Chapter 25: A Cad's Karmuppance

Olney burst through the door with a song:

"My destiny-y-y
Is to be in love with you.
Makes no difference
What you say or do,
I must stay in love with you ... "

Lateral-shifting a pretend set of dazzle-white lowers like the Billy Eckstine of his youth, Olney was about to croon on when Rhonda, betowelled and just then coming out of the shower, shrieked coyly. Croonjaws, now slaveringmaw, promptly bayed at her moons: "Va-va-là-oh-là-là-hubba-là." She ran to her room as the amorous changeling called cutely: "Tu as de bons gigots, mademoiselle."

"Gigots!" she hooted, firmly shutting her door on the silly man's run-through-the-decades (with a language crossover, to boot). In the kitchen, Olney hummed another verse of the old song while emptying the huge Monoprix sack of its wonders. Maggie walked in, stretching from a well-deserved nap.

"What's all this racket going on here? Can't a film star get forty winks in peace?"

"We're going to eat like royalty tonight, my dear. In honor of your birthday and a hard day's work, I have purchased three tranches of high-toned viande, namely: gigot d'agneau. Look at 'em."

"They're awfully small," she said, famished. "Hope you got lots of potatoes."

"Got rice."

"Rice!" petulant said. Would gorge on forbidden gordo foods if could. "Well, I hope you bought white rice instead of brown. Your health programs make me sick."

"Hey, take it easy. We haven't had brown rice since Crusty and Belle's. Did you have a bad dream, or something?"

"No, I had a good dream. I dreamt I was happy. Then I woke up to hear you singing that stupid song."

"How dare you call the sweetest souvenir of my swooning youth stupid, when what were you singing this morning? 'Au Château Miam Miam Miam,' for God's sake. If I had any real commitment to the spiritual regeneration of this world I would take and break that vile record."

Rhonda came in, rosy-skinned from her shower. Still defying the season, she wore a man's dress shirt which barely covered her knees. She was barefoot. "Celebrating tonight, are we?"

"Indeed we are," said Olney, returning to his former merriment. "I will personally cook the dinner, and afterwards," reaching deftly into the pinkish crinkly sack, "we can toast one another with the best neuron burner our favorite supermarché has to offer. Voilà: Martell Médaillon, five francs less at the Monoprix." Clever fellow put the sack with its remaining secret contents under the table.

"Here, let me pay you for that," said Rhonda, "it's supposed to be my treat." She ran back to her room before Olney could utter a protest, returning with a hundred franc note.

"It wasn't nearly that much," he said.

"That's all right, I'm rich."

"Tenu," said he, the bill already a wad in his pocket. "Now, while I prepare these succulent lamblets, Rhonda, why don't you pour us three glasses of wine -- none other than St. Chinian the Ripper -- from that sadly depleted bonbonne there, but no matter, it's enough for dinner, and Maggie, why don't you wash your face and freshen up a bit. It's your night, after all." The last crack circled the room after she'd gone, settling finally on the slimy meat to confront him, cadlike.

Rhonda stayed in the kitchen. "Hope you and Maggie don't mind my informal dress, but you keep it so warm in here." Olney croaked affirmatively. He tried to concentrate on preparing the lamb. Fortunately, there wasn't much to do; after sprinkling a few needles of rosemary on each side, he was done. He put the rice in some water to soak.

"Maybe we should have a salad, what do you think?" He was suddenly unable to look her in the eyes.

"Ok, where's the lettuce?"

"Sitting there, in front of you."

"Oh!" Their nervous laughter rang adulterously through the apartment.

Maggie came back almost immediately. "What can I do?" Her voice sounded thin, distantly angry. Grumpy from her nap? or ... !

"You can set things up in the living room," said chef de cuisine, very busy with his little arrangements, hands flitting over nothing to do but tremble. "Put down the table cloth and so forth."

Maggie was gone but an instant when Olney stepped behind Rhonda. She tensed, gaining a full inch in height, as he put his moth-like hands to rest on her breasts. "Relax," he murmured, licking her creamy nape, suckling the fine stray hairs of her luxurious mane. He bit her neck, a little too roughly, for she tensed again and dropped the head of lettuce. It bounced off the counter to the floor. To Olney it was the loudest sound then circulating in the fifteenth arrondissement. He stepped back, gasping for breath.

