The Storyteller

by Harold Robbins

  He sat at the end of his bed and took off his shoes. “Okay if I undress and rest in my undershorts?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “It’s too warm to try to sleep with your clothes on.” She wriggled under the covered sheet. A moment later she had the bathrobe out from under it and at the foot of the bed. She looked at him. “I’ll just rest a little while. Then we can talk.”

  He undressed with his back to her. He still had his wet hard and didn’t want her to see the wet spots on his shorts. He pulled the drapes across the window and the room turned dark. He stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep; he was listening to the soft breathing from the other bed. He became annoyed at himself because his erection wouldn’t relax. He turned on his side, away from her, and tried to clear his mind. Then the telephone rang.

  Quickly he rolled over and picked up the telephone before it could ring again and wake her. “Hello,” he said in a low voice.

  “Joe.” It was the contessa. “Did your editor arrive?”

  “Just this moment, Contessa,” he said.

  “I wanted to remind you that you are both invited for a long weekend on my yacht. We will be sailing at noon tomorrow.”

  “May I call you at seven o’clock this evening?” he asked. “I will be able to let you know by then.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Ciao.”

  As he replaced the receiver, Laura turned on the lamp on the night table between them. She was unaware that the sheet had slipped half away from her. “Who was calling?” she asked.

  “The Contessa Baroni,” he said. “She’s invited both of us for a long weekend on her yacht.” He felt himself growing more erect and rolled over on his stomach to cover himself.

  “Contessa Baroni?” she said reflectively. “I know that name.”

  “Baroni—that’s the name of the publishing company that bought the Italian rights to my book. She owns the whole company and many other things I don’t even know about.” He tried to burrow deeper into the bed. “She also financed the last picture I did for Santini and arranged for me to collect all the money he owed me.”

  “How did you meet her?” Laura asked. “At one of her parties? She also has a reputation for being a great hostess.”

  “Santini introduced us and for some reason she seemed to like me. I have a feeling that she gave her publishing company orders to buy my book. She told me that the managing director of her book company will be on the yacht on the weekend with his wife.”

  She met his eyes. “Did you have an affair with her?”

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed, automatically sitting up. “I’m not her type. She’s into young girls.”

  She stared at him, her eyes looking at his erection, the front of his shorts bulging, a large wet stain half covering the fly. “But she did that to you on the phone?”

  “That’s stupid,” he snapped. “I’ve had this hard on from the moment you came off the plane. Besides, looking at you half naked right now doesn’t make it any easier for me.”

  She glanced down at herself, the sheet falling off. She didn’t pick it up. “I did think, several times, that you were looking uncomfortable.”

  “You were right,” he said.

  “Take off your shorts,” she said suddenly, “before you get a hernia.”

  He swung himself off the bed and dropped his shorts to the floor. His phallus slapped up against his stomach.

  She looked at him. “You have a large penis, almost up to your bellybutton,” she said softly. “Like eight or nine inches.”

  “I never measured it,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. “I love big pricks. That’s why I kept away from you. I wanted it to be only business. I had a feeling that you would be like that.”

  “Is that what you want now? Only business?” he asked.

  She looked up at him and laughed. “Now you’re the one who’s crazy. I didn’t fly half across the world only to help write a book.”

  “I don’t get it.” His surprise echoed in his voice. “You were always so cool. What made you change your mind?”

  “Eight years in that damn agency with all their stupid rules.” She looked up at him. “And you know something? It would be the same in the new job so I quit it before I started.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  She reached and clasped his phallus in her hand. “This,” she said. “And I want to live free. Like you. You do anything you want. You seem to always be having a ball. What I read in the papers, you are always where the action is. People. Parties. My life is just boring.”

  He sat down on the side of the bed and placed his hand between her legs. “Your cunt is soaking,” he said huskily.

  “I want you to kiss it,” she said. “I was engaged to a lawyer for almost six years and he never did anything but fuck me, and that was always with a condom. I never had a man kiss me there.”

  “You came to the right man,” he said. “Eating pussy is my thing.” He bent his face into her. He could hear her moaning as he moved around and into her. He felt her clitoris grow larger in his mouth. “My God!” he exclaimed. “You’ve got the biggest clit I’ve ever seen. It’s like a little prick.”

  She grabbed his hair and pulled his face tighter into her. “Stop talking when I’m coming in your mouth!” she said gasping, shaking her head wildly from side to side.

  He glanced up at her. Her eyes were tightly closed. Quickly he pushed her legs back, his hands under her knees until she was opened wide to him. He slammed himself deep into her. Her mouth gaped open as she half screamed. “Is this prick large enough?” he growled.

  “I feel it in my throat,” she cried. “I love it! I love you! Just love me like this, forever and ever.”

  36

  THE SOFT SOUND of the ship’s engines awakened him. He checked the radium dial of his wristwatch. It was just past seven o’clock in the morning. Carefully he slipped out of the small three-quarter-size bed in the cabin and glanced at Laura. She was fast asleep, with the bedsheet draped over her head. Quickly he stepped into his bermuda shorts and pulled on a shirt. Quietly he left the cabin and closed the door without making a sound.

