Penny was no virgin. He would be taking nothing she had not given free to Rick and perhaps to others.
He asked, "Well, do you want the fifty?"
"I don't understand. I'd better go check the twins-"
"You understand. Fifty dollars to go to bed with me."
He grabbed for her. She screamed but no one heard. She fought but could not escape...
CHAPTER ONE
Penny Dayton stormed into her room. She hurled her baseball cap at the dresser lamp. The cap struck the shade. The lamp rocked.
She said, "Go on, fall down, damn you."
Knuckles on hips, Penny glared at the lamp. She loved it. The base was a dainty porcelain figurine. The shade was good parchment, painted with rosebuds and blue bows. But let it break like a girl's heart broke from humiliation when she was seen pushing a lawnmower.
Pops had been sarcastic.
The baseball cap will shade your nose, keep it from freckling...
A lot he cared about her freckles. He knew damn well she wore the baseball cap as a protest to show him how tomboyish she looked doing a boy's chores. He had to know better. He had noticed she was a girl two years ago.
Thank goodness, Penny has come down from the trees at last. She's beginning to act like a girl...
The occasion had been her quitting playing second base for the Wilson Street Warriors. She had been the only girl on the team.
Was Pops now trying to erase her femininity?
She had buried a past full of baseball and tree climbing. She was determined to live as her body indicated. And dictated. She wore a B-cup bra and her hips stretched her old baseball denims until she could hardly work the zipper. She reveled in frills like the lacy petticoat she had bought this afternoon after school, on sale at three-sixty-nine. And the thin saffron curtains blowing in the breeze-she had paid for them with baby-sitting money. The fragile porcelain lamp was similarly hers.
She heard a car pull up at the curb. The clatter of loose valves announced Rick even before he blew the horn. He had come to take her to baby-sit at the Metlocks'.
Her body softened. She sagged back against the wall. Rick Scheer was her guy. She watched the lamp settle back on an even keel. She hated Rick's beeping the horn. It was insulting. She was not a fourteen-year-old who would become giddy with excitement when a boy blew his horn for her for all the neighborhood to hear. However, Rick was here because she was a girl, not a lawnmower-pusher and an ex-baseball player-not even because she bought gasoline for the Monster, Rick's car, and sometimes helped him clean the spark plugs and set the timing.
Rick was here because when he kissed her she turned to silk, because she dissolved when he caressed her breasts, because she expired when he parted her thighs. Not that sex was everything. In fact, sex was only a small and uncertain part of it. More important was the shine in Rick's eyes when she looked pretty in a new dress. At such times he seemed afraid to touch her.
But Rick was usually an awful dope, especially when he asked what she wanted to do-instead of deciding for himself. Rick was immature, even if he was seventeen.
Her mother called down the hall.
"Rick's here."
Penny heard the Monster still rattling and shaking out at the curb. Rick did not dare shut off the motor because the battery was feeble again.
"Tell Rick the mower conked out, Mother."
Penny had left the mower just below her ground-floor window.
She knew that Rick would try to peek in and watch her undress if she did not hurry. She tore off her shirt. Rick was really a kind of sex nut, the way he stared at her in a bathing suit and sometimes peeked up her skirt.
She saw him staring at her now-he stood outside her window.
"What happened to the mower? Heat up."
"It stopped."
She stood at the window, her head between the curtains. She held a wad of curtain against her old bra.
Rick was scowling at the mower. Limp hair hung over his brown eyes. He was tall and loose, a string of bones. Big wrists and hands hung out of his shirt sleeves. His shirt was greasy. An oil blotch marked his cheek. Apparently he had been helping at Mac's Garage again. He rubbed the back of his hand across an itchy nose, leaving a grease smear.
Some girls at school thought Rick was handsome. Penny thought he looked awful most of the time, except when he gazed tenderly at her. Then he was beautiful. Anyhow, a boy's looks brought nothing. When he made her feel hot and squirmy in her pants it had nothing to do with what he looked like.
He said, "I bet you forgot to put oil in. These rotary mowers have shallow pans. Did it smell hot?"
"How does hot smell? Just fix it."
She ducked back inside. She unzipped her denim trousers. The released fabric flew open. She had worn these pants to play baseball before she had a shape. She "had. worn them today to spite Mother, who had agreed with Pops that she should mow the lawn. Mother said the pants were disgracefully tight, that they showed just everything.
Penny peeled the denims down her hips. They stuck on her thighs. They felt shrunken by sweat.
The curtains tossed in the breeze. Rick was peering in.
Penny tried to turn away. The skin-tight denims bound her thighs. She almost fell. Her panties were sheer. Darkness showed through. She lunged toward her bathroom, stumbled, caught herself on the bedpost.
She sobbed a curse at Rick.
The worst of it was seeing her in a baggy old bra, panties torn at the seams, her hair a sweaty tangle, her nose probably crusted with freckles.
The mower was as low on oil as Rick had suspected. Wads of pulped grass had also jammed the rotary blade. He cut the grass mush away with his pocket screwdriver. He did not go to the garage for oil. He pretended to be inspecting the carburetor.
He saw Penny bending over "when the curtains blew aside. She was trying to tug down her denims. Her bra was loose. It revealed her full white breasts and pink nipples. Her panties were almost transparent but she had twisted away from him. He could see only her hip.
He had seen her in a bathing suit a thousand times. But that was different.
The curtains tossed. Her enraged blue eyes flicked toward him.
He dodged her glance.
Why didn't she go into the bathroom and shut the door if she didn't want to be seen?
He never could figure Penny.
Sometimes when they parked and necked she felt like an armful of fluff. When he said, Let's use the back seat ... she would comply without protest. There he would simply strip off her bra and fondle her breasts until her panties were hot. On such nights she was slick inside, easy like her muscles had busted.
At other times she was all hard elbows and scratching fingernails.
She was worst after baby-sitting at the Metlocks'. A pair of phonies. Big swimming pool and new Cadillac every year and a imagine house overlooking the country club. Penny's nose pointed up and she sat on the edge of the seat in the Monster like it was dirty when she had been with the Metlocks. Penny never understood how much he loved her. He felt unspilled tears in his eyes when she was soft and fluffy and hugged him. His heart sang when she helped him repair the Monster.
Lately she called the Monster a piece of junk. That was the Metlocks' doing.
She also said that Mr. Metlock's voice was a velvet baritone, that it had a bedroomy sound. Rick suspected she was teasing him. But the way she sometimes spoke of Metlock made him mad enough to ram the Monster into the shiny new Cadillac.
She was still struggling with her denims and holding her elbow out to hide her breasts.
Rick thought a guy had a right to see his girl. Why keep secrets? She had a terrific shape. She should want him to see how good she looked.
He had tried to study her like he studied a motor, hoping he could figure how to tune her up-adjust her timing, spark, mixture and distributor until he had an eternally happy, soft, and loving Penny.
But she was trying to hide her body from him.
She sat on the floor to be below his line of vision. He scowled and went off to the garage to get oil for the mower.
Penny sure made a guy mad sometimes.
Penny was in a nervous frenzy by the time she escaped her blue denims. She would be late at the Met-locks'. She was furious at Rick for peeping. She hurled her clothes at the laundry hamper. She ran to the shower, hurriedly sluiced herself down. She put on the new petticoat without removing the price tags, strapped on a bra, pulled a dress over her head, scuffed into her sandals. She was still blinded by the dress when she grabbed a comb from her dresser and lunged out to the hall.
She wondered if she had put on panties. But she also remembered that she must take her algebra book to study at the Metlocks'. And she had to collect her lawn-mowing dollar from Pops before he conveniently forgot it. Pops was stingy. She ran back to her room, tugging down her dress, looking for the algebra book.
Rick was standing by the lawnmower, holding a can of oil. He stared at her, at the dress bunched up on her breasts and the new petticoat still marked by price tags.
She snarled at him. She forgot her algebra book, ran back into the hall, yanking savagely at her dress.
Her mother appeared.
Penny turned her back.
"I can't pull the zipper. I'm all sweaty-"
"Darling, don't say sweaty. It's unlady-like."
Her zipper closed, Penny went into the living room, tearing the comb through her hair. Pops slumped over his newspaper. His bald spot showed. His rimless glasses hung halfway down his nose.
Penny stabbed a hand down his back to his hip pocket and snatched out his wallet.
"Hey, young lady. Keep your hands out of my pocket-"
"This way I'm sure to get paid. You might forget tomorrow."
"Straighten out that dollar bill. I want to see that you've got only one." She waggled the single. Pops asked, "Is the lawn done?"
"Well, almost. After the mower conked out and I was late-"
"Then you owe me some change from the dollar."
"Rick will come back and finish mowing. I'm giving him the dollar for gas."
She kissed Pops' cheek and hurried out to the big front porch. The clematis vine hid her view of Rick and the mower.
The Monster was parked at the curb. It was a Ford but the manufacturers would disown it. The front fenders were gone. The hood was held down by wire. The doors and top were painted a murky red. The remainder was a dead blue, streaked by rust. The back seat was fairly spacious. That was the only good part of the Monster.
Penny ran down the steps. She paused beside the car in the shade of the big maple trees that lined Wilson Street. Now that she was dressed properly, the street and sidewalks were empty. While she had been mowing the lawn everybody in town had passed by.
The street was quietly respectable, occupied by people like Pops, who was an accountant in the city, forty-two minutes away on the train. The house was old-fashioned. The shadowing porch made the living room dark. Penny hated to compare it with the Metlocks' modern home. Yet it was attractive enough, painted pearl gray except for the scrollwork on the porch and the window frames, which were gleaming white.
Rick was still fiddling with the mower.
Penny called, "I'm late and you're still covered with grease."
"You asked me to fix the mower."
"You don't have to do everything I say."
"Well, I'm ready to go."
She started toward the car. "I'll take the Monster alone. Pops will drive you over later to pick it up."
"No. You'd shift without double-clutching. You'd tear out the transmission. And you corner too fast."
She beat him to the driver's seat.
Rick climbed in on the passenger's side without further protest.
The Monster had loose rods or valves or both. It clattered as Penny crashed it into second gear, maybe using too much accelerator. But it had to be goosed or it would stall. The whole car seemed to twist and bend on turns. A thousand steel parts scraped and screeched against each other. Exhaust smoke came into the car. The cracks in the muffler had opened up again.
The seat was low. Kicking the clutch and brake made Penny's short skirt slide back. Rick was eyeing her nude thighs.
He said, "If you get done early at the Metlocks'-how about my picking you up? We can take a ride."
"It'll be too late."
"Maybe they'll come home early."
"I hope they don't. They pay by the hour." He looked hurt.
He deserved to hurt for peeking in through the window.
She drove toward the country club. The street passed through an area of new developments. Little open land was left near town but Penny could see the woods and fields where she and Rick went at night to park farther westward. In the three other directions the town blended with the crazy quilt of the megalopolis, endless square miles of houses, shade trees and streets. In places the trees became few and the houses massed. At some points nature was blotted out entirely and office towers thrust upward. Pops worked in one of these vortexes of the megalopolitan waves of human pressure. But they were on the distant horizon of Penny's world.
Penny became aware that drafts from the open windows were circulating too freely under her petticoat.
She had forgotten to put on panties. Nor did she have her algebra book.
Damn Rick for staring through her window and confusing her.
The Metlocks lived behind the golf course, where everybody had an acre of lawn and hired a boy to mow it. Their house was a sprawling redwood rancher, built around flagged terraces. The swimming pool was in back. The place reeked of money. When Penny wheeled the Monster into the crushed stone drive she felt about as elegant as the garbage man.
She said, "We need a new car."
"We just need a valve job."
"Buy new valves and a car to wrap around them."
"Have you got money for a newer car? Maybe your rich Mr. Metlock would loan it."
"Maybe."
"Him and his bedroom voice." Penny flushed.
She stopped the car and got out, suddenly furious at Rick's mentioning Mr. Metlock's money and his bedroom voice like they went together. Mr. Metlock might lend her money because she was a big help around the house, almost one of the family. Also, he treated her as if she were a grownup who wore a B-cup bra and frilly undies. But his money and his appreciation of her as a girl did not go together.
Rick said, "I'll phone you."
She ignored him, went chin-high to the front door. He had spoken apologetically. But did he feel guilty from peeking through her window or from implying such a nasty thing about her and Mr. Metlock?
She rang the bell, hoping Rick would drive out of sight before either of the Metlocks saw him and the Monster, that old garbage can on wheels.
John Metlock stood as tall as the door. He smiled down at her.
"Penny, what a pretty dress."
She mumbled that the dress was an old rag, went past him into the huge living room, which was broken into three sections by groupings of handsome furniture. The rugs were so deep they felt spongy under her sandals.
He asked, "No schoolbooks?"
"I came in a hurry-I forgot them."
John Metlock was dressed impeccably in a tailor-made suit that showed no wrinkles. He never seemed wrinkled or smudged. He was about thirty, a corporation lawyer who not only made a lot of money but was lean and graceful. His curly black hair and handsome dark eyes complemented his velvet voice.
Sometimes, Penny thought, he gazed too intently at her. It was discomfiting. His look seemed to go beyond appreciation of her girlish femininity-it was as if he viewed her as a woman.
Penny was not sure she was ready to be a woman. Or knew how to be one. He made her feel unsure.
He went to a table and poured a dry martini from a pitcher.
Penny wondered where the twins were. They were boys, aged five-two housewrecking brats. The Metlocks and their home were smooth as oil but the twins were terrible.
Penny heard Mrs. Metlock's voice. "John, I'm dying of thirst. Has Penny come? Bring me a drink."
"Penny's here."
"Oh, send her in. John, I'm out of cigarettes. And all wet. The twins are running in the hall. Won't somebody do something?"
John Metlock smiled.
"Penny, I think you might go to the rescue. I can't cope with Harriet when she's suffering the torments of dressing."
He gave Penny the pitcher of martinis and a pack of cigarettes.
She ran to Harriet's room, glad to escape John's eyes. Tonight his stare seemed almost feverish. He seemed to look through her skirt and petticoat to her bare bottom.
She heard the twins yelling ahead of her. The back door slammed and cut off their racket.
Harriet Metlock was naked and racing around her room, yanking drawers open, throwing armfuls of undies on the bed. Her back was still wet from the shower. Without clothes she looked like an eel. She was supple and slim, had high breasts, tilted up and bearing nipples like pink cherries. But her breasts were smaller than Penny's. Harriet was maybe twenty-six and was the mother of two but Penny had more bosom and hips.
"Penny, darling girl, you've saved my life. There's the martini glass. And light me a cigarette, will you? I'm desperate. The blue dress needs pressing. The white one is too thin. My white undies all seem to be in the laundry. I can't wear black or blue or green under a light-colored dress. The heel is off those white shoes. Why doesn't somebody do something? I suppose John is hiding. He always disappears when I need him most."
Penny lit a cigarette. She suppressed a cough. She gave the cigarette to Harriet, who hung it from the corner of her mouth and continued to throw clothes out of drawers and closets. She paused to take the martini when Penny had poured it, gulped down half of the drink before resuming her search.
"Penny, you always seem tidy and prepared for anything. How do you do it? I have too much to do, making supper and feeding the twins, then hurrying to go outand this afternoon was bridge club."
"I have troubles, too. Tonight I ran here so fast I forgot to put on pants."
Harriet laughed. She scanned Penny's figure.
"I'd offer you a pair but you'd split them, I'm sure. Anyhow, your bottom won't freeze. How I wish I had a real figure. John says I look like a snake and he means it flatteringly-the poor man has to say something. Do you think I could wear gray? It makes my eyes look like slate."
"But with a little green eye shadow-"
"How clever you are. There, we've got it. Gray. Any color of undies will go under gray. D'you think? And pearls?"
Penny nodded.
She envied Harriet for having so many clothes that she became lost in choices. And a husband who made buckets of money and let her have all she wanted.
Having decided on a dress, Harriet put herself together with amazing speed, brushing her hair to a pale blonde wreath, applying eye shadow and lipstick in splatters that somehow landed in exactly the right places, finding pale undies that would not show through the gray dress, on the first try fitting the low neckline of the dress to a bra that pushed her breasts into view without showing any bra material.
Penny put away the scattered clothing, followed Harriet from the bedroom. Harriet was glossy and tidy enough to be photographed.
John had made a fresh pitcher of martinis. He was pouring himself one when they entered the living room.
Harriet said, "I simply can't live without Penny's help. John, I'm going to adopt her. Tell me, would the law let me adopt her, even though she already has parents?"
He smiled.
"I have a better idea. Penny could adopt you. I'll hunt a loophole through the obvious technicalities tomorrow at the office. Lawyers are for loopholes. Right, Penny?"
Penny nodded.
She felt comfortable with him when Harriet was present. She could enjoy their carefree chatter and feel in an odd way that she shared Harriet's handsome husband and her lovely house.
Still, the Metlock luxury would make a girl envious if she let herself dwell on it.
They went out. Penny watched from a window as John ushered his wife to the big new Cadillac.
She sighed. Some girls had all the luck.
CHAPTER TWO
John Metlock was thinking about Penny as he drove to the party at the home of Randy and Beth Hill.
He wondered how he and Harriet seemed to Penny's eyes.
He glanced at his wife's cameo profile, at her wreath of golden hair, the gauzy stole covering her shoulders, the lustrous pearls on her bosom. Graceful, svelte, worldly, Harriet was the most elegant woman in their group. Together he and Harriet were perfect castings from the mold that had produced the young professional people of Crestview. They belonged to the country club and owned a swimming pool. They had two new cars and the average two healthy children. They spent their energies in making money and trying to dazzle each other with clever extravagances.
They were loaded with debts.
John's income last year had been thirty thousand and they had spent thirty-five. This year he must earn thirty-five in order to spend forty.
But the money craze was superficial. The real rot lay deeper.
Penny's open admiration of their house, the furnishings, Harriet's clothes and jewelry, was perhaps natural in a teenager raised to less affluent and much less flam-buoyant circumstances. Could a vision of wealth corrupt the girl? Could it corrupt a whole nation of such teenagers?
Harriet asked, "Is my lipstick smeared? My bra showing? You keep looking at me."
"I was thinking about Penny."
"While looking at me?"
"Yes. I was wondering how we appear to her. I mean-does she see through us?"
"Darling, you're being introspective again. It's your guilt complex working."
"Be serious. Does Penny mimic you?"
"She trails after me like a good little servant. I suppose I'm a tin goddess to her. At least I try to be. Doesn't one behave that way toward children?"
He shrugged. Harriet and he were nowhere near the heart of the subject. Nor would they get there. Harriet preferred to live on the skin. By posing as the perfect magazine-cover wife and companion-tender mother, interior decorator of professional capacities, a clothes horse who made other women grit their teeth in envy-Harriet kept herself busy enough to ignore the truth. Particularly the implications of her affair with Randy Hill.
Did she think that a casual affair with her husband's best friend made her the complete woman? Wife, mother, mistress?
Her infidelity was a time bomb slowly ticking inside John.
His nerves were tight as a piano wire. Today, at work, his hand had suddenly closed on a pencil, breaking it. He had left the office and gone to the bar down the street for a stiff drink. And then another drink, a double.
Crush her lovely, fine-bridged nose? Grab her up by hair and skirt, hurl her head-first against a wall?
But he loved Harriet. He could not touch a single golden-dyed hair of her head.
The image of Penny and her lusty young breasts kept flickering through his mind. An under-age girl in his charge, a child at his mercy. While she had been in the bedroom with Harriet-earlier this evening-he had thought of her and discovered that his trousers were tented.
Could Penny offer him a way out of the evil black fog that was smothering him? "John-"
Harriet's voice was a scream. He jerked the wheel to the left. He had almost sideswiped a parked car.
"John, weren't you watching?"
He showed her an easy smile.
"I just wanted to see if you were awake."
She calmed down by the time he slowed for the Hills' drive. The big parking space was already full. John drove into the entranceway, blocking the exit of a dozen or fifteen shiny new cars.
Harriet looked at the gleaming vehicles. Her eyes sparkled.
"John, I love parties. Why do I always get excited."
"Because at parties men drool over your loveliness and women hate you."
She squeezed his hand.
"Are you saying that to be a dutiful husband or because it's true?"
"Because I have drunk three martinis and the blarney Of my Irish grandfather O'Houlihan is on my tongue."
"I love you when you wax poetic and blarneyful. Please flatter all the girls tonight. I like seeing everyone gather around you. But please don't charm Gloria Mc-Manus."
"Gloria needs charming more than anyone. Her ego is low."
"Yes, I suppose that's why she whores. Still, I'd hate for you to be used by her. I'd rather you did something difficult. Seduce a virgin or a faithful wife."
She spoke lightly.
You were once a faithful wife. Are you feeling guilty about having seduced Randy Hill? Are you offering me my own hunting license?
"John, let's go in and have loads of fun."
They left the car. Harriet took his arm. They walked toward the front door. John's unquiet mind's eye leaped to the doorway to observe himself and Harriet in a mental mirror. He saw a long-legged, graceful couple, dressed to perfection, climbing brick steps to the wide door of a house slightly more costly than his own and sporting a bigger pool. But the score was evened by Harriet's jewelry and the exquisite taste with which she had furnished their house. Harriet and he arrived as equals to the Hills.
For a moment his mind dwelled with pleasure on the elegant young Metlocks-a corporation lawyer of thirty who was indispensable to his firm and a wife who was indispensable to his dream of what life should be.
But the glossy fiction had long since worn thin. Suddenly he saw Harriet and himself stripped of sham and clothing. How foolish they looked, strutting to show off their clothes and Harriet's pearls, unaware that they were naked. How knobby knees were. How odd black loins appeared against pale flesh. Harriet's makeup placed a painted-doll mask above a white torso. John's own black-haired arms and shins were ludicrous.
The vision should have been funny but he did not smile. The removal of clothing was only the first step to their discovering their true selves.
Harriet pushed the front door open. Cocktail party chatter swarmed out.
She said, "Now remember, darling-no Gloria. I wouldn't be proud of you."
"Right. I'll stick to virgins and faithful wives. Playing with Gloria would be petty larceny."
"Yes. Think big-live dangerously or not at all."
"We're in the wrong place. There's no danger here. Do you see any virgins or faithful wives? Let's consider. Suppose I seduced the baby-sitter? Jailbait, a mere child-a perversion, eh?"
She grimaced.
"That's obscene, darling. Not amusing."
"I suppose."
In his mood the notion of seducing Penny seemed neither obscene nor inviting. His mind's eye neither approved nor disapproved. It simply observed.
The party engulfed them. John gave out smiles and uttered empty pleasantries while making his way through the crowd.
He lost Harriet on the way to the bar at the end of the immense living room. He deftly avoided the conversational hooks tossed out by self-appointed hostesses in charge of each little knot of people for a moment stabilized in the turmoil of the party's flow. The bar section was raised a step. He glanced back, surveyed the clusters of three or four persons each. Between them trailed singles and doubles, joining or abandoning a conversation, drawn by an amusing story or repelled by a bad one, gathering around a pretty woman or a man sober enough to be entertaining.
John had been through it too often. Tonight he would stay at the bar where the action was. He knew he would get drunk, though he doubted that alcohol would mask the unbearable clarity of his vision.
Dr. Harry McManus was at the bar, a heavy man with tired eyes, the husband of the notorious Gloria.
John asked the bartender for whiskey. He greeted McManus, inquired if the reddish beverage before the doctor could be something nasty like coke. McManus nodded. "I'm on call for hospital emergency."
"Medicine must be a lousy profession. If you get drunk you might kill people, eh?" McManus shrugged.
"That's the hell of it, John. A lawyer can only hurt people's money. That is, a lawyer like yourself, on the money side of law, not fooling with murder cases and such."
"Yes, I hurt people where they live. And they think I'm doing them a favor, keeping the tax collector off then-necks. I like hurting their wallets. To them money's just paper. To me it is nectar and ambrosia, the stuff of life."
"John, your bitterness is getting the better of you. You need a vacation."
"Thank you for the free diagnosis, doctor. You mean a vacation at some swanky resort where I will meet people just like me, trying to escape themselves. Our similar situations will reassure me that we are all in the same boat-a good boat, even if it sinks."
"Seriously, you should get away from it all."
"I am away. On the fifth drink my mind's eye becomes a camera hanging from a balloon above my head, showing me the entire surface area of everyone present, including myself. I see a gaudy display of tinsel, an incredibly false display. And what do I see beneath it?"
"Beneath it you see the real tinsel."
"Yes. The dirty tinsel, rotted and perforated. It no longer conceals and so we have bought a new layer."
McManus smiled. He sipped his coke, made an expression of distaste and set down the glass.
John said, "McManus, this can't be real. All this. Can it? This treadmill of mortgages? When I was in college and law school I saw great goals on the horizon. A lovely home, a beautiful wife, scrubbed and brushed children-and they're all there, achieved. I worked like hell and-"
"You've worked too hard."
"I need to break outside and look back in."
"You're talking about insanity."
John got a fresh drink and turned away. McManus was speaking as a man whose social front had been destroyed by his wife's whoring. The McManuses would have been frozen out of the group if people were not afraid of doctors.
However, this group also needed Gloria. Her indiscretions had made her a figure of ridicule, compared to which the others could feel comfortably smug. John guessed that every social set needed an obvious whore and perhaps a satyr to reassure its members. Suppose Harriet divorced him, married Randy? No. She would do nothing obvious. Harriet was simply playing a discreet game to dispel boredom. She would not clear the air by leaving him.
He saw Randy, a tall blonde man with inky eyebrows, towering over Harriet. The two were laughing. Randy waved at John. John signaled back.
He and Randy rode the same commuter train. They were both corporation lawyers working in similar steel-tower office buildings. They played golf together and confessed to each other the state of their indebtedness and their hopes that next year they would earn enough extra to pay it all off. They never, of course, discussed Harriet. Randy probably wished John would have an affair with Beth-to balance things.
But the apparent parallelism of their lives concealed great differences. Randy accepted his way of life as divinely ordained. Friendly infidelity did not disturb the even tenor of his existence. But John loved his wife. He loved Harriet until the thought of another man's touching her made him want to kill.
He glanced at Harriet, studied the dainty curves of her body, the golden crown of her hair, the grace of her gestures, her quick laugh up at Randy. Randy touched her arm, winked, whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
The sight of the two together made a rusty knife twist in John's stomach.
In the far corner of the room he saw Beth, a tiny redheaded woman with pouting breasts, eyeing her husband and Harriet. Beth must have figured out the score. She had been edgy lately.
John returned to the bar to avoid meeting Beth's glance. He did not want to admit to her that the situation existed. She was a fool, a tiresome woman.
McManus was talking on the bar phone. He hung up, glanced at John and shrugged.
"John, if you see Gloria, tell her I've got a messy highway accident to sew back together. I hate to leave but-"
"Hell, what's the use of staying when coke is your only solace?"
"At the hospital I can get morphine." McManus grinned. "You know, of course, that all doctors are addicts."
"Like all lawyers are crooked." McManus started for the door. He paused. "John, I mean that about your needing a vacation."
Shortly John spotted Gloria McManus. He beckoned to her.
Gloria came toward him. She was a raven-haired, olive-skinned, full-bodied piece of undisguised sex.
Her neckline swooped down almost to the navel, exposing the inner curves of her breasts and the deep, shadowed cleavage. She smiled at John. Her lush lower lip was wetly inviting.
Here was instant sex, ready to journey to a dark room. John glanced at the windows. The sun was setting. The pupils of Gloria's eyes seemed enlarged, as though in anticipation of dark-time doings. She glided to him, slipped into the curve of his arm.
She said, "Harriet looks lovely tonight."
She was right. Harriet tonight seemed special, gold-topped and slick-bottomed in a tight miniskirt. But Gloria wanted flattery.
He murmured, "Gloria, you're caviar and ice cream man explosion of dark flowers in my heart."
"How ridiculous and charming. If that comes from drinking whiskey, finish your glass and have another."
He gulped down his drink. Gloria vined closer.
"John, let's go to the buffet and float food in your whiskey. You must have some smoked salmon. It's delicious."
"No. Tonight I drink. Where do you spend your days, Gloria? I see you only at night, a flower that seems to have hidden and stored up beauty in order to burst out fresh as dew at nightfall."