"Oh!" said Rhonda once again.

"Ha-ha-ha," rasped the mechanical doll.

Maggie back again. "Well, everything is set. Someone drop something?" She eyed them dully.

"I dropped the lettuce," paralyzed Rhonda said transparently.

"Well and good," boomed the giddy chef inappropriately. "On goes the rice, hee-hee-hee, and soon will our little fête commence."

§§§

The tablecloth, used exclusively on the living room floor, was in fact a bright blue dhoti given to Gaston by a relative of Subji's. He'd never worn it, of course, and the family had used it to eat on for years. Maggie lit candles, and Rhonda put on a recording of Ravel's piano music. Olney brought in the food.

"Alors mes chères, chères amies, c'est prêt. Gigot grillé avec du riz. Sorry, there's no veges, I plum forgot." He looked closely at Maggie. She seemed happier.

"Umm, I'm starving."

"It does look good," said Rhonda. She smiled at her company, a slow panning glow from Maggie to Olney that modulated from good will to unbutton my shirt.

They finished the tiny meal in minutes.

"Is that all?" Maggie asked.

"Nope, there's more," said Olney, rising to his knees. "But first, a toast. To the birthday girl. May she have a long life full of better things to do than making toilet paper commercials."

"Hear, hear," said Rhonda. As Maggie drank her obligatory sip, Olney stole a glance at the paramour of his schemes. Her long, golden legs swelled his cock, lifting its gaze to the heavens, while Maggie's grateful smile had his conscience arrested and turned over to the Inquisition.

The girls chatted while Olney busied himself in the kitchen. He made coffee, opened the cognac, rinsed the only two cognac glasses for the girls and -- gallant man -- a fresh wine glass for himself. From the Monoprix sack under the table he carefully withdrew a sponge cake made with cointreau and persimmons. He'd coaxed the reluctant girl at the patisserie to spell out in thick cream, IN ADORATION OF THE MAGGIE, but now it was a mess. He should have put it in the fridge immediately. Oh, well. He pulled one candle from a packet of twenty, plumped it in the middle, lit it, grabbed three plates and called, "Here I come, ready or not."

Maggie was delighted. He sat the cake down in front of her and explained what it was meant to say. She was thrilled. "Happy birthday, Pootita," he whispered in her ear. Tears rolled down her cheeks. A few rolled down his cheeks too, but mostly from remorse. Damn me, I just want to get all over that Rhonda. Why do I have to feel so guilty?

Maggie cut the cake while he ran back to fetch the coffee and cognac. "Youpi!" he yipped, swaggering into the room. "Cognac pour les Dalton."

"Please, leave Lucky Luke out of this" Maggie admonished with a laugh.

Olney was indeed a big fan of Lucky Luke comics. The French version of life in the old west seemed so much more fun. He especially liked the comics that featured the Dalton Gang. Joe Dalton, the pint-sized gang leader, was Olney's favorite. He identified easily with Joe's temper tantrums, inevitably caused by rotten luck and that nonchalant thwarter of mischief, Lucky Luke. Joe was always scheming to pull off a big heist so he could install himself in his idea of Shangri-La, which largely meant dreaming up other heists while sitting on a veranda with his feet on the rail, smoking a big cigar. In his quest for a crime that would finally pay, Joe was foiled at just about every turn. Perhaps the greatest frustration of all was his gang. Composed of his own brothers, William, Jack, and Averell (the latter renowned as "l'imbecile le plus dingue de l'ouest"), Joe's was a band of cunning desperadoes whose incompetent methodology was unparalleled. But even when things were going right, Joe's old nemesis would always turn up. Lucky Luke, that easy going samurai of the old west, whose horse talked to him, was sure to be waiting behind the pot of gold, casually rolling a cigarette with one hand while playfully outdrawing his own shadow with the other.

