"I'll get you ready," Roy assured her, and used his hands to tip her head back. Then he kissed her lips in slow, unhurried fashion, reminding her that they did have plenty of time. She didn't have to get up to dress and hurry home to Clay. Not yet, anyway.
Tannen trailed blazing kisses across her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her brow, the lobes of both ears. Gwynn parted her lips. His tongue, which made him shudder with its knowledge, its sheer awareness of her body's capacity for response. In short, firm motions, he began to tease the roof of her mouth. Her panties began to moisten.
1
Gwynn Bunyard failed to hear the phone when it rang the first time. Between the hair dryer and the top-forty station on the radio behind her, she couldn't even hear herself think. But the phone's shrill ring penetrated her consciousness at last. She reached up to turn off the dryer. Her long, chestnut-brown hair was almost dry again, anyway.
Wondering who would call her when she was supposed to be at work, she removed the hood, switched off the radio and went to pick up the kitchen extension. "Hello?"
"Missiz Bunyard?" said a husky male voice. "Missiz Clay Bunyard?"
Gwynn's brows rose on her smooth forehead. "Yes, this is she. Who's calling, please?"
"Never mind who I am, Missiz Bunyard," the voice chuckled, an ugly edge creeping in. "It's Clay we're interested in. Or do you want to see your husband's career ruined?"
She caught her breath. Clay was a wide receiver for the New Orleans Seals of the United Football League's Eastern Conference. He would earn twenty-two thousand dollars playing professional football this year, and they needed every penny of it. Neither Clay nor-herself wished to see his career ruined. ""What are you talking about?" Gwynn demanded.
"I'm from the commissioner's office in New York, here to investigate some charges leveled against the franchise. One of the charges has to do with your husband. I want to meet with you somewhere and discuss it. Discreetly, of course. He doesn't have to , know. Can you drive to Tulane Stadium and meet me in the parking lot?"
Gwynn was annoyed and suspicious. She had no intention of driving anywhere, to meet anyone. "No!" she retorted. "If you want to know anything about Clay, you'll have to ask him. I won't tell you. Goodbye." She hung up.
With fists clenched, she returned to the' dryer. Only her heart thudding in her chest betrayed her alarm. She recognized menace when she heard it. For an instant, she considered calling Clay and telling him. Because he'd chide her for dragging him away from practice, she didn't. She wished Clay would come home soon, which wasn't possible. The wall clock read half-past two. Practice usually ended at six o'clock, and the drive back into town from the new, domed stadium took another hour.
Before she could adjust the hood, the phone rang again. Angry and a little frightened, Gwynn hurried to wrench it from the wall. "H-Hello," she faltered, dismayed at her own lack of fortitude.
"I'll expect you in an hour. Leave your parking lights on so I'll recognize you."
"I'm calling the police!"
"I don't think so. The publicity could be unpleasant. If Clay Bunyard is publicly linked to gamblers, his association with professional sports could very well be terminated. For keeps. We wouldn't want that to happen, now would we?"
Gwynn passed a hand across her brow. Gamblers. Publicity. Terminated. None of this made any sense. "What do you want, in God's name? If this is blackmail, why don't you say so! Clay doesn't gamble and never has. You're trying to terrify me, and it won't work." But it was working. It was working beautifully. She happened to be terrified at that very moment. The autumn day outside had turned gray and blustery. There was a cold wind coming off Lake Pontchartrain. The night's low would be in the low forties-unusual for the Deep South. Her caller laughed. There was an easy insolence to the laugh which made it something else: a threat.
"Calm yourself, Missiz Bunyard. I never blackmailed anyone in my life. And I really am from the commissioner's office. What I have to say will be of genuine interest to you. But first we must go where we can be alone. If you aren't at Tulane Stadium within the hour, I'll get my information elsewhere. And I'll share it with the sports editor of the States-Item. Good day, Missiz Bunyard."
The phone clicked dead. Gwynn took the receiver away from her ear and stood rigid for a minute, eyes closed, lips trembling. She told herself that this wasn't happening, not to her. She was the young bride of a promising young professional football player, and no one in the world would want to harm her. But it was happening. And intuition told her she might be harmed if she kept the appointment at Tulane Stadium.
She sat down to try and make sense of it. The caller had known something about her. A great deal, in fact. He'd known that she wasn't at work-she'd called in at eight a.m. with a "sore throat," which she'd probably have now, if she went out into the cold-and he'd gotten her number from either the insurance company she worked for or the telephone company. The number wasn't listed in the New Orleans directory. But why? Why had he selected her, and what did he want? There were other wives in the Seals' player organization, each of them supposedly as vulnerable as herself.
Gwynn realized she knew none of the other wives well enough to call them now, certainly not well enough to confide in them and ask for advice. Even after eight weeks, there was still a lakeful of ice to be broken. She could call the crank calls division of the NOPD, but a call might mean complications. Embarrassing complications. Clay would be furious with her if she got them laughed at, if she panicked without cause. He'd advised her, when they moved into their lakefront apartment on the last day of August, to expect the unexpected. Big-city living, he said, meant a new challenge every day. She would have to learn to cope.
Learn to cope? Gwynn wondered if Clay himself had "Learned to cope." Was he involved in any way with what a team spokesman in a letter to all players had once called "unsavory elements"? She didn't think so. And yet there was the caller's dark insinuation. The insinuation, like a snake for a child, held a dread appeal for her. Gwynn wanted to find out what, if anything, lay behind, it. She would find out, and now.
She bound up her hair and went to look for her car keys.
At a quarter past three-she'd set her watch before leaving the house-the Dasher Clay had given her for a wedding present became her only sanctuary. In a secluded area of Tulane Stadium's parking lot, Gwynn switched off her ignition and switched on the car's parking lights, as she'd been instructed. She waited.
Precisely at three-thirty, a late-model sedan-she thought it was an Electra or possibly a Centurion pulled up behind her and stopped. After a few seconds, a man she'd never seen before got out. He was about forty and stockily built with black hair and smooth-shaven cheeks. He wore an overcoat over a business suit. Gwynn was instantly afraid of him, he wasn't smiling. She began to regret having come.
The man opened the Dasher's door on the passenger side and climbed in before she could even think about working the ignition and driving away. He' closed the door and smiled a tight, self-assured smile.
"Good afternoon," he said, moving thick lips around the words as though he dispensed them only after considering their impact. "I expected to find an attractive young woman, but hardly this." After locking the door, he settled back, still smiling at her.
Gwynn resisted an impulse to shudder. "If you're from the league office, you must have some kind of identification. Please let me see it." Her caller shook his large, jowly head.
"There isn't any identification, I'm sorry to say. And I'm not from the league office, either. But I am connected with football and gambling, in a professional kind of way. Your husband owes my organization five thousand dollars, Missiz Bunyard. I've come to collect."
Stunned and confused, she needed a minute in which to recover. Realization came in a rush. Clay had bet on his own games, and lost. Only a confident rookie with an improving team would do such a thing. He'd been ashamed to tell her. He'd been ashamed to tell anyone. She'd had to find out this way.
Her brain began to try to devise a way out. If they sold the equity on her Dasher, moved to a cheaper apartment and postponed a few luxury purchases, they could just make it. Gwynn passed a hand across her brow. "Three days. Give us three days, and you'll get your money."
"I'm afraid it isn't that simple, lamb chop. Not any more. I don't want the money. It's too late to pay up. Five thousand dollars-Christ, what's that to me? A week's receipts. I don't come crawling on my hands and knees for a stinking five grand. Not when I've waited two weeks like a man. No, I want you. You! Do you understand? Or shall I start all over?"
A re-explanation wasn't necessary. She reached for the Dasher's ignition. "You're crazy. I won't. You'll have to get out." The man on the other side of the shift laughed so hard a button popped off-his overcoat. But when she succeeded in cranking the little car, he stopped laughing. His hand disappeared under the coat. When the hand came out again, it held a gleaming black automatic with a peculiar elongation at the barrel end-a silencer.
"Drive back out into traffic. Do it! And keep your eyes straight ahead."
Gwynn began to shake with fear and apprehension, but she did as she was told, heading the car toward the Vieux Carre. A light rain had begun to fall, approximating in intensity the tears trickling down her cheeks. "P-please," she quavered, when they'd traveled less than four blocks. "Don't do this. Don't."
"Shut up. I don't want to hear it. Take a left at the next comer. Without signals. If you try to use your horn or lights to attract a police car, I'll have no choice but to kill you. I can always run out and lose myself in the crowd, you know."
She had no intention of trying to warn a police car. After waiting for the intersection to clear, she turned, without signals, onto North Rampart. For the next hour, she drove, piloting them across Canal Street and through the city's commercial district. When the tall buildings thinned out to less impressive structures, and motels began to abound on every corner, the man with the gun motioned her toward one.
"In there. Drive around to the rear. To the rear. For your sake, little lady, do' as I tell you. I don't want to use this."
Gwynn, realizing he wouldn't have to leave her to rent a room because he'd already taken one, knew she was trapped. There was no escape. But she made herself steer the Dasher through the entrance-way, braking it in front of a unit he pointed out for her. At his insistence, she even removed the car's keys and tossed them on the floor.
"Stay where you are. I'll get out first." After stepping out and coming around to the driver's side, he opened the car door and grasped her by the arm, half-dragging, half-leading her toward the room-their room-cuffing her once when she briefly resisted.
Gwynn opened her mouth to scream. She meant to scream. But no sound came out. And then it was too late. Much too late. Without once releasing her, he unlocked the door and pushed her inside. Before she could protest, before she could fight him, he followed her through the door, slamming and locking it. She whirled to stare at him, still doubting that this was happening, and to herself. "If you have a shred of decency-"
"I haven't," he declared, and the declaration was no less chilling for its matter-of-factness. Grinning, he took bold inventory of everything she'd been born with, leaving out nothing. "Do you have a name?"
Gwynn went hot and stayed that way. Not because he wanted to know her first name-as a further means of humiliation, no doubt-but because she'd never been so swiftly undressed before, by eyes so hard and ruthless. In spite of herself, in spite of her fear, she began to tingle inside. "Gwynn."
"Well, Gwynn, take it off, like the boys say. Take it all off. I want to see what I'm getting for my five grand."
The look in his eyes, the lust, made her freeze. She didn't feel capable, just yet, of carrying out the command.
"Come on!"
"I-I can't!" she quavered, flinching over the malice in her abductor's voice.
"You mean, won't," he snorted. "If you won't do it, I will." In an ambling kind of stride, he started toward her.
As he laid a hand on one of her breasts, she jerked away and began to undress for him, keeping her lashes lowered so she wouldn't have to see the effect her nudity had on him. When she'd laid all her things on a chair back and turned around to confront him, he'd undressed, too, and stood, legs apart, watching her. His own. excitement Was evident now, a huge amount of it. But it was the eager way he licked his lips rather than his quick erection which dismayed her.
"Nice," he muttered. "Damned nice. Your husband is a fool. Or a boy." Shrugging, as though he really didn't care which, he advanced upon her once more.
Even as she edged backward, to a haven which wasn't there, Gwynn was thinking. What if Clay didn't owe this man money? What if she'd been the victim of a cruel and clever hoax? The possibility made her stop and clutch at her throat. "How do I know--? "
She expected a sneer, and that's what he gave her. "You know. I know. He knows. Let's get on with it." He lunged and caught her off balance, gathering her up in his arms and carrying her to the bed, dumping her on it as though she were a bag of cement. .
Gwynn tried to stifle a shudder, and couldn't. The shiver racked her slender frame. He yanked her across the bed and held her against his body, forcing her to meet his malevolent glare.
"Am I so repulsive?" he snarled. "Am I?"
"N-No," she assured him, and tried to sound convincing. He slapped her across the face, proving she .hadn't succeeded.
"Then act like it! Touch me!"
He rolled into bed beside her and assumed an attitude which would permit it. Gwynn conquered her qualms and dropped a trembling hand to his penis, stroking the swollen shaft a few times. He grunted in satisfaction, if not outright pleasure. Then he thrust a hand between her thighs until he found the lips of her cunt and the little projection between, which he massaged with cunning skill.
She discovered, after a few minutes, that fondling him was no longer quite so distasteful, even if the man himself still was. Gwynn set her teeth, closed her eyes and pretended he was Clay. But the rude way he closed rough hands on her breasts made her open them again. "I-I don't need that," she told him.
He left off with her breasts and moved on top of her, intending, it seemed, to have her without any more delay. "Give me a good target!" he warned, beginning to breathe in noisy bursts. "Else I'll break something." With no further concern for her welfare, he pressed the head of his weapon against her cunt's inner folds.
Gwynn moaned and made herself as available as possible. The strange penis still stretched her as it moved in, evoking a cry of mingled pain and pleasure, the latter real enough, whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not.
"You like it, don't you, baby!" he chortled. "Yeah, you like it. You don't like me, but you like it. I can tell." And then he fell silent, giving out no sound save for a raspy intake and exhalation of breath as he slammed into her again and again.
The room spun for Gwynn. She climaxed so intensely she couldn't remember her own name, or even why she'd been brought there. She felt her body's invader spend himself in one final lunge, then withdraw to clamber over her and land heavily on the floor. Disgust, nausea and a certain amount of self-loathing descended upon her. From afar, as though she were safe on another planet, she heard him give her one final order.
"Lie there until after I've gone. Wait five minutes more before trying to leave. That's all, dumpling."
When she opened her eyes, he was gone. A numbness pervaded her mind and body. She shook it off and rose to throw on her clothes, wanting only to be gone from the place. The motel manager, the police-no one mattered now. She just wanted to be gone. Clay, if she told him, could take whatever action he wished. Murder, even. She wouldn't try to stop him.
The rain ended as she drove slowly toward the lakefront. So did her tears. Gwynn knew she was a tougher woman now than when she'd driven away. As darkness set in, she made a decision which would have sickened her just an hour before: she wouldn't tell Clay. He need never know she'd canceled a debt of his with her own body.
He need never know.
2
Clay Bunyard started in motion from his flanker's position as soon as the ball was snapped. The play was a quarterback option, with the tight end, Gene Connally, as the primary receiver and himself as a safety valve in the event Brad Davis, the Seals' signal-caller, decided not to run with the ball. In practice, a quarterback hardly ever ran with the ball. Davis had a pulled thigh muscle today, making the option no option at all.
The Seals' defense diagnosed the play very well. Connally was picked up by the right cornerback and left safety as soon as he broke into the secondary. The linebackers blitzed and forced and opening over left guard. Davis, a five-year pro from the University of Mississippi, had to scramble to avoid the crush. At the last possible second, he flipped a short pass out to Bunyard, who gathered it in at the forty-six, where he was tackled-the description was much too mild-by the left cornerback, a defensive end and the safety. The gain was eight yards, one of the longest of the afternoon. In recent trades, the Seals had gotten some pretty fair defensive players but few who could move the football. Their record, in spite of Fred Shank's rebuilding program, was 2-4, the worst in the Eastern Conference's Western Division.
Bunyard picked himself up and limped back to the huddle. His left shoulder had gone numb and he was seeing stars. He thought it was still Tuesday, but he wasn't at all sure. He wanted to go to the sidelines, only his pride wouldn't permit it. Anyway, the Seals' coach, Fred Shanks, set a lot of faith on the toughening effects of contact scrimmage. North disliked malingerers.
Davis glared at the two running backs who were supposed to have blocked for him on the last play. Because they hadn't, he'd taken a jarring spill., "Why don't you guys go to the showers?" he complained. "Or better yet, through the gate?"
The backs had no replies. They were rookies, both of them. Davis was the team star with the two-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus and a fan following to prove it. The crowds might boo the team for a lackluster performance but never Davis.
"All right, this one's a draw. I'll fake a hand-off to you, Walters, then give to Hancock. Let's try to look sharp, huh?"
Bunyard lined up in his flanker's position, but this time he didn't try to confuse the defensive man assigned to him. Instead, he stayed around to block. The draw worked, or rather, failed to work, about as expected. Walters was bumped hard but not tackled as he ran through the line. The linebackers waited for Hancock and clubbed him to pieces. The gain was minimal. Hancock got up groggy.
Bunyard had the satisfaction of stopping a defensive end with a clean block. When he gathered himself together, however, his vision was cloudy and his neck hurt. This time he did go to the sidelines. Slowly, so Shanks would know he wasn't faking.
"You okay, son?" the coach inquired, peering inside the helmet.
"Yeah," Bunyard mumbled, supplying the only answer Shanks was interested in. The question was not whether he felt okay, but whether or not he could play Sunday against the Bucks. He slumped down on the bench and watched his replacement jog in. The Seals' offense was only a yard away from a first down, so the "drive" would probably stay alive.
"See Curtis if you're hurt," Shanks advised, and turned his back to confer with Jake Austin, an assistant.
Bunyard heard rain start drumming on the domed roof high overhead. On an outdoor playing field, rain would send them indoors to work out minus pads. A covered practice area gave them no such respite. But since they had four additional days to prepare for the Bucks, Shanks might send them home early.
Home. Home to a hot meal and an equally warm armful named Gwynn. Clay didn't know which he wanted most-the hot meal or the silken thighs beneath his, churning out yet another response to his lovemaking. The hot meal, probably, because without it he wouldn't be the man she expected him to be.
The rain had begun to fall in torrents, running off the plastic panels up above and taxing the capacity of the rain gutters in the parking lot outside. An early twilight had set in which reduced visibility inside the dome to fifty yards. Someone was sent to have the stadium's lights turned on. When everyone's mind had turned to ways and means of reaching a dry car, Shanks used a bullhorn to announce that practice was over.
* * *
After Bunyard had showered and dressed, the . pain in his neck diminished to a dull ache in his head. He decided not to see the team trainer, Larry Curtis. Instead, he retrieved his car from the lot and-hair plastered to his head-pointed the year-old Grand Prix, a bonus for having signed with the Saints out of the University of Arkansas, toward the lakefront ten miles to the northeast.
He glanced at his watch as he found a place in the expressway traffic. Five minutes past five. He'd be home an hour earlier than usual. In fact, if Gwynn was working late on her claim adjuster's job with the Great Southern Life Insurance Company, he'd probably be home before her. He'd greet her in a way she hadn't been greeted in weeks.
After less than a mile, the lights of a bar beckoned. Bunyard ignored them. He passed the bar and another. A third. Then the chill and the pain in his head made him ask himself, With an hour to burn, why not? The alcohol would kill the pain and help him shake the tight feeling in his guts. Bunyard turned the Grand Prix in at the next bar.
* * *
As he touched his lips to a bourbon double, a soft hand dropped on his shoulder. He looked up, startled.
"Why, Clay Bunyard, you're positively dreamy without your helmet!"
Bunyard stared at the girl-she wore an ordinary knit suit and flat heels, so she wasn't a hooker-and couldn't place her. "Have we, uh, met before?" he asked, gazing into wide-set blue eyes underneath long, blonde hair.
"Don't Jou recognize me?" The girl laughed. "I'm Rita, the head cheerleader. Or do you want me to turn a cartwheel across the floor?"
He chuckled. "No, I'll take your word for it. And I do recognize you now. Can I buy you a drink? Just one?"
Rita slid onto the stool beside him, wriggling clean hips until her feet were perched on the railing beside his. "Please. I saw your car outside, but I was coming in, anyway. Make mine a double, too."
Bunyard inhaled the scent she wore and wondered if he'd be arriving home early after all. Rita, in her own exuberant way, was quite an eyeful. She wore an outfit keyed to the Seals' colors: old gold, red and green. He watched her sip the whiskey in tiny swallows, smooth throat contracting. "Mind telling me what you do in real life?"
"In real life? I'm a reservations clerk for Delta Airlines." She smiled. "Your next question? Let me guess. Why do I cavort about in a skimpy outfit on a cold Sunday afternoon for a team that's won only two games and may not win another all season. That one's easy. Because I like it. And because it gives me . . '. " Rita wrinkled her nose. " ... a certain type of notoriety. Know what I mean? Men who might not otherwise see me as a challenge start thinking of me as one."
Bunyard placed his left hand on the bar top so Rita couldn't fail to see his wedding band. As a matter of fairness-common sense, too, since he'd been married little more than a year-he didn't cat around on Gwynn. So no one would be picking anyone up. "I think I know what you mean," he said. "I'm glad for you."
Rita looked strangely at him. "Are you?" She beckoned to the bartender. "My friend will have another one of those."
Bunyard was annoyed, and opened his mouth to refuse the drink. Then he shrugged. He did need another one. His head still hurt. The alcohol's dulling warmth hadn't reached him yet. He drank the second bourbon double and felt much better, to the point where he didn't mind when Rita leaned over and ran her hands through his hair.
"Clay, darling, did that mean ol' Shanks make you practice in the rain? No, of course not. Silly ol' me. I forgot the stadium's covered. But you had to run to your car, didn't you. Know something? My place isn't far from here. We could drop in long enough to towel you off. I wouldn't want the best flanker in pro football to catch cold and miss Sunday's game. "Deed I wouldn't."
"No," he muttered, reddening at the suggestion or perhaps the attractiveness of it.
She pinched his cheek and snuggled near enough for him to feel the imprint of her right breast, or rather, the bra covering it. "No, what?"
"No, you're off base," he snapped, recalling everything he'd heard and read about football groupies.
"You've got the wrong man, baby. I don't play that game."
Rita affected innocent outrage. Her blue eyes sparkled with amusement. With exasperation, too, which she strove to conceal. "Did I say anything about that? You'll stay just long enough to dry those golden locks of yours. Then I'll see you on your way. What could happen, silly boy? We're all grown up, aren't we?"
Bunyard felt his resolve weakening. Also, his hold on the glass. If he didn't go with her, everyone in the bar would soon know. They were the center of attention already. "Okay," he agreed. "But only for a few minutes." He called for the check, paid it, then followed her outside. Total darkness had set in now. No one would notice him or where he was going. He waited for Rita to climb into her car, a little roadster, and sent the Grand Prix in pursuit. He was sober enough to have almost full control of the vehicle, intoxicated enough to have no clear awareness of what he was about to do.
* * *
Bunyard eyed the odd-looking device with alarm which not even alcohol could dispel. "No. I don't want it." He edged farther down the sofa.
Rita laughed and fastened herself to his shoulder so that he couldn't escape. "It's only a hot pressing comb, darling. Millions of women use them. Men, too, if they have hair as long as yours and their coaches make them run in the rain. Now sit still."
He sat, allowing her to fuss over his hair in a way Gwynn never did. While she worked, he wondered where the situation was heading and why it had to head there. Why him? Rita would give herself to him, that much he knew. But she wouldn't throw herself at him. No more, that was, than she'd already done. She had pride, after a fashion. The first move would have to be his, and he wasn't even sure he wanted to make it. In this strange girl's apartment, with two double bourbons chasing one another through his head, he wasn't sure of anything, except that his headache had vanished and he felt great.
Rita put the pressing comb aside and moved so that she-stood directly in front of him. She took his chin in her hands and made him gaze into her eyes. "Where does it hurt most? In the conscience?" .
He shook his head. "You were cruising and I was the one."
Rita's eyes flashed. "I'm not a tart, Clay. You can ask around. Is that what you think of me?"
Bunyard squirmed. His prick began to swell to life, without his having to think about what he might do with it. "I think you're a nice girl. Nice." The words sounded so false, so insincere, his discomfiture deepened. So did the buzzing in his head.
"I'm glad you don't think I'm cheap. I like you, Clay. I like you very much. When I like a man, I want to treat him well. I've been a fan of yours since before the season. Since you caught the pass that set up the game-winning field goal against the Mustangs."
Bunyard had no trouble remembering that particular reception himself. Afterward, Fred Shanks no longer-frowned and rubbed his chin when he looked at him. "It was only an exhibition game. They don't prove a thing. And what you feel for me may just be admiration. It doesn't mean that you, that we..."
"But it doesn't mean we can't," Rita said quickly. She leaned forward, before he could reply, and began kneading the sore flesh around his shoulders, the areas which took the worst beating from his pads when he was tackled from the side. "What is your wife like, Clay? Is she pretty? Do you love her a lot?"
He set his jaw. Gwynn, as far as he was concerned, wouldn't be a fit topic for conversation while he was in another woman's apartment. "I won't say anything against her. But she's a looker. A lot of guys have told me that. And, yes, I love her a lot. I'm not ashamed of it." Bunyard inhaled, at that instant, the clean, fresh-scrubbed woman scent of Rita What-ever-her-name was, and wondered if he did. Did love Gwynn. A beautiful woman was easy to love, but sometimes the love wasn't love at all. But he'd married Gwynn, and that stood for something.
Rita, without warning, jabbed a long, tapered nail into his cheek. "Damn you, Clay Bunyard! I'm here, and you don't even care! What does it take? What do I have to do? Tell me!"
Bunyard jumped, sobered in a hurry. He rubbed his smarting face in mingled shame and anger, feeling suddenly reckless. Other men had conquests, didn't they? Casual affairs with girls who wanted neither marriage nor serious involvement? Why shouldn't he? Slipping his hands around Rita's sup-, pie waist, he locked them and looked up at her. "I warn you. I'm a hard man to start. But once I begin to move, there's no stopping me."
"I don't want to stop you, darling," she insisted, smiling.
"You won't drag me into the papers or call my pad late at night?"
She shook her head. "I promise."
He pulled her down on his lap and kissed her parted mouth. Rita's lips were warm and sweet, with an unmistakable taste of five-year-old bourbon. She returned the kiss with ardor matching his own. Her arms slid around his neck. When he thrust in his tongue, she welcomed the thrusting with her own, wrapping it about his so tightly that he had no choice but to leave it there. They kissed one another to a state of urgent need, of perspiring madness. If he didn't have her soon, he knew he'd go out of his head. The cock between his legs had turned into a-piece of cast-iron pipe, a tent which stretched his slacks' fabric to the bursting point.
She took her mouth away, finally, and shook her breasts at him. "Like?"
"Christ, you know I do." Bunyard almost tore the blouse getting it off. He wasn't a fetishist about boobs; he just liked them as well as the next guy. Maybe more than the next guy. When he unhooked Rita's bra and drew it away, he saw that her knockers were huge. Only now and then did a waist so slim go with boobs so generous. He admired them for a moment before taking one in his hand, rolling the sensitive tip between thumb and forefinger. The nipple, as he'd anticipated, sprang out to make itself more available. After a few minutes, he moved to the other one.
