WINNIE: "First-timers in adultery, Al, aren't we?"
AL: "We make our laws, Winnie. Nobody matters...."
ETHEL: "I always wanted to be unfaithful to Fred."
STU: "I'm going to love you. But not forever!"
SUE: "Stop asking-and start giving...."
FRED: "Stay where I can look. Lie on your back."
MAE: "Catering to a Peeping Tom is overtime!"
* Desire lines lie between places people want to leave and places they want to get to. Seven young modern marrieds, whose desire lines lead to each other's mates, make up THE WEEKEND GROUP!
CHAPTER ONE
He sat on the edge of the hotel bed, chuckling, cradling the glass of bourbon in his hands.
He asked, "Know how we came here, baby?" When she shook her head he said, "Desire lines of travel." He laughed softly. "Ever hear of them?"
"No."
"My job," he told her.
She stood beside the dressing table, wearing nothing but her slip and what was under it. He had stripped down to his shorts. She found herself thinking how unlike a lover he looked-at least any lover she had ever imagined. His face was narrow and intelligent, perhaps even a little intellectual. He had lively brown eyes, dark hair touched with gray. He showed good teeth when he smiled, but not quite perfect, so they had to be his own. He did not look especially strong, but his muscles seemed well-kept and he used them with coordination. He was slim and tan.
Perhaps she would love him. She wanted to love him.
His brown eyes studied her quizzically, clinging to her face. "That's how everything is, these days. Want it, desire it-and you can have it." He set his bourbon aside on the night table next to the bed. He held out his arms to her. "Come here."
She went to him. He put his arms on her waist, drew her toward him and, as she came down on the bed, slid his arms around her. His mouth found hers. It was a good mouth, expert at kissing. She had known it earlier, before she had agreed to come here with him. She parted her lips to his, felt the stab of his tongue. He used it to taste hers, or so it felt. Her arms wound around his neck and she sealed her lips to his, widely parted and clinging. His warm breath mingled with hers-she could not taste the bourbon on it because she had had some earlier. She felt her breasts swell against his chest and a warmth spread through her.
The kiss grew long. Before it was over her slip was around her waist and her bare thighs were entwined with his. His were hard, lean and hairy. His hand slid briefly into her underwear, came out, rose under her slip to release the catches of her bra, relieving the pressure on her breasts.
He broke the kiss and murmured, "Why wait? I'll tell you later how we came here. But those desire lines are real-millions of dollars' worth."
She smiled. She did not know what he was talking about, or care. But he knew. She could tell. Even in passion he looked intelligent. Quiet laughter echoed deep inside her. She had often wondered what she would think of at a time like this.
He was raising her slip. She lifted her arms to let him pull it off. Her loose bra dropped when she lowered them. Then it was simply a question of a few final gestures. At these he was casually expert. He did not begin to caress her until they were both naked.
His fingers were long and gentle. They were dry and slightly calloused-useful. They touched her with assurance, yet seekingly. His lips followed them. His hands felt her breasts and he kissed each tense nipple. His mouth coursed down her body and she shivered. She was so filled with his touch that she could not feel his body as she wanted to feel it. She reached for him and, wanting to bring her whole body in contact with his, tried to wind herself about him.
The attempt was ridiculous and they ended up wrestling and laughing. He kissed her mouth again.
She wanted him-but not just yet. She wanted to see him first-she had never seen anyone but Fred. Exerting all her strength she managed to fling him on his back and looked down his body. What she saw choked her throat, then loosened it again and she breathed once, hoarsely.
He stilled when he saw what she was doing. She slid her hand down his naked belly to touch him. She bent to do something she had never done. Then his . hands were reaching for her, pulling her up to him, drawing her open mouth to his. He rolled her under him and now she was ready.
He rived and filled her-and he was still a stranger. She gasped at the alienness of him, then felt herself adjusting, becoming one with him. Becoming new with him-something she had never been before. Her body, her arms, legs, eyes and mouth absorbed him and the movement began that made them one. She was aware of no motion separate from him and their mingled breaths came hoarsely.
Then breath began to leave her and there was wild motion only ... she cried his name thinly several times as fire leapt in her loins, fused moltenly with his explosive release.
* * *
A quiet little nobody with a pretty face. He called it beautiful. His hands explored each bone-the hollows of her cheeks, the line of her chin and jaw. He touched her cheekbones and temples. He pushed back the rust-blond hair from her forehead, looked deep into her gray eyes. He brushed her love-bruised lips with his.
"Lucky," he whispered. "Lucky me."
"How about me?"
"You say it."
"I'm lucky, too."
It could all have happened so differently. She had never, until now, known another man than Fred. She had meant to, subconsciously, all her life. How long had she been tired of Fred? She could barely remember. Perhaps since they were married.
Last summer they had gone to Europe. One of those tours. She had met a Frenchman, younger than she. He had made love to her with his eyes, words and flowers while Fred had been laid up for more than a week with a bad back. Je-je, the Frenchman's name had been-short for Jean-Jacques. He had never quite reached the point of kissing her, though she had wanted him to-and more-before Fred had been on his feet again. Then she had had to watch Fred, as always, like a hawk, and Je-je had faded gracefully-with some of her money.
A gigolo. She smiled reminiscently. Je-je-what a name for a man. But he had been charming.
"Stu," she whispered. "I like your name."
He grinned. "And I like yours-Ethel."
She made a face. "It sounds like some kind of gasoline."
"Strictly high test. What's wrong with gasoline? It powers today's magic carpets. We're here because of it."
"I thought you said we came along desire lines of travel. I like those better."
He laughed, lying close to her. Against her, as a matter-of-fact, still partly imprisoning her. He leaned on an elbow, his hand under her head, keeping her face turned to his. He liked her face, which she had always thought rather simple, though perhaps pretty. Stu really seemed to enjoy her face-he had told her he had been enchanted by it almost as soon as she had met him. Only two days ago?
And here she was. Stu was no Je-je. Stu's other hand was enjoying the rest of her. It had left her face and was coursing almost idly along her body. It fondled her breast, ran down her side, paused briefly to grasp the supple waist that a moment ago had powered her passion. Her breath caught. His hand moved down to absorb the swelling contour of her hip, came forward.
His eyes never left her face. One leg lay over hers. She could feel all of him. A slow drum began to beat inside her.
"Desire lines?" he said softly. "Want to hear about them?"
She nodded, smiling. What she liked to hear was his voice.
He was a civil engineer, specializing in highways. She clung to his every word, the sound, if not the meaning. But she tried also to catch the sense of what he said. She wanted to know him.
Desire lines of travel were established by surveys. The key phrases were "point of departure" and "destination." The desire lines lay between the places most people wanted to leave and the places they wanted to get to. When enough people agreed on point of departure and destination, a highway was built-sometimes a superhighway.
"As in this case," he murmured. "This hotel was built along desire lines of travel. Until the expressway was here, this place didn't exist. Did you ever see a survey map?"
She shook her head. She loved his quiet, deep voice. It did not matter what he said. She loved his hand, making its own desire lines of travel over those parts of her his body left uncovered. But what he said was important to him-she could see that in his face-and she glued her senses to what he was trying to tell her. He had a Midwestern accent.
"Beautiful." He smiled. "A survey map, I mean. I'll give you one some day. You can frame it, hang it on a wall."
"All right. Will you give me the one that brought us here?"
"Yes."
He kissed her. The slow drum inside her was raising an echo in him. She could feel it as he moved against her. The beat in her quickened. She breathed into his mouth, inhaled his gusty response. Her lungs were suddenly airless. She drew in life through her nostrils, not wanting to break the kiss. She opened herself to him, waited. All her life, perhaps, she had waited for this.
He filled her again, thrusting.
How long since she had felt wanted in this particular way? As though no one else held life's answers? Not since the early years of her marriage. Then Fred had found other women-not many, but enough to make her feel unimportant. The pain caused by Fred's other women had long since vanished-Fred had always come back to his wife. But the hurt had been followed by emptiness and at last-since a year ago when she had seriously considered an affair with charming, ridiculous Je-je-by boredom.
She was glad now, with Stu storming above her, that she had not had an affair with Je-je. It would probably have fallen into some nonsensical, rose-petal, professional hand-kissing pattern. Je-je, in all likelihood, could not even have made her feel unfaithful to Fred. And this, above all, she wanted.
To be truly unfaithful-to betray Fred not only with her mind and body but with all that she felt-all of life's forces. Not to avenge his cruelties-but to find herself.
What and who was she? Did tonight put her into some generic category called faithless wives? Did people" betray an institution-or some specific set of circumstances?
CHAPTER TWO
"WHAT KIND of world is it, Sue?" Al Ryan asked. "And what kind will it be?"
Sue wished she knew the answer. Al's question was, of course, pure rhetoric. Who could foretell the future? Even for a day.
The broad ribbon of the superhighway flew at them. The blunt, broad hood of the car seemed to gulp it, devour it. She was shorter than Al. Over the hood of the car she saw only distance. The road was virtually straight. Even the distance came rushing at her-there always seemed to be more.
She always felt a touch of fear of what lay ahead. She never knew why.
She glanced at the speedometer needle. Al was hitting eighty.
"What kind of place is this hotel where we're going?" she asked.
"You read the brochure," Al said. He kept his eyes on the road. "Lakeside, beach and pool. Boats, if we can afford them. New place. Built since they made this road. Who knows about it?"
Another rhetorical question. Sometimes Sue wished Al would give her some answers. Had he given her even one-one firm dependable answer-in seven years of wedlock? Bedlock might be a better term. Children, yes-he had given her four. The children had been an answer of sorts. The hurtling car felt empty without them-with only hers and Al's luggage in the trunk. What would she do for two whole weeks without the kids?
Again-a question that had no answer.
"Maybe we should have brought Stevie," she said. Stevie was six, born in her first year of marriage. "He'd like boating and fishing-"
"No kids," Al said. "I've had kids up to here. You know I don't mean our kids-I mean all kids. This trip's for you and me."
"All right, Al." Smiling, Sue took her eyes from the onrushing distances and looked at Al's strong profile. It seemed to jut against the future-against whatever the next moment might bring. Hawk-nosed, lean and tanned, he looked almost like a picture-book Indian-but there was no Indian in him. There was really nothing unusual about him-he was simply Al. Her husband. The man she had married. The father of her children. He loved her and she loved him. Period. No, make that a pause-not period.
The kids had been splitting them up, Al said. She was too busy with them to have enough time for him. He had job worries-automation. Al was an accountant. He was also a trends analyst. The last was the thin lifeline that kept him afloat. Not exactly, he said, what you could call security. A thin thread.
Once those damned computers learn to originate-I'm sunk....
This trip was to be at least partly a vacation, a chance for Al to escape his tensions, for him to get to know Sue again. For them both to meet other people-people out for fun, briefly unanchored by responsibilities.
One thing she knew about their destination. Al was to meet a man there. Stu Belden. A highway engineer. Stu Belden had somehow been involved in the construction of the broad multilane ribbon of concrete the car was eating up. Al's firm had done some work for him-area economic analyses had been the expression Al had used, combined with travel trends.
Data collection, statistics pure and simple that, fed into a computer, came up with compilations Al could translate into answers to questions Stu Belden had asked.
Unless you asked a question that only computers could answer, she thought suddenly, nobody listened to you any more. Al had not answered his wife. But he had answered other people.
This highway was partly the result of such answers. Millions of dollars had changed hands, the road had been built, new businesses had been started, including the hotel where they were going, because of the analysis of trends, which was Al's business.
Al had some idea of getting in on the changes the road had made. She and Al had a little money saved and Al wanted to invest it.
That, particularly, was why Al wanted to see Stu Belden. Not that any business would result directly from the meeting-Al wanted to learn, first of all, how his answers had been working out and what new developments might be in the offing. Mainly the trip was what Al had told the people in his office-a vacation. Stu Belden simply happened to be in the area.
Sue had never met Stu Belden. She wondered, familiarly nagged by her fear of unknown factors, what kind of man he was. Al thought highly of him.
The guy makes things move-people and money. I don't know exactly what he accomplishes ... but that's the kind of world we're in. The time trap....
Al had a theory that everybody who had ever lived had been caught in the trap of his time. Or her time, as the case might be.
Nothing stands still, baby. Our kids are already in the time trap of the next generation ... whatever that's going to be....
Did Al truly mean those silly words? Sad words too, if you thought about them. Stevie, their eldest, was in the same trap as his father, wasn't he? And he would have enjoyed coming along on this trip. Al played trains with him sometimes, talked to him, told him about life-now and then, when he found the energy, tossed a ball back and forth with the kid. Baseball, football, basketball-what mattered was not the shape of the ball but the people who threw and caught. And Stevie was reaching an age when sharing an adult fishing vacation could be important to him-and maybe to the adults.
Automation was Al's real fear. Electronic brains replacing human brains in his particular field, which dealt with statistics and computations. A human brain, Al contended, had only one advantage over an electronic one-it could originate, seize opportunities and make them grow, create new conditions and take advantage of them.
To originate something was part of Al's purpose on this trip-or rather, to find something to originate, using all their savings. Another purpose was to be with people rather than figures and machines.
Sue could follow Al's reasoning. But she was worried.
"I wonder if we'll ever go back," she said suddenly, "to the Gray Mare Inn."
He frowned. She realized with surprise and disappointment that he had forgotten the name.
"The place where we spent our honeymoon," she explained. "Where they had the artificial moon over the indoor pool."
He laughed aloud, a rare sound which usually she found cheerful. "Not likely, baby. That .was seven years ago. Even if the place still exists, what's the point? It's a used place. It's taken. Somebody else is making it tick and taking the profit from it." He raised one hand from the steering wheel, lowered it instantly, making a fist, a gesture of longing and surging will. "I need a place that's all mine. I need to claim something, start something, before I land on the ashheap."
On an ashheap at thirty-three? "You started something," she prompted. "Four kids. Remember?"
"Yeah. Starting them was fun." For less than half a mile the speedometer needle hovered down near seventy, as Al permitted himself a lingering memory of what lay behind. The needle shot to the right again within seconds, accurately measuring the tempo of his thoughts as well as the speed of his car.
"We'll have fun on this trip," he promised. "A ball. I could use a lot of what it takes to start a raft of kids. A whole lot of dedicated, ever-loving wife-but Susie baby, there's just one thing."
"What's that?" she asked, her mood changing an iota, turning younger and gayer.
"Don't start anything for real, you understand? Don't you get pregnant on me, you busy little family-machine, you gorgeous little trap ... not one more. Not now. I just might crack, honey. Enough is enough-and we've had too much."
The words should have hurt her feelings, she realized, at the very least. Instead they brought her back to that constant state of worriment and wonder and acceptance which seemed these days to be her inner life.
He had given an ultimatum that was no ultimatum. Neither of them knew whether she would get pregnant again-whether he would crack or not crack-whether they were headed for an ashheap or a ball.
Seeking security, her thoughts found the reality in their talk of old honeymoon inns-of children bred and borning.
She said, "I'm not a family-machine. I'm a woman."
If nothing else was certain, if the road and the world suddenly came to an end, she still had one truth to hold.
Al was her husband. One way or another, he would take care of her and their children, even if it killed him which she hoped not, of course, because she had given him her virgin body seven years before.
His conscience was not what she counted on, although she was sure he had one.
He would always want more of that no longer virgin body, which had originated-to use his word-for him four times.
She was a woman and Al was her man and she had it made in bed.
Slight rises, slight dips, endless scenery, endless bright sky above. She shut her eyes against their vacation's onrushing beauty, dreaming briefly of darkness and the space of two bodies.
* * *
At three in the afternoon the drive was over. The level rolling terrain rose suddenly and steeply, then afforded a slight drop as the road turned left toward a brilliant blue view of water. The day's heat, early-summer mild so far, reached a zenith.
Al said, "There it is. Freedom. The future. Vacation. The end of the road."
She looked at journey's end.
They had come to a vast and glamorous complex of buildings and pools and inlets from the big lake whose far shore was all but hidden in horizon mists. A few motor yachts were moored at the mouth of the major inlet. Power boats hugged jutting piers. The westering sun bent a rainbow arch over a misty fountain in the middle of what looked like a courtyard ringed by a circular drive and crisscrossed by flowered paths.
She saw luxury such as she had never dreamed of.
She gasped, gripped Al's arm. "Al, this isn't-we're not going to stay here."
If they put up here for two weeks Al would be spared wondering where and how to invest their life savings. They would have none left.
"Why not?" Al had stopped the car at the mouth of the circular drive, before reaching the main building. His head moved in jerky little gestures, like a hawk's. His sharp eyes appraised the scene. "Part of this is me, Sue. I helped to make it."
At times like this, happily infrequent, Sue was always a little afraid of losing AL He seemed to escape from her into some inner vision.
"But the cost-" Sue whispered.
"Don't worry about the money," Al said. "Belden's made arrangements." His voice was subtly angry. "Dreams, Sue-you're looking at dreams. You're looking at people's desires, wants. But these are dreams you can touch and smell-or fall asleep in and not have to dream at all." He turned to look at her from some hardness she had never seen before in his black eyes. He smiled. "Money-how do you like it?"
"Fine-can I spend some at the supermarket?"
He laughed. "Not that kind of money. This is money to enjoy-to send the kids to school with, maybe for us to retire on some day. Security. Ever hear of it?"
She had never felt less secure in her life.
"This Stu Belden, Al-I thought we were just going to bump into him here. Why should he put us up?"
"He's not putting us up. Plenty of room here, I've heard. We won't cost him a nickel."
Al started the car again. The circular drive had a kind of punctuation mark-a shrub-flanked entrance to a glistening, four-story building constructed in a half-pretzel shape to give maximum frontage to the lake. Al stopped again, turned off the ignition as a uniformed bellhop emerged from glass doors to let Sue out of the car.
Al slid out from behind the wheel, rounded the car, gave his keys to the bellhop.
"Ryan," he said. "You'll find the luggage in the trunk."
He handed the bellhop a crumpled bill, took Sue's arm, led her toward the entrance. She gazed at him in wide-eyed alarm, skipping in sandaled feet to match his long strides. Since when had tight-fisted Al become the big-tipping spender? She had not, of course, seen the denomination of the bill but she guessed it had been more than a dollar. She felt frightened and shabby in her plain travel clothes. Al had not warned her that they were coming to a place like this.
Though even if he had warned her, she would not have believed him.
If the place had a name-and Al had not mentioned it-Sue thought it might be Reflections. Al paused as the glass door swung silently shut behind them and she clung more tightly to his arm. She seemed to see images wherever she looked. She and Al were reflected in mirrors, some close by, some distant. Interspersed with the mirrors were panels of glass. Through them she glimpsed a dining room, a garden patio. Another glass wall seemed to lead to a landscaped swimming pool. Glass doors opened to airy corridors away from the lobby. Cool lighting gleamed softly, was punctuated by a brief flash of subdued brilliance as a glass door opened and closed to permit someone's passing.
She did not see many people. Those she saw seemed subtly unreal to her-well-dressed flesh and blood moving silently in a kind of crystallized atmosphere.
Al came to life. He strode to what seemed to be a reception desk. Sue moved mechanically with him. The woman behind the desk was slender and tall, green-eyed, copper-haired. She flashed Al a smile schooled in warmth, briefly included Sue. Sue noted that she was nicely tanned. The contrast between the tan and her eyes, the white smile, suggested fun in the sun. So, on closer look, did her hair, artlessly sun-streaked.
Again Al gave his name. Sue glanced at him to see if the woman had impressed him. She had. Al's eyes were appreciative. The woman's features seemed as flawless as the glass all around. She looked unreally athletic, outdoorsy in this place of mirror mirages, illusory unconfinement, quiet, reflected splendor. Even the casual looseness of her elegantly simple dress accented the teasing thrust of her breasts, the slender suppleness of an invisible waist, the provocative swell of trim hips.
"We're ready for you, Mr. Ryan. Mr. Belden has made all the arrangements. I'm Mrs. Price."
Sue's vicious thought was that Mrs. Price looked ready-not only for the Ryans-for anything.
No mail cubbyholes or key racks disfigured the light pastel wall behind the desk. Mrs. Price bent, pressed a button below the desk top and two keys popped into her hand. She gave one to Al, the other to Sue. The fingers that pressed the key into Sue's palm with friendly insistence were slender, wellformed, untaloned. The nails were neatly trimmed, pale.
Sue glanced at her key. It bore no bulky number tag. The room or unit number was imprinted on the heel.
"Mr. Belden thought you would prefer the conveniences of the main building-at least on your arrival. Of course, should you like the privacy of one of our lakeside units, we can move you instantly. Let me show you to the elevators."
Mrs. Price came out from behind her desk. Her legs, Sue noted, were long and slender under the tapering sheath, calves strong and well-developed. Her shoes were low-heeled and, Sue hated to admit, both sensible and pretty. Her walk was sexy without being vulgar.
Sue glanced again at Al. His appreciation of Mrs. Price had deepened-he was showing teeth in what seemed to have become a permanently fixed smile and his black eyes were warm. Sue began to feel like an enraged mouse-an emotion new to her.
Glass, properly used, could be concealing. Mrs. Price slid open a panel to reveal an unobtrusive bank of four elevators at the end of a corridor that also opened to the pool area. She pressed a button and a door opened at once.
Al spoke for the first time since giving his name.
"Thank you," he said with that silly grin and his damned eyes definitely dropping from Mrs. Price's face to drink in the rest of her.
Or perhaps drink was not quite the word, Sue thought. Sip might be more accurate-Al's eyes sipped at Mrs. Price, bosom, loins, feet, rose again. He seemed to have liked the taste.
"You're quite welcome." Mrs. Price smiled warmly. "I believe you'll find your luggage already in the room. Mr. Belden thought you would like this accommodation-but if everything isn't quite satisfactory, please telephone me at the desk. I hope your stay will be pleasant."
"I'm sure it will," Al said.
Mrs. Price turned, walked away to vanish among the mirages. Sue followed Al into the elevator. Al pressed the top floor button and the cage began to rise soundlessly. Sue faced him in plaintive fury.
"You had business to warn me about the kind of place we were coming to. I could at least have worn a dress."
Al stared at her absently.
"What's the matter with what you've got on?"
She was wearing last year's blouse and skirt-pleated at the waist-no stockings. Her unmanicured toenails felt indecent.
"As if you didn't notice what she was wearing-that Mrs. Price. And the other people we saw."
"What other people?" Al asked unforgivably. Abruptly his eyes warmed on Sue-more, actually, than they had on Mrs. Price. "Oh, come on, honey-those were her working clothes. She's being paid to look like a doll-I mean attractive. Good business. Belden told me all about her."
"So she's a doll, is she?"
"Yes," Al said firmly and took Sue into his arms. "And we're on vacation-remember?"
He kissed her just as the door opened. Some reassurance had just begun to seep through Sue when he hustled her out and into a glass-walled corridor. The glass overlooked the pool area. On the other wall were numbered doors.
Al had stopped.
"Will you look down there?"
Sue looked down. The pool was irregularly shaped and big enough to operate boats in. She saw, in fact, two small boats with what she supposed were electric motors. She also saw private little coves branching away from the main bathing area, trees, shrubs, flowers. The coves made a serpentine inner shoreline that meandered from this central point, toward what seemed to be well-spaced private units. A smattering of bathers was using the pool.
"You're looking at a million bucks right now," Al said.
Sue shivered. "What's the name of this paradise in the middle of nowhere, Al? I didn't see any signs on the road. What was the name on the brochure? There was no sign in the lobby-"
"Paradise?" Al still had his arm around her. He tightened it slightly. "Paradise Hotel?" He looked down at her. "Maybe you've got something. One reason we're here is to name this place. It's so new it not only doesn't have a name-it doesn't even have owners. It's being operated by a development company that's trying to unload it to recover its investment. Stu's involved. Some of the people you see down there are guests. Others are wheels from Wall Street, San Francisco, the Coast, Midwest and Canada-potential investors. They're all getting a free ride. This place isn't making a nickel right now, isn't trying to. The whole shebang is up for grabs-but it's going to have to be a big grab. They circulated a private mailing list, calling it the Miles Away Motel, just unofficially and temporarily. The name's no good." He squeezed her again, smiled at her fondly. "Paradise, now. It's not exactly original but it fits. It's good enough for a vacation thought."
"But where do we fit, Al? We're none of those people down there. We can't afford to be guests-why, nothing here could go for under a hundred dollars a day. And we're not wheels from any of those places you mentioned. We're not wheels from anywhere, Al. And who is Mr. Belden?"
