Clem Carter was still stupefied when he drove into the two-car garage of his split-level house in Glen Eden. The memory of how completely, once again, Sherry had rendered him nonexistent flattened him with chagrin. He had seen her off with another acquiescent, "Well, see you next weekend." And off she had gone with nothing changed. Or, if changed, made worse than ever.
Clem lit a cigarette and sat through long moments after he shut off the engine. On the drive to the airport, he had borne the stony silence between them until they were on the back road they used as a shortcut. All at once he had known they couldn't part in anger and retain any hope for their marriage. So he had swallowed his pride again, knowing she expected him to, relying on his love for her to work for her as it always had.
"I'm sorry," he said. "If you are." He felt that taking even half the blame for a bad weekend was generous. Her silence informed him that expecting her to assume any part of it was preposterous. His pride came back, fortified by the demand that, for once, she be the one who was humbled.
Ahead was a dark, tree-screened side lane. When he let the speed of the car slack off, she sat up straighter on her very far side of the seat.
"What's this?"
"We can take a few and still make your flight."
"A few for what?"
"To make not war but love."
"Don't be silly."
"I'm not putting in a second week unloved."
"You had two nights and two days and did nothing but pick fights."
"So now the other. Short but sweet."
"No!" He was braking, for the turn was sharp. "Will you please not give me another bad time? I've a headache, already."
"I've got the cure for it."
He took the corner, rolled into the shadow under the trees and stopped the car. He cut the engine and pulled her closer.
"Okay," she said wearily. "Give me your handkerchief."
"You don't get off that easy."
"Do you expect me to go aboard that plane all messed up?"
"Come on, or you'll miss it completely."
She sighed in exasperation, glanced at her watch, then stepped across him on her knees. He knew she was furious, but if she didn't make her flight there wouldn't be another until the next morning, and she would miss half a day on her wonderful special work. That outweighed her outrage and pride.
For a moment her physical presence was that of the pre-career, pre-soaring success Sherry who would have responded to the wacky spontaneity of this. Who would have wanted to help lift them out of their moods and tempers and part at the airport in tenderness, both of them resolved to do better on their next weekend. Yet in only a moment she was a stranger, one he could take but whom he couldn't take with him. She wasn't even the female submitting to male dominance as he had wanted to make her be. She was merely afraid that he would see to it that she missed her plane.
He put her back down on the seat.
She stared at him puzzledly. "Well. What did you prove with that?"
He started the engine, noticing that she glanced again at her watch. He backed out to the main road, deflated, despairing, not wanting, though, to tell her he had proved there was no hope. She made her plane....
Clem realized with a start that he was still sitting there in the garage. He got out of the car and went in to the house. A light burned in the living room. He hoped Ardis had only left it on for him and gone on to bed. But he found her there, sitting by the lamp and reading a magazine. To his surprise he found himself looking at her as though he had never seen her before.
She was in the dark slimjims, with a tight T-top, she had worn when he left with Sherry. Her dark hair was rumpled in the same careless way. Yet it struck him for the first time that, in her own way, she had as much going for her as Sherry had. Otherwise, the two were as different as sisters could get.
"You still look ferocious," Ardie said. Unlike Sherry's clear, brisk voice, hers was lazy, husky. "I sort of hoped you two'd get together at the last moment."
Clem eyed her uncertainly, but her smile was entirely innocent. Ardis was hardly a girl to visualize a quickie enroute, particularly as nutty as the one he had undertaken, although she had probably guessed it had been a sexless weekend. She had been married.
He took off his jacket and turned her remark aside with a question. "Davie finally calmed down, I see. He keep it up long?"
"A while. But once he got used to the idea that she's off again, he was all right."
"You're good with him, Ardis."
"I love the little guy, and he's starting to feel at home with me."
"I'm glad. If ever a three-year-old felt insecure, it's Davie with his mother."
"I know, I know," Ardis said reprovingly. "All weekend I heard you telling her that and her denying it."
"What do you think?"
"That you're right. But Sherry doesn't know it."
"You mean Sherry won't admit it."
"But she doesn't know she just won't admit it."
Clem grinned. That was a neat, thumb nail description of the girl they shared and, all too often, had to bear. He knew this arrangement wasn't any more to Ardis's taste than it was to his.
She resumed reading. Instead of going on to bed, as he had intended, he lit another cigarette and settled back in his easy chair. He was conscious of a wholly new interest in her when he took another musing look. Ardis Roberts, the one woman in the world Sherry would trust to live in, run the house, and take care of their child. In Sherry's own interest, of course, so she could take the out-of-town assignment that was a big step up for her.
It was more pleasant to study Ardis than to stew about Sherry. The lamplight fell on long, slim legs. Her waist was long, too, surprisingly small for the firm breasts and wide shoulders. Her skin was a natural olive shade, and her long-tailed eyes were as dark as her thick, multi-tendriled hair. The keynote was restfullness, where nervous energy radiated from Sherry in her every mood. This wasn't all because Ardis was three years older than Sherry's twenty-five. Clem realized he was getting too interested when he reflected that this put her at about his own age. "How about a drink, Ardis?" he asked. "Then I'm going to bed."
She looked up. "I'm going now, thanks. But you have one. You look like you need it."
"Yeah. I do."
He walked out through the dining room with its sleek Danish modern, Picasso prints and Bellusi ceramics. The kitchen was all hardwood, stone and glass, with every built-in and plug-in imaginable. Basics provided by drudging husband, he thought wryly. Floss by successful wife. Again it was more relaxing to think about Ardis. He continued while he fixed himself a rye-on-the-rocks, beginning to feel an empathy, if not more than that, of surprising depth.
It wouldn't have been so bad if her own marriage hadn't gone on the rocks in a way that left her fractured, a few months before she was dragooned into the Carter household. The guy, whom Clem had never met since they lived in a distant city, had got hooked on a cutie hardly out of her teens, and marriage was her price. It had thrown Ardis back into the only work she was trained for, toting up groceries at a chainstore check-stand.
It chanced that not long after the crackup Sherry was asked by her firm if she could underake a special, out of town assignment of several weeks duration. She'd had an option, for her bosses knew she had a child, husband and household to think of. She had wanted to take it as badly as Clem had disliked the idea. It would undoubtedly lead to another promotion, although this wasn't discussed between them for she had already climbed to where she earned more money than he did. She had found a red herring and extra weight for her arguments in Ardis's unhappy situation.
Going out of town so long, Sherry had told Clem earnestly, was something she wouldn't even consider except for the opportunity it opened to make Ardis feel wanted and useful in a home again. Ardis needed a change of environment, far from the scene of her unhappiness. A child to care for awhile wouldn't hurt her a bit, since her ill-starred marriage had produced none. She owed Ardis so much, for Ardis had helped her get the college degree without which she wouldn't even have her job.
Clem hadn't been able to buck all that, particularly from a position where any objection on his part looked like jealous resentment. So he had lost by default, only to : kick himself through the two weeks she had now been off on her new work. The desertion-trauma to Davie, already ; evident from spending his days with come-in sitters, had I been worrisome. On top of that, Clem had come to realize that Ardis hadn't really wanted to come. She must even have resented being relegated to the role of maiden aunt, available to come in and help out. Yet she had let herself be talked into it, Sherry was now committed to the assignment, and nothing could be changed. It had been an illusion to hope that, now that she saw how Davie was taking it, Sherry could be talked into asking to be relieved. It had kept them fighting all weekend, and the most she would agree to was to continue flying in for the weekends, which had been the plan all along.
Clem returned to the living room to find that Ardis had already left it. But he had barely sat down with his drink when she appeared in the doorway of the inner hall. He had seen her that way before yet now the sight of her in a robe, the hem of a nightie showing beneath, and her bare legs and feet checked his breath., She smiled and called, "Goodnight." Softly, because Davie's room was just beyond her.
Abruptly too restless to hope for sleep himself, Clem locked the house, turned off the last lights and went to the bedroom at the other end of the hallway from hers. It was at this point each night that he missed Sherry the most and most resented her unyielding drives. Lying in the double bed, so big and empty without her, he thought of the two nights just past when they had sleep back to back. The weekend before they had made love, not war, but tamely, quietly, mindful of Ardis, just down the hall. Well, Ardis was still just down the hall. He knew what followed in the night to be a dream, of the kind welcomed by bachelors and maybe by bachelor girls. Yet it was so vividly detailed he seemed awake when he got out of bed and went down the hallway to visit the John. And there had been Ardis, her door left open as it always was so she could hear Davie in the night if he called. Sleeping uncovered except for that nightie, which lay caressingly on breasts and belly and long thighs. He went on to her doorway, in the dream, and stood aching and unable to go nearer because of the delicacy of their relationship.
Bless her, she was above such inhibitions. Her head turned and her mouth formed a smile of reassurance, of understanding and compassion.
"Come on," she whispered. "She brought me here to take care of you, too. Why should she set the limits?"
He awakened, drenched and appalled, hearing himself groaning.
It had been a warning. The next time it might not be a mere, commonplace dream for which he couldn't be blamed.
CHAPTER TWO
Diane Wyman was on the telephone. Since she wasn't looking his way, Clem studied her with an open, speculative interest. In his present frame of mind, which was strictly lecherous, he found this very pleasant. Even in the early afternoon, which time it was, she looked fresh as a new-cut flower. While no more of an actual beauty than Ardis was, compared to Sherry, Diane reminded him of them both. He mused over whether she was a tall, dark Sherry or a vitality-charged, sexy-voiced Ardis. He also wondered if these resemblances were why he had thought of Diane, first off, as an outlet for his new and erratic drives. She was married. Yet he knew from working with her a long time that she considered this less than a state of complete happiness.
One of her talents was her ability to project her more intriguing qualities over the wire. She was doing so now to butter up some client, although Clem couldn't hear what she said. It was what she was paid to do. She enjoyed it, as well. He profited. Myner and Erkhart wholesaled home furnishings to dealers throughout the city and around the state. He handled the public relations, with Diane his only assistant. Together they promoted contentment in that big family, whatever they were called upon to do.
Diane finished her conversation, went over to the files and put back a folder she had had out. She wore a light green poplin suit, short jacket and short, flared skirt. Her dark hair was short, too, with a lifted-up fullness on the crown of her shapely head. Her face was a long oval, her mouth pretty, her dark eyes wide apart and very long-lashed. She pushed in the drawer and turned to him, wrinkling her nose.
"Who was it?" Clem asked.
"Hank Barfield. Need I say more?"
Clem grinned. Barfield was a big dealer, a good customer, and an incorrigible old goat. "He still trying?"
"I find him extremely so."
"Come closer. I've got something to whisper in your ear."
She came over to his desk. He liked her walk. It wasn't hippy. Just a girl walk, light and quick and smooth. "So whisper," she said.
"Let's you and me cut out early. Right now, like?"
She looked at him with warm interest. Their work was such that they were in and out of the office all day. Sometimes they took advantage of this, separately but occasionally meeting and unwinding in some bar. It wasn't chiseling. They put in more than the same amount of overtime because of the nature of their work. He doubted that she ever mentioned such meetings to her Barry, nor had he to Sherry. A small, covert intrigue, he reflected, held promise of becoming a bigger one. He just hadn't been motivated until now.
Diane was very interested, for she said pointedly, "I don't feel like going home this early, though."
"Would you if I dropped by?"
He nearly regretted it. Her eyes widened, and she studied him thoughtfully. "Why there?"
"It's close. And it's safer than a far."
"Safe for what?"
"Unwinding. Isn't that what we usually do?" She said reprovingly, "Clem, you're just sore at your wife."
"Damned right."
She patted his cheek. "I can't help you. Sorry." She started to leave, but he caught her wrist. "You're not too happy in your marriage."
"Maybe not. Who is? What I hear, though, sleeping around doesn't cure that."
"Who said sleeping?"
"You're thinking sleeping."
"Sure. But I'm no ape."
"I never thought you were." She looked away, then back into his eyes. "Okay."
Her cheeks were flushed. He had a fast heart, himself, while he watched her prepare to leave as though going out on a business appointment. She and Barry lived in a downtown apartment, which was why he had thought of her place instead of suggesting a ride in the country. It would be handy later if-he shook his head, superstitious about anticipation bringing bad luck. She wasn't seduced yet. He waited a few moments before he followed her.
It took another twenty to reach the dignified old building where she lived. She would have taken the bus, but he had decided to walk. That would give her time to whisk undies out of sight and get over the confusion he had wrought in her mind. Maybe to decide he had introduced something into their association worth checking out. The neighborhood she lived in was vintage but unblighted, its convenience to downtown having kept it healthy. He found the Wyman button by the mailboxes. His pressure brought an encouragingly prompt release of the front door lock.
He wasn't sure if it was her uncertainty or his own buck fever that bothered him when he went inside. The lobby was empty, the elevator waiting, and these, too, were good omens. He found her door with equal ease and, when he rapped on it, felt a sudden twinge of guilt. Diane had more than sex going for her, and he was deliberately disregarding the rest.
The girl who opened the door was the Diane of his office life, yet she was different. For one thing, she had replaced the chic suit with a cute, shirt-topped dress. She wore no stockings, and her high heels had given way to flats. This, alone, gave her a look of girlish innocence he hadn't expected. He wondered if it was meant to remind him he was fooling with something more important than he cared to admit.
She said, "You look exercised."
"I am. I walked."
They moved out of the foyer, and he looked around with interest. The two families had never got together socially, and this was his first visit. A nice thing about the older buildings, he thought, was that economy of space hadn't been so important when they were built. Her apartment was spacious, pleasant, and attractively furnished. Above all, it was homey, reminding him uncomfortably that a marriage besides, and maybe much better than his own, was involved in this.
He should have suggested the ride into the country, where there would only be Diane to work on his senses and nothing to disturb his conscience.
She said, "You like my pad?"
"It's terrific. But it figures. Anything you do, you'd do well."
She glanced at him keenly. "Don't count on investigating that too far." Then she smiled and motioned. "Sit down somewhere. I'll see what I can find to drink."
He chose one of the room's two sofas and sat down. She went out through a dining room and vanished into what had to be her kitchen. He sat there trying to picture his smart, capable office assistant as a housewife, busy with range dials, can-opener, mixer, pots and pans. Trying to forget that she was a wife he didn't know at all, as well as his strong right arm.
She came back, and his eyes dwelt again on her walk. She had those rare knees that looked good below a hemline. She handed him a drink and sat down beside him. She was turned so that those wonderful knees nearly touched one of his own.
"Who do we pan first?" she asked. "Your wife or my husband?"
"You know more about Sherry then I know about Barry Wyman."
"He's okay. It's just that I wasn't enough in love with him when we got married. That's all I have by way of a hangup, Clem. Shall we start on Sherry?"
"You've heard it all, already."
"Then what do we sympathize about?"
"I didn't come here for sympathy."
"I know." Diane lifted her glass and sipped it. "Sympathy you could have got in a bar. What you want here is bed, or so you think. What you really want is revenge, and I'm not about to help you get it." She waited. When he said nothing, she added, "All right. The girl said no. Beat it, if you feel like it, and flatten me completely."
"I've offended you," he said uneasily.
"A little. That you'd pick me to strike a blow at your wife she wouldn't, I'd hope, ever know about."
"I'm sorry it looked that way."
"Don't grovel. I'm only a little bugged. I take passes as part of the days work. But you're different."
"In what respect?"
"Given the right wife, you'd never have considered this." Having said that, she grew even more generous. "I know how you feel. If you'd caught me as mad as I get at Barry, sometimes, you might have made it."
"Maybe you can get mad. Think about the worst thing he ever did to you."
She smiled. "That's easy. He married me."
"Lots of men do that to girls. Some girls like it."
He had lightened her mood. They both liked that better. She lifted her drink and studied the ice through the glass, still wearing a slight smile. She put the glass on the table in front of them, untouched. He wondered if she was afraid of it.
"Barry should have married Sherry," she mused. She looked surprised. "Isn't that odd? Their names even match."
Clem took a big swallow of his drink before he put it down with hers. "Elaborate."
"I only have to elaborate Barry. He doesn't want me dependent. He's too busy depending on me. He likes a working wife. It means less responsibility for him. If I got pregnant, he'd be the one to panic. If I wanted to quit and stay home, he'd throw me out. I'd be too expensive for what I'd be worth to him."
"He's a nut," Clem said with conviction.
"Not exactly. He and Sherry are modern, that's all. You and I happen to be otherwise. Even square, if they like. I don't mind being called that. I have a big fondness for you because you are what you are." She shook her head. "Which makes me too susceptible to risk sleeping with you. Don't you see?"
"No, I don't see." She didn't want to supply what she knew he wanted, but she liked the sparring about it. They had never gone even that far before, and it had put color in her cheeks, a light in her eyes. "You don't get it. I not only like what you are. What nature blessed you with dings me deep. That's always been a part of our nice relationship for me. I just never brought it into the open before. I thought if the feeling is mutual, why shouldn't we extend the relationship in a very wonderful way?"
"You attract me very much," she admitted, looking away from him. "Clem, you're making this very difficult. I'm trying to tell you-"
He caught her hands. "Can't you get it through your silly head? I'm not running down prospects for a fling. I want you. I want us to mean even more to each other."
It startled her. Its ring of sincerity had a similar effect on him. He had meant every word of it. He really had surfaced a wish he had left buried much too long. He let go of her hands. They fell limply. He lifted his hands up under her arms. She tried to push him, then her arms collapsed, and she came in limply. She ducked her head, then lifted it to him. She let his lips brush hers, then turned her head away.
"Clem, please! I'm not made of ice!"
"No! You're made of girl! All sweet, wonderful, lovely girl!"
She tensed her back under his caressing hands, then turned her head up for his kiss. She closed her teeth against his tongue, then let it into her mouth. She stiffened her body, then let him lay her back and come down, too. She caught the hand that moved under her skirt, then let go of it. She flinched when fingers reached the sensitive places, then lay still. She looked up in helpless wonder, then turned her face aside and let him spring her knees.
It was marvelous. It was fast. It was over. Only in the rich moment of aftertaste did he realize that nothing about her had stirred. Her head was still turned away. Her arms lay limply at her sides. He drew back and away. Her hand pulled down her skirt. She sat up and looked at him with disenchanted eyes.
"And you told me you're no ape."
He sat stupefied, afraid to think because when he did he would feel as slezy as he had felt masterful. No age-old game had been played here. It hadn't been the end of an exciting sparring match to Diane when he took her to the mat. He had really won her and then proved everything she had suspected.
She ran fingers under her eyes. "Well, you made it. Zip up, tip your hat and take off."
"Diane."
He caught her hands. She pulled them free. Her skirt hadn't fallen completely into place. He tried to keep his eyes off the rounded knees, the slim thighs that were the color of ripe apricots, the white glimpse of panties. It only added to his shame that his regrets were in part for cheating himself, as well as her, in his mindless, primitive rush.
"Well, go on!" she said stormily. "Call Sherry and tell her to put that in her pipe and smoke it."
"Geezus. I tried to tell you. I wasn't striking a blow at her. I wasn't seeing if I could seduce a nifty job from the office."
"Oh, you seduced her. For a minute you had her believing she really could mean something more to you than a quickie on a sofa."
"You can-you do!"
"Since you've put us on such a nice, crude footing-crap. You wanted what you got. You got what you wanted." Her eyes filled with tears. "I don't know how I'm going to live with Barry. I don't know how I'm going to work with you. I've never felt so cheap and used in my life. Oh, get out of here!"
He stood up and straightened his clothing, dizzy and sick. He wished he could shut his eyes and not see this apartment where she had lived a life that, while not completely happy, she had given herself to honestly and faithfully. He looked down at her in profound sorrow. He had used her and her fondness for him, used their special affinity, and even more sorely than she understood.
