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Christina Ch. 02

By: stormy_31



I was in love with Paul, of course. I say 'of course' because that's how it felt to me, natural, honest, and so inevitable that it hardly seemed worth talking about. But my friends were nowhere near so matter of fact about it. They behaved as if some tiny, previously undetected flaw in my makeup had suddenly opened up to become an emotional chasm as deep and as dangerous as the san Andrea's fault.

"I can't believe it," was Xavier's first comment when I told him. " Have you gone batty?"

"No battier than usual, " I said. Besides, darling, everyone should fall in love once in a while."

"You've confused love with multiple orgasm," he said, shaking his head with bitterness that I found quite surprising. " If three means love, then I suppose at five you get married and move to the suburbs."

"I have no such plans, and I haven't bothered to count the orgasms," I said, and walked out without another word.

Xavier's attitude -- which was mirrored by that of the great majority of my friends -- disturbed me at first, but only momentarily. I was quite simply too happy with my newborn love to have my bubble burst by something as trivial as other people's opinion.

And we were happy. I underline it now because it was a happiness so short lived as to make one wonder if it had every existed at all. But it was real enough then, in those first few months, as we explored one another's spirits and minds and found them just as delightfully suited to each other as our bodies proved to be.

I left my apartment on Park Avenue in New York (this alone flabbergasted Xavier, who had been used to my complaints about the slack jawed mindlessness of the typical southern Californian) and moved into a crow's nest apartment that had once belonged to Isadora Duncan. Paul continued to maintain his studio, but we in effect lived together in the little white perch of an apartment with its serene view of the Lonnie canal bridges.

I painted a great deal during those months, the first time I had been able to discipline myself along these lines since I had ended my girlhood in Vermont. The results were encouraging enough to make me think I could make a career of my art if everything else in my life suddenly evaporated. In the meantime Paul continued to develop his own art, which I always saw -- and still do see -- as the most difficult, time consuming, and individual in the world.

His dedication was astounding. He would spend hours, even days, perfecting the simplest of mime movements -- running his hands along an invisible wall, for example, or descending a set of imaginary stairs into an imaginary cellar. He had an intensity and an ability to concentrate that positively unnerved me at times, as if he could turn his senses of sight and sound on and off at will, and simply plunge into the heart of himself where he could be neither disturbed nor distracted. There were times when I swore he had stopped breathing entirely, so still could he stand and so great a control could he exert over what are supposed to be involuntary functions. It even seemed that he could say 'yes ' or 'no' to the messages sent from brain to muscle, could, in effect, hibernate on his feet.

But as impressive as Paul's raw talent and his mental discipline were to me, I was even more impressed by his unswerving integrity. Talent is not specialized; it's a crude, undifferentiated force that can be channeled in almost any direction. Paul could have been a wonderful actor, or dancer, or comedian, all potentially more lucrative than mime, which most people (most Americans, at any rate) saw as a curiosity, a sort of circus-y activity that belonged in the same category with tightrope walking -- at which Paul also excelled -- and pink touted ladies doing toe dances on horseback.

Paul knew all this, of course. He knew that had he chosen an easier, broader route he could easily have been a major star -- on television, if nothing else. (God forbid that this should have come to pass.) But he was convinced that he could educate the public, could show them through his own performance that mime was the deepest, most universal form of drama that the world of the stage had to offer.

"I know it," he would say suddenly, as we lay in each other's arms after a sweet afternoon's lovemaking." I know I can do it."

"Do what, darling?" I would murmur, rolling my spent body against the hard muscles of his chest.

"Take mime with me," he would say. "Right to the top."

"Of course you can, darling."

"What?" he would say, startled out of his reverie. At such times I think he truly forgot my existence, so feverish was he in his devotion to what he saw as his life's goal.

"Never mind," I would say, and slide my lips down the length of his gorgeous torso until I enveloped his freshly stirring cock in my soft lips.

It seemed I could never quite get enough of the man. As lush and as powerful and as ultimately satisfying as our lovemaking was, there was something about his body, about the essence of his maleness, that stirred my own sexuality as no other had before. We would screw each other until we nearly dissolved in a pool of sweat and cum, and still I could not keep my hands to myself -- I had to be touching him, fondling him, fanning the flame in him until his proud cock stood ready once more to plunder my almost insatiable pussy.

There were times when something as simple and as seemingly innocent as a kiss, or even a slight brushing of the hands, would lead to a session of roaring sex that could last hours, days, in some instances. Some button had been pushed deep inside each of us, some central force had been activated, and it sometimes seemed that we were truly alive only when he was inside of me, when our bodies were melded in a fusion of the flesh, when we were screaming out our climaxes as inauguration to a deep new morning of love.

During those first few ecstatic months there was only this, only the lovemaking and the labor of love, the Siamese twins of art and romance joined at the belly. What little time remained was for the mandatory, eating, sleeping, and dealing with the nagging demands of the world at large. We saw friends (my friends, it seemed, had, for the moment, deserted me entirely, while Paul was quite content to live almost entirely without friends of his own), went to few shows, took absolutely no vacations, and wrote no letters home. We were an island, glad of our isolation, knowing it only served to increase the intensity of our feelings for one another. The rest of the world now seemed pallid, colorless, as if we were draining it of its sap to feed the hungry fibers of our love.

But in fact the world was still there, and Paul especially was forced to continue to deal with it. For me, of course, money from ownership of the world magazine continued to pile up automatically in my bank account, gathering dust and interest as I continued to simplify my economic needs. The truth was Paul still went out to auditions several times a week, concentrating purposely on the sort of small, arty club whose audience could never appreciate his astounding skill in mime, he avoided agents, the screen actors guild, anything that smacked of equity.

He got a few jobs that way, by answering small, self-conscious ads in grammalogue and the casting news, and occasionally by riding the coat tails of some better-established acquaintance of his. These jobs -- to Paul's everlasting credit, he never once called them 'gigs' -- were generally cameo appearances where a mime was needed for some idealistic little play in some struggling little playhouse, or for instructional showcases at one of the more arcane classes in the local drama schools. Paul was always genuinely happy to get these parts, and always touchingly earnest in his belief that each one was going to launch him on the path to stardom.

"Richard Lyon's going to be there," he would say, referring to the famous drama critic who had somehow been lassoed into attending a class called ' the unspoken theatre ' at U.C.L.A. and when Richard Lyon was observed nodding off during the middle of Paul's performance, my lover would simply shrug it off as extremely bad taste on the critic's part and go buoyantly off to another audition.

I rarely went with him. Although I shared his unquenchable hope and his charming optimism, I had had too much close hand experience of show business to want to expose myself to its heartlessness, especially when that heartlessness was directed at the man I loved. Rick Dempsey had been a lover of mine when I was eighteen, and through his eyes I had seen enough of the sordid cynicism of the star-making machine to last several lifetimes. Jason Larue, the producer who still holds the record for money spent on an independent film -- $45 million dollars on ' the war of the roses ' -- was another of my paramours, and although he was extremely kind to me, I could see his personality take on a razor's edge as he slashed his way through the competition. Even simonescu, the Rumanian ballet dancer who everyone hails as the new Nikiski, had a hard and vicious streak that appeared simultaneously with each new promising understudy. So now I chose not to subject myself to the crushing indifference of a buying public that did not and could not understand the fierce power of Paul's art. I did not want to hear the ' leave your phone number with Lydia's ' and the ' we'll get back to you's ' that to Paul were hopeful signs of continued interest but to me were the kiss of death. 

It was selfish of me, I suppose. I could have warned him, could have tried to make him realize how heartbreakingly difficult was the task he had taken on. I could even have used my influence, accomplished for him with a few quick phone calls (and perhaps a casual screw in some Malibu swimming pool) what he himself would never accomplish in two lifetimes of trying. But the reward would have been nothing more than a bit part for him in some yawning sitcom or perhaps some work as a mime model in a service piece for world mag. and my help would have been particularly pointless because Paul would have refused the jobs anyway, and if he ever found out I raised even a finger on his behalf he would have been beside himself with fury.

So I held my peace, and tried to make up ever more creative excuses when he asked me to go with him to this audition or that showcase. I don't think he ever fully understood my reluctance -- I made it a point never to tell him about my ' exalted ' past -- but he seemed to explain it to himself as my wanting to stay out of his way, which was fine with me as long as it didn't trouble him too much.

One night, though, I simply ran out of excuses. He insisted, in his calm but steely way, that I go with him to a showcase at a famous improvisational club, the whipping boy. A number of unusually good, intelligent comedians had gotten a start there, and Paul was sure he had found a place where both the management and the audience would appreciate and understand him. He was so excited in his touchingly childlike way, so sure that his big break was staring him in the face, that I swallowed my well-founded reservations and went with him.

The room was too small, too dark, and too smoky, as such rooms tend to be, but I was glad of anything that would obscure my identity. I was mildly concerned about running into someone I knew (god, Christina what are you doing here?), but I was much more worried that Paul would seek out my face at some unguarded moment during his performance and see the perhaps heartbreaking concern that I might well be unable to hide.

Luckily, neither of those things happened. Paul introduced me to the manager of the club, a thin, fey looking man who had once taught at the royal academy of drama. Despite myself, I was somewhat encouraged by his apparent devotion to classic art forms and by his air of rumpled pedagogy, and even found myself thinking, " well, maybe this time there's really something to it."

Paul's performance was little short of magnificent. For once the audience seemed to sympathize with what he was doing, and it even appeared as if they understood what heroic effort it had taken Paul to perfect his routine. " Raise the level of your game," they say in tennis, and that's exactly what Paul did that night, he raised the level of his art until mime itself became something transcendent, and, with the urging of an appreciative audience, he nearly soared across the stage.

I was thrilled, not only with Paul himself and his performance, but with what seemed to be the genuine opportunity that was being afforded him. When I saw the manager beaming in my direction as Paul absorbed what must have been the first standing ovation of his career, I let my fears and my tempered cynicism slide away from me and exulted in Paul's momentary glory. " This just might be it," I kept thinking as I blew my lover little kisses from the darkness.

The illusion did not last long. I went to Paul's side as soon as he left the stage, and stood silently behind him as he accepted the congratulations of the crowd. Finally, the manager came over, his face split in an ear-to-ear grin.

"Well done, young man," he said in a gravelly voice as he took up a position next to me. " We should talk."

"I'd be glad to," Paul said. I could see he was trying, without much success, to control his joy over what he had done.

It was just then, with the manager beaming and Paul nearly blushing with pride, that I realized it was all a sham. I felt the barest rustling at the top of my thigh, then the unmistakable sensation of a bony hand tentatively massaging my buttocks. Not wanting to embarrass Paul in his moment of apparent triumph, I looked surreptitiously behind me and traced the course of the hand up to its owner, the manager, of course.

So much for pedagogy. I brushed the hand lightly away and turned slightly, just in time to see him toss me a curious glance.

"When should we get together?" Paul asked him politely.

"Oh, soon, soon, " the manager said. " yes indeed. Very promising. " All this time he was doing his best to knead the buttery flesh of my ass checks with a hand that was surprisingly strong, as I continued to brush the hand away as quietly as I could. " we must have dinner some time. And bring the young lady." this last was said in an entirely different tone of voice, so that even Paul now understood what was going on.

