The Justice of the Peace was an old man who squinted. Gloria didn't care for him at all but he was good enough to perform the marriage ceremony and that was all that mattered. Bill looked uncomfortable in his newly pressed blue suit and he seemed to wish that the old man would hurry up with the ceremony even though it was a very short one to begin with. Chuck, the best man, seemed to be enjoying himself and he kept a half smile on his pimply face while the Justice of the Peace droned on. Sally, the other witness to the ceremony, stood to one side appearing as awed as if she were in a great cathedral. It was really a drab little wedding. There was only one thing that might set it apart from all the other weddings ... everyone except the Justice of the Peace was eighteen years old.
"I now pronounce you man and wife," the old man said. "You may kiss the bride, Mr. Landis."
Bill grabbed Gloria roughly and kissed her hard on the mouth. Gloria felt acutely embarrassed. This isn't the way a groom kisses his bride at the conclusion of the wedding ceremony. This is the way a fellow kisses his girl in the back seat of the car when no one is watching.
"Hey, lemme have seconds!" Chuck shouted and pushed Bill to one side.
Gloria saw the boy's pimply face descend upon hers and she closed her eyes in disgust. Chuck kissed her even harder and he ran his tongue over her lips. She clutched her hands into fists. Damn him! This was no movie balcony. This was sup posed to be a wedding, a milestone in a person's life.
"Knock it off, Bill," her new husband laughed. "You've got your own broad."
Out of the corner of her eye Gloria caught the expression on the old man's face. He seemed revolted by the display of adolescent spirits and curled his mouth into a sneer. How many marriages like this did he perform, Gloria wondered. How many teenaged couples drove down from the big city to take advantage of the county's liberal marriage laws? All a couple needed was a marriage license, proof that they were at least eighteen and blood tests. Several couples Gloria knew got married by this same Justice of the Peace and she hoped that the man would bring her luck. After all, the couples she knew were still married to each other. But then none of them had had their first anniversary yet.
"I wish you the best of luck," Sally said tearfully as she kissed Gloria on the cheek. "You make such a beautiful bride!"
Gloria didn't know what she was talking about. She was wearing street clothes like everyone else and only the corsage she wore added gaiety to her ensemble. Gloria never thought of herself as beautiful but she knew that she was pretty. Her natural blonde hair hung to her shoulders and she always was sure never to go over five pounds more than her normal weight. She was always proud of her figure and recognized it as her best asset ever since she started to blossom forth three years ago. It was her figure that attracted the boys rather than her face which was just about average. It was her figure that attracted Bill. Without her shapely body Gloria would not have the wedding ring on her finger now.
"Well," Bill exclaimed, "let's have something to eat. I'm starved."
Chuck whispered something and Bill laughed in a loud and dirty manner. Again Gloria had to clutch her hands to keep from striking out at the best man. Why couldn't he keep his dirty cracks to himself?
The four teenagers left the frame house and piled into their cars. As soon as Gloria sat next to her very recent husband she held his hand and sighed. "I just can't believe that we're actually married."
"You'd better believe it because I'm going to get tonight what I've been trying to get ever since I met you." He patted her thighs and let out an animalistic grunt.
"Do you have to talk like that?" Gloria snapped. "You and Chuck have been acting as if this were a game all day long. Now I'm getting tired of it."
Bill shoved his head out of the window and shouted to Chuck in the car behind him. "Hey! We're having our first fight!"
Chuck honked the horn several times and then shouted back, "Get a divorce! You two haven't constipated your marriage yet!"
"Constipated? You must mean con...."
Gloria dug her fingers into Bill's hand angrily. "That will be enough," she said between clenched teeth.
"Don't be such a nervous bride," Bill answered lightly and then pulled the car away from the curb.
At the first stop light Chuck drove his car next to Bill's. "Now that you two are such an old, settled married couple I suppose you wouldn't be interested in a drag race."
"No, they wouldn't!" Sally responded quickly. "Will you quit acting like a kid and grow up, Chuck?"
"She took the words right out of my mouth," Gloria said to Bill in a low voice.
"The old Ball and Chain says nix," Bill called over to his friend. "I guess she wants me in one piece for tonight."
Chuck made another dirty remark and Gloria stared at the road ahead. She would only have to take him for another hour or so. There was going to be a dinner and a couple of drinks and then Chuck and Sally would drive back to the city ... at least she hoped that was the way it was going to work out. Before they drove down Sally had confided to her that Chuck had tried to talk her into staying the night at the same motel she and Bill had reservations for. Chuck and Bill were two of a kind. She remembered all the times Bill had tried to get her in the same position. It was hard fending off all his advances but she managed it. She kept telling him that she wanted to be married first and, at last, he gave in. She knew too many girls who went all the way and received nothing for their trouble but a bad reputation. When the stop light changed and the car pulled off again Gloria fingered her wedding ring. So, she actually had made it. She had gotten married while she still had her virginity. In this day and age it was becoming increasingly rare and Gloria felt proud of herself. She was sure that her parents, like Bill's, were sure they married so young because they had to. Well, they'd find out in time. Let them all think what they want right now.
The restaurant was just off the main highway and Bill parked his car in the lot behind it. Chuck came into the parking lot a few seconds later. As soon as he got out of his car he tied a tin can to Bill's rear bumper. "I forgot about this," he grinned. "Just married! Just married!" he shouted aloud to no one in particular.
Gloria sighed. Children must play.
Inside the restaurant they were seated at a table next to an empty fireplace. Over it, on a brick wall, were crossed swords that looked phony.
"Let's have champagne first," Sally suggested. "That goes with big occasions like this."
None of them had planned on ordering champagne but all agreed that it was a good idea.
When the waiter came with the champagne bottle in a silver bucket Gloria felt more married than she had while at the Justice of the Peace. There was a certain opulence to the silver bucket and its bottle that had been lacking in the simple, fast wedding ceremony. The waiter took out the bottle and popped the cork. All four teenagers gave a happy shout. It was the one thing that they all did well together yet, Gloria thought.
All of them brought their glasses together in a toast. There were tears in Sally's eyes as she began a long-winded toast. "Here's to you and yours and may all the years you two have with one another be as happy as always and may all...."
"Bottoms up!" Bill said abruptly. Sentiment always embarrassed him and Sally was clearly going overboard with hers.
As soon as Bill drank he put the glass down and made a face. "Blah! So that's champagne! It tastes more like sour ginger ale."
Chuck looked at his glass in amazement. "Naw, it's just like wine ... except with bubbles."
"Haven't you two ever had champagne before?" Gloria asked.
"I think its just lovely ... just lovely," Sally said in a vague, romantic way.
Both Bill and Chuck refilled their glasses. "Hell, you must need a whole bottle to get loaded on this stuff," Bill said.
"You're not supposed to get drunk," Gloria said as an implied warning.
Bill ignored her and downed another glass of champagne. Gloria hoped that he wasn't going to get drunk ... not on their wedding night.
By the time the waiter came with the food the bottle was emptied. Gloria and Sally had had two glasses each while Bill and Chuck had finished the rest of the bottle. They were laughing and punching each other on the shoulder like a couple of kids let out of school. Gloria felt her face burn. Other people in the restaurant were looking at them.
Dinner was finished quickly, noisily and sloppily. Gloria could see that Bill was more than a little high and yet he wasn't really drunk. She had seen him when he drank too much. Right now he just had a glow on.
By the time coffee came around everyone was quieter. Chuck had his arm around Sally and was murmuring to her softly. "Please ... no," Sally kept saying.
Gloria looked away. Imagine propositioning her right in front of them!
Bill slipped his hand under the table and touched her leg. "Guess it's about time we left, right?" he said thickly.
A tingle went through Gloria's body. In a little while she would exchange her girlhood for womanhood. She wouldn't really be married until that happened. "Let's go," she said getting up.
"Hey ... hey," Chuck said bleary-eyed. "Where are you two goin'? We just got started."
"Where the hell do you think we're going?" Bill told him.
A leer came into Chuck's liquor-dulled face. "Thas' right. You two have a hot time in the old town tonight, huh?"
"I wish you the best of luck," Sally said starting to cry again. The two glasses of champagne she had drunk made her even more sentimental.
When the four teenagers got back to the parking lot it was dusk. The lights were on in the many stores that bordered the highway. Above, the pale stars were just coming out. A cool wind whipped by.
Gloria untied the tin can on the back of Bill's car and left it where it lay. Bill was standing beside Chuck trying to talk him out of seeing them to the motel. "It isn't far. You two just better get along now. You've got a long ride back to the city."
"I'm the best man, right?" Chuck answered in a drunken voice. "So I gotta see that you kids are tucked in for the night." He let out a laugh.
Bill shrugged his shoulders and came back to the car. "Chuck got me worried. He's too drunk to drive. He could never take the stuff like I can."
"Well, maybe he should find someplace to stay ... not our place."
Bill looked over his shoulder. "That's what he's been saying to Sally."
Gloria knew the bind her friend was in now. If she stayed overnight, even innocently, she'd lose her reputation. If she went driving back to the city with Chuck in his condition, she'd possibly lose her life in an auto accident. Then, of course, there was the other possibility where she'd stay with Chuck and lose her virginity.
Before Gloria would be concerned about her friend but now she wanted to forget her. This was her wedding night and she didn't want to have it ruined. Eventually Chuck was going to get what he wanted out of Sally so why not now? "Let's just slip away now, Bill," she urged.
"What about...?" he indicated Chuck and Sally with his thumb.
"Well, what do you expect us to do? Let them sleep with us?" Gloria said impatiently.
Bill sat beside Gloria in the car and kissed her hard. "No, I want you all to myself all night," he said.
He started the car and began to drive away. Behind them Gloria heard Chuck shout, "Wait ... wait up...."
Bill gunned the motor and they sped down the highway. Gloria didn't want to look back. She was afraid that Chuck might be following them. She tried not to think of Sally and her predicament. Somehow the girl would have to work out the problem herself. After all, she was eighteen.
The green neon sign up ahead burned into the night.
BOW WOW MOTEL
When Bill first told her about the name of the place she imagined some dirty cabins just off the highway. Actually the motel was clean and fairly modern looking. She couldn't imagine where the owner of the place ever got that name. It sounded so cheap and tawdry. She thought of explaining to her family and friends where she spent her wedding night. "At the Bow Wow Motel off Highway Nine." How was that for romance?
"Wait here," Bill said when he parked.
Gloria watched his slim, muscular form cut a shadow in the lights. He was an even six feet tall with a shock of sandy hair that never seemed trained. When they went to school together all the girls were crazy about him. All of them were captured by his looks and vitality. Gloria wanted to marry him the first time she saw him two years ago. Now they were both out of high school and he was working at his uncle's gas station. Everyone advised them to wait until Bill found a better job and became more secure, but she wouldn't hear of it. She had three older sisters, all unmarried, who were still waiting for men with both marriage and security to offer.
When Gloria first stated that she was planning to marry Bill, with or without the family's blessing, only Susan, her oldest sister, was for her. "There's a saying, Gloria," she said. "Marry in haste and repent in leisure. Maybe you are doing the wrong thing marrying so young to a fellow without prospects but it might be an even bigger mistake not to marry him at all. I turned down a boy when I was your age; now I regret it. Look at me, twenty six years old and no man in my present or my future."
While only Susan agreed that she should marry, her agreement was a reserved one. That comment about "repenting in leisure" implied that she would have something to repent about. Her mother and father did more than imply; they stated flatly, "Wait until after the honeymoon. Wait until you begin to live together in that tiny apartment of yours. Wait until the bills pile up. Wait until you get on each other's nerves...." That was her parents' warning. Wait....
Gloria was prepared for rough times. She wasn't a romantic like Sally. Men wanted sex and women wanted security. When this is exchanged it is called marriage. So that apartment that they were going to move into, once this one day honeymoon was over, was small and cheap but at least it was going to be theirs, hers and Bill's. The one advantage in marrying when you were eighteen is that you had your whole life to make the marriage grow. And, if she had to repent in leisure at least she had plenty of leisure time to do it in.
Bill came back to the car and opened the door. "I got the key," he said with excitement in his voice. "Our room is down at the end ... the quiet comer."
When they walked to the last door of a long row of doors Bill paused and picked Gloria up in his arms.
"What are you doing, Bill?" she cried.
"Isn't this what I'm supposed to do, carry you over the threshold?"
"No, you save that for our first apartment."
Bill let her down. "Okay with me. I was only doing it to make you happy."
He opened the door and brought in the overnight bags. When he turned on the light Gloria saw a bare, yet comfortable looking room. It was furnished with a single chair, a single bureau and a double bed. Gloria could not help blushing when she saw the bed. This was going to be the first bed she would share with Bill....
As soon as Bill closed the door behind him he kissed her. Gloria relaxed in his arms.
"Well, let's get started," he said abruptly.
"Started?"
"Yeah, take off your clothes. I want to see you naked." A lecherous expression twisted Bill's face into something she did not recognize.
Was this the way all wedding nights started? She had deliberately emptied her mind of all preconceptions about this moment knowing that, as all preconceptions were, they never were the truth. Take off your clothes....
"I'll go in the bathroom, Bill and ... "
"Bathroom? What are you giving me?" He sat on the edge of the bed and slapped his hands together. "My own private burlesque show! Take it off!"
Gloria thought of the negligee she had picked out for this particular night. She had planned to put it on in the bathroom. Perhaps that was just another preconception of what the wedding night was supposed to be like.
She slipped off her shoes. Outside she heard the hush-hush sounds of traffic along the highway. It was dull and muted like the sound of the distant sea. She took off her light coat. "Bill, I have a wonderful negligee...."
"What's with this negligee business? We're married, aren't we? I want to see what I got."
Gloria's hands moved woodenly to her dress. She pulled it over her head and placed it on a hanger in the closet. She could feel Bill's eyes on her, burning with desire. Her own desires slowly wakened. She wanted to show off her body in front of Bill, she wanted him to see her nakedness. And yet ... Something about the whole scene annoyed her. She felt like a stripper in a burlesque house. Wasn't that what Bill said just seconds ago? She took off her slip and now she stood in her bra and panties.
"Come closer, baby," Bill told her.
She came closer and stood just three feet from him. Her hand lingered over her bra. She looked behind her at the room's only window. It was thickly curtained. The harsh light from the overhead bulbs glared down at her. She pulled off her bra.
Bill groaned in ecstasy as her firm, well rounded breasts were bared. His hands reached up and touched the bright, red nipples. "Gloria, oh, Gloria," he gasped.
Now she slipped her panties down her shapely legs and stood utterly naked in front of him. Bill pulled her down on the bed. He stood up and removed his own clothes quickly.
"Baby, how I waited for this!" he cried.
He flung his weight downward. Gloria felt her breath leave her quickly. The savage movements of her new husband took her by surprise. Like a tormented creature he tore into her. There was no gradual building, just this sudden and violent thrusting. Pain.
Gloria gasped loudly. "Easy ... be easy...." she pleaded.
Unhearing Bill continued his love-making. Gloria tried to squirm away but he held her tight against the mattress. Her heart beat wildly. Suddenly she brought her knees upward, her thighs moving against Bill's quaking hips. Completely aroused now she clutched his back, digging her ringers into it. "Be hard, Bill," she said this time. "Be hard...."
Then they were still.
Their breathing filled the room.
Bill rolled over on his back and shielded his eyes against the ceiling light with his arm. There was a satisfied smile on his face. "Oh, baby, am I glad I married you," he said.
Still shaking with unslaked desire Gloria crushed her breasts upon him. "Are you, Bill?" she said happily.
He embraced her and grasped her buttocks. "All this wonderful meat and it's all mine...."
Desire welled up in him again.
Once again he shoved Gloria's back against the bed. This time he was slower and yet no less powerful in his movements. They locked together in a deep kiss as their flesh entwined and became one.
Gloria wished that the light was off. She wished that they could stay all night like this in their own private darkness. "Bill ... the light...."
He groaned and got up. He gazed at her naked body and then a smile curled the corner of his mouth. "I see I had me a virgin," he said.
Gloria saw what he was talking about. "I ruined the sheet," she said. "What will the motel say?"
"They don't have to say anything. Let's take the sheet home and show everybody we didn't fool around before we got married. I hear they do that in Europe."
"Oh, Bill...."
He turned off the light. Darkness, deep, silent, rich, flowed around them and the deep warmth became deeper and warmer still. Bill clutched and grabbed at her body as he breathed softly. She embraced him and felt weariness begin to drift into her flesh. So this is what it's like. This is what all the shouting is about. This is why people go crazy for not having it right. This is what all the books are written about. This is what movies and plays are made about. This is what boys whistled about and girls whisper about. This is what makes the world go round.
Bill's clutching hands became still and he relaxed in her arms like an exhausted child. She held him like a child, his lips against her breasts. Soon his heavier breathing told her that he had fallen off to sleep. Sex is more taxing on men, she heard. Once they are spent, they are spent. Even the very young of eighteen are spent and must rest, mouths upon nipples. She also heard that men were at their sexual peak at eighteen. And Bill had at least his share of virility. His exhaustion gave her a keen sense of power, the sense of power all women who loved men to exhaustion must have.
Now sleep was coming to her. She felt her legs grow heavy and her eyes closed against Bill's silent features. Leisure ... Repent in leisure....
A door slammed in the next room and woke her from the twilight sleep. Loud voices drifted through the wall. A girl was crying.
"I know they're in this motel. That damned desk clerk wouldn't give me their number...."
Chuck!
"What will my mother say?" Sally wept. "I told ya' I'd marry ya' " Chuck answered, annoyed.
"P ... promise."
"Of course, I promise, sweetheart." Chuck's voice became garbled. Sally stopped crying and there was the sound of bodies falling on the bed.
Gloria was wide awake now. She knew that everyone was going to hold her responsible for Sally. Everything that was going on in the next room made her wedding night seem dirty and cheap. She and Bill were like just another young couple who "shacked up" in a motel.
Tears slid down her cheeks. Damn you, Sally! Damn you, Chuck! Why did you two have to ruin this one precious night of my life?
In the room next door whispers, moans, cries and squealing bed springs seeped through the thin wall and filled the silence now.
CHAPTER TWO
Waking.
This first thing Gloria saw was the strange bureau standing against the wall. The early morning sun painted it in dull gold and she wondered where it came from. She turned over in bed and rolled against Bill sleeping soundly at her side. For a moment she thought: so he finally got me to sleep with him. Then she realized she was married to him. Her name was now Mrs. William Landis ... child bride. And he was the child groom.
Gloria was surprised to find that she was naked. She had never slept naked before and then she remembered last night, her "strip tease," and the negligee she never got to wear.
Not wanting to wake Bill she slid out of the bed silently and walked over to her overnight suitcase. She opened it and took out the long, black negligee and held it to the sunlight. It was transparent and the sunlight came through the material. One of her friends told her that she first appeared to her husband on her wedding night in a transparent gown such as this. Men are supposed to be intrigued by some mystery, some hiding of flesh. Gloria put the negligee on and looked down at herself. Her ripe, young body was hidden and yet artfully exposed at the same time. "Bill," she called softly.
A moan answered her but it came from the next room. Chuck and Sally! She had forgotten all about them. Now she recalled why she had cried herself to sleep. She hadn't counted on having company on her one day honeymoon.
Gloria padded quietly over to the bed. In his sleep Bill turned, moving the covers off of him. She looked for awhile at his lean, young body. Girls weren't supposed to be interested in looking at nude boys, not as much as boys were at looking at nude girls, anyhow. Well, maybe she was different. Maybe she was sexier than most girls. Last night proved to her just how much sexuality she had. It was good to know that she was completely a woman and not dried-up or neurotic.
"Bill," she whispered in her husband's ear.
His eyes fluttered open. He smiled. "Gloria, baby," he said and brought her close to him. "What's this you got on?"
Gloria stood up and turned. "The negligee I told you about last night before you got so hot and bothered. Like it?"
He leaned on his elbow and leered. "What a body you got, Gloria. Come back to bed. We have this place till three o'clock so let's make the most of it."
She twirled around again just to tease him. In doing so her glance sped fleetingly over the wall. She stopped. "Chuck and Sally are in the next room," she said flatly.
"What?"
She told him about what she heard last night after he had fallen asleep.
Bill laughed dully and without humor. "That bastard Chuck and his hot pants. Well, we always said that he would get Sally someday."
"But did it have to be this day? Bill, what's this going to look like when we get back home?"
"Why should we care? We're married. Those two aren't."
"I'm talking about how this will make us look. Most of our family didn't like the idea of us getting married and now we have to come back with this ... our best man and the maid of honor shacking up in the same motel on our wedding night."
Bill's young face furrowed. "Who has to know? We'll just tell everyone that Bill was too drunk to drive so he and Sally had to stay overnight ... in separate rooms."
"Oh, Bill, you know no one will believe that even if it were true!" Gloria cried.
Bill let out a long sigh. "Let's not worry about them now. Let's enjoy what time we have left. Now stop turning around like a top and hop into bed."
Gloria slipped out of her negligee and crawled next to Bill. Immediately he was upon her like a ton of bricks. The warmth of his body covered her flesh.
It was last night all over again. Once more Bill drove his hard body on until Gloria felt herself roused to maddening want. This time she gave herself more freely and clasped Bill's flesh in a vise of her arms and legs. Her nipples hardened and dug into his heaving chest. The peak of passion they both sought was reached at the same time and they allowed themselves to slide slowly down the descending slope. As soon as they reached the bottom of it Bill exclaimed joyfully, "Gloria, we're so good in bed together! Do you know how much that means in a marriage? Some couples never really hit it off in the sack and yet they go on living with each other year after year. I was always afraid that you wouldn't care for sex as much as I do. Now I see that you like it as much as I do."
"What gave you the idea that I wouldn't like it?" Gloria said combing his thick, sandy hair with her fingers.
"I don't know," he mumbled into her neck. "I read somewhere that girls don't like it as much as men do."
Gloria giggled. "We must've read the same books. The trouble with the world is too many sex manuals. People should just do what comes to them naturally."
"Yeah," Bill answered. "People are reading about sex more today but enjoying it less."
They embraced and laughed softly together.
Gloria felt very happy. She knew that Bill was right about the importance of a couple hitting it off in bed. No matter how much trouble a couple had to face, if they had the bed for solace they would have everything. All else was minor.
Their most immediate problem made itself known. Voices came through the thin wall. Sally began to cry.
"Shaddap, will ya'?" Chuck shouted. "I'm hungover."
"I'm ruined!" Sally responded with a wail. "What will my mother say?"
Chuck told her what she could do with her mother. Sally cried louder.
In anger Bill picked up an ash tray and threw it against the wall. "Knock that off in there!" he hollered.
"Bill, don't let them know where we are!" Gloria begged.
"That you, Bill?" Chuck shouted.
"Don't answer him," Gloria said in low and urgent tones. "Oh, please, let's have this day to ourselves. Let's just stay here until they kick us out at three o'clock."
Bill nodded. "I lost my head. You know my temper."
Chuck knocked at the wall. "You in there, Bill, old buddy? This here is Chuck. How did you make out last night?"
"Better than you did, you horny bastard!" Bill cried.
Gloria punched the pillow in frustration. "Why did you have to answer?"
"What the hell?" Bill shrugged. "He's my best friend."
"He's not mine."
"How about Sally?"
"I disown her!"
There was a tapping at the wall. "Gloria...?" Sally said gently. "I'm sorry that things worked out like this but we were in this accident, you see, and...."
"Accident?" Gloria shouted. Visions of broken bones and stitched faces rose in her mind. "Are you all right?"
There was a pause.
"I don't want to talk like this. I'll come over to see you," Sally said. "No, wait...!"
Bill threw himself back on the bed. "Now we'll have to dress for company."
Only a few seconds later there was a rapping at the door. Gloria looked around quickly for something to put on. She grabbed her negligee and slipped it over her head. Bill put the bed covers over his nakedness.
Gloria opened the door a crack and saw Sally standing there in her bare feet and with a coat wrapped around her. She was sure that was all she wore.
