He ran wild in the hot and sinful mind of Vicky Wilcox, sick for lust, hungry for the wanton delirium of shameful passions her husband could not provide. And for some reason. Bill Wilcox was willing to stand by while his auburn-haired, lust-bodied wife ran amok with a neighbor, a family friend, and even with sin-twisted Eloise, the upstairs maid. They lived on in their luxurious home, while Vicky used the panelled and carpeted respectability of her outward life to cloak the sin-slime of her degradation. Degradation that extended itself -- festered and grew until it carried her into lust-rivalry with her own licentious mother -- whose kept stud became the plaything of them both! Degradation whose ugly blotch upon both their lives was rotting at the hearts of Vicky Wilcox, suburban matron, and Bill Wilcox, society psychiatrist. Degradation that suddenly burst into the twisted flower of blackmail and moral shame as Vicky woke to the evil reality of what she had been doing -- and Bill Wilcox revealed the filth he had been waiting for!
CHAPTER ONE
SHE WAS BORED. And naked. That was at the root of the trouble, one of the many causes. She was bored. She was a bird in a gilded cage, a bored and naked bird. Bored silly. Bored unfaithful.
Well, why not? She had to do something to fill the emptiness in her life. So she filled it with a lover. Not the first woman to do it, either.
Her name was Victoria. Named for her grandmother, who was, of course, named for the Queen. Victoria Avery, that was her maiden name. Now she was Victoria Avery Wilcox, wife of William Howard Wilcox III, proud mother of Penelope Wilcox and, naturally, William Howard Wilcox IV.
And bored.
Vicky Wilcox was twenty-nine. She looked younger, because she had never known a responsibility in her life. Everything had been done for her from the very beginning right up to now, except the bearing of her children, and even that had been made as streamlined and as painless as could be managed. She had been a mother five years and eleven months, and had never changed a diaper in her life. She had never wiped vomit from a sick child's lips. She had never done anything like that. There were maids and housekeepers to handle chores like that. Her function was to preside over the household in queenly majesty, to look elegant and well-groomed, and to cast an air of glamour wherever she went.
So she didn't look her age. It was hard to tell how old Vicky really was. When she chose to, she could dress in slacks and a sport shirt, and leave her makeup off, and give the appearance of being about seventeen. In more formal clothes, she gave people to think that she was in her early twenties. No one ever thought she was more than twenty-five. That was why they were all shocked when they found out that her daughter was going to be six.
"Why, you must have been a child bride I" they would all exclaim.
And Vicky would smile. "I was old enough to vote when I married Bill" she would say gently.
And now she had voted in two Presidential elections, with a third coming up soon. She was almost thirty. She was a slim, graceful girl, with naturally auburn hair and the sort of delicate features usually seen only in advertisements; a narrow-bridged nose, full lips, high cheekbones, dimpled cheeks, a firm but not aggressive chin. Her body was lean and supple, except at the breasts, where two startling globes of flesh thrust out of her body as though put there by some careless sculptor who had meant them for a Juno, and at the buttocks where the same lush abundance prevailed. Willowy was the word for the rest of her. And bored.
The boredom had come creeping up on her slowly. At first the idea of being married had struck her as wonderful, and Bill could do no wrong. But gradually she came to see him as the cold, remote person he was. Gradually she lost interest in the splendid $75,000 house in Connecticut. The children stopped fascinating her almost as soon as they had left her body. The social whirl had never been anything new to her; she had grown up in it.
So without love, without motherhood, without anything to keep her occupied, she grew steadily less interested in the life she was leading.
Everything came to a head on a mild June afternoon, two and a half months before her thirtieth birthday. She and Bill were giving a lawn party that evening. It was the easiest way of repaying all the invitations of the winter and spring. Of course, Vicky herself had no part to play in the party but that of the gracious hostess. The caterers would take care of everything else. The hired bartender would mix the drinks. The hired orchestra would play gentle string music in the background. Floodlights would beam down on the broad, rolling lawn with its tightly grown, closely cropped blue-grass. And everyone would say, what a lovely party, what wonderful hosts the Wilcoxes are.
