19 Purchase Street (18 page)

Norma felt them hit and stick beyond her tongue. She could not get enough force in her cough to dislodge them.

Becque used his free hand to pinch her nostrils closed.

Ponsard poured cognac into her mouth.

She managed to spit out some of it, but it was poured and poured and eventually she had to swallow in order to breathe. The five Methaquaalude tablets were washed down by five to six ounces of the brandy.

Ponsard picked up the doughy ball of bread. He worked it a little more and then used the same thumb and forefinger pincer technique to make her open her mouth. He forced the doughball into her mouth, stuffed it in, filled her mouth to its roof and all around, kept stuffing until her cheeks bulged.

Becque released her neck.

The dough served as the most efficient gag, better in this case than a tied cloth or adhesive tape, avoiding the possibility of any binding marks or irritation or foreign substance on the skin. The crammed lump was congealed almost like plaster. There was no way Norma could disgorge it. The sounds she made were choked back, and if overheard they would be taken as the sort of sounds often generated by passion.

Norma, of course, now realized only too well that these men were neither robbers nor rapists. They were there on account of the money she had skimmed from her carries over the past few years. Oh God, how foolish of her. She had skimmed the first time only as a sort of self-dare. When she had gotten away with it she couldn't resist skimming the same amount the same way the next time, and then time after time. She certainly hadn't done it entirely for the money, but she had done it. These men intended to punish her. This was the punishment. The beginning of it. Gainer and his warning advice came to her mind. Too late for now.

They lifted her onto the bed, pulled down the sheet and coverlet. Becque got some tools from the black valise and went into the bathroom.

Norma's dress was where she had tossed it over the back of a chair. Ponsard put it on a hanger, straightened it and zipped it up, placed the belt she had worn over the hook of the hanger just as she would have done. Hung the dress in the closet. Picked up her shoes from where she had kicked them off, stood them up in a neat pair on the floor of the closet beneath the dress. Folded the panties and bra he had taken off of her, put them and her stockings in one of the dresser drawers.

Norma continued to scream inside as she watched Ponsard. He appeared so naturally preoccupied when he opened her bags, the small and the medium, and transferred things from them to the closet and dresser drawers. He did it with haste but also with care, folded tidily, smoothed with the back of his white-gloved hand.

The cognac combined with the Methaquaaludes. Norma felt her extremities tingling as though grains of sand were blowing on them. Her feet and lower legs seemed too heavy. The dough impacted in her mouth was causing her jaws to ache terribly.

Ponsard placed her hairbrush and comb on the vanity top, was very precise about them, their relative positions. Also her clear plastic kit of make-up and a believable scatter of bobby pins and the tortoise combs she used to hold back her hair. He brought her hand mirror to the nightstand by the bed. On the mirror's face he emptied a two gram vial of cocaine. He called for Becque to come help him.

Becque moved Norma so she lay across the bed, facing upward, her head over the edge. He pulled downward on her hair, harshly so as to have her head inverted.

Ponsard rolled a brand new hundred dollar bill, formed it into a narrow tube like a short sipping straw, tamped the end of it into the cocaine, forcing the white powder up into the shaft of the bill until he had about a half inch of it in. He inserted the tip of the bill into one of Norma's nostrils and blew on its other end, blew the cocaine into her. He repeated the procedure five times. Norma was left lying across the bed. The upper part of her face became numb.

Becque returned to whatever he was doing in the bathroom.

Ponsard used a razor blade on the surface of the mirror to separate a portion of the cocaine and form it into two lines. He leaned over to it with the rolled hundred dollar bill and, keeping an eye on the bathroom for Becque, drew the white lines up into his nostrils. He placed the razor blade and the bill on the mirror, adjacent to the remaining cocaine. Also, next to the mirror he set down the vial of Methaquaalude tablets, purposely dropped the top of the vial to the floor.

Two empty but used glasses. Ponsard poured some cognac into each and spilled a small pool of it on the marble top of the nightstand. He placed one of the glasses in the spill and then elsewhere on the marble so it left several wet rings. He stood the other glass up beneath the bed and knocked it over. The cognac soaked onto the carpet.

