So Willing

Five

It was quite a tableau. There was Saralee Jenkins, flat upon her lovely back and reaching up with curving fingers for Vince. And there was Vince, naked as a jaybird, lowering himself to those waiting arms.

And there was Bradley Jenkins, standing in the doorway and staring at them both.

The next second just went on and on, while everybody stared at everybody else. And then that second was over, the next second had started, and everybody was in motion. Saralee gave a shriek and squirmed into a little ball, in a silly attempt to cover herself. Vince dove for his pants, on the chair beside the bed.

And Bradley Jenkins fell over in a faint.

That surprised Vince so much he missed the chair and went sailing into the wall. He clambered around, knocking things over, and when he got his balance and his footing back, he looked over at the door to be sure he’d seen right. Because he couldn’t possibly have seen right. The husband who catches his wife in bed with another guy can do any number of things, from gunning the two of them down on the spot, through beating the guy up, to racing for his lawyer. But the one thing he doesn’t do is faint.

But there was Bradley Jenkins on his face, passed out cold.

Vince thought fast. That was one thing he could do at least, he could think fast. And it was a good thing, because one thing he couldn’t do was stay out of trouble.

The thoughts went flashing through his mind as he pulled his pants on. Number one, the husband was unconscious. Number two, he’d seen Vince for only a second, while in a state of shock, and while looking primarily at his wife, so he probably wouldn’t even remember very clearly what Vince looked like. Not his face, anyway. Number three, if he moved fast enough he could get the hell out of here before the husband woke up again, and be out of town before Bradley Jenkins could figure out just what the hell was going on. Number four, Saralee knew his name, but she didn’t know where he was from. Nobody in town did, not even Mrs. Sharp.

Which meant, number five, that with a little bit of luck and a lot of speed, he could get away with nothing worse than a bad scare.

Pants, shirt and shoes went on, and the rest of his clothes got stuffed into pockets. Then he jumped over the unconscious hubby and headed for the door.

Saralee grabbed him by the elbow as he was going through the doorway, swinging him around and practically slamming his nose into the jamb. She’d been busy, too, and was wearing blouse and skirt and loafers. “Take me with you!” she cried, and her eyes were wide with desperation.

“But— but—” He tried to slow down long enough to figure out the question, and the answer to it. “Your husband,” he said.

“I’m through with him,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to get out of this town for years. Take me with you.”

“But— I’m only going home.” The thought of going back to the lake, walking in to his mother and father, pointing to Saralee and saying, “She followed me home, can I keep her?” was a very strange one indeed.

She came up against him like a vibrating pad, jabbing him with the controls. “You don’t have to go home,” she said, seductively. “You can go anywhere you want, with that car of yours. And you could take me with you. We could go to New York.” She vibrated some more. “We’d have a great time, Vince.”

“But — I don’t have any money. I don’t have enough money to go to New York.”

“Don’t you worry about money, Vince,” she said. She smiled and kissed him, and the vibrations got stronger and stronger. “Don’t you worry about a thing, baby.”

So there they were in Vince’s car, driving hell for leather out of town. Saralee Jenkins, shed of her husband, sat very close beside him on the front seat. Vince’s suitcase was in back, and so was Saralee’s hastily packed overnight bag, and so was Saralee’s bulging purse. The purse was stuffed with bills, ones and fives and tens and an occasional twenty, taken from hiding places all over the Jenkins house. “He didn’t think I knew where he hid all this stuff,” she’d said, grinning wickedly. “Brad underestimated me in every way, he did.”

And now they were heading southeast in Vince’s car, and Vince was having some second thoughts. Some very gloomy second thoughts.

What the hell is the use, he wondered, of being able to think fast in an emergency, if all of your thinking simply throws you pell-mell swell-hell into another emergency? No use, that’s what use.

Question: Is it better to be caught by a husband with that husband’s wife, or is it better to be caught by the police with the husband’s wife and the husband’s money? Don’t answer.

It had all seemed so easy at the time, so simple and clear. Vince wasn’t in any hurry to go back to Lake Lousy, and here was a chance for a trip to New York, all expenses paid, with a hot and willing female tossed in as an extra premium. Not an offer to pass up. That’s the way it had seemed at the time.

So now Vince drove southeast through the night, and every pair of headlights reflected in the rear-view mirror shouted COP and every pair of headlights that shone through the windshield shouted TROOPER and Vince was beginning to get very very nervous.

Not Saralee, though. She wasn’t worried at all. In fact, she was snuggling beside him and telling him all about her life in Brighton, and how she had happened to get tied up with a clunk like Bradley Jenkins.

