The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (7 page)

“Does it make any difference?”

“I don’t think so.”

She reached for my hand and pressed it to her cheek and we remained like that for a while, staring and not saying anything.

Peter stood up, realizing that he’d lost Vy’s attention. “Have you seen Johanna, old man?”

“She’s in the living room.”

“Oh, God. I’d better go rescue her. She’ll be getting drunk, and then she’s impossible to deal with.”

“Poor Peter. He can’t handle that woman at any time. He’s an old teddy bear.”

“I want to make love to you.”

“I would like that very much.”

She stood up and I pulled her into my arms, pressing her long body into mine so that I could feel her knees and pelvic bones and breasts. She shuddered, and I felt it go down her body.

“If Charles and Mora saw us right now, I don’t think they’d understand,” she whispered in my ear.

I knew what she meant – that fucking was all right, but a long embrace was a sign that something serious was going on.

“Can’t leave you two alone for a minute,” Charles said, from behind us. Mora was with him and they were both naked. A streak of semen glistened on Mora’s left thigh and
her hair was matted. Her eyes looked like she’d been on a long trip.

“Enjoying yourself, lover?” Vy asked, stepping away from me.

“It’s like a geriatrics convention here. Mora and I are ready to play, and everyone is sitting around talking about relationships and the etiquette of a good swing. Can you
imagine?”

I kissed Mora and she snuggled into my chest.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m throbbing from my toes up. I could go on all night, but Charles is right – there’s nobody left to party with.”

“We could always go to Plato’s.”

Charles and Vy didn’t like the idea. I wasn’t crazy about it, myself, but I wanted more time with Vy. I knew that Charles was getting restless and, if he went home, Vy would go with
him.

“If you feel like being adventuresome,” Vy suggested, “there’s a new place called Night Moves we could try. Maurice told me about it.”

“I’m game,” Charles said, “as long as it’s not the same
old
faces.”

“It’s on-premise, like Plato’s. Very hip, Maurice said.”

“How do we get there?” Mora asked. “It’s too late for a bus.”

“We’ll grab a cab, or maybe we can find a ride,” Vy said.

“Let’s do it,” I agreed.

“Who has a car?”

“I have an idea,” Vy volunteered. “I’ll talk to Peter.”

We all groaned in unison. Not Peter.

“Have faith, children. Don’t forget that I carry special powers in my bag. Let me deal with this.”

Charles and Mora dressed while Vy went off to talk with Peter. Ten minutes later, she came to get the three of us and she had her coat on. Obviously she had conquered.

“Johanna is going to drive us in Peter’s Cadillac. He’ll get a ride with someone.”

“How did you manage that?”

“He wants a private session with me. And Johanna wants to party. She’s weird, and she’s getting drunk, but I approve of her nuttiness.”

“Just a bunch of old farts,” Johanna said when we left, jingling the keys of the Cadillac in her hand. When Peter had tried to kiss her goodbye she’d turned
her head so that he was presented with her ear.

Mora and I sat in the front seat with her. We had to hang on to each other when she took the corners, but she was a good driver. She steered the big beast with one hand, swinging wide around
taxis and surprised pedestrians. She glided over the dark slick streets, wet with the melting snow, like a skate on ice.

Night Moves was discreetly planted in the middle of a block of factory buildings and warehouses. Noisy with hand carts, trucks and honking traffic during the day, at midnight
it was a closed drawer. The only signs of life on the empty street were the colored lights of the firehouse across from the club. I could see firemen inside polishing a giant red engine.

The light snow had stopped and a thin layer of white slush covered the sidewalks. Vy strode regally in front, head back, heels tapping impatiently.

“Pinch me,” Mora said when we stopped at the glass front of the club to wait for Johanna to park her car. The sign said
NIGHT MOVES
, but otherwise it looked
like the wholesale soda and beer distributor next door, blank and black and anonymous.

I knew what Mora meant, so I kissed her instead.

“Yes, it’s true. We’re doing
this
again.”

“Just like we know what the hell we’re doing.”

“Well, at least we all share the same fantasy. We have that in common.” I was excited but apprehensive.