"I gotta come in," Sally said and pushed past the door before Gloria could react. Chuck came right behind her. All he seemed to be wearing was his trousers.
"You two don't look hurt to me," Gloria told them. "What's this about an accident?"
"It happened just after you two left," Sally answered. "Chuck insisted on driving so he did ... right into another car."
"What about the other people?" Bill wanted to know. "Were they hurt?"
"Naw, the car was empty. It was parked in the lot behind that restaurant."
"And we left," Sally added. "We walked all the way."
"You mean you left the scene of the accident?" Bill snapped. "What kind of dumb move was that to make? You know the police will check the license plate and arrest you, Chuck, boy, are you in trouble!"
"In more ways than one!" Sally wailed.
"Will you be quiet!" Gloria shouted. She rarely showed her anger but this was too much for her. It was bad enough that both of them stayed overnight at the same motel but now this. Police trouble.
"I got it all figured out, though," Chuck said. "I'll just go back to the parking lot today and then claim that somebody must've tried to steal my car and then got in the accident. This way I won't be blamed."
Bill shook his head. "It won't work."
"Yes, it will," Chuck went on. "Here's our alibi...."
"Alibi!" Gloria sneered. "Don't you two realize that this is our honeymoon? We're not here to make alibis for drunken drivers. Now both of you clear out. Solve your own problems. You've got us into enough hot water now."
Chuck was taken back in surprise. "Gee, what a grouch!" he mimicked. "So we don't use you two as an alibi. I'll still tell the cops someone stole the car after me and Sally...."
"You ever hear of statutory rape?" Bill asked. "Tell the cops you and Sally shacked up here overnight and you'll be in even worse trouble. She's a minor, you know."
"Aren't we all?" Chuck flipped. "Well, so I won't go to the cops. I'll let them come to me. It was an old car anyhow."
"And what about the other people's car?" Gloria asked becoming more hostile. "Can't you think of anyone but yourself?"
Chuck lowered his blood-shot eyes. "Right now I can't think of anyone but you, Gloria."
Suddenly Gloria realized that she was in her thin negligee. She went swiftly to the bed and joined Bill under the covers. "Leave, damn you!" she demanded.
"Sure ... sure. Don't get excited," Chuck answered. He took Sally's arm and led her to the door. "One more thing, though. We'll need a lift back to the city. Since you two are going back today, I thought...."
Bill looked at Gloria and raised one of his eyebrows in an unspoken request. He was leaving it up to her to decide whether to take them along on the return trip.
She covered her face with her hands. "Why not? They can't make things any worse than they have now."
At three o'clock all four were in Bill's car. Chuck and Sally were crammed in the back with their suitcases while Bill and Gloria sat up front. It was becoming overcast and the gray day matched Gloria's mood. She refused to think of the situation any more. Besides, it wasn't supposed to be a real honeymoon to begin with. Both Bill and she planned to take a regular honeymoon when he got his two week vacation later that year.
She looked back over her shoulder as the Bow Wow Motel disappeared behind a billboard advertising cigarettes. The wedding night was over.
At sunset they stopped at a diner and ate in near silence. It was a marked contrast to the last time they all ate together. Chuck was just coming out of his hangover and Sally sat dull and sullen. Bill tried to make small talk but they didn't respond to it. Gloria ignored them entirely.
As soon as they all piled out of the diner, Chuck grunted, "I need a drink." Without another word he walked to a nearby liquor store and came out with a package under his arm.
Once inside the car Chuck opened the bottle and took a long swallow. "I feel better now," he said. "Nothing like the hair of the dog that bit you. How about you two?" He shoved the whiskey bottle between Bill and Gloria.
"Bill is driving and I don't want any," Gloria answered. She took pains to put an edge in her voice.
"Henpecked already, huh, Bill?" he grinned and took another drink. "I'm glad I'm not married," he added.
"You will be," Sally snapped. "You promised."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Chuck responded, annoyed. "Since I have to marry somebody it might as well be you."
Despite herself Gloria had to turn. "What do you mean have to?" she asked.
"Haven't you heard? Married men can't be drafted into the army." Chuck leaned forward and slapped Bill on the shoulder. "Right, Bill?"
Gloria felt as if she had just been touched by a live electric wire. She glanced at her groom. His face was very tense. "You mean ... you don't have to worry about going into the army now, Bill?" Although she tried to control her voice there was a tremble in it.
"That's not why I married you," he claimed weakly. At that moment he stepped on the gas pedal as if to get away from Chuck's suggestion as fast as he could.
In the rear seat Sally took a drink from the bottle. "If it wasn't for the army a lot of boys wouldn't get married, you bet," she sneered. "Right, Chuck?"
Chuck gathered that he had just made a statement he shouldn't have made. "Ixnay," he mumbled to Sally.
"What do you mean ixnay?" Sally went on. "Didn't you tell me last night it was better to be wed than dead? Very clever of you. You told me you'd rather stand in front of a Justice of Peace than a Justice of War."
"I never said anything of the kind, now please shut up," Chuck told her, sotto voice.
"Oh, that's right. You didn't make that crack. You said that's what Bill told you once."
Chuck groaned. Bill gripped the wheel of the car and leaned forward squinting at the speeding ribbon of highway in front of him.
"What are you kicking my foot for, Chuck?" Sally said abruptly, "All I said was ... Oh ... Oh, I see...."
And the car became thick with silence.
CHAPTER THREE
Bill let Chuck and Sally off at a comer. "You two better sober up before you go home," he told them pointing to a coffee house across the street. Since they were the only ones who had been drinking out of the bottle they were both very drunk. Sally had spent the last half hour crying about her "lost virtue" but now she sat in stony silence. Bill helped her out of the car and Chuck lugged their overnight bags.
"It was one hell of a wedding," Chuck said and staggered into the coffee house. Sally followed him without saying a word.
Once Bill climbed into the car Gloria covered one of his hands with hers. "I want to know the truth ... did you marry me just to keep out of the service?"
"Didn't I tell you that wasn't so?" Bill answered without looking at her.
"We've got to start being honest with each other," Gloria persisted. "If there wasn't that new rule about married men not being drafted you wouldn't have married me in the first place, isn't that so?"
Bill tore his hand from hers and slammed both of them on the steering wheel of the car. "All right! All right! That new rule was one of the reasons I married you. The other reason is that I love you. Sure, I might've held off not marrying for a few more years before. But, when I had this chance to avoid getting drafted, why not now? Did I do something so wrong?"
Gloria looked away from him. "Thanks for telling me that much. Now I know where I stand."
Bill grabbed her and forced her to look at him. "And didn't you hear me say that I love you? Haven't I proved how much I go for you in that motel? Hell, you didn't think I'd marry you just to get out of the army, do you?"
"I didn't say that. I only want you to know I hate being used. If you had told me about this before we got married I wouldn't have minded. This way ... knowing that you were trying to keep it a secret...."
Angrily Bill put the car into gear and drove off. "Let's stop arguing. We've got to save our strength to see our families tonight."
After a ten minute drive through the downtown section of Hanover, Bill parked in front of an apartment building. Gloria looked at it with nostalgia. This was her former home as well as Bill's. Both of them had grown up together in this apartment building and in this average neighborhood. Bill had almost been "the boy next door." Actually he had been the boy in the floor below. It was this closeness that had done the most to bring them together. Gloria wondered if they would've married if they had lived a block apart or even another apartment building. If there had been another girl who lived closer to Bill than she had would he have married her instead? When Bill claimed so ardently that he loved her would he have loved another girl who would have been just as conveniently placed in the same building? Just how deep did Bill's feelings run anyhow? She realized that she was going to find that out in time. She hoped that she wouldn't be sorry when she did.
They went to her old apartment first. When she rang the bell her mother, round and gray-haired, opened the door. "Glad to see you, Mr. and Mrs. Landis," she said with a cool smile. Then she hugged Gloria quickly and kissed Bill even more quickly on his cheek. "What happened to your maid of honor, Gloria? Sally's mother is going out of her mind with worry. She keeps telephoning me every half hour."
Gloria told her about Chuck getting into a minor car accident the night before and about both he and Sally having to spend the night at the motel ... in separate rooms.
Gloria's mother raised an eyebrow. "Tell that to the Marines or, better still, tell that one to Sally's family. I just couldn't make it sound convincing."
"It's what happened," Gloria said. "We knew no one would believe it. Anybody else home?"
"As a matter-of-fact just about everybody is here including your family, Bill. We all decided to wait up for both of you."
As soon as Gloria and Bill walked into the living room the lights were turned on and handfuls of rice were thrown at them. "Surprise! Surprise!" several people shouted.
Bill's mother, father and kid brother were there along with her own mother and three sisters. Gloria's father had been dead for almost two years. Susan, her oldest sister, hugged her warmly. "Happy homecoming," she said. "And how is the bride?"
"Fine, Susan. I didn't expect all this," Gloria said waving to a table full of cake, coffee and liquor.
Bill seemed genuinely surprised too. "Hell, we just planned to drop by and then go to our own place."
"Oh, you two can kill a couple of hours yet," Bill's father said. "So Chuck and Sally had to spend the night together I hear."
Gloria didn't feel like arguing. In fact, she didn't give a damn about Sally and her "lost virtue." She turned to her other sisters and fell into sisterly hugs with them. Behind her she heard Bill explain about Sally, Chuck and the car accident. She knew Bill's father to be an old lecher who was doubtlessly keenly interested in what went on last night ... in her bedroom as well as Sally's and Chuck's.
Everyone sat down, ate cake and drank coffee. Gloria tried to revive her spirits with chatter. She wanted to show everyone that she and Bill were compatible. A sad expression on her face at this important moment after the honeymoon could start rumors. Smile ... be happy ... that's it, Gloria, you got them convinced.
"The Bow Wow Motel!" Bill's father roared.
Gloria felt her stomach curl. She had warned Bill not to mention that name.
"That place sounds like a real joint!" Bill's father roared on. "I knew you two couldn't afford much but...."
"It was really quite nice, Mr. Landis," Gloria said, cuttingly. "You can't judge a place by its name. After all, they call that restaurant you like to go to The Winsor." It wasn't much of a comeback but she wanted to show her anger. In any event it stopped any further talk about the name of her honeymoon motel.
After about an hour and a half of the coming home party Bill and Gloria left. Members of both their families offered to drive them to their new apartment but they declined.
"Well, I'm glad that's over with," Bill said as soon as they got outside again. "Seeing both our families together is like killing two birds with one stone."
"Don't make it sound like such a task. It was your father who kept making all those cracks. Does he think he's being clever?"
"And what about your mother? Look at what she said after you tried to explain about Sally and Chuck ... Tell it to the Marines ... is that supposed to be brilliant?"
"You can't blame her. She knows Chuck. He's your friend, not mine. He's the one who is making it hard for us."
"And that jerk friend of yours, Sally, isn't at fault either, huh?"
"Can't we stop mentioning their names? It seems that we've been thinking about them more than we've been thinking of us. Bill, we're married. We're going to begin a whole new life for ourselves."
Bill placed his hand gently on her cheek and looked deeply into her eyes. "You're right. Boy, for a couple that's been married for only a day we sound like we're rounding out our tenth year together!"
They both managed a laugh.
Their apartment was in a low-income section of the city. The building itself overlooked a main avenue and buses went by all day and night. It was one of the reasons that the rent was cheap. Both of them knew that this arrangement was only going to be for a year or so until they saved up enough money for a better place. Since Gloria intended to stay on at her job as a file clerk her salary, along with Bill's, added up to a nice figure every week, enough to have almost half of it put away. A year of such savings would give them enough to put a down payment on a house. This, at least, was what they planned. It was this dream that made the reality bearable.
They had to walk the three flights to their apartment. Both of them were breathing hard because they were carrying their suitcases. Bill opened the door and strode in. Gloria waited in the dully-lighted hallway. "Didn't you forget something?"
Bill paused, then he understood, "Oh, yeah...."
He picked Gloria up in his arms and carried her over the threshold.
"Ain't dat romantic," a sour voice said.
Bill turned with Gloria in his arms. Both of them looked at a short, fat, ugly man standing at the open door directly across from theirs.
A slovenly woman of about forty pulled him back. "Let the kids alone, Harry," she said. "Can't you see they just got hitched."
"You'll be sorry!" the man shouted pointing his finger at Bill.
The woman slammed the door. She started to raise her voice at the man. The man shouted in anger. Soon there were the sounds of slapping. The woman let out a cry. "Sonuvabitch bastard!" she screamed.
Bill kicked the door shut. The voice still came through. In the street below a bus squealed loudly to a halt. Being three floors above the street didn't seem to make any difference. The bus seemed to be right under their window. There were other sounds. Babies were crying. Children were running. Drunks were singing. The street lamps and neon signs burned through the narrow windows of the small apartment.
The teenaged married couple looked at each other. Both smiled weakly.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gloria felt Bill slip out of bed the next morning and go into the bathroom. She heard the plumbing facilities flush and the water being turned on. Gloria looked at the clock on the nearby dressing table and she found that it was just past seven. Bill would be leaving for work at seven-thirty.
She stepped out of bed and put on a robe. Both had slept naked and she wondered how many more nights they would continue to do so. She judged that the average honeymoon lasted two weeks and that was the length of time young couples went to bed in the nude, exploring one another, getting used to the other's body. After that there will be the pajamas and jockey shorts. After that there will be the nights couples only went to bed to sleep.
Gloria quickly filled a coffee pot with four cups of water and placed four tablespoons of coffee in the percolator or one for each cup of coffee. It suddenly occurred to her that she had never made a meal for Bill in her life and had a very sketchy background in cooking to begin with. She herself had never been fussy about food and she knew that Bill was the same. But, still, from this morning on she would have to make him breakfast and so many more tens of thousands of other meals.
Gloria picked a toaster out of a cardboard box, a wedding present from someone she couldn't find the card on off hand. In any event she thanked the unknown donor and plugged the cord into the wall socket. It was a four-slice model so she knew she wouldn't have to wait for a couple of slices of bread to toast before she had to refill it.
After putting the bread in the toaster Gloria put on another gas burner and placed a frying pan on top of it. She put some butter in the pan and, after it was well melted, she broke a couple of eggs in the pan to fry. The frying pan was not a large, four egg model but she didn't care. She would make Bill's breakfast first since she wasn't due at the office until nine. This gave her an hour more in the house than Bill.
Just as the coffee started percolating Bill came out of the bathroom. He was cleanly shaven and his hair was well combed. Except for a towel around his neck he was completely naked.
"Gee, you look ugly this morning," he said with a boyish grin. "I guess the honeymoon is over, huh?"
Gloria flipped part of an egg shell in his face. "If I had made the John first maybe I wouldn't look so ugly. Besides, I was working over a hot stove making breakfast for you."
Bill looked at the gas stove. "I don't like eggs," he announced.
"This is a fine time to learn about that," she answered. "Why didn't you stop me from buying eggs when you saw me stock this place with food?"
Bill shrugged his bare shoulders. "I thought you liked them."
"I do but not that much. So, that's something we can save money on, eggs. After that dozen in the refrigerator is gone that will be the last one we'll ever have in this house."
"That coffee smells good," Bill said sniffing. He took off the towel that was draped around his neck and flipped it at Gloria's rear. "Pour me a cup, honey, while I get dressed."
Gloria grabbed the towel and flipped it at Bill's bare buttocks. He held her arms and they wrestled for a moment. Gloria's robe parted revealing her nakedness. Bill embraced her and pressed his body against hers. "Oh, sweetheart, I just can't get enough of you!" he exclaimed. "Why don't I just take off today and we can stay like this until tomorrow?"
She wiggled out of his grasp. "I'd like to, Bill, but we both have to go to work."
He pushed her aside regretfully. "Damn! Why couldn't we have a regular honeymoon? Two weeks someplace like Miami? One week? Hell, I'd be satisfied with one week here."
The toaster popped up with a ringing bell. Somehow it made them both laugh.
"End of round one," Bill said and hurried into his clothes.
Gloria set out two cups, cream, milk, sugar and butter for the toast. She placed the fried eggs on a plate and sat down to eat it. Bill, wearing his work clothes and with newly cleaned coveralls wrapped up in a paper bag, sat down and began to pour a cup of coffee.
Gloria looked at him lovingly. Her husband was going to work. This was the way it was going to be for every morning of her life now. She was never going to be lonely like Susan who probably would never have a husband, a man to talk to, to have breakfast with.
"What will you like for supper tonight, Bill?" she asked.
"I don't care. How about hamburgers and French fries?"
"Oh, Bill, that's no meal. That's what we eat on dates. I was thinking of something special like ... a pot roast with potatoes."
"You know how to make a pot roast with potatoes?"
"Not exactly but I could learn."
Bill laughed. "Well, don't try to learn by to night. Meanwhile, stick to something simple. Franks and beans would be all right."
She sighed. When it came to food Bill was very unimaginative. Maybe it was all for the best because the meals he mentioned were about the only ones she could be sure of not ruining. There will be time enough to learn to really cook and they had lots of time.
Loud voices began to boom through the thin walls. The people across the hall were fighting again. They couldn't make out the words except an obscenity now and then. There was a slapping sound, a sharp cry and then a slamming door. They heard someone stomping down the hall towards the stairs. Now all they heard was the woman weeping.
"That guy knows how to keep his wife in line," Bill said, pointing towards the apartment across the hall.
"You can't mean that, Bill. We've only been here for less than twelve hours and that's the second time he beat her. I hope this isn't going to go on all the time."
A sad expression came into Bill's eyes. "Sorry, Gloria," he said.
"Sorry about what?"
"Sorry about bringing you to a dump like this. You deserve better."
"Now we've been through that before. We both wanted to cut down on expenses as much as we could to save up for a down payment on a house. It won't take long. Why, with both of us working we'll have the money saved up in less than five years."
"Five years!" Bill said exhaling loudly. "It sounds like a prison sentence and, in this dump, it is."
Gloria felt a flush of anger burn her face. "That's the way we figured it before we got married," she told him. "Five years will go before we know it. We would only be twenty three then. Twenty three and home owners. Not many married people can say that. And please stop calling this place a dump! We could be in a lot worse fixes."
"Yeah. We could be expecting a baby right now. I'm sure as hell glad you know how to take care of yourself. You do ... don't you?"
Gloria blushed. "Bill," she said softly, "you know that I don't like you getting that personal."
"Getting personal? I'm your husband. I'm supposed to get personal. So I know that you went to a doctor and he outfitted you with something or you take those pills just to be sure. If you can talk to a doctor, a stranger, about these things why not me?"
Gloria took a drink of coffee to clear her throat. "All right," she told him. "I know how to avoid having babies until we're ready to afford them. Satisfied?"
Bill sighed with relief. "You bet I am. If we can wait five years for a house we can wait five years for a kid. After all, I don't even know how this job will work out for me."
Gloria dropped her toast. "I thought you liked the garage."
"Sure, it's all right for awhile but I won't be getting any place there until somebody dies so I can replace him. I'm at the bottom of the ladder in that place. I don't know how long I'll have to stay there."
Gloria felt ill at ease speaking about so many important financial matters so early and on the second morning of their marriage. She had hoped for a kind of honeymoon anyhow when there were no thoughts about the years before them ... only that day ... and that night, one at a time.
Bill looked at his watch and stood up suddenly.
"Hey! Its twenty to eight! I'm ten minutes late already. I've got to shove of!!"
He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and then he kissed her again, harder, longer. "If only we didn't have to work today," he said. "We should've fixed it so we'd have at least an extra day to ourselves."
Gloria felt the same way. She wanted to hold him here in her arms and not loosen him so he could spend the rest of the day working on dirty cars. "We'll have the weekend," she told him. "We'll lock the door and not answer it and stay in bed for as long as we want."
He breathed heavily on her face. "You're getting me worked up again, honey. I could throw you into the sack right now and knock off a quickie."
"Oh, Bill, you're so vulgar," she chided.
"And don't you love it!" Bill kissed her hard once more and dashed out of the apartment.
He had only been gone a few seconds when Gloria remembered. She ran to the door and saw Bill just about to run down the stairs. "Bill!" she shouted. "How about lunch?"
"You know we'll both be working and too far away to come back here," he said pausing impatiently on the landing.
"No. I meant I forgot to pack you a lunch. We were going to save that way, too, remember?"
"Yeah. Well, its too late to worry about that today," he answered. "I'll grab something at work. See you."
He ran quickly downstairs. Gloria listened until she could hear him no longer. A lunch pail, that was what she had planned to get Bill. She made a mental note to buy one when she came home from work herself.
As soon as Gloria turned to close the door she saw a woman standing in the doorway across the hall. She was about forty, thin and awfully worn looking. She was wearing a faded housecoat and slippers. "Hello," she said. "You're the new bride, aren't you?"
Gloria nodded in agreement feeling it difficult to talk to such a pathetic, scarecrow of a woman.
"Are ... are you in a hurry?" the woman asked. There was a terribly lonely tone in her voice as if begging for a little company.
"Well, I'll be leaving for work pretty soon myself."
"Oh ... I thought maybe you would like to come over and have some coffee with me ... "
It was obvious that the woman was trying to be friendly and Gloria didn't want to turn her down. After all, she was her first neighbor. Then she thought: perhaps Bill didn't want her to associate with the people next door. Her neighbors were his neighbors, too. Then Gloria decided to respond to the friendly overture. If she was going to stay in the building for the next five years she might just as well get used to the people who were going to share this world with her. She crossed the hall and entered the woman's apartment.
Gloria was surprised to see that the neighbor's place was no different from her own. It was the same size and the walls were the same drab yellow. But the place was also very messy. Empty beer cans were everywhere and there was a clammy smell in the dank rooms. Gloria wondered why she simply didn't open the windows and let some fresh air in.
"My name is Polly Gray," the woman said. "My husband's name is Charles."
Gloria introduced herself and Bill. "I only have a few minutes," she added now wanting to leave the apartment. "I don't want to be late for work."
"You're both working!" Polly exclaimed. "How nice. I used to work for awhile ... until I caught sick."
Gloria didn't want to press her about the nature of her illness. Instead she went over to the kitchen table where a coffee pot was standing. She wanted to take a cup of coffee and leave as quickly as possible. "Well, how long have you been married?" she said by way of conversation.
"Twenty-four years," Polly answered in a monotone.
"Twenty-four years? Why you're a young woman now."
"I was sixteen when I got married," she explained. "Charles was nineteen. You two look about that age yourselves."
"We're both eighteen," Gloria answered. She looked about her and became more depressed than ever by the sight of the apartment. Didn't she ever clean the place, she wondered? "How long have you lived here?"
"Twenty-four years."
"Then...?"
Polly's eyes fluttered closed and she opened them a few seconds later. "Yes, we've been here ever since we got married. I suppose you two are already planning to move?"
"As a matter-of-fact we're going to buy a house."
"When?"
"Eventually. Five years from now, we hope."
Polly nodded. "We made the same plans when we first got married. Then things started to happen. Charles was drafted. That was two years out. Then he tried college under the G.I. Bill for awhile and dropped out after two more years when he couldn't go to work in the day and school at night. Then the babies came...."
"Oh, you have children?"
"I had five. The first died when she was a year old. The second died at birth. My next three were healthy though."
Gloria waited for her to continue about her children but she didn't. She looked about the apartment for the signs of a third or fourth person but found none. "Where are your children now?" she asked timidly afraid of another depressing recital.
It came.
"One is in a reform school. One ran away to join the Merchant Marine and I haven't heard from him in a couple of years now. My only daughter, she's just sixteen. She eloped. At least that's what she said in her postcard, she eloped and goodbye. That was two years ago." Polly "was silent for a moment. "This is no place to bring up kids. This is a lousy neighborhood. Junkies and drunks all over the place. My kid in the reform school was arrested for selling the stuff."
Gloria was so depressed now that she had to leave. She swallowed the lukewarm coffee and stood up. "I've got to hurry," she insisted. "I haven't even begun to dress."
Polly gazed at her with lifeless eyes. "You're so very young, so very pretty. I looked like you once...."
Gloria backed away to the door. She was going to take her leave whether Polly liked it or not. "Well, bye bye," she said forcing a smile on her face.
