Their silent pounding bodies were suddenly accompanied by the jangling of door keys getting closer to the cell. They rushed their pleasure, hoping to cheat the always present, always might-be-present guard.
"Faster, faster, for Christ's sake," the younger man pleaded. And the rattling created by their bodies stopped, replaced by the unmistakable sound of a key sliding into the heavy iron lock. The older man with the wise lined face pulled his body away from the young imploring animal.
"You're insane." The door was swinging open, and his fear made him limp.
"Coward, coward," Harry mocked, and with a graceful arc, his body was off the cot and standing at the sink, his back to the unannounced guard. The jailer looked knowingly at Phillip, stretched out on the cot, lighting a long American cigarette. Then he regarded the shuddering back of the tall blond thief. The young ones needed it a lot. The older ones could do without, but they taught their inexperienced brothers.
Showed them more in a six-month stretch than they learned in ten years on the streets.
The guard humiliated the gasping back by addressing it.
"You've got a visitor, Harry."
That surprised him. Phillip often had callers, but Harry had no connection, no sentimental patchwork outside the prison.
"A visitor?" he turned, buttoning his trousers.
"A woman," the guard announced curtly. "She says she's not your sister." She obviously impressed him. Harry didn't answer. He silently followed the guard out of his cell, not looking at Phillip who was watching the burning tip of his cigarette with scientific intensity.
Harry followed the guard noiselessly to the waiting room. The guard banged his stick against the cell doors as they walked the long corridor, and shouted in, "Stow those burners, do ya hear me? You can smell them in the warden's apartment. Stow them, or there'll be a midnight shakedown."
The two men walked into the large cold waiting room, tables that looked like waiting room tables bordered by chairs that looked like Anonymous The Pleasure Thieves Page 2
waiting room chairs. In one of the chairs was an elegant woman of about twenty seven. She was dressed in a grey suit with a French fit, curving her hips and breasts, the hem ending an immeasurable moment before it would on an American or English skirt. She was sitting straight and unaffected by her surroundings, a woman who created her own atmosphere and rested comfortable and secure in the nimbus of contempt that blessed her. It had been a long time, seven months, since Harry had had a woman, and this one looked as if she'd be a lot of work. Two hours to get the clothes off, and six hours to convince her she'd done the wise thing. And the cool ones only got convinced in their cunts.
"There she is," said the guard bluntly.
The woman pulled tight her blanket of correctness and looked over the guard's head into Harry's eyes. "Mr. Hatch," she said, "may I have a few words with you?" Her tone suggested that Mr. Hatch might now be too busy and his secretary would check his calendar and surely give her an appointment.
"Certainly," agreed Harry, living the scene she had created. He sat down lightly in the free chair across from her and waited for her to speak.
"There will be work for you in New York when you get out." He looked curiously at her. "Work you should enjoy." Neither of them seemed interested in pleasure.
"How?" he finally asked.
"Just call me," her boarding school voice enunciated, "at Plaza 5-7000 – ask for Miss Stoddard."
"Yes Miss Stoddard."
"I'm sorry," she almost blushed, "we haven't been introduced. I'm Carol Stoddard, and I shall wait for your call. I'm leaving two hundred and fifty dollars in the office for you. Will that be enough?"
"That will be quite enough."
"Till next month, Mr. Hatch." She was getting to her feet. There was, except for the brief business, not a human word for them. She put her striped, gloved hand into his, and had removed it before he could experience its pressure. "Good day then," and she walked carefully out of the waiting room, taking with her the breath of civilization.
Harry was being led back to his cell. The guard was saying something about class. The guard's tiny little mind, if you let it in, could irritate.
Back in the cell, Phillip looked up and said, "Who was it?"
It was not intrusive for him to ask. Little happened in the prison and a man shared his experiences, the way he shared his cock. Harry started to explain. He looked down at the shrewd cool man stretched out on the bed, and for a moment he was sinking into the cool eyes of the woman who had sat with him a brief five minutes and given him a strong odor of the world outside.
Phillip had a portable outside world that he carried with him. Maybe that was the attraction. Harry had never been hot for men, not for women either, except when a detached heat would spread through him, and then he'd find a cunt, thin and clinging or wide and comfortable and exhaust his prick. He'd pull it out of them, depleted and eager to leave them.
There were better ways to make it. Not get your prick into anything, just feel it ponderous like an arrow leading you into strange experience.
But that way it had to be without heat, just a cool fucking erection in the head. Phillip was strange enough to be a constant invitation. He never was hot for Phillip, but that was the only place for the cool fuck to go. So his prick never got finished and ready for something else.