"Let's find our room," Al said. He had stopped smiling.
The room was more than a room. It had a small entry-almost a foyer-broken away from the living area by an angle of the wall. The living area contained a couch, three easy chairs, a large circular cocktail table. Sue noticed a recessed refrigeration unit. Large twin beds were in an alcove that could be sealed from the rest of the unit by sliding doors.
She gasped at the windows. They made up the wall facing the lake and consisted of sliding panels that led to a small terrace outside.
Her mouse-like anger had been driven into her sub-awareness by Al's kiss in the elevator. But it had remained lurking. Now it pounced again, compounded by a mixture of outrage and reluctant admiration. And a breathless kind of panic.
"Al-this place isn't for people. It's for-" she searched for a word-"for purposes-"
Al grinned again. "Sure it is-for people and purposes. For making money and for relaxation. Simmer down, Sue. Right now this place is for us."
Again he slipped his arm around her. His touch helped but not much. Even Al seemed different to her here. She leaned against him. She sought some familiar point of orientation that would help her at least to approximate Al's easy acceptance of this sinful luxury-so that she could be with him.
She found it when her ears attuned to an almost inaudible hum that seemed to permeate the place.
"The air conditioner, Al," she said crossly. "It seems a little loud. You might speak to whoever runs this place about it."
"Oh?"
Al's dark gaze searched the room, settled on what seemed a narrow vertical control panel set near the bed alcove. He left her, strode to it, turned a knob.
The sound faded, was gone. Al grinned at her, kept fooling with the knob. At once the room was filled with the soft, irregular whisper of wind in the leaves. Then came the faint slap of waves on the shore, the murmur of rain, faint bird calls-all in succession.
Al turned the conditioner to silence again.
"Select an atmosphere," he said, returning to her. "Belden told me about this gismo. Atmosphere-not air-is what we have here. Please, baby, relax."
Again he kissed her, this time solidly, thoroughly.
Al's kiss seeped through Sue very slowly-but it did break through. In this place of utter irrelevance Al's warm mouth on hers, his caressing tongue, became both relevant and reassuring.
His kiss meant she had not lost her life-and-death hold on him in the midst of all this splendor. She thought of the pine-scented air at the modest inn where she and Al had honeymooned-dirt-cheap air, furnished by nature and probably therefore a vulgar thing to desire.
But the old inn was the place where she had made her life's big deal-where she had traded virginity for a man who would see her through, who would never abandon her nor her then unborn children. She, too, in her way, had been a wheeler and dealer.
People and purposes....
Sue kept her eyes shut and melted against Al in hot embarrassment. Her honeymoon inn had suited her purposes-what kind of wife was she to deny Al whatever uses he had for this place?
His arms held her where they stood, with the world-though-glass awesome about them, the carpeting thick at their feet.
"All right now?" he asked her. "You sweet and sweaty little thing-let's christen this paradise properly. We'll shower later. First let's change into something more comfortable-like our skins."
He undid the familiar button at her waist by touch, his eyes never leaving hers, and pulled down the zipper below it. She let her last year's skirt fall to a pile of fabric at her feet. He left her, went to fool with the air conditioner and a mixture of nostalgia and new excitement flooded Sue.
She lifted her blouse over her shoulders, briefly to hide her face, drew the garment over her head, dropped it. She looked at Al, knew her brown eyes were melting. She was probably being silly.
The sigh of wind in the trees entered the room-the sound of their honeymoon days. And the afternoon sun was the same, although its heat was effectively sealed off by the air conditioner.
Al smiled at her, shrugged out of his coat, tossed it into a chair. He began to open his shirt buttons-and for the first time since she had parted from them Sue stopped missing her children.
She reached behind her to unhook her bra, turning away from Al until she could cope with whatever was happening to her. Many years' accumulation of small tensions seemed to be draining out of her body pores as she shed her clothes in this cool, sun-filled room that seemed oddly filled with memories yet to come. Was her mood simply the creation of modern electronics-or did it go deeper?
On their honeymoon, as now, she and Al had been a family of two. During the years between, like stepchildren in their own house, they had made love in a sort of shadow, their bedding and kissing always losing priority to the infant who cried in the night or the toddler who asked for breakfast in the morning.
The years, temporarily, seemed wiped out. She remembered the certainties and the unsurenesses of those honeymoon days. Her chief certainty then had been the knowledge that she would fight for Al, fight to keep him. and possess him for as long as she lived.
All other worries she had known had paled to insignificance before her brief moments of dread at the thought of losing Al.
Now, once more, she and Al would make love and nothing would interrupt them.
Have I fought for him hard enough? Will I have to fight to win Mm back in this new place ... this new world where he seems to have been before? When did he come here-when did he escape?
Her hands had mechanically completed her disrobing. Now she felt Al's touch and spun to face him. She saw his expression.
She uttered an involuntary sound compounded of joy and fear. Al, no romantic, remembered all the past, including the seven years of domestic chains. She read in his face that whatever happened between them now must include a passion harsher than pine scent, wind in sunlight or moonlight and virginity's breathless ending.
No woman could yield her virginity twice. The second honeymoon could not copy the first.
She had feared losing him-that she already had lost him. Now she was suddenly afraid that she might find him-find the man he really had been beneath the role of breadwinner and bedmate.
He drew her to him, lifted her, carried her to the bed alcove. Sue had a spinning glimpse of the vast and shiny world outside the picture window before the stranger who was her husband-who had kidnaped her from the security of her children, who threatened to divorce her from the safety of common financial worries-dropped with her to one of the twin beds.
Al's mouth closed over hers, seeking, probing, thrusting-evoking strange new responses to which Sue felt barely equal-but which she must learn to master.
For now there would be no interruptions. The bedside telephone purred with courteous, gentle insistence.
CHAPTER THREE
Al raised his mouth from Sue's. He swore softly, reached for the handset. The bright passion in his black eyes was muddied by anger.
"Yes," he barked into the mouthpiece.
He listened. His roiled eyes grew calm, took on that quiet, almost deadly purpose Sue had seen in them during the drive here and at the moment of their arrival.
"Mr. Belden?" he said. "Hello, Stu. Yes, we got here and everything is fine. Sue? Well, she's a little tired-we'll have to freshen up ... Sure, we'll join you at the pool and dinner will be fine...."
Sue listened, her tight little body still partially covered by Al's hard-muscled frame, her lips slightly parted from Al's kiss.
No interruptions....
That had been her last coherent thought scant moments ago. But interruptions seemed to have been built into Al's world, too.
He stopped speaking, replaced the receiver slowly, turned back to Sue.
"Belden wants to meet us at the pool as soon as we can make it. He's got somebody with him." Al was looking at her, speaking to her, but his eyes were far away.
"So have you," Sue reminded him. "Oh?"
Al grinned, kissed her. His arms tightened. The warmth came back. So did Sue's worry. He had left her briefly but utterly during the short interruption. Had he returned all the way? When a child's cry had sometimes taken her away from his side she had stayed away longer.
"I want you," she whispered.
His kiss was firm, purposive. His tongue probed. His hands found the familiar places. An unreasoning chill touched her. During their first honeymoon each of them had explored, learned. To her senses, now, Al seemed rangier, bonier, bigger, stronger-hungrier, less tender.
How have the years changed me?
Al gave no sign if he thought they had changed her at all. His body covered, possessed hers. Too quickly.
She gave a shocked little cry.
"Sorry." He smiled fondly at her. "We don't have much time-"
"It's all right-"
But was it? This, too, was something new. He had never rushed her before.
I've been the one who sometimes hasn't had time....
He had always been patient, waited until she had had time for him. They had sometimes lost a full night-two nights, even three-when one of the kids had been ill. What had he told her during their drive here?
Don't start anything for real, you understand? Don't you get pregnant on me, you busy little family-machine....
No-she would not get pregnant on this trip. But she suddenly felt the need of starting something for real-such as, perhaps, a vacation during which she would not be the interruption but the object of his plans.
She held him, contained him, found her body making the necessary adjustments to his invasion-which presently ceased to be an invasion, became a part of something new she was learning. Something she had not known, had not learned during that first honeymoon.
He performed swiftly, thoroughly, well. Sue knew a blinding sense of adventure. She felt riven, possessed-felt also as if she were making a stand at some last bastion.
While I was distracted with the kids-was this what you felt like, Al? Backed against a wall, driven, driving, desperate....
But he gave no sign of despairing now-or of blaming her for anything. At one point her eyes opened. She saw the window beyond him as a blur. The room whirled slightly to her senses. His onslaught held violence. A part of her thrilled to it-the rest of her was dazed, overwhelmed.
From Al's strangled breathing she knew he was being violent with himself as well. His body pounded hers without pause for tumultuous moments-minutes, years? Within the well of her womanhood she was wracked by darting helpless reaction, each ecstatic tremor more reckless than the last, until she thought she must die of her own reveling lust, break into pieces or go mad. With numb incredulity she realized that he had not yet finished with what she I could only regard as his statement of himself.
She whispered frantically, "Al, please-"
He said barely audibly, "Sure-funny. I thought I was rushing you-"
The imbalance between them was ended by his abrupt flooding and release. Flames licked Sue's loins, were quenched.
He left her. At first her limbs felt heavy as stone. The terrible and searching exercise had drained and exhausted her. She held on to him nevertheless.
He lay beside her, his breath loud and still oddly ravenous.
"Damn it, Sue-we're going to let Belden wait-"
Her strength returned. Reassured, she clung to him. This was the sunny meadow on the mountain-top, the goal of all desire, the body's blessing. This was repletion, fulfillment, with a bonus yet to come. This was Sue and Al-both covered by a singular verb-the way they had thought life would be when they had been kids in love, counting the days and nights until they could be alone behind their own door. This was the past recovered-their one-time future-not as it had been but as she long ago had willed it to be.
She nestled close to Al. She laughed softly.
"You nut," she whispered. "Were you trying to break some record? You could have had a heart attack."
"How do you know I won't some day?"
He asked the question tonelessly as a trends analyst might-but he grinned.
Don't do it, Al. We have time....
She did not say the words out loud but had a curious sense, during the moments that followed, of having her say in a dialogue that would last as long as their marriage. Al's body had finished asking the hard and unanswerable questions-or had she been asking them of herself? At any rate, the answers now lay between them, in the gentle touch of lips and hands on muscles they had tortured.
Let Belden wait....
Al's hands stroked and fondled. His mouth tasted.
He grinned. "Guess what? You're exactly the size and shape you were when I married you-just stronger-better. And I love you more-"
He dipped into her testingly, a lazy, mammoth hummingbird with all his motion contained in a ceaseless quivering in one pleasant place. Suddenly passion possessed her, as startling as if she had heard herself shout without volition.
She whispered, "Know me, please, Al. For once in our lives-stop asking and start giving me answers-"
She broke off to kiss his face, his shoulders, any part of him she could reach. She clutched, clawed, writhed. An instant before she had been trying to work things out between herself and Al in this newness-now she was as fiercely demanding as he had been a moment ago.
Her teeth nibbled at his flesh. Breath burned in her lungs. She almost lost him in her violent writhing-he recovered just in time, drove hard against her. She tensed against his thrust, her body arched and taut as a bow, her limbs grappling.
"Who's this?" he asked, half in shock, half in jest. "The little woman, the good little mother of four?"
She punished him for asking-an erotic, open-mouthed kiss and bite and a leap of her loins that once more all but dislodged him. Then he used his strength-and she realized she had not known and perhaps he had not, either, how strong he was.
For long moments she lost yesterday and tomorrow. She and Al were not people who had made the long and tedious trip to an unknown vacation spot. They were strangers to themselves, to one another, meeting in a sensual maelstrom that had nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with unquenchable desire. Pinned beneath Al, Sue felt drilled to her core.
Part of her would never be a little mother again.
Wild words and bars of alien music seemed to fill the room. The music was the electronic hum of the present recalling the past-the words were new, never before uttered and possibly without meaning save in this context.
The tide crested, ebbed. Sue found herself tired rather than spent. Al left her and came slowly to his feet, with no restlessness whatever.
He said, "That was it-whatever it was." He shook his head. "Are we fighting, Sue? Are we arguing because we're alone at last? Because if we are-it'll have to wait. Let's shower and get dressed for the pool."
* * *
Stu Belden said, "Here are the Ryans." He stood up, waved to Sue and Al, then turned to a man in a poolside deck chair flanking his. "Here's the guy who can give you figures, Fred, without giving you eyestrain. He'll read them to you off the top of his head."
Ethel Stone said from an air mattress at the pool's edge, "I know one figure in that combination Fred will like."
She lay on her side, propped on an elbow, her cheek resting against her palm. She wore a one-piece bathing suit that was more revealing than a bikini. Most of it consisted of pink, transparent webbing, with small patches of material covering her nipples and crotch.
Fred Stone said nothing. His dark eyes were like glazed mud, expressionless. They rested on Sue. At the moment his mind, too, was without color or expression-simply absorbing, registering.
The woman is pretty ... her husband looks hungry, as who isn't? Like to see them together with no one else watching-only way really to tell about people....
Something ponderous stirred inside him as his mind shifted gear, became more directly appraising. It registered Sue's age at about twenty-seven, Al's at past thirty. Ethel had been right-he was more interested in Sue. Couldn't help it-and Ethel, of course, should know him by now. Not as well as he knew himself-some parts of Fred Stone no one would ever know who did not live inside Fred Stone's mind-but well enough.
Still, you could never take a woman without her man. The two made a combination. There was enough of this fellow to make two of his wife. He was six-three, maybe, bone and sinew. Not too wide-shouldered but well enough made, lean-flanked and spare. Fred's attention shifted back to Sue and he began to get the combination.
She was small, compact and strong. She would have had to be to take this man. Fred knew a trace of regret. He was medium height, medium weight, pushing forty and he had never really made it with Ethel. They had had sex, all right, and some of it good in the early years-but some ingredient had always been lacking. They had no children. This woman was a mother.
Now Sue was before him and he stood up. Stu Bel-den was making introductions and Fred found himself shaking hands, first with Al, then with Sue. Al's grip was a man's and meant nothing. Sue's fingers felt warmly alive in Fred's, trusting at first, then fluttering slightly like a bird trying to escape.
Fred opened his fingers and the bird flew away. But not before Fred had felt its quick pulse, like a heartbeat.
He found Sue's eyes on him, wide, questioning, brown flecked with gold. He smiled.
He said, "We're delighted you could come, Mrs. Ryan. Your husband, of course, is indispensable here, Stu Belden tells me-but no man is complete without his wife. And Ethel will love you."
"Of course," Ethel said from her air mattress.
Sue's eyes dropped to Ethel and she smiled. Fred was relieved. Words pattered like rain around him. He paid no attention. He could now absorb the thrust of Sue's breasts into the soft clay of his thoughts, also the trim waist and hard flare of hips, the slightly spraddled stance of contoured legs. Her feet were planted firmly on the ground.
He liked the fact that Sue's one-piece suit covered more than the bare essentials. Ethel, since their trip to Paris last summer, had become a tourist attraction.
Fred raised his eyes from Sue, ran them up Al's lean length. Al had become a tourist-he was drinking in Ethel and looking surprised and appreciative. Perhaps, Fred thought, Al had never been in Paris.
Stu Belden was saying something about drinks. Fred automatically held out the tall glass he had absently gripped in his left hand throughout the introductions. The glass was empty except for leftover ice. Stu took it, raised it and his own glass high above his head, signaling.
A hotel attendant came. Fred's mind collected impressions. Nothing important was being said and it was unnecessary for him to pay attention. He heard Sue talking to Ethel but did not listen to the words they used. People seldom had anything to say to each other when they first met-beyond banalities, of course. Fencing with well-forged swords, thrusting and parrying with remembered phrases. Ethel's uncertain soprano contrasted with Sue's low tones.
Voices meant something. Ethel had studied voice-to what purpose, Fred would never know. She had no real use for it. Sue's voice was untrained, her own. Unsophisticated, real. She had her life, wanted no other, her voice told Fred.
But he had sensed as much when his fingers had briefly imprisoned hers. He still remembered the fluttering pulse in her touch, demanding freedom-remembered it not so much in his mind as in the warm tingle of his flesh where it had caged hers.
A smile shaped itself in the clay of Fred's mind without reaching either his lips or eyes. Sue had known brief panic, although she had not been aware of it. Most people had no idea of what went on in their minds at a subconscious level-consciously Sue had been aware of nothing more than perhaps an uneasy wonder. And his words to her in praise of her husband had allayed that.
They were the only words he had spoken. They had had a purpose beyond meaningless chatter. Fred seldom spoke without meaning.
The drinks came. Additional chairs arrived. Al and Sue arranged themselves, Fred noted, close to each other, although Sue also positioned herself so that she could talk to Ethel. Fred's inward smile formed again, once more leaving his face expressionless, his eyes dead. Ethel probably wanted to talk to Sue as much as she wanted a bad head cold. She would have little use for Sue.
Fred tasted his drink. He savored the sharp tang of gin over tonic. Let others have the whiskies and the vodkas. When a man drank gin he knew it and knew also when he had had enough.
He grew aware that everyone was more or less watching him and waiting, except perhaps Sue. Her eyes took in everybody, everything. Ethel's gaze was speculative, faintly mocking, and something in Fred responded. It was good to be understood-even by a wife. He was target for tonight-both he and Ethel knew it. Belden and Ryan pretended to be exchanging small talk but their sentences were short and their eyes waited. They were ready to be interrupted at any time.
Fred said, "Understand you're familiar with this area, Ryan."
"In a sense," Ryan answered. "We did a thorough economic and transportation analysis of the entire region."
"We?"
"My firm, the-"
"Forget the firm," Stu Belden said. "Al did the job-all of it, Fred. And he's not representing his firm now. He's here unofficially-actually on vacation."
"I see." Fred's muddy eyes never left Al Ryan. He preferred for the moment to ignore Stu Belden. He was, in effect, also ignoring Ryan, pursuing a line of his own. He said, "You're here to sell me something, Ryan. What?"
The question was a sharp and sudden probe.
Al Ryan looked a little taken aback and helpless. Fred's clay-like mind quivered with the impression. He had learned something. Ryan was not a big man for all his size. Stu Belden came to his rescue.
Belden laughed. "Back up, Fred. Al's no con man. He sells nothing but figures-and those only when he's working. We're not talking business-yet." Belden turned to Ryan. "Fred's a banker. He's always imagining somebody is trying to take other people's money away from him."
Fred said nothing. His muddy eyes, his clayey brain were soaking up impressions. Ryan seemed a little angry, as he had a perfect right to be. Fred's mind was testing what it had found. Belden, he thought, had beat a fine retreat.
This time no smile formed in Fred's mind, although one touched his lips. He seldom smiled inwardly when money was even remotely mentioned.
"Sorry, Ryan," he said at last. "Belden is the one I don't trust. These engineers are dreamers. They think that if you let them pave it and build on it-it'll be a better world. And they always want to do it with other people's money."
Stu Belden laughed again. Al Ryan managed a smile. Fred felt Sue Ryan's eyes on himself, wide and wondering.
Impressions.
Ethel Stone said abruptly, "Who's for a swim before we dress for dinner?"
She stood up. The sun was westering deeply. In its rays her body shone golden through the webbed suit and the touch of rust in her blond hair caught fire.
She pulled a pink bathing cap over it.
Al Ryan set his drink on the poolside tiles, stood up. His eyes were on Ethel. Sue Ryan also came to her feet. Her eyes were on Al. Stu Belden turned lazily in his deck chair to watch Ethel walk to the diving board.
She moved with the schooled grace of a model, although she had never been one except for some fund-raising charity that got her picture in the papers once a year. Ethel liked to be seen, to be admired, and Fred saw nothing either very wrong or very right about the fact.
Impressions.
She was pink and golden in the sunlight and looked a lot younger than her years. Al took a tentative step to follow her-and Sue made it to the edge of the pool in nothing flat, dove in cleanly. She vanished in a bright splash and the water closed over her in shining ripples.
Her disappearance froze the scene. Ethel paused in midstride to stare down into the pool. Al looked as if he had suddenly mislaid something, perhaps lost it. Stu Belden smiled approvingly.
Impressions. They quivered through Fred Stone. He, too, stood up and walked slowly to the pool's edge. He studied the quieting ripples, at last caught a visual impression of Sue. She was moving like a dark seal close to the bottom of the pool on the far side, her hands at her sides, propelling herself with her feet only, her body undulating slightly.
Action. Ethel completed her stride, moved swiftly toward the end of the board, her motion adjusted to its spring-but Al beat her into the water. He crashed in from beside the board, raced to join Sue underwater.
Fred raised his eyes to see his wife hang briefly suspended and golden against the sky, jackknife perfectly and enter the water like an arrow.
Stu Belden came to his side. "How about it, Fred? Last one in is a-"
He let the sentence hang.
Fred shook his head. He patted the glass in his hand almost caressingly.
"Thanks, Stu. This is wet enough for me."
He did not look at Stu Belden. His eyes were on Sue and Al Ryan, who had surfaced a good distance away and were laughing at each other. Ethel had come up from her perpendicular dive almost at the exact spot where she had entered the water. She, too, was staring at the Ryans.
Stu Belden slipped into the water and Fred's muddy eyes shifted thoughtfully to watch him swim slowly toward Ethel.
Stu's wife was planing in toward evening, he understood. Fred looked forward to seeing her. He had known her briefly last summer in Paris.
Impressions.
CHAPTER FOUR
The plane hung in the sky above the burning sun. It wavered, began to lower. It tilted one way, then another as the pilot made final adjustments to wind and course, then seemed to be making an almost vertical descent into the lake.
Stu Belden said, "Now there's a sight."
Nq one disputed him. Al Ryan watched the plane's interminable descent jealously. He had two short weeks to rechart his life, to make his big score-hours had passed and nothing seemed to be moving. Fred Stone had asked him nothing after that first big question at the pool about what Al had to sell him. Stu Belden seemed bent only, on fun and relaxation-he and Ethel Stone seemed to have a thing going, fed by small looks and gestures whenever Fred's attention wandered.
And Fred's attention wandered often-especially in Sue's direction. Al found Fred's muddy eyes hard to figure. They seemed effectively to conceal-like stagnant pond water-whatever life went on inside Fred. Still, Al had a sense of a lot going on inside Fred. What did the man want with Sue?
The plane touched water. Infinitesimal spray misted briefly around the pontoons, subsided instantly-a smooth landing. The prop revved up and now the water foamed as the pilot taxied swiftly to a pier.
Stu Belden stood up. "That's the show," he said and grinned. "You'll excuse me? Be right back."
He strode away. Al looked at the others at the table. No one had spoken. Fred's muddy eyes ignored them all, seemed fixed on the plane, now being secured to the pier. Ethel's eyes followed Stu dartingly as he made his way past mostly empty tables in the glass-walled dining room and out. His steps were hurried. He almost broke into a run as he reached the path to the pier.
Al focused his attention on Stu's destination. The vanishing sun shot streaks of silver from the plane's wings and fuselage as the pilot got out, swung to the pier. He reached up toward the cockpit. A woman emerged, leaned forward, seemed to fly the short distance to the pilot's arms and then to the pier. She landed with long-legged grace, skirt flaring, balanced herself fluidly, stood away from the pilot and turned to watch Stu's approach. The sun struck gold from her hair.
The distance from the hotel's main dining room to the pier was perhaps two hundred yards. Too far for accurate observation. But Stu Belden's wife was a blonde, tall, slender. She moved with a dancer's abrupt grace, her silhouette melting into Stu's when he reached her.
The silhouettes parted, became two prettily, gracefully against the sunset. Stu and his wife maintained contact like partners in a dance. They moved with an intimate knowledge of each other-obvious even across the distance and against the obscuring backlighting-toward the hotel. The pilot, forgotten, climbed back into his plane.
Some small sound drew Al's attention to Fred Stone. The banker sat motionless and transfixed, his muddy stare on the figures on the pier. Al wondered if the bright pinpoints of light glowing in Fred's eyes were merely reflections of the fading sun or some expression struggling through.
Al glanced at Ethel and was startled. No doubt about Ethel's expression-it was bilious with jealousy. He glanced at Sue, found her watching him. His eyes met hers and she smiled.
Some small weight rolled away from him-his tension relaxed. Sue's eyes were warm. She had a general notion of what was riding him and her eyes told him that she was with him. The difficulty between them when they had first arrived had largely vanished. Al dropped his hand under the table-Sue's fingers found his, twined, squeezed.
