*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79382 ***




                              PARTY GIRL

                            By DON ELLIOTT

                      AN ORIGINAL NIGHTSTAND BOOK


                             _PARTY GIRL_

                   COPYRIGHT 1960, NIGHTSTAND BOOKS

                           PRINTED AND BOUND
                    IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




_McCarten Had Raped Her_--

that had started it. She thought at first she would kill herself,
but Laura was a strong girl, a hungry girl, fired with smoldering
passions that often threatened to engulf her. So she did what seemed
logical--she sold her young body for a price. At first is was ten
dollars a customer, but when Phil Spinelli picked her out to work the
Syndicate's party girl role, she found herself going for higher and
higher prices. This is a searing, uncompromising novel of the big city
today, glittering with the shattered pieces of women's lives. It's a
story no one with a weak conscience should miss. Because Laura Haynes
could be

_Any Wife, Any Sister!_




                             _CHAPTER ONE_


The moment she walked into the theatrical agent's office, Laura
Haynes found herself regretting it. There was no receptionist, only
an owlish-looking man of about forty, and he stared up at her with
intimate curiosity. His gaze seemed to go right through her clothes;
it was as if with his eyes he could lay bare her full, firm breasts,
her tawny thighs, her sleek, satiny buttocks. Laura had never been
appraised in such a _knowing_ way before. She felt color rising to her
face, and fought back the urge to turn and run out. She stood grimly
where she was.

"Are you Mr. McCarten?" she asked hesitantly.

His eyes were riveted to the rising sweep of her breasts. It was like
being stark naked in front of him, Laura thought uncomfortably.

"That's right," he said. "Ned McCarten, just like it says on the door
behind you. What can I do for you, Miss--Miss--?"

"Haynes. Laura Haynes."

"Sit down, Laura." He gestured to a chair to the left of his desk. As
Laura walked across the room toward it, he followed the fluid sweep of
her hips and buttocks eagerly with his eyes. She lowered herself into
the chair and crossed her legs, hiking her skirt up above the knee.
_Might as well give him a show_, Laura thought. _He's going to want to
look anyway._

He took in the display. Laura moistened her lips uneasily. McCarten
said, "I suppose you want a job in show business, Miss Haynes?"

"That's right, Mr. McCarten." Her voice came out thin and squeaky,
little-girlish.

"Make it Ned. Ned and Laura. Saves breath." He reached for a pad.
"Okay, Laura. Let's start at the beginning. What can you do?"

"Well," Laura said nervously, "I can dance, I sing, I've done some
acting--"

McCarten made idle scribbles on his notepad. He seemed uninterested.

The telephone rang, cutting Laura off. "Excuse me," McCarten said
mechanically, and picked up the phone. While he talked, Laura glanced
around the office. It was a squarish, cluttered room, opening onto
a smaller room at the right. The larger room had a desk, a piano,
an old leather couch, some bookshelves, and a table piled high with
sheet music, magazines, and old copies of _Variety_. The prevailing
impression was one of sloppiness and clutter. On the walls were
several dozen framed and signed photographs, none of them of people
Laura recognized. Most of them were women. Laura was a little surprised
to see that one picture, directly behind McCarten's desk, showed a
totally nude girl, wearing not even a G-string. She was grinning gaily
into the camera; her breasts were full and heavy, her hips ample, her
thighs round and thick. Squinting, Laura made out the inscription in
the corner of the photo: _To Ned McCarten, the man who made me ... what
I am. With love from Dawn Ryse._

She wondered what sort of a girl would give a man a photo like that,
with everything showing. Probably some strip-teaser, Laura thought,
that McCarten had helped find work. She wondered about the inscription,
whether it was just a joke or if perhaps there were some truth in it.

McCarten finished his conversation and hung up. "The damn fool," he
muttered, looking up. "Expects me to produce miracles for him every
time he snaps his fat fingers. Oh, well. Where were we?"

"You were asking me what I could do."

"Oh. That's right," McCarten said. He chewed speculatively at the end
of his pencil. He was a short, squat man, going bald in the middle of
his scalp. His face had a loose, sensuous look, but the eyes behind the
thick glasses were fiery and intense. "You sing, you dance, and you
act," he mused. "Any professional experience?"

"Not--really."

"What does that mean, 'not really'?" he asked sharply.

"I mean, not for very much money. I did some singing at county
fairs, local dances, you know. But you can't really count that as
professional, can you?"

"No, you can't," McCarten agreed sourly. "Where are you from?"

"Kansas," she said. "Marshall, Kansas."

"And how long have you been in New York?"

"F-four days."

"And you're living with an aunt," he said. "Or else you have a room at
the YWCA. Which is it?"

"I'm living at the Y," Laura said in surprise. "But how did you know?"

"It isn't telepathy, honey. Do you think you're the first girl who ever
came from Kansas to New York to get into show business?" He drummed his
pencil on the scarred desktop. "You're a rank green-horn, no experience
worth a damn. Well well well. How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"That on the level?"

"Of course. I was twenty-one last month. March 23 is my birthday."

"Okay, skip the genealogy. Parents living?"

"They died when I was a little girl. I lived with my grandparents."

"On the farm, I suppose. And you read the picture magazines and dreamed
of coming to New York. And now you're here, expecting to be showered
with gold."

"You're making fun of me," she said, reddening.

"I'm just feeling sorry for you, honey. I see so goddam many of you
come this way. Apple-cheeked flowers of American womanhood, you know.
All of you beating a track toward fame and fortune." He shrugged.
"How'd you come to pick me out of the book?"

"I looked up theatrical agents in the classified telephone directory.
Your office was the closest one to the Y, so I came here first."

McCarten smiled. "Okay. You sing, you dance, you act, and you implore
me to find work for you. Got anything special in mind? A Broadway lead,
or prima ballerina at the Met, or--I'm sorry, Laura. What kind of work
would you like to do?"

Laura was confused. Half the time McCarten seemed to be poking fun
at her, the rest of the time he appeared almost paternally concerned
about her. After a moment's hesitation she said, "I'm willing to begin
anywhere, Mr. McCarten. A chorus line, if I have to. Just so I'm in
show business, even at the bottom--"

He looked at his watch, as though growing bored with the interview.
"Chorus girl, eh? Well, just for a starter, let's hear you sing." He
pushed himself up out of his swivel chair and stalked across the room
to the piano. "How about--ah--the Mary Martin thing from the Rodgers &
Hammerstein show. Starts off _I'm as corny as Kansas in August_. Kansas
girl ought to know that one."

"All right," Laura said.

McCarten gave her a brief introduction, nodded her a cue, and she sang.
She was so nervous that she started off sharp, but after the first
bar she got back on pitch and everything went well. With his back to
her, McCarten's expression was hidden. He played through the first two
verses, then suggested another Rodgers & Hammerstein tune. Laura sang
that one for him, and a third.

After the third song he swivelled around. "Okay," he said. "You can
sing. Nothing spectacular, but at least it's easy on the ears and you
can carry a tune. You started sharp on the first one."

"I know. I guess I was scared."

"Well, after that you were okay. But the country's full of girls who
can carry a tune. You've got to have a figure, too." Again he eyed her
in that speculative way, as though undressing her. He went from the
piano to the closet, reached in, brought out some sort of costume.
"Here," he said. "Get into this and let's have an idea of what's under
the dress."

"Right here?"

He scowled. "Go into the next room, if you're bashful. I won't peek."

Uneasily, Laura took the costume from him and went into the smaller
room. She closed the door. There was no way of locking it.

The small room was piled high with junk--more old newspapers, cartons
of magazines, phonograph records, ledgers, all kinds of debris. Laura
put her handbag down on top of a stack of trade journals and examined
the costume McCarten had given her.

There wasn't much to it. Just a pair of blue panties with spangles, and
a halter. They both looked a little small for her. With an uncertain
glance at the closed door, she began to undress. There was a keyhole in
the door, and she didn't trust McCarten very much. He was just the sort
who would peep at her while she got into the costume, she thought.
She moved to the side of the room, where she hoped she would be out of
peeping range, and closed the dusty venetian blinds.

Her hands were trembling a little as she unbuttoned her blouse and
carefully hung it over a chair. The plaid skirt came off next, then the
half-slip. In the drafty office, she shivered a little in panties, bra,
and garter-belt. Her hands went behind her back and she undid her bra,
letting her breasts tumble free. She had an excellent figure, she knew.
Her breasts were big, but not so big that they drooped or dangled. They
thrust outward and upward from her chest, two rounded white globes
tipped with little reddish-brown nipples.

Quickly she reached for the halter and put it on. It was tight, and she
just barely managed to get her breasts into the cups and fasten the
snap in back. Looking down, she reddened a little in embarrassment. The
halter was so tight it was like a second skin; there were evident bumps
at each nipple.

Hurriedly, now, she rolled the panties over her hips, took down her
stockings, removed the panty-belt. She pulled the briefs up over
her loins. They were really scanty, just a tight triangle of cloth
round her waist. Craning her neck, she saw that several inches of
buttock were exposed on either side in back. For a moment she hung
back, frightened of showing herself to a strange man in a costume as
revealing as this. The thighs and bra seemed designed for a smaller
girl, and on her they were dreadfully provocative.

For a moment she came close to getting back into her street clothes and
leaving. But that would be foolish, she told herself. She wanted to
have a career. She was going to have to show her body a little, if she
hoped to get anywhere in show business.

She opened the door and walked into the other room.

McCarten was on the phone again, but the moment he saw her he said,
"Excuse me, Phil. Something important just came up. Call me back in an
hour, huh?"

Laura saw the reaction on his face. His fleshy mouth had sagged open,
and his bloodshot eyes were wide with surprise. She knew she had made
an impression on him. She stood by the door, throttling back her
embarrassment, while his eyes roamed her body.

"Well?" she asked, smiling.

"You're okay," he said hoarsely. "That's a pretty good build you got."

"Do you think I can have a job?"

He smiled. "I'd say the prospect's pretty good. But let's keep the
audition going. You know how to do a Charleston?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then. I'll play. You dance."

He went to the piano again, and pounded out a tune for her, looking
back over his shoulder to watch her as she danced. Alone in the middle
of the floor, she did the Charleston for him. There were some uneasy
moments when she was sure her halter would break from her exertions.
She began to sweat, and felt the globlets rolling down her almost bare
body. McCarten seemed to be playing forever--hours and hours. Actually
it was no more than three or four minutes before he stopped.

He walked over to her, appraising her. She was almost as tall as he
was, at her height of five feet five.

She was panting, and she was afraid she would catch a cold, heating up
in this drafty office. But she said nothing.

McCarten said finally, "You're not a bad dancer. And you've got a swell
figure."

"Thank you."

"I'm not complimenting you, I'm appraising you. No thanks needed. And I
think I can get you work. Chorus-line stuff at first, better jobs later
as you absorb professional polish. You've got a lot of natural ability.
With voice training and a decent dance coach, you can go places. Just a
couple of things that have to be checked, first."

"What are they?"

"Those," McCarten said. He extended two forked fingers. He was pointing
at her breasts.

Laura blinked in surprise. "I don't understand."

"The knobs. The knockers, honey. Are they real?"

Color flamed in her face. "Of course they're real! I'm practically
naked in this little thing, anyway. I couldn't be fooling anyone."

"I've got to be sure. Before I get you a job, I got to make certain
you won't embarrass me. Like I mean, I send over a girl with a Size
38 bust, and the second day she has an accident with her bra and it
turns out she's Size 33 with some foam rubber? That finishes me as a
supplier for that particular chorus. So I got to make a hundred percent
certain."

Laura felt chillier. "What do you want me to do to prove it?"

"The obvious, of course."

She took a step back. "But--show myself to you? I don't understand--"

"Do you want to get into show business or don't you?" McCarten demanded.

"Well, of course I do."

"Okay, then. I'm offering you a job worth $95 a week at the start, $120
after six months. And you're giving me the modesty act."

"I didn't think I'd have to undress myself to get a job. I'm sure other
agents--"

"Other agents wouldn't even let you get past their receptionists,"
McCarten said flatly. "They don't bother fooling around with green
talent. You were just lucky you walked in on a morning when I didn't
have much to do, so I was able to give you a break. Just try going
elsewhere, and see if you get anything. The contract's right there on
my desk for you. I'll send you right over to the studio and you can
start rehearsing this afternoon, and your first paycheck on Friday.
Now, come on. Show me what you've got, baby. For Christ's sake, there's
nothing so awful about displaying the body God gave you."

_I don't want to_, Laura thought frantically. _I don't want to show my
nakedness to you. I'm not that sort of girl. But you've got a job for
me._ Her throat went dry. What did it matter, just taking off the bra
and letting him look? If it gave him satisfaction, and if he wouldn't
let her have the job under any other conditions--

"All right," she said in a faint voice.

"There's a sensible girl."

Her cold fingers went behind her back. She fumbled with the catch for
a moment, almost hoping that it would be impossible to get it open.
But the hook left the eye and the tight halter sprang away from her
breasts. She felt a sudden gust of cold air around them, and felt the
flaming redness of her skin.

McCarten's eyes were like augers. He stared at the two high mounds with
awed fascination.

"D-do I get the job?" Laura asked, stammering from shame. "Can I get
dressed now?"

"Just a minute," he said in a strange, harsh voice. He moved toward
her, and before she could step away or cry out he was up against her,
his small soft hands cupping her breasts. She felt his pudgy fingers
tightening over the ripe swells, felt his fingertips pressing on
the suddenly hard tips of her nipples. His mouth was against hers,
cutting off all outcry. His hands left her breasts, went to her hips.
His fingers hooked into the waistband of her briefs and pulled them
down over her thighs, and she was naked, and he had his hands on her
buttocks, and then he was holding her in an unbreakable grip and
carrying her to the leather couch.

She shoved his face away from hers. "Let go of me," she whimpered.

"Just one little thing more, honey," he crooned. "Then the job is
yours. I promise--"

"No. No--I'm a virgin--"

He laughed harshly and pressed her down on the couch. She felt the
cold leather against her back and buttocks. She wanted to scream, to
cry out, but her voice betrayed her in her extreme fright, and nothing
emerged but a feeble little cry. He was kneeling above her, holding
her down with one hand, unzipping his trousers with the other. She
closed her eyes tightly, not wanting to see. She was weak and limp
with terror at the unexpected attack. His weight was on her, now. She
had her ankles locked together, but he slipped one foot between them,
and the hard shoe brought a little cry of pain from her, and she was
forced to break her grip, and the next moment he had spread her thighs
apart and she felt the sudden agonizing thrust, and the world swirled
around her crazily. She did not lose consciousness, but she felt dazed
and stunned, and she was only dimly conscious of his body moving above
hers, of the constant pain. And then she heard him shudder and let his
breath out hoarsely, and it was over, and he was rising from her.

She looked at him in horror. _I've just been raped_, she thought
inanely, her mind catching up to reality. _He threw me down on the
couch and raped me._

"I didn't know you really were a virgin," he mumbled. "Christ, I didn't
think there were any virgins left. I figured you'd give me a good time,
to earn the job. I didn't know--"

She shivered. Fire raged in her loins, and she looked down and saw
blood on the couch and she realized she was at the edge of hysteria.
All she knew was she had to get out of here. She pushed herself up from
the couch and rushed past him into the other room and began to pull her
clothes on. He followed her in.

"Listen, baby," he implored. "Don't take it this way. I got carried
away by the way you looked, and all. Christ, I never suspected--listen,
calm down, I'll give you the job, everything will be all right--"

"I wouldn't take your filthy job!" she cried. With trembling fingers
she buttoned her blouse. "Get out of my way!"

"Don't think you can call copper on me, honey," he said, his tone
changing from a wheedling one to an angry one. "You don't have a case.
I can claim you came in here and tried to twist my arm to give you
a job, and pulled a tease act that made me lose my head at the last
minute. Agents are always having girls come into the office and try
to sleep their way into a job. The cops know the setup, and they'll
believe me. So don't try running to them. Be a smart girl and take the
job--"

"No!" she spat at him. She snatched up her handbag and ran past him, to
the door, out into the hall. The world was reeling around her.

_Raped_, she thought.

She rang for the elevator.




                             _CHAPTER TWO_


It was April, but a cool breeze was blowing down Broadway as she
emerged from the building. She stood for a moment, still dazed by the
rapidity with which it had happened. Her loins still throbbed painfully
from the violent attack. She could still feel the touch of his hands
on her breasts, the weight of his body above hers, the terrible moment
when the castle of her body was penetrated--

She began to walk, knowing that she had to keep moving or she would
crack. She walked mechanically, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing.
The interview had turned into nightmare so rapidly that her mind still
could not fully accept the happening, the transformation of herself in
a few short minutes of urgent action from a virgin to a soiled woman.
She had never thought it would happen this way. In Marshall, the boys
had always regarded her as too pretty for them; they put her up on a
pedestal, as the town's prettiest girl, and though everybody tried to
date her no one made any serious passes at her. There were plenty of
willing pimple-faced farm girls if they wanted sex. Laura had reached
the age of twenty-one without any real experience of life. And now she
had her experience. The hard way.

She kept walking, uptown. A big clock on a building in front of her
read ten minutes to two. She did not want to go back to the Y. Somehow
she knew she would never be able to face the other girls, the matrons,
all of them. They would be able to see at a glance what had happened to
her, and she would never be able to face their smiles of pity.

She wondered what she was going to do now.

Go back home? Return to the farm and the sleepy little town, only
a week after she had left it? Come home devirginized, raped, a
sad advertisement of the terrors of big city life? That would be
humiliating. _I went to New York to break into show business, but the
first man I went to raped me and I came running home._ No, that would
never do.

Go to the police? She was afraid to. McCarten was too shrewd. He would
never have attacked her if he hadn't thought he could get away with it.
He would come up with some angle to save himself. Her name would get
into the papers, and she would become a figure of public contempt, the
girl who yelled rape.

What then, she wondered? Go to some other agent? And meet the same kind
of reception, she thought bleakly. One foot swung ahead of the other,
step after step after step. Dazed, confused, she had no idea of where
she was going, what would happen now.

She reached Columbus Circle. To her left, the towering bulk of the New
York Coliseum loomed up. To the right were the plush hotels of Central
Park South. Straight ahead was the park, just beginning to blossom into
tentative greenness after the long winter. Numbly, Laura waited for the
light to change, and went across into the park. The wind was colder
there, with no buildings to block it, and she pulled her light coat
tightly around her.

She found an empty bench and sat down, jamming her hands into her coat
pockets. A squirrel ran up to her, waited for a peanut, and, getting
none, scowled at her and went sprinting away. Laura tried to smile, but
no smile would come.

She had started the day with such high hopes. She had made a list of
five or six theatrical agents in the area near the Y, and she had
planned to make the rounds until one of them found work for her, on
television perhaps, or in a chorus line of a nightclub or show. And
instead the day had turned into nightmare.

_Why did he do it?_ she wondered. _Because he knew I was green, because
he figured he could get away with it. Maybe he didn't even have a job
for me. Maybe he was just sitting there with nothing to do, and when I
walked in he figured he'd try to get all he could out of me._

She sat there, brooding, feeling the pain still throbbing between
her thighs. She wondered if he had done any permanent damage, torn
something perhaps.

_Maybe I'll kill myself_, she thought suddenly.

The thought presented itself fully formed. She frowned in surprise as
it appeared in her mind. She had never thought of suicide before. But,
somehow, it seemed oddly appealing now. Here, alone in this strange
city, friendless, her body polluted with a strange man's lust, it
seemed a tempting way of wiping the slate clean. No more problems, no
more discouragements, no more heartache. Just rest.

_There's a lake somewhere in Central Park, isn't there? Maybe I could
throw myself in. Or I could jump off a tall building, or step in front
of one of those speeding taxicabs._

There were so many possible ways of killing one's self in New York
City. It was simplicity itself. Laura rose, with a vague idea of
self-destruction in her mind. Suddenly she felt terribly dizzy, sick to
her stomach. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to lie down and die.
She took five unsteady steps and felt her legs beginning to give way,
and she lurched forward, trying to find something to hold on to.

A girl appeared, walking briskly up the path. Laura took another
spinning step and started to fall. Blindly she reached out for the
strange girl, clutched at her, fell to her knees. She felt the pavement
scrape through her nylons.

"Excuse me," she muttered. "Dizzy--so sorry--"

She realized she was on her knees with her arms locked around the legs
of the other woman. Confusion shrouded Laura's mind.

"Dizzy," she mumbled again. "Sorry--"

"Here. Let me give you a hand," the girl said, in crisp, clipped New
Yorkish tones. Laura felt hands under her arms, lifting her to her
feet. She swayed unsteadily, trying to support herself, but the moment
the girl removed her hands Laura began to topple again. The girl caught
her before she fell, and eased her back to the bench.

"You haven't been drinking," the girl said. "What's the matter? Dizzy
spells?"

"I--I don't want to be any trouble--"

"Just let your head hang back, and take it easy. I've got plenty of
time. Do you know what's wrong? Are you pregnant?"

"No--just had a faint feeling," Laura whispered. "So kind of you to
help me. Don't want to be any trouble--"

"You look all feverish. Are you sick?"

"I'm--I'm dizzy, that's all. Chills all over." With an effort she
brought her head up and looked at her benefactor closely. The other
girl was no more than twenty or twenty-one. She was shabbily dressed.
Her face was pale and thin, and her dark eyes gleamed with almost
unhealthy brightness. Her lipstick was smeared. But she was smiling
sympathetically. Laura tried to return the smile. She was so glad that
despite all the stories she had heard about New York at least one
person was not too busy to help someone in trouble.

Laura said in a choked voice, "My legs just dropped out from under me.
I've had a--a very upsetting experience. It sort of stunned me." She
began to shiver again.

The other girl looked troubled. "Maybe I can take you home. Where do
you live?"

"At the Y," Laura said. "On Fiftieth Street. But I don't want to go
there. They'll think I've been drinking. I don't want them to think
that. I--I don't know where to go--"

"Let's go to my place," the girl suggested. "It's only a couple of
blocks from here. You can lie down until you get your strength back."

"No, please--don't put yourself to any trouble--"

"I can't just leave you here," the girl said. "Come on--give me your
arm. Can you walk?"

"I think so."

She leaned on the other girl, who, for all her leanness, was
surprisingly strong. They hobbled to the park entrance at Columbus
Circle.

"I live on 58th just across Eighth," the girl said. "Come on, now. One
step after another and it gets us there."

Somehow Laura found the strength to get across the street, past the
endless stream of autos. One step after another. She huddled close to
her savior, thinking only that it was wonderful for someone to have
come along and help her this way. Sweat bathed her body, and the city
around her seemed dreamlike and unreal. _Step. Step. Step. Step._

"Here we are," the girl said. "I live on the third floor. Lean on me,
and up we go."

It was a shabby little building, with a dark, creaky staircase.
Clinging to the banister, Laura let herself be dragged upward. _Step.
Step. Step._ Rest for a few moments on the landing. _Step. Step._ Rest
on the second landing a moment. _Step._ Up the final flight of stairs,
down a dark corridor. Pause for a moment in front of a door while the
girl gropes for keys. The door opens.

Laura stumbled inside. It was a long, narrow room, with two single
beds, a stove, a tiny refrigerator, a little broom-closet of a
lavatory. Laura sank down gratefully on one of the beds and kicked her
shoes off.

The girl looked down worriedly at her. "How are you feeling?"

"Sick."

"You can stay here as long as you like. My last roommate is gone,
anyway. I like company. I'm Marilyn, by the way. Marilyn Rivers."

"Laura Haynes."

"Let me put up some tea, and then I'll help you out of your clothes.
You'll catch pneumonia this way."

Laura lay back, limp, while Marilyn lit the stove and put a kettle
up to boil. Then the other girl gently lifted Laura up and slipped
her jacket off. "I'll open your bra," Marilyn said. "You'll be more
comfortable that way."

Laura made no protest. Marilyn's cool hands slid into Laura's blouse,
groped for a moment, unhooked her bra. Laura took a deep breath as the
tight garment came loose. A moment later, Marilyn was unzipping Laura's
skirt and drawing it off.

"You've got blood on your slip," Marilyn said. "You must be getting
your period."

"No," Laura said faintly. "I was raped this afternoon."

"You were _what_?" Marilyn gasped, staring down at her in shock.

"Raped. By a theatrical agent. I was a virgin ... he made me
undress...." Laura shivered. The memory was too powerful; she could not
recreate the incident.

"You poor kid," Marilyn murmured, shaking her head sadly. "And that's
why you're so bombed, eh? The bastard pulled a casting-couch routine.
Does it hurt much?"

"Like fire. Fire between my legs."

"Let's get some tea into you, first. Then a good hot bath. After that
you can tell me all about it."

Laura watched through slitted eyes as Marilyn poured the tea, and she
said nothing as the other girl added a healthy slug of liquor to the
cup.

"Sit up a bit," Marilyn said. "Sip it. It'll do you good. I laced it a
little."

Laura drank the tea down, slowly. It warmed her, giving her an inner
glow that dulled the pain of the rape. After drinking it, she felt
strong enough to undress herself while Marilyn drew a hot bath for her.
Marilyn helped her into the tub. "You just lie there and relax for a
while," Marilyn said. "Your trouble is shock more than anything else."
Her eyes roved Laura's body with interest. "You've certainly got a
marvelous figure, Laura. You could go places with a body like that."

"That's what I thought," Laura said bitterly, letting the warmth wrap
around her. "I was going to break into show business, I thought. And
then he made me undress and put on a little costume, and then he told
me to take the halter off, and he pulled the briefs off and threw me
down on that couch, and there he was on top of me, pushing my legs
apart, and--" She shuddered. "It makes me sick just to think about it."

"Talk it out of your system, Laura. Don't try to keep it inside you."

"After it was over, I put my clothes on and ran out of there. I guess
I was a little out of my head. I walked up to the park, and I was
thinking about killing myself, and then I just started to fold up when
you came down the path."

"Lucky thing for you I did," Marilyn said. "In this city they'd just
let you lay there half a day. And then the cops would come pick you
up on a vagrancy charge. Are you going to call copper on the clown who
forced you?"

"No," Laura said. "I'm afraid to. He's too smart--he'll end up proving
it was all my idea, or something."

"That's wise. You can't win with bastards like that. You've just got to
try to forget what happened, Laura. You never will, but _try_." Marilyn
laughed. "I lost my cherry the same way, you know? Only it wasn't a
theatrical agent. It was a juvenile delinquent I went to a party with.
He had too much to drink and around midnight he took me home and ripped
my panties off and let me have it right in my own back yard. I was
fifteen. So I know what you've been through today. I made up my mind,
the night he broke my cherry. I said that I wasn't ever going to lay
for a man unless he paid me to do it. And I haven't ever done it for
free, either."

Laura looked up at her new friend in bewilderment. "You mean--you sell
yourself?"

Marilyn shrugged. "In a word, yes. I know, now, you're shocked. Let me
tell you something, Laura. Nobody in this city _except_ a whore would
have picked you up off the ground in the park. I know what it's like to
be stepped on, that's why I did it. I know what you're thinking, too.
You're thinking that I'm trash, and you're wishing you hadn't let me
bring you home."

"No," Laura protested. "That isn't so."

"Sure it is," Marilyn said calmly. "You can't help but think that. Deep
down inside you, you know that there are good girls and bad girls, and
that I'm a bad one and you're a good one. I wouldn't be angry if you
insisted on clearing out of here right this minute."

"Don't say that," Laura said. "I--I try to judge people by what they
do for you, not by what they are. I mean, you helped me. Regardless of
anything else, I'm grateful to you, Marilyn."

"But still you wish I weren't what I am."

"You're what you are because of what a man did to you," Laura said
vehemently. She rose unsteadily from the tub and reached for the towel
Marilyn handed her. "I can't condemn anyone who's suffered what I
suffered today. You're the only friend I have in this city. How can I
condemn you for anything?"

"Would you like to stay with me?" Marilyn asked. "I told you, I'm
looking for a roommate."

"Wouldn't I be in your way?"

"You mean, while I was doing business?" Marilyn smiled wanly. "I never
bring customers here. We go to hotel rooms. It's safer all around, that
way."

"If it's all right, then--"

"Of course it's all right."

Laura smiled. "I'd like to stay here, then." She handed back the towel.
Marilyn gave her a robe, and she put it on, while Marilyn turned down
the covers on one of the beds. Laura got in.

"I feel a lot better now," she said.

"You just lie down and rest, anyway," Marilyn told her. "Tomorrow we'll
get you moved over from the Y. Do you have much stuff?"

"Just one suitcase."

"Fine. Closet space is a little skimpy here. The rent's fifty-five a
month, by the way. Split two ways it isn't bad at all." Marilyn went to
the mirror and began to freshen her lipstick. "I usually go out there
around two or three in the afternoon, and I come home anywhere from
midnight to dawn, depending on how business is. I try to keep away from
the late-night tricks, because that's when the cops do most of their
picking up. There's some meat in the refrigerator, and soup. You help
yourself to anything you want."

"Thanks," Laura said. "Should I wait up for you?"

"You get yourself some rest," Marilyn told her. "Don't worry about me.
See you in the morning, in case you're asleep when I get back."