The woman acted as if she hadn't heard or understood that Gloria was leaving. "You're too young to be married. I was too young. My daughter is too young. Young people should wait. Why do we all hurry in marriage? What is so great about it?"
Gloria dropped any pretense of courtesy and strode towards the door. "Stay," Polly begged. "Talk to me. Have some more coffee."
Gloria pretended that she didn't hear and left the apartment. She hurried into her own place and closed the door. She went into the bathroom and started to wash her face. In the basin were the remains of Bill's shaving soap. Tiny bits of hair were peppered all through it. She had seen this in her former home after her father had shaved and she always recalled how the sight of it disgusted her. She turned on the water full blast to wash it down the drain. Gloria made another mental note: she would tell Bill to clean up the bathroom after himself. Might as well start the good habits early. She didn't want to spend the next twenty-four years cleaning out beard stubble.
Twenty-four years? What made her say that? Then she remembered Polly and her seemingly endless tale of misery. No, she won't be stuck in this apartment for the next twenty-four years. She would not burden herself with children she couldn't afford. She would not turn out like Polly, dried up, unhappy, begging a total stranger to talk to her. No, she would make this marriage grow and improve every day and in every way. She would have a house, children who would not run away, a husband who would still be kind to her.
Gloria stared into the bathroom mirror. For a tiny speeding second Polly's face flashed before her and then was gone.
"No," she said aloud. "I won't turn out like her."
Gloria drenched her face with cold water as if trying to waken herself out of a bad dream.
CHAPTER FIVE
When Gloria went to her job at the insurance company she was prepared for the greetings of her fellow workers and held her breath when she entered the large, busy office. She was immediately surrounded by five of her girl friends who welcomed her back by calling her by her married name.
"You don't look any different," Jane, one of her co-workers observed.
"How am I supposed to be different?" Gloria wanted to know.
Jane blushed and giggled. "Oh, mature and experienced."
The rest of the girls laughed at Jane's sexual innuendo. Gloria tried to smile but she was embarrassed by the girl's comment. She guessed that all of them had been talking about what went on during her wedding night. Virginal girls. She used to be one of them but now she was a married woman ... mature and experienced.
The bell rang to announce the start of another work day. Gloria went to the file case and started to get the folders ready for the typists. Alma, a woman of thirty who was her immediate superior, gave her a sly grin. "Well, and how is married life?" she asked.
Gloria felt defensive. From the first day that she had walked into the office she could feel a personality conflict between herself and the older woman. It was just one of those things. You couldn't put your finger on it exactly but the two didn't like each other from the beginning. Gloria knew that Alma was teasing her in her own underhanded way.
She could also see the touch of envy in the older woman's voice when she asked about how she liked married life. Gloria wanted to tell her that she should try it and find out for herself but Alma had the power to have her fired and she didn't want to lose this job. Not for another five years, at least.
"I like married life fine," Gloria answered without looking at the woman.
Alma ran her small, black eyes over the girl's body. "Pregnant yet?"
Gloria had all she could do trying to keep herself in control. Alma was suggesting that she had married so soon in life because she had to. She was sure that many people in the office were feeling the same way, too. For all she knew some of the boys might even have bets on to see if she would have a baby in less than nine months. Well, let them, she thought. They will have to think again after she goes through the first year without being pregnant.
Gloria didn't answer Alma's insinuation and pretended to be busy with the files.
"Well, now that you're married how much longer can I expect that you will be still able to work here?" Alma said still trying to determine if she were pregnant.
Again Gloria did not look at her. "You can count on at least five more years," she said.
This seemed to take the older woman aback as if she didn't know whether Gloria was pulling her leg or not. Then she took another line of argument. "I hear your husband works as a grease monkey," she said in that same sly manner. "You two must really have to work hard to make ends meet."
Gloria felt like raging out against this dumpy, evil minded spinster. Perhaps she would on the day she left the insurance office for good but not now, not today of all days. "We all have to work hard," she replied tightly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to bring these folders to Mr. Anderson's secretary."
Actually Gloria didn't have to bring the folders to the office of one of the executives but she just had to get away from Alma. She took the folders and walked briskly towards the executive offices in the rear. When she got there she would make up some excuse for bringing the unwanted files.
Gloria knocked at the door marked "Mr. Oscar Anderson." A male voice told her to enter. She felt cold. She hadn't expected the executive himself to be in because the bosses never came in until ten and sometimes not until the afternoon. She swallowed hard and opened the door. It was too late to turn back now with Alma's tiny black eyes boring into her.
Mr. Anderson, a tall, lean man in his early forties was standing besides his secretary's desk. The secretary herself wasn't there and then Gloria realized that she was probably out getting her boss his usual morning snack.
"Why, hello, Gloria," Mr. Anderson greeted her. "I thought you were getting married."
"I am already, Mr. Anderson," she answered, the files feeling like lead in her arms. She was about to make up some excuse about going into the wrong office when he spoke up.
"And no honeymoon?" he asked.
"Well, Bill and I, that's my husband, Bill, we decided to put that off for awhile."
Mr. Anderson held her arms and looked deeply into her eyes. "Gloria," he said kindly, "honeymoons aren't something you can put off like putting an overcoat in storage so you can wear it another day. Honeymoons are to be grabbed and taken as soon as they come. If there was a problem of time I could've arranged a week or two for you."
"It isn't that, Mr. Anderson. We just want to save up money and...."
"Ah, money! That item again," he said without meanness. "That's the stuff that makes the world go around-not love. I know that only too well myself. Say, what have you got there, anyhow?"
Gloria told her story that she had made a mistake and to excuse her.
"I understand. Being single one day and married the next is enough to make anyone confused. But, while you're here, I wish you both all the happiness in the world. Your husband is a very lucky man. Tell him I said so."
Gloria smiled and left the office. She took her time getting back to the files hoping that Alma wouldn't still be there. She thought of how nice Mr. Anderson had been but, then, that was the way he usually was. Of all the bosses he was the favorite of all the girls in the office. He never made demands and never raised his voice. Oscar Anderson was also the best looking of all the executives, Gloria thought. She liked his clean, lean face and those soft brown eyes that were always so compelling. There was a certain sadness about Mr. Anderson that appealed to her most of all. It was as if he were carrying a secret burden inside himself that he could not let down. According to the office gossip he had married into the firm and the other executives resented him for this. Gloria had seen his wife a few times and couldn't see why anyone would resent him for that. Mrs. Anderson always seemed to be such a cool, aloof woman although attractive in a bloodless way. She seemed to be the exact opposite of her husband who radiated warmth even when he wasn't speaking.
When she got back to the files Gloria was glad to see that Alma wasn't there and that everyone was busy. She wanted to lose herself in work and make the day go as fast as possible.
At lunch time she joined her co-workers at the company's cafeteria. Since the food here was very reasonable she knew she could save on lunch money and did not have to pack one as Bill was going to.
Some of the boys who worked in the mailing room came over and Gloria prepared herself for some rude comments. All of them reminded her of Chuck with his pimples and his stupidity.
"Hey, Gloria, want me fix you up with a date for Saturday?" one of them shouted.
"No, thanks," she said coldly.
"Oh, you're already gonna get fixed up Saturday night, huh?" he added with a leer.
The boys with him laughed as if their sides would burst. She knew she had played a straight man for the so-called comic despite herself. She could imagine how the nasty, overgrown "boys" in the mail room had been planning all morning to get off that bright exchange and, now that she had fallen for it, they were beside themselves with glee.
Gloria's face burned and she tried to seem involved in a plate of meat loaf and peas. Why did people always have to make so many stupid cracks about getting married? What was so wrong about a male and female falling in love, marrying and then going to bed together? Didn't most people do it? Why couldn't people accept marriage as a natural, vital, important function in life without all these jokes and leers and innuendoes? What was so evil in married sex? Why did she have to feel somehow ashamed to walk into the office today knowing that everyone else knew that she had had sex with a man, her husband? Only Mr. Anderson hadn't made her feel dirty. But, then, he was one of the few really mature people in the office. Even people who were old enough to act like adults had acted like foul-mouthed teenagers ... like Alma, for example.
Well, once the day was over and people got used to the fact that she was now a married woman things would be back to normal. No, not quite. There will be the months ahead when everyone will be glancing at her body to see if she were pregnant. That was another evil, having babies. Maybe she should go on a diet and lose some weight just in case a slight gain might bring with it the charge that she had conceived out-of-wedlock, or, for that matter, in wedlock. Since all kinds of sex, even married sex, was something for people to make cracks about she didn't want to be "accused" of carrying a child.
The bell rang to announce the end of the lunch period. Gloria looked forward to the day when she would hear that bell for the last time.
CHAPTER SIX
Since Bill worked an hour longer each day than she did Gloria was home before him. She judged that she had a half an hour to cook supper ... her first supper for her husband.
She put the bag of groceries down and picked out the things that she had just bought at the supermarket on the corner. Because Bill had claimed he liked franks and beans that was exactly what she bought. It wouldn't take long to make, she knew. Just boil the franks in water for about ten minutes and heat the beans for the same amount of time and there would be the meal. To make it more exciting Gloria also bought Bill's favorite dessert, apple pie and vanilla ice cream to go with it. At least he can't complain about the first supper, Gloria smiled to herself.
Gloria opened the can of beans and placed the contents in a pot. She then half filled another pot with water in order to boil the franks. Once both jets were going she felt somewhat disappointed in that the meal was so uncomplicated. She always had visions of a big kitchen with a table full of fresh meats and vegetables for her to work on. But this kitchen was so small and dingy, the gas stove so tiny and old, the food so cheap and easy to make.
Gloria decided to take a quick shower in order to smell clean and sweet for Bill when he came home. She used the perfumed soap on her body and began to think of the night before her. Working in the days only made the nights seem that much more valuable. After she dried herself she put on a fresh ly cleaned house coat and she left the top of it opened so that the tops of her breasts showed. She flattened the cloth against her body and noticed that her nipples could be seen in outline. Yes, this would excite him....
Bill came in five minutes earlier than she thought he would. In his hand he carried the paper bag with the coveralls. He made a point of locking the door. "Now," he said with a melodramatic leer, "I'm gonna give you what I've been dying to give you all day long."
He rushed over to her pretending to open up his trousers but he suddenly handed Gloria the bag with the coveralls. "It's all yours," he said abruptly.
"Oh, Bill ... ," Gloria laughed.
He glanced at the cooking food and sniffed. "Hey, that looks pretty good. I'm starved."
"Wait'll you see what I got for dessert."
"You're what I want for dessert!"
Bill slipped his hands over Gloria's breasts and pulled the house coat down. He kissed her round, firm nipples and ran his tongue over them.
"Take it easy, sweetheart," she told him. "We have all night for that."
"You sound frigid," he whispered, breathing hotly on her bare breasts. Then he stopped and rearranged her house coat. He even covered her up more than she had been before. "There," he said. "Now you know what will happen when you tempt me like that. Now suppose I was a sex maniac of a salesman that just came in? You would be raped by now."
"Don't worry about salesmen coming to the door. I'll put a sign that says Keep Out. In fact, I'd like to put a sign up that will tell everyone to keep out including my family and your family and my friends and your friends."
"Which reminds me. I wonder how Chuck and Sally made out?"
"We both know how they made out. They shared a honeymoon with us, remember?"
"I mean after they got back? You know that Sally's old man is a mean one. He'll either shoot Chuck or make him his son-in-law."
"I don't know which is worse."
"Of course everyone is going to blame us for what happened."
Gloria turned down the gas jets under the beans and franks. "Will you stop worrying about them? They're not worrying about us."
"I know. But Chuck is my best friend. I've known him since we were three years old. Sure, he's kind of a jerk but I still like him."
Gloria didn't want to talk about Chuck or Sally or that awful day at the motel. "Let's eat," she said.
After the meal was over Gloria piled the dishes in the sink. She didn't feel like cleaning them. She felt like taking off her house coat and going to bed with Bill. But Bill seemed content to spoon out some more ice cream to put on the second slice of pie. First desire and then the lack of desire, Gloria thought. Men were like that. Fire and then ice. Women were more temperate with their fire and ice present at the same time. She opened the top part of her house coat a little to reveal more of her breasts. At what time in life do men become all ice and no fire? When would the day come when her body would no longer interest him?
Across the hall the people in the next apartment started to speak in loud tones again.
"Damn!" Bill snapped. "Don't those two ever let up?"
Gloria remembered her meeting with the neigh bor woman that morning. She didn't want to bring this up now. She might, in fact, ignore her from today on. Why get involved with such unhappiness? She didn't need a neighbor that badly.
Bill stood up after he polished off his second dessert. "Let's take a shower," he announced.
"I've already had one."
"So, scrub my back. That's what the Japanese wives do."
"You should have married a Japanese girl. But, all right, seeing that you're the lord and master around here."
The noise in the apartment next door increased. Gloria tried to ignore it. She was afraid that this was going to be a regular feature, the daily boxing matches.
The bathroom had a shower stall but no tub. Gloria preferred to soak in tubs instead of showering but she accepted this as another sacrifice she would have to make in the long journey towards owning their own home.
Bill took off his clothes and put them on a chair. Then he entered the shower stall and turned on the water. Gloria removed her house coat so it wouldn't get wet and ran her hands over Bill's muscular back. Bill grabbed her and pulled her into the shower. She issued a small note of complaint and then felt his lips hard upon hers. He ran his hands along her sides and down to her hips. She felt him reaching and groping her body as his desire grew. Gloria pressed even closer to him, arching her flesh into his.
There was a sharp rapping at the door. "Gloria! Gloria!" the woman from the next apartment shouted. "It's me, Polly! Let me in! Please! He's beating me again!"
Bill's hands froze on her body. "How come she knows you?"
Gloria was now forced to explain that they had met that morning after he had left for work.
"Now what made you get friendly with those nuts?" he complained. "You see what happens. She'll haunt you every day we live here."
Again Polly hammered on the door. "I know you're there, Gloria. Why don't you answer me? Just let me in. I won't bother you, I promise. I only want to stay for a few minutes. My husband is after me.
"Sounds serious," Bill said. "Maybe you'd better let her in."
Gloria curled her arms around his waist and held him tight. "No. She'll go away. If I let her in now I'll always have to let her in. I'm sorry I was friendly with her, Bill."
Polly screamed as there were the sounds of some more loud slaps. She sobbed wildly and her husband shouted as he stomped back down the hallway.
Gloria and Bill stood in the shower with the water striking their flesh listening to the sounds of a marriage gone sour. "Let's never be like them, Bill," she whispered against his chest.
"Why couldn't you open the door...?" Polly cried. Then she screamed. "Just a little thing to ask! What's wrong with people that they can't be friendly?" She kicked the door several times in frustration and then walked away still weeping.
The shower water grew cold and Bill turned it off. He seemed cold, too, Gloria noticed. He dried himself with the towel and then dried her body. "She sounds screwy," he said.
Gloria remembered Polly telling her that she had to stop work because of her "sickness." Now, as she suspected, she could see that it was a mental sickness. Her husband was probably just as crazy as she was, and her children were probably not much better off. Nuts for neighbors. Gloria felt like crying aloud herself she was so depressed.
Bill's romantic mood was gone again, Gloria noticed. He put on a pair of slacks and a bathrobe and then examined the refrigerator. "We have any beer?" he asked.
"I forgot to buy some. There's some coke in there if you want that."
He snorted. "There's a world of difference between beer and coke. I'll go downstairs and get some."
Gloria felt stricken. It was as if she were being stood up for a can of beer. Why did he have such rapidly changing moods anyhow? If only Polly hadn't knocked on the door just then they would have been in the bed together right now making love. She cursed the mad woman under her breath. She wished that she were dead.
Bill pulled on his socks and shoes and then took off his robe. He slipped a sweater over his head. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes. I could use a brew right now."
She had the strangest feeling that he was going out to some bar where his friends were and would be out half the night. It was only the very beginning of their marriage. They had to use every precious personal minute.
Gloria, still naked, walked over to Bill and embraced him. His sweater felt itchy against her skin but she didn't mind. "Bill, honey, that beer can wait ... can't it?"
She felt him respond again as his mood swung back. She slipped her hands under his sweater and lifted it so that her breasts with their hardening nipples dug into his skin like probing fingers. "Bill ... you don't want to go out now, do you?"
She felt him beginning to weaken. Bill put his arms around her and pulled her in closer.
There was a splintering of glass and a loud scream, a scream then seemed to come from the outside of the building and grow smaller. Bill and Gloria looked at each other. Both had the same idea.
They ran to the window and looked down, Gloria hiding her nudity behind Bill. There, crumpled like a rag doll on the front stairs, was Polly. She was surrounded by a widening pool of blood.
"She jumped!" Bill gasped.
He ran out of the apartment and Gloria had to step away from the window quickly in case she were seen. She had wished the woman dead only seconds ago and now....
Gloria hurried into her clothes and followed Bill down the stairs. By the time she arrived there was already a crowd around Polly. Bill was kneeling at her side, feeling her pulse. He looked up and spoke to no one in particular. "I think she's dead."
"Polly!" a man shouted.
Coming through the crowd was a fat, ugly man. Then Gloria recognized him as Polly's husband, Charles. "What did you do that for?" he shouted at the inert form in a voice mixed with anguish and anger.
In the distance there was the sound of a siren. Gloria wondered if it could possibly be an ambulance so soon. Perhaps it was a police car. The blood puddle around Polly's body grew even wider and started to slide down the stone steps. Gloria turned her head away and staggered up the flights of stairs leading to the apartment. When she reached her landing she noticed Polly's door open. She walked inside and saw the smashed window with bits of glass hanging along the sides of it. In her fury, in her agony, in her madness, Polly had thrown herself against the window, through the glass and all the way to the street below. Gloria released a cry. If only she had let the woman in when she had pleaded for her to. If only she hadn't wanted Bill's love so much that she had shut her ears to her cry for help.
Gloria managed to get to her own apartment. It seemed to spin before her eyes, the bed, the dishes in the sink, Bill's clothes in the chair, the toaster, all the implements of their life together, swirling faster and faster.
And then she passed out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Polly's suicide rated five lines in the back pages of the newspapers. The landlord complained about the expense of putting in a new window and Polly was buried after a $150 funeral. Gloria insisted on being one of the mourners. Charles was the other mourner. He took her back to the house in a taxi and they went into his apartment. There he said the first words he had spoken all day: "I should have been nicer to her."
Gloria tried to comfort him but she couldn't bring herself to because she had to remember that this was the man who had driven Polly to her death.
"No use me keeping the place," Charles told her. "I'm gonna move up-state anyhow. Never did like this place. Imagine, I spent more than half my life here. Take my advice and get out of here while you can. This place is a killer."
True to his word Charles moved out shortly after with all his worldly possessions in a single suitcase. He sold the furniture to the landlord who promptly deducted the cost of putting in the new window. The fat man didn't object and left the building he had spent twenty-four years of his life in, walking up the street with his suitcase banging against his plump legs, without looking back once.
Gloria watched him go from her window and, for the first time, felt sorry for him. The apartment next door was silent now. Gloria thought of the history of a marriage the now empty apartment had witnessed. Charles had brought his new bride, Polly, there carrying her over the threshold. They had had five children while they lived there, all being conceived on a bed that was now sold to replace a broken window. Two babies had died while they were in that apartment, three had lived, one to be sent to prison, one to escape to sea, one to escape into an early marriage....
"Why didn't I open that door?" Gloria said aloud.
Polly's suicide seemed to depress Bill, too. He became more acutely aware of things wrong with the apartment, the walls that needed paint, the plumbing that was too noisy, the gas range that was too small. "This place is a dump," he repeated for the hundredth time. "I don't care how inexpensive it is, it isn't worth living here just to save a few dollars."
Gloria tried to soothe him, to explain that they wouldn't be here as long as Charles and Polly but he was lost in a deep, dark mood. "Maybe we shouldn't have...." He stopped in time but Gloria finished the sentence for him. " ... shouldn't have married?"
Bill was silent. He stared at the floor.
Gloria felt that she couldn't reach him with words but perhaps her body would speak for her. She sat on his lap and kissed him hard on the mouth. When he didn't respond she ran her hand along his thighs. Dimly, desire flickered in him. He kissed her neck and down into the valley formed by her breasts. "Gloria ... ," he mumbled. "Oh, Gloria...."
Aroused at last from his apathy Bill picked her up and placed her on the bed. His hands worked at the buttons of her dress and he pulled it away. Gloria helped him by removing her panties and bra. He gazed at her nakedness with glistening eyes. "Such a wonderful body ... so full of life."
Gloria reacted to the word "life." Polly's suicide had filled him with thoughts of death and despair and now he was forgetting that. Gloria felt proud of the fact that her body could give her husband life just as she could give a baby life. She exulted in the power of her flesh. "Take me, darling," she told him.
Bill took off his clothes and lay next to her. His kisses became wilder, touching every part of her body. She felt his weight press down upon her and the thrust of his maleness....
Gloria brought up her knees and caught Bill's moving hips between her soft thighs. The pain of love was gone now, it had gone on the bed of that motel. Now she welcomed him and all that he could give. And she wanted to give her all, too.
Gloria embraced him with her arms and legs. She ran the tip of her tongue inside one of his ears. "More, Bill, more," she told him huskily. "I want all of you. I won't break. Hurt me if you can."
Bill's flesh roared with lust and their bed moved back and forth with its springs squealing out joyfully. Then his peak of passion came and his body stilled.
Gloria gasped at the first touch of his warm release and she felt her own body explode with this same need. Together they melted together on the now quiet bed, two fleshes becoming one.
In that twilight time after all passion has been spent, when all has been given, all received, and that slow drift back to reality begins, Bill whispered, "It will work out all right, Gloria. We won't turn out like those two across the hall."
"That's what I kept telling you but you wouldn't listen. Wait'll you find out how much we'll save this week when we both get our paychecks. Why, if we work it right, we might even get out of here in four years, maybe three."
Bill let his hands roam her body and then he caressed her breasts, his fingers touching the still hard nipples. "I can stand this place as long as you're with me."
"Same here. Together we make a great team."
There was a knock at the door. Both lay still on the bed as if the knocking had been another noise like some distant plumbing.
Again there was the knock, this time they knew it was on their door. "Gloria ... ," a female voice said softly.
For a weird moment Gloria actually thought that Polly had come back in ghost form. Then, when her name was repeated she knew who it was. Sally. In a way, this was a haunting, too. "What does she want?" Gloria moaned.
"You're the one who gave her this number. You ask her," Bill said without malice.
There was a harder knocking on the door this time. "Hey, you guys home?" Chuck asked.
Bill sat up in bed immediately. "Chuck!" he shouted. "What's up?"
"I know what's up with you, buddy," he laughed.
Gloria gritted her teeth. Bill's favorite three-year-old friend was back, pimples, dirty mind and all. Knowing that Bill was going to let them in she put her clothes back on and went into the bathroom to fix her face. She heard Bill grab on his clothes and hurry over to the door.
She stayed in the bathroom taking her time as she listened to Bill and Chuck greet each other like long lost brothers even though they had seen each other less than a week ago. After she was sure that her face didn't betray any evidence that she had just gone through a sexual session she entered the living room.
"Hi, married woman," Chuck grinned.
"Hello, Gloria," Sally said with a pained smile.
Gloria felt that something was in the air. There was that expression of Sally's that always gave her away.
Sally placed a handkerchief to her mouth and then said with a catch in her voice, "We want you two to be the first to know ... Chuck and I are getting married!" With that Sally bawled.
"Ain't that the craziest thing you ever heard?" Chuck laughed.
"No!" Bill shouted. "What happened, Sally's father force you into it?"
"Yep," Chuck said casually. "He said I was to make an honest woman out of Sally or get sent up for rape. So, after I gave the matter a lot of thought, and weighed the pros and cons, I decided to marry the girl."
"Chuck, now stop that!" Sally snapped. "You and your stupid jokes! How are you two making out here, Gloria?"
"They're making out like crazy?" Chuck grinned. "They were in the sack when we got here."
"When is the wedding to be?" Bill asked.