Fred Stone said abruptly, "Belden was right-that was a show." Al looked at him and Fred asked, "Ever meet Winifred-Belden's wife, Ryan?"
Ethel said, "We ran into her in Paris last year. Fred was quite taken. She was alone-I think."
Ethel's gray eyes slanted evilly at her husband. The look was lost. Fred did not glance at her.
"Business trip," he said. "Ethel doesn't understand. Winnie's in fashions. Didn't get to see much of her, actually."
A faint sound from the lake reached into the room. Al looked out again through the dining room's glass wall. The plane was taxiing away from the pier. It gathered speed as he watched, broke free from the spray, rose gently at first, then lifted abruptly into the sun. Stu and Winifred Belden entered the room at exactly that moment.
Subdued lighting filled the room as if at a signal, subtly brightening its dusk. And Al understood. The setting was both natural and staged-natural to this time and place and staged probably for Fred's benefit as well as for that of others who might be potential investors in what Sue had innocently called paradise. There were several in the dining room, scattered at various tables-men and women who were probably farther down on Stu's private sucker list than Fred. Not a single eye had missed Winifred Belden's airy arrival in the small sports plane-and the impact of her entry seemed suddenly to set the mood for this pleasure palace.
She laughed in surprise and turned to Stu, who grinned back at her. They came toward the table hand in hand and Al had a fleeting glimpse of perfection-an illusion he knew must vanish. But it remained quite real as he stood up, dimly aware that Fred, too, was rising to his feet.
Winifred Belden was nearly as tall as her husband and the abrupt grace Al had noted in her movements at the pier held on closer appraisal. Her walk, gestures and smiles seemed to consist of a series of stills flowing imperceptibly together, each motion, every shade of expression on her animated and lovely face infinitesimally poised and leading to the next. She was long-limbed and dressed with artless simplicity that somehow transcended fashion, emphasized movement and action. Her long blond hair was slightly windblown-casually correct in the context of her arrival.
Al found himself being introduced and gazing with some startlement into blue eyes that held vitality rather than depth. The eyes left him for Sue, rested delightedly on Ethel, rather amusedly on Fred, while brief acknowledgements were made of the trio's last summer's meeting in France. Al felt oddly uncouth and untraveled, saw that Sue was visibly impressed and delighted with Winifred Belden. He reserved judgment, was glad when everyone was seated and he could cease to be naively conspicuous.
Fred Stone said, "That was a nice bit of theatrics, Winnie."
"Wasn't it, though? Stu and I staged it entirely for you, Fred. He chose you as his prime pigeon on my recommendation. Are you going to buy the place-now that you see how lovely it is?"
Al saw Fred smile for the first time.
"I might-after I see how much that little stunt cost Stu. Or whose ever money he used-engineers never spend their own. But you made even Paris bearable-and I didn't buy it."
Winnie Belden seemed surprised. "You mean they didn't give it to you-after all that money you spent?"
Everyone laughed except Fred.
Stu Belden said, "You're a hard nut, Fred." He turned to gesture to a waiter hovering at a discreet distance. "Let's order another round of drinks and dinner. If Winnie and booze won't soften you, Fred, maybe the cuisine will."
Al doubted suddenly that Fred could be reached through any of the normal appetites. Those muddy eyes were once more expressionless, absorbing, this time trained on Winifred Belden.
* * *
Two hours later they seemed to have satiated themselves with Winnie Belden. Fred's unreadable attention seemed again centered on Sue. He had drunk, eaten, said little. His oddly indrawn gaze had revealed nothing of the man, at least to Al. Jokes and badinage had swirled around Fred, had been directed at him-his only reaction throughout had been an occasional wry comment, generally having something to do with business or money.
Al sensed that subtly he and Sue had drifted a little apart during dinner. She seemed oddly to reciprocate Fred Stone's interest in her, as if some silent understanding had sprung up between them. He felt more intrigued than jealous-or left out-Sue normally was drawn to stray dogs, cats, children or misfits. Which of these categories, Al wondered, could possibly apply to Fred Stone?
He found himself more than a little intrigued by Stu Belden's wife. His first impression of her as embodying some sort of perfection lingered. Hers was no classic beauty-she gave rather an impression of total symmetry, as if all her components, physical, mental, spiritual, were ideally designed for each other. Her features were well-defined-eyes set well apart over strong cheekbones, nose perfectly proportioned, rather informally uptilted above a ripe-lipped, generous mouth.
The rest of her was built along long lines-slender throat, high waist, long and rounded arms tapering to graceful hands. Her legs were long, too, hips and thighs strongly molded even under the casual, loose skirt she wore-calves well-muscled down to slimly tendoned ankles.
She drew him into talking about the area economic study he had made for Stu's engineering firm-Stu had evidently briefed her. He was not sure she understood the significance of the figures she made him quote but knew that it did not matter. The figures were for Fred's benefit, although Fred seemed barely to listen.
Al came to feel at last that money in sums he could scarcely comprehend-perhaps money that existed in terms of credit only-was the fulcrum of the evening. Stu and his wife were engaged in high-level selling. Fred kept his finger on the green pulse with an occasional and seemingly chance remark, often addressed to Sue, and after a while Al began to feel its throb.
He glanced around, saw other diners unobtrusively watching Stu's table. He grew aware of something else-no other tables in the room within earshot of this one were occupied. Perhaps Fred had a reason for keeping his face inscrutable, his attention on naive Sue. He gave away no secrets.
Al was not good at the kind of crosstalk the Stones and the Beldens-bandied-senseless gaiety punctuated by sudden meanings, hiding high tensions. He presently confined his contribution to answering questions and began to feel, somewhat resentfully, like one of the computers that one day might destroy him. With Sue obviously engrossed in catching and responding to Fred's every word and gesture and Winnie Belden solely interested in extracting from him marketable figures he had already turned over to Stu, Al began to miss human contact.
Not all the tensions at the table, he noted, had to do with money. He caught occasional venom in a word or gesture by Ethel Stone-directed at whom? Ethel's target was never obvious but Winifred Belden seemed the likeliest candidate if, as Al suspected, Ethel had a thing going with Stu. Although why any man married to a woman like Winifred would want to look to other pastures escaped Al.
Winnie seemed totally unaware of being under attack of any sort. She chatted gaily about her meetings with the Stones in France last summer-once dropped what seemed to Al a perfectly frank and friendly remark about a Frenchman idiotically named Je-Je who apparently had flirted with Ethel. The remark brought forth Fred's second smile of the evening, caused Ethel to blush and Stu to look at her quizzically.
The dusk outside had deepened to night. The dining room was now brightly lit and floods picked up highlights in the foliage outside. Subdued music came from the bar-dining area of the hotel, separated from the main dining room by glass and exotic indoor planting. Some couples were dancing beyond the glass.
Stu said abruptly, "Time to break this up. Who's for moonlight boating. I can take one passenger."
Ethel Stone said instantly, as if responding to a prearranged signal, "I'm your girl." She stood up, smiling at Stu. "Let me change into my sailor suit."
Stu rose also. "Make it warm and waterproof. We'll be making waves and the wind out there comes up cool a little later." He bent to kiss his wife quickly. "Win-don't let Fred off the hook. He's our fish."
Ethel had already left the table. Stu followed her out of the dining room.
Winifred Belden smiled brilliantly at Fred, turned to Al.
"Fred is a deep fighter-as you might have guessed from the line you and I have been feeding him all night. He hasn't surfaced once-he's no jumper or tailwalker. But he pulls hard enough to break most lines. Do you have a strategy to suggest?"
"I have." Fred's muddy eyes left Sue, touched briefly on Winnie, came to rest on Al. "You haven't said much, Ryan, except what these two con artists wanted you to say. Mind if I borrow your wife for a little while? I think she understands money-women usually do. Men understand dreams-at least some do."
Al began to bristle-then he saw Sue's hesitantly pleading look. Did she really want to be alone with this vacuum that was Fred?
Simultaneously he felt his fingers gripped by Winifred. She rose briskly to her feet, pulling at his hand.
"Come on, Al-we're being dismissed. I'll show you the pool, all the other marvels here-or any you might want to see. I doubt you've been taken around." She drew him up from his seat. He rose reluctantly. "Don't worry about Sue-Fred's quite harmless with women. All he has in his head is some kind of jello that grows money like a germ culture. He's useful rather than pretty."
Sue laughed, glanced from Winifred to Al, to Fred, whose face remained expressionless. Al realized for the first time it was not an unhandsome face if you let your attention wander from the muddy eyes. Its features were regular and its stillness held a curious strength.
Winnie's hand still gripped his.
"Let's go," she said. "I could stretch my legs after that cramped plane ride and sitting here all evening. And you don't look as if a little night air would kill you. Let's give our fish its head for a little while and see what happens."
"Go ahead, Al," Sue said.
She made up his mind. Also, he felt Winnie's grip tightening. The long slim fingers moved against his hard palm with subtle urgency. Whatever their message, Al felt a small warmth travel up his arm, found his hand instinctively returning their pressure.
He grinned suddenly at Winnie Belden, then at Sue and Fred, without quite knowing why. He felt neither courteous nor agreeable.
"Fine," he said. "See you two."
He left the table with Winnie. The eruptive breaking up of the group, the sudden switch in partners had taken place so swiftly, so smoothly that he felt a little lost. Not until he and Winnie Belden had reached the sliding glass doors leading out to the lighted walks among the meticulous plantings did he become aware of the effect on himself of Winnie's long sure stride that exactly matched his-or of the fact that the warmth from her grip had traveled beyond his arm and had put a tight little pounding into his chest.
He felt suddenly human-not a computer.
He glanced back once to see Fred's muddy stare and Sue's clear brown gaze absorbed in each other.
CHAPTER FIVE
The night wind carried the scents of pine, birch and plants he could not name. Another scent seemed closer to him, more constant and not subject to the vagaries of the night-Winnie's clean woman smell that was not quite perfume. He liked it.
A quarter moon hung overhead in a cloud-strewn sky. Few stars were visible. Winnie's long fingers continued to cling to his hand! and her shoulder and hip brushed his as she matched gradually slowing strides with him.
She stopped at a bend in the path beyond the hotel's lights, swung to face him. Her upturned face made a pale symmetry of loveliness below his.
"Well-what do you think?" she asked.
"About what?" His breath was tight.
She laughed softly.
"Me."
He waited before answering. He was not used to situations like this or to women like Winnie Belden. He did not fully understand the game being played-or why he was out here with her.
"Something I shouldn't," he said at last.
"Do you think I'm shameless? A kidnaper?"
"I don't know."
Her movement was almost imperceptible in the darkness but suddenly he felt her thighs pressing his, her breasts brushing his chest.
"And now?" she murmured.
"You're beautiful."
"Try to kiss me."
A warning clanged in his brain but he lowered his lips to hers, found a clinging, pulling softness that seemed to suck at the roots of his living. His hand lost hers and his arms encircled her. Her long body molded to his and her hands slid up his arms to his shoulders-briefly vised his face, pulling his mouth hard to hers while her lips parted. Then her mouth opened fully.
Al's tongue probed slowly. She made a strange, almost startled sound as it met hers-then she was kissing him greedily, her mouth meshing with his. Her arms tightened around his neck in a life-and-death grapple.
He became lost in the kiss, detached from Sue, the kids, the tensions that had brought him to this place-all things relevant. Some dim corner of his mind told him a reason existed for this instant out of context of all he had known.
The kiss ended. His voice came a little strangled, sounded like the voice of a stranger.
"What's the big bit?"
She was a little breathless, too. The startled undertone in her voice had more to do with the quality of their kiss than with her words.
"Desire lines," she murmured. "Didn't Stu tell you?"
His thoughts rocked back to familiar paths. His body did not quite follow them. His arms still cradled Winnie's long slenderness. She had come into them and into his kiss with the same dance-like grace he had witnessed when her silhouette had merged with Stu's on the pier-he had a dim sense of having somehow become part of that other tableau. His lips still tasted her perfume.
"Stu showed me some maps," he said. "They had to do with area development-where people wanted to go, what they wanted to do. Sometimes where they had to go-what they had to do. I supplied him with figures. He drew the lines."
"Pretty, weren't they?"
He remembered thinking so. Stu's final prospectus had been in color, showing rivers, hills, valleys, lakes in shadings of blue and green. People's desire lines had been drawn on it in deep red, had been of various thicknesses, depending on how many wanted to go where. One of the thickest had led past this hotel to a rapidly growing industrial area to the north. Al had last seen the map two years ago-before the road that had brought him and Sue here had been built, before the hotel had existed.
He said, "Yes, they were pretty."
His arms around Winnie's waist made a fulcrum on which Winnie's weight rested. The lower part of her body was levered tightly against him.
"And where do you want to go, Al?" she asked.
He nodded, feeling a stir in his loins in spite of his recent love with Sue.
"Straight to hell, maybe," he said.
"But you don't know." Her face was gently serious. Her hands rested on his shoulders. "Suppose I told you that you're already there."
He laughed. "In hell? When we came here-Sue called this place paradise."
"There's not much difference."
"I might learn to believe that. Right now I don't know."
He kissed her again, this time not because she asked him but because he wanted to. What was happening to him, to solid Al Ryan, four times a father and until now a faithful husband?
This time his probing kiss elicited no shock from Winnie-her mouth met his and mated with it in a kind of warm resignation. He felt they were both explorers of some unknown dimension-perhaps a kind of modern inferno. He did not yet agree with either Winnie or Sue. This place was neither heaven nor hell.
He was not a cheating husband and no woman had ever seriously tempted him since his marriage to Sue. Winifred Belden was doing so-why? But the question lay submerged in his awareness as he held the long kiss, fought to control its deep violence, tried to find its wild meaning. He knew his arms were crushing her, his hands roaming-and that when they reached her hips her loins tightened to his of their own volition. And he knew he wanted and would have this woman-but he knew this last remotely, as if his possession of her were impending, would happen at some other time.
Again-why?
The kiss was spent finally. Al raised his mouth from Winnie Belden's, stared down at her. The night made shadow pools of her eyes. She stood unmoving against him.
"And what do you think of me now?" Her voice was barely audible.
He shook his head.
"I still don't know."
"Aren't you a little hard to convince?"
"Depends on what you're trying to tell me."
"Isn't it clear? I'm Stu's wife. I'm obviously trying to seduce you. Doesn't that make me some kind of bum?"
"No. What's happened here is too real. The road, those desire lines, this hotel-and you. You weren't trying to do anything just now. You were doing it."
"Oh?" Surprise in the wide gaze now, in the loose shape of the parted lips. She pulled slightly away from him. "Are you some kind of wonder man?"
"No."
She eyed him for a silent moment, then drew free of his arms.
"Let's walk a little longer. I don't think we ought to go back just yet. Fred's thorough-not fast. He's pumping Sue about you. He'll want to know everything, even what you spend on socks and underwear." She made a wry face in the moonlight. "I don't know why he has to be disgusting-and why you don't."
She turned and her hand found his again. He fell into slow step beside her.
"Is Fred disgusting?"
She answered him with another question. "What do you pay for socks and underwear?"
"I don't know."
"That's what I mean." She stopped again and faced him. "Sue dresses you-right? She picks your socks, shirts, underwear and ties, even helps you select your suits. Am I correct?"
"You're doing fine-. What's all this supposed to mean?"
"It means Fred wants to know everything about you that Sue knows. It also means that probably all you've ever chosen in your life is Sue-you selected her to be your wife. Or did you? Maybe she picked you. Chose you to dummy you up in civilized clothing and send you to a humdrum job to earn a humdrum paycheck to support her and the children she wanted you to-breed out of her."
"Aren't you being a little rough?"
"Probably. I envy her."
"Why?"
"Because a little while ago I had to ask you to kiss me. But we're digressing. Are you going to like Sue's picture of you in Fred's mind? A dollars-and-cents image of the solid provider?"
He laughed. "Not too solid, I'm afraid. Reasonable fits better. It's been a fight all the way. But why should I mind?"
The hand clasping his swung in a noncommittal gesture. The long fingers interlaced intimately with his.
"No reason, I guess. It's a nice picture of a man for a woman to have-and give others. Are you planning to ask me to sleep with you?"
He was suddenly angry. This time his hand moved, pulled her close to him. His other arm curled around her waist, tightened.
"Planning to? No. Ask you? No. Intending to sleep with you? Yes."
His mouth crushed hers savagely. His anger fused with the sudden hunger he knew to run his own destiny now, at this moment, not at some later date when the Stu Beldens, the Fred Stones-yes, and the Sues-of his world let him. He was dimly aware that Winnie had neatly described his cage, his pigeonholed manhood. He knew a rage to break free, to destroy-if not Sue's image of him-at least Winifred Belden's.
His male reaction intensified. He recalled the last seconds of his lovemaking with Sue, hours ago in their room. He had sensed a quarrel between Sue and himself, expressed by their bodies but originating elsewhere.
He was continuing the same quarrel with another woman. He was learning about himself, seeing facets of the old Al Ryan that had eluded him earlier. Al Ryan-the frightened follower. A man who tilted-like a Don Quixote of the windmills-against inanimate computers. A man whose strength it was to originate and who, perhaps, had not even originated his marriage.
Yet in the shadows of the pathway, nothing was wholly untrue or true. Winnie wrenched her mouth free. Her throat and her smile were shimmers of faintest light.
She whispered, "This place is for play, Al. That's the whole point. You're wrong about anything here being real. But we can talk about that later."
"Why later? Are you trying to quit the game?"
"No-simply postpone it. This is no lover's lane-and we're not animals rutting-"
"Don't tell me what I am," he said. "Not again. And this place can be used in old-fashioned ways Stu never thought of. Not all desire lines are new. I see a spot right there we can use."
He staggered away from the path with her and into deeper shadow. Shrubbery in full foliage yielded to the pressure of their bodies, at last gave way completely.
He stumbled, fell to the ground with her.
He pressed Winnie beneath him. Once more he kissed her. She neither fought him nor tried to escape. He sensed she was suddenly waiting for some confirmation he had to give her. Her lips were quiet, not clinging. Her tongue made the barest gesture of acceptance, not response.
The kiss lasted-how long? Al's blood pounded, threatening thunder. He held it in check, felt his heart settle to a strong, even beat. The beat transferred to his loins, where a throbbing began to match it in slower tempo. His analyst's brain took over, computed the ratio of pulse and throb-about seven to one.
Somewhere deep within him he began to recognize himself again and knew quiet laughter, a kind of joy. Hullo, again, Al Ryan. This is how it was-a long time ago with Sue. Before the trap closed in. Before the kids, the house, the mortgage. Before the fears and the tensions. I was unfaithful long before this time-and so was Sue. I betrayed her with my work-she cheated me with the kids. Desire lines-they're for everyone but each of us travels alone....
Seven to one. Steady, dependable Al Ryan, who turned dreams into numbers-made even love measurable. This was the image he had to project in this place, beginning with Winifred Belden. Not the picture of a breadwinner, a slave.
Seven to one-feel it, Winnie. This is the truth of Al Ryan, no waltzer in three-quarter time but a believer in figures, in statistics-facts, if not truths. This is our tempo, the uneven and unpredictable rhythm of reality-seven to one....
She felt it. Her arms had been loose around his neck. They moved. Her hands slid to the back of his head, pressing. Her lips came alive. Her tongue tasted, examined his, leaped. Her arms tightened.
She whispered his name.
He said, "I'm not playing, Winnie."
"Neither am I." A shudder in her voice but her body did not tremble. The arms holding him did not waver. "I was going to take us to a cabin."
"Do you want to go?"
She shook her head. "No. If we put this off now-it may never happen. It never did before. Did you guess that I've never loved-or even kissed as we just did-any man but Stu?"
His hand had stroked her waist,' slid over the smooth swell of a hip. It raised the hem of her dress, caressed the inside of her lower thigh. He had tried to guess nothing about her-guessing was no part of him.
"Does it matter what happened-or didn't-before?"
The ghost of a smile eased the moon-white tension in her face.
"Doesn't it-statistically, Al?" Her clasp tightened once more. "You don't have to tell me about you. I know. We're both first-timers in adultery, aren't we?"
"Yes," he said and kissed her again.
Not only her mouth, this time. His lips explored her face, the soft flesh around the mouth, the firm cheeks, the nose, the eyes, the wide forehead. The oral contact gave him a new dimension of her beauty, tied in with the firm feel of the long thigh his hand stroked. Later he would want to know her breasts-now-only the essentials counted.
The rest came quickly. He bared her, then himself. She wore no body-shaping armor under her dress, needed none. He found her with ease and their joining was at once fast and deliberate.
He was sheathed in silk that first resisted, then clung. Nerve touched nerve and flame coursed in his veins without ever quite touching his brain where the rhythm persisted.
Seven to one....
Where had the tempo come from? He was able to think. He had simply measured it, counted it out in his calculator brain, measuring passion in terms of heartbeats. He was never unaware of her through the rising demand of his body-she was unlike Sue.
In this moment he was unlike the image of himself she had described.
Winnie's legs were long and active-Sue's were rather short. Winnie's movements against him were subtle, those of a woman who received fully-and on her own wavelength. Sue tried to please.
He beat himself against her and into her in short total thrusts. He was a lost ship smashing itself against a miraculous mid-ocean pier. He was an orphan of space who had suddenly found an orbit.
Hot jets fired and the orbit expanded, exploded. Jets flamed again and he plunged earthward, feeling re-entry heat.
* * *
He rose, helped her to her feet. He arranged his clothing.
"Should I say I'm sorry? Because I'm not. I'm damned glad."
She leaned against him, making shadowy gestures at righting her hair and her dress. She spoke with some difficulty.
"You surprised me."
"But not altogether," he suggested.
She lifted her face. "No-not altogether." She gave him her shimmering smile again. "You're not impulsive-but you are abrupt. What are you like in a bedroom, Al Ryan, under a roof with four walls around you? Or is that Sue's business?"
"It's my business," he said.
A sudden painful thought made his hand tighten on hers-was he through with Sue? And the kids? Had he really been through with both when he had insisted on leaving the kids home this trip-and were Sue and Winnie both right? Was this paradise hell?
"Let's find out," Winnie whispered, "how much you know about your business. Come with me."
The path, as all paths here seemed to do, led to the edge of water. Al recognized the meandering canal that led inland from the pool. The hotel's main building, situated as it was on land that bisected an inlet, seemed from this point to be a ship awash in some eerie and moonlit sea. The surrounding gardens could have been a vast deckside feature rather than solid land. All the illusion required was for the ship to take off into some other dimension.
Winnie came close to supplying that dimension when she indicated the small electric boat moored to a platform.
"Help me down."
He helped Winnie Belden into the deep clean cradle of the boat. She laughed in the summer night, a sound that came out of youth-his own and hers? Or all the youth that ever had been and all the summers faded and yet to come? He remembered her assertion scant moments ago that she was as new to adultery as he. Had she, too, somehow slipped back in time-as had he-to some premarital self or ego?
His answering laugh was earnest to the point of heartache. He started the motor easily.
He asked, "Which way?"
"Away from the hotel. Turn right, Al. Follow the left shoreline."
He peered ahead. The boatlight cast an adequate beam for the moderate and silent speed. The waterway narrowed, flared out, branched on occasion. Now and then a faint light from a cabin winked through foliage.
"Stu told me about this setup," he said. "The canal winds into the lake in the next inlet. Some cabins are accessible only by boat-privacy insured. Or almost insured. Will he guess where we are tonight?"
"Will it matter," she asked, "a hundred years from now?"
"It might matter tomorrow."
"Wait till you see where we're going. Tomorrow will seem a hundred years away."
"Okay."
Al watched the shoreline, steered the boat. Now and then he would turn his head to look at Winnie's blond beauty-then once more look ahead at the water in his headlight.
His arms, legs, brain, vision and hearing rejoiced somberly in this dark hour of release from tensions. His maleness rejoiced most of all-the part of him that had created new life.
Hurt, he knew, followed creation. You made kids like the god of thunderbolts and the rest of your life you were enslaved by worry about what the kids would eat.
"What's the cost?" he murmured. "That's one thing Stu didn't tell me."
"Not much. Maybe a part of yourself. You might be lucky. It might turn out to be some part you've always meant to get rid of."
Maybe fear....
He laughed aloud.
CHAPTER SIX
Ethel Stone said soberly, "I don't care what anyone else thinks-I claim it's kinder to cheat on a husband than to hate him. Don't you agree?"
