The June breeze tickled the slender white back of her neck as Lynne took her shiny little Volvo neatly around the curves and down to the city for the day. She had some shopping to do and she had to buy the text for her class which started next week. She was enrolled for two courses during the summer session: Art, History 101 and tennis. She figured she would try to get her phys.ed. credits out of the way in the summers. She looked out at the bright blue of the Pacific ocean which emerged and disappeared in the distance as she rounded the curves. Maybe she would go to the beach today and see who was around. The beach was a favourite meeting place of her friends. Maybe Sam and Joe would be around. Or Allison, her best friend.

But gnawing at the back of her mind was only two words: 114 Capp. She turned on the radio to try to drown the words out of her mind.

At-Londstrom's she bought herself a new bikini with a tiger skin pattern on it. It was really the briefest little bikini she had ever seen and she knew her father would have a fit if he ever saw her in it. It was cut in the new fashion that was being worn that year, with a high cut at the thighs and practically nothing, except a string behind. Two little triangles of striped tiger skin covered her little tan breasts and a third little triangle barely covered the thatch of black hair at her thighs. She stood in front of the mirror in the little dressing room in the department store and wondered if she should now dye her crotch hair to match the colour of the blonde hair on her head.

"Fuck it," she thought. "Let 'em see my hair is dyed. Besides I think it looks sexy, blonde hair on the top and black hair on the bottom." But then she wondered if it was sexy to have your crotch hair sticking out of the bikini bottom. No, she didn't think that would be considered sexy. She'd have to shave some down there.

She bought the suit for $42 and thought how her Dad would scream, she laughed. She also bought some suntan lotion at the cosmetics counter, a new special imported Swedish kind, and some new green sun-glasses and some bright red lipstick. She found herself examining a black garter belt and some black stockings but caught herself and wondered why she was looking at stockings.

"No one ever wears stockings any more. Why would anyone bother with hose and a garter belt when you can wear pantyhose?" she wondered.

She found the art text she needed for her class at the university bookstore. There she also bought some pens and notebooks and a pair of bedroom slippers with pom-poms on them that said "UCLA."

Then she went and had a soda at the drugstore. She ordered a black cow.

She caught herself sipping the last sip with a big bored sigh and she bit her lips and frowned and quickly paid the kid behind the counter who asked her "Hey, hot stuff. Doing anything tonight?"

"Why do only these dopey little boy types get attracted to me?" she wondered. "How come no interesting men like me?"

She decided to go to the beach and see which of the gang was down there today. She pulled off the highway at the section of the beach which her gang frequented. Her new sun-glasses glinted in the sun and, discreetly, in the car, she got her new bikini on without taking her clothes off. She was getting out of the car, planning where she saw some of her crowd, when she noticed Dave standing by the garbage can drinking a Sprite.

Before she had even decided what she was going to do, she found she had jumped back into the car and pulled back on the highway.

"Well, I just really don't feel like seeing him now, today, after last night. I'll wait until he calls me."

But that still left her with nothing to do and nowhere to go. She really didn't feel like being alone. That was the one thing she was afraid of, being alone.

She glanced at her watch. It was only 3:30. She still had two hours to kill.

 

"Piss!" said Roger angrily. He slammed the door of the public phone booth behind him and made his way down the sunny side of Capp Street back to his apartment. The interested party he was supposed to meet this afternoon had backed out. Roger was trying to get backers for a showing of his paintings. Consuela had told this man, who was a banker, about how great his stuff was and the banker had said he was interested in promoting the arts. He was one of Consuela's clients. She worked as a call girl for a select circle of men. Well, he would spend the afternoon painting.

He was getting out his canvas and preparing his oils that afternoon at 5:30 when his bell rang. He said "Shit," and didn't answer it because he wanted to work and he didn't want any of his lousy friends coming in and talking up a storm and distracting his mind and eating his food.

But he stuck his head out the window to see who walked away from the door. His face lit up and he laughed a broad laugh when he saw the little chick he'd driven home last night wiggle her little butt down his steps. She heard the laugh and looked up. He waved,

"Ring the buzzer again and maybe I'll be home this time," he called down to her. She made a face as if she were pissed off but she rang again and this time he let her in.

