franco and the Falange back before the Civil War. Would you like to go? Big Bill’s going, and Loretta, evidently, if Hamid can locate her. I suspect that Muley has arranged the whole thing solely in hopes of getting Loretta to come along.”

  “It sounds like quite a party, but would there be room for me?”

  Marcella looked at him. “The Cham has a private jet. One of these British Caravelles or whatever they call them. All fitted up for his private parties. As far as the finca having room enough, it’s supposed to be as large as a Hilton hotel. I’ve never seen it.”

  “Sounds fabulous,” Larry admitted.

  Marcella said into the phone. “Very well, Hamid. Tell Muley we’re both keen. No, I’m quite sure I have no idea where Miss Alsace is, probably shacked up with some spick matador, if I know Miss Alsace.” She banged down the phone. “I’ll have to ring Tangier and have two of the girls dash up. I can’t go to Pamplona without some minimum help.”

  • • •

  The Cham’s private Caravelle was kept at the Malaga airport, which lies almost exactly halfway between Torremolinos and Malaga. From the outside, it looked as conservative as the most staid international airliner, silvery in color without insigna other than those provided for by international law.

  Inside the motif was Indian, up to and including the garb of the steward department of the crew. The four girls wore saris, and moved with a quiet flow that would have put to envy even Big Bill Daly’s Concha. Aside from the crew, which numbered an even dozen, Muley Khalid’s entourage included his ever-present though inconspicuous bodyguards, two secretaries, his personal valet and two Afghan dogs, both of which were as beautiful specimens as the canine race is capable of producing, and both idiots.