“It seemed like such a good idea at the time,” she was saying. “Mom was always after me about security, about how I shouldn’t marry some randy bum who wouldn’t support me. I should find some nice steady guy. And Brad had had the hots for me from the time I was fourteen and just beginning to push out my sweaters. So when I found out I was pregnant, two summers ago, and I wasn’t sure who’d done it — and none of the possibilities would have made very good husbands — it seemed like a hell of a good idea to marry Brad. Security, you know, and a steady income, and a name for the kid.”

“I didn’t know you had a kid,” Vince said. More complications, he thought. I’m not only stealing a wife from her husband, I’m stealing a mother from her child.

But Saralee said, “I don’t.” She curled her lip. “That’s what made me so goddam mad,” she said. “I had a miscarriage two months after I got married. So I didn’t even have to marry the old jerk after all.”

“Oh,” Vince said. Well, that was a relief. Vince felt he was due for some relief.

Apparently, so did Saralee, for she suddenly said, “You know, we never did finish what we set out to do.”

“I know,” said Vince. At the moment, he wasn’t thinking about things like that. He was thinking that the more distance he put between himself and Brighton, the better off he was going to be.

“Boy, you know how to get a girl ready.” She rubbed herself against him, and nibbled on his earlobe a little.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m driving.”

“Well, stop driving,” she said, reasonably.

“I don’t know if we ought to take the chance.”

“Don’t be silly. Brad doesn’t know who you are, or what kind of car you’ve got, or where we’re going or anything.”

“Yeah, well—”

“You know,” she said, “I got dressed so fast back there I didn’t even have time to put on a bra or panties or anything. See?” She pulled her skirt up.

He saw. And he saw the light gleaming in her eyes, and he saw her hand reaching out for him, and he knew if he didn’t stop the car pretty soon he’d run it off the road and into a tree. “Hold on,” he said desperately. “Wait’ll I find a side road or something.”

“Hurry,” she whispered, and her hands were not a devil’s workshop.

Driving all over the road, Vince managed to turn left onto a side road, jounce off among the trees, stop the car and turn the engine off.

“I did so want to do it in a bed,” she sighed. “But it’s all right this way. It’s all right anyway, just so we do it.”

“I think I’ve got a blanket in the trunk,” he said, surprised to find himself out of breath, as though he’d been running. “That’ll be better than the backseat, anyway.”

“Hurry,” she whispered again.

He hurried. He clambered out of the car, opened the trunk and found the blanket. It was pretty dirty, but one side of it was clean. He spread it out on the ground beside the car, turned around, and she was naked again.

“Slowpoke,” she said, grinning, and wriggled.

“You spend half your life without any clothes on,” he said.

Vince, too, had dressed in too much of a hurry to be wearing much. So there wasn’t much to take off. And then he was lying on the blanket beside her, and all at once he wasn’t worried about anything any more. He was enjoying the sight of this woman, enjoying in advance what they were going to be doing together. “Now, let’s see,” he said, grinning at her. “Where were we?”

“You know damn well where we were,” she said. “Come on.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I was warming you up.”

“I was all warmed,” she said quickly. “I’m all warm now. Come on!”

“No, no,” he said, and his hand stroked her breasts. “Gotta be warmer.”

“Oh, don’t go through all that again, Vince. Come on!”

“In a minute.”

He forced himself to wait. While he stroked her and kissed her and squeezed her and fondled her, while she clawed at him and shrieked at him and pulsated for him, he forced himself to wait just as long as he could. He wanted her, he wanted her so bad that if Bradley Jenkins had shown up again, this time he would have kept right on going.

He stopped waiting. Vince thought this was surely it, they were going to kill themselves this way, the human body wasn’t meant for this sort of punishment.

And then they were punching each other, screaming and snarling, kicking and biting, hurting one another and loving to hurt, loving to be hurt, and there they were, doing it again.

When it was over for the second time, Vince was exhausted. He just lay pillowed on her flat stomach and her lush breasts, with her warm breath in his ear and her hands, gentle now, caressing his back.

He dozed for a while, and woke up to hear her whispering, “You’re getting heavy, Vince.” Then he rolled off her, and they lay quietly side by side for a while. He fumbled for his clothes, found his cigarettes, lit one for her and one for himself, and they smoked quietly, resting, nude on the blanket among the trees.

“I’m glad you came along, Vince,” she said finally. “I’ve wanted to get away from that stupid town for I don’t know how long. But I never had the guts to do it before.”

