Chapter 3

Her stage name was Kalola Kalikimaka.

She was billed at The Polynesian Paradise night club as an exotic fire dancer from Samoa, daughter of a chief. She was neither the daughter of a chief nor a Samoan. Her real name was Mary Kulihi and she had been born in the Palmyra, the old tenement district of Honolulu where her mother, a stout, good-natured Korean woman, ran a home laundry, and her father, a fat, happy half-Hawaiian, sat on the rickety front porch in the shade of the bougainvillea and drank beer.

Kalola was a very good dancer, as she certainly should have been. She had started practicing when she was four. She was also a very homesick little girl, as are all natives when they leave the islands of their birth. But Kalola could put up with being homesick because she was in love.

Jimmy Murphy was an American sailor, five years older than Kalola's eighteen. He was stationed on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay and, being a yeoman in the executive office, rated liberty every night, a fortuitous circumstance that made it possible for he and Kalola to live very happily together in sin. He tended to be a bit vague on the subject of marriage and their future, but Kalola never doubted for one moment that they would eventually marry. Until he had seduced her, she had been an entirely innocent girl and, in her heart, she still was, for a childlike simplicity and sunny disposition were a natural part of her mixed racial heritage.

Except for the annoying presence of Herb Drew, night club manager, she liked her job. Herb, a darkly handsome man of forty, considered all female entertainers at the club as primarily there for his personal benefit and enjoyment. He usually succeeded in bedding them, but his best efforts had been of no avail with Kalola. In desperation, he had even forced his way into her dressing room while she was changing and had held her by brute strength while fondling her breasts. Kalola had bided her time until he had relaxed his hold, then had brought a knee up forcibly into his crotch. For nearly a week after that, Herb had seemed to lose all interest in sex and had walked about backstage like a man riding an invisible horse, while glowering and muttering darkly at everyone he met. He had never bothered her again.

The drums rolled in a final flurry as Kalola completed her dance, her bronzed body glistening in the light of the two torches she dexterously twirled with such speed that they seemed hoops of fire. She ended by tossing them into the air and catching them as she ran from the stage. She returned to a prolonged applause to take a bow, then hurried offstage to her dressing room.

Carefully locking the door from the inside, she divested herself of the six flower leis she wore, the skimpy halter top and the short, imitation grass skirt. Then she removed her make-up with theatrical cream and quickly donned street clothes. She smiled happily at her naked reflection in the mirror, glad of the fate that had granted her skin as smooth as brown silk, breasts that jutted enticingly from her upper body and hips and thighs, developed from years of dancing into twin perfections of breathlessly lovely shape. She had long known that her seductively contoured form and piquantly beautiful face were great assets in show business, but now she was particularly pleased with her natural endowments because they pleased Jimmy. He praised her and petted her and could keep neither his hands nor his lips off of her body when they were together. And that made it an equitable arrangement, because she couldn't keep her hands off of him either. He had taught her to make love, and now she lived only for the hours when they lay together, white and brown bodies entwined as they struggled in the frenzied, panting, rapturous dance of passion.

Kalola left the night club by the back door and took a city bus to the apartment she shared with her lover in the Marina District. Jimmy met her at the door and swept her into his arms. She was glad he had just gotten there and had not yet had time to change from his uniform. She loved the feel of the dark-blue broadcloth with its contrasting white stripes, rating badge and single red hashmark. They kissed hungrily and he, as usual, dropped a hand to raise her skirt in back and caress the firm, rounded flesh of her buttocks. Everything was exactly as it had always been with them... and yet it wasn't. Kalola thought she detected a note of preoccupation, almost absentmindedness, in the kiss and in the caressing hands.

"Whatsa matta you, fella jimboy?" she asked anxiously.

"Nothing. For crissake quit talking pidgin," he responded irritably.

She was instantly and deeply hurt. It was the first time he had ever voiced an objection to the inland English she often used with him as a kind of lover's baby talk. She knew now that something real was troubling him, but she was too wise in the ways of a woman to let him see her hurt. She would wait and he would tell her when he was ready. She knew the kind of therapy he needed. She ran a hand down the front of his trousers, feeling for his cock through the tight material.

Jimmy stood tense and still for a moment, then he relaxed. "Gosh, Kalola honey, I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm just--" She silenced him with her lips on his.

