The Fly Boys Page 18

  She smiled at him as she worked the zipper on her girdle, and then danced in place, wiggling out of the undergarment’s binding confines. He grinned back. Watching them shimmy out of their girdles was a favorite part: kind of like the delicious wait while a present was shorn of its ornate wrappings on Christmas morning.

  She’d wrestled the girdle past her thighs. Her curvy, pantied rump bounced free as she stepped out of it. Her panties were pink, trimmed with white lace. The colors reminded Steve of a strawberry ice cream sundae frothed with whipped cream. He knew where the cherry was.

  Linda was about to skim off the panties. “Leave them on a minute” he suggested slyly.

  “Oh, ho!” Linda smirked. “And you, an all-American war hero!” she pretended to scold.

  Steve stretched out his arms. She ran, her lush breasts bobbing, into his embrace. Together they flopped onto the bed.

  From the start he knew that sex with this one was going to be different. He knew it from the way she didn’t just lie back and let him have his way with her, like all the others. From the start Linda was his partner in passion, but she was also his opponent. She scratched and tussled right along with him, giving as good as she got as they rolled and turned on the big double bed.

  When he had her good and ready for him, he reached into the bedside orange crate, where he kept his supply of foil packets of protection. She rolled the condom onto him, and then settled back on the mattress and spread her legs, guiding him into her. As they rocked together, they stared into each other’s eyes, giggling in wonderment and awe, and maybe just a little fear.

  When she reached her orgasm, she clutched at him, her arms around his neck and her thighs clasped around his waist. Her body went rigid and her back arched with incredible strength, lifting up all one hundred and seventy pounds of him. The roller-coaster ride she gave him brought on his own climax. He came moaning and growling, drowning in sensation, like a swimmer riding a wave that suddenly overpowers him. As he kicked and bucked, she was there for him, whispering endearments, assuring him that she could happily take all that he had to give.

  After, for long ticks of the bedside clock, neither spoke a word. It was Linda, lying sweat-drenched in the crook of his arm, her short hair a damp, dark mop on his chest, who broke the silence.

  “Tell me everything about you,” she languidly commanded, her fingers idly trailing down the hard, flat plane of his belly to tangle themselves in his moist pubic hair. “Tell me everything from the moment you were born.”

  “The moment I was born was the day I learned how to fly,” Steve said.

  “You really love the Air Force, huh?”

  Steve thought about it. “Love the Air Force? I don’t know. For me the Air Force is home. It’s family. I mean, it’s like how somebody might feel about his real family. Sometimes you love your folks, and sometimes you hate them, but the bottom line is that you belong to them and they to you. I guess that’s how I feel about the military. When the war ended, I decided that I wanted to make the Air Force my career. I tried to get assigned to a fighter squadron, but that didn’t come through. Instead they offered me this desk job I’ve got now.” He hesitated, blushing. “They said the fact that I’m supposed to be a war hero—”

  “Not supposed to be,” Linda interrupted. “You are.”

  “Well anyway, they offered me this public relations job, I guess, so they could trot me out as a propaganda weapon in the battle with the Navy over control of the nation’s air power.”

  “Come on, you’re too hard on yourself,” Linda chided him, tousling his short cut, thick blonde hair. “I’m sure you do a great job.”

  “No,” Steve sighed, shaking his head. “The truth is I haven’t got the faintest idea what I’m doing. Not that they ask all that much of me,” he added cynically.

  “But they’ve kept you at it for two years now,” Linda argued.

  “Sure, but I’m still a captain, same rank as when the war ended,” Steve pointed out. “Nope, I told you what I am. A propaganda weapon. Once in a while there’s a hearing like the one presently going on. When that happens, I’m trotted out like a champion hunting dog, except that now the hunt’s over.” He sighed. “Basically I’m living off my past.”

  She smiled. “Sounds like you miss the war.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “Yes, Cap’n.”

  “Promise not to tell?”

  She lightly crossed her left breast. “Cross my heart.”

