It Takes Two (24 page)

“Call me Dan,” I said. “We can’t pay you much.”

“But something?” She was, after all, a businessman’s wife. Though I could have paid her pin money, the look of her country club gown suggested a better solution.

“Lucky for us,” I said, “your husband’s stuck in Wisconsin. You sing two sets a night from now until he gets here and I’ll set you up with a credit for evening dresses at Flossie Hill’s Department Store.”

The singer laughed and clapped her hands. “I don’t have a second set ready tonight,” she said.

“Can you work with me a couple of hours later?” Tommy asked, grinning. “Late?”

“We’ll go to Flossie Hill’s tomorrow,” Carmen said, bending down to collect the empties. “We can also look into a champagne rinse for that hair.”

The three of them went away laughing. Bud took off for the men’s room. While he was gone, Admiral Asdeck came over with an invitation that was essentially a command.

“Why don’t you join us for dinner,” he said. “You and your buddy. My Louisiana friends are looking for a good time. Betty Harris—your party girl, Wanda’s new friend—she’s joining us too. So, why don’t you have Carmen set a table for eight in, say, half an hour?”

When I told him that sounded OK, he added something that didn’t sound quite as OK. “I thought I’d break out the blue movies after dinner. Carmen’s going to set up a projector in the Edison Room. Your buddy will get a kick out of it, I’ll bet.” Asdeck’s face was as serious as if he was talking business. Which, of course, he was.

Tommy Carpenter was playing again. I sucked my Regal down to the foam. The thought of Bud, me and stag films in a room full of other people sent a confusing, slightly agreeable shiver down my spine and around my balls.

I couldn’t say yes, I couldn’t say no. So I nodded, meaning that I understood.

Asdeck went away. Bud returned. “Huh,” he said when I delivered Asdeck’s invitation. But in the end he agreed to stay, though he didn’t sound happy about it.

I guess dinner went well enough. I remember nothing about what we ate. For all I know, the menu consisted of breaded and deep-fried Mae West life jackets served with cocktail sauce.

Carmen kept the alcohol flowing. Ray Bonner Flambeaux, the Louisiana oilman who was footing the bill for everything, drank Haig and Haig Pinch “with a good splash of branch” (I do remember that), one highball after the other, and never slurred a word. Bud put down two or three Bacardi and Cokes.

After dessert, Carmen led us to the private room on the mezzanine. Sofas and easy chairs were lined up facing a portable screen. Lou was stationed behind a bar stocked with liqueurs, whiskey, coffee, cigars and two big bowls of popcorn. Carmen took his post in the rear behind the looming green metallic projector and switched it on as soon as we were seated.

Bud and I were in back row, the darkest part of the room. The admiral and Betty Harris, Mrs. Broussard and the jockey-sized Flambeau sat down front. Captain Slidel and Mrs. Peek occupied a sofa in the middle.

Most of the black-and-white Cuban action was routine dog-and-pony show. The first movie featured two women in abbreviated maid’s uniforms and extremely high heels. Busily feather-dusting what must have been the reception room of a Havana whorehouse, one woman acted as if aroused by the act of cleaning the torso, legs and private parts of a nude statue of Bacchus. Her associate, dusting the breasts of a reproduction Venus de Milo, was similarly affected.

Behind an oriental vase, the young master of the house peeped hornily at the maids, hands busily exploring his pants pockets.

Quickly stripping each other of everything but their lace caps, garter belts, stockings and shoes, the maids retired to a Louis XIV-style settee and began to lick and explore each other. After five or six minutes of variety kisses, the darker and taller of the women went to a cabinet and removed two large dildos fitted with belts and straps.

The young master’s pants having now hit the floor, he began to stroke his flaccid equipment while leering at the camera.

“Little fella,” Carmen called out. “Don’t you bet he grows up.” Lou, meanwhile, was none-too-subtly rubbing the front of his pants. When one of the Cuban maids inserted her dildo into the vagina of the other, I heard him groan. Soon, he was breathing like a horse and had both hands in his own pockets.