"What wedding?" Chuck told him. "You mean all that striped pants and stuff? No, we're gonna do it like you two did. In fact, we're gonna go back to that same J.P. How's that for a kick in the head?"
"I figured Sally's old man would spring for a church wedding with all the trimmings. After all, she's his only kid."
"And what will the bride's father wear? A shotgun?" Chuck said. "Naw, he wants us to get hitched and then get out of his sight. So, how about you two standing up for us? Turn about is fair play, they say."
"Of course," Bill answered.
Gloria was annoyed because he hadn't even looked in her direction to consult her first. She was, naturally, going to stand up for Sally just as Sally had for her but she didn't like Bill taking her acceptance for granted. She thought of how beautiful and uncomplicated life was in bed only minutes ago.
"I hope we're not putting you two out of your way," Sally said. "After all, we know how you're trying to save and this trip...."
"Think nothing of it, Sally," Gloria told her. "How about some tea, or coffee."
"Tea, coffee or milk," Chuck lisped. "You sound like an airline stewardess, Gloria."
"When were you in an airplane, you bastard?" Bill asked smiling.
"I have dreams, haven't I?" Chuck answered.
Sally put the handkerchief to her face again. "Oh, was daddy mad! He called me a slut and a ... and a...."
"Whore," Chuck added. "Never knew that old bastard knew his daughter that well."
"Oh, Chuck, shut up!" Sally shouted. "You're the one who got us into all this trouble. If only you didn't get drunk that night and crack up the car. If only you didn't get hot pants!"
Chuck gestured obscenely. "I don't get hot pants," he corrected. "I always have hot pants. But, don't keep knocking me, baby. You're eighteen and old enough. You wanted a roll in the hay as much as I did. Don't come bawling to me about your crummy busted cherry."
"Did you say tea, Sally?" Gloria asked with forced sweetness. Then she acted as if the girl replied. "Yes? I'll join you. The boys here can have what they want."
"I want you, lover," Chuck said loudly.
Giving up on Chuck as she usually did Gloria turned away from the group and went over to the gas range. Sally followed her.
"Gee, I'm sorry about breaking in like this," Sally said. "But, everything happened all at once. Daddy wants us to get married this weekend and...."
"This weekend?" Gloria gasped. "I thought it would be a couple of weeks away anyhow."
"Am I ruining any plans?"
Gloria thought of that dream weekend she had been planning with Bill, just the two of them alone on an island in the city away from everyone. "No, you're not ruining any plans," she replied woodenly. "But, Sally, tell me the truth. Do you really love Chuck."
The girl drew herself up. "Certainly I do!" Then she hesitated and slumped forward. "I guess."
Bill and Chuck laughed at something loudly. The only thing that made her tolerate Chuck was his ability to make Bill laugh and enjoy himself. If only she had that ability....
While Gloria and Sally sat down with cups of tea Chuck and Bill drank beer out of cans. She had wanted to give them glasses but let it ride. Open beer cans reminded her of Polly's clammy smelling apartment.
Gloria looked at Sally sadly. She didn't envy the girl her "catch." She tried to imagine what it would be to live with Chuck, going to bed with Chuck ... Well, the girl already had so she must know what he was like. She could also hear their future arguments about being trapped into marriage by an irate father. And arguments were bound to come in their marriage. If only the girl was bright enough to simply break away from it all. What was to stop her from getting on a bus and going on until her money ran out? It wasn't the best solution but it certainly was better than being forced to marry that overgrown child.
"Sally, why don't you think things out first?" Gloria advised her. "Just let your father cool off and...."
The girl shook her head. "I've got to marry Chuck, can't you see?" she replied in a low, desperate voice. "How can I marry anyone else? Men want virgins and I'm no longer a virgin. I ... I'm ruined."
Gloria wanted to laugh out loud over her use of such an old-fashioned word but restrained herself. Sally was in enough trouble without being laughed at.
Bill and Chuck seemed to be getting over their laughing fit and they sprawled out on chairs, tilting their heads back as they drank beer. It suddenly occurred to Gloria that Chuck and Sally were their first guests. The firsts were coming faster; first breakfast, first dinner, first neighbor, first guests. She was beginning to feel like an old married woman.
"Well," Chuck said with a long sigh, "we'd like to hang around a little while longer but we really have to get moving."
"Why, what's the rush?" Bill asked.
"What isn't the rush?" he answered. "First off we'll have to find an apartment to come back to after we're married. We're looking for a furnished one, too, because we don't have the loot and the time to buy the furniture off hand."
Gloria knew what Bill was going to say and flashed an urgent message with her eyes for him not to say it. But, he did.
"We have just the place for you two!" Bill exclaimed. "It's completely furnished and it's ... get this ... right across the hall!"
Gloria heard Bill, Chuck and Sally exchange shouts of excitement but she didn't join in. She did her best to pretend that she was dreaming all this.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When the elderly Justice of the Peace saw the same two couples he had seen barely a week ago he squinted. "Haven't I seen you people before?" he asked.
Bill explained that he had married two of the group very recently and that the next two wanted the same service.
The old man clucked his tongue and shook his head slightly. This was about as far as he dared go by way of being critical. After all, young marriages were his bread and butter.
Once the usual signatures were attached to the usual legal documents the two couples arranged themselves before the Justice of the Peace as they had before except this time Chuck and Sally were the ones going to be married.
The ceremony was just as brief as it was before. Gloria wondered if the old man did the marriage ceremony in his sleep. He seemed to have every word down so pat that he probably didn't even have to put his brain in gear when be tied people together for-supposedly-the rest of their lives.
When the Justice of the Peace pronounced Chuck and Sally man and wife Gloria was surprised that she felt no excitement. Perhaps it was the fact that Chuck and Sally were now going to be their new neighbors that caused her lack of enthusiasm.
Sally, as expected, cried and Chuck gave an odd little shrug to his shoulders as if to indicate that he wasn't especially thrilled by the fact of becoming a new groom. Bill kissed the bride and shook hands with Chuck. Gloria did the same avoiding kissing the brand-new husband. She remembered the last time when he used his tongue as he kissed her on this very spot.
Everything about the day seemed to be a repeat of that day a week ago when Gloria and Bill married. They went to the same restaurant and ordered champagne. Gloria hoped that Chuck wasn't going to get drunk.
Sally kept examining her ring. "I just can't believe it!" she exclaimed. "I just can't believe it!"
"You'd better believe it because I'm gonna get you tonight," Chuck said without lowering his voice.
Patrons in nearby tables looked at them and whispered comments to one another.
Sally, lost in her romantic clouds, was the only one within earshot who hadn't heard Chuck's remark. "Wait'll the girls find out I'm married. I can't wait to see their faces."
Gloria could see that Sally looked upon her marital status as a new dress to show off to her friends rather than something much more permanent than a fashion. Chuck seemed even less aware of the major step he had just taken. Gloria felt that, while her marriage was a young one, too, it was not an immature one.
Chuck started to speak about the accident he had had with his car the last time and how he tried to explain to the police that someone had stolen his car when it was involved in the accident. "They didn't believe me. So what?" he said. "The guy I hit collected from the insurance company and a tow truck picked up my own car. The bill he sent me was worth more than the car so I told him to keep it. That was the last I heard from him. I bet he fixed it up and sold it for a few hundred. Well, let him. I guess that's the first thing we'll have to get ... another car."
"I was thinking of some new furniture, Chuck," Sally told him. "That stuff at the apartment is awfully tacky."
"The landlord charged us enough for it," Chuck responded. "Besides, I don't mind what furniture looks like. What we really need is a car. Maybe a new one. Why buy someone else's trouble?"
"Cars can wait, Chuck," Sally implored. "We ..,"
"Oh, hell, let's get off the subject," Chuck told her. "At least we'll get a lift back, right, Bill?"
"I thought you two were going to the Bow Wow Motel for your wedding night?" Bill said.
Chuck leaned across the table and winked. "We already had our wedding night at the Bow Wow Motel, remember? Besides, why waste loot on a sack for the night when we already have one at the house? This way we can all go back home together."
"I ... I thought we were going to spend the night here," Sally told him. "That's why I brought my overnight bag."
"I brought mine, too, but I was just thinking about how dumb it would be to stay at the motel and then have to get the bus back in the morning."
Sally demonstrated a flash of anger. "You could've told me! I wouldn't have packed my overnight."
"I'm telling you now," Chuck said raising his voice.
Bill looked embarrassed. "Hey, keep it low, you two. If you want to go back to the city, all right. But we might as well leave now and beat the traffic."
They all left the restaurant and piled into Bill's car. Again this was a repeat of what had happened on the last weekend with Chuck and Sally in the back-and Bill and Gloria up front. Gloria was too disgusted with the way things turned out to speak. Was she going to be hounded by these two for the rest of her life? She wondered if Polly and Charles wouldn't have been the better neighbors.
As they passed the Bow Wow Motel everyone but Gloria mentioned it. She stared ahead at the highway realizing that the sight of the motel would encourage comments.
"I wonder how many people are in there signed up as married couples?" Chuck asked. "That joint is a regular hot pad."
This comment seemed even too much for Bill who had a world of patience when Chuck was concerned. "Please, you're speaking of our honeymoon motel."
"Ours, too," Chuck added.
"Maybe we should stop someplace and telephone home that we're married and coming back to the city," Sally said. "I think my family wants to arrange something for us."
"To hell with your family," Chuck told her casually. "I don't want anything from them. We'll just go back to our apartment quietly and not say a word to anyone. Wedding nights are supposed to be quiet."
"Yes," Gloria told him pointedly, "they are."
Chuck laughed. "Oh, oh. Gloria's mad at me. I can see that right away."
The car rolled on through the late afternoon with its cargo of young lovers.
When Chuck opened the door to his apartment he walked in first and switched on some lights. "Come on, you two," he said waving his arm at Gloria and Bill. "Let's open a few brews and celebrate."
"Well, you and Sally must want to be alone tonight," Bill told him. "We'll all get together tomorrow. It'll be Sunday so we can have the day together."
"Come on," Chuck insisted taking Bill by the arm. "What's a few beers?"
Bill allowed himself to be taken inside. Gloria noticed that he seemed to be ignoring Sally, his bride, on his wedding night.
The four of them entered the apartment and Chuck went immediately to the refrigerator to get the cans of beer. Gloria glanced at the only thing that was new in the place, the window which Polly had thrown herself out of.
Chuck opened four cans of beer and passed them around. Gloria took one hoping that this would be the only one she would have this evening.
Bill raised his beer can in a toast. "Congratulations'," he said. Then he drank.
"That's the kind of speeches I like," Chuck told him. "Short and sweet."
When they all finished their cans of beer Chuck opened up four more.
"I really think we ought to leave, don't you, Bill?" she said imploring him with her eyes and the tone of her voice.
He obviously wanted to stay a little longer but he made a move to leave. "Well, take it easy," he said.
"Not so fast!" Chuck said. "I got a whole refrigerator full of beer. We can spend the whole weekend getting stiff."
"Chuck," Bill reminded him quietly, "this is your wedding night. We're not a couple of single guys again out boozing it up with the dolls."
"Just how many girls did you two know before?" Sally asked.
"Sweety," Chuck told her, "more than I could count."
"That can't be many," Gloria injected. She hadn't meant to give Chuck a dig but he always seemed to be asking for it.
Chuck laughed and slapped his leg. "What a sense of humor! But I'm sure as hell glad I didn't marry you."
"Likewise," Gloria responded.
"Hey, now let's not the four of us fight," Bill said. "We're going to be next door neighbors for about five more years."
"Why five years?" Sally wanted to know.
Bill explained to her about his plans for buying a new house.
"That's what we should do, Chuck," Sally told him. "We shouldn't waste our money on things we really don't need, like cars."
"Who says we don't need a car?" Chuck answered. "Anyhow we won't be here for five years. We only grabbed this because we needed something cheap and fast."
Sally looked around her. "We can fix the place up. Paint. Wallpaper...."
"Ugh!" Chuck exclaimed. "Work!" He drank deeply out of the beer can.
Gloria could see that he was beginning to get drunk. History was repeating itself all the way down the line. It was his drinking that brought about this hasty marriage in the first place.
When the second round of beer was finished Chuck opened up four more cans. By this time Gloria didn't care about Chuck and Sally's wedding night. She felt spent and exhausted by them by now. It was up to Sally to mention that she wanted privacy anyhow. In time Chuck would turn to thoughts of sex after he became sufficiently beered up.
Everyone soon became drunk and Gloria lost count of how many beer cans Chuck had taken out of the refrigerator. It seemed to hold an endless supply. That was probably the way the former tenant kept it. She also noticed how tbe empty beer cans kept piling up on the floor. That was the way the former neighbors kept it, too. She glanced at the new window and then at Sally. Just bow far would history really repeat itself?
Suddenly annoyed by the beery wedding night Gloria stood up. "Look, don't you two have a date with the bed or something?" she shouted.
"Naw," Chuck told her. "We already broke it in."
Gloria tried to focus on what Chuck had just said. "You mean that you two ... on the very day you rented this place...?"
"So we were engaged!" Sally snapped defensively. "So what's wrong with that? A lot of engaged couples do it before they get married."
"I bet that was the spiel Chuck gave you," Gloria sighed with disgust. "I was wondering why you two weren't in a hurry to go to bed ... you were there already."
She walked to the door. "If you'll all excuse me I'm tired. The three of you can stay up all night if you want to."
Chuck came back with another obscene remark but she ignored it. She walked over to her apartment, showered and climbed into bed naked. She was tired from the round trip by car, the tensions of the wedding and the beer. As she drifted into sleep she heard Bill laugh loudly. Chuck makes him laugh, she thought, that was the only thing he was useful for.
Gloria was drawn back to wakefulness by someone slipping into the bed beside her. She didn't know what time it was but the apartment across the hall was very quiet. She assumed that the party was over and Bill had left. She waited in expectation for the touch of his hands on her nude body.
No touching came. Then Gloria heard gentle sobbing. "Bill?" she asked.
"Bill is sleeping with Chuck," Sally answered. "They both got so drunk they fell on top of the bed with all their clothes on. I tried to wake Bill but he wouldn't budge. That's why I had to come here!" She began to cry louder.
Gloria couldn't find it in her to give her friend the slightest show of sympathy. She had made her bed and she had to lie in it. No, Gloria smirked bitterly in the dark, she had to come to her bed to lie in.
CHAPTER NINE
The morning sun slanting in through the window woke Gloria. Her mouth was thick and stale with the taste of beer and she had a headache. She turned and saw Sally curled up beside her like a huge infant. The girl was wearing her panties and bra while her dress, shoes and stockings were on the floor, as if they had just been dropped there the night before.
Gloria got out of bed and went to the bathroom. When she got out she felt a little better especially after taking three aspirins. She put on slacks, a blouse and loafers.
It was just seven thirty and Gloria knew that, by the amount Chuck, Bill and Sally had drunk last night, they wouldn't even be opening their eyes until ten. She wished that she could get Sally out of the bed and into her own because she didn't want Chuck coming over looking for his lost property. It was going to be bad enough with his visits without giving him an excuse.
Gloria had an idea and walked across the hall to the other apartment. Bill and Chuck were sleeping on top of the bed with their clothes on, including their shoes. Both looked dead to the world. The whole apartment seemed to be littered with beer cans and bits of food. That clammy smell seemed to be coming back and, in time, with Sally's lack of housekeeping, Gloria knew the smell would be back in full force.
She nudged Bill but he didn't move. "Bill," she said trying not to wake Chuck at the same time. "Wake up."
He lay there like stone. By this time Gloria was angry and she poured some cold water into a glass and went back to the bed. She sprayed some on Bill's face. He blinked and looked up startled. "Wha...? Wha...?" he croaked.
Gloria put her finger to her lips. "Shhhh. Get up, Bill," she implored him.
Bill looked about him and was shocked to see Chuck sleeping in the same bed. "What the hell happened? What's he doing here?"
"This is his place, Bill. What are you doing here?"
He brought himself up into a sitting position. "Ow, what a head!" he groaned. "Where's Sally?"
Gloria explained that she had spent the night with her and was still in their bed.
Bill managed a laugh. "Chuck's my best friend but I never expected to spend a wedding night with him."
"I can say as much for Sally. Now, will you please get up and get those two back together where they belong?"
Bill agreed and got out of bed. He brushed his hair back with his hand and walked out of the room.
Sally still lay in her curled up position. She snored slightly. "Seems a shame to wake her," Bill said.
"Don't. I want you to carry her across the hall and put her alongside Chuck."
"Carry her? You want to give me a busted gut?" Bill complained.
"Oh, come on Bill. I don't want to have her on my hands. Let's have a couple of hours of peace this morning anyhow. Just carry her over there and I'd bet that those two would have the idea that they had really spent the night with each other."
"Yeah. We really tied one on last night. You left the party early. You should've stayed around."
"Didn't Chuck or Sally make any move to bed at all?"
Bill scratched his head. "Let's see ... I know they started to talk sexy for awhile but the beer kept coming and the next thing I knew you were throwing water in my face."
"Let's hope that Chuck and Sally remember as much about last night." Gloria went over to the bed and peeled back the covers. "Now pick her up and get her out of here as quietly as possible."
Bill gazed down at the sleeping girl with her bare, sbapely legs curved on top of one another. Her breasts seemed to bulge out of her black lacy bra and her buttocks showed in part under the black lacy panties. "Nice looking stuff," Bill said thickly. "I can't see why that crazy Chuck didn't sack in with her last night. Man, what a chick!"
"You have your own chick," Gloria warned kiddingly. "Let's not covet thy neighbor's wife."
Bill scooped Sally up in his arms and grunted under the weight. She did not show the slightest sign of waking and her arms hung down loosely. As Bill walked across the hall Gloria gathered up her clothes and followed him.
As she crossed the hall she noticed an old woman looking at the scene with her mouth open. Now we've gotten the reputation as wife swappers, Gloria thought.
Bill placed Sally in the bed next to Chuck. He even picked up one of the girl's arms and put it over his waist. Chuck mumbled something and his eyes fluttered. Gloria and Bill stepped back and stayed as silent as possible. They watched Chuck fumble at Sally in twilight sleep, his fingers probing under her panties and onto her body. Then he fell asleep again.
Gloria draped Sally's clothes neatly over a chair and she left the room with Bill, closing the door softly behind them. Once they got into their own apartment they started to laugh. "Wouldn't be something if they really do get the idea they slept together on their wedding night?" Bill asked.
"If they do please don't tell them otherwise," Gloria said. "We'll keep it our secret. I think that Sally was so drunk when she drifted in here last night she didn't know where she was."
"Sally doesn't know where she is half the time even when she's sober," Bill noted.
"Then those two are a perfect pair."
Gloria made some breakfast of toast and coffee. Bill didn't want anything to eat but he drank the coffee and his color began to come back. "Never again," he said. "I feel lousy this morning."
"The only time you drink is when you're around Chuck," Gloria told him. "I hope he doesn't start you on a weekly drunk. That was all right when you both were single but...."
"You never have liked Chuck, have you?" Bill's tone was serious this time.
"Frankly, no. I think he's still a child. He's the kind who will never grow up and will act like a kid even in his fifties. But, you're different, Bill. You are the kind who matures."
"Meaning I'm not mature now, right?" Now Bill was more than serious, he was angry.
"You're eighteen and act eighteen. How much more mature can you be? Chuck is the same age and acts like he's ten."
"A pretty horny ten year old," Bill told her.
"I'm not interested in his sex life. I just wonder how this horny ten year old will manage to support a wife."
"Sally works. They'll manage the same way we do."
"I know that Sally brings in about the same salary I do from her job but I don't know what Chuck makes. In fact, I don't know what he does exactly."
"He works for a grocery store. I thought you knew."
"But as what?"
Bill seemed on edge slightly. "He ... he delivers things...." he answered evasively.
"You mean to say Chuck's a delivery boy?" Gloria gasped. "Why that's the same kind of work you did after school when you were thirteen! See, didn't I tell you he's really younger than eighteen? How much does he make, anyhow?"
"You're full of questions this morning, aren't you, Gloria?" Bill snapped. "I thought Chuck didn't interest you."
"He doesn't but I am concerned about Sally. I'm sure she makes about twenty dollars more a week than he does."
"You think he married her for her money? Is that what you're suggesting?"
"I wouldn't put it past him. Look, dumb as Chuck is he will be the boss in that marriage. He will run the finances and buy anything he wants and act any way he wants. Look at how he suddenly decided to come back here yesterday without telling Sally. You just watch and see. He'll start taking Sally's paychecks and buy a new car for himself ... for himself, not for both of them."
Bill shook his head. "Boy, you sure hate that guy. I'll admit he's wild but he's no bastard."
"Time," Gloria answered, "will tell."
Bill slept for a little while longer and then got up to shave. About noon Chuck and Sally, both bleary-eyed and dressed in the same clothes they had worn when they got married, came in to say hello.
"That was sure some bender we had last night, wasn't it?" Chuck said to Bill.
Bill cast a quick glance to Gloria. He wanted her to notice if the couple knew they had slept in separate beds on their wedding night. "How did you sleep last night, Chuck?" he wanted to know.
"Like a rock. I must've passed out last night because, when I woke up, I was still wearing these clothes."
"And how about you, Gloria, how did you sleep?" Bill asked.
The girl seemed befuddled. "All right. I must've passed out, too, but I somehow got my dress and shoes off. Funny thing, though. I can't get it out of my mind that I came over here last night for some reason."
"You must've dreamt it," Gloria told her. "We didn't see you and we were here all last night."
Sally seemed relieved. "That's good. I hoped that I didn't get loaded and cause a scene. I have the habit of stripping off my clothes after I have too much to drink."
"In that case let's buy some more booze," Bill leered.
Everyone laughed but there was no gaiety in it. The wild night was over and the morning after had come with its realities and its headaches.
CHAPTER TEN
As Gloria had feared, Chuck and Sally became almost daily visitors. Gloria had to teach Sally even the most rudimentary forms of cooking because she was unable even to make something simple, like coffee.
Sally proved as bad a housekeeper as she was a cook. She let the apartment become sloppier despite her plans for redecorating. However, Chuck didn't seem to mind. As long as he had his beer and his sex he was happy. Only one more thing would make his paradise complete and that was a new car. When he found that, with Sally's salary combined with his, he could buy a new car after a down payment and a certain amount each month he quickly took Bill along to pick one out. Typically enough he let Sally stay home while he went out to buy something that she would pay as much for, if not more, as he would.
Gloria greatly feared that Sally might eventually go the way of the last tenant. When she was alone with the girl in her apartment showing her just how she should keep the place in order sbe brought up the delicate subject of having babies. If Sally did know about ways to avoid pregnancy it would be just like her to neglect to put them to use.
"Oh, I can't have babies," Sally informed her. "A doctor told me that I have something wrong with my tubes, they don't connect right or something. He told me that, if I wanted to have babies, I would have to have an operation first."
Gloria felt relieved. At least this major source of concern was taken care of by mother nature.
"Imagine having an operation to have babies?" Sally went on. "Why just think of all the girls who would just love to have their insides fixed the way mine is?"
"Do you want to have children eventually, Sally?"
"Are you nuts? Who wants noisy kids around the house? I'd never get out of this place and have any fun. Thanks, but no thanks. I know too many girls who are stuck with three, four, five and more kids and it's driving them out of their skulls. And, can you imagine Chuck as a father? He can stand kids even less than I can."
Gloria never knew until now this certain cold-blooded streak in Sally's nature. She always impressed her as someone who would make a loving though inept mother. Yet, she got the feeling that this wasn't Sally talking but Chuck. He must've given his ideas on children and convinced her that a new car was better. Anyhow Chuck was baby enough for Sally to take care of. If, in some distant day her husband ever grew up, she could always have that operation to have her tubes put in order.
The car that Chuck bought was large, flashy and red. He beamed like a child with a new toy and took Gloria and Bill for a ride along with Sally. "Three thousand bucks!" he kept announcing the cost. "It wasn't easy to swing the credit but they did when they found out what me and Sally made together. In just thirty six months this baby will be ours!"