She giggled. "I didn't know you were a poet."
"A poet of the tongue only. I never write it down. Nobody writes it any more. I just turn it on as you would a TV set, then turn it off. Gone. Electronic poetry. Do you dig me, Gloria?"
"You sound unhappy."
She was looking at Harriet and Randy. They were standing closer together now. Harriet was flushed. Blushing, rather. She was supposedly ten years past the age of blushes but she often charmed John by her sudden reddening when their glances met or he whispered a call to bed.
Gloria said, "How square you are, John."
Not square. She did not dig the truth, the total picture from a home-and-garden magazine-the excellent furniture exquisitely arranged, the photogenic and gracious hostess, the well-scrubbed children, the brand new car parked out front. Standing god-like above all this was John, the provider. If this picture were not whole and perfect, then it was nothing-like a house built on mud.
Gloria said, "Randy's terribly attractive."
He did not want to discuss Randy's looks. He moved to block Gloria's view of Randy and Harriet.
He said, "Harry said to tell you he's gone to the hospital to sew some people back together."
"Oh, the devil with Harry. He's always at the hospital. Tell me something. Why is there never anything wrong with you? Everyone says John Metlock is so perfectly handsome, polite, charming, never a hair out of place-"
"A perfect bore."
"No, silly. People simply wonder if you have any flaws."
"I have a secret perversion. I'm queer for our baby-sitter."
She laughed. "Darling, tell me all about her. I adore sexual aberrations. Really it is all such a bore when men and women do it because they have no good reason not to as long as they keep up appearances. Is your baby-sitter pretty? Is she a she? I hope you haven't a boy babysitter."
"Well, I think she's a girl. I haven't tested her."
"There's only one way to tell for sure. I can now swear to your masculinity."
Her hand was between his thighs.
John glanced around to see if they were being watched. He caught glints of eyes, flicks of false eyelashes, smiles. But Gloria was wedged between him and the bar and the wall. Others could guess what Gloria might be doing but her actions were concealed.
"John, go on about the baby-sitter."
"She's sixteen and has cute bumps. She rushes madly about, trying to earn money to keep her boy friend's spavined old wreck of a car going. They make love in the back seat. This I know because one night I found them stalled in the parking lot of a curb-service hamburger place and I gave the car a push to start it. I happened to see a pair of panties on the back seat. I don't think Rick kept them there as a souvenir of some other girl."
Gloria laughed. "I didn't start having fun until I was seventeen. How slow I was. I regret that missed year. It's lucky your baby-sitter isn't fifteen. Then I'd have two years to regret. But please don't be corny and say that I've made up for lost time."
He felt aroused by her caressing hand.
He said, "I won't be corny. I was going to suggest we go out on the lawn and inspect the spring flowers, the daffodils and tulips."
"It's not yet time. There's still enough light to see the flowers."
"Well, we can drink while we wait out the sun."
"You drink too much."
"It blurs the edges. It glosses over the imperfections in the image."
"Meaning me?"
"No-you're not in the picture I'm talking about. You are an exotic outsider, one part caviar, one ice cream, the latter meaning what I see down your dress front, even the cherry toppings." She frowned.
"You're making fun of me."
He put his hand on her hip. It squirmed under his touch.
"John, am I just instant infidelity to you?"
"Don't be so damned feminine. If you want to go watch flowers with me, okay. But don't expect me to promise to divorce my wife before we hit the grass."
"You're being nasty."
"Hell. I'll go home and make out with the baby-sitter."
Her hand in his pocket squeezed tightly.
"Please be nice to me. You do care, don't you? I mean, we're friends-but don't you think I'm special? That you could love me a little?"
He thought he would rather get drunk. He did not mind a bit of cut-and-dried sex if it took his mind off Harriet and Randy-especially if it made him feel he was achieving some sort of revenge, however silly the idea was. But he refused to inflate Gloria's ego by avowing eternal love in full knowledge that later tonight she would probably exact the same price from some other man. He had a compulsion to hurt Gloria, in fact, insult her forlorn requests for affection, while pretending to himself that he was abusing Harriet.
But he would prefer to simply get drunk.
Harriet Metlock loved Randy's white-blonde hair and inky eyebrows, his easy grin, the big sure hand that clamped firmly on her hip. He was broader than John. He made her feel dainty-like a magic wand swaying and enchanting him.
She had no intention whatsoever of switching husbands. Let Randy's wife, Beth, think whatever wanted.
Beth was a dreadful bitch.
John was insanely jealous.
His jealousy disturbed Harriet but she was tired of John's taking her for granted, as he did the twins, the furniture and the decor for which Harriet was responsible.
Or was that a justification?
The buzz of cocktail-speeded conversation had risen to a level of dissonant shrillness that called for food to soak up the booze. But women on diets were supping on martini olives. And the men were just beginning to feel refreshed after a hard day in the city. They seized fresh drinks from the trays being offered by the bartender.
The party was soon to be a drunken one.
Harriet knew that cocktail gaiety could hide many an indiscretion, especially if she were sober enough to maneuver clearly. She had been stuffing herself with strips of smoked salmon and slices of rare roast beef from the buffet.
Randy said, "The way you eat, you should fatten."
"I burn it up by loving. I love everything and everybody. But mostly you, darling. Sometimes I even love Beth."
He grinned. "That's disappointing. I'd rather you were jealous of my wife."
Beth was coming toward them. She was small, brisk, and carried too much bosom. Nor were her breasts false. Harriet saw Beth's face as small and weaselish, conniving. It was pretty in a gamin sort of way but nasty.
Beth seized her husband's hand.
"Randy, have you been among the guests to make sure they're not dehydrating? Or do you intend to chatter all evening with Harriet?"
"To hell with any guests who aren't bright enough to find their own booze. Of course I'm going to chatter with Harriet. Why not? She's the best-looking broad here. Except you, sweetheart. As to men, why should I talk with guys I see every day on the train or the golf course?"
"You should talk to guys. Harriet is dangerous."
Beth winked at Harriet to imply she intended her warning as a joke.
Harriet laughed, which meant she accepted the joke for what it was-a lie to keep Randy from observing that she and Beth were on the point of fighting tooth and nail over him. He must not know. They would cheerfully claw each other's faces to ribbons but would not reveal the struggle to Randy. They must fight bloodlessly.
Randy gave his wife a hug. She kissed his cheek.
Harriet was not fooled by the display of affection. She smiled fondly at them.
She said, "You two are the happiest couple I know."
Beth said, "I think you and John are even happier. I see Gloria has snagged him. That dress of hers is the limit. I expect a breast to pop out at any moment. Well, Harriet-at least you'll know what John is doing and with whom. Randy, I wish you'd take over Gloria when John is done. Or I'll worry that some dangerous woman might get hold of you."
She moved down the buffet to a group of her guests.
Randy whispered, "I wonder if Beth has guessed anything."
"I'm sure not," Harriet said. But she knew that Beth was clever enough to figure it out without having caught them in the act. Could Randy be this naive? Harriet liked to think so. If she learned that he was Clever at intrigue, woman's favorite sport, she would be through with him. She wanted a noble beast, not a courtier.
Darkness was falling outside. Harriet felt a surge of excitement.
More guests were arriving. The house was full of people. It would be quite easy now to get lost.
She asked Randy if the pool had been filled for the season.
He said yes. They nodded agreement to each other and parted, he to greet the new arrivals, she to stuff more salmon and roast beef into a stomach full of dry martinis.
She would wait ten minutes before going out to the pool.
John was drinking doubles.
Gloria had become tiresome. Everybody said that to Gloria sex was just a game. But she was a damned bore, demanding all kinds of affection and flattery one moment, the next maneuvering herself to form a shield with her body. Behind it she could reach up his thigh and play with him.
Harriet had disappeared.
Randy was still in sight, moving from group to group, hugging wives and telling husbands to make themselves at home.
Where was Harriet?
Gloria said, "I think you'd rather have your baby-sitter than me. What was her name."
"Penny."
"Well, would you?"
"Sure. But she's less eager than you."
"I'm not eager. It's just that you cornered me. You wouldn't let me talk to anybody else. You say she's not eager? For ten dollars she'd be eager."
"Ten dollars buys nothing. Penny will earn that much tonight while watching TV and leafing through magazines."
"Fifty, then. It's just a matter of bargaining. You said the girl is eager for money."
"Tripe. She's a nice kid."
"Not as nice as I was at her age."
Suddenly he could take no more of Gloria.
He said, "You mean your price was higher? A hundred?"
Gloria paled with anger. She raised her hand to strike his face. Instead she turned, flounced off toward the buffet.
John felt relieved. He ordered another drink. He watched the crowd through narrowed eyes. He could not see Randy Hill.
Nor was Harriet in sight.
He gulped his fresh double whiskey.
Maybe Gloria was right-perhaps girls of sixteen would put out for fifty dollars. Maybe everything he believed in was false. If his beautiful dream-family image could be fractured by a wife who flipped up her skirts for a friend-maybe teen girls would whore. Maybe the whole deal was rotten.
He ordered another drink. It came quickly and he had to hurry to finish the previous one to get at the fresh drink before the ice melted.
CHAPTER THREE
Harriet left the house by the terrace door. The pool gleamed in faint starlight. She paused to accustom her eyes to the darkness.
She hated the pool for being eight feet longer than her own. She and John had put theirs in first. Beth had naturally talked Randy into building a larger one. And Harriet could not have hers rebuilt without giving recognition to a competition that by the rules of the game must remain unmentioned. Her only counter had been to claim that John had been able to buy her the best pearls in town by economizing on the pool.
The necklace had cost two thousand. Harriet had claimed three and on one occasion had slipped and said four. Beth had pounced on the he.
Harriet stood at the pool's edge, sipping her martini. She turned to the dressing cabin, which was larger and better than anybody needed, a pretty wooden structure covered with vines. It was furnished much too elaborately for its purpose. Who needed a couch in a poolside dressing room?
Harriet needed one at the moment.
She went in, closing the door after her. The cabin also had a dressing table, a mirror, a rug that silenced the sound of heels, a cabinet for bathing suits and towels.
Cigarettes were on the dressing table. She lit one, studied her reflection in the mirror while the match flared. Thoughts of Randy had made her color high. Her pale gold hair seemed darkened. Her shadowed eyes smiled at the secrets they held.
What about John?
She understood his torment. He was an actor who believed in his role. In theory, their set never indulged in extra-marital sex. Flirtations were taken for granted-indeed, considered social graces. But nearly everybody's hands presumably stayed at home and skirts rose no higher than the prevailing fashion.
That was the pose. But who believed in it? Only John.
Harriet believed in discretion. The women all knew precisely who slept with whom because they reaped such information from glances, winks, laughs. But all took for granted that there must be no evidence that would stand up in court.
Randy was a problem. He was too full of animal force. He threw discretion to the winds when the mood seized him.
The match singed Harriet's fingers. She heard footsteps on the pool tiles. A man's heavy tread. Randy. Harriet pulled down her dress straps and removed her bra. She lit another match. The flare warmed the whiteness of her breasts. The nipples stood out bright and sharp. Just from thinking about him.
She giggled.
He whispered her name at the door. She said, "I'm here."
The door opened. He loomed in the doorway, filling it.
He slouched against the doorjamb, drawing on a cigarette. The ember lighted his face for a moment, showing the strange black and bushy brows and white-blonde hair.
He said, "I can't see you. Dark as pitch in there."
She whispered, "Come in. Shut the door."
"Hell. All broads are alike in the dark. You might as well be Beth with different perfume and smaller tits if I can't see you."
She shrank back, a hand rising to conceal her breasts.
"Randy, I'm afraid. If somebody were to come-"
"Afraid of what? You can always escape through the lavatory and the back door."
"But if they see you there in the doorway-"
"See me doing what? Playing with myself? Hell, I don't like this sneaking around. Come here."
Harriet kicked off her shoes to ensure silence. She went slowly to him, an arm across her breasts.
He grabbed her wrist, pulled it aside to expose her.
He laughed. "Well, bare-titted already."
"Quiet."
He jerked her to him, threw away his cigarette in the same motion, brought a hand up between her thighs, lifting her with it. He kissed her, hard-tongued. Harriet shut her eyes against the outside brightness. Her middle was turning to jelly. But she was still afraid.
She whimpered, "Please shut the door."
"Screw the door."
He lifted her, rubbing her against his hardness.
She protested again, more feebly. Randy's animal ruthlessness was really what she sought. John was too gentle, too thoughtful. She wanted to be used, hurt.
But without being caught at it.
Randy dropped her. Without heels she reached only to her shoulders. She felt tiny against him. His hands were under her arms. He roughed her sidewise across his body, crushing and hurting her breasts but also driving ecstatic fires deep into her. She straddled his leg, tried to climb him. His thigh was hard and enormous.
He said, "I think you're the hottest broad at the country club, Harriet. Except for Alice-Bill Summers' wife."
She bit his arm to warn him not to mention other women. She knew he did so to excite her. He shrugged off the bite, pushed her against the opposite doorjamb. She panted as he held her at arm's length.
She gasped, "Go on, tell me lots of lies about other women. What about Gloria?"
"Gloria? Hell. Why should I entertain you with talk about other broads? I can tell stories back at the party."
"Randy, I hate you."
"Sure. Come here, puss."
"Don't call me puss." .
He grabbed her, picked her up in his arms. Finally weary of toying with her, he kicked the door shut, bent down to elbow the latch into place, carried her toward the couch.
He said, "Pretty puss."
She tried to slap him but her arm lacked the strength because she had been reduced to what he had called her. He had abolished Harriet Metlock, leaving only a grabby piece of female. She wanted him so much that she tried to tear off her dress while he held her in his arms.
He dumped her on the couch, pulling her dress down her hips, taking her panties and skirt with it, shucking her clothes away and tossing them aside like a banana skin. He left her exposed in stockings and a narrow garter belt across her hips and stomach. He reached below the belt to caress her.
His touch was fire. Harriet squirmed.
He straightened and stood over her, removing his clothes.
The fire quieted. She asked, "The door."
"Locked."
"John is suspicious."
"John is tangled in the Gloria game-in which he can have all the goodies if he says he loves her."
"Do you love me."
"Only on a couch."
She kicked at his leg. He laughed. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. The faint starlight from the window revealed him as big and ready.
Harriet's fingers were fumbling with the garter belt hooks and getting nowhere. But the band of nylon was not in the way. Her knees fell apart as she watched him.
Randy said, "And John won't lie to Gloria. He's too honest. He has trouble lying to himself. On the other hand, he makes a profession of that."
He shrugged, not interested in pursuing the ambiguity of his argument.
Harriet's teeth were clenched.
She gritted. "Please hurry."
"I thought you wanted to talk about Gloria."
He was removing his shirt with tantalizing slowness, as though he had hours before the people at the party would notice their absence. Randy did not care. Once when Bill Summers had gotten drunk and accused him of sleeping with Alice, Randy had knocked Bill flying on top of an antique table, wrecking it.
Harriet remembered Randy's words vividly.
Bill, it wasn't me that first made your wife a whore...
He said, "I don't think Gloria will hold John. He'll come looking for us."
Harriet thought so too.
A last flicker of sanity made her sit up and say, "Let's get out of here."
He shoved her down, bent and seized her nipple between his lips, pulled it out to a long streak of fire. "Randy, we can't-"
His hand knocked her knees apart. Her zones of sensation narrowed to her bursting breasts and the squeezing band of her garter belt, which in her hurried dressing tonight she had hooked one notch too tight for comfort even when standing, let alone when spread and suddenly filled. She cried out, as always startled by the giant Randy-but tonight hurting especially because she was afraid that John had followed her. All those fears. If only Randy would be discreet-but then he would not be Randy, the rampaging horse with wild, rolling eye bloodshot with lust, hard hoofs ready to strike down anyone who neared his mare of the moment. Yes, a mare, cowering and frightened and dissolving beneath his onslaught.
She felt the body-warmed smoothness of the pearls at her throat. Part of the strand was caught under her neck. The garter belt choked her hips. Otherwise she was free, boneless feet hanging loose and shaking in midair, limp hands on Randy's wide shoulders. The rest of her was fiery jelly that somehow absorbed his enormous drives. He forced her back against the head of the couch. The pearls were pulled stranglingly tight. She tore feebly at them.
She gasped, "Pearls-choking-"
He broke the strand with a swipe of his hand, sent warm pearls rolling down her body and tumbling to the couch.
The couch was soft. The pearls were quickly buried in the spongy cushions but Harriet's flesh was all sensation and she felt their slick touch everywhere as the couch pitched and tossed. Some were under her back, a big one stuck to her buttock. Several rolled between her breasts. One was caught under her garter belt.
The pearls John had bought her, still unpaid for, were being scattered by the lunging explosions of love. She must keep them. She fingered the one in her garter belt. It escaped her, rolled down. She had become a great cavern, one moment filled, the next waiting with voracious hunger. She would keep the pearl. She fingered it down. Randy rammed it and the slick body-warmed orb was a bullet shooting up to her throat, out through her skull.
Randy swore. "A pearl-"
"Yes. A pearl. My pearl. I can take pearls."
He laughed as she grabbed up pearls and used them as she had the first. He helped her.
He said, "Puss, you'll get hurt."
"That's what I'm for. Please, Randy. More-"
The pain of pearls and Randy drove her with frantic strength to lift the giant who said he loved her only on a couch. Well, that was where she loved him, only there. He had nothing to do with her life, only with couches. And pearls. How she would laugh when the jeweler's bills came, demanding payment. Where would the pearls be then? Pearls? Randy had pearls, twin beauties. She grabbed, trying to take everything.
She laughed shrilly through the hurting, exquisite explosions. Let Beth have her big pool. What was in it? Harriet had a small pool and pearls, pearls and pearls, warm as her flesh and perfumed, lustrous and slippery. She was losing some but did that matter? The little bathing house was sliding into the pool. No, the pool was she. She was a pool, small but delicious and big enough for a plunging giant who would never stop.
In the distance she heard the crackling echoes of the party. There was a louder noise. A table upset? Was John drunk and upsetting tables? Maybe John had stepped on pearls, slipped and fallen. She giggled and tried to tell Randy the joke but he was going like a rocket, trying desperately to rise from the launch pad. If only Beth could see where her big pool and her bathing house had gotten her. Beth had no pearls.
Randy lifted off the pad and Harriet clung with limbs and heels and fingers and lips to her flying steed, her noble beast who was sending her off in two parts, held together only by her frantic lock on him. She was spinning through a dark sky. She was lost. Only Randy's thrusting blast existed. She was no longer two parts, simply a broken string of pearls being scattered about the clouds, a fog of pearls lighted within by Randy's flame.
John Metlock was drunk. He stood in the kitchen, swaying and gulping at his double whiskey. Gloria had turned out the lights. She was tearing at his trousers.
Despite her spate of anger she had returned in pursuit of him.
She said, "You must want me. Look at me. Don't all men want me? Look."
She pulled down her dress and bra straps, exposed her breasts to him, high mounds lighted by the glow of light from the dining room. He felt over them, fingered the big dark nipples, saw them rise.
He laughed.
"Don't laugh-"
He had to laugh because the joke was on him. Gloria had chosen him tonight because he was vulnerable, betrayed by Harriet and thus as exposed to disease as a gaping wound. He would be no more hurt if his right to practice law were revoked as punishment for some misdeed. In that case he knew what would happen. A debarred lawyer was prey to criminals who would find illegal use for his legal expertise. It was logical that the nymphomaniac Gloria offer herself as a substitute for the woman who had fractured his pretty picture.
He welcomed her no more than he would criminals who might seize upon his professional disgrace.
Gloria needed him as an addict needed drugs. Little pride remained to her. He knew he should nourish it with kindness. Perhaps by lavishing tenderness on her he could forget his urge to break Randy Hill's neck and beat Harriet's eyes black and blue.
Beatings were taboo. Physical violence would mar the sleek gaiety of the party, the glossy show of prosperity and surface serenity that sufficed for meaning in their society.
It was better to feel Gloria's breasts in the darkened kitchen that no one would enter simply because it was darkened. Nobody would disturb an unlit corner without giving a warning cough. The open doorway was shut by pretense.
She said, "And you do love me a little, John?"
"Yes, very much. And why not? Caviar and ice cream, my dear Gloria, who loves them not? But wait, I'll finish my drink."
"You'll get too drunk."
"I'm not affected that way by mere drink."
He gulped down the whiskey. Gloria had stepped away, stooped to pull down her panties. She put them into a cutlery drawer in the cabinet next to him. She giggled.
"John, I should never go to a party wearing pants. Why do I? I know why. Because Harry often sees me dress and he would ask questions. He knows everything, of course. I make him sad. I wish I didn't cheat on him but he is always at the hospital when I am hot enough to pop. I hate to hurt him but he loves me anyway. John, why don't doctors beat their wives?"
She was holding up her skirt. John felt over her swelling hips. Sleek flesh. Full long thighs. A lot of fine woman meat.
She said, "I bet your baby-sitter can't match me."
"Ah, but there would be dividends in seducing her. The injury to innocence. That would make me hate myself. Then I would call my wife an angel. Eh, Gloria? Think about that. And the risk in playing with jailbait. An under-age girl. A lawyer could get himself debarred and jailed in one easy stroke. Ruined forever."
"Yes, it would be silly to take such a chance. I'll give you no complications."
"Exactly, Gloria. You would not even scratch the glossy surface of the picture. Harmless sexual gratification. But a pallid thing indeed compared to, say for instance, rape of a child. That would bust hell out of the picture, eh?"
"The picture? You keep talking about the picture. I don't get it."
"The picture on the TV screen, the situation comedy made in Hollywood, glossy perfection-the housewife who has been cooking or washing dishes but her makeup and hair are perfect. In fact, they were just arranged by a dozen makeup people now standing behind the camera. It's false, you see. And so am I. My debts are enormous and they'll never be paid off. But one doesn't mention debts, does one? I'm a cheat, Gloria."
"You don't seem to be a man."
"Oh, I'm that and I'll prove it to you."
He pushed her to the corner and lifted her, took her so quickly that she gasped. Gloria had one hip balanced on the open cutlery drawer. Her arms vised around his neck. A leg was trying to climb him.
He heard a voice.
Gloria let out a shrill cry of alarm.
A man asked, "Where in the hell is the refrigerator?" John glanced toward the doorway, saw Bill Summers, an architect, blundering through an open doorway that he would have known was spiritually closed if he had been sober. But Bill was putting away the sauce tonight. Summers thrust back to the dining room. "Sorry. Sorry, whoever is there. Damn clumsy of me. Just wanted ice cubes. Cube bowl is empty. Somebody spilled it."
John said, "The fridge is in the corner. Go ahead, get your cubes."
Gloria sobbed, "No, no-"
Summers said, "No, wouldn't think of coming in. All my fault. Must be drunk. Wouldn't think of disturbing-" His voice trailed off as he went away. Gloria and John had parted.
John said, "He shouldn't have gone. Maybe he'd like to take over after I'm done."
Gloria replied by punching him in the cheek.
Her fist hit hard, rocked him. He caught the cutlery drawer for balance. She spun away, pulling up her dress top and bra.
She cried, "You horrid, insulting, diseased, piggish-" She stopped to find words. Her eyes were blazing. "You-homosexual-"
John laughed as she flounced out toward the party.
Shortly he had to follow in Gloria's footsteps to get another drink. She was at the bar. She glowered at him. He knew that pride would hold her there only a minute. He took his double whiskey to the kitchen, then out to the big crushed-stone parking circle, where shiny cars were awaiting their masters.
John glanced at the cars. He wondered if Harriet and Randy were making love in one of them. There were better facilities.
He went up the flagged steps from the parking area to the garden at this end of the pool. At the other end was the bathing cabin.
The cabin was dark. He watched it. Shortly a cigarette ember appeared in the window.
Somebody was inside.
He sipped his drink as he walked along the tiled apron Of the pool, indifferent to the chance of slipping and falling in. Suppose somebody other than Harriet were in the bathing cabin?
That did not matter either. Breaking down a door was the important thing.
The cabin was dead quiet. They must have heard his shoes scrape on the tile. He banged on the door. It felt stouter than he remembered. It would not break open before the blows of a fist.
He finished his whiskey and threw the glass into the pool. He returned to the door. He heard noises inside, furniture moving, a door shutting.
He paused. Did he dare break down the door, abandon all pretense, destroy everything he had believed in?
He put his shoulder to the door and shoved.
It did not give.
He backed away. He had to do it. He began his run from a distance of ten feet, turned to slam his shoulder against the door. His shoes slipped on the tiles. He went head first, cracked the door and saw stars explode in his head.
He landed on the rug inside. The door stood open, hanging drunkenly askew.
He pushed up. His head hit something. Stars again. lie backed away. He had been under the dressing table, lie got up and reached out in both directions, hoping to find a light switch or lamp. He bumped the couch and tumbled down on it.
He felt something round and hard under his hand. A marble. He fisted it. It was warm. He felt over it. There was a flattening at each side, a hole.
He got up and went out. The starlight showed him a glossy white bead. A pearl. Harriet had worn her pearls tonight.
He heard the noise of the party, a steady buzzing punctuated by sharp laughter.
No one had heard him break down the door. He had achieved nothing.
He walked along the pool to the parking area. He got into his car.
He would not let Harriet spoil his picture and then varnish it over to make it seem that no damage had been done. Somehow he must destroy, break, tear, rend, crush.
He drove across the lawn to the street, leaving deep tire marks in the soft earth. But that was not destruction. Everyone would laugh heartily over his getting loaded and driving across the lawn. Randy would hire the landscape gardeners to repair the damage and his renovated lawn would be proof that Randy could afford whatever he wanted. Landscape gardeners, everyone knew, charged outrageous prices.
The car windows were open. The fresh air made John feel soberer as he drove through the quiet streets.
CHAPTER FOUR
Penny had always taken the Metlocks at face value, except for that dark unsettled look in Mr. Metlock's gaze. She had accepted it and the brattiness of the twins as unimportant flaws in an otherwise glamorous setup. But she was determined to borrow money from Mr. Metlock to buy a better car. She had to make a fresh appraisal of the situation.
The twins had been quieter after their parents left but occasional screechy outbreaks decided Penny on sending them to bed early. She prepared them for sleep by upending each in turn across her knee and bouncing a tightly rolled newspaper against their behinds.
The threat pacified them and they went to sleep, each in his own bed. But when Penny went to check on them she found them huddled together in one bed and hiding under the pillow. They said the animals were coming off the walls to get them.
Their room was papered with giant rabbits, bears and huge-eyed deer, which Penny thought the best possible company for two small boys. But they seemed genuinely frightened, saying that at night the animals grew long fangs and claws that dripped blood.
Penny was puzzled. The Metlocks gave the boys everything kids could possibly want but they sure reacted badly.
She wandered through the house, looking for clues to the mystery of what was wrong with the Metlocks. Not a lack of money, that was sure. The living room held expensive antiques-a beautiful cherry wood table and a mahogany armchair upholstered in green plush. Penny sat in it and wriggled, feeling the soft sensuality of it against her back and bottom. On the walls were original paintings, some with famous signatures. The gold drapes from ceiling to floor weighed a ton.
Mr. Metlock's study was fixed up as a stereo room. The cork walls held built-in loudspeakers that blew like dynamite when Penny started up the record on the turntable-Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, the noisiest music ever written.
She went out to the living room to test the study's soundproofing. She could hear only a faint murmur even when the orchestra went crazy, ringing big bells and beating kettledrums. She found the switchbox to turn on the living-room loudspeakers. The racket shook the place. She shut it off.
She went back into the study and sat on the couch, listening to records she chose from the hundreds in Mr. Metlock's collection.
The phone rang.
The phone on Mr. Metlock's desk was blue, matching the couch. She had counted five phones in the house. The one in Harriet's room was candy-striped.
Rick was on the phone.
He said, "It's getting awfully late. How much longer you going to be there?"
"I figure the party they're at is a kind of big blast. I don't know."
"It's almost too late now for us to do anything." She glanced at the wall clock. The hands stood at ten. He said, "You must get bored just hanging around."