Stu Belden lifted his face from where it had been, startled that he still could be startled by her matter-of-factness. A part of this amazing woman's mind was proof against all interruption. He supposed that "mind" was the right term.
"I agree fully, baby," he said. "But who could hate Fred? He's a prince."
They lounged on the foredeck of his cruiser, shielded from spray by a tarpaulin canopy. Soft pads supported their weight. He had anchored some thirty minutes ago outside the bay. The water was now even calmer than it had been at sunset for Winnie's arrival. The air was still warm. He hoped Winnie would understand his desertion of her-they had worked it out beforehand but with a woman you were never sure. And Winnie was all woman.
The stars above were a disciplined myriad of trained candle-bearers. He and Ethel were pleasantly naked. He had been enjoying the state lazily, waiting for appreciation to turn to ardor in both of them. The night's chill had not yet begun.
A civilized woman like Ethel Stone was never really undressed. She had spent more on her nakedness, he surmised, than any three average women would spend together on a year's wardrobe. His face had been cushioned against the luxury of her belly-just enough spring to you, he had told her in intimate jest He could enjoy, from that position, all she had lavished on herself in the way of creams, massage, exercise classes.
And don't forget healthy thinking, Stu. A woman can be as beautiful as the Mona Lisa and if she thinks ugly, she will be ugly....
He had met her only a few days ago when Fred had responded to his adroit wire-pulling and had come to investigate the hotel's potential. Winnie's running into the Stones in Europe last summer had been providential-Fred was stealthily moving up in the world of syndicate financing and seemed ready to sink his fangs into something big. Fred was also, Winnie had told Stu, a man with a problem.
The name of the problem might have been man-hungry Ethel-whom Stu had seduced with ease and almost as a matter of business-but it was not. Winnie had told Stu what Fred's problem was, so that Stu had been able to use the right bait to bring him here.
"You wouldn't think he was such a prince, that Fred of mine," Ethel now said partly to him and partly to the stars, "if you knew how he carried on last year in Paris."
"Maybe I know," Stu said. "A tribute to my wife. She turned him down."
The overt evocation of Winifred's image made him uneasy. But here it seemed politic-Ethel had shown signs of jealousy. Stu Belden loved and admired his wife, he often affirmed both to himself and to Winifred. But there were times and places where a man's wife did not enter. This should have been one of them.
He kissed the inner curve of Ethel's flawless thigh, meaning the passionate gesture as a courtesy. The manners of adultery, he had found, were parallel to those of the living or dining room, although more expressive. Instead of rising until a lady was seated-you bestowed inflammatory kisses. Instead of your arm, you offered your lust. If you liked and understood women, as Stu Belden did, the invariable result was good will and a chance of profit.
Ethel shivered and stirred. Her rippling body had a magnificence that Fred Stone had paid for and that another man could enjoy.
"The trouble is," she went on, as though Stu were also a hireling of Fred's, now in use as a listener as well as a lover, "I sometimes hate him, anyway. And hate is bad for a person. Did you know it can affect posture as well as digestion? Tell me, darling-do I seem in any way a vengeful person?"
"Not in the least," he murmured. He was beginning to enjoy the challenge of her. Beneath the layer of small-town upper-crust mediocrity, insecurity and discontent, she had her individual drive to be something specific and admirable. He had not yet learned what that something was and doubted she knew. When he discovered her secret-could he tap it? The adventure might then be worthwhile for its own sake. And if he unmasked this woman to herself, what then?
If he could channel the resultant explosion into sex, someone would have a ball. That someone might as well be Stu Belden.
Suddenly she laughed. She sat up so that his head rested on her thighs and, looking up, he saw the subtle line of the undercurve of her breasts. With less gymnastics, he guessed, the curve would have been a disappointment. "Of course I'm not vengeful," she decided aloud.
"I'm too good-natured for revenge. But I hate Fred's making me feel shut out. Whatever it is that's really on his mind-and I think I know-I'm not there any more. Kiss me, Stu. Or do you want to shut me out, too?"
"I've been kissing you, Ethel, baby. Like so-" his lips touched lazily at her knee and moved upward-"and like so."
She gasped as the second kiss brought her back to their solitude from the crowd and clutter of trivial memories. Her shoulders arched, her chin rose against the stars and her belly curved outward. He sensed the rising heat of her loins. A night haze seemed to surround her as shimmering lines surrounded warm objects at noon.
"We've been talking too much," he murmured. "The ones who're getting cheated are you and I. Let's enjoy us."
His indolent mood quickened into urgency, fired by the sweet taste of her flesh in the starlight. For some reason not clear to him, he found it necessary to think, What if we're caught? The words were a concession to bad luck, a finger-crossing, wood-knocking gesture that he had to make. Once they were privately said, he felt he could do no wrong, make no mistake.
His hard palms flattened against her breasts. He pushed her down with her back to the pad, straddled her hips with his knees.
"I'm going to love you," he promised. "Not forever-except that while it lasts, it will seem like forever. You'll never forget me, baby, the longest day you live."
She tried to reach for him. He lowered himself with deliberate and agonizing slowness, so that their bellies came in contact with a pressure whose increase was protracted past all bearing.
She cursed wantingly. "Stu, damn you-I need you-I'm breaking apart with need-can't you see? Please. What are you made of?"
"Of stresses and strains and iron," he answered softly, "like most engineers. Wait-you'll be glad you waited-"
His own brain was blazing now with desire, so simple and basic that the woman's identity no longer concerned him. And yet he knew he must put her off until the last possible moment. He must leave her with a memory of need stark enough to terrify her with the possibility of its recurrence. His plans required that he become an addiction with her.
He wanted Fred Stone's wife-but more than he wanted Ethel or any other woman, he wanted to keep the knowledge of his own invincibihty. And for that she would have to be hooked like a junkie, desperate in her craving for doses of Stu Belden.
Her face lost all memory of its careful lessons in charm. Physical strain and naked emotion etched lines around her wildly moving mouth. He continued to lower himself at a maddeningly gradual pace, while she tried to bounce against him and to be invaded by him.
Tears shone on her face. He could feel the throb and pulse of her empty well of womanhood even before he immersed himself. His self-discipline, a brief excruciating agony, was bringing him a pleasure he could never share, no matter who his partner.
He was a king and she was his whole land and people, body and soul subject to his will. She was life made pliant and workable as material-an engineer's last triumph.
With a soft short cry of gracious beneficence, he entered her at last. Instantly the tenderest part of him was clamped between vibrating walls that made and broke, made and broke, with the speed and energy of a perfectly, minutely detailed machine.
He still tried to ration her delight, to make her wait past all endurance for comfort in her rapture. His own staying power was spent. The machine, that immortal thing which must have started all of them, programming their ancestors to continue lusting and riving generation after generation, had Stu in its power now.
All his strength, all his memories and hopes, were gathered and tunneled into a single propulsive tool.
He stabbed and served her at once, hearing the wail of the past and the future escape from star to star. The wail was in her throat, his, no one's-the wail was behind the master switch of the unending machine.
They assaulted each other's bodies, as though each were trying to consume the other. He heard through the vast wailing that a finite mortal woman was gasping feeble words.
"... love you ... love you...."
The machine in any language had told her what to say. Except for the machine, no one would know of love.
Ethel startled him once more with a great convulsive inner heaving that dwarfed all preceding. He yelled her name and poured his treasure into her being. Immediately afterward he collapsed on the sweating, throbbing cushion that was Ethel Stone.
The stars quieted above them, the deck beneath once more was patently rolling gently as the cruiser rode at anchor. Ethel spoke softly.
"Don't go away, Stu. Fill me forever."
He remembered his plan for her and rolled aside.
She sighed, a minor note of grief, and continued to lie on her back. She was bare and patient to the stars.
"What just happened," she said slowly, "was better than yesterday-better than any yesterday I ever had, I guess. Why, Stu? What changed? You-me-both of us?"
He sat hunkered beside her, clasping his knees, waiting for the next ruling from his guardian machine. The machine, so mysterious that he could not even name it, was served by all his striving and self-interest. The machine would not let him down.
"Nothing changed," he said. "We're just closer, that's all."
"Closer to what?"
He laughed. "That map I gave you. Remember what it showed?"
She turned her face toward him. Her body in the darkness was resuming its mannered and graceful lines.
"Desire," she said. "Desire lines of travel?"
"Desire lines of travel," he confirmed. "We've traveled a little closer to what we want and need." She sighed.
"To think I went to Paris. And you were here all the time."
His machine was in charge, all right.
"That's right," he agreed. "Here. That's the ticket. This place. I've felt from the start that this place had all the answers anyone could need."
Ethel smiled.
"And now the pitch-fast ball or curve? Stu, aren't you wasting talent on me? Fred's the one you have to sell."
"All right," he said. "Woman, you're a brute. A peasant. You love like a primitive force. And resist a sales pitch the same way."
"Is that bad?"
Her anxiety was merely tentative.
"Bad?" Stu grinned. The big thing was to keep Ethel's "mind" in perspective-as much as possible on business. He could relax control, having reminded her of why she was here. "Are you nuts? You're great. The greatest. I'm jealous of Fred."
"Jealous of Fred? When you have that beautiful wife?"
"Winnie and I travel separate roads-she has her career and I have mine. Now, you and Fred-"
"I have no career at all," Ethel interrupted him. "Unless being myself is a career. A marriage like yours must be glamorous. Is Winnie very big in her work?"
Stu said, "She has the body and a taste for clothes." For some reason it occasionally became imperative for him to tear down Winnie-to bring her down to size. "Is she big? In some ways she's a big phony. Most women don't look nearly as good as she does in the clothes she designs-or helps to design."
"I made myself over in Paris last summer," Ethel said thoughtfully, "to fit a wardrobe she picked out for me. Special exercises-new hair style-I even practiced new posture and movement. I've gathered you like the result." She sat up, hugging herself. "I'm cold, Stu. Also, I'm sort of lonesome. You look cold and lonesome too, sitting there in the wind without a stitch-"
He silenced her with a gesture.
"Don't change the subject just yet. You said I liked the effect Winnie had had on you. And you're right. What makes you think I wouldn't have liked the original Ethel better?"
She laughed again. She picked up the nearest movable object, which happened to be his cigarette lighter, and tossed it playfully at him. The lighter skidded across the deck. He listened in alarm for the sound of a splash-heard it. The lighter, a gift from Winnie, had not been cheap. Perhaps, if his plans worked out, he could buy a replacement.
"You're funny," Ethel said. "That was the original Ethel who just lost you your lighter. Clumsy, silly Ethel, who thought throwing things at a man was cute. Stu-why do you want Fred to invest in this hotel?"
He held his breath. How much could he tell her? In some ways he had had her figured for a fool. But she was not all kinds of fool. In certain aspects she was probably quite bright-she would have to be to have held on to Fred.
"Maybe I want to do Fred a favor."
She shook her head.
"You don't do favors for people, Stu. Particularly men whose wives you sleep with. There has to be a money angle."
He laughed.
"Isn't there always?" he asked. "Some day I'll tell you about it. Right now let's get back to discussing you." He leaned over her in the starlight. "You said a moment ago you were cold and lonely."
"And you didn't want to discuss it," she said as he lowered himself down to her. "Are you jealous of Winnie's success?" Briefly his weight drove the breath from her. Her next words came murmurously. "I don't really know how much she changed me last summer, Stu. I always wanted to be glamorous. Exactly as I always wanted to be unfaithful to Fred-even before you came along."
He covered her softness silently, more acutely aware than ever of her appealing contours-subtler than Winnie's long-limbed, almost arrogant perfections. Ethel's breasts made soft cushions for his chest-her loins welcomed him receptively, non-aggressively. Yet her ecstasy and convulsive hunger were real-once again he had the sense of being caught in some intricately functioning, painstakingly detailed engine fueled by passion.
Some deeper understanding of her reached him-or at least of the challenge she represented.
... being myself is a career....
Quotes out of context. They floated through his brain. Unless ... she had said.
Unless being myself is a career....
She had not been sure that being Ethel Stone was an acceptable goal in life-yet that was all she was. Not Ethel Stone, the actress, the singer, the writer, artist or musician. Not even Ethel Stone, the banker's wife-little about her now suggested wifely respectability or even small-town upper-crust mediocrity. She was melted down to a puddle of passion. She was not even a tramp-one adulterous affair did not turn a self-centered woman into a bum.
She was simply Ethel Stone.
Next he grew aware of the practiced friction of her movements, the adroit clasp of her limbs, the planned warmth of her responses.
How long has she planned for this exercise in infidelity?
I made myself over last summer in Paris to fit a wardrobe....
He had a sudden feeling that at some point Ethel Stone had prepared herself for a lover-mentally and physically, storing her passions neatly on shelves of varying heights like so many jars of preserves-and that he had simply happened to be the man to fit her plans. The abrupt insight alarmed him-he had plans of his own for her-and he knew an urgent impulse to smash the neat jars, to break through to the raw Ethel, the unplanned woman-perhaps the girl who had originally married Fred.
He strove mightily, clasping her, his body hammering, beating at hers-and the jars opened cleanly to his probing, some sweet, some hot or deliciously, powerfully refreshing ... honey, peppers and fruit. He could not break them or reach what she had called the original Ethel-perhaps the original Ethel did not exist or had never existed.
Perhaps she had always been one of those women whose career was herself-the careful nurturing of whatever nature had bestowed upon her. With constant weeding, pruning and shaping even a mediocre garden could be made to flower brilliantly-and soon Stu no longer cared if he never reached the girl who had married Fred ... or if she wore the face of this later Ethel.
He fused all that he was with her-and perhaps, he thought at the instant of their final joining, he and she were really two of a kind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sue's glance wandered from time to time from the television screen to Fred Stone's face. She felt frightened-didn't she always? But Fred was such a peculiar man. She had sensed his strangeness the moment she had first shaken hands with him at the pool.
His hand had been soft as a woman's, clinging as a cobweb. Hers had felt trapped in it-all of her had felt trapped. She had known real alarm, briefly, instead of merely her usual fright.
He and she sat in comfortable upholstered chairs in one of the smaller lounges. Sue's teacup and Fred's gin highball were on the cocktail table between them.
"I've never seen closed-circuit television before," she said, not for the first time since the start of the show. "It's certainly interesting. But I kind of miss the commercials. I complain about them like everybody else but now I miss them. They give you a sense that the world is going on, no matter what happens, no matter how silly they are."
Fred nodded in what she took for sympathetic understanding. He was a hard man to read but she supposed that, since money was his business, he would be interested in TV commercials. She had not yet the faintest idea of what else might interest him.
He had turned the volume of the set so low some time ago that their conversation, such as it was, was undamaged and uninterrupted. His eyes remained on the screen with passive attention. The scene there would have shocked Sue in less luxurious surroundings. Some kind of foreign movie was being unwound from clinch to erotic clinch. But in this environment, Sue conceded, the clinches were probably fine art. Like naked statues by dead Greeks.
She said as much in reply to Fred's next question.
"Would you rather I turned the set off altogether?" he suggested courteously.
"Please don't. I see you're enjoying it." Was she going to be able to handle him? Her heart beat in a steady but fast drumming. Maybe she should not have taken him on, should not have sent Al off with that Winnie. But Fred had indicated earlier he wanted to know her better and anybody with half an eye could have seen all evening that he was important to Al and Stu-whatever Al was planning. She found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she knew Al better. She went on: "My own taste is middle-class, I guess, but I can go along if someone is intellectual."
She had decided that her best role with Fred would be that of a naive housewife. She was no actress and the part was closest to the truth. She had known a man or' so before she had met Al-none since. Fred, she sensed, would be hard to fool. And this place-and the drink or two she had had during dinner-were beginning to have their effect on her.
Three of the four walls of the lounge seemed to be made of color rather than substance. The effect, Sue realized, came from pane after pane of light reflected all through the hotel's first floor. When one transparent wall was juxtaposed to another-and another and another, with people and space and lights between-the result was a pleasant blur. Glass walls, once there were enough of them, seemed to afford as much privacy as wooden or plaster walls. Maybe more. A wooden wall could be pierced by imagination. But these walls of living color were made from the stuff of imagining. They lulled speculation. What went on beyond them was less important than their fantastic existence. She doubted that anyone who saw her here with-Fred realized just how alone with him she was-except she and Fred, of course.
The fourth side of the lounge afforded a view of water and stars. Boat lights played in the dark but the stars were constant. She took some courage from them.
"Do you think this place will ever make a nickel, Sue?" Fred asked abruptly and to her surprise. "You can understand my interest. Your husband's friend is asking me to invest fairly heavily."
Sue looked at the man's profile. His attention was still on the TV screen. "I'm amazed you'd ask an important opinion like that," she said, "of an uninformed person like me. Did I make it plain that I'm only a housewife? A woman with four children who are staying with my mother? I only hope she doesn't get a heart attack from them before we get back."
Fred turned his face from the high-class scandal on the screen long enough for her to receive his smile.
"You've made it plain." He paused and Sue's heart skipped a beat. Don't overplay it, she warned herself. "Sometimes a housewife's opinion is revealing. I'm married to a housewife-I've learned to ask her opinion."
The poor man, Sue thought with sudden insight. Ethel was out there with Stu Belden and all evening she had let anyone who cared know that Fred meant less than nothing to her. Fred's eyes abruptly reminded Sue of those of a bird she had had, a lonely and pining parakeet whose companion, after its mate died, had been a merciful mirror placed in the cage corner. Fred Stone's eyes were the same opaque shade as the parakeet's. She was sure the bird had not been deceived, that it had continued living only in gratitude for attempted kindness. The erotic farce of love on the TV screen-was that the mirror of Fred's dead marriage?
She said, "Al tells me this place has a wonderful future and I believe what he says. My husband is a brilliant man. You asked my opinion and that's it."
The words, which should have been fervent, came out compassionate because of what Sue remembered of her parakeet. The contrast between tone and content made for a curious quality of condescension, audible even to Sue. Fred's smile died and abruptly his eyes reminded Sue of nothing.
The nothing was more frightening than Sue's vision of death in them had been.
Fred said tonelessly, "I'll take your word for your husband's brilliance. You won't have to draw me a picture. More tea?"
"No, thanks." She looked at his glass, decided to let up on naivete. "You've barely touched your drink, Mr. Stone. I'll have one like yours when you're finished. I'm sorry if I sounded officious."
He touched the rim of his glass to his lips. She could have sworn he swallowed nothing, that all he did was touch.
"Call me Fred," he said. "This is vacation territory. Spoils things if people aren't on first-name basis." His voice was thrifty, somehow consuming no more breath than was necessary. "Have a drink now-I'm going to be a while with this." Fred's hand touched a button and a waitress appeared. Fred ordered the drink, turned back to Sue. "Are you having a good time?"
"Lovely," Sue said, tucking her legs under her because Fred's eyes had touched her knees briefly. She had changed from last year's skirt and blouse to a tight, short dress. "Everything is breathtaking. I never realized that places like this existed."
Fred uttered a skeletal chuckle-whether at Sue's comment or at some especially juicy fine point on the television screen, she could not tell.
"I take it you're not used to our happy nation's luxury resorts," he said. "I'll grant this one out-colossals the next most colossal I've seen. But the type is standard, isn't it? Service just short of miraculous. Comfort in immeasurable abundance. A sense of omnipotence. Name it, ask for it-you can have it."
Sue was not sure she understood what he was getting at. Nothing was quite as good as he had described. Of course, unless she was mistaken, his tone was pretty sarcastic. She had an actual physical pain at the thought that he might decide against whatever Al wanted from him.
Maybe she ought to let him look at her legs if he wanted. Her drink came and when the waiter had left she uncoiled them again, not trying to pull down her skirt. She knew she had something there-or she would not have four children.
She leaned forward, drink in hand, giving Fred a look at her upstairs, too. The dress was as brief and tight above as it was below.
"Please," she said. "What I said about Al was true. If he likes this place-and he does-it's good. He has taste and knows figures-"
"Did he buy you that dress?"
"Why, no." Sue was surprised. "I Sought it myself. Why?"
"Because it's good and has taste-whatever you paid for it," Fred said, "I doubt that you paid enough. You're probably a good shopper, Sue. So am I." His gaze was opaque on hers. "That's why I wanted to talk to you."
"Oh?"
"Yes," Fred said. "Tell me-how did you feel when you first saw this place?"
She remembered how she had felt and decided against lying, no matter what she did to Al's chances. Right now at least, she surmised, Fred would not be taken in by lies.
"Scared," she said candidly. "I was terrified of what staying here for two weeks would do to our savings."
Fred gave her one of his rare and fleeting smiles. The expression barely touched his lips and never reached his eyes.
"And now?" he asked.
"I'm still scared-"
She paused. What actually was she now afraid of? She and Al were spending virtually no money-had spent nothing since Al's fat tip to the bellhop on their arrival. She could hardly tell Fred that what worried her was Al's intention of investing their savings somewhere here-not when Al and Stu wanted Fred to invest in the hotel itself.
"Yes?" Fred prompted.
"I don't know exactly why I'm worried-except that I usually am. Al wants to put our savings to work somewhere around here, too-of course it's nothing like the money you're dealing with-and if he feels this area is growing you'd better believe he's right. He analyzes trends. If he says the whole world will be driving up here next summer-why, the world had better have its cars overhauled."
"Will you be here?" Fred asked her.
He stopped paying any attention whatever to the television set and concentrated on Sue. His eyes were harder to face, she found, than the parakeet's had been.
"Of course we'll be here," she affirmed. He kept staring.
She could not lower her eyes. She laughed uneasily.
"What are you trying to do?" she asked. "See into my brain? What I mean, of course, is that we'll be here if possible. Who knows about a year from now?"
"A trends analyst," he answered, "or a trends analyst's wife. Let me ask you again. Will you be here next summer?"
Sue took a sip of her drink.
She said carefully, "Al says you can predict what a crowd of people will do-any one person, never. He deals in statistics, not fortune-telling. He can tell you many people will come next year but he can't give you their names."
Fred Stone said, "Well put."
His smile this time almost reached his eyes, barely stopped at making them warm and alive. Evidently he counted emotional calories as well as breath.
Sue kept smiling after Fred's smile ended. Little by little, his eyes became a viewer's once more, although he was too interested or too polite to turn them back to the TV.
She felt herself turning into a shadow in this place of reflections and shadows, rather than the mother of Stevie and the wife of Al and the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Zigler of Detroit, Michigan. Under Fred Stone's bankerish stare, she dwindled to an account number, a blip, a signal-just as she felt herself weakening, she seemed to swell again into a composite. But the composite was not her familiar self. She was a dossier, an image.
Of what?
She gasped, "I asked you before. What are you looking at? You already saw my brain."
Fred Stone had the grace to look embarrassed. He reached for his drink hurriedly and spilled it. At once he seemed oddly helpless.
Sue looked about frantically and helpfully for paper napkins, saw none. Fred pressed a button.
Instead of a uniformed waitress, a pretty woman came in response to Fred's signal. Sue recognized Mrs. Price, the receptionist who had greeted the Ryans when they had first arrived at the hotel. She was differently dressed now. In place of the high-necked linen sheath, she wore what at first glance seemed a high-waisted skirt minus any blouse.
At second look, Sue saw that Mrs. Price's frock was transparent rather than nonexistent, at least above the empire sash. The sash was of crushed pink silk some five inches deep around Mrs. Price's lower rib cage. Below it, sensible folds of pink silk jersey reached to an inch above the knee.
Above the sash, except for seams fine as a frown-line, the dress was skin sheer, a tint rather than a fabric. Sue suspected that beneath the invisible bodice, Mrs. Price was wearing an invisible brassiere on her utterly correct breasts.
Their size, Sue guessed with the part of her mind not frozen by embarrassment, was 34-B. The breasts were pink-tinted by the overlying fabric, chiseled, pointed away from one another and as alike as if they had been made in a factory. In actual flesh-and-blood fact, a woman's two breasts were never identical to the last thousandth of a cubic centimeter, Al had told Sue, any more than anyone alive had a perfectly symmetrical face. Only a well-fitted undergarment could make someone's breasts a perfectly matching pair.
Mrs. Price said, "Mr. Belden left a message before he and Mrs. Stone went out with his boat, Mr. Stone. A new television set has been installed in your room."
She glanced at Sue, smiled professionally. "Hello, Mrs. Ryan. Has everything been satisfactory?"
"Oh, yes," Sue said. She pointed to the pool made on the coffee table by Fred's spilled drink. "We-Mr. Stone had an accident."