"Undress me," she whispered around the corner of the kiss. "Take my clothes off, Jimmy, and kiss my titties."

He hesitated, seeming for a moment on the point of refusing, and then, with a groan, he unzipped her dress at the back and let it fall to the floor. She wore no underwear.

"Now you," she said. "Hurry, Jimmy." While he struggled to pull his jumper off over his broad shoulders, Kalola knelt and undid the thirteen buttons of his trousers. She pulled them down and his shorts as well, clasping her arms around his hips and pulling him toward her so that his stiffening cock was cuddled against her cheek. She showered avid kisses on the thick shaft of it, on his belly and thighs. She reluctantly disengaged herself from him only long enough to remove his shoes and socks, then they hurried, arm in arm, to the bedroom.

She lay back across the bed to let him lean over her and suck greedily at the dark brown of her nipples, his tongue and teeth sending thrills chasing through her that made her squirm with mounting desire. She closed her eyes and rocked her head from side to side, her long, black hair fanned out on the pink of the chenille bedspread, her knees bent and her heels hooked under the edge of the mattress.

He lowered his head from her breasts to the taut skin of her stomach, his wet lips and tongue leaving a trail of moisture across her brown hide.

"Now do it to me! Oh, do it to me good, Jimmy!" she pleaded.

He mounted her and thrust his cock into her open and receptive vagina as she cried out in ecstasy. As he fucked it into her, she pulled his face down to hers and sucked his tongue into her mouth. Her hips rose to meet his and she felt his long, hard cock probe deeply, the head of it bumping its way past the mouth of her womb until it hit bottom. He continued to push at her, creating a little thrill of pain with each lunge of his body. This was what she loved most of all, the bigness and the length of him and the fact that he filled her so completely that doing it with him was both painful and heavenly. Tonight he was particularly rough with her, as though taking his earlier flash of irritability out on her body, punishing her for loving him too much, for demanding and getting too much of him. She cried out in pain and passion and strained for more, willing him to give her a physical pain to erase the memory of the other hurt he had inflicted on her.

Jimmy Murphy was actually neither very experienced nor very adept as a lover. But Kalola in her innocence didn't know that. She thought he was the greatest fucker who had ever lived. On the occasions when he came before she did, leaving her aching and frustrated, she forgave him easily, supposing that such was her lot in life and all she could expect as her share of intercourse.

Her passion mounted, welling and growing in her like the froth on boiling waters, until her body lost all meaning except as a chalice for his prick and a capsule to contain the screaming nerves that had become her. It was one of her lucky nights. She was able to have her orgasm just before he did. Their locked bodies continued to writhe and twitch in unison with the fading pulses of dying sensation that still shook them in surges of decreasing power.

"Jimmy," she whispered, her dark eyes adoring him, "I'll bet no other guy in the world can make love like you."

Jimmy frowned and looked uncomfortable. "I've been keeping track," he said, not meeting her eyes directly. "You know how long it's been since your last period?"

"Hunh?" She looked blank and then startled and admitted she didn't know.

"Nearly two months," he told her accusingly. "You aren't pregnant, are you?"

Kalola's eyes became round with mild shock as this new idea penetrated her mind, then she smiled radiantly. "Gee! Do you think I might be? Wouldn't that be wonderful, Jimmy?"

His frown deepened. "You better not be," he told her threateningly, "or we're in a helluva mess. I just got orders today that I'm being transferred back East... Brooklyn Navy Yard."

He had just dropped a bomb into the middle of her life and blown it to hell. Yet he seemed unaware of what he had done. He couldn't understand her heartbreak and grew angry with her when she cried and begged. As if it explained everything, he casually announced that he was already married anyway and what the hell had she expected?

A sunny disposition was not the only thing Kalola's conglomerate, racial heritage had bequeathed her. Her slanted eyes narrowed to slits and her lips curled into a snarl of rage as she hurled herself at him with clawing fingernails and flailing feet and knees. He managed to barricade himself in the bathroom until her temper had cooled, then he wisely gathered up his uniform and fled, leaving Kalola sobbing and screaming on the bed.

He had been gone from the apartment for an hour when she sat up and looked around her. Her face was puffed from crying, but her eyes were now dry and her mouth was set in hard lines such as it had never before known.