  He walked up the small circular staircase past the main deck and made his way to the dining salon. Already there was a small buffet set out for breakfast. He picked up a glass of tomato juice and sipped it slowly. Through the windows he saw the land slipping behind them as the ship moved forward.

  “The girl is going to marry you,” the contessa said behind him.

  He turned in surprise. The contessa was wearing a silk robe over a tight bathing suit. “What makes you think that?” he asked.

  “There are some things I know,” she said. She held out her cheek for him to kiss. “Buon giorno.”

  “Buon giorno,” he said, kissing her. “Are you psychic?”

  “No,” she said. “But we have been together three days now. That’s enough to tell. But do not be afraid. She will be very good for you.”

  He was silent.

  “Is she a good fuck?” the contessa asked.

  Joe nodded. “Very good.”

  “I thought so,” the contessa said. “I felt she was a woman who had kept her sex bottled inside for a long time. And now this is the first time she feels free with herself.”

  “What else do you have to tell me, O wise lady?” He smiled.

  “I would like to eat her pussy,” the contessa said. “And I am sorry that will never happen. This kind of sex is not a part of her. She loves you, Joe. That is the simple truth of it.”

  “Where is your little Danish girlfriend?” he asked.

  “Still asleep,” she said. “But I am bored with her. She has no imagination. I am also bored with Enrico and his wife. So much discussion of business does not make for a good time. This has to be done once a year. It is important to keep in touch with my business affairs.”

  “You have many,” he said.

  “My father didn’t have a son so
I had to take care of all his business after he died.” She pulled a cord to summon the steward. “Would you like some American breakfast?” she asked. “Eggs and bacon?”

  “That would be nice.”

  The steward in his immaculate white jacket appeared. She spoke to him in Italian and he left the salon. She gestured for Joe to follow her to the breakfast table. She sat at the head of the table and placed him to her right. Silently she poured a small cup of coffee for herself from the silver carafe and poured another cup for Joe. She drank the coffee slowly. “Dull,” she said. “Nothing but dull.”

  Joe was silent.

  She looked at him. She took out a vial of cocaine and a small gold spoon from the pocket of her silk robe. “I need a lift,” she said, taking two deep snorts and holding it out to him.

  He shook his head. “It would make me crazy in the morning.”

  She laughed. “Then let me put some on your fingers, and stick your hand in my cunt.”

  He broke up. “Anna,” he laughed, calling her by name for the first time. “You really are too much. We’re here in the dining salon. The steward is bringing breakfast, and who else do we know that might show up?”

  “Nobody will see even if they came up,” she said. She lifted the edge of the tablecloth and spread open her legs. “It will only take a moment. My cunt is on fire. Cocaine will cool it off.”

  “What about your bathing suit? You can’t take that off?”

  “Let me worry about that,” she said, taking his fingers and sprinkling the cocaine across them from the vial. “Now put your hand under the tablecloth.”

  He looked at her and did as she had suggested. He felt her hand grasp his hand and pull it toward her pussy. Surprised, he felt the seam under the bathing suit open. She slid forward in her seat and then strongly pulled his hand into her already soaking pussy, her cunt almost covering his knuckles. “Now!” she said, gasping. “Twist it twice then pull it out!”

  He could feel the juices running over his hand as he took back his hand. He looked at her. For a moment she was flushed, then the perspiration broke out on her forehead. She let her breath out in a slow sigh and smiled slowly at him. “You can wash your hand in the fingerbowl on the table next to you. It is scented with fresh lemon.”

  Quietly he splashed the water over his fingers, then wiped himself with a napkin. “Better now?” He smiled.

  She dabbed her face with her napkin. “Didn’t ruin my makeup?” she asked.

  “You look just perfect,” he said.

  She leaned across the table and kissed his cheek. “You are a very sweet man,” she said. “Believe me, that girl is very lucky.”

  He was staring in wonder at her as the steward came into the salon with his breakfast. He waited until the man had left. “Anna, tell me. Why?”

  There was a strange sadness in the back of her eyes. “Life is so fucking dull, darling,” she said, sounding almost angry at herself. “Sometimes you have to do something crazy.”

  * * *

  THE LAST DAY of the weekend on the yacht ended with the fireworks display in the bay of Cannes on Tuesday night. The contessa’s yacht was surrounded by boats, large and small, as the fireworks exploded above them. Joe and Laura had gone up to the sun deck to look at the sky. The others had remained on the afterdeck close to the buffet dinner placed on a long table. The contessa had invited about thirty guests to join her on the yacht.

  “I’ve never seen fireworks like this,” Laura said, staring up at the exploding lights in the night sky.

  “Neither have I,” Joe said. “Last summer I spent at the Lido in Venice. They never had anything like it.”

  She glanced over the railing toward the afterdeck. “I don’t think any of them down there are even watching.”

  “They are more interested in drinking and eating,” he said.

  “I thought I caught a sniff of marijuana near some guests.”

