The Erection Set

“Kelly. My first name’s a beaut. It’s D-O-G-E-R-O-N, but people call me Dog. I don’t take offense.”

But it did happen. It was too quick, too fast and she wasn’t prepare for it. It was the bomb blowing up in your face before you even had the time set for it. It was the world rocking to a standstill when a second before it was serene and placid. It was a chasm opening under your feet while you were walking up a beautiful path lined with flowers and happiness and the sense of accomplishment. Discipline and self-denial reacted before she was aware of it ... ages of fighting the battle of the sexes brought out the instinctive armor of words and demeanor. And always that little thought ... she could be wrong. The chances were that she was.

Forget it, little blonde girl. Coincidences do happen and it’s hard to remember anymore. That was all a long time ago and you’ve romanticized the image. You’ve held on to a stupid dream too long and now it’s starting to show. Like the time two years ago when he turned out to be a Brazilian engineer with ten kids. And the seaman on the Esso tanker with the same name. Only he was sixty-three and a grandfather. There is no real Dogeron Kelly. You left him there at the train station and now he’s dead. The whole family says so.

“So Dog’s your name, but what’s your game, Mr. Kelly? You look like a cop. Are you?”

He shook his head. “Hardly. I’m an individual entreprenuer. I do whatever is profitable and comes to hand. I’m a specialist in generalities and it would have been fun to watch you deball your friend.”

“You think I couldn’t?”

He gave a tight-lipped shrug and then grinned at her. “It’s not very hard. I’ve ticked off a few knotheads that way in my time too. It’s just that it’s an extreme penalty to pay.”

“For rape?” she asked quietly.

“Come on, nobody would have to rape you.”

“Now you’re on a sex kick too.”

“Kid, you brought the subject up. I wouldn’t bother raping you.”

“Oh? What would you do?”

He let out another strange, raspy laugh. “Hell, I like it better the other way around. I’m the lazy type myself. Prolific, imaginative, but lazy. Half the time the only thing I get into is a conversation.”

“And the other half?”

“That’s another story not fit for virginal ears,” he said.

She almost had an answer for him, but he winked and walked off, sipping at his beer. For some reason she felt annoyed. Raul Fucia had been right, of course. She had known what she was doing when she dressed for the party, instinctively aware of her potential, but it was not more than any of the others had known. No one was needed to tell her that she was beautiful and well constructed. They had, but the mirror was enough. Raul’s reaction was enough to satisfy her judgment, but then that damned Dog had to come along and shatter her illusions. He couldn’t have cared less.

She picked up her drink and tasted it, swirling the ice around in the glass, feeling a little smile pulling at the comers of her mouth. Hell, the dog, yes, small “d” dog, did it to her. He couldn’t have cared less. And she wasn’t too old, either. She was just right, absolutely prime, beautiful, knowledgeable, apt and exactly right.

The smile widened when she realized she had put her finger on it. She had been around just a little too long in the fast-moving world of show business where judgment had to be quick and correct if you wanted to survive not to miss it. She had put him in the forty-plus class, but the full head of short hair and only light touch of gray had fooled her. That and the strange lack of aging and the musculature. Heredity. Dog Kelly was a real, total predator.

And now he was stalking. She watched him across the room, his complete unconsciousness of what he was doing. The women’s eyes would drift and follow him, return blankly a moment to what they had been doing, then drift again. In the small groups he would join there was an un-comfortableness among the men, barely discernible because they were aware and the act they chose as a facade would cover them. Sharon knew they felt the same way she did. They wondered what he was doing there.

For some obscure reason a funny thought ran through her mind. She wondered if he were carrying a gun.

It was Darcy Taylor who took the initiative as always. A sweet thing on the screen, but a wild one when a man passed she wanted. She left Raul in midsentence and had her arm through Dog’s, taking the glass out of his hand to taste his drink with a mock shudder and steering him out of sight to the bar beyond the French windows. It just wasn’t Raul’s day at all. Sharon felt sorry for whoever he managed to go home with this night.

“Enjoying yourself, Sharon?”

She looked up, smiling, knowing the voice. “Hello Walt.”

Walter Gentry III was the prototype of any and every bachelor who ran his own private world with inherited millions that Hollywood had attempted to emulate. The major difference was that this, the last of the fabulous Gentry clan, had, by shrewd business acumen, more than doubled his inheritance, another factor he had inherited along with a natural aristocratic appearance and charming manner. He had been the target of women from monied families for the past twenty years, but somehow never bothered to become permanently attached to any of them.

“I see you met Dog,” Walt said.

“Yes, who is he?”

He tapped a long cigarette from a gold case and lit it, letting the stream of smoke drift from his lips. “We met in the Army. Quite a guy. He was one of the natural-born killers. He make an impression?”

“Unusual type,” Sharon told him noncommittally. “What’s he do?”

Walt smiled and shrugged. “I often wondered but never bothered to ask. One day he took me to a fraternal club in London and I saw a picture of him in a football uniform. Seems like he was an All American in college.”

“He looks like a cop.”

“I kind of think he dabbled in that business too. He’s got some odd friends.” He picked a drink from the tray of a passing waiter and tasted it. “Good to see you again, Sharon. It’s been quite awhile. How come old S.C. let you out?”

She looked up into his knowing grin and smiled back. “My boss is dangling me like bait on a hook for his enterprises, as if you didn’t know.”

“Lovely bait. How could any fish resist it?”

“You’re not supposed to. I was critically inspected for capture appeal by the great one himself before being turned loose in your pond.”

“And what sort of catch are you supposed to land this time?”

He signaled the waiter over, took another glass from the tray and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said. “S. C. Cable wants you for a coproduction deal. He figures you for at least a five-million-dollar bite.”

“Nice, he laughed. ”And you’re the bait. I imagine you are expected to give your all.”

“That’s what I’ve been told. You’ll never miss a slice off a cut loaf, and all that sort of thing.”

“Except that your boss doesn’t know ... or believe ... that this particular loaf has never been sliced.”

“He’s been told, but he doesn’t believe,” she said.

“Ah, you demi-vierges must have a rough time. You’re too much for me, young lady.”

“I thought you enjoyed the last time.”

“Oh, I did. And thoroughly too. A little nerve-racking, but absolutely enjoyable. You’re quite a performer. If you must know, I never had a more pleasant night and day after, but it was a real cliff-hanger with that attitude of yours. Not that I don’t appreciate it. All I can think of is how awful it would be if you ever had an accident, like slipping on a bicycle pedal or something. All your efforts would have been wasted.”

“I could still take a lie detector test,” she said.

“Sharon, I’d sure like to be the lucky man Want to make a trade?”

“For what?”

“Your virginity against the five million?”

“Walt, you’re a wonderful man, but I think I’ll hold out awhile longer.”

“Old S.C. is going to be pretty mad when he hears about the terms you’re turning down.”

She smiled at him, a laugh in her voice. “He’ll never believe it,” she said. “The bonus factor alone is worth five percent.”

Gentry had to laugh back at her. “You know, sugar, I usually can get anything I want with a nice sidewise glance of my gorgeous blue eyes, and if that doesn’t work a cheap diamond compact will do the trick. Except with