Tonight, Joe Dalton's Shangri-la was to be the body of Rhonda. But, his counterpart agonized, it's Maggie's birthday. Shouldn't I be making love to her? Then again, sex and love don't always go hand in glove, heh-heh, hee-hee. Maggie sat against the wall, dreamily rolling a cigarette with both hands, Olney was happy to see. He glanced at Rhonda. Like Joe Dalton, Olney was going to throw all caution to the wind. He poured more cognac, with special consideration for Maggie.

They small-talked, each responding to the cognac in his or her own way: Olney got yakkety, Rhonda emanated body heat, Maggie yawned. He knew she felt outdistanced. The part of him he liked best, his compassion and sense of fair play, had been left behind too. Months later he would writhe at the memory of this night. But now he just wanted Maggie out of his way -- on this, her birthday night! -- so he could whisk away those panties Rhonda so cleverly kept hidden under that big shirt and taste the source of all those stolen aroma moments. With a pang of regret, he realized that if he did, the magic of her untouched femininity would go out of the little duffel bag and its copulin-rich contents. The end of an era. Should he chuck her out, then? Get a new boarder with a new scent of compelling secretions? Hell, why not rent by the week. La sirène de la semaine ... yow! Psychotic.

They discussed cinema. Hyper Hebdo listed some three hundred films currently showing in Paris. Olney mentioned a Pasolini film that was opening for a short run in the Latin Quarter. He gave them a brief synopsis, but no, they didn't want to hear about women being impaled on giant meathooks. Olney suggested they could wear ear muffs. Nor did they want to see it either, they said, especially on the big screen. Olney said that the film was playing at an art theatre and the screen was small. No, they said.

They discussed books. The recent big event in the apartmenthold was a tattered copy of a book Maggie had been wanting to read for years, Doris Lessing's Shikasta, a chronicle of Earth from it's earliest, elysian colonization of humans by an advanced civilisation from the stars to a future of destruction and renewal. Central to the book was the theme of repeated incarnation until the lessons of each life were finally learned. Olney read it too; Rhonda had read most of it when it came out, and hated it. "Auntie Doris is a colossal bore," she reviewed.

"But the ideas are worth thinking about," said Maggie. "It all seems so true."

Rhonda rebounded, reviewing still: "There are too many holes. Her over-development of unimportant scenes is irritating. And then a really pregnant situation is dropped for no apparent reason, a scene which could have led to illumination." Rhonda, like many students, had been writing papers for years with a critical intent to annihilate.

"I agree her writing isn't all that ingenious," Maggie said. "But she has an amazing talent for imagery. Some of the scenes during Johor's first visit to the planet, when it was still called Rohanda, are heartbreaking, because life was so perfect then."

"True," admitted Rhonda. "The shaggy man who helped Johor out of the place where evil Shammat was sucking up all the planet's good energy -- he was a beautiful character. And I see why she had Johor leave him to his primitive destiny: he was light years from evolving. But why didn't Johor's Canopian overseers accept some of the other natives for relocation to a better planet? Even the evolved ones were left behind. What elitism."

"They were Rohandans, don't forget," Maggie argued. "They were born there. When Shammat infected Rohanda and it became known as Shikasta, the evolved ones were meant to stay and deal with the fall. If they'd been transported, then the future would have been even more depressing."

"You're right, I guess. It depends on one's point of view. For me, if I were seeding a planet and the crop failed, I'd want to save all the healthy 'inhabitants' I could."

"Yes, but that planet is this planet, so it's good for us that people with intelligence and kind souls were left behind. Otherwise...."

"Otherwise we'd still be on all fours. Point taken."

Rhonda's admission that she might be wrong about something stirred Olney -- not so much to admiration as to envy. "I agree with you both," he said, rousing himself from a reverie of the whimpering shaggy man, whose weakness for the known in the face of risk seemed to embody the evolutionary impasse of mankind. "Though I tend to take Maggie's side. The book's importance far outweighs its imperfections of style. 'Auntie Doris' touches on themes only the mystics bother with. Some aunt. But what impressed me were the case histories. Scared me, I should say, because the idea of people incarnating to perform a task essential to their evolution and the evolution of the human race, and then somehow losing sight of it, chills me to the bone. A good example in everyday life is how we keep forgetting our resolutions, like the famous New Year's resolution to quit smoking. And worse, when times are tough, the promise we make to ourselves or God to be more tolerant and compassionate to our fellow man. But we forget them almost immediately. It's as if the part of us that wants to be free is only allowed to surface once in awhile to make 'the plea.' If forced to, we'll listen for awhile and even agree that things must change. But once the meeting is adjourned our freedom loving higher self is shipped back to Siberia and we mindlessly return to the status quo of forgetfulness. It's like a form of amnesia. Months or years later our freedom lover will be allowed another R&R and then we'll exclaim, 'Oh, yeah, I remember. I was going to turn over a new leaf.'"

