The room filled with female sound, laughs, tumbling words and little squeals. Arthur had an arm around each girl and he brought them to Brian. "Here are my two favorite girls of all time. Rita and Stella Wasinski, meet my friend, Brian O'Malley."

Brian tried to rise but the chair seemed to hold him and he couldn't grab on to an arm for balance since there weren't any; he rocked forward, then back again helplessly. The girls grinned, they all laughed and Brian felt color, or the Scotch, rise to his cheeks.

"Hey, he's a good-looking guy," the older girl said frankly. "You didn't say your friend was such a handsome guy, Arthur. Don't he remind you of somebody, Rita?"

The blond girl, Rita, was the quieter of the two. She glanced at him somewhat shyly, then down at the bowl of food she'd brought with her, then back at him, then to Stella. When she spoke, her voice was a small, childish whisper and her words ended in a tentative laugh.

"Yeah, I think he looks like Tyrone Power. You know?"

Arthur and Stella took the assortment of food into the kitchen and the apartment was filled with rich, tempting fragrances, warm tempting spices.

They were cousins; Arthur had told him that much. And they were his neighbors two flights down; lived with an old aunt. But Arthur hadn't told him that Rita smelled of unnamable flowers and was cream-skinned and soft, with high rounded breasts and a waist that curved in sharply and then out again leading to sharp-boned hips and long, long, long thighs and slender legs. Brian's eyes moved slowly over the girl's body, at first measuring, then discounting, the clothing, evaluating. She wore a tight-fitting bright-blue dress which pulled across her bust and hips and hiked up above her knees as she perched on the edge of the couch. One ankle-strapped shoe dangled in the air as she crossed her legs and ran a finger along a stocking. She pulled her mouth down, touched a pinky to her tongue, then to the stocking.

"I get more runs," she said by way of explanation.

"I bet you do," Brian said coolly.

The girl's eyes held on his for a moment; they were dark brown and warm and startled, as though he had said something unexpected. Her lips were full and shining with bright-red lipstick and her mouth opened slightly. The line where her orangey pancake make-up started and her own natural pale-white skin began showed clearly along the side of her face, as though she'd made up in a room with poor lighting. Her hand moved to the top of her low-cut dress, as though to shield herself from Brian's gaze, or to brush away some invisible lint or dust. She seemed about to say something, then looked up at Arthur, who brought them drinks.

"That food smells great, Rita. Brian, these two are about the best cooks in the world."

Stella was bone-skinny and angular, with high cheekbones and a pointy chin. Her hair, which was dyed black, was piled into a high wavy roll along the top of her head. She had small bright eyes, oddly slanted and wide-set, smeared with heavy mascara over the scanty lashes. She sat on the arm of the stuffed easy chair and wrapped long, thin arms around Arthur's neck; her fingers plunged and raked through his tightly curled hair with an almost maternal gesture.

"It's a cinch to cook for this guy. He don't know from good food, so you just give him something hot and he thinks it's great. Arthur, you're gonna make some girl very, very happy someday. She's gonna think she's marvelous; anything she does, you say it's great."

Stella laughed raucously and Rita laughed softly and Brian wondered how the hell little Arthur Pollack did it. The girls watched his every move, hung on his every word. They also did his laundry, cleaned up his apartment and cooked for him every chance they had.

"Are you a policeman, same as Arthur?" Rita asked quietly.

Brian was surprised that they knew about Arthur. He said, "Yeah, I'm a policeman." He hesitated, rolled the glass between his palms, then, eyes on the blonde, he asked, "How about you, Rita? What do you do?"

The words sounded exactly as he'd intended them: soft and low and insinuating. An accusation and an acknowledgment rather than a question. Her face, beneath the hardness of too much make-up, was wounded. Her hands clenched together tightly and she turned toward Arthur, who gave her support with a smile and a slow, friendly wink. It wasn't at all what Brian had anticipated.

"Rita is a dancer," Arthur said. "She's really good, Brian. Someday, we'll hear big things about Rita. She can tap holes right through this floor." His eyes stayed on the girl as he spoke and she relaxed a bit. "The last time we had a great big party here, we had the radio on and they had a record of Fred Astaire tap dancing." He turned to Brian and laughed. "Isn't that a silly thing, a record of a tap dancer? Anyway, Rita just tapped along with him, without any preparation at all. She's just got a natural sense of rhythm, and I swear to God, Brian, she was right on beat the whole record."

Rita smiled at him gratefully and pressed the tip of one shoe into the rug. "That was before you got the place fixed up so nice, Arthur. Before you got the rugs on the floor and all."

Arthur had released the girl from the lip-biting tension; he did it easily, naturally, without acknowledging that anything wrong or out of line had been said or indicated.

