Chapter 6

When the lights came on, the room was in an uproar. It was crowded and smoky and people were shouting. Nancy felt guilty and embarrassed for having seen such a lewd film, and she tried not to look at anyone as she threaded her way through the chairs and people.

"More! We want more!" the cry went up around the room, mainly from men. The state and degree of excitement in the room was high. The tension was mounting as people milled about. Some of the men seemed to be looking for someone to blame. A man seized Nancy by the arm. "Have you ever seen anything like that?" he asked, his eyes wide.

Nancy saw that he was a little drunk. With a start, she realized that she, herself, had -practically sobered up after watching the film. Dumbly, she shook her head and tried her best to pull away from the man.

"How do you suppose they get people to do that?" the man asked, still hanging on to her.

Nancy closed her eyes for a second and saw the whip snaking around the girl's slender waist and saw wild, bulging cocks, obscenely erect, jerking and shooting hot flowing cum all over the girl's face. And the face: rapture, ecstasy, depravity.

She shook her head again, more to get the images out of her mind than to answer the man. She felt she knew only too well how they got people to do that. The man's grip slipped from her arm, and she pushed through the crowd to be confronted by the red sweating face of Tom Nelson. He had a drink in either hand. He looked at Nancy and held out a glass. "Here, looks like you could use this."

Nancy took it without a word and drank half of it. Tom mopped his red face with a handkerchief. "I dunno," he muttered then drained his glass. He caught his breath then looked out over the crowd. "I dunno, I dunno if Chicago's going to go for this."

Dumbly, Nancy nodded. She still felt guilty and embarrassed by what she had seen. More, she felt guilty about what she had felt. Did anyone know? Did it show?

Rita, grinning self-consciously, pushed her way through the crowd. "Jesus Christ! How about that? Where's my drink?" Then she looked at Nancy's hand and said, "Oh, I see you got it. It's okay, I understand." She turned to Tom who was still watching the crowd, trying to guess or calculate its mood. "Honey, let's get the hell out of here."

Tom nodded. He handed Rita his empty drink and cupped his hands in front of his mouth. "FOLKS!" he called out over the sound of people protesting, "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BAR IS NOW OPEN AND SERVING FOR THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES ONLY!"

His announcement seemed to do the trick. The mood of the crowd turned to grumbling and complaining, and there was a general push and crush toward the room where the upstairs bar was situated.

Tom, Rita, and Nancy let themselves be carried along until they came to the stairwell. They peeled out of the crowd, helping one another, and threaded their way down the stairs and finally out into the hot humid night of the great city. Despite the heat, Nancy heaved a deep sigh. "I need a drink," Rita said.

They hailed a cab and sped back to the loop where Tom knew a bar. The three of them said very little in the cab and bar until they all downed one quick drink and Tom hastily ordered another round. "Whew, that was an explosive scene!" Tom sighed.

"Explosive!" Rita's eyebrows lifted. "I was sure I was going to get raped!"

"Me too!" Nancy added.

"Of course," Rita said with a casual shrug, "I'm not so sure I would have minded."

Nancy looked at her disbelieving.

Rita drank again and pointed a finger at Nancy. "Listen, don't try and tell me you weren't excited."

Nancy couldn't admit the feeling that was still churning in her. "You mean you liked that?"

"Liked it? I don't think that's the word," Rita said, looking off as if remembering it. "The point is, it's exciting as hell."

"Exciting?" Nancy pretended to be shocked.

"Hell, yes. Listen, there isn't a woman alive who hasn't, at one time or another, wondered about a scene like that."

"Do you mean to imply you have?" Nancy was still acting shocked. In fact, she really was. She never suspected that Rita would be so honest.

"Hell, yes! Listen, that picture has a kind of evil genius to it because it gets at a wish."

"Wish?"

"Sure. Every woman has wondered what it would be like to be a whore or to be raped. Every woman has wanted to be treated like that. Just once. Admit it, haven't you?"

Both Tom and Rita looked at her face, waiting for an answer, and Nancy felt it turn crimson and she hastily drained her glass. Tom snapped his fingers at the waiter for another round.

Changing the subject, he shook his head doubtfully. "I dunno. I'm afraid there's going to be hell to pay if that thing plays in a theater."

"It played in San Francisco," Rita said.

"That's different. I don't know."

The conversation died out as they sat and drank, each with their thoughts. It wasn't lost on either Tom or Rita that Nancy had failed to answer Rita's question.

They drank with Rita being vivacious. "Jesus, I'm too excited to call it a night. Why don't we do something exciting?"

"Like what?" Nancy was grateful for the conversation, hoping it would detract from her silence when Rita asked the question. In fact, she had thought with considerable excitement about what it would be like to be treated so obscenely and roughly. Another involuntary shudder went through her, and she hoped that neither noticed. "I don't feel like calling it a night, either," she said, more to fill the silence than anything.

Rita lightly and playfully punched her husband on the arm. "You're the big P.R. man. Can't you think of something? Pretend we're a couple of high-class clients. Pretend you've got to amuse us. What would you do? Where would you take us?"

Tom smiled and drained his glass, ordering still another round. "Well, last week I took some clients out to Cicero. Sin city. They wanted to go slumming."

