Making Love (21 page)

“I'll pick them up, unless you're rackin' out early.”
 

“No, I'll be up till usual.”
 

“Solid.”
 

The girl stared over Sonny's shoulder at Jane, which made her feel uncomfortable and somehow unnecessary. She stepped back toward the elevator, but Sonny held on to her arm.
 

“This is Jane, a friend of mine, Gloria,” Sonny said.
 

“Well, yeah, if you say so.”
 

“Hey, Gloria, she's a friend. Come on now, cut it out. Listen, I almost forgot, if you or Joan goes up, there's a load of Chinese food in the oven, so just help yourself if you don't want to go out.”
 

“You want me to do the dishes, too?”
 

“No,
I
did them,” Jane said curtly.
 

“Good for you. He needs all the help he can get.” She closed the door and Sonny blinked, unexpectedly hurt.
 

On the drive downtown—he was now in control of the Mini and had used it all week—Jane made no attempt to question him.
 

“Funny,” he finally said. “I don't know what the hell's got into Gloria.”
 

“She likes you.”
 

“Don't be crazy. We're friends.”
 

“I'll bet she's not looking for a job as a screen painter.”
 

“They're business girls.” He turned to her and realized that she didn't quite catch the meaning. “I told you last week. She's a hooker.”
 

“And it's one big happy family.”
 

“And they do your baby-sitting and cleaning in return?”
 

“Sort of. Now Jane, don't be a creep. We do each other little favors. Sometimes they get a guy in there who wants to roughhouse, and I come down and make peace.”
 

“We ain't got a contract. Just friendly.”
 

“Do you still sleep with her?”
 

“I don't think you got a right to ask me a question like that. Suddenly my life's taken over and I got to give explanations.” He pulled over to the curb, cut the engine and gripped her head tightly between his palms. When she tried to wrench away, he gripped harder.
 

“That hurts, Sonny.”
 

“It's meant to, I got your pressure points. Now shit, listen. When Gloria and Joan moved in, like two years ago, yeah, I made it with them, and it wasn't anything important. Just happened. And afterwards we all got to be friends. They're nice people. They want to fuck for a living, it's their business, and I don't put them down for it. I throw noisy troublemakers out of the bar. That's
my
living. Understand, Jane, now stop the horseshit.”
 

She turned her face away from him and peered up at a group of tired faces on a Greyhound bus which had halted for a light. The Mini was causing a moment of animated discussion and several children began rapping on the window to get her attention.
 

“Jane, I love you, no shit. But I don't want you to become a warden.”
 

“Let's go home.”
 

The doorman told her that a man had been waiting around all day to see her, and had offered him five dollars to gain access to her apartment.
 

“Who could it be?” Sonny asked.
 

“No idea.”
 

She had a vision of Luckmunn, the corrupter of doormen, sniffing around. She'd mentioned her address in front of him. He was the sort of man who had a nose for the waning fortunes, the bad times of others, and quick as a mole he'd burrow in. She knew he was tenacious and obviously strong. He'd taken everything she could give without flinching, suppressing his natural instincts to strike back. She didn't underestimate him. In a fight he'd eat a dozen like her father. In fact his strength, ill-concealed because he was vain, worried her. If he'd been unscrupulous enough to take Nancy as a mistress, then drop her when it suited him, what might he try on her? He had the gall to go back for his clothes. Unbelievable. She'd been tempted to confront him with her knowledge, but it would be purposeless, merely self-serving. He'd simply laugh in her face, list a bill of complaints against Nancy which would have the awful merit of truth. She'd find herself agreeing with him, a party to Nancy's humiliation. A spy. It went beyond her natural limits of tolerance. If her mother fell of her accord, it was none of her business. There was no satisfaction in conspiring to defeat the defeated.
 

 

* * * *

 

At two o'clock in the morning, she and Sonny heard someone knocking softly but insistently on the door, and she cringed under the blankets, with the vain hope that whoever it was would get tired and move off.
 

“Should I get it?” Sonny asked. He slipped out of bed. “Great having carpet by the bed,” he observed. “I think I'll try it some day.”
 

“You know I'm not twenty-one yet,” she said, fearing obscure provisions in the criminal code which might make Sonny indictable. “I've still got a year to go.”
 

“What's that got to do with anything?”
 

“I don't know ... couldn't you get in trouble?”
 

“Eighteen's the statutory age in New York.” The tapping continued. It sounded like a pen, or a rat's dull incisor tooth. “Nothing to be afraid of.”
 

He moved back to the bed, and reached underneath the blanket with the palm of his hand.
 

“How's Mount Baldy, my old friend?”
 

The climate was still equatorial.
 

“That feels good, Sonny.”
 

She'd come so many times that she was subtracting from a dozen instead of counting.
 

“I'll be right back, so keep the store open.”
 

Hairless, except for an incipient needle fuzz, she had ruefully explained to the suspicious Sonny that this was a form of domestic tonsuring inflicted on her as a child by her mother in the godlike name of personal hygiene. He believed it, but pleaded a case for curly locks, calling up with surprising astuteness society's madness for hair. He extracted a promise of future growth from her and explained that he liked the way hair tickled the head of his member, a fact not lightly dismissible and certainly one that had never occurred to her. They'd gone a whole game without a time out. Orgasm led to orgasm. Every run a touchdown. He himself had come three times, but rather than diminishing the tension, he was back in business minutes later with a rod of steel and new zeal. At the doorway now, Sonny did an about-face, closed the door on the insistent tapping, and returned to the welter of crumpled sticky linen.
 