A few minutes later, as the young master demonstrated how to fuck one maid while kissing the breasts of the other, someone in the Edison Room slid down a zipper. Then somebody else gasped. I’m not sure who either person was.

“Hi yo, Silver,” Carmen called. “Ride ’em, cowboy.”

Once the young master had proved his manly satisfaction, Carmen deftly changed reels without switching on the overhead lights. Lou refilled drinks during the short interval. Bud sank a little deeper into the sofa, sticking his legs straight out in front of him, carefully not touching me. When I looked over at him, he threw me back a sloppy grin. “Not so bad,” he said, rubbing his chest. “Saw a live show like that in the Philippines one time.”

“Saw it? I thought you starred in it.”

“Won’t let me forget that, will ya?”

The second film featured a middle-aged black man with a phallus the size of Ray Bonner Flambeau’s forearm. His scrotum resembled a sunburned cantaloupe. Sweating under studio lights and looking none two clean, the man kneaded himself vigorously without ever becoming entirely erect. Just when he seemed about give up, a mulatto woman wearing a garter belt and mules entered the scene, fellated the man as if enjoying her work, then squeezed his testicles roughly.

“Look at her handle those peaches,” Carmen called.

Asdeck’s head and shoulders had disappeared from the front row. Betty’s head, meanwhile, rolled and bobbed from side to side.

Trying to get in the spirit of things, I moved a little closer to Bud. His eyes stayed on the screen. His arms were crossed on his chest. When I put my hand on his thigh I felt the muscles tense, relax and tense again, as if he was arguing with himself.

Maybe he was. Anyway, he let my hand stay where it was. When I slowly began to move it higher, he covered it with one of his hands but didn’t stop me until I touched the cloth over his hard cock. Then he laughed.

“That Santiago cane-cutter isn’t laughing,” Carmen cooed. “Anybody want to get in line?”

In the next shot, the Cuban stud had shifted positions and was kneeling over the body of what appeared to be a frightened teenage girl—she’d arrived while I was working on Bud. The Cuban leaned back lazily and beat his chest like King Kong. Pushing into the girl like a bull on a cow, he humped her slowly with a glazed expression on his face. When the garter-belted mulatto woman stuck a finger into his ass, he smiled like a monkey.

“Jesus fuck,” Bud whispered, reaching over to grope me roughly.

Though I wasn’t hard, I was certainly horny. Using both hands, I unbuttoned Bud’s pants and reached inside. He was wet and a lot harder than the Cuban. Gently slipping a finger under his skin, I brushed the moisture around the tip. Bud held his breath, stiff all over.

Moving carefully, I gathered the loose cotton fabric of his boxer shorts into one hand. Wrapping it around the unprotected helmet at the end of his cock, I twisted gently.

He folded up, almost breaking my fingers. “Hey, Coach,” he said, said, taking short little breaths. “Better…hold off on…that.”

I leaned into him. “My hand,” I whispered. “Jesus, you’re gonna break my hand.”

Still breathing fast, he sat back. “Just—it feels pretty late to be messing around,” he whispered back. “On a school night. Cold showers would be the thing this time.”

By then I was as hard and wet as he was. A cold shower probably wasn’t going to do it for me. I thought about asking him to stay, but I didn’t. He wouldn’t have agreed anyway, and there was no point in putting him on the spot.

Bud reached over, touched the tent of my pants and lightly shook my tent pole. “Nice bat, Coach,” he said. “All the same.”

I felt him again but he gently pushed my hand away, picking it up with two fingers, like a fish, and placing it firmly on top of my own erection.

“Cold showers,” he said, rebuttoning his pants. “With all these people around.”

He left just after the third film started—an epic variation on the Cinderella tale in which a horny prince tries to insert his phallus into the “slippers” of a dozen women and girls.

Though I hadn’t jerked off in months, I took matters in hand as soon as I got upstairs. Even before I got all my clothes off, I was on top of the ghost of Mike Rizzo, pushing him against the tan blanket, breathing in his ear, talking dirty, telling him what I intended to do. Mike was a rough-and-tumble lover that night. He made jokes, laughed, kissed my cock and balls, roughly pushed and sweated against me in the narrow bunk. I gently brought him off with my mouth and hands.