He knew she really wanted him to leave, that no amount of remorse, reassurance, promises or outright lies could redeem him and restore her self-respect and pride. He had proved the truth yet picking it off the minute her defenses cracked, by not making the live for which she had surrendered, by hammering it through to his own pleasure and achievement, instead. How better could a man tell a woman she had only been wheedled out of the means.
He didn't say anything. He just left.
CHAPTER THREE
Even though he knew that Sherry would come through the gate at any moment, Clem felt a strange suspense. It had started the moment the arriving passengers began to stream up the ramp. It was, he realized, a dread that somehow she had heard of his ghastly mistake with Diane and had not come home. He watched stranger after stranger appear, loaded with flight bags, packages, coats, some of them even carrying children. And then there she was, looking about for him as she came through the door of the plane.
He motioned, catching her attention, and the face he would always consider flawless broke into a smile. Apparently nothing in his own face had betrayed the crushing guilt he felt. Nor did she seem to reflect any of the huff in which she had left the previous Sunday. She came on, unable to hurry because of the people ahead. Waiting, he studied her, trying to recapture the responses he had always felt when she was the one and only woman in his life.
Her hair was a shade darker than blonde, with copper tones and highlights. She wore it short, with a demi-part separating jagged bangs that nearly reached her arched eyebrows. Her large eyes were separated by a nose with a slight dip. Her mouth accented the curves of her cheeks. Her neck was slim, her body rounded and rather small, she wore a scoop-necked dress that called subtle attention to the splendid modeling of her breasts. Its skirt, reaching excellent knees and legs, did the same for her narrow hips and tiny waist.
She reached the top of the ramp, stepped out of he crowd, and met him as he moved forward. Her eyes studied him, and he knew she would cue her mood to his. Even that much of a concession was unlike Sherry. Whatever caused it, he was going to take advantage. His grisly misstep with Diane had brought into focus as never before the main reason why they had to make a go of their marriage had survived on the basis of good sex alone, and already.
When he made himself really smile, she returned it. "Hi, darling," she whispered. "Hi, baby."
She was willing to help, and that gave him hope. He took her flight bag, and they went down the long concourse to the lobby. He listened to the quick click of her heels, realizing that there was something exciting to him even in the sound of her walk. Something physically undermining, independent of his mental and emotional states. His misuse of Diane had, at least, worked in the way he had hoped when he started it. It had taken his mind off Ardis. That left him free to try, at least, to revitalize his sexual relationship with Sherry. Many a marriage had survived on the basis of good sex alone, and they had the common bond of Davie.
They reached the lobby and rode the escalator down to the main level. She carried no heavy luggage on her shuttle trips, so they went directly out to the metered parking. He was backing out of the slot when Sherry spoke quite humbly.
"Honey, let's make this a good weekend."
He wondered what had set her to thinking along that line. Remembering the parking episode, on the way out here to send her off, he realized he had given her a needed jolt. There she had been, her waiting passive but compliant, and he had lifted her off his lap untouched. That he could do this with her, Sherry the magnet that had never failed before, must have rung a warning bell in her mind. It was something she had needed badly, and it increased his hope of maintaining a workable marriage no matter how much he had to take from her besides.
Trying to establish a light mood that would make the rest easier, he said, "This time we'll switch it. We'll spend the weekend in bed and stop for a quickie fight on the way to the airport."
He turned his head and smiled at her. She smiled back uncertainly. "All right. About that. Having stopped, why did you stop?"
It had really puzzled and made her uneasy. "To see if I could."
"And show me?"
"Not intentionally."
She was making him more clever than he was, but fie wasn't about to change the interpretation she had put on it herself. The crack in her supreme self-assurance lifted his spirits. By the time they reached home, he was eager to rush her to bed.
It wasn't to go that way; the pattern of their lives was too deeply set. When he left for the airport, Davie had been in bed. He was awake and in the living room almost as soon as Sherry reached it herself. His delight was so touching, no one had the heart to object. Half an hour had passed before ne would let Sherry put him back in bed. Even then, she had to promise to still be there in the morning when he woke up.
That was the first depressant. The second came when Ardis, more or less perfunctorily, asked about Sherry's week. Compulsively, Sherry was off and at length. Clem sat there impatiently, growing gloomier by the minute. The darker his thoughts became, the more they turned to his own transgression.
All week he had dreaded Diane's giving notice at tie office. That she hadn't done so in the four days since hi? visit to her apartment hadn't encouraged him to think that, in time, he might be forgiven. He knew she couldn't up and quit a job in which she had been happy without arousing an awkward curiosity in her husband and in the office itself. The only way she could leave gracefully would be for a better job. He had no doubt she was looking, but they didn't come along on demand.
If Diane had punished him, he might have felt better bout it now. But her attitude at the office was another thing that couldn't be changed without awkwardness and suspicions. So their outward association didn't show too much of how completely he had gutted it of what once had made it so pleasant. The dismal fact that there was no way to redeem it. You couldn't unscramble eggs, and you couldn't unseduce a pretty girl....
Finally Ardis pleaded fatigue and went off to bed. Clem locked the house, trying to get back in the mood for bed with Sherry. He doused the lights and smoked a final cigarette in the dark living room before he followed her into their bedroom. He had an odd feeling when he closed their door. Ardis had left her own open to hear Davie better, if he needed someone in the night. The nursemaid. The kitchen Cinderella. The woman Sherry claimed to be rescuing from the shambles of a broken marriage. He wondered how Ardis, the failure, liked listening to so much success talk from Sherry.
A bedlamp glowed in the room, soft and seductive. Sherry had finished undressing. Her most devastating nightie lay at the foot of the bed. It was for later; she liked to look captivating even while she slept. Without the nightie she looked devastating. His eyes slid over her bare, perfect legs, the sweet curves of thighs and hips, the lean loins and tight, uplifted breasts. Her nipples, he saw, had plumped up. She was thinking about it, now, her appointment for love. His gaze dropped back to the darkness of her thighs, plump as a pigeon's breast.
She slipped into bed and lay watching while he undressed. When his nonresponse grew evident, a frown pressed itself between her eyes.
"I talk too much, don't I?" she said.
He wasn't going to quarrel about it. "Well, it didn't help the spontaneity."
"I'm sorry. Come to mamma." He slid into bed and snapped off the headboard lamp. She moved quickly to make amends. A leg fell across his thighs. A soft, warm, feminine hand dropped and grew enticingly busy just above. There was no lost motion, not with Sherry. She went to the heart of the problem by instinct. She could recoup any situation, any time. The flaccid became a swollen ache. The fingers were gifted wands of magic. His senses were soon cyclones storming throughout his body. His dark thoughts gave way to mindless anticipation. He was a slavering idiot by the time she let go and invited him up and over.
This was one of the moments a man lived for. The yawning, the crush of round breasts to flat chest, the bonding of belly to belly, thigh to thigh, the dainty helping fingers, the touch of touches, the warm, soft, lush glide. The pretty eyes smiling in the near darkness, the soft, sweet breath, the smell of hair and perfume and woman all blended. The moment of rest to savor the whole before the concentration began. Possessing. Then the movement, the wave upon wave of sensation, each rolling farther like a swollen tide.
He must have grown noisy, for all at once she stilled his body with her hands.
"She only listens for Davie."
"Yes. It's so nice when I can forget him at night and just sleep."
She shouldn't have said that. Forgetting Davie had already reached its limit. So had the exploitation of Ardis. It didn't wilt him, but it did violence to the joy in his nerve ends after she coaxed him on. That had never happened to him before. The change of sensation from delight to a flattened physical experience. She didn't know about this or, doubtless, she would have found an efficient remedy for it, too. But she wasn't thinking about him now. It came to him for the first time that even in sex she was always intent upon herself.
She proved this very shortly by abruptly tensing her body, straining up to him, waving her thighs, and then subsiding in a slump. "Not already!" he gasped.
"You didn't?" she asked in surprise. She never waited, never warned. "Hurry, then. You know it makes me sleepy."
He managed it and left her, wondering if she had already gone to sleep, for she didn't sit up to put on her nightie-He lay beside her realizing it had always been like that. When his senses were keen and excited, as they had been until her remark, it had seemed wondrously enough. Now he felt cheated of something he could't explain. Sex play bothered her, for one thing. She had informed him on their honeymoon that she didn't like a lot of fooling around. She aroused without it, she said, and came like a house afire. That had seemed another of her talents until now when, for the first time, he had fallen behind. He had always thought of it with satisfaction when he heard men complain about wives who had never peaked. Now he felt some ineffable lack, even in their sex life.
At least it threw light, he mused, on the fiasco he had made of his one adventure into infidelity. Four years with a woman like Sherry hadn't taught him much about the needs of the rest of her sex. Her reference in love-making had not only been disappointing, it had been demanding to Diane.
He slept late and awakened to find Sherry still sleeping. He felt a twinge of guilt, but not toward her because of his infidelity. He couldn't hear Davie, and the boy would have been up long before now. Ardis was keeping him quiet, or had put him out in the fenced backyard, so his parents could sleep. Why hadn't he thought to tell Ardis to forget Davie for the weekend; giving her a break from the confining duties Sherry found so wearing? He slipped from bed, put on a robe, and left the bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind him. He smelled coffee but heard no one. He hurried to the bathroom, came out and went on to the kitchen. Ardis sa at the table, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, and going through the morning paper. He saw through the window that Davie was playing in the morning sunshine of the yard. Ardis could keep an eye on him from where she sat.
He had a feeling that she was out of sorts herself although she gave him a smile. "Ready for your breakfast?" she asked. "Or do you want to wait for Sherry?"
"Now, if you haven't eaten."
"I ate with Davie. I always do."
"Ardis, I'm sorry." Clem poured himself coffee, took it to the table and sat down across from her. He lit a cigarette. "You've been here quite awhile without one break. And neither I nor Sherry thought to spell you with Davie this morning."
"No sweat. I like to take care of him."
"I'm glad you do, but you're taking the rest of the weekend off. Sherry's car has been standing in the garage ever since she's been on this assignment of hers. Take it and go into town and shop. Tonight we'll get a sitter and go out for dinner and see a show. Tomorrow morning you do the sleeping in. And anything else you like for the rest of the day."
"Why, Clem," she said in surprise. "I haven't complained."
"Of course you haven't. Even when you're having al kinds of advantage taken of you." He smiled grimly "Just like the old days, when you and Sherry were younger."
She looked at him thoughtfully. She seemed uncertain whether this was prise or censure. "Well. What brought this on?"
"Belatedly, I seem to be getting eyes to see with."
"You're just hungry," she said with a smile. "I'll give you your breakfast."
"I wish it could be fixed that easy."
He went back to the bedroom to dress, no longer bothering to be quiet. Sherry opened sleepy eyes, then sat up quickly and looked at her watch.
"Heavens! Poor Davie! I meant to be up to dress him!"
She scrambled out of bed. He had stripped off his pajamas, and she hadn't put on her nightie at all. One look at her sleek body was all it took. He stood there, instantly helpless and hating her and himself. No woman should have that power without being all woman. She turned, glimpsed his condition and laughed.
"Tell him to try later," she murmured. "I've got another date."
She swept up a peignoir and fled from the room.
His suggested shopping trip, Clem knew, hadn't exactly turned Ardis on. But he insisted, and when she understood it so did Sherry. Her help only worried him, making it seem they only wanted Ardis out of the way. A fifth wheel, with even Davie all wrapped up in his mother. So he reminded her of the date for the coming evening, which he hadn't explained to Sherry. Ardis said she would be back in time. She took Sherry's car and left.
"What's this date?" Sherry said, the minute Ardis was gone.
She had been listlessly helping Davie put together a jigsaw puzzle she had brought with her. She sat on the living room floor in tailored casuals that made her look more like a relaxing young career woman than a mother.
"I told her we're taking her out tonight."
Her eyes widened. "And leave Davie with a sitter on my last night home? Nothing doing."
Davie looked up, instantly unhappy at the thought of being deserted again. That settled it for Clem, too, but not happily.
"Okay. But Ardis was pleased about it. She hasn't had a night out since she's been here."
"You're home evenings. She could go to movies."
"By herself? You know damned well she doesn't know a soul besides us."
"Then you take her out," Sherry said with a toss of her head. "And I'll stay with Davie."
"Don't be silly. It wouldn't hurt you to show a little appreciation."
"I'm showing it. I'm offering the loan of my husband for her escort."
Clem went out to mow the lawn, a regular Saturday chore, to avoid a real gasser in front of Davie. By the time he put up the mower and went back into the house, Sherry had given Davie his lunch and tucked him in for his nap. Clem found her in the kitchen.
"Since you had a late breakfast," she said, "I don't suppose you're ready for your lunch."
"Not yet. About Ardis"
"I know I sounded ungrateful," she interrupted. "I think it would be really nice for you to take her out tonight. A twosome with a handsome man would be very good for her spirits."
There was no use trying to show her even the fundamentals of gratitude. He said emphatically, "Okay, I will."
He knew she had expected him to brush aside her seemingly generous suggestion. She glanced at him keenly. His expression must have reminded her that she had spent the week puzzling over how, when he had been so close to her in the car, that night, he had been able to refrain. She smiled up into his eyes.
"That big buy you brought around this morning," she murmured. "I was sort of interested in him. Now, while Davie's napping?"
He was tempted to prove his growing detachment again. He felt that he could. But somewhere in the back of his mind was the frustrated idea that they had to get together that way, if in no other, for the preservation of their mariage.
"Okay.
His hesitation and notable lack of enthusiasm inspire her to bend some of her rules and add some trimmings.
She let him undress and lay her back on their bed and delight his eyes and mouth and fingers. He liked the leisure of it, her untesting though indolent reception. I brought up tenderness in him, some of his old adoration. But when he began to kiss the wrong places, she squirmed and shook her head.
"You're getting us out of phase again. You know how fast I am."
"What makes you so sensitive?"
"Don't you want me to be?"
"Sure. But I like this, too."
She wrinkled her nose. "It's messy. Come on. Davie might not nap long. He's pretty excited today." So it went her way, after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Except for stragglers, the loading at Gate 33 was nearly finished. Sherry watched it from the corner of her eye, standing wooden-faced and stiff-backed. She wore a trim brown suit with a matching pillbox hat and looked smart and coolly sophisticated, every inch the successful, rising young business girl. She held her ticket in her hand, and nothing now kept her from boarding but her own agitation. They were parting with things in even worse shape than they had been the week before.
Clem knew she was hoping he would say something to relieve the strain before they parted. If he did, she would relent a little, too, so they could at least take leave of each other on an upbeat. He didn't help her. He had contributed much less than she had to the dismal day behind them.
"Well." Her voice was tremulous. "See you in five days."
"Sure." He didn't smile.
She rose on her toes and kissed him, cool and quick about it, then checked past the man at the desk. Clem watched her trip down the ramp, not looking back before she turned and disappeared. Through that door at the bottom that had swallowed so much of humanity or, in turn, disgorged it. He thought of the multitudes so processed through that one portal. Each individual with a story hidden behind the face he wore in public.
Clem kept on his own public mask while he waited there a moment, as though Sherry might come rushing back to tell him she wasn't going, the hell with her career.
A couple more passengers appeared from the concourse and checked aboard. The p.a. was warning anybody else who held space on the flight to get the lead out. A pretty stewardess appeared down there and glanced up the ramp. Her eyes flicked over him but she had no message for him. He turned and walked quickly along the concourse to the lobby.
He slid in behind tht whell of his car, fastened the seat belt, then sat there long enough to light a cigarette. Home now. It was a prospect he had put off facing until the last possible moment. His date with Ardis, born of sympathy, had made a subtle change. Sherry's reaction to it had buried this, but now Sherry was gone. He started the engine, frowning , and headed home.
It had been very late, but Sherry was waiting up for them when he and Ardis got back from The Willows. While both had been in possession of their faculties, it had been evident that they had had quite a few drinks. There was still excitement in Ardis's eyes, and he must have shown it, too. Sherry hadn't been suspicious in terms of sex. After all, Ardis and he were alone nights, except for Davie, most of the week. They just obviously had had a hell of a good time together, while she had been left behind. For once the chorewoman, the baby sitter, while Ardis had all the fun.
Sherry tried to hide her temper, but she had had quite awhile to build it up. Davie's bedtime followed shortly after dinner, leaving her with hours to kill without even the child's company. When Clem told her candidly why he and Ardis were so late, her anger became so evident Ardis couldn't help noticing it too.
Saturday's matinee had been the last sex of the weekend. Sherry went through Sunday politely key, even with Ardis. She made a big thing of her devotion to Davie, who wasn't fooled and looked bewildered and nervous and finally wet his pants. Ardis took it all calmly. She had had a long training. Clem's own hadn't been that ling, so his patience was much shorter. On the way to the airport he had generated the only conversation between himself and Sherry that day.
"What would dinner out and a movie have done for Ardis?" he asked. "We have dinner in and watch television together five nights a week."
"You haven't taken me on a date like that since we've been married," Sherry returned in an aggrieved voice.
"The hell I haven't."
"Well-not in ages."
"This was special. Ardis needed it. I'm glad I gave her a real ball."
"Okay, you did. And you're glad. So shut up about it, will you?"
Driving alone now toward Glen Eden, Clem thought about the date, itself. They had started with drinks in the bar, but that wasn't what brought Ardis on so beautifully. A new light had come into her eyes, an aroused vitality that made her so young and attractive he was delighted with her as his date. They went from the bar to have an excellent dinner on the terrace while they listened to a string combo with a sane but exciting sound. Meanwhile they could watch the river, the strollers down there and, in time, the stars. She turned out to be an excellent dancer, as supple and graceful as Sherry. She was even more fun than Sherry, once she realized he was really enjoying it and not just doing his duty by her.
She drank well, but more than he had expected, and they were both a little high when they left the terrace and followed a path down to the dark river. There were no swimming facilities down there. It was just a place to wander and rest and buck for whatever you had in mind with your date. There were other couples here and there in the flower-scented darkness, all absorbed in themselves. He and Ardis walked to the end of the path, into solitude. They had barely stopped when she turned to face him, moving close. She looked up, smiling into his eyes, wonderfully appealing in the star glow. She placed her palms on his cheeks, rose on her toes and quickly kissed his mouth, "That's for being so sweet," she said heavily and stepped back.
"Hey. We can do better than that."
Her arms hung at her sides. He caught them at the elbows. She looked up. "No, Clem-!"
"Yes!"
He drew her in tight, his hands flat on the slopes of her back. Her face had sobered, but he was too high with excitement to think of anything but the moment and her and his sudden complete lawlessness. His arms tightened, pulling her until he felt the touch of her breasts, her flat belly and firm things, of arch pressed tightly to arch. She sighed and tipped back her head. His mouth clamped down. Lips smashed to lips, body strained against body.
He heard the breath in her nostrils, heavy and fast. He felt her speeding heart through the taut breast against his chest, felt the reared point of the breast. His hands slid down to slim buttocks and pulled until he felt her lips loosen and draw his tongue into her mouth. She shuddered when the tip of his flicked her palate. Her arch rolled on his, her back sagging in the hot clutch of his arms.
Her neck craned back, and he drove his mouth to her throat. It moved on to the starting cleavage now slightly lifted above the neckline of her dress. The warm skin was soft as petals. He kissed the swollen mound under the cloth. Her hands stroked his hair, making small, circular movements that her thighs repeated against his. She caught his shoulders to support herself when he loosened an arm. His hand lifted to knead the breast he had kissed. It slid under the dress, moving for the other breast, and she struggled free.
"What are we doing"?" she said with a gasp.
He said heavily, "Only what comes naturally. Let's go some-"
"No! I never expected-!"
She choked off, turned hastily and hurried along the path. He had to trot to catch up. She wouldn't look at him until they came onto the lighted terrace. When she did, there was a deep flush of color in her cheeks. Her breasts were tight against the thin material of her dress. The glow of her eyes and skin was of an arousal that embarrassed her now but which she couldn't hide.