"I like that. Clay, I really like that!" Rita said between clenched teeth.
"Two of us, baby, two of us!" he panted.
She began to squirm around on his lap, and the stimulation nearly made him come in his shorts. To distract himself, he tried to think of Sunday's game with Cleveland, the-in all-likelihood-pitiful contest between a protected Al Olsen and a harried 'Brad Davis. Then he bent his head and proceeded to suckle the breasts Rita offered him. The girl began to moan low in her throat. Her mammaries turned to hard-pointed cones which excited him all the more and gave him more to kiss.
When he judged she'd taken almost as much of this as she could stand, Bunyard stopped and worked down the zipper of her skirt. She had to help him. Between them, laughing like children, they worked the garment down her hips without her having to leave his lap. She wore a half-slip underneath the skirt, however, so he had to release her long enough to allow her to stand. Rita stepped out of the skirt and slip, then stood in front of him clad only in a pair of black briefs. Her face was flushed with the animation that seemed to characterize everything she did.
Without giving himself time to consider the consequences to himself or to his marriage, Bunyard hooked his thumbs in the briefs' waistband and tugged them down long, tanned thighs, exposing a lush growth of downy-soft, pubic hair. The panties fell to her feet. Before he could pick them up, Rita kicked them away.
Lashes lowered, she pirouetted twice for his inspection. "Do you think I have a beautiful body. Clay? A Seals' body?"
"You have a body fit for a seal," he quipped, "if seals go in for that sort of thing." Whether or not she had a Seal's body seemed irrelevant; possessing it was the part that mattered. He leaned forward to grasp his prize and bring her nearer, parting the folds of her cunt to expose the inner lips. While she writhed and twisted, he fingered the tender flesh until the excitement flowed. She implored him to stop, to continue, to do anything he wanted, and for as long as he wished. The way her hips moved made Bunyard's blood start to boil. He hadn't even touched her clitoris, and already ... He stood up to shrug out of his clothes.
Rita lay down on the sofa in an attitude calculated to inflame him. She smiled in satisfaction when she saw him totally nude, totally ready for her. "You have a lot of meat, honey," she remarked. "You won't hurt me with that thing, will you?"
"I may have to," he declared, to frighten her. But she didn't appear frightened. Satisfied, he climbed on the sofa and stooped to stroke her clit a few times. Rita twitched in time with his fingering, finally pushing his hand away.
"I don't need that. I want you inside me. Now!" She gave him a starved look.
Needing no more encouragement, Bunyard placed his legs between hers and knelt. In one lunge, he buried himself inside her, pausing for a moment to hang on to the load. Then, as Rita shuddered beneath him, he began to move, sounding her out in long, even strokes which speeded her excitement without hurrying his own.
"Fuck me, football hero!" she begged, tucking long legs around his waist. "Fuck me until you can't fuck me any more!"
He fucked her until she dug sharp nails into his shoulders and sobbed out a climax. He fucked her until she gurgled another climax which left her more spent, more sated than its predecessor. He fucked her until she came one last time, more intensely, if her single scream meant anything, than on the other occasions. Then he came himself, in four savage bursts which nearly ripped him in half. Afterward, he fell asleep.
3
Gwynn Bunyard started cooking a pot roast as soon as she arrived home, wanting to get her numbed mind on something else even though there was cold meatloaf in the refrigerator, left over from the night before, and sirloin in the freezer. The roast simmered until six-thirty, when she turned it off.
Seven o'clock came. Not so the man she expected. Seven-thirty. Gwynn began to be annoyed, then concerned. At eight, she called the stadium office. No one answered the phone. She went to find the Seals' directory, dialing everyone who might know where Clay was. No one could help her, although Fred Shanks did ask her to call him back if Clay wasn't home by midnight.
"The police, too."
At nine, frantic, she managed to reach Vic Pieper, the Seals' popular and personable equipment manager. "Please, Mister Pieper!" she entreated. "Tell me if you saw Clay leave practice with the others! Did you? And do you remember the time?"
"I was on the sidelines with Clay at four o'clock, Missiz Bunyard. When we heard the rain overhead, the fellows lost their concentration, so Coach Shanks dismissed practice. I'm sure Clay went out with the others. That means he should have left around five p.m. But to be honest, I don't know. I went straight to my car. Got soaked, too. I hope you don't suspect...? "
"I don't know what I suspect!" Gwynn snapped, and hung up. She wished a few minutes later that she hadn't been so rude, but Pieper probably understood. She was worried, and with good cause. The man who'd used her might have decided to collect his money after all, assuming there was a sum of money involved in the day's sordid happening. Clay might be bound and gagged in a car trunk somewhere, or lying in his own blood in a waterfront alley. New Orleans dealt sudden, violent death to quite a few.
To keep from screaming, she put a record on the stereo and sat listening to it, lips compressed. Another hour passed. She turned the record over. The last notes faded and the changer turned itself off again. Gwynn went to the phone and began dialing the downtown station. Then she heard a car door slam outside. A feeling somewhere between gladness and rage came over her. She put the phone down and ran to unlock the door, peering out into the gloom. The car with the slamming door had parked directly behind her Dasher. "Clay! Is that you?" He climbed put so slowly and came toward her with such deliberateness that she was alarmed all over again.
"Yeah, baby, it's me," he said, and his voice in the darkness sounded choked.
Gwynn left the house to reach him, throwing her arms around his neck and trying to press her lips to his. Clay was six-two and she was five-six, so he had to bend his head. The kiss to her seemed cold. Heartbreakingly cold, in view of what she'd endured for him. "Darling, are you all right?" she asked, telling herself she didn't smell another woman's perfume clinging to her husband.
"More or less," he returned, his voice cracking. "I'll let you be the judge."
"Where have you been?" Gwynn demanded. "Didn't you know I'd be worried sick? I even thought you'd been kidnapped or killed!"
"Hush!" he exclaimed, and stopped her lips with his palm. "Just let me get inside. I think I can explain."
"I think you'd better." She led him back inside to the warmth and the light, examining him with anxious eyes before closing the door. He looked all right, just tired, which was normal for a Tuesday practice. But Clay's fatigue tonight seemed to be more than surface deep. And she didn't like the way he avoided her eye. The perfume scent was stronger now. Unmistakable, in fact. "Explanation, please."
He shrugged, making a vague gesture which pleased her even less than the perfume. "The injury isn't serious. I'll probably be able to play Sunday."
"Injury!" Having expected a confession about the gambling debt which .would embarrass and humiliate the both of them, Gwynn expelled a breath. "Clay Bunyard, what are you talking about?" She watched him swallow twice before the words came.
"I took a lick on the head this afternoon. That is, I think it was this afternoon. Anyway, when I left the locker room, I couldn't remember where it was I was supposed to go. My head hurt and I-" He stared at her as though he were seeing her for the first time. "It is Tuesday, the twentieth, isn't it?"
She nodded, struggling to keep the skepticism off her face. "Yes, of course. Are you saying--? "
"I drove until I ran out of gas. Back across the river, fortunately. Then I left the car and walked. I must have walked a couple of miles and then stumbled into a cafe. Luckily for me, an off-duty nurse spotted me, asked me a few questions and figured out what had happened. She gave me an aspirin and massaged my forehead. After an. hour, I felt well enough to come home. We traced my car through the police, and here I am."
Gwynn made herself believe him. The story, after all, was borderline plausible. Athletes in contact sports frequently suffered injuries such as this. And yet..."Where did she take you for this massaging? To a hospital?" From the flush on Clay's face, she divined his answer before he gave it to her.
"To the apartment. But we never got ideas, if that's what you're thinking. We didn't ball one another. Baby, I wouldn't lie to you.".
"What was her name? Did you think to ask?"
He snapped his fingers. "No. What a careless bastard I am. She practically saved my life, and all I did was thank her. I could have gotten her a pass to all our remaining home games."
Gwynn stepped close to peer into his eyes. "And now? How do you feel now?" Clay grinned, or rather, forced his mouth to.
"I feel fine, just hungry as a Cajun. What's for dinner?"
Because she still loved him, she accepted his explanation. Her woman's intuition would make her doubt Clay's story later, but for now she believed. "Pot roast. And while you're eating it, I'm going to call the team physician. I think he should know what happened to you." Clay seemed to start, but she put it down to imagination.
"No. It was nothing. Nothing to be excited about. If you make a fuss, you could knock me out of a starting assignment. You don't want that, do you? Besides, the papers might pick it up. Remember what our attorney told us? The slightest notoriety could make me an ex-Seal. Think of the bread, the life we planned together." He eased nearer and took her in his arms. "Let's not blow it, baby. It's everything we've got."
Gwynn nodded, although she was fighting to hold back the tears. Something was wrong here. Dreadfully wrong. Just what, she wasn't sure. And after her own ordeal, she couldn't bring herself to force the issue. So she accepted Clay's perfunctory kiss and tried to ignore the cloying scent Which still clung to him. "Then come to dinner. I kept it hot for you."
"You would, being you." He squeezed her arm and turned away. "I'm going to wash."
* * *
When he sat down with her to eat, Clay smelled masculine once more. He'd splashed himself with his favorite cologne. Now he smiled at her like the Clay she knew. "Care to tell me about your day?" he asked, loading his plate with biscuits.
Gwynn considered the odds, then confessed that she hadn't gone to work. "I called in with a sore throat," she said. "It wasn't, really. Just a Tuesday funk."
Clay frowned. "Oh? But you did move your car. I had to drive farther up to touch the bumper."
Gwynn stared at her plate and wondered how he could forget his name and address for three hours, yet remember the exact spot her car had been parked when he drove away that morning. "I went to the hairdresser's," she fibbed, patting the home set. "Can you tell?"
He studied her hair for a fleeting second. "Yeah. Sorry I didn't notice. It looks great."
She wanted to throw the bowlful of beef gravy in his face. Only a dread curiosity as to what had really happened made her smile and look pleased. She needed time, time to think, time to check out at least one angle of his story. A woman with a marriage on her hands had to be sure before she acted. Or reacted.
* * *
She took longer than usual over her preparations for bed, wanting to see if he'd wait up for her. But Clay was snoring softly when she turned back the covers of their king-size bed. He lay on his back on the far edge, and even though he snored, his breathing was neither deep nor regular.
Gwynn slid under the covers, yanking them out of his hands and pulling them up to her chin. She was so rough about it that he had to turn Over and gape at her.
"Anything wrong, baby?" he asked with a yawn, and made the yawn a chasm of indifference.
She shook her head, affecting a rueful cheerfulness. "Nothing, darling. I'd love to .go without for another night. If you'll just let me."
Clay rolled near enough to kiss her over the eye. "I'm sorry, hon. I'm just not up to it tonight. If you knew the licks I took today ... Maybe tomorrow night?"
Gwynn reached up and worked the lamp's switch, plunging the bedroom into darkness. In the dark, she could clench both fists without being-seen. "That's a promise?"
"That's a promise." He rolled away and turned his back to her.
When she was sure that he'd gone to sleep, she began to cry. She cried until there were no more tears left to cry, until the frustrations of her day had been washed away. Then she, too, surrendered herself to oblivion.
* * *
The next morning, before going to work but after Clay had left, she dialed the police station and asked for the stolen car division. A desk sergeant referred her to another office on the next floor. After more waiting, she was connected with a captain who asked if he could help her. Gwynn, wanting to hang up now that she was in so far, steeled herself to go through with it. "I'm not sure. That is, I don't have a car that's stolen. Not exactly. I just want to know..."
"I beg your pardon, ma'am?"
"If your division ... recovered a car last evening, a car that had been, well, misplaced, would there be a record of it?"
"Of course, ma'am. We keep records of everything around here. That's why we're so slow. Do you have a description of the car, or possibly the license number and owner's name?"
Gwynn read from the information she'd scrawled on a piece of paper.
"Do you know the approximate time of recovery?"
She had to think. "Nine p.m. or thereabouts. But I don't know where."
"Give me a few minutes. I'll have to put the phone down, but I won't be hanging up."
Gwynn waited five minutes, then ten. She waited until she was in danger of being late for work again. As her fingers crept across the cradle to break the connection-checking up on Clay in this manner was ridiculous, when you got right down to it-the voice from downtown came over the line once more.
"Are you still there, ma'am?"
"Yes! Yes, I'm still here. Have you found something?"
"No, ma'am. There's no record. It hasn't been recovered. Does that help?"
"Yes," Gwynn replied, dying a little inside. She'd never in her life felt so victimized. Clay had deceived her cruelly on the one night when she'd needed him most. She didn't think she could ever forgive him for it. "Thank you. Thank you very much."
4
Clay Bunyard, still in street clothes, found his place in the Seals' conference room and sat down, flipping open his playbook, which he kept locked in the car trunk. For the next three hours, he and the others would analyze plays, plot strategy and in general ready themselves for the next game. Even the defense was expected to understand every Seal offensive line-up, in case an opponent copied it.
Bunyard, sitting between Isaac Hayes, a corner-back out of Prairie View A and M, and Charlie Walters, a running back from Michigan State University, listened as Fred Shanks asked for their attention. The coach looked from face to face as he offered criticism of the previous day's practice, but his glance, to Bunyard, seemed to linger longest on himself. The latter tensed, fearing Gwynn had called the team physician after all, to relay the yarn he'd cooked up. If she had, then he, Clay Bunyard, was in the fire. Or had someone on the team'spotted him as he rolled out of the bar? A minor crisis, that.
Another possibility gave Bunyard pause. If Fred Shanks even dreamed that he'd placed bets-large bets, losing bets-on two games the Seals had felt they could win, he was in trouble. He'd be placed on immediate waivers, if not suspended outright, and chances were, he'd go unclaimed, third-round draft pick or not.
But if Shanks knew about the debt, then so did the league office. The commissioner's eyes and ears, the players liked to joke, were everywhere, including the bedroom. And as far as Bunyard knew, no one in the league office had ever tried to contact him, for any reason. As to the debt itself, well, he hadn't disowned it, he just intended taking his time about paying it. Anyway, the operator who'd sucked him in was hard to nail down. There was still time.
The three hours passed slowly. Everyone in the room was grateful, to see twelve o'clock come. When the skull session broke for lunch, Shanks crooked his finger at Bunyard and beckoned him to the front, making a concession to locker room etiquette by waiting until the room had cleared to say what was on his mind.
"You know our policy on moonlighting, Bunyard. Don't push us."
Bunyard smiled in relief. His heart slowed its pounding. "I wish I knew what you're talking about."
"Your wife couldn't reach you last night, and neither could I," Shanks returned. "You don't have to deny anything. Just don't let me catch you. A suspension means you won't start Sunday's game. Clear?"
"Gwynn called you?" Bunyard felt guilty all over again. He hoped it didn't show.
"Pieper called me. She called him, and you know what an ulcer case he is. I had to cut short a sauna session and calm him down. Have you taken a job your wife doesn't know about?"
Bunyard shook his head. "No job. I had a few beers, forgot about the time and went home late. There was a little more, but you wouldn't be interested,"
Shanks crossed his arms and scowled, planting his feet like a lineman about to absorb a pass rush. "Try me. They weren't beers, they were hard ones. And you got so pickled you had to dry out before you went home. Yes or no."
Bunyard flushed. "No. I haven't hung one on since I signed the contract. You know who the team boozers are, coach. I'm not one of them."
"Then you shacked up with some dame and made a fool of yourself. No, don't tell me. I don't want to hear about it. And I'm surprised at you. I've met Gwynn, you know, and she should be enough woman for you. Maybe more than enough."
Bunyard let his expression show where the conversation was going-straight to nowhere. He even doubled his fist and went about estimating the distance to Shanks' fifty-two-year-old jaw. A no-scratch contract made a man forget Louisiana's stiff assault-and-battery laws.
Shanks glanced at the fist, and smiled. But there was no humor in his eyes. "Don't try it. I'd break your neck and then wipe my hands on your contract. But I admire you for thinking about it. A man who isn't reckless can't play for me. That's all, Bunyard. Go to lunch." t
Bunyard stalked out with his head held high and the hair crawling. But with his pride intact. He and most other players hated the autocratic powers granted an UFL coach, but even he conceded the need for them. Otherwise, discipline would be a whip, and the roster a band of savage, brawling brutes. The fans, safe above the playing field, might love it. The players wouldn't.
After lunch, the team and coaching staff watched game film clips for two hours, concentrating on the past Sunday's loss to Chicago, the Western Conference's Central Division co-leader. The resurging Bruins had dumped the Seals by three touchdowns. Not a man in the projection room was proud of the score, but few could argue that the Seals hadn't matched pads with a bigger line. Brad Davis had completed 16 of 37 passes for 212 yards, mainly in the second half. Bunyard himself had caught five of the passes.one for a touchdown.
He watched himself race into the end zone, fake off one of the better safeties in the business, and gather in the ball, relived the thrill and the satisfaction. As before, congratulatory hands from behind and to either side thumped his shoulders. He wasn't ashamed right now of having wagered on the Atlanta and San Francisco games, only of having placed his bets with the wrong people. The wrong people. Jeez, but a guy had to be careful.
Rita, for instance. If he was smart, or even half-smart, he wouldn't see her again. She knew he had a marriage and a career to protect. Rita was a nice little piece, but she wasn't worth the risk and the run-ins with Shanks. From now on, he'd do his pussy-chasing at home. That way, Gwynn wouldn't get any ideas of her own. He really wanted a stable, permanent relationship, and fooling around wasn't the way to get there.
At three he dressed out with the others for the day's contact work, the least-loved part of a pro footballer's existence. While he ran his patterns, however, Bunyard thought of other things, such as the possibility of a dark blue Electra hardtop waiting for him in the parking lot when he walked out at six. The driver would be large, well-dressed and no one's sweetheart. Their conversation might go as follows:
"You got the money, kid?"
"Now? All of it?"
"You're funny, kid. Real funny. If you didn't make your paycheck here, in front of cameras and writers..."
"Yeah? Finish it."
"I'll give you another week. With that straw in your hair, I guess you got it coming. See you."
He found no Buick Electra, so he drove home whistling.
Gwynn was quiet at dinner, so quiet he began to worry a bit. She'd never been the vivacious sort, anyway-talkative women put him off-even when he'd done something that greatly pleased her. Lately, he'd done very little that pleased her, unless it was to make himself valuable to a team that needed all the help it could get, both on and off the field. "Anything wrong, hon?" he inquired, watching her from across the table.
She let half a minute pass before shaking her head. "No. Well, yes. It must be a virus or something. I just don't feel well."
"Maybe you ought to see our doctor tomorrow," he suggested, although they had an agreement that she wouldn't get pregnant for at least another year. Gwynn seemed to start, pausing in mid-bite. Then she shook her head again.
"It's not that."
Bunyard remembered-guiltily-how he'd pushed her away the night before, and decided he knew what it was. Gwynn happened to have outgrown the dewy-eyed bride stage, probably to their mutual benefit. Now she was a grown woman with a grown woman's needs-and a girl's inability to communicate them"I dig. And I love you very much." He saw a nerve twitch in her cheek, and wondered why an assurance of love would make her react so.
"I love you, too, Clay, only..." Gwynn pushed her unfinished plate aside. "I'm going to bed early. There's pie in the refrigerator, ice cream in the freezer." She got up and left the room.
Perplexed, Bunyard finished his tuna casserole and went after the pie. The ice cream he decided to do without. After watching television until nine-thirty, he went to change into pajamas and slippers. When he crawled into bed, Gwynn's arm was flung across her forehead in an attitude of sleep. But he suspected she wasn't asleep. Gently, he removed her arm and kissed her lips. Gwynn's lips were icy. But she stirred and opened her eyes, blinking up at him. He kissed the eyes, too, before she could close them. "Like to tell me what's bothering you?" he invited. Her expression, in the light of a single bedside lamp. seemed oddly accusing.
"Maybe you should tell me. You haven't been yourself lately, Clay. What is it? Can't you talk about your problems to your own wife? Don't you trust me? What's happened to us?"
"Nothing's happened," he soothed. "And of course I trust you. You I trust." He reached to turn out the light, then realized she might read too much into the gesture. So he left the light on, meeting her gaze without flinching. He remembered, too, how long it had been since they made love with the lights on. Gwynn wore a lacy black negligee which he itched to get under. The gown set off her dark hair and contrasted with her pale, white skin. Bunyard grinned. "Now it's coming back to me. This is what I'm working for." He pounced. She fended him off for a few seconds, but he was much too strong for her.
"Have ... to ... make ... me!" she panted between clenched teeth.
"With pleasure," he chuckled, and raked the gown's straps off her shoulders even as she bucked beneath him. For him it was ell in fun, until she dug needle-sharp nails into the tender skin of his neck. Then he did something he'd never done before: he slapped her smartly across the face. The sharp report shocked him more than the expression on her face.
"Clay!"
Whether she was incredulous, pleased or just sur' prised, he couldn't tell. But she was struggling to put the straps back on her shoulders, which told him a lot. "I don't understand you!" Bunyard stormed, holding her arms by her sides. "One night you're practically falling all over me, the next you won't even give me a decent kiss! What gives?"
"Then kiss me-if you're man enough!" she taunted, offering her lips to him.
He bruised them with his own, forcing her head deep into the pillow. After a few seconds, she relaxed and kissed him back. Lips which three minutes before had been chilled with indifference warmed suddenly to fiery passion, astonishing him with their response. He stopped wondering and concentrated on kissing them, on tonguing their corners and nibbling their surfaces, on drinking the saliva which flowed nectar-like from her mouth to his.
When he drove his tongue past her teeth, she bit him, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to draw blood. Bunyard had to remind himself not to hurt her back. Instead, he stroked the roof of her mouth until she stopped biting and began stroking back, fighting a furious duel of love with him which neither could lose.
Finally, needing to catch his breath, he tore free of her. Glancing down at her breasts, he saw that they were red and swollen. She wasn't faking. He really had rung her bell. Bunyard bowed his head and proceeded to suck like a baby, moving from one tit to the other. Gwynn knotted her hands in his hair and whimpered encouragement. Excited, he used the shaft of his tongue to rake her turgid nipples across the roof of his mouth. He couldn't be sure-a man rarely could-but he thought she came off about then. The convulsing motions were his clue.
More stirred than she usually left him, he paused to roll back the covers. The negligee was up about her-hips, anyway, so he held her up with one arm and rolled the garment the rest of the way, sliding it over her head and tossing it on the headboard. Then he rolled out of bed to shuck away the pajamas and the satin shorts the rest of the team kidded him about. Naked at last, he had to smile at the way Gwynn was watching him. Now she was wide-eyed and rapt with interest. This was how sex had been for them once, before a year of marriage and too much familiarity took the edge off. "How am I doing?" he asked, pretending to be anxious about the size of his erection. She laughed out loud.
"Come nearer and let me feel."
Close behind a stiff prick, he ambled around to her side and let her grasp him with warm fingers. Using both her hands, she twisted lightly in opposing motions. But she made no move to take his manhood into her mouth, or even to kiss it. He was disappointed. Going down on a man, he supposed, wasn't every woman's bag. It certainly wasn't Gwynn's.
While she stretched and teased him, he eased a hand between her thighs. After the mood she'd been in, he didn't want to rush things. But she permitted him easy access to her cunt. He inserted a finger, another and a third, discovering the outer lips to be moist and supple. She quivered when he found her clitoris. Her hands faltered at their task. Encouraged, he went to work on the boatman's shaft with all the skill of his twenty-three years. He made her gasp, he made her swear, he made her beg him to do it.
"Do what?" he asked, leaning over her, wanting to hear the words. "Fuck me!" she entreated. "Fuck me hard!"
He pushed her farther back on the bed and crawled on top of her. Gwynn spread her thighs for him and arched them upward in surrender. But she turned her face away and closed her eyes, as though not wanting to view the actual possession. Bunyard, angered, had no time toconsider the implications. Bracing his knees, he stabbed through her cunt's lips and drove himself deep inside her. Rita or not, he had to stop and think of other things for a few seconds to keep from erupting. When he thought he had the control he needed, he began to move.
If he'd ever fucked her better, he couldn't recall the occasion, unless it was the third night of their honeymoon, when he'd finally gotten a normal hard-on rather than a permanent-and painfulerection. This time he made her implore him to, "Keep it up, keep it up! Don't ever stop doing that for me!", something she hadn't been able to bring herself to do during the honeymoon. He kept it up for almost an hour, wringing at least three climaxes out of a woman who usually came off just once, if at all. He groaned out his own finish while there was still enough of him left to drag out of bed on Thursday.
He went to. shower and eat a sandwich of cold cuts. When he returned, she was fast asleep, still in the same position in which he'd left her. Bunyard was mildly appalled. Never, to his knowledge, had Gwynn been a wanton. Had she become one now? He went to sleep troubled over the possibility.
5
Gwynn Bunyard overslept Thursday morning. The fault, if a finger had to be pointed, was less her own than Clay's. Not in months had he so drained her of tension, left her so sated in mind and spirit. And yet she loved him no more than before. She even thought she loved him less.
When she opened her eyes, sunlight bathed the room. The bed was empty beside her, the apartment silent. Then she realized why the sheets felt so smooth-she wasn't wearing a stitch. The shame lasted for only a second. After her humiliation in the motel room, nothing could ever shame her again. Nothing. She would fight the emotion and win.
She rolled near the electric alarm and compared its time with her wrist watch nearby. A quarter 'til ten. She'd called in sick once already this week, so she couldn't use that again. Nor could she expect anyone to understand if she confessed the truth. Great Southern Life Insurance Company employed her as a claims adjuster, not to sleep late on brilliant autumn mornings.
She found her negligee on the bed's headboard and put it on. Then she got back under the covers and considered her choices. First a hot breakfast. Without eggs or cereal, or at least a cup of coffee, she wasn't of much value to anyone, not even herself.
* * *
Between cups of coffee-black, no sugar-Gwynn brooded over the absurdity of the' situation: her working as an $8,000-a-year claims adjuster, helping process hundreds of death certificates every day, and Clay's job as a $22,000-a-year receiver, masking his pleasure under the guise of "business." Pro football, everyone said, was a business. She wasn't convinced. The unfairness of the arrangement had always infuriated her, right now to the point of desperation.
The phone rang on the nightstand nearby, but she didn't answer it. Before her supervisor at Great Southern could call again, she dialed the company's personnel director, a Gordon LaRose, and told him he could mail her check, that she wouldn't be in again, ever. LaRose didn't seem to understand.