Now he was beginning to plan the Llewellyn job; that was where his maleness wanted to be. An immense job, absorbing and satisfying. It would take brains and courage; it would take maleness.
Phillip was watching him, seeing him go off into a world nobody could touch. There was something pathetic and childlike about Harry's dream world, yet it had to be taken seriously. There was no question that the visions, created by a deprived child became the acts of the man.
That was how they all got there, wasn't it?
Even Phillip cared enough about something to get here, and not mind the ten month stretch. He cared about money. How original! The things you could do with money. There was no Midas touch about him, no sensuous thrill in spilling the sheckles through stretched fingers. He put all the money back into gracious living, fantastic expression, something out of a woman's magazine. The one thing, the one raison Anonymous The Pleasure Thieves Page 4
d'etre were the paintings. To line his walls with the brilliance, the most selective vision of all ages. Phillip despised museums, despised the keepers, despised the confused giggling viewers or the awed small town viewers or the arrogant student viewers. A painting had to be lived with, had to be cultivated. There should be a master-slave relationship, sometimes the painting master, sometimes Phillip master.
To keep the thing interesting. Like sex, only better. Museums were like prisons, and he wanted to tear down the precious colors that became barred windows on the long corridor walls.
Phillip felt the attraction of Harry's long relaxed body. Harry was as perfect as a master's etching, perfect and simple without a wasted line or a decorative curve. Phillip lifted himself from his cot, and crossed his arms on the rim of Harry's decker, a layer above his. He ran his fingers across the sharp planes of the upraised face. It should have felt like steel, cold and smooth to the touch. Instead, he was surprised to find his flesh damp, and the bristles of his heavy beard rough against his palm. He moved his fingers down to the what-could-be female flesh of his neck.
Harry lay as if in a dream, musing to himself. His mind's absence allowed Phillip to possess his body freely. To possess him coldly, to watch him as a snake watches a drowsy rabbit in the hypnotic sun.
"Harry," he said, as softly as a woman.
Harry lay immobile, unresponding.
"What will you do when you get out?" Phillip murmured.
"What I've always done."
"Take the pretty diamonds out of the pretty girls' ears?"
"Out of the ugly safes, off the ugly chests."
"Don't you like women, Harry?" Phillip's hands were moving under the rough shirt, down to the leather belt, loose around Harry's waist.
He swung himself up on the bed.
"I like diamonds."
"Why Harry? Because they're so cold and deep, cold and perfect.
Time makes it perfect?"
"A diamond is perfect. Time makes it perfect. Time makes it more beautiful. Flesh decays."
"Diamonds turn to dust. Someday all the diamonds will turn to dust."
"Not before me."
"But Harry," Phillip's hand had edged beneath the buckled belt soft into the hairy field that surrounded the dozing man's lazy prick, "you're so insignificant." The prick gave a responding jump, the face remained immobile.
"More significant than women, less significant than diamonds."
"Is it all a question of what turns to dust first. I'll be dust before you are Harry."
"I'm more significant than you." Harry turned bored grey eyes on Phillip's mocking face.
"Why do you say that, my diamond merchant?" Phillip was speaking as if to a drugged child. "Aren't all men equal?"
Harry coughed a spontaneous laugh, "You have no courage, Phillip.
You have no depth."
"Ahhh," Phillip sighed, "my diamond merchant is also a philosopher.
My hard as a diamond lover," and his fingers were a fist around Harry's cock. He pressed his thumb against the bulging vein. "Hard as a diamond," he approved, and lowered his head to the swaying erection.
"You're so weak Phillip, there's so much you want. A diamond doesn't want anything."
"So you've modeled yourself after a diamond. But no facets, Harry.
Just a rough uncut stone." Harry's prick was supremely erect. He did not move to touch Phillip, but his penis declared his awareness of the male caress. His prick was high and free, curving subtly like an unstrung bow. "You've got a fine cock, Harry." It stretched bigger than Phillip's hand span. He moved his fingers into the hidden valley where the rod and balls joined. "Your cock is the best part of you.
Better than your mind, or your diamonds, or your courage." His fist moved tight over the satiny skin. "Why don't you let me put my inferior member into you, and still hold on to this precious stone?"
