"Tamarack," Carolyn enunciated as clearly as possible for the ticket agent. "Tamarack, West Virginia. It's just a little place, just below Charlestown about twenty or thirty miles."
The ticket agent ran a stubby finger down the list of stops on his bus schedule, flipped over the page and ran down a second line of numbers.
"Oh yeah, here it is. Tamarack, West Virginia. Well, if you take the next bus – that's at 7:30 tomorrow morning – you will get in there about 4:30 tomorrow afternoon. It's not a regular stop, you understand, but the driver will let you off if you ask him to."
"Isn't there a bus tonight?" Carolyn asked hopefully. "I sure don't want to sit in the depot all night."
"Sorry, lady," the fat little man answered, "only one bus going that way a'tall. It's only a secondary highway, you know, t'ain't no highspeed toll road. It's 7:30 tomorrow or nothing. Less you want to take the plane into Charlestown and then a bus out of there maybe?"
"No," she frowned, "No, I'll wait for the bus. Thank you anyway."
"Yes ma'am."
Carolyn turned abruptly and bumped into the man standing behind her, apologized without looking up, and went into the Ladies Lounge.
A few minutes later, she pushed her way through the squeaking door of the women's room and walked slowly into the lobby of the half-deserted bus depot once more. Well, it was going to be a long night. She had better find a restaurant before she settled in for the night. It had been hours since she had eaten – not since early morning before Jason and the dogs and the opportunity for escape – and she was feeling a little queasy in her stomach. She wondered fleetingly if it was from lack of food or the let down after her flight to freedom. Whatever it was, she could sure do without it. She walked over to the cigarette counter. A tall attractive man in a business suit walked up beside her. Together they waited for the clerk to finish the word on his crossword puzzle and notice them.
"Oh," he finally realized he was not alone, "Can I help you, mister?"
"The lady was first." He smiled at Carolyn and touched his hat. She smiled back.
"I only wanted to ask if there was a restaurant near here that might be open this time of night?" She was looking at the counter man but her mind was on the handsome stranger. How pleasant to meet a man without a dog by his side, she thought bitterly, a man who isn't interested in your sex.
"I was going to ask the same thing," the handsome man laughed. He turned to the clerk and smiled. "Maybe you should be selling sandwiches instead of cigarettes."
"Matter o'fact I do," came his monotoned reply and he reached beneath the counter and came up with a pair of mangled sandwiches. "Lessee, I got one boloney with mustard and one salami 'n cheese. I make 'em up myself at home."
The tall man looked at the sandwiches then at Carolyn and smiled as if they shared a big secret. He put his hand on her elbow and turned her away from the counter.
"I do thank you," he chuckled, "but what we really had in mind was something more along the order of a nice medium rare steak. Isn't that right?"
Carolyn was caught up in his ready smile and nodded in agreement.
"Is there some place…???"
"Well now," the clerk sat back down on his stool and picked up the crossword puzzle, "There's always the Pickwick Hotel down the street if ya don't mind paying fancy hotel prices??"
"Thank you." He turned to Carolyn and guided her toward the door, his firm hand still on her arm. "You will let me take you to dinner, won't you? Somehow I can't envision a lovely girl like you eating salami and cheese."
"Well, I really don't know… I'm just waiting for my bus change," Carolyn was reluctant. After all, he was an absolute stranger.
"… and we haven't been properly introduced?" He smiled.
"Something like that," she smiled back.
"It's really quite proper, you know," he said frowning with exaggerated concern. "We've run into each other before."
"We have?"
"Of course! Don't you remember… you stepped on my toe at the ticket counter, Miss Tamarack West Virginia."
"Oh, that was you. I'm sorry. I just didn't notice who it was." Carolyn laughed an apology. "I really am sorry, you know."
"If you're really sorry, then you must let me take you to dinner to prove it."
"I'm afraid I don't look much like going out to dinner anywhere," she apologized. "You see, I left… where I was… in rather a hurry and I didn't take time to pack a bag or anything. This is all I have and, well, I don't look very presentable."
"You look charming!" He smiled down at her.
Yes, he had noticed that she had no luggage. That was why he had followed her to the counter, why he had invited her to dinner. This was a central transfer point for all major bus lines out of New York City. There were many pretty girls who arrived on the New York bus without luggage, down on their luck and usually pretty hungry. Pretty girls who left their small home towns with stars in their eyes and their brags of success still ringing in their ears… Pretty girls who came home eventually when all else failed, tired, hungry and broke. But still pretty…
It was the desperate pretty girls who were easy prey for Paul J. Price. "Just long enough to get enough money to go home in style." That's how he always put it to them. "At a hundred dollars a night, honey, you can go home like a aueen!"