Brian was more than slightly confused. Hell, the girls were hookers, out and out. Anyone could see that. It wasn't possible that Arthur didn't know what they were. Yet he leaned back and smiled and talked and cracked nice little jokes like they were Saturday-night dates.

Stella collected the glasses for refills and asked Arthur to help her chip some ice.

Rita became tense again. She bent over a fingernail and studied it and pulled at the cuticle, then she gazed at the walls and bookshelves and finally she came to Brian. A nervous smile pulled at the corners of her full mouth.

"Arthur's place is real nice, isn't it?"

"Uh-huh. You known Arthur a long time?"

Rita shrugged and her hand went inside the neckline of her dress to adjust a slipped shoulder strap. "Oh, well, you know. Since he moved in. I guess about a year. A little less than a year, I think"

"Uh-huh."

Rita picked at her nails, then said raggedly and without looking at him, "Hey, look, you don't have to give me the business, you know?"

The small breathy laugh was strange. It could mean several things: Don't take me too seriously; don't get mad at what I say. Or, okay, so you're wise to me; well, I'm wise to you too.

An expression of sadness accompanied the laugh. Beneath all the obvious things she was, there was something mysterious and remote and Brian felt a puzzling sense of shame and regret but wasn't sure why he should feel either.

Arthur brought the drinks on a tray and told them, "I went very light on these because Stella tells me she's got some wine to go with dinner and we don't want to be so darned looped that we don't enjoy the food."

The girls arranged the table, a shelf which folded down on hinges from the wall, while Arthur and Brian sipped their drinks.

"We're gonna go down for the wine and glasses, Arthur," Stella told him. "Then everything'll be all set. I got the pans in the oven, so's it'll be ready to serve by the time we come back."

"Okay, honey, make it fast or I'll eat everything before you get back. Man, I'm hungry!"

"Oh, Arthur!"

They heard their chatter and high heels on the metal-tipped steps. Brian managed to extricate himself from the sling chair and he shook his head. "Buddy, I don't get this at all."

"What, Brian, what don't you get?"

Brian lit a cigarette and shook the match out with a wave of his arm. "The whole thing. You told me you'd have a couple of 'really nice girls' over. Now, I mean, this Rita is a real dish but..."

Earnestly, Arthur said, "But they are really nice girls, Brian."

Brian squinted down at his friend, then grinned. "Arthur, you've been on the job as long as I have, kid. You've also been around a helluva lot more than I have. I mean, these girls? Rita, a dancer? Come on!"

"Oh. Oh, that. Well, sure I know what they do. They're pros. Heck, Brian, that's what they have to do in order to eat. But what they are, Brian, see, that's another thing entirely."

"You lost me, Arthur, you just entirely lost me. They're hookers, right? Jesus, I don't know, but where I come from a girl is a good girl or a bad girl, right? A nice girl or not a nice girl. Your little playmates might cook a good dinner, but what the hell, Arthur, they are what they are."

Arthur Pollack walked to the window and adjusted the slats. His face was serious and intense and earnest and he leaned against the window sill. "Look, Brian, I don't want to lecture or anything but it's just that, well, Rita and Stella are friends of mine. I guess we became friends because our backgrounds were similar. It's funny, Brian, but an institution kid can always spot another institution kid a mile away."

He folded his arms over his narrow chest and said quietly, "When I was six years old, my mother died in childbirth and my father, gee, Brian, he was twenty-seven years old. Couple more years and I'll be his age. Well, he was left with my baby sister and me, and one day-we lived in Brooklyn then-one day we were walking along Ocean Parkway. He was pushing the baby carriage and I was holding on." Arthur Pollack raised his hand and studied the palm for a moment. "It's funny, I can still remember how that smooth metal felt, where I hung on to my baby sister's carriage. My father let out a funny sound, like he was surprised by something, and fell down. Dropped dead of a heart attack right on Ocean Parkway."

Brian could see the small six-year-old Arthur and he could see the twenty-seven-year-old dead father in his friend's unhealthy face. "Well, my father had one married brother, that's all the relatives we had in the world. He and his wife took in my baby sister and raised her like their own. And me, well, it was no bargain to take in a six-year-old; they came to see me, out in the orphanage in Rockaway Beach. We had lots of ladies used to come and visit with us and we had fresh air and sunshine and sea breezes."

Arthur spoke without self-pity and with a slight hard edge of amusement over life's condition. He shook his head and continued. "But it was worse for Rita. See, her parents were both alive; they split up and put their six kids in an orphanage. And then took out the oldest; the mother brought home her daughters when each was old enough to go to work. And it just never came Rita's turn. The mother disappeared; the father never showed.