I was amazed at his control. He simply said, " I understand, " took my hand, and led me through the room and out of the club. He said absolutely nothing on the way home, although I knew he was burning with shame and indignation. But that night was a very quiet one in our bed, as Paul turned his face to the wall and tried to erase my existence. I understood, but at the same time I could not help feeling rather hurt. It had not been my fault, after all, yet here we were going through the first loveless night we had spent since the day we met.

Somehow it did not seem fair.

Happily, though Paul's mood didn't last long. The next day he set to work on some secret project, banging away on a typewriter in the office he had made of poor Isadora's dining room, and when he stopped for the afternoon and came to me, it was with the same ardor and spirit as always. In fact, we had such a monumental screw that I completely forgot to ask him what the piece of work was that had inspired him so.

Whatever it was, he kept working at it for the next six weeks or so, slaving away in fervor of intensity by day and letting off the excess emotion at night, with me. Finally he emerged from the dining room one afternoon, wiped his sweat-streaked face, smiled, and said, " it's done."

"What's done?" I asked innocently, knowing that six weeks of curiosity was about to be satisfied.

"My play," he said. " My vehicle. "

So that was it. Apparently Paul had decided that his singular lack of success to that point had been due to the absence of a ' vehicle ', some piece of theater art that was custom made for him and him alone, something that had value in itself, but that would also serve to spotlight his wonderful work in mime. The play, as he explained it to me, was set in New Orleans in the thirties, and involved a young mime who was obviously Paul himself.

"Would you like to help me with it?" he asked innocently.

In fact, I had done a bit of acting for fun (though modesty forbids me from going into too much detail here, the director I had worked with let me know in no uncertain terms that I had a star's career waiting for me if I chose to follow the profession, which I did not), and now I thought it might be a diversion to perform again in private, especially since I had my real life lover as a leading man.

"All right," I said. " I'd love to, as a matter of fact."

"Good," Paul said. " Now, if you're going to help me, you must give me one hundred percent. You'll have to let your own personality just slide out of your body, and when you're completely empty let your body fill back up with the personality of Louisa." 

He looked at me. His eyes were shining with the nearly vicious intensity that had attracted me to him in the first place. I felt that I could see behind his eyes; see his mind knotting up into a snarl. A feathery stirring began in my loins.

"Complete concentration, " he said. " you ready?"

I nodded, closing my eyes as he began to speak, eager for this opportunity to take a psychic vacation, to become -- even for a few moments -- an entirely new person. Paul, I suspect, was feeling very much the same way.

"Think new Orleans, " he began, his voice almost imperceptibly taking on the oily accent of that city. " the Vieux Carre. A little house on St Peter Street. "

Instantly the scene began to project itself on the screen of my mind. I saw the low, flat-topped buildings of the French quarter, and the lacy wrought iron grillwork and the softening willow trees. I even imagined I could hear water lapping against the embankment along the quiet Mississippi.

"You're in the room on the second floor," Paul went on. " The shutters are open, but the curtains lie completely still. You feel the heat -- it surrounds your body like an insistent lover. It presses on you, it's sultry and torpid and it touches you everywhere at once."

His voice now became the heat itself, and I could feel it wrapping itself around me, caressing me, encouraging me by its sticky soft moistness. I began to rub my thighs together, smearing the insides of them with perspiration that I knew was only a prelude to the flowing of my sex juices. I could feel the cartilage in my knees turning mushy with the power of my need. Unconsciously, I let out a low moan.

"That's it, " Paul said, nodding his head gently, approvingly. " you feel the heat. It's beautiful, and it's unbearable. Your dress is a prison, but you know you can't escape it, at least not now."

"Why not?" I said playfully.

Paul frowned. " Because Lawrence is coming," he said.

I shifted restlessly in my dress, feeling the soft cotton jersey rub enticingly against my hardening nipples. Paul had done his job of scene setting well -- I did want to escape the confining garment. I wanted to let the heat come at me unimpeded, wanted to let it find the secret damp places of my desire. Most of all, I wanted Paul. I wanted to feel his hands roam over me, feel them defining the contours of my breasts, feel the soft palms sliding down over my sides to ride out along my hips. I wanted him to touch me, to probe and squeeze my aching body until it opened like a flower to the welcome invasion of his magnificent cock.

"You hear footsteps coming down the hall toward your room, " Paul intoned. " Lawrence is here. You're glad he's come, but you're also terribly anxious about what will happen here this afternoon. After all, he has been behaving quite strange lately, and you no longer feel as sure of him as you did before."


Christina Ch. 03



As I look back on it, I realize that that night marked a watershed in the history of my affair with Paul Bayard. I had a great deal of opportunity to analyze why things went wrong in the months that followed, as I much later walked the decks of foreign ships in unfamiliar oceans or waited to meet some new link in a chain of seeking that somehow seemed to grow longer with each new attempt on my part to reel it in. with the benefit of this cheap hindsight I came to know that our decline was inevitable, and had probably started the night that seedy club manager had tried to use Paul's talent to gain access to my body.

But during the period of decay itself, as things went from bad to worse between us, I was not able to see things quite so clearly. All I knew was that for some inexplicable reason, Paul had turned away from me. I think I would have been able to understand and handle it better had he turned argumentative, or irritable, or even vicious and violent. The coin of strong emotions has two sides, after all, and one expects a great love to breed great antagonisms as a sort of natural fallout.

Instead, Paul simply withdrew. He grew morose and uncommunicative, and took to spending long periods away from our apartment. Although it was difficult for me to see him physically disappear in this way, it was even more tormenting to have him present in the house in body only, while the essence of him, the beautiful spirit that I loved so desperately, had obviously moved out.

I did not confront him at first, hoping as I did that his withdrawal was only a matter of some stray mood, or some necessary passage of the artist through the shadow of his own internal moon. At the time I had no other way to explain it, this mysterious and almost total absence, and I was not yet willing to admit that what I was seeing was nothing more unusual than another end to another love affair. I suppose I had ended so many of them myself, the sudden cooling of the flame, the awkward period afterwards when one tries to rekindle what has died forever, the petty arguments and the ultimate escape, that I refused to believe that it could happen to me in reverse.

Besides, I was convinced even then, even in my confusion and anxiety, that Paul had not stopped loving me. Something else was going on, I was sure, something that had nothing to do with me. Paul's withdrawal was not a sign of lack of love, but of some interior struggle that I could not understand without some kind of information from him, and he was simply not talking.

I think it was the long stays away from home that convinced me more than anything else that I had very little to do with what was happening to Paul. Within a very few weeks he was staying away for days at a time, and soon those days were stretching into weeks. Although part of me knew there was a special, concrete explanation for this, another part of me was growing wild with yearning for him. For the Paul I knew was still alive inside this tough new shell.

Probably the worst aspect of this for me was the fact that I no longer could count on any comfort whatsoever from Paul's body. His withdrawal from me was absolute, total, so that even on the few nights that he deigned to sleep with me in the apartment, he simply flopped himself into bed and rolled over to face the wall. Nothing I did could revive or encourage him in any way, when I touched him, I could feel his body turn to stone, a rigidity so complete as to be positively frightening. After a few nights of this, interspersed with those terrifying long absences, I even found myself wishing that he were the type of man who could simply objectify women, take advantage of them, use them for their bodies alone, and that he would coldly ravage me, impale me on the sword of his mysterious anger.

Never have I come so dangerously close to losing my integrity, the pride and confidence that have kept me alive and triumphant even in life and death situations. Never before had I been so willing to submit myself to a man and his needs, never been so desperate to have a man's interest and sexual reassurance. When I realized this, realized how close I had come to total surrender, some kind of alarm bell went off deep inside me, and I knew that I would have to take the bull by the horns.

Finally I confronted him. He had come home from one of his weeks away, had given me the same offhand 'hello' with the same unreadable expression that I had now become accustomed to, and had brushed past me to flop exhausted on to the couch. I wondered briefly, as I had wondered many times before, if Paul had simply found some new woman to keep him happy and was staying with me for reasons that neither of us could fathom. But as before, I again found that possibility unlikely, since absolutely none of the telltale signs of infidelity were there.

Still, I had reached the end of my rope. Something was going to get settled right then and there, or I would be on my way. I walked over to the couch and sat down next to him, feeling him stiffen as I did. But I was simply not going to be put off this time.

"Paul," I said, "let's stop this. Please tell me what's going on with you."

He turned to me with the face of an actor, as if he were trying to convince me that he was taken entirely by surprise by a bizarre and unreasonable question. "What are you talking about?" he said.

"Paul, don't do that to me," I said, honestly saddened by the childish weakness of his ploy." Don't hide that way, it makes me feel ridiculous."

He didn't answer, only turned his face to the wall once more.

For some reason it infuriated me this time. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around to face me. The look of surprise on his face was so comical that I could hardly keep from laughing.

But I managed to control myself. "Look, Paul," I said firmly, "if you want to go on staying with me, you're going to have to put a little effort into it. You're going to have to do some communicating."

His face, that marvelous, eternal face, now seemed to melt before my eyes, and his expression changed from one of surprise to one of sheer terror. The fear I saw nearly took my breath away, and I wanted to reach out to him, to hold his face between my hands and comfort him. If only he'd let me....

"First," he said, "I'm going to tell you what I can. It might not be the explanation you want, but it's all I can do right now."

Then he stopped. I waited for a moment, and then said, "well?"

He took a breath. "I'm under contract," he said.

"To who?" I asked when he showed no signs of continuing. "For what?" this petty mystery was beginning to annoy me, and I could hardly keep the tone of irritation out of my voice.

"That's all I can say," he said. "Please don't ask me anything else." with that he turned on his heel and walked into the bedroom.

I could control myself no longer. My reaction to these months of neglect and sullenness poured out of me, and I could not have stopped myself even if I had wanted to. I screamed, "Paul! Stop this, dammit! What's happened to you? Can't you see what you're doing to us?"

When he didn't respond I followed him into the bedroom. To my great shock, he had a suitcase open on the bed and was packing. Furiously.

"Paul," I said, "what in hell are you doing?"

"This isn't fair to you," he said, continuing to throw shirts into the suitcase. "I've taken your life away from you, and I'm not giving you anything in return." he closed the suitcase and locked it. "And now I've told you too much."

"Too much?" I shouted. "You haven't told me anything, except that you're under contract for something. Well, I want to know. What contract? What something?"

"I'm sorry, Christina," he said, picking up the suitcase and brushing past me. "I just can't tell you."

"And now you're leaving?" I said. I could scarcely believe it myself. "Just like that?" I followed him in to the living room and toward the front door.

"For you, Christina," he said over his shoulder. "I'm only doing it for you." with that he opened the door, walked through, and then closed it ever so gently. But the slight click the door made in closing thundered through my nervous system like the clashing of cymbals.

I went cold and numb. As usual in tense situations, my emotions immediately receded, allowing my intelligence all the room it needed to make quick sense of things. It is probably a defense, this characteristic of mine, but it is one that has served me in good stead when life itself was on the line.