"It was the drinks," she said and looked away from him.
It wasn't, but if it made her feel better to call it that he would make no correction. The illumination of the terrace created an embarrassment for him, as well as for her. There were couples dancing there, with others sitting at table, drinking and listening to the music. Mainly to screen the front of himself, he took her into his arms to dance. She detected the reason and had recovered enough, herself, to look up with a twinkle in her eyes.
"Serves you right," she whispered.
"Yours just doesn't show the same way."
"Good thing." Then her face sobered. "Clem, we mustn't go crazy. I was just so happy to know a nice guy really likes me and cares. But we can't ever do anything like that again. Or even remember we did."
"I'll never forget it."
"We've got to, the way we live. Or I'll have to go away, and I'm starting to be happy here. Promise?" He said with great reluctance, "If I must."
"We both must."
She had been right, and by the time they reached home he had known it....
Clem came out of his thoughts to realize he had reached their street in Glen Eden once more. A moment later he swung in on his driveway, left the car in the garage, and entered the house through the kitchen. There was light in the rooms beyond, but all was silent. Ardis was reading, he supposed. She preferred that to watching television when she was alone with her charge.
He passed through the dining room and saw that the living room was empty. Lamps had been left burning but Ardis had gone to bed. To postpone what she knew would be an awkward moment for them both. He hung his jacket in the closet and looked at his watch. It was only a little after ten. Early for her by an hour or more.
He went back to the kitchen, moving quietly, and made himself a stiff drink. If he was to sleep, he had to relax. He had the drink and a couple of cigarettes. He made sure the house was locked and turned off the lamps. He moved quietly into the hallway, turning toward his bedroom. He closed his door carefully before he turned on a light in there. He undressed and got into pajama bottoms, all he ever wore on warm nights.
He opened the door to go down to the bathroom and brush his teeth. He stepped back hastily and snapped off the light, afraid it would awaken Ardis. She slept lightly, with an eat always cocked toward Davie's room. He crept out into the hall in bare feet. He stopped at Davie's door. All quiet in there. He went into the bathroom and used the electric toothbrush. He snapped off the light before he opened the door to leave.
He couldn't resist a glance toward her room when he came into the hallway. Her door was open, as always. She was illuminated by the starshine outside. She lay on her back. The blanket wasn't quite drawn up to her breasts. They rose there free, full and lovely in the wane light. Her face was turned his way. Awakened? He didn't stop until he stood in her doorway, his knees weak, his cheeks hot. Then he turned to move away.
Her voice was barely audible.
"You don't have to go, if you don't want to."
He hauled around and had to put a hand against the doorframe to steady himself. Sherry's bitchiness had tipped the balance for Ardis, too. She was releasing him from his promise. The wonder of it seared through him like flames. Magic filled the night, and he had lifted to turgid readiness by the time he reached her bed. Nothing had moved there but her eyes, which looked up at him. The smallest of smiles was on her mouth.
"Check Davie," she whispered. "Be sure he's asleep."
"I did. He is."
His fingers tore at the snap of his pajama band. It flew apart. He stepped free and slid in beside her. His hand and arm crept under her, both arms pulled her close. Her arms came around him, her mouth met his. He knew she had been waiting, had come to bed early so it could happen without awkwardness.
"Love me first," she whispered. "Make me as crazy as I felt last night."
He checked himself half upon her, ardently aware of the glow, the sensuous languor that told him her body was ready to be riven now, if that was the way he wanted it. But it wasn't all she wanted, and he stopped himself from the mistake he had made with Diane. He had been mating with a computer all this while, not making love with a woman. He hadn't appreciated the difference until this momentous weekend.
Delighted, he smiled down into the eyes that watched him yearningly. "Loving you is dead easy, Ardie."
"You haven't called me that before." It was Sherry and Davie's nickname.
"I didn't feel that close to you until last night."
"You're close now. Oh, do it all again. Like you did by the river."
Her chest lifted invitingly. His mouth plunged to her threat while her hands stroked his back. Each of her fingers had its own electric charge. His kisses teased the soft curve under her jaw, while his fingers loosened the dainty strings fastening her nightie. He lifted his head and laid the filmy cloth open over her chest. Her breasts were sensational bared. He touched them with excited fingers pressed down a tip and watched it spring back erect. He kissed each one, gently biting, more roughly tonguing, and her head reared back. When her knees lifted, he understood and tugged up the nightie. She sat up and let him draw it on over her head. She leaned back on her arms.
"Clem?" She still whispered because they couldn't let themselves forget the sleeping child in the next room. "Is it my fault? I mean-because I kissed you, last night?"
"I wanted you before that, Ardie. One night I dreamed of this. It was a horrible frustration. I woke up before anything really happened. It was a shaking experience."
"Why shaking?"
"I wanted you so much, and you were so out of reach."
She placed a quick finger across his lips. "If we remember why we shouldn't be doing this, we'll spoil it."
"That's easier to forget than what you told me to forget, last night. You're devilishly attractive, but it's more than that. You've got so damned much for a man."
"But I lost one," she remembered for a somber instant.
"That's something for you to forget."
"Make me forget it."
She smiled contentedly and let her arms collapse. For a moment he lay there, propped on an elbow, enjoying her with only his hot eyes. Her bare body, long, lithe and stained by the darkness, was right to its minutest detail. His gaze ravished the curves of her neck, the firm, full, outward pointing mounds, the lean length of belly, the darkness at her thighs, the rounded thighs, the long, perfect legs.
Her head tipped back when he renewed his assault on , her breasts, the valley between, the taut flat of belly, the dark curve of mound. Her knees sagged apart, and his heart leaped. It didn't run in the family to dislike attention there. Captivated he caressed her there eagerly, learning her, adoring her generosity, worshiping at the fount of life itself.
A moan broke from her.
"Oh, Clem!"
He lifted himself and fell into her imploring arms. Yet she still wasn't ready. Her legs lay closed between his. He plunged his mouth to hers and, frenziedly, she pulled in his tongue, worked it, wooled it, then pursued it into his mouth with her own. The feeling, the taste, were sensational, and for moments they made love that way, penetrating each other's bodies. Her hands stroked his checks, neck, shoulders.
She broke out of her body stillness to start moving it in voluptuous stretching and sinuous weaving, her supple torso astonishing in its nimble grace. Her nipples moving on his chest enchanted him. The sweeping where their thighs touched together sent curls of heat clear to the small of his back. Then slowly her legs began to work under his. Abruptly his knees dropped down. A dainty hand slid between their bodies, caressing, guiding. His touch sent a shudder through her, and then brought forth a moan. She pulled him still closer and stilled him there. Her breath escaped her in a long sigh.
"Oh, Clem! How can anything so wrong be so good?"
"Tut, tut."
"Sorry. I forgot to forget."
All he cared about was the goodness of it, and he made her forget all else, as she had asked. He took her back to that spot by the river and carried her on from there into the delights and gratifications she had denied them there. Her body curled like a leaf to his, her eyes adored his, her wet mouth smiled. Whenever she stilled him, he knew it was the warning her sister never bothered to give. He would wait in the warm, smooth clench of her until the heartbeat coming through a moist breast to his chest slowed down. She wanted him to have enough of her, and she wanted enough of him. He would bask in the timelessness of it, sometimes moving just a little in the damp, dark depths. When fulfillment became what they both demanded, the need came in unision.
"Now?"
"Yes! Oh yes!"
He made it like that for her, his drives becoming urgent, mounting to a roughness that made her weave and churn.
Her fingers clawed his shoulders, her body tensed, and the explosion originating in him rolled to its peak in the convulsing depths of her.
They were wet with sweat that they hadn't noticed until then. Their chests heaved while they drew in great, gulping breaths. The house was perfectly quiet. Davie had slept through it all. And so they slept, locked in each other's arms.
CHAPTER FIVE
Clem had secretly watched the scene so many times, it was hard to believe that his situation with Diane had gone through such a dismal change. She was on the telephone, being warm and charming with somebody, and also looking devastating. She wore a very chic suit. That morning she had appeared with a new haircut that was very effective with such dark hair and eyes. It was shingled sides and back, with the top sort of roached at the back of the crown. Scanning the slim, shapely body that went with all this, he could hardly credit that he had possessed it. Although, as it turned out, the possession had been something of an act of piracy.
He was ready to leave for the day. In fact, he was downright eager, for he had been in a glow all day from the night before with Ardis. But he didn't want to leave-rushing hotly to the arms of another woman-without a parting word to Diane. So he sat at his cleared desk smoking a cigarette and waiting for her to ring off the phone.
When finally she did, he said casually, "Time to knock off."
She nodded, not looking at him.
"May I tell you," he ventured, "that I like your new haircut? It really becomes you." She said coolly, "Thank you."
"Well, see you in the morning." She nodded her sleek head.
He got to his feet. Instead of heading for the door, he turned and went over to where she sat. "Can't we forget it happened, Diane?" he asked.
She looked up with distant eyes. "I thought you had."
"Of course I haven't"
"Then do so." She turned to the phone again and began dialing.
He went out to the parking lot with the edge knocked off his pleasant thoughts of the night to come. Except for his rash misstep with Diane, he thought, he would have no problem. Sherry was steadily disqualifying herself, and Ardis was completely what he wanted. Diane would never be coaxed into looking on their one brief intimacy as a lark. He would never be spared the daily reminders of his transgression.
But he could put it aside with his other office worries. He had done so completely by the time he reached home. He put up the car, pocketed the keys, and felt like whistling while he went on into the house. Ardis was in the kitchen. Davie was playing on the floor, there, with his matchbox cars, trucks and construction toys. The boy looked up with a quick little grin.
"Hi, Daddy!"
Clem gave him his first attention but found it hard to keep his eyes off Ardis. Davie sprang to his feet and, hunkered, Clem hugged and kissed him. Except for the weekend upsets caused by Sherry, Davie seemed completely happy now. A secure boy. Ardis was giving him that feeling for the first time in his young life. Just as she was giving his father a happiness he had never known in his own, not so young life. A happiness that, for all its peace and contentment, was even more exciting than he love he had felt for Sherry.
"Well, what did you do today, Davie?" Clem asked.
"We went to the playground!" Davie said with bright eyes.
"I started taking him there," Ardis explained. "So he can be with other kids. Okay?"
"Of course it's okay." Sherry frowned on the public playground since it served less fortunate neighborhoods as well as theirs, and some of the kids were pretty rough. "This boy needs it."
Standing again, he smiled at Ardis. For some reason, she averted her eyes. It wasn't because she had taken it on herself to do something with Davie that Sherry wouldn't like. Shy now, because of the abandoned boldness of the night before? Or was she trying to hide her own eagerness for the night they would soon share. For once she wasn't in the smart casuals she liked to wear. She had on a shapeless tent thing that didn't diminish his pleasure in looking at her. He knew all too well, now, what was underneath. She would soon be that way for him again for another magnificent night.
He gave Davie the hour after dinner, which was the boy's last play period of the day. They spent it in the yard, for Davie wanted to learn to throw and catch a ball like the larger boys did at the playground. Clem stayed with it patiently. Then he gave the boy his bath and was pleased when Davie insisted that Ardis put him to bed and read him a story. Clem finished the last section of the paper while he waited for her to come out with word that the boy was asleep.
And then!
Ardis took her time. When finally the drone of her voice faded out, and he knew the story was finished, she went to her room and was in there quite awhile. He curbed his impatience. She was only making sure Davie was sound asleep before she came out. When finally she did appear, she wore that same look of gravity. He sprang to his feet, eager to hold her in his arms again, to kiss away that strange solemnness.
She stepped away from him, shaking her head.
"No, Clem."
"Why not?" he demanded. v
"We're not going crazy again. I would have stayed in my room, but we have to talk about it."
He could only gape at her, puzzled and disbelieving.
"Ardis! What's the matter?"
She moved quietly past him and stood by a table while she got and lit a cigarette. Coyness had never been a part of her nature. He couldn't fathom what had changed her from the ardent girl in his arms, the night before, to this cool stranger. She drew on the cigarette and looked at him askance.
"You see nothing wrong with what we did?" she asked.
"Well-technically, maybe, but-"
"The technicalities happen to be realities, Clem." She sat down on the sofa. "This is Davie's home. Not to mention that your wife is my sister. I've felt like hell all day."
A guilt spasm. He would have to be patient with it. He sat down beside her. She wouldn't let him take her hands. "I don't think Sherry deserves any consideration in this, Ardis," he told her sincerely.
"But decency does. It was a dreadful mistake. We had that nice date at The Willows. And Sherry was such a bitch about it. But-"
"You wanted me," he interrupted.
She looked down at the ciagarette in her fingers. "Yes."
"You still want me."
"That doesn't matter!"
"Does it matter that I love you?"
"You don't! You mustn't! We were good together, and that's giving you a feeling you want to continue it!"
"And so do you."
"Want, yes! But we simply can't! Every time I looked at Davie, today, I felt like I'd fouled his nest! That counts, even if it's possible to excuse the offense to Sherry! It's inexcusable that I let it happen! And cruel to tell you now, that was all!"
"Cruel to you, too. And it doesn't make sense."
Ardis was silent a moment. When she spoke again, she was calmer about it. "Does this make sense? Things doubled up on me, or I wouldn't have encouraged you when you came to my door. But no more, or I can't stay.
And I ought to stay till you bring Sherry to her senses, if you're ever going to. If another woman lets Davie down, he'll be marked by it for life."
"If you did, he sure would," Clem said fervently. "You can't go, Ardis."
"Then help me to stay. Please?"
He wanted to brush aside her inhibitions, burn them away with renewed passion. He probably could do it. The misery in her face told him plainly her hold on herself was weak. But he had handled one girl that way, already, with unexpected and unwelcome results. If he could control himself until this flurry of conscience had passed, Ardis would change her mind herself. No one could feel the intensities of sex that she had felt and shut it off completely with it so tantalizingly ready at hand.
"Okay, Ardis." He smiled ruefully. "But I had a beautiful day dreaming about a beautiful night."
"Oh, Clem."
"And I'll only be waiting. Remember that."
"You mustn't! It's wrong! So wrong nothing could ever make it right!" She stood up. "Look. Okay if I use your car? I think I'll take in a movie."
He knew this was only to separate them for now, when her temptation was it's greatest. She needed it. She had got her guilt out of her system. By the time she got home she might see things differently. He nodded and gave her his car keys. She got a light coat and her handbag.
Before she left, she said quietly, "Don't wait up. Please?"
"Okay."
Letting her walk out on the night he had expected to duplicate the night before was the hardest thing he had ever done. Doing the walking had been even harder for her. It had to be hard. Sitting so surprisingly alone in his living room, the babysitter for once, he found his mind flooded by memories of that night. Memories she shared and which would bring her back to him, no matter what she thought now.
He remembered how, in the small hours, he had been awakened by her slipping out of bed, very quietly so as not to disturb him. He had said nothing but had watched while she pulled down the nightie still bunched under her arms and over her swollen breasts. Then she had hurried on bare feet to Davie's room. Although he hadn't heard the boy, she had with her true mother's ear.
Davie had wanted a drink. Ardis got it for him. Then he had hurried back to his father's side as naturally as though it had always been and would always be like that. He didn't let her know he was awake. He wasn't aroused. It was just a pleasant little domestic thing in the night. He didn't move a muscle when she stopped beside the bed, but he watched her through nearly shut eyes. She smiled down at him, fondly, possessively, and to his surprise her nightie swirled off over her head.
He still didn't move when she put her weight on the bed. She kept smiling and slid in with him and settled at his side. Her hand moved to him. He was pleasantly aware of its greedy fingers while still pretending to be asleep. She worked a knee under his legs and pushed herself against his thigh. He could feel her readiness, sense the blood that pounded in her chest and the thump of it pulsing down there.
Her fingers caressed gently, and she smiled at his body's tensing. Smiling still, she pushed up on an arm and stepped on her knees. He had to open his eyes when she settled, so ready their union was instant. Her mouth fell open, and her eyes slowly shut. He had struck something so far in the depths they were both enthralled. Her back arched, and she reared back her head. Her knees began to supply motion.
Fire boiled up from him, raged in her loins, then returned to send its tongues of flame all through his body. His fingers clenched her cleft thighs, his back vaulted and, to his surprise, her explosion came. She slumped, still containing him, seeming still to want him with a maddened hunger.
She flattened herself upon him, and his arms closed around her. Their bodies were drenched although he hadn't noticed that before. He kept up a gentle movement. She lifted her head and dropped her mouth onto his. She slid her hands under his wet shoulders, her weight fully on him still. She seemed amazed that she hadn't weakened him.
"Didn't you?" she asked puzzledly.
"No."
"Why not?" she gasped in dismay. "Wasn't it good?"
"Too good." He grinned at her. "To stop that soon. I fought it off."
"Love that man! Come on!"
She fell, delighted, to the side, pulling him frantically up and over, both of them moving, her body ravening again as though nothing had happened with her either. It was like getting their second wind and becoming possessed of new, deep, utterly rampant energies.
It bloomed into the longest, most gratifying experience of his life. Of hers, too, if he could believe the enchantment painted on her excited features. By the time they took the roller coaster together, he felt replete. And her months of lack and misery and self-doubting were fully made up.
Only then did Ardis remember, once again, the child in the room next to them. She turned her head hastily, as though expecting to see Davie standing there watching them. She slipped out of bed and hurried to his room. She returned to report that he was still deep in sleep. She bent and kissed Clem there. It aroused him anew, but she shook her head.
"Back to your room," she ordered. "If we went to sleep again, he'd find us together in the morning. He often comes in and wakes me."
Clem agreed but said ruefully, "I hate to leave you."
"We'll have lots of nights."
She had been willing to commit herself to it then, which made her remorse and renunciation such a surprise to him. She hadn't tried to explain the change, only her yielding to the pleasures of the night. But those feelings were still in her. She hadn't tried to deny it. And she couldn't keep them bottled very long. Maybe not even until morning.
Clem watched television with unseeing eyes until his usual bedtime. He remembered his promise and went to bed, leaving the back door unlocked, with lights burning in the kitchen and living room.
He was still awake when she came in. He waited tensely, his hands clenched to keep from calling to her while she very quietly made ready for bed. She didn't come to him. Again silence filled the house.
CHAPTER SIX
It was nearly nine o'clock before the special work, which had brought them back to the office that evening, was finished. The job had been one of the extras that came along, requiring quick lodging and entertaining arrangements for unexpected company visitors. When the last detail had been taken care of, Clem leaned back in his chair and looked across at Diane.
As always, the taste of guilt rose in this throat. In spite of his mistreatment, she was ever faithful to the job, ready to pitch in regardless of hours and whatever other plans she might have had. It was the first time they had been really alone since the fiasco in her apartment. He wished he could thaw her out, at least enough to restore something of their old relationship.
"Do me a favor, Diane?" he asked.
She looked up from clearing her desk. She was in a yellow sleeveless dress. He wished she didn't have such beautiful eyes. That made the coolness with which they looked at him all the more discomfiting.
She said, "I thought we'd wound it up."
"The work. Let me buy you a drink?"
The eyes grew cooler. He was sure she would plead lack of time, politely but distantly. Then her face softened slightly, and she said, "Well-a quick one."
He knew better than to expect a palsy conversation, with two or three drinks, the way they once had wound up a session of overtime. But it was progress toward redeeming himself, and Clem liked that. She carried a yellow handbag to match her dress and shoes. It was very pleasant to walk with her again the few blocks to the bat they usually patronized.
Luckily, the place wasn't busy, and he ushered her to seats that offered a fair amount of privacy. He meant to make her talk, if it was possible. But she was still cool when she sat across the little table from him, their knees touching accidentally until she pulled hers away. He lit cigarettes.
He smiled at her.
She didn't smile back.
