69 Barrow Street (2 page)

Well, it was more complex than that, she admitted. There was the fact that men scared her silly, that the mere thought of letting a man enter her and touch her inside had her shivering. And a psychiatrist could probably delve into her mind and figure out even more complex reasons for the way she was, but to hell with all psychiatrists. She was what she was, and she was damned if she was going to start worrying about it now.

But the woman worried her, worried her very much. For one thing, she couldn’t remember being so strongly attracted to anyone before. More important, she could tell that the attraction was not all on her part.

They had met on the steps. Susan was carrying a suitcase and the woman stepped aside to let her pass. As she did so she could feel the woman’s hot, insistent eyes burning into her slender body. She felt the woman’s warm breath near her cheek.

And she knew that the woman wanted her.

It would he so easy, so easy to go off on another hot sex bout. Easy—and very nice. But God, after the thing with Gloria ended on the rocks she had been so damned determined to sleep alone for a while, to just relax and spend some time by herself until she got a clearer idea of who the hell she was and where the hell she was going. She had been so damned determined, and now look at her. Just another dyke with hot pants who couldn’t look at another girl’s breasts without wanting to kiss them, who couldn’t pass close to another female body without itching to cover it with her own.

God!

Que sera sera. That was how that song went, and it made its own kind of sense. Whatever will be will be, whatever would happen would happen, and she would just let things happen to her. It would work out; everything always worked out.

But Christ how she wanted to see that woman again!

She heaved a sigh and sat down on the edge of her bed. It was a single bed, and that at least was a good sign. If she got in the mood for any horizontal acrobatics she could go someplace else instead of making love in her own apartment. In her own place she could be alone by herself.

She stood up and decided to take a nap for an hour or two. She undressed slowly, baring a body that was slim and tan and boyishly beautiful. Her breasts were small but perfect, and she was by no means flat-chested. Her dark brown hair was cut short and her legs tapered from full, rounded thighs to trim ankles.

It was a nice body. She wondered how the blonde woman would like it.

When she was completely nude and ready for bed she threw back the covers and stretched out on the clean white sheet. She rested her head on the pillow and let her eyes close.

In her mind she pictured the blonde woman. Thinking about her, she let her own hands caress her body. She cupped her breasts, feeling the softness and firmness of them and imagining in her mind that it was the other woman’s breasts she was holding and that the woman was embracing her. Then she moved her hands down to the lean, flat stomach and stroked gently, rhythmically.

Everything was so quiet, so peaceful and so gentle. She relaxed completely and continued to stroke herself, her hands lingering on the inside of her thighs where the skin was so extraordinarily soft and tender. She remembered the way Gloria had loved to touch and kiss her there, and in her mind she saw the blonde woman doing the same.

Then her hands moved to the spot where no man had ever been and she stroked herself gently, languorously, feeling warm sensations of love course through her young body. Deliciously obscene pictures flooded her mind as she handled herself until she drifted off into a deep, heady, luxurious sleep.

It was almost 5:30 in the afternoon when Stella James mounted the steps at 69 Barrow Street and fitted her key in the lock. Anticipation coursed through her as she walked to the door of the apartment she shared with Ralph.

She was hungry.

She giggled to herself as she thought of the word.
Hungry.
That was what Frank had called her years ago. He said she was the hungriest woman he had ever met, and he was probably right.

“Don’t you ever get enough?” he had demanded.

“Never,” she said. “When I’ve had enough it’ll be time for them to bury me.”

Frank had been the first, and there had been so many after him that she had lost count. She couldn’t even recall what some of them looked like or what their names were. Old men, young men, boys even—she thought fleetingly of a delivery boy, just a freshman in high school, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen. What a sweet, funny, excited little thing he had been! He brought her an order from the grocery once—God, it had been two or three years ago!—and she came to the door in a kimono.

From there on it had been easy. She let the kimono slip open persistently and each time she took longer to close it again. The poor kid, he couldn’t help staring at her. And then she took him by the hand and led him inside and helped him off with his clothes. And she lay down beside him on her bed and showed him what to do…

Old men, young men and boys. And girls as well, of course. Sex was such a spectacularly wonderful thing that there was no point in drawing the line anywhere. It was as nice one way as the other.

She hesitated at her door, remembering the girl she had passed on the steps that morning. The girl was gay; there was no doubt about it. And the girl was interested in a roll in the hay as well. There was no doubt about that either.

Stella was interested herself. It had been almost a month since she had had a girl and she wanted one, wanted this one in particular. And it would be damned convenient having her living in the same building.

Almost reluctantly she turned her key in the door and stepped inside. There would be plenty of time for the girl later. Right now she wanted Ralph. She wanted to make him grovel at her feet and then have him possess her, harshly, violently.

She alternately liked and despised Ralph. All in all she thought him a pretty despicable individual, weak and spineless and totally dependent on her. Not many men would be willing or able to take what she dished out.

But at the same time he was a marvelous lover, and easily as virile a man as she had ever met. And he had an incredible imagination.

Besides, she needed a man like Ralph, a man she could push around whatever way she felt like. In his own way he loved her, and in her own way she supposed she loved him. Hardly the storybook kind of love with a picket fence and children, but love just the same. They were in the same boat.

He was sitting on the couch in the living room. When she walked in he looked up at her but said nothing. She smiled.

“Well?”

“What do you want me to say?”

Her smile widened. “You might tell me how nice I look.”

He shrugged. “You look fine.”

She did, and she knew it. She was wearing a lemon-colored sack dress just a shade deeper than her hair, and she had the sort of figure that kept a sack dress from looking like a sack. Her breasts and hips rubbed against the yellow material as she walked and accentuated all the sensuous lines of her full body.

“You look fine,” he repeated. “Is that all you want?”

“Do you think it is?”