The final item from the black valise was a vibrator, the sort not customarily used for a legitimate massage. Its motorized element was housed in its ten-inch handle and attached to that was its vibrating end, a pliable plastic sphere about two and a half inches in diameter. It had two speeds, moderate and intense, a choice that depended on the condition of nerve ends. Ponsard plugged the vibrator into a coily extension cord, plugged the cord into the socket nearest the bed. He put the vibrator into Norma's hand, closed her fingers around the handle of it several times at various places.

Becque returned, saying he was finished with the bathroom.

Ponsard told him to go back in and get some tissues.

Becque didn't mind because he knew what would be next. The woman was the sort that appealed to him, fair skinned with an abundance of dark pubic hair, slightly heavy breasts and hips. He didn't like swarthy women. Even if they came from families that had been French or Italian or Spanish for ten generations, they had some African in them, Becque believed. The only fault with this woman on the bed was her face. It was too handsome for his taste. He preferred a pug sort of face with less definite features.

Becque rolled Norma over roughly and pulled her by the feet so that she was not quite half off the bed, her buttocks just on the edge of it.

Norma's senses were now confounded. She felt cold except for her skin that now seemed hot, as though it had been sandpapered. Every inch of her was perspiring. Her heart felt like a fist inside her, opening and closing at a strenuous rate, and yet her breathing was shallow and slow. One moment her mind was so sharp she could recall anything, the next it was so hazed over she lost hold of the immediate circumstances. Her fingers and feet were twitching uncontrollably and the sounds of protest she had been making were now impotent, guttural moans.

Ponsard removed the restraining strap from her ankles. That act stirred up a resistance in her that really was no more than a fragment of the notion of resisting. She grasped at the thought of moving her legs, kicking, but it seemed the very air held them down.

Becque took off his jacket, shoes and trousers. He was not wearing undershorts. He held his cock with his right hand, flopped it as though to shake it out of itself, larger. He pulled back the foreskin, braced himself and leaned forward over Norma, rubbed his cock over the back of her thighs and across her buttocks and after a while could no longer do that because his cock was hard, angled upward.

Ponsard tried not to look at Becque's cock. It made him both angry and respectful. It was, he thought, exceptionally large, the head of it like a huge magenta mushroom cap. He parted Norma's legs for Becque.

She began to slide off the bed.

Ponsard hurried around to the opposite side, pulled her back in position. To prevent her from sliding off again he got on the bed and lay down across her.

Becque spread Norma's legs wide. He worked his tongue around in his mouth for saliva and spat onto his fingers, used the saliva to slicken his cock. Parted her with the thumbs of both hands and shoved his cock into her, all of it all the way in on the first stroke.

Ponsard, from his crosswise position, could not see as well as he would have liked, but his imagination was active.

Norma knew what was being done to her, and then she did not.

Bacque made it last a while. When he came, after the first two spasms, he removed his cock and quickly found her anus with it. He then wiped himself with a couple of the tissues, which he dropped at bedside. He dressed, sat in the chair across the way, waiting for Ponsard to take his turn.

Ponsard used the vibrator, pressed it against the base of his cock while his free hand stroked. He did it while sitting beside Norma, every so often interrupting himself to take hold of Norma's buttocks or to run his finger the length of her vagina. He came into the sheets and a hotel tissue, which was the purpose in his coming. He crumpled the tissue and tucked it beneath the mattress.

Becque took the wide restraining belt off of Norma and carried her to the bathroom. A large bath tiled white, with a separate enclosed stall shower. The shower door was clear, of heavy gauge safety glass. Ponsard held the shower door open. Becque put her in, propped her up in the far corner of it. For a moment Norma looked right at Becque, and he felt her eyes transfixed on his. Her knees gave way, locked, gave way again and locked. She tried for the chrome handrail, missed it by inches. Ran her hand along the tiles and managed to get the rail, but her fingers wouldn't mind, kept jerking and losing it. Her head dropped, again and again.

Becque avoided her eyes.

The shower control was the rotation type with a single white porcelain handle and indicator that worked in conjunction with a fixed chrome plate. It went left to right, from cold to hot. Becque had altered the mechanism so it would lock in the extreme heat position and appear to be a malfunction.

