Tailpipe 8 (Patreon)

“This is just obscene,” Peggy complained, paging through the script, eyes quickly scanning each description and line of dialogue. “Who’d want to watch tripe like this, much less perform it?”

“It’s theater!” Angie protested. “It’s avant-garde!”

“It’s setting the women’s movement back to just about before suffrage, that’s what it is,” Peggy quipped. “This female character, does she do anything but shag and look pretty? Is that all we’re good for?”

“They can’t all be super-spies,” Angie reminded her.

“And I can’t believe that any self-respecting theater would let this stage be put on, even in New York. Who wrote this trash?”

“I did,” Angie informed her.

Peggy’s eyes became full moons in her surprise. “You did?”

Angie wiggled her hands around in a purely Catalan manner. “It’s an exploration of, uh, you know—things.”

Peggy sniffed suspiciously. “You want me to help you run lines for the play you wrote?”

“Course. That’s why I named that one girl Peggy.”

The script thumped down into Peggy’s lap. “The one who only shags and looks pretty?”

“You do shag and look pretty,” Angie reminded her, batting her eyelashes.

“I’ve saved the city!” Peggy groused.

“It’s a short play, we can’t get into all of that. You think you can do it?”

Peggy huffed a sigh and shook her head before asking: “If I’m Peggy, who are you?”

“Angelo,” Angie trilled with pride.

“You get to be the man?”

“It’s not a privilege. They get drafted.”

“You really expect to play a man?”

“You ever been to a minstrel show? It’s not like any of them are Negros.”

“And you do recall what ‘Angelo’ does to ‘Peggy’?”

“It’s theater, English. It’s fantasy.”

“Oh?” Peggy fanned herself with the script. “Just how much of a fantasy is this?”

Angie colored. “It… it explores themes! Listen, do you wanna do it or not?”

“I don’t.”

“Peggy,” Angie whined. “It’s acting!”

“I’m not an actress!”

Angie gestured effusively to her. “You’re a spy! You dress up in funny outfits and put on an accent…”

“Is ‘Peggy’ supposed to have an accent? Because you know British people don’t talk like that. We’ve been living together for the better part of a year, have you ever heard me ask for a crumpet?”

“It’ll be like training!” Angie argued. “You’ll be keeping your spy skills in shape!”

“I can do that on the shooting range or in the sparring ring.”

Angie pouted. “Can you take me to the shooting range or the sparring ring?”

Peggy scowled in turn. “No,” she admitted. “But for goodness sake, Ang, this is degrading!”

“Not for you, for Peggy! For you, it’s pretend!”

“Pretending to be degraded,” Peggy argued.

“So I guess the next time I bum you, you don’t want to suck the spike clean? Since it’s so ‘degrading’?”

Peggy held the script in front of her mouth. “That’s different,” she said at last.

“And when you’re bent over, holding your cheeks apart so I can see what I’ve done to you, and your clit is literally twitching…”

“Very different.”

“Remember when I took those pictures of it with your little spy-camera? You were in the darkroom for three hours. When I went in there, the whole place smelled like cunt.”

“It had an effect on me, alright!?” Peggy cried.

“I have an effect on you, Peg.” Angie plopped herself down into her lover’s lap, happily resting her head on Peggy’s shoulder. “Geez-louise, English, I see you get knocked around and battered and bruised and I know barely any of those SSR creeps appreciate all you do. I’d never ever want you to feel anything like that when you’re with me. But I also know it does something to you when… I don’t know… when you get to stop being the agent and you’re just the girl. When you’re so much a girl that you don’t even have to decide whether you like something or not, it just happens to you, and you enjoy it because it’s being done to you by someone real cute who you’re crazy about. And I think a really good way to give you that feeling of not having to be an agent is if we pretended that you weren’t… just a housewife who’s gotta spread for Angelo Martinelli and his big dick.”

“Oh, you would give yourself a big todger,” Peggy sighed. “Can he at least go down on ‘Peggy,’ so long as he’s having his way with her?”

“You think Angelo Martinelli gives head?” Angie spat.

“I think Angelo Martinelli had better if he wants this housewife to carry on an affair with him.”

Angie blew a deflating raspberry through her lips. “One day as a writer and already I’m getting notes.”

***

In-character, Peggy tremblingly answered the door. She meekly opened it to ‘Angelo’ and Angie had a hard time controlling her erection—really a strap-on underneath her trousers—at the sight of the lovely woman, even clothed. Every moment she spent with the dildo’s base pressed against her mound reminded her that she could have Peggy’s skirt up over her hips and her cock in, railing away, at any time. It was better than reefer!

Angie had written that Peggy’d spent the torturous hours since their last encounter drinking, both fearing and anticipating the next time they met, and Peggy played that to the hilt. Even her eyes seemed swollen with fear and regret. It made Angie wish that Peggy would try out for Broadway—then again, the Italian girl didn’t really need the competition.

Peggy knew exactly the emotion she was playing. She’d felt freezing, irrational panic plenty of times before—the threat of her body becoming too confused and terrified to do anything—so it was easy enough to call up the symptoms and mime giving into them.

She played two layers of feeling: one, wanting to bolt and run away from the sneering gangster, screaming at the top of her lungs for help. Two, her desire to protect herself and her marriage and her family. The second was enough for her to stifle her first impulse.