She smiled goodbye and left. Laura sat up in bed, struck by the
weirdness of the day. To be raped, then to become the roommate of a
prostitute--no one could say she wasn't living an adventurous life! She
found it hard to think of Marilyn as a streetwalker, though. She looked
so pale and thin, and she was so gentle and sincere. Not at all what
Laura had thought whores were like.

She thought about what Marilyn had said. _I made up my mind that I
wasn't ever going to lay for a man unless he paid me for it._ So
her prostitution, then, was a form of revenge against the male sex.
She, too, had been raped of her virginity--and she had devised a way
of getting even. Make them pay. Laura could understand that kind of
thinking. Right now, she was filled with hatred, not only for McCarten
but for all men. For she suspected that, deep down, they were all the
same. Some men actually raped, others only yearned to. But all of them
saw women as receptacles for their lusts, not as human beings.

_I could become a streetwalker too_, Laura thought suddenly. _Instead
of going into show business._

The thought had popped into her mind just as unexpectedly as, earlier,
the notion of suicide had. And, though it was just as foreign to the
Laura Haynes of yesterday as suicide was, she found herself giving
the idea serious consideration now. Stunned at what she was thinking,
she put her hands to her face. _What's happening to me? In one day my
entire personality is changed. Room with whores, consider becoming one
myself--_

But the idea preyed on her, hard as she tried to drive it from her
mind. She rose, wandered around the apartment, looking at Marilyn's
meager possessions. Cheap dishware, shabby dresses, no reading matter
except a frayed little heap of movie magazines and confession stories.
Judging from Marilyn's apartment, she did not lead a very pleasant
life. Laura felt saddened at the pitiable dinginess of everything.

She picked up one of the confession magazines and began to read it, and
the hours passed quickly. Some of the stories were about girls who had
been raped, or girls who had gone on the streets. Laura found most of
the stories silly, in that they failed to capture the _real_ emotion of
the victim of a rape, the feeling of desolation, of loss, of sadness.
She put the magazines away, finally, and fixed herself a frugal supper.

After eating, she cleaned up, wondering where Marilyn was and what she
was doing. She read a while longer, then tuned in some dance music on
the radio, and finally, about ten o'clock, got back into bed and turned
off the lights.

She found sleep impossible. She closed her eyes and lay perfectly
still, hoping for sleep to overtake her, but she remained awake though
drowsy. Some time later that night, she was aware of the door opening,
of Marilyn tiptoeing in. Marilyn undressed, taking care not to make
any noise, and went into the bathroom. Laura heard the water running,
and it continued to run for what seemed like half an hour, as though
Marilyn were trying to scrub herself absolutely clean of the evening's
contamination.

When she came out of the bathroom at last, Laura looked up and said,
"How was you evening?"

"You up? I'm sorry if I woke you."

"You didn't. I can't fall asleep."

"Wasn't much of an evening," Marilyn said tiredly. "Four tricks. Twenty
bucks."

"What time is it?"

"Half past one." Marilyn sighed. She stood nude in the middle of the
floor, hanging up her clothes. Her body was thin and scrawny, with
small breasts and flat buttocks. Turning, she said, "I envy you, Laura.
If I had a figure like yours I wouldn't be scraping along on five-buck
tricks. I'd be a big-league call-girl at a hundred bucks a night." She
got into bed. "I've got some sleeping pills if you're really having
trouble falling asleep."

"No, no thanks. Good night, Marilyn."

"Good night," Marilyn said.




                            _CHAPTER THREE_


Sleep finally came, what seemed like hours later. When Laura woke, it
was only a little past nine. Her head throbbed; her loins were swollen
and hurt. Marilyn was still asleep. Laura quietly drew a bath for
herself, and spent half an hour soaking in a hot tub.

She felt better after the bath. Marilyn was beginning to stir by the
time Laura came out, and she was fully awake by the time Laura was
dressed. Marilyn prepared a light breakfast for them, and then they
went out. It was a warmer day than yesterday, fresh and clear and
springy. The two girls walked down Broadway to Fiftieth, turned west,
and headed for the Y.

Laura stopped off at the desk. The matron eyed her suspiciously,
because she had been out all night.

"I'm checking out," Laura said. "I've found a roommate, Miss Rivers
here."

"Very well," the fat, dowdy woman said coolly. "What time will you be
out of your room, Miss Haynes?"

"As soon as I can get packed. Half an hour at the most."

"I'll make up your bill." She turned and snaked a fleshy hand into the
row of mailboxes behind the desk. "There was a call for you yesterday
afternoon, and another one last night. No one knew where to reach you,
so we took down the phone numbers."

Laura accepted the slip and looked at it in puzzlement. It told her
that Mr. McCarten had called at three o'clock, and Mr. Spinelli had
called at half past seven. Laura frowned. Why would McCarten phone her?
To apologize for his brutality, perhaps. But he didn't seem like the
kind who would worry much about apologies. And who was Spinelli? The
name meant nothing to Laura, and the phone number, a Plaza one, rang
no bells. Shrugging, she filed the paper away in her purse and headed
toward the elevator with Marilyn.

"Who were the calls from?" Marilyn asked.

"The guy who made all the trouble for me yesterday, McCarten. And later
on somebody named Spinelli called. I don't know any Spinellis."

"Phil Spinelli, maybe?" Marilyn suggested.

"Who's he?"

Marilyn laughed. "Not the sort of fellow you usually find making
phone calls to the YWCA, I'm afraid. He's a bigshot racketeer. Dope,
organized vice, stuff like that. Supposed to be a real slick operator."

"Hardly the kind of phone-call I'd expect to get."

"Are you going to call him back?"

"I don't know," Laura said. "I can't imagine who he is or what he
wants. For all I know he _is_ Phil Spinelli."

"What's so bad about that?"

"Plenty," Laura said. The elevator stopped at her floor, and they got
out. "I'm just going to forget all about these phone-calls. That's the
safest thing to do. I'm not looking to get into any more trouble."

It didn't take very long to pack Laura's few belongings and leave. At
Marilyn's insistence, they took a taxi for the eight blocks back to her
place; the suitcase was heavy, and, Marilyn argued, they could afford
to splurge on a fifty-cent taxi ride.

It was almost noon, now. Laura unpacked while Marilyn, sprawled out on
the bed, devoured page after page of the movie fan magazines. About
one, they had lunch.

"What are you going to do this afternoon?" Marilyn asked.

Laura shrugged. "Look for work, I guess. What else is there to do?"

She had not completely given up the idea of getting into show business.
Getting the classified directory, she made a new list of theatrical
agents in the neighborhood--taking care to select only those whose
listings had display boxes or were in dark type. She wanted nothing
more to do with any one-man agencies.

She dressed with care, in her best clothes, a tight skirt that outlined
the curves of her hips and buttocks, a clinging blouse against which
her breasts jutted like swollen melons. At two o'clock the girls left,
Marilyn to take her position near the entrance to Central Park, Laura
to make the rounds of the agencies.

It was a discouraging afternoon for Laura.

Her first stop was at an agency whose glossy offices took up an entire
floor of a building at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Fifth Street. An equally
glossy receptionist behind a curved marbled counter asked what Laura
wanted and whether she had an appointment. When Laura explained that
she was a novice looking for any sort of singing or dancing work, she
was practically laughed off Fifth Avenue. "This agency handles only
professional talent," she was told curtly. "We don't have any openings
for beginners."

It was the same story at the next place, two blocks further down. They
demanded to see a list of her credits, and, having none, she had to
leave. The third agency, on 49th Street near Sixth, was less brusque;
she was called in for an interview, was questioned for about ten
minutes, and finally was asked to leave her telephone number. "We'll
call you if anything comes up that looks like a promising slot for
you," they told her solemnly. "You don't have to bother checking with
us at all--we'll get in touch the moment we have anything."

Laura left smiling bitterly. She might be a hick from the sticks, but
she was clever enough to see through the Don't-call-us-we'll-call-you
routine. It was a smooth way of brushing her off without making
enemies. In this business, you never could tell when a raw novice
blossomed unexpectedly into an important star, and it didn't pay to do
things crudely when you could be tactful about it.

Brushoff number four was a quickie, though. "Sorry, nothing for
novices," the receptionist said. At number five, it was the same story,
even if she did get another interview first. And at the sixth place on
her list, she was told without enthusiasm that interviews were held
only on Mondays from three to four in the afternoon, and that she
could come back at that time next week if she cared to.

And then it was five o'clock and doors were beginning to close at
offices all over the city. Laura had worked her way down as far as 43rd
Street and Seventh Avenue. Rush hour was under way, and the streets
were full of people streaming into the subways. A northbound bus
passed, crammed to the bursting point. Her legs were aching, but she
turned around and began to walk back uptown. The day had grown cold
again, and Laura felt tired, chilled, discouraged. McCarten had been
right: the other agencies were not looking for beginners. There was a
vast oversupply of pretty girls who could sing and dance. Girls just
as good-looking as she was, and with a great deal more professional
training and experience, were going without work. Only a momentary
fancy had aroused McCarten's interest in her.

For a dismal moment she pondered going back to McCarten's office and
asking for the job. After all, he had taken something valuable from
her; she had every right to demand something in return. And, probably,
if he had a job available he would give it to her. He had to have
_that_ much of a conscience at least, she thought.

But the whole idea was repugnant. She did not want to enter that
shabby, cluttered office again. She did not want to have to look into
those deep, intense, hungry eyes. She did not, above all, want to be
reminded of what McCarten had done to her, or to run the risk of his
doing it again. No, she thought. She would not go to McCarten at all,
not even as a last resort. If she ever got that desperate, there would
always be other alternatives. Return to Kansas. Suicide. Prostitution.
_Anything_, she thought. _Anything would be better than begging that
man to do me a favor._

Wearily she plugged on toward 57th Street. It was half past five by the
time she reached the third floor of the dingy little rooming-house. She
took out the duplicate key Marilyn had given her that morning and let
herself into the little apartment.

She got out of her clothes, hanging them up with care, and filled the
bathtub with hot water. For twenty minutes she soaked her aching feet.
Getting out, she caught sight of herself in the cracked full-view
mirror along the back of the bathroom door.

_Marilyn's right_, she thought. _With my figure I could go places._

She admired herself for a moment: the twin peaks of her bosom, high
and firm, the nipples small and flawless in their little fields of
dark red skin; the flat but yet feminine softness of her belly; the
sleek firmness of her thighs; the satiny globes of her buttocks. It
was a lush body, a magnificently-endowed body. Nature had been good
to her. Her breasts were not scrawny, like Marilyn's, nor did they
hang pendulously the way they did on some women. They rose straight
upward and outward, needing only the barest minimum of support. Her
high cheekbones, strong jaw, and finely sculpted nose gave her face an
aristocratic look that belied her farmland birth.

She wondered about the phone-call from the mysterious Mr. Spinelli.
Suppose it _was_ Phil Spinelli, she speculated. No matter how a vice
king could have found out about her; just suppose. Perhaps he could
offer her the wealth and affluence she yearned for. What difference did
it make if you got paid $95 a week for letting men look at your body on
stage, or $500 a week for letting men slake their desires on your body?
Plenty of girls sold themselves for less. Here was poor thin Marilyn,
creeping along hoping to turn four or five $5 tricks a night. While a
call-girl could claim vast sums, if only she had the sort of sleek,
elegant body that a man might pay fabulously to possess.

_A body like mine, Laura thought._

She left the bathroom and curled up on the bed with a towel around her
body, and gave the matter some hard thought. Oh, she had heard plenty
of things from her grandparents about sin, and the pastor had thundered
in church every Sunday morning. But Kansas and Kansas morality seemed
ten thousand miles away right now. She was in New York. And New York
was very different from Kansas.

_What do I want out of life?_ she wondered.

_Happiness_, she answered herself. And happiness meant mink coats
and trips to Paris and lovely clothes and a fine home and a long,
shiny limousine. Happiness meant handsome men and dim candlelight and
champagne.

Marilyn Rivers wasn't happy. Marilyn was having revenge against men,
but it was a petty revenge, a five-dollar-a-trick revenge. How much
finer it would be to grow wealthy and soft at the expense of male lust.
Why wring $5 from them when other men will pay $500?

Laura laughed. She had all but convinced herself to sign up for the
nearest call-girl syndicate, but she had built an entire lacy tower
out of nothing at all. Someone named Spinelli had called her. Perhaps
he was an encyclopedia salesman; perhaps he wanted to sell her dance
lessons. And she had assumed immediately that he was _Phil_ Spinelli,
the vice overlord, and that he was eager to sign her up for his chain
of high-priced girls. _How silly can you get?_ Laura asked herself.
_When you start building plans out of daydreams, you know you're going
too far._

She opened a few cans and fixed a light dinner for herself. This was
a lonely life, she thought, with her roommate out on the streets all
afternoon and evening. It meant she would always be eating dinner by
herself, spending the evening alone. She was grateful to Marilyn for
having taken her in, but, still, she wished she didn't have to stay
by herself all evening in this drafty little room. With eight million
other people in New York, it was terrible to have only one friend.

After dinner, Laura went down. She strolled around 57th Street, going
eastward. There was a concert at Carnegie Hall that night, and Laura
paused, watching in envy as the Rolls-Royces and the long black
Cadillacs pulled up in front, as the gleaming men and women in their
tuxedos and mink wraps got out and disappeared into the concert hall.
What a wonderful life it must be, she thought, to be able to drive
up to Carnegie Hall and stroll in and take your seat in the row of
boxes! Laura had been to only one concert in her life, once on a visit
to Topeka, and that had been tremendously exciting. How much more
exciting it must be, she imagined, to sit in Carnegie Hall listening to
the New York Philharmonic or the Boston Symphony or one of the other
famous orchestras, with famous people sitting all around.

She walked on, down 57th Street, past the fancy store-windows, still
lit, with their dazzling displays of china and imported silver and
furs and rare books and furniture. Each window was a peephole to an
alien universe, for Laura--the universe of money, of elegance, of fine
things. She wanted to enter that universe. Suddenly, that night, as
she stared into the glowing shops of 57th Street, she felt a powerful
thrust of ambition; _I must have these things_, she thought. _Give me a
mink coat and a new dress and you couldn't tell me from the prettiest
socialite in Carnegie Hall. And I want to be on top! I want to have
things!_

She walked down 57th Street as far as Madison Avenue, then turned
around and came back along the other side of the street. The concert
had started, by that time, and the only people in front of Carnegie
Hall were a few doormen, a couple of waiting chauffeurs, and a wizened
little beggar playing a screechy violin. Laura dropped a dime in his
cup, and he thanked her without missing a note.

_There you are_, she thought. _Some people play in the Philharmonic,
others stand outside and cadge dimes. You make your own chances. And if
you're lucky, you get into the diamond horseshoe. If you're not, you
end up out in the cold, like Marilyn, like this little fiddle-player._

There was a movie-theater next to the concert hall. It was showing a
British comedy; Laura decided it was as good a way of killing time as
any, so she went in. The ticket cost $1.80, which was three times as
much as it cost to see a double feature back home. She realized, as she
paid for the ticket, that she was running low on cash. Her savings,
before paying the train fare from Kansas, had amounted to less than a
thousand dollars. Now she had only a few hundred left. If she didn't
find work soon, she'd be forced to borrow from Marilyn, or to wire home
for cash. Neither idea appealed to her.

It was half past eleven when Laura returned home. Marilyn had not yet
come in. Laura washed up, got into bed, turned on the lamp, and read,
getting deeply absorbed in Marilyn's magazines. At quarter after one
Marilyn came in, looking tired and disheveled.

"How'd it go tonight?" Laura asked.

"Five tricks--no, six. Thirty bucks. God, am I tired! You get a job?"

"Not even a nibble," Laura said. Briefly, she told Marilyn how agency
after agency had brushed her off with greater or lesser degrees of tact.

"What are you going to do? Keep trying?"

Laura shrugged. "It's like batting my head against a stone wall. I
could keep going around to agency after agency and get nowhere."

"You could get some other kind of job."

"What kind? I can't type, I don't know short-hand, I don't know how to
operate a switchboard--"

"You could be taught. It doesn't take long to learn how to run a
switchboard," Marilyn said, peeling off her clothes and heading for
the bathroom. "I bet a lot of companies would be glad to have a
receptionist who looks as good as you do."

"Maybe," Laura said wearily. "I'll give it a try tomorrow."

After breakfast the next day, she left Marilyn and went out to pick
up a copy of the _New York Times_. Taking a seat on a bench along
the southern border of Central Park, she looked over the _Help
Wanted--Female_ section of the classified ads.

There were plenty of jobs available, that was certain. But a lot of
them required experience of one sort or another--typing, short-hand,
professional knowledge. Laura eliminated them at once.

The others were almost all offered through employment agencies, which
meant that the first week's salary would go to the agency. And the
salaries were nothing fantastic, either. Laura circled some of the ads.
_Receptionist-Monitor Board, No Typing, Appearance Important. $65. Gal
Friday to Interior Decorator, no exp., Mostly Reception, $70. Personnel
Trainees, no exp., attractive type, $75._

Plenty of jobs--but, probably, plenty of people applying. And the
salaries weren't great by any means. The best Laura could find for a
trainee or inexperienced girl was $80 to $90 a week. Most of the jobs
offered were in the $60-$75 range.

$75 a week was $15 a day, before taxes. Even on her poorest days,
Marilyn took in at least that much, and paid no taxes on it. True, it
was sordid work, but at least her time would be her own, she could
take a day off whenever she pleased, and there was the chance of much
greater income on any given day.

_No_, she thought. _Don't slide straight into whoredom, Laura. Look
for a decent job first._

_Times_ in hand, and without much enthusiasm, Laura began to make the
rounds of the employment agencies. At the first three she went to, the
jobs advertised had already been filled, and dozens of other girls
turned away. The fourth place was impressed with her good looks, and
sent her across town to apply for a receptionist's job. But three other
girls had already been interviewed, and all of them knew how to type.
Laura got a "Sorry--we'd like to use you, but the other girls have
better qualifications."

The day dragged on. It was the same story everywhere.

Everyone wanted a good-looking girl on their job. But what they didn't
want was an utter green-horn just fresh from a Kansas farm. They wanted
a girl who could type, who knew her way around a switchboard, who was
familiar with New York.

Laura didn't qualify.

From agency to agency, interview to interview, until her feet throbbed
mercilessly. Twelve o'clock, one o'clock, two o'clock, three. Always
other girls applying for the job, and always the other girls were
better qualified than she was.

"How about domestic service?" one agency suggested. "Midtown hotel
looking for attractive white chambermaids. $42.50 a week plus tips."

"No thanks," Laura said, repressing a shudder. Better no work at all
than work like that.

Another place had a page-girl job for her. $52 a week, first week's
salary to the agency. In desperation, Laura let herself be sent over
for an interview, but the personnel manager turned her down. "You're
too imposing for the job, dear. What we have in mind is a high-school
type, not a glamor queen. Sorry."

Sorry.

Sorry.

_Sorry._

Everyone apologized. McCarten was sorry; the theatrical agencies on
Fifth Avenue were sorry; the employment agencies were sorry; personnel
managers were sorry.

You couldn't eat sorrow. You couldn't spend it. You couldn't even feel
happy about it. Everyone was sorry, and you were sorry too.

At half past five Laura gave up, dumped the _Times_ in an ashcan, and
headed home. It had been another wasted day. Her legs hurt fiercely,
she was hollow inside, and she had accomplished nothing.

In the apartment, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her loins no
longer ached from the rape, and she told herself that she was starting
to forget about it. She was no longer a virgin; what of it? She looked
no different. Her face had not changed. She looked tired, now, but
otherwise there was no difference. A man's body had entered her body
and had withdrawn. She was a woman now instead of a girl. But the fact
made no difference. No difference at all, except that now she no longer
had to worry about guarding that meaningless thing, her virginity.

She fixed dinner. Afterward, while waiting for Marilyn to come home,
she considered the alternatives.

Suicide was silly, a coward's way out. And going back to Kansas was an
admission of utter defeat.

What else was there? Calling McCarten? That was defeat, too. Taking
one of the $42.50 jobs? That was worse than defeat; it was humiliation.
Going to secretarial school? A waste of time, she thought. She would
have to study for six or ten weeks to become qualified to take a
miserable $60-a-week job. You didn't get to wear minks on $60 a week.
You didn't sit in a box at Carnegie Hall.

_With your body, you can go places_, Marilyn had said. _Well, why not?
Why not?_

_Why not?_

Marilyn came home at two o'clock, with earnings of thirty-five dollars.
Laura was still up.

"You get a job?" Marilyn asked.

"Nope."

"Not even a near miss?"

"There wasn't anything," Laura said. She smiled. "I'm not licked,
though. I've made up my mind about what I'm going to do. And you can
help me, if you want to."

"Just tell me what I have to do, honey, and I'll help you every bit I
can."

Laura's smile was bitter. "I've decided to go on the street, Marilyn.
Teach me how to be a whore."




                            _CHAPTER FOUR_


The hotel was on 56th Street just off Seventh Avenue. It had obviously
seen better days. It was a big massive nineteenth-century structure,
with gargoyles and everything. But the marquee was stained and
tattered, and no doorman waited in front. Laura walked in. It was
just as Marilyn had described it: a dump. Even the potted palms were
drooping and frayed. The lights were dim, sputtering fluorescents. A
couple of sloppy-looking bellhops lounged near the elevator. The desk
clerk had a copy of the _Daily Mirror_ spread out in front of him, and
he was doing the crossword puzzle.

Laura felt a tight band of fear across her belly. She remembered with
tension what Marilyn had told her in explaining the pitch. _Hotels
don't like to rent rooms to unescorted girls without luggage, because
they know that nine times out of nine and a half the girl is a prostie.
They'll rent to you, but if you don't grease them up they'll give you a
hard time first._

She moistened her lips as she waited for the desk clerk to look up from
his crossword puzzle. He stared at her out of faded, red-rimmed eyes.

"Yes?"

"I'm looking for a room," she said. She opened her hand and let the
crumpled five-dollar bill tumble out. It landed on the open newspaper.
Casually, the desk clerk covered it with his palm, smiling faintly.

"A single?" he asked.

"That's right. For--for tonight."

She waited hesitantly. The fiver was out of sight, now. All the clerk
had to do was shake his head and say the hotel was filled up, and he
was five bucks ahead for not very much effort. Laura added after a
moment, "I'm a friend of Mary Ryan." That was the name Marilyn used
when she signed the register here; Marilyn had told her to mention it
to the clerk.

The clerk nodded. "Okay. We've got a room. Three-fifty okay?"

"Fine," Laura said in a choked voice. _Now I'm in business_, she
thought.

"We usually prefer it in advance when the party doesn't have any
luggage," said the desk clerk blandly. "Do you want to see the room
first?"

"That's all right. I'll take it anyway."

"As you wish, ma'am. Would you sign here?"

He shoved the register toward her. Laura signed in as Lois Harper,
giving a fictitious Brooklyn address. Then she counted out three
singles and two quarters, and shoved them across the counter. The clerk
scribbled a receipt for her and handed her the key.

"Room 804," he said. "The bellhop will take you up if you want a look."

"Thanks," Laura said. She took the key and walked toward the elevator.
The bellhop, a boy of about eighteen, got in and clanged the wire cage
shut. Creakily, the elevator began to ascend.

"You're new, aren't you?" the bellhop said.

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean, you've never been around here before. We don't get classy ones
like you, much."

Laura's face reddened. She looked at the floor. "Just show me to my
room," she said.

The elevator halted jerkily on the eighth floor. The bellhop led her
down the dark corridor, with its threadbare carpeting, to a room near
the end of the hall. Taking the key from her, he opened the door. She
followed him in. Grinning, he put his arms around her and tried to
kiss her. Laura's first impulse was to slap him. But more advice of
Marilyn's came to mind. _The bellhop will probably fool around. They
always try to grab a free feel. Let them have it, because otherwise
they could make big trouble for you. A nasty bellhop could tip off the
cops and get you raided. But don't let them get more from you than a
feel, Laura. You start giving out tricks on the house and pretty soon
you're everybody's doormat._

She let the bellboy kiss her and squeeze her breasts. He pressed his
body against hers, until she quickly eased away.

"That's enough," she said.

"Let's have some fun, baby!"

"You've had all I plan to give," she said. She nudged him toward the
door. He left reluctantly but without putting up much of a fuss, as
though it was all part of the rules for the bellhop to do a little
smooching but then to leave.

Laura surveyed the room.

It was not much. There was a wide bed--one of the reasons Marilyn
preferred this hotel was that the single rooms came with wide beds--and
half a dozen clean towels were draped over the iron bedstead. There was
a rickety dresser, a yellowing mirror, an ugly lamp, a small table. The
room had its own sink and toilet bowl, but no bath or shower. Instead
of venetian blinds, there was a greasy-looking windowshade. The room
was painted a depressing dull green, and didn't seem to have been
painted within the last ten years. It was a cheerless, bleak room. But
it only cost $3.50 a night.

Laura locked up and rode downstairs, and walked briskly back to Central
Park South. According to Marilyn, the block running along the bottom
of Central Park, 59th Street between Columbus Circle and Fifth Avenue,
was one of the best places in the city for streetwalkers. Usually the
cops didn't bother you, especially if you were well-dressed and quiet,
and since it was the street bordering a park you didn't run the risk
of being complained about by shopkeepers whose storefronts you might
be sullying. Marilyn had told her, _If a cop comes over and starts
trouble, just say you're waiting for your boyfriend. Stick around
another ten minutes, then walk away. They can't arrest you unless they
actually catch you in the act. Loitering isn't enough to stand up in
court. They have to follow you to your hotel room and break in on you
and the john you've picked up._

Marilyn's area was near the Columbus Circle entrance to the park.
At her advice, Laura moved further east, on the other side of Sixth
Avenue. That way they wouldn't be competing with each other, and,
besides, more high-money men were likely to come walking from east to
west along 59th than from west to east.

There was no sign of Marilyn. Laura wondered if she had a client. She
walked past Marilyn's post, heading toward Sixth Avenue. The time was
ten minutes to three; the weather was warm, the sky very blue. Laura
leaned up against the low wall that rimmed the park, and began to wait.

Marilyn had been a little surprised, the night before, when Laura had
announced her decision. At first she had tried to discourage Laura from
sharing her profession; then, seeing that Laura was determined to go
on the streets at least once, Marilyn had set about to instruct her.
They had been up half the night, the teacher and the willing pupil, as
Marilyn poured out all the benefits of her three years' experience.

Laura's heart raced furiously now. _If they only could know about me
now back in Kansas_, she thought. _They'd have fits if they knew what
line of work pure and lovely Laura Haynes has gone into._

Although she was not fond of smoking, she lit a cigarette now to
mask her nervousness. She was dressed in her smartest clothes--a tan
trenchcoat over a tight cashmere sweater and a crisp skirt. She had the
trenchcoat dangle loosely from her shoulders, revealing the eye-opening
thrust of her bosom and the trim lines of her waist and hips. To a
casual passer-by, she might have been some Fifth Avenue beauty waiting
for her beau.

Twenty minutes went by. A number of men looked at her with keen
interest, but moved on without stopping to speak to her. _Maybe I'm
too chic to look like a streetwalker_, she thought. _Most of them have
a kind of bedraggled look that tells a man they're available. But
maybe men are afraid they'll get slapped in the face if they try to
proposition me._

When it was nearly four o'clock, and she had been on her territory
almost an hour without any sign of a client, she came close to giving
the whole thing up. She told herself, though, that Marilyn spent nine
or ten hours a day to find four or five clients; presumably a girl
as attractive as Laura would do better business, but, still, she
hadn't expected to be ignored this long. She felt ambivalent about the
situation: she wanted to be picked up, yet at the same time she wanted
_not_ to be picked up. She would have preferred to retain her virtue.
On the other hand, she had already spent $3.50 in rent and $5 in
bribery to get a hotel room. Marilyn had told her to charge $10, but,
even if she got a client at that rate, she would have only $1.50 to
show for her first encounter. With a fixed overhead of $8 or $10 a day
for a hotel room, it was necessary to have several clients, at least,
to come out ahead.

Laura went tense. One man, who had already gone past her twice, was
coming back a third time--and now he was walking toward her! He had
come from the Fifth Avenue direction, had eyed her carefully, and had
gone on walking toward Columbus Circle. Then, a few moments later, he
had returned, as though for a second look. He had gone on to Fifth,
again. And now he was back, and cutting away from the sidewalk to walk
over to her.

Her heart thundered. _Don't freeze up_, she thought. _Don't muff it._

He was about forty, she thought, and well-dressed. Of middle height, no
hat, balding slightly, dark clipped mustache. Not bad-looking. Slightly
heavy-set. A big ring on the middle finger of his left hand.

He was holding out an unlit cigarette. In a suave voice he said,
"Pardon me, Miss. My lighter doesn't seem to be working. Could I
trouble you for a light?"

"No trouble at all," Laura said, making her voice husky. She stood up,
opened her handbag, took out a matchbook, struck one for him. He puffed
busily for a moment.