  “Here, let me do that.” He rolled on top of her and used his tongue to trace a wet X across her breast. Her dark brown nipple, glistened by his saliva, swelled to meet his lips.

  “Hmmm,” she sighed. “That feels good, but I’m waiting for your secret.”

  Steve lifted his head to look into her eyes. “The war was the finest time of my life,” he said. “Okay, so now you know. You being a woman, you’re probably horrified.”

  She shook her head.

  “Come on,” Steve scoffed. “Even my best buddy during the war thought I was nuts when I told him.”

  “Well, I don’t you’re nuts at all,” she said adamantly. “Fact is, I feel the same way as you.”

  “You feel the same way as me?”

  She nodded. “This puff piece I’m writing for Amalgamated is easy work, and it pays a mint, but I don’t intend to spend my life writing this sort of fluff.”

  “What do you want to write? A novel?”

  Linda chuckled. “No. I told you that I’ve worked on newspapers? Well, what I really want to do is be a journalist.” Her voice grew dreamy. “Maybe a foreign correspondent for an important newspaper. I had a little taste of it during the war. Thanks to the draft and the civilian man-power shortage, I got the chance to do some hard reporting. I don’t mean society-page stuff,” she added. “I mean real journalism.” She signed. “Of course, when the war ended and the boys came home, I got demoted back to the garden club beat. I wasn’t interested in that, so I quit.”

  “So you want to be a correspondent, huh?” Steve said doubtfully.

  “Yeah.” She stretched to reach over the edge of the bed for her purse. She rummaged through it for her cigarettes.

  “You mean kind of like Lois Lane?”

  “Yeah,” she laughed.

  “I dunno,” Steve said.

  “And why don’t you?” she demanded as she lit up one of her Chesterfields.

  “I just can’t imagine reading a woman reporter’s writing and thinking that she knew what she was talking about,” Steve said. “I mean, because she’s a woman,” he added innocently. “No offense.”

  “Hmmm, no offense, eh?” Linda growled with eyes narrowed as she exhaled smoke. “Don’t bother me. I’m counting to ten, slowly.”

  Steve reached out to fondle her breasts. She pulled away, but teasingly. Steve knew she wasn’t really mad. “Aw, come on,” he cajoled. “Baby Blue Eyes.”

  “What?” she pouted.

  Steve took the cigarette from her and took a puff. “Are you Don Harrison’s girl?”

  She seemed startled by the question. “No … I’m my own girl, Cap’n Steve.” She grinned. “Hey, you big lug, did you think that Don and I had something between us?”

  “I was afraid that you did, but now I’m relieved,” Steve smoothly said.

  But he was lying. He wasn’t relieved at all.

  What he’d felt with Linda had been frightening in its intensity. Sure, it had thrilled him, but it had also scared the crap out of him. He was used to loving ‘em and leaving ‘em, but this one … Well, if he wasn’t careful, she was going to leave her mark on him.

  “Don is a great guy,” Linda said. “He’s a gentleman and all, but he’s a little too cerebral for me.”

  “Huh?” Steve had been brooding and was too preoccupied to listen.

  “Nothing,” she chuckled. “All I was saying is that Don isn’t my type.”

  “No? Who is?”

  “You is, Cap’n.” She chucked him under the
chin as she plucked the cigarette he’d swiped from her from between his lips. “You’re my type, all right.” She took a puff off the smoke, dropped it into the ashtray, and then stretched out full-length on top of him and began to kiss him.

  This is going to be trouble, Steve realized. He was going to have to figure out a way to give her the brush-off. He wasn’t ready to fall in love, no matter how good it felt.

  She was nibbling on his lower lip. Her breasts were pressing against his chest. He palmed the firm cheeks of her wiggly rump as she rubbed herself against his groin.

  Later, he thought he felt himself swelling into the warm, wet fur between her thighs. I can always give her the brushoff later….