Sally seemed as happy with the car as Chuck was. "Why don't you two buy a car like this?" she asked. "The one you have now must be at least six years old."
"Seven," Gloria said. "But Bill keeps it up so that it runs like new and that's all that really matters." She wanted to get the possible seed that had been planted in Bill's head out before it grew. Despite the fact that Bill was far brighter than Chuck he seemed very much influenced by him. She didn't want Bill to get the idea that he needed a new car now.
"I just can't see how you got credit, Chuck," Bill said. "You have to be twenty one to sign contracts in this state."
Chuck glanced over his shoulder. "You can be under age if you have a co-signer."
"Who signed for you?"
"Sally's old man. I guess it was his way of showing us that all is forgiven." He laughed.
"Your folks would co-sign for you," Sally said still pushing her point.
Gloria wanted to make her point, too. "We don't need a new car," she responded tightly. "Bill works in a gas station and knows how to keep the one we have in top shape. We don't even have to pay for some of the things he puts in it."
"Hey, will you give me a break on service if I use your station, Bill?" Chuck asked.
"Naturally," Bill said vaguely. He seemed lost in his own thoughts as his eyes traveled the interior of the new car.
We don't need a new car, Bill, Gloria wanted to shout at him. Oh, damn you Sally and Chuck! Why are you complicating our lives? Why are you making Bill feel cheap and small and stingy? Why are you filling him with thoughts about buying things we don't need?
When they got back to the apartment that night Bill did suggest that they have a new car. Gloria immediately put a damper on this. "We'll never get out of here in five years if we start making three thousand dollar purchases," she said. "Chuck and Sally will never get out of this place at this rate. They will stay here, with no hope and no money to get out. I'd like to have a few luxuries myself like a television set but I'd rather see the money put away for a down payment on the house we'll have."
Bill fell into bed with his clothes on and stared at the ceiling. "How is it that Chuck and Sally seem to have so much fun all the time when all we do is save, save, save?"
"It's easy to have fun if you keep throwing your money away. If you can call that fun. Our fun will come later, Bill. Oh, please be patient, darling." She cuddled next to him. Speak, my body, speak....
He kept staring at the ceiling. "Look at last Saturday, for instance. Chuck and Sally went out making the rounds of the joints and you didn't want to. We could've afforded a few drinks, a few laughs."
"Yes, of course we could. But I just don't like the idea of having them take it for granted that we'll go with them every time they crook their fingers. Let's be independent, Bill."
"You just don't want me hanging around with Chuck, is that it? You think he's bad company for me?"
Gloria shoved her breasts into him but he still didn't respond. "Let's make a round of the joints ourselves right now if that's what you want. Let's pretend we aren't married and that you propositioned me and I agreed and we went to your place, this place, and...."
Bill rolled over on his side away from Gloria. "Cut it out, will you? I don't feel like games."
Gloria looked at him helplessly. She felt so closed out, as if she were on the outside of a glass door looking in at Bill and she was unable to reach him. What was she failing to give him? Was it companionship, a companionship that Chuck gave him? How could she be both companion and lover to Bill?
Now and then Gloria and Bill would go along with Sally and Chuck to a bar or a bowling alley or a movie. Each time Bill would seem happier but Gloria would become more morose. It was if Chuck were a rival for her husband's affections ... and she was losing.
At nights she made up for what she thought she lost by using something that Chuck could not give ... her body. Bill responded with his usual virility and lustiness and Gloria knew that she had him back if even for that moment when their bodies released passion.
In the following weeks the lives of the two couples settled down to a pattern. Chuck and Sally would spend their salaries as soon as they got them and their apartment became filled with things bought on time like a television set, a hi-fi, stacks of records and other items that they didn't really need. Gloria and Bill repainted their apartment and bought curtains and a rug but that was as far as their spending went; yet their place outshone their neighbors'.
Bill offered to help Chuck and Sally repaint their apartment but they gave evasive answers and claimed that they would be moving out "soon" anyhow and so why bother? While Chuck and Sally went from day to day Bill and Gloria lived for their long range plans. As for herself, Gloria was contented with her lot but Bill became more and more restless with the domesticity. Soon he started staying out later and later each day when he and Chuck went to the neighborhood bar for drinks. And he came home a little bit drunker each of those nights, too. When he was higher than usual he would start spouting about the big plans he had, about moving out of the state altogether and about getting a high paying job that he wasn't qualified to hold. Gloria knew that Chuck was behind her husband's grandiose plans, Chuck and alcohol. When they were added to Bill's feelings of being trapped on the domestic scene these ravings were expected.
Gloria tolerated Bill for as long as she could hoping that the more practical side of his nature would take hold but it didn't. He and Chuck went out on binges like a couple of bachelors without a care in the world. Gloria would have Sally for company but the girl had long since become a bore to her. She couldn't stand her immaturity, her sloppiness in the apartment and her free spending ways.
"Aren't you two saving up anything?" Gloria once asked her.
"Why? What's money for except to spend? You can't have much fun staring at a bankbook."
"Then how are you two going to manage to move out of this place the way you keep telling us?"
Sally shrugged. "Something will turn up. We'll get raises. We'll get promoted."
"Chuck?"
Sally drew in her breath. "When will you stop knocking my husband? I can't see where you get off. You don't even own a T.V. set. So which one of us should be knocked?"
Gloria couldn't argue with Sally's short-ranged logic. The more she lived next to the girl the more she became a stranger to her. People's taste in other people changed. She only wished Bill would lose his taste for Chuck.
Bill came home very late one night smelling of alcohol. He muttered and sang drunkenly to himself as he removed his clothes and fell into bed. He immediately started to paw Gloria. She moved away from him.
"Hey, honey, wazza matter?" he asked dumbfounded. "Lez have a little lovin'."
Again he grabbed her. "Pajamas?" he noticed at last. "When did you start wearin' stuff to bed? We always went raw so we could make it right off."
"I don't think we should have sex every night," she told him. "I especially don't think we should have sex anytime you come home drunk!"
Bill seemed stunned for a second as he studied the new turn his married life had taken. The pajamas Gloria wore was a sign that that first hot flush of passion was over and their married life was now going to settle down to a quieter tone. While he had expected this inevitable change he objected to the fact that Gloria's pajamas were also a sort of chastity belt to lock him out when she decided that he had had too much to drink.
Gloria waited for Bill to absorb this knowledge hoping that he would accept it. Instead he grabbed Gloria and pulled at her pajama bottoms. "C'mon, knock off this crap, will ya'? I'm hot for ya' body...."
He fell down upon her, his breath stinking with beer and whiskey. He clawed at her pajamas, pulling them away.
Never before had Bill revolted her so. Gloria bounded out of bed and switched on the light. She didn't know exactly why she wanted the light on but she felt that darkness protected her while it put Bill at a disadvantage.
"Stay away from me, Bill," she said. "I can't stand the way you smell! Either you sleep on the couch or I do."
Bill swayed and looked at Gloria between slitted lids. His face became hard and mean. He seemed to be an entirely different person. "Damn you," he said in a low but threatening tone. "So damned fancy in your fancy pajamas...."
He dashed over to her but Gloria stepped aside. Now she was more frightened than angry and she thought of running over to Sally's for protection. Then she thought of how idiotic that would be. Chuck would be there. It would be going from the frying pan to fire. She also couldn't help but think about Polly and how she had run over to her apartment for protection. Surely, he wasn't going to strike her? Bill had never lifted his hands to her yet.
"Bill, please, take it easy," she pleaded trying to turn away his drunken wrath. "I'll make you some coffee."
"Fancy ideas and you're no better than Sally. She's fun at least. A better lay, too, I'll bet." Bill grabbed her again and her pajama top tore off.
Gloria placed her arms over her breasts and backed away to the bathroom door. If she could get inside she could lock it. There was only a dime store latch but it might be enough to discourage him.
Gloria darted into the bathroom and closed the door, placing the small metal hook in the receiving metal hole. As she did Bill pulled at the door and the latch almost gave way but held. She could see that one or two more tugs could pull the hook and the metal ring out of the wall. "Please, Bill," she said shaking with fear. "You're not yourself tonight. Please, dear, go back to bed."
"Not alone!" he shouted. "You're my wife, damn it! We're supposed to sleep together!"
Gloria was sure that Chuck and Sally heard him. After all, she always heard the other tenants when they raised their voices. Would Chuck come in and try to calm Bill or was he laughing in the dark with his wife glad that she was getting what was coming to her?
Bill pulled at the door and the small latch was torn out of the wall. His face was damp with exertion and anger. His eyes were bloodshot with drink. He grabbed Gloria by the arm and pulled her out of the bathroom. Then he pushed her towards the bed. "Okay, bitch," he said thickly. "Off with those pants."
Gloria held on to her pajama bottom. The sight of her torn pajama tops on the floor enraged her, strangely enough, more than Bill's drunken rampage.
"I just bought this today! You ruined it! You disgusting drunken clown!"
Bill raised his open palm and swung it down. It caught her right on the cheek just as she was about to turn from it. The slap stung her and brought tears to her eyes. The first time her husband struck her. Was this to be another of a long line of unhappy firsts?
"I've been doing what you wanted me to long enough," he snarled. "I've been working and saving and fixing this dump up all for you! I have a few drinks and you turn off the meat supply. Well, I'm not henpecked, sweetie! I'll take you when I want you and I want you now!"
He pushed her in the bed and then fell on top of her. He held her down with the weight of his body while he pulled off her pajama bottoms with his free hand. Gloria struggled, sickened by his show of violence and his hot, foul smelling breath. This, she thought, is how it is to be raped. This is what it was to be taken by a sex maniac by force....
She bit him on the cheek and he howled. Once again he slapped her, harder this time. He brought his open palm again and again against her face.
Gloria closed her eyes and held her breath. Just don't let him use his fists, she thought. Don't let him break my nose or blacken my eyes. Maybe she should just be still, let him take her and get it over with. At what point do the women who get raped give in? Now, when given a choice of being beaten or ravished?
Bill grunted and exhaled loudly as he worked at his trousers. He rammed at her and Gloria gasped. He was using himself like a dagger to cut and maul her. Is this the way rapists were really like? Did they act out of overwhelming hate rather than overwhelming desire?
"Please don't, Bill," she cried in despair more for their marriage than for herself.
"Don't say don't to me!" he grunted hog-like into her ear.
He moved his body savagely now, sawing his flesh against her flesh, trying desperately to hurt as much as he could.
Gloria made her body rigid. Once she had demanded of him to hurt her. If he were acting now in love she would've responded to all his sexual thrustings. But now it was evil and it repelled her as if she were being attacked by a biting, spitting snake....
Bill spoke in time with his brutal sexual rhythm. "I'll-take-you-when-I-want-you-any-time-I-want you-any-way-I-want-you!"
As his hard body kept slamming against her flesh Gloria began to cry without sound. Tears spilled down her cheeks and onto the bed. She held herself as cold as she was able, unmoving as possible. She did want to give Bill the satisfaction of taking a live woman, she wanted him to take a corpse.
In a final spasm of lust Bill rammed himself down violently. She felt his heart pound wildly and his breaths coming in spasmodic gasps as the peak of his desire was reached. He flattened himself out over her, pressing his entire weight upon her like a vise.
She waited for what seemed to be forever as he kept gasping and grunting. She had the idea that he had fallen asleep on top of her. Gloria made the first move she had made for some time and she tried to push him off of her.
"Not finished...." Bill muttered.
He moved his body again but all the lust was out of him now. He gave a satisfied grunt of pleasure and rolled off her body. Bill lay sprawled on the bed with his trousers open. He started to snore.
Gloria shook and trembled. She was beside herself with disgust and shame. She still could not cry aloud and the tears poured down her swelling cheeks. She left the bed, turned off the light and curled into a chair. Down in the streets below she heard the traffic and the people going by and she wondered if anyone knew what had just happened. And would they even care if they did know?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bill was almost in the same position on the bed when Gloria woke up from a shallow and troubled sleep the next morning. She tip-toed quietly about the apartment as she dressed and made ready to leave. She wanted to be out of the house before Bill woke up. She didn't care whether or not he was late for work that day or, in fact didn't get to work at all.
Gloria left the apartment almost an hour and a half earlier than she used to. She didn't want to wait around because Bill might wake up while she was still there. She wanted to put at least an entire day between what had happened last night and having to see him again. Yes, she was going to see him again. She had thought about leaving him for good but where would that lead? The last thing Gloria wanted to do was to go back to her own family in an admission of defeat after only a few months of marriage. And she disliked the idea of getting a place of her own. No, she had to give the marriage another chance, she had to give Bill a chance to apologize.
Gloria hurried down the stairs and out into the cool morning. She decided to walk to work now that she had the time to do it. Walking would work off her tensions and clear her mind.
Half way to work Gloria stopped off at a diner and had breakfast. As she ate she looked in the mirror behind the counter at herself. She looked awful. Her face was still swollen from the slapping Bill had given her and her eyes were bloodshot from sleeplessness. There were circles under her eyes that told its own silent story that she had just gone through a difficult night.
She debated with herself whether to go in to work at all that day. The people at the office would be bound to notice her looks. Alma especially would comment on her appearance. She went to the ladies' room after eating and doused her face with cold water hoping that would bring the swelling down and take the redness from her eyes. Although she felt better she could see that she didn't look any better. Gloria decided to go to work anyhow. She didn't like the idea that she held Alma's or anyone else's opinion of her in such high esteem.
She reached her office about the same time she usually got there. Bill was late already if he hadn't gotten into work or had even gotten up. She hoped that he would be very late and that his boss would complain. In this way she would visit some punishment on her husband.
As she suspected her co-workers mentioned her looks as soon as she walked in. Some even came out and suggested that she had had a fight with her husband. Gloria didn't bother to respond. Let them think what they pleased.
Alma met her at the file cases. "You look terrible, Gloria," she said. "Have a rough weekend?"
"Yes," Gloria answered without inflection.
The woman put her beady black eyes on her like twin, burning needles. "Your hubby acting up?"
"Yes."
Alma became annoyed by Gloria's monotone and drifted away in frustration. That was the way to handle them, Gloria thought. Admit everything they suggest while, at the same time, making it sound as if you were pulling their leg.
During the morning's work Gloria had to bring some files to Mr. Anderson's office. He did a double-take when he saw Gloria. "Is anything the matter, Gloria?" he asked. "You don't look well at all. Is anything the matter?"
By this time Gloria had built up a reservoir of resentment against the co-workers and the girls who she had thought were her friends because of their constant jibes about her looks that she couldn't contain herself when touched by this first note of genuine sympathy. The dam that held this reservoir broke and she found herself crying and spilling out all her troubles. She was surprised that she even mentioned how Bill had acted last night. The deed had needed telling so badly that it could not be left unsaid once the first words trickled from her mouth.
After she had told all and the reservoir of words were gone she looked up at Mr. Anderson in shame. "I ... I didn't mean to say all this," she apologized. " I shouldn't have...."
The tall, lean man gazed at her with a gentle expression in his brown eyes. "Nonsense. We all must have someone to talk to," he said. "When you go home tonight I'm sure that your husband will be very sorry. And I hope that you will forgive him."
Gloria looked past the man, still feeling that she had told too much about herself. "I suppose I'll forgive him. He was so drunk and so mad last night."
Mr. Anderson took her shoulders in his hands. "Look, Gloria, my secretary will be going on vacation next week and I'll need a replacement. How would you like to take the job for a couple of weeks?"
The offer surprised Gloria. Such positions, even replacement positions, were reserved for girls with a lot more seniority in the office than she had.
"Please, Mr. Anderson," she said. "I know you're doing this because you're sorry for me and...."
"I'm not being sorry for you, Gloria," he insisted. "It's just that I always get such plain, over-aged girls from the replacement pool. I like to see something young and fresh looking when I get into the office."
Gloria brushed her hair back with her hand. "I'm not so young and fresh looking today."
"Maybe not but, still, you look a lot better now than the girls I usually get as replacements. So, how about it, Gloria? You can start next Monday. The job pays more, too, even if it is only for a couple of weeks. There isn't much to do, really, mostly answer the phone and take messages. When I want someone to take dictation I call up the secretarial pool. Well, how about? This job is going ... going....
"I'll take it!" Gloria answered quickly.
"Good. I'll see you next Monday, then."
Gloria left the office feeling lighter and happier than she had all day. She realized that Mr. Anderson had offered her the replacement position out of charity but she felt she needed a little charity now. And then there was that raise in salary she would get for two weeks. With enough extra time and work like this she would be able to afford a television set. Then let Sally try to knock her.
Later that afternoon Alma walked over to Gloria with a stern expression on her face. "I understand that you're going to be Mr. Anderson's replacement next week."
"Well, not his replacement but his secretary's." Gloria could not help but get this little dig in.
"You know what I mean. You're not qualified for that job. I am. In fact, I've worked as the replacement a few times before."
Gloria had to smother a laugh. When Mr. Anderson spoke of the plain, over-aged girls who had worked for him as his secretary's replacement he was doubtlessly including Alma. She could understand why he wouldn't want her greeting him every morning.
"Mr. Anderson offered me the job and I accepted," Gloria told the woman. "He must think I'm qualified."
Alma drew in her breath sharply. "You little bits of fluff must think you can run this office. I was here the day you were born."
With that Alma turned on her heels and strode away. Gloria could see that she had gotten in the woman's way again. It looked like predestination that she and Alma would always be locked in some kind of combat all the time. She no longer cared whether the woman had the power to fire her. Mr. Anderson was Alma's superior and he was able to veto any act of spite on her part. Mr. Anderson was not only a friend but a valuable friend as well.
As Gloria worked the rest of the day she kept thinking of the coming two weeks in Mr. Anderson's office. The thought both frightened and thrilled her. After so many months of working in a huge office with many girls running all over the place she would be behind a desk of her own and in a private office with the nicest man in the company. It was time her luck was changing.
After work Gloria didn't hurry getting home. She wanted Bill to get there before her assuming that he had gotten to work himself that day. She wanted Bill to wonder as to whether or not she had left him for good. It would be an easy thing for him to assume after finding her gone in the morning and not finding her there in the evening. Let him suffer a little more, she thought. It was a tiny return to the suffering he had caused her last night.
It was near sunset when Gloria walked down the street towards her building. She glanced up briefly at her apartment and then looked away. She had caught a glimpse of Bill up there looking out of the window. She smiled to herself when she realized that he had probably been pacing the apartment all day like a caged tiger wondering whether or not she was coming back or had left him for good.
Gloria climbed the stairs slowly. She could feel Bill's eyes on her gazing down from their landing. The confrontation was near now. Then, quite suddenly, she had the thought: Suppose Bill hadn't remembered what had happened last night? After all, both Chuck and Sally never found out that they had spent their wedding night in separate apartments because they had been so drunk. Suppose Bill had been that drunk? Suppose he was angry now because she hadn't awakened him in the morning and was now coming home late? How could she explain to him that she was mad at him because he had raped her?
She reached the final landing. Bill was not there but the apartment door was ajar. She pushed it wide open and walked in.
Bill was standing there in front of her with his young face twisted in torment. "Gloria ... ," he said with an awful strain in his voice. "I thought you'd left me...."
Gloria still did not know what his attitude was. Did he remember last night or didn't he?
"Gloria...." he added. "I'm so sorry!" he cried out. Then he actually began to sob and weep, covering his face with his hands.
So, he had remembered, after all.
Gloria didn't answer him. Silence could even be more damning than words when it was used right. She picked up her pajamas and started to sew the rips that Bill had put in them last night.
He turned to her with a tear stained face. "Well, say something! Throw something at me. Anything! Just don't sit there!"
Gloria had never seen a man cry before and she couldn't bear to look at Bill. She went right on sewing realizing that she was hurting him more than any object she could throw at him in the room.
Bill knelt at her feet. "Baby, I'm sorry. I was drunk...."
"I knew you were drunk," Gloria told him. "Is that going to be your excuse for what you did?"
Bill, glad to see that his wife was talking to him, sighed. "No, I can't use that as an excuse. I was out of my mind. Crazy. The booze had something to do with it. Are you hurt, Gloria? Your face looks all swollen up."
"I've been hearing that all day at work. By the way, did you get to work?"
"Yeah. I was three hours late. The boss chewed my ears out," he told her. "Tell me, are you all right?"
Gloria kept sewing. "I'm going to wear these pajamas again tonight," she said.
"I understand," Bill responded contritely.
Gloria hadn't thought of what the sleeping arrangements would be for that night or even the next few nights but her pajamas reminded her of why she had bought them in the first place. It was going to be her signal to Bill that she didn't want any sex that night.
There was a noticeable relaxation of tension in the apartment. The confrontation had passed, the crisis was over. Now that Bill had apologized and Gloria had informed him what his punishment was to be there was little to be left said. It was time for life to come back to normal.
Gloria asked Bill if he had had anything to eat and he told her that he hadn't been able to eat all day but was now starved. She cooked some hamburgers and string beans and finished the meal with coffee and cake. Gloria noticed that Bill did not open up a beer as he so often did at this time. She wondered how much longer would he avoid drinking. Living without sex for awhile would be hard enough on him. How many nights should she wear her pajamas to bed, Gloria wondered? Now that Bill had accepted her sex strike she debated with herself as to its duration. There would be this night, that was for certain. The next and the next would not be unreasonable either. Why not a week?
She kept smiling to herself as sbe sewed the pajamas. It was wonderful that she had this power in her flesh. She had something to keep him in line. Of course, she could not drag out her sex strike too long or Bill would get drunk again and come on with a repeat performance of last night or, perhaps, even find himself another girl. Bill hadn't been a virgin when she married him, she knew that. She wondered just how many previous girl friends he did have.
Gloria finished the sewing and put the pajamas on the bed as a reminder to Bill. She then turned to the sink and started to do the dishes. As she washed she told Bill about the new job she would have next week.
"That's nice," Bill said really not caring. He kept staring at the pajamas on the bed. Gloria knew that he was wondering how much longer she was going to wear them, too.
"I was thinking of getting a television set with the extra money," she said. "We should be able to afford one."
"Yeah," he answered glumly. "We'll have to do something with our nights."
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Gloria went to work for Mr. Anderson that next week she still had not allowed Bill any sexual happiness. During that week he did not complain and came home early from work every day. Chuck and Sally had not dropped over during the week either and Gloria was sure that they knew all about the scene of last week and the present prohibition in their bed.
On her first morning in Mr. Anderson's office Gloria found a half dozen roses in a vase on her desk. A small, white card next to it said: "Now I have seven beautiful things to look at in the office."
Gloria felt very flattered. It was the first time in her life anyone had ever given her flowers. Bill simply was not the type because he considered flower-giving effete.
She was surprised to find that the job did not frighten her as much as she thought it would and, after the first hour, quickly fell into the routine of accepting calls, messages and visitors. Some of the men from other offices who dropped by on business mentioned to Mr. Anderson that his taste in secretaries had improved. They always said this while she was in earshot and she couldn't help blushing.
Then a visitor came that she hadn't counted on, Mrs. Anderson. She strode into the office without knocking, tall, cool, blonde and beautiful. Her voice was brittle and reminded Gloria of ice being rattled in a glass. "I've never seen you before," she said to Gloria. "Are you new in the company?"
Something about the woman immediately put Gloria on the defensive. She tried her best to sound calm. "No, Mrs. Anderson, I've been in the company a year now."
The blonde looked at her questioningly. "But you've never worked as a secretary before? You couldn't have because you're so young. How old are you anyhow, eighteen?"
Gloria felt unnerved. She had asked and answered two of her own questions in a row. "Yes, I'm eighteen," she responded somewhat confused.
Mrs. Anderson stared without expression. "I see...." Then her ice-blue eyes fell upon the card next to the roses. Gloria wanted to hide it but that would make her seem suspicious so she had to permit the executive's wife to read the note. "I see ... ," she repeated with another inflection in her voice. Gloria knew its meaning only too well.
The blonde entered her husband's office without knocking or permitting herself to be announced. Gloria sat at her desk trying to hear what was being said behind the closed door. She heard words and phrases dimly: "Alma,"
"too young,"
"a child," and, again, "Alma."
