Naked Came the Stranger (21 page)

"I don't understand you, lover."

"Well that's what I do, don't you see?"

"I'm afraid you're losing me."

"That's what I do. I write dirty books."

"You what!"

"I write dirty books! I mean, that's it. That's how I really make
a living."

Now it was Gillian's turn to drop to the bed. "You're putting me
on."

"No, no. Honestly. I really do."

"Son of a bitch!" This time it was Gillian. She shook her head.
She had the look of a woman whose bra had just been snapped open.
What a tonic, she thought.

Gillian had never met a professional pornographer before, and she
questioned Varth almost as if she were doing an interview. For his
part, Varth seemed genuinely relieved that somebody knew his secret.
For the first time in his life, he was telling a stranger about his
hidden life, and his voice filled with pride. "No one suspects," he
said. "No one. Not even that idiotic wife of mine. She really thinks
I'm an accountant, that I take care of all my work through the mails.
Actually, I haven't been an accountant for years. I don't keep books.
I write them."

Gilly sat close to him and nibbled his car. "An honest-
to-goodness pornographer," she said.

Ansel Varth shrugged with pride. "The best in the business," he
said.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," said Gillian. "Listen, you'll have
to autograph one of your books for me."

"Certainly," said Varth. "With my prick." Gillian laughed.
"Beautiful," she said.

"You're some piece of ass," Varth said, as he watched Gilly's
blouse come off.

"It must be fascinating work," Gillian said, slipping
unconsciously into her radio style. "I mean, where do you get all
your ideas?"

"Nature," said Varth. "From nature. Like any other writer, I draw
from the human condition."

"I should have guessed," Gilly said.

"My pen never runs dry," said Varth.

"I can imagine," said Gilly. "But what started you? I mean, what
was the catalyst?"

"An interesting question," said Varth. "I would have to say that
it was my wife."

"Your wife?" said Gillian, as she took off her skirt.

"Yes. See, when I first married Astrid, that's my wife, I was in
the Navy, and I used to bang the hell out of her when I was home on
leave. And when I first got out of the service, she still gave me all
I wanted. We even did it in a night club once, with her sitting on my
lap. You know, in rhythm to the music – as I remember, it was a
rhumba. Another time we did it in a rocking chair, and once we even
did it in a snowbank."

"Mmmm," said Gilly. "All I've ever done in the snow is ski."

"You didn't have the right poles," said Varth.

"But I still don't see how your wife inspired your career," said
Gilly.

"Oh, yes. Well, the thing was that, after a few years, she started
turning me off. I guess she never really liked it that much, if you
know what I mean. And when she did screw, she was like a cold clam.
It was like playing with myself. In fact, I did start playing with
myself, and that was better than Astrid. That's when I wrote my first
dirty poetry. It was a four-line poem that went: 'I don't care if I
go crazy/ long as I can beat my daisy/ four times eight is
thirty-two/ three more pulls and I'll be through."'

"That's got a nice rhythm," said Gilly.

"Yes," said Varth. "It's a beater's meter. But that still didn't
satisfy me. As a matter of fact, I never was really satisfied. The
thing is that even when I was banging Astrid all the time, I wasn't
necessarily enjoying it that much. Before Astrid, there were just a
Negro woman in Port-au-Prince who looked at me as if I were a fica,
and an old lady in a West Side hotel who had a breast missing. And I
guess you would have to count Mr. Bagadello, my home room teacher in
junior high school."

"Yes," said Gilly. "I think early sex experiences are especially
rewarding."

"It's amazing how you understand these things," said Varth. "Well,
to keep from drawing it out, I became bored with masturbation. And I
found that I had become quite shy in terms of personal contact. I was
all right on the telephone, but I never really did anything. Anyway,
I started writing stories for kicks. Then I got the idea of selling
them. I put ads in the right magazines, and began building up a
mailing list. One thing led to another, and I met Solly Madchen."

Gillian had hooked a hand under Varth's trouser cuff and was
caressing his left calf. My God, she thought, he wears garters. Then
the name brought her up short.

"Who?" she said.

"Solly Madchen."

"You mean the Solly Madchen?"

"That's him," said Varth.

"No kidding," said Gillian. "He's the pervert the police are
looking for."