“Come in,” she said softly, with a choke in her voice. “Mr. Martinelli… I expected you earlier.”

“Business, Peg,” Angie said with a grin, entering the foyer. “And call me Ang. After all, we’re friends. Real good friends.”

She tossed her hat onto the hall table and rubbed her palms together, ready to get to work.

Laden with misery and guilt, Peggy trembled her way to the living room. She projected unsteadiness, as if the room were swaying with each step. Peggy’d had a little of Howard’s scotch to get into character; the light headiness of it she hoped would act as a cover for her feelings of shame.

She still felt naked under Angie’s lewd gaze, even though that seemed rather the point of the entire exercise. Perhaps it was the black bra and panties that Angie—oh, not Angie, the script—had insisted she wear. It was abundantly clear that Angie would be excited to see the lascivious color on her pale, silky skin.

Peggy took a seat on the low couch, aware that her sculpted legs were exposed to Angie’s salacious gaze. When she looked to Angie’s face and saw her visage reddening, her breath coming fast, and her eyes focused as arrowheads, there seemed no doubt as to Angelo’s intentions.

Peggy would say Angie was a true auteur if she didn’t suspect that her character’s feelings mirrored that of the real woman.

Angie sat down almost on top of Peggy’s exposed thigh. She leered at Peggy’s sumptuous form, lips glistening after she wet them with her tongue.

“Now, Peggy, let’s see if we can’t come to an understanding,” she said, in a broad gangland accent that made Peggy wonder how Angie wasn’t managing to offend herself. It wasn’t as if Martinelli were her married name; the woman was as Italian as spaghetti. “I want something of yours and there’s something I can give you in exchange. All we have to do is agree to an even trade.”

Peggy struggled to remember her lines when so much of her wanted to simply gawk at Angie in drag. The woman made a man’s suit something that could be painted on the nose of a bomber…

“Mr. Martinelli… Angelo,” she said, finding it hard not to catch fire from the spark in Angie’s eyes. “I’m a homemaker—I have a family. We should forget what happened between us before… except for you, I’ve only ever been with my husband, and I’d like it to be that way for the rest of my life, even if it can’t have been for all of my life…”

“You’re kidding!” Angie retorted, her voice sly and mocking. “I put plenty of money into you, ya know that? I don’t throw money away. I’m getting a return on my investment. You’re going to work it off, homemaker.”

Peggy stared wild-eyed at Angie, who barely seemed to be embellishing her lust. Her features were awash in sweat as her eyes devoured Peggy’s full, richly curved body.

“If you want money, I can get you money,” Peggy babbled helplessly. “How much?”

“More than you can afford, babycakes,” Angie spat. “That’s how much you’re worth to me. You and that ripe body of yours. You’re the best hooker I ever had!”

“Oh God!” Peggy moaned, falling back against the couch, her skirt hiking up to reveal more of her creamy, milk-white thighs. “I’m not a hooker, Martinelli… I can’t do that again, I just can’t!”

“Yes you are and yes you can,” Angie insisted. Licking her lips into an ardent shine. “You’ve got a chassis built too sweet for a Sunday driver. You deserve someone who can really put you through your paces and you’ve got him, whether you like it or not!”

Peggy’s mind whirled. As overwritten as Angie’s speeches had seemed on the page, they had a lurid effect on her once she was acting them out. She felt a bracing sense of humiliation, an intoxication from the scotch far out of proportion to the single sniffer she’d drunk.

It was enthralling, playing out this drama without it being real. Like being sucked into a good book, only Angie was sharing it with her. Her own excitement feeding on Peggy’s, mirroring it and magnifying it as they worked together to sell each other this fantasy.

God, Peggy was turned on. She wanted to submit immediately to the overtures of vile, depraved ‘Angelo,’ but Angie had scripted one last desperate act of bravado for ‘Peggy’ to try and free herself from shame.

Peggy threw herself into the role, steeling herself to be courageous in the scintillating knowledge that she would soon give in… it was all in the script. “Get out at once, Angelo! If you don’t, I’m calling the police! You’re a despicable blackmailer and if I breathe a word of this to anyone, you’ll be arrested—lose the license to operate that nasty nightclub of yours, out of a job, probably go to jail…”

Angie brayed a laugh, cutting off Peggy’s threat like an axe chopping wood. “And God’ll strike me dead with a bolt of lightning too, I bet! Don’t be such a damn fool. The cops know what I do! I’ve got them bringing me my bootleg right across state lines. The mayor, the councilmen, the commissioner, they all get cuts. Not only that, but they’re at my nasty nightclub damn near every night. Even if they believed you, you think they’d care? Hell, they’d probably ask to watch! Which isn’t a half-bad idea—I’d put you on stage if I didn’t want you and those gams of yours all to myself!” Angie chuckled again at Peggy’s face, now streaked with tears. She reached out to pinch Peggy’s cheek. “You’re lucky you caught me in a good mood, sweet-cheeks. It always gets me in a good mood when I think of fucking you.”

It was perverse, but Peggy played out the ‘housewife’s’ awareness that she had no other way out of her predicament but submitting to this rapacious advance. It clearly excited Angie and she couldn’t say she wasn’t thrilled too, imagining herself browbeaten and cajoled to the point of surrender. It was sick, but so was everything they’d done together in the eyes of most of the country. Why shouldn’t they do the sick thing that made them tingle the most?