He shrugged again, feigning boredom.

“I want to talk to you,” she said. “Why else would I come in here? I just want to have a nice, pleasant conversation with my lover.”

He just looked at her.

She sat down next to him and slipped one arm around him so that her breast pressed into his shoulder. He tried to ignore her but she could sense how she was exciting him, how he wanted her. This was going to be good.

“I met a girl today,” she said. “She just moved into this building.”

“Oh?”

“She’s very pretty,” she went on. “Young, small—a lesbian, of course.”

He laughed. “You make it sound as though every girl in the Village is a lesbian.”

“Most of them are.”

“And I suppose you intend to have her?”

“Of course.”

“Suppose she doesn’t want to be had?”

“She’ll want to,” Stella said. “I can tell.”

“Stella,” he demanded, “what in hell is the matter with you? Do you have to crawl in bed with everyone you see?”

“Only with my friends.”

“And you don’t have any enemies.”

“That’s right,” she said, smiling.

He turned away from her. “Leave me alone.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Well, what the hell do you want from me?”

“I told you. I want to talk about the girl.”

He sighed.

“She’s very pretty, as I said. I think you’ll like her.”

“What the hell’s the difference whether or not
I
like her?”

“Well,” she said, “you’re going to watch, of course. You might as well like what you’re looking at.”

“You bitch.”

She pouted. “That’s not nice, Ralph. You always watch. You know that.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “You can always get out and leave and take your paints and brushes with you. Of course you’d starve to death, but—”

“Shut up!”

She laughed, delighted. She let one hand drop to his thigh and squeezed him, gently. “Or else you can watch. Maybe we can make it more exciting for you this time, dear. Maybe you can have the girl when I’m done with her.”

Ralph looked at her, puzzled. “But she won’t want that, will she? If she’s a lesbian—”

“She might not have any choice in the matter, dear. I could help you, if you think it’s too much for you.”

He stared at her, his eyes wide with shock. “You don’t mean—”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“God! Stella, don’t you have any feeling for people? Don’t you—”

“Oh, shut up,” she commanded. Suddenly she was bored with the game. It was amusing the way Ralph was so easily shocked, as if he wasn’t as depraved as she herself was. But she didn’t feel in the mood for conversation any longer.

“Stand up,” she ordered.

He stood up.

“Now take off your clothes.”

He moved to the window to shut it but she stopped him. “Leave it open,” she said. “So what if somebody watches? I don’t care.”

He started to protest, then stopped and began to remove his clothing. She stood motionless before him until he was completely nude. There was a mocking smile on her face.

She stepped closer to him until mere inches separated them. Then suddenly she clenched her left hand into a fist and drove it into his solar plexus. When he doubled up in agony her open right hand lashed out and caught him across the face. Her fingers left long red marks where they struck him.

He didn’t say anything.

She smiled. “That’s for arguing with me,” she said. “That was your punishment. Now you can have your reward.”

She reached down and lifted the sack dress to her waist. There was nothing under the dress.

“I think I’ll leave the dress on,” she said. “It’s fun that way sometimes.”

He still said nothing. He was numb with anger and desire in equal parts, wanting to love her and possess her and kill her. And so he remained silent and motionless.

She stretched out on her back on the oriental rug, her dress up around her waist. She looked up at him, a smile playing with the corners of her mouth.

“Come on,” she said. “What are you waiting for?”

He took her, furiously and brutally and savagely, and all the while her cruel discordant laughter rang in his ears.

M
ORNING.

Ralph Lambert rolled out of the bed gingerly, being careful not to wake Stella. He yawned and rubbed sleep from his eyes. Then, before leaving the bedroom, he stood silently by the side of the bed and looked down at Stella.

She was sound asleep, her mouth pressed against the side of the pillow and her lush white body curled like a cat about to spring. Sleep softened the hard lines around her mouth and eyes and made her far more gentle and feminine than she was when she was awake. She invariably slept nude, and because the night was so warm she had thrown back the covers and slept on top of the bed.

Ralph saw her with the eye of an artist. While any man would have been captivated and excited by Stella’s body, Ralph was able to study it in detail and to realize just how beautiful it was.

Stella was thirty, three years older than Ralph. With the sort of life she had been leading it was almost a miracle that no signs of wear or aging appeared to the eye. Her breasts were still perfectly firm, and breasts as large as Stella’s generally show the signs of age earlier than smaller ones. Her complexion was clear and perfect from head to toe.

She was so beautiful, Ralph mused. How could anyone so beautiful be so inexplicably bad? It was impossible to understand.

He left the bedroom and closed the door behind him. A fast shower made him feel alive once again, his skin fresh and clean and his mind able to concentrate. He toweled himself dry and stood at the open bathroom window, gulping huge breaths of the early morning air. The air was as fresh as air ever got in New York and it made him feel even more awake and more alive.

He almost felt good.

But not quite. Not quite, because he knew that no man in his position could ever feel good. No man with Stella hanging on his neck like a millstone.

A millstone? That wasn’t a particularly good image, and he closed his eyes to hunt for a better one. An albatross, perhaps. A sexy blonde albatross. He remembered the poem by Coleridge in which a sailor shot an albatross and the corpse of the bird hung around his neck for months bringing terrible luck to the ship.

That was Stella, all right. Hanging around his neck and lousing him up.

Returning to the bedroom, he dressed quickly and quietly. Stella slept on. He glanced at her again and the events of the previous night flashed through his mind briefly—the insults, the slapping, the humiliating way she had forced him to make love to her on the floor with her dress on, the terrible laughter that tore from her throat all the while until passion caught her up and the laughter changed in midstream to a gush of foul obscenities. For a moment a wild impulse gripped him and he longed to kill her, to press the pillow over her nose and mouth and hold it there until she choked to death.