The Nude Wore Blaсk

Сhapter One

"There once was an innocent maid

Stripped naked, unafraid,

Ne'er dreaming a guest

Her virtue would wrest

And vanish like a shade."

It was a song the kids used to sing back in high school. Over the years Llona supposed she must have committed to memory some twenty or thirty verses of it, each more risque than the last. Why this particular verse should drift through her mind just now, she had no idea. Later, though, when she recalled how she'd hummed it to herself so casually, Llona would wonder if it mightn't have been some manifestation of second sight. It really was eerie, considering what happened so soon after the song flitted across her consciousness.

But now, as she hummed, before it happened, there were no other portents to arouse her caution. Perhaps if she had known that Archer was there, where she certainly had no reason to expect him to be, where he certainly had no business being… However, Llona had no way of knowing that. She really had no way of knowing of Archer's existence at all since they'd never met-until it happened. And even afterward, although in one way Llona had gotten t© know him better than she'd ever gotten to known any other man in her nineteen years of life, Archer was to remain a great mystery to her.

This wasn't too surprising, since Archer was frequently a mystery to himself. Quite often he was befuddled by the-he supposed-subconscious motivations which seemed inevitably to result in an action, or sequence of actions, landing him in untenable situations. His present predicament was a good case in point.

He was squatting inside a large, walk-in bedroom clothing closet with the door closed. In one hand he held a bottle of Scotch. Half the quart was in the bottle; the other half was in Archer. His eyes were at keyhole level. His vision was filled with a luscious, young, completely nude female who was preening herself before a mirror in the bedroom beyond.

Yet Archer couldn't keep his mind on the delectable keyhole view. He was too busy worrying what might happen if she discovered his presence. She'd scream, he supposed. Loud and long. People would come. The police would be called. There would be a scandal. He'd be carted off to jail. His family would never speak to him again. His career would be ruined. He'd be a convicted sex offender and the label of "pervert" would follow him for the rest of his life. And all because…

And all because his mother had insisted that he attend the wedding of his cousin Mortimer. "It's the least you can do for the family," she had told him firmly.

"What did the family ever do for me?"

"That's not the point. How could I ever explain your not showing up at the wedding of my own sister's only son?"

"Easy. Just say that Mortimer makes me sick to my stomach-which he does."

"How can you talk like that about your closest cousin?"

"Familiarity breeds nausea," Archer suggested.

"I just don't understand it. You two were so close when you were little boys."

"Only because Mortimer used to tag after me wherever I went. And he only did that so he could run home and tattle if I did anything he thought might get me into trouble."

"He was only concerned for your welfare, I'm sure. And Mortimer was always such an angel. He still is, for that matter."

"Yeah. I know. That's why he makes me sick to my stomach."

"You might learn from him. When it comes to his mother, he's the most devoted son I know."

"He sure is. To the point of incest!"

"Oh! That's an awful thing to say." His mother clutched at an area just under her left breast.

Archer well knew why she grabbed that particular spot. He was one of the few people who knew of the device hidden there. Years of experience in coping with his mother had confirmed that knowledge. What her fingers really clutched when they clutched there in moments of stress was the handle to a faucet. And the clutching movement was always a preliminary to the faucet being turned on to release slow tears from her careworn eyes. Archer stayed them quickly. "All right! I'll go!" He surrendered before she could loose the full flood of her watery assault at him.

"You'll be at the church in Birchville by eleven?" She pinned him down.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll be there."

"And you'll come to the reception at the home of the bride after the ceremony?"

"Do I have to?"

"My sister's only son and you can ask a ques-"

"All right! All right! I'll come to the reception, too." Having given in completely, Archer began edging his way out of the room.

"Remember. Eleven o'clock at the church!" his mother had yelled after him, sealing her victory.

"Yeah. Okay. Eleven goddamn o'clock!"

Archer had really meant to make it by eleven, too. He'd genuinely intended to go along with his mother's wishes. He'd had absolutely no intention of reneging. But-

But-

"I think I might be pregnant," the girl beside him in bed had greeted him when he opened his eyes that morning.

Archer had quickly closed his eyes again. There was a long silence.

"What would you like for breakfast?" the girl asked finally.

"Hemlock."