Carolyn Vance didn't care about going home a queen. She didn't even care about going home. Tamarack, West Virginia, wasn't her home. It was only a small town with a pretty name on a map. She had done a childish thing – closed her eyes and pointed blindly at a spot on a map. And the spot had been Tamarack. She had only wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, where no one knew her. She wanted to start over fresh and clean and smelling of Chantilly instead of dog.
But most of all, Carolyn wanted to learn to make love to a man… to many men, perhaps… not to dogs.
Mr. Paul J. Price, for all his continental manner and experience, was surprised when the pretty girl he had met but moments before answered his proposition to become a high-priced prostitute with a simple chaste "all right".
But then Mr. Price didn't know about dogs…
Or why it was so vitally important for her to know about men…
"You're very generous," Carolyn smiled at the balding conventioneer, and tucked the folded bills into her bra.
"Think nothing of it, honey, when Henry Pippen's in town, the sky's the limit! How about a little nightcap, baby?" His pudgy fingers poked at her ribs and Carolyn winced. "We been having us a time for over an hour. I'll just bet you could use a little 100 proof courage. Bet you don't run into many men my age who can keep a pretty young girl like you busy for an hour, huh? Huh?"
Carolyn smiled and lowered her eyes naively. No, she thought and fought to keep from yawning openly, not many, not more than fifteen or twenty a week… and most of them make love just as poorly as you. She opened the door and leaned against the sill.
"Not tonight, Mr. Pippen." She declined as gracefully as possible. "I'm awfully tired. Perhaps next time you're in town, hmmmm?"
"Sure thing, little girl." He reached into his inside coat pocket and handed her a business card. "You ever get down my way now, you give me a call, ya hear?"
Carolyn nodded and smiled… and closed the door on him. She leaned her back against the door and sighed, slowly tearing the business card into small even pieces. They fell to the floor in a flutter of white cardboard snow.
Another dismal failure. Her guts felt like they were spread out in a frying pan. There was the same old burning sensation in her loins, it never seemed to go away any more. She leaned her head back against the door and closed her eyes. How many had it been? Fifty, seventy-five? A hundred? At least. A hundred male bodies had paid their money and poked at her with a hundred eager cocks. A penis paradise for an insatiable female! Only it wasn't paradise. It was hell! 'Cause it never worked for her. A hundred strangers pumped her full of semen and were satisfied… and still she ached. She had nearly three thousand dollars in the bank now. It represented three months on her back and it was enough to put her back on her feet again. She would tell him right now.
Carolyn walked to the rumpled bed and sat down by the telephone. Slowly, carefully, she dialed the private number of Paul Price. It rang, then rang a second time.
"Hello, Price here," came the deep masculine tone.
"It's me, Paul… Carolyn."
"Through already, doll? Good!" his voice said he was pleased. "I've got another bunch from the convention that should be good for a real bundle, kid. I'll send 'em up."
"No," Carolyn said firmly. "No, don't send them up. I'm through, Paul. I'm going home."
"What'dya mean, kid?" He growled over the phone. "You can't stand me up with a Goddam convention in town."
"I'm not standing you up, Paul." She was trying to be patient, but patience weighed a lot on your shoulders when you were dead tired. "I told you when I started this thing that it was only for a little while. I had to prove something to myself. Or maybe it was un-prove something. I'm not quite sure. But I know when I've had enough. I'm going home."
"To Tamany or wherever it was?" he said with disgust. "You won't be satisfied in a hick town, Carolyn, you won't even be able to have a good screw without the neighbors talking about it! How you gonna satisfy that hot mouse of yours in a hick town like Tamany?"
"Tamarack," Carolyn said, "And I don't expect to satisfy it, if its any business of yours. I haven't been satisfied in months! Not once in months! I'm sick and tired of coming up with somebody else's kicks, Paul. I'm getting out. I'll leave your money in an envelope with the clerk downstairs… and I'm catching the next bus out. Good bye, Paul."