Gloria knew that she was talking about her and that the gist of her complaint was that she was too young for the job that Alma used to have. She was actually jealous of her! Gloria couldn't believe this at first but Mr. Anderson's wife didn't like the idea of a young, pretty girl in the office with him while someone who was "safe" like Alma would've done just as well. She couldn't understand why such a beautiful woman would be jealous of her, an eighteen year old girl, but, of course, there was that card that came with the roses.
Mrs. Anderson left the office without looking back at Gloria. Then the executive himself came out, picked up the card on Gloria's desk and read it aloud. "Now, does that sound very compromising to you, Gloria?"
"Compromising?" Gloria asked repeating the word. "I ... I hope that I'm not being the cause of any trouble between you and Mrs. Anderson."
"No, not at all," he answered bitterly staring at the door his wife had just slammed. "I just hoped that I haven't caused any trouble for you. I understand that one of your co-workers used to have this job."
"Yes, Alma."
"She called my wife and complained."
Gloria gasped. She knew that Alma had been angry but she didn't think she would go to such lengths.
"Don't worry, though," Mr. Anderson smiled. "You won't get fired. I'm keeping you here for the two weeks and I'll see that you'll keep your old job, too, once you get back to it."
Gloria was happy to receive this assurance. What good would having this two week job if she were going to be kicked out of the company after it was finished?
"So, you see, Gloria," Mr. Anderson sighed, "I have marriage troubles, too. By the way, how are you and Bill doing?"
Since he knew so much about her already Gloria told him about her sex strike. This caused Mr. Anderson to laugh aloud. It was the first time she had ever seen him do that. "Keep it up, Gloria," he said. "Make him suffer. That's what my wife does to me."
Gloria didn't know what to make out of his last remark. Did he mean that his wife refused to have sex with him, too? She could believe it of her because she looked the type. With her a permanent sex strike was probably a natural thing.
When lunch time came Gloria hated to go to the company cafeteria because she would have to meet Alma. She was not afraid of the woman, only afraid of what she might do once she saw her.
In the cafeteria some of her co-workers kidded her about being a "private secretary" and even hinted that Mr. Anderson had a "crush" on her.
"Oh, cut that out," Gloria told them. "Mr. Anderson is old enough to be my father."
"That's just the right age for guys to get crushes on young girls," Betty, a girl of nineteen told her. "I once had a fifty year old fellow after me. He kept sending me roses."
Gloria gave a start. Roses. The roses on her desk and with the nattering note attached. And Mrs. Anderson had been annoyed by it, too.
Was it really possible? Did this important executive have an interest in her other than paternal? Gloria felt light-headed at the suggestion that the man was attracted to her. But, why couldn't it be possible? Middle-aged men were always attracted to girls her age. Simply because her social standing was so much below his didn't make any difference. It was a matter of an older man having romantic leanings towards a much younger girl. After all, she was attractive. She had a good figure and a pretty face. Why wouldn't men, especially older men, desire her?
Gloria was so enthralled by the prospect that Mr. Anderson had a "crush" on her that she didn't notice Alma glaring in her direction. She got up and left the cafeteria without seeing the woman.
As the rest of the day wore on Gloria kept noticing that Mr. Anderson always gazed warmly at her every time he passed her desk. He had told her that he had wanted something young and fresh in the office and now he was proving it. But his desire for youth and freshness went deeper than she had imagined. How old was he? Forty two or something like that? A dangerous age for men by what she heard and read. When men his age made fools of themselves it was almost always with much younger women. Gloria never expected that she would be considered "the other woman" and "an office wife."
Gloria didn't mind the idea that Mr. Anderson might find her sexually desirable. He wasn't the fanny-pinching, dirty-mouthed type of old goat that other girls in the office had complained about meeting. No, he was the roses and flattering-note type who never pressed themselves on to someone when they knew they were not wanted. Yet, suppose Mr. Anderson did press himself on her during the next two weeks? What would she do then? Slap, his face and tell him to behave himself? Gloria typed up some letters. She would cross that bridge when she came to it.
The first week at her new job went by rapidly, the fastest she had ever spent in the company. Gloria felt so happy about the job and the raise in her salary that she splurged it all at once on a television set.
Bill was pleasantly surprised when the delivery men brought it into the apartment. They had been pinching pennies so long that he was overcome by this display of opulence, and from Gloria of all people.
Chuck and Sally came in to see the new T.V. set and Gloria couldn't resist mentioning that it hadn't been bought on time but was paid for in full.
"Well, it looks like the old woman wants to keep you happy at night, after all," Chuck said.
Bill flashed him a quieting glance. It was clear that he had let his friend in on the sudden drop sex had taken in his life. Sally giggled. She obviously knew, too.
Gloria didn't care if they did know about her no-sex edict. She wanted to show them that she wasn't someone you took for granted.
All four sat around the television set drinking beer for awhile. Gloria had been careful not to forbid Bill his friends and his drinking. Too taut a rein was as bad as too loose a one. She noticed that there was a certain reserve about everyone as they drank. All knew what had happened after Bill's last drinking bout.
Chuck and Sally left early claiming that they were driving over to see Sally's family. Bill seemed saddened by Chuck's departure. It meant that he would not have his companionship that Saturday night.
Gloria watched her husband as he sipped beer and gazed at the old movie on television. He had been sober, hard working and sex-starved all week. Wasn't it time to finally forgive him?
She took a shower using that perfumed soap that seemed to entice him. Wearing only a bathrobe she sat on the bed and watched television for awhile. After the eleven o'clock news was over stood up and took off her robe. Bill stared at her naked body with his mouth agape.
Gloria slipped in between the sheets naked and waited for Bill to make the next move. He switched off the television set and the lights. In the darkness she could hear him removing his clothes. Then the bed gave way under his weight as he crawled in beside her.
A moment passed when he did not speak or make a move. His hand slipped across the portion of bed that separated them. His hand curved over her waist and lay there. Gloria did not move. She neither encouraged nor discouraged his advances. Let him come to her, she thought. Let him be the lover and I the loved one.
Bill moved his whole body closer to hers. She could feel his nakedness. He slipped his hand from her waist to one of her breasts. Cupping it he felt the upright nipple that told him that she was just as sexually aroused as he was. "Darling," he whispered.
He placed his body hard against hers now and he kissed her full on the mouth. His tongue probed between her lips and slipped over her teeth. She let her mouth open and their tongues entwined. For the first time in a week she reached out and embraced her husband.
"Never again, sweetheart," he pleaded, mouth still plastered against her mouth. "Let's fight never again."
Gloria knew that this was an impossible thing to promise. There were fights and more fights before them, fights over money, fights over friends, fights over work, fights over children some day but she hoped that they never would have a fight like that horror of last week.
Bill, as if still afraid to advance towards that full sexual peak, kissed her breasts instead. His lips and tongue ran over her hard nipples making them come to stiff points. She felt that he was wanting her to make some show of sexual need on her part instead of just waiting passively to accept his aggressions. Last week she had given him a corpse to love, now he wanted her alive again.
Gloria groped towards his body and curled over him. He moaned with joy. Life had come back to his young Gloria. He turned and pressed his weight upon her.
She slipped her hands over muscular and slightly hairy buttocks moving up and down with the sexual motion of his torso. For the first time in a week his body joined hers.
"Ohhhh! Bill!" she said in a long sigh.
Gloria had been hungry for sex in the past week. Her own needs began to rise up in her like a fountain of warm liquid.
Bill's passion now was in full force. She heard his difficult breathing and she was briefly reminded of last week but she soon forgot it and concentrated only on this loving moment.
The bed squealed as Bill moved harder and faster. Did others hear it, Gloria wondered? She would have to get a can of oil. Then she realized the madness of thinking about something so prosaic at a time like this. Let the people below them know that they were having sex, let the whole building know that their bodies were flaming with young lust, let the whole world know that they hungered for each others' flesh.
Bill's sexual release came. Gloria grabbed his buttocks in a spasm of lust at that second and arched her own torso upwards against his. Her release of passion matched his. They were two of a kind, perfectly matched. How many married women reached the same peak of sexuality at the same moment their husbands did? How many married women reached a sexual peak at all?
Still now and both breathing hard and hot against each other's faces, Bill and Gloria lay in silence. Their hearts beat so loudly that they could hear them. Let the world hear them, too, Gloria thought. Let the message beat out that we are lovers, we are lovers, we are lovers....
Bill began to kiss her again. With wide open mouths they stretched their wet, warm tongues against each other's bodies. They devoured one another, cannibals of desire in this their green and lusting age, their age of passion.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When Gloria went to work the following Monday she could not help but think of the last time she had started the week. Last Monday she had crept out of her own apartment like an escaping burglar with her face swollen and her eyes bloodshot. Now she was joyfully going to work, from an apartment where love had been found again and to a job that she enjoyed. The job would only last another week but she was certain that the love would last forever.
With a week's experience behind her Gloria confidently went through the morning's mail and answered the incoming calls. Mr. Anderson had not shown up yet but she was used to having him come to the office at all sorts of hours. He especially could take what hours he pleased because his wife was the daughter of one of the insurance company's top men. If Mr. Anderson had no sexual satisfaction in his mariage as he once implied he surely had financial satisfaction.
When Mr. Anderson did show up it was close to eleven in the morning. He looked tired and unhappy and he asked Gloria to get him some coffee. She went to the cafeteria and brought back a container of coffee along with a piece of pastry. When the executive asked for coffee he usually meant a light breakfast and so she always brought back something to go with it.
"If anyone calls, Gloria," he said when she came back, "please tell them I'm out and you don't know where I am. Just take their number and tell them I'll call them back. If my wife calls ... tell her to go to hell."
Gloria looked at him closely. She was sure that he had had a fight with his wife. She wanted to comfort him in some way but she felt that it was not her position to intrude even with words of sympathy. After all, she was only an eighteen year old file clerk and he an important executive.
"Forget about that last part," he said. "If my wife calls ... switch it to me. I can afford to offend a business man but a wife, never."
"Yes, sir," Gloria smiled.
"Speaking of the affairs of wives and husbands how is that bed strike of yours working out?"
By now Gloria felt no qualms about talking about her personal life with the executive. She knew that he could keep a confidence and not announce it on the company's bulletin board.
"The strike is over," she said.
He nodded and let his eyes roam her body. "Lucky, lucky man. If I only had you to come home to every night...."
Mr. Anderson's voice and the exploration of his eyes was so blatantly obvious that Gloria blushed. "Now, Mr. Anderson," she chided.
"But I mean that, Gloria. You're a very beautiful girl," he added seriously. "And you're more than just beautiful, you're warm and feminine. Those are things fast disappearing in women today. They are becoming so cold, so asexual. I hope that you don't become like that, Gloria. Promise me you won't."
The force of the executive's statement made Gloria nervous. He was obviously talking about his wife and it embarrassed her to know this intimate confession. "I promise," she responded dumbly to Mr. Anderson's question.
He forced a tired, wan smile on his face. "Thanks for getting the coffee and cake, pet," he said attempting a casual attitude.
Gloria was glad to get back to her desk. She wasn't prepared to listen to the problems of someone else's marriage while so involved with her own. She wanted to extend help to Mr. Anderson but she needed all her strength and did not want to spend it on others. One had to be selfish to some degree if one expected to find happiness. She had learned that lesson long ago.
Another marriage Gloria knew of seemed to have reached rocky shoals. Chuck and Sally were now shouting at each other just as loudly as Polly and Charles had. The honeymoon was now definitely over for them and they seemed to be settling down to an insult-swapping married life.
Finances seemed to be the basis of Chuck and Sally's many arguments. They had now so many items bought on credit they never knew exactly how much they had to spend each week. The new car was the biggest credit drain and that, alone, was burden enough for two low-salaried people to carry.
Bill tried to help them out and explain just how much they should put aside each week. He was shocked to find that they were living above both their incomes. He suggested to Chuck that he should find another job. "You're a married man now," he pointed out. "You can't get by on a delivery boy's salary."
"Okay," Chuck readily agreed. "Then I'll quit being a delivery boy."
Both Gloria and Bill assumed that this meant that Chuck would now step up the labor scale to a higher paying job. It was true that he did quit his job but he neglected to look for another despite the fact that he always made a great show of looking in the want ads. He also found, to his delight, that he could collect unemployment insurance every week which, according to him, came to "only" ten dollars less than he had made when he was working.
Chuck took to being unemployed the way a proverbial duck took to the water. He even expressed resentment that he had never used unemployment insurance before. "This is really my money I'm getting," he said by way of justification. "Why shouldn't I collect the checks for awhile?"
Gloria secretly felt just how long this "awhile" was going to be. Chuck was going to take as many unemployment checks as he could before being forced to work again.
Sally did not have the strength of will to make Chuck find a job. She even defended him saying that he wasn't going to rush into something that he really didn't want. Again she came up with that old daydream of theirs about moving "up-state."
Gloria watched Sally's marriage disintegrate slowly. She hadn't much faith in it in the first place and the impending end held no surprises for her. She just hoped that Sally wouldn't be too hurt by the collapse of her union. As for Chuck, she couldn't care less. She couldn't see what Bill saw in him. But, they had been friends since they were tots and old friendships were like old habits, they were hard to break even when they were harmful.
Having Chuck around the house all day seemed to make things difficult for everyone. When Bill came home tired and hungry Chuck, who slept most of the day, was full of pep and he talked Bill into going out "riding around" with him.
Gloria hoped that Bill would not become depressed by the fact that, while he worked and stretched his salary, Chuck would be riding around in the brand-new car with seemingly no problems in the world. Creditors, like the Furies, were gathering around Chuck and Sally, even though both of them were too blind to see them. They were in for a rude awakening. Gloria tried to inform them of this through Bill but they both seemed indifferent to the future and its uncertainties.
What worried Gloria most was seeing Bill beginning to stay out later and coming home drunker each night. Once she put on her chastity belt pajamas but he never noticed them because he fell asleep as soon as he hit the bed. Chuck had already drained him of anything he had to give.
Gloria was saddened to see that her short term as Mr. Anderson's replacement secretary was coming to an end. On Friday, when the paychecks were handed out, Gloria found a note in hers. It was from Mr. Anderson. "Many thanks. If we're both in the company next year I want you for my secretary." With the note there was an extra twenty dollar bonus on top of the pay she had expected. She returned to the office to thank Mr. Anderson.
"Think nothing of it, pet," he winked. "It's only the company's money anyhow so you should thank them."
The rest of the floor was quickly emptying now. Mr. Anderson usually stayed later because he wanted to avoid the traffic. His office seemed quiet and still. Now that she was no longer working for him personally Gloria felt the courage to talk more intimately with him. "What do you mean when you say in your note about if we're both in the company next year? As for myself, I plan to be here."
Mr. Anderson tilted back in his chair. "And I don't make such long range plans."
"A year is a long range plan?"
"I know. It really isn't. Every year I say that this will be my last year in this place but I seem to hang on like a summer cold."
"You don't like your job, Mr. Anderson?"
"A job? You really think I contribute anything to this company, pet? I just make noises like an executive. I get paid a fabulous salary for acting important. I'm really not, you know. Work is being created for me in this company. I am handed small tasks now and then to make it appear as if I'm getting ahead. Strangely enough I seem to be fooling everyone. I bet I've even fooled a girl as wise as you."
"I ... I think you're just kidding me, Mr. Anderson," Gloria told him not knowing if he were or not.
He gazed at her softly. "Gloria, don't you know why I'm in the company in the first place?" She shook her head.
"You're only being kind to me. You must have heard the company gossip. I know I have. I've been given this so-called executive position for rendering one distinct service ... I married the boss's daughter in the fine old American tradition of getting ahead. I did it purposefully, Gloria. I did it deliberately. Can't you understand what I'm saying? I married for money. Does that shock you?"
Gloria had wanted an intimate conversation with Mr. Anderson and now she was getting it. She was completely lost for words. What does one say to such an admission of greed?
"My wife bought me," he went on. "I sold and she bought and that's all there is to it. And what is so desirable about me that I should be bought by beautiful, tall blonde ladies? Well, I happened to be what is laughingly known as a blue blood. My stock ... animalistic word, is it not? ... goes back to the Puritans and Plymouth Rock and all that jazz. I'm Society. Capital "S" if you please. Of course, even a capital "S" doesn't put money in the bank. Yet, weirdly enough, there are people who are stupid enough and rich enough to buy it. Dear Mrs. Anderson is one of these unfortunates. Now you know why I'm here. My name, for what it's worth, supposedly adds something to the company's prestige. You'll see it on all the stationery, very impressive, if you're impressed by such nonsense. I hope I'm not boring you, Gloria?"
Gloria cleared her throat. "No ... no. I just wanted to come in and say thanks for the bonus. I enjoyed working with you, Mr. Anderson." She just didn't know how to respond to the man's bitterness. His problems were ones she had never faced before. She stood up. "Well, bye."
Mr. Anderson reached out his hand. "Don't leave. Please stay just a little while longer," he said.
This was something Gloria had faced before, human loneliness. Polly had that same expression in her eyes on the day she killed herself. She even had said almost the same words. Please, stay. Please, be a friend to me. Gloria returned to her chair.
"Gloria," Mr. Anderson went on, "do you know how I envy you your life?"
"My life? You should see where I live and how I live, Mr. Anderson."
"And I can say the same thing to you. Other pastures are always greener, the cliche goes. But, what are cliches but proven truths? Maybe your life isn't easy but you have your youth. You have your dignity. I have neither. My youth was burned away before I was twenty-five. I was old by then. My dignity? That I sold for a mess of potage as another cliche goes. When I was your age I had wanted to marry a girl as pretty and as warm as you are. But, according to my family, she had no name. No, I had to be coupled with another name or, at least, money, which serves just as well. I chose money. What I should have done at the age of eighteen was to escape from the cold, sterile world of money and names and married the girl I had wanted. But, I was too weak, still am, as a matter-of-fact. So, I say to you, Gloria, my warm, feminine pet, all that glitters is not gold and money does not buy happiness. How is that for a pair of cliche of cliches? But, they just happen to be all so true."
Mr. Anderson stared into space. The entire floor was empty now except for tbe cleaning men who were moving up the long aisles outside with their brooms.
"I guess I'd better be going now," she said.
When she stood up Mr. Anderson did, too. He placed his hands on her arms. "Gloria ... are you busy this weekend?" he asked.
"Yes. I'm going someplace with my husband."
Actually she had no plans for the weekend but she wanted to remind the unhappy man that she was married.
This fact did not seem to slow him down. He stepped in close to her. "Gloria, I have a place in the mountains. A hide-away where not even my wife knows how to find me. Come spend the weekend there with me."
She pulled away from his grasp. "Please, Mr. Anderson! Don't think of me like that. I happen to love my husband."
"What difference does that make?" he said, his voice becoming desperate with need. "I love you, truly, I do. I've loved you since the very day you came into the company. Darling...."
His lips came down upon hers. He kissed her hard, his arms holding her close to him in a painful embrace. Gloria brought her head sharply away from his. "Let me go ... ," she pleaded. "You're mistaken about me if you think I'm so cheap!"
Mr. Anderson let her go. There was a stricken look on his face. "Gloria, I don't think of you like that at all! I just need someone! I need someone warm and soft and young I can hold!"
Gloria backed away from him but saw that he wasn't moving towards her. He just stood there looking terribly lost and lonely. The sound of the sweepers kept coming closer and closer. She searched for some final word of comfort but all she could say was, "Goodbye, Mr. Anderson."
Gloria turned and fled down the long, empty rows of desks and past the elderly sweepers who watched her blankly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Gloria found herself more complimented by Mr. Anderson's proposition than offended by it. He was unlike every man and boy she had ever met before. He seemed so worldly wise, so sensitive. She wondered what her answer would've been to him if she were not married. He certainly attracted her. How would he be as a lover? What would it have been like in that hide-away he had? Even the label of "hide-away" had a romantic ring to it. It reminded her of Shangri-La, hidden and remote. Had he taken other girls there? She couldn't believe that he would pick her to start a career in adultery with.
When she returned to the office the next time she took pains to avoid going into Mr. Anderson's office when he was there. His secretary greeted her and complimented her on the way she had taken over while she was on vacation.
Gloria took greater note of Mr. Anderson's secretary. She was an attractive, shapely redhead in her mid-twenties. Gloria wondered if she hadn't been propositioned by her boss ... and had accepted. The more Gloria thought about it the more she became aware of the fact that she was jealous of the redhead just as Mrs. Anderson had been jealous of her. Despite herself she was involved in an office intrigue. She decided to get out of it when she could by avoiding Mr. Anderson's office altogether and she switched her route there with another file clerk.
While Gloria found it easy to avoid Mr. Anderson she could not avoid her neighbors. Chuck and Sally now battled on a regular basis. So far it was all verbal and she wondered when the slaps and punches and scratches would start.
Creditors now became impatient and Gloria watched some of their items being returned and taken back. The television set went and then the hi-fi. At least, Gloria thought, the creditors were forcing an economy program on them.
Chuck still refused to work and now he didn't even make a pretense of looking in the want ads and going out with the excuse of seeking employment. He sat around the house and drank beer. Now and then he would go for a drive in the car he still managed to hang on to. Sally told her that he actually went as far as to pay the monthly installments with his unemployment insurance money. For Chuck to let loose money of his own was a sign of true love. His love for the car, in fact, seemed to exceed his love for Sally by a wide margin. He was so typically adolescent, Gloria noticed. A growing boy's first big love is never the girl next door but the car in the garage.
Bill tried to help Chuck out by offering him a job at the garage but Chuck turned it down claiming that he wasn't mechanically inclined. Gloria sighed with relief when he did turn the job down because she hated to think of Chuck and Bill spending the entire day together. Besides, Chuck would be bound to foul up in the garage somehow and it would reflect on Bill.
The problems of Chuck and Sally were rapidly coming to a head and Gloria wondered when the final blow up would come. She had been afraid that she would be stuck with them as neighbors for the next five years but now she had her doubts. They just couldn't go on at their present mad rate of speed without cracking up. And then it came with a bang.
When Gloria came home from work one evening she heard someone sobbing in the apartment next door. She knocked and received no answer. The sobbing went on and Gloria pushed the door open.
Sally was on her bed crying. She was still fully dressed in her street clothes and it looked as if she had just gotten home from work herself. Chuck was not in sight.
"Sally? What's wrong?" Gloria asked.
The girl did not look up but handed her a note. It was hastily scribbled in an immature hand. Chuck.
The note read: "I don't want to be married no more. This is a divorce. I am taking the car and going west like I always wanted. Don't look for me because you won't find me.
Chuck."
Gloria felt like ripping the note up in lieu of ripping up Chuck's pimply face. But she knew that she had to keep this note because it contained an admission of car theft. Chuck could not be dumb enough to think that Sally would go on keeping up the car payments after he deserted her. Or, perhaps she was dumb enough to do just that.
"Sally, he'll be back once the police catch up to him," she told the girl.
"The police? Why would the police go after him?" Sally asked through sobs.
"He stole the car."
Sally sniffed loudly. "That's right," she said smiling through her tears. "The cops will bring that bastard back for me!"
At least she had the spunk to be angry, Gloria thought. There was hope for her yet. She looked at the girl curled up on the bed bawling into a damp handkerchief. Deserted. Abandoned. She imagined herself in that same position. Well, at least Sally didn't have a child nor was she expecting. Pregnancies cause most of the weak men to take flight in what has been labeled "the poor man's divorce." Chuck had selected the right turn of phrase when he claimed that his very leaving was a divorce in itself.
"You're better off without him, Sally," Gloria told her. "He was sponging off you from the beginning."
"B ... but I love him!"
"Not now, I hope. If you do you're a fool."
"Don't insult Chuck like that!" Sally cried in defense. "Maybe he's only kidding. Maybe he'll come back and take me away because he found a new job out west."
Gloria didn't bother to argue with the girl. She needed the narcotic of this pipe dream to aid her in her hour of trial.
