Case of Lucy Bending (31 page)

Just as abruptly, the weather soured again. Florida's low clouds pressed down, and a thick, warm wind gusted out of the Caribbean. "You don't like the weather?" people said. "Wait five minutes, and it'll change."

And so it did.

Edward Holloway didn't give a damn about the weather. The old farts were always saying will it rain or won't it, will the sun come out, why doesn't it warm up? But Eddie couldn't care less. There could be a blizzard, and he would laugh. He loved every minute of it. He awoke with anticipation and slept with regret: it was all so satisfying.

He was scamming his way through school, cheating on the tests like everyone else, and his parents were so concerned with their own affairs that they had stopped breathing down his neck—which was a relief. Also, he had grown an inch taller, and the hair around his testicles was getting bushier. Everything was coming his way.

Most important, he was banging this Teresa Empt every night the weather permitted them to meet at the gazebo. It was a great experience for young Eddie Holloway. So great that the only one he told about it was Wayne Bending, relating in lubricious detail what he did to her and what she did to him.

"Solid meat," Eddie Holloway said, his voice choked with wonderment at his good fortune. "You could lose a dime in that belly button. And the snatch? If it had teeth, she could chew me up and spit me over the left field fence."

"Sounds fine," Wayne Bending said shortly.

"And on top of that," Eddie said enthusiastically, "she's good for the dineros. We been smoking some grass, you know, which I clip from my old lady's supply. So I tell her I'm paying twenty for two sticks, and she comes across without blinking an eye."

"Sounds fine," Wayne said again.

"So tonight," Eddie continued, "if the weather holds, I'm meeting her in the gazebo, and I'm going to make a pitch for the boat. A thousand bucks. Listen, she can afford it. And I think she'll pay up. I mean, she's like hooked on my schlong; I swear it. So tonight we get down to the nitty-gritty, and you better believe she'll pay off."

"Sounds fine," Wayne Bending said for the third time.

It didn't rain that night, though the ground under the gazebo was still dampish. Edward Holloway spread a clean blanket, settled down, and waited patiently. He had planned how he would handle this meeting, and had the supreme self-confidence of the brainless young.

She came drifting across the lawn like an eager ghost, pleated white slyrt billowing out behind her. Eddie had decided to play it cool. But when she lay down beside him, took his face in her hot palms, and flickered her tongue, he had to groan and grab her. She laughed and let him. She moved. The way she moved drove him bananas. She knew so much, laughing softly.

It was nippy that night, and they didn't take off their clothes. That made it, somehow, more exciting. She wasn't wearing any panties, and he just unzipped his fly. Like they were in the back seat of a car or standing up in a phone booth. Wicked, guilty, dangerous. It was grand.

He didn't know when it had started, or how she had done it, but she had him growling in the busby now, and loving every minute of it. She handled his head by the ears, like it was some kind of a jug, and she gave him orders.

After a good half-hour of this, she would begin to pitch, buck, moan, use language that really surprised him because he hadn't realized that women, especially old ladies, knew those words.

Then she began to shudder, so violently that sometimes it scared him, and he wondered if she might be having a heart attack or something. The shudders increased in intensity until suddenly they stopped. She held his head clamped between her strong thighs. He could hardly breathe, let alone hear.

When she released him, he rolled away, panting as if he had just run a four-minute mile. He tasted her on his tongue and lips. A little like Juicy Fruit. He stared through the latticed gazebo roof at scudding clouds and tried to remember the speech he had rehearsed. It took a while.

"I brought a joint," he said hoarsely. "Just one. We can share it. Okay?"

They smoked the cigarette slowly, passing it back and forth. He waited until he felt himself beginning to dissolve, and figured she was probably feeling the same way.

"I wish we could be together more," he said in a low voice. "I mean, not just sneaking off to this place to meet."

"I know, Eddie. I wish we could, too."

"Not just for sex," he said earnestly. "I don't mean that. Just to be with you. Alone. The two of us."

"You're sweet, Eddie."

"You don't get seasick, do you? I mean, you like boats, don't you?"

She turned to look at him. "No, I don't get seasick, and I like boats. Why do you ask?"

"I've been thinking," he said seriously. "If I had a boat, it would be a good way for us to be together. Alone."

"What kind of a boat, Eddie?" she asked, taking the roach from his fingers.

"Oh, nothing big. I was thinking about a sailboat. Small enough so you could pull it up on the beach and chain it to a palm tree. Carry four, maybe, but two would be best. Go out on a nice day. Sail around. Have you ever done that?"

"No, I never have. Not on a sailboat."

"It's the greatest. Out there on the ocean. All alone. Going like a bat out of hell. Nothing like it."

"Is it safe, Eddie?"

"Well . . ." he said judiciously, "a catamaran would be best. That's a boat with two hulls. They hardly ever tip over. They got a canvas deck between the hulls. A fun boat."

"Uh-huh," she said casually. "Sounds nice. What does a boat like that cost, dear?"

"Oh," he said, "it depends on how long it is. And if it's new, of course. Then it can run into bucks. But a friend of mine, he's got this fourteen-foot Hobie Cat. Really good condition. It needs a little work, some paint maybe, but the sails are okay. The only reason he wants to sell it is because he wants to buy a bigger boat."

"How much does he want for his boat, Eddie?"

"Well, he's asking a thousand, but I figure he'll come down a hundred for cash. Ah, what's the use of even talking about it. I haven't got near that much."

She was silent. She took a final puff of the roach and put the tiny stub aside to burn out.

"I'm just dreaming," Eddie Holloway went on. "Where am I going to get that kind of money? But I keep thinking of how nice it would be to have that boat, floating around there in the middle of the ocean. I could take you out for a ride, you know, and we'd be all alone. Miles away from anyone. All by ourselves."