"Don't, Olney." Maggie squirmed at the thought of her fruitless attempts to change.

"I wonder why we forget so easily," mused Rhonda.

"It seems," Olney continued, "that only the likes of a Christ can overcome the birth amnesia that causes us to forget the answer to the famous question: 'Why was I born?' Some fundamental organ of perception is switched off in the human being."

"Or just undeveloped," said Rhonda.

"I hope you're right on that one," he said. "That we could make the wrong decisions time after time and ultimately fail altogether is what makes Shikasta thought-provoking and terrifying. The theory that the human race as we know it may have derived from a failed experiment in the year dot is as good as any other theory, and goes a long way toward explaining the primitive state we're still in: not much better than the shaggy man's. The idea that our condition can only be understood after an almost impossible refinement of perception, and that each failure to perceive means a return to the line-up between lives in Zone Six for a heartrending assessment before we incarnate yet again for yet another try, with each subsequent endeavor and failure adding to the record of failures that just keeps growing and growing ..." He grabbed the Martell. "Boy, do I feel like a case history."

Maggie and Rhonda were both lying on their tummies, pert behinds offering clothed evidence that all had not gone wrong on Shikasta. But after all, Shikasta had once been glorious Rohanda, where pert behinds were One with All of Existence. Shammat, the prevalent Evil Force ever since, had won, indeed. The mystics now lived in remote powerhouses the whereabouts of which were unknown to the likes of Olney Garkle, whose working conception of "oneness" was to plunge his tempered titan into either of the two fissures hidden within those Shikastan summits before him.

"What about Paul Claudel, the man for your thesis?" Olney poured more eau de feu.

Rhonda twitched at the question. "Claudel! I wish I'd never heard the name. But, do you really want to talk about him?"

"Sure."

"Well, I don't know what to make of the old goat. Ionesco called him the greatest poet of the twentieth century, bar none, and claimed his theatre was the only worthwhile."

"Really. And here I am, totally ignorant of the mec."

"You're not alone. I thought I was going to be clever and pick an obscure genius for my thesis, one that I could take credit for introducing to the American public, like Colin Wilson did in the U.K. for Hermann Hesse. But I don't think they're going to buy old Paul."

"Why is that?"

"He's stuffy, for one thing. And religious, but in a thoughtful way; Americans seem to like their religion as literal as possible. Claudel is right wing though, that ought to appeal to them, but again, he's talking over the heads of the literal minded. After all, he has to appeal to Americans who can think for themselves. And that small percent of the population tends to reject right wing Catholicism. No, I'm afraid, he'll remain obscure in America."

Olney laughed. "I see we agree about our countrymen. But what a shame. I mean, here you've come to romantic Paris to study a purportedly great and unknown French writer, only to find him a dried up old fig."

Rhonda winced. "I hadn't quite described it to myself in such blunt terms. I still have to write the thesis on him."

"Sorry."

"You're right, though. For me, the problem is no longer whether he was a consummate poet and playwright. He may very well be the best of the century. The difficulty I have in liking him is that he was a fascist, or fascist leaning, and a reactionary. Add to those unappealing ideologies the fact that he was a rabid -- i.e., converted -- Catholic, and you have what is apparently a very strange man. I mean, that's a combination of fragmented beliefs to put off any student with a heart."

"A weirdo," Olney agreed.

"Exactly." said Rhonda. "I wonder if a year on the couch with Freud mightn't have cured him of his unfortunate religiosity. Of course in his time religion was still a serious issue, but I always feel it to be a step backward. It makes people simple-minded and turns them into bigots. Still, there is no getting around Claudel's poetic mastery. A complex man."

