Микки Спиллейн - The Erection Set

I shook my head and laughed. I thought a scene like this had died with the war. We both watched her deliberate burlesque-stage walk toward the bedroom with sheer appreciation, fascinated by the way the muscles of her thighs and back rippled in the light. At the door she turned and looked over her shoulder. “Dog,” she said, “what’s your right name?”

“Dogeron. It’s an old Irish name.”

“I like Dog better. Do you bite?”

“Only in the heat of passion,” I said.

REFLECTIONS

ROSE PORTER, SINGLE, AGE 28.

Three years in whoredom and no married woman can match my knowledge. Except the answer to why to have a man. One push from a forty-five-year-old fat grocer and my virginity became history with two boxes of Shredded Wheat and a candy bar for silence.

Linebacker for Bailey High thinks he’s a rape artist specializing in virgins and, because I was tight, figures up another notch on his scorecard. For a while, I was real popular with the team. Maybe I should have looked in the mirror. I was one of the lucky ones. No acne, big tits and sour-apple fresh with a pussy aching to be filled.

Hal said I was a bitch in heat... but he was a crazy, comic-book artist and the first tender man I had met. Wild, but soft and sweet and tender. He liked to kiss before screwing and laughed when the excitement got me wet. Some nights he didn’t even bother screwing. He laughed and kissed and... then one night he told me how very much he loved me, but he had leukemia and wanted to die somewhere on the slopes of the Florida Keys. He gave me twelve thousand dollars in treasury bonds, told me to take the pill, not get the clap and to have fun.

I bought a college education and became a whore. No man could fool me, trap me or fake me out. That’s what I thought. Two years ago I lost count of all the lays. Anyway, all johns look alike. No scars, either. A few bite marks, maybe, but no scars, no needles and I’m top cat in the trade. The blow-job pro, that’s me. Anal intercourse? A pleasure, mister. Simple screwing? Must be an odd nut to pay for the unfancy.

But they all respond. They dig the long hair, the smooth, long legs.

Oh, they love it, all right, all but this big slob of a Dog. He looks at me naked and says hello. He appreciates, nods his approval, shakes my hand and couldn’t care less. Shekky Monroe gave me five hundred just to run his fingers across my snatch one night. This dirty Dog says hello and smiles.

That’s the bad part. He really smiled. The bastard is for real. They’re all going to take him wrong and somebody will hurt.

Me, I’m lucky. I can’t be hurt anymore. Now I’m curious. Especially about that smile. The louse knew me inside and out like he knew everybody else.

Okay, Dog, now let me read you. Clothes good, but old. Perhaps fifty bucks in your jeans. I made more between cocktails and dinner last night. I had felt his arm and it scared me a little bit because I knew about how old he was and the arm was a little too big and too hard. Poseur? Some do it. A cheap barber had chopped his hair, but it was all there and would be grown back in another week. Gray spotted it and a little white streak tufted up in front. He looked heavy, but there was no fat and he walked funny, one hand always hanging loose, and whatever those green eyes looked at, they saw and understood.

I wanted to screw him, only it wouldn’t be any use trying. Tomcats pick their own time and place.

Time. The clock said three minutes after five. I had known the Dog exactly eight minutes.

The empty Pabst beer cans made odd splotches of color around the room, their big blue ribbon seals decorating every piece of furniture in the bedroom, including two that I had balanced delicately on the headboard of the bed directly over my face. A couple of soggy towels lay on the floor, sopping up the beer that Lee had spilled and I lay there listening to him sound off just like he used to. Only in those days he didn’t wear a LOVE button on his shorts.

“Just quit being a silly bastard,” he said. “And don’t tell me staying here is an imposition. Shit, man, why spend loot on a hotel room? You can’t even find a decent apartment in this town anymore unless you’re loaded with cash or have a couple months to poke around in.”

I popped open another beer. “Can it, Lee. You lover types need privacy.”

“Balls. I got two bedrooms right now. If it gets crowded, so we have an audience. I lost all my modesty twenty years ago.”

“Look...”

“Forget it,” Lee said. “You’re staying here. We shared everything during the war, we do it again. Besides, you’re going to need more than a pad, buddy. I’m damn glad we’re both the same size. I got three closets full of clothes and we’re both about the same height. You take your pick of the rack, I’ll get them let out a little in the chest and shoulders and you can look like nowadays.”

I went to say something and he shut me up again. “I get them wholesale, Dog. I do big favors for a guy who heads up a chain and he pays off in threads. What the hell do I need? I change twice a day and it would take me a month to repeat a suit. Nice, hey? I’m not rich, I’m not poor, I get along pretty well and, by damn, you’re my buddy and you’re going to share it with me. I’ll give you a week to get stretched out, find your way around, then well hunt up something with scratch behind it so you can get on your feet.”

The beer stopped halfway to my mouth. “Lee...”

“Don’t crap me out, Dog. I got plenty of contacts and it won’t be all that hard. Who has to know you stuck yourself in Europe all this time because a bunch of half-assed relatives kicked you out? Man, you have too much false pride. You were a fucking war hero, man. You could have shoved it up their tails. Why the hell did you try to bury yourself for?”

I tried to answer him, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Oh, sure, there’s always a dame. But you’re still not married, are you?” I shook my head. “See, so you blew it, you didn’t even nail a broad. You still look like you always did, a raggedy-tail flyboy who’d sooner scream around the wild blue yonder than screw a dame.”

“I got my share.”

“You could have gotten more.”

“I was too busy flying,” I said.

“And you came up with zilch. Plenty of kills, lots of ribbons and you weren’t even smart enough to get bullet creased a little so you could get a partial pension. No, you have to come home anyway.” He yanked a cold beer out of the bucket of ice water and looked at me with funny Pabst-colored eyes. “Why did you come back?”

“The old man died and left me an inheritance. I’ve been trying to tell you.”

He paused, his finger hooked into the circle of the pop top. “Old Cameron Barrin?”

I nodded. “My maternal grandfather. I guess he figured he owed me something, my being a sort of blood relation. If I can establish myself as having a good, clean... or, let’s say, totally pure... moral record since leaving his household, I can claim the munificent reward of ten thousand dollars.”

“Cash?”

“Uh-huh.”

Lee finished opening the can and let a grin twitch at the corners of his mouth. “How much chance have you got?”

“Not a smidgen,” I told him.

“Then why come back?”

“Hell, maybe I can lie a little,” I said.

For a good ten seconds, he looked at me, then took a long pull of the beer and shook his head. “Damn, it’s the same old Dog. Still as naive as they come. You never did learn, did you? Ten grand and you come all the way back for something that can be eaten up in a matter of months. Buddy, the world has changed. The war’s over. This isn’t Europe. The old days are gone. If we were kids all we might ask for is a bike, sleeping bag and an occasional remittance from home to buy some pot or a little snatch and maybe a side trip into a little bistro on the Left Bank for some gourmet spaghetti, but we’re big kids now and we can’t go that route.”