Instantly I began to think. I had little information to go on other than Paul's cryptic statement about being under contract. Had he become a criminal, then? Had he signed a contract to undertake some menial job, or to donate his brain to science? I simply couldn't tell.

One thing I did know, though. That fear I had seen in his face was absolutely genuine. For some reason or other, Paul was in danger, either that, or afraid that some danger might befall me. Well, I decided, he was not going to walk out on me, on our love, and into this unknown danger and expect me to sit back and meekly accept it. That simply was not my style. I would do something about this, whatever it was, would get to the root of it and make it right no matter what the cost. And there was absolutely nothing anyone could do to stop me.

As usual, having made a decision made me feel better, for the moment at least. I walked toward the bedroom feeling somewhat relieved. But when I looked down at the bed, at the wrinkled bedspread where Paul had packed his clothes, some emotional sluice gate in me raised, and all the feelings I had held back came out in a great, flowing gush.

I collapsed in tears on the bed, and for the first time since the death of my father I cried myself to sleep.



Christina Ch. 04



The next morning I was awakened by what to me had become a strange sound: the ringing of the telephone. As I went to answer it I realized with a start to what extent Paul and I had isolated ourselves from the world around us. We had, in effect, completely cut ourselves off from friends and social life, at first out of happiness with the self-sustaining contentment of our relationship (god, how I hate that word), but later out of some perverse desire to nurture our misery in private.

Now, as I heard Xavier's clear voice on the other end of the line, I sighed with gratitude. There was no one I would rather have talked to that morning. In fact, had he not called me I would probably have called him, as a natural place to begin looking for information about this ' contract ' of Paul's.

"Well, " he said in an uncharacteristically jovial tone. " I hear you've been given the chance to climb back out from between your lovely buns."

I didn't even bother to wonder how he had found out, and found out so quickly. Somehow Xavier had always known instantly what was happening. It was positively uncanny. Had he not been born filthy rich, he would have made a superb gossip columnist.

"Delicately put, as usual, " I said, " but it's good to hear your voice."

"What's even better, " he counted, " is to hear that your Marcel Marceau has finally taken a walk. "

"It's a bit more complicated than that, " I shot back.

"Well, don't snap at me, " He said. " I'm only trying to provide you with a little information."

"What are you talking about?"

I heard him sigh on the other end. " There's a screening tonight, " he said. " I want you to come with me. "

"Xavier, will you stop being so dammed oblique?" I said. " What is going on tonight?"

"I'll pick you up at seven thirty, " was his only answer. " wear your black dress."

My protest was interrupted by a click as he hung up the phone. I started to dial him back, but gave up in midnumber. It was useless trying to pry information out of Xavier when he was being mysterious, and I knew that I would only frustrate myself by trying. There was absolutely nothing I could do but wait until that evening and hope that he would be a little more lose tongued.

He arrived at seven thirty on the dot -- another shock, I had never known Xavier to arrive even within an hour of the allotted time -- wearing a bill blasé jumper suit and a heartening smile. He handed me a bouquet of American beauty roses, and took my hand.

"You see?" he said. " I still love you, even in your terrible foolishness."

"The flowers are lovely, " I said. " but I'd prefer an explanation."

"All in due time," he said, comically stroking a nonexistent mustache. " All in due time."

Xavier was full of surprises that evening. When we went downstairs, the car that was waiting for us was not his Lamborghini Countach, but a studio limousine with black tinted windows.

"So that's it," I said when I saw the car. " You've finally decided to go to work for a living. You've become a producer."

"Close, darling," he said, opening the door for me, " but no tiparillo. Besides, there's no such animal as a producer who works for a living."

"True enough," I said. It felt wonderful to be bantering with Paul. We carried on a verbal fencing match punctuated with laughter all the way to the borders of bel-air, parrying and thrusting and giggling just as we had in the old days, so that the short ride with Xavier turned out to be better than a dozen hours with some somnolent psychiatrist.

The screening was a private affair in the home of Reese Jacklin, who, like Xavier, was one of those mysterious figures who never seem to do anything much but are always at the very center of movie land affairs. Reese's function was to be trusted friend, confidant, and harbinger of fresh news to the power elite of Hollywood, a job he performed with great relish and obvious natural ability. On the side he sold the juiciest tidbits about his friends romantic failures to the American reader, that scurrilous little rag that maintains the largest readership in the country by picking at the bones of the rich and famous.

Jacklin's home was magnificent, a twelve-bedroom Old Spanish mansion designed by George Washington smith, with fresh flowers in the courtyard fountain and an observatory with what Xavier described as ' the world's only horizontal telescope.' Jacklin was one of the few remaining bel-airians who maintained uniformed servants, and his kitchen, which occupied what must have been a full acre in the basement, was famous on both sides of the oceans.

Reese met us at the door, dressed as usual in a kimono and loafers with no soaks. At his side was Wanda pearl, the country singer whose popularity was much more a function of her elephantine breasts than her thin and rather irritating voice.

"Hello, my love, " he said when he saw me, leaning over and giving me a peck on the check. " wonderful to see you back in the pool."

We all exchanged greetings and stood at the door chatting for a moment, until Wanda said, " Reese, honey, don'tcha think we oughta get back? Mah throat's so dry."

"Cottonmouth," Reese explained to us with a wink. " Poor Wanda just can't smoke that afghan boo without a bottle of Boone's farm to wash it down."

"Now Reese honey, you apologize," she drawled, her voice raising half an octave in irritation. " You know I don't drink no Boone's farm no more. Only mutton cadet."

"Mouton cadet," Reese corrected, throwing us a weary look over his shoulder as he guided us down the first leg of his labyrinthine system of hallways.

After what seemed an endless trek through art-bedecked passageways, we finally arrived at the screening room. Nowadays most private screening rooms in bel-air are simple affairs, comfortable and relaxing, Jacklin, however, was not a simple man. He had disguised his screening room so that it looked like the book-lined study of an oxford don (even though everyone knew that Reese never read anything but variety and pornographic fotonovelas imported from Acapulco). Full of leather easy chairs and crystal brandy decanters but with no screen or projection equipment in sight. When Jacklin pressed a button -- usually with no warning whatsoever to the assembled guests -- the entire floor descended, chairs, guests, and all, into a room one story down where all the screening equipment was kept. It was a dramatic enough experience the first time one underwent it, but by the second time it already seemed like nothing more than a boring and childish piece of ostentation.

Still, one was expected to ooh and aah, so I oohed and aahed dutifully as the floor carried us down to the screening room itself. The other guests -- among them bill and Dorothy page of roman a clef, perhaps the best restaurant in America, perennial squash champion haroun ahmed, with an Egyptian boyfriend who I did not know, and neurosurgeon miles O'Rourke with his wife rhea -- were all apparently making the descent for the first time, and neither Xavier nor I had the heart to make the withering comments that were so obviously appropriate.

Once the floor settled and the lights went dim, I completely forgot my surroundings and my companions. I have always been a pushover for the movies -- as a little girl, they were my basic means of escape from my mundane Vermont childhood. I've been such a pushover, in fact, that I remain one of the most unreliable critics I know. I can find something I like in any film, even the cheapest and most grotesque, if nothing more than the saturated brightness of color itself or a single expression on the face of one ham actor. In addition, the dimming of the lights was also like a time machine to me, speeding me back to those careless Sundays at my father's side in a darkened theater.

Just before the screen came alive with the titles, Reese Jacklin's voice cut through the darkness. " This film is going to be the biggest grosser since star wars. They're pulling out all the stops on this one."

"Why?" I heard Xavier say.

"The male lead," Jacklin replied. " I talked with George d'antonio over at regal studios, and he said this guy's going to be the hottest thing since free pussy. They're already billing him as the next Paul Newman."

"Hmmm, " I thought to myself, and promptly forgot everything Reese had said as the magic of the titles closed everything else out of my mind. The movie was called ' quicklime ', and it starred Randall Stearns -- who I assumed was the new heartthrob Reese had mentioned -- Cindy Paxman, and Gloria Richards, an old favorite of mine. It was apparently one of those grand prix movies, which for me always manage to capture the glandular appeal and sheer speed of the sport while blithely ignoring the precision and unglamorous hard work that go into the making of even an average race driver, to say nothing of the freaks who rule the world of formula one.

I knew that world well, and now the first roar of the sound track thrilled me as if I were one of the drivers once again. When the picture got to the point of putting me in the cockpit of an ice blue elf-Tyrell special, I forgot the calm maturity that had caused me to leave racing in the first place and wished that I could be plummeting once again down the long straight at hockenheim, gearing the car to take that breathless leap over the flugplatz.

I followed with pounding heart as the car in the movie finished its practice lap at what looked like the short course at Sebring, then I let out a long and probably audible sigh as it pulled into the pits. I smiled nostalgically as the driver stepped out of the car, remembering the unutterable and beautiful fatigue one felt after muscling a formula one car around a circuit for two hours.

Then the driver pulled off his helmet, and I got the shock of a lifetime that had already had more than its share of shocks. I drew in my breath with a loud gasp and stared open mouthed at the screen, hardly daring to believe what I was seeing.

For the driver, this ' Randall Stearns ' that Reese and the studios had been crowing about so loudly, was none other than my recently departed lover, Paul Bayard!

There is no way I can convey the paralyzing effect that the sight of Paul on the screen had on me. The impact of it was so stunning as to numb my senses almost entirely, and the only reason I now know what I did next was that Xavier recited it to me later in great and embarrassing detail.

The only thing I actually remember is running like a loon down the dark bel-air drive that led away from Reese Jacklin's house, running and sobbing and yelling, " no, no!" into the serpentine main line of sunset boulevard, and the cars were honking and swerving to avoid me.

When Xavier finally found me I had run almost to doheny, a distance, I'm now told, of about five miles from Jacklin's mansion. He leaped out of the limo and grabbed me around the waist, dragging me kicking and screaming into the waiting car. I thrashed wildly in his captive embrace, and I was later mortified to learn that I accidentally broke one of his teeth with my failing elbow.

"Now calm down, Christina," he said in an even tone but through clenched teeth as he held me in a grip that was surprisingly strong. " Just calm down. Jesus, if I had known you were going to react this way I would never have done it. Please, Christina, come to your senses, will you?"

I finally stopped thrashing and fell limp in his grip, my heart pounding and my chest heaving with exertion. He put his arm around me, and my head fell against his shoulder like a rag dolls. I broke down entirely, and for the second time in two days I found myself weeping and bawling like some cuckolded schoolgirl, wailing out my heartbreak in the comforting shelter of Xavier's arms.

I heard him order the driver to move on, and when we hit the bright lights of the strip I was grateful to have the tinted glass to keep out the inquiring stares of the tourists in front of the Roxy. By the time we reached Schwab's, I had calmed down considerably and was finally able to ask the question that had been ringing in my brain since the moment I had seen Paul's face on the screen.

"Xavier," I said, my voice breaking as I spoke, " what happened?"

