Folks and Christina sat cozily in the luxurious lodge on a couch before a warming, incandescent log in the fireplace that grenaded sparks. They snorted sparkling rows of cocaine with a mother-of-pearl horn. In the vermillion flare of the flames Christina’s curves gleamed through a black organza peignoir. Robert Goulet’s Couldn’t We? pulsed softly from a console.
Christina’s eyes were oddly electric, sweeping Folks’ battered boots, his tattered combination ancient Indian and southwest cowboy garb as he leaned snorting cocaine off the coffee table. A fake Cortez era helmet was jammed down over his shoulder-length platinum wig to his ears. His red-tinted face was creased and ruined with artificial age. His front teeth were blacked out with tar.
Rain stomped a raucous flamenco on the slate roof as she leaned and nibbled at his earlobe. She whispered, “Aztec Billy, you’re adorable!”
He sat back. She sucked his nipple through a hole in his shirt. Then, she swooped her head and teethed his fly open, gnawing at his pubic hair. In return he daggered a fingernail down her spine making her shiver and squeal.
In the earthy dialect of Billy, he said, “You boil my pot and I’m gonna give your poontang a black eye!”
They laughed and she snorted up a row of crystal dust. Folks got a quality erection as he brutally pinched her buttocks and gazed at her classic profile, translucent in kleigs of lightning. She trembled as she gazed luminous, enormous eyes into his. His slab of weapon escaped his fly into the firelight.
She caressed it and whispered, “Billy, your womb duster is heroic. And how your eyes turn me on. Up! Up! High! To randy heaven. Your eyes are like swatches of Saint Tropez sky in summer. Gorgeous Johnny and fantasy. One!”
He tried to remember that broad who had said something like that before about his eyes but couldn’t.
She purred on, “I’d love to share a secret with you, Billy. You’re a living link up with fantasy and dreams I’ve had since a little girl. There is this grotesque, but utterly exciting old roue. Shrinks tell me he was the symbol of my repressed desire to copulate with Father. Billy, you don’t think I’m a freak?”
He shook his head.
She said, “Then make love to me like that cruel old roue. Maim me with your dong! Ball me until I beg you for mercy. But don’t give me any.” She giggled. “Will you promise to keep it a secret from Johnny?”
He said, “I will if you will.”
They laughed. She slipped out of her wrapper, then removed his boots. He, wearing the wig and helmet, stripped nude. His blood-bloated organ lobbed a fearsome shadow across her flame-tinted torso as he lifted her into his arms. He arranged her bottom meat, with the casual precision of a butcher, on a pillow placed on a crotch high table block with her back jammed against the wall.
He shaped a cruel smile as he watched his reflection in a wall mirror trap her legs across the ridges of his shoulders. Then he lacerated her swollen Bing cherry nipples, lips and tongue with his bared teeth. She squawked ecstatically as she bucked in the trap. He gripped his weapon and twirled the snout violently against her clit until her vulva frothed with lubricity. Tidal waves of rapture rocked him to perversely imagine himself, like Hitler’s Rommel, juggernaut into the enemy, blitz her thicketed enclave pit with tanklike, powerful reams of his steely armament.
She trembled the air with howls of joy and pain. Dispassionately, he counted ten orgasmic spasms of her entrails as his weapon concussed her pit with a tally of five hundred bludgeon strokes. She sighed and went ragdoll limp. He stared down at her corrupt child’s face in repose, sweat shiny in the flickering firelight.
His unconquered slab of vengeance made a kissy sound withdrawing. He had no need or desire for anti-climactic physical ejaculation. He had achieved climax, an orgasm in his soul. He carried her to the couch, then went to the bathroom and brought an icy towel for her face. She stirred and opened her eyes, smiled and seized him in her arms, pulling him down between her thighs. They gazed into each other’s eyes.
She said, “Aztec Billy, I love you.”
He frowned skepticism. “Darling, don’t lead my poor heart to slaughter. Don’t you mean you love our loving?”
Hurt ridged her brows for an instant. Her golden mane swirled about her shoulders as she shook her head vigorously. “Please believe me. I mean I’m certain I loved you from the instant I saw you.”