Mrs. Price's smile took on added vigor. Kneeling, she opened sliding doors that concealed a low cabinet in the window wall and brought out a length of toweling. She blotted the spilled drink adeptly, without disarraying her sculptured auburn hair or jiggling her pink breasts.
She stood erect, her helpfulness accomplished.
"May I bring you another?" she asked Fred Stone. "Gin and ginger, wasn't it?"
Her voice was pleasant, agreeably impersonal, just as it had been hours before. She wore her indecency with a decorum and dignity that made Sue feel ashamed for having noticed. She shot a glance at Fred, saw that he was noticing, too.
Fred Stone's dirt-brown eyes were shaded but Sue could not face the expression in them. She looked away. She heard him decline the offer of another drink with a proviso.
"Perhaps later. Kind of you. I'll ring again if I want one."
Sue did not watch Mrs. Price leave the room. She fixed her shocked gaze on the TV screen.
Perhaps because of the smutty elegance of the show-which she had tried not to be shocked by-perhaps because of her embarrassment at the copper-haired hostess' matching exposed breasts, perhaps most of all because her own clothes were long since paid for and out of style, Sue made an escape.
The escape was non-physical. She remained seated in her scarlet chair, ostensibly still sharing a conversation with important Fred Stone. But all her emotions, her real sense of awareness, fled to a secret sanctum, the scene that never ended at the Gray Mare Inn. All the rest of her life would in a sense be a digression and wandering-the place where she lived and that gave perspective to all other places was a bedroom in a cottage in the mountains, never revisited and never truly departed from.
She could flip a switch and return, any time the need was acute, leaving the shell of herself to carry on. She flipped the switch and was seven years younger.
The time was the beginning of the world, Sue Ryan's world. Sue Ryan, the new person, not merely the maiden daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Zigler. Not a maiden, not ever again.
Many of the clothes she owned were common to both times. On her honeymoon the clothes had been new.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sue was scared to death of the first night of their honeymoon. Not scared of sex-she and Al had had some heavy sessions that all but put them over the brink. What scared Sue was the thought of people knowing.
Al assured her that everything would be okay. She kept her fears to herself and tried to enjoy the drive. No use spoiling the day-and maybe the honeymoon, maybe the whole rest of their marriage-for him as well as herself. She had known enough from the start to be afraid of fear.
She and Al had been married in a morning ceremony, followed by a wedding breakfast at noon. As they drove through foothills in the late September afternoon, the golden sky muddied over with a threat of squalls. She began to taste the champagne again-she was not used to wine at midday, even a wedding day-and the germ of a sick headache started behind her eyes.
As any bride in her senses would do, Sue had rejected her mother's advice to have some aspirin handy at all times. What a way to start out married life.
I suppose, Mother, you would also recommend my taking along sardines and a can opener, just in case they don't feed us enough....
That's not a bad idea, dear. I could slip them in with your handkerchiefs and Al would never notice. Until you brought them out some night if he wanted a little snack....
Sue wished the headache would go away. She wished she and Al had made more inquiries before reserving the cabin. She also wished, as the motor stalled on Al's car, that they had put their wedding money into a new sedan instead of into the bank.
Good Lord, was nothing changed? Was this same old yesterday world the one that they were stuck with? After all the fuss and planning? Why, this was only another date, like their dates when she was Miss Zigler-except ten times less convenient and comfortable.
So far Al was cheerful. He got the motor started with a series of magic gestures involving ignition and clutch.
I knew the old girl wouldn't let me down. Now that you're my wife, I guess she's the only girl friend I have left....
The words made Sue's dull headache more acute. She uttered a laugh.
Al's cheer continued. As he had been doing for several months, he reviewed his prospects aloud, budgeted his next two raises.
I thought I would buy you a mink coat after they put me in Sully's office. Now I'm not sure. If you were willing to settle for another fur we could make a down payment on a new car....
They reached the Inn some hours later than they expected, both of them tired by now. A strange male person showed them to their cabin and informed them that the dining room was closed.
You shoulda eaten on the way. Our brochure says plainly the dining room closes at eight....
Sue's fears vanished fragmentarily. Their welcomer could not have cared less about hers and Al's sex life, she realized.
She wished her old fears back within the next ten minutes. Faced with the need of tipping their guide, Al made a face indicating that he was about to die.
Sue, instructed more by panic than reason, fumbled for change in her purse, tipped the man and closed the door on him.
You didn't give him enough, Sue. A quarter. Nobody tips in silver any more. Don't you have a dollar?
What about you? What is this? Just because we're married, is it dutch treat from now on?
My wallet-I don't have it. My traveler's checks. Everything. I wasn't even driving legally, come to think....
I'm going to faint....
She found herself still conscious after forty seconds.
What happened? Stolen?
No. Now I realize. Locked in. I had them in some other pants I was ready to put on after the wedding. I changed my mind. I put on these pants instead. I forgot to change the pockets. My suitcase keys. They're locked in the suitcase....
You're my husband....
Sue faced a truth.
Do something....
Who? Me?
You're my wife....
I wonder if we're ready for marriage....
Frightened and tired, trying to make a joke of their mishaps and not succeeding, they had washed up and gone hunting for supper. They had found an open hot dog stand ten miles away, had returned to the cabin in rain and darkness, their fingers crossed lest the old car fail them.
They had undressed and clambered into bed, homesick and exhausted. Before she fell asleep, Sue felt a tentative touch on her shoulder.
"Please leave me alone," she had requested.
"It's our wedding night. Remember?"
"How could I forget? Now let's both get some sleep."
She supposed he had been too tired and disappointed to argue the point.
She had opened her eyes to dazzling morning light. In daylight the cabin was beautiful-why, Sue did not know, unless the place took color from her mood.
A man was sleeping beside her. The man she had married. Until last night he had been a boy. Now he was a lean hawknosed man who had spent the hours of darkness in the bed of a virgin-Sue.
She sat up and looked at him, holding her breath in wonder. He slept on his side quietly, although he had teased her for weeks, threatening that he snored. At one point during the night, either half in sleep or while briefly awake, he had taken off his brand new pajamas. She guessed that his long habit would be to sleep bare.
She would learn his other habits in the days and nights to come, intimate facts that would be treasurable because they pertained to Al.
They would find new habits together.
She slipped her new thirty-dollar nightgown over her head, balled and tossed it to the floor.
She lowered her lips to his cheek. His eyelids fluttered.
"Al," she whispered, "we're alone. This day is all ours. This is the beginning."
He sighed, still between sleep and waking.
She moved down the covers and looked at him with love. Most of his body was familiar to her. Everyone at the lake had seen the part of him that was tanned.
Filled with love, she kissed the part of him that had been hidden.
How proud it is. Like a spear.
His belly was warm to her cheek. She heard the even course of blood and breath that made him a living thing, not a dream, not a statue. Life was a miracle. No one could ever be grateful enough, not if he or she lived a million years, for being entrusted with another person's life.
Sue?
The voice of the man was new. She would never again hear the voice of the boy she had known. The man was new and his first spoken word was her name in the morning sun.
He reached for her, his hands touching first her face and then her shoulders. He drew her upward along his lean body until their eyes could meet. She saw tears and knew they came from intensity and surprise, not from weakness.
Why did you kiss me that way?
I love you....
The answer was all the answers. No need for him to ask why she had put him off the night before. The answer would be the same.
I love you....
He smiled, tasted her lips. Their mouths were closed to each other. They seemed to know each others' pace-this morning's consummation must have the exactitude of a minuet, until a change in music-or was there music? Maybe the rhythm they shared was older than lute or drum, the music before all songs.
Wife-woman....
She breathed in sharply, knowing joy that was close to anguish in its depth. She was not conscious of exhalation or when it came.
You're naked....
He dipped his head to kiss her breasts, each in turn. The breasts, of a size and scale to fit her diminutive proportions, had seemed skimpy to the discontented virgin, Sue Zigler.
The same breasts, kissed by Sue Ryan's husband, were mysteriously beautiful.
The time had come for a parting of lips. They had tongue-kissed during courtship, frantically and resentfully reaching for one another between arguments about trifles.
They had never kissed with all of themselves. As he stabbed into her mouth, Sue's loins, released from their long chastity, yearned hastily toward her bed-mate's.
How could love be told? Love was water in the desert and life after dying, love was in light or darkness, without beginning or ending, always to be discovered behind an invisible screen.
No matter where we go, Al never leave this place. Any time you want me you can find me here....
He understood that the place she meant was on every map in the world and included any city, any town, the seas, and the underseas.
The music changed from a minuet and became a wild waltz. They flung themselves together, sweating and straining, still not joining, their lust and joy mounting by the second.
A lock of dark hair fell over Al's forehead. She reached hastily to brush it out of his eyes. He parted the gates of her virginity. The spear she had kissed became a mortal weapon.
She gasped and sagged in his embrace, weakened by the thrust, clinging to the memory of herself and him. His dark eyes brooded above her. She babbled, not knowing her own words. She trembled convulsively, possessed by that other life for which she had given thanks.
Time was altered from a fluid to a succession of little disks, each succeeding the other roughly. When the last disk had withdrawn itself from her senses, Al lay beside her, propped on an elbow, stroking her hair and whispering words more beautiful than all the music.
She waited until he had stopped.
Now we're married, Al. Now we're strong. We can do anything. Now we can open your suitcase and get your traveler's checks and license....
She eased out of bed, firming her feet against the tautness of a bright braided rug. Still nude and warm in the autumn sun, she went to his suitcase on the luggage bench. She tried the unyielding lock to satisfy herself before she wormed the eyebrow tweezers out of her own make-up case.
The tweezers alone proved unequal to the task at hand, but they held down tiny tumblers while she pried with a spraddled bobby pin.
"There," she said as the lock sprang.
Al leaned over the edge of the bed, belly down, gaping in admiration.
You're absolutely wonderful. There's no one else in the world like my Sue....
Don't forget you said it....
A wonderful morning. A morning that never need end.
They were told that the outdoor water temperature at this altitude would be uncomfortable for swimming but that the indoor pool was available.
The indoor pool was housed in a kind of glass shed that admitted some measure of daylight, although not enough to eliminate a need for artificial lighting. Sue was glad-she was enchanted with the two-foot-diameter yellow globe in the ceiling of the shed.
They must get lots of honeymooners here, Sue, who get a bang out of that artificial moon....
Don't call it artificial, Al....
She felt Al's adoring eyes on her. Small as she was, she felt like a sex symbol in her simple one-piece suit-at least, to her husband. Which was what counted.
That moon is real. The other one may be a fake. Not this....
She and Al plunged into the pool under their secretly real moon.
* * *
Over and over, in her role as Al Ryan's wife and the mother of his children, Sue had had to remember which moon was real. When the children were sick or merely impossible-when Al desperately changed jobs-when life closed in-she could always return to the cabin of The Gray Mare Inn, to remind herself that she was capable of all chores and demands.
In the lounge of the luxury hotel, talking to Fred Stone, she dipped into memory's private river and emerged free of shame-shame that her breasts were invisible under two-year-old cloth, shame ultimately of merely being human.
She returned to the present, ready for what came.
"Let's stroll a bit," Fred said. "You've been very helpful, Sue."
They walked for some minutes on the well-lit garden paths. Fred said he hoped to turn in early.
"Ethel is a night person," he explained. "Keeps wild hours on vacation. My hat's off to her, although I can't keep up."
"Yes," Sue agreed absently.
She remembered her role as a loyal wife. She told Fred that on her honeymoon, years ago, she and Al had stopped at a place where the pool had an artificial moon.
"I never thought I'd actually go back there," she concluded. "I mean, in the flesh-but do you know something? When we came here and Al found I was sentimental about The Gray Mare Inn, he was able to reproduce the sounds on the atmosphere conditioner. I think that's wonderful, don't you?"
Fred Stone said the conditioner was wonderful. He asked a polite question or two about the old Inn. Sue explained that the place was a small motel in the mountains, suitable for newly married kids on medium budgets.
"Like a hundred other places, I guess," she confessed. "Each person thinks his own memory is the best."
They said good night.
She went to her room, uneasy without Al and hoping he would hurry. She supposed it was important for him to talk to Belden's wife-as long as he remembered that he belonged to Sue.
She was a little disappointed that Fred had not followed up his fleeting interest in her legs-but Mrs. Price, of course, had shown him a great deal more.
CHAPTER NINE
The boat bumped gently against pilings supporting a low-slung, sway-backed dock. Al cut the motor.
"The cabin is set back a little," Winnie Belden said. "You'll know why in a moment. Don't be afraid of the dock-it's as solid as Stu's desire highway. Take my hand."
He roped the craft, reached for Winnie's hand. It occurred to him that, more than most women he had known, she liked holding hands. He had no objection. She was, he had decided, made for touching-all parts of her. He felt deeply enmeshed with her in a purely physical sense, as though he had been sucked into some peculiarly sweet quicksand.
The experience might ultimately destroy him but for the moment it was pleasurable.
Her fingers were firm and warm. If a handclasp could convey laughter her fingers were laughing at him.
"Follow the path," she said.
The path was barely distinguishable in the darkness, but, like the sway-backed dock, firm underfoot. Underbrush had been cleared here, he could tell, but the remaining growth retained a startling fidelity to nature. He sought bearings. The lighted shape of the main building was a small glow on the western horizon, nothing more. A pair of bright feral eyes shone briefly close by and disappeared. His hand tightened on Winnie's.
"Watch out for snakes," he said.
She turned her blond head to face and mock him. "Sure, big chief. I doubt there's a snake left within miles. Those eyes you saw may have been real but they were no snake's and I'm sure their owner is harmless. This ruggedness was planned. But I'll watch out if it makes you happy."
Planned or not, the place felt gloriously primitive to Al Ryan. Evergreens perfumed the darkness. He was sure that no frontier farmer had cleared this land and abandoned it later to weedy second growth. No forerunner of the trends analyst, Al Ryan, had predicted tonight's traffic through the trees. This place, too, owed its existence in part to Al Ryan's figures.
He was first--
The cabin appeared abruptly before him like a cutout in the night, a filled-in blackness among silhouettes of growth.
Winnie said, "Open the door, chief. Since this is your night for claiming."
How had she known the trend of his thoughts? Or was she referring to his near-violent taking of her earlier?
He moved past her and put his hand on a metal handle. The handle turned easily-the door opened inward. He felt for and found a light switch.
The cabin's interior brought a chuckle from him. The decorating theme seemed to be fur. A bearskin rug sprawled on a stained plank floor. He had to look twice to see a clean overlay of varnish on the wood. A small russet pelt had been mounted above the stone hearth.
Four hassock-type fur cushions of assorted shapes, large enough for sitting or reclining, were stationed near the fireplace. A pair of wooden, frontier-type chairs flanked a board table. Two low divans had been placed along the walls. The divans were finished in deerskin. The light fixtures were replicas of ancient lanterns and candles. "Great," Al said.
Winnie disengaged her hand from his, moved past him. She rested one knee on a hassock. She glanced at him through a strand of golden hair. The chandelier above her was wheel-shaped, studded with artificial candles. The dim light made her lovelier than ever.
She said, "I promised you a distant tomorrow. Tonight we can play it's two hundred years ago."
"People knew how to live then," Al said.
"That little door," Winnie said, pointing to an un-painted panel to the left of the fireplace, "leads to both modern plumbing and a small electric icebox. But you're right. They knew how to live. Or we wouldn't be here."
He closed the cabin door behind him with a sense of having escaped some all-devouring monster.
The time trap....
The woman who kneeled on the furry stool was wearing a simple sleeveless dress that only an hour before had been twentieth-century style. The dress became-before Al's bemused eyes-a squaw's up-and-down smock, a bridal garment made with a bone needle.
His being was flooded with proud lust. In spite of his better knowledge, part of him believed that he had won this woman, built this cabin, slain the beasts whose skins covered what he felt were his possessions. He even imagined a figurative justification in the fact that he had been part of the area development concept that had originated this place.
He gave his imagination free reign as if he were a child playing Indians and trappers, using adult faculties. He had eaten the flesh of the beasts and grown strong. He was brave. He was his own progenitor, having a second chance-not at living his own life, that dream of the world's failures-but at the life of his lineage. He could once more, in the roaring drunkenness of their germ cells, seize and fulfill the fleet and busty women his forefathers had trapped, detained and loved.
He was himself and his father's father and a thousand fathers before.
They had made mistakes he would not make.
Somewhere one of them had yielded this land to soft, sly, lettered people. One of them had used a pen like a knife to cut a cross-his legal mark-on the devil's own papers, not knowing what he signed or why until he was dispossessed.
Al would undo the mistake, one or more centuries in the past, that had cheated him of his birthright When he left this place, if he ever left, he would no longer be a furtive human ant, scurrying, laboring, fearing! He would be a man.
Somewhere in the past, a thief had stolen the fair-haired woman whom Al had taken in combat. A thief who had appealed to Al's decency-decency? What was decent about vacation luxury that made a sham of the centuries? He shut his mind to the fleeting doubt-from now on he would make his own rules, including those of morality.
He moved toward the woman, shedding clothing as he strode.
Winnie stood erect. She stared at him. Her blue eyes became dark, pools of confusion.
She said, "Look at you. Like a bull. Al, please-we're people still."
He stopped. The sham of the place reached him without destroying in any way the reality of the woman facing him. Or watering down his own basic urges. He still felt a primitive need to conquer and the underlying fear he sensed behind Winnie's confusion pleased some atavistic or childish streak in him. He knew no weakness but curiosity touched him.
"All right," he conceded with a grin. "We're human. I guess I was reacting statistically to environment."
Winnie's eyebrows arched.
"Superficial environment," she said. "I told you we could play at tonight's being two hundred years ago. But suppose we'd be closer to the truth if we decided this place was somewhere in the future-too far ahead for today's people, including you and me, to handle. Then what?"
He grinned. "Somebody would lose a lot of money."
"Is that all?"
"What else is there?"
"What about Sue?"
Where was Sue? Back at the hotel, being pumped by Fred. Back home with the kids mentally-more likely-worrying about the mortgage and the bills, laundry, clean sheets and dust in corners. He had left Sue long ago-longer ago than this evening.
He said, "Coming here was your idea. What's the matter now?"
"Nothing." She sank down to sit on the hassock, smiled at him. "As you were."
But she was no longer a captive maiden-nor was he a savage. Once more the thought crossed his mind that a reason existed for their being here-he felt the familiar time trap closing in. The blue eyes regarded him darkly as he dropped down to her, their confusion gone, replaced by a kind of questioning.
He kneeled on the floor beside her, slid an arm across her thighs and around her waist.
"If we're not here and now-" he said quietly-"if we're two hundred years in the past or somewhere in the future-we can make our own laws. Neither Sue nor Stu matters."
Her face was now slightly above his. Her features were neither solemn nor smiling. Her eyes still asked questions.
"Do you really believe what you're saying?"
"No," he said. "I believe we carry the present with us-into the future or into the past. We can't run away. This place is a lie."
"I was afraid of that."
He touched his face to her breasts. They were softly resilient, spaced well apart-different from Sue's. Suddenly it became important to him to learn the details of Winnie Belden-somewhere in her complexity lay the explanation for this night, for her interest in him, for her sudden surrender to a stranger. That first encounter in the shrubbery had told him nothing beyond the simple fact of that yielding-had it really been her first infidelity?
Sue's breasts were broad. Between Winnie's conical mounds he found a proud swell of chest. She shivered, drew a long breath. Long fingers touched the nape of his neck, delved into his hair. The supple waist stirred in the prison of his arm. The long thighs moved.
He moved his face between her breasts, felt the smooth fabric of her dress grow taut. Her other hand came to press his cheek and responses seemed to course through all of her. Her body sagged, then seemed to coil about him. Her breath fanned his hair.
He slid an arm under her thighs, rose to his feet, lifting her. She felt lighter than he would have thought-then he realized that her physical coordination made her easy to carry. She had an acrobatic dancer's ability to distribute her weight so that not all of it rested on his arms. Her lips sought and found his.
He said against them, "Is there a bedroom?"
She shook her head. Her mouth moved.
"Bunkroom. Same door as the kitchen."
He remembered the small unpainted door beside the fireplace. His mouth clamped on hers, he carried her to it. It yielded easily to his shoulder, swung shut behind him.
He stood in the darkness, kissing Winnie Belden. Excitement rose high in him. The room had an earthen smell-not unpleasant-that mingled with Winnie's scent, accented it strongly. He grew aware of a coolness that contrasted with her soft and living warmth.
His arms tightened and she made a sound in her throat. Her tongue licked his avidly.
He set her on her feet without breaking the kiss. She came against him at once, her mouth clinging. Again her loins crowded his and now he was aware of the twin pressure points of her breasts, spread widely. He remembered her hunger during their first kiss and now something in him responded in kind. His earlier want of her had been a sudden and angry lust-what he felt now ran deeper.
He broke the kiss long enough to murmur, "Let's find some lights."
She said nothing and did not move. He reached behind him, pulled open the door to the cabin's main room. Light spilled through the doorway, showed him a wall switch. He flipped it as the door swung shut again.
His reward was a dim glow near the floor on the far side of the room. It showed him a room that was partly a low-ceilinged, primitive kitchen, partly a lean-to. The kitchen held a wooden table and chairs, an iron stove and what looked like a food locker. A wide, low bunk in the lean-to was covered with furs. Small windows were set high in the two kitchen walls. The place had a shut-in feel.
Winnie stirred in his arms. She rested her head on his shoulder. Her eyes followed his.
"Last stand," she murmured. "Can't you just see it-the Indians and wild animals outside ... arrows streaking into the ceiling through those high windows or maybe a bear or a bobcat scratching the sod covering the lean-to roof while the lone trapper is trying to convince a captured squaw that he's the only man on earth for her?" She laughed shortly but when he looked down at her Al saw that her eyes were serious. "Al," she whispered, "don't get hurt,"
"Why not?" he asked her.
"A good question," she told him. She twisted to face him, forcing some distance between them. "People recover from hurt-all but the final one. But we could go back now-Fred's probably through with Sue. You could pick her up and go home."
He stared at her. "Not a chance."
Her eyes were still dark with questions. Some of them seemed aimed at herself, at some inner uncertainty.
"I didn't lie to you," she said, "when I told you, you were the first man after Stu. But you may not be the last. I found that bit in the bushes a little too easy."
"Then let's make what comes now more difficult."
Her hands were braced against his chest, holding him away.
"Al-this isn't for you. You're not big enough-or bad enough to tangle with Stu. There are no Indians here-or wild animals-but there is danger."
"Is that what you brought me here to tell me?"
She shook her head.
"Why did we come?" He drew her once more against him. She relaxed abruptly.
"All right," she murmured, smiling. "Let's play the game-trapper and squaw." She reached up her lips to kiss him lightly. "Just to play safe-bolt the door."
* * *
A whippoorwill mourned in the darkness outside the cabin. Al sat on the bunk, watching Winnie become naked in the dim light. She was gently contoured, yet ripe where it mattered-the wide-spaced breasts were firm and full, the loins generous. Her long legs gave her an almost coltish look but there was nothing coltish or awkward about the way she moved. Naked, she moved with the same poised symmetry he had noticed when he had first seen her drop from the plane into the arms of the pilot on the distant pier.
He had shed his jacket earlier in the cabin's front room. The bunk under him was soft and resilient-it concealed a spring mattress. The skins covering it were lined with thin, soft quilting. The iron bolt he had shot on the door connecting the bunkroom-kitchen combination with the front room had activated an electric, jimmy-proof lock that had startled him.
"Security," Winnie had told him with a smile. Short of someone's breaking down the walls, we're safe from interruption. This lean-to roof really is covered with sod-that's the earthen smell you get and the coolness. How does it feel to get back to raw nature, Al-like so?"
She had crossed to the old-fashioned iron stove, flipped a switch and electric coils had glowed. She had opened the food locker and shown him a modern fridge interior.
"You were right, Al-this place is a lie."
But somehow none of this mattered.
We carry the present with us-into the past or into the future....
His old nemesis, the time trap, had never affected Al as it did now. He was wholly imprisoned in this moment, sealed into it by a jimmy-proof lock and small, high windows that permitted no prying from outside and no escape from within. He was surrounded by the gadgetry of his time but the cool scent of the raw earth was in his senses and his flesh tingled to it and to the warm nearness of a perfect woman.
He stripped off the last of his clothing and she came to him.
