Dex sensed that Ryan was creeping off the bed and away, but she could not stop looking at Gena or thinking of Gena, not even if she lost Ryan forever.
Gena lay back on the pillow, her face placid for the first time since Dex had met her. The girl's face had lost its youthful impishness. A new and steadier calm glowed in her eyes and in high color through her cheeks.
"Are you all right?" Dex said, needing to hear it.
"I never knew it could belike that." Gena's voice was a sigh. "I thought that when it finally happened… Well, I've done it before, Dex. But it was never like this. Never." Her voice trailed away. Dex was too exhausted and elated to understand the full meaning of Gena's confession. All that mattered was the immediate impact it had had on her.
Drained of the barbed urgency of need, Dex sat back on her haunches. She reached out and stroked Gena's leg. A moment in time had changed everything. She had conquered the girl. Gena would never try to toy with her feelings again.
Cold, strong fingers began to massage the back of Dex's neck. Ryan pressed her body to Dex's side. Dex felt that it was half-clad, as bra and panties rubbed her flesh. A shudder of annoyance passed through Dex. Ryan had changed her mind about leaving. The stubborn and self-centered streak in her couldn't cope with defeat.
"Are you ready to come home now?" Ryan's voice was soft, attempting to caress.
There was no way to ignore her. No way to turn Ryan off or make her invisible.
"Why don't you run along? I'll be there later."
Ryan did not budge. "Don't let the little girl turn your head, dear. You've had your fun. Now come home to sleep. You have to get up for work in the morning, remember?"
"I'll be there," Dex answered crisply, trying to shrug off the massaging fingers.
"Well, in case you forget, I'll just wait here to remind you."
Dex fell silent. All the while, Gena had not budged or attempted protest. Within the utter calm of her security, she lay still. She did not seem to care about the talk. Nor did she seem concerned about whether Dex stayed or went away.
To get away from Ryan, Dex dropped forward onto her belly. She stretched out full-length beside Gena with her nose and mouth touching the side of Gena's breast. The full, creamy breast rose and fell gently against her lips.
"Oh, you look great," Ryan said bitterly. "Just great. Like a teen-ager after her first make-out. And what am I supposed to do? Go home alone in the middle of the night? Maybe you want me to sleep with Madge for company. Or Robard."
"Ryan, please," Dex cut into the rampage.
Ryan pulled her hair back and shut her eyes hard for a moment. Then she swung around and went for the rest of her clothing. "Well, I suppose there's always Morton," she said, her voice just above a whisper.
An icy twinge of revulsion shivered through Dex but she did not move away from Gena's side. "You don't have to be foolish, you know."
"And why not? You don't seem to be doing any better."
Dex held silence. What difference could it make it Ryan passed the time of day with Mort? Why kid herself? Ryan's list of conquests was enormous. What difference could one more make? And yet she could not swallow the idea. All the other women Ryan had slept with had been nameless, faceless and harmless. But Morton was a viper. If Ryan slept with her, something irrevocable would happen.
Dex moved her mouth up along the cool, smooth curve of Gena's breast and let her lips come to rest on the peak of one nipple. How preposterous it was to care about protecting Ryan. Ryan was strong enough and experienced enough to take care of herself.
It was Gena who needed the guidance now. Gena for whom she could do the most good.
"Well, go, then," Dex said to Ryan.
The sound of dismissal was absolute. Its aftermath was like the soft, slithering drop of a stage curtain. The abrupt ending of an involvement, as strange and unexpected as the cutting off of a young life.
Ryan made no further protest. Dex hung onto Gena and buried her face as deeply as she could get into the girl's cleavage while Ryan finished dressing. Dex stayed quite still until she heard the click of the front door.
For a few seconds it did not seem possible to Dex that the end had come so easily. She whipped herself up from the bed and strode to the door, turning the lock from the inside in case Ryan should change her mind and try to return.
When she came back to the bedroom, Gena lay curled up on her side, hugging the pillow in close to her face.
"I guess I'll stay here for the night," Dex said.
"Whatever you want." Gena's voice was far away.
But Dex felt a flash of new energy. The thought of going to sleep seemed impossibly foreign to her bursting good mood. The incredible state of things kept reverberating. The inner core of her being felt a need to celebrate its liberation.
"Come on," Dex said, leaning over to pat Gena's ankle. "You don't want to go to sleep yet. It's early."