Olney: "It doesn't always help the poetry to know the poet."

"You should see his photograph, the one taken by Gisèle Freund." Rhonda pulled a sour face. "I wish I'd seen it before I took him on as a thesis topic. He looks like Harry Truman with Richard Nixon's soul, costive and ruthless. Stemming from his conversion to Catholicism and subsequent failure to become a priest, I'll bet. Just the man for Freud."

"Picture sounds like a likeness of J. Edgar Hoover," Olney muttered.

"The more I read him," Rhonda continued, "the more he seems a frustrated and sometimes hysterical bore. Why is it that people who have even the remotest leanings to the right end up being bores? There is something so unexciting about them. Don't you agree?"

"Oh, yes."

"I think their spiritual pallor comes from subordinating the quality of life to the economic models they love to promote."

"Power and money," Olney surmised, "is all they care about."

Rhonda nodded. "To my way of thinking, life is exciting because one can make it qualitatively better. I don't say it can always be bettered quantitatively; every poor person on the planet would call me a liar if I said that. But when it comes to quality, the Right is out in the cold. Conservatives are incapable of a creative approach to quality, they can only buy it or sell it or invest in it."

"Hear, hear!"

"Any ideology that places human beings in subservience to its fulfillment is an ideology of fiends. And they usually cover all corners by touting it as an ideology approved by God. 'Give it all over to God,' they say, 'and you will earn eternal peace.' Meanwhile they've got people slaving to fill their coffers. I'm absolutely outraged when I think of it. To throw away one's sacred uniqueness by believing in their God and serving the carpetbaggers who claim Him as their leader is some sort of ultimate in self-degrading ignorance. I am God and what I can ultimately do is an act of God. To shift the responsibility away from me and on to a phantom figurehead and His insidious bureaucracy is the greatest of all sins." Rhonda was visibly upset by her tirade. "What do you think?"

Olney thought he might be falling in love. "Brava, brava! Don't stop now."

"Reactionary etherealists like Claudel are beloved of the churches they represent, churches which are no different to corporations and totalitarian governments. These pious organizations have spent centuries perverting what I think, perhaps naively, is a natural tendency of human beings to cooperate with each other. By tricking people into serving ideals that are degrading, dividing, and utterly weakening, they've set the human race back thousands of years. Mankind in their hands is like a battered woman who can't escape. I don't for one minute believe that people would have fallen into such savagery as you see today without organized religion and its lust for power."

Olney gasped. What would happen if he and Rhonda were to join forces? Would he be able to convince her to stop talking and start shooting? Or would they wind up shooting each other? "Well, there's always the Shikastan theory," he said, grave inklings of the latter winning out. "Which more or less says that, religion or no religion, we're a hopelessly greedy lot bent on short-term gratification and long-term destruction."

Rhonda nodded wearily, picking at an imaginary speck of something on her knee. "Hopeless is right. Especially when we're constantly at the mercy of religious fascism. I mean, the paradox of Paul Claudel is that he spent his life writing about the unity of all things and then supported Franco."

"Sounds like Claudel's a clunk," said O., tiring of the subject.

"Incidentally, he was a Leo, like you."

"Oh, dear. Well, Leo's don't make very good artists, I'm afraid. Along with Cancer and Gemini, they're at the bottom of the pile of famous writers and painters for the last two hundred years."

"They make grand dictators, though," said Maggie, rousing herself from a stillness bordering on slumber.

"Of the benevolent kind, in my case," added His Highness.

"There's no arguing that Claudel is one of a kind -- " Rhonda began.

" -- Ah, now there's your Leo," interrupted the lion of the hour.

"Yes, a unique man in his time. Though the uniqueness may have simply been due to his anachronistic nature."

"Oh." So soon the laughing stock of his pride.

"In conclusion," did dilettante Garkle give sentence, "the man was a showpiece of right wing artistry. He was a poetic genius, a professional Catholic, and an amateur human being."

"I might use that in the thesis," Rhonda said. "But aren't we all amateur human beings?"

"Just a bunch of grunters, it's true."