"I don't know much more than you do, " he said in a low, soothing voice. " I found out entirely by accident. I ran into his agent, who's a friend of mine, and we just got to talk. When she told me, I called the studio immediately and they told me Reese had a print of the film. So I asked him to set up a screening for you. Believe me, I had no idea it would do this to you. You must really love this boy, bozo though he appears to be."

"Paul has an agent?" I asked. I could hardly believe it. He had always avoided agents like the plague, complaining that they were parasites and bloodsuckers who had no inkling whatsoever of what it went to be an artist. He absolutely refused to put his career in one of their hands, even though he knew that without one he would probably remain an known outsider.

"Katy Gleason," Xavier said. " The hottest talent pusher in town. " he gave me an even look. " What Reese said was no joke, lover. Your boy is going to be an enormous star. They've already paid him more for this picture than any other newcomer has ever gotten, and they gave him top billing over Cindy and Gloria, who are no small potatoes. The studio is hyping him like they haven't hyped anyone since Brooke shields. He's going to be enormous, Christina. More than you ever imagined."

Although it was very difficult for me to make sense of all this -- my high-minded, classical Paul, selling out to the movies, peddling his flesh in the meat market like all the other ambitious pretty boys -- I had to admit that explained a number of the mysteries that had been troubling me so. His long absences, for example, must have coincided with the shooting of the films, with story conferences, publicity engagements, principal photography and the hundred other steps that go into the making of a movie. And his tight lipped depression, it must have been caused by shame, shame that he had sold out his ideals in the crassest way possible, shame over his inability to admit to me that he had forsaken his own art -- and possibly his soul as well -- for the questionable glory of temporary stardom. It also, of course, explained the nature -- if not the source -- of his mysterious contract.

It was something of a relief to have all that explained, but it didn't make me feel any better. For one thing, it neither brought Paul back nor gave me much of an opening to try to get him back -- if, in fact, that was what I wanted. And I still hadn't the faintest idea as to the most important question of all, why? Why had he done it? Why after all those years of proud struggling, after all the discipline and the mind breaking labor of perfecting his mime routines, did he suddenly give it all up to go in a direction that he seemed never even to have considered before? Why had he sacrificed everything he knew and loved -- me included -- for probably nothing more than a little fame?

Xavier, of course, had none of these answers, and I didn't want to involve him any more than he already was in an affair that was so obviously distasteful to him. It was enough that he cared about me sufficiently to want to inform me despite the fact that he thought Paul useless and decidedly beneath me.

I asked him to drive me home and he did so, dispatching me at my door with a kind embrace. I spent an hour or so at home on the phone, trying every place I thought Paul might be staying, but I turned up nothing but complete blanks. No one had seen him, no one had heard from him. It was as if he had already gone into hiding in anticipation of his impending stardom. Finally I gave up -- for that evening, at least -- and fell into an exhausted sleep on the couch without even bothering to remove my black dress.

The next morning I called Katy Gleason. Apparently she knew me by reputation (or perhaps knew of me through Paul), for she took the call immediately.

"I want to talk to you about Paul," I said. I was in no mood for niceties.

"Not on the phone," Katy said. Her voice was rich, and had an almost honest quality to it that encouraged me. " Come to my office in two hours. "

"I'm coming right now." I said, and hung up the phone without giving her a chance to protest.

Within half an hour I was walking through the door of Katy's office, which was in the prestigious artists and writers building in the heart of Beverly Hills. The outer office was sumptuous in an understated way, a muted sort of high tech decor that looked as if it had been lifted whole from the pages of the architectural digest. When I told the receptionist who I was, she announced me immediately and I was told with no further ado that I could go right in.

Katy's office was a glass and metal wonderland, positively agleam with those shiny alloys that are so admired by American industry. It had a hard edged look to it that put me off a bit, but my critique of her taste in interior design was forgotten the second I laid eyes on Katy herself.

I am used to the company of beautiful women. My mother spent half her life turning down the photographers and agents who were constantly begging her to enter this beauty contest or pose for that magazine. Beauty, in fact, is taken almost entirely for granted among my friends and acquaintances -- it's one of the first prerequisites for permanent membership (as opposed to the temporary variety, which can be obtained with mere wit, brains, or achievement) in what the world's journalists are so fond of calling the haut monde.

But I had never seen a beauty like this Katy Gleason. She had one of those triangular, Siamese cat faces, with the hollowed cheeks and oversized eyes that make one think immediately of a high fashion model. But where a model's beauty often has a porcelain, hand's off quality to it (one imagines her splitting up the middle if asked to spread her legs too far), Katy's was substantial and firm without being overly athletic. Her hair was deep black and her eyes brilliant green, and when she stood up I saw that she had the kind of body that makes men moan in the dark -- full, yet somehow lithe at the same time, and positively rippling with sexual energy.

I could not help but wonder if the explanation for Paul's mysterious behavior lay right here in this office. Certainly she looked to be woman enough to turn any man's head, and I could rather easily imagine her seducing Paul right out of his art and right into the movies. But there was something about her that made me think this unlikely, and it wasn't long before I discovered that my hunch was right.

"Hello," she said in that melodious voice. " Paul certainly wasn't exaggerating when he told me how beautiful you are."

"You have me at a distinct disadvantage," I said. " You see, Paul never told me about you at all."

"I know that," Katy said. " And he swore to me that he never would."

"I'm not surprised."

There was a brief, awkward silence which under the circumstances made me extremely uncomfortable. So I simply blurted out, " I want to know who's responsible for what happened to Paul."

"You don't waste time, do you?" Katy said.

"Not when something's as important to me as this is."

She nodded. " I understand." there was another long pause, at the end of which she looked me squarely in the eyes, holding mine with her's in a steady gaze that very quickly turned into a sort of caress. " I don't know very much," she said, " and before I tell you what I do know, I'd like to get to know you a little better."

Now I understood at least this much, Paul had definitely not left me for Katy. She was unmistakably on the gay side of the sexual fence, and now she was unmistakably trying to seduce me. I didn't mind. I go to bed with whom I please in this world, and if a lovely woman happens to catch my fancy I have no qualms whatsoever about indulging a sexual appetite that is decidedly bipartisan. In fact, some of the lushest of my erotic adventures have been with women -- I am reminded of the island of Antigua, of the wonderful month I spent holed up there in the admiral's inn (where lord nelson once trysted with lady Hamilton) with the sculptor Eloise Bryant, and of an absolutely sensational night with a lady politician (who shall remain forever nameless) after a party for the president at Sardis's.




Christina Ch. 05



The next morning I called in my hairdresser, my manicurist, and my masseur and had them all apply their considerable skills (I got them, after all, as a birthday present from the queen of goa, a good friend) to prepare me for what lay ahead. I was going back to work, in a sense, and I wanted to be at my best in all-possible respects, especially the physical. I do not deceive myself -- I know that my appearance has gotten me into doors that would have been fortified to the nth degree against anyone less fortunately endowed, and besides, I know how important it is to go into a new story feeling absolutely at the top of my game.

From the outset, that was my attitude, that the unraveling of the mystery of Paul's -- what should I call it? Sellout or disappearance or change of life? -- Would be treated simply as another story, fascinating, no doubt, and challenging, but no more so than, say, the capture of those oil tanker pirates in the Seychelles or the behind the scenes machinations in the toppling of the government in Paraguay, both of which I had taken part in. to maintain that attitude, I had to quash my feelings and muster up all the objectivity I could, because I knew that my love for Paul could do nothing but cloud my vision and retard whatever progress I might be able to make toward the solution of this bloody mystery.

Once I had been primped, rubbed, and clipped to near perfection by my adorable caretakers, I went right to work, starting, as usual, with my favorite tool in these preliminary rounds, the telephone. First I called Reese Jacklin, who -- amazingly enough -- could tell me nothing more than the name of quicklime's producer, one Tony Jacobs. Jacobs was a nodding acquaintance of mine from some embassy party or other, and when I called he remembered me instantly. But he knew nothing, or so he claimed. He said he had simply been ordered by the president of constellation films to use Paul as the lead in the picture, and ordered in terms that brooked no argument whatsoever.

"What could I do?" he said, and I could almost see him shrugging as he shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. "My hands were tied."

I thanked him and immediately called constellation, tapping my fingers on the phone table and fuming silently as I ran the telephone maze of secretaries, receptionists, and the palace guards who kept the executives from talking to anyone but their mistresses. I finally got through to Desmond Starkey, constellation's president by reminding his personal secretary that I was part of a group that had bankrolled the first seven pictures the studio had ever made.

It was hardly worth my time. Starky had much the same story as Jacobs, that he was simply acting under orders.

"We're not independent anymore you know," he said. "We're just a division of amalgamated industries. They tell us what to do."

"Even down to the lead actor in a tacky little racing film?" I said. "I find that hard to believe."

"Believe what you will, Christina," Starkey said. "It happens to be the truth. I get a phone call one day from the home office, they say 'use Paul Bayard in quicklime'. So I use him. I make it a point not to argue with the home office."

"All right, Desmond," I said. "Thanks for nothing." 

"Any time, sweetheart," he said cheerfully. "And don't be a stranger."

We hung up. Just as I was about to dial the home office of amalgamated industries (located, appropriately enough, in Cleveland) the phone rang. It was Katy.

"My god," she said, "I've been trying to get you all morning. The line's been busy."

"So have I," I said. " Hacking myself a pathway through the corporate jungle."

"Amalgamated?"

"I was just about to call them."

"Don't bother. You won't get anywhere."

"How do you know?"

"Because," she said. "I've already talked to the fellow who keeps their wheels greased out there. He guarantees me that no one in Cleveland really knows what's going on."

"Not even the chairman of the board?"

"No one."

"Hmmm," I said brilliantly. "Who is this wheel greaser of yours?"

"His name is Leonard snider. He's a lawyer, and he has some sort of connection with both amalgamated and constellation, although I've never been able to get him to tell me precisely what that connection is. Some sort of liaison man, I imagine."

"Sounds positively opaque," I said. "What's his phone number?"

"You don't have to call him," Katy said. "I've already made you an appointment."

"Fantastic!" I said. "You know, if you didn't make so much money as it is, I'd hire you."

"Don't make me offers until you hear about the kind of appointment it is," she said ominously.

"Uh-oh."

"Exactly. What it boils down to is that I got you an invitation to one of his parties. They're quite notorious."

"Doesn't sound so bad," I said. "Especially after some of the parties I've been to." I immediately recalled the pirates of the Caribbean party that Xavier had thrown once, in which each of the guests ended up coupling dog style with some one and ' walking the plank ' into the swimming pool full of Dom Perignon. Or the Olympics benefit sponsored by an aging athlete who had once won three gold medals, and which featured a decathlon unlike anything ever seen outside the pages of the karma sutra.

"I'm sure I'll be able to manage it," I told Katy.

"I'm sure you will, darling," she said. "But I'm going to come with you, just to be on the safe side."