“Can't hear it now, can you?”
 

“You're brilliant, Sonny. Why didn't I think of closing the door?”
 

He placed his hands around her hips, arched her on her knees, and slipped in. She made little gurgling sounds and many new syllables out of his name.
 

“It's in so deep.”
 

“Meant to be. Now keep quiet. I can't fuck and talk at the same time.”
 

Mastered, she kept her mouth shut but long agonized groans escaped, and she hoped they'd be allowed. He had a remarkable degree of dexterity and succeeded in turning her over without coming out, so that she was on top. Deft, practiced lunges continued with no slackening, while he busied himself with her breasts, moving them in time to his own melody. A true werewolf howl accompanied the latest in a series of comes, and she pleaded for a momentary abatement. He was still, to her wonderment, hard as a rock, a minimuscle flexed to maximum size.
 

“Let me finish you my way,” she implored him.
 

She also had a supply of pillows and she propped up a pair, gathered his knees under her arms and arranged his flaming member in the Grand Canyon of her breasts, pushed her head forward, and with perfect calisthenic count got her mouth down on him and swallowed him in a pit of teeming saliva. The position was awkward but Sonny bore it with dignity.
 

“With an act like this we could get ourselves a shot on Ed Sullivan's program,” he said, in a fruitless effort to break the concentration of passion.
 

Useless; he arrived, and his body shook like a nerve exposed to acupuncture. He pleaded softly for the return of himself and at last with the onset of buckling knees, he emerged from her glorious cleavage, exhausted but no wiser in the ways of mystery.
 

“On my death bed this should happen to me ... that's what I wish myself.”
 

“There's no sweeter taste than Sonny Jackson.”
 

He wanted to ask her how he tasted, but good form took precedence over scientific inquiry.
 

“Jane, I love you. This is even better than when I made the AP's All-American team.”
 

The bathroom was not
en suite
but located in the corridor outside, and they both made for it as if by reservation.
 

“One thing I never did, Jane, was to take a leak with a girl watchin' me.” His head shrank into his shoulders. “I always get chills when I do that, and it embarrasses me.”
 

“I like being with you even here.”
 

“Not after Yankee bean soup, you wouldn't.”
 

She began to laugh, deep from the belly, and wrapped her arms around the large blocklike shoulders. The tapping on the front door resumed, and Sonny found a sunflower-print dressing robe and decided to investigate.
 

He opened the door fractionally and unexpectedly was knocked to the ground as a male intruder thrust in shouting:
 

“Jane, Jane, where the hell are you?”
 

She came out of the bathroom, blinking from the light, and froze panicky to the spot.
 

Sonny was on his feet quickly and grabbed the man around the throat in a cobra stranglehold which promised immediate destruction.
 

“Alan? What are you doing here?” Jane demanded.
 

“You know this lob?” Sonny asked, still maintaining his grip.
 

“He's my philosophy professor.”
 

“Cover yourself, Jane, will you, for Christ sake.”
 

Released, Alan considered the existential possibilities of the situation, and gloomily realized that he might not live long enough to enjoy or explore them. Sonny had gone to a hammerlock with a bar, causing Alan further grief.
 

Robed, Jane instructed Sonny to release the prisoner.
 

“Now I know why you left that fuckin' school,” Sonny said, his sensibilities outraged.
 

Alan slumped to his knees, his right arm still braced behind his back.
 

“I think it's broken.”
 

“Listen, asshole, if I'd wanted to break it, you'd be screaming loud enough to wake up the state of New Jersey.”
 

“Who let you in?” Jane demanded.
 

“I waited for the doorman to doze off.”
 

“So it was
you.
” Breaking and entering, she realized, wouldn't be Luckmunn's style.
 

He rested on all fours now for balance and in the light caught a fleeting glimpse of the bald eagle twitching through her flimsy wrapper. Having studied with great perseverance every acute angle of her body, he grew pensive, stifled his erection, which like Iowa corn could blossom in adversity, and wondered how he'd failed to arouse the latent perversities of his goddess student. That lovely animal smell of active human bodies tickled his nose.
 

“Oh, get up, Alan. You look so stupid on the floor.”
 

“Do I have this gentleman's permission?”
 

“He won't touch you.”
 

“Who said I wouldn't?” Sonny said, but he backed off.
 

Alan rose unsteadily, regarded his adversary out of the corner of his eye, and decided against physical combat, since he wanted to live to be a full professor.
 

“Jane, can I ask you something?” he said with uncharacteristic vagueness.
 

Blood might be shed, and Sonny's hostile suspicions aroused again, if she didn't allow him the question. She studied both lovers for a reaction, taking into consideration the classic struggle implicit in the situation.
 

“Go on and ask, but for Christ's sake, make it fast.”
 

“Could you make some coffee?”
 

“I'll kick your fuckin' head in,” Sonny said, pouncing suddenly.
 

“Go ahead.”
 

“Jane, is this for real?” Sonny demanded hopelessly.
 

“By the way, Jane”—Alan boldly adjusted the creases of his trousers and hiked them over his ankles as he rested on an ottoman—“I have no place to stay. It's impossible to check into a hotel at this time of night. The Americana has a convention of Knights of Pythias. I called there earlier.”
 

“You want to stay here?” Her robe swished open, unseen by the shocked Sonny, but noted by Alan who recalled with undiminished pleasure his own explorations. He restrained himself from leaping at her, for the prospect of his body hacked to pieces and set in trash cans around the city was a possibility not to ignore.