It both challenged and discomfited-him. Maybe, subconsciously, he was trying to zero in on her again, and for the same reason he had the first time. She was available. And a very attractive means of keeping his mind off Ardis, who had finally convinced him of the sincerity of her renunciation. Consciously, that wasn't what he was doing at all. He had fouled up with this very nice, very desirable girl, and he wanted to make amends if he could.
He ordered drinks, and they had been served before he said, "I haven't been able to say this at the office. But I hate myself worse than you hate me."
"I don't hate you."
"Well, I do. I'm not bucking for anything, Diane." He hoped he really meant that. "So you don't have to take this for soft soap. The closeness we used to have meant a lot to me. It was a nice part of the job. You wouldn't believe how I've missed it. Or how miserable I've been for having two left feet, that day."
"Let's skip talking about that day."
"It hung us up, and I don't like that."
"Then forget it."
"Not till you give me a hearing." He leaned forward earnestly. "I know you think I took advantage of our closeness to score with you. Because, as you put it that afternoon, I went ape."
She said in annoyance, "We've already discussed this."
"With you hopping mad. Keep your cool and listen. Okay?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"What you experienced is the pattern at my house." For the first time, Diane betrayed interest. He signalled for fresh drinks, and she didn't object. "My wife wants it that way. No fuss and feathers. Let's do it. We did it. Goodnight. It offended your dignity, and I don't blame you. But you were special with me, and I did want you for more than kicks."
Her features had softened, but she shook her head. "You still don't know what really hurt me. I tried to tell you, beforehand, that I am-that I was halfway in love with you. You weren't having any of that bit. You ignored it and went for the target. Oh, I let you. I wasn't raped. But I didn't expect to be left feeling like a rag."
Clem stared at her, dismayed. "What did I tell you. Three left feet. I knew we had a nice thing, but I didn't think of it as-well-"
"Romantic? Well, neither do I, anymore. This little girl got her eyes opened about that real fast."
"Diane! It was only a word difference. You thought of it as halfway love. A woman would. I thought of it as a rare attraction and rapport. Except for my bumbling persistence and performance, it was the same thing. I don't apologize for the persistence. You're a damned attractive girl, and that was a nice part of our relationship."
"Now he says the nice things."
"You can believe them."
There was color in her cheeks, life in her eyes again. If it came only from the drinks, he was grateful to them. He started to signal for more, but she stopped him.
"I've got to get home, Clem."
"Let's go back to the lot for my car, and I'll drive you."
She hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Okay."
He felt much better while, without talking anymore, they went back to the company parking lot. He had put things in perspective for himself, as well as her. She might not feel the need to quit now. If she no longer made him feel guilty, he would be glad of that. She was the best, most enjoyable helper he had ever had or could hope to find. If a couple could forget even one quick intimacy, they might be back on the good old footing soon.
She asked to be let off in the block short of her apartment building. He didn't know if this was because of neighbors or Barry, who was probably home. He pulled over to the curbing and stopped the car. Smiling down at her, he said, "Forgive me?" She looked up. Her eyes said that she did. Her head only lifted when his mouth lowered to hers. She sighed as a child sighs. Her voice was warm, the way it used to be, when she answered him.
He knew by midmorning, the next day, that things were back on the track with Diane. She looked almost too happy for his peace of mind. She had dressed gaily in warm summer colors, slim skirt and blouse showing the sleek tailoring she went in for. Her nylons created the effect of no stockings, which was more alluring even than no stockings at all. She stayed in the office, doing such outside work as she had to take care of by telephone.
He didn't suppose it to be more than the result of their being friends again until coffee break, when most of the force was away from the office. Diane strolled over to his desk.
She said quietly, "Do I take time off, this afternoon, for working last night?"
"By all means," Clem said. He was relieved, hoping this was all that had made her so cheery, shopping plans or something like that. "Take the whole afternoon."
"You going to work?"
His breath checked. The look in her eyes said more than the question asked. He had wondered about this after they separated the night before, then had dismissed it. He had only to think of the night that had followed for him, one continuing torment of frustration, to be tempted. If he didn't use Diane for a safety valve again, he'd be climbing the walls for Ardis in another night.
"I can think of things I'd rather do," he said guardedly. "The way I put my foot in my mouth, I'm afraid to mention them."
"Don't be." Diane smiled at him. "It's a free country." It wouldn't really be using her. She knew what would happen if he visited her apartment again, and she was clearly inviting him to come. He had soothed her feelings. If he proceeded with tact, there need be no repetition of the stormy period just passed. Nothing could happen that would equal the disaster much closer to home, if he lost control of himself with Ardis. He smiled at Diane. "Then-?" She nodded. "Soonest." She smiled and went back to her desk. She slipped out at noon, with no betraying indication that they had another secret date to keep. Yet he still wasn't completely with it, himself, when he left the office. He decided to give her time to eat lunch, get home and make ready for him. So it was well after one o'clock when he rapped softly on her apartment door. It opened. He gasped.
All she wore was a robe that only clouded the body under it. He stepped in hurriedly and shut the door. His knees went weak, his cheeks grew hot. There was to be no mistaking her wishes, this time. She was leaving no grounds for him to blame himself, or for her to take refuge later in blaming him. It was a generous thing, an understanding of his compunctions and a relieving him of them. She was offering the answer to his throbbing, aching desires of the night. She smiled up at him, opening her arms. He pulled her to him. Her hips ground against him. He was a thousand percent with it by the time she ended her kiss.
He said drunkenly, "You're wonderful, Diane!"
"O-o-oh! Say that again!"
He did, finding it easy with her arch grinding against him again. Her eyes were a'shine. It he had done it this way, her way, it might have gone like this the first time. She had it and was lavish with it once she was won. It was easy to adore her the way she required, with words, with his hands and eyes. Buttering her with pretense, glamorizing what she would consider hanky-panky adultery without it. He didn't mind, now that he knew it went no deeper than her ego.
Gallant insincerity was a small price for the promise he held in his arms.
In a moment she stepped away from him. Her cheeks looked as flooded with heat as his felt. He took hold of the robe. She turned quickly to let him draw it off her shoulders and down over her arms. Had he ever cheated himself in his mindless rush, the first time. Nude, she was an artist's dream. Knowing her capacity for passion, now, he wondered how badly he left her hanging, that other time, and what part it alone had played in her temper.
He hurried out of his jacket. She tired of basking in this inspection and took over undressing him. She displayed a frank curiosity, an open pleasure in learning him. She ran her hands over the muscles of his shoulders and chest. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her splendid, swollen breasts to his chest, rubbing the taut nipples against the matted hair, her body shivering. She dropped his trousers, shucked down his jockey shorts, and he stepped free of them.
She eyed him frankly, greedily.
"Like a drink?" she asked.
"Now?" He blinked at her. "Would you?"
"Yes. I like to lounge this way. It makes later even better."
For a girl unhappy with her husband, she had learned quite a lot about sex.
He was dizzy, but he followed her to the kitchen. He watched her make drinks, having a fight of it to keep his hands off. That was what he had come here to escape. Yet it was exciting to tease and be teased to such a point. He noticed how she basked in his yearning inspections.
They took the drinks back to the living room. She nodded toward a big, deep chair. He sat down, and she dropped into his lap. They sipped their drinks while he wondered if she was getting even for his huge rush, the first time. He maneuvered. She smiled and frustrated him.
He said with a groan, "I've got it coming."
"You sure have. This is lesson number one, old buddy. Be patient with the girl. She'll usually be a little behind you because she is a girl. But she'll get there, and you'll find it worthwhile. Think about that."
"I've thought about it. Is she ready now?"
"She's almost burned to the. ground!"
She sprang from his lap, and he hurried behind her. She was in control of him, now, and she loved it. She fell back on the bed, holding up begging arms. He fell into them. Her legs curled over him, and one lunge made them one. As they had been once before, but with such miracles of difference. No inertia in her now. Her hips picked up his rhythm, her breasts kept moving against his hairy chest.
In a moment he stopped to taste the rearing points. She rolled her head from side to side, shutting her eyes. He changed from mound to mound and tasted the valley between. Sounds of pleasure gurgled in her throat, while she whipped her head from side to side. Otherwise they were motionless, but the feeling down there was still electrically keen.
His voice was as thick as if he were stoned. "No wonder you felt so let down."
"I had-so much-for you," she panted. "You didn't give me a chance. Love me?"
He grew wary, then realized from her liquid, feeling-filled eyes that it was only bed talk. A feeling like the boundless love of one drunk for another, inspired by purely sensual euphoria.
He obliged her. "Crazy for you, baby."
That wasn't quite the expression she wanted, but it sufficed. She coaxed for motion. He lifted his mouth from a wet, tight point and plunged it to her mouth. Making her wait while he teased her mouth with his tongue. She fought it with her tongue and then, for a moment, they let their breaths run in and out of each other's lungs. Living off each other's oxygen, just as they were kept so intensely alive from each other's bodies.
"Now, now," she begged. "I'm going crazy."
"Promise not to tease me again?"
"I promise."
After that, they were inutterably absorbed in the thing itself. Her eyes grew vacant from her concentration. Sometimes she lay quietly but with her body always trembling. Again she was moved to match his thrusts with lifting hips and weaving spine. Whenever she opened her eyes to look at him, they were lambent with adoration. He could feel the heavy, continuing pound of her heart.
He knew the intensities were coming to her first, in spite of what she had said about the girl being usually behind. They were signalled by the sudden sharp digging of her nails into his back, the upward pressing of her own back. But, unlike the woman he didn't care to name at the moment, she gave warning.
"Darling-I'm sorry-I'm going to-!"
She gasped and convulsed, but he was right there with her to he last. He clamped his mouth down hard on hers. She sobbed and tears leaked from under her shut lids. But now they were tears of happiness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sherry's plane was early, but the flight waiting room was already jammed. Some of the people were the regulars, there to meet somebody or to see somebody off. But the bulk of them formed some kind of noisy, organized group waiting to board the plane for its continued flight. Thus Clem was pinned down where he couldn't see Sherry until she came up to his level from the ramp. He saw her look around quickly without picking him out in the crowd. She knew she was early and would suppose he hadn't got there yet.
Clem sidled his way toward her through the milling press. To his surprise, he saw her lift her head and smile at a tall man standing beside her. The man said something, smiling back. They turned and walked together down the concourse to the lobby. She was going out to wait there where it was more comfortable.
Suddenly Clem was in no hurry to overtake her, not quite knowing why. It wasn't like her to take up with passengers on her flights, even attractive men like this one. Slowing his pace, he walked along some ten steps behind them. They were talking animatedly, like old friends. She was in one of her habitual smart suits, this one a pale golden color. The guy was older than she, also expensively dressed, a definite man of distinction.
Well, she had made the flight many times now. If the guy, too, was a regular, it wasn't unnatural for them to have struck up a casual acquaintance. He was bird-dogging her out of his own untrustworthiness.
Just before they reached the main lobby, the two stoopped. Something in the tall guy's face, as he looked down at Sherry, raised the hair on the back of Clem's neck. There was a rapport there that no casual acquaintance would generate. The guy said something, and Sherry nodded her head.
Then, for some reason, she glanced back down the concourse and saw Clem. "For heaven's sake!" she called. "I thought I'd beat you in!"
Clem managed to look unperturbed as he went on up to them. "Caught in the jam," he said.
"Wade, this is Clem," Sherry said to the guy. Wade Hampton, Clem. Our technical brain. He's been helping me work out a problem."
Close up, Hampton proved to have friendly eyes and a quick smile. He offered his hand. Clem took it, feeling silly. Naturally he hadn't attached a simple reason for their chatty friendliness. He who had bedded two women since he saw her, had needed to find a matching guilt in her. The passion Sherry shared with this guy was centered in the work they did.
"See you Monday, Sherry," Hampton said. "Nice meeting you, Clem." He walked off across the lobby.
Sherry grasped Clem's arm. "How are you, daddy? And how's Davie? And Ardis?"
"Everybody's fine," Clem said. "How are you?"
"Tired." She smiled up at him. "But not too tired. What have you been doing?"
"Same old humdrum."
They went out to the metered parking and were in the car when Sherry said, "You'd like Wade, if you could overcome your hostility for anybody I work with. He's a genius, but not the eccentric type. He was as anxious as I to pet home to his family."
Clem wondered if that was meant for reassurance, Well, he didn't need it. He had been justifying his misconduct to himself by blaming it on her failure as a wife. Something within himself hadn't bought that tired old excuse. It had set him to hunting reasons to suspect her of an equal misbehavior. That was something he had to guard against.
"I didn't show him any hostility," he said.
"No. But I knew you felt it."
"I can't help my feelings, Sherry."
"No," she conceded. "And let's not get off on the wrong foot." She dropped her hand to his lap, her old trick for diverting his thoughts. She leaned her head against his shoulder while the hand caressed him. Mixed as his feelings were, he responded at once. "That's better. The way I like you."
It baffled him that she could still render him mindless so simply, which was really what she liked about getting him this way. He began to ache and throb to her touch. She teased him by starting to open his fly then stopping.
"Till later, sweet. We've got to have you fit to walk into the house. It might give Ardie ideas."
Clem hoped she didn't detect the sudden tenseness of his body. He managed to say lightly, "I'm the last guy on earth Ardis would get ideas about."
"Don't kid yourself. You're terribly attractive, and she's been a long time without."
Clem's throat was dry. "Then maybe you'd better stay home."
"I was teasing, darling! You know that."
He had worried all day about the moment when the three of them came together, all under one roof. He knew that Ardis had dreaded it even worse than he did. Her conscience had shaken her so much harder than his had him. Moreover, she would have to see him retire with Sherry for the night. But he needn't have worried about what she would show outwardly. She seemed as relaxed as ever when she greeted Sherry with a smile.
"Well, hi again," she said easily. "How've you been, and how was your week?"
"I'm pooped," Sherry said. "The week was a killer. Davie asleep?"
"Oh, yes."
Sherry looked a bit crestfallen at that. Always before Davie had kept himself awake for her return. She could read the meaning of his lack of excitement, now. He was getting weaned. This must be what Sherry really wanted, yet it seemed to disturb her somehow. Maybe only because it bothered her to lose one of her more worshipful fans.
Clem spent the rest of the evening listening while Ardis answered Sherry's question about her son's week. This interest, which required no great expenditure of energy on her part, seemed to reassure Sherry as to her motherliness. Ardis refrained from mentioning that Davie now went to the public playground. Nor did she tell Sherry, that night, of wanting to leave as soon as possible. When finally Ardis went off to bed, it seemed as casual as it had on any other night.
Sherry brightened instantly, lifting a suggestive eyebrow. "Seems to me I left something unfinished, on the way home." She leered and hurried off to their bedroom.
Clem was in much less of a hurry, now, and he took his time making the house ready for the night. Sherry on!" played the role of passion when she deemed it prudent, and then she overplayed it. Knowing a lot more about women, now, he wondered if she had ever really liked it. He wondered if she faked the peaks that always cam? so soon to rush him through and get rid of him.
He had news for her. He didn't need that kind of dutiful wifeliness any longer.
When he came into the hallway, he glanced uneasily toward Ardis's door. She had shut it. He went on to the other bedroom and shut that door, too. Sherry was in bed. Her nightie was over the foot of the bed. This brought no least anticipation on his part. He could take care of it, all right. But it would be her way, now, to get it over with.
He stripped and slid into place beside her. She reached up and snapped off the bedlamp, quickly turning on her side to grip his legs with her knees and resume what she had started in the car. The mere fact of it being a woman's hand started things. It was the mind and heart that needed endearment, not the body. He reacted swiftly and strongly enough to content her.
"Good," she whispered in his ear. "We had to wait so Ion?, I was afraid you'd have a letdown."
He came up over, which was what she wanted now. Lets get the show on the road-register all the proper feelings-ring down the curtain-I had a hard week and I'm pooped. But she was ready. She had got a surface response from her toying. Maybe he shared the blame for never having crashed through her barriers and really reached and aroused and satisfied her.
He wondered if it could be done.
He began slowly, not giving her anything to take hold of and soar off on one of her terminal solos. He watched her face, which he could read in the drift light from outdoors. The bright eagerness there began to fade, giving way to something that was more a look of patience.
After moments of this, she said, "You having trouble?"
"I just like this. Don't you?"
"Yes. Of course I do."
She didn't. She wanted it energetic enough to bring things to an efficient conclusion. He stopped completely, holding and kissing her, not as Sherry but as a woman he was coupled with. The challenge of bringing her alive, making her a full female, began to excite him in itself. Her lips and teeth closed against his tongue. He persisted until she let him in. He explored deeply, thoroughly. He thought he was starting something when her head began to turn from side to side.
He knew better when she freed her mouth and gasped, "Must you? I don't like that. Come on." Her hands pulled at his buttocks. "You'll have me so I can't, in a minute."
He repressed a sigh but still refused to oblige her with a flurry of activity that might or might not bring her a genuine surge of feeling. He moved slowly, applying his new insight and skill, probing deeply, caressing tenderly, gradually intensifying, desperately wanting to take her along with him. All without much hope that it would work with Sherry.
A girl will always be a little behind you because she is a girl, Diane had said in her lesson number one. But she'll get there, and you'll find it worth while.
He begged Sherry mentally to get there. For this thing was fundamental in a marriage. If he could make it good, it would give a new direction to their life. A new chance. Even if he didn't care about that, anymore, Ardis cared. Ardis wanted the marriage to go because it had produced a child she cared about. Come on, Sherry.
Her back began to twist. Again she dashed his spurt of hope. "I can't now. Hurry? My leg's trying to cramp."
He groaned and rolled over on his side of the bed.
She said bewilderedly, "But you didn't, either."
"Your cramp was catching. I got one-or some kind of pain-in my ass."
"Why-Clem!"
"Forget it. We'll try again sometime when you don't have so much on your mind."
"So sulk and see if I care!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Clem finished shaving, hearing the usual sounds of morning in the back part of the house. After the strange, tension-fraught night, he was reluctant to go out there. He look time to clean the razor head, a chore he usually put off. Finally he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, glancing toward the bedroom door behind which Sherry still slept. He went on through the living and dining rooms to the kitchen.
Davie was already out in the early sun of the backyard. Ardis sat at the table with the morning paper spread out before her. She was smoking and drinking coffee. She wore the least flattering kind of a dress, and he wished she would stop trying to play herself down. It was useless. No matter what she put on, she was still the exciting girl he had held in his arms that night.
She glanced up with an expression of calculated indifference. "Morning. Want breakfast?"
"I don't feel like eating." Clem poured himself coffee, sat down across from her and lit a cigarette, his brow knitting. She had been looking at the classifieds. Job? The thought of her being anywhere but right here in his house appalled him. He nodded at the paper. "Don't you find it dull reading?"
She glanced down at the paper, closed and pushed it aside, offering no explanation. She glanced toward the door to the dining room, then spoke in a quiet voice.
"Okay if I use one of the cars?"
"Why?"
"I want to get out." He sighed. He couldn't fault her for that. It was worse for her than for him. "Besides, I want you two to have a chance to get things threshed out. And, I hope, straightened out."
"No chance," Clem said flatly.
"You don't know that. You haven't really tried."
"Ardis, I want it to be you and me."
"Shush. I won't even listen to talk like that. How about using a car?"
"Of course you can take one." She could hardly go job hunting on a weekend. "Any time you like. But-"
"Clem, I won't talk about anything else."
He shrugged. In only a moment, they heard the shower come on. Sherry was up. Ardis got up from the table and started breakfast. But not as the kitchen drudge he had once thought she was letting Sherry make of her. She had a surprising amount of spunk, once something aroused it. He admired her for that, even if he couldn't agree with all her attitudes. He wondered when she would give Sherry the word that she was leaving the soonest possible. At least it would be a satisfaction to see Sherry get it and see the end of her own little dream.