Bill was stunned by the news that Chuck had deserted his wife when he came home from work. Oddly enough he made pretty much the same excuse for him as Sally had made. "Maybe this is just a joke. You know old Chuck."
"I know him only too well," Gloria told him. "Obviously, you don't. The bum's left, can't you understand that? I say good riddance. But, if Chuck wants a divorce the least he could do is make it legal. Suppose Sally meets a real man one day and he proposes marriage? She can't very well do it without becoming a bigamist."
"I still say that Chuck is only joking so don't get Sally married off so quickly," he answered. "Just wait. He'll show up."
Gloria agreed to wait and see if he would come back and even claimed that she would eat Chuck's words, his note, if he did. The night passed and no Chuck. The following day came and went and still no Chuck. After the first week had gone by Bill had to admit his friend was now a deserter and a thief. Sally took a little longer to accept these hard facts but had to when the finance company began to dun her for payments on the car. When she told the organization her story they wondered why she hadn't come forward with it before and implied that she was in on Chuck's life of crime. However, they did point out that they were protected by the co-signer clause in which her father had to keep up any payments Chuck had faulted on. Once Sally's father heard about this new financial burden he had to bear and the fact that his daughter had been abandoned he came stomping into Sally's apartment roaring. "I knew he was a bum the minute I laid eyes on him!" he shouted. "Why the hell did you marry him in the first place?"
"Daddy, you made us get married," Sally reminded him.
There was a moment of silence as the man absorbed this truth. "Don't get technical with me!" he went on as if nothing had been said. "You're coming down to the police station!"
"What for?"
"To get the police after Chuck, that's what for! I'm not paying for that car! And, when we catch up with him, we'll charge him with desertion and he'll have to pay alimony."
As Gloria listened to this drama through the thin walls of her apartment she tried to imagine Chuck actually being made to pay alimony. What would he do? Go fifty-fifty on his unemployment checks?
Despite Sally's father's claim that he was not going to make the car payments he found that he was bound by contract to do so. She was surprised that the man did not know this basic fact about financing. Co-signers have been made suckers of before and he wasn't going to be the last.
Life without Chuck made Gloria very happy. While Bill seemed morose for a few weeks he snapped out of it and readjusted to the disappearance of his best friend. Now Gloria did not have to compete for her husband's time and affection. She would become the friend that he had just lost.
Sally stayed on in the apartment for several reasons. In the first place her family didn't want her back; her father didn't want her back at any rate. In the second place Sally could afford the inexpensive rent on her salary and moving would not make any sense. In the third place Sally clung to the belief that her wandering husband would come back to her eventually and she wanted to be there to greet him. In the fourth place she was among friends in the building, those friends being Gloria and Bill.
Gloria knew that she would now have to accept Sally's dependence on her. She could not turn her down. It seemed as if she were never going to be free of people who drained her of her emotions. She wanted all her emotions, the important ones anyhow, to be directed in just one direction ... her husband's.
Sally kept working and looking in the mail box for a letter from Chuck. The police had taken all the information she had given them but nothing further was heard from them. Since Sally's father was now keeping up the car payments Chuck's running away with the car was no longer a criminal matter but rather a civil one which the police did not have to press. The only way Chuck could really be found was by the use of a private detective, Gloria felt, but she didn't want to tell Sally this. With her luck she would just find him. Besides, Chuck was like a bad penny. He would show up once he thought of the free meals, the free bed, and the free sex he would find at the old apartment.
Gloria hated to open the mail box herself because she was afraid that she would find a letter addressed to Bill from Chuck. It was like Chuck to use a friend like a tool. He might even go so far as ask for money to continue his flight "west."
During the Chuckless weekends, Sally would drink. It was as if, in place of her husband, she was taking on one of his best known habits. At first Sally would drink alone and then, in her cups, she would wander across the hall to see her friends. Bill readily joined her in drowning her troubles. When it came to open beer cans no one had to twist his arm to empty them. If she were in the mood Gloria would sometimes join both of them but it was more to deaden the sound of Sally's whines of self-pity rather than to demonstrate sympathy toward the girl and her problems. Chuck wasn't her only problem. Because he had deserted her she became worried about her personal attraction as a woman.
"Do you think I'm pretty, Bill?" she asked once after putting away about four or five cans of brew. "Am I ... am I sexy to you?"
"Sure, Sally, you're a real doll," he agreed pleasantly.
Sally tossed her head back. "You know I was never sure whether Chuck liked me or not. I always had the idea that he had sex with me because I was so available. I could've been a whore for all it seemed to matter to him. Daddy called me a whore once, do you know that?"
"Uh huh," Bill agreed sipping beer.
"Maybe I should be whore," Sally announced. "I got the built for it, right?"
Bill nodded and smiled and drank. "Uh huh."
Gloria braced herself for what she knew was going to come next.
Sally stood up and kicked off her shoes. "I got a real nice body," she said. "Chuck was nuts over it. A lot of guys are nuts over it."
The girl took off her blouse and skirt in a flash. Now Bill's attention had been arrested. He gazed at the girl standing in front of him wearing only panties and bra.
"You'd better sleep it off, Sally," Gloria advised her. She tried to approach the girl but she staggered away.
"I got a damned good body!" Sally cried. "I'm not ashamed of it!"
She stepped out of her panties and took off her bra. Naked, she did a bump and grind. "I should be a stripper, thas' what I should be," she laughed.
Gloria tried to put a blanket around her but the girl struggled free of it. "Lemme alone!" she screamed. "You're just jealous because I got a better built than you! That right, Bill? You should know."
"Yeah ... yeah ... ," Bill responded quietly leering at her nakedness.
Gloria gave up trying to cover the girl. She didn't want her screaming about her condition all over the building. She watched Sally go through a burleque dance, shaking her buttocks and kicking her leg into the air. Even drunk the girl's body was attractive. Her breasts were very firm cones capped with perfectly round, jutting nipples. Her skin was flawless and smooth. She couldn't understand why Chuck desired a car over her.
But Bill obviously had a better opinion of her. He had the look of unbridled lust on his face. His eyes followed every movement Sally made, taking in every inch of her young nude body. Sally spun around several times and then she stumbled to the floor with a dull thud. She did not move.
"Well, she's out," Gloria said. "She won't come to for the next ten hours if I know Sally." She placed the blanket she had been trying to put on her over her nude form.
"Can't let her stay like that all night," Bill said. "I'll put her in our bed."
"Our bed? Three's a crowd, darling," she told him.
"Just trying to be sociable. I guess I'd better carry her across the hall again. She'll give me a hernia yet. You check the hall. I don't want the rest of the people on the floor to get any wrong ideas."
"With the way she's been shouting they already have wrong ideas."
Gloria looked down the hall and, when she saw that it was empty, motioned for Bill. He hurried Sally across the hall and he placed her on her own bed. He removed the blanket and silently stared at her stretched out face and breasts jutting upwards.
"That'll be enough of that," Gloria said coolly. She pulled Sally's own blankets over her more to shut out Bill's view than to keep the girl warm.
Bill let out a sigh. "She's right. She has a better build than you have."
"And I suppose you'd like to crawl into bed with her right now?"
"Uh huh."
So far there had been a kidding tone to their conversation about Sally but Gloria wondered if Bill really meant that he would like to have relations with Sally.
When they went to bed that night Gloria tried to win Bill's attention back again with her body. She had a better body than Sally. Bill had only been teasing her. He had to be....
As Bill slept Gloria lay on the bed next to him fully awake. She stared at the dark ceiling. First she had to worry about Chuck absorbing too much of Bill's attention and now she had to worry about Chuck's wife doing the same thing.
It looked as if Sally were going to be a bigger problem than she had imagined.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The new tensions at home were added to the old ones at work. Mr. Anderson began to wonder why Gloria had been avoiding his office lately and, while she was in the middle of the file cases, he came up to her and asked her point blank. Gloria felt ill-atease with the executive talking to her so publicly about something so private. Alma watched them from the corner of her eye.
Mr. Anderson leaned towards Gloria and whispered. "Are you afraid to come to the office because I might attack you on the spot? I won't, not with my secretary looking on."
"Please, Mr. Anderson," Gloria whispered back. "Don't bother me anymore. I'm busy."
"Too busy to spend a weekend with me?"
Gloria was astounded that he would press this point again. Was he angry because she had turned him down? Was that it? His male pride had been hurt and he couldn't stand it?
"Why don't you ask your secretary to go with you?" she told him.
"Too old. Too cold. Beneath that wonderful face and figure there's an iceberg. Gloria, I'm sorry I'm annoying you. It's just that I'd like to see you drop around to the office as you used to."
Gloria agreed to change her route back so it would include his office. This seemed to satisfy him and he walked away. She had wondered what his personal relationship with his secretary was and now she knew. Too old and too cold. She could understand the part about being cold bothering him but what about the girl being too old? She was only about ten years older than she was at most. But, maybe he did consider that too old for him. Maybe he had a passion for teenaged girls while looking upon fully grown adult women as boring.
"What did Mr. Anderson want?" Alma asked sharply.
"He just passed the time of day, that's all."
She glared at her, her eyes like burning matches. "I'll bet. The way you were blushing there I'm sure that...."
Gloria walked away from Alma leaving her with her thought unsaid. But she knew that the woman would say it to someone else later on. She knew that she was about to become a subject of office gossip.
When Gloria did make her rounds to Mr. Anderson's office he was the soul of politeness. He did not come on strong with propositions or compliments. He seemed content just to know that she was around and that he could rest his eyes on her now and then. Gloria always took a more objective look at the secretary when she chanced to enter the office. She did seem all too efficient and crisp as she typed and went about the office routine. Was she really a cold fish sexually? Since Mrs. Anderson did not object to having her in the office she probably was considered "safe" to be around her husband. What good was beauty when it was not spent on someone?
At home Sally seemed to have the same opinion. She started hanging out in bars and taking men home. She was not one to put her candle under a bushel. Gloria became used to seeing strange male faces in the morning coming out of Sally's apartment. Some of these men would drop around at night and Sally would either chase them away or allow one to stay the night.
"Maybe she has become a whore." Bill noticed. "I don't think so. She goes to work every day ... so far."
So far. But one of these days a man would give her money for services rendered and she would be hooked on being paid for what came naturally to her. Gloria became worried about the other tenants and the landlord. The building might be a dump but it was a "respectable" dump.
Gloria tried to talk Sally into stopping her picking up of stray men. "They'll only get you into trouble. You don't know what kind of weirdo you may run into in bars. Maybe you'd better ask your father to take you back."
Sally, drunk as usual, waved her finger under Gloria's nose. "I know what you're afraid of ... You're afraid that I'll steal Bill away from you. Well, I could if I wanted to. All I'd have to do is crook my little finger and he'd come a runnin'."
Gloria set her jaw. "You'd better not crook that little finger or I'd break it off," she said in a flat, mean voice.
Gloria's reaction seemed to shock Sally. It was obvious that she had meant what she had just said. When it came to Bill Gloria was willing to fight like a tiger.
Sally began to lose time from work because of her drunkenness. Men still brought her home from bars and stayed the night and Gloria knew it would be only a matter of time when she would start accepting money from them. Sally, her best friend, turning into a prostitute and a drunk before her eyes. What was going to be her next step? Drugs? Prostitutes were popular users of all kinds of narcotics. And after that? Arrests? Vice squad policemen sometimes hung out in bars to see if prostitutes would accost them. Would Sally take a policeman to the apartment one day and get arrested when she asked for money?
After Chuck left her Sally's decay was rapid. She was the kind of girl to depend on male support ... any male support. Perhaps, Gloria thought, she should introduce Sally to Mr. Anderson. That would be killing two birds with one stone, having one problem cross out the other. Mr. Anderson liked young, sexy girls and Sally liked any man who would show her kindness.
The more Gloria thought about introducing her problems to one another the better she liked the idea. What held her back was her shyness. She would be doing the work of a procurer, really. Pimp was a stronger and perhaps more accurate word. Gloria, the pimp. If she had to be one to save her marriage she would be one.
Gloria rehearsed in her mind just how she would go about bringing Mr. Anderson and Sally together. She thought of inviting Mr. Anderson for dinner and having Sally there but she did not want the executive to see on what level she lived. The best way to approach Mr. Anderson was the use of absolute candor. They had been candid with each other so far. She had told him about her bed strike and he had told her about how he sold himself for security. Since they already had been so honest with each other why not pursue that line? She would simply tell Mr. Anderson the truth. Sally was a beautiful teenaged girl who was ruining herself and was endangering her marriage. She wanted to get her out of the building and out of Bill's sexual range.
Would Mr. Anderson be offended? Amused? Would he want to meet this teenaged sexpot who would be only too willing to share a hide-away with an important company executive?
Gloria kept trying to bring this up to Mr. Ander son but the words stuck in her throat. It was just too sordid, really. No matter how she sliced it it would come out that she had turned procuring young girls for middle-aged men. No, things just had to work out themselves somehow.
One day Gloria had to work late at the office because of some rush jobs. She called Bill at his work and told him to fix his own dinner and not save anything for her as she would be in the office to about eight o'clock.
The rush job was rushed through so quickly that it was over by six thirty. Gloria quickly rushed home. She bought some canned goods at the corner grocery for her supper and walked up the long flights of stairs.
The apartment was empty when she entered it. She could see that Bill had made himself a fast meal of franks and beans leaving the dishes for her to wash. She placed her grocery bag down. In the apartment across the hall she heard the bed move. She knew what this meant. Sally had another man with her.
And then, for some reason, she connected Bill's disappearance with those familiar bed movements across the hall.
Gloria slipped over to the door of Sally's apartment quietly and carefully turned the knob. It was unlocked. She dreaded opening the door and finding out what she feared. Even if Sally were with a stranger she didn't want to see them together.
She waited at the door for a full minute and then she pushed it forward. On the bed were two naked bodies, male atop female, moving in a sexual position. Gloria could see Sally's face, her eyes closed as she received the pleasure the man gave her. The male body was very familiar but she still could not be sure. Then she shouted out, "Bill?"
Bill turned and gasped. He rolled off Sally and grabbed for his trousers to cover himself. His face rapidly turned white. Sally smiled at her. She crooked her finger. "That's all it took, Gloria," she told her.
Gloria wanted to do something drastic, she wanted to kill Sally, castrate Bill, throw something at someone but she stayed frozen to the spot as she watched the adulterous young lovers react to being caught. Sally just lay there on the bed, legs parted and giggling. Bill, ghost white and trembling, struggled clumsily into his clothes.
"Don't bother to get dressed, Bill," she said surprised by her own icy calmness. "If you like it so much here you can stay. I'll get all your things together and put them in the hall. You can pick them up there."
Gloria did exactly as she had warned. She picked up all the clothes Bill had and threw them into the hall in a heap. She added everything else she could find that belonged to him, such as toilet articles and tools he had brought back from work. When Gloria had stripped the apartment of all Bill's things she broke the dishes he had used for his meal and tossed them in the garbage pail. She could not bring herself to clean them. And then, as if nothing unusual had happened, she turned on the television and watched it as she made supper for herself.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
An hour later Bill knocked at the door but Gloria didn't answer. "Look, sweetheart," he pleaded. "I have no excuses. I'm very, very sorry. What else can I say? Sally invited me to eat with her and ... well, it happened, that's all."
Gloria didn't answer and Bill tried to open the door but it was locked.
"Okay, I know how you feel and I can't blame you," he continued pleading. "We'll talk about this tomorrow, right?"
Again Gloria refused to answer. She could see that he just wanted her to laugh the adultery off like a good sport and take him back to her bed tomorrow. This meant he actually planned to spend the night with Sally continuing the relationship because it was convenient for him to stay there while being next to his previous apartment at the same time. The male ego at work again. Could anyone measure it?
Bill stopped knocking on the door and pleading. Gloria listened for signs that he was leaving Sally's apartment but she heard nothing. After another hour he still had not left. Bill was actually going to brazen it out, living with his mistress with his wife just across the hall! She had assumed that Bill had some maturity but, when it came to sex, what man was mature? Look at Mr. Anderson....
Mr. Anderson. She had wanted to use him to resolve the danger of her husband living next door to a sexpot who gave her body away to anyone who stuck out his hand for it. Now it was too late. The problem had already happened.
Gloria sat up half the night staring blankly at the television set not caring what program was on. She wondered what she had to do now. She had grounds for divorce, the best grounds. Every state in the union accepted adultery as a valid reason for a wife to leave her husband. And, after divorce, then what? She didn't want to go back to her family because she felt that she was a grown woman now and too old to live at home. She could stay here, alone, eating alone, sleeping alone. She could afford the apartment.
And Bill?
Would he go on living with Sally? Would he be there, across the hall, just within reach even after the divorce? No, the best thing for her to do would be to leave the apartment and find another place of her own. Since she was no longer saving up for a house she would select a nice one-and-a-half rooms near work. A lot of single workers do that, living near work because it was so convenient with no traffic to buck and it also gave the workers some more time to sleep in the mornings. She knew of one nice apartment building that had a lot of young, single people who worked for the insurance company who socialized with each other. She might even get to meet a nice accountant or junior executive.
What was she doing thinking of remarriage already? Her first had only begun to die.
Gloria was glad to see that Mr. Anderson was alone in his office when she entered it the next day. Actually, she had planned it this way, keeping her eye on the office door until the executive came in and, as expected, the secretary left almost immediately after to pick up a quick breakfast for Mr. Anderson at the cafeteria. She judged that she would be gone for at least fifteen minutes. This would give her enough time. She didn't know the first thing about getting a divorce and she turned to iMr. Anderson for help.
The executive was behind his desk looking glum. His expression changed the instant Gloria walked in. "Well, hello stranger!" he smiled.
Gloria didn't want to waste any time with pleasantries. She wanted to get to the point as fast as she could before she became inhibited about revealing it. She told Mr. Anderson about Sally, about Chuck, about the deserted girl's drinking and men, and about her catching Bill with her. "So, you see, I have no other choice. I have to have a divorce. I don't know how to go about getting one and I wondered if you could tell me what I should do next?"
"The very first thing you should do is give your husband another chance. What's a little adultery between friends?" Mr. Anderson responded glibly.
"But, I'm being serious, Mr. Anderson."
"So am I. Why do American women think they have to get a divorce as soon as they find out that their husbands had sex with another girl? Why destroy a marriage because of a trifle?"
"A trifle? He broke his marriage vows!" Gloria all but screamed.
"How melodramatic. His marriage vows. He promised to honor and cherish you and, from what you told me, he's been doing that all along. This little roll in the hay, this minor spasm of sexual release, isn't serious. Bill isn't in love with this Sally, is he?"
"Of course not. He just wanted her body. She kept throwing it at him and he grabbed it."
Mr. Anderson leaned back in his chair and raised his hands. "You've just summarized the whole matter. Your husband is an eighteen year old boy. He's at the very height of his sexual powers. A young girl offers him her body. He has the time and the place to take it. What eighteen year old boy, married or not, would turn her down? Gloria, forgive and forget. Let it pass. It won't be the last time he'll have himself a piece of fluff."
"You seem to take this thing lightly," Gloria told him. "I suppose men would. But I'm a woman and I can't. Adultery is adultery and I can't forgive or forget it. If you don't want to help me then I'm sorry I wasted your time."
Gloria strode towards the door purposefully.
"Wait!" Mr. Anderson shouted.
She stopped and turned.
"All right, if you are determined to get a divorce I can help you. I've tried my best to patch things up. Do you know that is the first thing a judge tries to do when a divorce case comes before him? No one likes to see marriages break up. The only ones who do are the divorce lawyers."
"I'll have to get a lawyer then?"
"And how. A divorce is a lot harder to get than a marriage and it is much more complicated. Now, let's see if we can simplify this. Do you want alimony?"
"No. All I want from Bill is my freedom."
"Do you have children or are you going to have one?"
Gloria shook her head. She didn't want to go into the details about the precautions she had been taking.
"Are you capable and willing to support yourself?"
"Of course. I've been working full time ever since I got out of high school."
"Good. Then things are easy to handle. Once there is no problem about financial demands and child support it is pretty simple unless, of course, your husband wants to contest the divorce."
"How can he? I caught him in adultery."
"If he admits it, and the girl he was having relationships with admits it, then you will have no trouble at all getting a divorce. Do you want me to handle the details? That is, do you want my lawyer to handle the details?"
Gloria hesitated. Things were moving too fast for her now. She had come to Mr. Anderson for advice and he had given it to her but now he was going one step further, he wanted to aid her in getting the divorce. He seemed so certain that it would be a simple legal matter and no more. For the first time Gloria had doubts as to whether or not she was doing the right thing. Didn't divorces take a long time? Wasn't there time to think and change one's mind? Gloria had considered thinking and even changing her mind but now Mr. Anderson seemed anxious to hurry the process after first attempting to discourage her.
"I ... I don't know what to think right now," she told him quite honestly. "How long would you figure a divorce would take?"
"Off hand I would say forty-eight hours."
"That soon?"
"Pet, you're the one who came in here wanting what you claimed was your freedom. I was only thinking of you. I could send you down to a place in Mexico near the Texas border and...."
"Mexico?" Gloria choked on the word. Just what had she let herself in for when she had turned to Mr. Anderson for advice?
"Of course, Mexico. Haven't you ever heard of a Mexican divorce? When both parties agree to the parting of the ways one of them simply goes to this place in Mexico, signs a few papers, pays a few hundred dollars and that's it. Mexican divorces are quite legal, too. The only reason Americans have to go there for a quickie is because so many of our states like to ball them up in red tape. I know this state is strict about getting a divorce. The fastest you can get one here is about eighteen months."
"Then maybe I should get one here and...."
"As I thought. You don't want to leave your husband. You still want to be married to him."
"I don't! I ... "
"Then why did you turn down the quickie Mexican divorce in favor of the much longer one this state takes? Gloria, it's so obvious to me that you haven't really thought the thing out. Why don't you give yourself time and find out just exactly what it is you want? A divorce is a serious business, even more so than marriage. I'm not trying to be clever. A divorce is final; cutting. A marriage you can jump into and then wonder if you've made a mistake or not at leisure. If you have then you can end it. If you haven't then there's no harm done. You've probably married in haste so why not repent in leisure for awhile? There I go with my cliches again. And, again, I have to tell you that a cliche is a proven truth. Allow the proof of this one."
Gloria felt a warm glow towards the older man. He had leveled with her and treated her as an intelligent adult and something of a child at the same time. He had probed her, kidded her, become a lawyer and judge, all trying to fix in her mind her own scattered thoughts. Mr. Anderson was like a wonderfully understanding father she never had. Her own father had never spoken to her like that. He was an inarticulate man who could not really cope with his children once they grew old enough to have minds of their own. But Mr. Anderson knew exactly how to handle her and she respected him for it. Was that the way she really thought of him-as a father-image? Was that the basic reason she had always been attracted to him?
"I would like to think about it," she answered.
"I just hate the thought of going back to that house. Bill would be there across the hall with Sally. I'm afraid they might even start drinking and start something unpleasant with me."
"Then stay at my place," he offered quickly.
"I ... I couldn't! Your wife!"
"I meant my private place, my hide-away."
Gloria swallowed hard. The father was now becoming a lover. "I can't do that either, Mr. Anderson."
"Why not? Afraid of how I might act towards you? No, Gloria. This is strictly altruism and not sex on my part. I have so few opportunities to give to someone. Let me give you time to think and a place to think."
Gloria could not resist his invitation after that. To do so would be cruel and she didn't dare return that for all his kindness. "Thank you, Mr. Anderson," she said.
Gloria hurried to her apartment as soon as she got out of work dreading the thought of meeting either Sally or Bill. There was no one in her apartment as she feared. When she had given Bill his things she was sure to keep his key. But he still could've got the landlord to open it up with some excuse about losing his key somewhere.
She didn't even attempt to see if anyone was in Sally's place and quickly packed two suitcases of clothes and toilet articles. Perhaps it was too much but she didn't know exactly how long she would be at Mr. Anderson's mountain retreat. She closed the door behind her softly and hurried down the stairs.