"I beg your pardon, Missiz Bunyard? Did you say you were leaving us?"
"I'm going to have a baby. The doctor told me this morning."
"But you needn't leave so soon. You-"
"Goodbye, Mister LaRose. Don't forget my check." She hung up.
In midafternoon, she went looking for a job. In the course of her looking, she tried every employment agency in town, plus the Louisiana Employment Commission, filling out application forms until her fingers ached. The results weren't encouraging. The positions that were available either paid poorly or called for experience of a sort she didn't have, indeed couldn't have until this one, maddening requirement was waived.
She even bought an afternoon edition of the States-Item and checked the help-wanted columns. Nothing. Nothing, at least, that she was interested in, nothing she could tell Clay about and not be ashamed. But in another section of the paper, her aching eyes fell upon what Gwynn felt was her last chance:
Girl Friday wanted. Must be single and attractive. Experience in typing and dictation desirable but not essential. A good business head a must. This position is a career opportunity with executive possibilities. Curiosity seekers need not apply. Salary open. Call 367-9853, Algiers. Ask for Mr. Tannen.
She wrote the number on a page comer, tore the comer off and went into a phone booth to dial. While the all was going through, she fidgeted, aware that her palms had gone moist. Gwynn argued to herself that she filled most of the requirements, so why not let this Mr. Tannen, whoever he was, think she'd never been married? Why not, indeed.
"Tannen Enterprises Executive Suites. To whom do you wish to speak?"
Gwynn winced. Tannen Enterprises? 'To Mr. Tannen, please."
"Just a moment."
She waited, and wished she hadn't called. But since she had...."Yes?"
The new voice was a pleasant male voice, so she took heart. "Mr. Tannen? I saw your ad, and I ... think I may be the girl you want."
"Oh? What is your name, young lady?"
"Gwynn. Gwynn Bunyard. I'm calling from downtown. Do you want me to--? " She heard Tannen laugh.
"I can't tell very much about you on the phone, can I? I'll be in my office until six o'clock, if you care to drive over. But I warn you, I've already rejected seven applicants today. I'll probably reject you, too.-Come at your own risk."
"I'm coming," Gwynn declared, and broke the connection. She stepped from the phone booth and started back up Bourbon Street toward the parking lot where she'd left her car. Dusk was approaching. As she walked through the canyon of buildings, she remembered to slip her wedding ring off her finger and drop it in her handbag. The place where the ring had been felt curiously naked without it.
* * *
R.E. Tannen locked his well-manicured hands together and appraised the woman in front of him with eyes that seemed to miss nothing. The eyes were brown and set rather deep in his head, accentuating an impression of depth. The rest of Tannen, the visible part, anyway, was vintage executive, from his crisp, shortish hair style to a tailored Hart Schaffner. On his feet, one had to suspect, were a pair of the best English leathers available.
He smiled. "So much for poise and appearance. You pass muster, needless to say. But sc did the others, and none of them lasted. None." Tannen beckoned her nearer. "Tell me why you're here. What was it about my ad that made you check it out? The money?"
Gwynn colored, looking away to conceal it. She didn't think she'd ever seen a more handsome man, a courtlier man, than R. Evans Tannen. He wore no wedding ring, either, which made her wonder. She brought her eyes back to his face, and nodded. "Well, yes, I want to be honest. The money. The salary and the status appealed to me. My old job..." She shrugged.
Tannen nodded, appearing to suppress a smile. "Then you are honest. The others tried to con me with cute talk about 'challenging careers' and 'stimulating surroundings.' What kind of job was your old job, if I may ask?" y She hesitated. "I was a claims adjuster for a life insurance company. I left them this morning. And I wasn't fired. I can give you a number, if you want to check."
"I think I'll let your honesty cover for you on that score. You take dictation, I suppose, and type. How many words a minute?"
"I know Gregg and Speed writing," she replied. "I type ninety-five words a minute, electric. Seventy-five, manual."
"Excellent, excellent." Tannen tipped his chair back and flicked an imaginary speck off his suit front. "You won't be typing a great deal, though. Mostly you'll be on the phone, talking to various clients. Your phone personality seems nice enough. How are you versed in business law? Do you understand the rudiments?"
Gwynn was suddenly glad-that she'd taken both the required business law course and the advanced while in college. "I can almost recite the Uniform Commercial Code by heart,", she admitted, and boldly appended a clincher: "My senior thesis dealt with court decisions relating to corporate prerogatives."
Tannen's eyes gleamed with wry humor. "Careful you don't hurt yourself falling off your senior thesis. All right, so you meet our standards. Our executive standards, if you please. I still haven't told you the two chief requirements for the job. You must know me so well that in my absence you can make the same decisions I would. That's one. In order to meet this one, you must fulfill the last, which is a little more difficult. You'll have to enter into a, well, a love relationship with me. Yes, you heard me right. Now I'd like to hear your reaction."
Gwynn stood up at once, face flaming, realizing she should have known there was a catch. R. Evans Tannen, for all his fine trappings and studied suave-eness, was just another man on the make. His clever come-on might fool many girls, but she was nobody's fool. "My 'reaction,' as you call it, won't make you happy, Mr. Tannen. You've made yourself very clear. Thank you for your time." She picked up her gloves and handbag, turned to leave.
Tannen's handsome face crinkled into a smile.
"You're leaving before we even discuss salary? I'm prepared to offer twenty thousand a year. Good talent is hard to come by, and when I find it, I pay. I suspect that's three times what you were making as a claims adjuster." , "But at least my body was my own!" she retorted. "You don't want a Girl Friday. No, not you. You want a pro. A pro who's always available. I can't fill your order, Mr. Tannen."
Before she could open the door, he sprang up to circle the desk and grasp her by the arm. On his feet, he wasn't as big as she'd expected, just perfectly proportioned. And the shoes were top-grade English leathers. "You seem to be a person of some refinement, Miss Bunyard.-At least, your manner of speech says so. You probably expect more in the way of amenities. Forgive me if I was too crass for your taste."
Crass? Gwynn thought him a master of understatement. "That's not the word for it!" she fumed, struggling to escape. But for all his lack of size, he held her as easily as he would a child. Before she could twist free, he turned her to him and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was as fiery as the expression on his face, an intense, calm look of a man who always got what he wanted. She wrenched' her mouth from his and tried to push him away by placing her palms on his lapels. "Please," she said shakily.
"Please, what?" he inquired, smiling. "It's plain we have nothing to talk about. Please let me go."
Tannen shook his head. "On the contrary, I think we have a great deal to talk about. Have you ever been married, Miss Bunyard?" He leaned close to examine something in her throat, and grinned. "Yes, I can see that you have. Your responses, as they say, have given you away. Your pulse is going wild and your mouth is probably dry. I think you may be interested in my offer after all."
"No!" she whispered, but his hand went to the thick, paneled door and shot the bolt. Gwynn realized she was trapped-for the second time in a week. Lately, her life seemed to be a series of traps. I Tannen's office-actually, a suite of offices on the
Tannen Building's eighth floor-was inaccessible except by elevator and locked stairs. The building had been emptying when she came up. By now...
He picked her up in his arms and carried her to his desk top. As casually as though he'd known her for years, Tannen began to undress her, starting with the coat. "You're going to stay a while with me, aren't you? Then you may as well be comfortable."
Jolted out of her state of inertia, Gwynn began, to fight him, landing ineffectual blows to his head and chest. He shrugged them off faster than she could lay them on. Desperate, she tried to think of a way to inimidate him. "I'm going straight to a lawyer if you don't stop at once! Do you hear? A lawyer!"
Tannen laughed. "I hear you. Chances are. I'll know your lawyer. I can probably pay him more than you're worth to him. Let's be reasonable, shall we?" He made his fingers fly across the buttons of her blouse, freeing the garment in seconds and laying it on top of her coat. Then he pushed her slip straps off her shoulders and started on her bra. The latter delayed him no longer than the blouse and coat. He lifted it off, inspected the two milk-white globes inside, then smiled into her eyes. "I've never seen a finer pair, my dear, and I've seen many pairs. I'm not boasting, understand, just stating a fact."
For her, the fight had long since been lost. She'd lost it when she came through the door, when he glanced up and planted those hypnotic eyes on her. She stopped struggling and raised her chin to his. "Mr. Tannen, I-"
"Roy. Call me Roy."
Roy. Of course. A man with this much flair would like to be called Roy. Gwynn passed a hand across her forehead. "You don't mean to have me this way ... Roy. You aren't serious." But she felt a vein pounding in her neck, and knew she'd hate and despise him if he didn't. This wasn't rape-rude, violent coupling with a stranger. This was a spirited conquest. The new Gwynn welcomed it, although she couldn't let him know it. She couldn't even let herself admit it.
"I do mean to have you this way. Watch." He bent over her breasts and lapped a nipple into his mouth, caressing its rubbery surface between his lips. The nipple, discovering a mind of its own, strained to show appreciation. After a minute, he bestowed similar attention upon its fellow, with identical results.
Gwynn remembered the debt she'd paid for Clay, the debt she'd wiped out with her own pride, and clenched her teeth, determined to enjoy whatever Roy Tannen did to her. She had this coming to her. She felt her thighs grow moist with excitement, and wasn't ashamed. Married, widowed or divorced, Roy certainly knew how to reach a woman. But why did he bother with the charade of a job offer? Was he really in search of a Girl Friday, and was she the one?
He returned to her lips, kissing them from the front, from the corners, every way she'd ever wanted to be kissed. Her eyes, too, and nose, throat and earlobes. The latter he nipped lightly at until she was ready to kneel down for him, to scream her readiness, her eagerness for anything he might have in mind. Then he found her mouth again and slipped his tongue between her lips. She was only too happy to admit it.
While he explored the roof of her mouth in slow, sweeping motions, his hands were busy elsewhere. One supported her back, massaging the-firm flesh below her shoulders. The other he wormed beneath the. waistband of her skirt, searching, searching, gliding on until he reached her panties and the quivering moistness beyond. Then he stopped frenching her.
Gwynn sighed, unable to maintain even a pretext of resistance. "Yes. Yes..."
"Call me Roy, darling," he coaxed, working two fingers inside her vagina and using one to stroke her clitoris. "Say it."
She trembled at the contact, and wasn't able to stop her trembling. "Roy, darling, Roy, darling, Roy, darling. Don't stop, Roy, darling.-Please don't stop."
He resumed tonguing the roof of her mouth, coordinating the action with a slow, deliberate stimulation of the entire clitoral area. A fire began to grow inside her, a fire she'd never experienced with Clay, through no fault of her own. The fire smoldered and grew, bursting finally into full flame.
"Now!" she groaned, tearing her mouth away. "Take me now!"
He transferred her to a big, leather-covered couch. There he finished undressing her and then started on his own elothing. Gwynn watched, fascinated. Roy took off everything: jacket, trousers, shirt, tie; tie clasp, blue satin jockey shorts, socks and shoes. The man he revealed to her was tanned and astonishingly trim.
He smiled at her, waggling an erection which, if it wasn't the largest she'd ever seen, came close. The organ fairly strained to get at her. "Once I felt I wasn't as well-hung as other men," he confessed. "Do you think I'm well-hung, Miss Bunyard?"
Gwynn nodded. She wasn't, at the moment, capable of words. When he came toward her, she closed her eyes, fearing she'd faint from the constriction around her heart, the fever in her brain. But she didn't faint. She was taken so gently, so skillfully, the possibility vanished right away. Without having to be instructed, she arched her back to help him. Inch by delicious inch, he took possession of her, balancing himself between her legs on careful hands and knees.
"Now wrap them around my waist and lock them at the ankle," he ordered, seducing her all over again with that look of his, a smoldering, come-hither look which made her feel weak inside.
She complied, although her body was really no longer her own. As soon as she had, he began to move. Not with haste or urgency, as though someone might interrupt them-no one would--but with art and tenderness, as though he were determined to cherish her whether she wanted it or not. Roy Tannen did more than plumb her depths. He awoke the perimeters of her genital zone in a way no one ever had before, causing her to respond totally and without reserve. When he lunged, she lunged with him. When he twisted, she twisted, too, without having to think about it.
Finally, she was rent by an explosion which racked her from head to toe. She climaxed, literally, with her whole body, and needed a few minutes in which to recover. He gave them to her, and then they went at it again. Her next orgasm was much more intense, with spasms that lasted longer and drained away still more of her stamina. And yet he wasn't finished. Twice more he made her come, before turning into a human geyser, panting out a finish which, by some marvelous feat of control, he stretched into a full minute.
"Terrific!" he praised, betraying a few signs of his exertion. "You were terrific."
Afterward, they lay entwined in a sweaty embrace, loath, both of them, to break the connection. He brushed his lips across her face and eyes, evoking the last of her response. She shuddered and tried to push him away. "This was crazy. I don't know what came over me. Please let me up."
"But it's done," he reminded her. "You've amply proved your qualifications. All of them. Now I want you to stay."
Gwynn realized now what she'd let herself in for. He wanted her to live with him, to go wherever he went. But she couldn't. Not while she was still married to Clay. "I can't. I'm sorry. I fust can't."
"Can't come to work for me?" Tannen stared at her. He appeared to be thinking hard. "All right. I'll do something I don't ordinarily do-I'll compromise with you. For now, you can keep your apartment, your friends, as much of your privacy as you feel you need. But you'll still be mine. Whenever I want you, you'll come. At once. Have we an understanding?"
She wanted to shake her head, knowing the arrangement was madness, a recipe for misery. But she found herself nodding yes.
"Splendid. As of now, consider yourself part of Tannen Enterprises."
6
Clay Bunyard sat midway down the Seals' bench, and suffered. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach-pre-game tension-wouldn't go away, not even after he patted the two white tablets tucked inside an envelope in his left sock. Bennies. One for the first half, one for the second. Other players were probably dosing up, too, as their teammates, not wanting to know for sure, looked the other way. No one wanted to commit perjury in the commissioner's office a year or two from now.
Every coach the Seals had was in front of the bench, talking as fast as his mouth would permit. No one could hear a word. Fifty-five thousand noisy fans were seeing to that. The dome wasn't filled to capacity, however. There were ten thousand or so empty seats on the other side of the playing field, in the Cleveland cheering section. The kick-off was just fifteen minutes away.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the starting line-ups for today's game ... For the Cleveland Bucks, leaders in the Eastern Conference's Central Division..."
The crowd's deafening roar subsided to a distant rumble, like thunder on the horizon. After each name on the Cleveland line-up, a raucous group of fans behind the Seals' bench heckled profanely, reserving their worst language for the Bucks quarterback, Al Olsen, and ace receiver, Dave Grady. Bunyard wondered how much the stadium security people would tolerate before they started booting bodies and refunding tickets.
The heckling stopped when the game announcer began introducing the Seals' offensive starters. Bunyard crammed his helmet onto his head and jogged onto the field for the pre-game warm-up detested. But at least the warm-up settled some of the queasiness in his belly. While he ran simple patterns the Cleveland coaching staff wouldn't take note of, he thought about other matters, particularly Gwynn's new coolness toward him. In the past three nights, she hadn't made even one move toward him. He wasn't concerned, just curious. He was sure she hadn't found someone else. But how had she learned to cope? Sex to Gwynn, he knew, had r ever been an urgent thing. For him, yes. But he had periods when he couldn't get it down, and periods, like now, when the next game was the only thing that mattered.
He saw the trainer, Larry Curtis, beckon to him from the sidelines, and ran off the field to see what Curtis wanted.
"How's the ankle?"
Bunyard jumped up and down on the ankle he'd bruised in Friday practice to show that it was okay now. "Never felt better!" he shouted back.
"Gives you trouble, we tape!" the trainer suggested, and whirled to inspect his roll-about dispensary. Three assistants hovered nearby, one occupied with flexing the stiff knee of a rookie tackle, the club's most recent knee casualty.
"Sure," Bunyard said, and couldn't even hear the reply himself. He loped back out onto the field to complete the warm-up. When the playing surface cleared for the coin toss and the invocation, he went to sit down. Fred Shanks and his staff were conferring behind the benches. When Bunyard saw that Curtis wasn't looking, he popped his first bennie. The inanity of grown men earning their living this way struck him then, but he neither smiled nor shook his head. There was time for neither.
* * *
The Bucks won the toss, which surprised no one who followed the team. They'd won the toss in all their road games. The road games, too, and that was more to the point. Their record was a comfortable 5-I. Sports scribes felt the Seals would help make it 6-I.
Bunyard listened to a rendition of the national anthem, and wished his thigh pads didn't chafe so much.
When the music was done, he prepared for the kickoff.
* * *
The Seals' field-goal and kick-off specialist, Danny Sloan of the University of-Arkansas, lifted a high, spiraling kick that carried to the Bucks' 19, where it was gathered in by Bailey Howell, a triple-year Heisman Trophy winner out of the University of Okalahoma. Howell eluded the Saints' rush, reaching the 27, where he was wrestled to the artificial turf by Rex Hardin, the man who'd held for Sloan.
The Bucks' Al Olsen trotted onto the field, and the crowd shrilled its scorn. Olsen paid them no mind. He huddled his team, set up the first play and stepped behind center Ted Matthews. Matthews snapped the ball, and Olsen handed off to Lou Waters. The free agent with no college experience ran around left end behind exceptional blocking and wasn't dragged down until after he'd crossed the 35.
The next play, was an audible. Olsen crouched behind Matthews, but wasn't able to make himself heard. He stepped back and raised his arms for quiet. The crowd went crazy, and the host team was penalized five yards, giving the Bucks a first-down on the 40. Someone on the Seal bench-Bunyard thought it was Reed Kimbrell-swore.
On the very next play, Olsen lofted a high, floating pass to Gil Stark, and the Southern University product raked it in from over his shoulder on the Seals' 38-yard line. Another first down. Surprising almost everyone in the dome, Olsen thereupon ran an option play, delaying until the last possible moment, then churning straight up the middle himself. The linebackers reacted too late. The gain was six yards to the 32.
"The mother's good," someone muttered on Bun-yard's right.
The latter felt that Cleveland's making the playoffs year after year spoke for itself. Olsen was indeed good, although not perfect. The Bucks' signal-caller could be blindsided, and sometimes was.
On second-and-four, Olsen retreated into a pocket and threw long for Dave Grady, the wide receiver out of Arizona State. Grady was bumped by the Seals' safety, Ray Newcomb, and couldn't hang on. The Bucks' coach, Claude Gifford, came off the sidelines and onto the Held a couple of yards. The official advised him to sit down. No pass interference was called.
With third-and-four, Olsen called another option, faking Carl Crenner into the line and following him with the ball. The Seals' defense smelted the play, but wasn't able to stop it. The gain was so near the 28 that a time-out was called for a measurement. The crowd booed to a man when informed that a first-down had been registered.
On the very next play, Olsen drilled a hard pass to Grady, who evaded the Seals' cornerback, Isaac Hayes, long enough to race to the Seals' 16-yard line. Two tosses into the end zone failed to produce a score, however, and an end sweep by Marvin Miller netted only four yards. But the Bucks kicked a 22-yard field-goal and led 3 to 0.
The Seals' kick-off and punt-return specialist, Reed Kimbrell, took the ensuing kick-off and ran it back to his team's 39-yard line, an eighteen-yard effort. The fans made the dome's foundations quiver. But Brad Davis called an option play which went nowhere. Cleveland linebackers Dennis Tyler and Rick Martin came charging in to nail Davis for a loss of four back at his own 35.
With second-and-fourteen, Davis faded behind good blocking and threw long to Gene Connally, the tight end. But Connally was delayed by defensive end Hamp King and ran his pattern tardily. The ball overshot the intended receiver by three feet. Clay Bunyard, running from his flanker's position, had been the safety valve, but Davis hadn't seen how open he was.
Bunyard jogged back to the huddle and listened as Davis hoarsely outlined the next play: a down-and-out quickie to himself designed to net a first down and nothing more. If this initial drive failed, as in all-likelihood it would, Fred Shanks would call every play from the bench from here on out, using substitute players to relay the calls.
Cleveland's linebackers began stunting before the ball was snapped, necessitating some adjustment on Bunyard's part. He delayed a second before going in motion, to draw in Mike Smith. Then he went outside as fast as his legs would take him, faked to the middle of the field after the linebackers passed, turned outside as soon as Smith committed himself. Davis hurled the ball at Bunyard, who had to scoop it from atop his shoes at the 48. As he straightened, Vernon Stroud, the Bucks' cornerback, 3macked him out of bounds. Bunyard felt his neck twist and most of the sensation leave his hands. The ball spurted loose, but the play had been blown dead, a yard short of the first-down. With Cleveland holding only a 3-0 lead, Shanks didn't want to gamble. Wayne Jennings came in to punt.
With 6:43 left in the quarter, Olsen moved his team from the Cleveland 7 to the New Orleans 37. On third-and-two, he dropped into a pocket to pass long. His feet slipped out from under him. The crowd whooped for nearly a minute, and not even the officials could stop them. The Bucks now faced fourth-and-eleven from the Seal 46. Proving they had some respect for a 2-4 opponent, Jim Elliot was sent in to punt.
* * *
Four minutes into a see-saw second quarter, Bunyard felt the bennie take hold. His eyes had dilated, because now he saw the action on the field much more clearly. He could run faster, although that was probably his imagination. He even fancied he could fly into the end zone if the notion struck him. A few minutes later, he experienced a feeling of giddy exhilaration, a friendly contempt for Fred Shanks and his "game plan."
The feeling seemed justified when Olsen was intercepted at midfield. The Seal cheerleaders turned cartwheels in the end zone and everyone who had lungs used them. Brad Davis and the offense swarmed onto the field. Davis, bringing with him Shanks' own play, wasted no time in putting it into motion. Falling back to the New Orleans 40, he looked deep for Connally, who was covered by both Vernon Stroud and Paul Griffin.
Connolly wasn't the primary receiver, however. Nor was Bunyard, who'd been instructed to make frantic catching motions on the Cleveland 45. Instead, Davis threw to the other wide receiver, Carver Casey, who had lined up as a tight end. The pass was completed and Casey, breaking two tackles, churned to the Bucks' 29, the Seals' deepest penetration of the day. A record for crowd noise was promptly established.
Bunyard whacked Casey on the shoulder pads when the latter returned to the huddle. But he wondered how many bennies the third-year man had popped before kick-off, if any. One bennie meant a superior performance. Two or more meant a superhuman performance, and possibly an injury as well.
North on the bench called for an off-tackle slant, with Charlie Walters the ball carrier. That's what he got. The gain was six yards to the 23. Cleveland asked for a time-out. Bunyard saw his substitute dash in from the sidelines, and knew that he, Clay Bunyard, figured in Shank's scoring strategy. So he reported to the bench to hear the pitch, remembering to keep his eyes lowered so the coach wouldn't notice his pupils. Most UFL mentors never discussed bennies if the subject wasn't brought up.
"Remember the cross-buck we worked on Friday?" Shanks yelled.
Bunyard nodded, to show that he did.
"It doesn't have to set the dome afire, just get the first down! Go!" As though he were a high schooler whose pop was sitting somewhere back of them, taking notes, Shanks pushed him back into the fray.
Bunyard arrived in the huddle just as the Bucks' official time-out expired. He explained the play change and heard Brad Davis say something that wasn't in the play book. Bunyard shrugged and made sure his sub went off the field before the officials asked for the clocks to roll. While Davis gave the play signals, he, Bunyard, watched the ground rather than Hamp King, the man who'd probably cover him, or try to.
The play began with Davis faking a hand-off to Charlie Waters, who plunged into the middle of the line, fooling, no one. Gene Connally, meanwhile, sped deep, as though he were the primary receiver. Carver Casey, the safety valve, ran a short, down-and-out pattern, then blocked Hamp King out of the play. Bunyard, pretending to be a blocking back, abandoned the ploy as soon as the middle opened. He began a cross-buck pattern which ended with Davis's getting the ball to him out near the 19. Bunyard sidestepped an onrushing cornerback and jiggled his way to the Bucks' 12 for a first-down.
Shanks ordered them to test the middle of the Cleveland line, and they complied, earning a ragged "yard on the gritty running of Charlie Walters. New Orleans then called its own time-out. Davis left the field to confer with Shanks personally, jogging back with a determined, if somewhat pained look on his face.
"We throw deep," he announced, frowning at the man to whom he'd throw. The man was Connally.
In the curiously reverent way of home crowds everywhere, the fans around them fell silent, or at least to a comparative silence. The Seals' lined up, the center prepared to snap the ball, and Davis began a long count. The strategy worked. Mike Smith, the Bucks' defensive end, lumbered off-sides and wasn't able to get back in time. The visitors were charged a five-yard penalty, making the down second-and-four. But the play remained the same, even if the circumstances didn't, making, it was hoped, for confusion on the part of Cleveland's defense.
Davis took the snap and stepped back five yards, looking left as though he'd toss to Casey. The latter wasn't especially well-covered, but Cleveland's Ken Claiborne soon saw to that, aided by Vernon Stroud.
Gene Connally, in the midst of slapping shoulder pads and grunting men, ran a zigzag pattern to the goal line, where he was picked up by Steve Nichols. To divert Kay Sullivan, Bunyard ran a shallow pattern through the middle.
While Ed Hancock and Charlie Walters held out Roy Prichard, Davis found Connally in the end zone with a perfect strike. The electronic scoreboard erupted with lights and strange noises, informing everyone under the dome that the Seals had just scored a go-ahead touchdown. The crowd approved. Thunderously.
Trailing 3 to 7 when they'd been favored by seventeen points, the chastened Bucks took the ensuing kick-off and set to work. In seven plays, on the bullish running of Chris Vandemere and the fingertip catches of Dave Grady, they rammed across a touchdown, scoring with I:52 left in the half. New Orleans fans, in a characteristic turnabout, booed their own team.
The Seals weren't able to move the ball once they got it back. With 59 seconds left on the clock, they were obliged to punt. Al Olsen almost widened his team's lead with twelve and fifteen-yard completions to Grady and Wallace Randle, respectively, until a clipping penalty nullified much of the gain. When the half ended, the Bucks had moved to the New Orleans 31 and faced third-and-two.