"Finally, her cousin Stella remembered her, and took her in when Rita was fifteen or so. She'd been there from the time she was about a year old, Brian. And, in a way, she's been looking for her father. She started with older men; she's a real pushover. Didn't even take money at first, until Stella wised her up, kind of broke her in. How old do you think Rita is, Bri?"

Brian considered for a moment, then guessed, "Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?"

"She'll be twenty in two months, Brian. And underneath that twenty-seven- or twenty-eight-year-old face, Rita's about four or five years old, afraid, hoping something good is gonna happen." He glanced toward the door, then told Brian, "Look, Bri. I don't have any house rules for my friends but one. I expect my friends to be good to each other, okay? You want to make points with Rita, that's up to you, but you treat her right or forget it, okay? I try to give her and Stella a kind of family up here; that's what they give me. She's been kicked around too much and I won't let anybody hurt her if I can do something about it."

"Jesus, Arthur," Brian said admiringly, "you really are something, buddy."

They heard the girls' voices in the hallway and Brian opened the door. "Hey, let me help you. Wow, this is the biggest bottle of wine I've ever seen. Either the food isn't all that good or you think we've got hollow legs."

Rita licked her mouth uncertainly, then smiled. "We can sip it real slow. Arthur says you drink it slow and eat slow and that way it don't make you dizzy."

"Good," Brian said quietly. "I'm getting dizzy enough just looking at a pretty girl."

The first time, a few weeks later, Brian worked another four-to-twelve tour, instead of heading for the subway, he went to Arthur's flat. He found Rita, curled in a chair, wrapped in a large bathrobe, frowning and squinting over a book. She was neither surprised nor alarmed to see him. It was almost as though she had been expecting him.

"Oh. Hi."

"Hi."

She held up the book and wrinkled her nose. "Arthur says I should read more. I don't know why he likes it so much. Most of these books don't make much sense to me. I always ask him to give me an easy book and he always says I should just take something off the shelf and jump right in." She put the book on the lamp table and her fingers fidgeted with the long belt of her robe. "Arthur's working a midnight."

He had known that; somehow, he'd known that.

She drew herself deeper into the chair. "Gee, it's chilly in here, isn't it?"

"You feel cold?"

"Sort of."

"Want to get warm?"

Rita stared at her hands; she wove the plaid flannel belt in and out, in and out, between her fingers. She nodded without looking at Brian. He glanced around, then went into the kitchen where he took off his off-duty revolver and put it into a high cupboard, behind some bowls.

Rita stood up and dropped her hands to her sides. The robe fell open but she was not naked and exotic as he'd half expected to find her; she was bundled into a large, heavy pair of flannel pajamas, with the sleeves and pants cuffs rolled up. The outfit made her seem very small.

She licked her lips and said, "I guess I look pretty dopey in this outfit."

"You don't look dopey. I just think you'd look better out of it," Brian told her. She raised her face and waited and he helped her to undress, slowly. She was not as heavy as she had been the night of Arthur's dinner. Her flesh was smooth and firm and rounded and her skin was startlingly white in comparison with the orange pancake make-up on her face. Brian stepped back and his eyes moved over her appraisingly, deliberately, carefully, lingeringly.

Rita turned from him and went to the couch-bed. She leaned her face against the dark-red fabric discreetly, not watching him, sensing his shyness while he undressed, but when he approached her she turned toward him and reached out for him.

Her incredible warmth and softness and fragrance and sweet fleshiness overwhelmed him. She moved carefully and languidly against his body, and when he wanted to plunge and rip and devour, she pushed a hand against his chest and whispered, "No. Not yet, Brian. Wait a little. A little longer, Brian, just a little longer."

She brought him along slowly, steadily, agonizingly, until he didn't think he could bear another second, another instant. Every part of his body throbbed and ached and pressed against the nerve endings of his skin. His mouth filled with her flesh, sucked in the sweet-tasting whiteness of her shoulder and arm and breast, then pressed against her mouth ravenously in a way he had never done before. He was inside the center of her very being, drawn in and down, pressure against pressure, and he felt, heard, experienced her deep and shuddering, explosive release, which was his release, and a painful sob came from his throat or her throat, he couldn't tell which and he didn't care.

There were things between them that were unstated, yet they were both sharply, willingly, acutely aware of the necessity for certain guidelines. Rita Wasinski existed for Brian O'Malley, totally and completely, within the boundaries of Arthur Pollack's apartment. She came to life on his arrival and vaporized with his departure.

