The Insiders (13 page)

"Goddam you, David! Where have you been?"

"Busy, sweetheart. At the office. I just got through. Still want to see me?"

There was a silence at the other end of the line, and then: "I wish I didn't." He heard the small sigh that escaped her. "Oh, David! Why couldn't you have called?"

"Stop making wifely noises, Eve. I didn't call because I kept thinking I'd be finished early. And then, when I noticed what time it was, I couldn't believe it. Can I come over?"

"I—oh, I guess so! Marti's in bed, so don't ring. I'll leave the door unlocked. David, will you be spending the night?"

It had been a long time since they had spent a night together. Why not, he thought. She usually had to be up early, and that would give him time to get back to his apartment before the traffic got too heavy.

"Okay, baby. Look, I'd better hang up now, so I can be on my way. Wait for me."

"Don't I always?"

Was there a trace of bitterness in her tone?

Marti heard David come in, and knew who it was. She wondered why Eve put up with the kind of treatment he had been giving her recently. She
loved
him, Eve said. But was a love that made you crawl and beg for crumbs, forgetting all pride, all reason, really worth it?

Not for me, I'm stronger than that, Marti vowed to herself, turning restlessly in bed, The drinks she had had earlier had given her a headache, but she couldn't be bothered getting up and going to the bathroom for water and aspirin.

The drinking had to stop. Pat, from the agency, had as much as told her that outright. She guessed they'd heard rumors. Who hadn't? She hadn't tried to hide her feelings for Stella from anyone, nor her reactions to Stella's gradual withdrawal, her betrayal. What the hell, Marti thought, there are other women in the world. No use crying over what was already, in effect, lost to her. Why should she have to be content with being Stella's hidden, backstairs lover?

Suddenly, Marti thought of an offer that one of the photographers she had posed for a few times had made her. Movies. The underground kind. There was a great demand these days for slim, beautiful women—the public was tired of the obvious whores, the usually over-plump and
older
women who played in the skin flicks. Since
Deep Throat
and
Behind the Green Door,
the business had gone almost respectable.

She didn't have to be much of an actress, he'd told her persuasively; they had a really great young director lined up, a guy who was destined to go places. And these movies his company was going to make would be a cut above the usual run-of-the-mill pornography.

"We're going to show them that fucking is fun—and something of an art. Baby, we already got distributorships lined up all over the country, and in Europe, too. Art movies, these will be. Sophisticated porn, aimed at the more educated and discriminating section of the public."

To shut him up, Marti had told him in the end that she'd think about it, let him know. Now, lying sleepless in her bed, Marti thought about it some more. Knowing what she was, what she liked, he had told her about the other girls he had recruited. Young and lovely and eager to learn. Many of them aspiring starlets. There was much demand for lesbian films these days, as well as the S and M variety. Marti could practically have her pick. Of course, it would mean moving to Los Angeles eventually, and she didn't care for the climate there or the constant rushing. But what the hell? She'd think about it. That couldn't hurt, just thinking about it. It was a damn sight better than lying here thinking about Stella and wondering what she was doing. With George. Lucky George!

"Well, at least I'm not going to sit around feeling sorry for myself—just waiting around in case she calls. No more crying jags, and no more booze. I managed okay before Stella, and I'll manage now. My way. Me for me, just like the old days. It's the only way to survive, and Eve had better learn that, too."

Eve had begun to feel
, tentatively, as if she could at least start
thinking
about being happy again. It was a feeling something like being able to release her breath after holding it for a long time. She had started to be afraid that she was becoming hooked on talking into Peter's little tape recorder, just for the sake of trying to sort out her feelings; but now, suddenly, she'd begun to feel as if there might be a chance for her to make it with David.

Since he had spent the night with her a couple of weeks before, he'd been more like the David she remembered—more attentive toward her, more spontaneously affectionate. She didn't know why, and she didn't dare ask. Whatever had caused the change, David was being much nicer to her these days. They had talked for hours that night he'd stayed over at her apartment, and he'd confided in her how concerned he was about Lisa, his little sister. Lisa really missed Eve's frequent visits and asked for her often, he said. And he had added:

"We ought to do more together than just screw, angel. I want you for my friend again."

