making with Sybil, and he did not intend to suffer again.
Inside the house, he looked around. There could be
no cameras hidden here. If there were any, they'd have to
be attached to the trees on the edge of the clearing, and
he could not see how they would be able to film much,
even if they were equipped with black-light devices. The
vines and their supports would bar anything except
patches of skin and an occasional glimpse of a head or
limb. Besides, what did he have to lose? Blackmail could
not be the object of such a game.
Magda yanked off the blanket acting as a dust cover
for the sofa. She turned then, the moonlight falling
through the vines dappling her pale skin. Childe took her
in his arms and kissed her again, ran his hands down her
back—she had the muscle tone of a young puma—the
inward fall of the waist and the outward fall of the hips.
The garter belt annoyed him, so he sank to his knees and
unfastened the stockings and pulled them down and then
pulled down on the garter belt. She kicked them to one
side and put her hands on the back of his head and pulled
him towards her cunt. He allowed her to press his face
against the hairs, and he ran his tongue out and inserted
it just below the opening of the lips and tickled the clitoris
with its tip. She moaned and clutched him tighter.
But he stood up, sliding his tongue up from her cunt
and along her belly and up to her nipple, which he began
to suck again. He stepped backwards until she fell on
the sofa, her legs sticking out, her heels resting on the
floor. Then he got down on his knees again and licked
her clitoris once more and then slid down and thrust his
tongue again and again into her vagina. She began to
twist her hips a little, but he reached up and pressed down
on her belly to indicate that she should hold still.
Her cunt tasted as sweet as Sybil's and the hairs
seemed to be softer. He put one finger inside her cunt
and another finger of the same hand up her anus and
then, working the hand slowly in and out, rubbed his
tongue back and forth over her clitoris and then later
tongue-fucked her while his fingers increased the speed
of their in-and-outs into her cunt and anus.
She came with a scream and a sudden tightening of
thighs about his head. The grip was so strong that he
could not move his fingers.
He could stand it no longer. He had had no emissions
for two weeks because of involvement in a case which he
had wound up just before Colben disappeared. He had
been busy night and day and when he managed to snatch
some sleep even his unconscious had been too tired to
whip up a sexual dream. Then the frustration with Sybil
had made him hypersensitive. In a minute, he was going
to come, whether he was in Magda or the air.
"I can't wait," he said. "It's been too long."
He started to get down beside her and to help her
scoot up on the sofa so she could lie full length. But
she said, "You're ready to come?"
"It's been too long. I'm full to bursting," he groaned.
She pushed him down and ran her tongue along his
belly and wet his pubic hairs with her saliva and tongue
and then closed her lips upon the head of his cock. She
slid it back and forth in her lips twice, and with a
scream that matched hers of a moment ago, he burst in
her mouth.
He lay there, feeling as if a tide inside him were with-
drawing to some far-off horizon. He did not say any-
thing; he expected her to get up and spit out the stuff,
as Sybil always did. Sybil also always immediately
brushed her teeth and gargled with Listerine. Not that he
blamed her, certainly. He could understand that, once
the excitement was gone, the thick ropy stuff could be-
come disgusting. He knew how it tasted. When he had
been fourteen, he and his fifteen year old brother had
gone through a period of about six months when they
had sucked each other off. And then, by mutual and
silent consent, they had quit and that had been the last
of his homosexual experiences and, as far as he knew,
of his brother's. Certainly, his brother, who was such a
cocksman that he must be a compulsive, hated fairies,
and once, many years later, when Childe had referred
to their experimentations, his brother had not known
what he was talking about. He was either too ashamed
of it now to admit it or else had actually buried it so deep
that he did not remember.
But Magda did not leave him. She audibly swallowed
several times and then renewed her sucking. He sat up
and bent over so he could cup her breasts in his hands
while she was mouthing his glans. And then, just as his
penis was at almost full erection, he thought of Colben
and the iron teeth. This woman could be the actress in
that movie.
She looked up at him suddenly and said, "What's
wrong?"
"Listen," he said, "and don't get mad. Or laugh. But
do you have false teeth?"
She sat up and said, "What?" Her voice was thick
with fluid.
"Do you have false teeth?"
"Why do you want to know?" Then she laughed and
said, "You want me to take them out?"
"If you have false teeth."
"Do I look that old?"
"I've known several nineteen-year-olds who had false
choppers," he said.