"Now, don't be like that, Archer. There's no point in sulking. Come on, now, aren't you going to get up? It's a beautiful day. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping outside the window…"

"Don't look now, but somebody just exploded an H-bomb."

"You're silly. These things happen all the time. There's nothing to get upset about." She hopped out of bed and stretched in front of the window. "Good morning, world," she said cheerily.

"Good night!" Archer turned over on his stomach and buried his head in the pillow.

"Archer! Wake up! We have to make plans."

Unwillingly Archer rolled over on his back, re-opened his eyes, and looked at her. "What kind of plans?"

"About the wedding."

"Jeez! You're right. I'm supposed to be at the church in Birchville by eleven o'clock. What time is it?"

"A little past nine. But aren't you in too much of a rush? I mean, I know we have to hurry. We'll have to have the wedding before I begin to show. Still, I appreciate it, darling, but it doesn't have to be that fast."

"What are you talking about?" Archer was bewildered.

"Why, our wedding, of course. What are you talking about?"

"My cousin Mortimer's wedding. It's this morning. I promised my mother I'd be there."

"Your mother? Oh, I hope I'm going to meet her very soon. Say, do you think I might come with you today? It would be a good opportunity for your mother and me to get to know each other."

"Sorry." Archer thought fast. "It's strictly a family affair."

"Oh. Well then, some other time, I guess. Still, I do think we should meet before the wedding."

"There isn't time."

"I don't mean your cousin's wedding, silly. I mean our wedding."

"Our wedding?"

"Of course." She smiled at him.

"Oh." Archer considered it. "You think we should get married, huh?"

"Well, after all, if I'm pregnant…"

"But isn't that a kind of drastic cure?"

"What do you mean?" The smile slowly vanished from her lips. "Archer!" she demanded. "Don't you want to marry me?"

"Well, now that you mention it…"

"Archer!"

"What I mean is that as long as you brought the subject up…"

"Archer!"

"It's a pretty big step and I think we should consider it very-"

"Archer!" "That's my name," Archer admitted.

"Archer!" She clutched the area just under her left breast. Immediately two large tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.

"I'll be damned!" Archer exclaimed.

"W-What?"

"You've got one, too!"

"One what?"

"A faucet in your chest. I thought only my mother- Tell me, do all women have them?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. And what's more, I don't care. All I care about right now is our wedding!"

"One wedding at a time," Archer told her. He picked up his wristwatch from the nightstand and looked at it. "And if I don't get a move on, I'm going to be late for Mortimer's."

"I don't care about Mortimer's," she wailed. "I only care about our wedding!"

"We'll talk about it!" Archer promised as he started to get dressed.

"Then you will marry me?"

"We'll talk about it."

"What do you mean? I want a straight answer. Will you marry me, or won't you?"

"Well, I'm certainly not going to be pressured into making any hasty decisions." Archer wagged his finger in her face. "You know what they say: 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure.'"

"But if you don't marry me I may repent in some home for unwed mothers," she cried.

"I understand some of them are very nice. Good food. Pleasant surroundings. Understanding counselors."

"For God's sake, Archer, we're not talking about some Girl Scout camp! We're talking about you maybe making me pregnant with child." "Maybe? Aha! Then you're not sure!"

"Not absolutely," she admitted reluctantly. "But if my timing's right, it seems pretty likely. And it's your child, too, Archer. So you'll just have to marry me."

"Not necessarily. There are things that can be done, to-"

"Archer! Are you suggesting-?"

"Well, we should think about-"

"No! Absolutely no! I don't see how you could even suggest such a thing if you love me."

"I have this problem in giving love," Archer admitted. "My analyst says it's part of my larger problem of feeling alienated from people. Honest, I'm really not a very good bet for any kind of long-term relating."

"Do you love me?" she demanded.

"Well now, let's face it, love is a very difficult emotion to define. Down through the ages the wisest men have tried and-"

"If I thought you didn't love me after everything that's happened between us, I'd kill myself."

"Now, let's not do anything drastic, anything we might regret later. I mean, acts like suicide and marriage, those are very large questions, and haste in such matters could be-"

"You don't love me!" she decided. "I knew it all along! You don't love me and I'm pregnant!"

"Maybe."