* * *
In the second half, a defensive battle began. Cleveland moved the ball almost at will, but whenever Gifford's men neared the Seal goal line, something unusual would happen. Once it was a fumble, scooped up by linebacker Barry Nelson and run back to the 37. On another, it was an interception of Olsen's down-and-out pass to Grady by cornerback Isaac Hayes. Near the end of the third period, Olsen, going back to throw on third-and-five, was even dumped for a nine-yard loss on the Cleveland 29.
The Seals, on the other hand, weren't able to mount a serious drive. Their deepest penetration through the third quarter was the Bucks' 36. Sloan attempted a 46-yard field goal which was short and to the left. The crowd, turning boisterous, began to throw apples and oranges onto the playing surface, most of them over-ripe. At one point, officials called a time-out to clean the field and issue a warning.
As the quarter ended, the score remained 10 to 7, Cleveland. Clay Bunyard, getting a brief respite on the bench at the insistence of Fred Shanks, swallowed his second bennie. He was still feeling the first, and the cumulative effects of both, he knew from experience, would soon have him walking on the roof.
Forty-two seconds into the fourth period, the home team's luck folded. Cleveland's Gary Mclnnes broke through ineffective blocking to smear Danny Sloan's punt on the New Orleans 34. The Seal defense wore no smiles when it went on the field. The game rode right here, and even the hot-dog barkers high up in the stands knew it.
To open the drive, Olsen called the play everyone expected: a hand-off to Chris Vandemere for five yards to the 29. But a quick toss over the middle to Dave Grady was batted down at the New Orleans 18 by safety Lou Shaughenessy. On third-and-five, Olsen sent Carl Crenner charging over left guard. The crowd exulted when Crenner was brought up short at the 26, two yards shy of the first down. Cleveland called a time-out to consider its options.
Fred Shanks, usually no sideline pacer, jumped up to make one of himself. He seemed to think the Bucks would go for the first-down, and sent in reserve end Roger Flanagan to replace linebacker Frank Zimmerman. But Claude Gifford apparently felt there was plenty of time left. He ordered his team to try a field goal. The kick was good and the Bucks led 13 to 7, with 13:09 remaining.
The resulting kick-off was fumbled by the Seals' Reed Kimbrell, but picked up and returned to the New Orleans 35. The offense scrambled onto the field. It needn't have bothered. Brad Davis' first pass, a long, wobbling heave to Carver Casey, was picked off by Vernon Stroud on the Bucks' 23. The crowd let its opinion of Davis be known to the length and breadth of south Louisiana.
Bunyard, racing off the field, was furious, too. He saw, if no one else could, how they'd win the game: short, down-and-out passes to Connally, in between off-tackle slants on the part of Charlie Walters and Ed Hancock. Climaxing the drive would be an end-zone pass to either Casey or himself. Any other way, in view of Cleveland's clear supremacy in the line, was lunacy. Yes, the means was clear. How to convince Davis and Shanks, that was the problem.
Precious minutes ticked by. Bunyard wanted to scream at Shanks: Forget the long stuff! We don't have it! Ram the ball down their throats? They outweigh us fifteen pounds a man! Think, man; think! But all he could do was-sit there and stew while his head expanded and his pulse raced.
The Bucks drove to the Seals' 27 and bogged down there, on the strength of Seal linebacker Ron Phillips' desperation tackle of Chris Vandemere after a meager gain. On third-and-five, Olsen, attempting to pass, was trapped for a ten-yard loss. Cleveland attempted a 47-yard field goal which was long enough but off to the right. The Seals took over on their 20.
Time, as the old adage had it, was running short. The stadium clock read 4:31, and moving. Davis, on orders from Shanks, threw out of bounds to stop it. He then laid out Shanks' notion of a game-winning strategy: a complicated series of screen passes and option plays which the bewildered Cleveland defense was supposed to stand and stare open-mouthed at. No one believed the strategy would work, not even Davis.-Certainly not Clay Bunyard.
But he set his teeth and blocked as he was supposed to in order to make the first option work. The gain was six yards to the 26, but now it was third-and-four, with 3:56 remaining. Confounding everyone under the dome, Davis sent Ed Hancock off tackle in quest of the elusive first down. The Bucks chose this moment to turn in their best play of the day, a bone-crunching tackle of Hancock which stopped his advance at the 29. Now the Seals would have to punt.
Bunyard lined up to block, but his heart wasn't in it. The game, as far as he was concerned, had been lost. He seethed inside at the incompetence of Davis, the stupidity of Shanks. When the ball was snapped to Sloan, he listened for the whomp of a leather-covered foot smacking a leather-covered ball. He never heard it. Bunyard looked around and saw that the ball had squirted loose from Sloan's flustered grasp and was rolling around on the ground. Danny picked it up, but now there wasn't time to kick. Mike Smith had Sloan dead in his sights. The rest of the Cleveland defense, including linebacker Rick Martin, was pouring in over right tackle.
Bunyard thought with his feet rather than his head. He sprinted for the nearest sideline, turned and raised both arms. The ball arrived drunkenly, but at least it arrived. Bunyard tucked it under his left armpit and set out for the goal line seventy-five yards away. Someone hit him high, but he shrugged the someone off and gathered speed. Two others tried to trap him between them, and he ran over one. He ran until he saw the goal posts, until the crowd noise made his ears ring and his head throb. When he staggered and fell down, the entire Seal organization-players, coaches and trainers-descended on him. They pounded his shoulders and buttocks to a state of numbness, even carried him off the field.
For interrupting the extra-point attempt, New Orleans was penalized five yards. No one cared. The kick was good, and the Seals led the Eastern Conference's Central Division's best. The crowd felt that a monumental upset had been registered, even if 2:14 remained. The noise wasn't to subside until the parking lot cleared.
On the Bucks' first play from scrimmage, Al Olsen was dumped hard by an aroused New Orleans defense. Olsen limped off the field and didn't return. John Sherman, the ninth-year man from San Diego state, came on to relieve him. Sherman wasn't able to move his team, and Elliot came in to punt. The time remaining, I:27. The clock was stopped at Cleveland's request.
The Seals took the ball and ran wide, sweeping plays that consumed time if not distance. They took too long in the huddle and drew a five-yard penalty. They dawdled after every play and fussed with their shoes and pads. They even managed to complete a 14-yard pass and delay giving the ball to Cleveland until only sixteen seconds remained. Then they punted, driving the visitors back to their twenty-one-yard line and virtually sealing their fate.
On the game's last play, Sherman was intercepted while attempting to throw long to Dave Grady. Bunyard, lying alongside the New Orleans bench, didn't see it. He was suffering from a severe nosebleed.
7
Gwynn Bunyard, sitting high in the stadium's reserved section-her season pass was free-listened to the bedlam erupting around her, and tried to grasp what had happened. Clay, her Clay, had just taken a punter's unsteady pass and weaved his way seventy-five yards for a game-winning touchdown. She supposed she should be thrilled, or at least pleased. But all she could think about was that awful man and his gun. He'd gotten to her because of Clay and his "sport." She didn't think she could ever forgive either of them.
"Please remain in your seats. The game is not over. The visitors are entitled to the same courtesy we would expect in their city. Anyone trying to reach the playing field will be ejected from the dome by security personnel."
Order, or a semblance of it, was finally restored. The home team kicked off to the callers from the north. The Bucks tried frantically to get the touchdown back, but the clock and something called fate were conspiring against them. The game ended the way Clay made it: 14 to 13. The Seals had improved their record to 3-4 and might even surprise their next callers, the Red Bay Panthers, who were coming to town for a nationally televised game in one week to officially open the dome.
The setting sun cast a golden glow over the acres of translucent panels up above as the teams jogged off to their dressing rooms. The crowd of 55,000 or so spilled from the exit ramps in search of half that many cars. Gwynn, her brow wrinkled in thought, filed out with the others. She wanted to get away from Clay for a few days, but couldn't think of a plausible reason. Roy had invited her to go with him to Chicago for an inspection of a brewery he owned there. She'd all but promised to go.
* * *
Clay eased down on the rug and propped his back against her bare legs, rubbing his head against her knee. He loved to watch television this way. "Visit your mother? But didn't you see her at the Los Angeles game? It certainly cost enough to fly her out there."
Gwynn tweaked him on the ear and kept her voice light. "Ingrate. She was your loudest fan. Yes, but that was different. She was our guest, and she didn't stay long. We didn't have time enough to discuss old family secrets. You know, girl talk." She watched Clay's square jaw jutting out from beyond her knee, the narrowed set to his lashes, and held her breath. A half-minute passed. Then he nodded, although in somewhat grudging fashion.
"I guess it's okay. Just sudden. I'll be the toast of the town tomorrow, you know. I'd think you'd want to stay around and help me celebrate. We could take out the laundry or something."
Gwynn, remembering the lie she'd told Roy, experienced momentary panic. If Clay's name were splashed across New Orleans' sports sections, there-might be mention of her, the proud wife. Roy would be furious with her for deceiving him. He might even fire her out of hand, and how would she explain that to Clay-losing two jobs in one week? He thought she'd earned a two-week vacation from Great Southern. She would have to catch an early-morning flight with Roy, and before they returned from Chicago, think of some way to explain the new position. "I'll tell Mother how it happened. She'll be so proud of you. Of both of us."
Clay tipped his head back and smiled up at her. He looked as though he wanted to burrow under her skirt, but wasn't in any hurry about it. Even with the new wall between them, the chill of growing indifference, the possibility wasn't entirely displeasing to her.
"Yeah. Give me a good build-up, baby. But don't overdo it. I still have the old degree, remember. Someday I may even use it. I'm not your average meathead football player, whatever your mother thinks. I got class." He winked.
Gwynn smiled, nudging him with a knee. "One more remark about my mother, hero, and I'll go to bed without asking for your torn jersey. Or anything else you happen to be wearing."
"Ouch. When you punch, kid, you punch low. Press me, and I'll make you sleep in it."
"Maybe you won't have to press me."
Clay had no comeback. He fell silent, and so did she, their usual mode of communication these days. They watched a new program, and then he reached up to lightly stroke her knee. The interest came through but very little else. No fire and no menace.
"What is it we haven't done in four nights?"
The question was delivered with a yawn, and she hated him. Not for the yawn-for being so obtuse. Once he would have overwhelmed her rather than ask. Nowadays, sex to Clay Bunyard seemed to be a chore rather than a pleasure. He wanted to be coaxed and even begged. Only he might as well know one thing: she'd never beg him again. Never. She'd go without first. "I can't imagine."
His head came back again. He scowled up at her. "Can't you?"
Gwynn smiled down into the eyes when she really wanted to scratch them out. "Don't you think you'd better rest, dear? I wouldn't want you to break something after the longest reception of your career. A man should know his limits, I always say."
Clay's head snapped down. He turned around to stare at her. "Christ, baby, what's come over you? A few nights ago, you were all-"
"That was a few nights ago. Tonight I'm not in the mood."
"I'll get you in the mood!" He seized her legs and tried to yank her from the chair.
Gwynn gripped the chair arms and hung on. The two commenced a grim, if somewhat ludicrous tug-of-war which neither could win. He was stronger, but she and the chair, from their greater height, were too much for him. Releasing one of her legs, he darted a hand under her skirt, intending, it appeared, to rip her panties away and enjoy her right there on the rug, with or without her consent.
"Never realized-game took so much out of me!" he puffed.
"Clay, no! Don't you understand? I can't! It's that time of the month!" It wasnt, not by a week and a day, but if she were lucky, he wouldn't remember. Men were notoriously vague about such things. Clay Bunyard was no exception.
"Well, shit, why didn't you say so?" he grumbled, letting go of her legs and turning back around. "Now I'm in a bad way," he complained to the television set. "You got me all worked up and then you told me. If I had any sense, I'd throw you across my knee and take it out of your hide." Clay clawed once at his genitals, as though to ease the congestion there.
She found his actions distracting, and for an instant, she regretted the he. But she couldn't take it back now, not without alienating him further and perhaps provoking a real fight. Instead, she leaned down and trailed her fingers through his hair, intending to mollify him with an offer of relief. "If you want me to, I'll ... you know. Beat you off. I think I remember how you used to like it. Shall I?"
Clay snorted, shaking his head. "I'm surprised as hell. That you remember, I mean. No, baby, I'll tough it out this once. And there's no need to feel guilty. These things happen. We can't have everything our way. That's what Shanks says when we recover a fumble and then give it right back on the next play."
Gwynn wondered if he didn't mean his way. Clay, now that she'd had a year in which to analyze him, could be quite selfish. And quite unaware of it. But most men were, even Roy Tannen. A flaw in the species, she supposed. "I want to. If I made you feel this way, then it's my responsibility to do something about it."
"It's kid stuff," Clay objected, but the disgust had left his voice. He was fast weakening, probably because four days was four days.
"We weren't kids when we tried it," she reminded. They hadn't been. He and she had been college juniors, both twenty years old, and mutual masturbation had been a way station on the way to full intimacy. Their courtship had been a slow one, due mainly to her cloistered background. Not until marriage was a virtual certainty had she permitted full penetration. The fact that he sometimes seem to resent her for it still probably wasn't her imagination.
"No," Clay chuckled, shaking his head. "I guess we weren't."
Gwynn left the chair to sit down beside him, positioning her body at an angle perpendicular to his. She dropped one hand between Clay's muscular thighs and used the other to find his penis. Finding his cock was less of a problem than extracting it. The stiff thing poked so tightly through the fabric of his slacks that she had to struggle to get him out without hanging the sensitive skin. He had to help her, raising to provide a better angle. Finally the phallus popped free and Clay lay back down again.
"He's all yours, baby. Try not to be too soft on him."
Ignoring the feeble excuse for a joke, she took the penile shaft in her left hand and squeezed, causing the erection to become more so in less than a second. Then, with her right, she moved the prepuce back to expose the purplish head. Grasping the shaft firmly in both her hands, pulling away from his torso, she began to masturbate him, simulating the movements of love.
"That's it, baby!" Clay groaned, quivering under her ministrations. "Give me a good one. You haven't forgotten how."
She slowed her motions until the stimulation was enough to keep him excited, but not enough to make him come in her face. If she intended leaving him for three days, Gwynn reasoned, and she did, a proper leave-taking called for beating him off in a manner he'd remember. For five minutes, she applied everything she'd ever learned about "hand jobs." Ten. Her hands began to ache, but she kept it up. Clay began to breathe more heavily, until at last he was panting with every breath.
"I have an idea!" he rasped, raising a clenched fist.
She faltered for a moment, regained the rhythm a second later. "I'm listening." But she didn't like the narrowed way he was looking at her.
"Suck me. Since you're going away, you can afford to give me a little head to tide ol' Clay over. How about it?"
"No." Gwynn realized she put unnecessary emphasis on the no, but never in her twenty-two years had she taken a man's sexual organ into her mouth. She hoped to be able to say as much after the next twenty-two, no matter how hard Clay badgered her, no matter which manuals he quoted.
"Have it your way, baby. It was only a suggestion." Clay's face, showing disappointment which he strove to masked sank back down.
Gwynn, after the resentment and outrage had passed, tried to be dispassionate about the request. After all, he was her husband. Anything which was anatomically possible, and which harmed neither him nor herself, should be permitted to them. He' kissed her belly, even the insides of her thighs when he made love to her, didn't he? Wasn't she obligated to respond in kind? Still, she held off until the tension between them was a physical thing. He was waiting. He wouldn't try to force or intimidate her, but he was waiting.
To prove something to herself, if not to him, she lowered her head and opened her mouth. Clay's penis up close was enormous, a bulging spike of smooth flesh topped by a purplish-blue glans. Gwynn had to close her eyes before allowing the thing to slide past her lips. Then she nearly gagged over the taste and feel, recovering, she hoped, before he could detect it. The taste of him, now that she had time to think about it, was reassuring: warm and a bit salty. Uncertain as to what she should do first, she applied slight suction and heard his sharp intake of breath.
"No, baby. That's not what they mean when they say ... Use your lips. Blow on me while you're doing it. That way it lasts longer. Try it before you make up your mind. I liked muff the first time I tasted it. Honest."
Gwynn grasped the phallus at its base and carried out Clay's instructions to the letter, using her lips rather than her hands to move the prepuce back and forth. Her tongue, she soon discovered, came into involuntary play. After less than a minute, Clay began making choked sounds. His teeth were chattering so fst he could scarcely speak.
"We should ... do this ... more often!" he gritted. "More often."
He tensed, and she realized he was about to ejaculate into her waiting mouth. Curiosity, and perhaps a reservoir of feeling she still had for him made Gwynn keep her lips clamped around his organ's head. The first spasm rocketed past her teeth and down her throat, surprising her with its fire. The substance of life. In reflex, to keep from choking, she swallowed the first and the second draft, continuing to swallow until there was no more left to swallow. The alkaline ejaculate was now in her stomach.
Gwynn took her mouth away and filled her lungs with air. Then-she leaned forward so that she could gaze defiantly into his eyes. "Well?"
"Baby, that was the greatest," he declared, going limp under her. "Maybe because you gave it, and I never thought I'd get that from you. Thanks, if thanks be necessary."
"You're welcome." Gwynn stretched so that she could kiss him on the lips. He kissed her back, but now he seemed drained of energy, a docile, little-boy of a lover who'd give her no more trouble this evening. For the second time, she regretted promising Roy Tannen that she'd fly north with him. But she would cancel everything-the job, the trip, the relationship, everything-if there were a chance, however slim, of salvaging a workable relationship with Clay. All he had to do was confide in her, confess his indiscretion in regard to the wagering incident, and she'd forget she ever heard of Roy.
"CUy, darling..."
His head lolled to one side. He seemed half-asleep, already. "Um?"
"Look at me," she commanded.
He looked, blinking wearily up at her. "Yeah?"
Gwynn tried to choose her words. "The past few days, you haven't, well, you haven't been yourself. Is something bothering you? Something you want to talk to me about? If there is, don't be ashamed. We're human, all of us." Alarm, for an instant, . seemed to flicker in Clay's brown eyes.
"No," he replied, giving her a smile that seemed forced. "Nothing's bothering me. Just the usual tension. Blazes, but it gets worse by the week. I'm not sure I can survive this racket. At first I thought I could. Now I'm not so sure." He grinned. "I may be the world's first twenty-three-year-old with an ulcer and not know it."
Gwynn dropped her head on his shoulder so he wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. He took the gesture as proof she'd been reassured, and cuddled her like a child, stroking her hair with hands large enough to wrap halfway around a foot ball. After a minute, the tears dried and she pulled away from him, dropping her gaze so he wouldn't notice the redness. "I'm going to bed," she said. "I have a flight to catch. You can stay and watch the movie if you like."
"Sure, sweetheart." He rapped her on the thigh as ' she left, then put his "problem" back inside his pants.
She lingered at the door to see if he'd come after her, but Clay wasn't even looking. Already he was absorbed in the television movie. Gwynn, lifting angry shoulders, went to wash the taste of him out of her mouth. Something had died inside her, and inside their marriage as well. She doubted that it could ever be resurrected again. Or that it even mattered.
* * *
When he came to bed two hours later, she pretended to be asleep. As soon as his breathing turned regular, she got up to go, intending to sleep on the living room sofa with only the mice for company. Clay stirred and mumbled something as she tiptoed out of the room, but it wasn't her name.
With a blanket, a pillow and the travel alarm she'd take with her, she stretched out on the sofa and prepared to spend an uncomfortable night, the rest of it, anyway, as far from Clayton Kingston Bunyard as she could get. After what she'd done for him tonight, the concession to pride was a small one, Gwynn acknowledged. But one had to start somewhere.
When she was unable to sleep, she groped for the phone in the darkness and-thankful for a lighted dial-pecked out Roy Tannen's unlisted number. The one scrawled on a back page of her mind because she dared not write it anywhere else while still living with a man who prowled through her correspondence on occasion. The phone rang emptily at Roy's end, however, so she put it down before the buzzing woke Clay. Returning to the sofa, she gave herself up to hours of tossing that ended only when sunlight peeked under the shades and her travel alarm signaled its message of a new day.
Groaning, reaching out to turn the device off before rage made her smash it, she got up to find out how strong she was. When she saw herself in the bathroom mirror, Gwynn didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Makeup she'd forgotten to remove was plastered across her face in a grotesque pattern. She rinsed it off and rinsed away the rest of her illusions with it.
8
Clay Bunyard awoke by degrees, slipping gradually from an unconscious state to a conscious one. He wouldn't have to go to the stadium this morning. It was the first thought that came to mind. This afternoon he and the rest of the team would view the game film, but no one except those on the taxi squad had to dress out. Fred Shanks would be hail-fellow-well-met until Tuesday, when the snarling would resume. After all, they were only 3-4, with the last half of the season yet to come.
Bunyard stared at the empty place beside him in the rumpled bed. Gwynn had risen at six-thirty to catch a Delta flight to West Memphis, Arkansas. He'd been so drugged with fatigue-and something else-that he hadn't even heard her electric alarm. He touched the place where she'd been. The spot was cold, the way her love seemed to be these days. But she had sucked him off, something he hadn't thought he'd ever get from Gwynn, short of putting a gun to her pretty head.
He lay back and smiled. Yes, indeed. Gwynn Caldwell Bunyard, once the most reserved little wife in the eastern United States, had gone down on him. He supposed that next she'd want him to reciprocate. He wasn't sure he would. Some things were manly, some weren't. Muff-diving, in his opinion, wasn't. Nor, on the other hand, was it worth worrying about.
But why this sudden trip to her mother's? Was she trying to punish him for giving so much of his life to sports? If so, she hadn't. Pro football, right now, anyway, was his life. He loved Gwynn and football, too, and he wasn't sure which he loved most. But he did know one thing-few mechanical engineers earned twenty-two thou a year out of college. None were ever treated to new automobiles or five-minute sports interviews that he knew of. None.
The phone jangled on the nightstand next to Gwynn's side of the bed. Making sure none of his bruised muscles ended up on top of or underneath one another, Bunyard reached across the bed to pick it up. She had promised to call as soon as she stepped down off the plane at Memphis International Airport. "Hello?"
"This is Greg Ward of the Times-Picayune. How does it feel to be immortal this morning, Clay?"
"Great," the latter mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Just great." He was both pleased and disappointed to hear Ward's voice when he'd expected Gwynn's.
"Did you honestly think you'd reach the goal when you caught Sloan's pass, Clay?" .
Bunyard considered his reply before answering. To be quite truthful, the bennies in his blood stream bad curtailed rational thought in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter. He'd felt only an exuberant optimism. "No. It was a busted play in every sense of the word. I hoped to take the ball across midfield and get us out of trouble. The goal line, no."
"But you scored, the Seals won and now you'll be asking for a raise, eh?"
Bunyard rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "Not quite. I'm a wide receiver, not a runner, remember. I did very little receiving yesterday."'
"What did your wife think of the feat, Clay? You are married, aren't you?"
"Yes." Bunyard grimaced. "You might say she took it in stride. So much so she left town this morning." He heard Ward laugh.
"Well, she probably knows you better than we do. Okay, Clay, I'll hang up for now. There must be others. Thanks for talking to me."
"Sure. Any time." The phone clicked dead, and Bunyard replaced it on the stand. He studied his watch. Five minutes past nine. If her plane had lifted off at eight, Gwynn should be in West Memphis by now. The airport wasn't far from her mother's house, so he could expect a call within fifteen or twenty minutes, a half-hour at the most. Expect one, but not necessarily get it.
The discipline of habit brought him out of bed and into the kitchen, where he scrambled a couple of eggs and poured some cream over his cereal. This morning seemed more welcome than any of the others, possibly because he'd taken more punishment than he'd realized. There was no major damage, however, and for that he could thank Fred Shanks' conditioning system. That and a lean, six foot-two frame covered by one hundred and ninety pounds of well-conditioned flesh.
The kitchen extension rang while he was cleaning his plate. Thinking about more Greg Wards with more congratulations, Bunyard let it ring. When the caller persisted, he crossed the room to snatch the intrusion off the wall. And wished he hadn't. Some guy whose name he'd never heard, from a television station whose call letters were unfamiliar to him, had a proposition that was:
"What are our chances of having you on our sports show today? Think you can make it?"
Bunyard watched a fly light on a piece of leftover toast, and scowled. He would no more appear on live television and risk saying the wrong thing than he would fuck a fly. "Uh, well, actually, I'm tied up all day. I don't think I can-"
"We'll be happy to send a car for you. And a young lady to drive you. Provided your wife doesn't object, of course. Never meddle in a marriage, that's our policy, hah hah, hah."
"Thanks, but some other time." Bunyard broke the connection before he forgot himself and broke Louisiana's law against telephone obscenities. His coffee was getting cold, so he went through the apartment removing extensions as a means of protecting what privacy he had left.
* * *
As he drove back from viewing the game film, a devil called temptation wriggled through a vent and pranced across the dash. Gwynn was gone and there was nothing to prevent him from dropping in at the same bar where he'd stopped on the preceding Tuesday. If Rita Whatever-her-name-was happened to find him there, why, where was the harm?
He had trouble locating the bar, and had to double back twice, finally recognizing it when darkness set in and neon lights twinkled on. Bunyard parked and went inside. There were no women present at the moment, amateurs or pros, but he climbed on a stool, anyway, and to dispel his former impression, ordered a Scotch and soda. He drank it slowly, keeping one eye on the exit. Half an hour passed. Just as he was about to give it up, Rita walked through the door. Alone. She looked even better than he remembered, although her bar-touring habits were beginning to trouble him.
She spotted him right away, smiled and came toward him. Bunyard ordered a drink for her, carrying both of them to a booth where they'd have privacy. She sat down and waited, face expectant. This time he had taken the initiative. Both of them sensed a change in their relationship.
"I've been thinking about you," he confessed, admiring the way her clean, blonde hair caught the light. Rita smiled back at him in frank, open fashion, making him wonder how many others shared it. The smile, not Rita. The girl laughed.
"And I've been reading about you, darling. Have you seen the afternoon sports' sections? Or the morning? I don't even believe some of the things they're saying about you."
Bunyard shook his head, past being embarrassed by someone who could reach him in other ways. "I don't read a lot. And I never read bullshit if I can help it. Let's talk about you. What are you doing tonight?"
She leaned across the table and took his chin in her hand. "Let's just say I'm available. But only if you have more than an hour for me. I have a little pride, in case you hadn't realized."
"I have all night for you," he declared flushing. "My wife's out of town. Gone, to visit her mother. We can go to my place and stay the night. The lake-front. Interested?"