The five of us were a crowd in the pocket-sized reception area. There was a cigarette machine, a pay phone, a few hand-lettered posters too small to read in the dark (one announced a wet T-shirt
contest), and – standing behind a counter next to the curtained entrance – a thin young black man with tack-sharp smartass eyes. He recognized Vy and made a small fuss over her while he
checked our coats.

“And I thought this was going to be a slow night,” he drawled, looking Mora and Johanna over.

Just as Charles and I were digging in our wallets for the twenty-dollar membership fee a sign on the counter asked for, a man who was obviously in charge stepped from behind the curtain and
waved us in. Vy introduced him as Bob, the manager. He wore a thick mustache and a three piece suit.

“I’m president of this lady’s fan club,” he told us proudly, taking her hand and pressing it to his heart.

Inside, we stood around chatting for a while, blinking in the darkness. Clever track lighting and plenty of candles illuminated an intimate stage set. To our right, a gleaming oak bar was tended
by female bartenders in T-shirts and satin shorts. Across from it and on a higher level was a carpeted lounge that led to a small mirrored disco floor. A young, lively-looking crowd filled the
moulded plastic booths.

I saw two Lacoste shirts, I swear it. The men who wore them had long blow-dried blond hair and they glowed with sun and good health. Tourists. Sitting with them were two of the most
luscious-looking college girls I’d ever had the pleasure of ogling from afar.

I nudged Charles, to point them out, but he was focused on Johanna. He couldn’t take his eyes off the way she wiggled her behind on the bar stool, alternately flirting and scowling and
sipping scotch. Vy and Mora stood on the other side of her at the end of the bar, foreheads pressed together as they compared notes on the people they saw.

“She’s a heartbreaker,” he sighed.

“She’s drunk, too. But look over there – it’s the flesh God promised us. In our adolescent fantasies.”

He studied them skeptically.

“I grant you that they are flowers of young American womanhood, but they’re also tourists. They’ll sit and watch and look decorative and, after they’ve gotten excited,
they’ll go home with the guys they came with. Mark my words – they won’t even leave a trail of smoke behind them.”

“I’m going to talk to them a little later.”

“God bless. They’ll write in their diaries about you.”

We were in the way of incoming traffic. A dozen attractive couples passed the bar, conscious of being on display. There was a lot of eye contact and body movement, but I didn’t see anybody
as good-looking as the college girls. I sipped my drink and thought about them, trying out and discarding various introductory lines in my mind, telling myself to be bold, that I had nothing to
lose and everything to gain by approaching one of them.

A man who was probably telling himself the same thing walked up to Vy and Mora and got brushed off, but he didn’t even pause to acknowledge defeat before moving on to Johanna, who
practically jumped into his arms. As he led her off towards the back room, she turned and winked at Charles.

“Perfidious bitch,” Charles muttered after her.

“Let’s go talk to Mora and Vy. We’ll all go into the back room.”

But they wanted to dance.

We moved onto the dance floor, and let a Rod Stewart song lead us around the polyurethaned oak floorboards beneath the silk parachute canopy. The floor-to-ceiling mirrors multiplied our images
as we shook our bodies and whirled about.

Dancing loosened me up. When the music stopped, I sat on a carpeted step, aware that the college girls were right above me. I wasn’t surprised when Mora danced Charles off the floor and
through the curtains into the back room.

Vy joined me on the step, sitting with her elbows on her knees.

“I’m tired. Maybe it’s just jet-lag, but I can’t boogie the way I used to.”

“Dancing is a warm-up exercise for the real thing.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and she looked down at my hand for a long moment before covering my fingers with hers.

“And how do you like Night Moves?”

“It’s not a circus, like Plato’s. It’s just the right size.”

“This is the first time I’ve dared to bring Charles here. He’s been funny since I got back, anyway.”

“Funny?”

“Different. He didn’t want me to go to England – almost as if he’s jealous and can’t talk about it. I think he wants to punish me, but he doesn’t know how to
go about it.”

I thought about her relationship with Maurice, her reputation as a dominatrix, and said something I immediately regretted.

“You could teach him about punishment, couldn’t you?”