"There's lots to do. And if I get tired I'll just go to sleep in the twins' room. At a buck an hour plus a tip."
"I kind of wanted to take you out for a ride in the Monster."
"Tomorrow night."
Rick seemed a stranger when she was in this glamorous house. Still, as he talked, she remembered riding here with his hand on the nape of her neck. He had been watching her bare thighs almost as much as the road and talking about how she was not wearing pants. She crossed her legs. She felt kind of steamy.
Rick tried to hang up but she kept him on. She took the phone to the couch and curled up, cradling the phone between her cheek and a pillow, legs doubled, holding herself in a tight hot knot that got squirmier as Rick talked and she thought of being with him in the back seat of the Monster.
He asked, "Can I come over there?"
"You idiot. Of course not:"
She saw that squirming had pulled back her skirt and exposed her dark-blonde triangle of curly fluff. She fingered it. Damp. Because of Rick. If only he could sneak through the telephone to her! She lay back and spread her thighs and looked down at her sex and pictured his long staff prodding it. She heard his voice on the phone. He came alive in her body, although it was her own finger slipping down her juicy vulva and into her pulsing sheath.
He asked, "What are you doing?"
She jerked her hand away, her face pink. "I'm hanging up, that's what!" She thumbed down the phone cradle.
She lay holding the phone, thinking of invading the refrigerator. There was always coke and ginger ale and often pie or cake.
She smelled cigarette smoke.
She spun to face the door.
Mr. Metlock stood in the doorway. His hair was mussed. His shirt and tie were open at the throat. His eyes were narrowed against the smoke rising from the cigarette that dangled from his lips. Something was odd about his eyes. They were reddish.
Penny yelped with surprise.
"Sorry, Penny. I didn't mean to frighten you."
Penny blushed wildly. How long had he been watching her? Her skirt was pulled back on her hips. She jumped up, hurriedly replaced the phone on its cradle.
She said, "My boy friend called. Rick. But I wasn't talking long. And I looked in on the twins ten minutes ago."
He continued to study her. Ash dropped from his cigarette, trailed gray down the lapel of his jacket. He did not seem to notice.
He said, "Rick is the boy who has the old car, isn't he? The one I pushed that night?"
"Somebody usually has to push it if he doesn't leave the motor running. But the motor drinks gas like crazy."
He continued to stare at her.
Finally he pulled a chair away from the desk and sat down. He landed wrong, made the chair rock.
"Penny, get me a drink. Bring the bottle-the bourbon-from the liquor closet in the dining room."
Penny hurried out. Her embarrassment had changed to fear. Mr. Metlock was drunk, wobbly, red-eyed, pale.
She brought the bottle and a glass to the study.
When she set the bottle on his desk she saw that a small round object lay in the middle of the blotter. A pearl. He was staring fixedly at it.
The pearl was beautiful, glossy white, washed with pink. She remembered that Harriet had worn her pearls tonight. They were the kind a girl would trade her right arm to own.
She asked, "Is that one of Mrs. Metlock's pearls?" He glanced up at her. He had some difficulty fixing his gaze.
He said, "Yes. My wife broke her string of pearls. And when you break a string of pearls you never find them all. Did you know that?"
He spilled some whiskey into the glass, fisted the drink.
"Play some music, Penny."
She went quickly to the record player. She wished Rick were coming to get her. There was nothing to be afraid of but she was scared. She sensed that something she had only glimpsed in Mr. Metlock was about to burst outmaybe like the twins imagined that their rabbits and bears and deer came alive and jumped off the walls to eat them.
He asked, "What records are there?"
"When I came in, Tchaikovsky's 1812 was on."
"Play it. I like that. The galloping horses, the bells of Moscow. Play it loud."
She started the record, saw that Mr. Metlock had finished his glass of whiskey. He was lighting another cigarette.
"Penny, you keep saying that the old car costs too much to run."
"Sure. But we can't raise the dough to buy a better one."
She remembered that she had wanted to ask Mr. Metlock for a loan-but not with him looking like he was coming apart at the hinges and speaking clearly only by forcing out each word slowly and carefully.
He poured another inch of whiskey in the glass. "There are ways to get money, Penny." She attempted a joke. "Rob a bank?"
He did not laugh. He reached into his hip pocket and drew out his wallet. He took a ten from it and laid it on the desk.
"That's for baby-sitting tonight."
"Gee, Mr. Metlock-that's more than a dollar an hour."
He shrugged. He laid down the wallet, took a gulp from his drink. It made his eyes water.
He said, "Ten bucks is just loose change. Money is everywhere. Sometimes my wife buys new furniture for the hell of it. I just add the price to the fee I was going to charge a client. True, I've got my hand in a bigger vault than most people. Still, a smart girl can make real dough. And I think you are smart. Why shouldn't a girl sell or rent what she's in the habit of giving away? Cash counts. The rest is nothing. Nothing. Strings of pearls break. One pearl alone is useless. Here, have a pearl, Penny."
He picked up the pearl from his desk and threw it to her.
Penny felt a scarlet blush work up her throat. He was saying a horrible thing.. It was unimaginable that Mr. Metlock should even imply something like that. It was truly like the rabbits and bears jumping off the twins' walls. She suddenly guessed that the twins' brattiness was a display of something they copied from Mr. Metlock-something he usually kept hidden. And Mrs. Metlock-where was she?
The door stood open. Penny had heard nobody out there. The 1812 Overture was blaring loudly enough to cover any noise short of the house's collapsing.
She held the pearl in her hand.
She saw Mr. Metlock take another bill from his wallet and lay it beside the ten that was to be her pay. The bill looked different.
He said, "That's a fifty, Penny. Do you want it?"
John Metlock heard the crashing music, the bells of Moscow tolling in triumph, kettledrums booming. His vision was hazy. But he could see the red blush go up Penny's throat. It did not reach down to her swelling bosom. He studied her legs, long and golden. The thighs now hidden had been just as handsome when he had come into the study and seen her rolling on the couch, talking on the phone.
A glimpse of dark loins had shown him that she wore no panties. Why not? He remembered Gloria's saying she should not wear panties to a party. Had Penny taken hers off in expectation of a back-seat love session with Rick Scheer later tonight?
Penny said, "I'd better go check that the twins are all right."
He shook his head.
He reached back to the door, shut it.
Penny's eyes grew large with sudden fright. Pretty eyes, gray with dark lashes. A creamy complexion. A good body. A voluptuous body. Yet Gloria had been an open blossom, breasts and hips luxurious in every detail. He had refused Gloria, had taunted her, belittled her, deprecated her. Sex on a platter was of little interest to a man strung tight as a piano wire. Indeed, he would have preferred making love to Harriet, that lovely piece of snake-shaped, snake-hearted bitch.
Could Gloria have been right? Could a girl of sixteen be bought for fifty dollars? The questions posed the kind of challenge Harriet had wanted him to meet head-on.
Live dangerously...
Penny was no virgin. He would be taking nothing she had not given free to Rick and perhaps others.
He thought of the broken pearls in the bathing cabin and his rage mounted.
He gulped down his drink.
He asked, "Well, do you want the fifty?"
"I don't-understand. I'd better go check the twins-"
"You understand. Fifty dollars to go to bed with me."
She burst into tears.
John thrust to his feet. He lurched against the desk. He threw the ten-dollar bill at Penny. Then the fifty.
He said, "There, that's a down payment on a workable car."
"But I don't want-"
"Hell, who cares what you want? I'm boss here. I own the house and I hire you. Isn't fifty enough? A hundred? A million? Shall we bargain? I know what you are-it's just a matter of arriving at the correct price. Is that it? Hell, I've seen your panties on the back seat of Rick's car. Did they fall off?" She cried out, "Mrs. Metlock will come home and I'll tell her-"
"She won't come home until she finishes whoring. Why not take the fifty and get a start on a good car? And clothes. Do you like how my wife dresses? She has tons of clothes and how does she get them from me? The same way you can make fifty."
He was carried away by his own outbursts of speech. He saw the girl shrink back against the couch, eyes wide with fear.
He said, "I saw you squirming with heat when I came in. Talking to Rick on the phone makes you feel sexy, eh? Then pretend I'm Rick and think of the fifty bucks."
"No, no-"
He seized her skirt hem, jerked it up. He flung himself down on her. She stabbed her hands up to fend him off. He shoved between her arms, seized her dress straps and tore them down. He tugged at her bra but the thing was nylon and elastic and stayed more or less in place.
The Overture was reaching a climax of crashing cymbals and roaring kettledrums, shrill flutes and keening trumpets: John felt seized by the fury of the music. He tore Penny's bra away and had her nude to the waist. He held her upper arms in his hands, clenched them bruisingly tight. He bent down and lipped her nipples. She was screaming in a manner that merged with the kettledrum and trumpet racket that filled the soundproofed room. Her high-rising breasts were snowy and well-capped with nipples. Harriet's were reduced to unripeness in comparison. And Gloria's overflowed.
But comparisons were not important. The broken string of pearls were-as was the fractured picture. Gloria was wrong and so was he if Penny resisted all the way. But if she fell for the pulling at her nipples, if the steamy heat that had made her roll and squirm on the couch while talking to Rick could be reawakened-if she would afterward take the fifty-what did anything matter?
Everything John had tried to believe in would simply be broken. like the string of pearls.
She tore her hands free and tried to claw him. He got a fresh grip on her wrists. She butted with her knees until he forced the weight of his body between her thighs. She still squirmed. He continued to use pulling kisses on her breasts.
She screamed, "I hate you-you're drunk and dirty and I hate you-"
"Fifty dollars, sweetheart. Fifty dollars."
"Let me go, let me go-"
"No, sweetheart. I've got to find out if you're a whore, too. At what age does whoring begin?" 'I'll kill you-"
"Fifty dollars and a bonus of things Rick doesn't know how to do, delights of the flesh that make you beg for more."
"You won't, I won't let you-I'll tell Mrs. Metlock."
"She has enough to worry about to cover up her own whoring."
"The police-"
"Should I tell them you're a little tramp."
"No, no, I'm not--I'm."
"You're a liar."
He wearied of talk. He had to learn the truth. He crossed her wrists and held them in one strong hand while he cleared her clothing from his path.
Penny had fought him with every muscle. His crushing weight had sapped her strength. His one hand on her wrists did not seem enough to hold her but her arms felt bruised and boneless. Her lower body was being violated. She could gain no leverage with knees or feet to fight him off.
Sobs wracked her and she could only fight for air.
Fifty dollars? How much was that? Five was money. So was ten. Fifty maybe did not exist. Yet he had kept drumming the idea of fifty dollars at her, almost in insistent cadence with the roll of drums and the clash of cymbals on the stereo. The record was repeating, going through the tumultuous music all over again.
She screamed but no one heard her, fought but could not escape from beneath the mountain. Suddenly she was pierced and the shock went up to her eyes, made them bulge, cracked a blow at the top of her skull. She knew that in an instant a great agony of pain would burst in her like fire, an unbearable explosion.
It would happen now.
But it did not happen.
Her body had refused to bar him, had failed to fight.
The shock of this made her burst into tears that ceased as quickly as they had begun. Fear, hate and shame had been driven from her by a terrible force that her body was not fighting, was seizing upon and taking as part of itself.
She gasped at this dirty betrayal. What was she-a piece of flesh or Penny Dayton? Her body had consumed its violator. It trembled uncertainly but did not achieve the burning pain that she had to feel, needed to feel in order to keep herself intact.
Mr. Metlock had started the treason by pulling her nipples until they spilled their moist fire deep into her. Yet she should somehow have resisted.
He said, "Fifty dollars."
"No, no-"
Her wrists had fallen free. He no longer held them. She could reach out to push him, claw his face. But her hands lay limp. She was beaten. She, her inner private self, no longer cared. Or did she care? She was skewered by a mighty power that dictated her body's response, made her close and seize, while she wept inside at her own weakness.
Suddenly he left her.
She heard the crashing music. It was inside her. She was the music, pulsing and beating. She could not see. Her eyes were shut tightly.
John Metlock asked, "Now do you want the fifty?"
She peered out from under her wet lashes. He stood beside the desk, pouring a drink. He was naked, a lean, tall man with a black-haired chest. He retained the giant manhood she had experienced. She flinched at the sight.
She sprawled on the couch, looking up at him. She could not move.
He asked, "The fifty?"
"No-no-"
"Then what do you want?"
She burst into tears. Her body was pulsing. It wanted. Wanted him. She squirmed, twisted her hips, turned over and tried to squeeze herself through the couch. Out of a fiery haze she shot a glance at him, saw that he held the fifty and was waggling it at her. Her gaze would not remain on the green bill. She looked lower, to the root of life. She stared, knowing what she must have.
But she could not speak.
He tossed the fifty to the desk. He gulped down his drink. He looked up and down her body. "Well, Penny, what do you want?" She whimpered, "You-" ,He laughed.
"There, that's the dirty whoring world in one word. You can't admit you want the cash. Gloria was right. But she lied, too. She grabbed at sex but wanted flattery. Okay. I've learned enough. You can go. Beat it."
She barely heard his words. She was crawling off the couch toward him. Her dress hung around her waist. She forced it down her body. Nude, she stood up on trembling legs and rushed to him, thrust herself against his solidity.
He said, "Ah, this I like. A bargain's a bargain to the end, eh, Penny? Fifty buys fifty miles. Fair enough."
He pushed her back. They fell again to the couch. She sought him now, clenched and pulled with thighs, heels and arms. She gasped out a sound of relief when he was there, fixing her, everything again complete and the music going and crashing as she went wild. She was swept along on a great storm she did not understand. She had had no experience of such craziness.
She had sometimes known delirious excitement in the back seat with Rick but now the world had gone to pieces and she had to cling to what concrete things there were, meaning the rampaging John Metlock, the core of her world. Then there was the thought of the green fifty, a real thing just as he had said. It existed. Under her back she felt the slick hardness of the pearl from Mrs. Met-lock's necklace. That, too, existed.
She was going like smoke rings curling softly in doughnut shapes. The circles were jellied steam, one ring after another popping out and rushing on its course, all of them impaled on her thrusting conqueror. The rings arrived at the end and each merged with the other to make a larger ring. They were pink and tender, curling and spinning, joining and bloating big, becoming more red than pink. They would burst. She felt sure of that. They would burst and become a glorious pink cloud.
But then she knew that this would not happen. The rings that had been herself were gone. Only the red thrust was left. An explosion. Yes. Wracking and hurting. She could not be the explosion-could only live for it. He said, "I suppose you'll say you love me." Those were the words she needed. "Yes, I love you."
"No. You love what I have."
"What you have. Hear the music-they're beating the big drum but you're all of it. Maybe it's not love-I don't care. Because I'm not anything. I'm-"
"You're fifty dollars, fifty miles."
"I'm fifty miles."
"And I'm everything."
"You're the drums and horns-the music-"
She knew a moment of clarity. They had been talking nonsense and she had been thinking it to avoid facing truth. She had pictured a steamy pink doughnut shape. It had been simply her vaginal sphincter, a soft ring muscle that she could sometimes control but which John Metlock had made pulse and grab like something detached from her body.
Struggling for understanding, she looked down herself at a moment when he raised up. Her breasts seemed swollen, flushed with passion, the nipples two proud little pink towers glistening from his wet kisses. She held her knees back. Her sleek thighs slanted down to the curly silk of her triangle, dark in the shadow of his body. She saw her furred lips open as he drew out. Her vision hazed. With his next drive she was again reduced to feeling. His swollen head was sliding in easily. Her sheath felt huge, a slippery tunnel effortlessly taking all of him. She gave an upward heave, meeting him, turning everything inside her to a flood of honey. That was the real truth, that his hard stem became liquid in her, merged with her molten femaleness. Her victory seemed chemical, a matter of dissolving his strength.
He asked, "Do you like it, Penny?"
She retorted, "Do you like this?" and made her sphincter ring tight, quivering, a nebulous pink doughnut shape that when controlled right was devastating.
He moaned, driving into her and she compressed again, ringed him, did it once more before she lost control and surrendered to the bursting floods of joy.
But for a few moments she had found herself. She knew at last what it meant to be a woman.
CHAPTER FIVE
Penny rode home in Mr. Metlock's car. She huddled against the door on her side of the front seat. She was silent. He did not once look at her. He stopped the car at the curb in front of her house. Not even then did he turn her way.
In her pocket were sixty dollars and a pearl. She opened the door.
He said, "Penny, I'm sorry it had to be you."
She got out. She wondered what he meant. She shook her head. She would think about it later. She closed the car door and went into the house on wobbly legs.
A flickering gray light came from the living room. Pops sat in his TV chair, watching the screen. A newspaper lay crumpled on his lap. His rimless glasses hung cockeyed on his nose. He was asleep.
"Pops."
He stirred, fumbled for his glasses. "Pops, were you waiting up for me? Gee, you ought to be in bed."
He yawned, folded the newspaper, straightened his glasses.
"That's all right, Penny. Watching TV. Must have fallen asleep." i
"Look, you can always count on Mr. Metlock's getting me home. And I just sleep in the twins' room if they're out late."
"Well, still-yes, I suppose you're right."
"Were you worried about something."
"No, no. I'll go to bed."
He turned off the TV and went to his bedroom. Penny remained, wondering if Pops had heard something about Mr. Metlock that might have made him suspicious.
She stole a cigarette from the copper box on the TV set and went to her room. She always stole a cigarette if she was the last one to bed, sort of to mark the peak of adulthood thus attained.
She closed her bedroom door and sat on the edge of the bed. She lit her cigarette and wondered what Mr. Metlock had meant.
Sorry it had to be you...
Her brain was not working.
She knew one thing. Mr. Metlock had not used a gadget. She was full of him. But Rick had slipped a couple of times to no effect and she had become tired of worrying about getting pregnant. Besides, pregnancy was a distant possibility. The events of the past hours had numbed her mind. Everything else seemed remote.
She laid out the money and the pearl on the bed. She looked dully at it. The money was only paper, the pearl a marble an oyster had built around a grain of sand.
Why had Mr. Metlock raped her? He had been drunk. But that seemed no answer. Another question-what had happened to Mrs. Metlock?
Somehow none of these questions seemed important compared to the occurrence itself.
He had taken her by force. She had fought as hard as she could. But at some point she had thrown away her individual existence. She had not liked what he had done. Something worse had happened. She had let him drive her crazy. She had chucked everything of her own for the sake of what he could do to her. Maybe she had fallen in love with him.
The' notion was easy to reject but the feeling of being a pink doughnut that had no purpose but to close tightly and hold him was still with her, filled her body and her mind. Suppose he made love to her again? Would she claw and scream? Or beg him never to stop?
She picked up the fifty. Her hand trembled. She touched the cigarette ember to the edge of the bill, traced a burned strip. She thought better of destroying the money, rubbed out the sparks.
With a few such fifties she could buy a pretty good car.
The possibility did not seem real.
Nothing was real. She stubbed out her cigarette and began to undress. She hid the money and pearl in the one place her mother would never by, accident or on purpose disturb-her box of junior-size monthly inserts.
Junior size.
She felt huge, cavernous.
She tried to decide on a meaning for it all but instead collapsed into sleep.
Politely drunken guests played status games like Exaggerating Indebtedness and Mock Horror At Prices during the latter stages of the party.
Harriet's specialty was Mock Horror Combined with Bargains-hundred-dollar shoes reduced to eighty, adorable dresses that could not be found on sale and one was left with the necessity of paying full price-because who could resist them? Harriet had a good memory for figures and was rarely caught lying in this game.
She did not play Exaggerating Indebtedness. She and John were not rich enough. Bill and Alice Summers played it unsuccessfully. Gloria McManus could have played it well because everybody knew that Harry charged scandalous fees for operations-but Gloria was in a disgruntled mood, snapping at everybody, for once drinking more than she could handle.
Harriet felt like a child eating stolen cookies, knowing that retribution would come but savoring her misdeed to the last crumb. She had been escaping the back way when John had broken down the front door of the bathing cabin. She had gotten away clean, carrying her clothes and giggling, to a patch of bushes. She and Randy had returned to pick up the pearls strewn about the couch and rug after John had gone away. She still had some pearls in her and each time she moved and felt them she laughed aloud, causing some of the guests to stare at her, as though wondering if she had drunk too much.
Randy did not dare to meet her eyes. Beth glared at both of them. She had guessed the truth but could not prove it. This made her play Mock Horror At Prices too outrageously. No one believed her and wondered at the reason for her ungraceful lies.
Bill and Alice Summers drove Harriet home. Alice said she thought Gloria had made a pass at John and had been refused. Bill said he thought Gloria had been rejected in favor of whiskey. Harriet agreed with Bill, saying that any healthy man would have to be out of his mind or else drunk to refuse Gloria. This kind of talk was not usual in their group, not even outspoken talk about Gloria. Harriet thought the group had broken down some walls tonight. Well, she would worry about that when sober.
She found John in bed, out cold, stinking of whiskey. She checked the twins. They were huddled together in one bed.
All was secure.
She found a needle and some thread, strung her pearls, judged that four were missing. She went to the bathroom after undressing and found three more. She almost hated giving them up. Holding them had been too hilariously funny.
She would not see John until he came home from the city tomorrow evening. By then she would have developed some kind of alibi. Of course, he might have been too drunk tonight to remember anything, might be contrite and full of self-blame. But she would have alikely story ready for eventualities.
She slept peacefully, dreaming about a lovely green dress she had wanted to buy yesterday. In her dream she bought it and several like it-all too expensive.
The dream was her favorite kind. If she did not buy the dress tomorrow she would dream of it again tomorrow night and every succeeding night until she succumbed.
John Metlock awoke long before his alarm went off. He rose, ate aspirin, bathed, dressed. His vision was foggy. He saw little more than his wife's pale blonde hair on the pillow and the humps of her bedclothed form.
He staggered into the kitchen and found some cold tomato juice. He drank it. His stomach heaved. A hot pump was working in his skull. He got into his car and drove blindly to the hospital.
He needed oxygen. Dr. Harry McManus made it available to friends.
McManus was not available but an intern named Ferguson, who hoped one day to share Harry's practice, supplied John a life-giving whiff.
He slept on the train to the city. He canceled some appointments and sat staring emptily at the folders of documents on his desk. He told his secretary to leave him alone.
Dr. Harry McManus had once said that a hangover was compounded alcoholic insult to the brain, lack of sleep-and guilt.
Guilt?
John had raped a girl last night. He was a responsible professional man of thirty. He had been given everything in life, including an excellent education and money to spend until his own came flooding in. He possessed a beautiful wife, fine children and the high regard of his coworkers, superiors, clients, neighbors. Yet the thought of exposure did not bother him. Guilt did. He was aware of an uncleanliness that could not be eradicated except by putting a gun muzzle into his mouth and pulling the trigger.
He was a loathsome, crawling creature.
Miss Ensworth, his secretary, brought in some files and said in soothing tones that he seemed to have a hangover. Would he like aspirin, coffee, tomato juice?
Miss Ensworth was a woman who knew how to coddle her boss. But she was not for today.
He went to the bar down the street and drank beer. His nerves quieted somewhat but also presented him with a clearer picture of the horrendous deed he had committed.
Could he blame last night on Harriet?
No. Harriet had torn open his defenses, had shattered his world. But a sensible man would either have taken vengeance on his wife or simply ignored his wife's infidelity. He had used Harriet's rupture of the glossy surface of their lives as an excuse to go berserk. Gloria had offered him a harmless outlet-at least a discreet escape hatch. But he had not wanted to keep the picture superficially intact. He had wanted to destroy it. Why?
He could not claim that Penny had in any way enticed him.
The most charitable view was that the life he and Harriet shared was false and he had at last found the courage to squash it. But what was false about him and Harriet? They spent beyond their income but so did everybody. They displayed in public a contrived glamor-but so did the others of their group. They bragged about their children and dressed them handsomely for display. They kept the twins out of their hair by sending them to a nursery school and hiring a baby-sitter. But all the clever young marrieds of the community regarded freedom from children as a status symbol.
Had he raped Penny because he was insane?
Perhaps. But was not the self-diagnosis of insanity simply a facile escape from responsibility?
His rape of Penny had not even given him proof that everyone was rotten enough to make him feel clean. Gloria had said that fifty dollars would buy Penny. She had not sold. Rape had aroused a violent sexual reaction in her. He remembered watching her writhe on the couch. She had suddenly torn off her clothes and attacked him.
The memory was, perhaps, the most wounding-it spelled out what might have been, a frantic and wondrous lovemaking with a beautiful young girl. Not that he had wanted it. But it might have happened. He had forever destroyed the possibility and perhaps had set up an almost perverted need for sex in Penny.
Would the girl expose him?
Something deep in him, some well of sickness, wanted to be caught and punished. But he suspected that disgrace and prison would not be his lot. He was to undergo a more subtle torture.
He could kill himself and end his sufferings. But shortly he knew his solution would not be that easy, either.
A pretty waitress caught his eye, a curvy girl named Jean or Jane. He could not remember which. She had an infectious laugh that had lifted the spirits of many a tired patron of the bar. John did not lust for the girl. He simply found himself smiling at her jokes, her prettiness, the impertinent swing of her hips.
A man who could still smile at a pretty waitress was not ready for suicide.
He ordered a sandwich, ate it and went back to the office to work.
Penny sat near Rick in French class. While Miss Pierrette lectured on the verb avoir, Penny studied Rick.
Her mind was still filled with the image of Mr. Metlock, his athletic body, his crisp, curly hair, the dark shadow of beard on his squarish jaw. Rick seemed incomplete, his bones loosely wired together and his hair floppy, his gaze unsettled and his cheeks inclined to change color rapidly.
Rick's lovemaking was as boyish as his appearance.
Still, she was back in Rick's world. Last night did not seem real. Adults again were a race apart, parents and teachers, peripheral beings who went their own mysterious ways, apart from the action.
Only the fifty dollars was tangible.
She remembered having seen a price tag on a new dress of Harriet's. Two hundred dollars.
Mr. Metlock sure had money.
The bell rang. Penny was still in a daze. She heard Miss Pierrette assign homework for tomorrow. She penciled a circle around the chapter number without shifting her mind from the strange gear in which Mr. Metlock had left it.
She and Rick left the class together. In the hall she wound her finger into his sweater cuff. They moved with the crowd down the hall.
Rick asked, "Did you get home late last night."
"Pretty late."
She frowned. She did not want him to bring up last night. She put her hand into his.
"How much did Mr. Metlock give you."
"Enough for gas." His hand closed tightly on hers. "Let's go for a ride tonight."
She shut her eyes, trying to close out the picture of Mr. Metlock standing naked and big by the desk. She said, "I've got to study."
"You had plenty of time to study last night." She was silent.
"Penny, last night on the phone you talked real cuddly. Sort of lovey-"
That had been before it happened.
"You could get your homework done by eight-thirty, nine o'clock-"
She found herself undecided. Usually she gave a quick answer and then lived with it for good or for bad.
He said, "Make up your mind."
"Well, I'll let you know."
"But last night you said-"
She was thinking about money again. She wondered how much a decent car would cost.
She said, "Okay. All right. Let's drive to Salesman Sam's and see what cars he's got to sell."
"You want us to try to trade in the Monster as a down payment? Sam would laugh himself sick."
"We could find out."
"One thing we don't have to find out. Sam sells for cash."
"Let's go anyhow."
She went into her class thinking that Mr. Metlock could at least give her the money that Harriet spent on one single dress.
CHAPTER SIX
Harriet had planned to have an alibi ready for last night by the time John came home. The more she thought about it, the worse her headache became.
The twins were in nursery school. She went around the house, holding an ice pack to her head. She did not have a hangover. She doubted she was suffering a kickback from alcohol. She had neutralized her dry martinis last night by eating smoked salmon, roast beef, boiled shrimp and ripe olives at the buffet.
The headache came simply from guilt.
But John had always been a dreadful square. They had been swimming in the pool after dark one night last summer. Harriet had become sexy from playing underwater tag and kissing him. She had peeled off her suit and enticed him out to the grass in the inky shade of the big maple tree, where nobody in the world could see them. But John had refused to proceed as indicated. He had said that people like the Metlocks did not make love on their back lawns. Besides, he had some briefs to study.