That afternoon Vicky sat alone in her upstairs dressing room. She was nude. She had just taken a shower, and had emerged, clean and pink and well-scrubbed. She was alone in the house except for the maid and the caterer's men, who were setting things up for the party. Bill had taken the children to New York for the afternoon, to a children's concert at Carnegie Hall. Vicky couldn't see the point of taking kids of six and three to hear classical music, but her husband wanted to expose them to Bach and Brahms at an early age, and, as usual, Bill had had his way.
Vicky stared at her nakedness in the mirror.
She liked looking at her body. She knew it was a damned good body. No one she knew her age had a body to equal it, or even came close. Her breasts rose, high and firm and big, with those curious little nipples perched on the upper curve. She hadn't suckled her children. Of course not; that might have spoiled her breasts, and that would have been a calamity. So she had the boobs of a virgin -- of an exceptionally well-endowed virgin.
Vicky put her hands over her breasts and gripped them tight, letting the nipples protrude between her fingers. She loved the feeling of hands holding her breasts, squeezing, moving the fleshy balls around Bill hardly ever played with her breasts any more. For that matter, Bill hardly did anything to her any more. He was too busy, too wrapped up in his profession.
Vicky closed her eyes. She grasped her breasts tighter, imagining they were a man's hands digging into her flesh. She heard imaginary words: "My darling, you have such beautiful breasts symphonies in flesh.. it makes me tingle all over to hold your breasts in my hands.. let me kiss your nipples, my darling... " A hiss of pleasure escaped her lips. She rubbed her thighs together, clamping them shut, trying to tell herself that she held a man's maleness imprisoned there. But it was no good. The illusion would not hold She swayed from side to side, dragged her hands down from her breasts to her belly, then to her loins.
Desire throbbed in her. It was only a couple of days since Bill had last made love to her -- he had managed to find time for it in his busy schedule -- but the love-making hadn't left her satisfied, and it seemed as though six months had gone by since she had last had any sex. She turned away from the mirror, and sank down tiredly on the edge of her chair, rubbing her hands emptily over her flanks. She pressed her legs close. The ache between her legs grew stronger. It was as though a fire had blazed up inside her, and if she didn't get it put out fast it would consume her completely.
She smiled.
She thought of Dan Connors.
Connors wanted to go to bed with her. He had been asking her, in a half-joking way, for the last two years, making a kind of game out of it. He was a well-to-do sportsman who lived in the big house at Woodland Knolls, about a mile and a half up the road. He had made a couple of million bucks in some kind of real-estate promotion a few years back, and had been that one man in ten thousand who was content to take his pile, sell out, invest it in blue-chips, and retire at the age of 32. He didn't speculate now. He just cashed his coupons and spent his days hunting, swimming, and wenching. His wife had left him about six months ago, but that hadn't had any perceptible effect on his activities. He had had a succession of mistresses sharing the big house with him, and he mingled in the local social set -- all couples -- as casually as though the cur teat incumbent, whoever she might be, was his wife.
Vicky had been propositioned by Dan Connors, like every other woman within propositioning range. She had turned him down in the same joking style of the proposition. Not that she would have minded going to bed with him. But she felt that it was sordid and messy and somehow stereotyped. She hated to be a stereotype, an unfaithful suburban wife. She would rather be that novelty, the wife who kept her vows. So she had said no.
But now things were different. Now she was six months or so closer to the boiling point.
Still nude, she picked up the phone and dialed Dan Connors' number. She walked to the window and listened to the phone ringing. Looking out, she could see the workmen arranging the buffet tables on the lawn. She wondered if they would look up and see her standing in the window. In her present mood she hoped they would. It amused her to have workmen looking at her nakedness.