“Aztec Billy loves you, darling!” He stripped off the Cortez helmet and wig. “Christina, Johnny O’Brien loves you too.” He shaped his heartbreaking smile. “Is it possible that you can love both of us? Billy and me?”
She laughed. “I love you both equally and madly.”
He slipped off, from his pinky, the heirloom Unhappy Virgin ring. Taking her hand, he said, “Could it be a mistake to dream the sweetest dream I could ever dream?”
She raised her ring finger with an outcry of joy as he slid on the ring. They kissed torridly.
She said, “I’m so happy I want to shout from steeples! I’ve landed in a bed of orchids with the man I love.”
He was intoxicated as heady victory shot thrilly lances through his being. Then he sobered, remembering his Pearl problem adangle. He simply needed time, he thought, to angle a solution.
He said, “Please, angel face, don’t shout it until after Saul and I have concluded a business deal with a mar . . . uh, client. A Mister Bates this month. The announcement of our engagement would magnetize local newspaper reporters and photographers. I am associated with Bates as Lance Wellington, and we could save him confusion by keeping our secret until after he’s gone home to the east coast. Do you understand, darling?”
“Of course you’re right. I couldn’t stand a misadventure now.” Then she frowned. “Johnny, promise me that you’ll retire from the rotten confidence game after we marry.”
“I promise.”
They lay in the fire-lit shadows for a long while before they showered and dressed. They clung together for a final kiss before they went to their cars, a perfect meld of sadist and masochist in the pungent murk.
Folks drove down the stygian mountain darkness toward the highway followed by Christina’s Excalibur. He glanced through the windshield at the obese full moon as it suddenly smashed through a wall of clouds. He thought, you wonderful, mystical old broad, you’re in the family way with a billion golden dreams. Then he thought about Pearl prophetically. And maybe nightmares.
Pearl, in the fallen dark on the McDonald’s parking lot, saw Folks go past her in the Eldorado. She keyed on the Mercury’s motor, started to back out to go down the driveway to the highway to follow. Then she stiffened to see Christina pull to a stop at the red light scant yards from her at the intersection. She hurtled the Mercury over the sidewalk onto the highway broadside across the front of the Excalibur. Curious motorists gaped as she leapt from the Mercury and sprinted to the driver’s side of Christina’s car. Pearl jerked open the door and glared hatred into Christina’s face, which was frozen in shock.
Pearl said in an ominous whisper as she brandished an angry index finger under Christina’s nose like a stiletto, “Leave my man alone, bitch! You hear me, cunt?”
Christina nodded furiously.
Pearl hissed, “I’ll stomp a mud hole in your ass if you ever speak to Johnny O’Brien again. You hear me, bitch?”
Christina frantically nodded again.
Pearl leaned her face almost touching Christina’s. “I’d bet you’re a stone racist dog. I hope so. You’ll get a shock down the line. I wish!”
Pearl slammed the door shut and went to her machine. She got in and straightened it up, then she screeched it away down the highway.
Stricken, Christina sat motionless through the horn blasts of angry motorists behind her for several light changes before she drove down the highway like an automaton.
SWEET DREAMS SOUR
Folks went into Speedy’s apartment to change his clothes. He and Speedy sat on a sofa in the den and sipped a succession of whiskies and sodas as they grooved to Ray Charles reco
rds. Folks went to the bar near a window to get refills and glanced down at the street. He saw Pearl loading suitcases into the Mercury trunk.
He said, “Speedy! Look at this!”
Speedy came to the window, looked down and said laconically, “She’s hitting the wind, pally.”
Folks galloped from the apartment to the elevators, savagely punched at a down button. He pounded his fist into his palm as he waited, then stepped into the elevator and rode down, sprang from it and raced to the street. Pearl’s car had disappeared. He got into his car and desperately tried to spot her for an hour and a half.
He drove back and went to his apartment with Speedy and found Pearl’s note on the bed. He sat down heavily on the side of it. Her tears had run the ink.
