David bought Linda a white mink stole for her birthday, and while this extravagant gesture hurled her into fresh paroxysms of guilt, it had only the most temporary healing effect on his conscience. Linda had guessed right about the return of his nightmares, although, due to David's earlier lies on the subject, she wasn't even warm in surmising the nature of these nocturnal tempests. Thanks to his unforgettable tangles with Valerie Hudson, his new bedtime hallucinations were more rampant than ever, with Valerie performing a more harrowing one-woman show in each successive vision.
One of these dreams had an especially potent effect on David, for it recurred many times and always left him gasping and spent. In it he could vividly see himself shackled to the ceiling of Valerie's bedroom, which she would slowly lower by pressing a button near her bed. Down and down would come his strapped nude body, his member jutting out before him, full and rigid and aimed right at the split-target between her thighs, while several fat decorator-pillows elevated her bottom to greet his descent. When he and his ceiling mounted rod poked close enough to penetrate her vagina, she would press another button and raise her roof once more… now up eight inches, now down eight inches… now up… now down. And so on. It was ghastly, but he always woke up coming, and was even more infuriated to discover that he'd locked his hands behind his back as if he's been tied up like that.
Nor could he keep from thinking about her by day; especially when he realized how close his dreams were to the devastating realities she'd given him. The thought of her nagged at him constantly: her unbridled impudence, her appalling cynicism, her smug and disdainful predictions that he would be back for more of her. And she had manipulated him like some kind of stud-boy slave, posing and angling him for her own private pleasure. She'd brought him home as a toy, designed expressly for her amusement and exploitation. And, if his dreams were in the least prophetic, perhaps that's what he wanted from a woman right now-to be commandeered and corrupted.
She apparently saw in him some powerful sexual entertainments of which he'd never imagined himself capable. He kept rehashing her audacious plans to put him up for sale, to rent him out to the lewd and the perverted at exorbitant fees. He couldn't believe her fantasies about men becoming career-prostitutes. It was utterly absurd; and what's more, she was incredible and thoroughly unregenerate and probably a female counterpart of Fagin and Shylock and David wanted to touch her naked body again, wanted to be on her and in her… Wherever it was her whimsy to aim him, that's where David wanted to be.
He let a week pass without even giving a thought to the remaining names on his computer-list, although he'd fully intended to make a nonstop sampling of each of them without ever once becoming emotionally involved. Look what had happened when he'd tried to form a lasting alliance with the man-eating Joyce Grogan! However, after another week went by, David realized he was too full of Valerie Hudson to consign her to the past; and so finally one Saturday afternoon he let Linda believe he was driving off for his weekly golf-game, but casually remarked that he might stay out a little longer than usual, since the clear October weather was so agreeable. To convince himself that her trust in him was still as indelible as ever, David even indulged in some risky double entendre to test her: "Honey, on a day like this, I'd just love to get in some extra holes… do you mind?"
"Oh, not a bit, darling!" she said. Linda was seeing Brad, Darlene and her husband Johnny for the third time that afternoon, and although she feared she might soon be developing a guilt-fed ulcer, she welcomed this opportunity to prolong the panting session. "And if you fellows want to have a casual dinner at the club, feel free to do so, David, because we're trying out another new cook tonight, and the food will be rather chancy, at best…" This was the first time in their married life that Linda had given over her cooking chores to a domestic. David seemed pleased that this would give her more time away from the house. As for Linda, who remained enchanted with her own shame, she was relieved to have the added freedom, and more than willing to stick all her cook-books in the deep freeze while Brad and his titillating cohorts put her through her paces.
"You're sure you won't mind being on your own today?" David said. "I do hate running off every Saturday and leaving you saddled with the children…"
"Now don't be silly, David. Flora will see to the kids. I'm… driving into town to do some shopping."
"Oh… well, that's fine, honey," he said. Then he got his golf-clubs out, moving swiftly lest she suggest giving him a lift to the country-club in her car, which she had often done in the past. But luckily, he saw that this notion was not going to occur to her today, although he made sure she saw him loading his clubs in his own car.
"Goodbye, dear," he said, after their friendly dry-ice kiss. "Have fun in town."
"And you shoot a hole in one for me, darling!" she said, waving cheerily as he backed out of the driveway.
"Oh David, I'm so glad to see you!" Valerie Hudson was a bundle of lisping ebullience as she greeted him an hour later. The silvery blond dips of her hair were full and loose about her shoulders, and she looked outrageously appetizing in a see-through Juliet-dress of pale chiffon, while David stood there and made positive identity of everything she owned: full and dimpled charms no longer the forbidden fruit of his dreams.
She took his hands and pulled him eagerly across the threshold. "Darling, when that phone rang yesterday, I knew it was you. I mean, even before I picked it up, I knew it!"
