He looked at his watch again. She’d slept long enough. It was time to get the show on the road, presuming there was going to be a show.
He arose from his chair and crossed over to the couch, seating himself sear her bead. She stirred and sighed, but didn’t awaken.
He put his hand on her cheek, and she snuggled it sleepily into his palm. When her eyes still failed to open, he let his hand drift down over the front of her sleek red dress until he was holding the firm mound of one breast.
She smiled. After a moment, she opened her eyes.
“Well, well,” he said. “Madam Fury’s awake.”
“Hello,” she said. Her voice was thick. “What time is it?”
“Getting late. Aren’t you supposed to be getting another call?”
Her eyes widened. “That’s right. I was so sleepy. . .” She shook her head and pushed herself erect on one arm. His hand dropped from her breast to the roundness of a thigh. “Did anyone call while I was conked out?”
“Nope. Nobody. You’re only expecting one more, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. The virgin.” She swung her legs off the edge of the couch and sat up beside him.
“Somebody called before. Who was it?”
“The fat man—the one I spotted in front of the cigar store. I told you about that—didn’t I?”
“Yes. You threw him a card out the window of the car.”
“That’s the one. Well, he called. He’ll show up tonight, too, I think. He turned out to be a real nut. Name of Small.”
The man lifted his eyebrows. “He gave his name? I’ll say he’s a nut.”
She waved a hand. “You don’t know the half of it. It seems he’s a sexual connoisseur—traveled the world over, or so he claims, enjoying helpless maidens in every port, trying out every sensation there was to be had.”
“Huh.” The man puffed his cigarette. “What did he want?”
“Something new. He said he needed a unique experience—a form of pleasure he’d never tried before. He sounded very sad about it.”
The man laughed. “Honey—you can sure pick them. What did you say?”
“I offered him a special treatment. The Climax.”
“What’s special about that?” He patted her knee.
“I don’t mean it that way, stupid,” said the woman, grinning. “The Climax—capital T, capital C. The ultimate in sexual pleasure. He sounded very enthusiastic.”
“You figure that one out all by yourself?”
“On the spur of the moment,” she said proudly.
“Nice work.” He quirked his mouth. “What is it?”
“The Climax, you mean? How the hell should I know?”
They laughed together. The woman reached into the man’s shirt pocket and drew out a cigarette for herself. She plucked the burning butt from his fingers and lit her own with it.
“This girl you mentioned,” said the man. “She’d better call soon. Time’s getting short.”
“She will.” The woman blew out a ball of smoke. “I had my doubts about the other three, but not about her. She’ll call, sure as fate.”
“The virgin, you said. How do you know she’s a virgin? What kind of broad is she, anyway?”
“A little blonde waitress,” said the woman. “I spotted her in a Brooklyn diner the other night. A very trim piece of merchandise, by the way—I wouldn’t mind being built like that myself.”
“I like you the way you are,” said the man. “What about this virgin business?”
“Oh, yes. Well, I knew the minute I saw her she’d be a likely candidate for what I had in mind, and I got the impression right away that there was something unusual about her. Sexually, that is. You know what I mean.”
He nodded. “I know all about it. Go on.”
“So l watched her. I kept my eyes on her all the while I was there. She knew it, too. I could tell she knew she was being watched. But she never once looked at me. That’s what gave her away.”
“What was?”
“The fact that she never looked in my direction. You don’t allow somebody to stare at you without returning that stare—unless you’re afraid to, of course.”
“Why should she be afraid to look at you? Get to the point"
“She probably thought I was a man. I could see it in the set of her shoulders, the way she turned herself, held her arms, trying to keep her goodies out of sight. She was a virgin, no question about it. A scared virgin.”
“You gave her a card?”
The woman smiled. “I left it under my plate—as a tip.”
“Very interesting. Only what makes you think the girl will call?”
“What makes you think she won’t? I was right about the other three, wasn’t I?”
He shrugged. “Granted. But the other three were sexually experienced. If you’re right about this girl, not only has she never had any, but she’s frightened to even try it. A girl like that wouldn’t call Madam Fury in a million years.” He paused and smiled. “Madam Fury,” he repeated. “Now you’ve got me doing it.”
“She will call,” said the woman. “That’s part of my feeling about her. I don’t know if she'll ask for sex, or just for advice—I can't figure out why she's going to answer that card. But he’s going to do it; you mark my words.”
He looked pointedly at his watch again. “Well, she’d better do it quick, because in about fifteen more minutes . . .”
The phone rang.
The man and the woman looked at each other. “I told you,” she said.
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I believe, I believe.”
“Go in the other room while I answer this call, will you?”
“Go in the-—why in hell should I do that?”
“I’m going to have to make this one up as I go along. I’ll be nervous if I know you’re hanging around listening to what I have to say. Come on.”
“All right.” He rose from the couch. “Far be it from me to do anything to spoil the composure of the great Madam Fury.”