Harry nodded like a much used woman. At first he'd resented being buggered. It had been just a game for him to stick his hungry flesh into Phillip and see how much Phillip could hold of him. But Phillip had sucked him all in, absorbed the throbbing erection with the ease of a Anonymous The Pleasure Thieves Page 6
child swallowing a gumdrop. He had used Phillip like a cunt, setting him on his knees and pounding into his unexpressive back. Now he could be a cunt for Phillip, and it was all the same, like faces in the funny papers that you could turn upside down. The beard became the hair, and the chin became the bald head. And the two men were the same backwards or forwards, prick in or prick out, asshole stuffed or empty. They ate together, worked together, came together. Soon they'd be out, Harry in a month, Phillip a week before him. They'd never see each other again. Harry didn't know how Phillip had been pulled into jail. Probably fucked little boys, elegant little boys, elegant little prep-school boys. A man of the finest tastes. But he'd take off to another world and Harry would go back to cracking the biggest safes in the country; for a while they could be cunts for each other.
"Turn around Harry, don't make an old man, I'm almost dust now, do all the work."
Harry was hot now, his mouth open to let the air rush out that was filling the cavity of his chest. He got doglike on all fours. Phillip held on to his immense penis, Harry had to swing his leg over Phillip's head, the only exercise of the day. "We should be in the Olympics." His voice shook.
"We'd win Harry." Phillip was shoving his untouched prick into the raised behind. "We're pretty good at this. We're fucking perfect." He was pumping his body back and forth, seeing it sink into Harry's dark hole, and then come out all the way to the tip, dry and palpitating.
"We'd win, we'd win," his voice mocking the rhythm of his body. He pumped his loaded hand. "Make it this time, make it this time, Harry."
The two bodies were silent and pounding. No footsteps of guards, no jangling of keys. Just the usual uninterrupted before-dinner fuck. The stomach and back slapped urgently, and when Phillip felt the cock grow mutely rigid in his hand, then the first few drops of sperm on his fingertips, he released himself into the swinging ass. The men fell away from each other and lay panting on the narrow cot. As always, Phillip spoke first.
"Was your visitor beautiful?" he asked.
"Yes, she was beautiful."
"Very beautiful?"
"She had eyes like emeralds," and the two men laughed mirthlessly.
An elegantly dressed elderly woman sat before a mirror in an exclusive custom jeweler's salon admiring an extravagant pear-shaped necklace placed around her well concealed neck. The thin masculine hands that took the glittering string form the black velvet box belonged to the dapper proprietor, Boris Novak.
"Or," he reached for a white placard on which there was a meticulous representation in India ink of a replica size necklace, "without pendant."
She studied the gems for a second while the jeweler showed a detached, respectful interest in the design. "That is really very nice.
What would the piece come to?"
"With pendant, I should say about forty carats, Madame Rothman."
She smiled and turned to the glass again, "I suppose it might be cheaper to buy a new neck, Monsieur Novak?"
"Madame Rothman, everyone has a neck."
As he spoke, a young man, dressed very much like Monsieur Novak, approached them across the deep-piled carpet. His place in the salon was definitely subservient; with his immaculate tasteful dress, it was hard to imagine that he had another interest besides his duties at the Salon. He hummed softly, to warn Monsieur Novak that he was coming across the room. The dapper proprietor made all his employees hum so that his elegance would not be shattered by a surprise approach across the thick muffled rugs. Neurotic, he admitted, but with the refined tastes and delicate sensibilities that accompanied his character, necessary.
"I beg your pardon, Monsieur Novak," the young man courteously interrupted, "but you have a very urgent call."
Monsieur Novak looked solicitously at his client and begged to be excused for a moment. Madame Rothman looked dreamily after him as though he were a lover she dared not part with. He charmed this type of rapport into his clientele. "It must always be there," he coached the novices who worked for him. "They must think that they are being presented with a gift such as a King gives to his Queen."
"Richard. Care for Madame Rothman, will you? And oh yes, please change the tune you're humming today." He winked at Madame Rothman, "I suppose you find me a bit eccentric?" He crossed the room briskly, leaving his precious client giggling like a young hen, happily guarded by a little boy blue. When he was gone, she studied the image of the necklace in the glass more intensely, her mouth a colorless smile of greed.
Inside his soundproofed inner office, the face of Monsieur Novak became expressionless. He sat down behind his empty mahogany desk.
Beyond the half-open door, he studied Madame Rothman and Richard gallantry attending to her. He picked up the white receiver.
"Hello."
"Boris, this is Carol."
Carol Stoddard, on the other end, leaned back in the modern precariously balanced chair that matched her blonde woman's desk.
The pastel decor was a woman's dream, exactly what it was supposed to be. Carol edited for Femme Publications, and they were in the business to furnish dreams for unimaginative femmes all over the country.
Every month or so Carol started a minor revolution by explaining "pink is the color this season," or, "ladies, we're dressing formal for the evenings." The office was indeed not an office but a chic woman's boudoir, and all the advertisers felt flattered to be invited there. They remembered to lower their voices to the charming blond woman, pretending to do business behind the white desk. So business, with lowered voices, prospered, and the avid subscribers knew when to wear pink.