David knew just the right words with which to get under her carefully constructed defenses! That night she had been prepared to have it out with him, to demand

to know, once and for all, if there was another woman he was seeing. But he'd disarmed her—as usual. The thing about David was that he always seemed so damned
sincere.
And then there was the way he concentrated on her in bed, giving her endless, limitless pleasure. When they were in bed together, it was as if no other woman existed for him. She always forgot her jealousy and her insecurity and loved him all over again then.

David started to take her down to see the family more often. He couldn't spend too much time with the kids as it was; mostly he went down over a weekend, and occasionally on a weeknight. The two younger children, particularly Lisa, needed adult supervision—more concerned,
loving
adult supervision. Mrs. Lambert, the housekeeper, seemed a motherly kind of woman and fond enough of the children, but Eve still felt her own instinctive mistrust of Francie that had been there from the beginning, when she first encountered the girl's cold, too-knowing eyes.

She felt that Francie, these days, seemed really quiet —almost withdrawn. Usually she'd try to show Eve in some sly, secret way that she only had David on loan, so to speak. But recently Francie spent more time in her room—studying, she said—than she did downstairs. It was almost as if she were staying out of their way—out of
David's
way. Eve couldn't figure it out. But she didn't try too hard, because of Lisa, whom she really loved and enjoyed cuddling, and David, who acted happy and satisfied in her company again. She guessed that she should be relieved that Francie was behaving, for a change. Maybe she was actually growing up?

Francie's studied avoidance of her big brother was really due to her new, secret status. She was Brant Newcomb's latest plaything—the current kick he offered his friends at the parties he was always throwing when he was in town.

Since Brant had discovered her secret weakness, Francie found herself obsessed—both with him and with her own body and the sensations he could evoke in it. There was nothing at all that he could not make her do and enjoy doing; and, after a while, almost nothing that she had not done.

She was leading a double life, Francie would think with smug satisfaction. Still a high-school senior and, on the surface, a normal teenager. But her other, hidden self attended all of Brant Newcomb's wild "partouzes" and those of his jet-set friends. She was the far-out chick they all wanted, who'd do anything for kicks.

Two months after she had first met Brant, everything had become old—even turning on. One wild night, she'd even tried acid after everyone had gone and Brant, who had forgotten about her, had discovered her tied spreadeagled on the bed in the game room.

"Jesus God, why didn't you yell?" he asked her, half-amused and half-annoyed that she was still there. And then, as he looked down at her, he'd begun to laugh.

"You dumb little cunt! But okay, baby, since you're here and I'm really not that sleepy, want to trip on acid? They tell me you shouldn't use it alone. Want to see if it does anything for either of us? The last time for me"— she saw his frown—"I didn't really remember too much."

As he untied her, he spoke to her like a real person, a human being, and she loved it—most of the time he either ignored her or treated her like some strange kind of insect he'd discovered.

Brant turned on some outlandish, weird-sounding music he said was Indian, and then he turned
her
on.

Francie never forgot her first acid trip. It was the most beautiful experience of her fife up until then, she thought, and it was made even more beautiful because Brant was sharing it with her. They lay holding each other close on the big bed and watched the night and the music unfold in shapes and colors around them; and then they made love, and it seemed to go on endlessly in slow motion.

Francie often wished that he'd do it with her again, but he never did; he'd brush off her suggestion with a shrug or a laugh. She couldn't understand Brant—she spent whole nights thinking about him and wondering how she could possess him the way he possessed her. She had to become important to him—she just had to! And so she took enormous risks just to be with him and his friends, slipping out of the house at all hours and sometimes returning at dawn. She knew that Mrs. Lambert knew whenever she sneaked out, but neither of them ever spoke about it. Mrs. Lambert drank a lot, and she needed the job badly; she knew she'd better not snitch on Francie or she'd be out on her ear!