He took her to the soft bed, covered them both with the quilted skins. He fondled the wide-spaced breasts, kissed them and kissed her mouth and face, glorying in the smooth-limbed warmth. She snuggled in close contentment. When he freed her mouth she kissed his throat, chest and shoulders.
He felt for her flat abdomen, caressed her with a touch as soft as rain. A ripple of reaction registered on his palm. His touch grew firmer.
When he entered her body she was ready for him and was like nothing he had known before. His first quick taking of her had given him no inkling of Winnie Belden-he had given her no chance to do more than submit. Now he read in her responses all the implications of their first hungry kiss-an intent abandon that reached at the roots of his being.
She evoked a heightened response in him, a reaching and striving to satisfy her-such as he had only occasionally known with Sue. Sue's sudden intrusion into his thoughts startled him-then fused with the heat of what he was doing. He had a fleeting, irrational sense of being with two women at once before all thought was blotted from his mind and his whole awareness narrowed to achieving two fulfillments-his own and this woman's. Whoever she is....
Dimly his senses told him the difference ... without telling him who Winnie Belden was or what she was,. Beyond being a cauldron of need, a cauldron he heated and stirred, into which he dipped and which might suck him into its boiling depths at his moment of final lust.
The boiling came. His being erupted, exploded, burned. He was bathed in blinding heat through which he heard two short, inarticulate sounds, one of which he might have made.
CHAPTER TEN
He found Sue asleep and was grateful. He felt numbly like a stranger intruding upon her-he was also utterly spent. His mind and body felt leaden. Movement and thought were an effort. He had a sensation of having returned from some immeasurable distance.
Sue had left on a baseboard light to welcome him. He studied the small, curled-up mound that was his legal wife under the covers of the wide bed. The mound was heartbreakingly familiar but the room was strange-his afternoon's sharing of that bed with Sue seemed to belong in another era, be part of some ancient history. He knew a pang of grief, as if a man named Al Ryan had died in that other day and the present Al Ryan were merely a ghost haunting the premises.
How far had he traveled-what eons had passed?
He glanced at his watch. The hour was nearly two in the morning. He had been gone at the most for four hours. And the cabin he had shared with Winnie Belden was probably no more than a half-mile away. Winnie's promise to him of a distant tomorrow came back to him with vaguely disturbing impact. Had they spent those hours in some uncharted moment involving travel through time?
His tired lips forced a stiff grin. Time travel was nonsense except in imagination. And he was too spent for imaginings. Nothing imaginary had happened at the cabin.
Sue stirred on the bed and Al's breath caught. The last thing he wanted was to wake her. He tried to visualize himself getting into bed with her and could not-and found himself unprepared for the sensation. The memory of Winnie Belden still clung to his flesh.
A shower. Where was the bathroom? He located the door, began to remove his clothes, thought better of it and took off only his shoes. He carried them with him soundlessly into the bathroom. It would be better if Sue did not know he had come back if she should wake before he was ready for her-if he ever would be again. In the bathroom he decided a shower would be too noisy, ran a hot tub and lowered himself into it.
He swore softly as the hot water laved him and brought back some of his spirit. He had hoped to get close to Stu Belden in a business way, buy into the boom that was sure to enrich all who were associated with Stu's desire lines and the road they had built. He was close to Belden now; all right. Bed-close. They had shared a woman. In Al's home town the fact would not make for lasting friendships between two men.
He took sour cheer from the fact that he was not at present in his home town. Trends, as who else knew better, also affected morals and customs. In the high thin air that the Beldens breathed, a wife probably was not considered a property. A woman was her own possession-what she did with her body was her business. In fact, Al considered, the night that soon would end might actually have done him some good. He had Winnie on his side.
What was the danger Winnie had mentioned? She had also told him he was neither big enough nor bad enough to cross Stu Belden. He had come here at Stu's invitation to do Stu a favor.
He had made a thorough study of the area. He knew its statistics from year-round temperatures to median incomes, principal occupations, spending habits and even average ages of the residents. He knew the rainfall, crop and tourist figures. He could guess at the area's potential-perhaps not in the big-money terms of a Fred Stone or a Stu Belden but for the more modest needs of Al Ryan. Al and Sue Ryan.
His brain paused. The door in his thoughts that led to Sue seemed to have jammed.
He put his mind back on the area possibilities. He supposed the abundance of water-the vastness of the lake-made for minimal climatic variation. Even winters here would be milder than elsewhere at this latitude. He considered a purchase of acreage with his savings, as opposed to setting up some local business service or buying outright into Stu's involvement with the hotel enterprise.
Maybe he could do both, take an option on land for a home site and invest as well. Real estate values here had not yet boomed. He could have a twelve-room house if he liked, with a separate bedroom for each kid and his own office downstairs with a separate entrance. He could continue his professional services as an analyst. Not on a slavish nine-to-five basis, as in the past, but in a consultant capacity, with frequent business trips to the earth's moneyed centers.
He could continue to see Winnie Belden-his senses ached suddenly for her slender loveliness in betrayal of his purpose of making himself ready for Sue-and atone by keeping Sue and the kids in wild luxury. He had an entree into the life of the elite-the Beldens and the Stones. That Ethel was a dish, too, though older than Winnie. Did Stu's devoted cultivation of her have anything to do with Winnie's actions with Al Ryan tonight?
His plunge into the realities of his marriage-and himself-had been too sudden for him as yet to have assessed them properly. He and Sue had for some time been drifting into separate orbits-she into the closed circle of kids and budget retrenchment, he into the explosive potentials of his work.
Explosive-the concept was new, born this night and it warmed him. Excitement stirred through his fatigue. A scant twelve hours earlier-when he and Sue had arrived here-he had still thought in terms of escape. But he should have been thinking in terms of explosions from the day he had first met Stu Belden. He had learned from Stu Belden that figures in painstaking combinations could level mountains.
Desire lines....
He thought of the long and level superhighway that had brought him here. Both public and private funds had been involved as well as countless and faceless people's wants and needs. He had supplied the figures for the last-and more-Stu and his big engineering firm had done the rest. Some of Stu's contracts, Al suspected, had been padded. Had the gravel for the roadbed really been brought in from three states away or had the distant contractor found a nearer source of supply? Al had toyed with the question and a number of others but it was not up to him to upset any apple carts. Stu had come out of the deal with cash to invest. He and some of his construction colleagues had put up this hotel-probably swinging the actual building of it at close to cost-and now they wanted to unload it at profit on someone like Fred, who had access to other people's money. Money knew no morality.
The last put his thoughts back on Winnie Belden and his own unexpected performance with her tonight. She had told him enough before they had parted to let him understand that-even more than he and Sue-Winnie and Stu Belden spun in separate space capsules. Stu liked a career wife. He had given her to understand as much before their marriage and so, mostly to please him, she had stayed with her work. She held down more than a job, really. She was something of a force in the fashion industry, without clock-punching hours and much occasion to cruise the world. She had Stu got together often enough-they even had a couple of kids in a boarding school-but she missed the feeling of staying home and putting down roots, of having the kids with her constantly. She envied Sue, she had told him. And her image of Al, the provider, the chosen of Sue, had not been derisive at all, it had turned out. He had exactly the qualities she missed in Stu.
Were the times ready for a scientific forecast on the future of legal polygamy? Al's flesh quickened at the thought of Winnie at the end of their last joining when he had answered her as he sometimes had answered Sue. For an instant his senses had actually confused the two women-but no real comparison was possible between Winnie's schooled physical perfections and Sue's merely practical charms. Al was in a mood to push multiple marriage-at least for men of proper qualifications and explosive potential.
He rose from the tub and once more fatigue assailed him. The warm water had buoyed him, supported his weight. But the thought stayed with him as he toweled-maybe he could lay the groundwork, do basic research for a report on people's actual sexual behavior, aside from convention. Some day his son, following in Al's footsteps, might make a name for himself, using Al's material. Something scientific might result-perhaps a Ryan Decade or a Ryan Revolution, based on trends.
Dreams. They were good for you.
He left the bathroom. His first thought when he entered the bedroom was that he had made some error. He was aware of muffled music, too faint for a melody to assert itself, that suggested jungle drums, chittering monkeys in treetops, dark dancing feet, a thunderous scarlet moonrise-he remembered the select-an-atmosphere air conditioner and made for it. Had Sue awakened and flipped a switch while he had been in the bathroom?
He arrested his movement across the room, stood still.
Sue sat up in bed and lifted her arms. "Al-you're back." She had stated the obvious. "Sure," Al said.
He stayed where he was, watching Sue. She wore a familiar face and a familiar nightgown-and the quick reaching of her arms toward him was also familiar. So was their sudden drop to the bedclothes when he failed to move.
"I was lonely and scared." She smiled. "I tried to tune in our first honeymoon sounds on that gizmo-" she pointed to the air conditioner-"and couldn't. Then I heard you in the bathroom and got back into bed. What time is it?"
"I'm not sure-maybe around two in the morning. Mind if I shut out the jungle?"
"Go ahead," she told him.
He dropped the clothes he had carried from the bathroom, switched the air conditioner to neutral, turned back to Sue.
"I'm sorry I'm late, honey. Winnie Belden was showing me around."
"I'll bet." Al shot her a sharp look but saw that she was not angry. "I spent the evening with Fred-Mr. Stone."
"You seemed to want to do just that," he could not help saying.
It occurred to him for the first time that Sue had virtually sent him off with Winnie.
She giggled. "You sound jealous. I'm the one who should be suspicious. That Winnie Belden's quite a woman."
Al said, "That's window-dressing, the kind of business-expense deductible front that anyone can put up."
But few women could, he knew, looking at Sue. No amount of window dressing would ever make a Winnie out of Sue. He felt ashamed and instantly thought no reason existed for Sue to look or be like Winnie-who had been in the arms of a man other than her husband tonight. The thought of Sue in a similar situation sickened him.
Sue was attractive in her own right, in her own way. He knew an abrupt longing to be with her as he had long ago. No ugliness-or even shortcomings-on Sue's part had forced him into Winnie Belden's arms tonight.
Sue said, "I tried to plug you with Fred Stone, Al. I told him that if you had confidence in this place-he couldn't go wrong investing in it."
"I bet he ate that up," Al said.
"No-as a matter-of-fact-he didn't," Sue said slowly. "He seemed a lot more interested in my dress and whether I was a good shopper. He decided I was. Then that Mrs. Price came in-wearing next to nothing-and he lost interest in me. What did you and Winnie Belden do?"
"She showed me some of the layout of this place-some of the private cabins and the canal leading from the pool. Sue-I'm kind of beat."
"I'll bet." Sue smiled. "Come to bed." He realized that the moment he had dreaded was at hand. He could no longer postpone it. Sue would expect to be kissed and caressed-she might even want sex. Could he touch her without thinking of Winnie?
He found and put on pajamas. He slipped into bed beside her. He made a ritual of kissing her good night. It was easier than he had expected. Her familiar feel, the warm touch of her lips erased the impression of lust Winnie had left with him. He felt gratitude, no sudden desire-but neither did he feel revulsion as he had feared. He grew aware of something he had never doubted-he loved Sue.
He tried to express his love and failed.
Sue murmured, "You're tired. I can tell. I'll fix that."
In the dim light from the baseboard, she became a visitant spirit, a benign, pert-breasted phantom in a gentle dream of love. She rose to her knees beside him, elfin-shaped in spite of the children she had borne, dipped her head as though to drink.
The spring at which she sipped was not one she often visited-still there had been times during their marriage when she had known with ageless wisdom that he needed a physical release which he lacked the strength to evoke. A man's wife knew his weakness as well as his strength-and because she was his wife, his weakness brought no shame. In some ways, Al thought, feeling her kitten-kisses at the spent lance of his manhood, marriage was swell.
He huskily acknowledged, "Sweetest girl in the world. My wonderful Sue."
Her answer was not in words but in the tempo of her efforts. He knew a deep-running guilt, mixed with something like fear of this love he had betrayed. Her slender arms clasped his flagging loins. Her hard little breasts rubbed against his thighs.
Amazed, he felt a reaction in himself-he reached for her hastily, pulled her lust-drugged lips to his.
In the half-torpor that possessed him, he knew that this hard-won pre-dawn desire of his was not altogether a man's: What he felt was a longing like a youth's. Years ago, when he had still been growing, when adults had called him a good boy-and he now supposed that he had been good enough-he had possessed girls like Sue in helpless imagining.
Their erotic yet innocent figures had come into his spartan bed while he had been in his late teens, in the hours of weariness or worry when his discipline had been down. They had come, thinner than mist, nameless yet beloved, many girls but one girl, to tug at his desire.
As he had answered them in long-ago dreams, tonight he answered Sue.
The second taste of her lips told him there was a difference, that Sue was flesh-and-blood. Even so, the dream's sweetness clung to him.
He kissed her as he had been kissed, thinking to tease her into frenzy.
She shivered, gasped, writhed. She worked herself back to their customary embrace, breast to breast, mouth to mouth.
She murmured, "Wherever you are, I'm with you. You know that, don't you, Al?"
The words were part of a dream and needed no reply.
Inventiveness failed him, became needless. He rolled his weight above her and breathed deeply, resting and weighting, his prone legs making a Y that left hers free.
She kicked one knee, uttered a nervous half-giggle. "Al," she asked softly, "are you falling asleep?"
He came to with a start. "I was dreaming," he explained. "Dreaming that I'm right where I am. Best possible dream."
He had had enough rest, all he deserved. He wedged his weight between her thighs, took a huge breath and possessed her. He knew he was spending a long-saved emotional capital that he well might miss in the future-he was spending a wealth he never had known was an asset, his own awkward and tender youth.
Boy and man together, the boy he had been and the husband he had become, Al Ryan plunged again and again into the sheltered hollow where Sue mysteriously throbbed, received, lusted and, at times, conceived.
And guilty shame possessed him. He suffered as he reveled-for now the fantasy that accompanied his lovemaking with Sue had both reality and a name-Winnie Belden. As Sue earlier had fused with her in his mind, so did she now fuse with Sue and provide the ultimate trigger for his release.
The shame was not the husband's but the boy's. The boy deep within him had been awakened and forced to make love to someone's wife.
"We're leaving here in the morning," he whispered to Sue. "We're never coming back-"
Then he slept.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fred Stone watched the television screen in his room.
The circuit was an even more intimate one than the private channel that had entertained him in the hotel lounge. Stu Belden-a born panderer, Fred conceded, and exceptionally gifted-had guessed Fred's taste in the love arts, had promised him his specially equipped set.
The screen showed a live and unaware couple in bed. Fred judged their performance with the expertness of a long-term connoisseur. He enjoyed Sue as he had expected he would-he had invested hours of his evening in working her to the proper pitch of nervousness and himself to the proper pitch of personally slanted lascivious interest.
The husband was a disappointment. Fred, no critic of the morals of others, damned well knew what the man must have been doing half the night with Winifred Belden. He had, in fact, tried to tune in hers and Al Ryan's whereabouts but evidently the room or unit they had occupied-if they had bothered with indoors-had been beyond the reach of this receiver. He might have a word with Belden on the subject-not mentioning Winnie, of course.
He smiled with all but imperceptible sadness.
Greed was a curse, an illness with those who were inflicted with it. He found himself shying away from the prospect of discovering how far it would take Stu. He honestly liked Winnie.
He watched a little longer in the pleasant light, while the big naked clod made the sprite-like girl perform an unspeakable and not particularly attractive act of wifely devotion. Love made the world turn 'round-made it topsy-turvy, in fact, and not altogether sane. Fred's own lust gave him bittersweet twinges-yet none were satisfying, none wrenched him through and through. The fault was Ryan's.
He turned the set off resignedly. What had the man's performance been, he wondered, with Winnie? That would have been the thing to see.
He found himself wanting Winnie in his peculiar way just as he had wanted her last year in Paris. Because a man's style of loving was different from other men's, let no woman suppose he was easily put off. Fred knew without emotion that he was a voyeur-his sexual satisfaction came from watching rather than participation. The tendency had always been with him but he had been discontented and unhappy until he recognized his bent and went along with it.
One woman after another, beginning with his wife Ethel, had been a disappointment to him. Even Winifred Belden, he was sure, would have been a disappointment if he had tried to possess her as other men did. Of course he had planned to know Winifred-differently.
He was sure that one day she would still be his-and on his terms.
No harm in being one's self. He had made a career of other people's money and other people's businesses. He found an equally satisfying private life in other people's love. One ought to be as respected as the other.
He grew impatient with the gentility of the air conditioning. Opening a casement window, he took a long, measured breath and spied on the weather.
The night breeze made him frown. It had an unnatural constancy which might mean rain was coming. What entertainments would the management be likely to offer for foul weather? Closing the window again, Fred allowed himself a private smile.
In his own way, he admitted, he was having an interesting time. The hotel was as tediously and vulgarly luxurious as advertised. It transcended in imaginativeness and ostentation most places he had known. It would have to be toned down substantially for public consumption. The Ryans of the earth, for example. They were a test case-Stu had arranged their presence as such among this hand-picked test clientele, beyond any value the male Ryan might have as a professional statistician. As such, of course his ilk were a dime a dozen.
Area analyses could be made by anybody for Fred's appraisal-but the Ryans represented the public in this weird and wonderful setting.
Would it destroy them? Had he just been privileged to witness, via Stu's foul closed-circuit television-an unspeakable invasion of privacy-the beginnings of that destruction? The breakdown into perversion of a normal marriage?
Desire lines. Stu's phrase-a part of Stu's religion? Ask for it and get it-whatever it is. No doubt Stu was getting what he wanted from Ethel-she ha( been primed for someone like Stu since last summer in Paris, when she had nearly gone head over heels for that improvident and parasitic gigolo. Stu at least had something to contribute. What, remained to be seen.
Fred let his mind dwell briefly on Stu's probable situation. The picture was neither original nor inspiring. The man had formed a cabal-development company was a euphemism-probably by bilking some public funds from the road construction project his engineering firm had handled, with some unscrupulous colleagues to build this place. He was now hard-pressed to unload it, not only to recover his own investment but that of his friends.
Miles-Away Motel the privately circulated brochure had called it-though hotel was more appropriate and the name was not final-the answer to all vacation dreams. The concept in the main was sound-if daring-for these times of plenty. The place offered escape into untrammeled luxury to all who could afford it, from sportsman to hedonist-and pervert?
Fred winced at the last. Was he one? The image of himself was hard to accept.
Fred's jelly-like thoughts retreated to the hard core of his being. There lay his clarity, no matter how muddied his outward lusts. No perversions, no desire lines touched him there, not his own, not Stu's. There he dealt in personal, hard-won peace with anxious people-priest of soulless deity.
Money. More superstition and awe revolved about money these days than had ever been evoked by another human religion. People thought themselves enlightened because they went to hospitals instead of calling the conjureman. They refrained from interdenominational war, at least in the western hemisphere, and no longer placed adulterers in pillories or stocks.
When it came to money, the faith that most lived by, men were ignorant savages in the jungle, fearful of sudden thunder, expecting to drop dead if they failed to perform each minute ritual act connected with their worship.
They would not believe you if you told them that their concept of money was a myth-that money was a simple commodity that you bought with whatever of value you possessed. Men like Al Ryan bought it most successfully by selling their time piecemeal from week to week.
Others, like Fred, gambled their lives. And lost.
I'm dead, damn it....
He thought helplessly of Winnie Belden who had probably idiotically surrendered tonight-last night, really-to that fractional portion of Al Ryan the man had been able to spare from his dual servitude to his work and his wife. Or had Ryan been able to spare it? His performance with Sue hardly suggested as much.
I would have taken less from you, Winnie-and you from me....
In the hard, celibate core of his being that mocked at the soulless deity other men worshipped, Fred decided he would some day possess Winnie Belden in his own peculiar way.
* * *
He slept in a fiendishly comfortable chair, not knowing he had fallen asleep. He had meant only to enjoy the playful luxury of thought in the small hours, while waiting for Ethel to come in.
Since he slept, her coming surprised him. Fred awoke to feel Ethel's impatient hand on his shoulder.
"Come to bed," she was saying. "Fred, do you hear me? Leave it to you to snore in an easy chair-how can you be so bourgeois in a place like this? Wake up this minute. Sleeping in the chair that way you make this place look like home."
He was alert by the time she was through talking.
"I suppose," he said, not rising from the chair, "nothing could be more disastrous than the look of home." He studied his wife with the interest he would have accorded a freak show. "Don't bother telling me where you've been," he said. "I already know as much as I want to. You've been making believe you have the guts to be a tramp."
Ethel stamped her foot. Her face turned witch-like. The blouse and skirt she had worn for boating drooped like rags. The outfit was one that required a brisk posture-a tantrum spoiled it.
Fred performed a private act of cruelty-he looked at and evaluated his wife's sudden ugliness, a thin smile on his lips. He enjoyed the fact that she was standing while he remained in the chair-a discourtesy in some ways more satisfying than wife-beating would have been.
"Don't be too sure," she raged. "Maybe you're too limp to appreciate me, but believe me, there are others-"
"Keep your voice down," he suggested. "You're spoiling your image. The witty, traveled, gracious Mrs. Stone."
She obeyed, continuing to rage and nag, but less audibly.
"And what have you been doing, Mr. Wiser-Than-All-Others? Reading a good book? Or dreaming up new ways to make me miserable? Look at you. A lump of mud. A piece of stagnant filth. I love this place, do you hear? It's the first place I ever found where I felt completely happy. But you're bound to spoil it for me, aren't you? The way you tried to spoil Paris. You've heard of party-poopers? Well, you're a life-pooper. All I have is one life and you took it and loused it up. You and your other women-when you can't even satisfy me. What do you do with them-just look ... as you do with me? I used to try to compete with them but it was no use. Now I'm fighting you another way, do you understand? I'm going to amount to something whether you like it or not, no matter how much you jeer."
"Fascinating," he commented in all sincerity.
Ethel's emotional displays struck the hard, practical core of him as wholly illogical, yet utterly authentic. In a sad way they furnished him with entertainment. Not for the first time he wondered if he liked his wife or hated her.
"Will you come to bed? It disgusts me to see you sleep in a chair when a perfectly good bed is available."
"You turn in," he said. "Your liquor's beginning to wear off. You need your beauty sleep badly." He sighed and turned away. "The years, Ethel-they'll show on you any day now. Can't put them off forever. Those little lines around the eyes-and am I wrong, or are those breasts beginning to sag?"
He heard her gasp. When he turned again to look at her, she seemed ten years older. She had never had any sales resistance. He felt a minor pang of remorse for the ruthless fun he was having with her-but a man was entitled to marital rights, one way or another. Fred's way was his own.
"You're mean," she said. "You're not like other men. Why don't you go to hell?"
She shuffled off toward the bed alcove of the luxurious suite.
He followed.
She pulled her clothes off any which way, her body expressing fatigue and defeat. Her small breasts slumped against her rib cage. Her thighs, sculptured by faithful attendance at small-town weekly exercise classes, met in a dark V of secrecy and shame, giving the lie to her blond hair. She fell to the wide bed and the V was hidden by her bowed torso. She fumbled for the edge of the covers.
Fred felt the winey stab in his loins that the TV peep-show had barely aroused.
He said softly, "Stay where I can look at you. Lie on your back. Spread those damned legs out."
The instant was precious to him, rare as a jewel, rarer than money, which was cheap. Desire could not be bought, although fulfillment might sometimes be for sale.
Ethel mewed in disgust, tried to scramble under the covers and hide herself from him. He reached her in a single stride of lean, strong legs, hauled her back to the counterpane. He held her in place with a hard palm on the quivering belly.
"Try, Ethel," he ordered. "Do as I say. Remember, I'm your husband."
He no longer cared whether he was cruel to her or kind, whether she enjoyed his peculiar passion or died of it. Part of him was fighting to stay alive.
He felt dead, a queer kind of zombie-but he was a man as his forebears had been, his brothers, his enemies. In all the conniving, planning, accepting or rejecting that the world knew as Fred Stone, a spark of lust endured that made him human and bearable to himself. The spark, often threatening to flicker out altogether, was the pearl of his existence. He lived in dread of losing it altogether. Even now it lived mostly in his mind-his flesh remained cold. When he felt himself aroused as he was now, no other consideration must be allowed to block him.
He would have preferred another partner than Ethel. Winnie Belden-or even the Price woman. But impractical considerations must not be allowed to matter. Ethel, since she had met Stu, had become almost a stranger-and it was time she learned the sort of thing she was up against. He had never before really let her know him.