He read: “Dear Johnny, sorry to do it this way. I lost my temper and I’m so ashamed. I thought I’d be nigger crazy and strong enough to tough it with you, until things worked out for us. Be happy with your new love, Johnny. I’m chicken, I just can’t compete with my competition. She’s a wipe out, Johnny. And after all, she’s got the edge I guess, since you both have white skins in common. I tried to make you happy. You know that. But, like you always said, “Somebody is got to lose when somebody wins.” Don’t forget to take your vitamins every day. Good-bye, Pearl.”
The jangle of the phone beside him on the nightstand startled him. He picked it up and said, “Hello.”
He heard Kid’s cold voice crackle. “Stay at home, Johnny. Trevor and I will be right over.”
Fifteen minutes later Folks opened the door to Trevor and Kid. They walked into the living room and sat down with long faces.
Folks leaned forward in his chair and asked, “Something important pop up? Trouble, Pappy?”
Kid growled. “Just some nit shit trouble cunt freak, lopear! Christina was threatened on the highway by Pearl. She’s distraught, in a rage and she’s frozen the fix. We can’t play for Bates! And our set-up is blown with a wave of your sucker ding dong!”
Trevor said, “Johnny, I just can’t understand how a fellow with your intelligence would let his girl tail him with so much at stake.”
“Shut up, Trevor! I was stupid all right! Look Pappy, give me a chance to clear my skull. I’ll come up with an angle to square the fix.”
“You have to square up Christina, Johnny. Mother has put her in charge officially. Christina vowed to me that she’s through with you. I know her well and I’m afraid you don’t have a prayer to change her mind about anything.”
“I can change her mind if I can talk to her. Trevor, arrange a meeting at the bank this week for Pappy with her. I’ll show up.”
Kid said, “Pipe dreams won’t get it, laddie. She’s too raw for that. Besides, what makes you think she’ll see me?”
“I know her more than slightly too. She’ll see us both, if for no other reason than to thrill herself with a cold turn down face to face. Set it up, Trevor.”
Trevor shrugged, “I’ll try, Johnny.”
Kid and Trevor stood.
Kid said, “Laddie, you’ve got your sucker flaws, but you’re a whiz with the fluffs. If any gee can turn Christina around, you can. You soured the fix, now sweeten it again if you value friendship.” Kid slapped Folks’ back and led the way from the apartment.
Disguising his voice, Folks fired a long shot and called Christina. He was told by a butler with obvious delusions of grandeur that Miss Buckmeister was indefinitely indisposed. Folks and Speedy sipped black coffee and put their heads together to plot turnaround strategy for the audience with Christina that Folks was certain he’d get.
Next day, Monday, Speedy received a call from Trevor at noon, four hours before his chief of security duties usually began. Victoria Buckmeister had gone sleepless, been traumatized the night before by phantom Nazi commandos she was certain were scaling the building outside her bedroom windows. She was demanding that only Speedy should install special locks on her windows. Immediately.
Speedy put on his uniform and got into his newly overhauled Datsun. He drove toward the Buckmeister castle situated on a granite peak in a remote section at the perimeter of the city. As Speedy drove up a forested incline he was impressed as always to view the spectacular Buckmeister white stone castle shimmering like a mammoth jewel in the sun. A security squad of his subordinates, impeccable in gold spangled uniforms and caps, swung open massive steel gates. The Datsun moved inside the estate past a gigantic black block of marble with the Buckmeister name and coat-of-arms chiseled into it in giant gothic letters.
Speedy parked and went into a one story building near the gates. It was the security forces office and the locus for weapons and the control center for a closed circuit network of TV cameras. They scrutinized, by night, the exterior and interior of the castle. By order of Trevor and Christina, a TV monitor in a private room was checked exclusively by Speedy on his four P.M. to four A.M. shift. It received the input from a camera secretly installed in suicidal Victoria’s bedroom despite the presence of around the clock nurses.
Speedy took a tool kit and locks to Victoria’s bedroom. He knocked. Millie, a sad faced elderly R.N., opened the door. Speedy stepped into the spacious room furnished in baroque Louis XIV style, with oil paintings of Victoria’s wedding strung on the silk-covered walls. Others depicted imperial social scenes in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany where she had been a grand dame.