"Do you know how to sail a boat, Eddie?"

"Oh sure. I took classes and everything. I can sail a cat. But what's the use of talking about it . . ."

She turned onto one hip. She smiled at him and patted his cheek.

"Don't give up, Eddie," she said. "Maybe it could be arranged."

"Yeah?" he said eagerly. "How?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said vaguely. "Let me think about it."

"Jeez," he said, "that would be great. You and me all alone, away from everyone."

She began stroking him through the cloth of his jeans, watching his face.

"Oh my," she said, "what have we here? Is this a present for me, Eddie?"

"Yeah," he said throatily. "That's for you."

This was the stage when she wanted him to lie still while she uncovered him, her long fingers working purposefully.

The toke was gone, but he still felt the languor and closed his eyes.

He felt her doing things to him. Everything was warm and wet. He heard her moving. He opened his eyes, halfway, and saw her sitting astride him, leaning forward, palms on the blanket at the sides of his head.

She loomed over him, her long black hair falling about her face. She looked fierce and determined, and for a moment he was frightened.

"I'll do it," she said sternly, beginning to twist. "Let me do everything."

And away she went, bobbing up and down like a jockey, occasionally throwing her head back to fling her hair away from her face. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth so it seemed to him that she was grinning as she rode him.

Meanwhile, she was crying out, sometimes so loudly that he feared they might hear her in the house. But he knew there was no stopping her, and after a few minutes he didn't even want to try.

The ululations of Teresa Empt were being overheard. But not in her home. The listener was Wayne Bending, and not only could he hear Teresa, but he could glimpse her frantic gyrations through the gloom. And he could smell the sweetish fumes of the pot they had smoked.

Since Eddie and Teresa had begun their meetings, Wayne had been the silent watcher, sitting far back in a thick stand of shrubs and trees with the syrupy scent of jasmine. He could not hear their words, but their smutty laughter and barks of bliss sounded clearly.

This eavesdropping was so painful to Wayne Bending that he could not have said why he was inexorably drawn to the trysts. Hunkering down on the damp, pungent earth, he sometimes felt like giggling nervously, and sometimes he felt like weeping.

He was wounded by the acknowledgment that the couplings he witnessed were his idea; he had pushed Eddie Holloway into this liaison. But now that it was accomplished, he wanted it finished, over, done.

For it seemed to him that somehow they were mocking him by their intimacy. His own friendship had been devalued. What he had done for Eddie Holloway obviously counted for nothing compared to those breasts, that eager mouth, the grasping thighs.

They were not punishing him deliberately; he knew that. They didn't say, "Let's screw old Wayne Bending." There was no intent. But the result was the same.

He had believed there was something special between him and Eddie Holloway, a very special kind of friendship. He had made love to Eddie, or let him make love to him, and there was a sweet surrender there that was proof of how he felt.

And now his special friend was doing all those wild, private things with that old woman, and bragging about it later to Wayne. With never a thought of how his words were tearing Wayne apart.

It was the first time Wayne Bending had tried, really, truly, to be close to someone. To reveal himself, express his feelings, tell the truth and act honestly with no finkery. He had tried to be himself, to give himself. And this was the result.

Shivering in his hiding place, watching the lovers kiss and touch, grope and stroke, Wayne Bending felt his world falling apart. The pain was so intense that it went beyond weeping.

He wanted to be dead and gone. Out of a world that hurt.

The case of Lucy B., Dr. Theodore Levin acknowledged, was occupying his time to an inordinate degree. He spent hours listening to the accumulated tapes, reading relevant literature, or just sitting on his apartment balcony, staring blankly at the night sky, and trying to solve the puzzle of this young girl's behavior.

None of his earlier facile explanations—castration complex, penis envy—now seemed sufficient to him. He returned again to the possibility of psychic trauma: a single incident or a series of incidents that had triggered the aberrant conduct.

"Lucy," he said coaxingly, "do you remember anything that happened to you when you were younger that made a big impression on you, that you've never been able to forget?"

"You mean," she said, "like going to Disney World?"

Once again, he had the feeling that she was playing with him.

"No," he said, "not exactly. Something in your private life. Something so important that you've never told anyone about it, that you've kept secret for years and years."

She appeared to be considering his question seriously, head tilted, bluish-gray eyes regarding him gravely.

"Nooo, Doctor Ted," she said. "I can't remember anything like that."

She was wearing a denim pinafore over a white T-shirt. Her wheat-colored hair had been woven into two long braids, tied with little blue ribbons. Her clear features seemed particularly luminous, glowing with innocence.

"Lucy," he said, "you told me your best friend was . . . ?"

"Gloria," she said. "Gloria Holloway. She lives right near us."

"She's older than you?"

"Just a year."

"What about boys, Lucy? Is there someone special you like?"

She thought a moment.

"There are some boys on the beach who are all right. Freddy Dickson. He's all right. Not too rough, you know. And Ben Hamilton. He's always teasing. Sometimes we play together. Like go swimming, you know. Or just fool around."

"But no one special boy?"

"Not really. We're always like in a bunch. I've never had a real date, if that's what you mean. Gloria has, but I haven't."

"Is there one teacher you especially like?"

"Miss Carpenter. She's my homeroom teacher. She has such beautiful eyes, and she never hollers at us. She's really swell. Everyone likes Miss Carpenter. Once she made some fudge and gave it to all us kids. It was very good. Much better than the boughten kind."

He stared at her, blinking. "Lucy, who do you love most in all the world?"

"My daddy," she said promptly. "And mother. And then my brothers."