Ethel, eyes wide now, whimpered, "Please. Fred, you scare me. Kiss me. Put your arms around me. Tell me that you like me."
She was asking the wildly impossible and in her way she must have known it.
He stepped back, pulling at his clothes as though they were drowning him, letting dark slacks and buttoned shirt fall to the thick rug. The illumined air gathered around his pulsing nakedness.
He told his wife, "Touch yourself. Let me see you show off. Act like a woman, damn you-a self-loving female. Something's made you feel like one, hasn't it?"
She uttered a wordless babble, lifted her arms to him and then let them drop again. A fleck of moisture showed on her lips in the intimate baseboard light. Her face worked. Her body writhed, half in terror, half in some subliminal reaction whose source did not interest him. Perhaps she was thinking of escape into Stu's arms or even those of the idiot Frenchman Je-je.
He watched her seeming agony with a matching, delicious agony of his own, standing three feet from her, gasping at the fury of his own sensation.
"Fred, hold me. I need to be held and loved-"
He took a backward step.
If the distance were great enough, perhaps he could imagine that the woman was not Ethel but Winifred Belden.
Ethel's shivering thighs blurred into the poetry that was Winnie's flesh.
Ethel's flip little breasts became a remembered glory, imagined under clothing.
Even the babbling, pleading voice could be blotted by imagination into a more honest voice.
Sue's?
Mae Price's? Winnie Belden's?
Or a composite chorus of all three?
As love could be imagined, as the squeezing walls could be imagined within a woman's body, relating a man to the ecstasy of life.
All things could be imagined, purchased or stolen, with one exception-desire came at a time of its own choosing, whether a man wanted it or not. And when it stopped coming-in whatever form-he was as good as dead.
Vision and imagining ended. Lust died stillborn.
Ethel lay suddenly silent, eyes closed.
* * *
She did not stir when he approached the bed. She had passed out like a peasant-probably from a combination of fatigue, excitement and liquor-mostly liquor. He doubted she had understood him beyond feeling terror. He had taken nothing from her-not as much as Al had taken from Sue. He had wanted nothing but a feeling of lust and she had failed him. Fred looked away from her quickly, knowing distaste and letdown.
She was only Ethel. He had tried to imagine her another woman.
He could hardly remember the last time she had managed to arouse him. They had little understanding for one another these days-although in his own way he had never ceased to see her clearly. Both of them lived on fantasy. Ethel cherished the doll-like image of a beautiful companion for him, nothing more. His dreams ran differently.
She worked with cloth, exercise bars, cosmetics and her own indifferent natural equipment. He considered her taste banal. Although she would never have admitted it, he suspected she agreed with him on the point She had a sheep-like dependency on price tags in her purchases, knowing her own powers of selection were limited and poor.
Any dress Ethel bought would surely be bought by a hundred thousand other women at about half the price that Ethel insisted on paying.
Any thought Ethel claimed as her own would have filtered step by commercial step from fountainheads of ignorance and ulterior-purpose through sewers and streams of gossip and newspaper filler columns until it was pulpy enough for Ethel to digest.
In the year when some other women had tried the topless bathing suit, the Stones had been abroad. For once, Fred had observed, Ethel had gone the styles one better, had appeared in a topless suit with a topless, matching head. He had shared the joke with her and she had not laughed.
The hour was so late as to be early-the stolen seconds before he would sleep beside his drunken helpmeet, Fred realized, were really part of tomorrow. He belted a robe about his nakedness and quickly picked up her clothes and his from wherever they had dropped about the suite. His was a tidy nature.
Ethel's expensive little evening purse had sprawled open on the floor, spilling some contents. His attention was caught by a folded heavy sheet of paper with which she had weighted the bag.
He opened out the sheet and swore.
Why was she carrying a survey map of the area? Then he smiled grimly. A present from Stu, of course-one that had cost Stu nothing. No wonder she had seemed a stranger.
Desire lines of travel....
He had a sudden threatened feeling that all the lines led to him, Fred Stone. All those green, red, purple waves and whorls of river, road and highway had been drawn to guide the populace to Fred Stone's temporary vacation hideout. Admission would be charged to the general public-as they filed in by twos to view his viewing, spy on his spying. Everyone else would come by twos-Fred would be alone. A voice would boom from a hidden horn.
Ladies and gentlemen, step this way. See the only half-couple in captivity, the man who can't love. Only quarter-price to persons under eighteen years of age....
His mind rejected the self-centered theory at once but fear and anger remained. He refolded the map, making it smaller than it had been before he hurled it untidily at the television screen that had proved a disappointment.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stu Belden moored his boat under the bright light of the full moon. Ethel had scampered ashore and run for the main building as soon as he had touched the dock. He had expected to be back earlier but he doubted any damage had been done. Fred and Ethel were not a mutually clinging couple. Winnie had briefed him on some of Fred's tastes and he had made arrangements to have what should prove a favorite toy delivered to Fred's room. A closed-circuit TV set-up to enable Fred to spy on the Ryans.
Stu grinned as he left the dock. One way or another, he should be able to make something of the Stones. Blackmail was an ugly thought-until enough money became involved. But even if he had to resort to it to win Fred's backing, Fred would get more out of the deal than a salvaged reputation. The place could be a gold mine.
Stu breathed deeply of night air as clean and new as it must have been for the first men millennia ago. His spirits rose. On a planet that was intolerably crowded, this barely developed big lake country had sell-and he, Stuart Belden, was the one who would do the selling. Stray thoughts wandered across the serene surface of his optimism.
Hard to imagine even now what he and Ethel had been to each other scant moments ago. How could a woman be like that-so damned forgettable? And yet she had pleased him tonight again until satiety had set in. After the night had grown chill they had dressed warmly and cruised the big lake. He had grown bored with her chatter and would never fight for another chance at her-but he would not turn one down either, if the opportunity came at a convenient time and did not involve too much conversation.
Fred seemed incapable of normal jealousy. The man was as twisted as a bayou. Stu thought again of the special TV installation he had put in Fred Stone's room and whistled an old tune for luck.
Everybody wanted something. Everybody had a secret that he thought was hidden from everybody else. And the wanting and the secret, in one way or another, usually had something to do with sex. Dress it up as sports plane flying, mountain climbing or making a fortune-somewhere behind every big effort was some sexual gimmick.
Look at Winnie. What else was she selling at an average income of better than twenty thousand a year if not sex? So it had another name-glamor, maybe, or style-but take away the sexiness and Stu's wife Winnie was just another housewife with big bones, a ball in bed and a natural at childbirth.
What a team they made, though. With his brains and her flair, no ceiling was high enough for them. This hotel was only a way station. Not a penny of her money had gone into this-he had other partners. But from here they could go anywhere. And as time went on, she would get smarter.
Even now she was brighter than she once had been-she no longer had a kid a year as for a while had seemed her pattern. Wow. That would have been curtains-if she had kept on breeding.
He rounded the hotel and reached the pool, jeweled by the starlight. Stu looked appreciatively at the spread of it. The gem-like ripples spelled a figure for him. Three hundred thousand dollars. If you really needed money, he had learned, the only way to get it was in nonexistent quantities. The smaller visible quantities had to be accounted for, earned, repaid. The large, impossible ones were easy.
You arranged to float a loan, to incorporate an investment company or to issue shares-and money magically appeared to cover wages, invoices and executive expense accounts.
The only way to live.
You had to make sure, though, that some patsy somewhere-like Fred Stone-pushed the ultimate money button. Otherwise, laughable as the idea might be, you could land in jail.
A voice called his name. "Stu."
He turned and saw Winnie in one of the glass-enclosed poolside lounges spotted along the first floor of the main building. She held the door open and waved to him.
"Talk to you, Stu. Important."
In some surprise but grinning, he went to her. She had obviously been swimming at this ungodly hour. Streaming from her glorious bikini-clad body, the pool water looked as costly as it had actually been, like diamond drops.
The water had straightened her yellow hair and, because she was Winnie, only straight, wet, yellow hair was beautiful. Any other kind was unthinkable. Her eyelashes were diamond-beaded, every one. Her breasts and their bandage of a covering were awash with molten diamonds. She smelled in the warmth of the lounge of health and woman.
Stu was impelled to say, "You're something, Winnie. I used to think there wasn't a woman good enough to marry. You're good enough, all right. Almost too good, even for me. I could take you now, this minute."
Her smile ended almost as it came. "Thanks," she said. "You're pretty, too. What kept you so long?"
"First things first. Are you out of your mind, swimming at this hour? And did you do a job on friend Fred?"
She turned her head to one side, looked pensively away. A damp lock swayed from her jaw. Each gesture, each tiny change of pose, created a new and beautiful picture. A woman like Winnie, he thought, should have a hidden camera following her everywhere. The trail she made in time, the many beautiful images, were ninety-nine percent lost forever.
"Job?" she said. "I thought I had already done one. In Paris. I told him about this place. I got him to come here. As I understood, from this point the hotel would speak for itself. I didn't spend the evening with Fred."
She still did not look at him. He suddenly understood-or thought he did.
"Oh, damn it, Winnie-I'm sorry." He thought of Fred and the TV set-the Ryans must have retired early and Fred had probably gone to his room to view the proceedings. "I thought from what you told me about the pitch he made for you in Paris that-it didn't occur to me you'd be alone-"
She looked at him now.
"I wasn't alone," she told him. The blue eyes seemed to gaze at him from some fathomless depths. "Paris was a year ago, Stu-and I left no doubt in Fred's mind about how matters stood with me-regarding him. What job was there left for me to do on Fred Stone?"
"You look hostile," Stu discovered aloud. "Something's on your mind. Winnie, we're friends, aren't we? I love you."
"Friends?" she repeated. She smiled. Her smile was generous. "Forgive. I guess the hostilities are actually over. The question stands. What was the job?"
Stu felt baffled. Winnie knew as well as he what he had at stake.
"Fred's got to shell out, Winnie. He's got to be on our team. Sometimes a tiny thing can make a disastrous misunderstanding-I hope you didn't set him down too hard about what happened last summer."
The diamonds had all rolled off her face and shoulders and breasts. Without them she looked more naked but equally desirable.
"Last summer never came up, Stu, after you left the table. In fact, Fred seemed more interested in Sue Ryan than in me. I did you a favor at that-if Fred's whom you want to please. I took Al Ryan away."
Stu relaxed. Much was explained. Winnie was still on his side. And if she had spent the evening hours with that Ryan poop, she had a right to feel moderately hostile. She and Al Ryan would have found little to talk about.
"I'm sorry again. Winnie-I was bored to tears with Ethel but she insisted on staying out late and-"
"I wasn't bored for a minute," Winnie interrupted. "Al's quite a guy when a girl takes him the way Ethel seems to have been taking you. Stu, I took Al to our cabin and afterward-well, I moved out. Mrs. Price gave me a room in the main building." Her eyes met his levelly. "I'm really quite comfortable but I thought you ought to know I'll be leaving in the morning."
He had a mindless impulse to strike her. He conquered it at once.
He asked in shock and outrage, "What in hell are you talking about?"
"Divorce, Stu. I stopped being your wife tonight."
He was without words. A voice he did not recognize uttered a questioning sound.
Winnie said in reply, "It probably happened a long time ago. I don't have any real quarrel with you-we don't see enough of each other to fight. But I envied a woman tonight and took her man." She glanced past him, out and down at the pool, and a new picture was formed. Her hair in the light of the lounge falling down to the firm tops of her tanned breasts seemed suddenly a covering for shame. "I'm not very proud or pleased with myself at the moment."
He said incredulously, "You envied Sue Ryan? You went to bed with Al? Winnie-I'll kill him-"
He thought his heart would stop. Without Winnie-what was he? Maybe a lot, maybe nothing-how could he tell? She told him in a moment.
"You wouldn't know how to kill him, Stu. He's not big enough. Except physically, maybe. I guess you could have him hurt. You might even take his savings away-but he'd simply save more. He could even lose Sue and find another woman. Not that she'd ever leave him-or let go of him. He's got something a woman wants."
Stu tried a comeback.
"I haven't heard many complaints about what I've got."
His tone was thinly vicious, slightly whining. Winnie raised her eyes to his. "I'm not complaining, Stu."
He knew an infinitesimal relief without knowing why.
"I'm bushed, Winnie," he said. "Come back to the cabin. We'll talk this out." She shook her head.
"You go back-if you can stand it. The bunkroom has been used. Maybe it won't bother you-but I'm new to this game." Her eyes were suddenly bright and hard-whether from anger or grief he could not tell. Her voice, until now almost casual, took on an edge of steel. "I'm going in now. We'll be talking later-but not in the morning. Not for a few days. Go back to the cabin if you like. The boat's in the usual place-"
She turned and left him. She had brought a beach robe and a towel-he had noticed them on one of the lounge chairs. She picked them up in passing, slipped into the robe and the gesture had a curious finality. Stu guessed he might never see as much of his wife again as he had an instant ago.
A glass door opened. She passed through and it closed. He watched her vanish beyond one panel after another into the night-lighted, quiet interior of his dream. Gone from him forever, swallowed and lost in this place he had created. He wanted to smash the glass. He wanted to destroy the silent nightmare. He wanted to rush out and burn down the cabin he had built partly as a joke for Winnie and himself-but mostly for himself-with a jimmy-proof bunkroom.
Stu Belden-the pioneer, the trapper.
Light changed in the small lounge and he took his eyes from the crystalline distance where Winnie had vanished. The subtle change in wumination had been caused by the reflection of the glass door's silent opening. The panel was just swinging shut. Mae Price stood before him.
She wore, Stu noted dully, an utterly correct air and not much else. He supposed the hour excused the revealing negligee. Her quiet make-up was as perfect as at high noon and her hair had not been slept in.
"I heard voices, Mr. Belden. Is everything all right?"
Everything was not all right. Stu could, in fact, think of nothing that was-except Mae Price. He had hired her for her finishing-school posture, for the controlled accuracy of each gesture she made-not graceful with Winnie's vibrant vitality but lovely with breeding. Mae Price came of pioneer stock that had first settled this area-she was old family, with a husband who was not doing too well in local real estate. Mae had a stake in Stu's schemes. She was pleased by the road and the motel.
He said, "A small discussion with my wife-she seems to have taken separate lodgings for the night. But you'd know about that."
Mae Price nodded.
"Mrs. Belden asked for a room in the main building."
Stu shook his head wearily.
"Hell seems to have been popping," he said. "There's a good chance all I've got left is this." He gestured vaguely at his surroundings. "Brief me on what's been happening. No-first find me a drink."
"The bar's locked, Mr. Belden-" Mae smiled faintly-"and I don't have the key. I can give you a drink in my quarters."
Stu managed an answering smile.
"Why, so you can."
He opened glass doors and followed Mae Price through dim crystal corridors, beginning to feel better. Whatever Winnie cost him-even if he lost her-he still had this, his dream and his big gamble. Right now it felt like owning a bit of hell-but the feeling would pass, was already beginning to pass.
* * *
He had never thought Mae Price seductive and did not think her so now. At the moment he was not even open for seduction, at least the physical kind. But he liked the authoritative, composed way her high hips moved under the negligee as she preceded him to what she had chosen to call her quarters. Mae had a home and a husband but sometimes, under pressure of duty, chose to spend a night at the hotel. Stu had assigned a good room to her-in case she ever had to entertain in the course of business. Mae made fine window dressing.
He watched the high hips and thought of Winnie. Mae had as long legs and under the gossamer negligee they looked straight and good. Not like Winnie's almost athletic underpinning but good legs nevertheless, distance-destroying and purposeful. Stu liked their economical stride, paced exactly to match his tired progress. He neither had to hurry nor slow down for Mae.
Unfaithful....
He had better put Winnie out of his mind for the present but briefly he tried on the word for size. It pertained at last to both Winnie and himself-until now he had considered infidelity his own sole prerogative.
He felt he was coming to his senses. Winnie had admitted to the act of betrayal and had assumed that, having paid him back in his own coin, she had to end the marriage. Not so, Stu thought guiltily. A marriage was bigger than one incident of adultery-especially when a woman had had Winnie's provocation. She had mentioned to him his affair with Ethel-she had forgiven him others from time to time. What was the big deal about Al Ryan that had made Winnie jealous of Sue-when she had not been jealous of Stu's many loves? He would find out and-whatever it was-he would try to match it and talk Winnie into coming back. All things were possible to Stu Belden.
Mae Price, oddly, was giving him confidence. He realized suddenly how much he had counted on her right from the start. Not for brains exactly-although nothing about her had ever suggested dumbness or even Ethel's empty-headedness-but for that imperturbably charming and hostess-like competence that came from a long line of ancestors and generations of training. She would give him a rundown on what had happened here while he had been out on the lake with Ethel-she might even help him with Winnie.
The high hips slowed. So did the long legs-oddly without breaking rhythm. Stu realized they had reached journey's end. He reached past Mae to open her door. She thanked him with a smile, went in.
Stu followed her and shut the door behind him.
Mae faced him and he realized the negligee was not as revealing as he had thought. The material was sheer enough in motion-when she stood still it hung in opaque folds that made it quite decent. Stu, in his present mood, was pleased. It was a time for him to appreciate decency.
"What will it be, Mr. Belden?"
She gestured with a long-fingered and perfectly manicured hand at a sideboard already arrayed with bottles, ice bucket and glasses.
Stu grinned. "Looks like you're ready for a party-hope I'm not interrupting. Bourbon on the rocks, please."
She moved to the sideboard, negligee at once flowingly transparent, "No party." She smiled at him over her shoulder, nicked her eyes toward the uncovered picture window. "Mr. Stone is prowling out there. I thought of giving him a show, perhaps luring him in. But your being here is even better."
Stu gaped at her while she was making his drink and giving him a rundown on the evening.
After he, Stu, had left for the lake with Ethel, Fred had paired off with Sue. Winnie had removed Al-and Stu winced, remembering Winnie's confession. Mae had watched Fred's lack of progress with prim little Sue. She had tried to enliven the proceedings by breaking in on the pair to tell Fred about his new TV set and at the same time give him something to look at. She had appeared in virtually seminude costume, she told Stu while bringing him his drink, taking a sip of her own.
She wore pastel lipstick of a particularly innocuous shade that glistened against her white smile. Her gray-green eyes were wholly candid-she might have been discussing some adjustment in the hotel's plumbing or air conditioning. Her nail polish was colorless, her tan healthy and exactly the proper shade to go with her coppery, artlessly sun-streaked hair. She looked wholly hygienic-not in the least like a scheming woman.
Stu had, of course, warned her of Fred's oddities, but mostly to keep her from being startled.
He said, marveling, "And you look like a strawberry milkshake-" and took a strong pull at his bourbon.
Mae seemed startled at the description. Then she uttered a peal of laughter. She was a good-looking woman with a fine-boned face, wide cheeks, a generous mouth and gray-green eyes he had always thought saw only the correctness of the world, ignored all things in bad taste. It came to him now that they were ignoring Fred Stone-if Fred really prowled beyond the big, naked window-they were focused only on Stu.
She raised her glass toward his.
"Shouldn't we drink an intimate toast or something-to give our audience a teaser, Mr. Belden? And try to smile-even if it hurts. For me this comes under the heading of unpaid overtime. I'm working to keep a guest happy."
Stu smiled numbly. He touched glasses with Mae, took another pull at the bourbon. Its warmth shocked life back into his laggard and much-used body and brain. No time to mourn for Winnie now or to try to enlist Mae to help him there. He evidently had work to do.
"What's Fred doing out there? Wasn't he happy with the damned toy we gave him?" Stu fought a certain harshness that threatened to creep into his voice. "It was supposed to keep him occupied-the latest thing in peeping. Has he been bothering people?"
Mae shook her head. "I don't think so. I've tried to keep an eye on things. I saw him leave his room after his wife came back-he was wearing a bathrobe." Mae's eyes clouded briefly-perhaps, Stu guessed, Fred had not appeared at his best in a bathrobe or this amazing woman might simply have been hurt by its color. Her expression cleared again. "I asked him if anything was the matter." Mae paused, eyed Stu's drink. "Your glass is nearly empty. Let me get you a refill."
"To hell with-" Stu began but she was already taking his glass. Her fingers fingered, dislodging his grip gently. She had moved closer to him, was smiling up to his face.
"Remember the window, Mr. Belden," she whispered.
He caught her drift. If Fred was out there-keep him occupied, she meant. Present him with a scene suggesting an assignation. He also caught a whiff of Mae's scent-soap and cleanliness mostly, with perhaps a suggestion of woman's wiles. He also glanced at the bosom suddenly close to his chest, saw medium breasts, unconfined, save by gossamer folds of fabric. Some feeling he did not quite recognize quickened in him. He relinquished his glass to Mae's cool fingers with some reluctance.
"What did Fred say?" he asked.
She went to the sideboard. He followed her. She spoke again over her shoulder.
"He said he wanted to talk to you about the new TV set-it brought in too few channels." Mae looked down at her hands, busy with ice and bourbon. "He's a strange man," she said thoughtfully. "Perhaps dangerous to your plans, Mr. Belden." She turned to give him his drink, again letting her cool, soft fingers loiter with his as he took it. "I tried to engage his attention. I think he saw me, all right-noticed me, that is-but he brushed past me suddenly, as if I didn't exist, and went out."
"And what makes you think he's watching you-us-now?"
"All the other rooms are dark. Most have their drapes drawn. I checked. I also locked all doors except the one Mrs. Belden was using for her swim-the one you used." She paused. "Also-I caught a glimpse of him just before I heard you and Mrs. Belden-and went to talk to you. He came quite close to my window. I doubt he's gone away."
Stu swore softly. "What were you doing?"
Mae said calmly, "Stripping. Not just undressing." She eyed him levelly. "I went to a very good private school, Mr. Belden-an expensive one. An equally good boys' school, full of eligible young males, was located nearby. The boys used to peep, naturally. And we learned to play up to them. No vulgar displays such as one sees sometimes on stage-we tried to show ourselves to advantage as prospective life partners." Her lips quirked. "Not part of the school curriculum, of course. But that's how I caught my husband."
Stu's smile came normally at last. He had met Roger, Mae's husband, a jut-jawed man who had inherited substantial real estate holdings and had made a business of getting rid of them to no real profit. Roger Price was out-dated landed gentry. Stu still had not paid Mae's husband for a part of the land on which the hotel stood.
"And you've been happy with Roger?" he asked.
"Have been," Mae Price said briskly. "Yes, we were happy until the money began to run out. Unfortunately Roger's not a builder. But we're digressing. I think Mr. Stone is still out there."
"I'm sure he is," Stu said.
He saw Mae Price for the first time as a man trap and the image was plausible. Her charms were not blatant or obvious but they were well tended and cultivated. She did not flaunt them-even in a transparent negligee, but managed to reveal them sparingly, gesture by gesture. They might appeal to a man like Fred. They were beginning to appeal to Stu.
He asked, "Exactly why are you making all this effort, Mae?"
"I want this place to succeed, Mr. Belden-I want you to win Mr. Stone's backing. It will mean money to Roger-he still owns property here. And I've been reading up on hotel management. I'm hoping you'll have a better job for me than hostess-receptionist."
Stu silently revised upward his opinion of Mae Price's intelligence-to doubt it he would have had to doubt his own. She was on his team.
"What do we do now?" he asked. "Incidentally, let's drop the Mr. Belden. Call me Stu."
"All right, Stu." Mae came close to him again. "I think Mr. Stone may be more advanced in his peeping than a schoolboy. He may prefer action. Do you think you could bring yourself to kiss me?"
Stu grinned again. "Easiest thing in the world."
Next he wondered if he had overreached himself. Mae's lips were cool under his. Her kiss was as practiced as her speech and gestures. Her mouth seemed to retreat from involvement and passion, yet subtly control his. He held his drink in one hand. His other arm was loosely around her. Their bodies barely touched-yet his mouth was frozen to hers. He could have sworn he had left all his passion with Ethel for tonight and his encounter with Winnie should have cured him of other women at least until she had been pacified or he had lost her irretrievably.
Now he wanted to be rid of his drink, have both arms free and further explore this phantom of passion that seemed to be Mae Price doing her job. Although he had never known anyone quite like her before. Not even Mae Price.
She had slid an arm around his neck. She, too, held a drink. It came to him that they made a picture-framed in that naked window-as dissolute as any Fred could wish, except that it was impossible for him really to imagine the inside of Fred's mind. But Mae was right-the practical thought swam grayly at the bottom of his awareness-Fred should be given his money's worth.