Victoria was propped up on satin pillows in her canopied emperor bed. She was a pitiful sight clapping and cackling in glee as she watched a cartoon villain get his comeuppance on a preschoolers’ TV show. Her hair was a snowy heap piled atop her ruined doll face. Her child-like antics, with her wrinkled, emaciated body, gave her the appearance of a spastic fetus in the satin womb of her gargantuan bed.
Christina, in a gold silk robe, was seated on the side of the bed vainly trying to feed Victoria vegetable soup from a tray across her lap. Speedy made a mental note to tell Folks that Christina was still wearing his Aztec Princess ring.
Victoria spotted Speedy as he went toward a window. “Wade, you darling!” she exclaimed, lips pursed, as she held out her bony arms.
Speedy went to her bedside leaned his face to take her kiss on his cheek. “How are you doing, Miss Victoria?” he said as he straightened up.
“Splendidly until those monsters tried to slip in here and murder me. Please, Wade, double lock them out. They are certain to return.”
He patted her shoulder. “I’ll do that, Miss Victoria, and if they come back I’ll send them to be Satan’s pets, as my mama used to say.”
Four days later, on Friday, Trevor arranged a bank meeting with Christina for Kid. The plan was that Kid would, when he kept his appointment, casually mention to the bank’s security guard, whose job he owed to Kid, that his business associate would be a few minutes late. Kid requested of him that he escort Johnny O’Brien to the executive office when he arrived.
Ten minutes later, Folks drove to the bank with Speedy in the Eldorado. Folks went into the popular bank which was bustling with clients. The security guard took him to the door of Christina’s office. He pushed a button and a buzzer sounded to unlock the door.
The guard swung the door open and said, “Miss Buckmeister, Mister Borenstein’s associate, Mister O’Brien.” The guard turned away.
Surprise and irritation shadowed Christina’s face for an instant as Folks stepped into the room with a warm smile on his face. “Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen.”
Trevor and Kid said, “Hello Johnny,” almost simultaneously.
Christina stiffened behind her massive mahogany desk and said coldly, “Good afternoon. I wasn’t expecting you, Mister O’Brien. But now that you are here, have a seat and I will repeat to you what I have just said to Trevor and Saul.” She nodded toward a gleaming gold coffee service on her desk. “Coffee, Mister O’Brien, to brace yourself for the bad news?”
He smiled thinly and shook his head. He glanced at his ring on Christina’s finger.
She flushed scarlet, slip
ped off the ring and slid it on the desk top toward him. “Something I forgot to return, Mister O’Brien.”
“Thank you,” he smiled as he dropped it into his blue serge vest.
Trevor and Kid at that intimate juncture left the office.
She said evenly, “Mister O’Brien, this bank has backed its last swindle! My final answer is no! However, if you are flat broke perhaps Trevor or even I could loan you and your rabid little bird dog plane fare to your next sucker adventure. Oh, by the way, she suggested that I was racist and as such she predicted a mega shock for me. Any idea what she meant?”
Folks shrugged and smiled urbanely. “Maybe she’s leading a revolution. And no thank you to welfare. I don’t need it. We do need you to change your mind, to be reasonable. Saul is an old man with his life savings and energies invested in our set-up. Don’t hurt him and his associates just to hurt me. Restore the fix and I’ll cop a heel permanently. Be reasonable!”
Her eyes shot gray flame. “I will not change my decision! I am always reasonable with honest people.”
Her hands shook as she took a cigarette from a case. Folks rose, leaned to flick his lighter to her cigarette. He leaned even closer across the desk.
He grinned lewdly and winked wickedly as he crooned, “No from you will always be unacceptable to me. You can imagine why, I’m sure. I’ve peeped at your hole card, humper by firelight. We will play for Mister Bates!”
Trevor and Kid entered the office and took their seats.
Christina said, “Ha! Biological encounters for me are as forgettable as rainstorms. I dare you to even play for a short con mark in this state! Please take your chair, Mister Wellington! You . . . ah . . . mouthwash makes me nauseous.”