She had gotten dressed and taken out her car. She had driven at wild speeds around town in an effort to dispel the hot wad of sex that had been splitting her.
John would not have agreed to last night's pearl trick. In his view nice people did not use pearls so. He was a prig-But she could take no comfort in viewing Randy as a final solution. Divorce did not appeal to her. Besides, Randy did not love her. He was simply a stud, making out with whatever women his roving eye settled on.
She went about her house, touching the furniture and drapes, her bare feet scuffing sensually through the deep carpets. This was hers. She had created it. Randy's hot manhood might split her in two but it did not drive away her sense of what she lived for.
She could not face John this evening. She reflected that if she could put off seeing him until time for late supper, seven-thirty or eight, he would be full of cocktails and prone to blow off steam. Harriet could not handle him sober. He would put her on the witness stand and cut her arguments to pieces. But she could confuse him with irrelevancies in a free-for-all shouting contest. Shouting and sex were Harriet's preferred emotional outlets.
She decided to call Penny to sit with the twins between five and eight, while she busied herself elsewhere and John loaded up on whiskey to cure his hangover.
The front doorbell was ringing.
Harriet went to answer it and found a surprise visitor, Gloria McManus, in sun glasses, sweater and slacks. Gloria's breasts made the sweater look good but her hips were too bulgy for slacks.
Gloria said, "I have a hangover."
"Welcome to the club."
Harriet seated Gloria and said, "I was going to make myself a pickup. Will you join me?"
"I feel too awful."
"You'll feel better."
She went into the kitchen and made the drinks, tomato juice with lots of ice cubes and little gin, much lemon and cracked peppercorns. She returned and saw Gloria scanning the living room over her pushed-down dark glasses.
"You have a lovely house, Harriet."
"It's too much work. John says I've made it up to be photographed for a magazine. The photographers never come. But maybe he's right. I worked for a decorator before I was married. I suppose I'm still in the habit"
"Does John like it?"
Harriet frowned.
She said, "Yes, I guess he does. He's a perfectionist. Everything has to be exactly so. He goes to pieces when things aren't right."
Gloria pushed her glasses farther down her nose, studied Harriet.
She said, "Perfectionists are a little sick, you know."
"They are?"
"I've read a lot of psychology because Harry said it might help me analyze myself. People who must have everything in perfect order are insecure. Is John a homosexual?"
Harriet burst into laughter.
"Really, Gloria. I have two children. And John is their father. He seems to me to be a perfectly adequate man. Male clear through."
Gloria shrugged. She picked up her drink, made a face at it, drank half of it down.
She said, "Last night I called him a homosexual. I didn't mean it. I think many women say that when they get angry at a man and run out of insults."
"Yes, I suppose many do. Especially when the man refuses them."
Gloria looked sharply at her.
"That's not kind of you. Besides, it's more than that. John wanted to hurt me. Not physically. Mentally or emotionally. He was looking for somebody to beat up and I guess I hunt trouble. Harry says I'm masochistic. He says I want to be hurt. He suggests I should have a baby to take my mind off myself. But isn't that like getting married to forget money problems?"
"I don't know."
"Why did you have the twins."
"I got pregnant."
Harriet was aware that her answers were curt. Gloria wanted sympathy, possibly friendship. But Harriet's nerves were tight. Gloria's comments were unwelcome. Maybe John was a perfectionist. And maybe it was not healthy. But Gloria's manner was too blunt. Candor was rare in their group and Harriet was not sure she could handle it.
Gloria finished her drink.
She said, "I guess I don't love Harry."
"Harry is a fine man. And an excellent doctor."
"But he loves me no matter what I do."
"And you needed John to hurt you last night in order to keep a kind of equilibrium. Is that it, Gloria?"
Gloria pulled a handkerchief from her sweater sleeve. She dabbed at her eyes.
"You're not very sympathetic."
"Not if you're asking permission to borrow my husband."
Gloria straightened, clenched her fists.
"You have Randy. It wouldn't hurt you to share-"
"Gloria, that is not true. Randy is only a friend."
"Oh, come off it, Harriet. I have eyes. Why does everybody pretend not to see the bed-hopping that goes on in this group? Beth had an affair with Bill Summers a couple of months ago because Randy was shacking up with Bill's wife, Alice. You didn't know about that? Or you didn't choose to notice? You're all hypocrites. You won't even admit the evidence of your eyes. And Bill Summers is drunk nowadays because Alice sleeps with Don Fredericks, since Randy left her for you. Everybody bounces from bed to bed but I'm the only one honest enough to admit facts. Maybe because Harry told me un-conventionality is therapeutic. You all do what you want but you avoid rocking the boat. After all, who can afford divorce? Everyone's too deeply in debt. But it's going to happen-divorce, I mean. This whole gang is bursting at the seams. Living faster and faster. It will explode, I guarantee you."
Harriet said stiffly, "This is only your view, Gloria."
"Do you think I am inventing all this to cover up my own sexing around? I'm not. Hypocrisy makes me sick-that's all."
Gloria rose and strode to the door.
"Gloria, please don't leave angry."
"You mean you don't want me to leave with my makeup smeared. No friend of the Metlocks should have smeared makeup. Spoils the picture. John kept talking about the picture last night. I finally caught on to what he meant"
"I'll make us another drink. A weak one. Then well both feel better. It was a difficult night-we all drank too much."
"I don't want a drink. I don't want to be an alcoholic. I don't think I want a baby either-a poor innocent to blame my troubles on. Maybe I don't fit. I suppose I should. I went to a good college and inherited some money and married more. But I won't play the game according to cheating rules. That's my trouble."
"We're all very fond of you."
"You always speak the right lies. Clever, circumspect-and false. In a nice way. But the lies will blow up in your face. I'm called a nymphomaniac and a sex nut. I've even heard the theory that I don't like sex but have to have it whether I enjoy it or not. But I admit what I am."
Gloria snatched open the door and went out, weeping. She ran to her car and clung to the door handle for a moment, swabbing away tears.
She got in and drove away in reckless haste. Harriet felt relieved that Gloria had left. She sat down to sip a fresh drink. She understood John's rejection of Gloria. He was fastidious. The quality made Harriet proud of him but he carried it too far. His perfectionism was often confining. She wished John, too, had sinned last night.
Another thing-John thought two children a perfect family. Harriet had no desire to pop out yearly babies but sex that was too tidily sterile did not quite satisfy a woman. She needed risk, the possibility of pregnancy. Or the risk of Randy. John asked her every morning at breakfast if she had taken her pill-as if she were sick and needed drugs to keep her alive-meaning, keep her fixed within the framework he had decided on.
But she preferred her attractive and discreet life to Gloria's messy one. She had friends. Gloria did not. Perhaps Harriet's friends were not close but she could enjoy herself with Alice Summers and with Beth-although the affair with Randy had caused conflicts there-without feeling either intimate or lonely. Perhaps the members of their group were not very honest with each other but they helped float each other's dreams. The girls praised Harriet's flair for interior decorating so extravagantly that she thought they praised too much. Perhaps she was not really very good at it. Within the group no one would tell her so. But was that harmful?
She wished Gloria had not come. What had the woman really wanted? Sympathy?
Gloria had chosen to live by her own rules. Let her. Harriet certainly would not let Gloria drag her into the cold.
She took the dirty glasses to the kitchen. There she phoned Penny's mother and said she wanted Penny after school. Penny would have dinner with the twins.
Then she phoned Alice Summers to arrange a late-afternoon shopping expedition and girls-only cocktails.
Alice proved to have problems similar to Harriet's. She did not want to face Bill until late this evening. Harsh words had been exchanged last night. He had seen Alice and Don Fredericks in a dark corner of the hall and had naturally thought the worst. Alice's dress had been high-but miniskirts were today's style. Don had had nothing to do with her exposure.
Harriet took this semi-confession as a request for a mutual defense pact. Alice had seen Randy and Harriet returning from the poolside cabin last night.
They would spend a delightful afternoon.
Penny reached home late and was told that Mrs. Metlock wanted her to baby-sit and was corning to pick her up.
She was surprised. She wondered if Mrs. Metlock had found out about Mr. Metlock's rampage.
In her room she took the sixty dollars and the pearl out of hiding, studied them and hid them away again. Her hands were trembling. Could she face Mrs. Metlock?
She was wiping off tears when the doorbell rang.
Her mother called.
She went to meet Mrs. Metlock at the door. Harriet greeted her warmly.
"Penny, I am in a crisis. I do depend on you, don't I? You must make John pay dearly for this inconvenience. I'll speak to him about a raise in your wages."
Penny gathered up her homework and followed Harriet to the car. She guessed that Harriet knew nothing about last night in the stereo room.
The twins were tumbling about in the back seat of Harriet's car. They grabbed Penny's hair and mussed it. She turned and fixed them with a glare. They quieted.
Harriet said, "You have a wonderful effect on the twins, Penny. How do you do it?"
Penny glanced back at the boys, whose bright eyes were calculating the pros and cons of telling their mother that Penny had put them over her knee and threatened their behinds with a rolled-up newspaper.
She decided to speak before they did.
"I beat them. Where it hurts."
Harriet looked startled.
She had not started the car. The twins watched, beady-eyed, for her reaction.
At last she said, "Well, you seem to get results."
The twins gazed bleakly at Penny.
She grinned triumphantly at them.
Harriet was thoughtful as they drove toward her house, as though studying the discipline problem.
At last she said, "I've a great many things to do-I doubt I'll be home before eight. You'll explain to Mr. Metlock, won't you?"
Penny began to realize that she could take over the Metlock family. The thought was a seedling nudged suddenly to life. It rocked and frightened her. Yet it seemed strangely normal-as if it had lain dormant in her awareness for a long time, perhaps planted there by the strange looks Mr. Metlock had been giving her from the time when she had first met him.
Harriet left her and the twins at the Metlock house. Penny took last night's newspaper and, in the twins' presence, made a tight roll of it and tied it with string from the kitchen. She whacked it a couple of times on the sink, then left it in plain view on the cooking counter.
The twins eyed her thoughtfully, then went outside and played quietly.
Penny tried to settle down with her homework but decided she would get nothing done until after the confrontation with Mr. Metlock. She wandered thoughtfully through the house. She glanced into the stereo room. She shuddered, then went in and sat on the couch. She reviewed the scene of the night before.
The moments when she had been transformed into a pink doughnut were vivid enough again to fill the room with a rosy glow that swirled and made the silence pop. She closed her eyes and crossed her legs and the memory came back, hot and bursting.
She jumped up and ran into Harriet's bedroom. Clothes were strewn all over the place. She hung them up. She sat at the vanity table, looked at the forest of makeup bottles, vials and tubes, then at her squarish face in the mirror. She would never be as beautiful as Harriet, not even with all these beauty aids.
She found the string of pearls hanging loose on sewing thread. One of the larger ones was missing.
No doubt about it, the pearl she had at home was from this string.
She heard a car crunch the gravel of the drive. The twins began to yell in the back yard.
Penny checked her impulse to rush out to avoid being caught in Harriet's room.
She had some rights here. In fact, she had a good many rights.
She took Harriet's long-handled lipstick brush, opened a tube of pink, painted her lower lips and then worked it in with the upper.
She rose and went out to the living room.
Mr. Metlock came through the door from the kitchen, lugging a twin on each arm, his attache' case, a newspaper.
He said, "So Penny is in charge. How are you, Penny?"
His eyes were bright, almost glittering.
The babbling twins relieved her of the need to reply. They informed him that Penny had rolled up a newspaper, tied it and put it on the cooking counter. They looked from him to Penny, their eyes nastily curious to learn who ruled the house.
They yelled, "She beats us-"
"Penny, is this true?"
Penny studied him. His eyes dodged hers. His uncertainty lasted only a moment. Then he was strong and masterful again. He even glared.
She was suddenly frightened, remembering his strength. But she had to stand firm.
She said, "I tan their behinds when they are bratty."
"Were they bratty?"
"Not after I tanned them."
The twins had drawn away from their father. They knew Penny had won the battle. They edged toward the back door.
John Metlock said, "Quite right, Penny. You have to enforce discipline."
She gave him a thin smile of satisfaction. She went into the stereo room and sat on the couch.
She saw a box of cigarettes on the desk. She took one, lit it and sat waiting for John Metlock.
John took a bottle of whiskey from the liquor cabinet, carried it into the kitchen and poured a stiff hooker on a couple of ice cubes and drank it before it was thinned by melting ice.
He found himself glad that Harriet had chosen to absent herself. Penny would be easier to deal with. He knew where he stood with Penny. Gloria had been right. A young girl would whore for fifty dollars.
He poured another drink and took it to his bedroom. He undressed, showered, put on fresh slacks and shirt. He had dried himself carelessly. The shirt stuck to his body.
The hell with it. He went to the closet to get a pair of moccasins but to hell with them, too. His feet were not cold. He took his drink and walked barefoot to his study.
He figured that a direct confrontation with Penny would clear the air. He would have to make a decision. To do so would put him a jump ahead of Harriet, who would come home soaked in dry martinis but still suffering.
Penny was sitting on the couch, trying to smoke a cigarette. She did not do it well. She closed her lips before she had a proper grip on the tip, sucked more air than smoke.
John sat at his desk. He held the cold drink against his stomach. It felt good. Alcoholic ashes were still trying to flare into hot embers inside him.
He scanned the girl, her tousled, blondish hair, fresh complexion, pouty underlip and stubborn little jaw, that lovely bosom and the full thighs amply displayed by a miniskirt.
She had character, he thought. He saw a core of hardness in the gray eyes, in the set of the little chin and in the fisted hand resting on one knee.
She reached to stub out her cigarette awkwardly, breaking it and leaving the ember burning.
She said, "Mrs. Metlock said that because she called me on the spur of the moment I ought to have extra pay."
He sighed with relief. Money was only money. "I don't think we'll have any trouble about pay." Her glance nicked at him.
"Mrs. Metlock spends an awful lot on clothes. So I guess you've got money."
"Yes. We have to put on a show-for business reasons. An expensive lawyer has to look expensive. Good clothes are an investment."
"Does Mrs. Metlock meet the people you do business with?"
He hesitated.
"Not all of them."
She said, "They're mostly in the city, aren't they? Your clients."
"Yes."
"She spends money because she wants to, right."
"It's not quite like that, Penny."
"I think it is."
He shrugged. Gloria had been right. Greed and whoredom blossomed young. Penny was a single-minded little trollop, handily pinning him down on Harriet's expenditures. Thank goodness for that.
She said, "Rick's car-the Monster-is ready to fall apart. We need something better."
"Perhaps I could arrange a loan. Nobody would be surprised if I made you a loan since you work for us-to be paid back from your wages-would they? Your parents? Rick?" She nodded.
"That's a good way to put it."
"I have to make up to you, Penny, for what I did. I was out. of my mind last night. You see-yes, I had drunk too much. But I had personal problems."
He saw her put a warning finger to her lips.
The twins were in the doorway, watching.
Penny said, "Supper time."
She rose and swept out with the children, leaving John to wonder at her brisk efficiency.
He sipped his drink. He had no choice but to pay her blackmail. Would Penny know when to stop? Would her greed grow until she broke him?
Even worse-could he have gotten her pregnant in his drunken state last night?
He finished his drink.
Penny put the twins to bed at seven-thirty. Harriet was due to return at eight.
Mr. Metlock had remained in his stereo-room study, playing mournful music. He had left the door open. Enough sound escaped to tease Penny.
She went in and found him staring into his drink.
She said. "That sound bugs me. Could I put on a different record?"
He glanced at her, hesitated. Finally he nodded.
Penny went to the record stacks to hunt up some popular music. She found it on the bottom shelf. She sat on her heels to look through the albums.
She became aware that John Metlock was staring at her. Her skirt was pulled far up her thigh. She fussed with the records, felt her throat and cheeks heat under his stare.
He had explained away last night as drunkenness and had mentioned personal problems. But maybe she had something that made him lose control. She knew how boys at school looked at her body, not boys who wanted to be friendly and companionable-go steady-like Rick. Boys who wanted only a wild session in the back seat of a car. Did she attract Mr. Metlock that way?
She put a new record on the machine, scarcely noticing the title.
She stood up, straightening her skirt. Mr. Metlock still stared at her.
The record was a sugary waltz. Penny walked to the door, feeling John Metlock's dark gaze following her. She spun on him. "Don't stare."
He blinked. He looked up at her with startled recognition. As if he had been dreaming.
She asked, "Did last night happen because of-me-I mean-because of how I look?"
He fidgeted, lit a cigarette.
"Your body is attractive. But I don't think-F
"You don't even know?"
He shook his head.
"Maybe I don't. Maybe last night happened because Gloria said-but you don't know her, do you?"
Penny shut the door. She went to his desk and stood close to him.
"Were you just playing a game? First you hurt me. Then you drove me crazy. You made me beg. Was that done to hurt me?"
"No."
"Was I just anybody? Not Penny Dayton?" He avoided her glance.
"Any man would want you."
"You don't want me now."
"Penny, please don't torment me. You wanted a loan
"I've run your house this evening. I even made your supper for you and Harriet while you were sitting here. Am I nobody? Harriet gets everything and I-but you don't love me. You love her. But why did you rape me if you love her?"
The answer came to Penny in a blinding flash. Because Mrs. Metlock had been cheating on him. The single pearl, the restrung necklace--Mr. Metlock's silence-all confirmed her guess.
She asked, "Because you caught her cheating?"
"No, you're wrong-"
He protested too loudly.
She said, "All right-then you must feel something for me."
She had come closer to him. She grabbed his arm in her excitement. He pulled away. He stood up. She followed him.
Suddenly he whirled on her, crowded her against the cork wall. His lips clamped on hers. His hand clutched at her breast.
Penny felt a surge of triumph. It was true. He had broken all the rules because of her. Right now he was gambling that his wife would not come home in time to catch them. He had torn down the shoulder of Penny's dress, pulled away her bra. His hand cupped her breast and he fingered the nipple to a point of fire. Penny responded by twining her arms around him and rising to tiptoes to press her loins against him. His hand dropped to her thigh, caressed her. She felt the splitting heat begin to melt her middle body.
But her mind was clear.
To test him she wrenched her lips from his, said, "Harriet said she'd be home at eight."
"Let her catch us. I don't give a damn."
His hand slipped into her panties. The feel of his fingers squeezing her mound was too much. She sagged against him.
He said. "Take them off."
Her knees were rubber. She almost fell as she bent to push the panties down her legs. She stumbled against the desk. He caught her up in his arms. She felt his strong hands clasp her buttocks, lifting her. He sat her on the desk, thrusting her thighs apart.
He told her, "You do it."
Her mouth opened to protest but his lips enclosed hers and his tongue pierced her lips. She felt the pink doughnut pulse inside her. She mouthed his tongue. That was not enough. She grasped the hardness in his trousers. Her hands obeyed his order, unzipping and drawing out his distending manhood, fisting it and rubbing it in her thirsting groove.
She gasped, "If Harriet comes home early-" But Harriet did not exist. She wrapped her legs around him, drew, felt his length slip slowly into her. She choked, clawed at his back, vised him with her thighs, jerked her inner membrane, fell back on the desk and squirmed nearer to him. He was thrusting hard and fast. Hurrying, because of Harriet? It did not matter. She was with him, going liquid, again dissolving his strength until only her pulsing roundness existed. She felt a flooding begin. He speeded. A great bubble of honey was going to explode. It filled her, became a viscid bliss that blotted out the room.
She heard him cry out, "Penny!" There was astonishment in his voice, and despair, and surrender, telling her that she could get anything from him. But what she needed most was this exploding rush that transformed her into a quivering wet emptiness, a vessel for him to use and abuse.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rick drove toward Penny's house, keeping his speed below thirty. The Monster would begin to heat if he went faster.
He felt angry at Penny's suggestion that they shop for a better car. He loved the Monster. True, the car might die at any moment. But it was his baby. The guys at school agreed that only Rick Scheer could make it run.
Besides, he was stuck with it. He did not earn enough at Mac's Garage after school and on Saturdays to save up for a replacement. He was learning plenty from Mac taking out transmissions and lifting heads, seating new valves, that sort of thing. Rick dreamed of being a mechanical engineer and working at Mac's was good experience. But he needed Penny's cash contributions to keep going.
He stopped in front of her house. He left the motor running, got out and walked around the car. His hand trailed over the fender and hood. It felt hot.
Mr. Dayton was mowing the patch of lawn that Penny had had to leave uncut yesterday. The mower sounded good. Mr. Dayton waved to him, pointed down at the mower, nodded his head approvingly.
Mr. Dayton called out that Penny was at the Metlocks'. Rick was to pick her up there.
He frowned. He did not like the Metlock place. It looked too slick to be real. And Penny always left the joint with her nose high.
But he returned to the Monster and wheeled away to find Penny.
The thing was, Penny helped him work on the car as expertly as any guy. She dug machinery. And she was all girl, soft as butter, when they made love. And she paid her share of the Monster's upkeep. It was an ideal setup.
But the Metlocks were a bad influence. All that rich stuff was no good for Penny.
Rick scowled as he nursed the Monster across town.
Harriet Metlock arrived home, feeling brittle as thin ice despite three dry martinis. She had left Alice briefly to pick up the twins and Penny and take them home, had met Alice at the club. She and Alice had run into Gloria, who had publicly denounced Harriet's affair with Randy. Alice had loyally pooh-poohed Gloria. Of course Alice had to be loyal because of what Harriet knew about her love life.
Gloria had emerged from the encounter as a big-mouthed tramp.
Harriet entered the house through the kitchen. She smelled something cooking in the oven. Maybe the frozen meat pies. Penny must have put them in. The dear child.
Penny came smiling to the kitchen doorway. She looked pretty in a miniskirt too extreme and young for Harriet to wear. Too bad. Her legs were even better than Penny's.
Though Penny had a bosom. Harriet sighed. Penny was a curvy little piece. The high-school boys probably stumbled all over her.
Harriet asked, "Did you hit John for a raise, darling? You deserve it. Do I smell meat pies baking?"
Penny nodded. She was rather flushed. Color made her prettier. Definitely. It softened the square outlines.
Harriet opened her purse on the kitchen table, took out a cigarette and reflected that at this moment she needed Penny more than ever. She grasped the girl's arm and drew her into the living room to face John. He would behave himself with Penny present. Harriet would have time to sound him out about last night before being alone with him.
He was standing in the doorway of the study. He looked pale. He held a drink. "John, are you feeling better? What a terrible night you had."
He made a mock bow.
"I'm fine. Best of health." He indicated his drink. "I'm destroying my hangover."
His grin was oddly lopsided. His eyes were unsettled, wavered between Harriet and Penny, avoiding both.
Harriet decided to try a kiss.
She went to him, hugged him, kissed his throat. He patted her shoulder. So far so good.
Penny said, "I'll go check the oven." She ran to the kitchen.
Harriet remained in the curve of John's arm. She bit her Hp. Did he know about the bathing cabin? Had he forgiven her?
He asked, "Busy afternoon?"
She sighed with relief. His voice had regained its calm, cheerful quality.
She said, "I had millions of things to shop for. Then Alice and I were bad girls. We drank martinis at the club and gossiped. Gloria broke in on us. A vulgar woman. A woman spurned. I gather that you spurned her in no uncertain terms."
"I'm a good spurner. You asked me to put down Gloria."
"I remember. I mentioned her as we arrived at the party. An affair between you and Gloria would be too degrading to you. She's such a big-mouthed tramp. When did you leave the party? I was talking to someone-Alice, I think-and people asked for you. I couldn't find you."
"I'd gone home."
"Poor darling. You were worn out. Your days are so long, commuting and all that."
"And today seemed longer than yesterday."
Harriet decided she had gotten away with it.
She heard a wheezing noise outside, then a high-pitched bleep.
Penny called out that Rick had arrived. Could she go?
Harriet paid the girl from her purse, afraid that John would not tip her enough. She wanted to hug Penny for being so wonderful, for holding together the house and keeping the twins away from John when he felt so awful. She was a jewel. Above all, Penny did not suffer from the many baby-sitters' failing of falling in love with the master of the house.
Harriet had heard of such girls. Usually they ended in the worst scandals imaginable.
Rick glowered at the manicured lawns and sculptured shrubbery around the Metlock house, at the redwood siding of three-foot-wide planks-no better than narrow stuff but everybody knew how expensive the three-footers were. The whole place was show-off. Penny came out, acting like she belonged here, walking with prissy little steps, nose up, hugging her books and wagging her behind.
Penny got into the Monster and sat on the edge of the seat, as if everything in the car were too dirty to touch. She put her hands on her knees and looked straight ahead, as though the windshield were the only part of the car she could stand to look at. Well, it was clean and had no cracks.
Rick slipped out the clutch and started up in first. He heard an ominous growl underneath. The shift was stiff. Second sounded better and when he got rolling in high the transmission quieted. But he knew a bearing was going and probably gear teeth were broken. That meant like twenty bucks for a junkyard transmission.
"Penny, you wanted to go to Salesman Sam's?"
"I can't endure this heap one minute longer."
He mocked her, "Ah caun't enduer."
She said, "I can get money. A loan from Mr. Metlock."
He snorted.
"You sure are in close with those people. Can I touch you? Or would I get you dirty?"
"You're a dope. I ought to buy a car for just myself."
"Yeah, and who would keep it running?"
"At least it wouldn't have your greasy handprints all over the paint."
Rick noted that her snottiness diminished as they got farther away from the Metlock place. She began to slouch back in the seat. She opened the glove compartment and took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Only two remained. She lit them both and handed one to him.
He said, "You sure are extravagant, burning two at once."
"I'm lousy with money."
She looked comfortable again, like she belonged in the Monster.
He said, "You must have found where Metlock hides his cash."
"Maybe like that. Or I found some they don't need. You know what? You need a new suit. That blue one looks like you slept in it."
"I suppose you're going to buy me a new suit."
"That depends on how you behave."
Rick glanced at her to see how serious she was. He almost hit a truck. He kept his eyes on the road after that. Penny usually talked pretty straight. He doubted that she had mentioned a new suit to tease him.
Penny was thinking seriously about buying Rick a new suit. But she knew she had to move slowly. The Metlock business was all choked up in her. It wanted out, needed a listener. But she had to be careful. Saying too much to Rick could screw up the works. And she had to be modest about spending money. A big splash of dough would cause talk and might kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
They stopped at Salesman Sam's in the section of the big lot where the cheaper cars were lined up. Rick left the Monster's motor running. They saw Salesman himself selling a car to a little old man, giving with a phony smile and patting the frail back with a hand like a bunch of bananas.
Sam glanced at Rick and Penny as if they had come to steal hubcaps.
Rick swore at Sam under his breath.
Penny quickly found the car she wanted, a small blue foreign convertible with battered fenders and a torn top, marked a real buy at three-fifty. She thought Rick could hammer the fenders smooth. The top was a wreck but who needed a roof in summer?
Rick said, "You can't get spare parts for imports."
"But it's groovy, man."
"And the back seat?"
The back seat was strictly for lovemaking midgets. Penny was irked by Rick's mention of it, like he thought of nothing else in a car. She wanted to zip fast in a neat little bomb like this, her hair flying. She'd buy a blue dress and ponytail ribbon to match the paint. Anyhow, a back seat was a pretty lousy place for lovemaking.
Sam came over and said, "You can't have that convertible. The guy who bought it is coming for it tonight."
Rick said, "Yeah?"
He began to look at the convertible with sudden interest.
Penny glanced narrowly at Sam. His eyes were black and tiny. His nose was also too small for his big face and huge grin. She knew he was lying about a guy coming for the convertible. If the car were really sold the sign would be gone.
Pops had often said she should believe nothing a salesman told her.
She got in and started the motor. It had a high-pitched whine.
She shut it off.
She said, "I pity the poor guy who bought it. How do you get the nerve to ask thirty-five bucks for a clinker like this?"
Sam said, "There's a zero after the thirty-five. Three-fifty. Can't you read numbers."
"I thought that was for laughs."
Sam turned his back on Rick. He looked intently at Penny.
He said, "I might let it go for three and a quarter if the guy that bought it don't show up. That's a clean little car, sister. And loaded. Radio, heater, disc brakes, new shocks-"
"The radio doesn't work."