Mr. Anderson had promised to meet her on a certain corner downtown and at a certain time. Both of them were taking pains not to be seen by either friends, enemies or co-workers. In the arrangement they were making there were actually no friends or co-workers, only enemies. In the world of enemies they were very cautious.
Gloria hailed a cab and it took her to where she wanted to go, downtown. She had gotten there just five minutes before she was supposed to. She felt vulnerable and naked standing there in the street with two suitcases at her side. Suppose someone saw her being picked up by a strange man? Suppose even Sally, wandering around town in one of her binges, saw her?
Of course Gloria knew that she was being nervous. Sally did all her bar cruising within a five block radius of her apartment because it was easy to crawl home in that short distance. No, this corner had been picked because it was out of the way. The hustle and the bustle that went on around her only served as a protecting screen rather than a revealing mirror.
A somber, late model car drew up to the curb. Mr. Anderson bade her enter and she placed her suitcases in the back seat while she sat up beside him. He drove off down the highway that led out of the city and towards the mountains in the distance. The shadowy tops of the mountain range beckoned them with snow-capped fingers.
"Everything go all right?" he asked.
"I didn't meet anybody so that means everything went perfectly."
"Didn't you leave a note for Bill to tell him that you won't be around for awhile?"
"No. I want him to worry. I also want him to suffer."
"Humm. You're not as sweet as I thought you were, pet," he smiled.
Two hours outside of the city limits the highway rose sharply. The mountains were all about them now, hulking dark and green in the twilight. Mr. Anderson made a turn into a secondary road which led even more sharply upward. They were now the only car on the road. Night was gathering fast and the headlights of the car seemed like tender, yellow tentacles of an insect reaching out towards the blind way in front of it.
Gloria was beginning to be frightened. Here she was alone with a man who had already tried to make love to her. She was going to a place that he had already propositioned her with. Although he had told her that he was not going to make any advances she was not so sure now that he would not try. She already formulated in her mind just how she would react if he did try to force his attentions on her. First she would try to stave him off with words. If that didn't work she would use what force she had. If he still persisted then she would not try to fight him all the way down the line. She would do the same thing she had done with Bill. She would give him a dead, cold thing to make love to.
After another hour's driving Mr. Anderson made another turn into a dirt road that barely had room for the car. "We're almost there," he said with excitement in his voice. "I haven't been to this place in almost three weeks now."
Gloria peered into the gloom. She saw nothing. Then, ahead to her left, she caught the reflection of a roof in the moonlight. It seemed a small place and rather dismal. Gloria was disappointed. Her previous thoughts about a rustic Shangri-La vanished.
Mr. Anderson pulled up in front of a low, flat building and got out. "It doesn't look like much from the outside but wait'll you see the inside," he assured her.
He took one of the suitcases and walked to the front door. He opened it and was immediately swallowed by the blackness of the interior. A light went on.
Mr. Anderson had been right. The inside of the building was everything the outside wasn't. Plush furniture was everywhere and there were shelves full of books, a fireplace, a bar, a small but modern refrigerator and gas range. Gloria examined it all and sighed in wonder. "Why do you just come here every now and then?" she asked. "Why not live out here?"
"I'd like to but there's a rub. I have a prestigious job and an even more prestigious wife to look after. I can't find the time to play middle-aged man of the mountains. I even had to make up all sorts of excuses to take the time to get you here. If anyone asks you're a board of nervous underwriters."
Gloria laughed. Her previous fears were dissipating. "Speaking of excuses do you think I can get away with that letter I sent the company for taking time off?"
"Why not? I think that being called away suddenly to be at the reading of a will in another state is a dramatic, valid and understandable excuse. When it comes to even the possibility of getting money anyone would drop everything."
"Well, I have some sick days coming to me. It's about time I took off."
"Speaking of taking off I can't stay any longer. Do you know how to make a gin and tonic? Let's toast something worthwhile like ... liberal Mexican divorce laws."
Gloria mixed the drinks and gave one to Mr. Anderson. "I don't know if I should go to Mexico," she said.
"Well, that's what you're here for, to decide." He drank quickly and made himself another drink. "If you do decide about Mexico I'll take care of everything, the plane, the money...."
"But why, Mr. Anderson? Tell me ... are there any strings attached?"
"How indelicately put. Of course there's no strings attached. I'm no dirty old man who has to buy his girls. But, if you do go down there and you do get your freedom ... I would then feel free to make my crass proposition again."
"But you would still be married."
"A minor point. My marriage is one in name only."
Gloria coughed on her drink at this revelation. "Has it always been?"
"No, not at first. Even when we both knew we had bought each other on the selling block we tried to find something warm and yielding in the other. It just didn't work out. I couldn't make love to her and she couldn't respond to me. So, that's the way it's been standing for years. We could be brother and sister for all it matters. We even have separate rooms, let alone separate beds."
Mr. Anderson's sexual hunger made Gloria nervous again. He wanted her to fill this awful void in his life and she didn't like to disappoint him. All his help so far was just a gamble on his part that she might fall in love with him or, at least, give herself to him in a feeling of gratitude. She knew that she was half in love with him now. The fact of his marriage, even one in name only, prevented her from permitting her feelings to go further. As for gratitude, she just didn't know. If she did get her divorce and became single what would be so wrong in giving herself to this man who was friend, father and lover? She could even see herself married to the older man. If he were single, too, she knew she would not hesitate to accept him. She had had enough of sex-crazy, immature boys.
After finishing his drink Mr. Anderson showed her the rest of the place. She noticed that there was only one bedroom with one double bed in it. How many others had slept there with him, she thought.
"Well, good-night, Gloria," he said briskly. "I'll see you in three days time, right?"
"Right."
"And don't worry about animals or prowlers. The animals moved out of the neighborhood when the human race moved in and wrecked hell out of the property values and the prowlers can't get up this high without oxygen masks. Sorry that there is no T.V. or radio but there are lots of books. If you want to indulge yourself in that ancient form of relaxation please feel free to do so. The gin is in the cupboard, steak is in the refrigerator, God is in His heaven and all is right with the world ... up here. Good night, Gloria, pet."
"Good night, Mr. Anderson."
"At this point I should ask you to call me by my first name but my first name is Oscar. What man in his right senses would want to be called by the name Oscar? It makes me feel like an award being handed about by weeping second-rate actresses. Perhaps another name will come to you. In the meantime Mr. Anderson will do. That's what my wife calls me."
He left and Gloria heard his car drive down the night-black mountain road. She watched as his twin yellow headlights could be seen no more. Then she looked up at the moon. She tried to concentrate on her problems but all she could think about was the man who was being so kind to her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Silence.
Gloria, being reared in cities, had never known the countryside to be so quiet. There was no wind and not even the trees rustled. She wished that there was a television or radio to break the silence but she could also readily see that those items would ruin the whole purpose of this retreat from the world.
She looked at the books -lined along the shelves. All of them were too deep for Gloria. She had just managed to squeeze through high school and hadn't read anything more than movie magazines since. Just why did an urbane, sophisticated man like Mr. Anderson pursue unlettered girls like herself? Perhaps it was because she was what she was. And, perhaps it was because she was the exact opposite of his cold, blonde wife. Marriage in name only. What a hell that must be for a still youthful and virile man. What a hell that would be for a normal red-blooded woman. She could not imagine herself living without sex.
Sex.
Back to that number one problem again.
Gloria decided not to think tonight. She would put her mind in idle and drink herself to sleep. Gloria found more than just gin in the cupboard; just about every other brand and type of alcohol there was. Was it possible that Mr. Anderson was a secret drinker? If he was he kept it a good secret because she never remembered him looking even slightly drunk. And then there were the two drinks he had just had before he left. A real drinker would not stop at only two drinks. Once the cork was open on the bottle they stayed to the end. She had had enough experience with drunks to know that much.
After three more gin and tonics Gloria felt sleepy and adrift on clouds. This was the first time in her life she had ever had an entire place to herself. She felt like a luxuriating Persian cat stretching out.
Gloria gazed at the moon until she felt hypnotized by it and went to bed. She sprawled over the cool sheets and rolled herself into the warm blankets. She allowed sleep to approach her like a friend. As her eyes grew heavy she wondered what Bill was doing tonight and what Sally was doing. They probably were doing it together. What the hell. Let them. Who the hell cared about them anyhow?
In this indifferent frame of mind Gloria slipped gently into sleep. She slept deeply and she did not dream.
When Gloria woke she heard the sounds of what seemed to be hundreds of birds. Looking out of the bedroom window she saw a flock of birds singing through the evergreens. She yawned and stretched. She realized that she had slept for ten hours and never felt so rested in her life.
Gloria went to the kitchenette and, because she was very hungry, fried herself some eggs even though she never especially cared for them.
After breakfast Gloria explored the land around the hide-away. The building deserved its name because, although it was only about four or five hours driving time from the city, she felt as if she were on another planet and alone. She shaded her eyes against the sun to see if she could find another house but all she saw were the lofty, snow-capped mountains and the rich greenness of millions of trees. Somehow all her problems seemed small in comparison to this massive display of nature. She thought that this is why Mr. Anderson came here now and then, to belittle his own problems in order to see them in the right perspective.
Gloria spent the rest of the morning, walking through the woods. She was always careful not to get out of sight of the cabin for fear that she would become lost. She could see how easy it was for people to get lost in the woods because the giant trees covered everything and towered over things as small as human beings.
She was disappointed in not finding any animal life outside of the many birds and insects. When Mr. Anderson had mentioned that the creatures moved out once the human moved in it obviously had been no joke. She had hoped to find a chipmunk and make a pet out of it. Pet. That was Mr. Anderson's nickname for her. Did he think of her as a small, defenseless creature that needed protection and petting? Perhaps he was enjoying his role as protector just as she would to a tiny, furry animal.
By the middle of the afternoon Gloria was tired but in that tiredness that comes from exhausting one's self physically rather than emotionally. She made herself a drink and gazed out at the mountains with the sun turning their caps of snow to bright copper. All right, Gloria, she said to herself. You came here to sort yourself out so start sorting....
Did she really want to divorce Bill?
In her heart she knew that she didn't want to leave him. She loved him very much despite everything. She had forgiven him for that awful drunken attack on her but she did not want to go through life having to forgive constantly. She did not want to become a doormat for some rampaging male animal that came and went at will. Polly had been like that. She was an utterly crushed woman dominated completely by her husband. She was sure that this condition had not come suddenly but rather came on slowly, bit by bit. Her marriage, her own personality, had decayed as a tooth would decay, so imperceptibly at first but, before she knew it the nerve was killed and the tooth had to be pulled out. Gloria didn't want that to happen to her. If she forgave Bill this "roll in the hay" as Mr. Anderson had put it what would be the next indiscretion she would have to forgive? No, stop the decay now. Fill the tooth.
But marriage wasn't a tooth. The bad spots could not be filled so easily. Only an extraction cured the decay.
Gloria tried to imagine what life would be without Bill. She thought of how Sally lived without Chuck. Would she turn out to be a man-chaser in order to prove to herself that she was still attractive? Gloria thought of these two women, Sally and Polly. One became single and the other stayed married and both were tragedies. But both were essentially weak women and she did not consider herself weak. No, she could live without Bill. And she was not unattractive. She was only eighteen and there would be lots of time for lots of men.
She smelled the piney air of the woods. It was clean and fresh just as a new beginning was. Yes, she would end the old and start a new. That was the whole trick. When the old ended for Sally she did not have the capacity to begin a new life for herself.
By the third day at the hide-away Gloria was certain of what she was going to do. She was going to take Mr. Anderson's offer and go to Mexico for a quickie divorce. After that she would take her half of the money that she and Bill had been saving and buy herself a new wardrobe and get a nice, little modern apartment near the insurance office. She would socialize and not nurse the hurt of her broken marriage.
Once Gloria had made up her mind she felt free, as free as the birds that fluttered about the cabin. She couldn't wait for Mr. Anderson to tell him the good news. She was sure that he would be happy, too, because she knew that he wanted her to leave Bill. The older man had an intense romantic interest in her and she felt flattered by it. Her life so far had been without romance. Bill had been a virile, but rough lover. Even his proposal of marriage had been self-conscious and abrupt, as if the proposal were something to be gotten over with as quickly as possible.
But Mr. Anderson knew what romance was. He knew the proper setting and the proper words. If she allowed herself she could easily fall completely in love with the man.
After sunset of the final day Gloria saw headlights picking their way up the long, winding road that led to the hide-away. Mr. Anderson was coming to pick her up and bring her back to the city. She didn't want to go. She wished that she could stay here forever.
The car pulled to a halt and Mr. Anderson walked towards her smiling. "Still in one piece, pet?" he said. "I thought you might have gone out of your skull by now. I know it took me some time to get used to the woods up here."
"It did frighten me at first, Mr. Anderson," she told him. "But I got used to it. In fact, I love it here."
"I know. That's what everybody says."
Gloria wondered what he meant by "everybody." Was she just one girl in a long line of girls he had taken here? Was it possible that he was talking about men friends? But Mr. Anderson was not the "man's man" type. She could not see him beering it up with the boys during a poker game. No, Mr. Anderson was definitely a man for women.
She made him a gin and tonic as soon as he entered the cabin and it seemed a kind of wifely thing for her to do and she enjoyed it. She was strictly a girl for men, too. They had this in common.
"Well, pet, have you decided what you are going to do with your life?" he asked.
"Yes. I am going to go to Mexico and divorce Bill."
Gloria watched his face for reaction but none came. "Sounds pretty definite."
"I am definite."
Mr. Anderson put down his drink and looked at her squarely. "Then I can make the arrangements and have you on a plane to El Paso the day after tomorrow. After that you cross the border into Mexico and meet a Mexican lawyer who handles these matters. You could be on the plane back the same day, a free and single woman. Is this what you really want?"
She did not hesitate this time. "This is what I really want."
Mr. Anderson touched his glass with hers. "Then, as my civil rights friends say, here's to freedom, now."
She laughed. Mr. Anderson always made her laugh the way Chuck made Bill laugh. This, she gathered, was something as needed as love.
"Well, then we don't have to hurry back so you could run into the arms of your husband," he said. "Are there any steaks left?"
"Most of them are. I only had one since I came here."
"Foolish girl. They're all prime cuts. In your place I would've gorged myself."
"I'm not a very good cook. I'm afraid I even burned the steak I did make for myself."
"Well, then watch me, pet. I'll give you your first lesson in how to cook a steak medium rare."
Mr. Anderson cooked the steak and some frozen carrots melted in butter. After they ate Gloria insisted on making coffee claiming that was the one thing she knew how to make. They sat quietly for awhile, drinking the coffee and listening to the wind shake the trees outside.
"Are you happy you came here?" he asked softly.
"Umm! Yes. I wished I had accepted the first time you asked."
Mr. Anderson smiled and reached over to hold her hand. "But you knew why I asked you that first time," he said.
She blushed. "Well ... I didn't mean it the way it sounded."
"It doesn't sound bad to me. You know how much I love you, Gloria."
She wanted to pull her hand away but she didn't. Let love come if it must come, she thought, excitement throbbing through her veins.
He took her other hand and pulled her close. "Gloria, I've wanted to come here every day that I knew you were in the hide-away. I was afraid that you might have left."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to. I'd be afraid of getting lost."
"I'm the lost one," he said painfully. "I'm the one who needs to be found." Suddenly his lips were upon hers.
She did not resist him and, more importantly, did not want to resist. Let love come if it must come....
His hands slid over her body and fondled her breasts. She felt her blouse being opened.
"No ... please ... ," the words rose out of her mouth as by their own will. She had not really meant them. She wanted this man's love.
"Let me see you, darling," he whispered. "Let me see your beautiful young body."
The buttons on her blouse were all open now. His hand slipped off her bra and exposed her naked breasts with their nipples stiff with want. He moaned gratefully as he saw them and he kissed each erect nipple and touched them with his tongue.
Suddenly he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. He began to remove his clothing. Gloria watched, unmoving. She shouldn't be doing this. She was still married. This was adultery....
The older man had a youthful and athletic body. He had long, slender legs that were only lightly -haired. He went into bed next to Gloria and he seemed disappointed that she still wore her slacks. "Please, darling," he said tugging at them.
"I ... I don't know," she pleaded. "I shouldn't ... "
"We should do what our hearts tell us to do," he said sweeping his hands over her firm, young breasts again.
He then unzipped her slacks and started to slip them off her hips. Gloria, feeling that she had passed a point of no return in this affair, went further on and stripped off the rest of her clothes.
Mr. Anderson fondled the girl's naked body with his hands and his eyes. When was the last time he had had a girl, she wondered. He seemed so hungry for her flesh. She enjoyed his attention, his touch. There was nothing hasty or clumsy about him even though he was being passionate; an experienced lover despite being hungry for love.
His lean body now covered hers. At that first touch of that final intimacy Gloria gave a tiny, convulsive gasp. Up until this point she had still not technically committed adultery, she still had not consummated her extra-marital union. There was time, even in this fractional second, to prevent it.
But she did not want to prevent it. She wanted him. Her legs spread wide to accept the thrust of his desire. Gloria embraced him hard exhaling hotly every time his body came down upon hers. This was the second man she had ever had relations with in her life and she wondered why she felt no guilt. She was in the midst of adultery and felt no sin.
Love came to both of them.
Resting in each other's naked embrace they listened to the wind rise outside. A storm was brewing.
"I think it's going to rain, Mr. Anderson," she said.
He nuzzled his face into her hair. "Mr. Anderson? Such formality seems strange at this most informal moment."
She kissed his neck. "Force of habit, I guess. You don't want me to call you Oscar."
"Have you been thinking of a nickname?" he asked.
"No. Sorry. I was thinking too much about Bill. I don't know how I'm going to tell him."
"Don't. I'll have my lawyer send him forms to sign."
"I can't be that cold. I'll have to meet him face to face."
He held her tighter. "You're certainly not cold. I was beginning to forget what a real female felt like."
"Have you had many girls up here?"
"Now don't start henpecking me. But, to satisfy your curiosity, there have been a few. Most of the time I'm here alone, reading. Sometimes I don't do anything, not even think. I just drift."
"Drift. That's what I felt as if I were doing just after you left."
"Seems we're soulmates despite the difference in our ages."
"You're not old. You weren't old just awhile ago...."
He kissed her in gratitude. "Why, thank you, Gloria! You don't know what that does for me. After having had those impotent sessions with my wife I needed that."
The wind tossed small rocks against the windows and they rattled. "Are you ever going to divorce her?" she asked. Say yes, she thought, say yes and I'll be the second Mrs. Anderson.
"Divorce my wife? Of course not! Where would that leave me? I would have to give up so many of the goodies of life, this cabin being one of them."
"And you're colder than I thought," she answered stung by his mercenary attitude.
"Don't think too badly of me, pet. I'm a realist. To leave my wife would mean that I would have to start life all over again when I'm past forty. No, only the young can afford such abrupt changes."
"Like me."
"Yes, just like you. But, when you do, make your changes for the better."
Gloria sat up suddenly and looked down at the man. "Like I'm doing now?"
He gazed at her for a moment. "You came here of your own free will. I want you to stay. You can leave of your own free will if you want to. But since we are soulmates I believe that you are a realist, too. After the divorce you can stay here. I can give you an apartment in the city, too, if you like. I always treat my girls well."
"I'm not one of your girls ... Oscar," she snapped. "I'm not a whore!"
"You used that word, I didn't. I prefer a softer one, mistress. Now before you get your back up again just look at the advantages I can give you. You won't have to work in that office again. You won't have to live in a tenement and struggle to make ends meet."
"And, after you've tired of me ...?"
Mr. Anderson placed his hand over his face. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Gloria, will you please be practical and see how nice life could be if you would only compromise with yourself? Bend a little, trade what you have for the best price that you can get."
"As you have."
"As I have," he agreed without rancor. He sat up with Gloria on the bed and embraced her, shoving her breasts against his flesh. "Oh, darling, please stay with me. We can have such a beautiful life together. We both have so much to give to one another."
Gloria broke away from him. "No matter how you put it you still want me to be your teenaged whore!" she cried. "Well, I have news for you. I don't sell myself at any price."
"You just gave yourself to me."
"Gave! Not sold! There is a big difference. If you can't see it then I feel sorry for you! I want to go home. Will you drive me or will I have to pay you off first with another roll in the hay?"
Mr. Anderson got up and dressed sullenly. "You're going back to Bill, then? Back to poverty?" he wanted to know.
"I don't know where I'm going at this point. I just know I want to get away from here as fast as I can. Tell your lawyer to forget about putting me on that plane to Mexico. If I get a divorce it will be on my own terms," Gloria shouted angrily.
She started to cry. For the first time she felt the guilt and the sin of her adultery.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The rain fell mean and hard when Mr. Anderson drove Gloria back to her house. He stopped right in front of the door, neither caring whether anyone saw them or not. In the long, wet trip from the mountains Mr. Anderson had tried to convince her that she was making a mistake in leaving him. By the time they reached the city both were talked out and they didn't even bother saying goodbye to one another.
Gloria picked up her suitcases and climbed up the stairs to her landing. It was now past midnight and the whole building seemed to be asleep. She felt strangely nostalgic for the place even though it was ancient, dirty, and had bad memories. It also had good memories and they made up for everything.
She wondered if Sally and Bill were together and she listened to hear any sound that might come from the girl's apartment. It was silent. She assumed that both of them were out, probably in some bar.
She put the key in the lock of her own apartment and opened the door. The television set was on and Bill was sitting in front of it wearing only his shorts. He was alone.
"Gloria," he said in surprise. "I was worried about you. I thought you went back to your parents but they didn't know where you were either."
"I ... I was at a friend's," she said.
Bill shut off the T.V. set and put on his trousers.
It was as if they were now strangers and they had to be more discreet with one another. "The landlord gave me an extra key," he explained. "I'll move out. I don't know where exactly at this time of night and in the rain."
"How about Sally's place?" She tried to sound bitter but she could not. After all, she was hardly in a position to revile Bill for his extra-marital sex.
"You don't know then. Sally's gone. Her father found out about her picking up men and took her home."
"I hope he keeps her there awhile longer. She needs some more growing up."
"I didn't stay with her after you left," Bill told her. "Even on that night ... the night you caught us together. I slept on the couch. When you didn't come back I moved back in here. You don't know how worried I was about you, Gloria. Which friend did you stay with, anyhow? Oh, I guess I have no right to ask you personal questions."
Gloria took a deep breath. "You have every right. You're still my husband."
Bill edged towards her hopefully. "Still? Then you didn't try to get a divorce or anything like that?"
She shook her head.
Bill raised his hands and touched her shoulders. "Gloria, does this mean you'll stay?" he asked thickly. "You've forgiven me?"
"I am the one who has to ask forgiveness," she said with her throat taut making the words strained and weak. She knew that she had to say it. She did not want to live with a lie.
"What are you talking about?"
Again she had to take another deep breath. "Bill, I was with a man. We had sex together. He didn't force himself on me and I knew what I was doing."
Bill looked confused and hurt. "You did that just to spite me?" he asked.
"No, not at all. I thought I genuinely was in love with this man at the time. I found out I was wrong. At first, I didn't want it to happen but it did. He touched my hand and then the other ... and then it just happened. I have no excuses, Bill. I just went to bed with this man as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do."
Bill stared at the floor. "Then you know how it happened with me and Sally," he said. "I have no excuse either."
"It seems we're both too hot-blooded for our own good," Gloria said smiling weakly.
The rain and wind hammered against the windows, rattling them. It made Gloria think of that hide-away in the mountains. She tried to forget it. She knew that she would have to erase it from her memory as she would have to erase Mr. Anderson from her thoughts, too. That was now the old life. It was her marriage that had to be renewed.
"Well, Bill," she said. "Are you mad at me?"
He ran his fingers through his hair. "I suppose I should be. Are you going to see this guy again?"
"No, that's over. I don't want anything like that to happen again. It won't ... if you take me back."
Bill lifted his head. His face was heavy with this moment and it made him look much older. "I won't have another girl either," he promised. "If you take me back, too."
Gloria rushed into his arms and they held each other close. The rain poured down violently but they didn't hear it. They had found shelter in each other.
