Since he had spent the night with her a couple of weeks before, he'd been more like the David she remembered—more attentive toward her, more spontaneously affectionate. She didn't know why, and she didn't dare ask. Whatever had caused the change, David was being much nicer to her these days. They had t
alked for hours that night he'd stayed over at her apartment, and he'd confided in her how concerned he was about Lisa, his little sister. Lisa really missed Eve's frequent visits and asked for her often, he said. And he had added:
"We ought to do more together than just screw, angel. I want you for my friend again."
David knew just the right words with which to get under her carefully constructed defenses! That night she had been prepared to have it out with him, to demand
to know, once and for all, if there was another woman he was seeing. But he'd disarmed her—as usual. The thing about David was that he always seemed so damned sincere. And then there was the way he concentrated on her in bed, giving her endless, limitless pleasure. When they were in bed together, it was as if no other woman existed for him. She always forgot her jealousy and her insecurity and loved him all over again then.
David started to take her down to see the family more often. He couldn't spend too much time with the kids as it was; mostly he went down over a weekend, and occasionally on a weeknight. The two younger children, particularly Lisa, needed adult supervision—more concerned, loving adult supervision. Mrs. Lambert, the housekeeper, seemed a motherly kind of woman and fond enough of the children, but Eve still felt her own instinctive mistrust of Francie that had been there from the beginning, when she first encountered the girl's cold, too-knowing eyes.
She felt that Francie, these days, seemed really quiet —almost withdrawn. Usually she'd try to show Eve in some sly, secret way that she only had David on loan, so to speak. But recently Francie spent more time in her room—studying, she said—than she did downstairs. It was almost as if she were staying out of their way—out of David's way. Eve couldn't figure it out. But she didn't try too hard, because of Lisa, whom she really loved and enjoyed cuddling, and David, who acted happy and satisfied in her company again. She guessed that she should be relieved that Francie was behaving, for a change. Maybe she was actually growing up?
Francie's studied avoidance of her big brother was really due to her new, secret status. She was Brant Newcomb's latest plaything—the current kick he offered his friends at the parties he was always throwing when he was in town.
Since Brant had discovered her secret weakness, Francie found herself obsessed—both with him and with her own body and the sensations he could evoke in it. There was nothing at all that he could not make her do and enjoy doing; and, after a while, almost nothing that she had not done.
She was leading a double life, Francie would think with smug satisfaction. Still a high-school senior and, on the surface, a normal teenager. But her other, hidden self attended all of Brant Newcomb's wild "partouzes" and those of his jet-set friends. She was the far-out chick they all wanted, who'd do anything for kicks.
Two months after she had first met Brant, everything had become old—even turning on. One wild night, she'd even tried acid after everyone had gone and Brant, who had forgotten about her, had discovered her tied spreadeagled on the bed in the game room.
"Jesus God, why didn't you yell?" he asked her, half-amused and half-annoyed that she was still there. And then, as he looked down at her, he'd begun to laugh.
"You dumb little cunt! But okay, baby, since you're here and I'm really not that sleepy, want to trip on acid? They tell me you shouldn't use it alone. Want to see if it does anything for either of us? The last time for me"— she saw his frown—"I didn't really remember too much."
As he untied her, he spoke to her like a real person, a human being, and she loved it—most of the time he either ignored her or treated her like some strange kind of insect he'd discovered.
Brant turned on some outlandish, weird-sounding music he said was Indian, and then he turned her on.
Francie never forgot her first acid trip. It was the most beautiful experience of her fife up until then, she thought, and it was made even more beautiful because Brant was sharing it with her. They lay holding each other close on the big bed and watched the night and the music unfold in shapes and colors around them; and then they made love, and it seemed to go on endlessly in slow motion.
Francie often wished that he'd do it with her again, but he never did; he'd brush off her suggestion with a shrug or a laugh. She couldn't understand Brant—she spent whole nights thinking about him and wondering how she could possess him the way he possessed her. She had to become important to him—she just had to! And so she took enormous risks just to be with him and his friends, slipping out of the house at all hours and sometimes returning at dawn. She knew that Mrs. Lambert knew whenever she sneaked out, but neither of them ever spoke about it. Mrs. Lambert drank a lot, and she needed the job badly; she knew she'd better not snitch on Francie or she'd be out on her ear!
Because she was wild and freaky and would do anything at all, Brant had started having Francie on tap at all of his parties. She provided a new and kicky type of entertainment for the jaded appetites of his guests, and some of the movies she let them make of her and various other members of the crowd were much in demand, as was Francie herself. Some of them were almost in awe of her capacity for punishment, even some of the experienced call girls who were also regular "guests." She was still so young, and yet more perverse than any of them. Francie was a sadist's dream come true—the perfect masochist. She would let anyone do anything to her.
At various times she had been whipped and ravished in every conceivable fashion—tied down, stretched out, or suspended by her arms; exhibited naked and open, to be used by anyone who wanted her. Nothing was too wild or far out for Francie.
She told herself that she did it all for Brant, to prove to him that she loved him. Just like the girl in that book, The Story of O. She was his slave, his plaything, and she would give herself and abandon herself just as slavishly to anyone he "gave" her to.
But after the first few times, when he used her as regularly as any of the others, the only attention he paid to her was to have her fitted with an IUD. She told herself that he was testing her to make sure she could take his kind of fife; she wanted him to know she could take anything his woman would have to take.
Once, Brant had to stop a group of fast-rising young rock musicians from literally screwing her to death between them. But Francie herself had not protested against anything they'd done to her. When Brant asked her, his voice hard and old, why she hadn't tried to stop them, or at least called for help, she'd whimpered, "But you told them they could have me, that I'd do anything they wanted me to."
"Oh, shit! Sometimes I wonder about you! You have to be sick to let them go that far and not try to stop them. Damn it, they could have killed you!"
Nevertheless, in spite of his disgusted manner, he'd called up one of his doctor friends, who'd come around and given her some shots that made her feel better and stopped the bleeding. And afterward, Brant had taken her home himself, letting her rest her head against his shoulder as he drove.
After that particular incident, however, Brant didn't call her for quite a while, and when she'd call him, he'd tell her, in that bored, aloof voice, that he felt she ought to get herself quite healed up inside.
"But Brant, I am, I promise I am!" Francie insisted, almost crying with frustration. She glared at the phone in her hand. "Brant, please, I'm so horny I can hardly stand it! Let me come—I'll be good, and I'll be more careful, I promise!"
This was a Friday, and he usually gave a party when he was in town Friday night. Why couldn't he let her come?
"I'll think about it, baby. You can call me again this evening. And in the meantime, if you're that horny, why don't you use that vibrator I gave you?"
She heard the click in her ear as he hung up and slammed the phone back into its cradle. Goddam Brant Newcomb to hell!
Like a caged animal, Francie paced around her room. On her bulletin board, right next to her Mick Jagger blowup, she'd pinned a small picture of Brant, cut out from a magazine. She wanted to tear it to bits, but she stopped herself—it was the only picture she had of him, after all. And something told her she'd be going to more parties—he'd have to see her, he was going to need her, miss her!