She walked around his little room curiously, picking things up and putting them down. She picked up a stack of sex magazines and dropped them hastily as if they soiled her fingers. "You read this stuff?" she asked.

"Yep," he said,dabbing yellow paint on the canvas he was working on. "Open 'em up and look at some of the pictures. They won't bite you," he said.

"No thanks," she said, idly continuing to sashay around the room. The next second she was on her hands and knees on the floor with her face between the pages of a magazine. "I said - look at some of the pictures, they won't bite you honey," said Roger. His hand was around her neck, holding her head an inch from the page. She was staring at two pictures of a woman tied in all which ways, with her legs tied open and a ball tied in her mouth.

Lynne gasped, horrified. "Let me go," she squirmed. Roger still held her neck in his firm grip.

"Honey, nobody forced you to come here and nobody's going to force you to come here. You come here of your own free will. But once you walk across that threshold, you don't get no more free will. The only free will in MY place is my own and if you want to come visit me here, you better remember that; I ain't no little boy and you ain't coming here to see me because you want a little boy. And don't you forget that." Then he released her.

She sat on the floor gasping for breath. No one had ever spoken to her like that in her whole life and she was mostly amazed.

She was even sort of amused.

"Maybe you've never had a real woman before. One with a mind of her own, who won't give up her own free will," she suggested, trying to compose herself seductively on the floor.

He wasn't even looking at her. He didn't even seem to hear her. He had returned to his canvas.

"I said, 'Maybe you've never had a real woman before with a mind of her own..." she said, coming up beside him.

"Honey," he said, smiling and turning to her and painting her nose with red paint, "I heard you. I just wasn't interested in what you were saying. I'm already wasting too much breath in responding to something you said that I sure wasn't interested in. You don't seem to be getting the picture."

"I get the picture. Is that all you draw? Women's genitals?" she asked staring at the very graphic painting of an open cunt. "It almost looks abstract," she said. "Actually, it's very pretty."

"Gee thanks," he said. Then he put his paintbrush down and looked at his watch. "Okay," he said. "take off your clothes."

"What?" she asked.

He turned and slapped her, not hard, but hard enough to catch her by surprise and knock her back on the floor.

"I don't repeat myself," he said in a perfectly gentle voice. "Just do what you're told when you're told to. "

She still wasn't moving. She seemed to be crying. She was reaching in her bag for some Kleenex and seemed to b@ sniffling and she was trying to wipe the red paint off her nose.

He threw a rag with some turpentine on it at her and said, "Here, use this. And you'd better leave now, because if you stay you're going to get whatever I want to give you, which may not be what you came here for. I don't need any females around here simply to yap at me."

And he continued with his painting.

Slowly she wiped the paint off her nose with the turpentined rag. Then she got herself up off the floor. She went to the door and hesitated. She thought of that jerk Dave, standing on the beach drinking his Sprite, his long skinny body sticking out of his swimming trunks like a tree. She thought of the moment last night in the pick-up truck when Roger's big thick finger had sought out her panties without any prompting from her. She still hesitated at the door, remembering that this man had her, and spoken to her like no other man or woman had ever done. The pictures he had forced her to look at in the magazine flashed through her mind and she was truly frightened. And still she hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. He led her to the bed after locking the door.

Determinedly, she took off her clothes, watching him to gauge his reaction to her body. She was wearing shorts and a UCLA shirt and underneath was the new bikini.

He was watching her with the professional disinterest of an artist looking at a potential model.

When she was in her bikini he said, "Stop."

"You like my new bikini," she shifted and posed for him. "It's new."

"Did I ask you to speak, or wiggle around like that?" he asked, going over to his closet.

"No," she said.

"Then be still," he said turning around with a whip in his hand. It was a short cowhide whip with fifteen leather thongs on it. The handle was bright red.

"What's that? What are you doing?" she asked, horrified.

"Be quiet," he suggested, "it's just for when you do anything you haven't been told to."

"I don't like this, she said.

The whip came down on her shoulders. She screamed. The whip came down on her again.

"That was once for talking back and once for screaming," he said.

This time she was silent. "It's still not too late to late to leave," he said.