Read Online A Diet of Treacle by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online Page A

covering everything. Not romantic, but he didn’t suppose that made much difference. It was not the setting itself but the prevailing mood that unnerved him. He and the girl were together in a room she had never been in before to do something she had never done before.
    Shank had left, sneering, aware of the agenda. Now Joe was scheduled to make some sort of pass at her, at which she ought to respond avidly. Thereupon they were supposed to make mad and passionate love among the dirt and debris of the apartment.
    Then he would go to sleep, or turn on, or go for a walk, or see some people, or do something. And she would board the train for Harlem and say hello to grandma and fall asleep in her own little bed.
    It wasn’t going to work, Joe thought.
    “Look,” he said, feeling terribly awkward. “Look, you can call this off. We can stop here and say good-bye. Or we can sit around and talk.”
    She started. “Did I do something wrong?”
    “No,” he said. “But—”
    “If I did it was an accident. I…I want you to make love to me. That’s all.”
    “We could wait until tomorrow. You could relax a little and then—”
    “Tonight.”
    He digested that. He still did not know where to begin, but he decided that there had to be a way, that all girls were built the same, that somehow they would wind up making their own kind of love. Then, he felt certain, she would go back to Harlem never to return. Sex was one thing. Commitment to an emptiness far greater than the one she spoke of was another. So Joe put his arm around Anita again and this time he kissed her, quietly. Her mouth stayed closed, but after a moment of the gentle pressure of one pair of lips upon another, her young arms curled around him and held him very close. He liked the taste of her lips, their coolness, and he imagined the sweetness of her young body.
    He kissed her again and her lips opened, his tongue turning up between them. Without trying as yet to arouse her, he wanted to know her, to understand her body with his, to touch her in some way not strictly sexual. He kissed her again and he felt the vague foreshadowings of response—the indrawn breath, the muscular tension and faint quiverings.
    “Scared?” Joe said.
    Startled, she looked up at him, as if he had been reading her mind.
    “This is your ball game,” he assured her. “You can call the shots. So there’s nothing to be scared of.”
    And, because there was nothing in the world to say after that, he kissed the girl. He leaned against her a little and they rolled back on the bed. They were lying on their sides, facing one another. He kissed her closed eyes, and kissed her nose. He pressed his lips to her throat, the softness there surprising him. He kissed her again and again.
    Then his hand finger-tipped her breast, pliant through the clothing. She stiffened a little. He remembered that this had been as much as the square cat, the engineer, had accomplished in many months of dating. So he held her breast very gently and kissed her again. He released her. “The light,” he explained, and he crossed the room to kill the lamp. The room was plunged into a kind of charcoal gray. He walked back and stretched out next to the girl curled up on the bed like a sleepy kitten in front of a fire, her eyes still closed. Joe could dimly feel the outline of the white bra through Anita’s white sweater. For a time he stroked and fondled. Then, slowly, he pulled the sweater free from the skirt and slipped his hand beneath to rub her back, the small of her back and her shoulders. He found the bra clasp and mastered it.
    “Oh,” she said. “Oh—”
    He kissed her lips. He used both hands to draw the sweater over her head. He could feel the tension in her body. He knew that nobody, no man, at least, had ever seen her breasts before. He knew that exposure scared her, and that he would have to be gentle. When he had removed the white sweater, he folded it carefully on a chair. He gazed at her bare and