Микки Спиллейн - The Erection Set

She felt his hand slip away from hers slowly, his eyes uncertain. “You are a... a...”

“Lesbian?”

He nodded.

“No, though I allowed myself the pleasure of experimenting in that direction several times. Does that startle you?”

Apparently it did. The bewilderment touched his mouth and he reached for his drink again. “But... when you could have had a man...”

“I have,” she said firmly, “but not in the primary circumstance. I have felt and tasted several men. There was great mutual enjoyment. Have I been explicit enough? There has even been penetration of another nature I found extremely satisfactory. So no, I am not a Lesbian, I am not frigid, I am not sexually abnormal. I am simply hanging on to an asset a man might consider quite valuable someday.”

Raul finished the drink, found an empty spot on the end table beside him and put the glass down. “American women,” he said. “You are quite shocking.”

“At my age I can afford to be,” Sharon told him. She deliberately leaned forward, knowing he was able to see the full sweep of her breasts beneath her dress in the movement. The slippery feel of the fabric made her nipples thrust forward prominently. “Now, why don’t you practice your erection on someone more appreciative.”

Somehow he managed to contain his frustration and rose to bow in a continental manner. She took his fingers in a gentle handshake. “I feel sorry for you, Sharon Cass,” he said.

She smiled again, a flash of amusement in her eyes. “I feel sorry for you, Raul. You know what you are missing and there is no possible chance of getting it at all.”

“Not quite true, my dear.”

“Quite true, Raul. I would deball you before you could rape me. My thirty-two years have been very athletic and, like I said, I know all the tricks... even those.”

His exit was graceful, she thought, for someone who had to revise all his thinking. Tonight he’d have some woman tucked under silken sheets next to him, wondering if somewhere along the primrose path he had lost his touch. His performance wouldn’t be up to par at all and tomorrow he’d begin to worry. So he’d try for her again and lose the battle again and the decline would begin. Like the gross income chart on S. C. Cable’s wall behind his desk.

“Would you really deball him?”

It was a funny voice, oddly scratchy with a strange accent she couldn’t quite place, a Brooklyn voice with the New Yorkese deliberately rubbed out. She half turned and looked at him, then smiled because he was out of place somehow and she couldn’t tell why either. She let all the reasons compute in her analytical mind and decided that he was too big in the shoulders and chest for one thing, and his hair too short for another. It was what they used to call a crew cut. His black suit was new, but molded from a different era, as if he were conscious of only one style and couldn’t care less for what the “in” crowd had adopted. He looks like an eagle, she thought.

Suddenly she was back in front of the mirror again. She felt the tiny blonde hairs rise on the backs of her forearms and a prickle go across her shoulders. It was like dropping into an abstract vortex of time and sound and colors she couldn’t understand at all. Her stomach muscles seemed to tighten until juices were being squeezed right out of her. Inside her mind a faraway voice said, “I have a funny, funny feeling.” And she answered back, “No. It’s silly and childish. It never will really happen.”

“Well?” he asked.

“It wouldn’t have been very difficult.”

“Your destruction of the boy was, a little more practical,” he said.

“I didn’t think there was an eavesdropper.”

“Hell, kid, I wouldn’t miss a scene like that for the world. I was envying his approach until you dropped him. You really mean all that stuff?”

A curious laugh escaped Sharon’s lips. “Yes. It was all true.”

“Even about being a virgin?”

“Does it sound odd?”

This time he grinned and shrugged, toasting her with his drink. “Sounds crazy, kid, but it’s your game.”

She wondered where he had found a beer in Walt Gentry’s supply. It was something Walt only brought in for his slumming parties. “What’s your game, Mr....”

“Kelly. My first name’s a beaut. It’s D-O-G-E-R-O-N, but people call me Dog. I don’t take offense.”

But it did happen. It was too quick, too fast and she wasn’t prepare for it. It was the bomb blowing up in your face before you even had the time set for it. It was the world rocking to a standstill when a second before it was serene and placid. It was a chasm opening under your feet while you were walking up a beautiful path lined with flowers and happiness and the sense of accomplishment. Discipline and self-denial reacted before she was aware of it... ages of fighting the battle of the sexes brought out the instinctive armor of words and demeanor. And always that little thought... she could be wrong. The chances were that she was.

Forget it, little blonde girl. Coincidences do happen and it’s hard to remember anymore. That was all a long time ago and you’ve romanticized the image. You’ve held on to a stupid dream too long and now it’s starting to show. Like the time two years ago when he turned out to be a Brazilian engineer with ten kids. And the seaman on the Esso tanker with the same name. Only he was sixty-three and a grandfather. There is no real Dogeron Kelly. You left him there at the train station and now he’s dead. The whole family says so.

“So Dog’s your name, but what’s your game, Mr. Kelly? You look like a cop. Are you?”

He shook his head. “Hardly. I’m an individual entreprenuer. I do whatever is profitable and comes to hand. I’m a specialist in generalities and it would have been fun to watch you deball your friend.”

“You think I couldn’t?”

He gave a tight-lipped shrug and then grinned at her. “It’s not very hard. I’ve ticked off a few knotheads that way in my time too. It’s just that it’s an extreme penalty to pay.”

“For rape?” she asked quietly.

“Come on, nobody would have to rape you.”

“Now you’re on a sex kick too.”

“Kid, you brought the subject up. I wouldn’t bother raping you.”

“Oh? What would you do?”

He let out another strange, raspy laugh. “Hell, I like it better the other way around. I’m the lazy type myself. Prolific, imaginative, but lazy. Half the time the only thing I get into is a conversation.”

“And the other half?”

“That’s another story not fit for virginal ears,” he said.

She almost had an answer for him, but he winked and walked off, sipping at his beer. For some reason she felt annoyed. Raul Fucia had been right, of course. She had known what she was doing when she dressed for the party, instinctively aware of her potential, but it was not more than any of the others had known. No one was needed to tell her that she was beautiful and well constructed. They had, but the mirror was enough. Raul’s reaction was enough to satisfy her judgment, but then that damned Dog had to come along and shatter her illusions. He couldn’t have cared less.

She picked up her drink and tasted it, swirling the ice around in the glass, feeling a little smile pulling at the comers of her mouth. Hell, the dog, yes, small “d” dog, did it to her. He couldn’t have cared less. And she wasn’t too old, either. She was just right, absolutely prime, beautiful, knowledgeable, apt and exactly right.

The smile widened when she realized she had put her finger on it. She had been around just a little too long in the fast-moving world of show business where judgment had to be quick and correct if you wanted to survive not to miss it. She had put him in the forty-plus class, but the full head of short hair and only light touch of gray had fooled her. That and the strange lack of aging and the musculature. Heredity. Dog Kelly was a real, total predator.