"Thanks," he said, when the cigarette was lit. He hesitated a moment,
as though still trying to size her up. She wondered numbly whether it
would all fizzle, whether he would now puff on his cigarette and stroll
away. But he said at length, "Maybe you could do me one more favor. I'm
looking for some congenial companionship for the next half hour or so.
Are you free, or are you waiting for somebody here?"

"I'm waiting," Laura said, as Marilyn had instructed her. "But it
doesn't look like the fellow is going to show up, so to the deuce with
him." She smiled warmly. "My name's Lois. I've got a place a couple of
blocks from here, if that's what you're interested in."

He smiled. The formalities were over. It was a straight business
transaction now. "Interested? Yes, I'd say I was. Depends, though, on
what it's likely to cost me."

"Ten," she said.

"For the next half hour?"

"That's right. Without any specialties." The cold words rolled glibly
off her tongue.

He eyed her, looking her over from head to toe. "Ten is a little higher
than some charge, Lois."

She smiled urbanely. "Ten is the price."

He hesitated only a moment. "Okay. Ten it is. Take me to your
love-nest."

She took the arm that he extended, and they began to walk toward
Seventh Avenue. Laura was so nervous she nearly tripped on her high
heels. Even though she had rehearsed her little speech all morning, she
was surprised that she had carried it off so coolly. She was surprised,
too, at the way the conversation had changed from casual interchange to
a seamy negotiation, almost of its own accord.

They crossed 59th and headed down Seventh Avenue toward the hotel. They
chatted about the weather. Laura kept up a steady flow of light talk.
Marilyn's advice went round and round in her head. _Never try to find
out anything about them. They'll think you're prying, and anyway you
don't need to know. Always collect from them in advance. Always let
them know that you're taking them for a single trick, and make sure
they know that specialty items command a higher price. And once you get
your clothes off, get it over with as quick as you can. The faster you
can get back out on the street, the sooner you'll be turning your next
trick._

They reached the hotel. The desk clerk did not look up as Laura and
her "friend" walked past him. The bellhop on duty was a different one
from the one who had brought Laura to her room before. He kept complete
decorum as he ushered them into the elevator.

The client seemed a little surprised at the shabbiness of the hotel,
but he said nothing. The elevator stopped at eight. Laura led him down
the hall to the room, and opened the door. As she stepped inside,
seeing in one glance the towels on the iron bedstead, the little
nightstand, the dingy walls, she had a sensation very much like
vertigo. She knew that she was standing on the brink, and the moment
she let this man into the room with her and closed the door she would
begin the long descent into the abyss.

She closed the door and flipped the catch on the lock, as Marilyn had
specified. Now not even a management key could open the door.

She switched on the light and smiled bravely at the man. "I'd like the
fee now, please. You can put it on the dresser."

"Right."

He slipped a bill out of his wallet while Laura undressed. Marilyn's
words again were in her mind: _If they look well-heeled, peel to the
buff. You may get a little extra that way. Otherwise don't bother. Get
back on the street as fast as you can._

She draped her coat over a chair, unzipped her skirt, and stepped out
of it. She peeled the tight sweater off next. After just an instant of
hesitation, she unsnapped her bra. She heard her client's sharp little
indrawn hiss of pleasure and surprise as he saw that the full, ripe
mounds of her breasts were all genuine. She removed her half-slip next,
and rolled her panties down over her hips. Now she wore nothing but
garter-belt and stockings. She tried to be casual about her nudity.
As she motioned to remove the stockings, he said in a strained voice,
"Leave them on, please. I rather like it that way."

He had removed his jacket and his trousers. She took a quick look at
his body. His legs were hairy, and surprisingly lean, considering the
stockiness of his upper body.

_Make sure they wear protection_, Marilyn had warned. Marilyn had
given her a little packet just in case, but the client had provided his
own, Laura saw.

She mounted the bed, lying on her back looking up at the ceiling.

_God help me_, she thought. _There's no turning back now._

She felt his weight above her. His hands touched her breasts, squeezing
them gently, toying with the stiff little nipples. He made no attempt
to kiss her. He roamed her body with his fingers, and she felt herself
warming under his touch. He didn't seem to be in any hurry. _Some of
them may try to be regular romeos_, had been Marilyn's warning. _Don't
let them spend hours on preliminaries. Get yourself ready, and do it.
You're in this for cash, not for kicks._

She locked her legs around him, and he responded, and their bodies
joined. She closed her eyes and began to move rhythmically. It had not
been painful, as it had been with McCarten. She felt a faint sensuous
stirring in the pit of her stomach, and wished dimly, sadly, that she
could be doing this out of love and not out of callous cynicism. Every
movement brought a soft tingling of pleasure. She realized that she
could almost be enjoying what she was doing.

But Marilyn had warned her to bring matters to a swift culmination.
Laura began to gasp, counterfeiting the crisis of passion. Sweat broke
out all over her, and she closed her eyes tightly, continuing to thrust
her body, and suddenly she cried out in counterfeit ecstacy and the man
shuddered and gave a little moan, and his body shook convulsively and
it was all over.

He did not want to get up, or even to leave her body. She waited a
minute, then said, "It's all over."

"Okay. Okay."

"You can stay another round, if you like," she told him. "Same price."
_Always be a good salesman_, Marilyn said.

"No," he muttered, getting up from her. "I'll leave now." The suaveness
seemed to be gone. His lust satisfied, he hardly looked at her. He took
one of the towels and washed himself, and then, quickly, he dressed. He
was in a hurry now.

Laura remained on the bed, watching his hasty exit. _He got what he
came for_, she thought. _Now he wants to scram before the hotel gets
raided._

He muttered a goodbye and tried to open the door. But he had trouble
with the catch; Laura had to get up and let him out. He paused before
going, taking one last look at the ripe glory of her breasts and
buttocks, and then he was gone. Laura shut the door behind him and
locked it.

There was a ten-dollar bill on the dresser. She put it in her billfold.
Her watch said twenty minutes to five. So she had given him a little
over half an hour, and now she had a profit on the day of $1.50, with
hours still to go. Wearily, she walked over to the mirror. _Take a good
look_, she thought. _Take a look at the face of a whore, Laura._

She felt tired and embittered. There was a dull ache in her loins, the
throb of unfulfilled desire. Marilyn had warned her of that. The men
got you all worked up, but there was no satisfaction.

She went over to the sink and washed herself carefully, and then she
got dressed. In the dim light of the lamp, the room was unimaginably
gloomy. She felt terribly depressed. The transaction was completed. She
had sold herself to a middle-aged stranger; he had ploughed his furrow
and had paid and was gone.

She pulled the bra cups over her breasts and fastened the snap. _Is
this what I want?_ she asked. _An ugly hotel room and a few minutes of
sweaty grunting? I can do better than this, I don't have to depend on
five or ten bucks a lay. As long as I'm selling myself, I ought to get
a good price for the merchandise._

Dressed, she locked the door and rang for the elevator. _This is
minor-league stuff_, she thought. _But it's valuable experience. I
ought to be able to better myself soon, when I've been around a little
more._

The commitment was made. She felt neither joyous nor sad about it. This
was her life, now--and, if she played her cards right, she would wind
up living a plush life. Everyone has to start at the bottom.

Outside, it was growing dark rapidly. Laura walked at a brisk pace back
to her post near Sixth Avenue, and waited for the next customer to come
along.




                            _CHAPTER FIVE_


Laura turned her second trick about forty minutes later. He was a tall,
sharp-faced man in his late thirties, who talked with a pronounced
Southern drawl and seemed very embarrassed about the whole thing. After
him, business slowed down. At quarter to seven she went into a cafe
opposite the Coliseum and had a quick supper. By twenty after, she
was back on her post again. It was getting quite chilly, now. Marilyn
had said that the outdoor work was done only in the spring and summer
and early fall; the rest of the year, they hung out in the many bars
in the neighborhood. Bar work was easier in many ways, but also less
profitable, since you usually had to give the bartender or proprietor
a cut of your takings if you wanted to be allowed to solicit on his
premises.

Trick number three turned up at half past eight--a short,
round-bottomed man of perhaps forty-five. He had a strong body odor,
and he seemed more interested in playing with Laura's breasts than in
making love with her, but she finally managed to get rid of him. Now
she had taken in thirty dollars; she was $21.50 ahead on the day, after
about five hours' work. She decided to quit after one more trick, since
it was getting cold.

The trick came along. Jovial, well-dressed, fairly high. He wanted to
take Laura for a few drinks first, but she kept her mind on business
instead. When he asked about the price, she upped it to fifteen,
figuring she could always let herself be bargained-down. He looked like
a free spender, though, and he was. Fifteen was okay with him. They
went to the hotel.

At quarter to ten, Laura returned to the little room she shared with
Marilyn. She felt tired and filthy all over; the sweat of four men had
mingled with her own, and four men's bodies had pressed down heavily on
hers. She took her jacket off, stripped off her clothes quickly. Every
square inch of her body seemed to itch. She went into the bathroom and
turned the hot water on. She wished Marilyn had a shower. She wanted to
have the hot water cascading down on her from above, washing away the
day's physical contact.

But there was no shower, only the tub. She ran the water in, as hot as
she could stand it, and scrubbed hard, until her skin gleamed. She knew
now why Marilyn always spent an hour in the tub after coming home from
a day's work. It wasn't to prevent picking up any disease as much as it
was to wash away the touch of the men who had bought her body that day.

When she was through soaking, she towelled herself vigorously dry. She
felt cleaner, but there was still a residue of discomfort.

_Maybe you never can wash the feeling away_, she thought. _Not even
if you take a bath in concentrated sulphuric acid. It stays with you,
soaking into your bones, and you can't ever get rid of it._

And there was the dull throbbing of frustration in her loins, too, the
cost of being sexually aroused four times without a single fulfillment.
She felt the discomfort up through her entire body. Her nipples were
hard and painful. Her thighs ached.

She finished drying off and went into the bedroom, planning to read for
a while and then perhaps doze off until Marilyn came home. But she was
surprised to find the door opening, and Marilyn coming in. Marilyn had
a paper bag under one arm.

"You're back early," Laura said. "It isn't even eleven o'clock yet."

"I know. But I figured you'd come in by now, and I wanted to get back
here and spend some time with you. What sort of day did you have?"

"Four tricks," Laura said with a touch of pride. "Three tens and a
fifteen."

"Wow! You take to it like a natural."

"Thanks," Laura said ironically. "How'd you manage today?"

Marilyn shrugged. "Four tricks. Twenty bucks. If I had your figure, I
could charge ten and get away with it. But I don't, so I can't. How do
you feel?"

"Okay, I suppose."

"I mean, you aren't all keyed up? They heat you up, and then they don't
finish what they've started, and it leaves you all lousy inside. Or
didn't that happen to you?"

"It did," Laura said. "I took a hot bath, but it didn't help much."

"There are ways of helping it," Marilyn said. "Let me get washed up and
I'll show you." She began to get out of her clothes.

"What's in the paper bag?" Laura asked. "Groceries?"

"Sort of," Marilyn laughed. "Take a look."

Laura opened the bag. Inside was a fifth of Scotch. "Whiskey!" she said.

"I figured we'd have a little party. To sort of celebrate your debut.
It's a kind of special occasion, after all."

Marilyn finished undressing and went into the bathroom, leaving the
door open. While she bathed, she bombarded Laura with questions about
the way her day had gone. She wanted to know what sort of johns she had
picked up, whether they had given her any trouble, whether the hotel
people had been sassy, whether there had been any kind of interference
from the police. Laura found that talking about the day in this manner
eased some of the festering guilt within her. It reduced the whole
day's activities to a mere professional level. They could just as well
be two secretaries or two receptionists talking shop.

Pink and glowing, Marilyn came out of the bathroom and opened the
Scotch. "How do you want yours, honey? On the rocks, neat, or with mix?"

"Mixed, I guess."

"There's ginger ale in the fridge. Dig it out while I'm opening the
bottle. Get the icecube tray too, while you're at it."

Laura complied. When she had finally succeeded in wrestling the
frozen-in icecube tray out of the miniature frigidaire, she saw that
Marilyn had already poured healthy quantities of liquor into two
drinking-glasses. Almost a third of each glass was filled with whiskey.
Marilyn added two icecubes to each drink, and filled Laura's the rest
of the way with ginger ale. She drank her own on the rocks.

"Cheers," Marilyn said.

Laura smiled. "Cheers."

They clinked glasses gravely and drank. Laura had never been
much of a drinker, and when she did have anything it was usually
bourbon-and-water, sometimes rye-and-ginger. Scotch was new to her. But
she liked the flavor, and she particularly liked the immediate warmth
in her throat and in the pit of her stomach.

"It was awfully good of you to think of picking up a bottle," Laura
said. "I was getting kind of blue, here all by myself."

Marilyn nodded. "It's always a little rough, after you've finished your
first day on the street. That's why I knocked off early. To keep you
company here."

Laura found the drink slipping smoothly down her throat. In no time at
all, nothing but half-melted ice cubes remained in her glass. Marilyn
caught up with her in two quick gulps and poured refills.

"Not much for me," Laura said. "I'm getting dizzy, I think."

"What of it? Come on--you only live once."

But Laura _was_ getting dizzy, very dizzy. She drank the second drink
cautiously. Even so, her head began to buzz a little, and her eyes
would not focus. She leaned back, letting her gown dangle loosely open,
and a glassy smile appeared on her face. So this was what it was like
to be drunk, she thought. It was fun.

She was vaguely aware that Laura was filling her glass again. She tried
to protest, but the only words that came past her lips were thick,
fuzzy things that probably were unintelligible. Automatically, she
lifted the third drink to her lips. She could make out Marilyn's face
smiling across the table at her, blurred and badly out of focus.

"Want another?" Marilyn asked some time later.

"No ... no, please. I want to go to bed."

"Sure, baby. Sure." Laura stood up and staggered uncertainly, almost
falling. But Marilyn was right next to her, her arm around Laura's
shoulder, and with the strength that seemed so strange in her thin,
wiry body Marilyn managed to hold her up, to carry her across the room
and put her gently down on top of her bed.

"Let's get the robe off you," Marilyn said. "Easy, now. Just lift your
shoulder."

Laura complied, and Marilyn took off the robe. Laura saw Marilyn remove
her own robe. And then, to Laura's surprise, Marilyn lay down naked,
not in her own bed, but on Laura's. The two girls were naked, side by
side. Laura frowned, not knowing what to say.

Marilyn murmured, "I'm going to make you feel real good now, honey. I'm
going to help you relax and get a good night's sleep."

"What--whatcha gonna do--"

"Just relax, Laura, just relax." Marilyn's hand was cupping Laura's
breasts. It was almost like a man's hand, Laura thought, nothing soft
and feminine about it. She lay on her side, facing Marilyn, and the
other girl had her hands on both of Laura's breasts, playing now
with the nipples, now squeezing the entire heavy globes with all five
fingers. One of Marilyn's thin knees gently pushed its way between
Laura's thighs. Laura found it was pleasant to have the leg between
hers. She began to move rhythmically, deriving pleasure from each
rubbing motion of her loins over Marilyn's skin.

Then Marilyn released Laura's breasts and began to move her hands over
every part of Laura's body. Laura smiled. She saw nothing unnatural in
one woman making love to another, at that point. It was simply that all
day both of them had been denied fulfillment, and now, alone with each
other, they could give each other the pleasure that their clients had
denied them all day.

Laura's lips gently caressed Marilyn's stiff nipples, and her hands
wandered toward the other girl's lean, muscular buttocks. She wriggled
closer to Marilyn, and the two girls embraced, and Laura could feel the
jutting little bones of Marilyn's hips pressing into the softness of
her own thighs.

Laura began to pant as Marilyn's hands touched the secret places of her
body, stimulating them, exciting them. She reached out for Marilyn,
wanting to do the same.

"Kiss me," Laura muttered harshly. "Kiss me _there_."

Marilyn kissed her. "Now you kiss me," Marilyn whispered. Laura did.
"Again," Marilyn said. "Oh, again, again!"

And then neither of them could control themselves any longer, and they
came together in a tight embrace.

After the long hours of standing in the street, all the moments
of sweaty exertion beneath the sagging bodies of strange men--all
forgotten now, all blurred by the sweet haze of alcohol and the warmth
of Marilyn's lean body above hers.

Laura felt her heart pound as though it would rip out of her chest.
Every muscle contracted; she gasped harshly for breath and cried out,
"Oh oh _oh_!" and at the same moment above her Marilyn emitted a low
moaning sound, and then it was finished, and Marilyn clung limply to
Laura like something washed up by the tide, and the two women rested,
letting the fierce tides of passion ebb slowly away.

The ache in the loins was gone, now, Laura thought. The day's
frustrations were wiped out.

The very strenuousness of the act had sobered her, had burned the
excess alcohol from her brain, and now, as she lay with all passion
spent, Marilyn's warm flushed body against hers, she reflected that
what they had done was unnatural, a strange act.

But _was_ it so unnatural, really, she asked herself?

They were friends. They shared a mutual need for fulfillment. Because
of their profession, they could not get that fulfillment from men. What
more natural thing in the world was there but for them to give that
fulfillment to each other?

She opened her eyes. Marilyn, smiling, looked into them.

"Hello, darling."

"Hello, Marilyn."

"How do you feel now?"

"Wonderful."

"No guilt about it?"

Laura shrugged. "I don't know. It was like all my troubles being washed
away in one second."

"You've never done anything like this before, have you?" Marilyn asked.
"I mean, with another woman."

"No. Never."

"Then I was the first. That makes me very happy."

"Do you--have you done much of this?" Laura asked.

"Practically since I went on the street. It's the only way I can get
any kicks. I pretend the men excite me, but it's never happened, never
once in my life with a man. Only with women."

Laura closed her eyes. "I feel very sleepy now. Warm and drowsy and
happy."

"That's the way you should feel, honey. Let's get some sleep, now. See
you in the morning."

Marilyn's lips gently grazed Laura's. Laura smiled.

"Goodnight, Marilyn."

"Goodnight, honey."

Laura nestled under the covers, against her pillow. The lights went
out, and a moment later she heard Marilyn getting into her bed. Laura
yawned.

She understood now why Marilyn had been so eager for her as a roommate.
It was more than sheer generosity, more than mere loneliness. Marilyn
had been looking for a lover. Laura frowned. She was not sure she
wanted to settle down this way as a regular habit. Walking the streets
all day for twenty-five or thirty dollars, then coming home and
drinking and making love with another woman....

Yet a routine it became, at least for the next three or four days. In
the morning, the girls read, slept, shopped for food. Marilyn had a
bank account with several thousand dollars in it, and she persuaded
Laura to open one as well, and to bank as much of her earnings as she
possibly could, as an emergency fund against illness or pregnancy. In
mid-afternoon, they would go out together to take their positions near
the park. Then, at whatever time they decided to call it a day, they
would return to the apartment. Usually Laura got back first, since she
demanded a higher rate and was more popular with the passers-by. She
would return by eleven and bathe and set up the drinks; by midnight
Marilyn would come in, and after she had tidied herself up they would
have a little party and then go to bed.

The lovemaking invariably satisfied them both. Laura felt secret pangs
of guilt at these lesbian practices, but she said nothing about them
to Marilyn. She did not like the idea of making love with another
woman, but on the other hand there was always the ache of frustration
in her loins at the end of the day, and after a couple of drinks her
inhibitions disappeared.

Then, on the fourth day, Marilyn said apropos of nothing at all, "Hey,
did you ever call that Spinelli fellow back?"

Laura frowned. "Why, no. I forgot all about it."

"You dope, why'd you do that?"

"I didn't know any Spinellis."

Marilyn glowered scornfully. "Suppose it was Phil Spinelli, though?
Maybe he saw you somewhere, and wants to line you up for his syndicate."

Laura shook her head. "Don't be silly. There are dozens of Spinellis in
New York, and Phil Spinelli doesn't know me from Eve. Besides, it was
probably a mistake, a call for some other girl on my floor. There were
two or three girls with Italian names--"

"Does it cost you very much to call him?"

"No, but I feel funny, calling a strange number and asking to speak to
someone I don't even know--"

"Just suppose it _is_ the bigshot, though!" Marilyn urged. "Christ
almighty, Laura, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling
your ass at ten bucks a throw? A girl with your figure could be making
a mint. I tell you in all truth, I never seen a pair of buttons like
yours on _any_ woman in the trade. So you live up here wasting yourself
on me and on a bunch of cheap ten-buck johns, when you might be a big
syndicate girl--"

"But how could it be--"

"_Call_ him," Marilyn insisted. "You never know. Don't sell yourself
short."

In the end, Marilyn won out. It was unreasonable not to try, at least.
Laura had some trouble finding the scrap of paper on which the number
was written, and for a moment she thought she might have thrown it out.
But at last it turned up, crumpled into a corner of her handbag. She
flattened it out.

"Maybe it's too early to call," Laura suggested hesitantly.

"It's eleven in the morning, goof. If he isn't there, you can leave
your number or something."

She had run out of excuses. She went to the phone and dialed the
number. On the third ring the phone was picked up, and a deep masculine
voice boomed, "Yeah?"

"Mr. Spinelli?" Laura said weakly.

"Who's this?"

"My name is Laura Haynes. I got a message about a week ago from Mr.
Spinelli telling me that he had called, but I lost the number and it
just turned up. Are you Mr. Spinelli?"

"No. What did you say your name was?"

"Haynes. Laura Haynes."

"Hold on, huh?"

Laura held on. She heard muffled sounds, as though someone's hand were
over the mouthpiece while a discussion went on.

"What's happening?" Marilyn asked.

"They're bringing Spinelli to the phone, I guess," Laura said. Her
heart pounded.

A different voice--smooth, almost oily--said, "Miss Haynes?"

"That's right."

"I was wondering why it took you so long to get in touch with me, Miss
Haynes. I was very anxious to hear from you."

"Oh?"

"Yes. You've been recommended most highly to me, Miss Haynes. Do you
mind if I call you Laura? And you can call me Phil. I like my friends
to call me by my first name."

Laura nearly dropped the phone. Nodding frantically to the puzzled
Marilyn, Laura said, "Ah--yes, _Phil_."

"That's better. Are you free this afternoon for lunch, Laura?"

"I--could be. But this is all so mysterious--"

"I'm sorry. But I have a business proposal for you, and it's not
something that can easily be explained over the phone. Shall we make it
a date for lunch in, say an hour and a half?"




                             _CHAPTER SIX_


"I'll be damned," Laura muttered in quiet incredulity, as she hung up
the phone. "So you were right after all. It was Phil Spinelli! But
how--where would he find out about me?--"

"They say he knows everything about everyone, honey. Aren't you glad
you listened to me and called him, now? Christ, I wish _I_ could get
into his syndicate! If I only had your looks--then I wouldn't need to
tramp around in the cold for five bucks a trick." Marilyn shrugged.
"Well, this is your big break. What kind of arrangements did you make
with him?"

"He's picking me up here at half past twelve."

"_Here?_ Baby, you better be ready ahead of time, and wait for him out
in front."

"Why?"

"Because we don't want Phil Spinelli to know that you live in a dump
like this. His girls have to radiate class, poise, breeding. Which
means you've got to give him the impression right from the start that
you come from the proper side of the tracks."

"Oh, dear--"

"Don't worry about it," Marilyn snapped. "Just start getting ready. And
dress like you're having a date with the Duke of Windsor."

Laura put on her one cocktail dress, a tight blue affair with a scoop
neckline that left bare the creamy upper globes of her breasts. At
Marilyn's suggestion, she put just a dab of perfume in the hollow
between her breasts, and wore a tiny jewelled locket that lay
tantalizingly over the soft, high hills of flesh. She combed her long
auburn hair out and arranged a meticulous coiffure. She brushed her
teeth until they sparkled like pearls. By the time she was finished,
she glistened. No one could possibly tell, merely by looking at her,
that only the day before she had taken part in five squalid acts of
physical lust in a cheap hotel room with flyspecked walls. She looked
more like a radiant Bryn Mawr senior on her way to meet her fiancé.
Marilyn nodded in approval when Laura turned away from the mirror at
last.

"Tremendous," she enthused. "You'll knock him for a loop. You've got
just what they want--a virginal appearance without the virginity that
goes with it."

"What sort of man is he, do you know?"

Marilyn shrugged. "All I know is that he's supposed to be a smooth
operator with lots of dough. Also that he doesn't like to waste time."

"Do you think he'll want me for--for his syndicate?"

"You bet. And you know what _that_ means. He'll put you up in a plush
apartment somewhere on the East Side, and every afternoon you'll get a
phone-call telling you where your assignment for the night is, and you
go off to some fancy party or some millionaire's hotel suite and you
earn yourself a hundred bucks."

Laura shook her head. "But why will men pay so much just for a night in
bed with a woman?"

"For one thing, because they can afford it. For another, because
it saves them a lot of fuss and bother. Look at it this way: Phil
Spinelli's girls aren't cheap whores. They're beautiful society dames
of the sort every man wants to lay. But to lay a regular society
woman, you've got to date her for weeks, take her to fancy restaurants,
spend a lot of cash and time on her before she'll come across. With a
call-girl, you short-circuit all the steps in between. You pick up the
phone, you call Spinelli, and you get a nice glossy Fifth Avenue type
girl who doesn't need to be coaxed into bed." Marilyn glanced at her
watch. "But it's almost half past twelve. You all ready?"

"Yes."

"Get downstairs, then. You don't want Spinelli to have to come looking
for you up here."

"Okay. I'm going."

"And--" Marilyn smiled tenderly and squeezed Laura's gloved hand. "Good
luck, honey. I hope you make the grade--even if that means we have to
split up."

"We'll stay together, no matter what," Laura promised.

Marilyn shook her head. "It won't work out that way, believe me. But
thanks for saying it. Hurry along, now, honey."

Laura made her way downstairs, trying to remain calm. She had only a
few moments to wait in front of the building before an enormous black
Imperial sedan glided up. A chauffeur hopped out and opened the back
door, and a man emerged. He looked around uncertainly for a moment
before spotting Laura.

"Mr. Spinelli?" she said in a hesitant voice.

He smiled. "Laura."

"That's right."

"Don't call me Mr. Spinelli. I like people to call me Phil," he said,
and gestured toward the car. The chauffeur opened the door again,
and Laura got in. The back of the car was enormously roomy, and the
upholstery was luxurious. A sliding glass panel separated the rear
compartment from the driver's cabin.

"Hungry?" Spinelli asked, grinning.

"Some," Laura said.

"What about the Henri IX? Or don't you like French cuisine?"

Laura almost said, _I don't know, I've never tried it_. But she
checked herself in time. Settling back against the wonderfully buoyant
upholstery, she smiled and said, "I love it."

"Henri IX," Spinelli said to the chauffeur, and slid the glass panel
shut.

As the car pulled away and swung eastward in a big, arrogant U-turn,
Laura turned slightly to eye Spinelli. He was younger than she had
expected--no more than thirty-five at the very most, and possibly even
a few years younger. He was a medium height, extremely well-dressed,
with a relaxed, cosmopolitan manner. His face was tanned, his dark
hair thick and curly, and he wore a neat little clipped mustache. He
was, Laura thought, one of the most handsome men she had ever seen.
He positively radiated wealth, power, animal magnetism, strength. An
enormous sapphire glinted from a massive gold ring on one hand. Even
his wristwatch was formidable, a sleek oval face with all manner of
smaller dials on it.

He was looking her over thoroughly, too. And, so far as Laura could
tell, he seemed to be pleased.

As they reached the corner he said, "Would you care for a drink,
Laura?"

She smiled in faint confusion. "A drink? You mean, we'll get out now?"

Spinelli chuckled. "I mean right here and now. This is a very
well-equipped car." Leaning forward, he pressed his fingers against a
wooden panel on the rear of the front seat, and the panel swung open,
revealing a miniature bar within. "What about a Manhattan?" Spinelli
asked.

Laura was too astonished to answer the question, at first. Staring at
the bar in wonder, she said, "I didn't know automobiles could have
things like this."

"A custom job can. A Manhattan?"

"Oh--yes. Yes, thanks."

Spinelli took a glass from a rack and punched a spigot. Amber liquid
squirted out. "I keep Manhattans and Martinis readymade under
refrigeration here," he explained, as he took a cherry from a plastic
container and popped it into her drink. "It's a nuisance trying to mix
things while the car is moving." He filled a second cocktail glass with
a martini for himself, and they sat back. Laura sipped her drink, it
was delicious; and, in the big car, there were no jounces, no bumps.
The ride was serene.

Spinelli said, "I suppose you're wondering how I happened to get your
phone number."

"I suppose I am," Laura said.

Spinelli smiled amiably. "I have a number of friends around town who
keep me informed about promising newcomers," he said. "I like to know
about it whenever a lovely girl comes to New York--especially when
she's looking for a job in the entertainment world. One day last week
there was a call from one of my friends, a Mr. McCarten."

Laura stiffened involuntarily.

"Something wrong?" Spinelli asked easily.

Laura forced a smile. "Mr. McCarten and I had--some unpleasantness."

