The Children of Hamelin Read online

  Then she threw herself on top of me, flipped off the light, tangled my hair in her hands and whispered with a forced throatiness: “Let’s fuck!”

  In the darkness, I felt her body moving on mine in jerky, exaggerated rhythms. She kissed me, started to push her tongue inside my mouth—I clamped my arms around her, rolled her over and beneath me, pulled my mouth away from hers and flicked my tongue inside her ear. I felt her shudder.

  Quickly, I began stroking the inside of her thighs with one hand, kissed her and began moving my tongue inside her mouth in slow pelvic rotations and she sighed soundlessly and began moving her hips to the touch of my hand in a softer, more deeply-felt rhythm.

  I ran my other hand up and down between the cleft of her breasts and over her soft stomach, up, down, and around, up, down, and around, keeping time with the motions of my hand between her legs, my tongue in her mouth.

  Our mouths parted softly around her moan; her belly under my hand began to tremble like a luffing sail—her legs clamped tight around my other hand and she began to buck her hips awkwardly. She reached down and grabbed the shaft of my cock in one hand and began milking it savagely. Dammit, we were fighting each other; she was breaking my slow and building rhythm with hard staccato frenzy and her pumping hand was bringing me along too fast! Too fast!

  Still stroking her thighs with one hand, trying to get her to go with my rhythm, I reached down with my other hand and the two of us fumbled with my parts in silence, then with hers, then everything together. Feeling myself in danger of letting go, I finally got her hand away and got myself inside. She bucked me out. “Shit!” I cursed audibly, and bumbled my way inside again, planted myself firmly with a heavy thrust of my hips.

  I began moving my hips slowly, slowly, slow it down, baby! She slowed down, trying to match my rhythm, but she wasn’t making it, she wasn’t grooving with my moves; now she was a half-beat ahead of me, now a half-beat behind. Damn!

  She began to moan loudly, wordlessly. I felt myself moving towards the crest, but only from the waist down. I couldn’t tell where she was at.

  Then suddenly, she clamped her legs around my waist, hard. She started to squeeze my body with her thighs as if she were trying to get out the stuff at the bottom of a toothpaste tube—harder and harder, faster and faster, like an engine out of control.

  All at once, with no warning, I came; soundlessly, hardly feeling it. And she was still moaning and squeezing me with her legs frantically. I felt myself starting to lose it....

  Goddamn, I would not let this chick do that to me! From somewhere deep inside, maybe from the pit of pure fury, I found the stuff to keep myself going. I began thrusting, harder and harder against her pounding rhythm, faster and faster, sheer brute force, knowing it was now or never, feeling myself starting to go soft, pounding ahead on memory alone. Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Finally, she let loose a nasal scream, her body gave a tremendous heave, and it was over. Just as I felt myself leaving her.

  Reflexively, I half-rolled off her, then paused, kissed her lightly on the cheek, perhaps more than half-sarcastically; then I did roll off and pulled the covers over our panting bodies. I reached for the light switch; her hands caught mine and pulled it back.

  “Please...” she said softly.

  I sighed, pulled my hand back under the covers, and we lay there for long moments, not speaking, not touching.

  Jeez, what a bummer! I thought, remembering Robin, remembering just about every lay I could to avoid thinking about what had just happened. Like fucking some out of control milking machine... I felt used up, fucked out, spent and sticky....

  “Thank you,” she finally said softly, breaking the ugly silence.

  “For what?” I answered coldly.

  “For... what you did... for helping me come after... after the way it was for you....”

  All the anger and frustration went out of me like air out of a balloon. Oh you poor kid... you poor lost sorry kid....

  “I’m... I’m not very good at it,” she said. “I know I’m not very good at it—”

  I hated myself for it, but I dissolved into a sloppy mass of tenderness. What could I say? What could I do? I moved closer to her, letting her feel my skin against her. She was tense and rigid. What the hell could I say...?

  “You... you seem to like it...” I finally managed lamely.

  “I... I do like it. I like the way it feels... But I can’t... I can’t...” I felt her choke back a sob. I put my arm around her and pulled her head down on my chest.