"Wonderful!" I said, truly meaning it. We made the arrangements and chatted for a moment about trivialities before hanging up. Once the phone was back on the hook, I sat back in my chair and relaxed inside for the first time in days. I have an instinct for the right track -- an instinct that is indispensable to the work I do -- and now I felt as if things were finally going somewhere. This Leonard snider sounded very promising indeed, and I silently thanked Katy for the referral, knowing she had saved me much work and frustration in dealing with the corporate mélange. And I knew too that snider was just a man, and no matter how loyal and tight lipped he might prove to be, I had yet to meet the man who would not talk to me ... sooner or latter, if you know what I mean.

The party was due to begin late Saturday afternoon, so Katy picked me up at noon in her cornice, putting the top down for the two hour drive to Santa Barbara, where snider lived. Santa Barbara, is one of those towns about which people are always saying that it has the highest per capita income in the country, which instantly incites arguments with aficionados of shaker heights, great neck, and Tiburon, and which is due primarily to the fact that a great many successful movie people live there in blissful semiretirement.

But to my surprise, Katy did not turn off the highway at the Montecito exit, which leads to the heart of the Santa Barbara movie colony. Instead she drove on through town and out the narrow road toward the San Morcos pass. We went up the coast range, up past Camino del Cielo with its magnificent view of the ocean, past the sprawling ranch which Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden keep as a weekend retreat, and down into the oak studded greenery of the Santa Ynez valley.

Just before we reached lake Cachuma and the little town of paradise, Katy turned off onto an unmarked but well graded dirt road, which was set off by a double stand of eucalyptus trees on either side. Black angus cattle grazed peacefully in the tall yellow grass, lifting their heads to bellow at us, as we roared past. Finally we came to a circular driveway, and parked in front of the immense one story ranch house on the other side.

Snider himself greeted us at the door; he was a tall, rangy man who reminded me a bit of an old fashioned secretary of state. He smiled at me pleasantly when Katy introduced us, looking much more like a rural gentleman than the sexual madman Katy had described.

"Come on in " he said in a relaxed baritone. "party's just getting started."

I have heard those words at least ten thousand times in my life, and they almost always conjure up the same scene, people standing around in little groups of three and fours, nibbling exotic little tidbits and smoothly swooping drinks off passing cocktail trays as they engage in a low key contest to see who can be the more quietly impressive ' undertone ' of repressed sexuality and eager anticipation.

Consequently I was not in the least prepared for the sight that hit me when I walked in the door. There were some fifteen to twenty couples in sniper's hockey ring of a living room, and another ten or so outside, gathering around and in a swimming pool that looked to be only slightly smaller than red square in Moscow. And nowhere did I see a shred of clothing; nowhere did I hear a sound that was even vaguely conversational. What I did see was a writhing, almost undifferentiated mass of naked human bodies, pushing, pumping, slithering and sliding along the freshly waxed floor like some kind of ballet gone madly horizontal, what I did hear was on odd mixture of passionate whispers, groans, and delirious screams.

In one corner of the room a man with the body of a weight lifter was standing erect, inserting his monumental cock into a woman who was at least six inches taller than he while at the same time he lifted two other women entirely off the floor by their crotches, one in each hand. In another corner the blackest woman I have ever seen -- so black as to be almost purple -- was straddling the body of a gorgeous American Indian in full war paint, while simultaneously reaching her head back to lap at the pussy of a woman who must have been the world's most magnificently preserved senior citizen. In the middle of the floor a group of eight people had formed what looked like a human train while the poor woman who was unfortunate enough to play the caboose wailed for some one to come couple her. Outside I could see two men standing on the diving board, fencing exuberantly with their monstrous cocks while the sexiest water polo game I have ever laid eyes on went on inside the pool itself.

I have to admit it, I gaped. I have been to enough orgies to know what the word 'orgy' generally means in reality -- two or more couples screwing simultaneously in two or more different rooms. I have been to private clubs in London, Hong Kong, and Lagos that make Plato's retreat look like a baby sitting cooperative. I have been to the weddings of porno kings and super bowl victory celebrations. But I have never seen anything like the passion play that was going on in that house, have never experienced a sexual circus that was so absolutely without inhibition.

All in all, it looked like something hieronymus Bosch might have drawn on commission for playboy magazine. 

As I continued to try to adjust my unbelieving brain to receive and process the messages my eyes were sending it, I found that my body was responding unbidden. Unmistakable and undeniable little flutterings were beginning to bounce about in my belly, and I felt a twitching between my legs as my pussy began to dilate of its own accord. Instinctively my one hand began to climb up my rib cage, up and up until it rested enticingly on the hill of my breast, while my other hand went under my skirt and up my leg toward my already pulsating vagina.

At the same time I felt a hand on my ass, gently rubbing and kneading the creamy flesh of my buttocks. Under other circumstances I would have responded immediately -- one way or the other -- but in this setting it seemed so entirely natural and even innocent that I didn't even turn around to see who it was. Besides, I was too busy staring at the mass of humanity in front of me, sorting out sexual details as my brain began to distinguish one incredible coupling from another.

I was particularly intrigued by a tiny, perfectly proportioned and well muscled little man who I latter discovered to be one of the countries most successful jockeys, a two time winner of the Kentucky derby. He had two women lying face down on top of one another, and he was screwing them alternating in perfect rhythm, withdrawing from one and then plunging his surprisingly hearty cock into the other -- in, out, in, out, in, out up and down and back and forth while both of them squealed their delight. I was tempted to tear off my clothes and add myself to this pile, but I thought first it would be a good idea to find out what happened to Katy.

I needn't have worried. With one scan of the room I found her, already gloriously naked and on her knees, that luscious tongue of hers snaking into the creamy pussy of a woman with a diamond in her nose and a pair of lacy little tattoos around her nipples. The woman's face was vaguely familiar to me, and when she closed her eyes and threw her head back in delight at Katy's ministrations, I realized I had seen her in just that position, but with a sequined jump suit on and a microphone in front of her. It was Belinda jay, a jazz singer whose exquisite talent had made her a star in Europe while she remained virtually unknown in this country.

I was glad to see Katy well occupied, but at the same time I was curious as to what our host might be doing. I looked around until I saw snider standing near a grand piano with all his clothes still on, sucking contentedly at a pipe. I wondered for a moment if he ever actively participated in these sexual whirlwinds of his, or if he was simply the ultimate voyeur, getting his pleasure vicariously from the pleasure of others. Nor was my question answered when a slender, beautiful redhead came up to him, unzipped his pants and unceremoniously drew out his still limp pecker and stuffed it whole into her mouth. Amazingly, snider hardly moved a muscle, continuing to observe the goings on with that detached air of his, hardly taking notice as the redhead gulped and fondled him with her lush lips.

But I had no further time to indulge my curiosity vis-à-vis our host. Once again I felt that hand -- or perhaps a new one -- begin to massage the already trembling orbs of my buttocks. By this time I was well on the road to full arousal, my breasts heaving and my breath coming in ragged little gasps, and I could no longer ignore the insistent message of this anonymous touch on my eager behind. I turned around to find myself staring into the deep brown eyes of one of the most gorgeous men I have ever seen -- a male model, probably, or perhaps a professional womanizer. His body was like a statue, a paragon of rippling perfection, and the smile on his face had the serenity of an angel's combined with the tantalizing sexual mischief of a servant of Beelzebub.

"Hello," I said, my breath nearly catching in my throat. "And who might this be touching me."

"Aw, shit," said the gorgeous piece of manhood. He turned on his heel and walked away.

I had inadvertently discovered one of the rules of Sniders little soirees. One was perfectly free to indulge oneself in whatever sexual activity that struck one's fancy; there was absolutely nothing verboten in the way of pleasure and satisfaction. But the one inviolable law if one was to indulge was never, never to ask anyone else's name. This form of discretion was actually quite sensible, as Snider's parties tended to attract the crème de la crème of the world's glamour elite, and of course each guest had a vested interest in his own anonymity. I only wished I had been told that rule explicitly. It would have both spared me considerable embarrassment and perhaps gained me the attentions of that lovely man.

The loss of my Adonis only served to arouse me that much further. Luckily, there were a number of people who were not about to let me wander about unattended. A friendly looking woman came up and smilingly (but silently) helped me unbutton my blouse (oh, the glorious freedom as my breasts were exposed to the warm air!), and someone else slipped my skirt and panties off from behind.

Thus liberated, I went off in search of a partner or two. I didn't have to look for long. Before I had gone three steps I felt a collection of hands reach up and grab me by the calves and ankles, and within a few seconds I had been pulled down onto the floor of warm humanity.

I got into the spirit of things instantly, twisting and writhering in that wonderful mountain of flesh, my hands reaching out to grope and finger and explore as other hands rubbed and prodded me everywhere at once. I felt breasts press against my tummy, muscular thighs rub up and down the sides of my rib cage, hardened cocks poke at the little doorway to my anus. For once in my life I could have tolerated what has always seemed to me the cruelest handicap, blindness. For in this sensual feast, this chorale of pure sensation, the one thing I could have done without for a few moments were my eyes.

I continued to swim happily about in this ocean of flesh, my aching pussy growing more and more demanding as the juices of my excitement continued to flow. To understand how thoroughly I was aroused, imagine your favorite lover, your most skilled paramour not only multiplied by ten, but a hermaphrodite as well, with the sexual equipment of both genders caressing your entire body, lodging in all the secret places of your desire at one and the same time. Imagine having one hand on a perfect, lush breast, another pumping up and down a hardened shaft of male love flesh, while your lips alternately caress a warm, creamy pussy, and the sensitive skin of a pebbled scrotum. Imagine the mingled fluids, the sweat and the juice and the drops of semen smeared all about your body so that you slide over the moving flesh like a seal on a wet rock. Imagine all that, and you'll begin to understand why this marvelous party of Snider's had me fairly dizzy with delight.

Finally my urgency overcame me. My vagina was dilated to the utmost, and my belly was heaving and throbbing with the strength of my desire. I had two orgasms in quick succession before I could reach out, grab the nearest and hardest cock, and plunge it to the hilt into my over wrought pussy. I had another orgasm as the unknown cock entered me, and still another as I felt soMeone's groin make contact with the pulsating knob of my clitoris.

Soon I cried out in disappointment as I felt that wonderful prick withdraw from me, leaving me empty and still moaning out my need into the sunlit room. But I was not left long in that condition, as soMeone rolled me over and I felt another, even plumper cock penetrate me from behind, reaming out the softened walls of my vagina as it plunged in and out. In a moment I was up on my hands and knees, bucking back and forth on that wonderful rod while soMeone else knelt down in front of me and offered me his sleek prick, which I gathered hungrily into the warm cavern of my mouth.

By now I was quite beside myself. I wanted every hole plugged, every cavity filled. I wanted to feel warm flesh all over me, feel myself being flooded, inundated until I dissolved in a stream of fiery orgasms. My pussy was firing now like a machine gun, little bullet like climaxes that grew stronger and stronger until they melded into one gigantic, cosmic orgasm that left me drained, limp, and satisfied -- a grinning, mindless heap on Snider's floor.

I don't know if I fainted or merely fell asleep, because the next thing I remember was hearing Snider's cheerful baritone saying, "all right, everybody -- game time."