"Oh? He didn't mention that. He did say you were an extremely handsome
young woman, and I must remark his judgment was excellent. And he
thought you might be receptive to an offer from me. I'm--ah--in a form
of the entertainment world myself. Mr. McCarten told me where I could
reach you, and I phoned the Y, only to learn that you were out. When
I called again the next day, they informed me you had moved, but they
didn't know your address." Spinelli shrugged. "I was ready to write you
off as a lost cause, until your telephone call. I'm delighted you were
able to get in touch with me at last."

Laura sat back, sipping her drink. She found it hard to believe that
this handsome, cultured young man could be the overlord of high-priced
vice in New York City. But it was easy to read between the lines
of what he was saying, to know that McCarten was one of Spinelli's
talent scouts and had recommended her. It was strange that McCarten
should think that a girl who had been raped of her virginity would be
interested in becoming a call-girl--but perhaps McCarten was so shrewd
a psychologist that he knew exactly what the effect of his act would
be. Certainly it had led her in a straight line toward Spinelli.

The limousine pulled up in front of an East Side hotel. The chauffeur
ran around to the side to open the door; Spinelli got out, helping
Laura, and they entered the hotel together, she on his arm. The
restaurant was at the rear of the hotel; the moment Spinelli entered,
a dignified-looking man in black came racing up, bowed, and gave him an
effusive welcome.

"Your table is ready for you, Mr. Spinelli. If you and Mamselle will
come this way, s'il-vous-plait?"

He led them the length of the lavishly-upholstered restaurant to a dim
alcove at the very rear, where a table for two nestled in intimate
darkness, separated somewhat from the rest of the dining room.
Spinelli helped Laura off with her jacket, and, in turning, she made a
half-bow, revealing her bosom to him. She noticed that his eyes flicked
appreciatively to her breasts for an instant before returning to their
usual blasé expression.

"I have a permanent lunchtime reservation for this table," Spinelli
explained softly, as they took their seats. "Sometimes, when the place
is full and I am not here, they will telephone me for permission to
give it to someone else. But normally it waits for me at all times.
They are very kind to me here."

He gestured to a waiter, who glided over at once. There was no menu.
Laura, having no idea what to order, smiled warmly and asked Spinelli
to order for her.

Spinelli nodded. Speaking in smooth French, he said, "We'll begin with
_escargot_ today. Onion soup for the lady, _petite marmite_ for me, and
the baked pheasant for two. With a bottle of the '47 Tavel, Pierre."

The waiter moved away. Laura asked Spinelli for a translation, which he
supplied.

While waiting for the snails, he said, "McCarten told me you had just
arrived from Kansas. I don't suppose you have many restaurants of the
grand cuisine out there, do you?"

"Not very many," Laura said.

"You don't have to pretend with me," Spinelli said gently. "I know you
want to seem sophisticated, Laura, but you don't have to be afraid to
admit things. You're a very beautiful girl. The sophistication can come
later. You've never eaten in a French restaurant, have you?"

Laura glanced at the table. "No."

"All right. There's a first time for everything. Don't you agree?"

"Yes," she murmured. "A first time for eating snails--and a first time
for other things."

"But you've experienced some of the other things already, haven't you?"

Color came to her cheeks. "Yes," she said.

"Good. I just wanted to start clearing up any misconceptions you may
have. McCarten gave me a rather ambiguous report about you." Spinelli
toyed with his silverware. "You are twenty-three?"

"Twenty-one. Did he tell you--?"

"He told me you were twenty-one. I'm a very suspicious man, my dear,
and I like to try to catch people in little slips. I believe in perfect
honesty, both on my part and on the part of my associates."

The waiter returned, bearing a little tray of snails. Laura stared at
them in some anxiety, but Spinelli quickly dispelled it. Carefully he
showed her how to grip the shell in the little clamp and extract the
snail with the tiny fork, and how to mop up the delicious garlic-butter
sauce with a bit of bread. The snails were magnificent. Laura had been
apprehensive about eating them, but she found nothing repugnant at all
about them.

Spinelli seemed to be in no hurry. He kept up a smooth flow of
conversation, generally aimed at trying to draw Laura out. She
abandoned all attempts at pretense of sophistication--but, at the same
time, she endeavored to let him know that she was not utterly innocent.
She kept from him any hint that she had been a streetwalker for the
past several days. As Marilyn had pointed out, that would hardly
enhance her market value to him.

At length, when only a few scraps of pheasant remained on their plates,
Spinelli said, "I think the time has come to take off the masks we've
been wearing. Laura, do you know what sort of employment I can offer
you?"

"I think so."

"Don't try to make guesses." Spinelli steepled his fingers. "I don't
know what stories you may have heard about me, but probably they're all
fairly accurate, if somewhat coarsened. One of my chief enterprises is
a kind of entertainment service. I provide feminine companionship for a
wealthy and carefully chosen clientele, largely business executives. Do
you understand me?"

"Perfectly," she said in a steady voice.

Spinelli looked a little surprised. "McCarten remarked that you seemed
a trifle naive to him. Perhaps his standards of evaluation need some
revising."

Gently Laura said, "I had only been in New York four days when I met
him. I've had an extra week, now, and a week more in New York makes
quite a difference."

"Evidently," Spinelli said. He stared evenly at Laura. "I have
reason to want you to join my staff," he said. "The activities you
will engage in are far from unpleasant, and highly lucrative. The
girls on my staff earn between $20,000 and $50,000 a year, all of it
tax free. The amount they earn is limited only by their eagerness
and--ah--abilities. I think there's an opportunity for you. You're
free to leave my employ at any time, so long as you give me adequate
notice--say, two or three weeks. Most of my girls stay with me five or
six years. The nature of the work brings you in contact with a good
deal of promising matrimonial material. You'd be amazed to learn how
many wives of executives are my alumnae. At no time will I stand in
the way of a good match--though naturally I'll expect that you keep my
interests in mind when you take up your life as the wife of a wealthy
man." Spinelli smiled urbanely. "Don't give me any decision yet,
please. There are certain technicalities to settle before we can arrive
at any agreement. If you're absolutely positive you're not interested,
let me know at the end of the meal, and we can go our separate ways.
Otherwise, I'd like you to come up to my apartment for some further
discussions."

Laura nodded. "Very well."

Spinelli lingered over dessert and coffee, and he finished the meal off
with cognac. It was now well over two hours since they had entered the
restaurant. When he was ready to leave, he put a five-dollar bill on
the table and they departed without waiting for a check. Probably they
simply sent him a monthly bill, Laura decided. She wondered how much
the meal had cost. Twenty or thirty dollars, probably.

The limousine was waiting. Spinelli looked at her inquiringly.

"Shall I take you home, Laura?"

She smiled. "I'd rather continue the discussion," she said.

He looked gratified. He helped her into the car and it drove off,
eastward to a towering apartment building in the mid-Sixties,
overlooking the river. Spinelli dismissed the chauffeur and escorted
Laura into the glittering lobby. They rode up, up endlessly it seemed,
getting out finally on the twentieth floor. The elevator opened right
into a foyer of an enormous apartment. As they walked in, a massive man
came out of a room off to the left, bearing a sheaf of papers.

Spinelli nodded. "Laura Haynes, this is George Skalkottis, my personal
secretary. Say hello to Miss Haynes, George."

"Hello," the big man said. Laura recognized it as the voice of the man
who had answered the phone earlier that day. Skalkottis looked like
nothing so much as a well-dressed ape. She shivered imperceptibly,
realizing that the "personal secretary" was probably really a bodyguard
and hired killer. Spinelli's urbane charm had almost made her forget
the fact that he was a criminal.

"Save the messages for later, George," Spinelli said airily. "Miss
Haynes and I have business to discuss. See that we're not disturbed for
at least an hour."

"Yes, sir."

"Come, Laura."

Spinelli led her through a series of breathtakingly beautiful rooms,
into one final room at least forty feet long and twenty wide, which
opened out onto a terrace that gave a magnificent view of the river
and of Queens beyond it. The big room was lavishly furnished, with a
big hi-fi set, an enormous bar, and a vast divan big enough to sleep
two. Laura noticed that Spinelli clicked the door shut behind him. He
moved gracefully to the controls of the hi-fi set and flicked a knob,
and soft string music filtered into the room from what seemed like
every direction.

"Another cognac?" Spinelli suggested.

Laura took the drink from him. They stood together at the terrace,
admiring the view, sipping the drinks. Laura waited tensely, knowing
what was coming. It would be a personal test of her abilities, she
thought.

Spinelli's hand rested lightly on her shoulders. Suddenly, putting the
drink down, he spun her around and bent to kiss her breasts just above
the neckline of her dress. His hands left her shoulders, travelling
down her sides and trailing lightly over her buttocks.

Without a word, Spinelli began to undress her. She tried to remain
calm as he unzipped her dress and drew it off, removed her slip, and
unhooked the tight bra that thrust her breasts upward. Despite his
silence, she could see the obvious pleasure in his eyes at the sight of
her full round breasts bare before him. Continuing, he knelt to unhook
her garters, and delicately rolled her stockings off. His hands moved
with a surgeon's finesse. The panties and garter-belt followed, and
she stood naked before him, feeling the color mount to her throat and
breasts under his intense appraising gaze. She put her hands on her
hips and stood with her legs slightly apart while he looked her over.

Then he removed his own clothes, just as silently. His body had an
athlete's lean symmetry, with wide, muscular shoulders and a deep
chest, tapering to narrow hips and thickly-muscled but narrowing legs.
He was tanned an even golden-brown over every part of his body.

Smiling, but still silently, he came toward her, took her by the hand,
led her toward the divan. He folded his arms around her, and she felt
the flat muscles of his chest tight against her breasts, and, gently,
he drew her down on the divan.

He was an expert lover. He played on her body as though it were a fine
musical instrument, and every motion was a graceful, unhurried one.
Desperately, because of her lack of experience, Laura tried to play the
part of an experienced woman. She took her cues from him. He seemed
to sense that she had never made love in a fully willing way before,
because every touch was one of tenderness. His fingertips lightly
caressed her nipples until they became hard and erect. His lips darted
like a butterfly's wings over her entire body. His hands brought gasps
of pleasure to her.

At last he decided that they could complete the act. Laura was clinging
to him, eager and aroused, and he seemed magically to float above her,
until she began to feel the rippling waves of ecstacy and she could no
longer keep her eyes open.

She closed them, and her lips parted to admit his tongue, and she felt
warmth rise up and surround her, soft soothing warmth like the loving
embrace of the womb, and with every motion new pleasure inflamed her.
Her breath was coming in irregular bursts now, and whenever she opened
her eyes she saw Spinelli smiling above her, always calm, always
silent.

She cried out, a moaning wordless cry of delight, and felt her
muscles contract and her skin grow cold, and she moved feverishly
in her ecstacy, subsiding after a moment with throbbing heart.
Spinelli was still with her, though, carrying her along from one
height to the next, smiling, bending his head now to kiss her breasts
or to nibble thrillingly at the fleshy part of her. Her breath was
coming in irregular bursts now, until finally--it seemed like hours
later--Spinelli's grasp tightened on her shoulders, and he quivered and
she cried out one last time, and then all was still. She wrapped her
arms around him and held him tight against her.

For some time they remained that way. Then Spinelli rose from her and
walked to the window. Naked, he stood with his back to her, looking out
over the islands of the East River.

He spoke, at last, for the first time since it had begun.

"You're very beautiful," he said. His voice was deeper, harsher than it
had been before.

Laura said nothing. Her body still throbbed from the afterglow of their
sensual encounter.

"I want you to work for me," Spinelli said, turning around. "You're
magnificent. For a novice, you're tremendous. I'll guarantee you $500 a
week, and you can have a month's salary in advance before you walk out
of this apartment today. What do you say?"

"I'll take it," Laura said in a voice she hardly recognized.




                            _CHAPTER SEVEN_


The twenty hundred-dollar bills new and crisp, made a neat little
stack. Spinelli toyed with them, tapping them together, shuffling and
reshuffling them. It was half an hour since they had made love. They
had donned their clothing once again.

Spinelli said, "This will be four weeks' advance against your earnings.
I'll expect you to buy some fine clothing--if you need help picking
anything, one of my other girls will help you. You'll move across
town as soon as possible, into an apartment that more nearly reflects
your economic status. It probably won't often be necessary for you to
receive clients in your home, but I want you to live well anyway. When
you travel, you'll travel by taxi. When you eat, you'll eat only at the
best places. You're not a Kansas farm-girl any more, remember. You're a
sophisticated Manhattanite, and I want you to live the part twenty-four
hours a day."

"It shouldn't be too hard," Laura said.

"As for your working day: I'll have to insist that you be within
telephone range from three o'clock on, every day. When possible, I'll
try to line up your assignments in advance. The general arrangement is
that you meet the client for dinner, attend a show with him, and go to
his hotel. Most of your clients will be out-of-towners, executives.
You'll be eating at the best places in town, so I suggest you keep an
eye on your weight. You cease to be valuable when you begin to get
bloated." Spinelli smiled smoothly. "There'll be various special
assignments for you--trips out of town, parties at conventions, things
like that. You'll be notified well in advance when possible. Some of my
clients have--ah--unusual tastes in sexual practices. In the beginning,
I'll keep you away from the really oddball ones. I have specialist
girls for them, anyway."

"And you'll pay me a regular salary, is that it?" Laura asked.

Spinelli nodded. "Five hundred a week, payable every Wednesday in cash.
My messenger will drop the money off at your apartment, and you'll give
him a receipt for it. Aside from the base salary, you may receive gifts
from your clients. Anything they give you is yours--but you must report
it to me, even if it's only a few dollars. Is that clear? I insist on
knowing what they give you."

"Fair enough," Laura said. "How will they pay for my services?"

"I bill them. No money will change hands through you, except what they
choose to give you for yourself. I refuse to let my girls be forced to
act as collection agents for me. You render services: I worry about
collecting the fee for them."

Laura crossed her legs. "Just as a matter of curiosity, could you tell
me how much you'd collect for my night's services?"

Spinelli showed even white teeth in a flickering smile. "The answer to
that is no. All you need to know is that my operations show a profit
despite the basic overhead of the girl's salary. Incidentally, you'll
have six days off each month. You can generally pick these yourself,
but you'll have to give me a couple of days' notice. On the days when
you're unable for--ah--personal reasons to give complete services,
you'll be assigned to less intimate social events." Spinelli stood up
and pushed the little sheaf of hundred-dollar bills toward her. "Are
there any questions?"

"Yes," Laura said. "I've got a friend, a girl I'm rooming with. Is it
all right if I let her share my new apartment?"

"Absolutely not."

"But--"

Spinelli's face grew stern. "I don't want any complications. None of my
girls are allowed to share their apartments, even with other girls of
the staff. If you think this friend of yours is interested in this sort
of work, I'll be happy to interview her--but you can't go on living
with her."

Laura shook her head. "She's--not very pretty," she said in a low
voice. "I don't think you'd be able to use her. But--I wish I didn't
have to split up with her--"

"I don't believe in making exceptions," Spinelli said coolly.
"Understood?"

Laura shrugged. "Yes."

"Everything's agreed, then?"

"Agreed," Laura said in a low voice. "When do I start?"

"There's no rush. The end of the week, perhaps. I'll arrange for an
apartment for you tomorrow, and you can begin furnishing it right away.
My decorator will help you, and we can arrange any kind of payment
scheme you like. Also, tomorrow, you'll come here to be photographed."

"Photographed?"

"Like this," Spinelli said, taking a large flat book from a desk
drawer. He handed it to Laura. It was thick, printed on glossy paper.
It consisted of page after page of photographs of girls, all of them
nude, photographed from front and back and in several angles. Laura
reddened faintly, and gave the book back to him.

"Why?" she asked.

"Expensive stores have display windows for their goods. This book is my
display window. When a client insists on seeing in advance what he's
paying for, I show him the book. Your pictures will be in the next
edition." Spinelli laughed. "Don't worry though. The book has a highly
limited circulation. Only a very exclusive few ever get to see it,
and no copy can be bought at any price." He looked at his watch. "Run
along, now. I'll phone you tomorrow when your apartment is rented."

Laura felt dizzy as she stepped out. It was hard to believe that she
had two thousand dollars in cash in her handbag, harder to believe that
in a few days of rocketlike rapidity she had taken up and abandoned a
career as a streetwalker and had stumbled somehow into the glittering
and money-laden life of the call-girl.

She started to look around for the subway; then, remembering what
Spinelli had told her, she hailed a cab and took it to Columbus Circle.
She got out and looked around for several minutes before finding
Marilyn.

The slim prostitute was sitting glumly on one of the benches just
inside the park, obviously having a slow afternoon. But she brightened
the moment she saw Laura approach, running toward her and embracing her.

"Well?" Marilyn asked eagerly. "Tell me all about it. What happened!
What did he do?"

"I made the grade," Laura said simply.

"Great!"

"He took me to lunch--fabulous place--and he explained the setup. Then
he took me up to his apartment and sort of tested me out, and told me I
could have the job if I wanted it. For five hundred bucks a week."

Marilyn gasped. "Five hundred--!"

"And he gave me a month's advance. I'm going to go on the most glorious
shopping spree a girl ever went on, Marilyn. He's getting me an
apartment, too, on the East Side, and--_oh_."

Marilyn looked up, anguish on her thin face, "I figured."

"I'm sorry, Marilyn," Laura said gently, and tears came to her eyes.
"I asked him if you could room with me. He said Absolutely no. No
roommates of any kind. That was emphatic."

Marilyn smiled wanly. "That's okay, hon. I'm not in your league,
anyway. You wouldn't want me around. I'm a hundred percent for you,
Laura. I think all this is wonderful." She shrugged. "What the hell,
I'm not any worse off than before I met you. I'll find another roommate
sooner or later."

"We'll keep in touch," Laura promised, but already she began to see
that they would not. Marilyn belonged to a different world, a shabby
world of $3.50 hotel rooms and five-dollar tricks. It would be
inevitable that the gulf between them would widen as Laura moved into
more and more exalted circles.

Laura persuaded Marilyn to quit for the day, even though she hadn't
turned a single trick yet. "I'll pay you for what you'd be losing,"
Laura said gaily. "Let's go downtown and do some shopping--the stores
are open late tonight, aren't they? And we'll have a little party, you
and me, just for old time's sake."

It was not as joyous an evening as it might have been. Laura stubbornly
insisted that Marilyn should get herself some new clothes, and that she
would pay for them. Marilyn was unwilling, but Laura kept at it. At
length, Marilyn bought a dress and a few blouses, while Laura treated
herself to virtually an entire wardrobe, telling the clerks that she
was moving and would notify the store of her new address so delivery
could be made. The clothing bill came to $250, and Laura lightheartedly
paid for it in hundred-dollar bills, to the astonishment of the clerks.

An undercurrent of gloom marred the evening, despite every attempt to
keep things festive. They ate out--Laura was not very hungry, after the
big lunch, and she limited herself to a few drinks and sandwiches--and
then went back to the apartment and talked till very late about Laura's
new future. They went to sleep in the same bed, in each other's arms,
but they did not make love.

There was a call at eleven the following morning from Skalkottis,
Spinelli's secretary. "Mr. Spinelli says to tell you to get your things
packed right away, and he'll send the car over to pick you up. How
soon can you be ready?"

"Give me an hour."

"Okay," Skalkottis rumbled. "The car will be in front of your place at
noon."

With Marilyn's help, Laura packed quickly and she was ready to go by
quarter to twelve. The two girls waited silently for the minutes to
pass. There was not much that could easily be said.

At five to twelve a horn honked down below. Laura glanced out the
window and saw Spinelli's limousine in front of the house. Spinelli
himself had not come, only the chauffeur. While Marilyn bustled about,
frantically getting everything together, Laura slipped into the
bedroom. Quietly, she drew two hundred-dollar bills from her purse
and, folding them up, put them in the medicine cabinet. She knew that
Marilyn would never accept the money if it were offered--but perhaps
this way she would keep it.

Marilyn and Laura brought the luggage downstairs, and the chauffeur
stored it in the trunk. Laura turned to her friend before getting into
the car.

"So long," she said. "I'll be in touch."

"Just live well," Marilyn said. "Have the best of everything. You
deserve it, hon."

They kissed--quickly, like sisters--and then Laura entered the long
black car. It purred serenely away from the curb.

Spinelli was waiting impatiently in the big apartment. Greeting Laura
impersonally, he said, "I've got a place for you on 65th right off the
East River Drive. Four rooms, terrace. It'll set you back $325 a month."

Laura whistled. "So much?"

"Believe me, that's cheap. Dirt cheap. You have to live in a good place
if you work for me, Laura. My decorator's coming over in an hour or
so, and we'll all go over there and plan things out for you. Meanwhile
let's get the photography out of the way."

One room of Spinelli's sprawling apartment had been converted into a
regular photo studio. The photographer, a thin, bald man with a domed
head and a peculiarly glassy-eyed stare, was busily setting up lights
and chalking off angles.

"All set?" Spinelli asked him crisply.

"Another few minutes, Mr. Spinelli. If the young lady will remove her
clothing so all marks of garments and belts can disappear--"

Laura hesitated. Skalkottis had come into the room.

"Go ahead," Spinelli said. "Didn't you hear him?"

"In front of everybody?" she asked.

"These men have seen the female body before, Laura. Yours isn't going
to be anything new to them. Come on, let's get the show moving."

Swallowing any lingering vestige of modesty, Laura began to remove her
clothes. She unbuttoned her blouse and draped it over a table, removed
her skirt, took off the half-slip. She sensed the tension in the room
as she bared her breasts; maybe these men had seen the female body
before, but they certainly took a lively interest in hers. A moment
later, the panties and garter-belt joined the rest of her clothing, and
she was nude.

"Over here," Spinelli ordered. "Stand under the light. Heinsohn, how
does she look?"

At the photographer's gesture, Laura turned in a complete circle. The
photographer said, "The garter-belt has left a mark on the upper part
of her buttocks, as you see. Otherwise she is ready. We'll do the front
views first, and perhaps by then the back will be ready."

Efficiently, he went about his work. He was obviously a master of
the art of photographing women. He showed Laura how to hold her arms
against her sides so her breasts would thrust forward even more than
they already did; he asked her to suck in her belly, to stand at a
slight angle, to smile with drooping lips, to look at the camera with
slitted eyes. He took more than a dozen shots--downward over her
shoulder to catch the steep thrust of her bosom, upwards toward the
crotch, profile, breast close-ups, everything. By that time, the marks
on her rear had disappeared and he was able to complete the set.

"I want the proofs at nine tomorrow morning," Spinelli said. He patted
Laura's buttocks. "Back into the clothes, girl. I'll show you your
apartment now."

Laura dressed quickly, and she and Spinelli drove the few blocks to
her new apartment. It was in an extremely modern building, and the
apartment was an attractive one, with spacious room and a nice little
terrace. Spinelli soon left, pleading urgent business elsewhere, and
Laura and Spinelli's decorator--a plump, dowdy little woman--conferred
on the furnishings.

Evidently Spinelli had pull even in the furniture world. Later that
evening, a van pulled up with a temporary bed and chest of drawers for
Laura, to last her for the few weeks it would take until her permanent
furniture arrived.

The next few days were hectic ones for Laura. She was busy poring over
fabrics and designs, spending sums of money that would have seemed
incredible to her only a week before. Spinelli told her not to worry,
that he would cover the cost of the apartment and she could pay him
back over as long a period of time as she chose.

The telephone was installed on the third day--a gleaming ivory one
in the bedroom-to-be, and a beige wall extension in the kitchen. The
apartment began to take shape as, with fantastic speed, the furnishings
arrived. Laura saw little of Spinelli during those days. He dropped in
from time to time to see what progress was being made, and he brought
over the proofs of Laura's photos to show her. They were astonishingly
intimate shots, and she blushed to see them, much to Spinelli's
amusement.

One of Spinelli's other girls was detailed to fill Laura in on the
ropes. She was a glamorous, somehow brittle-looking blonde in her late
twenties, who gave her name as Tania. Tania, it seemed, was one of the
veterans of Spinelli's staff, one who handled many of the "specialty"
clients. She gave Laura a thorough coaching on what she was expected to
do when with clients.

Laura listened carefully. She wanted to be a good pupil. She wanted to
be worth her salary.

At the end of that week, she had her first chance.

There was a call from Spinelli at half past two that day. "I've got an
assignment for you," he said simply.

Laura felt a flutter of nervousness. "When?"

"Tonight. One of the regulars came down with her monthlies a day early,
damn her. I need you to pinch-hit."

"What's the setup?"

"Double date," Spinelli said. "Two purchasing agents from a midwestern
department-store chain company are in town, and an air-conditioning
outfit promised to send them a couple of girls, just to sweeten things
up. You and Tania are the dates. They're staying at the Hudson. You
meet them there at six for dinner, and the rest of the evening's up to
them. Take your cues from Tania and it'll be all right."

Tania phoned a few minutes later to arrange to meet her. Tania lived
on the next block; they met at the corner of 59th and First and hailed
a cab to the Hudson Hotel. Laura wore one of her new dresses, an
extremely _decollete_ affair which bared her breasts practically to
the nipples, while Tania's dress was a severe, high-neckline affair
that pulled taut against her body and accentuated the sharp outjutting
contours of her bosom.

The purchasing agents had a suite on the ninth floor. At six sharp,
Tania and Laura were knocking on the door.

The man who answered was in his late forties, tall and plump and
bland-looking. Before he could say anything, Tania said warmly,
"_Hello_, there. Are you Lou Hazen?"

They stepped inside. The second man emerged--shorter, leaner, a little
older. His name was Dave Hesse, and the girls introduced themselves.
Deftly, Tania slipped her arm through Lou Hazen's, thereby establishing
a coupling for the evening and avoiding any possible confusion about
which date was which, at least at the start.

They had a gay and lengthy dinner at a nightclub, and stayed around for
part of the floor show. Then Hazen suggested, none too subtly, that
they return to the hotel and have a little "party."

In the two-bedroom suite, they ordered drinks and setups from room
service, and until about eleven-thirty they had a party. Tania did
as little drinking as possible, and Laura followed her lead. The men
seemed to be having a good time. They told the filthiest jokes Laura
had ever heard, and they grew increasingly uninhibited as the evening
wore on; Tania sat on Hazen's lap, and he had his hand thrust up under
her skirt between her legs, while Laura sprawled out on the couch with
her head in Hesse's lap while he slipped his hands into her dress, and
under her bra to cup the warm large breasts and play with her stiff
nipples.

Still later, the couples were kissing intimately, and finally Hesse
leaned over Laura drunkenly and said, "C'mon inside. We need some
privacy."

Obediently, Laura went into one of the bedrooms with him, and Hesse
closed the door. "Take off y'r clothes," he ordered thickly. She did
so, while he undressed too. He was hairy and had the beginnings of a
potbelly. He eyed her admiringly. "You got a nice paira tits, you know?
Jeez, if my wife only had a pair like that. Wish I could take them
back to Illinois with me."

He staggered forward toward the bed and tumbled down on top of her.
"Letsh have relations," he whispered. "Isn't that what they call it,
relations? They got some other words for it, too, but I like relations."

He began to laugh, as though he had said something tremendously funny,
and he was still laughing as he entered her. Laura caressed him
impersonally, as though he were a statue come to life, and he continued
to chuckle until it was over.

Almost immediately, he was asleep.

Laura lay by his side for a long while, hearing laughter coming from
the next room. Suddenly the door opened, and Hazen stood there, stark
naked, his fat body pale and soft. Tania was with him too, also naked.
Her nakedness had a sleek, tawny quality about it.

Tania said, "Is he asleep?"

"Like a light."

"Come on inside, then. Hazen wants us both."

What followed was complicated, and Laura had never dreamed that such
acts were commonplace. Hazen sprawled out on his bed with both girls,
switching from one to the other without reaching fulfillment in either,
until finally he clasped Tania tight to completion. By that time, Hesse
was awake and ready again. The rollicking party went on hectically
until nearly five in the morning, when both Hesse and Hazen, exhausted,
indicated they had had enough fun for the evening. Just before
tottering off to bed, Hazen found his trousers and pulled out a bill.

"Here," he said, extending it to Laura. "You're good girls. Have some
fun with this."

Laura took it and showed it to Tania as Hazen went into the bedroom. It
was a hundred.

Tania grinned. "Fifty apiece. Not bad at all, even with the specialty
stuff."

"Can we go home now?"

"Nothing stopping us. How do you feel?"

"A little shaky. I've never done things like that before."

"You'll get used to them," Tania chuckled. "These mid-westerners have
the damndest ideas, sometimes."

Laura went into the bathroom and tidied herself up, and dressed
while Tania was washing. Hazen and Hesse were sound asleep, snoring
blissfully. "They'll sleep like logs now," Tania said. "Well, I hope we
sold plenty of air-conditioners tonight."

"They seemed to like us," Laura said.

"You all ready?"

"Just about."

"Phone the desk and ask them to call a cab for us while I'm getting
dressed," Tania said. "After a night like this I can always use plenty
of sleep." She yawned. "Spinelli wants me to turn in a report on your
performance tonight, by the way, Laura. And I'm going to give him a
good one. You did damned well for a beginner, you know. Damned well."




