CHAPTER I
Their silent pounding bodies were suddenly accompanied by the jangling of door keys
getting closer to the cell. They rushed their pleasure, hoping to cheat the always
present, always might-be-present guard.
"Faster, faster, for Christ`s sake," the younger man pleaded. And the rattling
created by their bodies stopped, replaced by the unmistakable sound of a key sliding into
the heavy iron lock. The older man with the wise lined face pulled his body away from the
young imploring animal. "You`re insane." The door was swinging open, and his
fear made him limp.
"Coward, coward," Harry mocked, and with a graceful arc, his body was off the
cot and standing at the sink, his back to the unannounced guard. The jailer looked
knowingly at Phillip, stretched out on the cot, lighting a long American cigarette. Then
he regarded the shuddering back of the tall blond thief. The young ones needed it a lot.
The older ones could do without, but they taught their inexperienced brothers. Showed them
more in a six-month stretch than they learned in ten years on the streets.
The guard humiliated the gasping back by addressing it.
"You`ve got a visitor, Harry."
That surprised him. Phillip often had callers, but Harry had no connection, no
sentimental patchwork outside the prison.
"A visitor?" he turned, buttoning his trousers.
"A woman," the guard announced curtly. "She says she`s not your
sister." She obviously impressed him. Harry didn`t answer. He silently followed the
guard out of his cell, not looking at Phillip who was watching the burning tip of his
cigarette with scientific intensity. Harry followed the guard noiselessly to the waiting
room. The guard banged his stick against the cell doors as they walked the long corridor,
and shouted in, "Stow those burners, do ya hear me? You can smell them in the
warden`s apartment. Stow them, or there`ll be a midnight shakedown."
The two men walked into the large cold waiting room, tables that looked like waiting room
tables bordered by chairs that looked like waiting room chairs. In one of the chairs was
an elegant woman of about twenty seven. She was dressed in a grey suit with a French fit,
curving her hips and breasts, the hem ending an immeasurable moment before it would on an
American or English skirt. She was sitting straight and unaffected by her surroundings, a
woman who created her own atmosphere and rested comfortable and secure in the nimbus of
contempt that blessed her. It had been a long time, seven months, since Harry had had a
woman, and this one looked as if she`d be a lot of work. Two hours to get the clothes off,
and six hours to convince her she`d done the wise thing. And the cool ones only got
convinced in their cunts.
"There she is," said the guard bluntly.
The woman pulled tight her blanket of correctness and looked over the guard`s head into
Harry`s eyes. "Mr. Hatch," she said, "may I have a few words with
you?" Her tone suggested that Mr. Hatch might now be too busy and his secretary would
check his calendar and surely give her an appointment.
"Certainly," agreed Harry, living the scene she had created. He sat down
lightly in the free chair across from her and waited for her to speak.
"There will be work for you in New York when you get out." He looked curiously
at her. "Work you should enjoy." Neither of them seemed interested in pleasure.
"How?" he finally asked.
"Just call me," her boarding school voice enunciated, "at Plaza 5-7000 –
ask for Miss Stoddard."
"Yes Miss Stoddard."
"I`m sorry," she almost blushed, "we haven`t been introduced. I`m Carol
Stoddard, and I shall wait for your call. I`m leaving two hundred and fifty dollars in the
office for you. Will that be enough?"
"That will be quite enough."
"Till next month, Mr. Hatch." She was getting to her feet. There was, except
for the brief business, not a human word for them. She put her striped, gloved hand into
his, and had removed it before he could experience its pressure. "Good day
then," and she walked carefully out of the waiting room, taking with her the breath
of civilization.
Harry was being led back to his cell. The guard was saying something about class. The
guard`s tiny little mind, if you let it in, could irritate.
Back in the cell, Phillip looked up and said, "Who was it?"
It was not intrusive for him to ask. Little happened in the prison and a man shared his
experiences, the way he shared his cock. Harry started to explain. He looked down at the
shrewd cool man stretched out on the bed, and for a moment he was sinking into the cool
eyes of the woman who had sat with him a brief five minutes and given him a strong odor of
the world outside.
Phillip had a portable outside world that he carried with him. Maybe that was the
attraction. Harry had never been hot for men, not for women either, except when a detached
heat would spread through him, and then he`d find a cunt, thin and clinging or wide and
comfortable and exhaust his prick. He`d pull it out of them, depleted and eager to leave
them.