She was stung. “Don’t be a son-of-a-bitch, Richard.”

“I can’t help thinking about that bag of yours. And Maurice.”

She pushed my arm from her shoulder and stood up. Her eyes were cold. “I thought . . . Well, never mind what I thought. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. Not even you,
Richard.”

Before I could say anything – and if I could have grabbed my words from her ears and crushed them underfoot, I would have – she squared her shoulders and strode across the dance
floor, straight into the back room.

I sighed and stood up, just as one of the college girls passed me, trailed by the blandly smiling Lacoste shirts. The three of them started to jiggle and strut and I decided, what the hell, and
approached the remaining college girl. I bent over to whisper in her pink, shell-like ear, blowing aside wisps of soft gold hair.

“I like the way you look. You are so special, it takes my breath away. I would love to . . .”

I have to give her credit for a classy brush-off. Without looking up, she shook her head slightly and said, “It’s not me you’re looking for.”

I was surprised – and relieved – to find Charles back at the bar. His expression was cloudy. Disappointed.

“I didn’t expect to find you here,” I said, ordering another glass of wine.

“I’m surprised myself. Mora’s hard to hold on to.”

“So what happened?” As if I couldn’t guess.

“The manager, Bob. He saw her and came over to collect on the entrance fee. She went off without a whimper.”

“She’s a woman with a strong sense of duty.” We drank to her.

“I ran into Johanna – actually it was more of a tripping motion – and stopped to say hello.”

“Had she changed her mind about you?”

“She hissed at me like a wet cat.”

“Maybe she’s serious.”

“You know I’m persistent, Richard. I can’t help myself for trying, but I go ahead and try. Know what I said to her? ‘You look best on your knees, giving head.’
”

“The direct approach. I see.”

He looked around. “I don’t see the college girls.”

“It wasn’t me they were looking for,” I admitted.

“Lord, what makes women so contrary? So . . . ungrateful for our efforts, so closed of heart.”

We might have sung the Chasing Male Blues right there, in the middle of a sexual game park, but Mora interrupted in time to remind us of our opportunities. She slid in between us.

“Why are you sitting out here?”

“Just taking a break, you know.”

“Well, there are a lot of women in the back.”

“What’s Vy up to?” Charles asked. “It must be like old Home Week.”

“Last time I saw her, she was talking to Johanna.”

Charles did a quick double-take at the news. I watched his mind turning over the possibilities, like a hungry raccoon turning stones over in a creekbed. When his curiosity was tickled, he
rumpled his hair from back to front, raising a crest above his forehead. His eyes turned heavenward for a sign.

“I wonder what
that’s
all about . . .”

“Well, let’s go find out,” Mora said, taking our arms as if we were brothers out courting the same young maid, and pointing us to the back room.

Stepping into the back room at Night Moves was like walking into the Arabian Nights. The plush sprawling orgy room seemed fur-lined. We walked across mattresses and around huge
pillows on which people lay in every position making love, inhaling the mixed odors of warm flesh, marijuana and tobacco smoke, amyl nitrate and perspiration, perfume and incense. Above the low,
throbbing music rose the sounds of orgasm and of bodies moving together in the dark; the whispered, urgent imprecations of those close to the edge, and the quick, breath-snatching sobs of those
who’d gone over it.

I remembered what Mora had said about a secret society of people who liked to make love as much as she did, and I wasn’t surprised when a black hand reached out to circle her ankle. The
kid with the smartass eyes who worked the door showed white teeth. Mora smiled, shrugged helplessly at us –
noblesse oblige
– and allowed herself to be pulled down into the
darkness next to him.

We found Vy at the center of a circle of naked onlookers. She was kneeling beside Johanna, who lay on her side, also naked, her wrists tied behind her with a black silk scarf. There were beads
of perspiration on her upper lip and between her heaving breasts, and her pupils were dilated.

“I’m not going to . . .” she sputtered, but Vy put her hand over her mouth, and she stopped.

“There you are, dear. And Richard, too. Johanna has been asking for you. I warned her that you might be busy.”

Johanna shot Charles the fierce look of a victim who is determined that the sacrifice will be conducted according to her own fantasies.