"Oh, I know all about your extra-sensual perceptions," he grinned at her, his eyes scanning all those shimmering annexes beneath her dress.
Laughing, she reached up and pulled his face down to hers, her lips ripe and questing as they kissed, her hands travelling down his back, going investigative at his hard, round buttocks, slapping him there. "Ahhh David, what a brilliant structure you are. Face, physique and fanny, all luscious!"
"Leave my fanny out of this!" he protested, pulling her closer and burying his lips against the silky-hot flesh above her bodice.
"Oh no, my darling… Those hot back-buns of yours will come in very handy once we hang out your shingle. In fact, when we finally get you up on that auction-block, every inch of your anatomy will shape up into an asset."
He raised up and pressed a finger to her lips. "Stop talking like a lady-butcher. I want you. In my arms, in your bedroom, in my mouth…"
Valerie shuddered a little with this intoxicating announcement, lightly licking his fingertips as they pressed against her lips. She took his hand. "Come," she said. "We'll map out our strategy later."
Her bedroom was as massive as it was French and feminine, with a queen-size bed, naturally; and despite her diminutive stature, Valerie filled it to overflowing. What a wingspread this girl has, thought David, after he speedily undressed her and watched as she flung her naked body onto the downy quilt, thighs divided for him, squirming there. Recalling his dream, David gazed briefly upwards at the ceiling, promptly deciding it would be an architectural impossibility for it to budge a single inch. He also noted that the walls of this enormous room were draped in much the same fashion as that to be found in her living-room. With the exception of one eight-foot wide panel directly across from the bed. This was a floor-length inlaid mirror, designed to record their every squirm. Wistfully, David wished there'd been such a mirror on the other side of that wall, chronicling their historic performance on the white-fur rug in the living room. And now he gazed at Valerie's crystal-clear reflection, then back to the living proof of her in bed. Then he quickly stripped down and descended upon her.
There were none of her barked-out instructions this time, for Valerie knew what this adventuring boy wanted to do to her… wanted that confection from which she'd kept re-routing him the last time. The oral finesse. David was still eager to plumb the full depths of this new talent, hungry to serve her up for it, stripped and palpitating harlot always so willing to be imbibed afresh. So get her all poised and quivery for it, boy, and give her the moist endowments, the wet seeking intimacies, and up goes the curtain on that soft showery ballet… tongue-dance at the pulsing hub and the base of her.
And then, when done, gaze brightly up and wait for milady's still-thrashing approval…
"For a novice you are fantastic!" she praised him, pulling him upwards for the after-kisses. "Think how marvelous it'll be to get paid for that, instead of having to pay."
He frowned, but did not stop kissing her, gliding his lips over hers as he spoke. "I brought fifty with me this time, so we needn't discuss money."
"That's eighty, my pet. You owe me thirty from the last time, remember?"
David lurched angrily up and away from her, and then suddenly burst out laughing. "Oh man, you are one mercenary bitch! I think you've got a turnstile built in down there…" he made a fist and jabbed it at her fuzzy blond nest.
Her lips curved into a grin and she pulled him down to her again, her murmurs lispy and guileless. "You'll find I'm very expensive, David. But darling, you won't even miss the money I'll cost you once you stick a price-tag on your own swinging valuables. Don't you think all this gash is worth selling yourself for… hmmm, baby?"
"Shut up, Goddammit!.. I can afford you right now. I brought enough with me…" He dove down and ran his tongue along the fleshy dip between her breasts, crazily pressing the fat globes to his ears so as not to hear her words, wanting to block out everything but the moment and the feel of her.
"Next time, too, David," she reminded him. "Fifty every time you see me…" lifting his head up from her valley and pushing a nipple between his lips. "And I like gifts too. Jewelry, antiques…"The nipple hardening as he nuzzled.
"But dammit," he mumbled with his mouth full, "I satisfy you in bed, don't I… Hmmm, honey? Don't I satisfy you?"
"Oh for Christ's sake, everybody satisfies me in bed!" she let out an ironic burst of laughter. "It's just that I've always wanted the icing on the cake… wanna pop my cream and have it, too. You dig?"
He rose up and stared down at her in disbelief. "Is that really true, Valerie? You… you actually enjoy having sex with all your customers? Even if they're old… and fat…?"
She gave him a bright, defiant smile. "Honey, whenever I go to bed with a John I'm a little like Pollyanna. I'm able to find the good in all of 'em. All they have to be is nude, breathing, solvent, and here!" she fiercely pounded the mattress. "And baby, that's democracy in action!"
David continued to stare at her, trying to imagine her coupling with the grotesque and the obese. "You mean… guys in their sixties and seventies…?"