“Go to hell,” she said. “Or at least as far as the other room.”
He grinned at her, then turned and went through the door which led to die bedroom. He'd discovered earlier that the only comfortable spot in the room was on the bed, and that was nothing special. The ashtray on the night table was heaped with his butts. He picked it up and dumped it out the window into the alley below. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, and lit a fresh cigarette.
Her call took quite a while. When she finally came into the bedroom, he’d run through three cigarettes and was working on a fourth.
“Well?” he asked.
“She’s coming,” said the woman. Her face wore a puzzled expression.
“What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” She crossed the room and sat down next to him. He handed her his cigarette and lit another for himself, “She sounded—peculiar. Not the way I expected at all.”
He chuckled. “Maybe she isn’t a virgin any more. She might have taken the plunge last night.”
“You know,” said the woman slowly. “I think it might be something like that.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “She’s still a virgin—I can tell that. But something happened to her. Maybe some boy—molested her. I don’t know. But she’s not so sure of herself any more.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“It might.” She gnawed her lip.
“For the better, I think.” He yawned and stretched. “Well, that’s the last of the calk. Can we get out of here now?”
“Yes.” She stood up quickly. “I want to get over to Staten Island early—before they start to arrive.”
“I want to go home first and wash up. And what about you? Don’t you want to change your clothes, or something?”
“I suppose.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s get moving. I don’t want this to be a last-minute rush.”
They lef
t the bedroom and went to the front door of the apartment together. He took their coats from the closet, and held hers for her as she slipped into it “Got everything?” he asked.
“I think so.” She looked around. “Oh, wait a minute. The cards. Are there any lying around?”
“Yes, there’s one on the table opposite the couch. That’s the only one, I think.”
She crossed the room and picked up the card, placing it carefully in her purse. “I wanted to be sure we didn’t leave any of those cards hanging around where somebody could find them.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“That depends.” She came up beside him and took his arm. “If things work out as I hope, we may have a lot to keep quiet about by tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER 10
CHARLIE, OF EUREKA Limousines, eased his cab into a space before Burton Small’s house. He glanced at his watch, saw he was a few minutes early, then keyed-off the ignition.
He took a cigar from his jacket pocket, lit up, and settled back to wait.
Charlie was a squarely-built man in his early forties. His hair had receded to the point where it was nothing but a fringe of fur around his naked pate, but the years had left few other marks on him. He still considered himself a young man, and in most respects he was.
Burton Small had discovered Charlie, and vice versa, about eight years before. Small had appealed to Charlie on their first meeting. The cab driver had a shrewd eye for people, and he spotted Small as a woman chaser instantly. There were few people Charlie liked more than women chasers. Charlie was one himself.
The relationship between Charlie and Burton Small had grown out of this common interest, and had reached the point where Small now hired Charlie’s car for any trip too long to make on foot. The arrangement pleased Charlie. In the beginning, he’d been annoyed at Small's prowess; it had become evident rather rapidly that Charlie, successful though he was, was quite outranked by Small in the matter of sexual conquests. But Small had gradually revealed himself as such an easygoing jolly guy that Charlie’s jealousy had faded, and had been replaced by respect. Small wasn’t the sort to measure a man’s virility by the number of his conquests, or to regard sex as anything but a prime pleasure. He would have been just as cordial to Charlie if the cab driver had been a virgin, or even a homosexual. It made no difference to Small.
Once Charlie had gotten over his initial envy, he’d found Small quite willing to share the broads he lined up, whenever it was possible, and whenever the service involved was something Charlie could take. Small’s tastes were so specialized and highly-refined that Charlie frequently had to turn down a free roll in the hay because he couldn’t identify the nature of the person he’d be rolling with. Small was constantly coming up with creatures so exotic and far-out they might easily be from other planets, and Charlie couldn’t enjoy the use of a female unless he knew for certain she was human.
With Burton Small’s little friends, you couldn’t always be sure.
But often enough, Small would come up with something Charlie could appreciate. He remembered fondly a blonde from about a year before—Small had been on a feet-kick at the time, and had hired the blonde for the purpose of playing with her toes. How he could have resisted playing with the rest of her, baffled Charlie. The girl had been endowed with one of the ripest sets of breasts Charlie had ever seen, and her legs and torso and specially her jutting backside had been molded from the same excessive flesh. That blonde had been just a few ounces short of being fat.
But those few ounces made a difference.
So Small had hired her for the night, at one hundred dollars, and had called on Charlie to drive him to the girl’s apartment. He’d told Charlie to wait for him downstairs; he wouldn’t be long, he said.
So Charlie had waited, and Small had returned in about an hour. It had taken him only that short time to satisfy his latest specialized lust, and he’d paid for the night-long use of the girl, and it seemed a shame to let all that paid-for woman-flesh go to waste, or so Burton Small seemed to think.