"I'm not sleeping."
"So sit up. Put your clothes on."
Gena turned her face slightly.
"I was just thinking about Morton," she said.
Dex felt her mouth snap shut. The sound of Morton on Gena's lips was like the unfurling of a dark shadow. It had no business being in the room with them. Not now. Not tonight.
"What could you possibly have to think about her?" Dex said, straightening up and going to the mirror that hung on the outside of a closet door.
"Morton knows everybody's secrets," Gena mused. "And I'll bet that Ryan is going to tell her about us, too."
Dex examined down the length of her body. Her breasts were full and firm. The nipples were nibs of pointed flesh. Her waist was willowy and firm. Her hips round and welcoming. She was pleased with her body's ability to feel and to respond to the spontaneity of youth.
"So what of it?" replied Dex.
"I don't want Morton to know," Gena said flatly.
Dex tried to see Gena's reflection in the mirror. She drew the door out, turning the mirror at an angle. There was just enough room between the foot of the bed and the closet door to catch a glimpse of the lower half of Gena's body. The sprout of curly blonde hairs at her crotch warmed Dex at the base of her spine. That young, wild body, untamed by love affairs and experience, was hers. Something leaped excitedly in her at the thought of that. But there was more to Gena right now than just a body relaxing after sex. Her mind was obviously ranging far and wide. If only Dex could get into that mind, know it as well as she had succeeded in making Gena's body know her own. It was not enough to know that that ripe mouth had sucked and drunk up her cunt. Because the minute sex was over she had the feeling that Gena had left her, even though her body remained.
Now as she looked at her in the mirror's reflection, she saw that the girl's toes were curling and uncurling like the tip end of a cat's tail when it was trapped and nervous.
"Morton can't get in our way," Dex said, trying to maintain her good mood. "So let's not talk about her." Dex swallowed her resentment. "We're supposed to be having our own private fiesta tonight."
Dex brushed her hair back from her temples. She knew that she was forcing the issue with Gena. It wasn't Gena who cared to be romantic, who wanted to engrave the night upon her memory. Gena preferred to lie in bed alone and work over her own private thoughts. And Dex could feel the letdown flowing through her. She had been trying to predict Gena as if she were like Ryan in the early days. It wasn't possible. The girl remained the gnawing enigma she had been to Dex before. Despite what she had considered to be their sexual breakthrough together, now nothing concrete seemed to be accomplished.
As her mind played morosely with this new realization, something clicked in her mind. It was something Ryan had said while they were all on the bed. It had been deliberately vague. Perhaps she should just drop it, thought Dex. But what she had half-understood when being overwhelmed by her need for orgasm, to feel the young tongue licking her to satisfaction, now came back to haunt.
A shiver random Dex's spine. Ryan and Gena had made love to each other after all. Gena had taken the initiative. She had taken Ryan's pussy in her mouth; she had done all the same things to bring her to orgasm as she had done for Dex.
Dex shook her head, denying her thoughts.
"Okay, never mind," Dex said. "We'll stay home and watch the Late Show or something. Do you keep any beer in the fridge?"
Even as she spoke, Dex felt that her heart wasn't in it. There was something too disappointing about Gena's reaction. She seemed completely passive, emotionless. And now her doubts about Gena's sexual breakthrough in giving her pleasure with her mouth returned in full force.
Dex felt herself going for her clothes. She had to get away from Gena's basic isolation. No matter how far she reached out to Gena, Dex realized that she could never really touch the girl where it would count.
The hollowness of this knowledge made Dex ache throughout her insides. She had allowed herself to fall in love like a school child. She had given up Ryan to possess someone she could neither have nor hold. What kind of possession was this? What kind of life was she going to lead? The tantalizing promise of Gena would dangle out there just beyond her grasp.
Dex was back where she had started from.
"Never mind," Dex said roughly. "You go to sleep. I'm going out to walk all this off. I'll see you tomorrow sometime."
Gena grunted consent. She seemed so neutral. So bland. Suddenly, it occurred to Dex that she did not know the first thing about Gena. What the girl did for a living. If she worked at all. Maybe someone else was paying for the apartment. It certainly wasn't much of a place. Couldn't require a lavish allowance.
Dex sat down on the edge of the bed and stared down at Gena.