  “I can’t seem to... connect up,” she said. “I can feel what happens to me but... I can’t feel a man.... It’s good for me, but I know....”

  She began to cry lightly. “I know I’m a terrible fuck,” she said.

  “Aw, you’re not that bad,” I said, stroking her hair.

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  “All right, I won’t.”

  “I know what my problem is,” she said. “Harvey says I can’t give myself to a man because I cling too tightly to my ego. I’m afraid of merging my consciousness with a man’s. That’s why I can’t let go—” Now she had stopped crying, drying her honest tears with the cruddy towel of textbook intellectualizing. Shit!

  “Screw Harvey Brustein!” I snarled. “Shove his Total Consciousness up his anal-retentive syndrome!”

  “Stop it! Harvey’s helped me and no one else ever has. Before I came to the Foundation, I couldn’t even come.”

  Do you believe it? I felt like a character in some idiotic Feiffer cartoon. For a hundred dollars a month, you too can learn to come... Just you and me and Harvey makes three. But if that filthy mother were really in bed with us, I’d tear off his right arm and beat him to death with it! Stinking son of a bitch!

  “Stick with me, baby,” I said, “and we’ll have you seeing novas.” Now why the hell did I say that? Was my manhood involved or what? Well maybe it was—if I couldn’t do more for her with my dick than Harvey could with his gibbering, it was time to hang up!

  “You mean... after... this... you still want to... to see me again?”

  “After all, practice makes perfect,” I heard myself say. What the fuck was I getting myself into?

  She kissed me lightly on the lips, so grateful I wanted to cry, and all the hassle I saw coming suddenly seemed worth it.

  “You know, you’re the only man I could ever talk about it afterward with who even cared—”

  I hugged her to me, the poor sorry bitch. A bad fuck with a good heart. Shit! How did I get into these things? You should kiss this poor creature goodbye, I told myself. Swine if you do, I answered back. Conscience, yet!

  “Tom,” she said, “I’d like to ask you a big favor.”

  I felt the cold breath of still more trouble down the back of my neck. Nevertheless, I said: “Ask away.”

  “Come to my therapy group this Friday,” she said.

  “No dice. I’m not about to let Harvey and company waltz through my head.”

  “For me... please? It could be what I need for a real breakthrough, having someone in my group who understands first hand... who cares...”

  Damn! Right in the old ego, not to mention the old conscience. Ooooh, that fucker Brustein! What this chick really needs is some Acapulco Gold and a solid weekend of getting her brains fucked out. Literally getting those damned Foundation-ridden brains of hers fucked out of her system.

  Yeah... Well, why not? Okay, go to the damn therapy group and show it up for what it is and then take her home for the weekend and fuck some sense into her!

  “Okay, baby.” I said. “But I warn you, I go in there out for blood.”

  She kissed my forehead. “Tom Hollander,” she said, “you’re not half as tough as you come on. You’re an old-fashioned gentleman, is what you are.”

  Do you believe that? How could I let a chick who said something like that to me go down for the third time? How could I let her throw her life away sucking up old Harvey’s junk?

  But as we drif
ted off to sleep in each other’s arms, I seemed to remember that I had once thought I could win Anne away from smack... and how that ended up....

  But it wasn’t really the same thing... no, not the same thing at all....

  7 - Room 101

  Somehow, it seemed appropriate that the room Arlene led me into had no windows. In fact, it had nothing but cheap gray fiberboard walls, a frosted-globe light fixture, institutional carpeting on the floor, and a semicircle of eight green metal folding chairs, each with a cheap ashtray beneath it.

  Arlene and I were the first to arrive. “Welcome to Room 101,” I said. I sat down on the chair at the left end of the semicircle. Arlene sat down two seats away.

  “What’s that for?” I said. “I used Ban this morning.”

  “One of the rules,” Arlene said. “Two people who are... involved with each other can’t sit together. If they did, they might give each other support.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a disaster?” I said. Arlene seemed about twelve light-years away behind her glasses; seemed to be no human connection between us at all now. I was really starting to feel like an asshole for letting myself get sucked into this thing. Starting?