He asked Charlie if he’d like to go upstairs and take over for the rest of the night Unable to believe the man’s generosity, Charlie had said yes. And so, with a friendly wave of one fat hand, Small climbed out of Charlie’s cab and wandered off to hail another, leaving Charlie with a clear field, a long night, and a paid-up blonde—a natural blonde, too.
Charlie discovered that the moment she opened the door to her apartment. She was wearing only a thin negligee, made of material with hardly any more substance than cigarette smoke. Through that translucence, Charlie could see the irrefutable proof of several interesting facts—that she owned breasts as round and solid as pink cannon balls, an hour-glass torso which flared from a narrow waist to a set of hips fully as broad as her shoulders, and curvaceous thighs and calves which hugged each other voluptuously as she stood there.
When he looked down, he discovered she also had nice feet Certainly if a man were going to hire a girl for her feet, this blonde would be worth the price. Charlie, however, was not a foot man. He was a woman’s man.
No sooner had she closed the apartment door than his hand had slipped through the open front of her negligee and around to cup the heft of one buttock.
“What are you?” she asked him. “Do you dig feet too?”
“I just dig blondes,” said Charlie. “As often as I can.”
She blinked. “You mean, you aren’t some kind of nut like your friend was?”
“I’m your kind of nut,” he replied.
She examined him from head to toe. “Maybe you are at that,” she said, with a slumberous grin.
She untied the sash at her waist and dropped the negligee to the floor.
Charlie got out of his clothing in record time while the blonde watched and waited. He had no sooner stripped off the last of his garments than the blonde was upon him, shoving the whole length of her extravagantly-fleshed body against him, flinging her arms around his shoulders and one hot thigh around his hip.
“Let’s have a good one,” she said.
“I’m with you,” replied Charlie.
“I mean, a really good one with no kidding around—just a good old-fashioned normal one. You get me?”
“I got you,” he replied. He reached around to grab both her buttocks and danced her across the room to her bed. She fell back on it and opened her arms and her knees as he flopped upon her. He filled both hands with her lush breasts as his hips settled against her body.
They went.
It was the usual, no kidding around, just a good old-fashioned normal one, exactly as she’d wished.
It was great.
Charlie was in good form, but his form couldn’t compare with that of the blonde. The girl pistoned up against him like a pile-driver in reverse, matching and surpassing his motion with a rhythm all her own. Charlie was hard put to keep up with her. She was a pro, and no question about it. She was also as passionate as a woman could get, and there was no question about that, either.
They extinguished their mutual fires in a very short time, lay plastered together for a while, breathing into each other’s mouths, and then started in again. The second time was just as good as the first—maybe even a little better, because it was less frantic. And the third time was also good.
But the fourth go-round was the winner. It took forever. Both of them scaled the heights, reached the brink, and then just hung there for what seemed like hours until the final moment came roaring over them.
Afterwards, smoking cigarettes and stroking flesh, they talked to each other. And the girl asked, “What’s wrong with your friend?”
“Mr. Small? There ain’t nothing wrong with him.”
“Yes, there is. He’s got a yen for feet!”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“It’s crazy, she said. “He’s crazy.”
“No, he isn’t,” Charlie said quickly. “He may have funny ideas sometimes, but he ain’t crazy.”
“I think he’s crazy,” said the girl. “I like guys like you a whole lot better than guys like him.”
“I’m not in his league at all,” said Charlie.
"You’re in my league.” She touched him. “Let’s go again—what do you say? You got another one in you?”
He grinned and rolled over on top of her. “Sister, I can go as long as you can.”
“That’ll be till dawn,” she said.
“Yeah,” replied Charlie. “I figured.”
And so it was.
The evening left an impression on Charlie, and not merely because of its sexual pleasures. Besides providing him with a brand-new and delightful set of recollections, it also provided him with a fascinating question.
Was Burton Small crazy?
Sometimes Charlie was convinced of it; other times he wasn’t so sure. It was true that Small looked for pleasure in odd places, and indulged in varieties of experience which were beyond Charlie’s understanding. But wasn’t Small in a way the logical extension of every male’s preoccupation with sex? Take an average man, give him all the money in the world, plus the endurance of Superman, plus the single-mindedness of Adolph Hitler, the inventive spirit of Tom Swift, and the opportunity of Aladdin, and wouldn’t you have another Burton Small?
Young boys dream of becoming Flash Gordan.
Grown men dream of becoming Burton Small.
It was all a matter of perspective.
So maybe he was crazy, thought Charlie. So what? He was a great man, and all great men are a little coo-coo. Besides, Small’s brand of craziness was one Charlie could really appreciate.
Charlie sat and thought about it, smiling, shaking his head, smoking his cigar all the way down to a butt. Small came out of his home and down the steps precisely on the dot of ten forty-five.
“Hi, Mr. Small.” The cabbie leaned over the seat and opened the back door. Small eased his bulk into the rear of the car and settled back with a sigh.
“Charles, my friend. Right on time, I see. Or have you been here for a while?”
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