                            _CHAPTER EIGHT_


Within a week, there no longer was any novelty for Laura in mingling
with rich men and accepting money from them for her favors. Within
two weeks, her new career had settled down as a routine. Each day,
about three o'clock, Spinelli or one of his assistants would phone
her and tell her the details of that evening's assignment. At the
earliest--when the evening began with a dinner date--she had to set out
about six; other engagements began as late as nine or ten. She would
taxi to her rendezvous, which almost always turned out to be in one of
the fine hotels in the Fifties, and for the rest of the evening she
would take part in whatever sociability was required of her. Generally
she was free to go home by three or four in the morning, though
sometimes she had to remain until dawn. When she got home, she would
sleep for eight hours, get up, breakfast lightly, and spend the hours
after noon shopping or reading or at a movie matinee. By three, she was
back in the apartment to await Spinelli's call.

It was difficult, at first, to adjust to a schedule that involved
staying up half the night and sleeping all morning, but gradually she
found herself accommodating to the change. It was harder to adapt
to the sudden quantity of fine food and liquor that her profession
required her to consume; she quickly learned to eat sparingly when
on dates, to drink as little as she possibly could without seeming
unsociable, and to cut down on her other meals of the day. She skipped
lunches altogether and reduced breakfast to a matter of juice, toast,
and coffee, and thus was able to cope with the output of New York's
finest restaurants each evening without undue ill effects.

The assignments were varied. One night she was picked to accompany an
aging steelman to the theater. She sat at his side through a musical,
clinging appreciatively to his arm during intermissions and attracting
a lot of attention by her daring neckline. After the theater they
visited a nightspot and went to his hotel. It turned out that he was
not interested in making love. He asked her to undress, watching
eagerly as each garment came off. When she was totally naked, he
inspected her body with weird curiosity, and then put her clothes back
on her. She undressed two or three more times, and he fondled her and
pinched her and ogled her body, and then gave her fifty dollars and
sent her home.

Another time, Laura's task was to attend a convention of automobile
dealers. She and two other girls, a brunette named Gloria and a blonde
called Charlene, were assigned to the task of setting themselves up
in the bedrooms of a big suite belonging to one of the automobile
manufacturers, and entertaining certain specific guests. By the end of
that evening, Laura figured that she had slept with close to a dozen
bigshot auto dealers--but her tips for the evening's work came to more
than $200, and when she left the hotel, at four-thirty in the morning,
she was able to blot the succession of grunting paunchy men from her
mind with ease.

Tips were running high--anywhere from $150 to $450 a week, on top
of her regular salary. Each day when she talked to Spinelli she
scrupulously reported the amount of cash she had been given the night
before. She sent some of it to him to cover the furniture expenses, and
spent the rest on clothing, furs, jewelry, fine objects of art for her
apartment. She banked fifty dollars every week no matter what expenses
she had, and when she could manage it she put a hundred away. Her years
of big money earning couldn't last forever, she knew, and if she saved
systematically there would be a cushion of quite a few thousand dollars
by the time she quit.

One day a few weeks after Laura had begun working for Spinelli, he
called up with a weekend assignment. "Fellow named Burrows," Spinelli
said. "He's an advertising man who owns a yacht, and he's giving a
little weekend shindig for his possible future employer. He wants two
girls to liven the proceedings up during the weekend. I'm sending
Charlene to take care of the guest--how about you for the host?"

"Sounds swell," Laura said. "When and where?"

"This weekend. The yacht's kept in Long Island Sound. I'll have you
and Char driven out to the place Saturday morning. Take Friday off so
you'll be well rested," Spinelli told her.

She was up bright and early on Saturday. It was almost a novelty not
to be getting up after noon. She packed a light frock and a couple of
bikinis and some evening wear, and at noon she was in front of her
house waiting for the limousine to arrive.

Charlene was already aboard. She was a tall, slim, solemn girl of about
twenty-four--not busty like Laura, but more elegant, more like a high
fashion model. The two girls smiled hellos and settled down for the
long drive out into the country.

At one-thirty they reached the North Shore home of the advertising man.
He came out to meet the limousine. Burrows was a rangy, good-looking
bachelor of thirty-two; his guest, Stan Fields, was closer to fifty,
with a worried, uncertain look. Both men were deeply tanned, and both
were dressed in polo shirts and Bermuda shorts.

After introductions, Burrows said, "Everything's all ready aboard ship.
Suppose we head out there now."

There was a launch out back, belonging to the marina, and they rode out
to Burrows' yacht. The boat was good-sized, a sleek, low white ship
with two masts. "I'll bet he won't be through paying for it for twenty
years," Charlene murmured in a low voice as they stepped out onto the
schooner's deck.

Burrows and his guest busied themselves, slipping the mooring and
heading out of the harbor under power while the girls stowed their
personal gear in the staterooms belowdecks, and changed into bikinis.
When they came up above again, the motor was killed and the two men
were energetically making sail.

"Help with those halyards!" Burrows yelled. "You girls didn't think you
were here just as decorations, did you?"

Laura and Charlene pitched in, and the canvas rose and bellied out in
the breeze.

"We're under way," Burrows said. "Laura, there are martinis in the
refrigerator down below. Want to break them out and do the honors while
I'm heading for the cove?"

Laura efficiently served drinks in the cockpit. The sleek ship raced
along, heading eastward through the Sound, until finally Burrows pulled
it into a secluded cove and dropped anchor. Here, they could frolic
undisturbed all weekend.

It was half past two, now, and the warm late-spring sun beat down. The
four yachters downed martinis for a while, accompanying them with hors
d'oeuvres from Burrows' well-stocked galley. It was after the third
round of drinks that the older advertising man said, "How about a swim,
Teddy-lad?"

"Fine with me," Burrows said. "Girls?"

The girls were already in their swimsuits--eye-popping bikinis that
consisted merely of a double-diamond-shaped piece covering loins
and buttocks but leaving all but the essential parts bare, and a
nipple-shielding strip under the arms. Burrows and Fields went
belowdecks and returned a few moments later in trunks.

They dove overboard and splashed in the cool, clear water for a while.
The coupling had definitely been established--Laura and Burrows,
Charlene and Fields--and there was a good deal of horseplay in the
water. Exhausted, Laura swam to the side of the boat and hung on.
Burrows came paddling up behind her and locked his legs around her
body, slipping his hands up and cupping her breasts. She turned around
halfway and kissed him, and at the same moment his hands found the
catch of her bikini halter and opened it. The bit of cloth fell away.
Her breasts, round and full, rose into his hands. She turned to face
him fully now, and they bobbed in the water, his hands cupping her
breasts, her leg thrust between his thighs, both of them laughing and
panting in excitement. Laura heard giggles from the other side of
the ship, and knew that Charlene and Fields were engaging in similar
shenanigans over there.

Burrows was busily engaged now in opening the loop that held Laura's
breechcloth on. He had some trouble--the salt water made the cloth
stiff--but finally he whipped the flimsy fabric away, tossing it and
the halter up onto the deck. Laura was naked, now. The cool water was
delightful against her bare breasts and loins. She found the beltstring
of Burrows' trunks, pulled it, pulled them off. Now both of them were
totally naked in the water.

"I've never done it in the water before," Burrows laughed. "I didn't
ever think of the idea."

"There's always a first time," Laura said. She put her back to the
boat, reaching behind her to grasp the ladder with each hand as a
stabilizer. Burrows swam to her, and she locked her legs around him,
moving back and forth. From the far side of the boat came a derisive
yell: "Hey, cut that out! You're making waves!" Burrows laughed without
replying.

The water surrounding them cooled them, slowing stimulation and
prolonging the act. Laura clung to the lean, athletic body against
hers, releasing her grip on the ladder as he took hold of it, and body
to body they gasped out their delight. At the highest moment, Burrows
let go of the ladder. They slipped below the water, bodies still
joined, and she felt the tingling sensation of a mutual climax while
she held her breath, and then they were coming up for air and drifting
apart and smiling.

Afterward, they clambered up on deck. Nude, Laura stretched out on the
forward deck to bask in the sun, while Burrows lay at her side, gently
stroking the silky skin of her buttocks. A little while later, Charlene
and Fields came on board, both of them minus their bathing-suits,
and all four sunbathed until the afternoon grew old and the breezes
brisk. By five, everyone was in a gorgeously gay mood. Charlene served
more cocktails, and then, as it began to get still cooler, they went
belowdecks. Burrows made love to Laura again in his stateroom--he
seemed tremendously virile--and then the girls prepared dinner, serving
it wearing little aprons over their otherwise nude bodies.

After dinner, it was fishing time, to lay in a stock of food for
tomorrow's lunch. Then the four of them gathered in the big salon
near the galley for some music and necking. During a lull, Charlene
explained to Laura exactly what kind of specialty Fields went in for.
"They picked me specially for it because I don't mind doing it that
way. Some girls can't stand it at all."

"I don't think I'd like it very much," Laura said. "It doesn't give the
woman any satisfaction."

Charlene shrugged. "I told him I'd do it that way if we did it regular
way too. So I'm taken care of, and so is he. All in a day's work,
darling."

Night descended, starry and beautiful. Cold now in sweaters and slacks,
they danced above deck until late, then retired. When he and Laura
were in bed together, Burrows began telling her all of his troubles.
He earned $32,000 a year at his present job, but he was heavily in
debt, and hoped to transfer to the agency Fields helped to run--at a
salary of $40,000 or better. The job was all but cinched, and inviting
Fields out to the yacht for a weekend of coeducational fun and games
was intended as the hoped-for clincher. "The only trouble," Burrows
complained, "is that if I make $40,000 a year I'll spend $50,000. I
can't help myself. It's like a disease. This yacht costs me thousands a
year in upkeep alone. But I tell myself life wouldn't be worth living
if I didn't own a yacht." Burrows laughed and cupped Laura's breasts.
"Come here and give me a good time, honey. And wish me luck."

They made love three times that night, and in the morning, after
breakfast, they swam and made love in the water once again. The older
man, Fields, seemed to be beaming, so evidently Charlene had pleased
him more than a little.

Burrows produced a camera and insisted on taking color shots of the
girls, nude, as souvenirs of the weekend. He promised not to show
the pictures to anyone, and to send them prints. They consented, and
Burrows photographed them sunbathing on the deck, photographed Laura as
she climbed breasts-first up the ladder out of the water, photographed
Charlene with a life-preserver round her hips. Fields began to suggest
some more imaginative poses, but luckily the film ran out long before
any of his suggestions could be acted upon.

Late that afternoon Burrows sailed the yacht back to his marina, and
they returned to the mainland. Spinelli's limousine was waiting to take
the girls back to Manhattan. As everyone said goodbye, Burrows folded a
hundred-dollar bill into Laura's hand. "Thanks for making everything so
wonderful," he whispered. "This is for you and Charlene to keep."

They were back in the city by sundown, and Laura went straight to
her apartment. Tanned and tired, she stretched out on the couch and
relaxed. It had been a swell weekend, she thought.

She thought of Marilyn, then, for the first time in weeks. Her promise
to keep in touch had been foregone; things had simply been too hectic.

_Marilyn doesn't spend weekends on yachts in Long Island Sound_, Laura
thought. _And my tip for that weekend was more than Marilyn earns in
two whole days of grubby soliciting._ Laura felt sudden guilt. She
tried not to think about rights and wrongs, now, but suddenly it seemed
wrong that she should be living so luxurious a life.

For a moment she thought of phoning Marilyn. But she shook her head.
Marilyn probably did not want to hear from her now. It would be only
human for Marilyn to hate her, since envy turns easily to hate. Laura
decided simply to forget Marilyn. She and Marilyn did not inhabit the
same world any more, and any communication between the worlds was bound
to be distorted.

She forced herself to forget about Marilyn.

It was June, now. She had been in New York City for two months. Every
week, she wrote a postcard to her grandparents, telling them how she
was doing. It was practically the same postcard every week, because she
knew the old people would not care. _Am holding a nice job and meeting
interesting people. New York is a wonderful city. The weather is
getting a little warm now. Send my best wishes to everyone back home,
Your affectionate granddaughter, Laura._

That was all that was needed--a formal reminder every now and then that
she was still alive. She suspected the old folks never read the cards.
They had their Bibles and their farm to keep them busy, and never went
in much for family ties.

Laura took stock of her six weeks with Spinelli's syndicate, and the
stock-taking surprised her. She had earned $3000 in salary, $2250 in
tips, or almost nine hundred dollars a week. She had a well-furnished
apartment, a lot of jewelry and furs, and a thousand dollars in
the bank. With the furnishing expenses behind her and her wardrobe
complete, she would be able to start building up the bank account now.
She began to make elaborate plans. She would put ten thousand dollars
in the savings bank, to start with, and then she would start buying
stocks and bonds. As she grew richer, she would be earning more and
more from her investments, and perhaps it would be possible for her
to retire from the call-girl business altogether by the time she was
twenty-eight or so.

_Retire to what?_ she wondered.

Marriage? A theatrical career? Possibly, she thought. But she suspected
that she would grow to like her present soft life so well that she
would never abandon it voluntarily. Having money pour in faster than it
can be spent is an agreeable way to live. And, Laura told herself, she
had never been much on asceticism.

One gilded day flowed into the next. Laura consorted with bankers,
stockbrokers, salesmen, manufacturers. She was astonished by the
magnitude of the business of sex. _If people only knew_, she thought,
_how many big deals are clinched in bed_--

Dozens of influential executives had fondled her breasts. Scores of
big-budget purchasing agents had been treated to an expensive night
between her satiny thighs. Her lush bosom had been a decoration of more
than one high-powered smokefilled-room conference at big conventions.

The summer wore on. The money poured in.

There was only one snag in paradise, though. Laura began to discover it
as June came to an end and July began, and she settled down into the
snug routine of a syndicate hostess.

She was lonely.

She had no friends.

Lovers, yes. But all one-night stands, or a weekend at most, and then
they drifted off out of her life, and she out of theirs. Nor did she
want any further contact with any of her clients. She had no interest
in becoming friendly with a man who paid for sex.

But she had no personal friends. Marilyn was lost to her at the
other side of an economic gulf; the other girls of the syndicate
were friendly, but most of them were too busy or too tired for any
after-hours socializing, and, in any event, Spinelli frowned on much
intimacy between girls of his syndicate.

She hardly ever saw Spinelli, either. He summoned her to his apartment
every few weeks to stay the night with him, but that was all. He
treated the girls of his syndicate as his personal harem, but there was
always a fifty-dollar bonus in their pay envelope the week they had
slept with Spinelli. He slept with the girls, he told Laura, to make
sure they were staying in condition, and to keep tabs on the sort of
services they were offering the clients. Laura enjoyed the evenings
spent with him. But they were few and far between.

She took to wandering around the city on her days off, drifting idly
from store-window to store-window, looking for something but not
knowing what it was. The idea of remaining home, alone, was repugnant
to her. The very act of being near people in the streets--even
strangers--gave her pleasure.

That was how she met Dan Bittner.

It was a Thursday afternoon, late in July. There had been a heat-wave
for the past two weeks, but it had abated somewhat, now, and Laura was
out strolling on a day off. She was walking up 57th Street, looking in
the windows, remembering that night so long ago--only three months, but
it seemed like centuries--when she had stared into these same windows
and had resolved someday to have money to buy beautiful things.

She had the money now--all she needed, and more, to buy anything she
wanted. But it all seemed hollow, all the empty gaiety of the fine
restaurants and the gaudy musical shows. Lonely, bored, jaded, she
wandered up 57th, across Madison toward Fifth. While waiting for the
light to change, she happened to overhear a bitter quarrel just behind
her.

"I don't care if you _do_ have tickets!" a girl was snapping
petulantly. "You can take the tickets and throw them away, for all I
care! I'm not going, Dan."

"Listen, Ruth," a man's voice said mildly, "I paid six bucks apiece for
those tickets, and it's lousy of you to back out now. I don't want to
go alone, after all. Even if we've broken up, you could--"

"You could have found someone else!" the girl retorted. "You think
you're going to shame me into going to that damn show with you, but I'm
not! Find another date somewhere! Or just throw the tickets away, if
you don't want to go. Goodbye!"

"Ruth!"

Laura paused, looking back. She saw a tall, very good-looking young
man of perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight, staring in anguish at a
well-dressed, angry-faced girl who was flouncing petulantly away.

"_Ruth!_" he yelled again. He gestured in frustration, as if trying to
pull her back on invisible strings, but she was almost half a block
away, and moving faster as she picked up steam.

Laura had no idea what made her speak up at that moment. But she was
surprised to hear her voice say, "Don't go after her, Dan. She isn't
worth getting excited over."




                            _CHAPTER NINE_


An hour later, as they sat in a 58th Street restaurant together sipping
cocktails, Laura quietly retraced in her mind the pattern of events
that had brought them together. There had been the moment of mutual
surprise, first, there on the busy street corner as they stared at
each other, she surprised that she had spoken, he that he had been
spoken to. Then the nervous laughter from both of them, breaking the
awkwardness between two strangers on a Manhattan street, and his sudden
grin and his admission, "No, you're right--she _isn't_ worth getting
excited over."

They might have parted at that moment and remained strangers forever,
but they let the conversation continue, and within seconds they were
no longer strangers, but Dan to her and Laura to him, and in a wild
exhilarated way he was inviting her to have dinner with him and go to
the show in Ruth's place, and she was telling him that she was free
that evening and would be delighted to accept, and that was how it
began.

And over drinks he told her about the quarrel and why it had been.

"Ruth's my fiancée," he explained. "Anyway, she _was_--up till about
three weeks ago, when we decided to call the whole thing off. We both
knew all along that we weren't right for one another but we just didn't
have the guts, or something, to admit we'd made a mistake."

"Until three weeks ago."

"Until three weeks ago, yes. Then we had a big hassle and decided to
nix it. Only we had these theater tickets for tonight, and we agreed
we'd have one last date after a cooling-off period and see if we
couldn't put things back together again." He let his shoulders slump.
"So she met somebody else during the three weeks. Hell, I _wanted_
her to. And she did. But when I phoned her about the theater date,
she said she'd come anyway. And then she kept changing her mind, and
I kept phoning her. It wasn't so much that I was afraid of wasting
the tickets, as that I wanted to see her one last time, sort of get
everything wrapped up neatly. So she met me in the city, but right away
she started to back out--she said hello and goodbye practically in the
same breath. I kept arguing with her, telling her at least we could
have the one last date, but she didn't want to--"

"And that's where I came in," Laura said.

"Right."

"How long had you gone with her?"

He smiled sadly. "Two years and some," he said. "But it was all a
mistake, all wasted time. Dope that I am, I would have gone running
after her, too, if you hadn't spoken up then."

"I'm not in the habit of butting into other people's quarrels," Laura
said quietly. "I don't know why I talked up just then."

"I'm glad you did."

"Are you really?"

"Really. Because otherwise I'd have gone after Ruth and we'd still be
quarrelling. And I'd never have met _you_."

He reached out across the table and squeezed her hand warmly. She
smiled at him. It made her feel good all over to think that there was
one man in New York City who was actually spending some time with her
simply because he wanted to, not because he had bought her for the
night and had to get his money's worth out of every minute.

Using the skill she had acquired in her new profession, she drew him
out as they sipped their cocktails. His name was Dan Bittner; he was
twenty-eight, a bachelor, a design engineer for a big industrial firm.
Although he was seven years older than Laura, she regarded him inwardly
as practically a child. He gave off an appearance of innocence. She
suspected he might even be a virgin, improbable as it was to consider
it.

He had never been married. Apparently there had been an unsuccessful
romance before the Ruth affair, and between the two affairs he had
simply used up the past four years without finding the warmth and
security he was looking for. He seemed terribly lonely.

_Two lonely people meeting on a street corner in Manhattan_, Laura
thought. _And he's so shy, so gentle. I wonder what he'd do or think if
he found out how I earn my living._

Eventually, as she knew it would have to, the conversation came around
to her. When he asked her what she did, she replied glibly, "Oh, I'm a
minor editor on a fashion magazine."

"Oh? Which one?"

Just as glibly, she said, "You wouldn't know it. It's a trade-journal
kind of thing that doesn't have newsstand circulation. It pays well,
anyhow."

"What kind of work do you do?"

Laura had soaked up plenty of new information from her clients in
the magazine field. She said without hesitation, "I'm a kind of
high-salaried flunky. I do pasteups and write captions and check copy,
and stuff like that. All very very dreary."

"Do you ever pose for the magazine?"

"Oh, no, never."

He smiled. "You should. You're prettier than any of the slabjawed
models that get into all those magazine advertisements."

Laura tried to look confused. "By my boss' standards I'm hideous. My
face is too full, my figure is too big, I've got too much behind--"

"Your boss is out of her mind."

"My boss knows her audience," Laura said. By this time she had
conjured up a complete picture of the magazine where she allegedly
worked, complete with the chic offices on upper Madison Avenue and the
grimfaced bachelor-lady editor in the severely tailored mannish suits.
"You don't sell lady's fashions using girlie-magazine models. You use
walking skeletons. Don't ask me why."

"Suppose I ask you what you want for dinner, instead. We're going to
miss the first act if we don't start stepping things up."

It was a show that Laura had seen twice before--she had no control over
what kind of plays her clients picked to attend--but she hid that fact
from Bittner, and tried to act as though it was the first time she had
heard the songs or laughed at the gags. When they left the theater at
eleven, they were walking hand-in-hand.

"I'd suggest a nightcap," he said, "only I don't know how late I'm
allowed to keep you out."

"Don't worry. I sleep till all hours of the morning," Laura said. She
realized at once she had made a mistake, even before he reacted.

"Doesn't your boss mind that?" he asked.

She forced a brittle laugh. "Oh, I mean I can sleep till eight or so.
The office is just a couple of blocks from my apartment. And I only
need a few hours' sleep to keep me going."

They stopped in for drinks, and, about midnight, Bittner took her home.
He seemed surprised that a mere sub-editor should be living in such a
handsome building in such a costly neighborhood, but he said nothing
about it. They rode upstairs in the elevator. Laura wondered whether or
not to invite him in. She wanted him desperately, but he did not seem
to be the sort of fellow who would want to go to bed with a girl on
a first date. Besides, if she kept him outside he might get the idea
that her apartment was only one or two rooms, which would be within the
budget of someone with her kind of job.

They paused hesitantly outside the door. He was smiling down at her
from his height, not knowing what to say, and after a clumsy pause he
managed to get out, "Well, it's been a wonderful evening, Laura."

"I'm glad, Dan. Maybe the day didn't start out so well for you, but at
least it ended well."

"Will I be seeing you again?"

"I hope so," she said, meaning it more than anything she had said to
anyone for a long time.

"Is your number in the book?"

She shook her head. "It's unlisted. Here, I'll write it down for you.
The best time to call me is--oh, around three or four in the afternoon."

"At _home_?"

Another slip, she thought. Retrieving the fumble, she said, "Yes, I'm
only at the office two-thirds of the day. I leave at three and finish
my work at home."

"Nice work if you can get it. Can I have the office phone too?"

Laura tensed. "Sorry, no. The boss is death on personal calls during
working hours."

"Okay. I'll phone you here." He hesitated again. "Goodnight, Laura."

"Goodnight, Dan."

He made no motion toward leaving. He teetered for a second, and then
she moved toward him and he took her in his arms and put his lips to
hers, and she kissed him hard, with tongue and breasts and thighs, and
she felt his body jerk back in surprise at the passionate hunger of her
kiss. But she did not release him, and he joined in her fervor. Only
after a long moment did they separate. He looked dazed and shaken and
bewildered.

"Goodnight," he whispered, and darted toward the elevator.

Smiling, Laura let herself into her apartment. She laughed out loud
in sheer happiness. It had been a splendid evening, she thought. No
sex, no groping under her skirt, no hands kneading her lust-stiffened
nipples. Just pleasant companionship, two lonely people making each
other less lonely.

She thought of Spinelli then, and it made her uneasy. Spinelli would
be furious if he knew. His girls weren't supposed to carry on little
flirtations of their own. They were supposed to reserve all of their
affection for the paying customers. Spinelli would hit the ceiling
if he found out that on her day off Laura had indulged in a little
innocent hand-holding with an unhappy young man.

_But I'll keep on seeing him_, she told herself determinedly. _He's the
only decent man I've met since I came to New York, and I want to see
more of him. Spinelli can't stop me. He doesn't own me. As long as I
keep his customers happy, why can't I have a little happiness myself?_

She began to construct a little daydream. Dan Bittner was obviously on
the verge of falling in love with her, she thought. Perhaps he would
ask her to marry him. And she would accept, and would tell Spinelli the
end of her employment had come. She would go to live with Dan in his
little apartment, somewhere, and they would have children, and he would
never know or need to know of her past. She would simply stuff the
experiences and sins of the past several months into a compartment of
her mind that she would never open.

It seemed pretty enough--the little apartment, the babies, the
domesticity. He needed someone to love him, and she needed love too.
They were meant for each other, or so it looked.

_But it's not fair_, she thought. _He's a good kid. And what am I? I
used to be a cheap whore, and now I'm an expensive one, but I'm still
a whore. And someday maybe we'll go dancing and one of my old clients
will recognize me, and while I'm in the powder room he'll go over to
Dan and ask him if I'm still as good a lay as I used to be. Or maybe
Spinelli will be angry because I'm leaving him, and to get even he'll
send Dan a copy of his photograph album a week after the wedding. If
Dan ever found out the truth about me, his whole world would collapse.
And if I married him I'd live in constant fear that the truth would
somehow be exposed._

All the same, when he called her a few days later, she greeted him
warmly. It was four in the afternoon, and she was just beginning to
dress for a dinner date she had that evening with a bachelor wheat
magnate from Iowa, in town for a week and anxious to whoop things up
with one of the bustier of Phil Spinelli's girls. She was going to wear
the deep-cut dress, and the half-bra that seemed not to be there at all
when she wore it.

"When are we going to see each other again?" Dan asked. "I'm free every
night from now on."

Laura thought fast. "How about Tuesday? That's a good night for me."

"Why not Saturday?"

"No, sorry, Dan. No can do. I'm--busy."

He sounded hurt. "Well, Tuesday will have to do for me, then. Suppose I
pick you up at your place and we'll take a drive out into Connecticut
for dinner and a show?"

"Sounds fine," she said. "You make all the arrangements and anything
you get will be great with me."

They talked a little while longer; he seemed unhappy about what
he assumed were other dates she had, but she eluded any direct
questioning. _How can I tell him that I'll be working a convention over
the weekend and serving as a bedwarmer for twenty or thirty middle-aged
lechers? Let him think what he wants. At least he won't ever know the
truth._

She arranged with Spinelli to take the following Tuesday off, and
Dan picked her up at six. She was dressed a little daringly, that
night, in a provocative off-the-shoulder blouse, and in his shy way
Bittner goggled at the exposed square inches of bosom without making
any specific comment. Laura smiled and kissed him as she got into his
little foreign car.

"I've got reservations at a restaurant just off the Merritt Parkway,"
he told her. "And tickets for the Village Playhouse in New Canaan.
They're doing Shaw tonight, _Man and Superman_."

"Fine," she said. "I've never seen it."

She nestled close to him as he drove. The little car clung bumpily to
the road, going up and down with every tar-line or pebble. They talked
as he drove, mostly about him, his work, his impatience to have a
second date with her.

He was definitely more forward than he had been on the first date,
letting his hands rest lightly on her bare shoulders for a moment as
he helped her off with her jacket, and holding her hand during the
play and even slipping his arm around her. Considering how most of
her escorts behaved, though, Laura could only regard him as almost
comically reserved. It was a novelty, though, to have her body
respected. A very pleasant novelty.

On the way home, though, there was a nasty jolt for her, one that
nearly wrecked everything.

It was eleven o'clock, and Bittner had tuned in the news broadcast.
The commentator, droning along, said suddenly, "_Police are continuing
to probe the so-called Hotelroom Murder Case, and several suspects are
being questioned as a result of the discovery of the strangled body of
Marilyn Rivers, twenty-two, in a hotel room on West 57th Street early
this morning_--"

"_Oh, God!_" Laura gasped.

"--_informants suggested that the dead woman, allegedly a prostitute,
was strangled by a customer after a quarrel over payment. Residents of
the hotel heard shouting coming from the room shortly after midnight,
and a 'tall, heavy-set' man reportedly was seen in the hotel just
afterwards. Meanwhile, in juvenile court this afternoon_--"

Laura reached out and snapped the radio off. She was shaking
uncontrollably.

"What's the matter?" Bittner asked, startled by her behavior.

"That--that news bulletin. The murder in the hotel room--" Laura sobbed
without tears. She could not speak.

Growing more astonished, Bittner said, "Didn't you hear about it
before? It was in all the afternoon papers, and on the radio--"

"I didn't see them."

"Well, anyway, why are you so upset? Honestly, Laura, you look like
you've just lost your best friend or something."

The savage, if unintentional, irony of his words struck home deeply.
Laura looked away, burying her face in her arm, and fought her way back
from the edge of hysteria inch by inch, telling herself that she had to
regain her self-control, _had_ to, _had_ to....