I had no idea what he ment, of course, but given the uproarious time everyone had had up till then, I could only suppose that this ' game time ' was some sort of traditional grand finale to the party. We all picked ourselves off the floor, a forest of glistening naked bodies, and stood there grinning at each other like children at a birthday party while snider rounded up those guests who were still outside. I happened to catch a glimpse of Katy, who was holding hands with Belinda jay while the singer idly massaged the agent's breast. We winked at one another, and then turned our attentions back to snider, who had just returned to the room.




Christina Ch. 06



There were no commercial flights to San Cristobal. Xavier offered to fly me down in his Lear jet, but when I checked on it I was told that the runways there were too short even for executive sized jets. So I took a Mexicana flight to Tuxtla Gutierrez -- a horrible industrial town in the middle of a raspy desert -- and from there hired a local pilot to fly me up to san Cristobal in his prewar Cessna.

The flight itself turned out to be just as beautiful as Tuxtla was ugly. It took us sailing up the sides of the magnificent range of mountains that starts there in southern Mexico and runs all the way down to panama. From our altitude, which seemed to be no more than treetop level plus a hundred feet or so, I could see long, elegant ribbons of waterfalls winding through mountain forests, and a thin mist that laced its way through the trees so that the whole scene was somehow reminiscent of a Japanese paradise. Occasionally my eyes were tantalized by marvelous little foot trails that ran mysteriously off into the woods, and once or twice I thought I saw Indians trotting along the trails, carrying loads of firewood at least as big as they were, using nothing more than a strap attached to their foreheads.

By the time the pilot landed in a little alpine meadow at the top of the mountain, I was enthralled. Everything around me was brilliant green and dotted with yellow flowers, and a creek ran peacefully through the little meadow that had been dignified with the name of an airport. By the side of the creek a gaggle of Indian women dressed entirely in white laughed and talked as they washed clothes and beat them dry on the blue rocks that also served as their chairs. It was the sort of wonderfully primitive place that under less pressured circumstances I might have chosen for a private retreat, or a romantic holiday with a special lover.

But I had business. The pilot very graciously drove me from the airport into town, a magnificent old colonial pueblo with a weather beaten seventeenth century cathedral facing the village square. I took a hotel on the other side of the plaza, a charming old place with fresh flowers in the courtyard fountain and wildly colored tropical birds cawing madly from their wrought iron cages.

I drank a manzanita in the courtyard, and for the first time began to wonder what I was actually going to do now that I was there. I hadn't the faintest idea who to talk to -- even Xavier's almost universal network of contacts did not reach into this remote little spot -- and very little notion of where to start. Now I found myself regretting that years ago I had turned my schoolgirl nose up at Spanish and concentrated on learning French.

Luckily, the hotel manager spoke English and was able to find me an interpreter, a winsome young mestizo boy with the improbable name of Tolerante dos Rios. A part quiche Indian, Tolerante was sixteen and had one of those angelic Mexican faces with the Walter Keene eyes. I immediately took him to my room so as to avoid being overheard, but when I boldly told him that I wanted to meet whoever might be in charge of the local drug traffic, and would pay for that information, he was so startled that he forgot his English.

"Quieres conocer al cubano?" he said in surprise.

I didn't need Spanish to understand that last word, and now I was just as surprised as he. "You mean there's a Cuban in charge of the drug trade here?" I asked.

"Si, senorita," he said. " Back in the mountains, where they grow the mota and the opio, the Cuban runs everything."

"I want to meet him," I said.

"This is not easy," he replied.

"I didn't expect it to be easy. If you can arrange a meeting, I can fix it so you never have to work again."

He gave me a wary look -- I suppose he was entirely unused to having women speak to him that way. But when I opened my wallet and gave him a hundred dollar bill -- " for your trouble," I said -- he brightened immediately.

"I come for you tonight," he said. "I take you to the Cuban."

"Perfect," I said. "And thank you, darling." I leaned over and planted a motherly kiss on his forehead, whereupon his face lit up in a tremendous blush and he literally sprinted from the room.

I spent the rest of the day seeing the sights, strolling through the Indian market, picking among the baskets of green chilies, mangoes, and the bright red pepper called aji, buying several pairs of the crude, massive golden earrings that the women haul down from the secret mountains in cardboard boxes, then a short trip outside town to a series of caverns that were even more spectacular (although somewhat smaller) than the famous ones at Carlsbad, new Mexico. By the time I returned it was after dark, and I found myself running from my rented car to the hotel in fear that I had missed Tolerante.

But he was there, dressed in white peasant pants and white serape, his hair combed and slicked back, his face shining clean. He looked so adorably innocent that I had the urge to take him in my arms and cuddle him half to death, but I remembered his reaction when I kissed him that afternoon and managed to stifle myself.

"We must hurry, senorita," he said when he saw me. "The fight is already started."

"What fight?" I said. He had mentioned nothing of this in the afternoon.

"Los Gatos del Monte," he said. "You'll see. But please, we must hurry. Apurese, senorita."

"Wait a minute," I said when we were outside. "What does this fight, whatever it is, have to do with the Cuban?"

"His cat is fighting tonight," he said. "He will be there, I know."

Without another word of explanation he started off across the square, and there was nothing I could do but shrug and follow him as best I could. He led me past the church, and then through a maze of impossibly narrow alleyways, finally stopping in front of a silent, darkened tire shop to wait for me to catch up. When I reached him, Tolerante drummed his fingers on the corrugated metal door, and within a few seconds I heard a muffled voice say something in Spanish. Tolerante answered, then took my hand and led me around to the back of the shop.

There a door creaked open and Tolerante ushered me into a large, brightly lit room that must have served as the shop's garage during the daytime. Once my eyes adjusted to the sudden glare, I could see that the room was ringed with people, an amazingly mixed crowd that included Mexicans in fancy dress guayaberas, solemn Indians in their white cotton clothing, a few Caribbean looking blacks, and one woman who I could have sworn was German, although she was dressed in the bright wools of the Indians of Guatemala. The room was surprisingly quiet, as people talked in matter of fact tones, and only an occasional laugh rose above the conversational hum.

Then I noticed a stack of cages standing apart in one corner of the garage. Inside the cages were various felines, but in versions I had never seen before, not even in the pages of national geographic. The animals had long, low bodies reminiscent of weasels, with triangular heads, sharp, pointed noses, and faces that reminded me of raccoon, but without the mask. Some walked restlessly around their cages while others appeared to be almost somnambulant, but they all exuded a mysterious sort of tension, like athletes before an event or, perhaps more aptly, like coiled snakes.

"Los Gatos del Monte," Tolerante said when he saw me staring at them. "Soon they will fight."

"What about the Cuban?" I said.

"I don't see him now. But he will come. I am sure."

Before I could open my mouth to ask another question, a hush fell over the room as two Indians walked across to the cages, opened them, and dragged out two of the mountain cats by the scruffs of their necks. The cats remained quiescent in the restraining grasps of their masters, who now walked over to the center of the room and stood on opposite sides of a large wooden box with side rails just high enough to keep the cats in while still low enough to allow the audience a good view.

The tone of conversation in the room rose perceptibly now, an anxious, excited buzz that foretold of the violence to come. I saw bottles being raised to lips and money passing from hand to hand as bets were placed. The air was growing thick with the sweet smell of fresh marijuana. Tolerante passed me a cigar-sized joint and a mason jar filled with an ominous looking clear liquid of some sort. I took a hit on the joint, feeling the fragrant, skunky mota go instantly to the back of my brain, which immediately lit up in grateful response. I then took a healthy gulp of the stuff in the mason jar, which had the furious punch of airplane fuel mixed with an aftereffect that whispered of the secrets of the Mayans.

The scene was beginning to have a decidedly sexual effect on me. The tension and suppressed violence of the exotic mountain cats, the tableau of the excited crowd and the two solemn Indians presenting their animals, and stimulation of the weed and the liquor (which I knew to be the notorious mescal), were combining in me to send erotic little messages beaming through my body and out to the surface of my breasts and inner thighs, which themselves acted as antennae, picking up the unmistakably sexual overtones being emitted by the crowd. Even before the action started I could feel the excited little tremors running through my belly, and I wondered how I would get through the evening without a man to pour myself over. I found myself now hoping fervently that the Cuban would show up, for more reasons than one.

Suddenly the room erupted in an explosion of noise. The two Indians simultaneously flung their cats into the box in front of them, and in a flash the vicious little animals were at each other, rolling and spitting, howling and clutching as they went for each other's throats. At the same time, all the stored tension and excited anticipation of the crowd was released, and in the din that followed it was hard to distinguish one animals cry from another's.

As for me, the sight of those two slinky animals tearing at each other acted like an electric prod to my already overcharged insides. The part of me that managed to remain detached wondered at this sudden eroticism in the face of violence, for I have never been the type to derive any sort of pleasure at all from the pain of animals, although there are many in my circle of acquaintances who do. But the mezcal and the sweet weed were evidently tapping something inside me that had remained hidden up till then, something primitive and bestial, an ancient sexuality that was tied to life and death in a way we moderns can scarcely understand.

But this is intellectualism. The plain fact of the matter is this, I was incredibly excited by the fight between the two mountain cats, excited in a way that was all the more stronger for being entirely new to me. As the animals continued to have at each other, launching themselves full force at one another's faces, parrying for balance, looking for that mortal opening at the soft underside of the throat, I found my breasts tingling and heaving, my heart pounding, and my tongue unconsciously flicking over the surface of my own lips.

"How long does this go on?" I said to Tolerante.

"Hasta la muerte," he replied. "To the death."

"And where is the Cuban?"

"I do not know, senorita."

He must have noticed the heaviness of my breathing, the glazed look in my eye, the faint line of perspiration that had begun to form on my upper lip. I may even have taken the initiative myself -- I no longer remember. What I do remember is the sensation that charged through me as I felt his delicate, slender fingers at the back of my neck, massaging the muscles gently, with an astonishingly knowing touch. Under other circumstances I undoubtedly would have reacted, would have removed his hand with a gentle smile, perhaps, or even have scolded him. But no such thought crossed my mind at that moment. The delightful, insistent massage was exactly what I needed, and almost immediately I found myself backing up so that the rounded crests of my buttocks brushed lightly against his groin.

"Si, senorita," he murmured, and I could feel his breath on my neck. He was timing the pulses of his massage so that they coincided with what was happening in the box -- each time one of the elegant little cats lunged at one another, Tolerante's marvelous fingers closed on my tender neck muscles. Each time one of the cats let out a mighty yowl, he would press his groin that much more tightly against my trembling buttocks. Each time one of the cats made a desperate plunge for the other's throat, he would flex his long, slender pole against me, laying it against the crevice of my asschecks and penetrating that vulnerable spot ever so slightly.

As I tore my eyes from the cats and looked about the room, I could see signs that many of the spectators were being affected the same way I was. There was a group of obviously wealthy Mexicans who had probably come from the capital just for this spectacle, and I saw now that a number of men had hiked up their ladies' skirts above their waists and were running their hands along the insides of their cinnamon colored thighs as the women writhed and wriggled in transported ecstasy. In another corner a group of Europeans -- the men dressed rather comically in safari suits, the women resplendent in silk evening gowns -- were nuzzling passionately at one another, and here and there I saw the flash of a bared breast, the glimmer of an exposed thigh. The German woman, who was evidently some kind of veteran of these shindigs, was rubbing her breast with one hand and massaging her pussy with the other, while a gorgeous and regal Latino sank to his knees in front of her and began to clutch wildly at her churning hips. Of all the people in the room, only the Indians remained unmoved, their taciturn eyes still glued on the struggling cats.