The office bedroom had a huge velvet-covered studio couch and soft indirect lights. Sometimes, when all the others had left for the evening Carol would remain to work … she and the night watchman would alone keep life in the glass skyscraper.
On the desk before her were the second phone and three cover layouts, each featuring the word "Femme," and a vase of beautiful long stemmed roses. She plucked one from the vase and held it to her cheek with one hand, the phone in the other. She watched her secretary pin some reproductions on a large wide, hewn-edge, black cork board, studious catch-all crowded with line-drawings, gouaches, a tiny antique petit point evening bag and countless reminder notes pinned afresh each day. There was a note on the board today that was somewhat more special than the rest, an address she had obtained through an unusual source. Her pulse quickened at the remembrance of the address. Carol had a cool, blonde attractiveness. Her speech and gestures, not vivacious, involuntarily held the stamp of good breeding with unconventional prettiness.
At the sound of Boris' voice she tightened her hold on the rose in her hand.
"I think I'll be seeing you soon, Boris."
"That is good news," he said warmly. "It happens I'm having difficulty finding sixteen matched two carat blues. If something could be done about it, that would be particularly advantageous right now."
"No doubt," she replied with a sardonic twinge to her voice. "You know I'll certainly keep it in mind, darling."
"Yes, Carol dear, please do; see you soon."
They said their goodbyes simultaneously. Carol was free to think of her secret address pinned on the cork board. She placed her rose back in the vase and came out from behind the desk. Boris, on the other hand, remained thoughtfully in his chair as he watched Richard come toward him humming a more pleasing tune. "Back in business again,"
he mused. "This should be most interesting."
"Mr. Novak, sorry to disturb you, but Madame Rothman is anxious to keep her luncheon engagement and is wondering if you have a blank check for her to fill out."
***
Carol looked at her watch. She made the appointment for 1:00
o'clock; it would be all right if she was there a few minutes late, but to avoid any chance of embarrassment, she had better leave now to be sure the same person would take care of her. Things must move along as smoothly as possible, and Carol had a facility for seeing that things were done the simplest, most intelligent way.
Outside the office, the usual lunch hour rush was on – people dashing to their business lunches, some were grabbing for the check, others sat coyly. It made no difference who picked it up. None of them were paying. It was all good old management behind them making it possible for more executives to have more luxurious indigestion at their expense.
Carol waited patiently on the corner of 57th and Madison Avenue.
She hailed a cab. "Who the hell invented the expense account anyway?" she wondered, entering the taxi.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am, but what did you say?" Carol laughed to herself. "Overwork," she thought, then she reached into her bag for the piece of paper that had been tacked to the cork board for a few days.
Why hadn't she memorized the address by now? She certainly should figure that one out.
The taxi dropped her downtown on the east side of Manhattan – odd twisting little tenement streets, fronted by shabby stores selling candy and cigarettes. Then there was the store that had an exotic floral drape across the window and Gypsies sitting inside, holding babies on their knees, waiting to tell someone's fortune. She found her number.
In the window of this shop were one or two broken porcelain dolls with real hair wigs, a few toy animals with human hair that looked like fur. Everything was badly faded.
The store itself was completely bare, dirty grey shelves filled with colorless boxes, some wrapped in brown paper. Behind the shelves she could hear two people talking, a sewing machine being used. No one came out immediately. As she waited to be noticed, the atmosphere of the place oppressed her. It was indefinable. She had been in some pretty strange environments in her time, but now she wanted to be back in the frantic spin of Madison Avenue, running to the office to meet the deadline.
A man appeared from the rear. He was a bit messy, nondescript except for a smooth glassy bald head.
"Mr. Gasper?" Carol asked hesitatingly.
"Yes."
"Remember me? You came to my office one day and I ordered something from you. I believe today it was to be ready."
"Yes, of course," he said evenly without expression. "I have your merkin right here."
Carol weakened at the mention of that word. The dusty air caught the sound and in her mind, she repeated several times "Merkin, merkin – what an evil sound it has, disgusting, and he dared to say it, and in front of me."
Mr. Gasper disappeared into the back of the shop and quickly came out with a small anonymous brown package.
"I believe you have already paid me, Miss. You could try it on here, only it's not a wise thing to do; if in any way the merkin is not perfectly suited, call me immediately."
She received the package mechanically and stared rather dumbfounded at Mr. Gasper. She wanted to run from the store, but he continued talking to her in his unemotional insurance salesman way.