"Before I go, tell me one thing," Dex said, stroking her fingertips nervously down the length of her pants till she reached the knee. "Does Morton have anything to do with the place? Is she giving you money… or anything?"
A burst of guffawing laughter erupted from Gena. It was the first sign of life that Dex had seen since they had made love. Dex felt her eyelids close beneath the squinting pressure of her anger.
"That one," Gena said. "Since when does she give anything to anybody?"
An unmistakable sound of bitterness rang strongly in Gena's rhetorical question. Bitterness and knowledge.
Gena shut her eyes and turned her head to one side, half-burying it in the pillow. Morton. She could see the woman's eyes, the way they devoured her body at first, only to grow bored when Morton had gotten what she wanted. What she had wanted from Gena had been her virgin mouth. And she'd gotten it. Gena had wanted to cry at first when she saw Dex demanding the same thing. When instead it had made Dex even more passionate towards her; it was even more depressing. Dex should have had the first licks from her tongue on a woman's sex. It might all have been different then. She would never have this gnawing sense that she had been used for cheap satisfaction and then discarded when satisfaction was rendered.
Through her closed eyelids she saw Morton's thighs, the massiveness of them. And then she saw the gaping hungry mouth of her cunt, demanding to be given what it wanted. She could almost smell the woman. She had had a heavy odor like a female animal. Crushing her labia against Gena's lips, she had been total, brutal and selfish. Gena's eyes had watered, she had choked, but the churning, grinding cunt would not stop until it had flushed itself of its need. Morton had clamped her thighs around the girl's head, bulldozing her way to orgasm.
Dex felt her insides contract. She did not have to read Gena's mind now. That last sentence had told her the complete history of her relationship with Morton.
"Come on." Dex shook Gena by the shoulder. "You didn't love her. What do you give a damn about her character?"
"No, I didn't love her," Gena's voice echoed with memories. "And I never will."
"So forget it."
"Only fools love Morton," Gena persisted. "Maybe acid freaks and other assorted nitwits. Not people with half a brain." She stared off at the wall. "And I never gave her the satisfaction of crawling… of trying to make her give me my self respect back… She was the one who taught me all those tricks," Gena added in a quick, nervous voice. The sarcasm took over. "The other tricks I could have learned from her about using people, putting them down, making them crawl… well, now that I think of it, maybe they were catching. Hatred's pretty contagious."
"Shut up, damn you. Shut up." Dex heard her own voice raging out of control. Every word from Gena was a sharp slap in the face. A testament to the fact that Morton had left her mark, indelibly, on the one person that Dex had been able to care about.
As though the mattress were burning coals, she leaped up from it knowing that she had to get away from Gena. Leave her instantly. Leave her forever. There could be nothing but futility in a relationship with someone who kept thinking back to other days and nights with Morton.
Through Gena, Morton would be able to sink her fangs into Dex's spirit. She would be the death of her. Deliberately as if she had poisoned Dex with her own hand.
Dex scowled down at the girl and tried to swallow the harsh lump of revulsion.
"What could you want with her?" Dex rasped. "What did you see in her?"
But Dex knew better than to wait for an answer. There could be no answer, after all. The classic condition of wasted love had hit Gena as hard as it had hit herself through the years with Ryan.
Dex turned on her heel and went from the room, determined not to make a bigger fool out of herself than she had already. She flung herself headlong out the door and kept on moving, taking the steps down two at a time at breakneck speed in case something masochistic inside her tried to convince her to change her mind and go back to try again.
Try again. That was what never worked. Trying. Either you hit the bull's eye or you struck out forever. With love there could be no second chances. No patchwork operation.
Dex reached the street and kept on going as though she were being washed out to sea by an undertow that she had never dreamed existed. It was, in fact, the urge for self-preservation. The force that superceded all rationalizations when the chips were down and she, herself, out.
As Dex prowled the empty streets, she stared, face forward, into the pit of gloom that seemed to have no bottom. It had all happened so fast and so unexpectedly, that there had been no time at all to collect her wits.
With hands thrust deep into her pockets, Dex tried to collect herself now.
Ryan was gone, rubbed out of the picture because their relationship had been doomed since Ryan's first unfaithfulness.
Gena was gone, gone because she had never really existed except in a moment's impulsive dream.
Dex looked up at the sky. For the first time since her very early childhood, she was alone.