In the meantime, Tolerante was gluing himself to me. His hand was rubbing even more insistently at my neck, and I could feel his chest against my shoulder blades, his thighs against the backs of my own, and most of all his marvelous little prick rubbing up and down along the crack in my ass checks. I pressed back against him with greater and greater fervor, my buttocks beginning a slow, grinding rotation as I groaned aloud at the delightful contact.

"Mmmm," I purred as I ground into him. "You feel marvelous, darling."

"Senorita," he sighed, and despite my yearning I was touched by the sweetness of it. "You are so beautiful. I want you so much."

I closed my eyes and leaned back against him even harder, feeling his rigid cock throb as it tried to bury itself in my buttocks. With my eyes closed the hissing and growling of the animals mingled with the screams and sighs of the overwrought crowd to become an erotic symphony in my brain, a symphony that even now was beginning to rise to an inevitable crescendo. When I opened them again I saw that the audience had now reached more advanced stages of erotic involvement, saw, in fact, that what few inhibitions remained were being shed one by one.

The party of Mexicans had lost all pretense of continued interest in the cats (who, by the way, had reached some sort of impasse in their struggle and acted much like exhausted boxers who spend the late rounds of a fight simply clenching and clinging to one another). One of the women was on her knees, lapping gently at the underside of her lover's cock with long, smooth strokes of her velvety tongue while another women who was stripped to the waist and whose breasts were jiggling enticingly was just beginning to lick the same man's ball's. Staccato 'ahh's ' and whispery 'mi amor's' emanated from the group, sounding for all the world like the movements of small animals in a fern choked jungle.

The Europeans were now prancing about in various stages of undress, and it seemed that in their group no genital was left exposed without some hand to cover it, or some mouth to engulf it in its warm, moist tunnel. I particularly remember the sight of one reed thin French woman, standing alone a bit apart from the group, her dress torn to tatters by her own fierce clutching, swaying to some invisible wind as she clawed at her pussy with her whole hand.

The German woman now seemed to be bent on out doing everybody. Her dress was hiked up almost to her neck, and she was being held in a horizontal position by two reluctant looking Indians who must have been her servants, while her elegant lover buried himself between her legs, sucking madly at her vagina as she threw her knees over his shoulders and began to kick him wildly in the back.

"Ja!" she screamed as she kicked him, her voice cutting like a knife through the general commotion. "Ja! Ja! Ja!"

By now even the stoic, silent Indians were beginning to shift their interest from the animals in the center of the room to the wild goings on along the peripheries. Two of them were casting hungry glances at the solitary French woman, and over near the cat cages I saw one elderly man unveil an astonishingly virile cock and start to stroke the hardened rod in easy, measured rhythm, his eyes glued on the Mexican woman with the bared breasts. He must have been sending her some kind of urgently sexual telepathic message, because just as she grew bored with playing with her companion's ample butt, her eyes locked with those of the old man across the room. Without hesitation she strode over to where he still stood stroking his proud cock, and with an ecstatic groan she knelt in front of him and buried his dark pole in the warm valley between her heaving breasts, which she then pressed tightly together to form a sheath around the Indians cock.

"My god!" I moaned as my senses registered the sights and sounds of the sensual banquet taking place all around me. I pressed back still harder against my wonderful little lover's loins, panting out my desperation as my buttocks rotated wildly in a frenzy that was rapidly growing out of control. I had to have satisfaction! The massive orgy going on in that room was stripping me of my sense of judgment was turning me wild with desire! I had to feel this man-child's luscious cock inside me, pushing at the resisting walls of my tight cunt! I had to have him, and to hell with the consequences!

"Tolerante!" I gasped. "Please! Touch me! Touch me all over! Touch my breasts, my ass! Make love to me!"

"Si, senorita," he said in a husky whisper. "Asi, mi amor! Asi!"

As he spoke I felt one of his hands snake around my waist and drift up my chest to gently cup the underside of one breast in his palm. At the same time the hand that had been rubbing my neck so dreamily now sought out my other breast, so that soon both hands were clasped over my heaving mounds, the fingers alive on me, pressing the cloth of my dress against my nipples until the little berries stood out proud and firm against the restraining garment.

"Yes," I sighed. "Yes, my little lover! Touch me like that! Oh, yes, you feel so good!"

He went on massaging my firm breasts, brushing and pressing at the nipples through my dress until I could stand the heavenly teasing no longer. I took both his hands in mine and literally stuffed them into the bodice of my dress, the touch of his fingertips on my bare skin igniting me still further. In another moment he drew both my breasts up and out of the restraining garment, exposing them to the night air and at the same time providing unimpeded access for his amazingly practiced fingers, which now tweaked and rolled and pressed at my nipples with an urgency that was making me positively weak with desire.

"That's it." I moaned in passion, wriggling my buttocks in tight little circles against the hardness of his prick. How I wanted that cock inside me! How I wanted to open my legs to admit him, swallow him, wring the pungent juices from that lovely penis of his! I knew in that moment that I had passed the point of no return, that if it was fated to be I would gladly make love to him then and there, with the growls of the cats and the sequels of the ladies ringing in my ears! The feel of his fingers on my sensitive nipples, the wonderful surge of his cock as it parted the cleavage between my pumping buttocks, the delightful sensation of his hot breath along my shoulders and neck... I was absolutely alive with passion, and my moistened quim was begging for satisfaction, for the release I knew this lovely little Mexican boy could provide me!




Christina Ch. 07-11



Chapter seven

By the time the morning sunlight hit the top of the cathedral, my mind had returned to business. Somehow that long, dreamy night with Tolerante had made me more determined than ever to find out what had happened to drive Paul into that mysterious and seemingly hopeless captivity, to turn that powerful love of ours so suddenly and irredeemably cold.

"Tolerante," I said as we sipped coffee and munched on fresh bolillos in the courtyard, "take me to see el cubano."

He shook his head immediately. " No, senorita," he said. " This I cannot do, not even for you."

"And why not?"

"Because, senorita, one doses not seek out elcubano. If he wants you, he comes to you."

"How unsatisfying," I said. I reached into my purse, took out another hundred-dollar bill, and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. Then I reached across the table and gave him a long passionate kiss, sliding my tongue between his teeth and rolling it enticingly around the moist cavern of his mouth. He remained stiff for a moment, and then began to respond, sucking at my tongue like a hungry kitten at his mother's tit.

"All right, senorita," he sighed as I finally broke the kiss. " I will take you. But I cannot guarantee that we will find him. Even if we do, I don't think he'll talk to you."

"I'll take the chance," I said

"I don't think you understand, senorita. It could be very dangerous for you to go into the mountains."

"I'll take the chance." I repeated

He gave me a long look, than seeing that I was absolutely resolute, he sighed and nodded. " All right," he said in a resigned tone. " Vamoose."

We got into my rented car -- one of those horribly noisy German jeeps that everyone finds so cute these days -- drove through town, and headed south on the highway toward the Guatemalan border. After a half an hour's drive along the excellent pan American highway, Tolerante suddenly directed me to stop at an unmarked spot by the side of the road. There was a small foot trail that led off into the forest, for the life of me I still can't figure out how to tell one of these tiny footpaths from the other, and without a word Tolerante started off down it, leaving me no choice but to follow in silence.

We walked for what seemed like hours through the still forest, seeing no signs of life whatsoever. Thankfully I had worn a pair of baggy jeans and an army shirt, for everywhere it seemed that thorns and brambles reached out to grab at me. Finally, when the noonday sun had burned the mist off the clinging trees, the trail began to broaden and I thought I heard voices in the distance.

In another few minutes we emerged into a large clearing, where a dozen or so stone huts with thatched roofs were pouring smoke through the unadorned holes that served as chimneys. Immediately a tiny Indian woman appeared at the door of one of the huts, and then walked quickly towards us. Tolerante met her halfway, and the two talked urgently in a language the words of which thundered with antiquity, while I stood off to the side trying to hide my nervousness.

Finally I saw Tolerante nod solemnly, and then he turned and walked back to me.

"Esta bien," he said, " the old woman will take you to see el cubano."

"And you?"

"I go back to san Cristobal."

I frowned at this news, for a moment not knowing whether I should feel relieved that I was finally going to see the Cuban or apprehensive about being abandoned here by Tolerante. But I could see that I had absolutely no choice in the matter.

"All right, " I said. " I'll see you in the hotel."

"Si, senorita," he mumbled, giving me a look of such intolerable sadness that my heart nearly broke. I reached to touch his cheek, but before I could he spun on his heel and walked off down the forest trail. Within moments the trees had swallowed him.

It was the last time I ever laid eyes on that marvelous boy, who had touched me so deeply in such a short time. 

Now the tiny Indian woman -- she could not have been more than four feet tall -- motioned that I should follow her. We crossed the village, the woman beating off the wretched, furiously barking dogs as we passed, and soon plunged back into the forest, following a trail that, unbelievably, was even narrower than the comparative superhighway on which we had come. The old woman immediately broke into a surprisingly rapid trot, so that I had some difficulty just keeping her in sight, let alone keeping up with her.

After an hour or so of this, we suddenly broke out of the woods into another clearing. In this one there were no houses, only a blackened, ash-strewn field that had once obviously bourne some crop. The woman stopped at the edge of the clearing and let out a howl so astoundingly similar to the ones I had heard last night from the Gatos del Monte that an inadvertent sexual thrill passed through me.

In a moment the call was answered, and soon a couple stepped out of the woods on the other side of the clearing. Their appearance was so strikingly different from anything I had seen since coming to Mexico that I almost gasped in surprise: - the man was at least six and a half feet tall and black as a panther, while the woman, who resembled him somewhat, was a statuesque Negro Latin mix with a round face, startling eyes, and skin the color of milk chocolate.

They walked quickly across the clearing toward me as the old Indian faded away into the woods. They were holding hands, and their quiet confidence with one another led me to assume that they were lovers, or perhaps husband and wife. Finally they reached me and I looked from one to the other, barely able to hide my admiration for these two nearly perfect physical specimens.

So this is el cubano, I thought. Maybe I'm finally going to get some answers.

"Miss van bell," the gorgeous giant said in flawless English, with just a hint of a Cambridge accent. " We've been expecting you."

"You have? " I said. " How? Why?"

He ignored my question completely. " I am nacimiento Santos, " he said, " and this is my wife, Julia. Please come with us."

With out allowing me a word he took his wife's hand and led me up a small hill on the other side of the clearing. When we reached the top he pointed down the hill to a large field in a bowl at the bottom. Even from that distance I could see that I was looking at what amounted to a marijuana plantation, the plants -- all of them from ten to fifteen feet tall -- waving in a gentle breeze, foot long flowers crowning the tips and reaching for the benevolent sun.

