George just stared. "The star of our little rural retreat," said Drake by way of introduction. "May I present- Miss Tarantella Serpentine." Maldonado's applause continued, and George wondered if he should join in. Music, Oriental but with a touch of rock, flooded the room. The sound reproduction equipment was excellent, nigh perfect. Tarantella Serpentine began to dance. It was a strange, hybrid sort of dance, a synthesis of belly-dancing, go-go, and modern ballet. George licked his lips and he felt his face get warm and his penis begin to throb and swell as he watched. Tarantella Serpentine's dance was even more sensuous than the dance Stella Maris had done when he was being initiated into the Discordian movement.

After she had done three dances, Tarantella bowed and left. "You must be tired, George," said Drake, resting his hand on George's shoulder.

Suddenly, George realized he had been going on almost no sleep except for the times he'd dozed off in the car on the way from Mad Dog to the Gulf. He had been under incredible physical, and even more important, emotional pressure.

He agreed that he was tired, and, praying that he would not be murdered in his sleep, he let Drake lead him to a bedroom.

The bed was an enormous four poster with a cloth-of-gold canopy. Naked, George slid between cool, crisp sheets, and clutching the top sheet around his neck, lay flat on his back, shut his eyes tight and sighed. That morning he had been on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico watching naked Mavis masturbate. He had fucked an apple. He had been to Atlantis. And now he was lying on a downy-soft mattress in the home of the chief of all organized crime in America. If he closed his eyes he might find himself back in the Mad Dog jail. He shook his head. There was nothing to fear.

He heard the bedroom door open. There was nothing to fear. To prove it, he kept his eyes closed. He heard a board squeak. Squeaky boards in this place? Sure- to warn the sleeper that there was someone sneaking up on him. He opened his eyes.

Tarantella Serpentine was standing over the bed. "Bobby-baby sent me," she said.

George closed his eyes again. "Sweetheart," he said, "you are beautiful. You really are. You're beautiful. Make yourself comfortable."

She reached down and turned on a bedside lamp. She was wearing a gold metallic bikini top with a short matching skirt. Her breasts were delightfully small, George thought. Although, on a five-foot-two girl they'd be ample. But Tarentella was built like a Vogue model. George liked her looks. He had always been partial to tall, slender boyish women.

"I'm not intruding on you, am I?" she asked. "You sure you wouldn't rather sleep?"

"Well it's not so much what Td rather do," said George. "I doubt that I can do anything other than sleep. I have had a very trying day." Masturbated once, he thought, had one blow job, and fucked one apple. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Plus been scared out of my wits 90 percent of the time.

Tarantella said, "My name is known in ratified circles for what I can achieve with men whose days are all trying. Presidents, kings, Syndicate heads- naturally- rock stars, oil billionaires, people like that. My thing is, I can make men come. Over and over and over and over again. Ten times, sometimes even twenty times, no matter how old or how tired. I get paid a lot. Tonight, Bobby-baby is paying for my services, and I'm to service you. Which I like very much, because most of my clientele is on the middle-aged side, and you're nice and young and have a firm body." She gently pulled the sheet loose from George's grip- he had forgotten he was still holding it up around his neck- and caressed his bare shoulder.

"How old are you, George- twenty-two?"

"Twenty-three," said George. "But I don't want to disappoint you. I'm willing and I'm interested. In fact, I'm curious about what you do. But I'm pretty tired."

"Honey, you can't disappoint me. The more limp you are, the more I like it. The more of a challenge you are to me. Let me show you my specialty."

Tarantella doffed her bra, skirt, and panties quickly but deliberately enough to let George enjoy watching her. Smiling at him, she stood before him, her legs spread wide apart. Her fingernails tickled her nipples, and George watched them swell up. Then, her left hand playing with her left breast, her right hand snaked down to her groin and began massaging the golden-brown hairs of her mons. Her middle finger disappeared between her legs. After a few moments a scarlet flush spread over her face, neck, and chest, her body arched backward, and she gave a single, agonized cry. Her skin, from head to toe, was glowing with a fine coating of sweat.

After a momentary pause she smiled and looked at him. Her right hand caressed his cheek and he felt the wetness on his face and smelled the Lobster Newburg aroma of a young cunt. Her fingers drifted to the sheets, and with a sudden movement she stripped them away from George's body. She grinned down at his stiff cock and in a moment was on top of him, holding his prick, inserting it into herself. Two minutes of smooth pistonlike movements on her part brought him to an unexpectedly pleasant orgasm.

"Baby," he said. "You could wake the dead."

He enjoyed his second orgasm about a half hour later, and his third a half hour after that. The second time Tarantella lay on her back and George lay on top of her, and the third time she was on her stomach and he was straddling her from the rear. There was something about the mood Tarantella created that was crucial to what she called her "specialty." Though she had boasted about her ability to make a man come repeatedly, when it came right down to doing things she made him feel that it didn't really matter what happened with him. She was fun-loving, playful, carefree. He did not feel obligated in any sense to stiffen, to come. Tarantella might view men as a challenge, but she made it clear that George was not to see her as a challenge.

After a short nap, he woke to find her sucking his rapidly hardening penis. It took much longer this time for him to come, but he enjoyed every second of mounting pleasure. After that they lay side by side and talked for a while. Then Tarantella went to the bedside table and took a tube of petroleum jelly out of a drawer. She began applying it to his penis, which grew erect during the process. Then she rolled over and presented him with her rosy asshole. It was the first time George had had a woman that way, and he came rather quickly after insertion from the novelty and excitement of it all.

They slept for a while and he awoke to find her masturbating him. Her fingers were very clever and seemed quickly to find their way to all the most sensitive parts of his penis- with special attention to that area just behind the crown of the head. He opened his eyes wide when he came and saw, after a few seconds, a small, pale, pearl-like drop of semen appear on the end of his dick. A wonder there was any at all.

It was getting to be a trip. His ego went away somewhere, and he was all body, letting it all happen. It was fucking Tarantella, and it was coming- and, judging by the sounds she was making and the wetness in which his penis was sloshing, she was coming, too.

There followed two more blow jobs. Then Tarantella pulled something that looked like an electric razor out of the bed-table drawer. She plugged it into the wall and began to stroke his penis with its vibrating head, pausing every so often to lick and lubricate the areas she was working on.

George closed his eyes and rolled his hips from side to side as he felt yet another orgasm coming on. From a great distance he heard Tarantella Serpentine say, "My greatness lies in the life I can generate in limp pricks."

George's pelvis began to pump up and down. It was really going to be that superorgasm Hemingway described. It began to happen. It was pure electricity. No juice- all energy pouring out like lightning through the magic wand at the center of his being. He wouldn't be surprised to discover that his balls and cock were disintegrating into whirling electrons. He screamed, and behind his tight-clenched eyes, he saw, very clearly, the smiling, face of Mavis.