Rita reached for her drink. "Lead oh, hero. I'm interested."
* * *
Bunyard experienced only a twinge or two of guilt at seating Rita on the sofa where Gwynn usually sat, where he'd once lain with his head in her lap, dreaming about the treasures underneath. He sat down beside her and looked at his watch. "The fact is, I'm expecting a call from my wife in a few minutes or so. For your sake, I'll try to keep it brief. Then we'll broil a couple of steaks and make a real occasion of it."
She smiled. "I can wait. Meat like that a girl can always use."
He threw back his head and enjoyed the only good laugh of a lackluster day. They waited until half-past six, but the only call was a radio station's sports desk wanting a point spread on the game with the Panthers. Bunyard, after glancing at Rita, gave them one: he predicted the Seals would upset the Panthers with a field goal. Then he hung up and went to sit back down, beginning to be concerned over Gwynn's failure to call. She knew he wanted to know if she'd arrived safely. He still cared about her personal safety. He still cared about her. "Maybe we should turn on a radio," he fretted. "If there's been a crash..."
"I'd know about it," Rita assured him. "An airline safety director calls us whenever there's been an accident."
Bunyard grinned with one side of his mouth. "No airline safety director could reach you here, doll. Not without walking over me first. And I don't play dead unless there's a check involved." She leaned to kiss him, but there was no more fire on the kiss than on the steaks defrosting in the kitchen. Gwynn, by not being there, and by failing to call, had somehow managed to come between them, casting a chill over things.
"I don't think you ever play dead, Clay, honey. I saw you yesterday and it really set my teeth on edge, let me tell you."
"Teeth!" He jumped up. "Let's eat before I start drooling on you."
He and Rita used the microwave oven to cook the steaks. They ate them so fast, he figured she wanted a screwing at least as much as he. The dishes had begun to pile up, anyway, so he stacked the latest ones on top and led his guest back to the living room. They sat and watched television until ten o'clock, he on the sofa, she leaning against his shoulder. The phone rang once. It was a wrong number.
At a quarter past ten, as Bunyard grew increasingly on edge, Rita's hand found its way into his lap. He relaxed. The evening-and his self-esteem-had salvaged. He said nothing, just let the hand and her. imagination work their magic. She applied light pressure, then deftly lowered his fly. His prick swelled to life when she found him. Rita sighed and took the swelling out of his shorts. He noticed she had no trouble working him free. Practice? Possibly. Too much practice? Maybe.
"I think you have a beautiful cock, Clay."
Bunyard fidgeted in her hand. "I bet you tell every man that," he scoffed, although he didn't intend to hurt her. His mind was just elsewhere tonight. Rita winced, however, letting go of him as though he'd burned her.
"Please, Clay. I'm not cheap, whatever you might think."
He patted her arm. "I never said you were, babe, I never said you were. When I open my mouth, sometimes I put both feet in. Didn't I bring you home for a steak and the works? Sounds like a lot of respect to me. Some for you, some for me."
"Just be careful when you open that mouth of yours. I have feelings, too."
"Like, if someone drops in? I'll have to introduce you, you know. What do I tell them?"
She smiled. "That I'm a cheerleader, and you're teaching me some new cheers."
"I could take you to a lounge over in Gretna where no one would recognize us," he suggested, ignoring the humor. "I have to warn you, though, I'm no dancer. I'm not even a promising beginner."
Rita snuggled nearer, returning her hand to his prick. "I don't want to be taken anywhere. Really I don't. I just want you. Don't you understand?"
"Yeah." Bunyard sat quietly and enjoyed the feel of a warm female hand fondling and caressing the most sensitive part of his body. His erection became rock-bard and ready, although he was in no danger of losing control. The easy, restrained way she handled him seemed designed merely to stimulate, not to make him come. When he couldn't stand any more without exploding, he pushed her back on the sofa. Closing his mouth on hers, he kissed her wetly. She parted her lips at once to admit his questing tongue. They licked and sucked one another to a state of clawing, moaning desire. Bunyard stopped worrying about the call he was expecting.
Rita's skirt had hiked to her hips. He thrust in a hand and worked it between her thighs, burrowing under the tight edge of her panties. The pussy he found was moist and steaming. She was at least as far along as himself. Encouraged, he applied the point of one finger to her clitoris. She began to quiver in time with his fingering. When he coordinated the action of tongue and digit, she jerked and cried out, experiencing, he suspected, a powerful climax.
Recalling her enthusiastic response to breast stimulation, he stopped long enough to open her blouse and unhook her bra. The succulent globes which spilled out attracted his mouth and teeth. Until his tongue and jaws began to ache with fatigue, he suckled the firm, young boobs. He believed that she climaxed at least once more, but he couldn't be certain.
When delaying another minute meant losing the greatest hard-on he'd had since the exhibition season, he drew away to wrestle off his clothing. He tuned back to find a totally nude Rita smiling an invitation for him. Bunyard needed no further encouragement. He climbed back on the sofa and moved on top of her, spearing her slim, available body. They began to move in hasty concert.
He imagined, when they were near the bursting point, that he heard the phone ringing. Not that it mattered. Shutting out all distracting sounds and thoughts, he gathered himself for a final minute of driving which brought the cum boiling to the head of his tool and an involuntary sob from Rita's parted lips. Then he sent them both over the edge and heard her whoop a finish which made the hair rise on the back of his neck. Gwynn never responded this way. Never. He could make her climax, sure, but only by working at it. Sometimes, it seemed, by having to work too hard.
They lay in a torpor until their blood pressures and respiration rates returned to normal. Then she brought her mouth to his ear and nibbled lightly.
"On a scale of one to ten?"
"About thirty-five," Bunyard quipped, to please her. With very little passion now, he trailed subdued kisses down her face to her neck and throat. The morality of the situation, which hadn't troubled him before, returned to bother him now. But at least, he argued, he hadn't laid Rita in their bed, his and Gwynn's. If they slept in that bed, they'd do just that-sleep. "Care for a drink?"
She nodded. "Please."
He put his' clothes back on and went to the portable bar in the corner to splash bourbon into a couple of glasses. When he brought the two glasses back, Rita had dressed and sat waiting for him. But she looked thoughtful. Questions leaped from her blue eyes. When she accepted the drink, one finger crooked to draw him closer. "What is it?" Bunyard asked, curious.
"Your wife-what does she look like?"
"Tall and well-built. Long brown hair. Dresses better than most when she wants to, but no clothes horse." He smiled ruefully. "In all fairness, she's a knockout and I'm a heel."
"And she took the eight a.m. Delta flight to Memphis? Coach?"
"That's right." Bunyard tensed, puzzled as to where all this was leading. "Don't, for God's sake, tell me you sold her the ticket."
Rita put down her drink and smiled a smile which wasn't a smile at all. "As a matter-of-fact, love, I did. Or rather, the girl out front did. It was my morning to check reservations. But I glanced out about seven-thirty and saw a woman who may have been your wife. There ... was a man with her. They both purchased round-trip tickets to Chicago."
Bunyard put the bourbon glass down very carefully, not wanting to drop it and make his state of mind known. He stared at Rita and struggled to keep his voice normal. "What are you trying to say? Why would Gwynn buy a round-trip ticket to Chicago when her mother lives in West Memphis? If you saw a man with her, then obviously it wasn't Gwynn. Anyway, how do you know he was with her? He had to use the same counter, didn't he?"
Still with a cryptic half-smile on her lips, Rita picked up her drink and placed it to her lips, saying nothing.
Bunyard, for only the second or third time in his life, experienced blind rage, an urge to commit murder. He balled both hands into fists that would have been more than large enough for the purpose. "I asked you a question, didn't I?" he stormed. "Answer me! If you're having a joke at my expense, so help me, I'll."
"I'm not joking, Clay."
He realized, from the tone of flat assurance in her voice and the expression on her face, that she wasn't. His face worked and he couldn't control it. Bunyard stared into the bourbon until he could trust his own voice again. "There's only one way to find put. I'll call West Memphis, and ask. Go take a hot shower or something. Anything. Just don't listen on the extensions."
While she went to do as he ordered, he dialed a number in West Memphis, Arkansas, which Gwynn had given him some months before. He dialed and waited, aware that it was eleven-thirty, almost midnight, and Gwynn's mother, particularly if she were asleep, wouldn't be happy at the interruption. Nor would she be happy at the implication. But he had to know. When she picked up the phone four hundred miles away, he identified himself to Mary O'Bannion and blurted out the question uppermost in his mind. Mary's answer-"No, Clay, she's not here. Why, has she left you? Clay? Clay?"-sent him reeling from the room. He didn't even remember to break the connection.
In a state of mild shock, he stumbled through the apartment to stand outside the shower where Rita was bathing. He could hear her humming inside, something else Gwynn never did. Further comparisons of the two might be made now, for whatever it would prove. Actually, any comparison of the two had now been rendered meaningless.
"Clay? Is my towel ready."
"Yeah, it's ready."
He began to wonder who was cheap and who wasn't, what mattered and what didn't.
9
Gwynn Bunyard watched with conflicting emotions as her escort signed the hotel register Mr. and Mrs. Roy Tannen. Then she looked away, so she wouldn't have to meet the desk clerk's curious stare. But when she remembered her humiliation in faraway New Orleans much of her embarrassment vanished.
"We'll have your bags sent up right away, sir."
Tannen took the promise the way he took her arm-with confidence that he'd have his way. He wore a conventioner's straw hat, and appeared more relaxed than she'd ever seen him. He led her toward one of the Sherman's elevators, advising, from the corner of his mouth, "Stop looking so furtive. People are beginning to notice."
"I can't help it," she confessed in a whisper. "The truth is...."
"You've never done this sort of thing before. A-likely story. Come along with you."
"Go to hell, Mr. Tannen," Gwynn said with calculated sweetness. But she followed him into the elevator. At this point, what choice had she? But Gwynn only wished that she'd been able to reach Clay by phone during the Memphis stopover. The failure might prove to be a costly one, for her and for their marriage.
When the elevator door closed, Roy pushed the button for the seventh floor and then took her in his arms. "We'll spend the afternoon sampling the output," he said. "You can imagine how we'll feel tonight. No, I guess you can't. You've never been north with me before."
"There's something I don't understand," she said, palms on his chest. "Why the Sherman? Why not the La Salle? Or the Congress? I mean, don't you remember any history at all?"
"Why not?" Tannen chuckled. "The way the bastard rode through Dixie, I think it does something for my you-know-what to stay in his hotel."
Gwynn pretended to be puzzled. "Your you-know-what? I don't think I follow you." She followed him, all right. The way he crushed her breasts against his broad chest told her exactly what he was talking about. Where Roy Tannen, age fifty-four, got his potency was an ever-deepening mystery to her. He'd mentioned apricot nectar and a concoction made of peanut butter, chopped nuts and chocolate syrup. She felt there was more.
He attempted, only half in play, to lift her skirt while the car was still in motion. "I can't tell you, but I can show you."
Gwynn wrested herself free of him and retreated to the other side of the car. "No. Non. Nein. Nyet."
"Give me one good reason," he challenged, while the car was passing the fifth floor.
"We're supposed to be married. And how many married couples act this way?"
"Devastating logic," Tannen admitted. "Okay, two good reasons."
"I want to see the Loop. No, I want to have lunch there."
"You're on," Roy agreed, releasing her when the car stopped and the door opened, revealing two hotel security men waiting to descend. "Afternoon, gentlemen. Morning, I should say."
Gwynn smiled in the other direction.
* * *
Lunch was two-inch-thick steaks in a Loop restaurant which didn't bill itself as the world's finest, but might have. Gwynn ate until her sides ached. Even Roy was surprised at the size of their bill. "Know what we could have bought with this when I was growing up?" he grumbled, squinting at the figures. "Two sides of beef and a smokehouse to go with it. But maybe some stock comes with the receipt. I'm thinking of the paper kind."
"I'm thinking of the Sears Tower-the World's Tallest Building."
He leaned across the table. "And me? Are you thinking of me?"
Gwynn gazed into his eyes, at the salt-and-pepper hair, the broad shoulders in their tailored jacket, and decided that she-was thinking of Roy Tannen a great deal. Not to the point of loving him, of course. It was much too soon for that. "Yes. But I'm still thinking of the Sears Tower."
"All right, all right. I'll take you there as soon as we finish our coffee."
* * *
The brewery Roy owned was located in a suburb called Chicago Heights. He and she took a taxi there and were met in the brewery office by a surprised manager who hadn't even known they were coming. The latter, unless his smile masked the suspicion in his heart, accepted Gwynn as advertised: an executive secretary, neither more nor less.
"We came to inspect the new vats, Arthur," Roy told him. "Miss Bunyard here isn't a beer drinker, but maybe we can make one of her."
"We can try," Arthur agreed, and he led them, from the suite.
Armed with a china mug, which she was invited to keep as a memento of her visit, Gwynn followed the men through the entire brewing process, from the receiving department where the hops and malt were graded and processed, to the vats-open tanks so huge a person could drown in them. One man, Arthur related solemnly, had. Take-off taps were plentiful, and so were the occasions to use them. She drank much less than the men, but still arrived back at Arthur's office in a state of near-intoxication.
"Did you like it, my dear?" Tannen inquired, forgetting to keep up the pretense by dropping an arm across her shoulder.
Gwynn staggered under the unexpected burden, nearly losing her mug.
The men laughed. Roy kept her on her feet with an arm around her waist. "We'll be back again to morrow," he told Arthur. "Right now I'll take her to the track to use the ladies' room."
She was only too glad to crawl into a taxi thoroughly ashamed at having nearly made a spectacle of herself. Somewhere between the brewery and the race track, she even lost her mug. Tannen, as he helped her to a window, promised a dozen more just like it.
* * *
Roy lost a substantial amount on the sixth race, having bet on a horse which finished fourth, while she won a modest sum on a long-shot who placed second. "You've just proved something about tippling," he complained, watching her count her winnings. "Only I'm not sure what."
Gwynn, her head cleared by an hour of fresh air and the exhilaration of winning, stood on tip-toe to kiss him on the cheek. If she thought about Clay now, it was only in a detached kind of way, as though he belonged to some buried part of herself which needn't concern either of them any more. "Thank you for bringing me to Chicago. I feel like a little girl again. A naughty little girl."
"I suppose that makes me your father," Tannen winced, glowering at her. "Where does that leave us for tonight? After the bedtime story, I mean?"
"Free," she promised.
The pair drove back into town and spent the remainder of the afternoon touring McCormack Place, Shedd Aquarium and the Chicago Natural History Museum. Twilight found them strolling, arm-inarm, with the students of Loyola University. Then they returned to the Sherman, where he dined her prior to coaxing her onto the dance floor.
While they were swaying cheek-to-cheek, she reached a disturbing conclusion: she was in love with Roy Tannen. Love him she would. Tell him she wouldn't.
* * *
An awkward stiffness came between them when he closed and locked their door. Tannen tried to make it go away with a smile and a quip. "Know where I'd be if you hadn't invited yourself along? In any one of two dozen State Street dives, that's where. Having the time of my life. Or down in the tenderloin district, having a go at that other Chicago. You really know how to spoil a man's fun, cupcake."
"Invited myself?" Gwynn reached for her jacket and started putting it on, until she realized he was trying to provoke her. He liked his women angry, Roy had once confessed. "You can take your three-day trip and fly home with it, for all I care!"
Tannen snatched the jacket out of her hands and laughed. "That's the kind of answer I've come to expect from you. I rather like you for it." He came near and pulled her to him until their middles met. An erection, or the beginning of one, made itself felt through his trousers. He winked. "But I'm not going to fly home with it. Not yet."
"I don't think I'm in the mood," she objected, backing away. Actually, she tingled inside from the very nearness of this man and would have gone down on him at that very instant if he'd asked her to.
"I'll get you ready," Roy assured her. and used his hands to tip her head back. Then be kissed her lips in slow, unhurried fashion, reminding her that they did have plenty of time. She didn't have to get up to dress and hurry home to Clay. Not yet, anyway. Tannen trailed burning kisses across her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her brows, the lobes of both ears. When he returned to her mouth, Gwynn parted her lips for him. His tongue which made her shudder with its knowledge, its sheer awareness of her body's capacity for response. In short, firm motions, he began to tease the roof of her mouth.
In a matter of minutes, she felt herself near a climax, the first time in hr life she could recall such total, undistracted arousal. The points of her breasts, even before he placed his palms over them, swelled to strain at the bra cups holding them. Panties which had been dry a few minutes before were now soaked with the proof of her excitement. And still he continued to french her, and she to strive feebly to get inside his mouth. This, too, surprised her. With Clay, she was usually passive. He led, she followed, like a good wife.
At last she did climax, jerking spasmodically in his arms while he made the sensations last and last. But she found, when the orgasm ended, that she was just as hungry for him as ever. Roy, however, released her and stepped back, smiling, to survey the results of his efforts.
"I think you said something a few minutes ago, about not being in the mood. I wonder if you could tell me what you're like when you are in the mood. Provided it's no trouble."
"If you can tell me what it is you could have found in the 'tenderloin' district!" Gwynn retorted, shivering under his bold inspection.
Roy shrugged. "Excitement. Variety. Something I couldn't see back home, except in the Quarter. But I don't have to tell you about the Quarter, do I? We both flew in on the same plane."
She struck a disdainful attitude-hands on her hips, legs spread wide apart, head flung back. "I don't know anything about what goes on in the Quarter. Or what comes off. I understand that's what makes the men pant. And what turns them into beasts."
Tannen laughed, tugging at the crotch of his tailored slacks. "I get it. All this time, I've been whistling up the wrong sycamore. You're a sheltered, naive girl who's led a straight-and-narrow life. But someone's taught you something. Maybe more than something. And now I suppose I'm responsible for the rest. Very well." He started toward her, stalking his prey like a primitive hunter.
Gwynn backed away until she came up short against the door. With no place to run, she let herself be captured, mauled against his chest, and soundly kissed. Almost brutally kissed. Roy's lips weren't gentle any more. Now they came at her with little tenderness and no mercy. While he kissed her, his hands were working the buttons of her suit top, plucking each one from its hole. "Mmmmmm," he said into her mouth.
Gwynn shuddered as he drew away the top, then easily removed her bra. Roy grasped the nipples of both breasts and proceeded to squeeze the rubbery points to hardness. When they were tight enough for his satisfaction, he lowered his head and lapped in first one, then the other, using his tongue to grind die buds against the roof of his mouth. Standing on tiptoe, she dug her nails into his shoulders and closed her eyes, giving herself up wholly to his attentions in whatever form or fashion they might take.
His hands, meanwhile, began to toy with the zipper on her skirt. He worked the garment down her hips until it fell to the floor. She wore a half-slip which he was obliged to raise before he could reach her panties. Arriving at the latter, his fingers burrowed underneath the elastic until they found what they sought, the lips and folds of her cunt.
"Yes," Gwynn sighed, struggling to make herself more available for him.
Applying a rigid finger to an area just beneath the clitoral prepuce, Roy made the digit and his tongue speak to her soul. She climaxed once more, this time with almost frightening intensity, thrashing in his grasp like some landed game fish. He waited until the tremors had left her body before continuing. Then he carefully removed the rest of her clothing and laid it across a chair back. Picking her up in his arms, he carried her to the bed. "Now?"
"Now!" she begged.
Because he was still fully dressed, Gwynn hardly knew what to expect. She felt dazed and delighted when he grasped her naked legs and pulled her torso to the bed's edge. She'd never been orally stimulated before-the one area of premarital experimentation Clay had never been able to coax her into-but somehow she knew how Roy's mouth would feel: warm and hard, with a suggestion of bristle from half a day's growth of beard. The anticipation proved correct.
Her first, greedy response was to try and get closer to him, working herself into more intimate contact with the devouring mouth and swirling tongue. Undaunted, Roy kept his lips fastened to her cunt, drinking her love dew as though it were nectar, poking his tongue into every nook and cranny within reach. There was an urgency about his actions which hadn't been in evidence before.
Gwynn felt his rough tongue lashing her clitoris, sliding up and down the shaft, and wondered if it were possible to lose one's mind from pleasure. Before she had time to reason it out, the room began to spin for her. In the space of an instant, she turned into a writhing tigress of passion, unable to control her own tossing. With the 'lan she'd come to expect of him, Roy stayed where he was until she ceased to thrash, until there were no more ecstasy signals being transmitted to her brain. Then he raised and stood gazing down at her.
"Are you ... finished?" she whispered, because now there was a look of purpose about him, almost sinister in its impact.
He shook his head and began removing his clothes. "As a matter-of-fact, no. I've only just begun."
Gwynn didn't know if she'd heard right, but she prayed that she had.
10
Clay Bunyard ran his patterns Tuesday afternoon, but he heard neither the contact on the field nor the coaches' orders from the sidelines. His mind-the parts of it that weren't numbed by mangled pride and hatred-was on a hotel room in Chicago. Yes, it had to be a hotel room. They'd purchased round-trip tickets, Gwynn and her paramour, so the rat probably didn't live up there.
What was going On between them at this moment, and how had it come to pass? Why had he, of all men, been singled out, midway through a difficult first season, for such a shafting? Losing Gwynn would throw his whole career into a tailspin. Had he lost her? Or had he driven her away by some careless remark, some act of commission or omission?
Bunyard tried to tell himself that he wasn't the first man to be cuckolded, and he wouldn't be the last. Millions of women cheated, in hundreds ofingenious ways. It was human nature to seek romance, if not with lawfully wedded spouses then with strangers. Strangers without scruples. But no matter how hard he rationalized his misfortune, Bunyard succeeded only in making himself doubt his own masculinity, in working himself into a murderous rage. If Gwynn and/or her lover were there on the field with him, he had no doubt that he'd kill them both. Cleanly, of course.
She had no right to do this to him. Whatever he'd done to her in the past, she had no right to do this to him now. But she had, and his problem was what to do about it. See a lawyer? Move out of the apartment at once? Moving out would alert them. He wasn't ready to alert anyone. No, better to go on being the big, dumb football player who didn't know what was going on. At least until-
"Bunyard!"
He looked around, startled, and saw that Brad Davis had huddled the offense for another play. Without him. Fred Shanks, because he was Fred Shanks, wanted an explanation. Pulling a long face, Bunyard jogged off the field and pulled up beside the coach. He could have faked a minor injury and gotten the rest of the day off, but Shanks could spot malingerers in the next parish.
"Something bothering you, son?"
Bunyard nodded. He almost had to, because something was so obviously eating him. "A financial problem. I can't figure where it all goes."
"Get yourself a lawyer if you don't have one," Shanks advised. "If you're in really hard straits, I can arrange an advance on your salary. It has to be an emergency, though. Is it?"
Bunyard bowed his head and scraped a cleated foot on the artificial turf. "No, I don't think so. At least not yet."
"Don't let it affect your play. If I catch you staring at the stands again, Casey will start ahead of you Sunday. That's all."
* * *
The caliber of his play worried Bunyard almost as much as Gwynn as he throttled his car out of the stadium's lot at six. Maybe bennies weren't enough. He'd caught only three passes in the Cleveland win, hadn't he? And dropped two more? Okay, so they'd been poorly thrown. He was supposed to have the hands to catch anything thrown near him. Sunday he hadn't. Sunday he'd been just your average, run-of-the-mill wide receiver.
Maybe he'd try the Teacher. Mesc. One or two of the guys, the bolder ones, were said to use cautious amounts of the stuff. Their performances, on the other hand, were the roller-coaster variety-sensational one week, inept the next. But that could be laid down to the class of their competition on any given week. Tampa was no Los Angeles, Seattle no Red Bay.
Where to buy mesc, that was the problem. Or was it? This wasn't Fayetteville, Arkansas, Bunyard reminded himself. This was big, bad New Orleans, and he had the scars to prove it. Down in the Quarter, so talk went, there were hawkers for whatever a man could think of. And a few things he couldn't. And there wouldn't be any Frank Broyles to call the squad together and make high-octane speeches about what would happen to the player, starter or sub, who allowed himself to be caught with anything more potent than-
Surreptitious sounds from the Grand Prix's back seat made Bunyard's hair start to curl and sent him careening to the curb. He'd seen no dark-blue Buick Electra in the lot, but the gambling debt was still outstanding. He was, damned if he'd carry a hit man to a quiet street and help him do his work. He'd make him do it here on an eight-lane expressway. Bunyard reached into the back and yanked a blanket from someone crouched on the floor. Then he worked the car's light switch, activating the pillar lights. A girl of about seventeen blinked up at him, trying to smile.
"Hi. You are Clay Bunyard, aren't you?"
Bunyard scowled at her, trying to put more on the scowl than he felt. A smile, after all, beat a .357 Magnum with a silencer on the end. "No, I'm the ghost of Christmas past. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my car? Make it twenty words or less, and I'll buy the ice cream."
"Brenda. You can call me Brenda. I thought you wouldn't notice me until after we reached your place. And then..."
"And then?" Bunyard prompted. Brenda, who had long, dark hair and quite a bit more to go with it, whitened under his cold stare.
"I-I think you're terrific, Clay! Really I do. I thought that you and I..." .
He counted to ten, then began to laugh, although anything with statutory in its name was generally no laughing matter. "And my wife? What would we do about her? Think about that angle?" Brenda gulped, so he knew she hadn't.
"Your wife ... I didn't know. I'm sorry, Mr.
Bunyard. In your pictures, you look so young."
Bunyard winced. "Do you mind?" He watched the girl struggle to a sitting position on the rear seat, and told her something he probably shouldn't have. "Actually, I don't have a wife. Not right now, anyway. She's seven hundred miles away, and she may not be coming back." His unscheduled passenger hugged the blanket more closely about her. She wasn't wearing a coat, just a light jacket. And now her eyes were sparkling again.
"Then you will take me home with you?"
He turned around and cranked the car, remembering to turn off the pillar lights. Putting the car in motion once more, he said over his shoulder, "No. I'm dropping you off at the next pay phone. You can call your girl friends, your parents, or whoever put you up to this."
"But you just told me-"
"I just made a fool of myself. Forget what I said." Bunyard drove, determined to say no more to her. But when he spotted a pay phone, he drove past it, and the next. His mood had turned reckless. Rita had a bowling date with an ex-roommate, she'd said, and wasn't available tonight. Gwynn had turned betrayer. He had every reason to throw off all restraints.
As soon as traffic permitted, he pulled to the curb and patted the seat beside him. "Come up here."