There were better ways to make it. Not get your prick into anything, just feel it
ponderous like an arrow leading you into strange experience. But that way it had to be
without heat, just a cool fucking erection in the head. Phillip was strange enough to be a
constant invitation. He never was hot for Phillip, but that was the only place for the
cool fuck to go. So his prick never got finished and ready for something else.
Now he was beginning to plan the Llewellyn job; that was where his maleness wanted to be.
An immense job, absorbing and satisfying. It would take brains and courage; it would take
maleness.
Phillip was watching him, seeing him go off into a world nobody could touch. There was
something pathetic and childlike about Harry`s dream world, yet it had to be taken
seriously. There was no question that the visions, created by a deprived child became the
acts of the man. That was how they all got there, wasn`t it?
Even Phillip cared enough about something to get here, and not mind the ten month
stretch. He cared about money. How original! The things you could do with money. There was
no Midas touch about him, no sensuous thrill in spilling the sheckles through stretched
fingers. He put all the money back into gracious living, fantastic expression, something
out of a woman`s magazine. The one thing, the one raison d`etre were the paintings. To
line his walls with the brilliance, the most selective vision of all ages. Phillip
despised museums, despised the keepers, despised the confused giggling viewers or the awed
small town viewers or the arrogant student viewers. A painting had to be lived with, had
to be cultivated. There should be a master-slave relationship, sometimes the painting
master, sometimes Phillip master. To keep the thing interesting. Like sex, only better.
Museums were like prisons, and he wanted to tear down the precious colors that became
barred windows on the long corridor walls.
Phillip felt the attraction of Harry`s long relaxed body. Harry was as perfect as a
master`s etching, perfect and simple without a wasted line or a decorative curve. Phillip
lifted himself from his cot, and crossed his arms on the rim of Harry`s decker, a layer
above his. He ran his fingers across the sharp planes of the upraised face. It should have
felt like steel, cold and smooth to the touch. Instead, he was surprised to find his flesh
damp, and the bristles of his heavy beard rough against his palm. He moved his fingers
down to the what-could-be female flesh of his neck.
Harry lay as if in a dream, musing to himself. His mind`s absence allowed Phillip to
possess his body freely. To possess him coldly, to watch him as a snake watches a drowsy
rabbit in the hypnotic sun.
"Harry," he said, as softly as a woman.
Harry lay immobile, unresponding.
"What will you do when you get out?" Phillip murmured.
"What I`ve always done."
"Take the pretty diamonds out of the pretty girls` ears?"
"Out of the ugly safes, off the ugly chests."
"Don`t you like women, Harry?" Phillip`s hands were moving under the rough
shirt, down to the leather belt, loose around Harry`s waist. He swung himself up on the
bed.
"I like diamonds."
"Why Harry? Because they`re so cold and deep, cold and perfect. Time makes it
perfect?"
"A diamond is perfect. Time makes it perfect. Time makes it more beautiful. Flesh
decays."
"Diamonds turn to dust. Someday all the diamonds will turn to dust."
"Not before me."
"But Harry," Phillip`s hand had edged beneath the buckled belt soft into the
hairy field that surrounded the dozing man`s lazy prick, "you`re so
insignificant." The prick gave a responding jump, the face remained immobile.
"More significant than women, less significant than diamonds."
"Is it all a question of what turns to dust first. I`ll be dust before you are
Harry."
"I`m more significant than you." Harry turned bored grey eyes on Phillip`s
mocking face.
"Why do you say that, my diamond merchant?" Phillip was speaking as if to a
drugged child. "Aren`t all men equal?"
Harry coughed a spontaneous laugh, "You have no courage, Phillip. You have no
depth."
"Ahhh," Phillip sighed, "my diamond merchant is also a philosopher. My
hard as a diamond lover," and his fingers were a fist around Harry`s cock. He pressed
his thumb against the bulging vein. "Hard as a diamond," he approved, and
lowered his head to the swaying erection.
"You`re so weak Phillip, there`s so much you want. A diamond doesn`t want
anything."
"So you`ve modeled yourself after a diamond. But no facets, Harry. Just a rough
uncut stone." Harry`s prick was supremely erect. He did not move to touch Phillip,
but his penis declared his awareness of the male caress. His prick was high and free,
curving subtly like an unstrung bow. "You`ve got a fine cock, Harry." It
stretched bigger than Phillip`s hand span. He moved his fingers into the hidden valley
where the rod and balls joined. "Your cock is the best part of you. Better than your
mind, or your diamonds, or your courage." His fist moved tight over the satiny skin.
"Why don`t you let me put my inferior member into you, and still hold on to this
precious stone?"
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