Evan Hunter - Candyland

"Uh… I hate to ask you this, Michael," she says, tearing her eyes away, "but the basic massage is a hundred bucks."

"Okay," he says.

"Could I have it now, please?" she says, and pulls a girlish face. "I know, it's tawdry," she says, "but I do have to ask."

He takes out his wallet. Finds two fifties. Hands them to her.

"Thanks," she says. "I'm sorry."

She does seem genuinely sorry, but he knows that's an act, too. This is all a performance here. This is a movie, They are both performers in a movie about a man and a woman in a whore house. Except that it is all real. He sits on the edge of the bed, studying her ass and her legs as she stands on rip toe to reach for a handbag on the top shelf of the closet on the wall beside the bed. She takes down the handbag, opens it. A black handbag. To match the stilettoheeled, ankle-strapped black shoes. She puts the hundred bucks inside the bag. Isn't she afraid he might steal it? Didn't she tell him they were held up here only last week?

"Okay," she says, and snaps the bag shut, and puts it back on the shelf, and slides the closet door closed, and turns to him. "I don't usually do this, you know," she says.

I'll bet, he thinks.

"I'm usually on the door," she says. "I sort of greet people."

"How come I'm so lucky?" he asks.

Please don't tell me I'm gentle, he thinks. I've already been there tonight.

"Is that meant to be sarcastic?" she asks.

But she's smiling.

"No, not at all. I'm curious."

"I don't know," she says, and shrugs. "Change of pace." She takes off the black wrapper, drapes it over the back of the chair, and moves to where he's sitting on the bed. “Want to kiss these?" she asks, and leans over to offer her breasts, squeezing them together with her hands. He finds the clasp at the back of the bra. Unfastens it. Her breasts fall free. He kisses her nipples.

"Mmmm'" she says, faking enjoyment.

Or maybe not.

He tries to kiss her mouth.

She turns her face away.

"Uh-uh," she says.

"Why not?"

"I hardly know you."

"I'm hoping we'll get to know each other better."

"Even if we do."

"What I'm thinking. "

“Yes, tell me, Michael, what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we should go beyond the basic massage," he says.

"Wherever we go, we go safe," she says, and to emphasize the point, she opens the drawer in the end table on the right hand side of the bed and takes out a box of lamb's skin rubbers.

"We don't need those," he says.

"Oh, that's what you think," she says.

"I got tested just last week," he lies.

"Mm-huh, and I suppose you've got the signed papers with you, right? "

"No, but you can trust me."

"Oh, I feel certain," she says.

"I've never had a venereal disease in my life."

"Me, neither," she says. "And I don't want one now."

"Here's what I'm thinking," he says.

"If you're thinking no rubber, think again."

She smiles to show him she's still a genial whore. But she shakes her frizzed blond head at the same time, to let him know she's dead serious about safe sex. He smiles secretly, wisely, raises one eyebrow. The knowing look is to tell her that every hooker has her price, dear, a theory he is about to put to the test. But the box of condoms is still in her hands, so maybe he's wrong. In fact, she's now tearing off the cellophane wrapper.

"I'm thinking you should bring in the Arabian girl," he says.

"Oh, is that what you're thinking, Michael?"

"I'm thinking all three of us should forget about tomorrow," he says. "That's what I'm thinking."

"But how much are you thinking, Michael?"

Shaking one of the small blue plastic containers out of the package now, bringing it to her mouth, ripping the blue plastic seal with her teeth.

"How much do you think would be fair?" he asks.

She spits out blue plastic, and then, surprisingly, puts the box and the single condom down on the end table. She comes to where he is still sitting on the edge of the bed, steps between his legs, puts her hands on his shoulders, his cock standing stiff between them. She glances down at it. Her look is almost proprietary. She looks up again. Her eyes meet his. They are the deepest blue. He notices this for the first time. She is really a very beautiful girl.

"For what you have in mind," she says slowly, carefully, balancing time and demand like an accountant in a button factory, "me and Fatima, the busiest time of the night… I'd say a thousand flat."

"I'm not talking about a month in Europe," he says, and smiles again.

"You're talking about sticking that big hard cock in both of us bareback, is what you're talking about," she says, and glances down at it again. He is outrageously hard now. He reaches behind her to cup her buttocks. She presses his face between her breasts. She lets him finger her asshole. She grabs his hair and pulls his face away from her.

"What do you say?" she says. "Both of us. A thousand flat."

"For how long?"

She still has his hair gripped in her hand.

"Whatever you want to do," she says, avoiding the question. "However you choose to do it."

"Six hundred," he says, bargaining. "For however long I need."

He is breathless in her grip.

"Six hundred for an hour," she says. "Me and Fatima, okay? Both of us."

Helpless in her grip.

"Yes," he says. "Okay."

"Let me go get her," she says, and releases his hair, and drops suddenly to her knees before him. She gives his cock a swift wet lick, her tongue lashing out and back into her mouth again, and then she rises, and for a moment stands tall and splendid before him, a frizzed blond goddess. Then she slides open the closet door and takes her handbag down from the shelf. Lifting the sheer black wrapper from where it is draped over the chair, she slips into it, and glances slyly at his cock. Grinning, she says, "Don't let that thing go down," and spins away from him and leaves the room.

He wonders how long it will take for her to get back here with Fatima. Suppose Fatima is right this minute in another room in the building with the guy Heidi said she'd be watching out for? Otherwise engaged, as one might say. Suppose he has to wait till Fatima is finished with this guy, whoever he may be, until she can come in here with Cindy? He doesn't like the idea of her coming to him fresh from some other guy. Maybe he should have asked for Heidi instead, no, the gold tooth. Besides, by now she may be with some other guy, too, leaving the fat freckled babe to guard the sacred portals. He knows he's not the only man these girls see, but he likes to think of himself as such. The sultan calling for one or another of his harem girls. The eunuchs outside watching but not allowed to touch. All the girls belong. ing to him and him alone. Oh sure. He knows this is nonsense. But it's a nice fantasy. Moreover, he knows it's a fantasy. Knows this entire scene here, this scenario, this lavish production that's about to cost him an additional six hundred bucks is a figment of the imagination, a dream concocted — or about to be concocted — by himself and the two girls scurrying down the hall toward him this very moment, he wishes. Maybe he should have asked for Heidi, if it's going to take Fatima so long to get her ass in here for their big spectacular dream sequence.

He can just imagine Grace being picked for a spontaneous three-way dream sequence like this one. Grace, there's some guy upstairs wants both of us, go put on your garter belt! With Grace, you have to "plan" everything. She's like the commanding general of some vast army about to invade the European continent, she has all these complicated plans" to make. She's the same way about sex, too, she has to "plan" for it. Nothing is spontaneous with Grace. In the morning, she doesn't feel clean enough for sex because she hasn't bathed yet. At night, she feels too clean for sex because she takes three baths every single day of the year — not showers, baths — and at night, when you roll over against her with a hard-on, she tells you she just took a bath and doesn't want to get "messy." Grace Howell Thorpe is the cleanest woman on the face of the