* * *
She was taller than he expected and better built. Her manner, when you got past the brashness, was self-assured. Confident, but not brazen. He led her inside the apartment, switching on lights and turning up the heat. Frost warnings were out as far south as St. Tammany Parish. "Do you do this sort of thing very often?" he asked. Brenda raised her chin to him in a kind of defiant innocence. "What sort of thing?"
"Throw yourself at strangers who might hurt or kill you."
She laughed. "I'm not a 'groupie,' if that's what you mean. Is that what you took me for? I said I liked you. Can't you stand the truth? You're so-so uptight! So conceited!"
He grinned. No one, not even Gwynn, called him conceited. Not to his face, anyway. "Experienced is the word." After seating her in the living room, he turned on the television set. This might prove to be a sorry evening's work, but he wouldn't throw her out. At the very worst, he'd only smash up a promising career. At the very best...."Sit here. I'll bring us some coffee."
He made coffee and took it out, along with cups, saucers, sugar and cream. Setting the tray down in front of them, he sat down beside her and wondered, between covert glances at bare skin, how Brenda's boy friends made known their wishes. Right away, of course, and with no attempt to be subtle. At the risk of losing her, he had to be different.
"Shall I pour for both of us?"
"Please."
He sipped his coffee and admired the way her legs blended into lithe, athletic thighs. Brenda's skirt was short but not conspicuously so. Along with the coffee's steaming vapors came another smell-an intoxicating, young-female scent. Bunyard, who'd thought he'd gotten all this out of his system years before, in high school and college, realized that he hadn't. He wanted Brenda, and he wanted her very badly. "Are you using anything?" Her hand froze with the-coffee cup. She looked at him. "Drugs?"
Bunyard silently implored heaven for patience. This seduction, if seduction it was, might not go according to the script. "Christ, no. Pills. Birth control pills. Or a diaphragm. A pessary. Even a prayer. You must use something. Tell me if you do. I don't have a thing."
Brenda lifted the coffee to her lips, shrugging. "I'm fitted with a di. Most of the girls are. The girls I run with."
Bunyard relaxed, draining his cup and placing it on the table. Moving across the sofa, he slipped an arm around her shoulders. "Whatever happened to the Pill? The way I heard it, peace of mind came in a little plastic vial and lasted about a month. Aren't the girls you 'run with' with it anymore?" She gave him a pitying look, but whether for the observation or the out-of-date expression, he wasn't sure.
"They're too hard to get, silly. How do you think I'd look walking into a drug store with a prescription that wasn't mine? I might be arrested, and then who'd sneak into your car to surprise you?"
She finished her own coffee and set the cup beside his. "I see your point," he conceded. When she leaned back, he turned her face around to his, kissing her at first without passion, not sure how fast she'd respond, or even if she'd respond at all. But if she was just another half-witted kid who didn't know fire when she found it, who promised the sky and couldn't deliver, he'd toss Brenda Whatever-her-name-was out so fast she'd catch cold on the way down. And without even a "Thank you, ma'am." Brenda amazed him, however. She returned the kiss with both skill and fervor, twisting so that she was practically sitting in his lap.
When he parted his lips as a first step in getting past hers, she surprised him further by inserting her tongue into his mouth. Rather than he exciting her, she seemed determined to excite him, to make his readiness equal or surpass hers.
Someone had taught her a few things about technique, too. Her tongue drove past his teeth like some untamed bolt of lightning, crisscrossing the roof of his mouth so many times he lost count. Bunyard stopped worrying about her "Lack of experience" and started worrying about what she expected of him. Maybe too much. Maybe more than he could deliver.
The frenching turned his prick into an iron-hard rod. Before she made him come in his shorts, he succeeded in forcing his way past her tongue into her oral cavity. While she squirmed and twitched in his arms, inflaming him all the more, he explored every corner within reach, establishing a rhythm which seemed to pleased her as much as it pleased him.
She'd offered all of herself to him, so he partook, fondling her firm young tits through the fabric of her blouse. She wore no bra. Nipples which had been soft before now hardened to thrust straight out at him. He had no trouble finding them, even less trouble in knowing which areas to pinch and which to leave alone. Brenda, as soon as he touched the tender buds, began to breathe noisily into his mouth. Her eyes had closed, but Bunyard knew she was still seeing the things he was doing to her. In her mind's eye, each new move, each fresh stimulation was emblazoning itself on her id, ready for instant, dreamy recall at some later date. Women, young or old, had more mental imagery in sexual matters, marriage had taught him that.
Moving carefully, almost stealthily, he worked a hand up under her skirt to the edge of her panties. Brenda quivered when his cool hand encountered her hot flesh, shifting slightly so that he could reach her better. Upon arriving at her cunny, he found the lips slippery with excitement. Better and better. But he could blow it here, for both of them. Bunyard paused, then addressed the shaft of Brenda's clitoris with a few, gentle swipes. A sob, or perhaps a whimper, caught in her throat.
He needed to breathe again, and so did she. He tore his mouth away from hers and began on the buttons of her blouse. Bunyard longed to just throw the girl on her back and sink his prick into her without further delay, but he felt that he should go through with the rest of the foreplay, for his sake as well as hers. The Louisiana law on statutory rape was quite clear. He'd already assumed the risks, a fact which made him feel he was entitled to all the pleasures. All the pleasures.
While she watched, wide-eyed, he kissed and sucked her tits to hard knots of desire, fingering her clitoris all the while. Finally, Brenda hurled a command at him he'd been waiting to hear:
"Do it! Do me now!"
He almost tore her skirt and panties getting them off, but she didn't seem to mind. He let his clothes fall where they would, exposing himself to her without considering the effect a full-grown prick might have on a girl who wasn't. "You're-you're huge!"
Bunyard chuckled, until he saw the apprehension in her eyes. Then he stopped laughing and held his aching dong so that it wouldn't appear quite as large. "We'll take it easy," he promised. "There's a way. I won't hurt you. I swear it." The apprehension gave way to anticipation when he waggled his thing for her. "See? He can hardly wait to be inside you. Neither can I."
"Then let's let him!" Brenda exclaimed, and climbed back on the sofa to stretch out for him, spreading her thighs as far as they would go.
Bunyard realized, when he touched the head of his prick to her cunt's velvety lips, that he'd made a pledge he couldn't keep. He crept in an inch at a time, fighting an urge to stab and lunge, but still he hurt her. The pain, he hoped, was bearable, although she bit her lip and whimpered with every move he made. At last he was in, and lay quietly for a moment to gather himself. "Like?" le asked, because she seemed calmer now.
"I love it!" she assured him. "I want you to stay inside me! I want you to give me a good fucking."
It was the one command he hadn't hated today.
His cock inched slowly into her, but he controlled his movements with an iron will to prevent himself from jamming his cock into her with a single thrust. He didn't want to hurt Brenda, but the sensation of his prick slipping into her tight pussy was overwhelming. Although Brenda was no virgin, she was obviously not as experienced as she pretended to be, and Clay was mildly amused by her false sophistication. Now that she was begging for pleasure, she had changed subtly.
She spread her legs wider and lifted her little ass off the bed so that her pussy would be at a better angle to receive his cock. She slid one hand down between their bodies to guide his huge throbbing prick into her hot moist cunt. When it was halfway into her she released his cock and put her hands on her knees to hold her legs wide apart for him.
Clay put his hands on her waist and held her tightly, looking down at her as he fucked her. He began slowly withdrawing his cock until it was almost completely out of her cunt, with only the head remaining within, and then sliding it back into her, a little bit farther each time. She gasped with pleasure at his every thrust and reached up to encircle his waist with her slender young arms.
Clay leaned forward and moved his hands up from her waist to caress her firm young breasts with his fingers. He squeezed her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers until they stood straight up like small pink pencil erasers. All the time his thick cock was pumping in and out of her hot, wet pussy. Her cunt was incredibly tight, and his prick felt as if it were being squeezed by a moist, warm hand. Brenda was moaning deep in her throat and tossing her head from side to side on the pillows. Clay eased his cock almost all the way out of her and she thrust her pelvis up toward him in quick movements, begging him to continue with body language rather than with words.
He bent his head and kissed her deeply. She opened her mouth wide to receive his tongue. His hands moved over her breasts and down her flat stomach, stroking her body firmly and arousing sensations in her which she had never before experienced. Clay's stiff tongue fucked her mouth with the same rhythm his cock was fucking her pussy. Brenda placed her heels firmly against Clay's buttocks and braced her legs wide apart. Her lips closed fiercely around his tongue as it slid in and out of her mouth. Their saliva mingled and gathered in the corners of her mouth as his cock probed deeply into her cunt. Clay pulled his mouth away from hers and they both gasped for breath.
"Puck me, Clay," she murmured softly. "Puck me, you football star!"
Clay winced at the remark, but realized he didn't care if she was only interested in him because he was a football player. All he wanted to do at this moment was just what she was asking.
He thrust his hips forward and his cock speared her tight pussy once more. She gave a small, choked cry, and Clay shuddered from the sensation of his cock sliding deep into her warm, damp cunt Brenda lay still, her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted, and Clay remained motionless, his cock buried deep within her. Then she let out her breath with a ragged sigh and began pressing her hips upward against his cock. Clay began moving his hips with slow, tentative movements, working his cock back and forth in her fractionally. Brenda drew her feet up until they were flat against her buttocks as she spread her knees apart, opening her legs as far as she could. Clay's fingers stroked her inner thighs as he began moving his hips with longer, harder thrusts, inching his cock into her.
Clay reveled in the sheer pleasure of driving his throbbing cock deep into her quivering slit. The pressure building up in him was almost unbearable, and he knew that he would soon lose control. He stopped for a moment, gasping for air and getting a firmer grip on his control.
"Ohhhh," she breathed. "Don't stop!"
"I had to, baby. I was about to come, and I want to make it last."
Brenda nodded, lifted her legs high in the air and clamped them around his waist. Clay bent his head to her breasts once again and sucked at her nipples. He flicked his tongue back and forth across first one nipple and then the other. Brenda gave a deep sigh as she began stroking his head. The pressure of her legs wrapped around his hips increased and she thrust her pussy up toward him. Her hands caressed his head and she ran her fingers through his thick, wavy hair. There seemed to be a growing urgency in her movements as she undulated her hips and drove her pussy up at him, fucking herself on his cock with quick thrusts.
Suddenly she gave a wild, harsh cry, then burst into a frenzy of motion, dragging her fingernails across his back as she lunged up against him, driving her pussy up on his cock until his balls slammed against her ass. He gripped her as hard as he could and fucked her with long, hard strokes. She moaned and writhed under him convulsively. Then she gave a final lurch and fell back on the bed, exhausted, gasping for air and moaning with pleasure.
"Oh, Clay," she breathed. "That was wonderful. So wonderful. I never felt that way before."
He grinned at her. "Just wait, baby. You'll feel even better."
He withdrew his cock from her pussy and turned her over on her stomach so he could fuck her from behind. Brenda lifted herself onto her hands and knees and Clay crouched behind her, positioning himself to dog-fuck her. He moved forward, sliding his prick between her buttocks and searching for the opening of her pussy with his fingers and the head of his cock. His cockhead touched her pussy lips, and he slid it in firmly with a quick, smooth thrust of his hips. She shuddered convulsively from the sensation of his thick prick spearing her hot, steaming cunt. Clay reached forward with his hands and cupped her firm young breasts, playing with her nipples until she moaned with desire. His cock was buried in her hot, tight pussy. He panted and murmured incoherently as he slid his cock in and out of her in a rapidly accelerating motion, and he watched his swollen shaft disappear and reappear between her smooth, firm ass cheeks. The blood was pounding in his head with dizzying force as delirious sensations of ecstasy roared through him. He was overcome with sensual delight. Brenda thrust up at him convulsively, and her pussy was clamped around his cock so tightly that it felt as if he were being squeezed and wrung by some powerful woman instead of this young, inexperienced girl.
Her body rocked back and forth with his violent thrusts. Slowly she spread out her arms and gripped the mattress to brace herself against the slamming rhythm of his cock. She arched her back and he drove more deeply into her, moving faster and faster until his balls were slapping against her buttocks with each thrust. The pressure of his semen rising within him was almost unbearable. He was on the verge of exploding into orgasm. It felt as though he were being torn apart by the massive force within him. He held on for as long as he could.
Brenda was thrusting up against him so hard that he could tell she was on the brink of another orgasm. She moaned and tossed her head from side to side in sensual ecstasy. Clay savored the exhilarating pleasure of driving his long, thick prick into her firm young body. Then he gave way to a shattering orgasm.
Brenda gave a shriek of delight as she felt the come begin to pour into her in hot, thick spurts. She held her body tightly up against him so that he could empty his semen into her and drive it deeply inside her with his cock. All the muscles in Clay's body tensed and trembled as the come erupted from him in long, wet spurts. He speared his cock between her lovely white ass cheeks and gushed into her, with a ragged hoarse cry. Finally he crumbled, exhausted by ecstasy, all his strength gone.
ll
Gwynn awoke Wednesday morning puzzled over her surroundings. The bed swayed to and fro in a delicious rocking motion. But unless she'd been shanghaied to sea ... Champaign's Folly! Of course. Roy had taken her to the north end of State Street at nightfall. Together, they'd drank and danced their way to the south end, to the point of insensibility. Then, after a hectic taxi ride, he'd bribed them aboard a Lake Michigan excursion boat. They'd been assigned a vacant stateroom which, she noticed now, offered an excellent view of lakefront Chicago.
At least, she hoped Roy had come aboard with her. The bed was empty beside her, but someone was running the shower behind the headboard. This, rather than the boat's gentle tossing, was what had summoned her from a sound sleep. "Roy!" she called and gasped. The effect on her already throbbing head of this slight exertion made Gwynn believe in divine punishment. "Roy, can you hear me?
Is it you?"
"It's me," Tannen called back. "Give me a minute, huh?"
Gwynn considered joining him in the shower, and decided against it. Two miserable people couldn't possibly be good for one another. She was grateful for the decision when he stepped out a minute later, towel draped about his middle, and stood smiling down at her.
"How do you feel?"
She made a face. "Miserable."
Tannen laughed. "You may have had one or two more drinks than I did, which is saying a lot. I think there's a galley somewhere forward. Shall I go and ask them to make you something?"
"Please. And tell them to make it strong. I don't want to die feeling this way. And I don't want to live feeling this way." She watched him dress, and noticed that he was just as fastidious when his things were wrinkled as when they were fresh. Fastidious, but not foppish. When his tie wouldn't knot perfectly, he shrugged it off. "Roy." He turned to look at her.
"Yes?"
"Last night ... Did we--? "
He chuckled. "To tell you the truth, my dear, I'm not sure myself. From the way I feel when I look at you, I suspect not. We were deeply intoxicated, you know, and alcohol, they say, is a depressant. Yes, I'm inclined to believe we behaved ourselves for a change. I hope, it doesn't set a pattern."
Gwynn rubbed her aching head. "I'll make it up to you, I promise. Just get me well again." She closed her eyes and accepted the kiss he pressed to her lips. Then she heard him leave the room. Because the silence oppressed her, too, she made herself think of Clay, far away in another windy city on an equally bleak lake shore. Did he miss her, and was he even the least bit suspicious? She hoped not. If she returned to him, there was a chance he and she might save their marriage. A dwindling chance, perhaps, but still a chance.
* * *
Business, Roy said, was behind them. He knew all he needed to know about the brewery's current operation. Conditions for an improved profit curve appeared good, was how he put it, although the industry as a whole couldn't say as much. "So we have the rest of the day to ourselves," he said as they inched up Michigan Avenue in a taxi. "I'm open to suggestions as to how we should spend it."
"Fly home?" Gwynn offered, without thinking. Roy looked pained.
"Every one except that one. I'm beginning to think, if I may say it, that you have a fianc' down there. Or a husband."
"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed, heart thudding. But she gazed out at the Chicago Art Institute so he wouldn't the alarm on her face.
Tannen patted her arm. "A man can get false impressions at times, provided he's human. I am."
"Take me to a theater," Gwynn coaxed, before he could pursue his impressions further. She had a positive dread of people with extrasensory perception, up to and including Roy Tannen. Live or filmed?"
"Live."
Roy winked. "I hear 'Oh, Calcutta!' is still in town. And 'Hair!' must be showing at one of the college playhouses. Maybe we can catch it tonight. Before we begin our own performance, I mean." She knew what he meant.
* * *
The two had lunch in the Sherman's grill room, then went to sec a first-run movie at the United Artists Theatre. After dark, he took her to an X-rated feature in a smaller house on Franklin Street. The feature was neither live nor well-done, but it did hold them their seats until the end, during which the cast performed more sexual acts and non-acts than The Sensuous Woman ever dreamed about.
Gwynn walked tingling from the theater, holding tightly to Roy's hand. She's thought she no longer had the capacity to blush. She'd been wrong. Her face burned now from the power of the sex scenes portrayed in the picture. People were still so hung up, she realized, that they'd pay money, lots of it, to view acts they didn't dare perform with someone they dug, hot even in private.
"What did you think?" Tannen inquired, steering her toward the curb and a taxi. "Is this the decadence that brought down Rome? If so, will it bring down Chicago's upper North Side as well? An opinion, please."
Gwynn slipped an arm around his waist. "I won't know where to start," she confided in Roy's ear, hoping to pique his interest.
"I'll show you!" her escort exclaimed. "Our plane doesn't lift off until ten a.m., you know. We have hours and hours."
* * *
He made no mention of dinner, and neither did she. He took them straight to their room, locking the door as soon as they'd entered. But when she started on her clothing, he stopped her, smiling. "Before you let me see the menu, let me tell you a story. A true story. A fantasy of mine with a real-life beginning. Actually it goes all the way back to my high school days."
"In the early fifties?" she guessed, to flatter him.
Roy shook his head. "Class of Forty-one. I'm not ashamed of it. Hell, I'm the only member of the class to make three fortunes before I was fifty. Anyway, there was a history teacher at my school, name of Miss Winslowe. Karen Winslowe, I think it was, although of course I never dared call her that. She was even prettier than you are, I might add. I have to be honest. Me, I was the usual gangly kid, awkward in body and mind. One afternoon Winslowe kept me late, on the theory that I needed help in separating Presidents with the same or similar surname. Seems I was forever scrambling them at quiz time. Maybe that was her fault, too."
"I think I can finish the story for you," Gwynn remarked, because she'd heard or read similar ones before.
"Shut up, please," Tannen advised. "So there we were: a red-haired teacher of about twenty-two who would have made a blind man start drooling, and a seventeen-year-old who hadn't even laid his first girl but was thinking about it. Let me tell you he was thinking about it. Imagine my surprise when she dropped a hand on my you-know-what, talking all the while about John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and William Henry Harrison, John Tyler and Zachary Taylor. I thought it was unintentional, and didn't say a word. But then she lowered my fly and took me out, stroking my half-sized rod until I nearly exploded. This time I couldn't say anything. I was speechless with delight. Winslowe was excited, too. She squirmed around in her chair like there was a bucket of fire ants in her pants. Unfortunately..." Roy Tannen smiled a wan, sad smile.
"Unfortunately?" Gwynn prompted, interested in spite of herself over the story's conclusion.
Roy sighed. "Someone made a noise out in the hall. Quick as a flash, she stuffed me-my leg of lamb-back inside my pants and zipped me up again. Told me to scram, the old tease. Even threatened to tell my parents if I didn't keep my trap shut. You can bet your booties I did, because I hoped to have another go at her."
"Did you?"
"Never. It was near the end of the term. I saw her twice more before final exams, but she looked straight through me. And then she left. Her contract wasn't renewed, I guess. She may have thought I was responsible. I wasn't. I never breathed a word to anyone."
Gwynn folded her arms across her chest and gave him the coldest stare she could muster. "So now when you look for a girl Friday, she should be around twenty-two or three, have red hair, and her typing doesn't have to set the woodwork afire. How do you want my resignation? Orally or in writing?"
"I don't want your resignation," Tannen chuckled. "I accept you on your merits, not someone else's. Maybe I should explain the rest of the fantasy. I dreamed that Karen Winslowe, bless her, sucked me off while the whole school watched. Isn't that wild? That's how young boys are, you know-obsessed with strange fixations. The people who make the profoundest impression on them are the ones they'd like to explore these fixations with. Since you've made me forget much of the fantasy, I wonder if you wouldn't also..."
Gwynn's pleasure-weary brain was a few seconds in realizing what he meant. "Wouldn't also what?" The gleam in Roy's eyes made her clap a hand to her mouth. "Oh. Uh-uh. No, thanks. You'll have to find yourself another girl. Or whatever they call them."
"But the girl in the picture-"
"An actress. Or, I should say, 'actress,' quotation marks."
"No matter. She gave her man whatever he wanted. Even that. Have you forgotten so soon?"
"Her 'man' was an actor," Gwynn reminded, coloring. "They were both in it for the money. I can be fooled about the little things, but not the major ones."
Tannen swore. "I should have known. You let me show you a good time, now you've turned coy on me. Maybe I'll fire you after all."
She made her eyes flash. "And force me to fly home alone, I suppose, Dutch treat." Roy rubbed his hands together and crackled like a fiend, disgusting her further.
"What a perfectly lovely idea. Yes, that's what HI do. Unless you start acting like a woman instead of a spoiled child." He saw the fury on her face, and threw up his hands, grinning. "Hell, I'm only kidding. You know I wouldn't go through with it. I may be a lot of things, but s.o.b. isn't one of them."
"Well, I'm not kidding!" Gwynn heard herself declare.
"I beg your pardon?"
Slowly, deliberately, she wept to her knees in front of him, letting the act speak for itself. Roy's expulsion of breath was an instant's warm breeze through her hair.
"I knew it. You have class after all. Real class."
She heard the words, but her concern was no longer for what he might think of her. Without hesitating or closing her eyes, she lowered the fly on Roy's trousers and reached in for his manhood, swollen already with eager life. He sucked in his breath when she brought him out.
"Danielle never would. She never would."
Danielle, Gwynn remembered, was Roy's wife. Roy's late wife. She'd perished in a sailing accident on Lake Pontchartrain nine summers before, or so Roy had said. And she'd never done for him what she, Gwynn Bunyard, was doing for him now, which was grasping his congested organ around the head and aiming it toward her mouth.
"Give me a good, hot suck!" he begged, when she paused, or rather, hesitated.
Conquering the last of her qualms-and that's what they were-Gwynn opened her mouth wide to accept him. The warm, smooth shaft of Roy's phallus slid between her parted lips. Right away she noticed something different-Roy had been circumcised. When she lapped twice around the head with her tongue, Tannen groaned, the sensations were so acute.
"Christ Jesus!" he gasped. "If you only knew how that felt! If I only had the words to tell you! If I ... only had ... the words!"
Gwynn, remembering the one occasion when he'd eaten her, had a fair idea of how he must feel. Working her lips and her tongue, coordinating them as best she could, she began to bob up and down as Roy made strangling sounds.
"That's it! By heaven, I knew you were junior-executive material!"
She tightened her lips and bobbed faster, making him pant with rising lust and lock his hands in her hair. Now he controlled both the depth of penetration and the speed at which she brought him to climax. Tannen began to breathe in staccato bursts which seemed to come, judging by their difficulty of expression, from the innermost recesses of his lungs.
"Now!" he panted. "I'm going to come now!"
If she'd had any notion of tearing her mouth away, he prevented it, holding her in this captured position until she'd accepted and swallowed every drop. Then and only then did he allow her to raise her head. Gwynn gazed up at him in exhaustion, awaiting his praise or his censure.
"That was beautiful. Simply beautiful. But I wonder if we couldn't do it together. In bed, I mean. With you on top."
She saw no reason why they couldn't. If Clay's accusing presence was beside her, she couldn't detect it.
12
After Wednesday's practice, Clay Bunyard drove home and called West Memphis again. A complete fool? No, he just wanted to be sure. Gwynn's mother told him the same thing as before-Gwynn herself hadn't flown in from anywhere and wasn't expected.
"Clay, I wish you'd tell me what this is all about!" Mary O'Bannion implored. "Has she left you? Are you suing her for divorce?"
"I don't know myself, but I intend to find out," Bunyard replied, trying very hard to sound calm. "When I do, I'll let you know. I have to go now. Thanks for talking to me."
Upon hanging up, he heard a plastic vial rattle in his shirt pocket and remembered what it contained: mescaline. He and a certain character in a coffee shop on Toulouse, after thirty minutes of jousting behind dark glasses, had struck a bargain. The twelve caps now reposed in his pocket, for whatever use he chose to make of them.
But he realized, from high school and college lectares on the subject, the pitfalls of experimenting with a drug he'd never used before. And the wisdom of testing one. Safely, of course, and under some kind of monitoring. Rita could monitor him. She could observe his reactions, direct his activities, and when he came down, help him crash without ruining himself. Then he'd know.
Bunyard changed into casual wear, and headed toward Rita's apartment.
* * *
A mile from his destination, he noticed a car in his rear-view mirror which hadn't been there before. The strange car appeared to be an Electra. A dark-blue Buick Electra, which meant he was now expected to ante up $5,000. Bunyard, who had never panicked in his life, reached under the car seat and patted a .45 automatic wrapped in a pillow case. The gun was loaded. Slowing down, he took the gun out and placed it between his legs, where the weapon couldn't be readily seen.
But then he passed under a street light and saw that the car behind wasn't a dark-blue Buick Electra but a Dodge of undetermined color. Bunyard chuckled and prepared to put the .45 away. Then he wondered if New Orleans' detective force, some of it, anyway, didn't cruise around in unmarked Dodges. The clue might be a wire-thin, two-way antenna in the middle of the roof deck. Bunyard strained to see such an antenna, and did, or thought he did. Despite the chill inside the car, he began to perspire.
Should he try to throw the mesc out the window? No. If the pursuers were merely suspicious, they'd have him for sure. And wherever he concealed the stuff inside the car, they'd find it. The gun, too. But they had to stop him first, and they might not.
Bunyard drove, counting out the longest five minutes of his life. When he speeded up, the Dodge did, too. When he slowed, the Dodge slowed. He went past Rita's street and tripped his turn signal three blocks farther on, hoping to make "them"-whoever they were-tip their hand. But the detectives, if detectives they were, swept on by, ignoring him altogether. Bunyard pulled to the curb and bowed his head in gratitude, the closest he could bring himself to religious expression.