Vince didn’t answer her. He was thinking about the fact that he had to bring the car back to the lake in only four more days. He wondered if he should tell Saralee about that, or if he should just go along with the gag, and quietly disappear four days from now.

It wasn’t that he was worried about how she’d make out in New York after he left. A girl like Saralee, he knew there wasn’t a thing to worry about. She’d make out fine in New York.

So, there really wasn’t any need to tell her about anything. If he told her he was going to be leaving in four days, she would either try to talk him into staying, or she’d start looking early for somebody else to pal around with. If she tried to talk him into staying, using that body of hers as the main argument, she just might succeed, and then Vince would be in dutch with his old man. And if she started looking for somebody else the minute she got to New York, she’d find somebody else right away, and Vince would be out in the cold.

So he didn’t tell her anything. Instead, he sat up and said, “I suppose we ought to get going.”

“I suppose so,” she said. She sat up and looked at him. “I don’t suppose you could do it again,” she said.

“Not without eight hours sleep, three pounds of steak, five raw eggs and a quart of milk,” he told her. “And even then, I might not be in top form. You’re an awful lot of woman, Saralee.”

She smiled, murmuring, “Aren’t I, though?” She threw her arms around him and kissed him. “There,” she said. “To remember me by until you’ve got that sleep and steak and everything.”

“Yeah,” he said. He had the feeling it was going to be a hectic four days in New York.

This time they put on all their clothes. Then they climbed into the car, Vince backed it to the highway, and they set off again for New York.

She slept most of the trip, and Vince was just as pleased. He’d heard before of people with one-track minds, but this girl had a one-track body as well. When she was awake, there was only one thing she seemed to think of. She didn’t need a man, she needed a platoon. She’d do fine in New York, Saralee would. She’d do great.

New York City at six in the morning of an already hot summer day doesn’t look very much like Paradise. It looks and feels more like the other place. The streets are cluttered with papers and taxicabs and sweating human beings. The buildings are soot-darkened, the sky is a glaring white, the air is heavy with fumes and soot and humidity and the smell of eight million people.

Nevertheless, Vince was glad to see the George Washington bridge recede behind him. He’d been driving all night, after some pretty exhausting calisthenics, and he was ready for those eight hours sleep he’d been talking about. He prodded Saralee awake and said, “We’re here. Now what?”

“Now,” she said, “you park the car somewhere and we go find a hotel room.”

Easier said than done, Vince thought. There was no place in New York to park a car, except the parking garages, where you had to pay. He told her so, and she said, “That’s okay. I’ve got the money, remember?”

So they parked the car. Saralee did all the talking to the attendant at the garage, paying for a week’s parking. “We won’t need a car in New York,” she explained to Vince, and he nodded, beginning to feel a little dirty for keeping silent about having to leave in four days.

Then they went to find a hotel. There was a convention in town, Vince learned at the first place they went to, and all the midtown hotels were full. The desk clerk suggested he try some of the hotels up around Broadway in the West Seventies. Vince thanked him, and they grabbed a cab, which Saralee paid for.

They found a hotel, finally, at Broadway and 72nd. Saralee had her wedding ring on, and they both had suitcases, and they were signing in for a week, so there was no trouble. Vince hesitated over the register, not knowing what name to put down, and then remembered a cat his Aunt Edith had once owned. So he put the cat’s name down. “Mr. and Mrs. James Blue.” James Blue was a pretty phony-sounding name, but the hell with it. The desk clerk didn’t say anything, and the bellhop took their bags just as though they really were Mister and Mrs. James Blue from Philadelphia.

Up in the room, Vince dragged out a quarter for the bellhop. As soon as the door closed behind the bellhop, Saralee cried, “A bed!”

Eight hours sleep,” Vince reminded her. “I’ve been driving all night.”

“Oh, don’t say things like that,” she squealed. “It gives me goose flesh.”

Vince blinked. “Say things like what?”

“That you’ve been driving all night. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Great,” said Vince. He was beginning to suspect that Saralee Jenkins was nuts.

He managed to get undressed and crawl into the clean-sheeted double bed without anything worse from Saralee than dangerous looks. Then he said, “Wake me when I wake up,” and closed his eyes.

“I’m all rested,” she said. “I slept in the car. So I guess I’ll go shopping.”

“You do that,” he said, and fell asleep at once. He didn’t even hear her leave the room.

When he woke up it was twilight, and the clock on the table beside the bed said seven-thirty. He’d been racked out for more than twelve hours.

Saralee wasn’t there. For an awful second, Vince was afraid she’d found somebody else already, somebody who could supply his own money and who maybe didn’t need as much sleep as Vince did. Maybe she’d found that platoon.

