Two—I wanted to.
“Jeff,” she said gently, “are you going to be my co-maker?”
I opened my mouth to say God knows what but she didn’t give me time.
“If you’ll be my co-maker for a thousand dollars, I’ll let you.”
“Let me what?”
“You know.”
Yeah, I knew. But I had a feeling she was a little gone in the head and I wanted to hear her say it, so I asked her to explain what she had in mind.
“If you are my co-maker for a thousand-dollar loan,” she said slowly, “I’ll let you have what you want— anything!”
You figure it. I’m damned if I can. Here I was, a happily married joker with a spotless record as far as adultery was concerned, a guy who loved his wife and got along with her in bed as perfectly as two people can. Not an inexperienced guy, because while I was married at twenty-three, there were a lot of women before then. But no skirt-chaser.
There I was. And there, also, was Candy. Nineteen years old and built for boffing. Here we were, just the two of us, and she wanted me to pay a mere thousand dollars in return for which she would be my ever-lovin’ mistress.
Yeah, pay her a thousand dollars. Being co-maker was absurd—she had about as much intention of ever repaying that loan as Hitler had of settling for half of Czechoslovakia. It added up to paying her the grand, which I preferred to do than sign for her anyway, all things considered.
While I sat across from her being dumfounded she regaled me with details of how good she was in bed and what a hot number she was. It was impossible to believe those grown-up words were being spoken in that little-girl voice.
“I’ve got the hardest and firmest breasts of any girl I know,” she told me. “They’re big, too. You can see how big they are.”
I could see how big they were.
“And I know lots of tricks. I’m real good at it, and it’s not as if I did it with just anybody.”
“How many men have you had?”
“Four.”
“One doesn’t count,” she said, “because I was only sixteen then and he got me drunk on applejack and I didn’t know what he was doing. Another one only half-counts because we didn’t really.”
I asked her what in hell she meant and she told me. The explanation of just what it was that the two of them did would have made Krafft-Ebing blush.
The other two, as it turned out, counted. Mentally I tripled the figure—the gal must have been had by everybody in the rollicking town of Gibbsville. But somehow this did not make me one whit less anxious to see what sort of bomb was ticking inside her.
“Candy,” I said, “I can’t be your co-maker.”
She made the no-Santa-Claus face at me again and it was so sad I felt like helping her cry. But I didn’t. Instead I did something that changed her expression, and I’ll be damned if I know why I did it. Perhaps it was the fact that three Gibsons were enough to cloud my brain. Maybe it was just that I was born with an addled brain.
Whatever it was, I said: “I’ll loan you the money myself.”
I had a savings account at the Bowery Bank with a little over three grand in it. It was a nice quiet account that Lucy knew of without having the vaguest idea how much was salted away. The account fluctuated anyway— occasionally I dipped into it if I had a good tip on the market and occasionally I added to it if the tip came home. I drew a cool grand out of the account and solemnly presented it to Candy.
“You won’t regret it,” she assured me.
Yeah.
Her hotel was a reasonably good one and as we went inside I wondered how much rent she owed them. The elevator was self-service and on the way up I stopped wondering about things like rent because I was all wrapped up in Candy. That may sound like some kind of pun but I don’t much care. I had those knockers of hers drilling happy little holes in my chest and that innocent little mouth pressed against my not-very-innocent big mouth. Kissing her like that was like drinking her, except that you can’t
“I really like you,” she told me on the way into her room. “It isn’t like I was just doing this for the money. I need the cash but you’re so nice I probably would have done it with you anyway.”
I didn’t say anything to that. As a matter of fact neither of us said a hell of a lot after that. We were too busy doing other things.
She was right. Her breasts were hard and firm and huge. I couldn’t keep my hands off them and she didn’t want me to. She was one of those girls with remarkably sensitive breasts and she went absolutely wild when I touched her. It really had her jumping.
And she liked to be touched there, too.
And the other thing she said was true as well. She was wonderful in bed, except any adjective like
She was not Love. She was almost anything other than that. She was, if anything, Sex. She was the complete personification of sex, and she acted as if it was the only thing in the entire world that mattered.
Maybe it was.
I didn’t get back to the office at all that afternoon. It was a Friday and since Friday is traditionally payday it was a slow day. The morons who borrow money usually do it on a Monday after having blown their paycheck over the weekend. So I could stay away from the office on a Friday afternoon without the world falling in.
Except that the world fell in. Not at the office. The world fell in a room at the Somerville Hotel on West 44th Street where Candy Cain and a bastard named Jeff Flanders made sex all afternoon. Note the terminology. We did not make love. We made sex.
And we did it very well.
I’m sure Lucy didn’t suspect anything that first night. She couldn’t have because I know my guilt couldn’t have shown. That’s what bothered me the most—that I didn’t feel guilty. I wound up feeling guilty about not feeling guilty, and that’s as nutty a one as I’ve ever come across.
She couldn’t complain about any lack of attention on my part that night either. As far as I was concerned the chapter with Miss Candy Cain was over and done with, the most expensive roll in the hayloft that I had ever had, but one which was almost worth it. I never figured to see the girl again and I made up to Lucy that night by making desperately passionate love to her.
And Monday afternoon Candy called. The conversation went something like this:
“Don’t you want to see me?”
“Can’t afford it. How come?”
“I just feel like it.”
I called Lucy from a booth outside, told her I had to work late. Then after work I went up to Candy’s room. And the bedsprings squealed in protest for hours.
The pattern was on—there was no way to stop it. I saw her every other day, then every day. Before I entirely understood what was happening I was addicted to her as sure as a junkie is addicted to heroin, and I had about as much chance of breaking the habit as a junkie does. She hooked me in the traditional manner—at first it was free until the habit had built itself up gradually. Then, when I couldn’t live without her, it started to cost.
The price was not high. All she wanted was security—her rent paid, her meals bought, a small allowance for clothes and amusements. She was happy seeing two movies a day and eating hamburgers, and all I had to do was give her seventy dollars a week and I could have her whenever I wanted.
I earned roughly a hundred and eighty at Beverley. The pay varied with the volume of loans I landed, but it worked out in that neighborhood. It was a very livable salary, but chopping seventy a week out of it cut it down one hell of a lot.
But the savings account was there. I could dip into it for a long time before it ran out and I had to figure out a