She laid the phone back in the cradle quickly before she could hear his crackling objections. It was over and done with. She would call the bus depot and find out when the next bus went to Tamarack. She ran her fingers across her aching stomach, scratched gently in the tangled mass of curls and massaged the hungry button in her wet crotch. She wondered fleetingly how the dogs were. Had they gotten safely away? Was someone taking care of them, exercising them, enjoying them? Eyes closed, she worried the needy flesh of her loins and remembered how it had felt to have one of the big Danes between her legs… his thick rough tongue rubbing life into her, endlessly, tirelessly, until she couldn't stand it any longer and grabbed his harness and pulled him hard into her kneading hole where he would hump her into orgasm after orgasm… and leave her weak and satisfied. Satisfied. Oh God, how she wished she could be satisfied that way again! How she would sleep!
The brassy ring of the telephone shattered her memories.
She reached over for the phone listlessly, sighed and answered its impatient jangle. "Hello?"
"Don't hang up, kid. I just want to talk to you a minute."
"What is it, Paul?" she sighed into the phone.
"Answer me honestly now. I've done alright by you, haven't I, kid? I did what I said I'd do for you I sent you lots of guys, clean guys, guys with money to pay the tab. Right?"
"Yes."
"Then how about doing me fair? How about turning just one more trick tonight, kid? Just one more before you leave. I'm in a real bind. I promised these guys a real looker… and you know how the word gets around. If I don't come up with something special, the word will get out that I don't have a good stable and it'll kill me for the rest of the conventions this year. Maybe even next year. How about it, kid? Come on, huh? Please?"
Carolyn took the phone down from her ear, stared into the mouthpiece as if she could see Paul J. Price with his feigned hurt look, and shook her head. She returned the receiver to her ear in time to hear the last of his impassioned plea.
"… won't ask you again, I promise!"
She sighed. What was one more, really? It didn't matter.
"Alright, Paul. One more. One more and I'll hold you to your word."
"Thanks, kid," she could hear the relief in his voice. "I'll tell 'em to come on over. Five minutes okay? Fifteen?"
"Make it fifteen, I need a shower," and then she remembered his exact words 'tell them to come over'… "aaaa… wait a minute… did you say 'them'?"
"Yeah… aaa… that's what I said. You know how conventioneers are? Ha, ha, anything for a laugh?"
"What's with the 'them' business?" she pinned him down.
"Well, you know how it is. I got a call for a little group action. Three guys is all it is, just three. Probably reading a dirty book between meetings and it gave 'em ideas. They want to gang-bang a pretty girl. You know, watch each other do it to her. Nothing to it, kid. Just lay there and collect three times the fee."
Carolyn listened to his playdown of the facts. She smiled to herself. Paul was scared she wasn't going to go along with the gang bit. Let him worry, damn him, would do him good.
"Oh, I don't know about that…" she purposely let her voice trail off. Let him sweat.
Three at a time. It might be fun. It had been fun with the dogs! Hot, hotter and begging! She ran her finger across the little button box again and felt its answering twinge. Maybe that's why she hadn't made it with all those men in the past three months. Because they didn't last as long as the dogs. Maybe that was the trouble. Three men working her one after the other, or even all at once, might turn the trick. She had always had at least three, maybe four dogs in each training session and by the last one she was hotter than french fried nuts. She smiled wishfully. Never say die. She'd give it one more chance.
"Come on, baby?" Paul was still pleading on the phone. "They're real nice Joes, good looking too. Why, you'll have a real blast. How about it, kid?"
"Welllll, alright, Paul… but just for you." She purred at him, then made a face into the phone. "And just this one last time. You understand that part of it."
"Sure, kid, sure." He agreed readily. "Any thing you say. I'll send 'em over in about fifteen minutes, okay?"
"Okay." She agreed. "… and Paul… goodbye!"
"So long, kid. Have fun in your hick town. Screw all those farmer boys silly."
Carolyn replaced the telephone on the cradle. He just didn't understand. No one understood. And what was worse, she couldn't explain it. Not even to herself. How do you explain to a civilized socialized square-cornered world that you can only seem to cum under a dog? You don't! Your guts ache and you grit your teeth and pretend it doesn't matter… while the rest of the world screw themselves sideways with their fellow man.
Carolyn got up slowly and straightened up the bed, smoothing the sheets and plumping up the pillows. She took the folded bills from her bra and tucked them under the pile of lacy brassieres in the second drawer, then hurried into the little bathroom and turned on the shower. After the last rollicking romeo who graced her bed, she really needed a hot shower. Henry Pippen could sweat like a pig. She tucked her long hair into the shower cap and stepped in. Hmmmmmm, it felt good.