"What?"

"Maybe you're pregnant."

"That's what I've been saying," she wailed. "Maybe I'm pregnant by a man who doesn't even love me! Oh! I can't stand it!" She got to her feet and ran toward the bathroom door.

"Where are you going?" Archer inquired.

"To kill myself!" The door slammed behind her.

It was very quiet for a long moment. Then Archer walked over to the door and broke the silence. He knocked lightly. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"No! I can't find anything in this damned bathroom! God, you're a slob, Archer! Where do you keep your razor blades?"

"Behind the shaving cream on the second shelf of the medicine cabinet."

There was another long silence.

"What are you doing?" Archer asked finally.

"I'm slashing my wrists." Her voice sounded like it was coming through clenched teeth.

"I'd sort of like to get in there," Archer said timidly.

"What for?"

"It's one of those things I have to do every morning just after I get up."

"Oh. Well, you'll just have to wait."

Archer waited. After what seemed quite a while, he spoke again. "Will you be much longer?" he whined plaintively.

"How the hell do I know? Every one of these damned razor blades is dull and old and rusty. How the hell are you supposed to cut anything with them?"

"I manage to slice up my face very nicely every morning," Archer told her. "You're just not used to them."

"Ouch!"

"What happened? Did you cut yourself?"

"I did not!" The sound of her gritting her teeth was audible. "I was pressing down on the blade so hard that I slipped and banged by elbow on the washbasin."

"Why don't you just give up?" Archer suggested.

"I am! Damn rusty blades!" There was a multiple clinking sound as she evidently flung the blades away from her.

Again there was a long silence.

"I really have to go very-" Archer started to break in.

He was interrupted by a loud crash from the other side

of the bathroom door. Alarmed, he backed off and rushed the door, using one shoulder like a battering ram. He needn't have bothered. The door had been unlocked all along. He went hurtling through it so hard that he slammed his head into the towel rack. It was a moment before he stopped seeing stars and found his voice.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" He looked down at the girl.

She was down on the tile floor with the shower curtain and the metal rods which had supported it on top of her. Around her neck was an old athletic supporter of Archer's. The other end of it was tied to one of the shower rods.

"I'm hanging myself," she told him with as much hauteur as she was able to summon.

"On that thing? It wouldn't support the weight of an incubator baby. Didn't you ever take Physics in high school?"

"Why should I? I'll have you know that I've never had any trouble whatsoever with my stomach or regularity or anything like that. Furthermore, I don't particularly like discussing such matters with you!"

"Skip it," Archer said. "Sorry I mentioned it," he added. "Do you think I might get into the bathroom now?"

"I'm not finished yet."

"Goddammit! I have to go!"

"There's no need to be vulgar. I'm well aware that the only one you ever think of is yourself."

"I'm not thinking of myself. I'm thinking of my cousin Mortimer. He's getting married today. And I'm going to be late to the wedding."

"Well, at least there are some weddings you don't mind going to." She picked herself up off the floor and marched into the bedroom.

Archer joined her there a few moments later. Quickly, she once again sprang to the attack. "Go on! Get dressed arid go out," she told him. "By the time you come home, I'll be dead," she announced dramatically. "But a lot you'll care."

"Now look,.." Archer began.

It was only the beginning. An hour later they were still wrangling. The only progress Archer was able to make with the situation was to extract a promise from her that she wouldn't kill herself until he returned from his cousin Mortimer's wedding. Once assured of this, Archer at last felt free to leave.

He drove the road to Birchville like a bat out of Lugosi-land. But he'd delayed leaving too long. Even a Bela-bat zooming for blood couldn't have made it in time. Archer spotted the church soon after he crossed the township boundary line and he realized immediately that he'd missed the ceremony.

He caught a flash of the bride and groom darting into their car amidst a shower of rice. As he drew closer he saw the guests pouring out of the church and into other cars which followed in the wake of the wedding couple. Archer remembered then that he'd neglected to get the bride's address, where the reception was to be held, from his mother. So he simply fell in at the end of the line of cars leaving the church and followed along to the festivities.

