Candy

She was as cool as a pickle. Her steel-blue eyes through the black-rimmed glasses were looking at me with a mixture of humour and contempt.

And that’s what did it. I had to take care of that amused reserve once and for all, had to show her that she couldn’t laugh or sneer or smirk at me.

But it was more than that. That breastless chest, those slim hips, that aristocratic face …

And that twisted psyche.

Damn it, I wanted her. I hated her and wanted her at once, and I could no more stop what I was about to do than I could hold back the flood by sticking my finger in the dike.

So I hit her.

I hit her in the stomach, naturally. If you’re going to be cad enough to hit a woman you might as well hit her below the belt and that is precisely what I did. I hit her as hard as I could and I am not a small man nor am I a weak man. I know how to throw a punch and I threw this one with all my strength.

She doubled up in pain. Her hands went to her stomach and her knees buckled.

Her glasses fell off and settled on the carpet. I stepped on them and ground the lenses to dust.

I tangled my hand in her short hair and jerked her to a standing position. I held her like that with one hand while I slapped the hell out of her with the other, slapped her across the face again and again until her cheeks began to bleed from the force of the blows.

Then I hit her again.

In the stomach.

She puked all over the carpet and it was messy so I hauled her a few feet further into the room. By this point I was getting confused. I didn’t know exactly what to do so I hit her again.

That did it. She crumpled up and fell on her face and she didn’t move.

I had to hand it to her. She didn’t utter a sound all the way through, didn’t moan or scream or cry or anything. She was a twenty-four carat bitch and I hated her from hell to breakfast but she had guts, even if I had been trying to kick them out of her.

I rolled her over onto her back and looked down at her. Her face was contorted in an expression of horrible pain and when she spoke she spoke through clenched teeth.

She said: “Just what do you propose to do to me, Mr. Flanders?”

So I told her.

You have to hand it to her. You really have to give the bitch credit. The old amusement and contempt came back into those steel-blue eyes and the old quiet fury returned to her voice.

“You may proceed,” she said.

I ripped the buttons getting the shirt off. But I did get it off and there wasn’t anything underneath it. Candy didn’t need a bra because her breasts were firm enough to get along without one; this bitch didn’t need one because she didn’t have anything to put in one. Her chest was as flat as a flounder.

I had a tough time with the pants. But I got them off and tore off the panties she was wearing under them. I tore off her tennis shoes and socks as well, although there wasn’t much point in it. They wouldn’t have gotten in the way. But I wanted her completely naked, naked and defenseless.

When she was naked I got my own clothes off. I hooked my hands under her armpits and pulled her to her feet, and when I let go of her she sagged against me like a rag doll with half the stuffing gone.

God alone knows where she got the strength, but when she came up off the floor this time she came up fighting. Her hand came at me nails first and her razor-sharp nails lashed my forehead and drew blood. She heaved a knee that would have played havoc with my virility but I swivelled a hip and dodged the blow.

She called me a nasty name.

So what the hell.

I hit her again.

This time she came off the floor like an irritated rhinoceros and gave me a poke in the jaw that sent me reeling. For a little bundle of fluff she packed a wallop.

I got a grip on her shoulders, put one foot behind her feet and gave her a shove. She obligingly flopped on her cute little tail and I fell forward and landed right on top of her. She made a nice cushion.

I almost couldn’t go through with it. She was fighting me, all right, but when you stop to consider the fact that I outweighed her by a good seventy pounds the fight didn’t seem too fair. I almost got up and left, but then I saw the whole incredible picture of her and Candy in bed together and I couldn’t hold myself back.

I had to even the score.

It was quite an experience. Technically I suppose it was a vaguely enjoyable ride; at least it was something different. But it was sick and sordid and when I was done I felt like cutting my throat with a rusted razor. I stepped away from her and fumbled my way into my clothing while she lay on the floor like a castaway napkin.

“You’re okay,” I said, hysterically. “We’ll have to have another go at it one of these days.”

And for what was possibly the first time in her life, Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie did not have a snappy answer.

I didn’t ride the elevator because I didn’t want the operator to get a look at me. Not because he would be able to identify me later—that was one thing I wasn’t going to waste my time worrying about. I knew it was better than rubles-to-rickshaws that Caroline Christie would no sooner call the police than she would call me and beg me to do it again.

Hell, that much was elementary. Every juvenile delinquent with enough moxie to live up to the garrison belt dangling from his grimy paw knows that the easiest way in the world to pick up a quick buck is to beat up a faggot. The juvie picks up on one of the gay boys, leads him anywhere at all and pounds the crap out of him.

Now who is the fag going to bitch to?

No one.

And who was Christie going to bitch to?

No one.

No one at all.

So, among my other remarkable accomplishments, I was now a successful rapist. Somehow I wasn’t particularly proud of myself, and that is why I didn’t want the elevator operator looking at me. Hell, I didn’t even want to look at myself. I felt sick to my stomach.

At the same time I was not without a small glint of triumph. It was with considerable self-esteem that I wondered idly how long it would take Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie to wash the blood out of her rug. Yes, blood— because Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie had been a virgin until I altered her status once and for all.

Back in my room I washed off my cut face and took an opening slug from the bottle to dull the hate I was building up for myself. What had the afternoon landed me, all things considered?

Not much.

Not a hell of a lot at all.

I had raped a lesbian. Raped a virgin lesbian, to be precise. If nothing else, it was something I had never done before. I had had a virgin—my wife, Lucy—but I had never raped anybody, and I had never had anything horizontal to do with a lesbian.

It was a great afternoon for firsts.

But what else?

I was as far away from Candy as before and I letched for her as violently as ever. It was her face I saw at the peak of passion with little Miss Lesbo, and it was the memory of her that had occasioned the visit and the rape in the first place. So where was I?

I was up the creek. Not only didn’t I have a paddle, but I also didn’t have a great many other things.

A job.

A woman.

And on top of everything else the canoe had sprung a leak.

I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes and thought to myself what a bastard I was. I thought about the woman who was divorcing me, and the other woman who was putting out for the woman I had just gotten finished raping, and there seemed to be more reasons to hate myself than there were stars in the sky.

I let myself sink into a positive abyss of self-loathing which was masochistically delicious. After awhile I went