  Joe laughed. “It’s not marijuana, it’s hashish. They don’t have any ganch here. But the contessa has everything. Cocaine, hash, absinthe, opium. All you have to do is ask.”

  “Kathy told me you always had coke and ganch,” Laura said.

  “I did in Hollywood,” he said. “But here I don’t have any connections.”

  “I’ve smoked with Kathy a few times,” she said. “But I never had any cocaine. Sometimes I think I would like to try it. What does it do for you?”

  “It’s a big high,” he said. “Goes right through your head. But you can’t use too much of it. Then it’s a big downer.”

  “It might be fun if we could try it together.”

  “I’ll check with the contessa,” he said. “Maybe she’ll give me a little.”

  She looked down again over the railing. “I don’t know how the contessa got all these people together at one time.” She turned back to Joe. “I saw Ali Khan and Rita Hayworth and Rubirosa and Zsa Zsa Gabor. There were also a lot of faces that I recognized but I couldn’t connect their names.”

  “The contessa collects them all,” he said. “She can afford it.”

  An explosion of white Roman candles turned the night into day. “Do you like my dress?” she asked.

  “Beautiful,” he said. The black silk dress clung softly to her lush figure.

  “I bought it in a store on the Rue d’Antibes today,” she said. “When I heard there would be a party I realized I didn’t have an evening dress with me that would be appropriate.”

  “It’s just great,” he said.

  “It was two hundred dollars,” she said. “I’ve never spent that much money on a dress.”

  He laughed. “I’ll pay for it. It’s worth it just seeing you in it.”

  She kissed him quickly. “I had another idea while I was walking around in Cannes. It’s a much smaller and quieter town than Nice. I found a small one-bedroom apartment on La Croisette, just across from the beach. The hotel would cost like fifty, sixty dollars a day. I can get the apartment for two hundred dollars for two weeks. It has everything. Bathroom. Kitchen.”

  “You planning on cooking?”

  “I’m a good cook,” she said. “And we can save some money while you’re working.”

  He was silent.

  “I’ve already gone through your twenty-seven pages. You have the whole book there. I can help you block it out into chapters, then I will write a few pages of outline I know would sell if you write five chapters to go with it. I know I can get this book sold, for a crazy deal.”

  He stared at her. “Then what’s going to happen to our fucking?”

  She moved closer to him. Quickly she opened his fly and held his phallus. It went hard almost immediately. She squeezed him. “I always know where to find it.” She laughed.

  He held up his hands in mock surrender. “You win. I’ll tell the contessa that we’ll get off here in the morning.”

  She took his handkerchief from his jacket pocket. She wiped her hand, then handed it to him. “You’d better dry yourself. Your cock is dripping like a leaking faucet.”

  37

  IT WAS ALMOST two o’clock in the morning when he finished the last page of chapter three. He pulled the page from the typewriter and read it, then glanced down at the table that he used as a desk and studied the chapter blockout that he and Laura had worked out. He needed two more chapters to submit to a publisher in New York. Laura had finished the outline of the book and he had to admit to himself that she, with her experience as editor and agent, had written a better outline than he could have done.

  A look at that last page, and he realized that it worked well. But it was not going as quickly as he would like. The two chapters he had to finish would take more than the two days left of the two-week lease of the apartment, and they had already been notified that the apartment would not be available after the lease expired.

  He rose from the table and turned off the light. He walked into the darkened room and looked out the window. Across La Croisette he saw people entering and leaving the casino. N
ear the other corner he watched the whores offering their wares. The way he had it figured, business was not very good. But then, the end of the season was approaching.

  He heard the rustle of silk and turned. Laura had come from the bedroom in a short silk robe and joined him at the window. “Finish the chapter?” she asked.

  He nodded. “But it’s only the third. I’ll never make the five chapters in the two days we have left here.”

  “We can find another apartment,” she said. “The season is over and there are plenty of vacancies.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve had enough of these places. The French aren’t very cooperative with their tenants. Besides the rent, they charge you for towels and sheets, they murder you with a deposit on the telephone—which you’ll probably never collect once you’re gone.”

  “What do you want to do then?” she asked. “Do you want to go back to Rome?”

  “That won’t help,” he said. “I have nothing there except some trunks in storage.”

  She looked up at him. “I know you,” she said. “You have an idea.”

  He nodded. “Our lease is over Wednesday. Every Wednesday an Italian liner stops at Cannes to pick up passengers on the way to New York. The trip takes eight days. I can finish the next two chapters on the boat. And we’ll be home.”

  “An ocean voyage is very romantic,” she said. “But it’s also very expensive. Could we afford it?”

  He laughed. “If it’s good it’s automatically expensive.”

  “But you have to wear an evening dress at dinner every night. I have only the one I bought for the contessa’s party,” she said.

  “So buy a few more. They should be cheap enough, it’s the end of the season.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to work on the boat?”

  “I’ll be able,” he said. “We should have everything together so that you and the lawyer can work out a deal for the book.”

  “Then what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Write the book and get rich.”

  She looked up at him. “And what plans do you have for me?”

  He took her in his arms and bent down to kiss her. “You come with me,” he said.