  It was a little after five in the afternoon. Steve was wearing a terry-cloth robe. His hair was still wet from the shower, and his groin was aching pleasurably. He was on the telephone, calling around, trying to get a dinner reservation for this evening. So far he’d called three places, but they were all booked. He wanted to take Linda somewhere that was tops, but it wasn’t easy booking a table someplace like that at the last minute on a Saturday night.

  Saturday night, Steve thought, wincing. The redhead from the office. He’d totally forgotten about it, but he already had a date for tonight!

  He glanced at the closed bathroom door. Linda was taking a shower. He could hear the water still running.

  Thank God.

  He hauled out his little black book and riffled through the pages until he found the redhead’s number. He dialed it. Please, please be home, he thought.

  She answered. He immediately began coughing and wheezing as he launched into a bullshit story about a sudden cold and how sorry he was about breaking their date at the last moment.

  The redhead sounded icy, but he thought that she bought his cock-and-bull story. As he was hanging up, he heard Linda say from behind him, “You really shouldn’t have done that.”

  He whirled around. She was wrapped in a towel, standing in the bathroom doorway. The shower was still running, but she didn’t look as if she’d gotten wet.

  “How much of that did you hear?” Steve asked weakly.

  “All of it. I was about to step into the shower when I realized that I’d left my purse with my hairbrush out here.”

  “Well,” he shrugged, grinning sheepisly. “It’s done. Now we can spend the evening together.”

  Linda shook her head. “I’m sorry, Cap’n, but, you see, I already have a date for tonight.”

  That hit him like a ton of bricks. “But—I thought after dinner tonight we could come back here for a brandy, and …” He trailed off, gesturing to the telephone. “You could suddenly catch a cold as well.” He tried to make a joke out of it. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

  “I can’t. I’m really sorry, Cap’n, but I can’t.”

  Steve stared at her. I don’t believe this, he thought, stung and feeling foolish. She’s giving me the brush-off.

  She saw his upset look. “Look, what we had this afternoon was swell, but I don’t want you to start carrying a torch for me. I mean, you’re a nice boy—”

  “Stop it!” he abruptly shouted.

  “Stop what?” she asked, looking mystified.

  “Calling me a boy! You keep doing it, and I don’t like it!”

  Linda smiled slightly. Her eyes searched his. “Honey, how old do you think I am?”

  Steve pondered it. Women were touchy about this sort of crap. “Twenty-five?”

  She shook her head, laughing. “You are a very sweet b—Oops! I mean, a very sweet man, but I’m thirty years old.”

  Wow, Steve thought, shaken. She was even older than his big sister, and Suze had already been married and had herself a toddler.

  He kept staring at Linda in disbelief. He didn’t know what to say.

  Her laughter faded. “Well, the water’s running. I’ll go take my shower.”

  Steve was dressed and waiting when she came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Her skin glowed from the hot shower spray. She’d put her hair up to keep it dry, but a few dampened tendrils had escaped to frame her lovely face.

  “I’ll drive you back to the hotel,” he said as she began to get dressed.

  “No, thanks. I’ll take a cab,” she replied.

  He nodded. “A drink before you go?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He nodded again, and went to the telephone. The cab company said that a car would be there in a few minutes.

  Steve watched her finish dressing. They were both quiet. He wondered if she felt as awkward as he felt. The doorbell, when it rang, made them both jump.

  “Well,” Linda said brightly.

  “This date you’ve got tonight …” Steve began gruffly.

  She held up her hand to stop him. “It’s with a California newspaper editor in Washington for the hearings. Tim Campbell introduced me to him the other day.”

  “Is it strictly business, or … is it pleasure?”

  “A little of both, I’d say,” Linda replied evenly. “He might offer me a job.”

  “On his newspaper?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’d probably sleep with him to get it, wouldn’t you?” Steve accused. He instantly regretted his words. He’d just met her. Who was he to act so jealous?

  Linda glared at him. “Who the hell do you think you are to say that to me, you bastard! That’s a terrible thing to say!”

  “But is it true?”