Because she was wild and freaky and would do anything at all, Brant had started having Francie on tap at all of his parties. She provided a new and kicky type of entertainment for the jaded appetites of his guests, and some of the movies she let them make of her and various other members of the crowd were much in demand, as was Francie herself. Some of them were almost in awe of her capacity for punishment, even some of the experienced call girls who were also regular "guests." She was still so young, and yet more perverse than any of them. Francie was a sadist's dream come true—the perfect masochist. She would let anyone do anything to her.

At various times she had been whipped and ravished in every conceivable fashion—tied down, stretched out, or suspended by her arms; exhibited naked and open, to be used by anyone who wanted her. Nothing was too wild or far out for Francie.

She told herself that she did it all for Brant, to prove to him that she loved him. Just like the girl in that book,
The Story of O.
She was his slave, his plaything, and she would give herself and abandon herself just as slavishly to anyone he "gave" her to.

But after the first few times, when he used her as regularly as any of the others, the only attention he paid to her was to have her fitted with an IUD. She told herself that he was testing her to make sure she could take his kind of fife; she wanted him to know she could take anything
his
woman would have to take.

Once, Brant had to stop a group of fast-rising young rock musicians from literally screwing her to death between them. But Francie herself had not protested against anything they'd done to her. When Brant asked her, his voice hard and old, why she hadn't tried to stop them, or at least called for help, she'd whimpered, "But you told them they could have me, that I'd do anything they wanted me to."

"Oh, shit! Sometimes I wonder about you! You have to be sick to let them go that far and not try to stop them. Damn it, they could have killed you!"

Nevertheless, in spite of his disgusted manner, he'd called up one of his doctor friends, who'd come around and given her some shots that made her feel better and stopped the bleeding. And afterward, Brant had taken her home himself, letting her rest her head against his shoulder as he drove.

After that particular incident, however, Brant didn't call her for quite a while, and when she'd call him, he'd tell her, in that bored, aloof voice, that he felt she ought to get herself quite healed up inside.

"But Brant, I am, I promise I am!" Francie insisted, almost crying with frustration. She glared at the phone in her hand. "Brant, please, I'm so horny I can hardly stand it! Let me come—I'll be good, and I'll be more careful, I promise!"

This was a Friday, and he usually gave a party when he was in town Friday night. Why couldn't he let her come?

"I'll think about it, baby. You can call me again this evening. And in the meantime, if you're that horny, why don't you use that vibrator I gave you?"

She heard the click in her ear as he hung up and slammed the phone back into its cradle. Goddam Brant Newcomb to hell!

Like a caged animal, Francie paced around her room. On her bulletin board, right next to her Mick Jagger blowup, she'd pinned a small picture of Brant, cut out from a magazine. She wanted to tear it to bits, but she stopped herself—it was the only picture she had of him, after all. And something told her she'd be going to more parties—he'd have to see her, he was going to need her, miss her!

Oh, shit! Was there time to call up one of the guys she sometimes screwed around with in school? Probably not—they were usually out with their straight girl friends until late in the evening, especially on a Friday. And—the sudden thought stopped her as she reached out for the telephone—Dave might be coming down this evening, just to check up. He sometimes did, when he planned to stay away the rest of the weekend. He'd blow down early Friday afternoon and return to the city after supper. Oh, godammit, she wished he wouldn't come. He'd probably have that dumb Eve with him, unless they had been fighting again. Thinking of Eve and David reminded her of fucking. They must do a lot of it, she figured. And with no one to interfere. Well, Dave was a damn nice-looking guy, even if he was her brother. He had quite a body, too—one of her girl friends had said once she'd sure like to get screwed by him because he'd probably know what he was doing. She bet he did, too.

A slow smile started to spread over her face, making her look suddenly much older and wiser. That was a thought.
Dave!
Big brother David. Why not? She'd learned from being with the fast crowd that nothing but nothing was forbidden, not even a brother and sister making it. Or a father and daughter, for that matter. They did it all the time, those laughing, glittering people she'd met. Didn't think anything of it.

Wow, Francie thought, starting very slowly to take her clothes off. What a kicky trip that would be—to see if she could seduce Dave. Maybe he wasn't as uptight as he pretended to be.

And in the meantime, since she
was
horny, she might as well get out her vibrator and watch herself in front of the mirror while she used it....