She eyed Sam. She figured he had not tried out the radio. Nor had she.
He said, "Yeah, I sent for a replacement for the tube that's burned out. The radio will work, see?"
Rick said, "The motor don't sound bad."
Penny laughed.
"Rick, you're used to the motor on the Monster. This thing is about to shoot a rod."
Sam said, "Listen, sister, I've been driving this little wagon myself for a week. Sweetest job on the lot But I need cash. Even a hundred down I need."
He eyed Penny speculatively.
Penny said, "Rick, how about you drive around the block and see if it holds together, if the wheels are screwed on and all."
Rick got into the car and drove it out of the lot.
The light convertible went lively as a jackrabbit. Penny loved it but she kept a dour face for Sam's benefit.
By the time Penny and Rick left Salesman Sam, she had beaten his price down to two-fifty-on condition that she pay cash tomorrow evening.
Sam had said she was taking bread from his children's mouths.
She was pleased with how well she had used Pops's methods of close dealing. It felt good to be backed by the authority of Metlock cash.
She had Rick stop at a diner. She bought cigarettes. She came back to the Monster, puffing one.
He said, "When did you learn to walk with your rear wagging like that? like it was solid gold."
"I've got a right. Let's see you raise two hundred and fifty."
"You walk like a snake-or like Mrs. Metlock. Only you got more to wag than she has."
"Have a cigarette and knock off the griping. Do you need gas?"
"No. Mac paid me today. I filled up from his tank at the wholesale price."
Penny said she wanted a coke at the Wayside, a teen place on the highway. It was kind of expensive but she meant to spend the ten dollars Harriet had paid her. And she wanted to dance because she had some thinking to do about Rick. The place to figure out this sexy business was in his arms.
He found a hill near the Wayside and parked on the downslope. He could not leave the Monster running in the Wayside parking lot because, while anybody would have to be nuts to steal the car, this place was full of kids who would do anything for kicks.
The Wayside had two dance rooms, one playing hot rock, the other slow music. Penny took Rick to the slow floor, called the Passion Pit, and they squirmed among the other dancers.
She closed her eyes and began to figure.
First she tried to remember Mr. Metlock's lovemaking.
It was hard to bring back here. She had found reliving it in the study easy.
All around her girls giggled and whispered, boys guffawed and said intimate things too loudly, were slapped lightly. Some said nothing, just danced close and hugged-usually the ones who were trying to do it right here because they had no car of their own or did not have a love affair organized. The Passion Pit was cheerfully and openly sensual. Everybody minded his own business and paid no attention to whose hands wandered and which couples were close, like built together.
Penny could barely recall John Metlock.
Rick caressed her breasts in a corner when the music had stopped. She wound her fingers into his shirt, tugging him close. The music began and she put both arms around his neck and rose to tiptoes to lift her loins against him. If she closed her eyes the Metlocks vanished and her teen world emerged fully-the French homework she had not done, the dress she had to iron for school tomorrow, the prodding hardness of Rick and the faint odor of gasoline that always clung to him. The car smell was smothered by the aromas of male sweat and the after-shave lotion he used every day, although he only shaved on Saturdays.
She felt over his bony shoulders and corded muscles, finger-combed his shaggy hair. It was loose and floppy, kind of immature, but her fingers felt hot from touching it.
He asked, "Want to go?" His breathing was short. She had to cling to this moment. "Stay. Don't change anything."
She was thinking of later tonight, of studying while she ironed a dress. She would be smiling over what would have happened in the back seat of the Monster, or maybe angry like she sometimes was when the sex did not work.
Rick lifted her hips and they ground at each other until she bit her lip to restrain herself.
They parted. She was trembling.
Rick took her hand and started for the door.
"We're going," he said.
She hurried to keep up with his long strides. If only he would always say, We're going ... instead of asking what she wanted to do.
She clung to Rick. The Monster careened down the hill. The motor coughed in second gear but did not catch. He tried third. The Monster wheezed and gasped to the foot of the hill, started explosively.
Rick said, "You got to know how."
She agreed, clinging to him, feeling pleasantly small and inept. She could not have started the car on that little hill.
He drove out to a bluff overlooking the lake. He stopped as far as possible from the darkened cars that were scattered about. Ahead was a starting slope. Rick shut off the motor and lights. The Monster became a black, silent shape like the others, each as private as a locked room.
Again Penny tried to think of Mr. Metlock. She could feel nothing of him between herself and Rick. What mattered was now. Later, while ironing a dress and studying French, maybe she would call Mr. Metlock and ask for two hundred and fifty dollars. But the money had nothing to do with last night in the stereo room-only with a car for herself and Rick.
Right now she was tasting Rick's well-remembered kisses. She felt herself shrinking softly against him. Her breast was being too gently caressed-but the gentleness was Rick, too. He thought she was breakable, like eggs.
Rick cursed the steering wheel, rather than suggest bluntly their going to the back seat. Penny giggled at his rough sense of propriety. She began to climb over the seatback because her breasts were exposed and she did not want to get out of the car where people could see her.
Rick was too long and angular to climb over. He got out, opened the back door, met her as she tumbled down. In closing the back door he lost his balance and she fell astride him. She drew his face to her bare breasts. She whispered, "Hard."
She shut her eyes to reduce the world to scalding pinpoints being alternately drawn out of her depths. The pinpoints knobbed and drew out long, a yard, pulling a slippery silk string connected fluidly with fires deep down in. her. She was still inclined to giggle because Rick's love-making was as awkward as the way he walked, shambling like a skinny bear.
She had not giggled at all with Mr. Metlock.
Her tangled dress restrained her movements. She reached back for the zipper. Her elbow struck the front seat. She lifted to pull off the dress, bumped her head on the car top. They struggled in the narrow confines but tonight she did not swear. Maybe she had come to love the awful Monster.
When the dress was hung on the steering wheel she skinned out of her undies and nestled down in a maze of cold door handles and plastic seat covers that stuck to the skin. She rested one heel on the back of the front seat. A hand, seeking support on the floor, found a big iron car jack.
But Rick was there. Fumbling Rick. Missing. But that had to be, too. Just as Penny had to be tiny, like afraid-this is how it always was with Rick.
She whispered, "Have you got one?"
"I bought a dozen."
He spoke proudly. He had never bought more than a three-pack before. "Don't use it yet."
Suddenly she was slick but frowning anxiously because she remembered how Mr. Metlock had been and, because she loved Rick, she did not want him to come in second.
He jolted her and she dug her fingernails into his bare back. But then it was smooth and she stopped frowning, waited tensely to learn how it would go.
He said, "You're soft as silk."
"Not yet. Not really."
"What do you want me to do?"
She thought about that while tiny pink blossoms formed in her fingertips and toes and eyelids, gathered inside her to form one big opening blossom full of honey. He should not ask. She could not teach him. It had to be for him, not her. But she could not say it.
"Penny, are you all right?"
"Only if you're all right."
"Do you love me?"
"Not yet. Not until you show me how much you love me."
"How?"
She despaired of making him understand. She said, "I want to be nothing. I mean, I want to be you."
"But that's not fair. It's for both of us."
"What you do is for both of us."
At last he caught on. Penny gasped. Her right leg straightened. A toe caught her dress on the steering wheel, jerked it. The honey blossom filled and her knee drew back to let him closer. Then she lost him but suddenly the blossom burst and she felt heat out to her fingertips, the pink effusion bubbling sweet and warm.
It was nothing as definable as a bubble, yet she was all foam that had a recognizable core and or else she was all core. She was jelly, alive and glowing-that was it-transfixed mightily and long although Rick was still uncertain from fearing to hurt her. She whispered that she could not be hurt but the words probably did not leave her lips.
The foreign feel of cold door handles and flesh-catching plastic and her heel on the worn fabric of the front seat began to fade away as the blossom expanded. The blossom now had no walls and yet it was filled tightly.
The wild shaking began. She recognized it, knew it was time for Rick to put on protection-but he was crazed like never before. She wanted Rick to protect her, although she would die without him.
She gasped, "Aren't you going to-"
He groaned. He drew away, tore at his clothes hunting the gadgets. She put her fingers into her mouth and bit hard to mute the agony of deprivation. Even in the faint moonlight Rick looked unbelievably long. It did not seem possible that she could have him. But she was again counting herself a mere girl. She had that right with Rick. That was part of it, letting herself be less than adults might expect and not being blamed for it.
He returned wildly and Penny's flower pulsed and burst To her surprise it formed again and came on stronger, even though it did not truly exist.
Only his hard drive existed. She was weightless as a balloon, an unimportant extension of him. He went at high speed and exploded like a bomb and with that the ravenous flower lost coherence and love took its place.
She could say she loved him, now that it was ending. And she began to form again around him, effortlessly reviewing it all a thousand times a minute, doing so with flesh, not mind, fattening on his expended strength.
Maybe that was it. She had taken his strength into her. He would be weak. She would be able to tear the Monster apart with her bare hands, smiling because she had a man in her.
She was sure the car would start easily. She could start anything.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Harriet Metlock had decided to seduce her husband.
He was gloomy, withdrawn, gray-faced, silent. He had gone out to stare at the pool, had returned to the living room to sit and stare at nothing.
He had eaten little dinner. Harriet had tried to liven him with gossipy chatter, had found herself ravenously hungry. She finished off the remains of John's meat pie when she did the dishes. She had survived a crisis and felt she could fly. But he was not with her.
She should feel guilty. But Randy was only a dumb stallion who could make a woman and mother feel like a giggling girl again. John's insecurities, his bootless pursuit of meaning beneath the pleasures of life, were what made him worth loving. But they also reduced him as a lover. Harriet wished she could have both men without causing all these complications.
She bathed and put on the nightie she had bought today. It was bell-shaped, hanging from lace shoulder straps, close on the bosom, flaring on the hips and ending there. It hid nothing, thus was accompanied by matching panties, blue nylon and lace, that simply begged to be taken off. Harriet equipped herself with fresh dabs of makeup, two kinds of perfume, high-heeled white mules and a cigarette. She set off for the living room.
John saw his wife come into the corner of his vision like a feather borne on a lazy breeze. She looked soft and drowsy as a summer afternoon. Blue and gold. Blue lace and long golden limbs defined by the tilting, muscle-tautening effect of high heels. She brushed hair back from a silken cheek. Her breasts moved beneath pale blue lace and in the light from another room the backs of her thighs shone sleek as ivory.
Harriet seemed an ethereal being. The blistering hell-fires and cobwebby demons that filled his mind were crashing together and grinding like broken gear teeth in a car. This insubstantial bit of lilac and daffodil was too lovely to enter the agony of a man whose sufferings were only now taking tangible form.
Or was she a new evil, a traitorous Lilith, a dragon in the form of a nymph?
Her voice came like a gentle echo, seeming to emanate from another point than that occupied by her slender form.
"Just the same, John, I love you terribly."
Just the same as if she were faithful?
His eyes rested upon her, rested for the first time in twenty-four hours, found solace and ease in the sight. He saw no mere beauty and daintiness, elegance, slimness and charm. She was more than these-more than a pearly smile and the downturn of a pink lip cushion. She was a bridge back to the happiness of the days before he raped Penny.
He said, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci."
"Who?"
"A poem about a merciless beauty who had no soul-who consumed men's souls. She let them escape themselves. But they could never return."
"You're making nice nonsense talk again. like my dream man, the one I married."
But she remained distant, glimpsed only in bits and pieces beyond the black, skeletal, gnarled shapes of the evil forest that fenced him in, where red demons howled and showed black teeth and throats of fire. I He had raped a child.
And his wife, an ephemeral shape in blue lace, stood smiling at him. Her smile swam through the evil forest where he was trapped. She had slept with another man-whose fault? Had the man she had married somehow driven her to it? Had he been less than enough for her? Could her faults be explained in terms of his depravity or insufficiency?
She untied a bow on her bosom. The minute gown opened down to her navel. Slender fingers enlarged the opening until tip-tilted breasts were in view.
She strutted toward him, a laugh in her eye. She walked stiff-legged and swing-hipped. Her breasts leaped in their blue lace frame. She was always cheerful about sex, sometimes merry and bubbling with laughter-to Harriet it was a fine joke that this most delicious of pleasures was not fattening, harmful to health or difficult to accomplish. She had explained that young girls whispered dreadful things about it and she had been terrified until her first experience at the age of seventeen, when she had laughed endlessly on discovering that it was no horror at all, but delightful and easy. On her very first try she had, as she put it, done flips. She had had to struggle to retain her laughter ever since at women who had sex problems.
She lived successfully on her skin, delighting in the taste of food, the finger-feel of fabrics, the interactions of color on the visual sense, the feel of a newly clipped lawn beneath her bare feet. Some sensations offered drawbacks-hangovers, overweight, smoker's cough. Sex, of course, might result in pregnancy but she had borne the twins as easily as an old hand at the game. And she had said she would not mind if more came her way. However, she took the pill.
John knew that he could never make himself understood by this pagan creature.
Yet she was interested in his problems, real and fancied, studied them with curiosity and asked blunt, embarrassing questions out of innocence. She did not understand why he had problems.
He said, "Not tonight, Harriet. The trouble is me. Tin a wretched-"
"No. We both know the trouble is me. I'm a bad girl. But darling, can I help it? I love you. In my heart I can't love anyone else. This leaves me free to be foolish."
"You don't understand. I hate myself-"
"You're a hating party of one. Everybody else loves you."
She put her hands on his shoulders and hung over him, swaying from side to side, sleek gold except for the snowy breast globes and their pink tips. The blue lace contrasted with her warm flesh. He was in her shadow. Perfume wafted subtly into his nostrils and perhaps through his pores, gathered deep in his loins. She touched her lips to his forehead, tongued delicately at his eyes.
He had to confess. Yet he could not bring the ugliness with Penny into the open like a dirty weapon to rend Harriet's joy.
He could only fend her off. He loved her. He would not bring his shame to her body.
He said, "How can you feel free to be foolish if, as you said, you love only me?"
"By foolish I meant frivolous, darling."
"Is making love with another man frivolous?"
"I'd never make love with anyone but you. No other man would tempt me."
She lied-laughing.
"But you did."
"That's not true-unless it was dark and I thought the man was you. But I'd know, wouldn't I? So it can't be true." She bent lower, trailed her nipples across his face. "Darling John, is this why Gloria tramps? Because her husband is unresponsive? A girl's pride would fall to the cellar. If you don't want me-I'll phone Gloria and learn whom she plays games with. And I'll try her methods. Tell me-what's the trouble? Is my beauty fading? Am I flabby? Do you prefer Gloria?"
"Ihave no interest in Gloria."
"Then who? Beth? Alice?"
"No."
"Perhaps you need a change to stimulate you. Remember, we mentioned Penny-"
He could no longer confess-not since she lied. "No."
"I know you wouldn't, darling. But I'd let you-if it were good for you. Don't act so insulted. I was only teasing. Anyhow, a girl of her age couldn't be fun. Though I was at seventeen. Really. Do you want me to tell you about those days before I met you? I will, to make you jealous."
He had been shoved back into the ugly forest by her remarks about Penny. There had to be a way out. Yes. Her past. Because it did not matter.
He said, "The names of your lovers were Tom, Dick and Harry."
"No, darling, not Harry. Larry. Five minutes alone with Larry and he'd have my panties off."
"In public?"
"At high noon on Main Street." John managed a grin. "Like this?"
He grabbed, jerked her panties down to her knees, hobbling her. Laughing, she toppled on him. And something in his mind broke open-a door at the end of a labyrinthine passage, a gate out of the forest of skeletal trees and howling demons. Escape, surrender. Give up the right to incriminations. The love act forgave. All else would fade back to the past-like Tom, Dick, Harry or Larry, all of whom might have been mythical anyway. Though Harriet had probably been quite free in bestowing her favors.
He went at her fiercely. His self-loathing had generated rampaging power. He flung away the blue lace panties and lifted the bell gown. Harriet fell laughing to the couch, slipped to the floor. They rolled on the rug. She thrust her breasts against his face. He seized a pink-tipped cone, pulled. Her long legs thrashed about in search for him.
She said, "The fire's already hot-"
So was he, almost painfully enlarged. He thrust and met a honeyed seizure, was bathed in furnace heat. His hands felt the coarseness of the rug. It was out of place with this satin skin and slipping, syrupy trap. He lifted her and levered himself upright. She clung tightly and he stood up without losing her.
He was strong enough to support the world.
He tried to take her into the bedroom without losing contact. She held him tightly but she was laughing and finally fell back, as though to flop to the floor. He found himself laughing, too, pouring cosmic, earth-shaking laughter of release. It was easy. No strain. Simply admit that you loved unbearably because she was everything you could not be, a simple, earthy creature who lived on the skin. Although in a subtle and intelligent fashion. And she had no demons inside. Was her cleanness what held him?
But why worry the point? Why not let go? She was here to release him.
He picked her up, a slippery, child-sized eel, her weight and length diminished by the new surging power in him. Slippery flesh squirmed and laughed in his arms, rubbed against him. A kiss sucked at his cheek. Arms encircled his neck, suddenly crushing, then releasing.
She squirmed as he neared her vanity table in the bedroom, she slipped from him and landed in vials and tubes, combs and brushes, cylinders of lipstick. She fell back and bumped her head on the mirror. She raised her legs to catch her balance. She was exposed to him and at the right height. He drove at her, pierced again to the slippery haven. Delighted, she banged her heels on his spine.
The nightlight glowed amber on the mirror. John's reflected face was harsh and full of bone, topped by hair that looked coarse compared to the reflection of her back, the spine curved limber as a willow branch, the skin slick gold, the hair a silky pale wreath. And down, shadowed from the nightlight but visible, the breadth of her hips, widened impossibly, sprung, unimaginably wide. The dusky gold hips curved strongly out from the tiny waist Her thighs were visible, pointing high.
He had seized upon her native sensuality and could see all this beauty and live for it Yet he also lived another life-one being consumed by her moist furnace. He put an arm around her back to support her, saw the gross black-haired arm against her slick gold.
Males were revoltingly ugly. How could women want them? Did they seek an ugliness to balance their own beauty? His self-loathing was returning-the subjective view destroyed rational thought.
"John, darling, I must be a bad girl more often if it makes you behave like this."
"Then you admit-"
"That I saw Gloria chasing you? I admit that I love you. Oh, John, I'm sitting on bumpy things, lipsticks and combs and perfume flasks-"
"We'll move-"
"No, please don't. They'll indent me and then you'll be able to turn me over and see where I've been, maybe read the brand names on my skin. Yes, I'd love for you to read what's printed on my bumps. Nothing ever has been. Isn't it sad?"
He laughed.
"I think I feel my pearls, John." Her pearls.
His world went black and spun and the red-throated demons came black out of the pits deep in him. "Oh, John, you've lost me."
She slid off the vanity table. Tubes and vials fell in a shower to the rug. She reached behind herself, laughing, pulled away the string of pearls, which had been stuck to her backside.
He was in a black rage but Harriet hung the string of pearls on him. She made quick turns, doubling and then tripling until he was sheathed in pearls.
Her foolishness was irresistible.
They ran to the bed and without losing the pearls he plunged, arrived and was consumed. She tangled about him.
She said, "My lovely pearls. If only they were paid for. If the jeweler knew. Well, I know. Oh, how I know, darling. My sweet pearls feel like roller bearings. John, do they hurt you?"
Absurdity. That was the key. Laugh hard enough, be foolish enough with mortgaged pearls, take the photograph of the glamorous Metlocks and blow it up bigger and bigger, borrow and borrow-why worry about a Puritan consciousness of debt and guilt?
He was with it now.
This pearl thing would be obscene if she were not his wife. Between married couples existed no aberrations, only differing tastes, the sex books said.
"John, I am the pearly queen. I had never imagined. Will you buy me more pearls, many more, bigger ones?"
Yes, pearls. A silky nest of pearls exploding. A great crazy ramming flight. The red-throated demons ran away howling, defeated. He was rushing on a great flood. He let go like a breaking dam. All legal in the eyes of the world and permitted and welcomed by his legal partner, his wife.
She gasped, "Oh, pearl me, John, with the greatest pearls. No wonder I had twins. The best bouncing pearls in the world. Please send me off to fly inside out-"
He lost track of her words. Flood and thunder, earthquake and disembodied flight tore through him-a vortex of sensation kept him going endlessly. It would not stop. He rode the current without trying for progress or restraint, simply letting himself be carried until the volcano blew.
It blew scalding honey and John at last was rid of his demons.
He drifted on swan's-down to a field where two red raspberries slowly deflated. He was gripped still in the quieting cleft of the world.
He was home.
The nightmare was over.
CHAPTER NINE
Springtime ended that week. A summer sun burned down. Swimming pools were in use and grass grew tall. The tops of convertibles were folded back.
The changes were particularly marked for Penny when, on Monday morning, she arose to feel the hot sun in her bedroom window and simultaneously discovered that her monthly worries were over. This ended her concern about Mr. Metlock's carelessness.
She telephoned Mr. Metlock that evening and he agreed to supply two hundred and fifty dollars. The Monster made its last wheezing journey to the Metlocks' to get the cash and then to Salesman Sam's, where Penny and Rick obtained ownership of the Blue Bomb and gave the Monster to Salesman Sam, although he begged them to go abandon it in a distant ditch.
They spent their evenings that week in putting the Blue Bomb in shape, sandpapering off the rust and painting the car a brilliant but uneven blue. They removed the torn convertible top. Rick bought two sheets of plastic to use as ponchos in case it rained. He took off the motor head, ground the valves, put in new plugs and points, Penny bought a blue dress and ponytail ribbon to go with the car.
At school they were envied by almost everybody.
On Thursday they triumphed over Irene King by taking a parking place into which she could not squeeze her big white convertible.
Penny also bought a blue bikini. She wore it for the first time on Saturday afternoon when the Metlocks were playing golf and she rode herd on the twins in the backyard pool. The twins said the bikini made her look naked.
When Randy Hill came she decided the twins had been right.
She had been sunning on the edge of the pool when she heard the front doorbell ringing. She told the twins to stay on their plastic raft. She ran through the house and found Mr. Hill at the door.
He said, "I'm late. Have Harriet and John already gone to the club? I'm supposed to play golf with them."
He broke off. He looked at her, his gaze raking up and down, tearing off the wings and triangle that formed the bikini. He kept on looking.
Penny could say nothing. He spoke as if he had just discovered her.
"Well, hello, sweetheart. Your name is-"
"Penny Dayton."
She saw a big blonde man with curiously inky eyebrows and bold blue eyes. She had seen Mr. Hill before but he had never noticed her. And she had not really been confronted with his piratical handsomeness. He looked as if he ate young girls whole.
He said, "Ah, so you're the invaluable Penny."
He leaned against the doorjamb. His gaze again raked her, pausing here and there to examine details he might have missed on the first go.
He wore a sports shirt and slacks. He was barefoot. Penny noticed his lack of shoes because her eyes were downcast, avoiding his.
He saw her staring at his feet.
He said, "I had to work in the city this morning. Just got back. Terrible, working on Saturday. But sometimes it goes like that. I've got my golf shoes in the car. See?"
Penny nodded.
"Well, Penny, nobody told me you're the cutest pumpkin in town, as well as the marvel baby-sitter. I've been cheated. How'd you like to take care of my kids on Tuesday? We're playing bridge here."
"I'd better go see that the twins don't drown."
"Ah, swimming. Good. I might as well say hello to the little brats while I'm here. Go ahead. I'll close the door."
She tried to walk through the house without bobbing her rump, knowing that Randy Hill was watching her every curve. She felt she was blushing all over. He looked at a girl as if he took for granted that she wanted him. He was scary.
He squatted on his heels at the pool and leaned over the edge to trade banter with the twins.
They were subdued in his presence, shy, as though they figured he also knew how to roll and tie a newspaper.
Penny stood aside, an arm across her bosom to shield it from his gaze.
She eyed him sidelong. His trousers were tight on hard-looking thighs. His arms were brown and bulged with muscle. His wrists looked four inches wide.
He turned abruptly to Penny.
He asked, "Been swimming?"
She nodded.
He glanced at the water.
"Looks inviting. I suppose John has bathing trunks around somewhere. I'll borrow a pair. I'm too late for golf anyway."
He sprang up and went into the house.
Penny's mouth was dry. She felt as she sometimes felt in dreams when she screamed for help and nobody heard her. But this was no dream.
She thought Mr. Hill could pick her up with one hand and tear off her bikini with flicks of his index finger. He was the opposite from Mr. Metlock, who spent most of his strength fighting inside himself. Mr. Hill was all forward-rushing bone and muscle.
She scrunched her eyes shut and tried to draw strength from thinking about the Blue Bomb, her greatest achievement. But the Bomb was still hazy in her mind. She saw the Monster more clearly. The days of the spavined, wheezing old Monster had been secure. She had traded them for the zippy speed of the Blue Bomb. The Bomb moved like her present life, in starts and swerves and sickening lunges.
Randy came back, yelling. He hurtled past Penny, flying through the air, a great brown-gold hulk of a man in green trunks. The twins cried out in delirious excitement. Randy left the pool's edge straight as an arrow but in midair he made a frog. His arms and legs jerked crookedly. He landed with a belly flop that splashed water all the way to Penny.
She cowered before the splash. She giggled despite her fears.
Randy came up under the twins, lifted them out of the water, took one on each mighty shoulder. He tossed them about the pool, ducked them, swam with both on his back.
Penny realized that an adult, a handsome pirate, was showing off for her benefit. The thought excited her strangely.
He played whale and porpoise with the twins, then lay on the bottom of the pool, looking up through the clear water at the twins. He convinced them that he was dead. They were on the point of tears when he at last drifted to the surface.
He gave them a ball to play with. He got out of the pool and sat beside Penny.
She saw that his borrowed trunks were too small. She tried to avoid looking at his bulge.
He said, "You didn't answer when I asked you if you can baby-sit for us on Tuesday."
"If Mrs. Metlock doesn't need me-"
"We're coming here for bridge."
"Oh. Then I guess it's okay."
He wiped water from his face. He sprawled back on the grass next to the tiled edge of the pool.
Penny watched from beneath shuttered lids.
He was huge. His chest and thighs were enormous. His. rib cage rose high. His stomach was stretched flat and hard, emphasizing his bigness below.
He asked, "What do you do for fun, Penny?"
"Me? Oh, I work a lot. School and baby-sitting. And I own half a car."
"Half?"
"My boy friend owns the other half."
"Lucky guy."
"Well, he hasn't much money. We both support the car."
"He's doubly lucky to have financial help and a chick like you. Baby, you are the cutest pumpkin that ever sat babies."
Penny looked away from him. Her cheeks burned. He asked, "Isn't it time for the twins' nap?" It was. But Penny knew the twins were her only defense.
"They don't nap."
"The heck they don't. I remember my wife's saying she's been for coffee with Harriet while the twins were sleeping."
"It's swimming weather. The pool keeps them busy."
The twins overheard and came to protest that they did not want to nap. Randy Hill sprang up and yanked them both out of the water, told them in a rolled-newspaper tone of voice that they would run to their bedroom or get walloped. They ran. Penny hurried after them. She had to dry them off and she needed them as a shield.
Randy Hill followed.
In the twins' room she stripped off their bathing suits and toweled them dry. The little brats ran around naked, which disturbed her because Randy was watching, grinning. They were just little boys and their nudity meant nothing-except that the air was laden with sex. She had to dry them all over. She had to bend down to their height and that made her bra gape.
Mr. Metlock had thrust her into direct confrontation with the adult world. She was no longer a mere girl. She had learned that mature men and girls of sixteen sometimes became sexually involved.
She tucked the twins into bed and hurried to Harriet's room to dress.
Randy Hill followed her. When she grasped the doorknob to close the door he was blocking the way.
Randy figured he knew a few things about women.
None were easier to know than teenagers who blushed all over.
The key to seduction was women's need of praise. When a man told pleasing lies about their beauty they lied to themselves in order to believe him. Self-deception allowed them to imagine that they loved him-which made lovemaking all right in their eyes. Few ever admitted that they only wanted a quick roll in the hay.
