“That’s right,” Archer moaned, squeezing the muscles of his thighs and buttocks to keep from releasing his passion prematurely.
“This has been awfully kind of you.” Marguerita stood up. “But there is one other problem that Kevin and I have. I hate to presume on your time anymore. But I wonder-—”
“That’s all right!” Archer panted. “Anything to be of service!”
“Well, we always seem to have this problem of losing the thing while we’re making love. I wonder if —”
“Absolutely!” Archer ripped her skirt off with one violent motion and pulled her down on him. “But not like this,” she protested. “I mean, if it’s going to be meaningful in my future relations with Kevin, we should do it the way Kevin and I always do it.”
“Any way you say! Any way you say! Only let’s hurry! I don’t know if I can hold --”
“Like this then.” Keeping a firm grip on his manhood, Marguerita led him across the room to the wall. Here she turned and faced him, bending her knees with her thighs wide apart. She dug her nails into his buttocks, drawing him to her. As soon as she felt the desired contact, she locked her hands around his neck and jumped lightly so that her knees were secured around his hips and she wasn’t touching the floor.
Archer supported her plump, burning buttocks with both his hands. Her back and shoulders bounced against the wall as he pounded her. Marguerita reached behind her and between his arms with one hand and hooked her fingers in the rolled rim of the condom. Seemingly, she was only heightening his excitement by stroking his testicles. But actually she was making sure that the contraceptive remained firmly in place.
“That’s it!" Archer strained breathlessly. “You hold it in place! That leaves the man-—Kevin, me-—free to do it right. Ahh ... Ahh ... Ahh ... AHH!!!...”
“OOOHHH!” Marguerita responded in kind.
With one last, mighty lunge from Archer, one tight, corkscrew spasm from Marguerita, they attained the pinnacle of their passion with such ferocity that they knocked loose some of the plaster from the wall against which they were propped. When it was over, they crumpled to the floor together. After a moment, Marguerita reached out and smoothed the contraceptive. “I see how,” she said. “It’s still in place. All I have to do is remember to hold on to it while we’re making love — Kevin and I, I mean.”
“That’s all,” Archer panted. He reached down and started to remove the device.
“Don’t do that here!” Marguerita’s voice was unusually sharp. “Please.” Her tone softened a little, but it was still quite firm. “You’ll make a mess. Take it off in the bathroom.”
“All right.” Archer shrugged. He didn’t really like the way she seemed to be ordering him around. But he was too happy at having finally overcome his impotence to bother taking umbrage. He got to his feet and started toward one of the doors across the room.
“Not that one,” Marguerita told him. “That leads out to the balcony. The other door is the bathroom.”
Archer shrugged again and went out the other door. Before it had even closed behind him, Marguerita had leaped to her feet, slammed the door through which he’d gone, and bolted it. She ignored the pounding from the other side. Quickly, she slipped into her skirt, blouse, and shoes. She grabbed up a suitcase which was already packed and waiting and left the room at a hurried pace.
Half running down the staircase to the lobby, she paused for only an instant at the bottom to look through an archway at the growing commotion beyond. Beyond the archway was a large interior courtyard of the hotel. Several tables had been set up here to accommodate a dinner for the ladies attending the DAR convention. The dinner was in progress.
Or, rather, the dinner had been in progress before Archer's sudden appearance on one of the mezzanine balconies overlooking the courtyard. Each of the rooms on the mezzanine had such a balcony, each separated by a few feet from the balcony of the room next to it. Now Archer stood there stark naked-—save for the contraceptive still limply affixed to his member.
Initially, his appearance might have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t reacted so loudly to his discovery of his predicament. But his pounding on the door and shouts to Marguerita to let him back into the room had attracted the DAR ladies’ attention. And now there were shrieks of pandemonium at the sight of his naked body dancing in panic on the balcony overlooking them.
As the waves of their reaction swept over him, Archer was immobilized by his panic. He stood frozen, rooted to the spot, his jaw hanging open, only his eyes moving, rolling wildly, yet managing to focus on one or another of the outraged faces screaming up at him. He saw Shirley Simpell shaking her fist. He saw Olivia smiling with sadistic satisfaction. And he saw Llona beside Olivia, Llona, his wife, with her face contorted more with fear and apprehension than shock.
Llona’s reaction stemmed from the same knowledge which propelled Marguerita from the scene, out of the hotel, into a taxicab to the airport where a plane would take her out of this city, never to return. Marguerita had good reason to flee. Any second now the exclamation point would be put to her diabolical scheme. Any second now Archer's punishment would be horrifyingly executed.
The exclamation point, the final punishment, had been attached to Archer from the moment Marguerita had rolled on the contraceptive. Archer didn’t know it, but within the unrolled portion of that condom, still adhering to the base of his manhood as he stared naked from the balcony, was a very special chemical paste which was of itself a powerful explosive device. Marguerita had used it sparingly. She didn’t want to blow up the hotel. She didn’t even want to kill Archer. All she wanted to do was explode his manhood!
The explosive would only go off when it cooled. Heat kept it in a dormant state. That’s why Marguerita had held the box of contraceptives over the radiator. She had known that the body heat generated while they were making love would keep it from going off prematurely. She also knew that as passion cools, so does body temperature. At a certain point in this cooling process, the explosive would detonate and Archer’s gonads would be blasted apart.
Standing on the balcony, Archer shivered. It was partly humiliation and partly the breeze in the courtyard, but he was suddenly aware of how cold he felt. Every part of his body seemed chilled. Even the most private parts. It never occurred to him to throw the contraceptive. He had no idea, of course, that it was a genital bomb. Besides, it wasn’t much but it was the only thing between him and the coldness.
So he simply stood there, frozen to the spot and freezing, a naked man, embarrassed, with the reason for his embarrassment about to be exploded from the rest of his body! Proof positive, fellas, that the little Liberation ladies aren’t fooling!
CHAPTER TEN
PEACENIKS BOMB
DAR CONVENTION
Last night’s gala convention dinner held by members of the Daughters of the American Revolution chapters across the state was thrown into pandemonium when a bomb was exploded by militant radical hippies, according to a confidential police source. Policemen attached to the special Department Bomb Squad rushed to the main courtyard of the Midwest Riviera Hotel within moments after the explosive device was detonated. Here they interviewed the female victims of the explosion, many of whom were still in a condition of shock, and pieced together the following story:
Shortly after eight p.m., as the DAR ladies were starting on the main course of their dinner -- a choice between Yankee Pot Roast and Southern Fried Chicken — a man appeared on one of the mezzanine balconies overlooking the area where the dinner was being held. The man was completely nude. (Police point out that this is a typical diversionary tactic employed by Yippies and other militant peace radicals, the idea being to cause maximum confusion and thereby increasing the effectiveness of the major action.) The DAR ladies were greatly shocked and agitated by the man’s unclothed appearance. Accounts of what followed vary greatly. It is unclear as to whether the man on the balcony was joined by a co-conspirator who threw the bomb, or whether he actually threw it himself and his cohort simply appeared in an endeavor to help him make his escape. In any case, it seems sure that the bomb was thrown from the balcony. It landed in a brandy punchbowl which was already flaming. According to police, this greatly increased the effectiveness of the device. The brandy was extremely inflammable and flames spewed out over the room. (Police say that the device of itself would have caused far less damage.) The DAR ladies fled the area screaming. Nobody was seriously injured, but the hotel suffered a still un-estimated amount of property damage and many of the ladies had their garments torn in the crush caused by the exodus. Some of them were blackened by the smoke resulting from the fire.