The bottle was half empty when Maggie announced she was going to bed. Olney too felt exhausted from the long day. Only Rhonda appeared to be as alert as she'd been at dinnertime, midday, and morning. At twenty-two, conserving energy was no problem. Olney said: "I'm not long for this night either, Poot. But I feel like a little more cognac."

Maggie kissed him good night. "Quite a day," she said to Rhonda. "Don't wake me up when you come to bed, Olney. You couldn't if you tried, I'm that beat. But don't stay up too late. After all, it's my birthday."

Olney grinned like a wolf.

Rhonda looked demure.

"So, bon soir, tout le monde."

"Bonne nuit," chimed the cheeky pair.

The radiators hissed and clinked with joy on the cold winter's night. The fridge hummed and gurgled in the kitchen. The elevator, engaged, descended to a lower floor. Maggie ran water in the bathroom. The elevator's machinery echoed in the empty shaft and stopped. The water stopped. Maggie stepped to the toilet and closed the door. Dogs barked in the street below. Two Arabs yelled words of encouragement to them and fell into loud conversation. Maggie left the toilet and went to the bedroom. She closed the door behind her. The dogs yipped with delight. Through the coils of the fridge an eldritch procession of erotic phantoms passed, anciently calling upon the Goddess to mate them with fire. The radiators hissed and clinked and spread their tender heat.

Rhonda sat with her legs crossed. Olney sat across from her, yet he had the odd sensation they were on their feet, or on all fours perhaps, circling each other like animals, he clockwise on the perimeter, she counterclockwise at the center. He got up to put on a record. The sounds of the Pink Floyd drifted through the room like migrating galaxies wishing they could stay. Olney sat down again, a little closer to Rhonda. She dropped her gaze, a faint smile on her face. Her long eyelashes were so distinct he thought he could count each shimmery, upcurving filament. She reached down and lightly massaged her feet. His eyes felt their smooth skin. She leaned back, with her arms straight behind her. Her legs, shirt tucked between them, glowed in the candlelight. Then she looked directly in his eyes. Olney leapt to his feet as if electrocuted, excused himself and fled to the toilet. Standing over the commode he urinated on the porcelain, listening for any sound from the bedroom. Silence. When he returned to Rhonda, she was still reclining like an Italian film tart. Olney poured them more cognac, took a sip, bent over and licked her ankles. He licked round and round her ankle bones, savouring the taste and smell of her skin. Abruptly he sat back -- it was too early for prolonged silences.

"What are you going to do after the university and Paris is behind you?" he managed to ask. Rhonda sat up. She cleared her throat and sipped a little cognac.

"Don't know yet. I'll be qualified to teach. But that doesn't interest me so much. My parents want me to settle down and marry someone who won't hate me the way they hate each other."

"Had any affairs in Paris?" Down to the uncharted deeps of his shallow depths he wanted to know. Was he going to be the first one to get her in Paris? As for the life story, he could hear it another time.

"Not really. There was a French boy where I used to live, before here. I say boy, but he was over thirty. It seems most Frenchmen under thirty-five are like boys ... or is it all you men? Anyway, he was cute, even sexy in a way, and very attentive when we were alone. But as soon as a friend or his brother came around, he got childish. My sister and I double-dated he and his brother for a weekend in Amsterdam. Absolutely ridiculous. Imagine, two sisters dating two brothers. They turned into nervous, giggling idiots about five kilometres out of Paris, punching each other on the arm and singing stupid bawdy songs; they actually thought they'd scored us. Elli and I just looked at each other in amazement -- we were in the back seat, of course. All they did all weekend was drink and play jokes on each other. Hardly looked us in the eyes. So we spent Sunday by ourselves, just to get a little intelligent time in. Wound up drinking too much in the red light district. We were cordially invited by the low-life in several bars to set up shop. They promised great returns, especially for a sisters act. Needless to say, the brothers were furious with us. On the drive back they refused to stop once, and we were so thirsty. I woke up the next morning with a terrible hangover. I wasn't myself for days. Of course I haven't spoken to Jean-Luc or his brother since."

"Yah, kids," scoffed Olney the elder. "So, there hasn't really been anyone?" He felt foolish pursuing it.

"Not yet."