His theory might not be true in every respect but Randy had found it a workable hypothesis and he was pragmatic to the core.
He said to Penny, "Your bikini is new, I bet. Latest style."
She nodded.
He grinned as he studied her downcast eyes and crimson cheeks.
He said, "Most girls wouldn't dare to wear a suit like yours. It doesn't hide faults. The manufacturers should hire you as a model. In fact, a client of mine is in the business. I bet he'd love to find a girl like you."
She said, "I have to get dressed."
Her voice caught and scraped in her throat.
"No. The afternoon's young. Let's have another swim."
She bit her Up. She still stared intently at the floor.
She said, "Mr. and Mrs. Metlock will come home pretty soon-"
"I know how long they'll play golf. Leave that up to me. Look, we might as well be friends. You're going to be on my payroll on Tuesday night. Right? Tell me, what do you think about the idea of modeling bathing suits?"
She looked up at him.
"Well, I'm kind of busy."
"A smart girl can always use money."
Having dropped the bait, he turned away. He knew better than to force his way into a bedroom. What a lovely piece she was, breasts like globes and thighs slick as hot ice.
Complications?
Randy expected complications. His secretary, for instance, was trying to make him get her pregnant. The greedy bitch wanted the whole shebang, divorce and a remarriage. Another difficult time had been when he had broken off the affair with Alice Summers. She had threatened to tell Bill, who had a terrible temper and might damn well take his shotgun and blow off a guy's head.
But the wrath of a scorned broad was muted by guilt over her indiscretions. Alice had taken it without squeaking. Harriet was easier. She had no shame, no guilt. She liked her sex unadorned by love.
And this little Penny piece was no innocent baby. He had seen her stare at his bathing trunks. She knew what was good.
He called back to her, "I'm having a coke in the kitchen. I'll uncap one for you. Then we'll swim."
He got out the cokes, grinning as he wondered if she would dress or come in her bathing suit. She might be smart enough to dress. The seduction process might have to wait a few days until she had gotten the idea that it would happen firmly planted in her mind and thought it was her own.
His success probably finally depended on how greedy she was. Probably she was too young to have heard the I-can-make-you-a-model line before. If anything brought her to him-it would be that.
She came into the kitchen, wearing her bathing suit and a blush.
She said, "I could drink the coke while I dress."
"Sure, baby. And have a cigarette." He saw a pack of Harriet's brand on the counter. He figured that offering a smoke to a kid might make her try to fit the adult world in other ways.
She took the cigarette. Randy guessed he had her. He felt his manhood stir. What a lovely piece she was. Real peaches and cream. He lit her cigarette, took one for himself and stood leaning against the sink, savoring the feast before him. Her bikini bra was slightly tented on the nipples and the bottom part was tight enough to show a pretty mound and cleavage.
How had John Metlock kept his hands off this little broad?
John was a strange one. There was no understanding him. Out of a clear sky John would suddenly blurt out idiocies.
Why in hell do we ride this lousy commuter train every day?
Randy would shrug.
To make money, John. Deal the cards ... Penny asked, "These modeling people-how much do they pay?"
"Plenty. I know girls who make fifty bucks an hour."
"Fifty an hour?"
"It beats baby-sitting, eh?"
He drank coke from the bottle and studied her. She had lost her blush. Thoughts of money wiped out a lot of self-consciousness.
She was frowning, apparently studying the proposition. Randy laughed silently. Instead of asking for reassurance that she was pretty enough to make out at modeling, she had asked about the money. She was not vain, at least no more so than average. He guessed that she was used to making out through determination and hard work instead of using her rosy tits and flaring hips.
Her kind was the best. He could let her chase him, employ seduction in reverse, the kind that put the blame on the female. They were easier to handle afterward.
He said, "I'm going for a swim. You can do as you like."
He left his cigarette and coke behind, trotted out to the pool.
Penny did not believe all promises. People paid when they had to pay, as Mr. Metlock had done. Still, she had little to lose. Mr. Hill could not force her to do anything she did not want to do, not with neighbors within hearing and the twins eager to blab.
She went out to the pool and stood on the apron, drinking her coke and watching Randy swim back and forth. He drove himself with powerful strokes. He climbed out at the shallow end, came around to her.
He said, "Great swimming. Try it."
"Not now."
"Now."
He grabbed her arm and leaped into the pool, jerking her like a rag doll after him. She surfaced. He faced her, grinning playfully. He submerged, tagged her ankle. She started for the ladder. He popped up to bar her path. She dodged, trying to get around him. He flung himself across each route she chose. At last she was forced into a corner at the deep end.
She found herself laughing.
He said, "Escape is hopeless, Penny. I was on the water-polo team in college. Water polo is a sport played while drowning. But you're the prettiest girl I've ever played it with. Do you know that?"
She clung to the pool's edge.
He moved closer.
"Penny, you excite me. You make me all hot and bothered. Wouldn't it be a fool thing for a man of my age to fall for a chick like you? How old? Eighteen?"
She laughed.
"You're kidding."
"You look eighteen."
Suddenly he was against her, his wide shoulders seeming to reach across the corner, blotting out the light. A big hand closed on her arm. A gentle hand. She was being kissed.
Her head was spinning To the flotation of the water was added the lift of a big arm around her. She felt her breasts flatten against his chest. She could not figure which way to struggle to get free. He seemed to be everywhere. Before she knew it, her shoulder straps were down and a big hand enclosed her breast. She felt a hot pulsing. Her nipple was bursting against his palm.
She gasped out a protest.
She was vised in the corner. His hands were on both of her breasts. She was sinking. She grasped his shoulders for support. His tongue probed through her resistance, hands twined about his neck. Despite the cool water her breasts heated under his caresses.
No, no, she must not let herself go. He was only playing, just having fun.
He broke his mouth from hers.
He said, "Take a deep breath. We're going down."
She gulped air. They sank. His grip shifted. An arm went around her back and his free hand closed between her thighs. He kissed her breast as they sank toward the bottom, drew harshly, as Mr. Metlock had done-as Rick was afraid to do. He pulled the silken cord that reached down into her loins and joined his hand, holding her there caressingly. She knew she could hold her breath for only about a minute, but they seemed to sink for hours while her nipple was pulled, was lost in slipperiness, was caught again. They sank deeper. He had pulled down her bikini bottom and she was being split.
She remembered Rick's leading her brusquely from the dancing place the other night, remembered wishing he would always simply tell her what he was going to do.
Now she had such a man.
As they rose slowly to the surface he released her.
She swam to the ladder, avoiding his gaze. She began to pull herself out of the water. As her breasts reached the surface she saw that they were free of her bra. Floating. The pink nipples showed.
He said, "Beauties."
She dropped down, adjusted her bra. Her bottoms were low on her thighs. She pulled them up. He swam to her, went past her and climbed the ladder. He said, "Come into the house." She clung to the ladder.
Her body seemed to emit a rosy glow, to warm the water around her.
She wanted to follow him. She climbed the ladder. She paused, her legs trembled. She sat on the pool's edge. She looked around. A wooden fence and tall hedges cut off all view of the pool from other houses. No one could have seen what had happened.
Nor could anybody see into the house.
She got up and hurried toward the back door.
CHAPTER TEN
She found Randy in the kitchen, opening a coke. Water ran in gleaming rivulets down his brown body, pooled at his feet. His trunks were dark with moisture. She saw how they were stretched. She did not avert her gaze until he asked if she wanted a coke.
She shook her head.
"Cigarette?"
She hesitated. She felt her hands flutter over her breasts as though to hide them. She reached up self-consciously to arrange her sopping curls. She molded against the doorjamb, boneless and soft, unable to move without the bidding of the hard eyes she was watching.
He lit a cigarette and handed it to her. She dragged on it. Her lashes dropped, shielding her desire from his gaze.
He said, "Good, eh?"
"What?"
"A cigarette after swimming."
He was being cruel, toying with her. She smiled wryly. She had given in during the delirium of those moments in the pool, sinking to the bottom, hanging loose like a jellyfish caught in the hard angle of his arm, his hand parting her loins, her breast pulled until a delicious frenzy had bubbled inside her and nothing else had mattered.
He gulped at his coke, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He grinned at her. He made no move to conceal the appearance of his trunks.
He said, "My golfing party will play a slow eighteen holes without me there to hustle them. And the nineteenth hole at the club bar will be even slower. We've got plenty of time."
He put down his empty coke bottle. He came with long strides to Penny, swept her out to the hall. The nearest doorway was the sound-proofed stereo room.
He said, "No. Can't hear anything in there. Got to keep an ear open."
He swung her into Harriet's bedroom and kicked the door shut.
Penny's knees trembled. She dropped down on the vanity bench. The cigarette fell from her nerveless fingers. "Shouldn't burn the rug."
He stooped and picked up the cigarette, crushed it out. He took Penny's chin between his thumb and forefinger, pinched lightly, raised her face to make her look up at him.
His grin was reckless, cruel and commanding. "Penny, d'you like this oversized ugly old hulk of a guy?"
"You're not ugly-or oversized."
"But I'm old." She shook her head. "That doesn't matter."
"I guess most broads don't mind, not even young ones. Well, do you like me."
"I don't know."
"Scared?"
She nodded. Her heart was pounding.
Abruptly he reached over her head, caught the tie of her bra top, pulled it loose. Her hands automatically clutched at her breasts. She felt only flesh. The bra top had been whipped away.
He bent down, grabbed her thighs and picked her up against him, bore her to the bed. He dropped her, peeled down her bottoms, tore them off her legs, ignoring her futile effort to grab them.
He said, "Pretty Penny, curved and dimpled and cleft-a dish of peaches and cream."
She thrust a thigh across to hide herself, covered her breasts with an arm. But she did not stop looking at him as he pulled down his trunks. She saw his mighty maleness.
She cried out in fright but he quickly soothed her, sitting on the edge of the bed and stroking her cheek, smiling warmly like a pleasant boy-but strong with the authority of his years. He was bigger than Mr. Metlock. But as his finger trailed over her body, she gained assurance that he would not hurt her. When his fingers parted and stroked her, she suddenly wanted to try, no matter what pain might come. She reached out and seized him.
"You want me, Penny?"
She was silent. She shut her eyes. She did not release her grip.
"Penny, ask me."
She gritted her teeth. But soon his probing and delicate caresses broke down her reserve. She was opening around scalding fire. She wanted, needed, had to-must have him.
She whispered, "Please-"
"Say please, Randy."
"Please-Randy."
She understood vaguely that he had forced her to beg in order that she could not blame him later. But later was light-years away. The present was clenching her fists and shutting her eyes tightly and panting as his hard lips tore her nipples, then feeling the soft and surprisingly gentle parting, silky soft against her yielding opening, that incredible softness stroking up and down until she was wide and knew that even Randy Hill was not too much man.
No man was too much for Penny Dayton, who had everything-a sure source of income in Mr. Metlock and a companion in Rick and now someone who owned her without having paid-but he would. Of course he would. Anyone this gentle would. What she wanted him to buy her was a dress the color of daffodils.
That was how she felt-like an extended, waiting daffodil trumpet that lacked only golden pollen.
She had the clue to herself, a daffodil-she was a fresh and eager flower waiting, demure and thornless, to be plucked. The daffodil bell would split at a touch. But Randy Hill was a deft handler of gossamer fabrics, a giant with exquisite control.
He said, "Sweet, small girl."
"Too little?"
"Ears like fragile shells." He was lipping and tonguing her ear. "Tender little lips."
"Randy, I could maybe love you."
"You will, sweetheart."
Then she realized that she had him entire and, although her hands pulled her ankles, she could get no more. But more was not what she wanted, simply the knowledge that she had done it. He had called her a sweet, small girl. Whatever he meant-she knew she was a woman at last. She was with a man who really was a man.
A man was a male who could turn a girl into a daffodil.
She wished he would buy her a daffodil-colored dress, in which he might see her and remember.
Yes, she wanted him always to see her in a daffodil dress.
Storms were sweeping her body. She was a quaking enclosure. She was smiling and trying to paint Randy's lips and cheeks with kisses but seldom summoning the strength to move her lips. She went through golden daffodil hoops of her own devising.
She whispered, "I did it."
"What?"
"Ah by myself."
"The age of discovery. Ah, sweet, small girl."
"I'm a daffodil."
"The hell you are. You're a slick slipper, baby."
"A slick-"
"Better than my secretary, baby."
"Your secretary-you mean-but Mrs. Hill-I mean-"
"You're not the only broad in the world, Penny. Just the tastiest."
"Who-else?"
"I don't tattle. Except about secretaries. Hell, everybody bumps his secretary."
"Mr. Metlock."
"No. He's too busy worrying."
The lull passed. She was caught up on something she could not claim was hers, a plunging fiery destruction of Penny Dayton. Due care was taken of the daffodil except that, because it was now pale flesh, it sought and twisted and clutched at this violent storm. At some point it was ruptured to the heart and Penny anxiously followed the rampaging course of this thing that shook her bones like twigs in a high gale. She remembered that she had gotten safely through one month but another had begun.
He gasped, "Oh lovely, lovely-"
He must mean her. She smiled uncertainly as she clung to him and wondered what lay beyond the precipice she was approaching at hurricane speed. She was going to go over. The precipice bulged and rose higher in the sky. She was still going up, blasted by giant thrusts. She realized that it would not pause, would not leave her writhing and begging, would go all the way toward the whole month of worry that stretched before her.
But the month was a small cloud beyond the horizon.
She was being flipped over the cliff. She fluttered down like a yellow blossom relieved of its weighty, succulent stem, a bell descending and parachuting after its motive force was spent.
She was on earth, holding captive her rocket, proud and pleased to be his honeyed cushion.
She whispered, "Yes-you made me love you."
He was drawing away.
"No-don't leave me now-"
"Something to be done, baby."
He was off the bed. She felt as though her underbody had been torn away. She writhed, crying out.
He picked her up in his arms. She wept on his bare shoulder. He carried her to the bathroom. He seated her.
She looked up. He was opening the medicine cabinet. He took out a rubber syringe. He filled it from the cold-water tap. He handed it to her.
She asked, "What do you want-"
"Baby, I'll do it for you if you don't know how. You're full of future Randy Hills. This boy is not in the business of inflating bellies. So we take care of it."
"You mean you want me to-"
"Hell, I'll do it."
With brusque efficiency he squirted her full of icy water. The physical shock was nothing compared to the shattering of her nervous system. She dashed in a moment from ecstasy to agony.
He shoved the syringe into her hand.
"Do it a couple more times. Get a good wash."
He turned and went out.
Weeping, she did as he had bidden her. She was still sitting there when he returned, buttoning his shirt and zipping up his trousers.
He lit a cigarette.
He did not offer her one.
He said, "I'll see you at my house at seven-thirty Tuesday. Or do you want me to come for you?" She said feebly, "No, I'll get there." He flicked cigarette ashes into the sink. "Penny, you're all right. Good girl. Fun." He turned away.
She asked, "Aren't you even going to kiss me goodbye?"
He paused. He grinned, put fingers to his lips and tossed her a kiss without removing the cigarette from his mouth.
Then he was gone.
Randy Hill left the Metlock house and drove toward the club. He did not see John Metlock's car. He had to find John and Harriet and forestall any complications that might arise from the afternoon's doings.
Little Penny was a sizzler.
Hot as a sheriffs pistol.
John's car was in the parking lot. Randy parked beside it, trotted up the steps to the bar terrace. They were not in the bar. He glanced out on the course. He saw John's tall lankiness on the ninth hole. Randy strode across the club lawn between the flower beds, hailing the golfers.
Harriet waved to him. Her slim body was as graceful as a branch heavy with new green leaves. Her sweater bumps were small but they made the knit stuff look good.
He would have to speak carefully about swimming with Penny. Harriet thought in her pants only in bed. She was hard to fool on her feet. John, of course, would believe anything.
Bill Summers was with them. He looked dubiously in Randy's direction. Funny, Bill had suspected nothing during Alice's affair with Randy. But now that Alice had begun to shack up with Don Fredericks, Bill thought Randy was playing pantie games with her. But that was how it went.
He felt sorry for Bill. He always felt warmer toward guys after he had laid their wives. He liked John much better these days than he once had. Sometimes he even forgave John's moody preoccupation with eternal verities, things that made no money for anybody. But often John's soul-searching was tiresome.
Harriet said, "Beth phoned us and said you had to work in the city today. We decided just to go ahead."
She looked pretty, her color high from the sun, her hair tousled as though the beauty shop had arranged it that way. Something about her long gray eyes brought a warmth to Randy Hill's breast, a feeling of peace enlivened by the knowledge that she would sex it up at a moment's notice.
John looked good, too, sunburned and clear-eyed. But Bill was obviously nursing another hangover, still trying to drink away his wife's infidelities.
Randy said, "I didn't know what time you'd start. So I went to your house. Glad I did. Too late for golf but plenty of time for a swim with your baby-sitter and the twins. Say, that's a cute little piece. Eh, John? If I had a baby-sitter like that I'd-"
Harriet's eyes suddenly glinted at him, sharp knife points in the warm gray. She said, "I bet you would." Randy grinned.
"I've hired her to sit for us on Tuesday night."
"If Beth is smart, she won't let you drive Penny home."
Her manner was joking but Randy figured she was also asserting her rights as his mistress.
He said, "John, I borrowed a pair of your swim trunks. Hung them on the line to dry. Say, the twins are sure growing. I swam with them on my back and they wore me out."
He glanced at Bill Summers. Bill's eyes were bloodshot. He licked his lips as though trying to draw moisture from them. A guy was a fool to break up over his wife's playing around. Randy figured that Bill needed some curative beer.
Besides, Randy wanted to play.
He said, "Bill, old boy, off you go to the showers. Let the coach take over."
"I'm all right."
"What's your score?"
Bill showed it to him. It was astronomical. Randy laughed. He thumbed toward the clubhouse. Bill went.
Harriet put her ball on the tee and took a stance. She looked good. Her swing was a slow, graceful wave of motion that turned every curve into muscle that swooped the club head down at the ball. The arc descended. Randy saw her wrist pull or jerk. He clucked his tongue. She was going to hook. She must be disturbed by the thought of him and the pretty Penny. That meant Harriet was on her way to caring about him. Fine-unless she became adhesive.
John, too, swung badly.
Randy felt sorry for both of them. Why couldn't they learn to give with the action?
Randy took Bill's driver and blasted the ball a mile. It landed plunk on the green. He grinned. He'd go one under par, maybe two.
He shouldered two golf bags and went down the fairway with long strides.
It was a great Saturday in June. Only one thing more was needed-food. All this action was hunger-making.
Rick Scheer had worked at Mac's all day Saturday. He had slipped out in back of the garage between jobs to rub more wax on the Blue Bomb.
He drove toward Penny's house in the warm evening twilight. The car ran like a sewing machine. Beautifully. It cornered at right angles and growled lustily when it chewed up a hill. True, the back seat would hold only two passengers chinning their knees but in this weather he and Penny would use the blanket in the trunk for love-making.
Mr. Dayton was hoeing the flowerbed alongside the house when Rick arrived. Penny's father came over to admire the Bomb. Rick lifted the hood and showed how he had scrubbed the block with gasoline. A few parts were already repainted-the coil red and the generator green. He had used scum paint from the bottoms of cans at Mac's.
Mr. Dayton put on his glasses.
"It looks fine, Rick. Only one thing bothers me. Penny told me that you got a loan from Mr. Metlock. It makes you pretty much obliged to him."
"Well, I figured that. Penny's going to ask him if he wants me to help out around his place, like mow the lawn, to pay it off. Right now he's got a regular gardening service. But we'll see. What Mr. Metlock said was that the Monster was dangerous, besides costing too much to run."
"He's right."
"And the Monster was always laid up in the garage."
"But borrowing money can be dangerous, too. You can easily get in too deep. I have never borrowed money in my life."
Rick reflected that Mr. Dayton never lent money either. And Penny worked to buy her own clothes because he would not cough up. Mr. Dayton claimed that earning built character. Rick did not disagree but he knew Penny's working let Mr. Dayton tuck his loot away in a savings account or wherever he hoarded it. Anyhow, Mr. Dayton was a good old guy. He seldom interferred in their concerns.
They went into the house. Rick found Penny looking blue under the eyes or maybe kind of dazed. Anyhow, she looked odd. She said she had just gotten home from the Metlocks'. She wore the blue dress she had bought to match the car-but the blue seemed to reflect under her eyes rather than in them.
He asked, "What's wrong with you?"
"Maybe I got too much sun. Swimming with the twins."
"You don't look like you got burned." She seemed to think that over. "I feel burned."
Rick sat down and grabbed a picture magazine because Penny just sat there, staring. They were going to the movies. The evening was pink outside. Mr. Dayton called to Mrs. Dayton to come out and see how pretty everything looked. The side of Penny's face near the window was pink. The other side looked pale gray.
Rick said, "Your father trunks we shouldn't have borrowed the dough from Mr. Metlock. like we'll get too deep in debt."
"Doesn't matter. Mr. Metlock's easy."
Her lips twisted.
"But he'll want it paid back."
Her eyes came alive.
"Look, that's my worry. Forget it, see? I can handle that end. And don't pester Mr. Metlock about mowing his lawn."
"I only wanted to help."
"You keep the Bomb running. I'll handle Mr. Metlock. And don't talk about this business so much. This is a private loan. Don't even mention it to Mrs. Metlock if you see her."
"No? Why not?"
"Because it's between me and him."
"Maybe he-likes you better than Mrs. Metlock-likes you."
"He ought to. I'm a girl. Come on, let's go." She jumped up and started for the door. "The second show doesn't start for thirty minutes."
"Let's drive around."
He followed her out, wondering at her mood. Instead of demanding that he let her drive she went directly to the passenger's side and got in.
He called goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Dayton, who were on the lawn. Penny did not glance toward them.
He drove away from the curb.
He said, "Something's wrong. What?"
"A boy wouldn't understand."
"You mean that girl thing? I thought it was over by now."
"Not that. It's that sometimes I want to kill somebody."
He could not figure her. Lately she had been more changeable than ever. She seemed to be living several secret lives these days. What did she mean about how Mr. Metlock liked her? And wanting to kill somebody?
He said, "Listen, about Mr. Metlock. I mean, does he have funny ideas? like-has he tried to kiss you or something?"
She looked sharply at him. She laughed.
"Rick, I'm not a Hide kid. Guys like Mr. Metlock have noticed I'm not ten years old."
"Suppose one of them made a pass at you? What would you do?"
She looked long and hard at him.
"I'd scream for help. And you'd come running. Would you."
"Sure."
He guessed she was hiding plenty. But as she said, handling Mr. Metlock was her business. They had the Blue Bomb and it had been her doing. He had better let her alone with the problem of paying for it.
Penny sat leaning away from him in the movies. Rick made tentative efforts to draw her closer. She looked sulky. Finally he got mad at her. He told her firmly to sit close. She did and by the end of the movie she was soft against him, sometimes rubbing her cheek against his. She made him feel crazily excited.
After the movie Rick drove toward the bluff overlooking the lake. Penny did not protest. He could not guess how she felt about where they were going. The Bomb had bucket seats and she could not snuggle against him. She sat gazing absently at the cars whizzing past.
He said, "I've got a blanket in the trunk."
She looked down at her hands, folded on her lap. She did not answer for a long time.
Finally she said, "If you want to."
He drove to the moonlight-flooded fields. He parked in a corner between some brushy outcroppings where he would not have dared to leave the Monster because there was no starting slope. He grinned, pleased with his new wheels.
He took the blanket from the trunk and Penny followed him into the woods. Her hand felt small and soft in his. He found a place where moonlight filtered through the branches. A breeze stirred the leaves above and the moonlight came like gentle rain. They sat on the blanket and looked up at the moving, white-splashed leaves.
Penny said in a hushed voice, "The moonlight's like dandelion fluff falling down. Only it doesn't touch."
He put his hand on her shoulder. She kissed his fingers.
He said, "We're kind of lucky. Good things happen to us."
"Sometimes. Most things don't happen unless we make them. Sometimes people pass out lollipops just because you're there. like when you're a little kid that hasn't wrecked anything for an hour or so. But don't count on it."
"How did I get so lucky as to have you?" She was thoughtful.
"I guess because I need somebody. And you need things. like I said, you ought to have a new suit. Maybe I can swing it."
"Listen, I can buy my own clothes."
"But if I can't spend my money how I want, what good is it?"
"You mean the money you get from Mr. Metlock?" He had spoken harshly. She looked quickly at him. He said, "You let him kiss you, that's how you get the dough. And you let him-"
"Anything I do is for you."
"So you admit-"
"Do you like the Bomb?"
"I'd wreck the car if I thought-"
"I guess you do love me." She turned to him, smiling, slipped into his arms, fell back and drew him down over her. "Rick, we've got special moonlight. Let's use it."
His suspicions were agonizing but Penny's soft embrace was real. Her lips tasted sweet and rolled softly beneath his. A sliver of her tongue danced between them.
He suddenly realized that he had everything a guy could dream of. He should quit worrying about what might go on at the Metlock house.
Penny had never felt so full of love. She was a brimming pool, lilac-scented, tranquil in the dappling moonlight. The humiliation of this afternoon-Mr. Hill's jabbing her with the syringe, then throwing her a mocking kiss-was no longer real. She had decided Mr. Hill would pay for his cruelty and the payment would go to Rick, to her guy. She had done it for him. Why else would a girl go to bed with a man she did not love?
A hundred dollars would buy Rick a nice suit. She could easily get a hundred from Mr. Metlock. But she felt a little sorry for him. She figured he had been driven by some crazy force he could not control. Sorry it had to be you, Penny ... He had not meant to hurt her. Randy Hill owed her a suit for Rick. Rick lifted her to free her skirt, pulled her dress over her head. She glanced down at her white undies. They shimmered in the moonlight. She watched Rick's hand pulling down a bra strap, baring her breast and gently exciting her nipple until warmth pushed it out pointy.
He said, "You're so quiet."
"I'll let you make the noise."
She had everything under control. She glowed with serenity. Rick pulled off her panties and petticoat and she studied the gleam of her thighs and the small dark mounding of her loins. She was ready for Rick but not impatient. She was a warm, scented pool waiting in the moonlight.
Rick reflected her calm. Maybe he had understood her hints about Mr. Metlock and had accepted the situation. He took her with his usual caution. He gave enough, really enough, no matter what other men Penny had known. She remained passive. There was no need to strive. She had gotten the Blue Bomb for Rick and now she gave him her body. She thought no woman could achieve a fuller satisfaction.
Slowly Rick's fever mounted. She warmed but did not fly. There would be no pink doughnut rings, nothing like imagining herself the now-hated daffodil. She remained Penny Dayton, five-feet-three and thirty-five bust, her hair something less beautiful than gold but plenty good enough for Rick. She liked the cool feel of the firm earth beneath her, the showering moonlight above, her loins easily holding her guy.
Presently the sweet slowness of the moment became rumpled. She clamped tightly to Rick, heeled him, felt him answer with a wildness that she instantly captured and began climbing like going up a tree, rising in a swinging spiral, spinning up into a roseate glow faintly silvered by the moon. The world was rosy and she a voracious flower, honey-trapping her prey. She was lifted. Only her head touched the blanket. Astonished, she asked why he had removed her from her previous tranquility, why he thrust her off on this dangerous journey to places where she had been with older men-through the pink doughnut rings and opening like a daffodil trumpet being violated. And loving it.
She felt a pointed rock boring into her back. She protested, squirmed away from Rick, went on hands and knees feeling over the matted leaves for a softer bed. But Rick was wild. He seized her hips and rammed into her from behind. She gave a startled yelp. That was not like Rick! But whatever it was like it was good, a hot stabbing that made her switch her rear and back toward him, seeking more. She saw that she was poised over another rock. She could not he down. She looked back toward him, underneath herself, saw her breasts hanging like rounded cones in this position, swaying and lurching each time he hit her buttocks. Between her spread thighs were his thighs. He was kneeling. She saw his scrotum leap.
Had she somehow cut Rick loose from all restraints? Oh, she loved it, ground herself against him when his loins pushed up flush, flattening her buttocks. But had she brought the Metlocks' kind of sex to the dreamy thing she and Rick had shared?
