Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,42

had vanished in the frustration of the moment. "We can go somewhere else. We can use your name. You can cash a check."

"Any check I would cash," Marvin said, "would bounce from here to King's Neck and right back again."

"But you could cover it," Gillian said. "You could go to the bank on Monday and cover the check."

"You don't understand, Gillian," he said. "All I could cover that check with is unpaid bills. I'm broke. I'm flat broke."

Now that it had happened, Marvin couldn't accept it. His conquest, so fortuitously begun and so intricately constructed, was collapsing like a deflated balloon. He was again, again and forever, a loser. No, not a loser. No, not a loser, the loser, the all-time number-one world-champ loser. And what he had even greater difficulty in accepting was the fact that Gillian Blake was convulsed in an uncontrollable attack of giggles.

"You're broke?" she said, finally.

"I am driving from here," he said, "directly to the nearest poorhouse."

"But this car?"

"I own precisely $1,350 worth of this car. And the way they charge for this car, that means I own four tires and the rear window."

"The house?"

"Will be mine in precisely twenty-eight years if I continue paying $325 a month until that date."

"Poor Marvin," Gillian said. "Poor Marv."

They rode silently then, each contemplating a private disaster. Finally, more to clear the air than anything else, Gillian told Marvin that she had been going to ask him for a loan. A loan of $1,500. A loan to pay for an abortion because she was carrying, deep in her womb, the beginnings of a beatnik, the embryo given her by a hasty hipster.

"You wanted my money?" Marvin said.

"Don't get me wrong," Gillian said. "I wanted you, Marvin. But wanting you didn't prevent me from also wanting your money. But not permanently. Just a loan.

And, honestly, I wouldn't have even mentioned it except, you have to agree, it is an emergency."

"We each have our emergencies", Marvin said.

"Poor Marvin," Gillian said.

They were approaching the toll booth in Pelham. Marvin fished for a coin, found two dimes and a nickel. He searched his pockets, desperately for a moment, found another quarter. "For the bridge," he said. His words were lost because Gillian was kissing his right ear.

"Poor, poor Marvin," Gillian said.

Marvin's body jerked involuntarily as Gillian slipped her hand inside his shirt and ran her fingers along his ribs. Slowly and methodically she unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers. Traffic was beginning to thicken, Marvin noticed, even as he responded to Gillian's dexterous fingers.

"Maybe not so poor after all," Gillian continued, stroking him into a full erection.

"Christ, Gillian," Marvin said. "The other cars, they'll see."

"Oh Marvin, let them see. You've nothing to be ashamed of. Let them see. Let the whole world see."

"Oh, God," Marvin said. "Oh, God, that feels good." Ahead, but dimly, Marvin saw the approach to the Throg's Neck Bridge. Rush-hour traffic, he perceived, was jamming the lines to the toll booths. As he reached for his last quarter, Gillian burrowed her head in his lap. "My God. my God, my God!" he was saying as he rocked up and down on the seat cushion. He had never known this, never known anything like this before. Never. Not anything. And he gasped as Gillian suddenly stopped, pulled back, brushed back her hair.

"No, please," he said., "Don't stop now."

"Marvin," she said, "you could still lend me the money."

"How?" he said. "I don't have it."

"You could raise it," she said. "You could raise anything, Marvin."

"Just don't stop," he pleaded.

Gillian bent down once again. The truck driver in the adjoining lane looked down in mute fascination. In the other lane a three-year-old boy was jumping up and down in his car seat, pointing, but his parents didn't notice anything amiss – just a man sitting silently behind his wheel with a silly grin on his face. Again Gillian pulled up and away.

"Please," he said. "Please?"

"A thousand," she bargained. "You could raise a thousand."

"Five hundred," he said.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! The car behind the white Cadillac sounded its horn as the space widened in front of Marvin Goodman's car. Marvin stepped down on the accelerator. In the next lane the truck driver, attempting to keep abreast of the car, crunched into a Chevrolet carrying a troop of Cub Scouts and a Den Mother.

"A thousand" – this time Gillian didn't even lift her head.

"Seven fifty," he said.

Marvin felt a kind of paralysis engulfing him – every muscle was tense and