"Kiss me and I'll tell you," she said.
"Certainly."
He held her tightly while he probed her mouth with his
tongue. He sniffed in the wild-beast odor of his own
semen and tasted the thick-oil gluey-seeming product of
his own body. Far from being unpleasant, it excited him.
She had her hand on his cock, and, feeling it swell, im-
mediately withdrew from his arms and went down on him
again. Evidently, she did not intend for him to find out
if she did have false teeth or perhaps she thought that
his tongue would have determined that.
Whatever her reasons, she would not tell him, unless
he were to use force, he was sure of that. He leaned back
and let her work on him. And after a while he rolled her
over and she opened her legs and took his penis gently
in her fingers and guided him in. He had no sooner sunk
in to the hairs than she squeezed down on his cock with
her muscles and continued to squeeze as if she had a
hand inside her cunt. And then, once again, thinking of
the film, he became soft. He remembered that bulge be-
hind the G-string of the woman in the film.
"For God's sake," she said. "What's the matter now?"
"I thought I saw somebody in the shadows," he said,
the only excuse he could grasp at the moment. "Glam?"
"It had better not be," she said. "I'll kill him if it is.
So will the baron."
She stood up on the sofa and called, "Glam? Glam? If
you're there, you asshole, you better start running and
/> fast. Otherwise, it's the other end of the wolf for you."
There was no answer. Childe said, "The other end of
the wolf? What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you later," she said. "He's not out there; if he
is, he isn't going to bother us. Come on, please. I'm ready
to explode."
Instead of reaching for him, she got down off the sofa
and crossed the summerhouse to a small cabinet on a
stand in the shadows. She came back with a bottle with a
squat body and a long narrow neck with a wide mouth.
It was half-full. She drank some, swished some in her
mouth, and still, holding it, pressed her lips against his
and squirted the liquid into his mouth. It was hot and
thick and slightly tart. He swallowed some and immedi-
ately felt his anxieties draining off.
"What the hell is that?"
"It's a liqueur made in Igescu's native province," she
said. "It's supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect. I under-
stand that there isn't any true aphrodisiac, but this stuff
does one thing. It burns away the inhibitions. Not that I
thought I'd ever have to use it on you."
"I won't need any more of it," he said. His penis was
rising as if it were a balloon being filled for a trans-
atlantic voyage. A beam of moonlight fell on it, and
Magda, seeing it, squealed with delight.
"Oh, you beauty! You great big beauty!"
She lay down and raised her legs and he entered
again and then, for a long long time, said nothing. It was
a peculiarity of his that if he were blown at the beginning,
he took a long time coming the second time. Magda
seemed to have an almost unbroken series of orgasms
during this time and when he finally came she clawed his
back until the blood ran off. He did not mind at the
time, but later he cursed her. It was a theory of his that
women who clawed your back when they came were
actually attempting to prove how passionate they were,
but he was willing to admit that he could be wrong.
They lay there for some time by each other, not saying
a word. They were sheathed in sweat and would have
been grateful for a breeze. But the air was as still as
before.
Finally, he said, "There's no use your playing with it.
Not for some time. I'm shot out. I could stay and be all
right within an hour, but I have to go pretty soon."
He was thinking that he was supposed to have called
Mustanoja by now.
"I'm not unsatisfied, baby," she said, "but I could be
whipped up into enthusiasm again and I'd like to be.
You don't know how long it's been for me!"
She reached for the bottle, which was on the floor
by the sofa.
"Let's have another drink and see what happens."
He watched her to make sure that she drank again
out of the bottle before he drank. He took a small swal-
low and then said, "What's this about Glam and the
other end of the wolf?"
She laughed and said, "That big ugly dumbshit! He
wants me, but I can't stand him, and he'd probably try
to rape me, he's such a moron, but he knows that if I
didn't kill him, Igescu would! You must know about
the wolves, since you mentioned them. I was walking in
the woods one evening when I heard one of the wolves
howling and snarling. It sounded as if it were in pain, or,
at least, in trouble of some kind. I went up a hill and
looked down in a hollow, and there was the female wolf,
her head in four nooses, and the ends of the nooses
tied to trees. She couldn't go back or forward, and there
was Glam, all his clothes off except for his socks and
shoes, holding the wolf by the tail and fucking her. I
think he must have been hurting her, I don't know how
big a female wolf's cunt is, but I don't think they're built
to take an enormous cock like Glam's. I really think
she was hurting. But Glam, that animal Glam, was fuck-
ing her."