  “What do the rules say about freebies?” I asked. “I hope I’m not expected to pay for this.”

  “You’re allowed one free trial group session. Then you can have your first six weeks’ groups and membership for only $50. That doesn’t include private sessions, of course.”

  Old Harv sure had it down to a science. One free shot, a cut-rate ounce, and then when you’re good and hooked, the price takes off for the stratosphere.

  “Am I expected?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  Uh-huh.

  At this point in walked Ida, the biddy who had faked the ass-grabbing game with Ted at last week’s party, looking like a female version of Torquemada with her hatchet-face and her hair in a Mrs. Grundy bun. She sat down between Arlene and me and lit a cigarette (blindfold optional).

  Followed closely by my lost love from last week, Linda Kahn, who gave me a you’ll-get-yours look and sat down on the other side of Arlene. Then, just as I was beginning to wonder if this was Tom Hollander-versus-six-uptight-chicks night, two guys walked in: a thin, blond cat of about forty in a Madison avenue brown suit and image but with the slightly-mottled skin and rheumy eyes of an obvious rummy; and a kid in blue Levis and checked flannel shirt with medium-long straight black hair that just didn’t fit with his thick Brooklyn-hood face.

  The Mad Ave type walked over to me as the kid sat down on the far right-hand chair, held out his hand. I took it; it was soft and squishy.

  “Charley Dees,” he said, with a hollow three-martini-lunch smile.

  “Tom Hollander.”

  Old Charley sat down next to the kid, who muttered “Rich Rossi” across the room at me. Just for kicks, I gave him the “V” sign. He didn’t quite know how to take it.

  And then bad, bad vibes walked into the room with Doris. Doris! I had the distinct feeling I had been set up for something.

  “Welcome to old home week,” I said sourly.

  “Hello Tom,” Doris said from behind some bullet-proof glass wall. She sat down next to good old Charley, leaving a central seat vacant for guess-who.

  Not exactly a cozy group. I was sure that this thing was stacked against me—and even paranoids have enemies.

  And then the Man entered the Star Chamber and closed the door behind him. Harvey was dressed in the same baggy gray pants and crummy tieless white shirt he had worn at the party. Or was he? I wouldn’t put it past Harvey to have a whole closetful of baggy gray pants and dirty white shirts.

  Harvey sat down on the empty folding chair, lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke, and said conversationally: “Are you still smoking pot, Rich?”

  Rich squirmed, pouted. He looked more like a Brooklyn hood than ever.

  “Come on, Rossi,” Charley said crisply, “a simple yes or no answer.”

  “Are you still a lush?” Rich snarled.

  “We’re not talking about Charley,” Arlene said.

  “Are you still getting stoned every day?” Doris said.

  “Ted fucked you lately?” Rich said.

  Doris flushed. I think I flushed, too. What kind of crazy shit was this?

  “Come on, Rossi,” Charley said, “you ashamed of it?”

  “Fuck you, dad. No, I’m not ashamed of it. I just don’t dig listening to all you dumb assholes trying to make me ashamed of it.” Well, well. Maybe Rich wasn’t a complete prick after all.

  “Then why do you come to group?” Ida said.

  “Same reason I go to the zoo.”

  Two points for you, Rich baby.

  “Baloney,” Charley said. “You’re hiding from reality.”

  “You wouldn’t know reality if it bit you in the ass, creep.”

  “Don’t you think you’re reacting a bit hostilely?” Harvey said in his dentist’s voice.

  “So?”

  “So you’re being defensive,” Linda uptight Kahn said.

  “So I’m being defensive.”

  “So if you’re being defensive about it, it means you’re ashamed of it,” Charley said.

  “You’re trying to make me paranoid!” Rich whined.

  “You’re afraid.”

  “Yeah, you’re afraid you’re hooked.”

  Oh WoW.

  “Because he is hooked,” Ida said. “He’s been here four months and he’s still turning onto pot. You’re a pot-head, Rich. That’s what you’re afraid of. You can’t stay off drugs.”

  “Dope fiend!”