Then he saw the note beside the clock. He picked it up and read it. It was from Saralee, and it said she was starved. He was surprised to find she hungered for other things beside sex. Anyway, it went on to say that she had gone out for something to eat, and would be back around eight o’clock.

The mention of food reminded him that he, too, was starved. It was time for that steak.

He got up, dressed, and left a note for Saralee on the back of her note. “Can’t wait,” the note read. “I’m hungry enough to eat the furniture. I’ll be back in about an hour.” He propped the note up against the clock, and turned to leave.

Then he noticed all the packages on the chairs. Saralee had said she was going shopping, and it looked as though she’d been good to her word. Vince took a second to look in the packages, saw skirts and blouses and stockings and underwear and shoes. The kid had really gone wild with her stolen loot.

Stolen loot. Better not think about that. Better to think about food.

Vince took the elevator down, then wandered around Broadway for a while, finally stopping in at a luncheonette and having a too-dry hamburger and a too-bitter cup of coffee. Then it was time to go back to the hotel room.

But he didn’t feel like it, not just yet. He knew Saralee would be there now, and he knew she would be hungry again, and this time not for food. And he didn’t feel quite ready for another fast round with Saralee. He wasn’t up to it yet, that’s all there was to it.

So he wandered around some more. He strolled down West 69th Street to Columbus Avenue, headed up Columbus, and stopped in at the first bar he saw. He ordered a beer, and the bartender didn’t give him any trouble about his age, which was a relief. He sat and sipped at his beer and tried not to think things over. That wasn’t too difficult, since his stomach was acting up a bit. As soon as he put some beer down, the stomach let him know there hadn’t been enough food put in yet. The old hunger pains were coming back. So he’d just finish this one beer, find someplace better than the greasy spoon where he’d had the hamburger and coffee, and this time really have a meal.

It was a goofy introduction to New York. A lousy hamburger, and living on Saralee Jenkins’ money. No, not Saralee Jenkins’ money. Saralee Jenkins’ husband’s money.

That thought was enough to drive Vince from the bar.

Vince went back to Broadway, and this time found a halfway decent restaurant, where he had his steak, blood rare, and a side order of poached eggs, and a couple glasses of milk. He finished it all off with two beers. He’d had some idea of filling himself with protein, so he could go back and at least have an even chance in the coming battle with Saralee, but instead he ate too much and wound up logey and stuffed and half-asleep. So he had to go out and walk around some more, and smoke lots of cigarettes until he felt like braving the hotel.

Saralee was coming out the door of the hotel just as he was going in. They both stopped on the sidewalk, and she said, “Where’ve you been? I’ve been going frantic. I was just going looking for you.”

“I was pretty hungry,” he said. “I’ve spent all this time eating.”

“It’s nine o’clock, Vince,” she said.

“I was pretty hungry,” he repeated.

“Well,” she said, twining her arm with his and leading him back inside the hotel, “you’re here now, at any rate.” She pressed her hip against him as they walked. “And you know what we’ve got upstairs, don’t you?”

“No,” he said. “What?”

“A real bed,” she whispered.

He took a deep breath. Saralee had told him, that first time they’d been together, that once a night with a normal guy was enough for her. But apparently she’d been wrong. No wonder Bradley Jenkins hadn’t been able to keep her at home. Vince was beginning to doubt that anybody could keep Saralee Jenkins at home.

A stray ironic thought hit him. He’d started all this looking for a virgin. Instead, he’d found a nymphomaniac. How far a miss could you make?

Saralee wasn’t a miss, but he could make her. He winced at that pun, and allowed Saralee to lead him into the self-service elevator.

She was a busy little girl in the elevator, all over him like a heavy fog, and when the elevator stopped at their floor, he had to readjust himself before he could step out to the hall.

The interlude in the elevator washed away all his apprehensions. As they headed down the hall for their own room, he was almost as eager as she was. It was impossible to be as eager as she.

They got into the room, and she pirouetted in delight. “A bed!” she cried, and started pulling off clothes.

Vince joined her in the disrobing act, and then he joined her in bed. “This time,” she told him fiercely, “no warm-up. I’m ready to go right now. So you just come here.”

“Right you are,” he said.

Once was never enough for Saralee, that’s all there was to it. It had to be twice.

It was eleven o’clock before she fell asleep. Vince lay there awake a little while longer, thinking about things. He had a feeling he was going to enjoy the hell out of these four days.

But he also had the feeling that he’d be ready for a vacation by the time they were through.