"I know," said Varth. "But they'll never find him. Old Solly. What
a character! You know where he is? He's hiding out in a kibbutz in
Israel. No fooling. Old Solly bought his own kibbutz, and for all I
know he's back in business. He's probably trying to sell
cola-flavored hormones to the Arabs."

"I forget the whole case now," said Gilly. "Why was it the police
were after him?"

"It was the LSD thing," said Varth. "That was strictly Solly's
operation. He mixed LSD with Spanish Fly. We were netting close to
$10,000 a week on it, but I always told him there would be trouble.
That's dynamite. The thing blew apart when a woman in Corpus Christi
impaled herself on a fire hydrant, and a kid in upstate New York
mutilated himself in a milking machine. Luckily, the police only got
Solly's name."

Gilly was up now, removing her pants, and Varth's eyes fastened on
her golden triangle. "Now the business is all mine," he said. "I have
outlets in thirty cities. But I stick to books and movies. My first
book was called
The Captain's Wife.
It was a classic. The
captain is a sea captain who gives his wife a German shepherd pup
just before he leaves on a long voyage. By the time the pup is eight
months old, he is getting down on her. You can imagine what the pup
is doing to her when he's full grown. And then I wrote a book about a
wandering gypsy who travels around the countryside with six earrings
in his foreskin."

Gilly was on the bed now, stretched out, her naked body beginning
the motions that had become second nature to her.

"Another book I wrote," said Varth, "it was about this squirrel
monkey who had an enormous dick. This monkey's keeper used to take
him around to bridge clubs and charge the housewives for his
services."

"Shhh," said Gilly. "That's enough for now."

Varth slowly took his clothes off, folding each garment neatly on
a chair. Then he stood nude alongside the bed.

"Come on," said Gilly.

Ansel Varth, pornographer, never moved. Suddenly, he turned his
head away.

"Come on," Gilly said again.

Varth shivered. "I can't," he whispered. "I can't."

"You're Jack the Fucker and I'm Lady Asshole," she said.

"No," he said. "I'm Jack the Phony. I can't. Don't you understand?
I haven't had a woman since I stopped doing it with Astrid. All I do
is write books and make phone calls. I can't get it up any other
way."

Gilly made a brief visual examination. He was telling the truth.
The poor bastard was positively flaccid.

"Come to Gilly," she said reaching for it. Nothing.

"Poor Jack the Fucker," Gilly said.

"Oh God!" Varth yelled. He leaped away, ran to a dresser and
furiously started opening drawers.

"What's the matter?" Gilly cried.

"I'm looking for a pencil," he said. "Pencil and paper. I told
you, all I can do is write books."

"Look," Gillian said, holding out her nipples. "I got a pair of
big ones."

"I can't," Varth screamed. "I can't get the goddamn thing up!" He
was still looking through the drawers. Gilly tried to trigger him
with words. "Cunt!" she yelled.

"Pecker!"

"Dick!"

"Suck!"

Varth had found a pencil and was jabbing at the air with it.
"Paper!" he screamed. "Where's the hell's the paper?"

Just like that, the answer hit Gillian. "Ansel!" she shouted.
"There's a way."

"What?"

"I know how to do it."

"No. No. I can't get it up."

"You can, Ansel. You can. We'll act out a story." Varth looked at
her.

"Yes," she said. "We'll act out a story."

"How?"

"Well," Gillian was thinking fast. "Let's make believe that I'm a
lady chimpansee and you're a big horny camel."

Varth dropped his pencil.

"See," shouted Gilly. "I'm a chimpanzee." She scratched herself
under the arm and chattered. "See."

Varth saw. He leaned over and loped toward her as if he were
indeed a desert beast. "I'm a camel!" he shouted. "I'm a camel."

Gilly hopped around chattering.

"I'm getting it up!" Varth yelled. "I'm getting it up." Gilly
chattered faster.

"I'm a camel!" Varth screamed. "I'm a camel!"

"Hump me!" Gilly shrieked. "Hump me!"

Varth was on her, grunting, gasping, humping. They heaved together
on the white sheets faster and faster and harder and harder. Ansel
turned to thunder, and the surf broke warm and dark on Gilly's beach.
Again, it broke. And again.

