Answered Prayers

"I wish he'd given her to me. What's her name?"

"Mutt."

"You can't call her that. She's far too charming. Let's think of something more suitable."

When I had the massage table arranged, she rolled off the bed and dropped a gauzy short negligee, underneath which she was nude. Her pubic hair and her shoulder-length honey-red hair were an exact color match; she was an authentic redhead, all right. She was thin, but her body needed not an extra ounce; because of the perfection of her posture, she seemed taller than she was—about my height: five feet eight inches. Casually, her perky breasts scarcely quivering, she crossed the room and touched the button of a stereo phonograph: Spanish music, Segovia's guitar, relieved the silence. Silently, she approached the massage table and reclined there, letting her fascinating hair fall over its endedge. Sighing, she curtained her brilliant eyes; closed them as though she were posing for a death mask. She wore no makeup, and required none, for her high cheekbones had a warm natural coloring and her pleasingly pouted lips a pinkness of their own.

I felt a stirring in my crotch, a stirring that stiffened as I gazed along the length of her healthy, sculptured body, her succulent nipples, the ample curve of her hips, and her supine legs extending toward slender feet flawed only by skier's bunions on both her little toes. My hands were unsteady, damp, and I cursed myself: Cut it out, P. B. — this isn't very professional of you, old boy. All the same, my prick kept pressing against my fly. Now, nothing like this had so spontaneously happened to me before, though I'd massaged, and more than massaged, a fair share of arousing women-though none, admittedly, to compare with this Galatea. I wiped my wet hands against my trousers, and began to manipulate her neck and the upper regions of her shoulders, kneading the taut skin and tendons as though I were a merchant fingering costly fabric. At first she was tense, but gradually I induced suppleness, an easing.

"Hmm," she murmured, like a drowsy child. "That's nice. Tell me, how did you fall into the hands of our naughty Mr. Nelson?"

I was glad to talk; anything to get my mind off that mischievous hard-on. So not only did I tell her how I'd met Aces at a bar in Tangier, I continued with a brief resume of P. B. Jones and his journeys. A bastard, born in St. Louis and raised there in a Catholic orphanage until I was fifteen and ran away to Miami, where I'd worked as a masseur five or so years-until I'd saved enough money to go to New York and try my luck at what I really wanted to be, a writer. Successfully? Well, yes and no: I'd published a book of short stories-ignored, unfortunately, by both the critics and public, a disappointment that had brought me to Europe, and long years of traveling, scrounging about while I attempted to write a novel; but that, too, had been a dud. So here I was, still drifting and with no future that extended beyond tomorrow.

By now I'd reached her abdomen, massaged it with a rolling circular motion, then descended to her hips, and then, with my eyes on her rosy pubic hairs, I thought of Alice Lee Langman, and Alice Lee Langman's memories of a Polish lover who had enjoyed, jamming her cunt with cherries and eating them out one by one. My imagination enhanced that fantasy. I imagined soft pitted cherries marinating in a bowl of warm rich sweetened cream, and I saw Kate McCloud's savory fingers selecting creamy cherries from the bowl and inserting them—My legs trembled, my cock pulsed, my balls were tight as a miser's fist. I said: "Excuse me," and walked into the bathroom, followed by Mutt, who watched with puzzled, pixie interest as I unzipped my fly and jacked off. It didn't take much: a couple of tugs and I launched a load that damn near flooded the floor. After removing the evidence with Kleenex, I washed my face, dried my hands, and returned to my client, my legs weak as a seasick sailor's but my cock still semi-saluting.

The dormer window was smudged with wintry Parisian dusk; lamplight defined her figure, silhouetted her face. She was smiling, and she said, a flickering amusement tempering her tone: "Feeling better?"

A bit gruffly, I said: "If you could turn over now…!"

I massaged the nape of her neck, rippled my fingers along her spine, and her torso vibrated, like a purring cat. "You know," she said, "I've thought of a name for your dog. Phoebe. I once had a pony named Phoebe. And a dog, too. But maybe we ought to ask Mutt. Mutt, how would you like to be called Phoebe?"

Mutt squatted to sprinkle the carpet.

"You see, she loves it! Mr. Jones," she said, "could I ask a great favor? Would you let Phoebe spend the night with me? I hate sleeping alone. And I've missed my other Phoebe so much."

"It's all right with me, if it's all right with… with Phoebe."

"Thank you" she said simply.

But it wasn't all right. I felt if I left Mutt here with this sorceress, she would never belong to me again. Or, perhaps, I'd never again belong to myself. It was as if I'd slipped into furious white water, an icy boiling current carrying me, slamming me toward some picturesque but dastardly cascade. Meanwhile my hands worked to soothe her back, buttocks, legs; her breathing became rhythmic and even. When I was sure she was asleep, I bent and kissed her ankle.

She moved, but did not waken. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and Phoebe—yes, Phoebe—jumped up and curled beside me; soon she was asleep herself. I had been loved, but I had never known love before, and so I could not comprehend the impulses, the desires careening around my brain like a bobsled. What could I do, what could I give Kate McCloud that would force her to respect and return my love? My eyes toured the room and settled on the fireplace mantel and the tables supporting the silver-framed picture of her child: such a serious little boy, though sometimes he was smiling, or lapping an ice-cream cone, or poking out his tongue and making comic faces. "Kidnap him" — wasn't that what the Black Duchess had advised? Absurd, but I saw myself, sword unsheathed, castrating dragons and fighting through infernos to rescue this child and bring him safely to his mother's arms. Pipedreams. Bullshit. And yet, instinct somehow told me the boy was the answer. Surreptitiously, I tiptoed out of the room and closed the door, disturbing neither Phoebe's slumbers nor those of her new mistress.

Time out. I need to sharpen pencils and begin a new notebook.

That was a long time out; almost a week. But it is November now, suddenly, unreasonably cold; I went out in a hard driving rain and caught a dandy. I wouldn't have gone out if my employer, Miss Victoria Self, the High Priestess of the Dial-A-Dick, Call-A-Cunt services, hadn't sent an urgent message ordering me to her office.

It beats me why, when you think of the money that woman must be coining, she and her Mafioso confederates, they can't fork out for slightly less sleazy headquarters than the two-room dump above a 42nd Street porno shop. Of course, the customers seldom see the premises; they only make contact by telephone. So I guess she figures why waste money pampering the help, us poor whores. Drowned, the rain water all but gushing out of my ears, I sloshed up the two flights of creaking stairs and once more confronted the frosted-glass door with chipped lettering: The Self Service. Walk In.

Four people occupied the stuffy little waiting room. Sal, a short hunky Italian wearing a wedding ring; he was one of Miss Self s moonlighting cops. And Andy, who was on probation for a burglary charge; but, if you didn't look too closely, he might pass for an average college-kid type; as usual, he was playing a harmonica. And then there was Butch, Miss Self's blond, languid secretary, who, now that the last of his Fire Island suntan had deserted him, resembled Uriah Heep more than ever. Maggie was there, too—a plump sweet girl: the last time I'd seen her she had just got married, greatly to Butch's indignation.