Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

no need for them to stop and they didn’t. Her hand slid inside his shirt and felt the smooth warmth of his back tenderly.
    “Wait, honey. Not yet. Kiss me some more.”
    “What if Molly should wake up?”
    “She won’t. She’s young. You couldn’t wake that kid up. Don’t worry about things, honey. Just take it easy and slow.”
    All the things Stan had imagined himself saying and doing at such a time did not fit. It was thrilling and dangerous and his heart beat so hard he felt it would choke him.
    “Take all your things off, honey, and hang ’em on the chair, neat.”
    Stan wondered that he didn’t feel in the least ashamed now that this was it. Zeena stripped off her stockings, unhooked her dress and drew it leisurely over her head. Her slip followed.
    At last she lay back, her bent arm under her head, and beckoned him to come to her. “Now then, Stan honey, you can let yourself go.”
    “It’s getting late.”
    “Sure is. You got to get your bath and get back. Folks’ll think Zeena’s gone and seduced you.”
    “They’d be right.”
    “Damned if they wouldn’t.” She raised herself on her elbows and let her hair fall down on each side of his face and kissed him lightly. “Get along with you. Skat, now.”
    “Can’t. You’re holding me pinned down.”
    “Try’n get away.”
    “Can’t. Too heavy.”
    “See’f you can wiggle loose.”
    There was a knock at the door, a gentle, timid tapping. Zeena threw her hair out of her eyes. Stan started but she laid one finger on his lips. She swung off the bed gracefully and pulled Stan up by one hand. Then she handed him his trousers, underwear, and socks and pushed him into the bathroom.
    Behind the bathroom door Stan crouched, his ear to the panel, his heart hammering with alarm. He heard Zeena get her robe out of a bag and take her time about answering the tap. Then the hall door opened. Pete’s voice.
    “Sorry t’wake you, sugar. Only—” His voice sounded thicker. “Only, had little shopping to do. I sorta forgot ’bout getting breakfast.”
    There was the snap of a pocketbook opening. “Here’s a buck, honey. Now make sure it’s breakfast.”
    “Cross my heart, hope die.”
    Stan heard Zeena’s bare feet approach the bathroom. “Stan,” she called, “hurry up in there. I want to get some sleep. Get out of that tub and fall into your pants.” To Pete she said, “The kid’s had a hard night, tearing down and putting up in all that rain. I expect he’s fallen asleep in the tub. Maybe you better not wait for him.”
    The door closed. Stan straightened up. She had never turned a hair, lying to Pete about him being in the bathtub. It comes natural in women, he thought. That’s the way they all do when they have guts enough. That’s the way they would all like to do. He found himself trembling. Quietly he drew a tub of hot water.
    When it was half full he lay in it and closed his eyes. Well, now he knew. This was what all the love-nest murderers killed over and what people got married to get. This was why men left home and why women got themselves dirty reputations. This was the big secret. Now I know. But there’s nothing disappointing about the feeling. It’s okay.
    He let his hands trail in the hot water and splashed little ripples over his chest. He opened his eyes. Drawing his hand out of the steamy warmth he gazed at it a moment and then carefully took from the back of it a hair that gleamed brassy-gold, like a tiny, crinkled wire. Zeena was a natural blonde.
    The weeks went by. The Ackerman-Zorbaugh Monster Shows crawled from town to town, the outline of the sky’s edge around the fair grounds changing but the sea of upturned faces always the same.
    The first season is always the best and the worst for a carny. Stan’s muscles hardened and his fingers developed great surety, his voice greater volume. He put a couple of coin sleights in the act that he would never have had the nerve to try in public before.
    Zeena taught him