She did not know. She could only back against each of his thrusts, feel him clutch her breasts pendant in the crouching shadow of her body, hear the wind in the trees above sigh as though regretting something lost to her.
Then ecstasy gushed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gloria McManus sat at her dressing table, filing her long red nails. Normally the ends were rounded. She was shaping them to stiletto points.
John Metlock had refused her at the Hills' party. And Gloria had been harshly treated by Harriet the next day. And again when she had run into Harriet and Alice at the club that evening.
She glanced into the mirror, glimpsed the black rage in her dark eyes. Her dressing gown hung open to her bosom. Her breasts were dark ivory in the room's shadows, the cleavage a deep line. These breasts John Metlock had refused-this bosom and the steamy heat that could crush a man to ecstasy.
She could not understand why.
She could guess. Her thoughts centered on the blondish little baby-sitter whom Gloria had seen riding everywhere in a little blue convertible. Last night the girl had worn a pretty new dress, blue like the car. She had looked smug. like a cat with canary feathers clinging to its whiskers.
Before marriage Gloria had made a good thing of her lovely body. Men liked to make gifts to a beautiful woman. Now she had money to burn. Money was why she had married Harry McManus. But something was lacking-a sense of conquest.
She was sure that John Metlock had bought the car for the baby-sitter. He had gone home early the night of the party. It must have happened that night. She had kidded and taunted him about the girl. Maybe John had become curious about the fifty dollars Gloria had named as the girl's price.
Maybe he was getting even with Harriet by keeping the girl. Or the kid was blackmailing him. John was a poor, weak fish, blackmail material.
Gloria continued to sharpen her nails.
Abruptly she reached for the bedroom phone, called the country club. She glanced at the clock. Six. She asked if Mr. Metlock was playing golf today. Yes. He had played yesterday with Mrs. Metlock and at that time had made a reservation for today. Eighteen holes.
Gloria quit sharpening her nails. She dressed hurriedly and drove to the club.
John Metlock had not broken a hundred on the first nine but when the clouds came and the day cooled he began to feel new strength. The change in the weather seemed to signal the passing of his tension. At the same time the jokes of Fred Carruthers began to be funny instead of irritating.
He was playing with Fred and two other men, none of them members of his and Harriet's social group, and the more welcome for that. They were younger and were pleased to have drawn lots that grouped them with John Metlock, who was considered a success as a corporation lawyer and who had a glamorous wife. He was one of the people who knew everybody because he was somebody.
He played the last holes close to par and headed for the clubhouse in high spirits, rarely thinking of Penny and her blue car and the questions that were going to be asked about it, or the inevitable demands for more money when Penny realized what power she held over him.
He had a drink and a sandwich in the clubhouse lounge. One drink was enough for John-until he saw Gloria McManus.
The clouds outside were lowering, becoming bulging black bags beginning to drip water. Gloria came in. She wore a black raincoat thrown cape-fashion about her. Raindrops sparkled in her dark hair. She paused, turned a broad smile toward John.
One of the men in John's foursome said, "There's a friend of yours."
John nodded to Gloria. She had paused by the door, was looking at him. She seemed pale. Her inky brows lay like small raven's wings on her high forehead. She made no sign to John but her smile beckoned him.
He carried his drink to her.
She said, "I'm glad you're here, John. I hate to wait alone."
"Waiting for Harry?"
She said nothing. She turned her back to him, indicating that he remove her coat. He took it. She went to sit at a table by the picture window and stared out over the course, where golfers were scurrying for the shelter of trees. Lightning flashes and distant thunder rumbled like giant bowling pins in the sky.
Gloria wore a sweater and skirt. The sweater was white, cut low on her splendid bosom. The men at the bar were staring at it, especially when she tugged it down to straighten out the folds.
"I'll have a bottle of beer, John."
"Beer?"
"I've quit hard liquor. It does me no good, makes me morose but I don't cry. I never do."
"Did you say Harry is coming?"
She touched his sleeve with blood-red nails.
"John, are you afraid of being seen alone with me?"
"Well, people might think-you're not known as a shrinking violet. More as a man-eater."
"You feel guilty, that's why you're afraid. No, Harry isn't coming. He was last heard of at the hospital. I'm an emergency-clinic widow. Now look, there's nothing wrong with our having a drink while waiting for people. Is there? Or do you feel some repugnance toward me?"
Her saying that surprised him. Though he had learned the other night that Gloria's ego was a thin layer over her insecurities. Deep within her seemed to lurk self-hatred. Or self-pity. But why would she pity herself, this beauty with a husband who mined gold from peoples' injured flesh?
He said, "Repugnance toward you? Gloria, that's a silly notion. I got drunk at Hills' and I don't remember what I said. But I apologize if I in any way belittled you. And I'll buy you a beer to show that we're friends."
"Friends. What a pallid word. It's better to be lovers or enemies, either one."
He grinned.
"You like things definite and extreme, don't you?"
Rain was now beating heavily outside and people pushed in, shaking off water, crowding the lounge and making a great deal of noise. John felt relieved. Anyone seeing him with Gloria would think less of it amid the confusion.
Her hand touched his knee under the table. She said, "What a dreadful party that was, you and I chasing each other about, tearing our clothes open-and our big argument over the baby-sitter, whether she would or wouldn't-"
Her eyes bored into his.
Guilt made him avoid her glance.
Gloria said, "I saw her last evening in that cute little car. With her boy friend. She's pretty."
He shrugged, making an attempt to appear nonchalant. His hand gripped his glass until it turned white.
He said, "She's no beauty but-I guess she's pretty."
"Terrific shape."
"I guess so."
"If I were a man I'd have her in a dark corner so fast that-"
"Gloria, you see through male eyes so clearly that I sometimes wonder about you."
"You're saying that I'm a lesbian?"
He hoped she was getting sidetracked.
He said, "You seem more interested in Penny than I am." He feigned a yawn. "For myself, I prefer a woman."
She moved closer.
"Like me?"
"Like you. And like my wife." Her hand tightened on his knee.
"But John, you could have me all to yourself. That is, Harry works almost every night. Whereas you share Harriet-"
He rose abruptly.
"Let's not go into that. I'm due home now. Harriet's expecting me. I'll give her your fond regards."
He rose, turned, strode to the door. A sheet of rain greeted him. He plunged out.
He turned up his shirt collar, buttoned it to the throat. He was quickly wet through.
Gloria came running. She grabbed his arm. She was clutching her black raincoat tight to her bosom. It billowed and blew in the dark rain wind like the wing of a monstrous bird.
"John, you can't run off-"
"I'm going home to my wife. Gloria, you and I clash every time we meet. Let's call it quits."
"Home to Harriet? Or to Penny?"
"Don't talk nonsense."
"I know how she got that blue car."
This stopped him. Gloria was peering up at him, eyes narrowed. She laughed sharply.
He felt the cold rain beat through to his skin and run in icy rivulets down his back and legs. The strength left his shoulders. Numbly he turned to Gloria.
He did not know if she had made a clever guess or had somehow learned the truth.
Did it matter?
Her raincoat had fallen to the ground. The rain pounded her hair flat against her head. Her sweater turned dark and water cascaded down her face but Gloria was impervious to the storm. She was glowing, bursting with glee, somehow beautiful in her triumph. And frightening.
He picked up her raincoat, put it on her shoulders. They walked across the parking lot. They came to his car. He looked questioningly at her.
She opened the driver's door and slid in, across to the other side. He followed her.
When the door was closed he heard the rain hammering on the steel roof.
She said, "We'll catch our deaths in these wet clothes."
"Where to?"
"The highway north."
He started driving.
The Mountain Inn was a hillside motel. The view was across the suburbs, toward the smoky haze of the city.
The room seemed poised on the brink of a cliff. There were big picture windows. Gloria had parted the drapes to open the panorama to their view.
John was drinking whiskey and water. He had removed his shirt and shoes but had gotten no further in undressing. He was still damp. Gloria lay on the bed, wearing a bra and a brief, lacy petticoat. She held her drink on her stomach.
John stood facing the window.
Gloria asked, "Did you buy her the car as a blackmail payoff?"
"Who mentioned blackmail?"
"Don't be evasive. Get it off your chest."
He sat heavily on the bed.
"Not blackmail. Payment for hurting her."
"You're still dodging."
"I suppose so."
He finished the drink and went to the bureau to make another.
"All right, John, so you raped her. Did she scream."
"It happened in the sound-proofed stereo room."
"I asked if she screamed."
"At first, I guess. But the worst of it, Gloria, was that finally she begged me for more." Gloria laughed.
He went on: "I was a volcano. I suppose because of the problem of Harriet and Randy. And I had played with you. That had excited me. If only she had suffered. But I started something wild in her, something beyond her years. She went off like a fire engine, bells ringing."
"And you?"
"I felt sorry that it had to be her. I liked her. She was a nice kid."
"Hell, she was no virgin."
He glanced at her. Gloria looked lovely lying on the bed, a full-bodied seductress, a dark destroyer of illusions. True, Penny had been no virgin and he had known it. But he had needed the illusion of the pretty teenager as a girl who might kiss but then flee, perhaps because he had viewed girls so when he had been her age. Harriet and Gloria had forced him to destroy his illusions.
Yes, the worst was that Penny had responded, had gone wild.
He said, "Illusions, dreams. They tell you girls are sugar and spice, everything nice-" She laughed. "Go on."
"And I knew that boys were goats, evil-eyed ravishers. Of course I also knew that nothing is quite what it seems or is said to be. The law, for instance. The law is man's protector but also a labyrinth that catches the stupid and permits escape by worse men who are clever. All life is full of flaws, glossed over by paint or by looking the other way. Perhaps the fault derives from our living in an age that glorifies the moment's action in order to avoid contemplation."
"John, you're a bore."
Gloria was lighting a cigarette.
"And you live for kicks, Gloria. When you haven't got your body working you pry into the sexing of other people."
"Well, kicks, yes. That's where life is. Not with Harry, answering an emergency call at three in the morning, his eyes like slits, stumbling out of the house half awake. I see him so and then maybe I don't see him until the next afternoon when he comes home and collapses on a couch, unconscious."
"You're a hell of a fine doctor's wife."
"I can cure you, John."
With an impatient gesture she stubbed out her cigarette. She left the bed, went to the picture window and looked out over the megalopolis. No one could see her without binoculars but she preened her hair and removed her bra, stood bare-breasted at the window as though displaying herself to the eyes of the millions in the checkerboard of towns before her.
She was clearly vain of her breasts, heavy white beauties, capped with large dark nipple circles. Her chin was held arrogantly high. She was no child of nature sharing her goodies with the world. She used her body as a weapon, a means of demonstrating her hatred and perhaps her despair.
She said, "I can tell Harriet, of course."
"Would she believe you?"
"Don't be a fool. Women have a sixth sense. She must have noticed how the girl, Penny, looks at you. And how you look at her. Let's call the sixth sense that women have sexual awareness. She would try to claw me or she might laugh, depending on her mood. But she'd know it was true. Do you see what I am driving at, John?"
"You intend to blackmail me."
"Of course. But I don't want money."
"I suppose that you want my soul."
"You'd call it that, being mealy-mouthed and fond of spouting moralities. But here you sin and in the city your morality is money. You're a split man, John. I can make you whole. In fact, you're not a man. But I can make you one."
He watched her as she spoke. The clouds had broken and pink light briefly bathed the vast vista beyond the window. It vanished and the rain came again. Grayness seeped into the room and surrounded Gloria. She glanced sideways at him and he knew she saw the truth. His home morality was a sham and a pretense, hiding the rapaciousness of his money-making in the city. He thought her idea of a man must be Randy Hill, whose morality was not getting caught.
She said, "Tell me how it was with the girl-Penny."
"I've told you."
"In detail."
Back to that. He understood that she wanted him to confess and so free himself. But this would put him in debt to her.
"John, I think it was an act of desecration. The girl took care of your children, helped your wife. You had to dirty your family."
"No, I was drunk. And I saw her lying on the sofa, talking to her boy friend on the phone. The talk must have been sexy. She was squirming. And she'd forgotten to wear panties."
Gloria shook her head.
"That won't do. That was only the last straw that broke the camel's back-the last drink that made the drunk fall."
"I was drunk."
"But not that drunk."
Gloria made a gesture of impatience. She turned toward him, came walking softly, her hips rolling, breasts jarring. She stood against him. He backed to the dresser. Surprisingly, she was a head shorter than he. At a distance she had seemed as imposing as a tall, dark tree.
She took his hand and led him to the bed. He went. He did not know why, except that he had lost his will to define this encounter. Could she be right about his having to desecrate and dirty his family? She undressed him and, sitting on the edge of the bed, made him kneel. Her thighs vised on him.
She said, "Tell me every detail about Penny."
He closed his eyes. His head fell, his forehead against her breasts. They were hot, perfumed, swinging as he shook his head in negation.
But suddenly he began to talk.
He said, "I held her wrists together over her head. She fought me. My weight exhausted her. I don't know how long it took. Hours?"
"You liked fighting with her?"
"It had to be done."
"But it made you hot?"
"Yes. Anyhow, she became worn out. like a rag, a pillow. Later sex caught her up and she was like boiling lava."
He talked on. Gloria wanted every detail. His words trickled out in a stream that was sometimes incoherent. She patted his cheek, bent and kissed his forehead, his neck. He was conscious of the steamy opening of Gloria's body, the feverish heat rising in her. He confessed as he might to a psychiatrist and she absorbed the heat and passion of it until she was trembling, kissing him frantically, clawing his back, forcing his head below her breasts. She made him tell about Harriet, her careless gaiety, her ability to live on her skin, to take Randy Hill as lover without disturbing her equanimity. He found he was forgiving Harriet.
Gloria was a sister and a mother, a part of himself, the female reflection of what he would be if he had the guts to be a man. He had no guts. He had achieved nothing. Everything had been handed to him on a silver platter, the right family background, college and law-school education, good looks and commanding height, charm and wit. He had done nothing, had not gone through the hell of making a man of himself, had never known toughening vicissitudes. He had easily had whatever women he had wanted, men friends and the admiration and respect of the community. He was completely false, a phony.
She said that he could prove to her that he was a man.
Yes, he wanted to.
She said, not yet. But she was unable to remain still, rocking her body and suddenly swinging her breasts across his face, groaning and clawing him, her speech falling into disconnected syllables. She clung to him and forced him back over the details of his rape of Penny, made him tell her about his sex life with Harriet, about his finding Harriet and Randy in the bathing cabin-rather, breaking in and finding a pearl from her necklace. And the necklace was not paid for.
"Not paid for. Is that a crime?"
"Yes."
She said, "But there's no crime here-not between us in this hired room. Nothing outside matters-not Penny, not Harriet, not Randy."
Thunder was crashing outside but without really bringing the realization that a world existed beyond the hot flesh and silky black hair that enclosed him.
Gloria said, "Harriet and Penny are only women. Weak. Lascivious. Traitorous. Self-seeking. Greedy. like me."
"Like you?"
"Yes. But I don't hide what I am."
He raised himself and was seized by an ecstatic hunger, was consumed and pulled by terrible forces. This stage lasted only seconds. Then he was confessing again-but doing it with his body. Suddenly this sister-mother figure, this female reflection of the rampant male that lurked in him, changed him into a Randy Hill, king of the mountain, an untamed brute who flipped up skirts because they were there. Only because they were there. Not in search of heaven or to examine his guilts-or to placate a nerved-up wife. Because he wanted to. Because he was a prodding satyr, unchained, making reckless promises that had the same chance of coming true as prophecies. He said he loved Gloria.
"Very well. But make sure you he, you must learn deceit."
"I hate you, then."
"No, you want me."
"Yes. That's it."
Gloria grew molten and scalding fissures seemed to open, to deepen beyond his reach. He had driven her over a cliff. She returned, humbled, seeking affection. At the party her demands for compliments had irritated him but now he rained on her all the fantastic lies he could summon. Never had a woman been so beautiful, understanding, charming.
She smiled almost shyly as he ranted on.
Where was the Gloria who had broken his pride, who had forced him to reveal his innermost thoughts, who had mothered him and clawed his back when he avoided stating the truth?
That Gloria had been subdued by a man.
Suddenly he understood that he could do anything-rise to great heights, dash across vast distances, sink to fathomless depths. His manhood was his weapon. It was his inner self. It was the strength that made men clear forests and tear mountains apart. It was what destroyed men, too.
Gloria had teased it to life, surely with intent to demolish it. But having been beaten by it, she was happy.
That, then, was how women were.
He tested himself with her, simulating mindless passion, counterfeiting the last wild moments. Gloria cried out. She was torn from her remaining containment and sent flying wildly. The depths again were plumbed, her body jellied, turned to honey, vaporized. He again drove her over the edge.
Again she recovered and weakly begged compliments.
He wound both hands in her silky hair, fisted them, bent her head back. He abused her verbally.
He said, "You are my sister. I have committed incest because I want you."
"Yes, yes, my darling-"
"You are my mother."
"Yes, yes."
"My daughter."
"Yes, but why? Why?"
"Because you are a gorgeous big-breasted woman, the essence of dark roses, the feel of ivory-and because without me you are nothing. You are only a place to be. You have nothing. I have everything. I have the hard drive you five for."
"Oh, my darling-"
Again he drove her to a frenzy, tumbled her off the cliff. Again she begged for him to tell her why. Again and again. When she was jellied to the bone he forced her to summon up her last strength to cling to him on the final journey, the rocket-blasting that vaporized the hilltop room, that threw them out through the picture window to careen across the suburbs and the city, joined streaks of fire in the night.
Then there was sleep, a honeyed black pit lighted by the pale ivory of Gloria's flesh.
CHAPTER TWELVE
John Metlock reached home at midnight.
Harriet was waiting for him in the kitchen. She wore her blue, bell-shaped nightie. She rubbed her eyes, yawned.
"I just woke up."
"You didn't. You've been waiting for me."
It was true. Her hair was smooth. Sleeping would have mussed it. Nor was her lace nightie creased. He guessed she had suspected that he was with a woman and was prepared to berate him or seduce him, according to the opportunities presented.
He brushed past her, went into the bedroom, throwing off his clothes.
She followed him.
"I thought you'd phone. Where were you."
"I was out tomcatting."
"John, that's silly. Not you. Never."
"I'm thirsty. Get me a bottle of beer." She looked wide-eyed at him. "John, I can't imagine you speaking that way."
He said, "Damn your lousy imagination. Get me a beer."
She stared at him in disbelief. But she recognized his changed attitude as important. Her hands touched her breasts nervously. She backed to the doorway.
He finished undressing, kicked his shoes into a corner, threw his clothes on top of them.
"John, you've been drinking all this time."
He glowered at her.
"You cheating little bitch, go get my beer before I kick your lovely ass."
She went, pink heels flicking.
He gathered the pillows and sat in bed, propped up on them.
She trotted back, carrying a tall glass of beer. She gave it to him, backed away.
He said, "Take off your pants. What kind of wife comes to bed hiding herself from her husband?"
"John, you weren't here."
"I'm here now."
She bent quickly and pulled down the panties. She straightened, tried to tug down the hip-length skirt of the nightie.
He said, "Get me a cigarette."
He drank his beer, watching her flutter about, pink buttocks bouncing, sleek legs scissoring as she hurried to bring the cigarettes. He had no matches, she ran to get them, went again to find a coaster for his beer glass. He knew that he had brought her to heel.
He asked, "What have you been doing all day?"
She stood at the foot of the bed.
She said, "I swam with the twins. And tonight-I watched TV."
"Alone?" She nodded.
"No men?"
"John, you must understand-"
"I asked you."
"No."
"Come here beside me."
She came uncertainly, still tugging at her nightie.
He seized her wrist. It was tiny, breakable. He squeezed it hard.
"Harriet, the next time you decide to open some guy's britches-remember that a black eye is waiting for you."
She avoided his gaze. Her face was deeply flushed.
"Yes, John."
"Where did you go today?"
He twisted her wrist and jerked hard. She screamed, came tumbling across the bed. His glass of beer spilled. Gasping, she burst into tears. "John-"
She rose, dripping suds.
He said, "Get me another beer."
She took his glass and ran out, weeping. . John pulled on his cigarette. He knocked ashes to the floor. She came back, looking angry. Her hair was wet and tangled. The nightie was plastered to her body.
"John, if you think you can cover up your tomcatting by acting like a brute-"
"You'd better change the bed linen."
He took the beer and went to an easy chair, sat drinking and scattering cigarette ashes.
She looked at him with high-chinned indignation. He gave her a bleak stare. She blinked, turned away.
She tore off the wet bedclothes and took them out to the hamper. John watched her pretty pink curves and sleek long legs. Never had she looked more attractive. He felt curiously liberated, able to see her objectively as another man might.
He understood vaguely that he had rid himself of some hang-ups tonight with Gloria.
Harriet brought a fresh bed mat and sheets. He finished his beer while she bustled about the bed, tucking sheets. The nightie was still wet and stuck to her body. She bent over the bed, her back to him.
He moved quickly, grabbing her hips. She cried out, tore at his hands.
He said, "Relax, sweetheart. I've got a lot of love for you."
She paused.
"John, do you-love-me?"
"I don't know yet. I want you. And I'm going to have you."
He lifted her hips.
She did not protest. She was ready. He thought maybe being treated harshly made a woman ready. Randy's method? But Randy was beside the point tonight. Harriet was anybody's-tonight she was even her husband's. Randy might matter tomorrow. Now he did not exist.
She whispered softly, "John-"
She hung limp from his hands. He was a roaring giant. He had only practiced on Gloria. Now he would show off. He slammed Harriet to jelly on the half-made bed.
He said, "Take off that wet nightie."
She quickly tore the nightie from her body. She looked at him with fear and gladness. She opened her arms to receive him.
Penny arrived early on Tuesday evening to baby-sit at the Hill house. Beth Hill was still dressing. Randy slouched in an easy chair, watching a baseball game on TV. He called out for Penny to come in. When she appeared in the doorway his mocking glance raked her body. He winked. She flushed.
He did not rise to greet her. He sat with a long leg hooked on the arm of his chair. His attention returned to the TV ball diamond.
He said, "The Sox are playing a great game."
"Where are the children?"
"Chit back in the pool, trying to drown themselves. They float like rubber balls. Fat little devils. Want to swim?"
"I haven't got my bathing suit."
"Hell, Beth will lend you one. Hey, Beth. Have you got a suit that would fit Penny?"
Beth Hill came out in the hall, wearing a dressing gown. Her hair had been freshly tinted orange, Penny thought.
She said, "There must be a suit in the bathing cabin you can wear, Penny."
"I don't think I'll swim."
"Anyhow, make yourself at home."
Beth gave her a smile. But she held back warmth and glanced sharply at Randy. Penny guessed that Beth did not trust any female near her husband.
Beth returned to the bedroom. Penny went toward the back of the house. She knew that Randy was watching her. Something impish inside her took hold, made her switch her behind as she walked. The movement was impertinent and taunting rather than seductive.
She heard Randy laugh.
The sound made her grin.
Why? Why did his mockery amuse her?
She found the Hill children, a boy and girl aged four and five, bobbing like corks in their foam jackets. They drew together on the far side of the pool when they saw her.
They both looked like their father, blonde, with mean blue eyes. The girl glowered at Penny. The boy pinched his sister underwater. She screamed, swatted him across the face. He grabbed her hair.
Then they both stared at Penny to observe the effect of their scuffle.
The girl asked, "You're Penny?"
Penny smiled at them like a cat. She went slowly around the pool until she stood over them. The girl had pigtails. The boy offered nothing that handy to grab. Penny crouched down close, sitting on her heels.
She said in a harsh low voice, "You can call me ma'am."
The girl looked up, her eyes slaty. Penny saw in miniature the tough self-assuredness of Randy Hill.
Penny demanded, "What's your name."
"Betsy."
"Okay, Betsy. We'll get along if you behave. Or do you want me to yank you out by the pigtails and thrash you?" Betsy studied her.
The battle of stares last only a moment. Suddenly Betsy grinned.
"Okay," she said. "Ma'am." like her father, Betsy knew how to face realities. She said, "He's Jerry."
Penny gave the boy the glare treatment. He looked to his sister for advice. What he saw made him shrug and look up at Penny again.
He said, "Okay. Ma'am."
Penny said, "You've got until seven to swim. Then out of the water."
Betsy cried, "But Daddy said until seven-fifteen-" Penny grabbed both pigtails and yanked her back to the side of the pool. Perhaps she did it extra harshly because of Randy. But these spawn of his would only bend under rough treatment.
Betsy surrendered. "Okay, seven."
Penny let her go.
She rose. Across the pool she saw Randy Hill watching her. He was grinning.
He said, "You can expect us home at eleven, Penny."
Penny figured that was exactly when they would return. One thing-at the Hills' she felt she knew where she stood.
Penny studied the house during the evening. The TV screen was bigger than the Metlocks' and the kitchen had more gadgets. The rugs were ankle deep. Yet the house lacked something. Taste. It did not have the coherent artistic unity of Harriet's house. Maybe the Metlock house belonged to Harriet and here a man ruled.
It set Penny to thinking what kind of husband a girl might want. But she did not get far-the shadow of Randy Hill loomed over her. He was in the children's eyes, ornery, waiting for a chance to get the upper hand.
They asked if she would kiss them good night. She did, hugged them, turned out the light and said if they did not sleep in five minutes she would thrash them. They slept.
Penny thought there might be a good side to marrying a man like Randy. People in this house knew where they stood. But Randy was bound to be unfaithful and Penny would not put up with that.
At five to eleven she gathered up her things. The Hills came in on the hour and Randy said he would drive Penny home. He told Beth he would be back in ten minutes.
She sat against her door in the car, eyeing him mistrustfully as he drove.
He asked, "Were the kids good?" She nodded.
"Penny, you're quite a girl. I'm glad you're not older. I couldn't handle you then."
"Should I thank you for saying that."
"Hell, if you want. Go on, thank me."
"Thank you."
"I consider myself thanked. How much do I owe you?"
She looked out at the familiar street lights, the passing cars, the red mail boxes on the corners, the fire plugs and concrete walks. They were entering her part of town. Her house was at the end of the block. It seemed strange to state her price here, where she had roller-skated as a kid and played with dolls on the grass.
Still, the price was on the tip of her tongue.
She said, "A hundred dollars."
Randy braked gradually and drew up in front of her house.
She stole a glance at him. His lips were pursed, whistling a soundless tune.
Suddenly he said, "The rule is to get paid first, Penny."
He took out his wallet and extracted a bill, handed it to her.
It was a ten.
She had wanted that hundred to buy a suit for Rick. Randy said, "I think whoring is a well-paying profession if you do it right. But most whores are stupid." She stared aghast at him. He laughed in her face.
She said, "I'll tell your wife that you-raped-me."
"Don't hunt up excuses for your own hot pants. You showed me those pretty tits. What was I supposed to do, grab a camera and take a picture?"
"I'm under-age-"
"I knew you were jailbait. I took the chance because you're a cheap little whore out to cash in on being jail-bait. I taught you a lesson. Maybe you still haven't learned it. I'll spell it out. All a woman gets in bed with a man is a big hot thrill. That's all you got, baby. That's all there is. Now get your ass out of my car."
Penny got out.
She was strangling on rage. Randy was chuckling. She started up the walk. Her knees were trembling. She glanced back, saw him peering at her, griming.
At least she could show her spite.
She went slowly up the steps, head high and tail wagging, lurching her hips to make a bump on each step.
She glanced back. He was still watching.
On the porch she faced him, raised her skirt to her waist.
She stood like that for a moment before going in. She would make sure Randy Hill paid in another way if he would not pay cash.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Penny baby-sat at the Metlocks' on Thursday afternoon to free Harriet for shopping. The day was bright. She swam in the pool with the twins.
She was still fuming with rage at Randy Hill.
He had said that all a girl got in bed was a big hot thrill.
Penny knew better than that.
Harriet came home early. She came to the pool in a new bikini that seemed to consist of three hand-sized yellow triangles pasted to her body.
Penny said, "Gosh, you'd better not wear that bikini when men are around. They'd get so excited that-"
Harriet smiled.