If it could be done without pain.
His arm tightened around Mae, not as much from passion as from some wish to bring reality and familiarity to their kiss. She was too coolly expert-Stu was used to dominating his women. The gesture brought those average but perfect breasts he had glimpsed earlier from teasing contact hard against his chest. It also swung her belly and thighs against his, so that below the neck Mae became a woman.
The cool lips pulling gently at his still puzzled him, as did the slitted eyes from which she studied him as he awkwardly waltzed them both to the sideboard d set down his glass. He took Mae's drink from her unresisting fingers and, without lifting either his lips or his eyes from hers, placed it beside his own.
Mae's mouth moved under his and suddenly he knew she was laughing at him. Bright splinters of amusement shot from her lidded eyes. Her breath quivered on his cheek. He broke the kiss. "What's funny?"
"That finishing school where I went to catch a husband-and that had everything else on the curriculum. The texts I've been reading on hotel management-and that have nothing on how to cater to a rich Peeping Tom."
He, too, had to laugh. He did so softly. The coolness of her kiss was explained. What was unexplained was why it should have excited him. Why he wanted to taste those expert lips once more. He felt utterly spent and had no idea of what time it was. The big picture window was still black but soon, he thought, dawn would streak the sky.
Fred's prowling would be over.
Both of Mae's arms were now around his neck. His encircled her waist. She stood motionless against him, her posture correct for the situation-for being held by a man. She seemed unexcited.
He said, "Mae-I'm tired."
Her green eyes slid past him. She gestured with her head. "There's the bed."
"I'm not sure I can put on much of a show."
Did the cool eyes mock him?
"I'm not sure you have to."
A weary anger in him responded to her challenge. He kissed her again, this time crushing her to him tightly. Her arms also tightened and her body came strongly against him. He kissed expert lips that would not warm to his, that were cooperative yet strangely elusive. He bared and fondled breasts sensational in shape and texture. Now and then he tasted a tongue that fled his always before ultimate commitment. A show. She was just putting on a show. Some cynical corner of his mind drew amusement from Mae's incongruously well-bred efforts. She knew all the little feints and retreats, the shy advances, the right moments to be bold yet never aggressive. She uttered all the correct sounds, from gasps to moans, small whispered directions, gentle murmurings, laughter.
You're meeting up unth quality, Stu, boy....
He grew naked under Mae's seeking fingers. He had never known a woman who could give so much while withholding everything. He completely uncovered her body, found it trim and good, deliriously sloped and curved. An honest shape, femininely muscled. And an honest coppery blonde all the way through-more honest there than Ethel. Yet he could not conquer the green mockery of her eyes or imprison the soft treasure between her thighs to slake his passion, now storming so mightily that all fatigue was forgotten.
He shifted and found her under him. "Don't you break down? Aren't you human?"
Mae flicked her honeyed cleft, evading his hot downward thrust. "I'm not an animal, if that's what you mean." She slipped off the bed, stood up in her neat nudity. "I mind my manners. Besides, I can't risk pregnancy-not yet." She seemed to be thinking hard. "Look, I know a good way to put on a show for Fred, a real show. And ease ourselves in the process...."
"You need easing? I'd hardly suspect."
The gray-green eyes glinted. "Because I control my needs, don't think I lack them. Animal, no. Wornan, yes." She strode to her dressing table, snatched up a pink bottle of lotion. In a moment she was back on the bed. Handing him the bottle, she swung to a prone position, drawing up her lovely tapered legs so as to elevate her rear. "The safe way," she said. "And dramatic! It will seduce Fred to our side."
Stu stared at the delightful ivory moons, pierced at their heart by a rosy pucker. Neat and spotless like the rest of her. Astounded, he could not help laughing. This mannerly teaser, genteel even when strolling about the hotel half naked-this cultured creature, cool as a frappe even in a bedroom-and now offering him the ultimate vulgarity with calculated circumspection.
He could only conform to her etiquette. Carefully he spread lotion where it would do the most good, lubricating the creamy cheeks, the puckered rose. Grasping her, he penetrated an inch, two inches. "Hurt?"
"Yes. Ah, slowly, Stu. Slowly. Ah!" That last as he buried himself to the hilt.
He knew enough not to move until she had adapted to containment. He felt her thews relax after a time and knew that pain was gone. Experimentally he stroked. Heaven of heavens! Pleasure pierced him like a thousand knives.
Suddenly he realized that she was the first woman of his kind he had ever met. Winnie, Ethel-no other woman mattered. Mae was the first one greedy enough to share his dream even when it verged on nightmare-though hungry, he thought, might be a better word than greedy.
"Partners?" he furiously whispered to Mae.
Her impeccable head decorously nodded.
Clasping her perfect breasts, gorging himself on their tender shapeliness, he homed into her with all he had. No woman had ever presented him with such perfect fusion and merging. Let Winnie have her divorce-he doubted Mae's husband would fight to hold her. Roger probably felt no more for her than his long-ago schoolboy crush.
His hand descended to help her. His fingertips found the knob of her womanhood, pressed it, frictioned it, fondled the nether lips that sheathed it. Then fever truly possessed them. He pushed, rammed. She contorted and heaved and cried out. Yet even during that mindless mating he was aware of the quality of her-the subtle teachings of many ancestors who first had settled this land. Hers was the strength to fight with any weapons at hand-she would lie, cheat, steal, even love, for survival.
As she was doing now. As he would. Oh, they might not survive. She had lost her first gamble with young love, planned for success but diluted by years to failure. He had lost Winnie to a nonentity named Al Ryan, whose name was legion. He might lose with Mae.
But he was not losing now. He was conquering Mae's schooling. Her body and mind writhed in savage torment under his thrusting assault. The breeding of generations crumbled as he pounded at her innermost gates until they opened to admit his flooding joy.
As the crowning rapture possessed him, she too showered her delight. She kicked and twisted frantically, moaning, convulsing. In his palm, Stu felt slippery, dewy moisture. Like tears.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shadows shrouded Fred Stone. He stood unmoving, hands in bathrobe pockets, feet planted firmly in the dew-wet grass. A biting predawn chill rose from the ground and coursed up his bare legs. He accepted at last in the hard, sane core of his being that there was a madness in him.
As there was in all things living. To live was to destroy. Sometimes insanely-sometimes one's self. But it was also to create-and here he felt a vast and desperate vacuum. He and Ethel had never created, a fact that did not seem to trouble her. In some empty-headed way she had become her own child-the daughter she had never had and perhaps had never even missed-to rear, educate and improve and keep forever young. A chill that had nothing to do with the night touched Fred.
What would happen to Ethel when she truly aged? What would happen to them both?
He felt divorced from her-in spirit if not in fact. She had long ago ceased to need him. He had become useless to her and perhaps to all women. He could no longer love. He fixed his gaze on the Price woman's window, reaching for that spark that Ethel once had kindled in him and never would again. Disgust welled up in him as he remembered the scene in the room he had left--Ethel asking to be petted and loved while still fresh from Stu Belden's arms.
Fred did not envy the man-except for Winifred Belden. Let him have Ethel. Let him have this Price woman, as now he was doing. But what was the secret of life's continuum-of leaving a flame behind when you died? Most people had it or the race would not survive. Why not he? Even Stu had it. Fred stared out of the dark into the mellowly lit room, his mind seething with bitter envy.
He gave a start. Look what she was offering Stu. Warmth stirred in Fred, combating the morning's chill. His hands went to his groin. Yet even in her humiliating position, he saw, her veneer of culture held. He watched her receive Stu with her peculiarly banal grace, as if going through some hostess routine. Mae Price probably knew no other way to act, even in sin.
Stu was responding, riding her gallantly. He was slapping her shaking pink buttocks, forcing himself in. Now his hands went around her and filled themselves with her breasts. He lowered his fingers, at the last, to her undulating crotch, stroking and probing to reach her lust. She humped and fishtailed like a well-mannered mare suddenly roweled by spurs. Fred's fingers were busy, too, as Stu rode the bucking woman like a frenzied jockey. Now, Fred groaned. Now, Stu, please! Now....
A voice said, "For heaven's sake, Fred!" He turned slowly. "Thank God it's you."
She stood at the edge of shadow, pale hair touched with starlight, wearing tight bellbottoms, sandals, a heavy pullover sweater. She looked like an astonished angel.
"You've got to be crazy," she said and Fred smiled. "Of course," he admitted.
She glanced at the scene in the window and grimaced.
"For that," Winifred Belden said, "you'd risk pneumonia." She looked again at Fred Stone, tugged at his arm. "Let me get you indoors."
He walked with her quietly. Was this how the sick walked? She led through darkness. The moon was sinking but the stars were still bright. He might have been seen away from the shadows. He was grateful for her solicitude.
"You weren't only risking pneumonia," she presently observed. "Did you want to be caught?"
"Yes."
She stopped and faced him. "Why?"
"To end things."
"Oh?" She studied him a moment longer and he suddenly shivered. She pulled at his arm again. "Come along."
They rounded the main building and came to one of many doors. She opened it, pushed Fred in ahead of her, let the door swing shut again. They were, Fred noticed, in a small poolside lounge. He felt grateful for its warmth.
"Now," Winnie said and he noted her eyes were unnaturally grave, "let's find out why the rich voyeur wants to die of scandal. Stu doesn't have many guests here but some are important. Probably quite a few are as kookie as you-but they're sharks and you know it. They'd love to tear you to shreds and you'd do the same to them." She looked him up and down. "I think we'll be all right here. If anyone comes you can pretend you're addicted to before-dawn dips in the pool. Are you wearing anything under that robe?"
Fred shook his head mutely. He liked Winnie's candor, as he liked all things about her. In some way she was his friend-as she seemed to be everyone's-she met.
Now she frowned.
"What on earth possessed you not to dress decently for your prowling?"
The subject interested Fred less than another.
"I'm sorry you had to see Stu and that woman."
"So am I." Her eyes still held that unnatural gravity. "I'm afraid I asked for it-I was checking up on Stu. Thanks, anyway. Are you upset about Stu's having carried on with Ethel?"
Fred once again shook his head. "No."
"But you're upset about something-else why the risky exposure? Would I be safe, I wonder, asking you to my room? Don't answer that-just come along."
He followed her through glass doorways quite calmly, down a short corridor and into an elevator. He asked for her room number, pressed the button. At her door he held out his hand silently for her key. She gave it to him. He was no longer thinking of the personal problems of Fred Stone but of those of Winnie Belden.
First, Stu and Ethel. Now, Stu and Mae Price. And who knew how many others? His unreadable eyes studied the unwonted gravity of hers as she faced him in her room and he felt almost himself again-a man who dealt with and did not yield to problems.
Winnie said, "Find a chair, Fred, and I'll make you a drink for breakfast." She looked suddenly not only sad but desperately tired. "Has anybody you know slept tonight?"
"Ethel's asleep," he told her. "Stu brought her back around three in the morning."
"I know." Winnie had her back to him. She was doing things with bottles and glasses at the recessed refrigerator unit. "I saw him briefly. How do you like Stu's arrangements here-a stocked liquor closet in every room? All the comforts of home. You're not getting your usual gin, by the way. Brandy warms better. Okay?"
"Okay," Fred said. His eyes absorbed Winnie, gathering impressions of fatigue from her posture that seemed to register more deeply in his awareness than most of his appraisals of people-as deeply, in fact, as her loveliness had always done. He was mildly surprised. People's problems seldom touched any tender part of him. "Many of Stu's ideas have to be toned down to make operation commercially feasible." He spoke carefully, avoiding commitment. "Where did you see Stu?"
"At the pool. I was swimming-or had been when he came." She turned and came to him, carrying two glasses. "You and I seem to share a mania for freezing-probably for similar reasons. I was working some sex out of my system."
"Ryan?" Fred asked, taking one of the glasses.
"Ryan," Winnie agreed and Fred's muddy mind registered desperation in her voice. An acceptance of some calamity. She sank into a chair facing his and sat limply. "I don't know why I'm telling you this-except that you're good with people, although lousy with women. How did you find Sue Ryan?"
"A woman in love," Fred said. He let his steady stare absorb each nuance of Winnie's weary posture. "Unshakably, I think."
Winnie nodded. "I knew that. That was why I borrowed him. I wanted to know how it felt to be loved by a man who could possess a woman so completely."
"Did you find out?"
"For a little while-yes. For a while I even hated her for having him-for owning him. That's why I needed the cold swim. Can you understand what I mean?"
"Yes," Fred said. "A man like Ryan's good for a small loan at any time-if you want to do him a favor."
Winnie mustered a smile. "I like the way you put things. Did I do him a favor? And Stu? What would you lend him?"
Fred said nothing.
Winnie sighed. "I was afraid of that. A poor risk. I broke with him at the pool. I'm getting a divorce."
Fred sat motionless, gripping his brandy.
After a while he said, "A tightly knit family is a good, good security risk."
Winnie said ruefully, "Stu and I were never that-a tightly knit family. I see my children during vacations or visit them at school. Stu and I have met from time to time. He wanted me to have a career. He wanted a glamorous wife. He also wanted other women."
Fred sniffed his brandy. He did not taste it.
He asked carefully, "If you'd already broken with Stu-why were you out there checking on him?"
"Second thoughts." Winnie's eyes were sad. "I saw that Price woman going to him as I left-and I wondered. Lucky for you I was the one checking up, not Mae Price's husband or one of the other guests. You still haven't told me why the undress masquerade. You told me you wanted to be caught. Was that good business?"
Fred privileged her with one of his brief smiles.
"No," he admitted. "It's not easy to explain." But the explanation proved simpler than he had imagined. He had thought matters through clearly. He described his session with Ethel-when he had tried to imagine her another woman-and told of finding Stu's map in her purse. "I suddenly saw Stu's desire lines all pointing at me-at an evil-at a man who could create nothing except with money. I'm a dead man, Winnie. I thought it was time to end it."
"Try that brandy," Winnie said.
Fred took a controlled sip, set down the glass. He did not need the drink.
"Now take off that bathrobe," Winnie said.
Panic touched Fred. He clutched her wrists.
"Don't, Winnie," he pleaded. "You know how I feel about you."
"Yes-you told me in Paris. Are you going to hurt me, Fred?"
"No." The thought of hurting Winnie was unbearable. Shocked, he saw that his hands were crushing her wrists. He released her. "I tried that, too. Paris has girls willing to be hurt for a price. But their pain did nothing for me. Like everything else I attempted, it just degraded me, humiliated me. And my shame made things worse-"
"I know." Winnie was rubbing her wrists. "Because I'm in the same boat. Routine sex once in a while with Stu-it did nothing for me. I began to fear I'd become frigid. Then I realized that in the absence of real love to make sex work, I needed sport, naughtiness-maybe even wickedness. But I could not steal it or buy it. That would shame me, as it did you ... which would prevent it from working. So I seduced Al-"
"That," Fred queried, "was not stealing?"
"No. I was giving him something, don't you see?" She laughed. "A small loan, you called it." She eyed Fred sharply. "Tell me this much. If stealing or buying couldn't work, why didn't you just ask Ethel for spicy explorations? For the offbeat indulgences that can kindle appetites?"
"For the same reason, I'm sure, you didn't demand them of Stu. I don't love her. Poor girl, she doesn't interest me." He finished heavily, "Anyway, nothing would have helped. I'm not a man-"
"I want to see," she responded, "if you're telling me the truth-if you're telling yourself the truth. This is the night for truths, isn't it? Al Ryan declared this place a lie-I believed him. You told me Stu is a poor risk-I believed that, too. The rest I want to see for myself."
He stood motionless while Winnie undid the bathrobe. Her hands felt his chest, his back. Her gaze touched him, too-everywhere.
"Not bad for a dead man," she said. "At least the body is still warm."
His flesh leaped where she had touched, cringed where she had looked.
Smiling, Winnie tossed her sweater to a chair. Her breasts were bare, wide, pointed-and deep.
He watched the tight slacks slide down her smooth hips, saw her lift first one long leg, then another, kick free.
She shook her cascading blond hair into place over her shoulders. He stared at the equally blond tuft at the junction of her fine thighs. And staring, again he felt flame start to rise in him.
"I could learn to love you, Fred," she said. "I think I did, a little-last year in Paris-though all you wanted was to look. I felt sorry for you then, and I guess a little angry. Looking is never enough for a woman. But go ahead. Look. Look all you want to, if that pleases you...."
She posed and pirouetted before him in glorious nakedness, but his flame was already dying. He sank into a soft armchair, his eyes muddy once more. For a moment they had been bright.
Winnie took a deep breath. Flinging herself to her knees, she forced herself between his bent legs. She lowered her deep, nude breasts until they enclosed his flaccid member.
"Poor little thing," she cooed. "Is it afraid of me? Or just of another failure?" Delicately she kissed its upturned tip. "We must help it. We must encourage it. Mustn't we?" Again she kissed delicately. With soft fingers she fondled it. She cuddled it in her rich bosom.
"Winnie-my God-"
"See? It's swelling! What do you think of that?" Fluttering lips touched the fleshy rod once more, and he groaned. "Why, the darling," Winnie chuckled. "It's absolutely sticking up!"
"Hussy!" he roared, clutching her hair and forcing her mouth to the tip of the engorged protoplasm. "Do it. Do it to me, Winnie! Right now, while I can-"
Her beautiful mouth, her flicking pink tongue, quickly brought him to a pitch he had not known for years. Thoroughly Winnie lapped, unabashedly slobbering until from end to end he was wet and glistening. Then she wantonly engulfed in her laughing mouth all of his length it would hold. Fred leaped as if lashed. He pumped, cried out, lifted....
But in that frantic instant, Winnie drew back her lovely blond head, buried his straining arrow in the quiver of her big, trembling breasts.
He felt that he was wallowing in warm mallow. He seized the heavy hillocks, lush as cream, smooth and clinging as pink velvet. The coral nipples kissed his palms. He pressed the plump and billowing flesh to his inflamed center still slippery with the dew of her mouth. Her hands came down over his, helping massage him, enfold him, in her soft tumbling mounds. Scathing sensation scorched his nerves. He convulsed, exulting. He cried insanely, "Winnie!"
His soaring lust burst, flailing him as he spewed, whipping him into writhing ecstasy. He fell back in the chair.
"Sorry," Winnie said, eyeing the milky spume trickling over her bosom. "My first experience, you know. I wasn't quite up to tasting any. With practice, maybe." She added, "By the way, I detected not a thing wrong with you-"
He waited until he had regained his breath. But all he could say was, "You wretch!"
His eyes were no longer muddy. Her blue ones sparkled with mischief. "Isn't it marvelous what a pair of tits can do?"
"Winnie! How can you be so bawdy? And so-so shameless?"
"Not bawdy. Spicy. Provocative-naughty-to break the dam that's had you stopped up. And there's nothing to be ashamed of, because we're not buying it or stealing it. We're giving it-"
He stroked her hair. "What did I give you? Surely you had no ... no...."
"No orgasm? Don't hesitate to' name it. No, I had none," she said. "Your gift to me was the feeling that my love is needed-desperately needed. To heal you, Fred. And in time to come, to refresh and renew you."
"And am I healed?"
"Oh, yes, Fred. Now that I've burst the dam, now that I've broken through your guilts, inhibitions, self-doubts, you'll see. Making straight, honest love will be as easy for you as for any healthy guy."
"Healthy?" Defeat crossed his craggy features. "Ethel and I-we tried-but we never managed to have any children-"
"I'm sure it wasn't your fault," Winnie answered lightly. "Fred, face it. You're about as sterile as a prize bull. And as impotent."
"Show me," he growled, reaching for her.
Still seated in the big chair, he swung her to his lap. Her long legs dangled over his thighs, the feet delicate yet strong, the toes daintily manicured. He kissed her mouth, leisurely, lingeringly. His strong hands caressed the length of her silky body. Sure enough! He felt passion leap in his loins. The biological urge to create, he thought. Healthy.
"By 'any healthy guy,' " he said, following his train of thought, "I suppose you meant Al Ryan."
"Please don't let him bother you," she begged. "Believe me, he was the only one except Stu-"
"Bother me? Not at all. It excites me to talk about it." A breast in each hand, he kneaded and thumbed. "Did he do this to you?"
Excitement was rising in her. She settled more cozily into Fred's lap.
"He played with my titties, yes. Not as nicely as you do, dear."
Fred felt his already distended staff engorge even more. The swollen flesh rubbing between her thighs seemed to bathe her in bliss. She kissed Fred's neck, his chest. Her slim fingers agitated his nipples, traced his whorls of graying chest hair. She mewed and purred like a stroked kitten.
"You," remarked Fred, "were after spice. What kind did you get?" He was remembering Stu and Mae Price. "An unaccustomed rearward assault, perhaps?"
She laughed softly. "Oh, Fred. No inhibitions, remember? Say what you mean."
Fred clutched her. He whispered, "Did he, uh, give it to you in your lovely ass?"
"In that respect I'm still a virgin."
"Then he just stuck it into your pretty slit? Like this?"
She twitched violently. Fred was cleaving her from underneath. Filled with him, she squealed happily, rolled her thighs to pleasure him.
"It was good, I bet," he said huskily. "But not as good as this is going to be!"
And he lifted her quaking silky body a few inches, brought it down. Lifted, lowered. Each stroke evoked agonies of sensuous delight.
Savoring the burning thrusts, he felt powered by pagan gods. He tasted heat fusing with his own, knew a warmth of breasts and tongue and breath mingling with his own. Elevating her once more, he lowered her with torturing slowness, glutting himself and her with slick, hot feast. Suddenly ecstasy erupted in them both. Wild joy endured an eternity as they clutched and convulsed-
Slowly then it waned, leaving in its wake a quiet peace.
Now I create, thought Fred. If not this time, then another time. It was his need, and he knew it was hers also-Stu had once complained to him of Winnie's proclivity to breed.
Dawn was streaking the sky. They slumbered quietly in each other's arms.
* * *
Sunlight bathed Fred and Winnie when they awoke in early afternoon. Desire trembled through him and he made her a promise.
"Ours will be a home with children, Winnie-no damned hotel-"
She quieted him. "We'll get out of here as fast as we can. But for the time being, this is still a convenient place."
Her laughter was soft as he rediscovered and repossessed her-best deals, he found, were made by daylight in love as in business. Last night's spark had grown to a steady flame he knew he would carry with him as long as he lived-a flame shared with this woman.
He left her at last and went to the window. He looked out at the blue lake, at the scattering of Stu's chosen guests testing the hotel's facilities. A powerboat roared from the pier to vanish in the distant sunswept spray. Another boat curved in from mid-lake, hauling two water-skiers. Sounds came from the tennis courts. Fetching waitresses served lunch on the color-bedecked terrace.
The hotel might have potential, Fred reflected, if someone could persuade Stu and his friends to turn it from a crystal cage for sin into something that real people wanted.
People like the Ryans, Fred thought, who right now did not belong here. And who evidently knew it. Fred caught sight of Sue and Al Ryan walking out of the hotel. A bellhop had already loaded their luggage. Al pressed what was probably an exorbitant tip into the fellow's hand. Their car moved off, headed for the highway.
Winnie emerged from the shower, fresh and sunny, wrapped in a bath towel. "Fred," she said, "what of Ethel?"
"She'll be all right. If she doesn't have the hopeless task of trying to please me, she'll become her natural self at places like this. She'll meet her natural mate-"
"Not Stu?"
"Not him," Fred said. "Too many desire lines. She'll find someone steadier. She has money of her own, did you know that?"
"Stu's desire lines brought us together," Winnie said. "Doesn't he deserve some reward?"
"Poor credit risk," Fred reminded her, still gazing through the window. "Nevertheless, my dear, I'm going to stake him."
"What!" Winnie clapped her hands, with the result that the bath towel fell to the carpet. She pressed her nakedness to Fred's back and hugged him. "I'm glad. I like to see people happy." Then she pouted. "But the Ryans. They'll get nothing out of this. They can't go along with Stu."
"It's his sick concept they can't go along with, not Stu personally." He paused. "I just saw the Ryans leave. I'll give them a few days to get the sickness out of their hair, then I'll send them a wire. I'm putting Al Ryan in real charge. As the man behind the scenes, he'll make the hotel healthy. As the operating partner, Stu will make a mint. We all will."
At last Fred turned back into the sunlit room. His admiring eyes ran over Winnie's sleek lines, then noticed her pensive expression.
"What are you thinking of, dear?"
"Of what a darling you really are," she said. "And of desire lines."