"Really?" Rita's face was aglow. She looked at Nancy. "What do you say?"

Nancy was dubious. She had had enough sex for one night. It was getting late and she already had drunk too much and done things she shouldn't have. Already there were things she felt she couldn't tell Allan... secrets it would be difficult to explain.

"Come on," Rita chided, good-naturedly. It was almost as if she were reading her thoughts. "We'll see the seamy side of things."

"I don't think so."

"Listen, you'll be in good hands with us and, what the hell, if you're going to be hung for a horse thief..." Rita shrugged and downed her drink.

Nancy drank along with her, grinning mischievously. She tossed back her beautiful mane of black hair and emptied her glass and put it down. She blinked at the two full drinks that were sitting in front of her. It was an exciting night... a once-in- a-lifetime night for her. She picked up her new drink and toasted Tom and Rita. Hung for a horse thief. Even in college, Rita always knew how to get Nancy going. Why not? It was only one night, and she was perfectly safe, and would never do such things ever again. Certainly not with Allan.

"Okay," she breathed and both girls laughed. "Where are we going?"

Tom was acting just a little drunk now. "Cicero. Lot's of strip joints. Actually, it's pretty tame compared to Scorpio Sex Rites."

Rita rolled her eyes. "You can say that again."

Nancy, beginning to feel the drinks heavily, giggled and agreed. "Wow, that was hot."

"Aha!" Rita pointed an accusing finger. All of them were a little silly and loose now. "See, I knew you were horny!"

"Well, so what if I was?" Nancy surprised even herself with her candor. They all laughed and Nancy shrugged and picked up her drink, spilling a little as she did so. "What the hell, I'm human."

"What did I tell you?" Rita asked her husband triumphantly. "What did I tell you? Didn't I say that my friend was all right? "

The three of them laughed and put their arms around one another and finished their drinks. Tom paid, tipping lavishly and drunkenly and they weaved, giggling and laughing, out of the bar, holding each other up. In the taxi, Nancy held her head and mumbled, "I'm smashed. I'm bombed. I'm going to be sick tomorrow."

Rita put her arm around her friend, squeezing her tightly. "Oh, honey, don't you worry. Listen, take two aspirin before you go to sleep and some vitamin B."

"Sleep? I'm going to pass out."

They all laughed. The long ride to Cicero was one of continual laughing and giggling. Nancy sat crammed between Rita and Tom. Both of them had their arms around her, and Nancy was feeling wonderfully naughty and daring. She felt she was going to remember this night for a long time to come. She didn't, at that drunken happy moment, realize how right she was.

They arrived in Cicero laughing and joking, piling out of the cab and staggering around on the sidewalk. One look told Nancy they were in a sleazy neighborhood. The street was lined with cheap bars with sagging rooming houses above them. Yet there was a carnival kind of atmosphere going on. People strolled the street. Drunks lurched along or else stood spraddled on a corner and delivered long, incoherent speeches. Music and laughter came from the bars. A patrol car silently cruised the block with quiet attentive policeman inside, watching, evaluating.

The bars were poor yet colorful. Dixieland jazz came from one, ragtime from another, as people spilled out onto the sidewalk, laughing and staggering, or couples pushed into bars that were dark... barely lighted... and groped along for a table or stool, watching one end of the bar that wasn't visible from the street. There, it was brightly lighted, and there one could always see a girl in various stages of undress. The block was renowned far and wide for its strippers, and they worked night and day, bumping and grinding it out, shedding their clothes until they stripped naked. Then, pumping their naked loins rhythmically and lewdly, they would dance off the tiny, brightly lighted stages. Into such a bar went Tom and Nancy and Rita.

Nancy let herself be guided in the pitch black. Tom had his hands around her slender, beautifully molded waist while Rita, behind her, placed her cupped hands high on Nancy's fully swaying buttocks. Nancy jumped when she felt the hands... thinking: aren't they kind of low? Rita's hands were virtually cupping the snowy twin cheeks of her sensuously shaped ass. Nancy could feel her warming fingers through the material and her flimsy panties. She reasoned, drunkenly, that it was only Rita, and it was dark and no one could see and... it felt good.

The small, dimly lit bar was crowded and the three of them found they had to stand at the bar. Most of the people in the bar were men and most of them were drinking beer from bottles and watching the stage at one end of the bar. It was a tiny stage, barely big enough for one person to stand and do a little dancing. The juke box was blaring out a rock tune, and a young girl was dancing up on the stage.

In the dark, feeling Rita's hands almost caressing her softly full buttocks, feeling Tom's arm around her waist and feeling his big beefy hand sliding over her stomach, Nancy permitted herself a smutty smile. She felt wicked and was dying to tell someone where they had been and what they had seen. If people only knew, they wouldn't be so interested in the stripper, if people only knew, the stripper would seem mild in comparison. Nancy watched the stripper with a calculating eye.

The girl was down to a spangled brassiere and a sequined G- string. She was very young and had a voluptuously slender body with a slim waist and big breasts that bounced and quivered as she danced. She was wearing high heels that helped exhibit her shapely legs and figure all the more. Her eyes and wet lips making a pouty expression, she lewdly thrust her groin out. Idly, her fingers toyed with the G-string. "Take it off!" a gruff voice came from the dark audience.