Chapter 12
Laura bought some vodka and tomato juice on the way back to her apartment, but once there, she did not open it. She'd yielded to too much temptation in the past week, and now that it was too late, she'd at least show herself she could resist it. Looking at the bottle of liquor, she wondered if alcohol could be blamed for her downfall. She'd been drinking every time she'd made it with them at Perry's place, but then again, she'd not been drinking that day, but she'd certainly been ready to make it. It was possible, she thought, that she couldn't experience a real orgasm without a little liquor in her. If that was the case, so much the better. Working as a whore, she'd layoff the booze, and when she wanted to go on a sex binge of her own, all it would take would be a few drinks to get her going.
She sighed and put the bottle away, knowing inwardly that her lusty appetite for sex could not be blamed on anything inside a bottle. It was inside her, and with or without the influence of liquor and bad companions, it would have eventually come out. In a way she envied normal people who kept their sex lives in the correct and usually subdued relation to their day to day living. But in another way she felt sorry for them, never feeling the sexual energy bursting so magnificently in them as it did in people like herself. Even then, following her dismal experiences with Stanley and Helen, she felt it trying to burst out. She experimented with subduing it by taking a cold shower and dressing in a drably familiar old nightgown, and she was pleased that her experiment was a success. She sat down to read away the time until she'd be forced to start her new career. It was a chemistry book she chose, and she found it highly absorbing. It was good to lose herself in it and feel almost like the Laura Dandridge who had gone out of existence in the rain and mud of the Friday night before.
Laura read for a long time and dozed in her chair. The phone ran and she didn't answer it. She knew it was one of her bed partners and she had no need to see any of them or anyone at all until she was taken to see the vice lords of Las Vegas. She cooked and ate a can of soup, chagrined at herself for having an appetite for steak and potatoes now in this time of great distress. Sitting at the little table, she had to think hard about the horrors she'd face as a paid sexual performer before she was able to cry. Even then the tears didn't last long, for she knew she was not only capable of selling herself well, but also capable of enjoying it at times.
It was after dark when the knock came at the door, and she didn't rise to answer it. She sat where she was and listened to it two more times, wishing whoever it was would go away, and wondering which of her wild friends had come to drag her off to another night of dirty, wonderful fun.
"Laura, are you in there?"
It was Chuck's voice, and it gave her such a start she knocked the book off the arm of her chair.
"I know you're in there," he said after a moment's pause. "Your car's downstairs and I can hear you, so open up."
She covered her face with her hands and willed him to go away.
"Damnit, you let me in or I'll knock this door down! What the hell's come over you, quitting work and holing up here? Laura, are you sick?"
She was sick with shame and the dread of seeing him, but as he rattled the doorknob loudly and bumped hard against the wood panel, she raised her head proudly and said, "Just a minute."
In just the few days they'd been apart she'd forgotten how handsome he was. He didn't have the beach-boy good looks of Bobby Barker, nor did he have the snake-like sensuality of Perry Coleman. Chuck's handsomeness was straightforward and clean-cut, and it probably would have gone unnoticed by most girls. She tried not to notice it then, as she spoke to him with cool reserve.
"I am not sick. I have quit my job and am leaving Sulfur City. I never said I'd marry you, you're not my fiance, and I owe you no more explanation than that. So if you'll kindly stop banging on my door and…"
"You owe me a helluva lot more than that!" he interrupted, grabbing her by the shoulders with most unexpected fierceness. "Why are you quitting, and where are you going?"
"It's none of your business!" she retorted, twisting in his powerful grip. "How did you even know I'd quit anyway?"
"They sent us a copy of your resignation by, teletype at the hotel. I flew right back. Now, spit it out. Tell me. What the hell's got into you?"
Man and boy, dog and woman, they'd all gotten into her since last she'd seen him, and how did she go about telling him that? It was better he didn't know that she'd gone all the way with anyone who'd wanted her, after having held him at bay for so long.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm just sick of it here. Now, damnit, let me go!"
He turned tender in the face of her anger and tried to embrace her, saying, "If you're tired of things, I'll change them. Stop being silly and marry me, and in a few months, after we get to know each other as man and wife, I'll be transferred to another plant, and things won't be so dull there."
She resisted his attempts to kiss her, and wanted to tell him she was transferring herself to a Nevada whorehouse. But she said, "No! I don't want to marry you or anybody. I just want to be left alone."
"It's not somebody else then? God, I was worried. Sit down. Talk it out. Whatever it is, I'll understand."
Her look made him let her go. She smiled faintly and shook her head. "You'd never understand," she said, and went to her kitchenette.
Her hands were very steady as she took out the bottle of vodka. She'd broken open the cap and poured several ounces of it in a glass, planning on drinking it raw, before he strode over and snatched it out of her hand.
"Are you crazy? Have you turned into an alcoholic since I've been gone? What the hell's got into you?"
Having asked the question a second time, he deserved an answer. She waggled an eyebrow at him, curled her lips in a teasing grin, and smoothed her hand over the front of his pants. "One of these got into me," she said. "In fact, several."
He blinked a few times. He said, "You're kidding."
"Oh, no," she airily replied, stroking his pants front, finding the soft warm there. "While you were busy at the convention, I learned to fuck, and now I like to fuck. I learned some other fun things to do too, and I liked them all, Chuck, every one of them. So you see, I'm not for you. You need a nice girl, a company girl. Except perhaps when you go to conventions. Then you might like a party girl, a call girl, a whore, and then you might run into me again."
"Cut it out, Laura," he said ominously. "That's not funny. Tell me the real reason you quit, and cut that out," he said, his voice rising in anger as he knocked away her hand.
She sighed and said, "What do I have to do to prove it, take off your clothes and fuck you?" She enjoyed the way he winced at her use of the word, and she went on, confident again, unbuttoning her nightgown as she spoke. "Or would you like to see me do a little strip for you first? I can do that, too. Oh, there are lots of things I know how to do. My friends taught me it lot, Chucko."
He grabbed her arms again. "Who were they? When I get them, I'll kill them!"
"Get your hands off me!" she said, and angrily brushed them away. "It so happens I like my friends and they like me. I like to fuck and suck and I'll do it with anyone, even you, if you… if you have any balls."
His face was dark with anger, and she spun away, laughing at him over her shoulder as she bared it-loving him and wishing he'd go away-hating him and wishing he'd take her. She turned to face him before dropping the nightgown to the floor, and was warmed by the look of desire that showed through his anger. She offered herself to him with her hands, running them over her lush body in a brazenly inviting way, using them to point her big tits at him and to open up her cunt so he could see what might be waiting for him at some future convention of engineers.
He still looked angry, but now she could see the bulge in his pants. She came forward, swinging her hips and laughing softly, and he stood still while she tickled her fingers over his cheeks and down his sturdy body to his loins. She could feel it then, hard and strong, and it excited her considerably. But she contained her excitement beneath the mask of a teasing temptress.