  “Go to hell!” she spat at him, her eyes flashing blue flame. “And what if I did sleep with him for a job! What of it? I know what I want for myself in this man’s world, and I intend to get it, and if sometimes being a woman is a disadvantage and sometimes it’s an advantage, what of it?”

  “You’re such a wiseacre,” Steve sulked.

  “Don’t give me too much credit for brains,” she muttered, grabbing her purse and lighting a cigarette. “I said you were my type, didn’t I?”

  “Dammit! I don’t want you to go!”

  She nodded. “I know. And part of me doesn’t want me to go. That’s the major reason why I’m going.”

  “I don’t get that,” he complained angrily.

  “Yeah, you do,” she said quietly, exhaling smoke.

  Steve glanced at her. “Well, maybe I do.” Looking at her, he couldn’t suppress a smile. “You’re one tough dame.”

  “Tough as nails,” Linda agreed. She winked at him. “Tough as you, and that’s no lie.”

  The doorbell jangled insistently. On her way out she paused to kiss Steve on the cheek. “See you in the funny pages, Cap’n.”

  “’Bye, Baby Blue Eyes.”

  She left the bedroom. Steve listened to her cross the apartment and open the closet to fetch her coat. Then he heard the click of the front door as she let herself out.

  “Wow,” he told the empty room.

  He was on his way out of the bedroom when he happened to glance into the bathroom. He laughed out loud.

  Linda had used her lipstick to cross out Doreen’s name and insert her own. After “Call Me” Linda has inserted her Los Angeles telephone number.

  Steve fetched his little black book and carefully copied the number down. He knew he’d be calling it one of these days.

  “Tough as nails,” she’d bragged to him. “Tough as you.”

  An older woman … son of a bitch.

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  (One)

  Gold Household

  Bel-Air, California

  4 August 1948

  “Son, I’d hoped that you would have come to your senses by now,” Herman Gold murmured into the telephone.

  “Why do you look at it that way, Pop?” Gold could clearly hear Steven’s angry tone above the hiss and crackle of the transcontinental telephone wire. “Why do you insist on viewing my decision to make a career in the Air Force as some form of temporary insanity on my part?”

  “Because I know where you belong—” Gold began.
>
  “Oh, is that right?” Steve demanded, sounding sarcastic. “You know where I belong? And where’s that? As your office boy?”

  Gold struggled not to lose patience with his son. Anger only made things worse between them. “I would never have you be an office boy, and you know it. I’d give you a good position at GAT. A responsible, respectable job—”

  “As your lackey,” Steven cut him off.

  “No! As my assistant!” Gold said, his voice rising.

  “Oh, sure,” Steven laughed. “Assisting you in what? Answer me this, Pop. If I wasn’t your son, and my résumé came across your desk, would you hire me then?”

  “But—but you are my son.” Gold evaded.

  “That’s what I thought,” Steve said, sounding weary. “Thanks, Pop, but no thanks.”

  “Okay,” Gold sighed. “Have it your way. But you yourself have told me how unsatisfied you are stuck in Air Force public relations.”

  “Pop, I’m working on something for myself,” Steve said.

  “A promotion?” Gold asked eagerly. “You’ve been a captain a long time now, son.”

  “I know that.”

  Gold heard the cold, flat tone. He’s feeling bad enough about his stalled career. He doesn’t need his father rubbing salt in the wound. “Don’t get me wrong,” Gold said hastily, trying to repair the damage. “You’ll always be tops in my book.”

  Gold was gratified to hear Steven chuckle. Damn, Gold thought sadly. When he was a little boy it was always a snap for me to get him to laugh.

  “Pop, don’t sweat it. Like I said, I’m working on something….” He trailed off.

  “Can’t you tell me what you have in mind?” Gold asked, intrigued.

  “It’s going to take some time,” Steven said evasively. “I don’t want to tell you any more about it right now.”

  “Okay. All right,” Gold said, disappointed. “But I don’t understand why you have to expend so much energy working on creating something for yourself when everything you could want is right here waiting for you.”

  “Pop, I’ve got to hang up now.”