"What would they do, Penny."
"Fight over you, I guess."
"How drilling. Please go find some men of the fighting kind."
Penny climbed the ladder and sat on the edge of the pool beside Harriet.
"Mrs. Metlock, what's it like to be married?"
"Why? What on earth prompted that question, Penny?"
"Well, I have problems."
"Being human, you probably do."
"What I mean is, do you get jealous of Mr. Metlock?"
"Of course."
"What do you do about it?" Harriet laughed.
"Why, I make him jealous right back. What else could I do?"
"Whom do you use? What man?"
"Why-I-now, Penny, I was only joking-"
"Randy Hill would be the best. He is so different from Mr. Metlock. Randy is like a pirate, the type to kill the men and rape the women."
"Penny! Whatever makes you use such language? Really-"
"I guess I'm just talking. Or thinking out loud."
She had to talk to somebody about it. She could not tell Harriet. But having hinted around made her feel better.
Harriet knew how a woman acted when she wanted to talk. Penny seemed to have something bottled up inside her. A sixteen-year-old child in a woman's body must have problems by the fistful. Harriet had never been shaped as amply as Penny but at sixteen she had drawn plenty of boys. The nights in parked cars were still vivid to her, the agonizing battles between natural desire and the fear of debasing herself if she gave in. Once she had gone all the way it had been worse-the increasing hunger for sex, the fear of pregnancy, the sudden overwhelming passions that as quickly crumbled and vanished. Sixteen was a dreadful age.
John had said he would come home late. Harriet and Penny set up a card table beside the pool and ate supper with the twins.
Harriet said, "You seem to drive your little blue car more than you did the Monster, Penny. Are you and Rick still co-owners?"
Penny nodded. "It's easier to arrange for sharing the new one because it always runs. I mean, the Monster was so feeble that usually only Rick could keep it going."
She spoke casually. Harriet guessed that her problems did not center on Rick.
The twins went off to play.
"Penny, what is the trouble?"
"Trouble? I'm fine."
"No. You're torn up inside. You fidget. You look as though you want to say something-then you bite back the words."
"Oh, it's nothing you'd know about."
"I was once a girl of sixteen, Penny."
"But I'm different. I'm bold and demanding, my father says. You-well, people always give you things because you're so dainty and feminine."
"Feminine? I'd show people what feminine is if I had a bosom like yours."
"But you seem like-well, a flower. You know, men just fall all over you-"
"Tripe. I scheme desperately to get attention, just as you do. More, I imagine. Are you in love with someone? Perhaps an older man?"
Penny's eyes went wide.
Harriet realized that she had struck pay dirt.
She asked, "John? My husband?"
Penny flushed.
Harriet sighed, feeling old with experience. Penny could not admit that she was in love with John. It would seem an act of betrayal to her. But girls always fell in love with their bosses, with any man in superior position, just as a woman loved her husband when he took charge, despised him when he let her walk all over him. Women wanted to be bossed. John's domineering behavior the other night had kindled new flames in her. She liked being made to feel that she was helpless. But what had made John behave that way? Not booze. Another woman.
"Penny, has my husband ever made a pass at you?"
Penny went crimson. Yes. He had. Harriet's fingernails clawed her palms. John had. He was-sick. She had always known there was something wrong in him.
Penny did not answer.
Harriet was choking on a sudden fear. She spoke with difficulty.
"Penny, I don't mind if you've flirted with him. He's handsome. Many women have flirted with John. If I were your age-I don't blame you. Really. I have flirted with many men-not meaning any harm, understand. Seeking attention is natural to women."
Penny was crying.
Harriet glanced about for the twins. They were playing across the pool.
"Penny, come inside with me. This is no place to talk."
She rose and took Penny's hand, drew her into the house. Not the living room. Too public. She took Penny into the bedroom and shut the door. Tears were streaming down the girl's face. Harriet sat her on the bed and put an arm around her.
Penny sucked in her tears.
"I don't know how to say it-I feel awful. You've been good to me. Maybe I'm oversexed."
"All girls think they are. Girls are supposed to pretend that sex doesn't exist, just a sort of ethereal, namby-pamby love. Penny, you're at an age of experimentation.
I would become terribly excited when I was sixteen and wonder if I were different from other girls. They would talk plenty about boys and cuddling and kissing them but nothing about-well, wanting their panties taken oft"
"It's Randy Hill."
"What?"
"He treated me like a."
"Randy?"
"I'm just a tramp, I guess."
Harriet was shaken. She went to her dressing table, lit a cigarette, sat on the bench pondering. Randy was a bastard but would he take an under-age girl?
"Penny, did Randy really-"
"I felt helpless."
"Yes. I understand."
She understood too well.
Even though she knew what a bastard Randy was, Harriet's pride was hurt. She had gloried in having seduced him away from his obligations to Beth, in making him risk being caught with her in the bathing cabin.
Penny lay face-down on the bed, shaking with sobs.
"And Mr. Metlock."
"Penny-I don't understand-"
"Him, too. One night-a party you went to-he came home early-"
Harriet could not believe it.
But she had to learn the truth, no matter how horrible it was.
She thought of the other night when John had treated her so brutally.
She asked Penny about it.
"No. I was with Rick that night."
With whom had John been?
Gloria?
Harriet went out to the living room phone. She rang Gloria's house.
Gloria answered in a sleepy drawl.
"Oh, Harriet. How are you, darling?"
The endearment cut like the edge of a razor blade.
Harriet blurted, "Gloria, did you and John-"
"Darling, ask no more. I confess. I've been wanting a chance to rub it in your face. Yes, I finally got John's pants off. I think he's the better for it. Is he?"
Harriet bit her lip. How could even Gloria talk so coarsely?
Gloria went on, "John is really quite a man. Better than Randy Hill in some ways. Don't you agree?"
"Agree? How can I agree when I don't know-"
"Harriet, you're talking to Gloria, remember? Randy has laid you too many times to count. Don't play innocent with me, my dear. You become bow-legged when Randy just looks at you. How do you maintain that mask of simpering wholesomeness? I haven't pretended to be that goody-goody since I was sixteen. Or fourteen."
Harriet could only gasp. She was speechless.
"Harriet, speaking of sixteen-your baby-sitter is a pretty piece."
"What do you mean?"
Harriet's stomach was beginning to turn over.
"Her name is Penny, isn't it? As John described her, she has breasts like honeydew melons. At least I think that's what he said."
"He did not say any such thing."
"Maybe not. The gist of our talk was his guilt. Why shouldn't he tumble the girl? A man must get tired of going to bed with a skinny broad like you. Are you still listening, Harriet? You have to listen, don't you? I'll tell you everything. Really, John is a pig. I hope he goes to prison if he's made the girl pregnant. But she has profited by learning disrespect for older men. Young girls have such silly ideals. When she realizes that men like John are goats she can figure that sex should be turned to profit Apparently she already has done so. John said something about blackmail."
Harriet heard it all. She was crawling inside. She suddenly realized who had paid for the little blue car.
The fault was hers for carrying on an affair with Randy. Harriet cringed and closed her eyes to hide from her own guilt.
Gloria was saying, "I don't apologize for anything. I seduced John to throw your phoniness in your face. The elegant and beautiful young Mrs. Metlock, clean as a hound's tooth, her voice never raised above a murmur in speaking to her beautiful children-such a pretty picture. And I dirtied your scene by existing and speaking the truth. You put up with me because my husband is a doctor and you know that you'll be sick some time. But you treated me like a dirty bitch crawling out of the gutter. Or did you hate me because you knew you were no better, merely more circumspect? Call me a whore but look in your mirror and call yourself one. See how it fits."
Harriet dropped the phone to its cradle. She went, trembling, to the living-room mirror. She saw a woman whose cheeks were raddled by tears, eyes red, mouth sagging. She wore a teasing little yellow bikini, patches of material at breasts and crotch, bits of body used with wild abandon but circumspectly hidden.
In the mirror she saw Penny standing in the doorway, looking at her. Penny's bikini was insufficient to cover her breasts. Honeydews, Gloria had called them. A child in a woman's body.
Penny said woodenly, "It's the twins' bedtime, Mrs. Metlock."
She avoided Harriet's gaze.
"Please put them into bed, will you? I must think-do something. I don't know-"
Harriet sat on the couch and wallowed in self-hatred when Penny had gone.
How could she repair the damage?
She could not go on forever blaming herself. Nor was she in the habit of honestly facing reality. Suppose Gloria lied? Perhaps John had merely taken Gloria to bed, no more than that. Gloria had pumped up his ego, made him feel capable of treating his wife brutally and making her like it. Oh, she had liked it. She wanted a man to use her in a harsh male way, to present a rough challenge that she could consume and dissolve in honey and use to her own ends. John had always been too gentle.
Perhaps John had not touched Penny after all.
Penny returned from putting the twins to bed.
"Penny, it can't be. John isn't like that. Randy-well, Randy would do anything. But John-"
"He did."
Harriet shook her head. She looked about for cigarettes. She wanted a smoke. A drink. Any escape from facing this horrible reality. Maybe Penny still lied. She must be lying. She could prove nothing. Gloria had mentioned blackmail. Had John bought the blue car for Penny?
"I can't believe it, Penny. I mean, it makes me look rotten-makes everybody rotten. Can you prove it?"
"How could I prove anything? Nobody saw us."
"I would believe it only if I saw it. There. That's my final word. John and I have our faults-but so does everybody. I refuse to let it floor me. There are worse people all around us. Penny, were you a virgin?"
Penny sat on a chair. She buried her face in her hands. She shook her head.
"No. I wasn't. Maybe you're right-it was all my fault."
"Then put it this way. Did you seduce John."
"He raped me."
"Prove it."
Penny leaped to her feet.
"I'll prove it. I can make him do it again. T know I can. Would you believe me if you found us together in the stereo room?"
"Yes."
Harriet spoke weakly. Could it really be true, John and Penny?
Penny asked, "What time is he coming home tonight? I could show you-"
"No, no. I don't want that."
"Mrs. Metlock, you were always swell to me. I don't want to hurt you. I shouldn't have said anything. But you guessed-"
Harriet had indeed been good to Penny. But for good reasons. The girl had been responsible, energetic, pleasant to have in the house. Furthermore-and this was important-she had flattered Harriet by mimicking her walk and dress.
Perhaps Penny had been too anxious for money and when she saw an easy way to get it-but whose fault was that?
Harriet's fault. And John's and Randy's.
Penny said, "I used the money to buy the blue car. I mean, I always buy things for Rick. He's good at being a mechanic but dumb about money."
Harriet pondered this.
At last she said, "You're cheating yourself if you think that you wanted the money for Rick. The truth is-you wanted the money. You sold yourself. Why?"
Penny was suddenly in tears again.
"Maybe I didn't care about the money. The excitement. like with Mr. Metlock-on the couch-I was grown up. Not a kid any more. Do you see?"
Harriet saw.
But she was still fighting it. "Penny, if I could only be sure-" Penny cried out in sudden rage.
"Don't you believe anything? I mean, is everything around here so phony that you don't know what to believe? Or don't you want to?"
Harriet said humbly, "You're right. I don't want to be-lieve."
"So should I worry about what you think? Even if I enjoyed it with Mr. Metlock? If you don't want to believe-that's worse cheating than my pretending I wanted the money for Rick."
Harriet thought, how awful to be taught honesty by a child.
Penny cried, "I'll show you. You hide somewhere when he comes home tonight."
"No, no-I couldn't."
"You don't want the truth. I could tell him you'd gone out for the evening-to the women's club-"
Harriet looked up. At last she met Penny's gaze. She saw scorn. Penny had lost all respect for her.
"Penny, I'll do it. Just as you said. I have to. I can't go on like this."
She meant that she could not bear to be despised by Penny.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
John Metlock was coming home late for a good reason. He wanted to see if Harriet would take it.
He had been drinking with some business associates, enjoying himself, chuckling at their guilty glances at wrist-watches, hearing them mutter that the wife would kill them if they did not make the next train.
John had no such worries.
He had learned that women-including wives-liked being raped. They enjoyed rough handling, a certain amount of debasement. They wanted to be reduced to receptors for male power. Their strength lay in weakness-so masculine weakness frightened them.
Harriet had lately dogged his footsteps, had humbly asked his opinions even on matters clearly within her province. Such as furniture arrangements.
He reached home in the pink of evening. He felt mildly elated from several martinis and was hungry for the supper Harriet would have waiting for him.
Penny's little blue car was parked in front of the house.
Had Harriet gone somewhere without telling him, left Penny to hold the fort?
He frowned. Harriet should have phoned him.
He parked behind the little blue car.
Penny must have seen him approach. For a gag he rang the doorbell and waited until she came.
He asked her, "Want to buy some brushes, lady? I'm working my way through college."
Penny laughed.
John felt as high as a kite. Penny looked adorable, bursting out of her undersized blue bikini.
She said, "Mrs. Metlock went out-to the women's club. She asked me to-"
"And I ask you, Penny, will you mix me a cocktail? Are the twins in bed?"
"Yes, asleep."
He drew the door closed behind him. "Then, sweetheart, I'll take that kiss now." Penny giggled.
"Mr. Metlock, you are really terrible. I'm here to baby-sit, not to-"
"Baby-sitting is a profession that covers a lot of ground. Hold my dispatch case."
He thrust it at her. She took it in both arms, against her bosom. He seized her face in both hands, turned it up and kissed her, pierced those cushiony lips with his tongue. Her arms fell and she held the dispatch case dangling from one hand. He cupped her breast and fingered the nipple. Her tongue came alive, probed at his. He glanced over her head, suddenly afraid that one of the children might have heard him arrive and would come running out. The hall was empty. He dropped his hand to Penny's bikini bottoms. He caressed her. She squirmed against his hand.
Hot little bitch. And who could say he should not? In fact, why not tell Harriet? Make her swallow the fact. The idea was rather exciting. Penny slipped out of his arms.
She said, "I kept your supper in the oven. Mrs. Metlock and I ate before she left for the women's club."
"Ah, the club. I suppose they have a speaker tonight."
He was looking at Penny's breasts. Her nipples knobbed out against the thin bikini bra.
She said, "I suppose there's a speaker or something. I don't know."
"It doesn't matter, does it? Penny, mix me a martini. Lots of gin, a drop of vermouth. I'll go wash off the city dirt."
He went into the bedroom, strewing the place with raincoat, dispatch case, hat, jacket, necktie for Harriet to pick up. Women liked doing those things, didn't they?
He showered and put on fresh shirt and slacks.
Penny came into the bedroom, carrying a martini in a stemmed glass on a tray. She walked with an undulating gait that reminded him of Harriet. She was learning. Hell, her body was sexier than Harriet's. What did her age matter?
He pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger, kissed her before taking the drink. She looked away, eyes downcast.
"Mr. Metlock, shall I put some music on the record player?"
"Absolutely. Just the thing. And hold off supper. There are better things to do than eat. When is Harriet coming home?"
"I don't know. She told me to phone my folks and say I might be late." He grinned. "Yes. You might be."
She went off. He sipped the martini, watching the bump of Penny's hips as she left the bedroom. Lovely. And cheap. How much had the little blue car cost compared to what Harriet spent? He would cut down on Harriet, raise Penny's blackmail. Two for the price of one.
He went into the stereo room. Penny had put on a dance record, a slow syrupy tune. She sat on the couch, hugging her knees. She was bent forward. The upper halves of her breasts showed above the bikini bra.
He asked, "How does the new car go?"
"Gee, it's smooth as oil. I mean, a real bomb. Rick and I have everything we need, almost. Except for his good suit. It's not good any more."
He nodded. She was laying it on the line. More money.
Her petty demands would never strain his finances. But did he, John Metlock, have to buy whores? Penny sexed like a racing fire engine. li he gilded the sexual goodies with protestations of love, could he make her forget the money angle?
He said, "Let's hear the Eighteen-twelve Overture."
She blinked.
Music to rape a girl by...
She said, "That music-I don't like it-"
"I like it, Penny. The record that you put on is sentimental. It makes me gag. I like exciting things."
She avoided his glance. At last she rose and went to the record player. She seemed to take a long time changing the disc. Most likely her hands were trembling.
The music of the Overture came welling out, trilling flutes and blaring horns, an ominous roll of kettiedrums in the background.
Penny turned abruptly to face him.
She said, "A good suit for Rick would cost about a hundred bucks, I guess."
A hundred. A good round figure.
Could honeyed words save him a hundred bucks? He finished his drink at a gulp. He closed the door. A penny saved is a penny earned. A hundred bucks saved makes Penny no whore.
He chuckled to himself as he went toward her.
Penny looked at the closed door, searching for escape.
John Metlock was standing over her. She felt tiny in his shadow.
Harriet had said, I'll come back...
Where was she?
Penny's eyes were closed. Her head was bowed in submission to the inevitable. She felt the big hands close on her shoulders. He teased down the straps of her bikini. She heard the music begin to evoke the sound of galloping hoofs.
Her heart was pounding with the hoofs, missing a beat when he touched her nipple and it burst big and fiery. She had told Harriet that she would prove that she had told the truth but she did not want to prove anything. She was afraid. She was not a grownup. Mr. Metlock towering over her was like her father, sort of, a man bristiy of beard, not like Rick, who shaved only on Saturday.
She wanted to run. Run from this and from the memory of Harriet an hour ago, her lovely face like a broken pie crust, pale and dirty gray. The sight of Harriet had been horrible, like seeing some stranger who had lurked behind that sleek golden face. Worse, she understood that Harriet was not broken up because her husband had cheated. No. Harriet had been blaming herself.
That vision of Harriet was in her mind despite the shadow of John Metlock pressing down on her, his hands stripping away her bra and closing on her breasts.
Harriet, in one of her last desperate attempts to blame Penny, had cried, You're just a hot little tramp...
Penny had said she did not know if she was hot. Maybe other girls felt the same. Maybe not.
Harriet had apologized, had hugged her, had said that what had happened was not Penny's fault. Penny's trouble was exposure to adults who were filthy degenerates.
Penny had become somewhat bored with Harriet's self-flagellation.
Besides, she had wanted to know the truth about herself. She had insisted again that she had been no virgin when Mr. Metlock raped her.
Harriet had said, "Darling, I wasn't either at your age. Damn it, a girl has to experiment. It's in the nature of kids. And life is harder for a girl who has the equipment to attract boys-"
John Metlock said, "My adorable Utile Penny. I think I'll get rid of Harriet and marry you."
"You're talking silly."
He kissed her throat, his lips plucking lightly at her flesh.
"Penny, Penny, I love you, my Utile darling."
"You don't."
He was taking her to the couch. When she was down she crossed her legs and locked her ankles.
She said, "I want a hundred doUars for a suit for Rick."
"Penny, sweetheart, I can't give it to you. I don't want you to be a whore. Lovemaking is for the sake of love. Don't you love me?"
"No. You make me excited but I don't love you."
He kissed her nipple, tugged it out to a bursting nubbin of fire. The idea of the rich and powerful John Metlock bent over her breast was a triumph that made her crossed legs wilt. Where was Harriet? John had not locked the door. He was becoming careless. Penny could not see the doorway, only the record player. The disk was turning slowly, sending waves of throbbing kettledrum beats to pound her senseless.
John asked, "Would you like to be my wife, Penny?"
She tried to speak. A big wet lump choked her throat. His wife? Silly. She was only a girl. Oh, she would love to own all Harriet's things, her clothes and her house. But they were Harriet's.
He said, "You think you're too young. But in a couple of years-Penny darling-I'll divorce Harriet. She's given me grounds."
His hand was on her thigh.
Her head was raised by a pillow. She could see down between her pink-capped breasts to his brown hand on her thigh. The heat of his touch flowed through her legs, melting the lock of her ankles. He liked her body. That was sure.
The bikini was held by ties on each hip. He plucked at the bow knots. She did not resist. He was telling her that he loved her eyes, her walk, her gamin charm-whatever gamin meant-she understood the purring sound of love if not the words.
Maybe being told that you were loved was better than money, but gosh, Rick's old suit-well, John would give her money or she would tell Harriet-but she had told Harriet. Still, she liked his hands on her body because they felt good.
The strings that held her bikini bottom were gone. He fingered her. She closed her eyes. She was splitting. The hand left her, touched her knee. A tap of his index finger ordered her to bring the knee back. Her muscles jerked, drew the knee toward her. Then the other knee. Her knees were back and apart and his brown hand again covered the joining of her white thighs.
He asked, "Penny, will you marry me?"
But poor Harriet, her face like crumbled pie crust, gray and white, hating herself. Where had Harriet gone? But the answer did not matter. Penny was here alone, feeling a man expertly work her body to steaming heat.
She felt a quake inside her. She needed him right now.
The stereo room was exploding with music that de--. scribed a titanic battle. The kettledrums crashed like mountains falling. Horns blared and distant bells tolled. Waves of sound swept Penny high on the frenzied drive of the music. She seized John's shoulders, frantically tugged him toward her. He held himself rigidly away, except for his hand, which still teased a curve of fire in her honeyed furrow.
He demanded, "Say you love me."
"I love you-"
"And you will marry me."
"Yes, I will. Anything. Please-"
His fingers were gone. The music smashed her, upended her, was replaced by the massive thrust of his manhood.
Penny collapsed, fainted, flew out of her mind on a single hot burst.
She came to. Her lower body was pitching and tearing at him. His channelling drive burned her. The agony was glorious.
A small corner of her mind still functioned weakly. She asked him, "Why am I doing this."
"Because you love me."
The answer more than satisfied her. She was built around him. She was alive through his body. John Metlock was her reason for being a woman.
His explanation freed her to smile easily while answering his movements. She was reduced to an airy nothing of pink foam that popped and vaporized on every earthquake rumble inside her. She was utterly consumable. She knew it was true because he was telling her that it was so. Besides, no man could continue being a roaring cannon unless he found the target eruptively destructible. Yes, he loved her. It did not matter at all that she was an under-age girl and he a married man, a father, a respected corporation lawyer.
She grasped her ankles and pulled. She would show him. She really was a woman, all the woman he could want. No, she was not enough. She bit her hp. But a little pain was better than not being a spinning pink doughnut circle, pierced and then whole, forming again as quickly as she was rent, a ring with the incompressible strength of water.
The music roared toward a wild climax, a dim bleating sound in the distance. The sound became weaker. It was going away, leaving her as a honeyed pink doughnut shape with John Metlock.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Harriet had opened the study door a few inches. She sagged against the doorjamb. She heard John ask Penny to marry him. Was he serious?
No. He was worse than serious. He was reducing the child to a mindless jelly, driving from her every remembrance of character, of decency, of honesty. He was playing tunes on her body and mind. He would leave her a feeble blob of flesh that would never be whole without a man. Harriet guessed-any man.
She peeked, saw the brownness of his body cradled in Penny's white thighs. The coupled brown and white jarred as though their contrast embodied the wildest thunderclaps of the music that shook the loudspeakers, torrents of sound that blasted the room to an insane frenzy. Her husband and a child.
Harriet screamed.
She rushed through the doorway. She lunged at them, clawed on John's bare back.
The music had ended. The room was full of screams and shouts. An arm struck Harriet. She fell to the floor. Penny was writhing in agony on the couch.
John was shouting, "I've done it, done it-do you see, Harriet, what I've done?"
Harriet crawled to the door and stumbled away, blinded by tears. She tripped over a coffee table and found herself prostrate on the living-room floor. Her fingernails clawed at the rug. She rolled, moaning.
A small soft hand touched her cheek.
"Harriet, I'm sorry."
"I didn't know it could be so horrible. Penny, it was all my fault."
"What shall I do."
"Get dressed, Penny."
"Do you want me to go away? And stay away."
"No. We can't run away any more." Penny left her.
Harriet looked up and saw herself in the big wall mirror. She sprawled on the floor. Her skirt had somehow piled up on her waist. She wore no panties. In the frantic confusion of dressing she had forgotten-or had not bothered.
This was rock bottom.
She rose, trembling, knotted her fists and gritted her teeth until she stood solidly on her own two feet. She went into her bedroom, sat before her vanity mirror and looked at the ghastly ruins of her face.
With comb and brush and makeup she worked out a compromise between the ugliness of despair and the false loveliness of her former self.
Harriet went out to the living room. The study door was closed. John was apparently inside. Penny, dressed, sat on the living-room couch, staring blankly before her.
"Harriet, he said he loved me. That was a joke, wasn't it?"
"It was part of the cruel game that John and I have played."
"You?"
"Yes. I more than John. Love is a woman's responsibility, Penny. Men are quite ignorant until a woman opens then eyes."
Penny looked directly at her.
"I'll miss you, Harriet."
Harriet went to Penny, kissed her forehead.
"Darling, you're not going to leave me. I need your help. I hate to use you as a weapon against John, a threat hanging over him. But I'm going to make something decent of this family, no matter what pressures I have to use. Now go home. Sleep. Come back tomorrow afternoon to swim with me. We'll work things out."
Penny looked brighter when she left. She squeezed Harriet's hand, then dashed out to the little blue car.
John was standing in the living-room doorway.
He said, "I heard what you told Penny."
He tried to meet Harriet's gaze. He failed.
He said, "I suppose we've evened the score."
"Score? John, there's no score. We are just a pair of fools."
"We've done no more than everybody else."
"I don't care about everybody else, Randy or Gloria or anybody. Just my family-and Penny. I want to look in the mirror and not flinch at the rottenness in my eyes. And you will go along with me. Or I'll divorce you, John. I'll cite your seduction of a teenager-"
"That would dirty you, too."
"Nothing can dirty us more than what's already happened. I'm through with pretending we're different from what we are. I want us to start out by paying our debts, wearing old clothes and buying only bread and potatoes until we own what we wear and live in." John was still on the defensive.
He said, "A messy divorce would ruin my career. You'd be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs."
"They're not golden, John. Just thinly gilded and empty inside. like our mortgaged house and everything else that's not paid for. Let's come down from the clouds. The past is done. Let's start living." She paused. "Penny's one of our debts-we owe her a future. She'll need money for an education-whatever she wants. You can be earning that."
"You're letting me off easy."
"Both of us had better let each other off easy."
She went toward the twins' bedroom to see if they had slept through the turmoil.
John called after her, "Why are you willing to forgive me?"
Why? Because he was her husband, the father of her children, her goose who laid gilded eggs-and from now on the only man she ever wanted to touch her body.
For love, money-or fear.
Penny drove the Blue Bomb toward Rick's house. The moon was high. Her hair blew free in the wind.
She was still in a state of shock but she knew one thing. Harriet would not leave Mr. Metlock. He was her guy for better or worse. That was how marriage had to be.
She drove up before Rick's house and blasted the horn. An upstairs window flew open.
Rick called, "What's the matter? Having trouble with the Bomb?"
"No. Come on down."
She had to see Rick, to look into his face and learn if she could meet hisgaze.
He came running down the front walk, climbed awkwardly over the door and flopped down in the passenger's seat.
Penny saw him through a mist.
He said, "Let's go to the Hamburger Heaven. I want to see a guy who has some dual carburetors to sell. I might buy a pair to soup up the Bomb."
Carburetors were pretty far from love-as far as Rick was from the torment at the Metlock house. To Rick she was only a car partner and a girl to play sexy games with when he was not otherwise busy.
She drove toward the Hamburger Heaven, blinking away tears.
He asked, "What did your banker say about dough for my suit?"
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
He said, "What I really want is those carburetors."
She guessed that was true. And if she really loved Rick she would not have come unglued and reacted as she had to Mr. Metlock and Randy. Rick was a good guy for a car partner but he was not quite man enough to handle her. He lacked maturity.
The wind blew away her tears and whipped her hair.
She felt lonely with her awful burden of experience but she had made Harriet honest and Harriet was a really great person. She had come on strong in the end.
Penny guessed she herself would never fall as hard and bruisingly when she was Harriet's age. She had learned better.
One thing, she would know how to pick a solid guy when the time came.
Rick said, "I'm hungry. I want a hamburger." His mention of food relaxed her.
Her only problem at the moment was deciding whether to put ketchup or mustard or pickle on her hamburger. Rick said, "With onions." A new choice had been offered. She laughed. "What's funny."