Then, when his head cleared, he experienced a fierce anger at himself for the debt, for having waited so long to clear it up. And for the man-the vulture-who'd sucked him in. He circled the block to a pay phone, parked his car and went inside, dialing a number he'd written backwards on the reverse side of his gasoline credit card. The number, naturally, would belong to an answering service. But he dialed, anyway, and waited.
"Crescent City Answering Service. Your call will be recorded. Please speak clearly and distinctly, prefacing your message with the correct subscriber's number."
Bunyard licked his lips, glancing out through the phone booth's glass for signs of the mysterious Dodge. He saw only normal, early evening traffic. "The subscriber's number is thirty-three, but I don't want to make a recording. I want to speak to him personally."
"I'm sorry, sir. That isn't possible. The subscribers pay for this service in order that they may not be disturbed."
Bunyard gave the booth a kick that dislodged a lower panel. "Operator, this is an emergency. I have to speak to subscriber thirty-three without another second's delay. If you don't try to locate him for me, he may cancel your blasted service." He waited for the girl to balance this threat against her orders to maintain, at all costs, her subscribers' anonymity.
"Just a moment, sir."
A minute passed. Various clicks, dial tones and other feedback came over the line. Two minutes. Bunyard fidgeted, beginning to wish he hadn't bothered. Thirty-three, whoever the hell he was, had probably given up on collecting from him. Large operators didn't bother with the rough stuff anymore. Bad for business.
"Hello?"
Bunyard jumped. The gravelly voice seemed-to come from inside the booth with him, evoking its owner, who was large, two-fisted and possessed of a sneering amount of confidence. "This is B. Remember? The Atlanta and San Francisco games? The, uh, tab comes to forty-seven hundred. I'm ready to pay up. Where can I meet you?" There was an instant of amazed silence, then loud, booming laughter.
"You. know, you're a card. A swell of a fellow. I've seen 'em all, but I've never seen your like. You must have been in the whale's belly when Jonah arrived. I mean, you're not real."
"What's so goddamned funny?" Bunyard shouted into the phone.
"Your debt's been paid, B. Canceled. You don't owe me a dime. But if you're trying to work up more credit, forget it. I don't get walked on twice. I'd rather read about you, not take your money."
Bunyard was relieved, then incredulous, finally suspicious. "How could it be paid? No one else knows I owe it. Tell me what's going on before I-"
"Your wife paid it, funny boy. All of it. If you want the details, ask her."
"Hello? Hello?" Bunyard, more puzzled than ever realized he was talking into a dead phone. The connection had been broken from the other end. He hung up on the second try and stumbled back to his car. Having the debt canceled made no sense. None of this made any sense. Why in God's name was Gwynn in Chicago? To punish him for having deceived her?
As he drove away, he felt something hard under his left haunch. The automatic. Bunyard wrapped it in the pillowcase and stuffed it back under the seat.
* * *
Rita's greeting made him feel better. She welcomed him to a warm apartment by pressing her lips to his, then pressing a drink into his hand. "I've been waiting half an hour. What kept you?"
Bunyard accepted the drink and closed the door with the heel of his foot. "I had to run an errand. Only it turns out someone else ran it for me." He went to sit down on the couch.
"Oh? It's too early in the evening for riddles, darling. But I suppose if you wanted to tell me, you would."
After fetching a drink for herself, Rita came to snuggle up beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. He gave her a smile, and most of his tension went away. "You're a smart girl. Smarter than most, that is. And you're right-I don't want to talk about it." Because they were there, within reach of his itching hands, he reached out to fondle one of her breasts, idly, without intent to arouse her just yet. They drank together in silence for a few minutes. Then he remembered the caps in his shirt pocket. "Like to try something with me?" She turned to gaze up at him. "What?"
Bunyard took out the vial and told her what it contained. "We can go up together," he coaxed. "You're not expecting anyone else, are you? No one knows I'm here. Who's to know?"
Rita shook her head. "I tried those in high school; Clay, honey. They're not for real people. The school psychologist used them, too, and he flipped out in the parking lot one afternoon. I'm surprised at you." She plucked the vial from his hand. "I'm going to flush them down the toilet. Then we'll have a nice evening together, you and me."
Banyard snatched them back in time. "Like crap you will! These little beauties set me back fifty hard ones. Christ, I was only asking. You don't have to throw a shit scene for me, baby. And can the sermon. If you won't trip out with old Clay, he'll go alone." Before she could stop him, he shook out one of the mescaline caps and popped it into his mouth, swallowing the little bit of packaged fantasy at once. Rita looked at him with an expression he wasn't sure he liked. Disgust was there. Also, fear. Or was it simply apprehension?
"I wish you hadn't done that. Clay. Really I do.
But since you have..." She put down her drink and got up to cross the room, locking the door and covering the peephole. "Now you'll have to stay the night. No one can drive with mesc in their blood. They think they can drive through other people. Don't you have any respect for your career?"
He nodded, finishing his drink in a single gulp. "A ton of respect. It buys the bacon. And the airline tickets for that tramp of a wife of mine. I expect her home tomorrow, and then..."
Bunyard shrugged. He hadn't gotten that far himself. Lately, he'd been living from day to day. Maybe that was the only way to live. Head lolling, he looked at the girl who still seemed to care for him. "What would you say if I told you I loved you? Would you laugh in my face? Quick, while I'm still lucid. No, don't tell me. Save it for later." He found her mouth with his own, and crushed her lips against her teeth. As a means of testing his concentration, he tried to hold the kiss longer than he'd ever held a kiss before. Cooperating, Rita locked her fingers behind his head and kissed him back.
For five minutes, they kissed. Ten. Fifteen. She parted her lips, and naturally he inserted his tongue. Bunyard, who had expected the room to start spinning, his inner self to start parading across his field of vision, possibly even the imaginations of childhood to spring to instant life, was disappointed. Nothing of the kind happened.
He removed Rita's blouse and bra, kneaded and sucked her breasts to hard-pointed cones, and still nothing unexpected happened. She began to make the usual manifestations of pleasure: groans and whispered entreaties to repeat some especially pleasing caress, sharp nails driven into his back-the whole predictable bit.
He tugged off her skirt and peeled down her panties. Whether he did either any differently than before was debatable. Certainly Rita helped him as much as possible, wriggling back on the couch and wrapping her legs around his middle so that he could reach her better. Puzzled and a little angry-if he'd been sold sleeping capsules, a full refund would be made or blood would be spilled on Toulouse Street-Bunyard explored the girl in a way which had never interested him before. But then he'd never been so interested in her before. Making an effort to be original, he used two fingers to separate the outer lips, then thrust in one of them. By juxtapositioning thumb and forefinger, he was able to make the lips swell and fill with blood until they closed snugly around his finger. By way of thanks, Rita went wild, thrashing out a climax which made the couch shake.
"Jesus, Clay, darling, you've never done this for me!" she bleated down at him.
Bunyard stared at her distorted features, and for once in his life knew exactly what she must be experiencing, exactly how the spasms must be going through her brain. Almost in chagrin, he realized the mesc was working. In creeping fashion, the Teacher was causing him to perceive things more clearly than he ever had before. Her flesh was his flesh. He could be inside the fabulous body if he chose, could wrap her around him like a cloak. But intromission really wasn't necessary.
He continued to press and squeeze her glistening cunt lips, taking intermittent swipes at the clitoral hood but staying away from the shaft. The little organ was too sensitive for very much direct contact. But he couldn't recall having ever been told this before.
Twice more she convulsed and climaxed, and still he worked, relishing his "task" in a way she probably found puzzling. Finally, she raised her head and gazed in some concern at him.
"Aren't you going to put it in me, Clay, honey?"
He laughed like a child. The idea of putting himself inside her both amused and troubled him, whereas an hour before he would simply have availed himself of the invitation. The suggestion transcended the rational, and yet it was the rational thing to do. He belonged inside her, and she inside him. The two were one and the same. He was himself, but he was also a cheerleader named Rita Hazlitt. He was everyone. Everyone in the whole screwing universe. Reality was fantasy, and fantasy, reality. The two were intertwined.
"Clay! Clay, I'm afraid for you! Do you want me to call you a doctor? An ambulance? Clay, are you listening? Clay?"
Bunyard blinked at her because she had his face between her hands and was shaking. He heard the words but had no idea what they meant. His eyes focused now with difficulty. Bright, multi-colored lights seemed to be everywhere about the room, even inside the head which was no longer his own. Objects and ideas floated in and out of their own volition, without his having any control over them. The room began to reel, to revolve. "No," he muttered. "Wanna be ... inside you. Wanna be..." He got on hands and knees to take her, but wasn't able to.
He was still wearing all his clothes. "I'll have to help you."
Somehow the two of them got pants, shirt and shorts off him. He must have succeeded in penetrating her, because Rita began to utter wild, choking sounds underneath him while he moved jerkily above her. But he was to have no later recollection of climaxing. There was no culmination, no peak of feeling which could be called an orgasm. Orgasm was an on-going thing.
Finally, there was nothing. His brain, having been taxed beyond its capacity, refused to register any more happenings. That must have been when she broke the connection and put him to bed.
13
Gwynn Bunyard, the taste of Roy Tannen's lips still on hers, arrived home to a deserted apartment Thursday morning, stepping out of the taxi at ten-thirty. New Orleans was warmer than she remembered, although there was rain in the air. Clay, she knew, had left for practice at eight. His car was gone. Her hands shook, anyway, at being so close to retribution, so close to hands that could wrap halfway around a football and squeeze the life out of it.
Guiltily, she stole inside, discovering everything a mess, as she'd expected. Magazines and candy wrappers, cigarette butts and fruit peels were everywhere, in and out of ash trays. Cigarette butts? Gwynn frowned. Neither she nor Clay smoked. He must have had company. She picked up one of the butts to examine it, and spied lipstick traces on the filter. Then she hated him all over again. Female company.
Somehow, the discovery made her ordeal in the evening-and it was certain to be that-easier to prepare for. Roy, who was going to th office as usual, had given her the rest of the day off, which also helped to clear the deck. If Clay even suspected how she'd spent the preceding three and a half days...
She went into the kitchen and was appalled at the clutter. Every dish they owned-and one or two strange ones-seemed to be piled crazily in the sink. The range was covered with pots and pans, none of them clean. Gwynn washed and scoured for an hour, and still wasn't satisfied. Now she was not only angry but exhausted as well. But she supposed she had it coming to her-penance for three days of mirth and madness.
Their bedroom, on the other hand, was scrupulously neat, the bed having been made up just that morning. Unless ... unless he'd spent the night somewhere else. Gwynn checked the ash trays beside the bed. Clean. Someone had policed the room. To assuage a troubled conscience? Perhaps. Clay had never been an ash tray emptier before. She had always had this particular chore.
From the bathroom came a horrible smell. She slammed the door until her stomach could cope, then opened it again. Gingerly. Clay or someone had gotten very sick in here, that much she divined from a leftover stain in the toilet bowl. What she didn't understand was why he'd gone to practice. Not even Fred Shanks on a losing streak demanded that sick men work out.
Gwynn went after rubber gloves, put them on and cleaned in here, too, applying an air freshener before leaving. Her head was beginning to whirl from the implications, the unanswered questions. Whether Clay accused her, or she accused him, someone had some talking to do. Not that talking would solve anything. The problems she and Clay had were considerably past the talking-out stage.
* * *
She went out to shop for food and came back to start a beef stew, Clay's favorite dish in the not-so-distant past. At five-thirty, as she moved the stew to another burner to cool, he came home, walking in stealthily to stand, arms folded, behind her. Gwynn turned around and almost screamed. She caught herself in time and smiled her warmest greeting, hoping her voice didn't quaver when she spoke. "Dearest, I'm home. Are you glad to see me?" He neither shook his head nor inclined it. The scowl he wore like a mask hadn't left his face.
"Maybe. It depends on the answers you give me. And how soon you give them to me."
She dropped a pot holder and knew her face had turned a stark pale. Clay's voice was low and hoarse, yet curiously aloof. When he talked this way, the anger was about to explode, like a grenade with the pin pulled. "Answers? Darling, what are you talking about? I went to see Mother just as I planned. I came back when we expected. Please tell me what's bothering you. If you're ill, I'll-"
"Bullshit!"
Clay's features had gone livid. His voice had picked up volume and resonance. He took a step toward her, and Gwynn, for the first time, realized he might kill her for what he knew. And he probably knew everything. He was certainly acting like it.
"You flew to Chicago with a jerk you hardly knew!
Don't deny it! I have someone who saw you together, someone who saw you buy the tickets! I called your mother, too!"
She felt a constriction about her throat, and actually imagined that he was choking her already. But he was still two yards away and advancing. Gwynn edged away from him until she encountered the sink edge. There was nowhere else to go. "I can explain, Clay, if you'll just let me! He's my boss! I have a new position now, with Tannen Enterprises! It pays so much better than Great Southern Life Insurance Company! He-"
"I can imagine!"
She flinched. Clay's eyes were flashing a dangerous, murderous white. His hands had balled into fists, each one big enough to batter her senseless. "He-He took me with him to Chicago to ... to..." Gwynn gulped, having forgotten, now that her story reached this crucial point, just what Roy had taken her to Chicago for.
"To break you in?" Clay sneered, jaw muscles twitching.
Even with the fear-no, terror-she could notice that he looked less handsome than menacing, with his jacket collar up about his ears and his nostrils flared the way they did when he'd been pushed too far and was about to push back. Or maybe smash back. "No. To inspect his brewery. We stayed in separate rooms. I don't expect you to believe me, but it's true. I swear to God."
"You swear to-" Clay threw back his head and laughed, conveying far more malice than humor. Then he stopped laughing. "I ought to break your goddamn neck, you little slut! No, I ought to break every bone in your body! hi fact, I think I will!" He started toward her.
Because her instinct to survive was much stronger than her longing to reason with him, she snatched up a long-bladed carving knife, made the point hold still long enough to give herself courage, then held him at bay with it. "I won't let you kill me, Clay. I won't." To her heartfelt relief, he stared at the knife in little-boy wonder, as though he'd had no idea she was capable of using it, or even of picking it up.
"Put that thing down," he muttered. "We can be civilized about this."
"Can we?" Gwynn, without letting go of it, dropped the knife to her side.
"I think you went to Chicago with a guy. Did you?"
Slowly, reluctantly, she inclined her head. "Yes."
"Why? Care to tell me that?"
She collapsed into a chair before her legs gave way under her. "Maybe we'd better start at the beginning. With you."
"With me? Me?"
Gwynn swallowed, knowing she was about to send his blood pressure soaring once more. "I know you've been wagering on your own games, Clay. Don't try to deny it. And I know you've been losing. There's no need to deny that." He reddened, clenching his fists again.
"Who's denying it? I stopped two games ago. Cleared up my obligation, too. I've quit it and I don't intend to go back. For that you stick me in the spine?"
She quivered. The lie hurt worse than his willingness to do physical harm to her. "Did you clear it up? Did you?" Clay's hard brown eyes searched hers for a moment.
"I took my time about it, but I had the money. Last night when I tried to reach my boo-my contact, he told me you'd canceled the debt yourself. So I'm clean. I'm clear. I thank you for paying, but not for snooping."
Gwynn stared at her feet. She saw instead a motel beds soiled sheets, along with a lifetime of shame and ignominy. "Yes, I canceled it. I'll never tell you how I canceled it, but I did. And I didn't have to snoop. Your 'contact,' as you call him, came to me." Clay, she noticed, seemed relieved rather than curious.
"When?"
"A week ago Tuesday," she said, watching him. He smacked a fist into an open palm.
"Then why didn't you tell me? Did you think it would get to the commissioner's office if we even discussed it between ourselves? Hell, don't you trust your own husband?"
The accusation was so unfair, the lack of consideration so open, that she had no retort of any kind. She could only sit there, lips trembling, and wish she'd never heard of Clayton Kingston Bunyard. He'd brought her a false, premature kind of happiness which was fleeing almost as fast as her sanity.
"Well, can't you say something? Christ, I know I'm no saint, but you're certainly not one, either. You caught me blowing a wad on a couple of games, you figure I'm playing fast and loose elsewhere down the line, and you shoot me through the grease. I don't like it one bit. Do you hear? I don't like it!"
"You don't have to shout," she countered with a weary shrug. "I heard you. Do you want your stew in a bowl or on a plate?" Clay sniffed the aroma drifting from the range. A man's stomach, his expression said, came before pride. "In a bowl. And lots of it."
They ate in stony silence, broken only by curt requests on Clay's part for second helpings of stew, salad or pie. Because he would have come after her and demanded an explanation if she hadn't, Gwynn even went into the living room to sit down and watch television with him. But they sat far apart.
At ten she excused herself and went to change into sleeping gown and slippers. When he came to bed half an hour later, she wasn't asleep, just pretending to be. And she was neither astonished nor intimidated when he grasped her rudely by the shoulder and tuned her to face him.
"His name. Tell me his name."
She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We said-" Being slapped hard across the face prevented her from saying the rest.
"We said nothing! Tell me before I heat it out of you!"
"You can go to hell," she told him, and was surprised at her own calmness. "I hate you and I'll never tell."
"Then I'll fuck it out of you! Let's see how much cheating you can do when your pussy's raw and aching!"
He pushed the covers back and ripped the gown from her body, grinding the garment under his heel one tattered piece at a time. Gwynn saw the savage, hating expression on his face, and resigned herself to being raped. She conceded, too, that he had probable cause. He was still entitled to his physical enjoyment of her, if only because she was still-legally-his wife. Lately, she hadn't been much of a wife to Clay. Even if he'd had occasional release with someone else, the frustration must have been too much. "Tell me!"
"Go to hell," she whispered.
Raped she was. Clay didn't concern himself with foreplay, except in a rough, punishing kind of way. He had a tremendous erection which he flaunted before her eyes until she closed them.
"Open them, damn you, open them!" he yelled, and pinched her cruelly on the thigh.
She opened her eyes before his right fist descended on her jaw. He yanked her to the bed edge, turned her buttocks so that the light struck them better, then thrust inside her in one, violent lunge. Without a pause, he began to move, and his movements, for perhaps the only time in their fourteen months of marriage, found the key, the elusive button, to her response. Though she loathed and feared Clay, Gwynn nonetheless moved with him until they were one, heaving creature of lust, a creature whose lower part despised its upper, and vice versa. But he ejaculated too soon and withdrew, leaving her, as he so often had in the past, high, dry and stranded.
"There," he panted, shoving her away from him. "Take this news back to your lover. He can have you! I'm going to wash him off me. You, too." '
Rather than give him the satisfaction of seeing her tears, she turned her face away from him.
While he was in the shower, she realized what she had to do. Throwing on the clothes she'd flown home in, she packed everything she could into a pullman and two weekenders. These she carried out to her car, somehow fitting them into the trunk with a spare tire and an ovemighter stuffed with cosmetics. Hastily, before he could come out and scream her perfidiousness to the neighborhood, she climbed under the wheel, fought a balky ignition, then drove away without once looking back.
Her marriage, if she'd had even the slightest doubt, was over. Finished and done with. If he didn't sue for divorce, she would. "And it never really began," she mumbled out loud, braking around the first corner. Tears formed rivulets through her makeup, and she had trouble seeing. Rather than cause an accident, Gwynn pulled over for a few minutes. As soon as her vision cleared, she drove on, no happier than before but a great deal more in command of herself.
In spite of herself, she watched the Dasher's rear-view mirror, half-expecting that Clay would follow, half-hoping he would. When no Grand Prix surfaced behind her, she set a course for Roy Tannen's penthouse apartment. Roy might choose not to welcome her, of course. He might profess ignorance of any relationship of theirs which entitled her to room and board, plus a shoulder to cry on. She'd go there, anyway. She had nowhere else to go.
* * *
Tannen looked her up and down as though he were seeing her for the first time. He poked a finger in his ear and withdrew it. Then he smiled, removed his pipe and stood aside. "You can come in. But you'll have to start all over from the beginning. That's quite a story you've told. I'm not sure I believe a word of it. If it were anyone else..."
Gwynn, who couldn't take offense tonight, no matter what he said, staggered through the penthouse door with the first of her luggage. She was close to hysteria, to a screaming, kicking fit which might end in hospital sedation. But she had no right to take it out on Roy. Not after he'd opened his door to her.
Tannen took the weekender from her hand and pushed her down in a chair. "Drink?"
She nodded. "Make it strong."
He went to pour two double bourbons at a bar in the corner, and brought them back, keeping one for himself. Pulling another chair nearer, he leaned close to her and eyed the tear stains on her cheek. "You say you're married, your husband has been wagering on his own games, and his book raped you one week ago tonight because he thought he'd been skinned. The part about your marriage I knew already. Don't ask me how. A man always knows. The rest is news. Kindly fill me in."
She had to finish the drink and ask for another before she could start.
14
The Seals' underground dressing room was lined with concrete to make it soundproof. But someone, in violation of the New Orleans Electricians' Union contract, had devised a hook-up to the stadium's PA system. While he struggled into his shoulder pads and looked about for his shoes, Bunyard listened.
"...for today's game, Number Seventeen, Otis Palmer. On defense, the Seals will start..."
"So they found a cure for pulled groin muscles," someone growled, referring to newspaper reports all week long that the Panthers' starting quarterback had pulled a groin muscle in Monday practice and wouldn't be available for duty in today's contest. "It's called 'Nationally Televised Game.' "
Something rattled inside one of Bunyard's shoes when he picked it up: the plastic vial of mescaline. He'd dropped it inside when he came down, on the one-in-a-million chance that Fred Shanks or Larry Curtis, on prodding from the commissioner's office, shook down the room for narcotics. But the kick-off was just fifteen minutes away. There wasn't time left for a shakedown.
No one was paying him any attention, so he took out the vial and removed one of the capsules. Squinting down at it, he hesitated, studying his watch, considering the odds. He'd been violently sick this morning after taking the first one, but then he was violently sick the morning after almost every game, especially if the Seals lost. And they needed to win this one if the league and the country were to take them seriously. The Panthers were leading the Western Conference's Central Division-the "Black-and-Blue Division." They were given an excellent chance at the Super Bowl.
Bunyard thought of Gwynn and the way he'd lost her, and he popped the cap into his mouth, using his helmet as a shield. He wanted to play a superior game today as a means of vindicating himself in Gwynn's eyes. Rita's, too. The one might be lost to him, but he still had the other. No sooner had he swallowed the capsule and pressed the helmet down on his head than Fred Shanks himself burst into the room. Shanks wasn't much on pep talks. He came to make announcements and give orders, nothing more.
"Okay, every man on the field. And remember the Red Ones suit up the same way we do. That's all."
* * *
The Panthers won the toss and elected to receive. The Seals' Danny Sloan, no wind at his back in the still dome, kicked off while every fan in the country watched. The Panthers' Phil Latour took the ball on his own 18 and. moved it diagonally across the field back to the 26, cutting to avoid a vicious rush.
Otis Palmer, his relative youth indiscernible inside the Red Bay helmet, raised his arm to the crowd, as though asking for quiet. Rather than abating, the crowd noise intensified. Palmer shrugged and huddled his men, anyway. The play had probably been diagrammed days before, .so the lack of quiet wasn't as yet a problem.
Vaughn Russell went in motion to the left, while Don Jackson stayed put at his fullback's slot. But Palmer surprising everyone in the country who followed the Panthers dropped back to pass. He zinged a strike to tight end Woody Campbell, who gathered it in on the 35 and rambled to the 41 before the Seals' secondary collected their wits and shut him off.
Bunyard, who felt absolutely nothing yet from the mescaline trickling into his system, admired the sheer zaniness of the call. Other teams might pass on first down, but not Red Bay. Not with Don Jackson and Vaughn Russell in the same backfield. But professional football was a game of the unexpected. . On a home field, in front of network cameras, anything could happen.
After a commercial pause, Palmer sent Don Jackson on a slant over left guard, and the Ohio State product picked up six yards to the 47. On second-and-four, Vaughn Russell went outside on a pitch-out, after a fake move to the inside which duped no one. Seal linebackers Frank Zimmerman and Tom Gillespie, with help from defensive end Neal Sanderford, reacted very well, cutting off Russell at the sidelines before he could pick up the first down.
The crowd whooped for nearly a minute, but Bunyard, watching Number Thirty-Six pick himself up and limp back to the huddle, knew that Russell's thirty-year-old legs weren't what they once were. But then his thirty-year-old legs wouldn't be what they were now.
The third-down play was a marvel of blocking, timing and just pure power. Behind left guard Jud-son Jarvis and left tackle Terry Fitzsimmons, Jackson smashed into the Seal secondary, completely demolishing middle linebacker Tom Gillespie, which, if you believed New Orleans sports writers, happened only once or twice in an entire season. Not until Isaac Hayes applied a shoulder and two hundred well-conditioned pounds at the Seal 45 was Jackson brought down.
Bunyard saw what they were up against-the Panthers' offensive line was one of the best in the business, making the running game all the more dangerous. Otis Palmer could pass, too, when he had to, having once completed 17 out of 23 in a narrow loss to New England two years before. But his forte was strength-strength on the ground, strength in directing an infantry attack almost legendary in the game.
The next play proved it. Vaughn Russell took a hand-off from the Panthers' signal-caller, made a feint to the left sidelines, his usual route, then reversed himself behind Don Jackson's blocking and ran right. New Orleans' linebackers bought it. Woody Campbell, six-four and two hundred-thirty pounds, was able to tie up Randy Coulter, six-five and two hundred-sixty, long enough for Russell to sweep right end-and without being called for holding. The gain was sixteen yards to the 29. Another first down.
"Defense! Defense!" the New Orleans cheering section chanted.
Bunyard wondered if Rita were leading this particular cheer. Rather than turn around on the bench and have the crowd intimidate him by its size-a rookie always imagined everyone in the stadium was staring at him-he kept his eyes straight ahead, or rather on the New Orleans end of the playing field, where officials were unstacking players like cord-wood.
The Seals called a time-out, and re-grouped. Whatever defensive adjustments were made proved effective, at least for the time being. Don-Jackson's next carry netted seven yards to the 22. Palmer was sacked on the next play, however, attempting to set up some sort of a screen pass to Harry Kenoe. On third-and-seven, rather than the expected fullback draw or trap, the Red Bay general tried to find Harley Winters on a fly pattern down the left sideline. The pass went incomplete and Gale Gordon kicked a 36-yard field goal, giving the visitors from Wisconsin a 3-and-oh lead.