Sherry came out to the kitchen looking as fresh, amiable and lovely as she always did. If she felt any irritation from the night's events, she gave no hint of it. She had put on slimjims and wore a bra top that left a generous expanse of lean belly. Ardis, by then, had breakfast ready. She had eaten with Davie, but she sat down companionably with coffee while his parents ate. Clem's respect for her poised confidence kept increasing his admiration as well as his desire for her.
Ardis left round nine o'clock with a convincing excuse to Sherry of wanting to shop again. She still had said nothing about her real plans to Sherry. Clem assumed this was because she didn't want to put Sherry in a bad mood any earlier in the weekend than she had to. Sherry didn't seem too happy about having the responsibility for Davie all day, but she accepted it graciously.
Ardis hadn't been gone an hour when the first quarrel erupted. Clem had started his Saturday yard work, and Sherry had gone to the backyard to join Davie. Unfortunately, the boy tried to teach her to play ball, his new passion. Clem was putting away the mower when Sherry came into the garage where he was. There was a warning look in her face, even before she said anything.
"Clem, has Ardis been taking Davie to that awful public playground?"
"Yes." Then Clem added hurriedly, "After I okayed
"But, Clem. There are such little ruffians there. I don't want him playing with them and picking up their coarse talk and ways."
Clem eyed her thoughtfully. "Look, Sherry. We don't have a toy poodle in Davie. He's a boy. B-o-y. He needs a lot of things he wasn't getting."
"Why, he's always had-"
"Yeah," Clem cut in. "Lavishness. The cutest clothes money can buy. The most expensive toys. An excellent diet. A posh, split-level roof over his head. All the fine fruits of a two-income family."
"Stop shouting," Sherry retorted.
"I wasn't." Clem struggled to get hold of himself. "But don't you take Ardis to task for it or you'll hear some yelling."
Sherry shrugged and left him.
Clem wondered if he had been too vehement, too protective of Ardis. If she persisted in her plan to leave, Sherry's climbing her frame over the playground wouldn't have mattered. Ardis would probably have let her have it, then and there.
Sherry prepared their lunch, unsmiling, seeming annoyed with Davie, too, for wanting to be an ordinary kid. Clem noticed that her face, when it wasn't animated in her usual gaiety, seemed sharp and hard. There was a steel will behind her facade, just as there had proved to be one behind her sister's. She took a nap while Davie had his. Clem knew this was to avoid him. He wished Ardis would get home. But Davie had been tucked in bed for the night before she did.
By then Clem was really worried about her. Sherry was at least puzzled and not a little annoyed by having to prepare dinner by herself. Ardis was the most relaxed of the three when she came into the living room by the back way.
"Well," Sherry said, with a not too warm smile, "we were about to send out the St. Bernards."
Ardis said quietly, "Sorry about that. I'd have called you, but the phone isn't connected yet." She smiled. "I'm sorry. I didn't mention it this morning, but I looked at apartments today. I found one I could have right away, so I've been cleaning it. I hate somebody else's dirt. I only came over for some things. If I can keep the car till tomorrow evening, that is."
Clem could only blink his eyes.
"Apartment?" Sherry asked feebly. "What do you want an apartment for?"
"For weekends," Ardis said. "At present."
"Why-Ardie. You know you're family. You don't have to clear out when I come home, for heaven's sake. We're not shy newlyweds."
It seemed to Clem that Ardis flinched at this pointing up of what naturally took place on Sherry's visits home. She sat down but on the edge of the chair, like somebody meaning to stay only a moment, she regarded her sister, although she avoided Clem's disturbed eyes. "I want a little time to myself, Sherry," she said calmly. "I have nerves, too, you know."
For once, Sherry was stunned into silence. Clem, too, was speechless because he couldn't utter a word of what he wanted to say. Ardis had presented him, as well as Sherry, with a fait accompli that bypassed arguments and pleas. She had done it so smoothly Sherry was caught flatfooted, bereft of her charming persuasiveness and insidious guile.
Finally Sherry said weakly, "I know that Clem's and my present difficulties are hard on your nerves, too, Ardie. But-"
"So," Ardis cut in coolly, "is your little pride and joy."
Clem winced. Knowing how much Ardis cared for Davie, he knew it had made her wince to say that. Sherry stared at her in disbelief. "Why, I thought-" she began. She stopped and sat numbly shaking her head.
"Look, Sherry." Ardis was playing a role she loathed, but she played it well. "I was glad to help you out, and all that. But I've got my own life to live, you know. I'm not about to spend it bringing up your child and running your house. That's what you've had in mind. I've known it all along. It's past time we cleared that up. If you're bound and determined to be a a working mother, you'll have to find you a new girl."
Sherry looked sick. But, for once, Clem found himself stoutly on her side in that old bone of contention. He didn't care what Sherry did, as long as Ardis stayed with him.
"You've got to stay!" Sherry wailed.
"I don't have to do anything," Ardis returned. "But I will stay from Sunday nights to Friday evenings till you can make new arrangements. They ought to be you quitting that precious job and taking over yourself, Sherry. Why don't you?"
"I-I-"
"You haven't that much interest in the child you brought into the world. Or in the man you married."
"That's not true! I-!"
Ardis motioned her to silence. She rose and went into her bedroom. Sherry sat there with stricken eyes, at the end of her hope of palming off her child. Her once indulgent sister had, somehow, become the worm that turned. It was good to see this.
He chuckled softly.
Sherry looked at him annoyedly, then changed her expression. "Don't let's quarrel on top of this. If you meant what you said about wanting to keep her, Ardis is our problem right now. What do we do about it?"
"You could try being thoughtful and appreciative."
"I will. And you work on her, Clem. Will you?"
"I can promise you that."
CHAPTER NINE
By the time he pulled in on his driveway, Sherry beside him, Clem's mind was boggled completely. To begin with, she had seemed like an entirely different person when she came off the plane. The earmarks of the sleek, successful young sophisticate, he had realized watching her come up the ramp, were not calculatedly in evidence. She wore a dress rather than one of her modish suits. She had simplified her hairdo. She looked, in result, like any young wife returning eagerly after an absence from her family. She had greeted him warmly but without overdrawn pleasure. Coming home from the airport, she had thrown in none of her teasings and hints of a big eagerness for bed.
If it was all designed to throw him off balance, it had worked. He didn't know what to make of her.
He wasn't at all eager, either mentally or physically, for the hours ahead. He had kept a long tryst with Diane only that afternoon, the slack in their work having continued. By Friday he realized that his failure to exploit it fully was upsetting her again. So he had got with it, finding it easy enough once he was in her apartment with the door locked behind them. She had been insatiable. Afterward he had wondered if she had tried deliberately to exhaust him, knowing that Sherry would be in that evening.
Intended or not, she had weakened him to the point of anxiety. He had hoped that Sherry would reach home all tired out again. For all her new demureness, she showed no signs of fatigue. When he remembered how she had changed her bed ways, after the jolt Ardis gave her on the previous weekend, he knew he would have to strain himself. At twenty-eight, he had to admit, a man didn't have the machine gun capacity he had had ten years ago.
Sherry bounced out of the car the moment he stopped it and hurried ahead of him into the house. Clem took his time about closing the garage door and following. He was tempted to think that, having been hit so hard by Ardis, she really wanted to face up to things and meet them properly. What a triangle he had got himself into, if this were the case.
He lingered by the car while he lit a cigarette. He knew Ardis would leave for her apartment as soon as she and Sherry had done a polite bit of visiting. He went into the house to find them talking, the same as they always had when Sherry came home.
With a smile for Clem Sherry said, "I have good news I saved so you both can hear. After that hellish hangup, last week, the work's really moving. I should be all I through there in another three weeks."
Clem managed to say, "Well, great."
Sherry was waiting for comment from Ardis. When none came, she added, "I hope you'll stay till then, Ardie. I mean, that you won't crowd us to make other arrangements. You've been so wonderful, it will be hard to you."
Ardis frowned. "How about replacing me yourself?" she asked pointedly.
Sherry nodded. "I'm thinking about that. Honestly. But-you know? We're set up for two incomes, here, and there'll have to be adjustments. Then I can't just say, 'I quit,' and leave my job. I flatter myself that I'd be hard to replace, too. It will take a little time."
Clem was impressed, although Ardis seemed to have a worming suspicion that she was being taken in. Sherry I could mean it. She seemed so different. Presently, she was stalling for time, and he could go along with that wholeheartedly.
"Those are valid points, Ardis," he chipped in. He brought in what he knew to be the most persuasive argument he could make to her. "And it would be rough on Davie to have to adjust to an outsider. I know it's selfish, but I hope you'll spare him that as long as he needs you."
Sherry flung him a look of gratitude.
Ardis's glance was more one of distress. The temptation to do just that, Clem knew, was as potent as the other desires she was renouncing.
"I'm in no rush," she said hesitantly. "I'm not trying to rush you. Whether you should quit work is something you ought to decide for yourself. If I could believe you'd do it, I'd stay till then. But I don't think you will, Sherry."
"I can't promise," Sherry agreed. "Will you just not crowd me?"
"Okay. Mind if I take a car again for the weekend?"
"Of course not," Sherry said. "You don't need to ask. You don't even need to leave. But I appreciate that you could use some privacy yourself."
Ardis didn't answer that. She got her handbag, took the car keys from Clem and left.
"She's wavering," Sherry said, with a smile.
"Yes." Clem lit a cigarette to avoid her eyes, afraid that his own would betray his understanding of the turmoil Ardis was really in. Hoping it would reach Sherry more effectively than Ardis's pose of hardboiled selfishness, he added, "What she said last week about Davie getting on her nerves was poppycock. She just has ideas about working mothers."
"And so do you," Sherry said with a sigh. "I'm surprised you helped me out."
He felt a bit guilty about that. His motive had been to hold onto Ardis and somehow keep her in his and Davie's fife. To what end? She had flatly refused to marry him and meant that as sincerely as she meant her refusal to sleep with him, meanwhile.
"Are you considering resigning?" he asked. "Or were you stringing her?"
"I'm considering it. But it's something I'd have to feel right about, isn't it? There are plenty of women like me who'd feel wasted in domestic life."
"You've never really tried it."
"I know." She stepped out of her shoes. "I'm taking that into account. Bed now?"
She gave him a small, inviting smile and disappeared.
He was completely at a loss to know what was really in her mind.
He made his nightly rounds and followed her. She had undressed and lay on the bed without even a sheet drawn over her. He only looked at her with the detached interest of a man about to avail himself of a body he had rented. It was a shocking light to see Sherry in. He knew it came in part from his sexual fatigue, but there was more than that involved. More than the undercurrent of hostility still between them. He was plain bored with her type of sex life, and the three in combination were too much for even his animal instincts to overcome.
"You're frowning." She whispered because of the child down the hall from them. "What's wrong?" He said vaguely, "I didn't know I was frowning."
"Well, you were, and you come here."
For what, once upon a time, had made him a happy idiot.
He closed the bedroom door, leaving it slightly ajar so they could hear Davie if he needed anyone. Sherry was smiling at the ceiling, and he had come to distrust that smile completely. He undressed without having started to stir, and it scared him. He had never had a failure with her, and if he had one now it could be dangerous. He moved to the bed and stretched out with her. She snapped off the bedlamp, turned on her side and touched him to start the mechanics she, herself, always seemed to require.
And he certainly wasn't a guy in need. "Hey-how come?"
"I'm tired. I have hangups, too, you know."
"You've got one now. Who's responsible?"
His whole body tensed. She had gone so unerringly to the truth, he wondered if she had suspected him from the start of his infidelities. Through the female instinct that j seemed to keep Diane unhappy about his sincerity. The! trouble was that Sherry had never shown the slightest suspicion of Diane. While Ardie had been right here in the house with him the night before.
"You," he said bluntly. "I guess it's started making blocks."
"You-don't want me?" she gasped. "Something doesn't seem to."
"Oh, no. You've got to want me. If you stopped, I'd die."
He had saved himself. He said relentlessly, "Only from a crushed ego Sherry."
"No!" She was desperate. To her, the ultimate catastrophe would be losing her power to arouse a man, any man. "Get that big guy! Come on!"
The excitement of his triumph made a physiological change. No longer was she a lovely instrument available for his pleasure, and the evidence appalled her. It was worse for her even than the rebellion of Ardis, her once faithful handmaiden. She tried as she had never tried in their married life.
She hovered over him, kissing him recklessly, bawdily, all over a body that soon tingled with renewed vitality. She invited him to do things to her she had never allowed. He did them with a feeling of mastery she had never been willing for him to have. He had his fill of the gorgeous breasts, his hands explored in total freedom. Before he would come up over, he had her begging frantically. She was discovering what sex could be like when she didn't computerize it with her efficient mind.
"Make it last!" she moaned, when he drove into the depths. "All night!"
The voluptuousness he had never seen in her face before made him share her wish. He could ignore the fact that it had germinated from the desperate need to prove that her power to captivate was still there. The results were there for him to enjoy. He did so, relishing the novelty of its coming from and being with Sherry. Her knees gaped, her hips thrust up, her quivering back writhed sinuously. They put the point where she once would have had her big moment, and written finis to it, far behind. She still begged for more.
When finally she looked up at him with glazed eyes to whisper, "Together? Can you?" he had his fill and was ready to join her.
Only later, exhausted and with her still clinging to him, did he wonder if it had been her biggest snow job yet. For she turned on her side, as she always had, and went off to sleep.
He got up, put on his pajama bottom, and went into the hallway. Ardis's door stood open, with nothing beyond it now but her empty bed. He went in for a look at Davie, who was sleeping soundly. He pulled the blanket a bit higher on the boy's small shoulders. He went out to the living room, found a cigarette and lit it. He smoked the cigarette, then returned to bed as quietly as he had left it. He didn't want to wake her up and have to repeat his attentions. He had overdone himself badly, that day.
He awakened to the novelty of finding Sherry up ahead of him. He lay in bed awhile but seemed to have had aD the sleep his keyed-up nerves would permit. He got up, shaved, showered and dressed in a T-shirt and wash pants before he went out to the kitchen.
Sherry had given Davie his breakfast. He was out playing in the backyard. She was in trim slacks, with an overblouse, and stood leaning against a counter, a mug of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She looked at him warmly.
"Hi! I hoped you'd sleep late, for once."
"Didn't seem to want to." He poured coffee for himself and lit a cigarette. They both sat down at the table.
She smiled across at him. "I thought you'd be tired."
"Why?"
"You gave me quite a workout. Or should I say I gave you one? What shall we have for breakfast to renew our strength? We've got such a nice weekend ahead. Happy?"
He had been afraid of it before. He was afraid of it again. She was putting on the honeymoon routine in her anxiety to recapture him. He said, "No man's happy until after breakfast." She laughed and began to prepare it.
She kept it up all through the weekend. She was a mother to beat all other mothers with Davie. She was especially ardent again, that night. He functioned well enough, for the day had rested him physically. But he was no longer carried away by her ravenous new pleasure because he was afraid of it. Sunday was a lazy, equally serene day. Sherry divided herself between him and Davie. Clem couldn't help noticing that it didn't give the child the lift it once had. He wondered how Sherry could help noticing it.
He had hoped to avoid a Sunday matinee while Davie napped. But Sherry came in and sat down beside him on the sofa, where he was finishing the Sunday paper.
"I hate you," she said.
He glanced at her. "Why?"
"Reading an old paper, when you've got such a passionate little wife."
He put down the paper, wondering if she was testing to see if he really was short on resources that weekend. After all, she had asked who was responsible for his initial failure. Whatever else was cooking, he didn't want her thinking of that again. He drew her to him and kissed her roundly. His hands slid up under her loose blouse. They reached around and unhooked her bra. He laid her flat on the sofa and dropped his mouth to a freed breast. It was the one with the heartbeat under it. It surprised him that the beat strengthened and speeded up. The tip enlarged, grew firm between his lips. Her hands stroked his hair. He found the zipper of his slacks, slid it down. She lifted, and he took off the underpants at the same time. It had readied him. He dropped down and drove hard.
She let him lie there and grow really excited. When he started moving again, she laughed and said, "This is pretty cramped, and we have a lovely bed."
Stripped and on the bed, they made long love. Gone was his dragging fatigue. Excitement had burned it to cinders. Her physical responses, at least, were genuine. Again she begged him to take his time, to make it last for them both. Words he had never expected to come from Sherry. If she was only mending fences, she was using big nails. When she wanted to be, she could be as delicious as any woman he had possessed. But they had to cut it shorter than they had in the night. They had to be up and faultlessly behaved when Davie woke up from his nap.
Ardis was back punctually, and Clem made the airport in time for Sherry to take her plane. She left him as off balance and much more bewildered than he had been Friday evening when she arrived. Either Sherry was trying to assume a new personality, to really try being a domestic type, or she was one hell of a fine actress. For the life of him, he couldn't say which it was.
All the way home he kept thinking of the irony of it if Sherry came through with what he had wanted so long only after his wishes and hopes had turned to another woman. That was what Ardis wanted, to turn them back to Sherry to preserve a marriage and a child's home. She would never change. The least he could do for her was to make her self-sacrifice worthwhile by giving her what she wanted.
If Sherry really was changing.
Ardis was neither reading nor watching television, and Clem had a feeling that she had been waiting anxiously for his return. While still hanging up his jacket, Clem said, "I hope you didn't buy it lock, stock and barrel, Ardis."
"What makes you say that?"
"I know that girl too well to believe a complete change of heart so fast."
"I don't know about that. I shook her pretty hard. It's worth a gamble, isn't it? I mean, my agreeing not to push things."
"If you don't do too much wishful thinking." He sat down by her. She didn't object to his nearness. "I meant what I said about that. It would be rough on Davie to have to make another emotional adjustment. He wasn't especially pleased to have her company over the weekend, although she tried hard. Did you notice he didn't make a big fuss when she left?"
"I noticed," Ardis said with a frown.
"He's swung over to you completely. So have I!"
"Now, Clem," she warned.
"I'm not trying to cozy my way into your bed. But I'd like to be back, with you wanting me there."
"It's impossible!" she cried.
"Only your thinking makes it so."
"Well, it's my thinking. And I'll stay with it, it you don't mind."
"But I do mind."
"Clem-!" she warned.
"Okay, Ardie. You can shut me up, but you can't change my thinking about it."
"It's my fault," she moaned, shaking her head. "It was rotten to let you and then cut you off. But not as rotten as keeping on letting you would be."
He caught her hands. They were trembling. She tried to pull them free. "I don't agree."
She looked at him helplessly.
"Cant you take comfort in knowing that I want to? Dreadfully? Right now? But you've got to get together with Sherry again. She's got to grow up. I'll do all I can to help that. If, for heaven's sake, you'll stop tempting me!"
She pulled free of him and ran into her bedroom. He wanted to follow and persist until she gave in and make her see how right they were for each other. He felt sure he could do it. She had relented on her insistence on being replaced at once. Her defenses were caving in.
Yet something arrested him. She had made as frank a statement as a woman could of her sex feelings. She had made it only in a plea for understanding and mercy. When he remembered how he had rebounded from her into Diane's arms again, he cringed.
But with her so devastatingly tempting, he didn't know how he could stop tempting her.
CHAPTER TEN
Diane was being cool again, or so it seemed to Clem. She had kept herself busy all morning, on the phone, going through her work basket, or visiting some other department, with all but no notice of him. She didn't seen really annoyed with him, just detached and interested in other things. As though it didn't matter a whit with her that he hadn't set anything up with her for several days.
There had been, as usual, a reason for his hesitation. By chance, a couple of days before when he stayed in town awhile after work to do some shopping for himself, he had run into Diane with Barry in a department store.
If it was the embarrassment to Diane that it was to him, she hadn't betrayed it. They were so directly confronted, Clem could only stop and further his brief acquaintance with Barry. It had been disturbing to find nothing wrong with the guy except what Diane had said at the start. She just wasn't enough in love when she married him. Barry obviously cared for her, while she hadn't bothered to hide her irritability with him for a piece of furniture she had wanted to buy that Barry hadn't cared for.
