Frederick Laughton - Bookstore for boys

"Huh?" The teenager opened his eyes and looked at her as if he didn't remember who she was or where they were. Then he smiled. "Did I do all right, for my first time?"

"Yes, Skip." She hugged him quickly, then slid from the bed and went to the closet and pulled a bathrobe over the soft curves of her body. "Now, you better be getting home."

"Yeah. I guess it's night," he remarked, sitting up and stooping to retrieve his trousers. "But I'll be back the same time tomorrow and we can do it again, huh?"

Jennifer bit her lips and shook her head. "No, Skip. That was the last time. If you want to do it again you'll have to find a girl your own age."

"But I thought you liked it?" he gasped, the hurt mirrored in his face.

"I did, Skip. Maybe I liked it too much. But this has to stop between us. It would never work and sooner or later we'll just get into trouble. You… you can keep the book as… as a present from me. Now, good-bye," she blurted suddenly. Then she got up and went into the bathroom and closed and locked the door.

Jennifer stood looking at herself in the mirror, hearing Skip's footsteps as he scurried to the door, flinching each time he knocked with his fist. "Miss Watson? Open up," he called. "What's wrong? Open up."

"No, Skip," the broken-hearted woman said, tears filling her eyes.

He knocked some more, and called her name half a dozen times. Then at last she heard him leave, softly closing the door to the street behind him. Her eyes still filled with tears, Jennifer emerged at last and went out to lock it. Still clad only in the loosely clinging robe, the incriminating fold-out bed unchanged from before, she stopped in her tracks as the door opened and Lou Kelly appeared.

"Hello, baby," he said, leering as his gaze roved over her barely concealed curves.

"What are you doing here?" she gasped, her eyes wide with horror.

"Sort of get the feeling I've been standing in line," he said, still grinning lecherously.

"I… I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about that kid," he said, now looking suddenly dead serious.

"Oh my God! Skip, you mean. He… he helps clean up around the shop."

Lou shifted his position slightly to better observe the fold out bed. "Place doesn't look very clean to me," he remarked dryly. Then he smiled again. "Look, baby. Don't play any games. I know what you were doing. I know it as well as those two street punks who were listening with their ears pressed to the glass. We all heard it. You want to hear it again?"

Oh my God, thought Jennifer. What on earth was he talking about? Who heard what, and who were the street-punks and just what had they all heard? Then she almost fainted as Kelly called out in a loud falsetto that was an obscene and exaggerated mimic of a cry she herself had made but a few moments ago: "I'm cuuuuummmmmiiiiinnnnnggggg!"

Jennifer was spellbound and speechless for a long moment. She felt as if she were drifting out of her body, lost in purgatory. And then she came back to herself, drawn back by a sudden wrath that made her forget her own now terrible problem and be aware of nothing but her own deep hatred for this man who had caught her.

"You bastard!" she hissed. "You bastard, get out of here and don't ever come back!"

"Aw baby, I just want a little of that good pussy before I go."

"Get out of here!" Hardly even thinking of what she was doing, Jennifer seized a heavy, hard-bound book off the nearest shelf and hurled it with all her might straight at Lou Kelly's face. It struck him directly on the nose and fell to the floor at his feet, and from his nose the blood gushed forth brilliant red.

As Jennifer glared unrepentantly, the half-drunk man stared dazedly back at her. He reached up and touched his nose, his face flushing red with anger as he took his hand away and saw the blood. Then he lifted his eyes slowly back to Jennifer. "You bitch," he said in a voice that was almost calm. "You're going to pay for that."

Without another word he turned and left.

Jennifer sighed and consulted her watch. It was almost closing time, almost closing time four days, to be exact, since her last satisfying encounter with little. Skip Palmer. And those four days, she thought, had been as miserable as any four days she'd ever spent in her life. It had begun with her guilt, and then as the temporary satisfaction her body experienced as a result of the shattering climax had faded, her guilt was replaced by loneliness and finally, raw lust. Her life had become a constant struggle with lust. She almost went out of her mind every afternoon as the kids from the junior high school came pouring in, and at six o'clock on the first two days as she'd sat here behind drawn curtains and listened to Skip bang on the door and plead for her to let him in, she could have died.

And that wasn't the extent of her trouble. She'd begun, in her frustration, to think a lot about Stephan. It had been she who'd left him, and now after everything she had done she couldn't help but wonder if she hadn't been too hasty in leaving for Reno to get a divorce. She'd begun to dream of the long nights of lovemaking they'd experienced together, sometimes the images from that now distant-seeming past mingling with more recent memories of the fourteen year old boy who'd been her only lover since her husband. And then she'd read in the gossip section of the Chronicle that San Francisco would be the location for the filming of Stephan's second book. The filming would begin in a week and Stephan, as special consultant to the director, would be here in town. And Stephan knew Lou Kelly. And Lou Kelly knew…

He knew everything he needed to know. Jennifer could have cried right there for shame and horror at the thought Lou might tell her ex-husband what he'd heard the night he'd come here. And right that minute she might have done just that if she hadn't been startled by the opening of the door. Looking up suddenly, she saw a tall, rather mature looking redheaded boy she recognized as one of the kids from the school come in. He was followed by a shorter stockier kid, a classic fat-boy type with a very heavy stomach. Though she'd seen these boys numerous times before, their arrival now caused a stirring of apprehension that she couldn't immediately identify. Then, as both boys looked at her, she understood. These were the boys Skip had mentioned the first day he came to study the book The Joy of Sex, unless she was mistaken. Tony Jackson and Fred somebody. It was just that unconscious association with Skip that had troubled her, she told herself. But for some reason it gave her little relief.

Acutely aware of the presence of the two young but quite mature males in her shop, Jennifer pretended to be busy by totaling up the sales for the day. But her eyes kept drifting furtively back up to them. She remembered what Skip had said about them and one of the girls at school, and she couldn't help but wondering how far they went with her when they took her out. Skip had implied that they both took her out together, and the sheer suggestion of the possibilities of that was almost enough to make her tremble. And they were cute enough boys, handsome almost, she thought. But what were they doing in her shop at closing time? They hardly seemed to even be paying attention to the books, and she couldn't remember either of them ever actually buying a book. They just seemed to be browsing around as if they were killing time, waiting for something.

"Can… can I help you?" the blonde store owner asked finally.

"Maybe later," said the taller redheaded boy, the one whose name, she thought, was Tony. "We just want to look around a little while first." He paused, looking her straight in the eye. "If that's all right, that is," he added.

"Of… course," Jennifer said nervously. "But I should remind you that I'm closing in about ten minutes."