  “Junkie!”

  The wolf-pack was howling. Ida and Linda and Charley seemed to be getting cheap, pious thrills off the game. Doris, thank God, was beyond that. Arlene—who knows? Rich was trying to stare them down, but his fat lower lip was starting to quiver. Have some balls, man! I telepathed.

  “I...” The poor bastard was letting the cretins get to him. I had had just about enough. Rich might be a jerk, but he was on the right side.

  “You are all full of shit,” I said loudly.

  Heads swiveled. Rich looked at me uncertainly, maybe remembering that “V” I had flashed him and wondering if maybe it hadn’t been a put-down.

  “You are all full of shit,” I repeated. “Pot isn’t addictive. Pot is just good clean fun. You’re the paranoids. Nobody can get... hooked on grass.”

  Rich grinned at me and made a “V”. “Sock it to ‘em, baby!” he said. Oh WoW. A stoned jerk is still a jerk.

  “You’ve been sitting here five minutes and you’ve already got all the answers,” Linda Kahn snarled. “How did you get so smart so fast?”

  “Clean living,” I said.

  “Tom’s been a junkie...” Doris blurted. Rich’s eyes widened. Jesus, what kind of game was this that turned your friends into consciousless swine? Doris... what’s been done to you, baby?

  “Ex-junkie,” I said, “and the little lady knows it.”

  “There’s no such thing as an ex-junkie,” Charley said.

  “How would you know, wino?” I asked.

  “Once a junkie, always a junkie,” Ida chanted like a snotty little smart-ass brat.

  “Once a virgin, always a virgin,” I chanted back. Ida blanched, shot me a look of pure hate, and edged to the far side of her chair.

  “Hey man,” Rich said respectfully, “you were really a junkie? You really got off smack?”

  “Scout’s honor,” I said.

  “Junkies have no honor,” Doris said. Jesus! Doris! What the hell’s happening to you?

  “That sounds pretty strange coming from you,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Doris said, with genuine innocence.

  “You’re supposed to be my friend, remember? So what’s with the dirty-junkie business, Doris?”

  “But I am your friend, Tom. I remember what you were like then. I said it to help you.”

  “Horseshit!” I snarled. But the hell
of it was I knew she actually believed it. What were we doing to each other here?

  “Do you identify with Rich?” Arlene said.

  “With every hung-up person in the whole wide universe,” I told her.

  “Don’t you think you might have the same problem as Rich?” Harvey suggested.

  “What problem? Neither of us has a problem. You jerks have a problem.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Linda Kahn asked smugly.

  I looked across Ida at Arlene. Her uptight eyes, her clenched jaw, her hands toying with the fabric of her skirt told me: no, please, no, don’t say it. Well, what the hell, I could take it.

  “Just slumming,” I said.

  “You’ve got a drug problem,” Doris said quietly.

  “Aw come off it, Doris, you know I haven’t had any smack for a long, long time.”

  “But you still smoke pot, don’t you?”

  “Sure I do,” I said. “In fact, I seem to remember blowing pot with you and Ted on occasion.”

  “Not since we’ve been members of the Foundation,” Doris said righteously. “Pot gives you a phony feeling of increased consciousness which keeps you from really expanding your consciousness.” Obviously, the Gospel according to St. Brustein.

  “In other words,” I said, “Harvey here is dealing a better grade of shit.”

  You could almost hear the room gasp. A grin from Rich. An Earth Mother shake of Doris’ head. Linda, Charley and Ida pumping uptight adrenaline into the air. Arlene knowing how I felt but not expecting me to actually say it. All grossed-out in their own ways.

  Except Harvey. Not a flicker of emotion on his gray pudgy face. “An interesting idea,” he said smoothly. “Let’s try going with it for a while, Tom. Let’s see if I understand you—you’re saying that the Foundation acts like a psychedelic drug because it expands—”

  “Not so fast, man! Take your words out of my mouth. I’m saying that your Foundation suckers are like junkies because they’re trying to get the same thing off the Foundation that junkies think they can get off junk. I’m not saying that either brand of junkie really gets anything.”