After a moment she said in a hollow voice, "I don't know what happened
to me. I guess I was just struck with pity. Some poor girl trying
to scrape up a living taking men to a hotel room, and one of them
strangling her because it was easier than paying her the five dollars
she wanted from him--"

"It happens all the time, sweet. These streetwalkers never know when
they're likely to get slashed or strangled or beaten up. There are
some men who actually enjoy beating them up, you know." He slipped one
arm around her shoulders, driving with the other. "Don't be so upset,
though, honey. After all, people die every day. And this girl wasn't
anything society needed. She was probably full of disease, and stupid
and ugly besides, and--"

"Stop it."

"But--"

"_Stop it! Stop it!_"

Bittner was growing more and more confused. "Honey, I wish I knew what
got into you all of a sudden. Sure, I feel sorry for that girl too, but
you're carrying it a little too far, aren't you?"

"Maybe I am," Laura forced herself to say. "I--I'm very tired, that's
what it is. Overstrung."

"We'll be home soon. A good night's rest and you'll be as good as new."

They lapsed into silence. Laura heard the steady pounding of her
heart, and gradually her mind accepted the awful words. How could I
tell him? she asked herself. _How could I explain that she WAS my best
friend, that she picked me up off the street when I was sick, that she
slept in the same bed with me, that she was good and kind to me? How
could I let him know that the girl he loves had been a friend of a
skinny little whore who was murdered in a dirty hotel room?_

There was no way she could explain to him the reason for her
outburst--no way that he could accept, at any rate. She grew calmer,
and a feeling of pity replaced the earlier horror at the news.

They parted quickly at Laura's door. Bittner made no attempt to come
inside. They kissed, but it was without the fervor of their first. Then
he smiled and was gone, and she let herself into the apartment.

Switching on the television set, she picked up a late newscast. They
were going over the murder story again. They showed a tattered snapshot
of Marilyn, her own photo from her wallet. She looked thin and harried
in the photo; it was a good likeness. They showed a photo of the room,
with the sheet-covered body on the bed. They discussed the various
suspects who had been rounded up. That was all. By tomorrow, the
suspects would be released, the murder forgotten. The law did not waste
much energy solving the murders of whores.

Laura shut off the set and poured herself a stiff drink. She felt
overwhelmed with sorrow and guilt, guilt for having failed to keep her
promise to Marilyn. They had not spoken since the first week of her
employment by Spinelli. And now they never would again. It had been
almost inevitable, Laura thought, that Marilyn would end this way,
snuffed out, her troubles over. She was so fragile, the night so dark,
her clients so brutal.

And now she was dead. Laura downed her drink and prepared for bed. It
had been awkward, then, when two of her worlds had impinged, when her
grief for Marilyn had startled the man who thought she was innocent.
Confusion made Laura's head buzz. She realized now that she was in love
with Bittner--who quite probably thought she was a virgin.

_I'll destroy him if I don't break up with him now_, she thought. _If
he ever learns how I've strung him along, he'll be crushed. It's a
cruel world. A cold, nasty world where people set traps for themselves,
themselves and each other. Some people sell themselves, others buy--and
the good people, the innocent people, somehow they get caught up in it
all and are ground to bits._

_God help us_, she thought. _God help us all._




                             _CHAPTER TEN_


There was nothing about Marilyn in the paper the next day. It was
yesterday's murder, already stale. And, in any event, it was a very
small tragedy, meaning nothing to anyone, except for one mourner at the
other side of the city who could not tell anyone why she felt grief for
an unimportant dead whore. Laura flipped bleakly through the papers
and, finding nothing, threw them away. Marilyn had ceased to matter to
the world.

The worst of it all, Laura thought, is that the victim didn't
necessarily have had to been Marilyn. It could have been any of the
girls who worked the 59th Street-Central Park region.

_It could have been me_, she thought with a little quiver of horror.

It could have been, so easily. Unbidden, the scene formed on the screen
of her imagination. There she was, dressed shabbily--not the way she
dressed these days--standing in front of the park, waiting, waiting. It
was late in the day; she had a few dollars in her handbag, and she was
tired and sweaty from a long day's work. As the twilight shadows fall,
a client approaches--a big man in a stevedore's cap, hulking, unshaven.
She wants to refuse him, but he is insistent, picking her up with a
quick line, plenty of filthy words. They go to the hotel. He orders her
to undress, standing back and admiring the pink-tipped globes of her
breasts, the white soft skin of her thighs, the gently rippling flesh
of her full buttocks. He drops his trousers: he throws himself down on
her, squeezing her tender breasts with calloused hands, thrusting his
body against her, taking her with brutal speed and lack of tenderness.

And then, afterward, rising from her naked body with his lust
satisfied, he reaches for her handbag, takes out the money she had
earned that day. From the dresser, he takes the bill he had given to
her only a few minutes before. She rises, protests, shouts shrill
abuse at him. He laughs, turns toward her with a cruel smile on his
face, seizes her. Thick fingers bite into the soft flesh around her
throat. The heavy paws contract. She claws at the tightening hands,
unable to remove them, and he shakes her like a doll, and the pain goes
ripping down like a red-hot ingot thrust into her breasts, like a bolt
of lightning in her loins, and her legs grow weak and her eyes begin
to bulge and she hears his booming laughter as life slowly ebbs from
her....

Laura shuddered.

_It might have been me. Marilyn used to talk about perverts who enjoyed
hitting or choking prostitutes. I was lucky, that's all. I got out in
time, into a different league where they don't play so rough._

The telephone rang. Laura snatched it up eagerly, grateful for anything
that would serve to interrupt her mood of morbid depression.

It was Spinelli.

"How's my favorite redhead this morning, eh?"

"Surviving," Laura said cheerlessly. She wasn't in a mood to make
conversation.

"That's all? Just _surviving_? Chick, you know it's against the house
rules just to _survive_. You've got to live, live, _live_!"

"Not today, Phil. I'm not in a very lively mood, I guess."

"After a day off?"

"I'll perk up. I--I've got a headache. That's it, a terrible headache."

"You going to be okay by tonight? Take some aspirin, or something.
You've got to be your old sparkling self this evening."

"Where am I supposed to be working?"

"Hotel Whittier. There's a banker named McDermott in Suite 1411 who
wants company."

"Dinner date?"

"No," Spinelli said. "You go to his room around nine o'clock. No
dinner, no show. As long as you've got a headache, it's just as well
that way, yes?"

"I suppose so," Laura agreed. "You know anything about this McDermott
that I ought to know?"

"Not much. Just that he's loaded with dough, and you stand to pick up a
nice bit of change. The last time I supplied him with a girl, he tipped
her two bills. I'm not guaranteeing a repeat, but keep it in mind."

"Don't worry, I will!"

"He's going to be in town for a week," Spinelli added. "When he
contacted me, he implied that he might be interested in making use
of the same girl for several nights. Be nice to him and you may have
earned yourself a fat piece of change by the time the week's over."

Spinelli hung up. Laura walked to the window and stared out onto the
river. She thought about Dan. He was so good, so gentle--and in for
such a shock when and if he found out the truth.

_Maybe there's a way out_, she thought. _Maybe I can slide out of this
filthy profession and talk Dan into moving far away, to San Francisco
maybe, or Seattle, or someplace else thousands of miles from here.
Thousands of miles from these terrible memories._

She went into the bathroom and stripped for her morning shower.
Her body, reflected in the full-length mirror against the bathroom
door, looked young and vibrantly healthy. Her breasts seemed to have
grown more ripe since the loss of her virginity; the two full globes
jutted proudly forward, heavy bowls of soft flesh tipped with dark
reddish-pink. It was a wide-hipped, strong body she had. A woman's
body, a body built for childbearing, with those big breasts and broad
hips.

But call-girls don't have children, she thought.

They take precautions. And in the rare instances when the precautions
fail, they employ the best abortionists money can buy to deal with the
little accident. Spinelli kept a little book in which he recorded the
dates of each of his girls' menstrual periods, and when the period
started getting a couple of days overdue he began asking questions,
and if it got as much as ten days overdue he would whisk the girl off
to his doctor for an examination and tests. Spinelli didn't want any
of his prize livestock being put out of commission for a year or so
by a pregnancy. He didn't want to run the risk that childbirth would
alter the firm roundness of a valuable pair of breasts, or paint blue
vein-lines on a much-admired pair of thighs. He didn't want his girls
busy with diapers and perambulators when they should be earning money.

No, Laura thought. Call-girls don't have children.

She wondered what it would be like to have life swelling in her womb,
to have her breasts grow stiff and heavy with milk, to experience the
hundred inner changes of pregnancy. She wondered what it would be like
to be the mother of Dan's children.

_I could swing it_, she thought. _It's only three months since McCarten
raped me. I could manage somehow to forget all the things I've done in
those three months. I could wipe the slate clean and start all over
again, fresh ... with Dan...._

She stepped under the shower, setting the controls for a fine
needle-spray of cold water. The little needles lanced her skin with
exquisite pinpoint pain. The trick, she thought, was to get out--to
draw the line and say, After tonight no more, and to stick with it. To
resist the lure of the $500-a-week salary and the hundred-dollar tips.
To quit before it became too late ever to break the bond.

She had a good reason now. Dan. A decent, honest man who loved her, or
who seemed to.

_Get out now_, she told herself. _You've got the best motive for
quitting that you'll ever have, and you haven't been in it so long that
it's changed you._

She turned off the water and left the shower and towelled herself
vigorously dry. Decision crystalized; she walked to the phone, grabbed
up the receiver, began to dial Spinelli's number, to tell him it was
all over, that he would have to send some other girl to amuse Banker
McDermott this evening at the Whittier.

She got as far as the second letter of Spinelli's telephone number.
Then, weakening, she paused, staring at the dial.

_What am I doing?_ she asked herself in horror. _Suppose Dan isn't
interested in marrying me? I can't assume anything. I mustn't rush
blindly ahead._

Slowly, Laura replaced the receiver. Before she burned all the
bridges that linked her with Spinelli, she would have to make sure of
Dan's intentions. In the meantime, she would have to continue taking
assignments as usual.

She walked through the livingroom, out onto her terrace, spread out
her robe and lay down nude on top of it. At this hour of the day, the
diagonal rays of the sun slanted over the terrace wall. No one could
see her as she sunbathed here, and she had come to enjoy the daily hour
in the sun.

Stretching out comfortably, Laura turned her breasts and loins to the
sun and basked in the warm radiance. She had tanned quickly, all over
her body. It gave her a pantherishly sensual appearance that attracted
much approval from her clients. Men accustomed to women whose skins
were fishbelly-white between their breasts and their thighs were
delighted with Laura's golden-brown breasts and buttocks and belly.

After a while, she turned over, lying on her stomach while the sun
caressed her buttocks. There in the warmth, all tension departed. She
knew what her direction was, now. As soon as she was sure of Dan's
intentions, she would sever all connection with Spinelli. And they
would go far, far away, and she would bear him children.

She even became reconciled to the death of Marilyn. The poor girl was
out of her misery, now--no more walking the streets, no more days of
humiliation and loneliness. Marilyn would have been a prostitute to
the end of her days, and life would have become more and more of a
bitter struggle for her as what little erotic appeal she had dwindled
inexorably with the years. Now she was spared the anguish of age.

After an hour of sunbathing, Laura came in, feeling relaxed and
glowing. Her maid had arrived and was tidying up the apartment. Laura
prepared a light lunch for herself.

It was a relaxing day. She had awakened early, and she did not have
to begin work until nine in the evening, so she had a full day for
shopping and reading and decorating her apartment. She went out to eat
around seven, dressed in slacks and a blouse, and had a light meal at
a delicatessen on Second Avenue. By seven-thirty she was back in her
apartment, and an hour and a quarter later she was in a taxi on the way
to the Whittier and her rendezvous with Mr. McDermott.

The Whittier was an old-line hotel on Fifth Avenue, very elegant, very
tasteful. Laura entered the lobby as though she were a visiting member
of the Royal Family, as Spinelli had instructed her long ago. ("Never
walk into a fancy hotel as though you're a whore, or they'll throw you
out. Make them think you're Queen Victoria herself and you'll get a
warm welcome.")

Regally entering the elevator, Laura said in loftily sophisticated
tones, "Fourteen, please."

The elevator boy practically bowed. The car rose swiftly.

The hallway was floored with plush carpeting that seemed to be a foot
deep. Laura walked briskly along the corridor, watching the numbers
descend, until she came to 1411. She knocked.

The door opened. "Hello," McDermott said. "You're Laura, I take it?"

"That's right."

"I'm Robert McDermott. Call me Bob. And come in, do, come in!"

Laura stepped in and let McDermott help her off with her jacket. He was
a man of medium height, probably about fifty; his hair was thin, and
what there was of it was white, but his face was unlined and his pink
cheeks were pleasantly plump. He had pale blue eyes and the friendly,
open look of an aging cherub.

He hung up the jacket and turned to survey her. Laura had dressed
well for the occasion, in a tailored suit over a tight silk blouse.
Everything tasteful, nothing on vulgar display. When the time came for
McDermott to see her body, he would see it, but she was determined not
to flaunt acres of bare bosom at him as an appetizer beforehand.

"I've taken the liberty of ordering some liquor," McDermott said.
"Would you care for a highball, Laura?"

"If you do."

"By all means! Will it be Scotch, rye, bourbon? I've got a very
well-stocked little bar here, as you see. Or if you prefer some liqueur
or brandy, we could ask room service--"

"Rye will do," Laura said, smiling. "And some ginger ale, please."

McDermott fixed the drink for her. She waited while he prepared his own.

"To a wonderful evening," she said, lifting the glass toward his.

"Amen to that," McDermott said. "Cheers."

She took a shallow sip. He drank more deeply. Putting the glass down,
he stared with sudden intensity at her.

"How old are you?" he asked abruptly.

"Over twenty-one, Mr. McDermott."

"I should hope so. But not very far over, eh? And call me Bob. How old
do you think _I_ am, eh?"

"I'm sure I couldn't guess."

"I'm sure you can. Come on, girl, don't be so afraid of offending me!
Take a guess!"

"Fifty?"

"Fifty-eight!" he crowed. "You wouldn't believe it, would you? Not a
wrinkle on my face. If I still had my hair I could pass for forty, I
bet." He took another deep gulp of the highball. "I'm still a young man
in many ways," he said with sudden seriousness. "But my wife is an old
woman. Two years younger than I am, but you'd think she was seventy.
It's a terrible thing, Laura, when a wife grows old faster than her
husband does. It's made my life miserable. Miserable."

Laura said nothing. She had been through this sort of thing
before--the unhappy middle-aged man who took almost as great a pleasure
in baring his personal problems to his mistress-for-a-night as he did
in making love to her. The best tactic, she had discovered, was to
remain sympathetically silent. Men love a good listener.

McDermott went on, "We've been married thirty-six years. Can you
imagine that? I married her the day I graduated from Harvard.
Look--here's her picture, one that I took in the spring of that year.
Tell me what you think of her."

McDermott groped in his wallet and delicately pulled out a snapshot.
Laura took it from him. It was old and faded, turning brown with the
years, but the smiling girl it showed still had kept the beauty of that
day nearly forty years ago. She was slender, with a classic serenity of
feature and elegant posture.

"She's lovely," Laura said quietly.

"Yes. _Wasn't_ she? Take a look at this one now. On a cruise ship in
the Caribbean last winter."

The second picture showed McDermott and an elderly woman standing at
the rail of the ship. McDermott, wearing a polo shirt and Bermuda
shorts, looked gay and youthful. But the woman--!

It was possible to detect the underlying features of the girl of that
time-browned snapshot. But only barely possible. Thirty-six years had
wrapped a layer of wrinkled, sagging flesh around the classic chin.
They had rounded the square shoulders, had thickened the Grecian nose,
had made coarse flabby lumps of flesh out of the smiling lips. The eyes
had lost their sparkle; the hair was frizzy and unkempt. The woman
looked like McDermott's mother, not his wife. Laura shuddered.

"It's hard to believe," she whispered, as she gave the picture back.

"Of course, it's a lot more striking to you, seeing the two pictures
side by side. I've watched it happen gradually, so I'm not as rocked
by the contrast. But it's an awful thing. Awful." He gulped down his
drink. "How about a refill?"

"Not yet, thanks," Laura smiled. "I've still got a way to go on this
one."

"Of course. Mind if I--?"

"Not at all," Laura said.

As he prepared a second drink for himself, McDermott said, "We've
got three children. Bob Junior, he's thirty-three, a vice-president
at the bank. A little too snobbish, but otherwise a fine boy. And
my son Richard, he's thirty, an Air Force officer. Joined the ROTC
in college and liked it so well he made a career out of it. I don't
see much of him. The girl's name is Elaine. She's twenty-seven, I
think. Her husband's a professor at Yale. What a bitch she is! I think
she's slept with half the student body in New Haven. Well, that's her
business--hers and her husband's. But those are my children. There was
a fourth one, too. Donald. Also an Air Force man. Killed in Korea, he
was. He'd be almost twenty-nine, if he'd lived. My wife turned into
an old woman the day we got the telegram about him from the Defense
Department." McDermott scowled. "Well, I was upset too. But it's almost
eight years, now! I'm used to the idea that Don is dead. Elizabeth
isn't. She still wakes up at night and goes into his room." McDermott
looked up, sudden anguish in the baby-blue eyes. In a hoarse voice he
said, "Do you know how long it's been since my own wife has slept with
me? Not since the day Don died. Not since the middle of the Korean War.
You probably weren't even going to High School yet, back then. And she
hasn't let me touch her since that day. Not that she'd been any ball
of fire in the bedroom for years. Not that she ever was. You know how
New England girls are raised, or at least how they _were_ raised back
then? The mothers tell them that sex is evil. They tell them that no
good woman possibly can enjoy sex. They tell the girls to sleep with
their husbands and make children, but once the children are all born
you don't have to sleep with the dope you married any more. God, I'd
like to strangle that old bitch, Elizabeth's mother!" McDermott shook
his head heavily. "I'm talking too damn much, I guess."

"I don't mind," Laura said softly. "If it makes you feel better to get
these things off your chest, I don't mind listening at all."

"You're a good girl," McDermott said. His voice was getting a little
thick, and his pink face was growing flushed. Laura suspected that he
had begun drinking long before her arrival. "You see why I live for
these visits to New York? I can't do anything up in Boston, oh, God,
no! If I ever got caught there, they'd practically crucify me on the
Common. But four times a year I come to New York and I can live again."
His eyes sought hers eagerly. "Four times a year I can have some
genuine affection and sympathy. Sure, I have to pay for it, but that's
better than not having it at all."

He gulped down the second drink and put the glass on the table.
"Don't let me have any more," he said. "I want to stay sober enough to
appreciate you. You're a very beautiful girl, Laura. I need some beauty
in my life. I earn a hundred thousand a year, you know? More than some
people make their whole lives. And I'm unhappy. Funny, isn't it?"

"Money doesn't always make people happy."

"Damn right it doesn't! I see these people who work for me--tellers,
they make $60 a week maybe. And they go home to their wives and lay
them every night. Every goddam night!" He reddened. "Sorry if I get a
little coarse. It's the drinks. But these people, they bang their wives
all night long, on their lousy $60 a week. It's all they have, is fun
in bed, but I don't even have that. I just have my Cadillac and my big
house and my coupons to clip and my stone-cold bitch of a wife. Come
here, Laura."

She put her glass down and walked across the room toward the couch. He
rose, a little unsteadily, as she came close.

He let his hands rest lightly on her shoulders, and smiled at her.

"While I was waiting for you," he said, "I made up my mind that I
wasn't going to exploit you tonight. We both know why you're here,
but I promised myself I wouldn't hop into bed with you before eleven
o'clock at the earliest. I'd show some restraint. I'd sit around and
make polite conversation, and pretend that we were good friends who
had known each other for years. But I can't do it. It isn't even ten
o'clock, but I can't hold out."

Laura smiled tenderly. "I understand," she said.

"I really believe you do. Let's go into the bedroom, shall we?"

They went in together, hand-in-hand. Laura felt a tremendous wave of
pity for this man, this millionaire whose life was so lonely. She
almost forgot that this was a cold business transaction, that he was
buying her for a night at a fixed price. She felt almost like an angel
of mercy, performing an act of kindness.

They stood by the bed, and she pressed her body against his and he
kissed her, hesitantly at first, then more passionately as his desire
mounted and his natural reserve diminished. She realized he was
hesitant, and she took his hands and put them on her blouse, and he
cupped her breasts for a moment before beginning to unbutton her. He
removed her blouse and, with shaking hands, unhooked her bra, and she
heard his little sharp indrawn hiss of delight at the first sight of
her bare breasts. He kissed her stiffening nipples tenderly.

"Lovely," he muttered. "Lovely."

She helped him undress her, and within moments further she was nude and
he was undressing too. His body was fleshy without being fat; he had
obviously taken pains to keep himself in trim, and it certainly did not
seem like the body of a man of fifty-eight.

Naked, they embraced, and he carried her down to the bed.

"Be kind to me, Laura," he whispered. A little shuddering sigh of
longing burst from him, and with sudden frenzy he clasped her, his
hands gripping her breasts tightly, and she surrendered to him. He
gave one deep-throated gasp of delight and uncontrollable desire,
and almost immediately reached his release and sank down limply
between her breasts, his breath coming in harsh bursts, and he said
apologetically, "It happened so fast, Laura. It happened so fast!"

She stroked his back consolingly.




                           _CHAPTER ELEVEN_


They rested for a while, and then, about an hour later, vigor returned
to him and they began to make love again. This time McDermott's
lust was less urgent, his passion more easily restrained, and their
lovemaking lasted longer. When it was over, McDermott switched off the
light and they got under the covers. He curled up against her, his face
nestling in her bosom, his mouth pressed to one hard little nipple.
Within moments he was asleep. Laura smiled at him in the darkness, this
unhappy man at her breast, old enough to be her father but nestling
there as though he were her child. She adjusted her body to fit his; he
muttered something unintelligible and she joined him in sleep.

At half past seven the next morning, the room telephone rang. Laura
swam up rapidly through layers of sleep, and nudged McDermott awake.

"The phone," she said.

"Answer it," he mumbled.

"No," she said. "It wouldn't be right. You'd better get it."

He nodded dimly and, leaning across her body, picked it up. After a
moment, he said, "Thank you," and replaced the receiver. "It was the
desk," he explained. "I asked them to phone me early so I wouldn't
miss my appointments." He sat up on the edge of the bed, thumbing his
eyes. A golden-gray stubble had sprouted on his cheeks. He looked
rumpled and older, now, in the morning. He smiled at her. "Christ,
but you're a vision, Laura. Lying there with that red hair all over
the pillow, and all your skin showing. You're the only woman I've ever
known who could look beautiful at half past seven in the morning." He
leaned over, planting a kiss just below her navel. Squeezing her thighs
affectionately, he rose and shambled off toward the bathroom. Laura
heard the shower running, and then, a little while later, there was the
sound of an electric razor. When McDermott came out, he looked much
more capable of facing the morning. But his eyes were bloodshot.

"The annex is yours, my dear," he said airily.

Laura showered quickly, just to refresh herself a bit. When she came
out, pink and scrubbed, there was a towel around her, but McDermott
made her remove it. "Delicious," he said. "Delicious. I'd rather
eat you for breakfast than a grapefruit. What lovely skin you have.
Elizabeth had skin like yours ... once." He scowled. "I keep talking
about her. I must be boring you."

"Do you have many important appointments this morning?" Laura asked.

"Oh, God, yes. I've got to be at the Chase Manhattan by half past nine,
and then there's lunch with the Morgan Guaranty fellow at noon, and
after that--" He shook his head. "It's a busy life, this business of
money managing. But I suppose other people work just as hard, with a
good deal less of a reward." He took a starched shirt from a drawer.
"Will you join me for breakfast at the hotel coffee shop?" he asked.

"Of course," she said.

No one looked askance at them as they rode down together and went into
the handsomely-appointed coffee shop. It was a _very_ dignified and
conservative hotel--which meant that the guests were free to do as they
pleased, so long as they did it in a dignified and conservative manner.

Over coffee, McDermott said, "I'd like to see you again tonight, Laura.
Is it possible?"

She shrugged. "If it were up to me, I'd say yes. But I don't arrange my
own assignments. You'll have to--go through channels." She did not like
to mention Spinelli by name.

McDermott smiled faintly. "All right. I'll try to arrange it. You're a
very wonderful girl, do you know that, Laura?"

"I enjoy making people happy," she said.

"You've made me _very_ happy. And I'm looking forward to spending much
more time with you. But just in case your schedule doesn't permit me to
see you again, I'd like to give you something just as a little token of
gratitude for the wonderful time you gave me last night." He reached
into his jacket pocket and produced a sealed envelope. He slid it along
the table to Laura, who slipped it into her purse without looking at it
at all, smiled, and murmured a "Thank you."

They parted, then, McDermott entering a taxi to take him downtown to
the financial district, Laura hailing a cab to take her eastward to her
apartment. Only when she was home did she open McDermott's envelope.
Wrapped in a blank sheet of Whittier stationery, she discovered three
crisp, fresh hundred-dollar bills.

She gasped. Three bland, smiling images of Benjamin Franklin's face
looked up at her.

It was a phenomenal tip for a night's work. Even if she saw McDermott
again tonight and he gave her nothing additional, she would have no
cause to complain about a lack of generosity. It meant that at the
very least she would have $800 this week. Money ceased to have meaning
when it cascaded in at such a rate. She closed her eyes, thinking of
her burgeoning bank account, wondering whether she would ever find the
courage to break away from so lucrative a way of life.

Shortly after noon, Spinelli called.

"You must really have bowled McDermott over," he said. "He phoned in
giving an enthusiastic report on you, and practically demanding that I
let him have you for the rest of the week."

"What did you tell him?"

"I had you lined up for the camera convention tonight and tomorrow,"
Spinelli said. "But McDermott was practically drooling into the
receiver, so I've made some switches. Tania and May will work the
convention, and you'll be with McDermott tonight and tomorrow, and
maybe the day after that if he's still in town. I figure it doesn't
hurt to please him a little extra. He's got plenty of influential
friends."

"Okay," Laura said. "What time tonight?"

"He wants to take you to dinner. Be there around six, I guess. Did he
give you a tip last night?"

"He sure did," Laura said.

"How much?"

"Three," she said.

Spinelli was silent for a moment. Then he whistled and said, "You sure
_must_ have impressed him. What did you do, mix Spanish Fly in your
perfume?"

"I listened to all his troubles, and then I went to bed with him,"
Laura said. "That puts me one notch up on a psychiatrist. _They_ just
listen to your troubles."

Spinelli laughed. "I think I ought to tell you that McDermott isn't the
only one who's been raving about you. Your public is wild about you,
kid."

"I'm flattered, I suppose."

"You ought to be. And--just between you and me--you may be in for a
little elevation of the base salary, if you keep going the way you've
been going. How does it feel to be rich, huh?"

"I don't mind at all."

"Maybe you'd rather be in the chorus line on Ed Sullivan's show?"

"Thanks all the same, Phil. I'll stay where I am."

"Smart girl. You know what's good for you."

Hanging up, Laura bit her lip. So Spinelli was thinking of giving her
a raise! Pretty soon she would be the top attraction on his list, that
meant. She was already the best-looking girl in his organization, and
as she gained in poise and sophistication she was increasingly in
demand among the rich clients Spinelli served. A raise would make it
harder and harder for her to give up the life. If she went to $600 a
week--why, that was $30,000 a year! And tips were averaging four or
five hundred a week more. A few years of income on that scale and she
would be independent for life, if she invested her earnings wisely.

At half past three that afternoon there was a call from Dan.

"I've been trying to reach you for two days," he said. "I phoned around
dinnertime yesterday, but there was no answer."

"I was out," she said.

"You're a hard girl to find, sometimes. When am I going to see you
again?"

"When would you like to?"

"Tonight?"

She paused. "I'm sorry, Dan. Tonight's out. I--have a tremendous amount
of work to catch up on."

"Tomorrow, then?"

She thought of McDermott. Sadly she said, "I hate to do this to you,
honey. But I'm going to be busy tomorrow too, and most likely the day
after."

"Catching up on important work?" The sarcasm in his voice was only
faintly disguised.

"Yes," she said.

"Listen, honey, you don't have to try to soften things. If you're
dating somebody else those nights, you can come out and tell me the
truth. I won't fold up and die."

"I'm working, Dan," she said. "Honestly." _It's the truth, isn't it?_
she asked herself savagely.

"All right. Have it your way. I'm not going to try to force myself on
you."

"Look, Dan--darling--believe me, I'd give anything to be able to see
you the next couple of nights. But I can't. Absolutely. It's impossible
to explain, but I--I can't."

"Okay," he said mildly. "I told you, I'm not out to force the issue.
But I do want to see you. I've some very important things to discuss
with you. In person."

"Monday?" she said.

"Monday's fine. Pick you up at six or so for dinner?"

"Swell, darling!"

"Till Monday, then." He blew her a kiss. She returned it, and they hung
up.

Immediately she phoned Spinelli and requested a day off for Monday.
He was reluctant, but she pinned him down to the admission that she
was entitled to several more days off that month, and that he had not
scheduled her yet for anything beyond the weekend.

"How come it's so important?" he asked.

"It isn't, really. Just that I feel like taking a breather."

"You had a breather just a couple of days ago. You seem awfully eager
for another one."