The Arabs called their dogs. Yips and barks followed the men and their loud conversation up the street. The radiators went off. The fridge had absorbed the Druid procession and now stood silent. The record was over.

Olney felt flushed; too much cognac, too long a day. He wanted to light another Gauloise -- too many of those too -- and lie back with his eyes closed. Had he destroyed their moment? He got up and opened a window. The Rue de Lourmel was ugly at night. Fluorescent street lights turned the buildings a ghastly, under-rock white. Shadows hid from the light wherever they could, concealing everything despicable and sordid about the human race. He breathed in the cold, clammy air; it didn't help.

Rhonda had fallen asleep in his few moments at the window. A self-contained woman she was, in charge of herself, not driven. Olney knelt beside her. His desire was still there; he could feel the wetness on his thigh from the hours of excitement; Rhonda had been glancing at the bulging damp spot all evening. He wondered if her panties were just as wet. Oh, maybe he should just go to bed, to his birthday Pootie, and tomorrow invade Rhonda's duffle bag: tonight's knickers should be worth several afternoons of nuclear orgasms. My God! I'm twisted! But it was the lesser of two evils. All this guilt. If he woke her now -- and he was going to -- there would be years of anguish ahead. And Maggie, what about her, his beloved? He did love her. It's just that his cock loved them all. And he did feel responsible for her, even though she was paying for everything.

In reality, Olney Garkle was a bad man, one of those ignoble and callow men who threw aside wife and children for any stray flesh that happened to excite his baser metabolism. Ignoble and callow! He leaned over and stroked the inside of Rhonda's ear with his tongue. She murmured, her eyes fluttered. He kissed her cheek softly; she smelled so good. What words, he wondered deliriously, could describe the perfumed body of an aroused, beautiful woman? God be praised, he yodelled from atop the slippery summit of his Satyrhorn. Rhonda cupped his face in her hands and kissed him passionately.

He recognized the panties she was slipping off as he pulled the shirt, unbuttoned at last, from her arms. His own clothes seemed to take themselves off. Naked and embracing her feverishly, Olney was suddenly shocked to observe that his cock was anything but stiff ... was it exhausted from a long day of perpetual motion? Good Lord! Rhonda was falling back in preparation for ecstasy and unaware of the potential tragedy. Olney bent to sup at her source to help his poor cock along, but she wanted him inside, at once. "Please, I want to eat you," he said, glancing down at his traitorously soft member. How dare it?

"No, no," she insisted, "I'm too hot. Fuck me!"

"But ... but ... Rhonda." Embarrassed, he pointed to the drooping coward. Instinctively she took it between her lips. Her tongue, and especially the silky feeling of her hair across his thighs, brought it shuddering to attention. Cock Bobbin' finally took the plunge, but once inside, it didn't dare move. Rhonda was sopping wet and squeezing it with every muscle in her body. This was going to be the best fuck she'd ever had.

"Je vous en prie," she begged, "don't just lie there, go in and out, fast."

"I can't," he whimpered. "I'll come if I move."

"Pound me, dammit!"

"But...."

"Do it!"

"Ok."

He came in, well, a jiffy was about how long it took.

Perhaps this was too much like the very-first-time for Rhonda; the look in her eyes, as she pulled away, was devastating. It accused him of pressuring her daily with his seductive innuendos, of raping her with his eyes from the moment she'd entered the apartment and his life. And now that she'd finally given in, he left her frustrated and gasping at the capitulation. Whatever fantasies she'd had about older men, or about being the "other woman," were thrown in his incompetent face. The look in her eyes told him he'd failed as a cad.

"I'm sorry, Rhonda. I can't believe it. Maybe the build up was too much, the excitement all evening. Maybe -- "

"Lick me!" The tone of her voice left Olney no choice. "Taste yourself in there and see if that helps." The idea of absolute power over this weakened man inflamed her in a way she had never dreamed possible. La Transsudeuse lay back and spread her willowy legs. His sperm ran down the foothills of her buttocks onto the carpet.