It was a madhouse. The very street itself was jammed with merrily honking cars. Archer parked blithely in front of a fire hydrant and made his way through the throng in the front yard to the porch. Inside, the caterers were just finishing setting up for the guests. When the front door opened to admit them, Archer was the first one inside. He hadn't had any breakfast and his stomach was growling its need for sustenance. He quickly double-crossed it by feeding it a double Scotch when it had every right to expect ham and eggs and coffee.

The second double Scotch hit Archer hard. It swished around his stomach like molten lava and sent waves of confusion to his brain. The confusion was matched by that in the room, which had by now filled up with people. Archer looked out over a sea of sweating, celebrating faces and was struck by the implied lechery which had drawn them together for this post-ritual anticipating of the deflowering of a tribal virgin. The faces were unfamiliar to him, blending before his eyes into one blob of liquor-swigging, caviar-munching babblers.

Archer squinted his eyes for perspective. It helped to separate the faces once again. Still, they remained as alien to him as before. He tried in vain to locate his mother, or Mortimer, or Mortimer's mother, or the bride-whom he'd never met but thought he might identify by her gown-in the crowd. He kept trying as he downed a third double Scotch, but still without success.

It was then that he overheard someone mention that the nuptial couple had gone upstairs to change into traveling clothes. Another remark, accompanied by a leer, passed on the rumor that bride and groom were changing their garb in separate rooms. The implied shyness of the newlyweds drew a general titter, but it didn't really penetrate Archer's consciousness. He was too busy trying to figure out how to save face with his mother and-for her sake-with the family for having missed the ceremony.

He decided that the best way was to locate them immediately and establish his presence. If he knew his aunt, she was probably upstairs shedding a few last tears over her son, the bridegroom. And if he knew his mother, she was probably up there mopping up her sister's tears.

Archer girded himself to go upstairs and find them. He'd been knocking off the double Scotches so quickly that the caterer's bartender had simply left the bottle in front of him. As part of the girding now, Archer stuck the bottle in his belt and concealed it by closing his jacket over it. He looked not so much like a fat young man as a bizarrely pregnant young man as the bottle made him waddle climbing the stairs.

There were people milling about the hallway of the upper floor as well. Archer tried a few doors, but he didn't find anybody who was familiar to him. Pretty soon the confusion began getting to him again and he felt the need of a quiet drink. He elbowed his way into a bathroom, locked the door behind him, sat down on the toilet seat, and took a long pull from the bottle of Scotch.

He must have been sitting there quite a while-he'd lost track of the passing of time-when somebody began pounding on the door from the hallway. "Hey!" a voice called. "Give somebody else a chance."

"Go bust a kidney!" Archer mumbled to himself.

"Come on! I want to get in there!"

The yelling annoyed Archer. More than a little drunk by now, he stumbled out of the bathroom through a door opposite the one by which he'd entered. He found himself in a small, quite feminine bedroom. He sat down on the edge of the bed, raised his eyes to the canopy over him, and took another swig from the bottle. As he did so, the knob of the door leading from the bedroom to the hallway was turned and the excited chatter of voices from beyond it reached Archer's ears.

"Man can't find a li'l privacy t' have a qui' li'l drinkee anywheres," he mumbled to himself. Clutching his bottle, he strode over to the large walk-in wardrobe closet opposite the bed, entered it, closed the door behind him, sat down crosslegged on the floor, and took another nip at the Scotch.

Behind him Llona had entered the bedroom and closed the door behind her. Then she had crossed over to the bathroom and locked that door. Quickly then, she had stripped off her clothes. Humming to herself, she had lain down on the bed naked to snatch a few moments' relaxation. It was when she finally got up that her luscious nude body first filled the keyhole and attracted Archer's attention.

It had a sobering effect on him. He was titillated, filled with anxiety, and then ruefully reminiscent of what had led him into this situation-all in quick succession. Then, as Llona posed before her mirror, he reversed the order and went back to worrying over what might happen if she found him there.

Screams of "Rape!" un-numbed his liquor-fogged brain. Police sirens silently howled. Jail doors clanged shut. Fingers pointed at him. A judge's gavel bonged with the finality of a J. Arthur Rank gong, and a doomsday voice echoed his fate. Gnarled but nimble fingers tied a hangman's knot while a beckoning finger drew him into the gas chamber and the executioner's face was impassive as he threw the switch shooting the fatal jolts of electricity into Archer's body which crumpled under the volley from the firing squad. Then a plain pine box, a lone funeral caisson, a bleak graveyard, and only his mother's tears to dampen the dank earth with a silent reproach, a final silent rebuke for the consequences of his not having arrived at the church on time.