"I've got some things to catch up on, Phil."

"Oh? Say, now, you aren't involved in anything on your own, are you?
You know I don't take much to free enterprise in this organization."

"Would I jeopardize myself by anything as dumb as that?" she asked
angrily.

"Women do peculiar things when they think they're in love," Spinelli
said with calm menace in his voice. "We've been getting along swell,
Laura. I wouldn't want you to mess up a splendid arrangement."

"All I want is a day off on Monday, Phil. If you're going to imagine
all sorts of wild affairs--"

"Okay. Okay. Take Monday off," Spinelli said brusquely. "I withdraw all
insinuations. Friends?"

"Friends," she said.

When she put down the phone, she felt a sharp pang of guilt and fright.
_I'm getting into this thing deeper and deeper_, she thought. Spinelli,
who was anything but a fool, was beginning to get suspicious. It would
be only an elementary precaution now for him to station a detective on
her tail to watch her after-hours activities. Spinelli would find out
about Dan that way.

She knew what would happen. Spinelli would do nothing to her--not
directly. But Dan would be visited one night and the facts of life
would be explained to him, perhaps with a baseball bat, perhaps with a
knife. And she would be told quietly not to make a second mistake.

She had lied to Dan, and she had lied to Spinelli. The tangle of her
lies was increasing--perhaps, she thought bleakly, it would soon weave
itself into a noose for her throat. Dan had to talk to her about
"something personal," and she had a good idea that it meant something
to do with a ring. But how would she elude Spinelli's vigilance? How
would she ever break free of him? She was too valuable now for Spinelli
to let her go without an effort. And he could so easily keep her,
simply by telling the truth about her to Dan.

There was no way out.

There was nothing to do but live from one day to the next, and hope
against hope that--somehow--everything would turn out all right.

Fear and despair chilled her. Spinelli was urbane and amiable, but the
urbanity was only a mask for the ruthlessness beneath the surface. She
could not hope to defeat him in any sort of struggle.

The wise thing would be to give up Dan, thus avoiding the conflict with
Spinelli and the chance of harm to him or of possible exposure. But she
could not give him up. He was the one chance she had--perhaps the only
one she ever would have--to escape into a decent life. He was the first
man she had known who tried neither to buy her nor to rape her. He was
the only one who regarded her as a human being, not as a two-legged sex
machine. She loved him for that.

She loved him.

But she dreaded what was coming.

She forced all thoughts of the dilemma from her mind, and began to
dress for the evening. Since it was a dinner date, and a second date as
well, she dressed more daringly, in a gay and provocative gown whose
neckline actually cut _below_ her breasts, leaving only a filmy band of
gauze and lace to cover the bosom. There was a special bra to go with
the outfit, one that embraced her nipples and hugged the lower curves
of her bosom. She had never worn the gown in public; with a jacket,
though, it seemed moderately decent, and a really high-class restaurant
would be accustomed to such a dazzling display.

McDermott was impressed. He was ready, immaculate in formal tuxedo,
when she knocked at his door at five after six that evening. He
kissed her hand, and then--to the accompaniment of her delighted
giggles--lightly kissed her exposed bosom. "Won't you be arrested in a
gown like that?" he asked.

She smiled. "This isn't Boston."

"I know. But it isn't Bali either!"

The waiter, though, kept his eyes modestly averted as she swept into
the restaurant on McDermott's arm. It was a Park Avenue restaurant so
costly that even she had only been there once before, and McDermott
had reserved a table that placed them practically in the center of the
room, where all eyes were drawn to the milky loveliness of Laura's
bosom.

She enjoyed the attention. Holding her cocktail aloft, she would lean
forward, until her breasts came within an ace of popping out of their
confinement altogether, and she could almost hear the _oohs_ and _ahhs_
all over the restaurant. McDermott, smiling, seemed to drink her with
his eyes. He told her at least a dozen times how happy he was that she
could join him for a second night.

It was a long meal. There were innumerable entrees and cocktails,
and with the main dish came rare wine, and with the coffee there was
cognac. Laura felt mildly dizzy, even though she had eaten sparingly
and left her wine unfinished. She felt tremendously relaxed and happy,
except for the one nagging thought that if she married Dan she would
probably never eat at a place like this again, where the menu did not
deign to make mention of price, and where a dinner for two could easily
run to sixty or seventy dollars.

In the taxi on the way back to the Whittier, McDermott turned to her
and kissed her, his tongue gliding into her mouth and his hand seeking
beneath the lace until it came to rest cupping the warm, soft bulk of
her breasts. Only when he attempted to slide one hand under her dress
did she stop him. The taxi driver was covertly watching in his mirror,
she was sure. Delicately Laura took McDermott's hand away from her
thighs, and they straightened up. "We don't want to look sloppy in the
hotel lobby," she whispered, and he nodded and smiled.

Once they were in the room, though, there were no such restraints. He
pulled her tight against him, grinding his loins against hers, and
while one hand cupped her breasts the other ducked under the hem of her
gown in back, swooping upward and into her panties to grip the cool
flesh of her buttocks. They remained glued together for a long moment,
McDermott finally breaking away. He looked flushed and excited. Laura
wondered distantly whether he might not have a weak heart. So much
excitement would be dangerous for him, then. And it would be awkward if
he happened to have a heart attack while she was with him.

He was on the phone, now, telling Room Service to send up champagne.
"The Piper Heidseick '52 _Cordon Rouge_," he specified.

An impressive-looking official brought the champagne up fifteen minutes
later, in a bucket on a tray, and he made a big production out of
removing the cork. Pouring out a glass for each of them, he bowed and
departed. McDermott offered Laura her glass, and they clinked them
gravely and drank.

Putting his glass down empty, McDermott said in a peculiarly halting,
hesitant way, "Laura--I--I've been doing a good deal of thinking since
last night--about--about things." He looked down at his gleaming
black shoes. "I--I'm rather fond of you, as you might imagine. I was
wondering if--perhaps--you could possibly be persuaded to move. To
Boston, or one of the suburbs."

She looked at him in surprise.

Before she could reply, he went on, "I have a fairly good idea of what
you earn here, and I could guarantee that you'd live equally well
up there. And you'd be free most of the time, except when I could
manage to see you. We'd have to arrange things very carefully, of
course. A breath of scandal and I'd be ruined." He looked up, pale and
tense. "There's one additional angle. My wife, as I've said, has aged
rapidly. She's not in the best of health. Now, a divorce is beyond
consideration, but--in the event of her death, say in the next year
or two--I would ask you to become my second wife. After the proper
interval of mourning, of course. Naturally this would entitle you to a
considerable portion of my estate at such time--as--well--"

He paused. Laura looked at him in confusion.

"I don't know what to say," she got out finally. "I'm--well--stunned--"

"I admit it's sudden of me, this way. But I've searched my soul and I'm
convinced I must have you. Your past is of no interest to me. I need
you, Laura."

It was her turn to look at the floor. "Well--there are some
complications," she said, thinking of Dan. No doubt Spinelli would be
willing to release her from employment to make such a marriage, or even
to become McDermott's mistress while Mrs. McDermott lived. "I'm afraid
I can't give you any answer on the spot, Bob. I'd have to think about
it a while."

"Certainly," he said, calmer now that he had said his say. "This isn't
anything for you to rush into. Consider it, and let me know your
answer when you've reached a decision. For my sake, of course, I hope
it'll be _yes_."

She looked away, moistening her lips. It was an idea, she thought.
A lot depended on what Dan had to say Monday night. If he asked her
to marry him, life would be a lot more complicated. But if he had no
such intentions, then it might not be bad at all to become McDermott's
mistress and possibly someday his wife and heir.

She smiled. "I'd like some more champagne, Bob."

"Certainly!"

He filled her glass. She drank quickly. She began to feel giddy.
Without his telling her, she started to remove her clothing. When
she was nude, he came toward her. She realized she was very close to
being drunk. He took her in his arms, and she leaned against him as he
carried her to the couch. She sprawled out limply, her arms around his
neck, and he kissed her breasts, her eyes....

He sighed sharply as her cool hands touched his body, and then he
was on fire, crushing her in his arms, thrusting his tongue between
her teeth, and he brushed his fingers along her body and cupped her
breasts, and she clenched herself to him and their bodies joined and
this time he stayed with her all the way, until they went sweeping away
together on a riptide of delight.




                           _CHAPTER TWELVE_


They made love twice that night before McDermott, utterly sated,
dropped off into sleep. The hotel desk woke them again at seven-thirty.
When they parted, after breakfast, McDermott did not give her anything.
Laura understood. It had nothing to do with the three hundred dollars
he had given her the night before. It was simply that McDermott was a
man of fastidious tastes, and he felt it was improper to offer crude
cash to a woman you had asked to become your mistress and someday
perhaps your wife. To slip her some cash that morning would be to
destroy all he had asked for the night before. It would reduce her to
the status of a whore again, albeit an elegant one, rather than a lover.

Laura returned to her apartment by ten. She took a nap, and was well
rested by the time Spinelli phoned in the afternoon for a report on her
activities of the night before.

She told him, in detail--including the proposition that she move to
Boston.

"I know," Spinelli said. "McDermott brought it up yesterday. He wanted
to know if I had any objections, and also how I thought you'd react to
the idea. I told him to go ahead and ask you."

"_Do_ you have any objections?"

Spinelli chuckled. "McDermott would recompense me amply if he took you
out of my string. And it would be very useful to have you settled in
Boston under his protection. No, no objections here. Did he give you
anything for last night?"

"No," Laura said, and explained why. Spinelli seemed to accept the
theory without any particular hesitation or suspicion.

"Okay," he told her. "You'll be with him again tonight. He wants
you for dinner at his suite around seven o'clock. He's also made
arrangements to stay over in New York for at least another day. You'll
be assigned to him for as long as he stays."

At seven, Laura reported to the Whittier for the third night in a row.
McDermott received her in a costly-looking oriental dressing-gown. He
had cocktails ready, and while she sipped hers he telephoned downstairs
to have dinner brought in.

He had arranged for dinner to be prepared at a fine restaurant around
the corner, and brought over specially. It was wheeled in, now, on
a sumptuously laden tray--meats, vegetables, salads, all manner of
delicacies, accompanied by the best wine. Laura was glad she had not
bothered with lunch.

They were not finished eating until after nine. McDermott had the
remnants of the meal removed, and as soon as they were alone he put his
arms around her, drew her tight against him, clasped her tightly and
kissed her.

"Have you been thinking about--what I asked you last night?"

She nodded. "Yes, I've been thinking about it, Bob. But I still can't
give you any definite answer. Not for another few days."

"I'll be going back to Boston Saturday morning."

"I couldn't let you know before Tuesday," she said. So much depended
on the meeting with Dan Monday night. "Could you phone me at home on
Tuesday? We'll be able to decide everything then."

"If I have to wait that long, I guess I have to wait," he said quietly.
Gripping her hands, he whispered, "Don't fail me, Laura! I need you so
very much, you know. More than I could ever tell you."

He began to undress her. When she was completely nude he knelt before
her, gently kissing her soft flesh until he had reached her lips. They
kissed deeply. Breaking away, he kissed her left breast in a way that
sent tremors of excitement through Laura's middle. He toyed with the
little nipple, while his hands roved the rest of her body. She began to
pant as excitement rose in her.

He took his mouth from her bosom and cupped the heavy breasts in his
hands while she undressed him. The tips of his fingers curved under the
full globes, squeezing them tenderly. She throbbed in anticipation of
delight. He was naked now, his bare body flattened against hers, his
teeth nibbling at the lobe of her left ear while his hands caressed her
bosom and back, and their harsh breaths mingled in one stream, and she
began to draw him across the room toward the divan, a kiss at each step.

Then they were curled there in each other's arms, ready for love, hers
long since on fire, and they kissed again, both of them coyly delaying
the moment when their bodies would become one. He was talking, now,
whispering passion-inspired words of love into her ear. He had learned
quickly which places set her on fire, and he was making use of his
knowledge.

"Take me," she murmured, "Don't wait any longer, Bob. Now. Bob. _Now!_"

She thrust toward him.

A key turned in the door.

They had only half a second to react, and in that time they were both
so enflamed with desire and numbed with surprise that they did nothing.
Then the door was flung wide open.

What seemed like an army poured in. Men in police uniforms, men in
business suits, men with cameras, men with guns. Flashbulbs exploded.
Laura heard her own voice screaming hysterically, wordlessly; she heard
McDermott shouting angry curses, gutter abuse, violently vivid language.

A raid!

Stunned, the naked pair on the couch sprang up. Laura saw McDermott
scowlingly pulling a robe around his nakedness. She herself had nothing
to put on; she looked wildly around for a robe, a towel, anything, but
there was nothing, and perhaps a dozen men were staring greedily at her
bare breasts and thighs, their eyes alight with keen appreciation.

Finally someone gave her an overcoat. Dazed, she murmured,
"What--what's going on?"

A towering man in business clothes glowered down at her. "What's your
name?"

"Don't answer him!" McDermott shouted.

"Shut up, you," the big man snapped. Again to Laura he said, "I want to
know your name."

"Lois Harper," she said quickly, using the name that had been her
pseudonym in her streetwalking days. "But what is this, anyway?"

"This is a vice raid, lady. I'm Lieutenant Harkness of the vice squad,
and you're being booked on a morals charge. _You_," he said roughly to
McDermott. "Your name is Robert McDermott of Boston, now?"

McDermott looked shell-shocked and crushed. He did not even seem to
have the strength to bluster. "Yes," he said weakly. "That's my name."

"And who's this woman in your room?"

McDermott shrugged. "You ought to be able to figure that out for
yourself."

"Answer my questions! Did you hire this woman for immoral purposes this
evening?"

McDermott shook his head. "I don't have to say a word to you, friend.
I intend to speak to my lawyer before I give any statements to the
police. And let me tell you this, while I'm at it--before I'm through
with you I'll bust you down to a beat cop."

"Listen to the wise guy! He's in so much hot water he's boiling all
over, and he can still threaten!" the vice detective guffawed. "Listen,
McDermott, you know who tipped us off? It was your _wife_. She wrote
a letter asking us to check up on you because she suspected you were
entertaining call-girls when you took business trips. She wants divorce
evidence, I guess. And so when the Chief ordered a city-wide crackdown
for tonight, you were a natural. Especially when the bellboy told us
you had young female company. And there the two of you are bare-ass,
you and Miss Bigtits here. Don't threaten _me_, McDermott. You're in
big trouble."

McDermott turned away, his face ashen, and sank down on the couch.
Laura began to whimper hysterically. The suddenness of the raid, the
flash-bulbs, the huge army of men--there were more than a dozen of
them--she was dazed and rocked by it. And her body, brought just to the
pitch of desire before the spectacular interruption, was aching now.

The policeman who seemed to be in charge said, "Ryan, keep an eye on
the _lady_ while she gets dressed."

"Gladly," a thin, beak-nosed man in uniform grinned.

He scooped up Laura's clothes, underwear and all, and handed them to
her. She took them, still in a fog.

"Come on," he said. "Into the bedroom here and get into your things.
We're in a hurry."

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Book you, of course."

She began to panic. "I've got to make a telephone call!"

"From the station," Ryan said. "Get into your clothes."

He shut the bedroom door and stood with folded arms. Laura stared at
him.

"Aren't you going to turn your back?"

"And have you jump out the window or something? Uh-uh. Come on, kiddo.
You've been selling it long enough. You can spare me a free look, now.
Hurry it up."

Blushing a fiery red, Laura slipped off the overcoat they had put
around her. Ryan's eyes were glued to her breasts as she hurriedly
donned her bra. She dressed quickly, weak with fear and embarrassment,
while Ryan leeringly watched her.

"Okay," he said when she was finished. "Shake your butt, will you?
Everybody's waiting."

Fully dressed, she returned to the outer room. Most of the invaders
had left. McDermott sat on the couch, his head in his hands, sobbing
brokenly. Feeling a sudden surge of pity, she started to go toward him,
but Ryan caught her wrist and pulled her back.

McDermott looked up. His eyes were streaming tears. He tried to speak,
but no words would come.

Laura said, "Don't worry, Bob--"

"Too late. Too late. Elizabeth's stinking spy has pictures of us.
There'll be a divorce ... a scandal ... everything ruined...." He
sobbed again, his whole body shuddering. He covered his face with his
hands and slumped down.

"Come on," the police said to Laura.

"Where are you taking her?" McDermott demanded.

"To the station-house, to be booked on a morals charge. You want to
come along?"

"I have to talk to my lawyer--"

"Talk to Phil," Laura whispered. "Tell him--"

The police hustled her out.

They went down via the freight elevator, which was some relief to
Laura. After having been the object of much interest and admiration
in the main elevators for the past three days, she did not want the
humiliation of being seen in police custody.

The freight elevator opened onto the side street facing the hotel. A
police-wagon waited there. One cop held Laura as though expecting her
to break and run, while the other opened the back of the wagon. They
thrust her in. The wagon started to move.

There were four other women in the wagon already, and they looked at
her with blank curiosity. Two of them were Puerto Ricans, fleshless
wiry little women wearing slips. A third, a big blonde, was dressed
only in a housecoat and a pair of panties. The housecoat was open,
and her big, heavy breasts, full and pendulous as a cow's, hung out
exposed, swaying and jiggling with every motion of the Black Maria. The
fourth girl was a very young-looking negro, wearing a tight red sweater
and a pair of black toreador pants. The Puerto Rican women seemed not
to understand or to care about what was going on; the fat blonde did
not appear to be very concerned, while the negress huddled in one
corner of the wagon, obviously terrified and tearful.

The big blonde grinned at Laura. "They pull you outa that hotel?"

Laura looked at her feet, and said nothing.

"A snob, huh?" the blonde cackled. "Well, go screw yourself. I was just
trying to be sociable."

"Please," Laura said. "I don't feel like talking."

"None of you broads feel like talking!" the blonde roared. "The spics
don't understand, and this one is scared spitless, and you don't feel
like talking. What the hell kinda whores are you, anyway?"

Laura said nothing. One of the Puerto Rican women looked up hesitantly
and said, "_Donde estamos?_"

"I don't understand Spanish," Laura said.

The woman smiled. "_Por favor donde estamos?_"

"I don't understand," Laura repeated.

"She wants to know where we are," the negro girl said in a husky voice.
"She's been asking that all the way downtown. She's never been south of
72nd Street before." Turning to the Puerto Rican, she said, "_Estamos
cerca la calle numero cuarentidos_."

The answer seemed to satisfy the Spanish-speaking woman, who settled
back in silence.

Perhaps fifteen minutes later, the wagon pulled up in front of the
House of Detention in Greenwich Village. Police guarded the women
carefully as the van was unloaded. Other wagons were parked nearby in
the streets, indicating that there had been plenty of arrests in the
last half hour.

As Laura marched up the steps and into the building, bright light
exploded in her face. To her horror, she saw a little squad of press
photographers just inside the door, getting shots of the girls as they
came in. Spitting a curse, Laura threw up her arm to shield her face,
hoping their pictures would not come out.

She was ushered inside. The place was brightly lit and ugly, with high,
bare walls. A bored-looking desk sergeant booked the new arrivals in,
explaining yawningly that they would be held in custody overnight
and arraigned in the morning. Laura once again gave her name as Lois
Harper, and she was led further into the building, to the cell blocks.

They put her in a big cell with four other women who had been picked up
that evening. One was the negress, one the big blonde who had ridden
with her in the wagon. The Puerto Rican women went into another cell.
Laura's remaining two cellmates were a slovenly-looking redhead who
seemed to be a friend of the blonde, and a tall, lean girl in blue
jeans who kept to herself at the far corner of the cell. The metal
door clanged shut. Far down the corridor, some woman was singing in
a high-pitched, drunken voice. Further down, two women were arguing
violently in Spanish.

Feeling strangely out of place in her elegant clothing, Laura huddled
down on one of the hard cots. It was only midnight. There were many
long, bleak hours yet to come before dawn.

She wondered what would happen now. They might send her to jail, she
thought. Perhaps she would just get off with a fine. In any case, she
was in trouble. Not so much trouble as McDermott, though. She pitied
him terribly. No doubt there would be a messy divorce case, now. She
would be named as co-respondent, and the pictures of her and McDermott
in the nude would figure prominently in the trial, and his reputation
would be blasted. Probably he had enough money to get along for the
rest of his life, but his banking career would be effectively ended.

She settled down without undressing and tried to sleep. A short while
later, she heard hoarse sounds coming from the other side of the cell,
and looked up. It was the big blonde and the redhead. They had pushed
their cots together and had stripped, and now they were lying with
their heavy bodies entwined, their lips pressed together, making love.
It was a disgusting sight. Laura remembered her own brief lesbian
interlude with Marilyn, but she told herself it had been nothing
like this. These were two heavybreasted cows of women, women in rut,
grappling with each other to slake their revolting lusts. Big breasts
quivered with desire; thigh locked around thigh. Laura closed her eyes,
but she continued to hear their heavy grunting, to hear the sudden
gasping insucking of breath as first one, then the other, arrived at a
culmination.

It was a horrible night. Laura slept hardly at all, and every time she
awoke it seemed that the two lesbian prostitutes were at each other
again, enjoying it mightily. She heard the slap of hands on buttocks,
the sticky squish of one sweat-bathed body pulling away from another
and approaching it again. When morning came, Laura's head throbbed
mercilessly. She felt as though there was sand in her mouth, gravel
where her eyeballs once had been. Her clothing was rumpled and dirty,
and she needed a shower badly. She was hungry. She was frightened. She
was miserable.

A burly policewoman came to the cell door about seven the next morning,
looked in, and entered. The two lesbians were still asleep in each
other's arms. The policewoman, grayhaired and iron-jawed, slapped them
soundly on their exposed buttocks. "Here, you two disgusting chippies!
Get up and separate those cots!"

She stalked out. The lesbians muttered angry curses after her, but
separated.

At nine that morning the policewoman returned. Peering into the cell,
she said, "Lois Harper, or Laura Haynes, or whatever you call yourself?"

"That's me," Laura said.

"Somebody to see you. Come on out."

Laura freshened up quickly at the little dirty washstand in the
cell, while the policewoman opened the door. Laura followed her down
the wide halls toward the offices at the front of the building.
Feeling hopelessly rumpled and sloppy, she was ushered into a small
waiting-room. A suave-looking man of about forty rose immediately to
greet her.

"Miss Haynes?"

"Yes," Laura said uncertainly.

"My name is Brewer, Leon Brewer. I'm a legal representative of Phil
Spinelli." He dropped his voice to a hollow whisper when mentioning
Spinelli's name.

Laura smiled wanly. "When did he find out I was here?"

"Last night, when Mr. McDermott called him. But there was nothing we
could do to help you until this morning."

"What's going to happen to me?"

"Nothing. You're free," Brewer said, smiling loftily. "The city doesn't
have a case against you. There's no proof you were soliciting, no proof
you were receiving money. All they can definitely accuse you of is
being present in Mr. McDermott's suite in--ah--a state of undress. In
short, they could make trouble for you, but not very much, and in any
event we've succeeded in having charges against you removed."

Laura understood. Spinelli had pull. Brewer had spoken a few magic
words and they were letting her go. But all the other girls rounded up
last night, the streetwalkers and whores who didn't have fancy legal
assistance to help them, they would have to pay the fines and serve the
workhouse terms for prostitution.

_Don't complain_, Laura thought. _At least you're free, aren't you?
It's their hard luck that they don't have any pull._

There were a few technicalities involved in her release. Within half an
hour, she and Brewer stepped out of the House of Detention into bright
morning sunlight. A black limousine pulled up.

Spinelli was inside. Laura and Brewer got in. Spinelli looked grim.

"Was there any trouble, Leon?" he asked.

"Not a bit," Brewer said. "I just explained that they had accidentally
nabbed a Spinelli girl without realizing it, and they let her go with
apologies."

"A damned good thing," Spinelli muttered. "I pay thousands a year for
protection, and what happens? They pick up one of my own girls. Christ,
I'm going to smash someone for this!" Suddenly solicitous, he said to
Laura, "How do you feel?"

"Tired. Filthy. Scared as hell."

"Take a couple of days off. And don't worry about this thing. It was
a big mistake. Some hotshot flunky wanted to have a morals raid,
that's all. And McDermott's wife put a bug on him. It was just a lousy
coincidence."

"What about McDermott?" Laura asked.

"Up the crapper, I'm afraid. He went back to Boston on a midnight
train. You better forget any deals you might have been offered by him,"
Spinelli said. "He's going to need every cent he has, by the time his
wife gets through with him. The lousy bitch."

Laura shuddered. "The poor man."

Shrugging, Spinelli said, "He could have avoided it. He should have
paid a bellhop to look out for something like that. But he never
thought it could happen to him. It always is a big surprise, when the
bulls bust in. But it was his own damn fault."




                          _CHAPTER THIRTEEN_


The first thing Laura did when she reached her apartment was to strip
off her soiled and rumpled clothes and head for the shower. She paused
to look in the mirror. She looked terrible. Her eyes were bloodshot
and rimmed with dark circles. Her cheeks were hollow. Even her breasts
seemed to droop a little.

The brisk shower revived her to some degree. At least she was clean,
now. Naked, she walked numbly through the apartment, with all its
beautiful furniture and expensive carpeting, and threw herself down in
a heap on her bed. Her eyes throbbed mercilessly. She felt sick, sick
with pity for McDermott and Marilyn and herself, for all the hapless
whores rounded up and bundled into the House of Detention, for everyone
who schemed and suffered for filthy lust.

After a while she began to doze off. She had had virtually no sleep at
all, and she was exhausted. She thought fleetingly of Spinelli, that
octopus of crime. He had saved her, and she supposed she should be
grateful for that. But she realized suddenly that she hated Spinelli
and everything he stood for. The merchant of high-priced sex, of
blue-chip nookie. Always ready to work the fix to cover something
up. Always ready with the glib talk, the smooth sales pitch, the big
money. He bought and sold souls with his money. He was a new kind of
villain, she thought--not the mustache-twirling kind with an evil
leer, but a new Madison Avenue kind of villain, an Ivy League kind of
villain, soft-spoken, dressing in perfect taste, eating at the finest
restaurants. Handsome, affable, cultured. But just as evil as the
most raucous gangster. More dangerous, in fact, since he cloaked his
malevolence behind smooth phrases.

She dropped off to sleep, finally, still thinking of Spinelli. The
ringing of the telephone brought her up out of it. She woke, listening
to the bell ring for a third time, a fourth, a fifth. Frowning at her
own nakedness, she stretched across the bed and picked up the receiver.
The clock on the nighttable told her it was four o'clock; she had been
asleep for hours.

"Hello?"

"So you work for a fashion magazine, eh? And you had important work to
do last night?" The voice, Laura realized in astonishment, was Dan's.
But it sounded different--thick, as though he had been drinking, and
shaky.

"Is that you, Dan?"

"Yeah, it's me. Sucker Dan. The biggest dope this side of the
Mississippi. Fashion editor, you are. I could have had a free lay from
you, if I'd known. Fashion editor!"

"Dan--" Her voice was edged with fright. "Dan, are you drunk?"

"Maybe. You stinking whore!"

"_Dan!_"

"Go on, deny it, why don't you?"

"I don't understand--"

"Maybe it was your twin sister. You got a twin sister, Laura? Because
she looked just like you. Right down to the last, she looked just like
you. I didn't know you had a twin, Laura."

"What are you talking about?"

"The picture in the paper, Laura. On the front page of the _News_. You
mean you didn't see it?"

She began to shiver. "N-no."

"Well, I saw it, Laura. My sweet little fashion magazine editor. My
sweet little hand-holding girlfriend who was too busy to see me most of
the time. My sweet little whore. So long, Laura. It just goes to show
you you can't trust anybody in this world ... not anybody...."

The phone clicked.

"Dan!" she cried.

The line was dead. With trembling hands, Laura replaced the receiver.
She clung to the edge of the bed, racked with deep sobs. She was at the
edge of hysteria. She fought for control.

After a moment she regained her inner balance. The first thing to do,
she thought, was to get a copy of the newspaper and see just what sort
of pictures they had used. She made her way into the kitchen and rang
the house-phone several times, until the doorman answered.

"Howard," Laura said, "will you pick up a copy of today's _Daily News_
and bring it up to my apartment as soon as you can?"

"Will do, Miss Haynes."

She waited. Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. Laura started for it,
realized she was still nude, and hastily grabbed up a robe and wrapped
it around her. It was a thin, practically transparent robe, but there
was no time to worry about that now.

The doorman, a young, massive West Indian, goggled in surprise at the
immodesty of Laura's outfit as she answered the door. But he made no
comment, merely smiled and handed her the paper. She took it from him
without unfolding it, and gave him a dollar.

As soon as the door was closed, she spread the paper out on the bed.

A headline screamed up at her from the front page:

                             ARREST 100 IN
                             VICE ROUNDUP

The entire lower half of the front page was given over to a single
picture that had been taken from the doorway of the Detention building.
It showed a file of women being shepherded into the building by
policemen, with police wagons in the background.