This had put a crack in Clem's complacency about keeping their affair apart from their private lives. He could no longer think of Barry as a vague, background guy paving the price of his inability to satisfy his wife. Barry had become real and, more inhibiting to Clem, a nice enough guy. So Clem had taken advantage of a pickup in work to avoid arranging another tryst with her.
Until, at least, he had got over the new feelings that the encounter had aroused. It all added up to the fact that, as Diane was so inclined to suspect, he did want out. Tidbit though she surely was, he would no longer be interested if Ardis would drop the barrier she had erected around herself. In view of Diane's coolness without open irritation it was tempting to hope that, for reasons beyond his ken, her enthusiasm for their affair had reached its crest and might soon run down.
But, late in the morning, Diane came over to his desk, carrying a sheaf of papers. She merely put them down in front of him and went back to her own desk. Clem glanced at the stuff and saw that the only important thing was a note she had clipped on top.
"B. had to make an overnight trip. Left this morning." Clem wondered who in the firm, or among their customers, had that initial. Then it hit him with a bong. It was her code name for Barry. She had teased him with the aloof bit to set him up for the big surprise.
He shot her a startled glance. She pretended to be busy again but was watching from the corner of her eye. All night with her? That was what she expected, and he could never cover it innocently with Ardis. Yet he knew he had to come through with what Diane expected. His turning down an invitation like that would really put her in an emotional tizzy. So he grinned at her. She granted him the smallest of smiles and went on with her work.
He wadded the note and dropped it in his wastebasket. Diane saw the prospect as a beautiful break for them, but she didn't have his problems. His main one was to find a plausible, harmless excuse for an overnight absence to give Ardis. He invented a few and liked none of them. She knew he sometimes had to work late but that his work never called him out of town. The most he could give Diane was the afternoon and evening. He decided to explain this to her now, before she had built the coming night too big in her mind.
He carried the file back to her desk. As he put them down, he said quietly, "Right after lunch?"
She shook her head. "My cleaning woman's there, this afternoon. Come right after work." She smiled at him. . "For breakfast. Dinner thrown in."
He hoped his, "Great," didn't sound hollow to her too sensitive ears.
He waited until she left for lunch!, and then called Ardis. It was something he rarely did, and she had never called him at the office. He wasn't proud of lying to her to gain himself a night with another woman, but he had no choice.
She was surprised by the call and said quickly, "Well, hi. What's up?"
"Dreary developments," Clem said regretfully. "I can't make it for dinner. Big upstate customer barged in today without notice. All the same, he expects the plush treatment. So I've got to give him the evening."
"Oh? How late?"
"I'm afraid very late. He's a fun guy, and it's my job to see he has it."
She sounded like a wife when she said quickly, "Girlie fun, I suppose."
"Booze fun," Clem said. "I'll have to let him drink me under the table, but not with a fight. If I caved in too easy, he'd despise me for toadying to him."
"Oh, Clem. You be careful driving home."
"Don't worry. If I get that spiffed, I won't come
"Don't come home even if you're a little spiffed." That was an assist he hadn't dared to expect. "Promise?"
"I promise."
Her worry pleased him, yet it made him feel like a senior grade heel. The way, he realized, that learning more about Barry had made him feel. Two innocents. It made him realize what a help it had been to be able to blame Sherry for his misbehaviour and escape feeling that way with her.
He went out for lunch, and when he returned Diane was back in the office. In contrast to her morning indifference, he now seemed a magnet for her eyes. Yet she was conscious of the danger of letting something slip to some suspicious type in the general office. The result was that they both did more unnecessary work, that afternoon, than they had ever done before.
At quitting time, she came near enough to whisper, "Did you call home?" and he nodded his head. She secured her desk, bade him a casual goodnight and left.
He was making his usual walk to her apartment building when he nearly stopped in his tracks, jarred by an unexpected thought. In their more innocent days, Diane had never once mentioned Barry's being out of town, either. Why now, and so unexpectedly, for Diane had said nothing about it until that morning? If she was still cramping Barry's sex life, and he was curious about the reason, a phony overnight trip would be a good way to find out. He tried to dismiss the fear as another of those that bugged a man who made free with another man's wife. The cost of cuckolding.
Diane had pinned up her hair, was barefoot, and wore a frilly-collared, belted duster of green dots on silky white cloth. Breast points suggested no underwear. A pull on that belt and a few buttons, and there would be Diane all ready for him. That was all it took to get him with it. His breath quickened, and he reached to do the pulling. She laughed, eluded him and locked the door. "Dinner first."
"Let's start with dessert."
"Greedy boy." She came smiling into his arms. "Love me lots?"
He held her tightly and showed her that, at least at the moment, he thought she was terrific. She pushed and ground herself so hard against him, he thought she was about to reverse the agenda. But she stepped away and went into the kitchen.
He took off his coat and tie, turned back his cuffs and removed his shoes. Instead of the usual mixed drinks, Diane brought out beer, saying, "You like? I do in warm weather, and we can have more with dinner. It's cold plate. Okay?"
"If there's a hot dessert."
"You know you don't need to worry about that." She looked at him ardently. "Oh, darn it. I'd sooner have it first, now, myself."
"Why darn it?"
"You've got to eat. I want you real strong tonight." She beamed at him. "I love this. Nobody but us, till morning."
"I hope."
He shouldn't have said that. It started him thinking again about Barry.
Diane didn't connect it with her husband. She said chattily, "What was your cover story?"
"Out of town customer. It went over okay."
"With a housekeeper. Your wife wouldn't have believed it."
That gave him an opening, and he said, "How do you know? Didn't you buy Barry's reason for going out of town?"
"Oh, that's legit. I almost wish it wasn't. If he had another interest, he wouldn't bother me so much."
"Are you keeping him satisfied?"
Her eyes narrowed. "How do I know? I let him. The rest is up to him."
Her indifference about that irked him. "Diane, do you realize this could be a trap?"
"How so you mean?"
"He didn't strike me as stupid, that day we met in the store. A man with an evasive wife, all at once, would wonder if she'd found someone else."
"Pooh. He doesn't think I'm all that hot. And I never was till now, you know. And you do know it, don't you? You're the first. If this had to stop, you'd be the last. I'd be faithful to your memory till the day I die."
He didn't care for that promise. And having voiced his uneasiness about Barry, he meant to pursue it until he either confirmed or rid himself of it.
"Do you know why he went out of town so unexpectedly?" he asked.
"I don't know what it was," Diane said impatiently. "He just came home last night and said he'd be away today and most of tomorrow. We don't talk about cur work. Mine bores him as much as his bores me." She eyed him suspiciously. "I guess you don't want to stay tonight."
"Of course I do," he said quickly. Incurring her quick petulance was another thing he was sharing with Barry, he thought, remembering the pet she had been in when he saw them together.
He reached and tugged the belt of her duster. She started to stop him, then let him open the buttons. It proved the correctness of his guess. There was nothing under it but Diane.
Her frown changed into a smile. "Everything there you expected?"
"Seems so. And in excellent shape, if I may say so."
"You may say so."
"But not touch?"
She sat straighter and drew his face to the rearing, rosy tip of a breast. He took it in his lips, and she held him there, gently rocking her body.
"I love that," she said dreamily. But when he started to lay her back, she pushed at him, shaking her head. "No, or we'll never eat."
"Save the cold plate for breakfast. Or lunch, tomorrow."
She laughed, sprang up, closed the duster and went into the kitchen. He leaned against the sofa back with his fingers laced behind his head. Had he ever underestimated the mercurial nature of her temperament. So quick to doubt him and herself, to anger, and then to brim with warm, loving passion. She lacked Sherry's hounding ambition. But in her own way, she was very much the same spoiled child.
She called to him, and they ate in the kitchen. It was a cozily old-fashioned room, like the rest of the apartment. Beyond its window was a view of treetops, with other high-rise buildings in the distance. Diane had put a cute apron on over the duster. Her good humor was fully restored, along with her look of expectancy for the coming tours.
They ate shrimp salad with crusty rolls and drank beer. "Good salad."
"I thank you," she said with a smile. "And my deli thanks you."
"I hope you didn't bring dessert from there."
"That's something I like to give a personal touch. Old family recipe. Handed down from mother to daughter from the Garden of Eden."
"Apples!"
"Some say that's what was hanging on that old tree." She 'winkled at him. "Don't you believe it."
She had a feeling of leisure that he couldn't quite match. They finished eating and smoked cigarettes.
At last she looked at him with provocative eyes. "Too full, now?"
"Still starved."
"Then come with me!"
The duster was off before she reached the bedroom. It went flying from her hands, and she piled into the bed to watch with open pleasure while he undressed. When in only a moment he bent over her, she smiled up eagerly.
"You were doing something very interesting till I stopped you! Take it from there!"
His mouth plunged to the swollen breast she had taken away from him earlier, her hands clasped his head, her back twisted, her legs thrust out. In a moment she moved him to the other side.
"It has such wonderful echoes!" she breathed.
"Where?"
"You know where."
He kissed where, and she opened for him. In a moment he had her squirming and beating her heels on the bed Her arms came up imploringly. He fell into them. His anxious hands reached to make sure there was no more delay. There wasn't. Her body shuddered. She hurled herself to him and began to move.
Now he liked the way she milked each moment of it; utmost pleasure. Again he liked her personally to the exclusion of his doubts, guilts and fears. Bed feeling;. Here today and gone tomorrow. Her hands stroked the muscles of his shoulders, proving that his maleness excited her as her femaleness did him. He demonstrated his prowess with movements that made her roll her head. Her eyes slowly closed, like going into a hypnotic trance
"Rest," she murmured, after a long while. "We've get the whole, wonderful night."
He rested. Her eyes were open again, and she smiled up contentedly. He kissed them shut, and when he lifted his mouth she opened them again. He kissed her mouth and drove his tongue deep into hers. She drew on it, as though trying to pull them in after it.
"I feel like I want to devour all of you," she said drunkenly, when he lifted his head.
"Maybe it's because you want a baby."
"If it were yours, I would." She looked sober. "Bad remark. I'm not scheming to marry you. I love it this way. Just your mistress. None of the strains and stresses of marriage."
He began to move again, and she forgot about talking. She held him more fiercely now. She was lifting to each drive, the small of her back sinuously twisting. She had never been so intent. When her little upthrusts started, he waited for that abrupt tensing of her body. When he felt it, he was apace. It ended in a sunburst of sensation.
Instead of lying spent and happy, as she usually did after gratification, Diane became curiously restless. He didn't realize that her thoughts had strayed to the quarrel they had almost started before eating until she spoke.
He turned his head to stare at her. "Why?"
"Want to go home now?"
"To play it safe. You've had what you came for."
"Did I start you worrying about Barry?"
"I couldn't care less what happens to me and Barry. But I don't want you to stay, if you don't want to."
"If you don't stop accusing me of trifling," he warned, "I'm going to paddle your cute ass."
"You're evading."
"Okay. I don't want to go home. And I didn't come here just for this." He grinned at her. "I also wanted my supper."
A giggle escaped her, and she crept back into his arms.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Clem awakened with a drowsy sense of dislocation, then remembered with a start where he was. He turned his head on the pillow to see Diane sleeping serenely beside him. She was facing him, with a bare leg over his thighs and her hand on him. But she was really asleep. He lifted his arm and focused his eyes to read the dim-glowing dial of his watch. Day would break soon, and no violently outraged husband had crashed in on them. Barry had really had to go out of town.
Lowering his arm, Clem studied Diane's face in the pale light of the night. Her hand hadn't aroused him, except to stir a pleasantly erotic languor. They had made long love twice, with a short shift of sleep between, and then had slept again. She seemed so young and innocent in her quiet sleep, both of which she was. He believed her claim that he had participated in her one and only lapse from fidelity. Fidelity, in fact, seemed an instinctive part of her, which might account for her rebellion against her marital relations.
He thought a lot of her, and his worry about Barry appeared to have been baseless. She had herself ruled out the idea of their affair ever being more than it was already. She had, in fact, implied a distaste for the stresses and strains of marriage. He suspected that her mistress role satisfied some romantic need in her. So this could go on safely enough until it lost its honeymoon momentum and her irritations with him grew stronger than her appetite. Or so it seemed, here in this undeniably pleasant intimacy.
He wanted her again before he had to leave and reached and put his hand on her, caressing gently. A smile formed on her mouth, even though her eyes stayed shut.
"Who's fooling around there?" she asked drowsily. "He ain't fooling."
"He better not be." Her eyes popped open. "Why, it's you! I thought I was dreaming!"
The room was flooded with daylight by the time they were done. He had been aware of the dawn but only as something insignificant compared to the sense acuteness that had so surprisingly returned to them. Slack at last, he turned his head to look at the light-bright window.
"Geezus. By now, the building's buzzing."
"Probably," Diane said, without concern. "So you might as well have breakfast. I open a mean box of dry cereal." She yawned and stretched, sated and happy. "Love to shower with you, but if I did we'd be late for work. You go ahead while I fix breakfast." She put her arms around him. "Oh, lover, it's been a fabulous night."
She sprang out of bed, put on a sexy house thing and vanished. Clem went into the bathroom, tired but glad that it had come out all right. The problem of whiskers confronted him. He didn't want to go to the office un-shaved, and he had brought nothing with him. Barry's electric shaver rested in its holder. Why not? He had helped himself to other things that the guy considered personal possessions. He shaved and stepped into the shower stall.
He had just got the water adjusted to his liking when the sound of the door buzzer penetrated that of the water.
He stood rigid. His first thought was of Barry. But the guy had a key and wouldn't ring to be let in. Particularly if he expected to catch some bastard using his shaver. He started to shut off the water. That was silly. Whoever had come in, if anyone had, would have heard it already. He went ahead and showered, expecting momentarily to be shot in the wet nude. He toweled but didn't dare to leave the bathroom without knowing what it had been about.
It seemed minutes before Diane opened the bathroom door and looked in. She didn't look as ebullient as she had when he last saw her. "It's okay," she said, blowing out her cheeks. "But I was scared spitless you hadn't heard the door and would pop out naked as a jaybird."
"Who was it?"
"Woman across the hall."
"Geezus."
"She just wanted to borrow sugar. She's a chronic runner-outer."
"Could you hear the shower?"
"Sure."
"Well, if she saw Barry leave with luggage, yesterday-Clem lifted an eyebrow. "Did he?"
"Yes, but that doesn't mean she saw him. You like to worry, don't you?"
"No, I hate it."
But he couldn't help it.
He had been unconscious of standing there before her without a stitch until her eyes ran over him and a faint color suffused her cheeks. Suddenly she rushed forward into his arms. Hers wrapped around him and, startled, he tightened his. She rubbed hard against him, then reached and opened her robe. It was all she wore. Her breasts touched his chest, her belly strained to him. He reacted violently, to her delight and his own surprise. She guided him, sobbing and shaking. It was rampant. It was fast.
She stepped away and placed the back of her hand to her brow.
"Whew!"
He grinned at her. "You planned it that way."
"I did not. Let's go eat breakfast before I lose my iron grip on myself again."
"Better not lose it at the office. Mine isn't strong enough for us both."
She giggled. "Well, not in the general office, anyway. Come on."
He wrapped a towel around himself, and they had breafast. She had kidded about the dry cereal. She had fixed bacon and eggs, with juice, coffee and toast. He dressed while she showered. Then she checked the hallway, found it empty, and he hurried down to the elevator. Nobody appeared while he waited for the elevator, no one was in it, and the lobby was empty. But, once more, he didn't draw a full breath until he was well away from the building.
Looting on the other guy's own premises wasn't exactly his forte.
The first thing he did when he reached his desk was to call home to talk to Ardis. He wanted to get that done before Diane appeared, and her arrival would be on the heels of his.
Ardis said in relief, "So you're still among the living."
He had nearly forgotten the drinking bout bit he had given her as his excuse.
"Barely," he agreed.
"Did you get any sleep?"
"Not much." He could say that much truthfully.
"Poor boy. If you have to do that to build goodwill for the company, they should give you time off for the hangover."
"I can live with it. I think." Clem glanced toward the door. Diane had just come through, looking fresh, pert and innocent. "See you this evening." He rang off and looked at Diane, who had gone to her desk. "Checking on Davie," he explained.
"They get along all right?"
He hadn't thought to ask Ardis. "Fine," he told her.
It was a rough day, not because of a rush of work but because he kept staring into the befanged mouth of reality. Instead of working to solve his problems, he kept sinking deeper into them. He went home as early as he dared to knock off. His spirits didn't lift a bit when he reached Glen Eden to sense at once a new troubledness in Ardis. He wondered if he had under-estimated her astuteness.
Davie was still in the backyard, in swim trunks and a floppy sun hat, playing with a boat in his wading pool. Ardis was in the kitchen, preparing to start the dinner they always had early because of the boy's schedule.
She gave him only a brief glance and smile, saying, "You don't look as pooped as I expected."
He wondered if that were a dig. "I'm fine, now," he assured her.
"I don't think you were drinking, Clem. Not with a man, anyway. If drinking had anything at all to do with your hard night."
He had been a little prepared, but not enough to hide his dismay. Afraid he would crumble in abject guilt, he resorted to outraged innocence.
"Why-what a thing to say to me!"
Ardis didn't answer him. He went on to his bedroom to change his clothes. While he couldn't profess the innocence to himself, he could cling to the outrage. She was as suspicious, jealous and angry as a wife, and yet she had stood him off insistently. She should know that, if her suspicions were true, she had only herself to blame. He had made it very clear to her that she was the one he wanted.
He would neither confirm nor deny what she thought.
It might give her second thoughts about letting him run around in such frustration. He hadn't cooled off much when he went out to the backyard and played with Davie until Ardis called them.
Dinner was very strained. Even Davie was aware of it I and looked bewildered and unhappy, as he used to look when there was trouble between his father and mother.
Clems' anger began to fade. Here was the little guy who took the rap.
He knew Ardis was unhappy about that, herself. She began to make small talk and once actually smiled at him. She knew she had made a big contribution to the situation. He toyed with the idea of admitting her suspicions and confronting her with an ultimatum. So okay, lady. You know my preferences and what you can do about them. Starting that night.
He took Davie out to the yard again, afterward, and played ball with him with extra enthusiasm. Then he gave the boy his bath and turned him over to Ardis for his bedtime story. He sat down with the day's paper, but his mind wasn't on the news.
It was quite awhile before she came out. Apparently she had wanted to make sure that Davie was asleep. For she said, "I'm going to my apartment, Clem. I'll come in days till after this weekend. But no longer. So you'd better start working on Sherry."
Clem put down the paper he had been pretending to read. He hadn't anticipated anything like this. It swept away his intention to admit his guilt and use it to persuade her to take Diane's place.
"Ardis, no! You're imagining things!"
"You're imagining things," she said coldly. "For instance, that I'm stupid. I didn't buy the visiting fireman bit for a minute. I just made it easy for you. I wanted to see if what I'd begun to suspect about you was true. That your method of meeting your marriage troubles is having other women? I'm sorry I was one of them. But at that time I didn't understand you."
"What makes you think I was with a woman?"
She smiled coldly. "Have you developed a taste for the other sex?"
"Very funny and very nasty. What put you on this kick?"
"I gave you two weekends to try to get straightened out with Sherry. You haven't done a thing. Have you? She's smarter and more tenacious than you are. It's easier for you to give in and find fun on the side for consolation. She doesn't know what I know, or she'd know why you're on her side, now, in trying to keep me here. You thought you could wear me down and I'd be your fun, again, but it didn't work. So?"
"I find me another woman."
"Blaming this one on me like you blamed Sherry for me."
She was so accurately on target, he nearly folded and admitted it. But if he did, his one last slim chance with her was gone.
"Where did you get such a lousy opinion of me?" he asked.
"From experience with you. I'm terribly disappointed. And through. The hell with you. The hell with Sherry."