Archer gasped to himself as he saw his fate approaching the door of the walk-in closet, naked and implacable. Yet fear wasn't the only motivation for the gasp. Admiration also prompted it. Despite his horrendous predicament, Archer couldn't help appreciating the revealed beauty of the nude girl now overflowing the keyhole.

Many men reacted to Llona that way even when she was wearing clothes. Perhaps it was her height. She was taller than most girls-about five-nine-and it does draw eyes when so much pulchritude is piled so high. Then too, there was the mass of golden-brown curls which topped the pile-thick and worn loose. There was something savage and feline about the way Llona would unconsciously toss her tresses when she moved, something reminiscent of the mane of a lioness rippling in the sunlight. Now, combed out, the smooth sheen of her hair was like some careful arrangement of fronds designed by an artistic florist to set off the white-petaled, red-tipped flower twins of her large, firm, uptilted bosom.

A tiny waist further accentuated the size of her naked breasts and the fully curved, slightly heavy hips which always seemed to sway so sensually when Llona walked. Her small but plumply provocative derriere usually picked up the movement of her hips and elicited the interest of most men who happened to view her from the rear. Front or rear, her legs-long and strong, but shapely nevertheless-likewise drew admiring glances.

The sensuality of her body, however, was not particularly reflected in her face. It was a pretty enough face, with high cheekbones, dark brown eyes, firm chin, and pert, small nose, but it lacked the sultry appeal of the knowing siren. It was young and clean and shiny rather than exotic. It hinted at no mysteries. It showed little experience. Yet it was alive with expectancy.

Archer continued to misread that expression as Llona drew closer to the keyhole. He saw her wide mouth contorting with fear. He heard her scream: "HELP!" He felt her pounding fists pummeling their defense against what she would certainly mistake for his lustful intentions. And once again Archer saw the whole panoply of his dire fate following the naked body up to the door of the walk-in closet.

A hand on the doorknob blotted out the keyhole view. The doorknob turned. Archer cowered. And then the door opened, and the walk-in closet brightened with the filtered sunlight coming through the chintzy curtains of the bedroom windows.

The naked girl looked at Archer and gasped audibly.

Archer steeled himself. She wavered there a moment, evidently too surprised to move either way. Archer's eyes pleaded with her to wait before she screamed, to hear his explanation, to try to understand.

But to Llona, the eyes which met hers seemed filled with a powerful, overwhelming lust. Wave upon wave of hot flushes suffused her naked body under his stare. Her knees grew weak, and her body sagged under the sudden flood of desire which seized her.

"Go ahead," she murmured, closing her eyes, resigned. "Take me. I can't fight you off."

"You don't understand-" Archer started to protest.

"I can see that you're too strong for me. I can't stop you. Go on. Get it over with."

"But I'm not going to-"

"I'm too weak." Llona crumpled to the closet floor. "I could never withstand your animal attack. So go ahead and rape me and get it over with."

"You don't understand!" Archer said desperately. "I didn't hide in here to rape you."

"You didn't?" Her eyes fluttered open. "Then what are you doing here?"

"I just got a little drunk. I wanted to get away from the crowd and drink in peace. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's what happened."

"You don't intend to rape me?" Her voice was accusing.

"No."

Llona thought about it. "I don't believe you," she decided. "You look like a desperate, animalistic, trapped rapist. Even your eyes are red with lust."

"They're just bloodshot because I've been drinking and I didn't get enough sleep last night and this morning I had a very rough time with-"

"Just the fact that you're here, watching me get undressed, lusting after my naked body, proves that you must be a rapist," Llona interrupted.

"I tell you I have no intention of raping you."

"Is that so? Well, we'll just see!" Llona opened her mouth very wide. "HEL-" she started to scream.

Quickly Archer closed his hand over mouth and cut off the scream. But it had attracted someone to the bedroom, and he quickly closed the closet door so that he and Llona and the compromising scene he knew they must present would not be seen. There was still enough light from the keyhole so he could see her brown eyes. They looked back at him with a womanly, "I-told-you-so-I-was-right-all-along" sort of smugness.