Childe was silent for a moment and then he said,
"What about the male wolf? Wasn't Glam afraid of the
male wolf?"
She laughed and said, "Oh, that's another story,"
and she laughed for a long time.
When she stopped, she raised the bottle and poured
liquid on her nipples and then on her pubic hairs.
"Lick it off, baby, and then we'll make love again."
"It won't do any good," Childe said. But he rolled over
and sucked on her nipples for a while and finger-fucked
her until she came again and again and then he kissed
her belly, traveling downward until his mouth was against
the tight hairs of her cunt. He tongued off the liqueur
and then jabbed his tongue as far as he could until
his jaws and tongue hurt. When he stopped, he was rolled
over by her strong hands and she gently nibbled at his
penis until it rose like a trout to a fly. He mounted
her from behind, and she told him to be quiet, he did not
have to wear himself out. She contracted the muscles
of her vagina as if it were a hand and this time he
kept his erection. He seemed to be getting a little dizzy
and a little fuzzy. He knew that he had made a mistake
drinking that liquid; it couldn't be poison, because she
wouldn't have drunk it also. But he wondered if it had
a property of becoming narcotic if it were on epidermis.
Could its interaction with the skin of her nipples and
cunt have produced something dangerous only to him?
Then the thought and the alarm were gone.
He remembered vaguely an orgasm that seemed to
go on forever, like the thousand-year orgasm promised the
faithful of Islam in heaven when they are enfolded
by a houri. There were blanks thereafter. He could
remember, as if he were seeing himself in a fog, getting
his car and driving off while the road wiggled like a snake
and the trees bent over and made passes at him with
their branches. Some of the trees seemed to have big
knotty eyes and mouths like barky cunts. The eyes be-
came nipples; sap oozed out of them. A tree gave
him the finger with the end of a branch.
"Up yours, too," he remembered yelling, and then
he was on a broad road with many lights around him
and horns blaring and then there was the same tree again
and this time it beckoned at him and as he got closer
he could see that its mouth was a barky cunt and that it
was promising him something he had never had before.
And so it was. Death.
11
He awoke in the emergency room of the Doctors
Hospital in Beverly Hills. His only complaint was slug-
gishness. He was unconscious when he had been pulled
out of the car by a good Samaritan. The Beverly
Hills officer told him that his car had run into a tree off
the side of the road, but the collision was so light that
the only damage was a slightly bent-in bumper and a
broken headlamp.
The officer evidently suspected first, drunkenness, and
second, drugs. Childe told
him that he had been forced
off the road and had been knocked out when the car hit
the tree. That he had no visible injury on his head
meant nothing.
Fortunately, there were no witnesses to the crash.
The man who had pulled him from the car had come
around the curve just in time to see the impact. Another
car was going the opposite direction; it was not driving
eratically, as Childe had reported, but this meant noth-
ing because the car could have straightened out. Childe
gave Bruin and several others as references. Fifteen
minutes later, he was discharged, although the doctors
warned him that he should take it easy even if there
was no evidence of concussion.
His car was still on the roadside. The police had not
had it towed in because the trucks were too busy, but
the officer had removed the key from the ignition. Un-
fortunately, the officer had also forgotten to give it back
to Childe, and Childe then had to walk to the Beverly
Hills Police Department to retrieve it. The officer was
on duty. A radio call resulted in the information that
he was tied up and would not be able to drop by the
department for at least an hour. Childe made sure that
the key would be given to the officer in charge of the
desk, and he walked home through the night. He cursed
himself for having buried the extra key under the bush
outside Igescu's.
He had tried to get a taxi to take him home, but
these were too busy. It seemed that everybody thought
that the smog was over for good and was celebrating.
Or perhaps everybody wanted to have some fun be-
fore the air became too poisoned again.
There were three parties going on in his building. He
put ear plugs in as soon as he had showered, and he
went to bed. The plugs kept most of the noise out
but did not bar his thoughts.
He had been drugged and sent out with the hope that
he would kill himself in a car accident. Why the drug
had affected him and not Magda was an interesting
question but one that did not have to be considered at
this time. She could have taken an antidote or relied on
someone else to take care of her after Childe was gone.
Or it was possible—he remembered what he had thought