"And the hell with Davie?"
She lifted blazing eyes. "You know I'd never say that! Oh, Clem, don't keep using him on me! It's so damned unfair!"
"Sorry."
"May I take Sherry's car?"
"Sure."
He sat stunned for long moments after he heard the car pull out. Diane had told him that a wife wouldn't believe his hoary excuse for staying out all night. And Ardis had, in a very large way, been his wife. She had, for whatever it had been worth, been asked to become his wife. He squirmed with a growing sense of the cheapness of his behavior.
Her views were real and vital to her. He should have respected them. Because of his blindness, he had lost her respect and lost her physically. The one was as hard to bear as the other. But he had to accept it and help her get out of the mess that was as much of his creating as it was of Sherry's.
It had been part of his expression of annoyance with Sherry's assignment not to call her during the week, although she had dutifully called home herself. But she had written the number of her hotel and room in the phone book. He looked it up and placed a call. He didn't know how he could explain Ardis's refusal to do more than come in days, and that only until the coming weekend. But the ulimatum would jolt Sherry, as it had him. She would have to fish, now, or cut bait.
It seemed to be taking a long while for the call to go through. Then the operator's voice came on to say, "Sorry, sir. They say your party's room doesn't answer."
"Okay," Clem said wearily. "Try again in half an hour."
He hung up and glanced at his watch. Sherry might still be at dinner. Or she could have gone to do late shopping, or to see a movie. She could even be working late, if she had meant what she said about wanting to get through and home.
He didn't cancel the call until midnight, at the end of a long string of negative reports.
He went in and looked at Davie, not wanting to think about it. But as long as he was trying to face things, at last, he might as well face everything. He went back to the telephone and placed a call, this one to Wade Hampton, at the same hotel. He had put the guy completely out of his mind after that initial spasm of suspicion at the airport.
But-
In only a moment a man's voice answered. "Yeah?"
"Hampton?"
"Yeah." An impatient voice but not a sleepy one. "Who is it?"
Clem rang off. His hand had left a wet print. He had probably jolted Sherry, all right, out not in the way he had expected. He put a cigarette in his lips and was a couple of moments in lighting it. He hadn't really proved anything. But why would the guy be there in his room, and Sherry so inexplicably absent from hers?
He smoked the cigarette and chained through several more. Then he went to bed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was the first time Ardis had called him at the office. When he recognized her voice, Clem felt himself tense. Only an emergency could make her break precedent, and he had more problems already than he knew what to do with. But she spoke quietly.
"Will you be home this evening?" she asked.
"As far as I know now." He frowned. He thought they had come to terms, that morning, and she seemed to expect him to repeat his offense. Which he was about to do, right after lunch, thanks to Diane's having taken the initiative for the first time, that morning. So Ardis was right, except for the time of day she expected him to go bumming around again. "Why?"
"If you're coming home, it had better wait till then, Clem."
"What's it about?"
"Well-Sherry called me, this morning. Want to talk about it on the phone?"
He thought of the office switchboard and said, "No. I'll be there."
They rang off, and he glanced uneasily toward Diane. She and he both made and received numerous calls during the day, and she seemed to have paid no attention. In only a few minutes she would leave for lunch and then rush home to her apartment to wait for him. He was tempted to plead an emergency at home and rush out to Glen Eden to see what had upset Ardis. An awful prescience about how Diane would take that cancelled the idea.
He soon forgot Diane in his pre-occupation over Sherry's call to Ardis. He wondered if it had resulted from his impulsive call to Wade Hampton and his mysterious breaking of the connection. If those two had reason to be jittery, that would have worried them. It might or might not have been a jealous, checking husband. Sherry didn't know that Ardis hadn't been in Glen Eden at the time. So Ardis would be apt to know if he had tried to get her.
Yet that didn't explain why Ardis had to talk with him the soonest possible.
He noticed that Diane was preparing to leave. He sat tongue-tied, doing exactly what Ardis had charged, riding along with it weakly when he should take prompt and decisive action. She gave him a teasing flick of he eyes and left.
He waited awhile, then went out for his own lunch rueing his cowardice. If he went to her apartment they would quarrel worse than if he had begged off before she left. He was in no sexy mood, and she would be hurt for, this time, she had invited him. He ate his lunch, then walked around. When the lunch hour was nearly over, he went into a bar, had a drink, then stepped into a phone booth.
Diane had reached home and answered quickly. "Hi," he said, trying to keep yis voice steady. "If you like what I've got to tell you, I'll hate you."
"If I hate it, will you love me?"
"Of course."
"I hate it. What is it?"
He swallowed. It wasn't much easier to lie over the phone than it was face to face. "Right after you left, Sales called me. Some damned supplier's in town with a new promotion gimmick to explain. They decided at the last moment I should sit in on it."
"Oh, no. Couldn't you say you're too busy."
"They know better than that."
"Business comes first, I guess," Diane said dismally. "But I don't see why. Should I come back?"
"No need," Clem said quickly. "Now that you've got your girdle off, enjoy yourself."
"How? Besides, you know I don't need a girdle. All I have to take off is my-hey, where are you?"
"Public phone."
"-panties. Think about that and see if you can't duck out of that thing early."
"I'll sure try."
They rang off with his lunch and drink feeling like rocks in his stomach.
At least he had freed himself to go home and learn the worst from Ardis. Even as he thought of this, he realized that he was very reluctant to learn it. He went back to the office and sweat it out there until quitting time, knowing that, toward the end of the afternoon, Diane was again waiting for him-or hoping, at least.
As it would be, with his nerves in a jangle, the home-bound traffic was unusually heavy. Every one of the other drivers seemed to be trying to see how irritating a driver could get. This made him late getting home to find Davie playing in the kitchen where Ardis was making dinner When Clem started to shoo him out to the yard, Ardis frowned and shook her head.
Angry with them both, Clem went to his room to change his clothes. To his surprise, Ardis followed him but only to stay a moment.
"You're upset, already," she said sternly. "And you're going to be more so. So it waits till Davie's in bed Okay?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
His over-stimulated imagination built all sorts of spectres while they snailed through the process of dinner, the playtime afterward, and the final step of getting Davie squared away for the night. His annoyance with Ardis kept mounting. Maybe she got some perverse satisfaction from this, seeing it as vengeance or the jealousy his night out had aroused in her.
But when she finally joined him in the living room, he saw from her somber face that she had reason to want privacy, that she had played no game with him. She said at once, "Sherry's been offered a big promotion."
"Promotion?" Clem gaped at her.
She sat down across from him and lit a cigarette. He noticed how her fingers trembled. "It seems she did a dazzling job on this assignment. Some wheel wants her for his personal assistant. Big jump in salary. Higher place on the totem pole."
"For more of the same." Ardis nodded. "What inducement did she offer for you to change your mind and stay here permanently?"
Ardis shook her head. "She was too smart to try that. She's only considering it, she said. But she couldn't see how I could blame her for being tempted by such a big opportunity. And she hoped, if he took it, I'd bear with her until really satisfactory arrangements can be made, et cetera, et cetera. Finally, she asked me not to tell you she called. She wants to break it to you, herself. I didn't promise. And I thought you should be prepared."
"Did you tell her I tried to call her, last night?"
"No. That's between you and her."
"Well, she isn't just considering it, Ardis." Clem smiled bitterly. "She knew she was bucking for it and would probably get it all through these last two weekends when she's been so sweetly reasonable about our wishes." And, he thought grimly, so extraordinarily passionate with him in bed. "She had to stall till she was sure. Now she's sure."
"Don't be too hard on her. It could have come as a surprise."
"Anyway, the hell with it. Even if she's only tempted, she'll do it. You know that."
"You're going to let her?" Ardis looked at him in contempt. "I guess you are." She sprang to her feet. "I shouldn't have concerned myself. But I thought that maybe-just this little once-you'd get up on your feet and stop making like a worm. So call your little playmate and tell her you need comforting." She ran to her room.
He found himself driving toward the city with no actual destination in mind. He wasn't drunk, or didn't think he was, for everything held steady. In fact, he needed another drink, for a dryness had formed in his mouth and throat. When he saw the sign of a wayside tavern on the edge of the city, he turned off onto its parking space. He had noticed it many times, passing by, but had never been in it. It seemed much busier by night than by day.
When he opened its door, the low music he had heard outside blared into the effusion of a juke. It was a bar and booth place, he saw, with a fairly young crowd. He spotted a vacancy at the bar and took it. He ordered a double scotch.
He had been served his drink when he saw that there was a vacant booth seat not far from him. The other side of its table was occupied, but no problem. The occupant was young, blonde and quite pretty. She was real pretty he decided, watching her, and probably had an escort somewhere around. There was no harm in finding out. He carried his drink over there. She looked up at him with long-lashed, deep blue eyes. The glass in front of her was empty. Maybe she was about to leave.
He nodded at the seat across and said casually, "Taken? I've got a thing about bar stools. I fell off one, once, and nearly broke my head."
She said indifferently, "I'm not using it."
He sat down and looked at her more closely. She was an extremely pretty thing. She wore a knit pullover with a mock turtle neck. This did what little needed to be done for a splendid chest.
"I was afraid," he told her, "that you had a husband in the John."
She seemed about to treat that with silence, then she said, "My husband is out of town."
"So there's nothing for you to go home to except those empty rooms."
"And the kids." She picked up a handbag from beside her. He took it and put it down beside him. She eyed him thoughtfully. "That how you make a living?" she asked.
"Snatching purses?" He nodded. "Like you've got kids."
She smiled, at last. "You're drunk. But you're kind of cute."
"I'm not drunk. But let's drink to the other."
He signalled a passing waiter and ordered more drinks. She leaned back. He was in, if he wanted to stay in. He wasn't sure yet. She was very attractive and, as far as showed, beautifully stacked.
"You've really got a husband?" he asked.
She nodded her very blonde head. "Except for three weeks, now, I haven't seen him. He works for a moving firm. Long distance hauls."
"That gives you some lonely stretches," he sympathized.
"You can say that again."
"I'd rather say you're much too pretty to be away from. I'm Clem. Who're you?"
"Connie. Hey." She brightened. "Same initial."
"It's fate. We've got the same problem, too. My wife's been away a long time, too."
The drinks came. She picked hers up and sipped it. He noticed how she pulled back her shoulders to tighten the material over her keen breasts. She wore a skirt, he could see, that fitted snugly to a very small waist. Color had suffused her cheeks. She put down her drink.
"I like you."
"I like you, too," he assured her. "You know I was hoping somebody like you would show, don't you?"
"I was only hoping you were hoping that."
"Then why waste time about it? Let's go to my place."
He didn't have to make a decision. His body made it for him in its excited response to her honesty. It was how she should be. Obviously, sex was what she was there for. Having found someone who met her specifications, sitting there drinking was silly.
He grinned at her. "Now, why didn't I think of that?"
"You did the minute you saw me. I hope you haven't drunk too much. I've been going crazy."
"You won't be sorry," Clem promised.
Connie had her own car. She told him to leave his, for she would have to sneak him past some nosey neighbors. She wanted him to drive, and they were barely on their way when she unzipped him.
"Hey. You want me to run this thing up a tree?"
"You tend to your business," she told him. "I'll tend to mine."
"I hope it's not your business."
"Silly. Maybe it ought to be. Married to a guy like mine."
She was too smart to overdo it and cheat herself. He liked her plenty for her simple, earthy lustiness. He wondered how many guys she had cooled and shooed away before he came along. He followed her directions, not toward the city but off toward a suburban area only a little less posh than Glen Eden. He didn't pay too much attention to that aspect. He was too absorbed in the hand in his lap and the girl who owned it. He wondered how old she was. Married or not, he would be surprised if she were out of her teens.
She directed him, at last, onto a driveway. The houses about were all dark. The door of the garage stood open. He drove in. She seemed practiced in smuggling in men She told him not to get out of the car until she had closec the garage door herself. He waited until the door slit down then snapped open the car door. She was unlocking yet another door. She opened it and went in withou bothering to see if he was following. She had gone into a kitchen. He moved in behind her, put his arms around her, and closed his hands on her breasts.
"Don't, or I'll explode," she warned. "I nearly did in the car."
She went into a hallway. He followed until they reached a bedroom. It was, from what he could make out in the semi-darkness, quite a nice house. There was a kingsize bed. She bent, and the jersey came over her head. He undressed absently, watching her every move. She straightened, glancing at him with small smile, and stepped out of her heels.
He wondered why it was so stimulating to watch a girl do so simple a thing as lifting her skirt and unfastening her stockings. He was down to his underwear by then. She was keeping tabs. The skirt came off, the slip. Sure enough, she wore a black panty and bra set. It went stunningly with her nearly white hair. He kicked his shorts aside and, stripped, rushed to her.
After her warning in the kitchen, he was almost afraid to touch her. But fulfillment was close, now, and she let him. He loosened her bra, took it off, and tumbled her back on the big bed. He lifted her hips and drew off the panties.
He fell into welcoming arms, felt legs tighten over him. He lunged, and to his astonishement it happened to both of them just from that. Her body bucked up, tensing and convulsing. He drove wildly through his own brief spasm.
"Afraid of that," she moaned. "But go ahead. I'll catch up with you."
"You've caught up with me already."
She stared at him, then laughed. "How about that? Great! Now you can do everything I want you to do to me!"
She released her hold on him. He hovered over her and drove his mouth to her breast. It lay beautifully firm and shapely on her chest. Her hands caressed his head. The nipple in his lips was resilient as new rubber.
After long moments, she murmured, "The other's getting jealous."
He changed to it. When she had enough, she pulled him flat with her. She drew down his head and sealed their mouth together. She wanted to do the probing. Her tongue ran in and out suggestively. He had no problem left, but she was in no hurry. He wasn't, either. In a different way, he had needed her as badly as she needed him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The house was very silent. There wasn't even an occasional sound drifting in from the quiet street and sleeping neighborhood. Clem ended his long, busy kiss and lay quietly. His stillness blended with the peace that filled the bedroom. This refuge that the evening had provided for him. For escape, for awhile, from the pressures and uncertainties and dangers of the world out there.
With a stranger in the night.
Yet hardly more of a stranger than Sherry and Diane and even Ardis were to him.
The girl looked up with protesting eyes. "Hey! Don't you go getting a letdown!"
He laughed and stopped his musings. He said teasingly, "Must have been that last drink."
She knew that, functionally, he was okay. She only thought that he had lost the sharp edge of erotic feeling that had carried him with her to that point, that fatigue and drowsiness were about to put him out of commission. She struggled, and he realized that she wanted out. He let her roll him onto his back. Sitting on the calves of her legs, she began to caress and kiss him. It brought his mind back to a burning focus on her and the excitement of learning a fresh partner. She worked teasingly over his belly, never quite doing what he began to want with a mindless craving.
He coaxed.
She did it, but for a moment only. She lifted her head and laughed. "All fixed! Come to mamma!"
Lithe and nimble as a cat, she had him up and over before he had drawn another breath. Much of her silvery hair had fallen over her smiling, greedy face. Her curling body conformed, and he needed to help to sink deep. He watched her eyes close and her mouth open. He delighted in her. They were beautifully matched. He examined this mentally, with an idea that she did the same. Her mouth had formed a smile. Small motions begged him. He began quietly, knowing she wanted to take the long route up the mountain, this time.
It was a terrific experience, all the way up. Her whole being seemed focused, and she never stopped smiling. Her ever enlivening co-ordination was instinctive and proficient. She didn't do anything that, in his now considerable experience, he hadn't known before. Yet she did it with a total absorption he had seen in no other girl. Without pretenses, exaggerations or coy feminine frills. She didn't lead or guide him, seeming blissfully happy with whatever he did. She didn't stall him when his demands grew unbearable. She signalled no readiness of her own. She was just there with him when the tumult seized him. She was herself content when at last he grew still.
But in one respect she was an ordinary woman. The first thing she said was, "Compare me."
"What's greater than great?"
"I am."
"Right!"
They smoked and rested. And then he found her agreeable to the deviations he had always been curious about but had never dared to ask of another girl. One he respected. One he knew. Connie repeated what he had coaxed her for earlier. He was only mildly hesitant when she took it for granted that the favor would be returned.
She was as interested as he in going on through all the ways of making contact. Nothing was too awkward, embarrassing or wayout for her, If he wanted it, then so did she. He spent himself with the stamina of a teenager and was always soon ready again. She seemed to expect that, even to demand it in what was taking shape as a deep and obsessive hunger.
When they were so he faced her, he began to notice the strange expression that had come into it. The look disturbed him, for it contained both a ravening and a fatigue. The latter wasn't physical tiredness but an ennui that the ravening fought against. Gradually her countenance changed from that of the fresh, eager girl he had picked up in the bar to that of an ageless, world-weary woman. He sensed that she lived on this, lived for it. Escaping what? Maybe only the rest of herself.
The time came when, both with reluctance and relief, he was ready to blow the whistle. A glance at his watch startled him into action. It was half-past three in the morning. It would get getting light within the hour.
"You better get me out of here," he said.
"I guess."
She seemed indifferent about it.
They dressed. She paid no attention to him, and when he saw her yawn he knew she had lost all interest in him. They went out through the kitchen, the purpose that had brought them through it, to begin with, accomplished. He got in the car before she opened the garage door. She backed the car into the street.
"Well, it was great," he said.
"Uh-huh."
There were still three or four cars besides his own at the tavern. Connie pulled in beside his and stopped her car. She smiled at him with something of the politeness of a driver letting off a hitchhiker.
"See you around sometime," she said.
No giving him her phone number or asking him to call her.
"Sure," he agreed.
He watched her back out, then go sweeping off down the highway.
He got in his own car and lit a cigarette. There went a living example of what happened when sex became the be-all objective of life, the cure-all relief from self and life. He wasn't contemptuous of Connie, whose address he had neither noted nor cared to ask. There was a kind of dignity and gallantry in the doomed way she had done it. In the way that, tomorrow night, she would be prospecting some other bar for some other durable partner.
He drove onto the highway, turning back toward Glen Eden. This slipped him back into the unpleasant focus of himself. He hated to go home and face Ardis, but he needed a shave, shower, business suit, shirt and tie. It didn't matter, really. He had already lost her by trying to destroy her moral fiber and bring her down to his level. By doing exactly what she had pedicted-seeking solace and vengeance between the legs of some woman.
What a phony way that was of asserting the manhood he had never really possessed. The manhood he should have asserted long ago with Sherry. The manhood that Ardis had hoped to the last he would find and use, now that the showdown had come with Sherry and Davie's future really hung in the balance.
It was getting light when he drove into his garage. Ardis wouldn't be up that early, but it would only add to his cowardice to do what he wanted to do-get what he needed and slip away without seeing her. He moved quietly through the house, but only so he wouldn't awaken her or Davie prematurely. When he reached the hallway, he looked toward her bedroom and stopped still.
Her bed had been used, but it was empty now. He moved quickly to the doorway of Davie's room to see if she were there. Davie's bed was also empty. Clem stood there motionless, rubbing his whiskery jaw. His first thought was of sickness. Hospitals. Without her knowing how to get hold of him. Then he calmed down and knew what he had done. She had taken Davie to her apartment to avoid an encounter here. In his bemused state, it hadn't registered on him that Sherry's car wasn't in its usual place in the garage.
He went through the house to see if Ardis had left a note. She hadn't. He hadn't bothered to get the telephone number of her apartment and had no idea of its location. There was no way to make certain that she had gone there with the boy.
He went into the bathroom and regarded himself in the mirror. He looked grim, beard-shadowed, gaunt-eyed. This was what Ardis hadn't wanted to see. He could hardly stand it himself. And he couln't eradicate all of it before he went to the office. To be seen by his other, other woman. Diane. He was tempted to call in, later, and say he was sick. He was. Of himself.