"Oh, you poor dear innocent boy! Those are often the most virile, accomplished and enormously built stallions of all, if you have a little patience and work on 'em long enough. Who cares if their faces are wrinkled when Mother Nature so beautifully preserves their ding-dongs? In fact, some of the best times I've ever had were with sexy septuagenarians…"
"Well then… Christ!.. Maybe I should just get out of here and come back in forty years, if that's how you get your kicks…"
"All rightie! But before you go, leave the money where I can see it."
David let out a furious roar and flung his naked body hard against hers, his member stiff and swollen from the excitement of perversion he'd found in her words, as he envisioned her sucking the long limp cocks of doddering old men… dirty old basket-cases nobody in their right mind would even touch, let alone lick. "Aw, you dirty filthy pig… you whore!.. you Goddamned slut!.. Tell me if I'm old enough to fuck you right this minute, tell me if I can use this picked-over piece of junk you call your body… that anybody can have or eat or split… damn you, with your fat tits and your cutesy lisp and that cuddly trap of a cunt… Tell me if I'm old enough or solvent enough to do this… and this…" And damn… if he didn't zoom in and crunch up and do it!.. not waiting for her orders, not waiting to be positioned or launched or pointed… but unnnn!.. slamming it…
"Aaaahhhhoohh!" she grunted, taken completely by surprise. "Aw… wait… no… wait, Goddamn'ya… not like that… don't pound it… oooh no…!"
Oh boy, David was ever so happy, because he was sure he really hurt her with that first dagger-stroke, positive her cries weren't put-on and that she felt a real twinge of distortion for a minute or two, because he hadn't been the gentle, innocent Mr. Virgin-Ass and given her a cue, hadn't let her stage the whole rumble like it was some native ritual. Just plain and simple and whooshh!.. fuck-BANG!.. right up in there where a whole damned battalion of senior-citizens had dumped their pukey loads… the twisted little bitch! Even now he could feel her trying to slide his ramming cock out of her so she could rearrange it and become the smart-ass engineer again and shove it the way she wanted it shoved. But no dice. It stayed in… and up and out and deep and jabbing… and unnn! For David, there was no pain… and soon he saw that mad-girl gleam of ascendancy in her eyes and he knew he'd begun to tap this little baby's resurrection… aw, Miss Gutter-Tits… Miss Swallower of all those zombies and cadavers and Johns!.. if your Mommy never spanked you, I will… take that… and that… and this…!
They tooled the afternoon away like that, in the painless joy. A tart-ambrosia for him to sip… the taint of a poisoned blossom. The virus grew.
October gave way to November, and the Montclairs at last returned from Europe. They were swept up in plans to re-open their Hillsborough house and begin their winter entertaining, so it was some time before the old man got wind of David's deteriorating work-performance at the office. Meanwhile, David was soon seeing Valerie Hudson three times a week. And, as the lady herself had summed it up, it was pretty damned expensive. Old Wilbur's return reminded him how desperately he'd relied upon the power of nepotism to sustain his position at All-Planet Insurance Co. And since he was worried that the old man might be calling him on-the-carpet any day now, it wasn't as if he could put in for another raise. And yet, quite suddenly, David found himself facing a drastic money problem.
Valerie had this absolutely weird fixation about being paid whenever they had sex. She admitted that she loved him, although claiming what they did between the sheets bore little resemblance to a duet from New Moon. However, she said it was the purest form of reflex-conditioning: money had to change hands whenever she did it. Probably due to some form of insecurity, David decided; and perhaps it even dated back to her childhood, if she ever had one. So all right, she felt rejected unless someone paid for her fluid charms. But for David, this little mental quirk added up to a hundred and fifty clams a week; plus extras, like perfume or cashmere sweaters or "sweet little necklaces" from Joseph Magnin's.
Knowing he couldn't lessen the weekly deposits he made in his joint-account with Linda, David opened a private checking account of his own, in order to keep rewarding Valerie for her feverish endeavors. But it soon became a very close race to keep this new account from being overdrawn each week. He supposed he could borrow an ample sum of money, but didn't know how he could pay it back without dipping into the family savings, which were considerable, but which were also scrutinized regularly by that neat little bookkeeper in his family whom he called wife, mother and Linda.
Several times he jokingly told Valerie that she was milking him dry in more ways than once, and that his love for her was driving him swiftly up the walls of bankruptcy. Of course, this was what the girl had been longing to hear, so she was always ready to offer him the same, single-minded alternative: "Oh honey, you clogged-up suburban husbands all have the makings of great whores, but dammit, you guys sure take a helluva lot of convincing!" After which David would roar and rant and tell her how nauseated he was by that proposition, which did little to curb Valerie's great powers of salesmanship.
She kept citing instances and examples of her fabulous success in recruiting male prostitutes among his fellow freeway commuters. "Guys you probably went to school with, David… who live in Atherton, San Mateo, Woodside… who've been married ever since college, have great little homes and wives and babies, but those poor trapped kids, they never seem to be able to pay their damned property-taxes or buy new cars or keep themselves in home-appliances, or just keep up with the Joneses in general. What other sideline could they work at to keep ahead of inflation without paying more income-tax? Stud-service, David! It's the answer to all your problems."