* * *
Midway through the first quarter, the Saints were discovering what the rest of the league already knew-the Pack played defense, too. Brad Davis' two passes had gone awry, and Red Bay's front four were yielding turf in grudging amounts, three or four yards at a time. The "drive" bogged down on the New Orleans 43. The Seals punted.
Moving into action again, Palmer directed his team to another score in twelve plays, starting from the Red Bay 14. Two spectacular runs of seventeen and twenty-two yards on the part of Don Jackson keyed the thrust. Vaughn Russell took the ball into the end zone from the 5. Gordon converted, and the Panthers led 10 to 0. The crowd, which had come to see a spectacle, not a slaughter, began to grow restive, although not yet to the point of tossing debris onto the playing field.
After instructions from Fred Shanks and the offensive coordinator, the Seals took the field. In very deliberate fashion, a drive commenced. Casey's catch for nine yards, and Bunyard's own reception for thirteen, supplemented the hard running of Ed Hancock and Charlie Walters. When Walters earned a first down on the Red Bay 37, a score seemed imminent. But Davis, fading to pass, was wrestled to the ground by Sonny Wagner and Tim Secrest, who had overpowered tight end Gene Connally. The loss was back to the New Orleans 49. Not even Charlie Walters' valiant legs could get the yardage back. When two consecutive passes went into the artificial turf, the Seals punted.
* * *
Clay Bunyard, sitting on the bench again, began to experience a glow, a warmth which spread throughout his body. He checked his vision right and left, and discovered that he could see as clearly as ever. This time, he felt, there'd be no interfering lights from the drug's chemical interaction with alcohol already in his system. He hadn't had a drink in twenty-four hours.
With an eye on the clock-the first half had 12:04 remaining-he waited for the Seals' next possession. The Panthers, meanwhile, drove for another score, Harley Winters over-the-shoulder catch of a Tagge pass from the New Orleans 18 capping the usual effective ground game. Gordon converted. Red Bay now owned a 17 to 0 lead, and the crowd made known its displeasure.
Reed Kimbrell's return of the ensuing kick-off put the Seals in operation at their own 31, their best start of the day. In four plays, Davis moved them to the visitors' 43." Bunyard, who understood, or fancied he understood, everything happening on the field, joined the huddle in time to hear his play, the sideline pattern in which the flanker turned right, caught the ball and went out of bounds with it, or turned left, made the reception and penetrated the secondary for additional yardage. The right turn meant an almost certain gain, but no more; the left, danger of an interception by a linebacker alert enough to come over.
"It's yours, Bunny," Davis warned, and slapped him on the flank.
Bunyard, whose senses, all five of them, were rapidly being honed to razor sharpness, lined up a step ahead of his usual backfield position. He couldn't have explained why. In his state of expanding awareness, he couldn't have explained anything. He just knew, or felt he knew, what he was doing. Not even Fred Shanks himself could have moved him. At least, not without a fight.
Stanford Mitchell snapped the ball, Davis fell back into a pocket and looked left. Just as Sonny Wagner was about to plant two hundred and fifty-five pounds of defensive end on him, Davis swiveled and rifled the ball to Bunyard, who by now was four or five yards deep into the Panthers' secondary. The latter had turned left, and the ball arrived right on target, hitting him high on the chest. He gathered it in and ran, while the crowd noise climbed several decibels and the officials accomplished feats of athletic prowess themselves, to avoid being run down. Bunyard used every move he had in him and a few he hadn't dreamed were in him. He ran until the last Panther-he thought it was George Gressetdived for him and missed by a couple of inches. Then he ran some more, until even he was satisfied that six points had been tallied and no penalty would take it away. He felt dizzy when he stopped, but the dizziness vanished when he jogged back to the bench and congratulatory hands began drumming on his pads and helmet. Now his ears hurt. But Bunyard didn't mind the crowd noise, even when he realized his ex-wife-he could think of her as such already-probably wasn't making any of it.
Sloan converted and made it 17 to 7, Red Bay. The Panthers threatened twice more, but a gutty Seal defense held until half-time.
* * *
During the half, Bunyard began seeing the lights he feared-brilliant, many-faceted lights which came at him from every direction. He bathed his forehead with a water-soaked towel, but still the lights dazzled him. At the risk of attracting Larry Curtis, he even lay down on an empty bench and did rapid sit-ups. The sit-ups seemed to clear his vision, but now his pulse started to race. If anyone asked him anything, he didn't recall it later. Nor did he have any recollection of replying.
When the second half commenced, he had trouble following the action. The Panthers were moving the football once more, that much he realized from the crowd noise and the fact that he himself wasn't on the field. But if the score changed, and by whatever margin, he had no awareness of it. He sat and watched the activity inside his own head. There was an astonishing variety of it. The scenes were wild, bizarre. They changed with kaleidoscopic swiftness, awing him with their vividness.
"Okay, offense, on the field!" someone said, and gave him a shove in that direction.
Bunyard realized, with some lingering remnant of rational thought, that he shouldn't go on the field. Just why he shouldn't escaped him, only that he shouldn't. He should stay there on the sidelines and contemplate the oneness of it all, the commonality, the harmony. He should-
"Bunyard! Get your butt moving if you want to start for this team!"
He trotted off toward a hazy knot of players out in the middle of the field. Luckily for him, it was the right huddle. Someone dropped sn arm around his shoulder. He had trouble making out the someone's face but not the words that came out:
"It's yours again, old buddy. Let's work it like last time."
Someone else bumped pads with him-a guard or a tackle, because he bounced like a tennis ball-and his head briefly cleared. He saw the Panthers' front four drop into their three-point stances, and knew, vaguely, what he was supposed to do. Without having to think about it, Bunyard lined up in his flanker's position. Seconds later, he went in motion, not because he knew the ball had been snapped but because an instinctive sense of timing told him to go in motion.
At the proper moment, he turned around, and the ball was there. Whether or not he hung on to it, he didn't recall later, only that he pointed himself downfield and ran. He ran until he lost his sense of direction. Even when the rest of him wanted to stop, he continued to run. About then, the lights came crashing down on him. His whole world went black.
15
Far away in a Baton Rouge hotel room, Gwynn Bunyard was watching the game from the shelter of Roy Tannen's strong arms. Roy had invited her to accompany him to the secretary of state's office on a business matter two days before. Even if the feeling were illusory, she'd never felt so safe before, so secure from harm or the threat of harm. The game was just five minutes old; she and Roy had more than two. hours together before catching an afternoon flight back into New Orleans.
"That's him, isn't it?" Tannen said in her ear. "Number Ninety-nine? Your alleged husband?"
She looked, then nodded, recognizing Clay's number, if not his features.
"A nice reception," Tannen conceded, gazing over her shoulder. "Nice. But then I'm not a fan of the sport. I was a baseball man in college. Still am, for that matter." He tightened the arm he had around her waist. "I don't know if I can hold out until half-time. Know what I mean?"
Gwynn did. She tingled at the fire he kindled in her loins, the points of her breasts. Roy could make her feel this way just by looking at her, and right now he was doing more than just look at her. His free hand had crept along her leg to a point where it could easily reach the warmth between her thighs.
"Palmer now, he's the complete athlete," Tannen remarked. "Davis, too. Those two fellows could probably play any or all of the professional sports, including hockey. Don't you agree?" He squeezed her leg and nibbled lightly at her left earlobe.
"I do," Gwynn returned, quivering. "What was the question?"
"Cheeky baggage. Watch this."
They watched as the Panthers completed another relentless drive which upped their advantage to 10-and-oh before the first quarter had ended. The instant replay showed Vaughn Russell, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him, sliding over left to score from five yards out. Before the extra-point attempt, the Seals were penalized five yards for being off-sides.
When the home team received the ensuing kick-off, Roy's right hand wandered between Gwynn's legs. His left cupped first one breast, then the other. He tongued the inside of her ear until she would have done anything he asked except go back to Clay. At last she had to ignore the images on the television screen. Twisting so that he could reach her mouth, she lay back in his arms and closed her eyes. Roy bent over her and kissed those eyes, also her nose, lips, even her hair. But while their visual senses had turned off, their ears continued to hear the game announcer's excited description of the action on the field:
"...the forty, the thirty, the twenty-he's going into the end zone! Clay Bunyard, the Seals' fine young receiver, scores from forty-three yards out! We have a seventeen to six ball game, ladies and gentlemen! And here comes Danny Sloan for the EPA."
Roy Tannen's head jerked up. "Did you hear that? Is he trying to make All-Pro or something?"
Gwynn looked, too. The extra point try was successful, and New Orleans trailed by only 17 to 7. The instant replay showed her husband, the man she'd once loved, twisting and leaping his way to a touchdown. Watching the peculiar, almost desperate manner in which he ran, she had to wonder if it was Clay. He'd taught himself to be a pass catcher, not a runner. But he eluded the Panthers' grasp as though it were a matter of life and death.
"Aren't you proud of him?" Tannen asked, studying her face.
She hesitated, then nodded. "In a way. It's what he always wanted. Clay thought he could build an easy life from pro football. And do it in a hurry. He just didn't know."
"Don't be too hard on him," Roy advised. "We still have to cope, remember. Or, I should say, you have to cope. He's your husband."
Gwynn needed no reminding. She lay back down, and Roy began to nuzzle her neck and throat. He returned to her mouth and kissed her hard a few times. When she parted her lips, he thrust in his tongue, .searing her mouth and palate with the urgency of his need. After a few minutes, she was moaning with need herself, on fire from his kisses, his handling of her.
"There's the two-minute warning, ladies and gentlemen. We have exactly two minutes until half-time. The Panthers have the ball on their own twenty-seven. Can they score from seventy-three yards out on a ground game alone? In their previous possession, Alex Northrop's bunch were stymied at the New Orleans thirty-four. Into the game for Green Bay
Gwynn tuned out the announcer's voice, and concentrated on the sensations coursing through her fevered body. Roy had lowered the zipper on her stretch pants and wormed in his hand until he found he clitoris, or rather, the shaft of her clitoris, which he began to massage adroitly. Between his hand on her breasts, his finger on her clitoris and his tongue ' in her mouth, she was about to explode. Seconds later, she did explode, climaxing thunderously while he helped her along.
Tannen, as soon as she stopped her thrashing, took his mouth away to breathe again. "Ho boy!" he panted. "You're really spaced out. I didn't know football did this to you. Suppose we can get a tape of the game?"
She wasn't interested in a tape of the game, only in having his penis in her vagina as soon as he could get out of his clothes. She grasped Roy by the arm and let her glance plead for itself. He raised a brow.
"That bad, eh? Well, seeing as how I'm responsible..."He pushed her off his lap long enough to undress himself and her, too, with a dexterity that no longer surprised her. Then he carried her to the bed, laid her on top of the covers and climbed up to join her. "Shall I turn it off?" He indicated, while preparing to kneel between her thighs, the still-blaring television set.
Gwynn half-rose to touch the head of his tool. "No! Just put it in me! If you don't do it soon, I'll--I'll scream!"
"And we wouldn't want that, would we?" Roy smiled and leaned forward to claim her, sliding his swollen appendage in to the hilt. He paused a few seconds, probably for control's sake, then began to fuck her in slow, even strokes, varying his thrusts with sidewise, corkscrewing movements.
Gwynn, after a minute in which she lay passive, found the rhythm and began helping him. While a dozen high school bands urged them on, they helped one another to a tumultuous orgasm, climaxing at very nearly the same instant. She discovered that the emotional excitement of sharing sex with another man during the half-time of her husband's football game accentuated the whole affair. She didn't even mind that Roy, who probably wanted to watch the second half, hadn't dangled her through another climax or two. Didn't she have the evening to look forward to?
He withdrew and stepped down to put his clothes back on. "Forgive me if I'm brusque. Strange hotels don't bring out my best. I'll make it up to us." Tannen checked his watch. "What do you say I run down for a fifth and the makings? The house's stock isn't large, but there might be a better brand or two."
She nodded, having grown thirsty herself. "But hurry back."
"Just try to lock me out," he chuckled. When the door closed behind him, she got up to dress and repair her ravaged makeup. The hair she'd spent the morning on was hopeless, so she gave up trying to restore its hang. While she replaced the comb and compact in her handbag, something the half-time announcer said broke through her reverie.
"...a fifty-seven-yard pass play. When Brad Davis throws long, it's usually to Gene Connally, the veteran acquired two years ago from Minnesota. This time it was to Clay Bunyard, who scored easily"
* * *
As the second half got underway, Roy returned with a fifth of bourbon, a bag of crushed ice and some plastic tumblers. He set about opening and pouring a couple of stiff ones, handing the smaller one to her. While she sipped it and watched the Panthers' kick-off return team earn good field position, Tannen's restless glance flickered from the screen to her. "Doesn't it bother you?" he asked finally. "Or is it just me?"
Gwynn looked at him, pretending ignorance. "What?"
He shrugged. "Sitting here like this with me, watching him play. After we've screwed one another silly. I mean, he's still your husband. Me, I'm still old-fashioned enough to feel, well, a twinge or two of guilt."
"No. No, it doesn't bother me. He never saw us. He was in the dressing room the whole time." Even if her own was forced, Gwynn joined in Roy's hearty laughter.
On the Seals' first second-half possession, something strange began to unfold. Brad Davis, on se-cond-and-eight, threw to Clay Bunyard in what appeared to be a perfect repeat of the first-half scoring play. The latter staggered a step, straightened, then ran toward the goal line sixty yards away, bouncing off a linebacker and the Panthers' strong safety en route. Just as it appeared he might score again, bringing the Seals to within three, Clay veered off the playing field and charged headlong toward a concrete retraining wall. The run was broken, as though Clay still saw enemy tacklers in front of him where there were none.
Gwynn, puzzled, felt the blood drain from her face, leaving her with a sensation of having just died. When Clay failed to stop, or even to slow his mad rush toward the wall, her bewilderment turned to horror. "No! He can't! He won't!"
"He's going to hit!" Tannen predicted, his voice rising an octave with each syllable. "Even if he tried to stop..."
She closed her eyes so she wouldn't see. Sixty thousand people, all screaming at once, would assure her against hearing it. The crowd noise pouring from the set became a thunderous roar which set the room and its furniture to quivering. The announcer's voice was drowned out twice over.
Tannen seized her by the shoulder and turned her toward the set. "Don't you want to see? He's your husband! Look at him!"
She opened her eyes and saw Clay lying motionless on the artificial turf beside the restraining wall.
Clay, the center of a growing swarm of people, most of whom were jumping about and waving their arms. "Oh, my God!" Gwynn groaned. "Don't let him be dead! Please don't let him be dead!" She jumped up and looked about for her coat. "I'll have to go. If he's dead or dying, I have to be there." Roy got up and blocked her leaving.
"No. We'll fly back the way we planned. Sit down and let's watch. Maybe he's only stunned. Knocked out. It happens all the time in athletic events. With pads and helmet, he had plenty of protection."
Coming from Roy, the words seemed callous. Gwynn, blinking back the tears, continued to struggle toward the door, her thoughts more jumbled than her hair-do. Clay had done this to punish her, that was the first one. He'd maimed or killed himself to make her feel guilty, to spoil forever her one last chance at happiness. "L Let me go! Please let me go! What will they think if I'm not there? What will I say? What excuse can I give?"
Tannen carried her back to a chair and literally stuffed her into it. "It doesn't matter what they think. Not any more. Didn't you say you don't love him? That you'd get a divorce?"
"Yes!" Gwynn sobbed. "Yes, I said it. And I meant it. I still want to be free of him. But not this way. If he's dying, if he needs me ... Don't you understand?" Roy squeezed into the chair with her and took her in his arms, comforting her as much by being there as what he might say.
"Of course I understand. But you're estranged from Clay. In peoples' minds, that the same as a separation. You have no legal or moral duty to run to him when he gets himself in trouble. Not after the way he's treated you. Let's sit it out. I know someone in the police department I can call in a few minutes. He'll give me the lowdown. Then we'll start back. So calm yourself."
Through her tears, she watched an ambulance drive around the field and back up to her husband's supine form. He was strapped onto a stretcher, the stretcher loaded and the ambulance dispatched to a hospital, all this while the network color man was saying the usual bland and uncontroversial things:
"Clay Bunyard, the Seals' fine young wide receiver, has just met with an accident, we're sorry to report. It's a tragic thing. .We'll let you know more as soon as we know more. Action an the field will resume shortly. In the meantime, let's listen to this message."
The game picked up where it left off, and the Panthers eventually won, 27 to 7. Gwynn sat in a kind of stupor while the highlights were recapitulated and the statistics reviewed, hardly noticing when Roy picked up the phone and dialed the hotel's switchboard. He placed a call to New Orleans, asked a few questions of someone at the other end, then hung up, looking grim.
He had to tap her on the arm twice before she'd look at him.
"Clay's in Oscliner Foundation Hospital. A massive concussion. But he'll live, they think. He was on a, um, trip. That's what the doctors discovered from a routine blood typing. So you can stop feeling sorry for him. I doubt if he feels sorry for you."
Gwynn felt as though she'd been given a reprieve from death herself. "T-Trip?"
Tannen's smile was tolerant and bleak. "Mescaline."
16
Braced by an antiseptic smell, Clay Bunyard s nostrils crept back from nothingness before the rest of him did. He wanted to open his eyes, and after a strenuous effort, did so. Someone in white was bending over him. He blinked and the someone's features cleared into those of an attractive young nurse. The latter smiled, but the smile wasn't a Rita Hazlitt promise of better things to come. This smile was altogether professional.
"Good morning. We were beginning to worry about you. How do you feel?"
Bunyard tried to move his jaws, to ask her what she was talking about. His jaws refused to move. He could only stare silently, stupidly, at her. The brain which had once worked so well for him was right now an absolute, total blank.
The nurse placed a cool hand on his forehead. "That's all right. You've had a terrific shock. Don't try to talk if you can't." She wheeled to confer with another person he couldn't see. When she turned back, a needle flashed between her fingers. She bared one of his arms and jabbed. Bunyard, who could neither move nor speak, had no way of protesting.
A few minutes later, the darkness came for him again.
* * *
When next he shook off the black, he could both wiggle his fingers and move his lips. But now there was no one to move them for. He was alone in the room, Bunyard raised his head and turned it, searching for a button beside his head. He found one and pressed, falling back with the last of his strength. "Weaker ... than ... baby," he muttered, aware, after this slight exertion, of a head that throbbed like a tugboat's engines.
The door opened and a nurse came through. A smiling nurse. Whether she was the same one who'd jabbed him, he had no way of remembering. But the antiseptic smell was the same, which probably meant nothing.
"Hello. I'm Judy. Can I get you anything?"
"Get me my clothes," Bunyard whispered, and knew he no more meant it than he would mean to beg for another needle. He wasn't even capable of dressing himself, much less of walking out of the room.
"Sorry. You're in no condition."
"Then tell me why I'm here."
"That I can do. You're here because you ran into a restraining wall at the dome. At full speed, no less. But the dome's still standing. I think there may be a lesson in there somewhere."
He looked hard at her to see if she were joking. "Me? Why did I do that?" Now the girl laughed, but he could tell she wasn't joking.
"You tell me, Mr. Bunyard. Now are you going to he back and rest, or do I have to get my needle?"
Bunyard let his head fall back to the pillow. The head would have dropped back anyway, within a few seconds. That's how weak he was. "No needle. Just one other thing. What day is it?"-
"Tuesday. You've been here two days. Don't let that bother you. Some of our patients have been here two years. Please try to rest, Mr. Bunyard. You need it. If you have to ring again, I'll be next door."
Judy Whatever-her-name-was turned her back on him and left the room. Bunyard wished, while he was still conscious, that Rita would come. Not Gwynn. Rita. Strange that he should think of her, long for her, rather than his own wife. Maybe Rita could tell him what had happened. Maybe...
He slept.
* * *
Hours, or perhaps a day later, he emerged once more to find himself the center of a knot of people gathered around his bed. Their faces were bleary until he closed his eyes and opened them again. Then he saw that two of his viewers wore white jackets. One was male, the other female. Hospital staff. The identity of the third person puzzled him for a moment, until the caller's voice unlocked the mystery: Grant Hicks, the attorney who'd negotiated his contract with the Saints and now represented him in all his legal dealings, both on and off the field.
"Can you leave us for a minute?" Hicks was asking the M.D.
"We'll leave you for five," the latter replied. "Five, and no more." He went out, taking the nurse with him.
Bunyard smiled a wan greeting for the tall, silver-haired Hicks, who did not smile back. "Is it still Tuesday?" he asked.
Hicks shook his head. "Wednesday. You've slept a long time. Clay, I'm afraid I bring two items of bad news for you. One is of an especially painful nature. Shall I break it to you first? If you want me to come back tomorrow, please say so."
Bunyard struggled to a half-sitting position, wincing over each movement. His body ached from one end to the other; the discomfort wasn't localized. "No. I'm strong enough to take it now. Tell me."
"Your wife, Gwynn, has filed for a divorce. The papers from her attorney came this morning. They charge mental cruelty and adultery. The young woman named is--"
"I know who she is. I expected it. The suit, I mean. If she doesn't try to steal the shirts from my closet, I won't contest it." Smarting inside nonetheless at this proof that Gwynn wanted out, Bunyard scanned Hicks' time-and-booze etched face. "What's the other?" From the way Grant hesitated, he figured the rest of it hit below the belt, also. "Well?"
"It's rough, too. Try to understand why it has to be this way."
"What, man, what?"
"The commissioner's office has suspended you from the game until next September. I don't think I need to tell you why."
Bunyard felt as though he'd been slapped in the face, kicked in the groin and crack back-blocked, all at the same time. All the discipline and grit he'd ever acquired were necessary to keep the tears out of his eyes. Oh, he knew why, all right. The mesc. Somehow he'd managed to knock himself out while still under its influence. An astute emergency room resident had done the rest. "I'll fight it. I'll deny everything. I'll say someone slipped me the stuff in my breakfast coffee. I'll-"
"Believe me, I've considered our alternatives, and there are none. Your best course is to take the suspension with good grace-"
"Good grace!"
"-admit that you made an error and report to camp next year with a clean blood stream. There's no fine, by the way, just a suspension."
"What if there isn't a next year!" Bunyard stormed. "What if they won't let me through the training camp gates? Do I have any recourse? No!"
"You have, if you'll stop thinking with your emotions. Remember the no-cut contract we held out for? The contract still has two years to run. If they strike you from the roster, you're due forty-four thousand dollars within thirty days. I have a copy of the contract in my office if you've lost your copy."
Bunyard expelled the first good breath he'd had in days. "Now I remember. Okay, I will come by. How about criminal charges. Will they--? "
"I called the DA's office before coming over. They tell me they won't bring charges. I'd say you're a very lucky man, Clay." Hicks looked at his watch.
"And I see my five minutes are up. We'll meet in my office in a day or so and talk out the rest of this. See you then."
Bunyard, watching him go, didn't feel lucky. He felt wretched. To have a headache like his, to lose a wife and be shorn of six weeks' work, all in the same day, shouldn't happen to any man, much less a man named . . What the hell was his name?
* * *
On Thursday morning, a specialist with an eastern accent came and told him he could leave. Not in so many words, of course. First he had to undergo an hour of sitting up, flexing various extremities and staring' into fights attached to strange-looking instruments. "How about it, doc?" Bunyard demanded. "Will I be able to play football again? Can I take the licks?"
"I don't see why not. As long as you confine your playing to the field. But I suggest you stay off your feet for a day or two. Any dizziness, lie down until it passes. If it doesn't pass, have the good sense to bring yourself back here."
Remembering that he wouldn't even have to dress out with the taxi squadders, Bunyard promised to do everything that was asked of him. The specialist departed, replaced a few minutes later by a red-haired nurse who brought him something he hadn't seen in going on a week: street clothes. But he hadn't been brought in wearing civvies. Someone must have fetched fresh clothes from his apartment. Gwynn? Not a chance.
"Oh, and there's someone here to drive you away.
Mr. Bunyard," the nurse said from the door. "A young lady. I'll tell her to give you a minute."
Rita. Who else would take time off from her job to see him home? She probably felt responsible for him, it being her place where he'd first tripped out. She'd even tried to warn him, and like a prick, he'd told her what she could do with her warning.
"Hi."
With one leg in a pair of double-knits and the other still inside a hospital gown, he looked up to find Rita watching him from the door. "You might knock," he grumbled. "I might have been buck naked."
"But you aren't," she said, and crossed the room to kiss him on the cheek. "Are you all right? I've been worried sick. When you ran toward the stadium wall, I screamed. I knew what made you do it, and there was nothing I could do to stop you. Why didn't I take those damned capsules and flush them down the toilet when I could?"
He patted her shoulders. The imprint of Rita's firm breasts on his sore chest reminded him of how good life could still be, even without Gwynn. And how long he'd gone without female thighs underneath his. "Because I wouldn't let you. Remember? We nearly fought. Let's get out of here."
* * *
After clearing the hospital's business office, he allowed her to lead him out to her little roadster. In the light of day, he saw something he'd never noticed before-one taillight lens was shattered. Bunyard stopped and ran his fingers over the jagged plastic. Even this simple contact with the outside world was reassuring. "I've been suspended for a year, if you haven't heard," he remarked. Rita's brow wrinkled.
"And my wife's suing me for divorce. Guess who she named as co-respondent."
"Can I have three guesses?"
He watched her squirm under the wheel, tanned arms and legs mastering everything within reach, and knew he'd be getting bed rest on top of bed rest. As much as he could stand. "You can have as many guesses as you need. That's a promise."
Epilogue
LEAGUE OFFICE CRACKS DOWN
NEW YORK-The Inter-State Football League commissioner's office today issued stern guidelines for member clubs in relation to drug use by players. Commissioner Reggie Smisher warned that unless management acts on the guidelines, each franchise faces certain state regulation.
Sources say the guidelines are to prevent a recurrence of an incident which occurred last weekend in New Orleans. Wide receiver Clay Bunyard, a rookie out of the University of Arkansas, was knocked unconscious after running headlong into a restraining wall at the new Louisiana Dome. Hospital examination disclosed that Bunyard was under the influence of an hallucinogenic drug for most of the game.
The player has since been suspended from the league for a year.