He returned to the kitchen to start coffee, although he had a flat, jaded lethargy to fight instead of a hangover. By the time he finished in the bathroom he knew he wasn t going to let himself play sick and stay home from work. He dressed and looked considerably better, even if he failed to feel it. He stood in the kitchen and drank coffee, which was all in the way of nourishment that he could get down.
He didn't look toward the tavern when he passed it on his way into the city.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Gem had never walked into the huge air terminal with such a feeling of dread. His mind was made up as to what he would do, but his feeling was that of a patient waiting to go into surgery. His restless thoughts had to move in some direction and, since he wouldn't let them move ahead, they turned back on the past. It was hard to relate this moment with those early days when he and Sherry, not yet married, had been so in love. Or in some other state of emotional transport they had thought of as being in love.
Then they had wed.
And now they were dead.
He threaded his long way down the concourse to her flight gate. Her plane was in, with people already coming up. He stopped and waited with a dry mouth until he saw her. She was in a cute suit of small black and white checks and wore a small, young girl hat on the back of her head. She wore white gloves and heels and carried a white bag. She spotted him and shot him a fond, happy glance. As though she saw the coldness in his eyes and wanted to melt it fast.
Just looking at her made something turn over in his heart. Designed or not, her attire, replacing the smart things, had resurrected for the moment the lovely young girl of the past. He moved out of the crowded area to wait for her, sick at heart. He had more problems than the showdown he meant to have with her over her career.
He hadn't heard from Ardis since she and Davie disappeared. This suggested there had been no emergency, yet it hadn't put his mind at rest. He had even considered calling every apartment building listed in the yellow pages until he got hold of her. Then he had decided to wait, thinking she would surely get in touch with him before this evening. She hadn't. And it would be damned awkward explaining this to Sherry. It would cut the ground from under him before he could even bring up the matter of her present and promised jobs.
Sherry emerged from the crowd and came toward him. He wondered how much tension there was behind her sparkling eyes and relaxed smile. She had a big deal to promote with him and Ardis before she could take the new job. So okay. He would string it along and see how far she would go with her wiles and guile before he punctured her big red balloon.
To do this, he had to give her the kiss for which she lifted her mouth.
"Hi, darling."
"Hi."
"We'll have to go down to the baggage room. I've started bringing things home."
Gem nodded with no comment, although he knew how long she intended that being home to be. She glanced up quickly, but he failed to reassure her with a look of pleasure about that.
They rode down to the baggage room and waited until the luggage from her flight came down the chute. Sherry identified a white bag and a green one, and he took them off the turntable. They went out to the car with the strain mounting between them. She sensed trouble, that she would gain no easy victory, and was getting set for it. She didn't know she would gain a tremendous advantage when they reached home, and he had to explain why Ardis had refused to stay in the same house with him.
They were halfway home when he thought suddenly of what Diane had said about rattling Barry with her own quick offensives. If he could trap Sherry in a lie, he would have a weapon against what might have to come out about Ardis.
"You didn't call home this week," he said.
Sherry glanced at him quickly, convinced that Ardis hadn't divulged her secret call. "No, I've been awfully busy. Is that what you're angry about? You've never bothered to call me."
Partly because he had only made guesses that he had dismissed, and partly because he had had plenty of local problems, he had all but forgotten that angle.
He said, "I tried, one night."
"Oh? What night?"
"I don't remember, exactly. Around the middle of the week."
"Well, I had to work late all week. I'm in a hurry to get through with it, you know."
"Hampton still helping you?"
He thought that she caught her breath. "No. He only did that one time."
She was confused. She was a liar on at least one count. He didn't want to pursue it any further.
He was surprised when he came along their street to see light in the house. When he swung onto the driveway, there was Sherry's car in its previously deserted place in the garage. Ardis had come back with Davie. She had shared his dread of having their private conflict revealed to Sherry.
Clem followed Sherry into the house, carrying her bags. Ardis, looking relaxed and friendly as ever, sat reading one of her paperbacks. She put down the book with a smile, but only for her sister. Sherry brightened and, although he had been ignored, Clem felt better. Now he held the trumps. He flashed Ardis a look of gratitude, but she refused to meet his eyes.
"Well, hi!" Sherry said. "Davie's in bed again, I see."
"Yes. He was awfully tired."
Ardis got to her feet, like a sitter about to leave foi home. Sherry's eyes clouded quickly. "Don't go," she protested. "Let's visit a bit." She wanted a moment alone with Ardis, at least some look of assurance from her, before she broke her big news to him, Clem realized.
"I'm tired, too," Ardis said dismissingly. "We went to the zoo, this afternoon. I could hardly tear Davie away from there."
"That's nice, but-"
Ardis smiled at her. "Anyway, you two have plenty to talk about without me."
She picked up her handbag and left.
"Silly girl," Sherry said musingly. Her brow was knitted. "I don't know why she got the idea she makes it awkward for us." She moved to him and put her arms around his neck, smiling up. "It is nice to be alone, though. Ready for bed?"
"You?"
"You know you don't need to ask. A week without's a long time."
He knew that if he took her to bed, she would put on another of her new, superheated performances. Neutralizing any doubts he might have about her behavior when away from him. Tomorrow, or maybe not until Sunday when another passionate night had softened him up, she would break it. After all, he was the big obstacle. Ardis, if she would stay on awhile, would only be a convenience.
"No rush," Clem said. "Like Ardis said. We've got a lot to talk about."
Sherry stepped back and looked at him questioningly. "Has something gone wrong?"
"Nothing that can't be put right again, if you'll listen to sense and try. You're not taking that new job."
Sherry backed to a chair and sat down weakly. "She told you."
"She didn't promise not to, did she?"
"No, but-"
"But you asked her not to," Clem supplied. "And Ardis used to always do what you wanted. But this time she didn't, Sherry. She has some pretty square views that I've come to share. Like I've been a goddamn worm to let you twist me around your finger so long."
"I see."
"No, you don't see. We've both made a lot of wrong turns in this marriage. I admit my share of them. But this is it. You're not only going to turn down that job offer. You're going to quit the one you have. It's that or else."
Her mouth dropped open. "Divorce?"
"Those are your options."
She slumped back in the chair. She reached for a cigarette and had trouble making its tip meet the lighter flame. She drew deeply, exhaled angrily. Clem watched her, surprised by his ultimatum when he had expected to try reasoning yet once more. But his back had straightened. He knew it was going to stay straight from there on.
"I'll set my own options, thank you!" she said furiously. "I always have, and don't think I'm about to change it! I've already accepted the promotion, and I'm not about to reverse it!"
She glared at him. He shrugged.
"Okay, Sherry,' he said calmly. "You're opting out."
"Stop trying to threaten me," she said scornfully. "If there's a divorce, it'll be because I want it, not because you demand it. I think I want it. I've had all of your sick jealousy of my career that I can take. Don't think I've been fooled. That's what all this concern for poor Davie really is. I'm more successful than you are, and you're sick with envy and resentment."
"Very neat, Sherry. Also, very typical. You tell me what you've already done, which you had already done before you came home to discuss it with me. So it seems I was the one with the options. Better I should be won around or at least kept impotent. But if I wasn't, I could take it or leave it. Right?"
"When you get down to it, yes."
He nodded. "And I think I know why you'd as soon stay married to me, if you can manage to put up with my sick jealousy. Shall we say why you have put up with it? I believe you said at the airport that the guy has his own family. Which, apparently, he wants to keep as long as he can get what he wants by helping a girl up the ladder."
Sherry's mouth had hinged open. She had been afraid it was he who called Hampton in the night, but she had gambled that it hadn't been. She knew she had been caught in two lies. She was too smart to try to add more.
"All right, Clem. If you're going to make a nasty thing of it, let's call it quits. You can have Davie, and you ought to marry Ardis. She's in love with you. I've sensed that and more. I'm pretty sure you've slept with her. That was okay if it kept you both happy. But let's not dump a lot of dirt, too, on Davie. Okay?"
He nodded his head.
She smiled. "We're faced with a delicate situation, I guess. Do I take Ardis's room, or do you?"
"I'm going to a motel, Sherry. If I stayed here, we'd fight all weekend. Let's spare Davie that, too."
She shrugged and disappeared into the hallway.
Clem smoked down a couple of cigarettes before he got his jacket. If he felt anything at all, it was the relief he knew that Sherry felt to have it over. He didn't call to tell her he was leaving, and was passing out through the utility room when he stopped, turning his head.
In the corner of that room was a stack of newspapers, which were accumulated there until there was a paper drive they could be given to. He snapped on the light and went over to them. Hunkered, he began to go through them, looking for the classified section he had seen Ardis examining, the morning of the day she rented her apartment. He found it easily, tucked it under his arm and went on out to the garage.
He drove away from the house marveling at what a painless thing it was after so much dread and indecision. Sherry had shown no guilt about Hampton and no jealousy of Ardis. She might have been quite happy to let it go on permanently, if it kept her free for her job and wasn't brought into the open.
So, as far as Sherry was concerned, his own guilt no longer bothered him. But she had been dead wrong about his concern for their son being only a phony front for his jealousy of her career. Davie's future was all that counted now. That was what he was going to make a fight for.
When the door opened, it was on a chain. A small shock jarred her face, and she gasped.
"Clem! How did you find me! What's wrong?"
"I'd better come in, first, hadn't I?"
She hesitated, then opened the door. He stepped in and closed it behind him. She wore a robe. If there was a nightie under it, it was too short to show.
"Which do you want first?' he asked. "How I found you or why I came?"
His lack of urgency reassured her. She went over and sat down in a deep chair, her legs tucked under as though to hide them and their temptation from him. He sat down on the sofa across from her.
"I ran you down through the classifieds you checked," he told her.
"That took patience."
"I lucked out. I located you on the third try."
"But why?"
"It's gone smash. Now, wait a minute. I really tried. I told her it was stay home or else. She ridiculed me. She'd already taken the new job, she was that sure of bringing me around. Don't say it. I know I let her get in that habit."
Somber-faced, Ardis waited for him to go on. "Maybe she isn't as loaded with talent as she kept us thinking," he said. "Just ambition.' "Why do you say that?"
He told her about the suspicions aroused in him at the airport, the night he learned that Hampton had been in the field with her. He capped it with a full report on his telephoning, that other night, and the lies that, exposed, had made Sherry admit there was more than company business between her and Hampton. Tacitly, of course. She didn't want a scandal.
"I can't believe it," Ardis gasped.
"I tried not to believe it." Clem grinned wryly. "Or maybe not to face it. But it's true. She opted out just like that. For her career and her angel-lover."
Ardis looked dazed. She sat shaking her head. "Does she want Davie?"
"She never wanted him."
"So what happens to him?"
"Will you take him, Ardis?"
Her face sagged. "Me?"
"You're the one person on earth I'd trust to take care of him properly. Not excluding myself."
She looked up at him. Her eyes weren't quite the same. She was impressed by his willingness to give the boy up, too, but only for the boy's own good. It was the first really selfless act of his life.
Her voice was husky. "I'd love to have him and to bring him up as my own. You know that. But I'll have to work to five. Don't you think he's had enough of that?"
"I'd expect to provide the money, Ardis. Please?"
It was a moment in which he might have bowled her over. Yer he hadn't told her of Sherry's suspicions of them, and her apparent willingness to let it go along the way as long as it served her own convenience. Instead of making Ardis feel less guilty and ready to hop into bed with him again or to marry him, it would only add to her distress.
"Will you take him?" he asked. "Give me time." He nodded and left.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Clem opened his eyes to look around at the daylight version of the motel unit he had taken for the night. It was the first motel he had come to, after leaving Ardis's apartment. The tawdry, badly painted, poorly furnished room was no more pleasing than it had been by artificial fight. It was the kind of place in which a man might awaken with a hangover, blank memory, and a strange woman beside him. But there was no woman. For once he had found no soft, yielding body to cushion him on the rough spots.
He got out of bed, went to the bathroom, then glanced at his watch. Ten after nine, of a Saturday morning. He had slept longer in one solid stretch than he had in weeks. He rubbed his rasping jaw, remembering that he had no razor, no toothbrush, no fresh underwear and shirt. He had even slept in the underwear.
He went back, sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. Between that moment and Sunday evening, when Sherry would go winging out of their lives, he had to have a place to take Davie. The place had to be Ardis's apartment until he could make better arrangements for them both. He had a definite idea of how he wished he could improve them.
But someone else had a prior claim that, somehow, had to be met.
He stopped at a public phone booth not far from Diane's building, looked up the number and called her apartment. If Barry had deviated from habit, that day, he would hang up and let it ride as a misdialing. Diane answered.
He said, "Hi. Barry golfing?'
"Yes, but-Clem, what's the matter?"
"Just taking my turn in the crisis department," he said. "I've got to talk to you. Should I come up, or should you meet me somewhere?"
"Big eyes is still around, so I better meet you." She sounded worried. "Where are you?"
He told her. It was only a couple of blocks walk for her. He went back to sit in the car, smoking and waiting. She took a while. She probably had had to get dressed. Then he saw her coming around a corner up ahead. She wore a dress and looked like a high school girl hurrying toward him. He couldn't say much for his recent morals, but he could for his taste. He had picked the cream of the crop for his spin-off. He reached over and snapped opened the door when she reached the car. She slipped in quick-Only then did she really look at him. Her eyes widened. "Hey. Did you sleep in your clothes?"
He rubbed an unshaven cheek. "Nearly. I moteled, last night. Don't look at me like that. I was all by myself."
"Blow up, huh?'
"Surgery. Sherry and I are through." Diane's mouth dropped open. "Really? Is she suspicious?"
"Nothing like that, Diane. It was inevitable. Painless. I'm glad it's over."
He had a feeling that she was something less than glad "I don't know what to say," she breathed. "Your poor little boy. Half a mother, and now no father."
"She gave him to me, Diane."
Her eyes widened. "She did?"
"Without a quibble. The hangup's a big promotion she sprang on me, take it or leave it. It'll keep her moving around. She thought I'd take it and no problem. I wouldn't take it. So she presented me with Davie and told me to marry someone as square about such things as I am. Which I certainly hope to do."
Diane looked at him keenly. She glanced down at her hands. "Are you suggesting something?"
"Doesn't that go without saying? A few days ago your marriage was on the brink. Now a scandal wouldn't make much difference. Except it would be better to agree to disagree, if you can manage it with Barry, on more innocent grounds."
She nodded, not lifting her eyes to him. "It's all happened so fast. I just can't think."
He was glad she wasn't looking at him, for she would have seen the relief in his eyes. She had never though it through this far. She wasn't too happy with what she saw now that she had been brought to this point by events beyond her control. He remembered what she once said about a mistress having it better than a wife, enjoying the pleasures while escaping the strains of marriage.
But mainly it was his having custody of Davie, and his telling her he hoped to marry a full time woman and mother, that had boggled her mind. He should have known it. With a nature like hers, she would have little taste for raising a child, particularly another woman's. He had been sincere, feeling obligated to give her first chance. It would have been another disaster to Davie if she had grabbed the chance.
He said, "I just wanted to tell you, so you could pi in, Because I think we'd be smart not to see each other until. the dust settles. Don't you?"
"Yes," She glanced at her watch. "I'm glad you told me. And I'd better get back to the apartment. Clem Barry goes out early and usually comes home about now."
"Okay." He doubted that this was why she wanted to get away. "We'll still be seeing each other at the office."
"Yes."
She got out, smiled at him uncertainly, then went moving up the sidewalk as rapidly as she had come to him. He knew she wouldn't resume the relationship after his divorce, even if he should try. She would probably lose no time in changing jobs.
He was free to do it, and he did it. He drove straight to Ardis's apartment.
This time her blinds were open, and she had seen him come past the window. The door opened before he rang. She must have expected him back for her answer about Davie, knowing that it had to be settled soon. He noticed that, for the first time since her renunciation of him, she hadn't dressed to play down her attractiveness. She wore a short skirt with a turtleneck top. She looked wonderful the most desirable girl alive. He stepped in and closet, the door. Her cheeks were flushed.
"You look like you'd been pulled through a knothole," she said, trying to keep it cool. "Had your breakfast."
"I haven't wanted any. But I could use some coffee." She went into the cramped kitchen beyond a plywood partition. Her slim thighs, her wonderful legs, were back for him to see. He hurt from the hurt he had caused her. She returned with coffee for them both. Black, hot and in mugs. She sat down properly across from him. She lit a cigarette, watching him. He lit one, watching her.
He wanted to crawl to her and beg forgiveness, but it wouldn't do. It wasn't the fact that he was free, now, that had changed her attitude toward him. His regained manhood had restored her respect for him. She wasn't going to crawl, on the one hand. He wasn't going to let her off with less than he wanted of her, on the other.
"I've decided not to turn Davie over to you, Ardis," he said. "He needs a father." He hesitated. "He deserves to have me marry again, don't you think?"
Her face fell. She not only saw Davie slipping out of her life after her hopes had been aroused. He was turning his big act of self-abnegation, the night before, into a bit of phony dramatics.
'Yes, he does," she agreed.
"Besides, that would only take care of one of the two people I'm concerned about. That I care about. That I love. You're going to marry me, Ardis, and don't argue. I'm sick of willful women." She gasped.
"And not just to provide Davie with a mother," he resumed. "I happen to need, and I mean to have, what you gave me for one short, wonderful night. And the peace and contentment you gave to my home life, otherwise."
"Clem, stop!"
"Keep quiet and listen to me." He went on relentlessly. "This other girl. I was involved before our night, Ardis. I'm not charging you with driving me back to her, but it contributed. I just came from seeing her. It's over, also by mutual consent. I never was so glad of anything in my life."
He put down his coffee and walked over to her. He took the mug from her fingers and put it on the end table. He sat down beside her. She tried to keep him from catching her hands, but he caught them. They were moist and trembling. She looked at him with damp eyes.
She said heavily, "I was as wrong as you were. You don't know how many times I died from jealousy. And I kept wanting to do what I swore I wouldn't. To steal my sister's husband and baby. I'm as weak as I blamed you for being!"
"Ardie, you're only human."
She shook her head numbly. "We couldn't make anything good out of something so wrong all around."
"That's what you think."
"Clem-stop-!" She tried to push him back.
"Put those arms where they belong. Around me. You hear?"
She sighed and slid them around his neck.
Something he had never felt before crept through him when their mouths met. It was because this was the first time he had kissed and held her except in a driving state of physical desire. His feeling now was born of peace and happiness. He knew she felt it equally. Her body relaxed its tension. She moved closer to him. "Convinced?"
"Yes. It's so sweet. It can't be wrong."
"Neither is the other, anymore. But to prove it, I'll have to take you to bed. This is a pretty small sofa."
"No, Clem! You're still her hus-!"
"I told you I can't stand a willful woman."
She struggled for only a moment when he lifted her in his arms. He carried her to the bedroom and placed her gently on the bed. She looked up at him with reproving yet lustrous eyes. He took off her slippers, the skirt, the top. He was using her weakness again, the passion she had never been able to conquer. But this time it was to show her how right they were for each other, and how deeply he cared.
She was passive, but her cheeks were flushed while he removed her bra and kissed each breast, tenderly but with passion, too. She lifted her hips voluntarily while her half-slip came off with her panties. He undressed.
It was supreme, for he made love with his heart as well as with his body. She recognized the difference, was healed and she rewarded him abundantly. With all the little woman things that were so delightful when the woman was one you loved, when she loved, when she loved you. They not only reached the heights of sexual feeling, they had discovered that it also had depths.
He knew he had won her when they reached pillow talk and she said, "Where will we live? Please not there."
"I wouldn't want that, either," he agree. "At his age, it wouldn't make much different to Davie to be moved."
"No, and there'll be a gradual transition. I'll keep him here till it's over with. And-if it's all right with you-I'd rather this was all till I'm your wife and his mother."
He agreed, but he must have looked crestfallen. She smiled. "But since it's the last till then-again?"