David would listen to her, but keep shaking his head in shocked disbelief. "Oh wow… I've heard some talk about housewives becoming call-girls to supplement their incomes, but nothing like this."
"Look, Dum-Dum, it's part of this whole new trend towards integration and civil rights and fair employment practices. I mean… like men and women can now hold the same kind of jobs and make the same kind of money. Equal Opportunity… no more sexual discrimination, it's part of the law now… a whole new thing, baby!"
"Valerie, to my way of thinking, prostitution is one field where men and women have never competed, and I doubt they're about to start now."
"David, I really think you've kept your head buried in the sand all these years along with your ass! But let me enlighten you. In the first place, there are male-pimps whose job it is to line up all those housewives you were talking about. But here in San Francisco, the guys are my job… Well, mine, and three or four other big-time hookers who're tryin' to muscle in. We do it through escort-bureaus or ads or computer-clubs or bar-pickups, or whathaveyou. Hon, you'd be amazed how much you can make just by turning a trick a day on your lunch-hour. A lot of your pure-assed college-buddies have been doing just that ever since they graduated, not to mention how they earned those diplomas in the first place, with their keesters pointed towards Mecca while their grades went up."
However, when Valerie saw that these hard-sell spiels were not getting through to the boy, she decided on a more direct approach. By having charged him a fee each time they met she'd been trying to break him down financially, thereby hoping to create a drastic need in him to earn some extra money. David represented many things to Valerie Hudson, not the least of which was his great potential value as a money-making property. In truth, she never took money when they swung like David, but she couldn't think of any other way to get him desperate enough to do as she wished. Although the boy was a fantasy of unleashed sensuality for her whenever they went to bed, she stood to profit a great deal more from him once they went into partnership.
Consequently, Valerie decided that only some stark personal catastrophe would bring David Fortune to his senses. And now she was determined to create one. A plan! And the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced it would be a most ingenious device to swing the boy over to her side of the street.
They were having cocktails in the living-room one evening, listening to stereo and waiting for their dinner to be delivered from the highly-touted Mandarin Restaurant. Valerie didn't trust cooks or servants of any kind, much preferring the strictly anonymous style of living.
David had often told her how bitterly he hated his job and resented the power his father-in-law wielded over his life; how he'd wanted to cut out and become a musician, how arid and pre-recorded his sex life was at home. But tonight, after tripling the vodka-shot in his Martini, Valerie used all her powers of persuasion and induced him to speak of these grievances again. She prompted him whenever he paused, sympathized in order to make him feel more wronged by the forces of destiny, as David vehemently mouthed all his grudges and frustrations. Mainly his opinions regarding that "old reactionary imperialist bigot-sonofabitch Wilbur Pierce Montclair!"
Then, when David rose and went to the door to admit the restaurant-personnel with their food, Valerie quickly reached underneath the divan where he'd been sitting and plucked the tape from a tiny recorder she'd planted there. On the pretext of wanting to powder her nose, she went to her bedroom and found a safe hiding place for her cache.
The next morning she lovingly gift-wrapped the tape and sent it to Wilbur Montclair's office, via special messenger. Then she sat back and howled with the surging excitement of victory and anticipation; for she was certain that the result of this act would be the industrial relations coup of the century, and… Wheel… that boy would be released for active duty so fast she'd have him peddling his weenie out of sheer nervous aggravation before he even knew what hit him. She sensed a compulsive need in David to wallow in self-degradation, having observed that the lower his opinion of her, the more frantic he was in bed. So all right, if he had a secret desire to set up housekeeping in the gutter, she was just the gal to help him with the decorations, and welcome to the swill, Prince Valiant! Drop your armour and your virtue and start hustlin' your ass off, Mr. Precious-Face dewy-lips, Mr. Tall Pedigreed Hard-On…!
… Oooh, she'd be so proud of that pasteurized stud, for there was no telling how much juicy traffic they could swing in and out of her apartment once they put their goodies together and concentrated. She decided to blast him right into a ball-breakin' crash-program so she could realize the fullest profits from him before he ran out of steam. She'd start him out on eight or nine parties a day, to see how he weathered the turnover. And then finally, when she was sure she'd milked all his talents dry and useless, she'd dump him and hit up the old man himself. It made her little tummy tingle when she thought how much cash Wilbur Montclair would cough up to keep his son-in-law's escapades from being publicized all over the area. Of course, that poor kid was so hungry for sex, there was no telling how long she'd be able to keep him productive. Months… maybe even a year… and ooh wow, what a future they'd have while it lasted! And how good it would be for the industry!