Perhaps a dozen girls were shown in the picture. The one closest to the
camera was Laura. It was the photo that had been taken of her while she
was unawares. There was no mistaking the likeness. It was quite clear.
She was staring expressionlessly right into the camera, and a policeman
stood at her side with his hands grasping her arm at the elbow.

The caption said, _Vice squad man leads some of the more than a hundred
prostitutes arrested last night into the women's house of detention.
Story on page 3._

Quickly Laura opened to page three. There, under a page-wide headline,
were two more pictures of girls struggling with policemen. The article
began,

_The city's vice squad swooped down last night in a lightning raid on
New York City prostitutes. The carefully-planned operation covered
everything from cheap B-Girl bars to flossy midtown hotels, and by
midnight had netted more than a hundred tarts. Ten wagons were needed
to convey all the chippies to the hoosegow._

_According to a Vice squad spokesman, this is only the beginning of an
intensive campaign against the play-for-pay girls. Similar blitzkrieg
raids will take place from time to time, and there will be increased
surveillance of bars, hotels, and traditional street-corners. Another--_

Laura threw the paper down. She had to fight back a wild burst of panic.

The worst had happened, then. The picture was in the papers, and Dan
had seen it. He had drawn the inevitable conclusion.

_Oh, God_, she thought, _why did that photographer have to be there?
Why did they have to take my picture? Why did Dan have to see the
paper?_

_Why?_

The _why_ didn't matter any more. What mattered was that Dan had seen
it. And, obviously shocked, perhaps drunk, he had called up to accuse
her--rightfully--of having perpetrated a horrible deception on him. Her
head drooped in shame. To become emotionally involved with someone,
perhaps to come to the point of wanting to ask her to marry you, and
then to see her picture in the paper in a group of common prostitutes
arrested in a vice raid--what a shock that must have been to him, she
thought! And there was nothing she could do now, no way of calling
him and telling him that it was all a mistake, that they had arrested
someone who looked very much like her, or that they had really arrested
her but through some gigantic error of justice.

No. Dan knew the truth. No lie would help now.

Laura picked up the telephone and dialed Spinelli's number. On the
fourth ring it was Skalkottis, Spinelli's secretary-bodyguard, who
answered.

"Yes?"

"George, this is Laura Haynes. Is Phil around?"

Skalkottis hesitated. "He's pretty busy. Maybe he can call you back,
huh?"

"I want to talk to him. It's important."

"Hold on," Skalkottis rumbled. "I'll tell him who's calling and we'll
see."

A moment later Spinelli's voice came over crisply: "Laura?"

"Phil, have you seen the front page of the _Daily News_ yet?"

"Damn right, I've seen it. I saw it right after I left you this
morning. I tried to get the edition killed, but I was too late. It was
the final, and it was already on the stands everyplace."

"Phil, that was my picture right there on the front page! I'm ruined!
Everyone will know--"

"Calm down, baby, calm down. Listen, I'm working hard to fix things up
right now. The _Post_ had the same picture for the afternoon edition,
but I got it killed on the grounds that you weren't booked and so it
would be libelous to imply you were a prostitute. They got scared when
I pulled that. And--"

"Sure, Phil, but that doesn't unprint the _News_ photo, does it?"

"What are you afraid of? Laura, honey, you got the wrong idea. People
aren't going to look close at that picture. They pick up the paper and
it shows a bunch of women going into the clink. You happen to be the
first in line, that's all. But they don't pay any special attention to
the faces. Inside of two minutes after they've turned the page, they
forget what they saw."

"But some people _will_ notice. My friends--the people in my house--"

"How many of your friends read the _Daily News_, anyway?" Spinelli
asked.

"That isn't the point. They'll _get_ to see it, somehow. Somebody will
notice, and the phone-calls will start going around. I'll be ruined,
Phil!"

Spinelli was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Would it make you
happy if I transferred you to San Francisco for a couple of months?"

"Would that help?"

"I could set you up there until, say, October. Same pay, same kind of
clientele, only West Coast people. Then if you wanted you could come
back here. By that time everything would blow over."

"I don't know--"

"You don't like Frisco? Hell, I got branches everywhere. You want to go
to Montreal? St. Louis? Chicago? Detroit? Just say the word, Laura."

"Let me just stay here and calm down for a couple of days," she told
him. "Then maybe I'll move on. I don't know. I'm so mixed-up right now,
Phil. So goddam terribly mixed-up."

She got off the phone, went to the sideboard, fixed herself a drink.
She stared into the glass for a long time before she raised it to her
lips. The newspaper lay on the floor nearby, the incriminating front
page staring up at her. She wondered if the doorman had glanced at the
photo and had thought of comparing it with the face of the tenant known
as Miss Haynes. She wondered how long it would be before she got her
eviction notice from the management.

Spinelli would take care of it, she thought, bitterly. Spinelli takes
care of everything. He got her the apartment in the first place, and
with a little judicious fixing he would make it possible for her to
keep it. Unless, of course, she chose to accept a transfer and do her
whoring in San Francisco or Montreal or Chicago or Detroit or some
other city on Spinelli's circuit.

But everything was smashed. McDermott ruined--well, that was his own
fault, she had to admit. Still, he had offered her a princely deal, and
now it was shattered. Dan ... he would probably go out and get good and
drunk and swear off women for the rest of his life, after this latest
demonstration of their faithlessness.

_So I better stick to what I've got_, she thought. _I'll go on being a
high-priced party girl, and I'll salt away more money in the savings
bank, and I'll buy shares of American Tel & Tel, and I'll grow rich. I
won't ever have children or love or a husband, but at least I'll have
plenty of money._

Spinelli was a slick devil. It was hard to hate him, except when you
looked past the mask to the monster beneath, and then you saw what a
cesspool he was. Spinelli could fix anything. Spinelli could glibly
lead girl after girl into prostitution, by promising the moon and
delivering it. Laura hadn't had any experience with the dope-peddling
part of Spinelli's enterprises, but she could guess that he operated
the same way there, manipulating his deluded pushers and the deluded
addicts, giving them all what they thought they wanted and milking off
plenty for Phil Spinelli, Esquire.

Laura finished her drink. She put the bottle away quickly. It would be
so easy to go on, drinking sip after sip, until she lay sprawled out
naked and unconscious on the floor, her troubles temporarily blotted
out by liquor. But that was no solution.

Nothing was.

There _was_ no solution.

She turned on the radio. Mindless music flooded the apartment. Laura
stretched out on the bed, listening to the vapid tunes, the talentless
rock'n'roll yammering, the caterwauling lyrics, and the music flooded
her, shutting off her mind. She listened for hours. The station played
nothing but music, and in between numbers a disk-jockey went on and on
with juvenile drivel aimed at his audience of morons of all ages. Laura
barely listened to the words, to the meaning. The pure sound flowed
through her, like a narcotic coursing in her veins. Every hour on the
half hour there was a news broadcast, but she paid no attention to what
they were saying.

The afternoon moved along, and darkness began to descend over New York.
It was five o'clock now, six, seven, seven-fifteen. Laura did not get
up. She felt utterly weary, without the strength necessary to get up
and dress and have dinner. She just wanted to lie there and listen to
the music....

The news was being broadcast again.

Words impinged on Laura's consciousness.

Horrible words.

"_Three people were injured this afternoon, one of them critically,
in a two-car crackup on the East River Drive. Martin Farber, 43,
and his wife Phyllis, 39, escaped with minor cuts and bruises when
their northbound car was struck from behind by a foreign car driven
by Daniel Bittner, 28, of Manhattan. Bittner was taken to Bellevue
Hospital with broken ribs, internal injuries, and a possible skull
fracture. Police said he was intoxicated while driving. At the hospital
just before entering sedation, Bittner said he had been despondent over
personal affairs and had let go of the wheel of his car in an attempt
at suicide. The Farber car, he said, had cut unexpectedly in front of
him after he had lost control of his own vehicle. He will face criminal
charges after his discharge from the hospital._"

"No," Laura whimpered. "Not Dan. Not Dan!"

It was an hallucination, she told herself. Her overstrained mind had
invented the news broadcast. Dan had not really done a thing like that.

But he had. At eight, Laura turned the dial to another station that
broadcast the news, and they carried the story too--with the additional
comment that Bittner was now in very critical condition, and doctors at
Bellevue were not sure he would pull through.

Laura was numb. Everyone she had come in contact with had, in some way,
met destruction. Perhaps it was not her fault that Marilyn had died,
or that McDermott's life had been wrecked. They had made their own
choices, and their roads had brought them to tragedy. But Dan--there
was no evading the self-condemnation there. She had known right from
the start that it was wrong to let him fall in love with her not
knowing the truth. Yet she had been unable to break away. And he had
done the expected, once the shocking truth about her had been revealed
to him.

Marilyn ... Bob McDermott ... Dan Bittner ... the only one who had
not found her a deadly jinx thus far was Spinelli. But the dark gods
protected Spinelli. He had nothing to fear from anyone.

For more than an hour Laura debated with herself about going to the
hospital. She wanted to; she wanted to throw herself at Dan's feet,
to apologize for having deceived him in this way, to plead with him
to find the strength to remain alive. Yet at the same time she feared
going to see him--feared his scorn, or, worse, his tears. She was
unworthy of him. Unworthy of loving him, unworthy of visiting him in
the hospital.

But finally she decided she had to go. It was past nine o'clock, now,
and half an hour more went by before the taxi dropped her off at
Bellevue.

In the lobby they told her inflexibly: "Visiting time ends at eight
p.m."

"I know, I know. But he may die by morning. Don't you make exceptions
for dying people?"

The nurse on duty frowned. "Who is it you would like to see?"

"Bittner, Dan Bittner. He was in the auto accident on the East River
Drive this afternoon. They said on the radio that he was in critical
condition, that they weren't sure he'd last the night. I _have_ to see
him, don't you understand? This may be my--my last chance."

The nurse looked more sympathetic. "Are you a relative of Mr. Bittner?"

"I'm----I'm his fiancee," Laura said. "We were going to be married.
But--" She stopped, forcing the tears to remain back. It was almost
the truth, wasn't it? Why did this woman have to stand in her way,
blocking her when Dan lay perhaps dying upstairs?

The nurse's expression softened further. "Let me check upstairs.
It's irregular to have visitors admitted this late, but we do make
exceptions in--in certain instances." She picked up a telephone
receiver and asked for an extension. Laura listened eagerly as she
spoke to a nurse upstairs. "Yes ... ask the doctor if Bittner can have
a visitor."

There was a pause. Laura said, "Is he conscious?"

"Semi-conscious," the woman said. "He's been in a coma most of the
afternoon, she said, but they told me he's out of it now. Oh." She
listened for a moment. Then she said to Laura, "The doctor says he's in
very shaky shape, but that any close relatives can be admitted for very
brief spells. Could I have your name, please?"

"Haynes. Miss Laura Haynes."

"We'll have to check, of course," the nurse said. "I mean, all sorts of
people try to get upstairs under false pretenses, and--"

Laura gasped in horror, but it was too late; the nurse at the desk
was saying into the mouthpiece, "Her name is Laura Haynes. She's Mr.
Bittner's fiancee."

There was another moment of hesitation. Then the desk nurse put the
telephone down. When she looked up at Laura her expression was stony,
bleakly hostile.

She said, "I'm sorry, Miss Haynes."

"But--"

"They checked with Mr. Bittner," the nurse said coldly. "Mr. Bittner
said that he did not want to see you under any circumstances. I'm
sorry, Miss Haynes. We can't admit you."




                          _CHAPTER FOURTEEN_


Laura dreamed of Dan that night.

She dreamed that somehow the mistakes of the past had magically been
undone--that she had never gone to McCarten's that day, had never been
raped, had never embarked on the chain of events that had ultimately
brought her to Phil Spinelli. And, so, Dan had never tried to kill
himself on the East River Drive. But they had met, though--that much of
the past remained unchanged in her dream--and they had fallen in love,
and now they were getting married.

She dreamed of a small wedding, just a few friends on hand. She stood
at Dan's side, gleaming in her white dress of virginity, and after
the ceremony they made a quick escape, getting into Dan's little car
and heading upstate for a honeymoon in a secluded mountain resort. By
sundown, they had eaten and were alone in their room, and they smiled
at each other shyly, Laura a virgin and Dan an inexperienced man, and
with hesitant fingers Dan began to undress her, opening her bra, laying
bare her young, full breasts that no man had ever touched, and finally
her body was naked to his, and he was undressed too, his body slim and
manly, and he took her uncertainly in his arms, just as frightened as
she was, and they kissed, a timid kiss at first, then more passionate
until it inflamed them both, and in one moment of blazing happiness she
surrendered to him, and she heard him mutter "I love you, Laura" as her
virginity vanished without pain, and their bodies were moving together
in perfect accord, every motion bringing incredible pleasure to both
of them, and they were moving faster and faster now, his hand resting
on the rising sweep of her breasts, she gripping the firm muscles of
his back, and she felt the great throbbing contractions of fulfillment,
and above her he was breathing deeply, and in another moment they would
reach a thundering ecstasy, a perfect climax to their first act of
love--

She woke.

She sat upright in bed, trembling. She had put pajamas on before going
to bed, and they clung stickily to her skin, pasted to her body by
perspiration. Angrily she ripped the pajamas off and flung them to the
floor. Her loins ached; the dream seemed so vivid that for a moment she
could not understand why Dan was not right here, next to her in the
bed, and then she remembered that he was lying in the hospital, on the
borderline between life and death, and he had refused to let her see
him.

The bedside clock said three A.M. Laura tried to return to sleep. But
sleep would not come; she twisted and turned, moving from one position
to another without finding any comfort. Every nerve in her body was
drawn tight. The dream still hovered with her, and it was almost as
though she could feel Dan's hand tenderly cupping the fullness of her
breasts, Dan's body lying between her thighs. But it was only a phantom
of the night. She had never slept with him--and now she never would.

The hours dragged mercilessly on. At half past five, Laura decided
it was pointless to try to sleep any more. She sat up at the edge of
the bed, her head bowed, supported by clenched fists, elbows on her
thighs. She looked down at the heavy globes of her breasts. Her nipples
tingled painfully from the imagined stimulation of her dream.

The sun was rising, now. Laura walked to the terrace and stepped out on
it, still naked. The morning air was cool and fresh; the summer heat
would not descend on the city for some hours yet. She stood there,
feeling the river breeze caressing her naked breasts and bare loins,
not caring whether anyone might look up from the street below and
see her. For a long moment she stared down, many stories down to the
street. It would be so easy to clamber up onto the little parapet and
to float out into space, falling twelve, thirteen, fourteen floors.
They would find her naked body later in the morning, the breasts
flattened to ruin, the tapering flawless legs crushed and shattered.

Shaking her head, she walked back into the apartment and shut the
terrace window. It was six in the morning now. The dream of love was
far behind her, fading like the dream it had been. It no longer seemed
to have even the semblance of reality to her.

She poured some juice, made some toast, put up a pot of coffee. She
breakfasted morosely, too tired to care what she was eating or how it
tasted. At half past seven she telephoned the hospital.

"I'd like to find out how Mr. Dan Bittner spent the night," she said.

"Just one moment," came the impersonal, disinterested voice from the
hospital switchboard. "I will check on that information for you."

Laura waited. A moment or two later, the operator said, "Pardon me. Are
you a relative of his?"

"I'm--a friend," Laura said. "A very close friend of his."

"I'm sorry, then. Mr. Bittner died during the night."

"Oh," Laura said, in a small voice. She had been expecting it. It came
as no surprise. She had _known_ he would not last the night. _And I
never even said goodbye to him_, she thought sadly.

"His parents have been notified," the operator went on. "If you'll
leave your name with me, I can give it to them when they arrive to
claim the body, and they will get in touch with you concerning the
funeral arrangements for him."

"That's all right," Laura said quietly. "It doesn't matter, about the
funeral. I wouldn't want to see him dead. Thanks, though. Thanks."

She let the phone drop back into its cradle.

She felt no hysteria, no wild grief. There was only a lingering,
festering bitterness, a cold rage against the universe that had
designed events to turn out in this way.

_I killed him_, she thought acidly.

_As sure as if I'd put a gun to his brain myself, I killed him. I ought
to give myself up for murder. I knew all along that it would kill him
to find out the truth about me. I should never have let him become
involved with me. But I did. And I killed him._

She stared at the floor, thinking of the people she had known in New
York, and what had happened to them. Marilyn ... dead. McDermott ...
ruined. Dan ... dead. At least one of those deaths was unquestionably
her fault. Marilyn's fate and McDermott's were simply coincidentally
involved with her.

But still, it was a horrid trio of memories.

Rising, Laura paced the apartment, wondering about the course of her
life since she had come to New York. She had earned a good deal of
money, but that was her only positive accomplishment. On the credit
side, money. On the debit side, betrayal of every ideal she had once
known. She had sold her body, had deceived herself more than anyone
else, had led a good and innocent young man to his death. She had
mingled with lechers and perverts and pimps.

_Not very pretty, is it?_ she asked herself.

Not at all. Somehow her life had gone off the track. Somehow instead
of the show-business career she had come to New York to win, she had
achieved success in whoredom instead. Nothing much to be proud of.
Nothing much to wire home to the folks in Kansas.

She walked to the dresser drawer and opened it. A gun lay under a
pile of blouses. It was a .22 that Spinelli had given her, to use
as protection in case any burglar tried to force his way into her
apartment. It was loaded, but she had never used it. It was a small,
well-made, expensive-looking little gun. The low-caliber bullet it
fired would not always kill, but it could cripple--and if it hit a
vital area it could destroy.

She took the gun out and balanced it on her palm. All she had to do was
wrap a finger round the trigger, lift the gun to her temple, and fire.
She would die instantly. There would be none of the lingering horror
of poison, or the deadly terror of the long wait before your hurtling
body reached the street. A tightening of one finger, and death would
crash through her brain, ending a useless and empty life.

She slid her hand round the cold butt and raised the gun. Her finger
quivered over the trigger. Her hand shook.

For a long moment she remained poised, on the brink of pulling the
trigger. No one would miss her, she thought. The Kansas folks had
probably already begun to forget her. Spinelli would miss her, sure.
He'd miss the money she brought him, that's all. Dan would not miss
her. Not now. She was of no importance to the universe. She was an
enemy of society.

She deserved to die, she told herself.

But the finger resting on the trigger remained relaxed. She did not
fire. She sat motionless, hardly breathing, while the battle raged
inside her mind. _End it, end it_, part of her shrilled. _Why go on?
Money isn't everything. Life isn't worth living if you can't respect
yourself. You might just as well pull the trigger._

But the reply came quickly, anguishedly: _No, don't. Death is too
final. If you live, there's always time to repent, to change, to atone
for the harm you've done. Suicide is a coward's way out. It would be
the last sniveling act of a weak and worthless person. It takes guts
to go on living from one day to the next. It takes courage to try to
repair the mess you've made of your life._

Slowly, she let the gun down.

The tension broke. She was slick with her own sweat, and her heart
raced dizzyingly. She went into the bathroom and got under the shower
again, scrubbing the beads of sweat from her breasts and thighs and
buttocks. She came out and began to dress--not in anything fancy,
just a simple dress of the kind she wore back in the dim days before
Spinelli.

By ten o'clock she was ready to leave. Almost as an afterthought, she
dropped the .22 into her handbag.

The morning was warm and bright, a perfect late-summer day with just
the merest hint of the approaching autumn in the soft breeze coming
down from the east. Laura considered taking a taxi, but decided against
it. Her own legs were good enough. Besides, she didn't have very far to
go.

It was half past ten by the time she reached Spinelli's apartment
house. She had not walked rapidly. In New York, everyone sprints, but
this morning Laura had chosen to stroll. She had plenty of time.

All the time in the world.

The doorman in the palatial lobby of Spinelli's building recognized her
and smiled.

"Miss Haynes to see Mr. Spinelli?"

"That's right," Laura said.

In this building, no one went up unannounced. Laura waited while the
doorman rang upstairs on the house-phone and told Skalkottis that Miss
Haynes was here to see Mr. Spinelli. Skalkottis rumbled an "Okay"
so loudly that Laura heard it plainly. She walked into the waiting
elevator and punched 20.

Skalkottis met her in the foyer as she stepped out of the elevator and
into Spinelli's apartment. The hulking bodyguard said, "How come you
didn't phone before you came over?"

Laura shrugged. "I didn't know I was coming. I was out taking a walk,
and all of a sudden I realized I was right near Phil's place, so I
figured I'd stop up and say hello. I haven't been here for a while."

"Phil has some visitors," Skalkottis said uncertainly.

"That's all right. He won't mind if I join them," Laura replied
breezily. Before Skalkottis could stop her, she marched past him and
into the long hallway, past all the rooms of breathtaking beauty,
looking for Spinelli. She found him finally in the long room with the
terrace, the enormous room where Spinelli had administered her final
exam before graduating her into his staff.

He had two visitors.

He looked up in surprise as she swept into the room. "Laura--"

"Hello, Phil. I'm not disturbing anything, am I?"

She looked at the two visitors. One of them was a girl of about
nineteen. She was stark naked. She was a tall, virginal-looking blonde,
with thin soft golden hair. Right at this moment she was blushing
practically all over. She was lovely, in a soft, pale kind of way, with
round high breasts and tender-looking thighs. She was staring at Laura
in surprise, and in an automatic gesture of modesty before another
woman she was ineffectually trying to cover her loins with one hand and
both her breasts with the other. She looked extremely naked, extremely
young, extremely frightened. Obviously a new candidate for Spinelli's
stable, being shown off by her discoverer to Spinelli.

The other person in the room was Ned McCarten. That was just perfect,
Laura thought. It was better than she could have dared to hope for.

She sized the situation up: McCarten had found this girl and had
brought her direct to Spinelli himself, McCarten now looked shamefaced
and uncertain, as though he wanted to sink into the deep pile carpeting.

Laura said, "Hello, Ned. Long time no see."

"H-hello, Laura."

"You don't have to cringe like that," Laura said calmly. "What you did
to me is ancient history, Ned. I've been through the mill plenty since
the day you raped me." She smiled at the naked blonde. "And this is the
new one, eh? Very nice, Ned. Phil, are you going to give her a job?"

Spinelli looked annoyed. "Now, listen, Laura, you can't come busting in
here--"

"Sure I can. I just did." She realized Skalkottis was standing behind
her. But Spinelli would not dare to have her manhandled--not in front
of a potential candidate. The naked girl looked about to faint. She was
cramming her full breasts into a bra, now, and reaching for panties.
The audition had suddenly become much too public to suit her, it seemed.

To the girl, Laura said, "I'm Laura Haynes. I'm also one of McCarten's
discoveries. Remind me to tell you someday about how he 'discovered'
me. Maybe you got the same treatment yourself."

Spinelli was scowling. "Laura, I'll have to ask you to wait outside
until--"

"I won't," Laura snapped. She stepped back and to the side, so there
was solid wall behind her and not the possibly menacing Skalkottis. "I
want to talk to this girl. I want to tell her to get her clothes on
and get out of here before it's too late."

"Are you out of your mind, Laura?" Spinelli shouted.

"No! I'm _in_ my mind, at long last," she tossed back at him. In a
quieter voice she said, "He's dead, Phil."

"Who is?"

"Dan Bittner."

"And who the blazes is he?"

"I loved him," Laura said quietly. "Remember, you suspected I might be
carrying on on the side? Well, I was. I never slept with him. He was
too innocent for that. He loved me, I think, and he wanted to marry me.
But he killed himself the day my picture got into the papers with the
label _whore_ underneath it."

Spinelli moistened his lips. "You're drunk, Laura. If you've got
anything to say to me, wait until I can see you in private. George--"

"Don't touch me!" she warned Skalkottis. To Spinelli she said, "I'm
not drunk. I just came here to tell you that I was through with the
call-girl business. You hear me? _Through._ The only decent person I
ever knew in my life is on a slab in the basement of a hospital right
now, and you sit here like a bloated spider in your web, and here's
some new girl ready to be turned into a whore."

"Get her out of here!" Spinelli grated.

Laura stepped back. "Keep your hands off me," she told Skalkottis. "I'm
warning you, don't lay a finger on me, you ape."

"The boss wants you to wait outside," Skalkottis said in a
surprisingly gentle voice. "Why you want to make all this trouble, huh?
You shouldn't come in here and shout at him like that. You did all
right by him, didn't you?"

Suddenly Laura knew what she had come here to do. In one quick flash of
understanding, she realized what her purpose in existence was.

She opened her handbag. The cold little .22 leaped into her hand.

Skalkottis jumped back, startled. Laura's finger slid round the trigger.

She fired.

There was an explosion that seemed incredibly loud for so small a
gun, and a violent shaft of pain ran up Laura's arm. A crater erupted
in Skalkottis' throat. Hit at five feet's distance, the little slug
practically blew his throat apart. A gout of blood coursed out of
severed arteries; he uttered a thick, wordless moan and sank to his
knees, clutching the wound and trying to hold it closed.

The half-naked blonde screamed. McCarten cowered. Spinelli rose to his
feet in astonishment.

Smiling, Laura swung round to face Spinelli. He was groping in a
desk-drawer, now, obviously searching for a weapon. His well-groomed
face looked pale and frightened, and his eyes were very wide.

Laura fired again.

She aimed for his chest, but the gun kicked hard, and the bullet
entered him low, in the stomach, hardly six inches above the top of the
desk. He grabbed his belly and staggered back, away from the desk.

Shrieking, McCarten broke from his seat and dashed across the room. He
presented his full back to Laura, who aimed with skill that surprised
her, and squeezed the trigger a third time. The bullet caught McCarten
between the shoulderblades; he howled and went sprawling. Laura took a
deep breath. The blonde, with her panties still halfway up her hips,
had fallen flat and was moaning hysterically. Skalkottis lay face-down
in a pool of gushing blood, not moving at all. McCarten did not seem
to be moving either. Spinelli, still alive, was writhing feebly and
clutching his belly.

Laura walked calmly toward the girl and lifted her to her feet.

"Don't worry," Laura said. "I'm not after you. Just these worms." She
looked at Spinelli. Her voice was rock-steady as she said, "The police
could never stop you, Phil. You knew too many people, you had too much
pull. They'd never pin anything on you that you couldn't wriggle out
of. And you'd go on, getting richer and richer, leading girl after girl
into filth and sin."

"_Laura_...." he muttered.

"You didn't expect this, did you?" she asked. "You figured you'd live
forever, that no one could possibly catch you or stop you. Well, you
were wrong. You're lying there in your own blood, and you're going to
die, Phil. You're going to die right now. All the pull in the world
can't save you, Phil."

She lifted the gun.

She fired again, aiming carefully.

The shot caught Spinelli in the chest. He had risen to his knees, but
the impact of the bullet threw him down flat. He lay still.

Laura let the gun drop to the floor. She realized she was almost at
the point of collapse.

_Killing myself wouldn't have accomplished anything_, she thought. _But
now I've done something for society, something that society couldn't
do for itself. Maybe they'll send me to the chair for it, but at least
Phil Spinelli is dead and the world's a cleaner place for what I've
done._

She looked at the blonde. The girl was dazed and stunned.

Laura said, "Why were you here, honey?"

"They--they were going to give me a job, they said. And before I knew
it they were taking my clothes off, and then you came in--"

"Are you a virgin?" she asked.

The girl shook her head. "No. Not really. There was this fellow back
home--he said he loved me. But I only did it with him once. And then I
came to New York. But--oh, I'm all frightened now! Did you kill them?"

"I killed them," Laura said. "Stone dead. Get your clothes on and get
out of here, now. Go back home to that boyfriend of yours and marry
him. And if anyone asks you, you were never here."

The girl nodded and hastily began to dress. Laura walked to the
telephone at Spinelli's desk. She dialed the operator.

"Give me the police," she said.

There was a click. "Police headquarters."

"Hello," she said. "My name is Laura Haynes. I've just killed Phil
Spinelli and two of his men." In a calm, mechanical voice, she gave the
address and hung up.

She felt clean, now.

Perhaps they would send her to the chair; perhaps they would free her
as a public benefactor. It didn't matter. She had absolved herself now
of her personal sin, and if society insisted on her death she would
not mind. At least she had bought back her soul from Phil Spinelli. At
least she was pure again.

She smiled. She walked to the window, and sat down by the terrace to
wait for the wailing sirens.


                                THE END




              OTHER NIGHTSTAND BOOKS YOU'LL WANT TO READ

                              LOVE ADDICT
                               LUST CLUB
                               SEX GANG
                               GANG GIRL
                             CAMPUS TRAMP
                           CARNIVAL OF LUST
                            THE WILD NIGHT
                           SUMMERTIME AFFAIR
                             BORN FOR SIN

                      ON SALE AT YOUR NEWSDEALER




ON THE STREET ...

_was their affectionate way of saying, "I'm becoming a prostitute." And
so Laura Haynes went on the street. It seemed the only way out after
coming to New York to become an actress, after getting raped in an
agent's office, after meeting Marilyn, the sad girl who could only find
satisfaction in the arms of another woman. It was a way of making it
big in the big town, and Laura wanted that. She also wanted to become a
high-priced call-girl in the Syndicate, and if Spinelli could do that
for her, she'd_ ...

... SELL HERSELF CHEAP!




*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79382 ***