"Will you be quiet?" Archer whispered.

When she nodded, he removed his hand from her mouth. "If you're not going to rape me, then why are you holding me here?" she asked in a tone of voice which matched the message her eyes had conveyed.

"Because I don't want us to be found like this," Archer whispered back. "I know damn well how it will look to anybody who stumbles on us."

"Aren't you afraid I'll double-cross you and scream anyway?" she murmured in his ear.

"You'll be sorry if you do," Archer warned her. But he knew that his heart wasn't in the threat.

"Ooh! What would you do to me?"

"If you scream, I damn well will rape you!"

"RA-"

Archer quickly covered her mouth again. "I think you want to be raped!" he said accusingly.

She wriggled her body insinuatingly against his and muttered something he couldn't understand.

"What?" He loosened his fingers over her mouth cautiously.

"I said I believe in being fatalistic like Confucius."

"Confucius?"

"Yes, Confucius say: 'If rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it.' " Llona's body was a hot torch writhing against him.

"But I told you. I don't want to rape you!"

"The evidence says otherwise." Her hand slipped up his thigh and closed on target to prove her point.

There was the sound of footsteps outside the closet. Archer held his hand over her mouth. She didn't try to scream, or even to talk. He was afraid to talk himself, frightened of being overheard. So they were both quiet now. But their bodies were communicating volumes.

In reaching down to remove her hand, Archer had been ambushed. Like some magnetic vise, her thighs had entrapped his hand, the muscles contracting to grasp it and hold it imprisoned in the hollow just beneath the juncture of her legs. Archer had opened his mouth to chance a whispered protest, but she had denied him the opportunity by filling it with as much of her quick-breathing left breast as could be stuffed between his lips. Her tongue in his ears affected him so that she had to loosen the fist she'd made in order to encompass its swelling prisoner.

Right about then Archer became a convert to Confucianism. His free hand closed over one of Llona's fiery buttocks and encouraged the rotary movement upon which both buttocks had embarked. His other hand felt the hot dampness of her passion and wriggled upward to investigate the source. His lips became active, and his tongue began to duel with the hard, long, erect nipple she'd inserted in his mouth.

Llona's fingers released their grip and searched upward until she found the belt encircling his waist. She undid the belt and pulled down the zipper of his pants. A moment later her fist re-encircled him directly, with no garments to hamper its rhythmic caress. Her lips fastened over his as her urgings caused him to pull away from her breast to meet them, and her mouth was a narrow well of honey goading him to deeper and deeper tongue-sips.

Using both hands now, Archer scrambled atop Llona, prying her thighs apart and investigating her eagerly quivering nether-well. Her legs stretched straight up in the air and the ankles locked around his neck. Her hands held them there as he plunged his sword full length into the scabbard of her passion.

They both moved unthinkingly then in a wild, savage, timeless rhythm that carried them beyond mere feeling to pure sensation. Higher and higher they traveled, pushing to the limits of their physical strength, beyond thought, beyond the world and the universe to Heaven itself. And they pulled down the pearly gates with a mutual explosion that splattered them with angel fluff and finally sent their weary bodies careening down to the Earth below, to the floor of the walk-in closet, to the postcoital reality which it would take them a full moment to grasp.

Llona recovered first. "Wow!" she exclaimed. In the dim light from the keyhole, her eyes were brimming over with the glory of the experience.

"Wow!" Archer agreed. Then a dim remembrance of something which had flitted across his consciousness while they were making love prompted him to phrase a question. "Why didn't you tell me you were a virgin?" he asked Llona.

"It seemed a futile sort of objection to make to a rapist. It wouldn't have stopped you, would it?"

"You mean it wouldn't have stopped you." Archer chuckled. "And it didn't."

"That's not very gallant. "You must be from the groom's side of the family," Llona decided.

"I am. Mortimer's my cousin."

"Who?"

"Mortimer. The groom."

"The bridegroom's name isn't Mortimer," Llona said positively. "It's George."

"George? But then I must be at the wrong wedding reception. Are you sure?"

"I should be," Llona assured him. "I'm the bride!"