"Of course, it isn't often I receive calls for this sort of thing. It is a bit rare, particularly in this day and age, but I assure you it is for this reason that I have taken exceptional pains with yours."
"Thank you and good day," Carol said, imitating the monotony of his voice.
She walked swiftly out of the obscure section into a larger thoroughfare and hailed a taxi to get away, just get away to the sterile safety of Femme.
Carol dismissed her secretary for the day. Everyone was finished up and going home. She would stay at the office tonight for several reasons – a pretense of work to be done on the closing issue – and she had to be sure she was entirely alone when she opened the little brown package.
Dinner was sent up to her before the building was closed for the night. Eating the delicacies, a small bottle of excellent dry Riesling, a roast chicken, she felt secure. Calls could not come into the office at this hour. She approved some proofs held before her blind eyes. She walked about the room, stretching languidly. The wine had tasted good and helped to relax her. She switched on the radio. It played softly, corny mood music, but pleasant she thought. In a large square mirror she caught her reflection, walked up close to it and stared at herself.
"Yes, I am attractive. I forget this once in a while; I forget about all my equipment." She put her hands over her breasts, the round softly supple mounds felt good under her touch. The nipples bounced out into her hands, hard and rubbery. She ran her hands down her stomach, turned sideways and gazed at her thighs in the mirror. "I should lose a bit of weight there." Femme disdained heavy thighs. She stood directly in front of the mirror now and pulled off her cashmere sweater and brassiere. She placed her hands on her breasts again. The skin was softer than the cashmere of her sweater, the rouge color of the nipples begging to be licked off.
She put one hand down inside her panties and felt the burning fever of her cunt. She ran her fingers delicately over the moist vaginal mouth, tickling the tip of her clitoris. Her vagina was vibrating with passion, the small tongue between the top of her mound was stiff with desire. She thought, "What I want is someone to lick it for me, soothe it like a cat lapping cream."
She stripped off the rest of her clothing and tried to keep her hands off her body for a second. She stood in front of the mirror, naked, her wavy blond hair perfectly combed, every hair in place. She bent her head like a horse bucking and threw it back, shaking her head furiously, grinding her ass as in a primitive dance. Her hands cupped around the cheeks of her fleshy ass and she moved them deep inside the crack until the tips could play with her pussy, teasingly touching the rim of her opening, and now and again stuck her finger up her throbbing passage that pulsated against it like a worm squirming on the end of a hook.
It was time. She couldn't stand it any longer. She grabbed the little box wrapped in brown paper and ripped it open. There, inside, was a piece of hair, not as silky perhaps as the hair on her head, but almost as soft. She had debated with herself what the color should be and decided upon the exact tone and color of the hair on her head. After all, they couldn't possibly be identical. One area was always exposed to the world and the other never.
She held the small triangular piece of hairy blondness before her and shook it slightly in the air. Carol stood with it in front of the mirror and placed it over her hairless exposed mound, the small suction cups adhering to her skin. It looked wonderfully real. Genuine. No one would suspect that this was not her own pubic hair. It took a great deal of courage to expose herself in this way, but she got what she wanted.
When as a child she had diphtheria and all her hair fell out, everyone was concerned about whether her hair would grow back in, and it had, all except in the one private area. At first she felt great shame in not being like other women, but she certainly was not like other women in many ways. Then, of course, there were those who would be excited by the lack of the curly hairs intimacy. "But now it can be either way, as I choose. Perhaps I shall keep it only for me, although I'm sure it's guaranteed not to be chewed off." She laughed at her pornography, and placed the palm of her hand over her new pussy hairs. She felt the warmth of her flesh come through the hairs of her merkin.
Her head was tousled and wild from her previous abandoned movements. Her newest possession fitted perfectly over her hungry cunt.
She lay on her back, her legs parted wide on top of the dark green velvet spread of the studio couch, gently moving the hardened point on the top of her clitoris round and round. Her hips rotated automatically beneath her and she was breathing heavily. The mouth of her vagina began to open wider. She wanted to push the Empire State building in there tonight, but what was she to use? Her fingers were not enough, not now. She thought frantically of some object she could thrust into her that her cunt could suck satisfactorily on as she became hotter and closer to that moment when everything inside her would open forth and fall away deep inside, the indescribable sensation shaking her body with tremulous pleasure. Her hands were wet with her juices.
A plaster mannequin stood behind the couch, as naked as Carol. It was used for draping dresses during the day. She stretched behind her and pulled off its arm, smashing it at the elbow, and rammed the forearm up into her in time for the mouth of her cunt to lock stubbornly over it, as she came savagely.