The things she taught Brian were things she herself was learning. They taught each other, explored each other with fingertips, tongues, eyes, bodies, lips. She taught his body to prolong, defer, hold back, wait, build to a tension that was unbearable and bear that tension a little more, just a little more, so that they rose together, ached, swelled, burst together in a passion of movement and sound.

She taught him to control and use his quick-rising animal instincts and to feel pride in his self-mastery and in the pleasure he afforded her.

She taught Brian not to be shy of his body. He had never stood naked before a woman, yet he learned to take pleasure from the frank scrutiny and her evident delight. At first, he undressed in darkness or turned from her and covered himself afterward, but Rita pulled blankets away, ran her small, warm hands down the length of his body, as he stretched and flexed against the sheets of Arthur's studio couch.

Her touch revived his lust over and over again until he thought of his body as a never-ending explosive, stronger and more powerful each time it rose from emptiness to new fulfillment. Her hands, curious, caressing, appraised parts of him he thought had no connection with his sexual being, yet through her touch, all parts of him related to that central force which throbbed between the two of them: his toes; the arch of his foot; the calf of his leg, hard-muscled and strong; his flat belly; her hands touched lightly, traced, brushed, twisted at black-haired chest, created sensation along his throat, behind his ears.

"Don't move, Brian; don't do anything, Brian. Let me, oh, Brian, let me do for you."

Tongue tip in his eyelids, his eyebrows; tongue tormentingly soft and wet and strong and alive; inside his ear, his brain.

No, Brian, don't move; let me do it this time. Let's try it this way. A million ways, let's try let's try let's try.

He relinquished the sense of himself as someone separate and apart from his own strong physicality with a sense of wonder and regarded everything they did together as something apart from any area of self-judgment. He discovered a deeper dimension than he had thought possible, and rather than satiety and a devouring sense of guilt, which he knew he should feel, Brian O'Malley felt a greater and stronger and more demanding energy and desire.

When he was not with Rita Wasinski, he thought about her, and when he was with her, he merged himself into her without hesitation, without reservation, without caution and generally with a wild sense of exaltation.

She made no demands on him other than the physical demands and those she increased steadily in perfect rhythm with his ability to fulfill. The greater the demand, the greater his power to respond. There was nothing he needed to know about her; her body was perfectly tuned with his own and through her body, he learned of his own uniqueness and potential.

One night, carefully, he asked her, "Rita, how come you bleach your hair so light?"

Her small hand touched a strand of almost whitened hair tentatively and a frown pulled her brows down. "I, well, gee, Brian, I guess because, you know, all the pretty movie stars and all." She laughed softly and shrugged at her own audacity. "I guess I had this big thing about...you won't laugh if I tell you?"

"I won't laugh."

"Well, I used to have this like daydream, you know, about being Ginger Rogers and dancing with Fred Astaire and all, in all those beautiful dresses and with all the music and all. Gee, isn't she lucky, and all of them other movie stars, to have such pretty blond hair?"

"They're not natural blondes, Rita, none of them are."

Her mouth opened in surprise, almost in protest, but if Brian said something, she knew it for fact. Her fingers raked her bleach-stiffened hair thoughtfully. "But how come they always look so nice and natural, Brian?"

"I guess they spend a fortune at the hairdresser's."

"Gee. I buy this stuff in the five-and-dime. You know, peroxide. I guess it looks it, huh?" She giggled, laughed at herself.

Casually, he pointed to his jacket which he had slung over the back of a chair. "Look in my pocket. Go ahead, in the right-hand side. I bought you something."

Rita stood absolutely still, hand in her hair, and finally she shook her head slightly without looking at him. "Uh-uh. I don't want you to buy anything for me, Brian."

He'd expected her to be pleased and eager to see what it was but her face masked over and she hid within herself.

Boundaries between them; pleasures given and received only for the pleasure involved. No gifts. No payments.

Brian stood up abruptly and crossed the room, roughly yanked at his jacket, dug in the pocket for the small package. He reached into the bag and his hand came up with the gift.

"Look, dopey," he said, "real big-deal present."

It was dark-blond Nestle's color rinse: eight capsules for a quarter. Rita emerged again, grinned, stood on her toes, reached for the package which Brian held over her head.

"Now you can't have it."

"Oh, Brian, give me. Oh, Brian, please." She grabbed his arm and brought his hand down and pried the package loose. "Oh, Brian, let's do it now."

His hand cupped her breast and he teased. "Sure, any time, babe, no time like right now. Let's do it now."

Oh, no, not that. Let's do my hair. Oh, please, Brian, please. Look, I could kneel over the tub and give it a fast wash. I only washed it yesterday, so it's really clean, but I'll wash it again and you could do the rinse for me. Oh, please, Brian, please."

"My God, you're a little nut, Rita."