Two hours later, Ansel Varth dropped off Gillian Blake at her
parked car near the King's Neck Post Office. He told her that he was
mad about her, that he couldn't wait to see her again, that she had
changed his whole life. He said that Gilly had given him fresh
inspiration. He was a real man. This time, he would surely write the
great American dirty novel.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he said.

"Sure," Gilly said. "Sure."

As he drove away, Varth affectionately made an obscene gesture at
Gilly. She laughed, and then she turned away from her car and walked
into the post office, where she slipped into a telephone booth.

"Hello," she said in a disguised falsetto voice after she had
reached her party. "Is this police headquarters? Fine. Are you still
looking for Solly Madchen's partner?"

Gilly: I'd have to agree with you, Billy. Fidelity
is the key to a successful marriage.

Billy: Yes, it may sound corny, but when I read about all these
wife-swapping clubs and such, I wonder what the world's coming
to.

Gilly: I know, and the ideas some of our young people have
about, well, sex. I mean, it's almost as if they advocate
promiscuity.

Billy: I suspect that there are more moral people around than
you think. It's just that the others get all the publicity.

Gilly: You may have something there. And I'II tell you
something else. The men who do philander, well they're the ones with
problems. I think they doubt their own virility.

Billy: My wife, the psychiatrist.

Gilly: No, really. Actually, I don't think there's anything
more attractive than a truly moral man.

The afternoon sun caressed his face, drawing its
golden fingers across his neck. In his mind, Melvin Corby was
bronzed, muscled, a man – God behind the wheel of a
Lotus-Climax at Le Mans. The Formula One motor throbbed and roared
with loin-tingling power as he dominated the turns, conquered the
straightaways. Women watched with excitement – the sun glinting
on their tanned shoulders and the down-curves of their full breasts.
Gillian Blake was in the front row, stretched forward on the tiptoes
of her nylon-clad legs; her bust and behind snugly sheathed in white,
her face eager, her pink tongue peeking out of her parted lips.
RRRRRR . RRRR. RRR. ROWR. ROWP. His power mower stalled, and the
daydream disappeared in a kaleidoscope of splintered images. Gillian,
he thought. Gillian. Gillian. Gil-li-an. Gilly. Oh, Gilly, Gilly,
Gilly. He was still excited as he got off the power mower and faced
the fact that he was out of gas. Melvin Corby paid a gardener to take
care of most of the landscaping, but running the ride-on mower was a
treat he reserved for himself. It was one of Melvin's special joys;
the power mower represented a pleasure he could revel in openly.
Sitting astride the mower, Melvin Corby – myopic, curly-haired,
thin-shouldered, soft-bellied – was somebody. The power mower
symbolized his material, if heavily mortgaged, achievement –
the front-to-back split-level home and the half-acre that went with
it. The house had cost $32,850 – about $6,000 more than it was
worth, but he was paying for the address. King's Neck. 69 Selma Lane,
King's Neck. The builder had named the street after a daughter;
probably, thought Melvin, in honor of her bathmitzvah. He wondered if
it bothered the goyim who dominated King's Neck that the builder was
a Jew.

It was some address, all right. King's Neck. It meant something.
Last winter Melvin and his wife, Myrna, had followed the sun to Miami
Beach. They had spent two weeks in that fabled land of papaya juice
and potato knishes. Well, it had been worth every cent they had spent
on the house to be able to say, "Yes, we live on the Island. King's
Neck." When you said King's Neck, people looked up. People paid
attention. They figured you were somebody. It didn't matter that
Melvin lived in the southern section of King's Neck, that his
property had once been part of a potato field, that there was a Negro
slum strip on the edge of town less than two miles away. It was still
King's Neck. An address like that, it was instant status. It was
something you did for your children. In his case, for your child.
David was only seven years old, and already he was going to a place
where they taught horseback riding. Imagine, his son riding a horse.
Only in America. My boy takes horseback-riding lessons.

It annoyed Melvin that his mother wasn't impressed by this.
"Fancy, schmancy," his mother had said during one of their phone
conversations. "Who needs it? Better he should get good marks." His
mother still lived in the four-room apartment in Brooklyn in which he
had grown up. Melvin was a good son; he called her every few weeks.
He had even offered to come and get her one weekend and bring her out
to see the house and David, but she had refused. "So what'll you tell
the fancy neighbors? My name is Corby, and this is my mother, Mrs.
Korbinsky?"