Ponsard reached in and turned the handle as far as it would go.

The hot water sprayed down.

Upon Norma.

She could not avoid it. Even if she had been able to react normally it still would have hit full on her.

Ponsard shut the shower door, leaned against it.

The water was scalding. The interior of the glass became coated with steam so that they could not see it. Norma hit against it, weakly. The cry in her now was unmistakably one of pain, but it wasn't loud enough to be heard. Five minutes after her cry ceased, Ponsard opened the shower door.

She was down in the near corner in a stiff, contorted position.

Eyes open but set.

Avoiding the water, Ponsard forced her teeth apart and dug out the doughy wad, including what was lodged between her gums and cheeks, upper and lower, all around. He handed it to Becque, who flushed it down the toilet.

Ponsard was about to try for Norma's pulse when her hand twitched. It startled him.

A little closed-mouth laugh from Becque.

Ponsard gave her a shove. She toppled to the far corner of the shower, more directly in the scalding stream.

Her skin was splotched. Bright crimson and glaucous, already rising into blister sacs in large areas.

The hotel, with its two hundred rooms, had an endless quantity of boiling hot water.

Becque and Ponsard waited another fifteen minutes before looking in on Norma again. Ponsard took her pulse. He believed she was dead.

She was.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HE
morning of that same Wednesday.

From Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven the ferry was five minutes early. The Sound was as calm as it ever got, but the wind from the east was blowing high up for some reason, not scuffing the surface.

Aboard was Gainer. Outside on the upper deck, sighting shoreward, he saw ahead off to the right the white painted cylindroid that was West Chop Lighthouse. He heard the buoy bells, lazier than usual, and the cries of the gulls seemed closer with scarcely any wind to carry them. He imagined they were announcing him, not to everyone, just to her.

All the way into the harbor Gainer remained there on the upper deck. It was the best possible vantage. He told himself he shouldn't expect to see her. Their arrangement had been she would wait at the cottage. Still, as the ferry approached and maneuvered broadside to the landing, he searched among those there to meet it. The color of nutmeg was what he looked for, the shade of her hair, and when he didn't find it he tried to make up for the letdown with distractions: the private boats tied up directly across the harbor; an overtanned woman in a white bikini polishing the brass of one of them. But he was drawn back to again scan the crowd on the landing.

And there she was.

Leslie.

His insides did a catch.

How could he possibly have missed her? She was so outstanding. Her eyes were right on him, and she had both hands as high as possible, waving. A stray breeze chose that moment to take her hair across her face. She made no attempt to discipline it. That was so much like her.

Gainer hurried down to the lower deck and got into his car. He was the sixth to drive off, and not to hold up those cars in line behind him he could stop only long enough for Leslie to jump in.

No hellos. In their entire year and a half they had not said either hello or good-bye to one another, as though in that small way refusing to submit to the time they spent apart. It had been only four days this time, but seemed longer for them both. Leslie's kiss missed, got mostly the right corner of his mouth and a lot of cheek. Her bare arms were quick and tight around his neck, almost yanking him to her, and it was particularly cruel that he had to resist, pay attention to the Main Street traffic, vacationers on foot, assuming right of way, darting between and across.

“Where's Norma?”

Gainer told her of Norma's unexpected carry. Matter of fact.

She read through his tone, would do her best to offset his disappointment, and her own. She had a limited but accurate understanding of what Norma did for a living, was the only one Gainer had ever confided in about it. It was the sort of chancy, across-the-grain thing that rather appealed to her. A few times she had tried to pry Gainer for details but had gotten nowhere. Her excuse for being so inquisitive was that a dozen years back a man she had met and known not very well for a brief time had obliquely proposed she do the very thing Norma was doing. At the time she was twenty-six and a very busy model with the Ford Agency. Not the highest paid nor the most in demand, but close to it. She was always flying somewhere, to Europe practically every month, for
Vogue
or
Harper's Bazaar
or some other fashion client. Being a carrier of money would have been easy for her, and, perhaps if she hadn't been making a hundred an hour then, just for being herself in someone else's brand new clothes, she might have given the offer more than a mere in-and-out thought.