Well now, the idea of being a slave to the goddess was thrilling to him too, but Olney didn't so much like the taste of sperm. And box lunching his own fetch wasn't even on his list of the Top Ten Turpitudes. He just wanted to go to bed now, thank you, and crawl in beside dear Maggie and cuddle her: she, the needle through which his only thread to sanity might pass. He felt exhausted and disgusted with himself. His cheeky little pecker flopped pathetically between his legs as he bent to Rhonda's effulgent, nearly virginal love-slick. "Lick it all out," hissed hussy-two shoes.

Olney obeyed, wondering if he would ever get a hardon again. Rhonda writhed and made animal noises. "Shh," muffle said. "For God's sake don't wake up Maggie." He wiped his face on her panties. Rats, he mumbled under his breath, now I've ruined them.

"Don't stop!" Back to work, he ran his nose and tongue in a tandem swathe from perineum to clitoral sheath. Rhonda was in ecstasy. Olney still clutched her panties and now he put them on her mons to stop her pubic hair from tickling his forehead and nose. The cool surface excited him every time he came up for air. Cock Floppin', so recently disgraced, started to rise with each touch of brow to knickers. Christ! I'm right out of Stekel! In no more than four heave-ho's his regenerated fontana di papa was searching blindly for la grotta di mama. Rhonda, unaware of the biological miracle taking place, cursed when he stopped licking.

"Don't stop, damn you!" she seethed, her voice breaking. Jack-Nicholson-eyes stared back at her as Olney aimed Cock Throbbin' and rammed home. The look in her own eyes changed to something like full-blown insanity, accompanied, as karma would have it, by a bloodcurdling scream of rapture.

"No, don't!" Olney yelled before he could stop himself. Their mingling cries joined hands and sped down the hall to spread the word. Well, good goin', Ace, he muttered to himself, nothin' like blowin' it in the clinch. The Gestapo would be knocking the door down any minute now, machine guns blazing. He fucked the oblivious Rhonda anyway, armed with a hardon only a war movie could stop. He thought: Don't make much difference o' course, gotta die someday, but sweet Jesus, not lucky enough for a B&W silver screen demise tonight, poor lovers waiting with sobbing violins for that RKO death squad, everyone'd sympathize then. Oh, no, not the good ol' SS, gonna get it instead at the hands of ... oh, well, fuck it, fuck happiness, fuck all those daily routines boring and blissful, fuck all that is good and true and just, fuck life even, above all, fuck!

Rhonda was finally getting the best one ever when Maggie came running in, toute nue, the sweetheart. Olney looked up without losing a beat. Her face was wild with incomprehension, as if the Gestapo had just wakened her with a pistol whipping.

"You bastard!" she screamed.

"Pootie," extemporized he, "sit on Rhonda's face, for God's sake. It's the only chance we have."

But no, hélas.

Instead, she ran to the kitchen ... O gawd, is she going for a knife? ... turned on a faucet ... steps ... grunts ... more steps ... muffled thud on the counter ... What? ... running water ... the bonbonne! Olney knew it was cold, cold water filling that big, big bottle. Cruel and revolting development!

Rhonda, meanwhile, had lost her Aryan persona, as well as her passion. She tried desperately to uncouple, but Olney kept fucking. "Gonna come, God damnit, gonna come before The End." He pinned her arms to the carpet, enjoying the look of fear in her eyes. "I may be the slave but you're the victim," he whispered bitingly in her ear.

Maggie appeared with the big green bottle full of the coldest water Paris had ever known. "You don't even stop," she cried, stunned and betrayed and ready to kill.

"Let me go!" raged Rhonda. No longer the juicy whip-mistress, she was drying up fast. As Admiral Bebette advanced with her crock of recognition, Olney experienced a sudden glimpse into the multiple case histories starring his tarred-and-feathered self, and the intrinsic boner shafting each: against the wisdom of the cosmos, he kept externalizing his Anima onto a no-no world in which Her clones were legion. And yet, in spite of the fact that each clone was an illusion, he continued to crave them one and all.

Olney wanted to laugh and sneeze and cough and fart and above all come at the same time, but Maggie aborted his golden satori. She emptied the bonbonne over them both.

You'd have thought it was a slasher flick, the screams.

He never did come.

§§§

Chapter 26: Nights in the Wicked of Heart

Top