And then, because I hadn’t yet climaxed, we started all over again, this time just after a battle at sea, when we were both wound tight as steel spools. We made it standing up, fighting for balance against the rolling motion of the old ship. I unbuttoned Mike’s uniform quickly, and he mine. He hurt me when he pulled me close, but we couldn’t get close enough. We pushed against each other, filthy dirty and sweating like deck apes, grabbing for air, muttering, “Fuck, yes, fuck, yes,” him quickly spilling on my heaving stomach like a desperate school kid after a winning game.

Then, in the sweaty, dead-real split second just before I started to shoot, I was kneeling over Bud out in the fishing boat. He was lying there, flat on the deck, and about to release his load. I sucked him and sucked him. And he was someplace else, eyes closed, passive, fearful, waiting for me to get us where we were going.

But I couldn’t do it. My cock misfired and started going numb. An ache throbbed somewhere behind my balls. Bud and the boat disappeared. I looked for Mike again and couldn’t find him. Searching for dependable fantasies, I revisited the Australian colonel with the shot-up knee, the one who wanted me to dwell with him in Queensland. I grabbed at him briefly, but couldn’t get his pants off.

And then nothing, nothing except my own cold hands and soft, unfinished wetness and a chilly breeze on my heaving gut.

A window facing the river was open a crack. Out on the water, I could hear a passing marine engine. Summoning up an
Indianapolis
full of horny sailors, a New Victory Club weekend with a dozen horny officers and Bud on the fishing boat, I tried again, but with no success.

Cursing tiredly, I crawled under the sheet and rolled myself around the pillow. As I drifted off to sleep, I made a firm resolution:
Hit the swimming pool tomorrow, Lieutenant. Do at least fifty laps. You’ve got to get the pressure off. That’ll be a start
.

If I dreamed at all that night I don’t remember a bit of it.

“You say your man’s been with Philippine whores,” Asdeck cheerily observed the next morning. “But I noticed he skedaddled on home halfway through my Cuban vaudeville show.”

“Too many civilians around, must’ve spooked him,” I answered. “Can’t blame a cop for caution.”

The morning was bright and cloudless, the crisp February air as bracing as a splash of Old Spice. We were stretched out in lounge chairs by the hotel swimming pool, enveloped in fuzzy terry-cloth robes, feeling tired but self-satisfied. I’d just finished thirty up-and-back laps, with Asdeck matching me stroke for stroke.

He left the water game but breathing hard, laughing at the unaccustomed effort. I felt relaxed and alert, happy that some of the previous days’ frustrations lay in my wake.

Homer Meadows approached and set down a tray containing coffee, cream, sugar and a breadbasket. Asdeck turned his attention to the sweet rolls and hummed a little tune.

“Marine grunts stick with their buddies,” Asdeck continued after Homer went away. “They go on liberty together, drink too much hooch and egg each other on. Whole platoon will hit a whorehouse at one time. Wear the girls out. Exec has to pour the men back aboard ship before he can sail. Next day the doc lines up the whole platoon for short-arm treatments. And you think he was embarrassed?”

“Admiral, you know this isn’t some whorehouse in Manila. Those weren’t his buddies upstairs.”

“Except for you.”

“I gave it a try.”

“He still seeing that woman, the waitress?” Asdeck’s lip stiffened almost imperceptibly when he pronounced the last word.

I sugared my coffee. Asdeck’s probing compounded my doubts about Bud and set me on edge. “Yes, sir, he sees her,” I answered, “Don’t know how often, though.”

“Appearances count,” Asdeck said. “Not disputing that, Dan. Even if you and your buddy do hook up for good, it can’t hurt for him to have an occasional woman on his arm. At the Legion hall, community events, that sort of thing.”

“Yes, sir,” I said again, knowing well enough—and knowing Asdeck knew it too—that Slim was more than just a beard. “Except, well, if he’s going to work for me here, as house detective, that’ll keep him pretty busy.”

“Have you finished your background check on him, son?” Asdeck asked. “I know I said to take your time. But you take my advice and you’ll lay your cards on the table soon. Talk to him flat out.”