"Very impressive," I said, and I ment it.

"It's actually quite sad, " he said. " come with me and I'll explain."

They led me down the hill to a tiny shack at the edge of the marijuana field. From there I could see corps of Indians tending the plants, some trimming and picking yellow leaves from the bottom stalks, others carrying bucketfuls of water with that now familiar forehead strap. Evidently what the Cuban had here amounted to an industrial installation -- lack of machinery not withstanding -- and I found myself wondering how much he paid his peons for their obviously considerable labor.

We stood outside the shack, watching silently as the workers went about their business. Finally the Cuban spoke:

"This is our last field, " he said, and I could hear the sadness through his steely voice. " I came here ten years ago from Cuba, with orders from Fidel to organize these Indians, to make them see how the puercos in Mexico City were conspiring to keep them poor and miserable. And I did a good job. I cut their corn production in half and applied that labor to planting mota, which we then traded for guns and money. We had a real revolution going. We were wining. The army didn't dare follow us here, where the forest is one of our most powerful weapons, and we controlled everything outside San Cristobal. We even elected one of our people governor of Chiapas. Oh yes, we were strong." his eyes shone as he remembered his triumph.

"What happened?" I said.

"The D.E.A." he spat out the words as if they were some kind of deadly poison.

"Are you talking about parquet?" I asked, remembering the hubbub that the spraying of Mexican marijuana had caused. " You mean they killed all the plants?"

"Pah! " he said bitterly. " They never touched a plant. But they killed the trade as effectively as if they had really sprayed the entire country."

"You mean it was a hoax?"

"The hoax of the century. You see how this field is protected? You feel how the winds blow everything up the hill, how no plane could possibly fly lower than the field to seed the wind with that poison of theirs? All our fields were that way. We were never touched by parquet. The only thing that killed us was the scare."

Now I understood. I myself had never smoked much Mexican marijuana, as I preferred the fragrant Thai and the potent afghan sinsemilla grown on the kona coast. But I had heard the talk. I had heard the news of lung damage, of parquet testing and chromosome breakage and what - have you. I had not paid it much attention at the time, but now that it was laid out in front of me I could understand that no American pot smoker would have bought Mexican marijuana during those days of fear. I could see how clever, how diabolical the government had been in playing on the paranoia of the health food generation, knowing the yogurt- eaters would never touch anything that had been tainted with chemicals, even if the tainting were nothing more than sheer invention, sheer propaganda.

We sat in silence for a moment, looking down at the field that represented the last gasp of hope for Santos' personal revolution -- or so I thought at the moment. As we sat I occasionally glanced over at him, seeing the almost holy determination in his eyes shine through the unutterable weariness. I saw now that Julia was looking at him in the same way, and abruptly I suspected that this lovely young woman, a teenager probably, had known no other existence than this for over half her life. Nacimiento Santos had become her entire world -- her hero, her raison d'etre, her friend, her lover, and this last thought stirred in me a pang of the one emotion that I hardly ever fell: --- jealousy.

Then another thought occurred to me. " Senor Santos," I said, " you said awhile ago that you'd been expecting me. And yet you let me find you without your knowing why I came. Why? If I were you, I would let no one find me."

"A dangerous policy, I agree," he said in that curious accent. " And you're right, I don't know why you came. But I do know that anything important enough to bring you to me must be important enough to deal for."

"You're offering me a deal? But what could I possibly do for you?"

"I know you well enough to know that you have influence."

"I know many influential people," I said. " That doesn't mean I have influence."

"No?" he said, turning to look at me with a cool, challenging stare.

"It depends on what you want me to do with these influential people."

"Just tell them what I have told you. Tell them what your government has done to a country of poor, ignorant Indians who will starve if they have nothing to live on but corn. The mota is the only chance they have to improve their lives."

"You want me to tell my friends to support a communist revolution?"

"Communism has nothing to do with it. I stopped being a communist six months after I got here. ' Isms ' mean nothing to these people. They need food, and they need self-reliance. And what they need, I need."

He was looking directly into my eyes, and the dedication, the sincerity in his expression was undeniable. It was evident that he had somehow been absorbed by these secretive and implacable Indians, and that in that process he had given up his political orientation to become something of a missionary.

"All right," I said after a long moment. " I'll do what I can."

For the first time I saw him smile, a flashing smile, blazing smile that lit up his face like a diamond. He reached over to touch my hand, and it was as if he had put his strong fingers directly on the entrance to my vagina, so strong was the sexually thrill that coursed through me.

"Thank you," he said softly, still smiling that magnificent smile. "And now what can I do for you?"

"Among other things," I said coyly, throwing him a teasing glance, "you can tell me who your buyers are. Or were."

"Why would you want to know that?" he said frowning slightly.

I told him about Paul, about the mysterious contract, and obliquely about the lead that had brought me to Chiapas in the first place. He listened intently, and when I was through he sighed deeply.

"I'm afraid, "he said, "that you've got the wrong drug. The man you're looking for, the man who apparently owns this lover of yours, does not deal in mota."

"But you know who he is," I asked hopefully.

"No. I just know his reputation. And I'm not trying to frighten you, but I think you would be much better off if you simple found a new lover."

He turned again to look at me, and I caught his eyes and held them. I am quit good at reading truth or fiction in people's eyes, and if Santos was lying, then he was by far the best lair I had ever met. Realizing that, I was stuck with a feeling of hopelessness and utter disappointment - it seemed as if Paul was further away from me then ever, as if I would never solve the wretched mystery, and as if the entire incident was lodging in my brain like a fish bone in the throat.

My thoughts must have registered on my face, for in a moment I felt Santos' hand in mine again. I looked up at him to see his face softly lit up by a gentle, compassionate smile.

"Come," he said softly. He helped me up, then released my hand and started walking down the hill, indicating with a gesture that Julie and I should follow. When we reached the of the marijuana field, he stood up on tip toe, grabbed one of the fifteen foot plants by its neck, then pulled the foot long flower down toward him. A look of calm and peacefully ecstasy passed over his face as he closed his eyes and rubbed the fragrant blossom all over himself, smearing his face with the heavy golden pollen and sticky resin.

When he was finished he offered the flower to me, and I followed suit, immersing my face in it, inhaling its delightful perfume, feeling the pollen cling to my lips and eyelashes. When I finally turned the flower over to Julia-- who immediately began to repeat the ritual in which Santos and I had just indulged---Santos bent over and kissed me lightly on the eyelids, the tip of my nose, and finally my lips, licking the resins from them, then feeding them back to me with his tongue as it entered my mouth.

What a wonderful sensation! It was as if my head were immersed in a fragrant cloud of perfume marijuana, my eyebrows and lashes dusted with the sweet pollen, my taste buds inundated with the thick flavor that was being planted in my mouth by his gentle tongue. I sucked now on that warm flesh, feeling my head go light as the insistent weed penetrated my brain, my body, my pores, down to the very cells them selves, the center of life. At the same time the tip of his tongue was rubbing gently at the back of my throat, thrilling me with little sparks of desire that were growing more urgent by the moment.

I knew I would have this marvelous man, and soon!

In a moment I felt him gently with draw his tongue from my mouth, and I opened my eyes to see what he would do next. My question was answered when he dipped his in the rich flower again, then walked over to his wife, who turned her ecstatic face up to his. In a moment they were kissing passionately, a kiss that spoke of an intimacy so powerful, so total, that I was almost ashamed to watch; and even wondered momentarily if I should somehow make a graceful exit and try to find my way back to San Cristobal.

But I needn't have wondered. Santos soon broke the kiss with Julia---I noticed that he stayed with her no longer than with me----took her hand, and led her over to where I was standing.

"Now," he said in that soft, strong voice, "my two ladies if you please."

I looked at Julia, carefully examining her face for any sign of jealousy, or of mindless submission to her husband. I saw neither. What I did see was a bright, eager, innocent face, a face that radiated beauty and devotion to this man, whom she obviously loved with all her heart. I was touched deeply by that face, that smile, and I soon found when she licked the pollen from her lips, parting them just slightly to allow the very tip of her tongue to pass over them, that I wanted her every bit as much as I wanted him.

"Come to me Julia," I whispered.

She obeyed instantly, stepping over to me and opening her arms wide to except my embrace. As her body melted into mine, I could feel the pliant softness of her breasts as they met my own; and as we kissed, our tongues mingling in delightful play that was laced with the heady flavor of marijuana, I found my hand beginning to rove of its own volition over the smooth roundness of her buttocks. This touch she answered by beginning a slow undulation of her hips, so that I could feel the shy softness of her mound of Venus as it made contact with my own love-flesh.

By this time the beast was stirring within me, and it was all I could do to keep from taking over the program, as it were, and attacking the two of them simultaneously. But I realized that I was on soMeone else's ground, that Santos was to be the conductor here, and that I would probably enjoy myself all the more if I simply surrendered to him, accepted his pleasure as my own, and availed myself of the lush fruits that were being offered to me in the form of their two glistening bodies.

I stepped away from Julia and waited for Santos to introduce the next movement in this sexual concerto of his. While Julia and I watched raptly, he took a dried corn leaf and rolled the most enormous joint I have ever seen from the blossom he had picked. He lit it and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and grinning that marvelous grin of his, and then passed the joint to Julia, who took a hearty tote.

Then it was my turn. I inhaled the grass and instantly felt it fill my veins with its secret joy. I felt as if the weed were making love to me itself, massaging me just under the skin with a thousand subtle fingers, a thousand tongues.

"Excellent!" I murmured, closing my eyes to savor the juice of it. "My compliments."

"Open your eyes," Santos urged.

I did as he asked, seeing that in the meantime Julia had stripped her self and was standing naked, like some magnificent bronze statue in the afternoon sun. She stood there with her arms outstretched and her legs spread wide while I gaped unashamedly, almost sobbing in my desire for her lush body.

"Santos..." I groaned. "My god, she's so beautiful... I want her so..."

"Patience, my darling' " he said, and for the first time I could hear the rolling accent of the Caribbean in his voice. "Everything will happen, darling. Just be patient."

I moaned to myself and unconsciously cupped a hand under one of my breasts, beginning to massage it idly as I kept my eyes glued on the rich chocolate brown of Julia's body. As I watched, Santos picked another blossom and walked slowly over to her, as she spread her gleaming legs that much further at his approach. When he reached her he put his hand down so that the blossom he was holding came to rest squarely between her legs, and Julia immediately began to ride back and forth on it slow, tantalizing motion, her pussy lips just grazing the soft, furry flower, her eyes closing and a lazy, seductive grin beginning to spread across her face.

"Si, " I heard her whisper as she rocked gracefully back and forth. "Si, deme la flor...la Linda flor........."

I was hypnotized by the lushness of this sexual scene being played out in front of me, fascinated and stimulated almost beyond control by the lovely Julia as she swayed so elegantly over the golden bloom. Only half conscious of what I was doing, I raised my other hand to my breast and now began to poke and tease at both nipples through the material of my fatigue shirt. Santos glanced over at me and smiled approvingly as he continued to hold the flower for Julia, whose lips were beginning to pull back to bare her teeth in a lusty smile.