On the seventh ring, Dan Connors said, "Hello?"
"You sound out of breath," Vicky said.
"I was in the pool," he panted. "It's a long run to the nearest phone. Who's this? Lois? Marian?"
"Guess again.
"Oh, come on."
"Vicky Wilcox," she said.
"Oh. That's a surprise What's the matter? Lawn party cancelled or something?"
"No," she said. "It's still on. You'll still be able to make it, won't you?"
"Yes."
"With your friend -- what's her name?"
"Linda," he said.
"Linda. Yes. Dan and Linda." Vicky smiled across the room at her naked reflection in the mirror, with the pointed breasts jutting outward so thrillingly "Listen, Dan, do you think you could get rid of Linda for a couple of hours this afternoon?"
"Huh?"
"Give her a fistful of bills and send her shopping," Vicky said. "I'm all alone here and I feel pretty blue. I thought I'd invite myself over to your place for a swim. But three's a crowd."
"Matter of fact," Connors said, "Linda went into the city about half an hour ago. She's getting her hair set for tonight. So if you'd like to come over--"
"I'd love to."
A pause. "Something wrong between you and Bill?"
"I just feel like doing something wild," Vicky said.
Her hand shook a little as she put down the phone. She realized that she had committed herself. She felt adulterous already, even before setting out. It was a strange feeling, but a heady one. For seven and a half years she had been a faithful wife, absolutely faithful, not even a minor lapse, unless you counted a couple of drunken New Year's Eve parties where she let other men play with her breasts, and not even a puritan could call that unfaithful in the twentieth century. No sex with other men. William Howard Wilcox III had had a monopoly. She could hardly even remember what it was like to sleep with another man, the others had been so long ago.
And now she had agreed, without saying so in that many words, to sleep with Dan Connors this afternoon. The agreement was almost as good as the deed.
Almost.
Vicky took a light yellow summer frock out of the closet and slipped it over her nude form without bothering with underclothes. It buttoned down the back to midway, then zipped, so there was no danger of a bit of bare breast or buttock being exposed to someone who oughtn't see.
She went downstairs and poked her head in the kitchen. The maid, Eloise, looked up. "I'm going out, Eloise."
"Yes, Ma'am." She was a handsome mulatto girl, around thirty, a terrifically hard worker.
"If Mr. Wilcox calls, tell him I went for a drive. I'll be back around five o'clock."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Vicky went through the kitchen and into the garage, and into her little Jaguar convertible. She switched it on, enjoying the thrum of power under the hood, and backed out of the garage. Bill wanted to get her a new one -- he was always smothering her with material gifts to make up for the love he didn't offer -- but she liked the Jag, saw no reason to replace it.
She roared down the driveway and out onto the road. It doesn't take long to drive a mile and a half at sixty miles an hour. Vicky made a left turn in a cloud of dust and turned up the private dirt road leading into Dan Connors' estate. He had a medium-big place, about fifty acres, with his main house perched on a hillside and the rest of the property sloping back in complete privacy. Vicky reached the top of the hill and pulled her car up in front of the house. She honked her horn.
"In back, Vicky! I'm in the pool."
She got out of the car Her fingertips were cold despite the summery warmth of the day. A tight band of tension gripped her throat.
Suppose I'm no good, she thought? Suppose I freeze up and disappoint him?
Or suppose I get home and Bill can tell I've done ill She brushed the fears away and walked around the house. It was a big, rambling modern ranch house, built in a lazy U, with a swimming pool in the belly of the U. She rounded one of the wings.
Connors was standing hip-deep in the big free form pool, smiling at her. Although his body was hidden by the water, she could see no change of color indicating a bathing suit. He was obviously naked. She felt excited and at the same time a trifle insulted. Surely it was taking things too much for granted to await her in the nude.
But she had half expected it. And she had a masterstroke of her own ready.
"Hi," he yelled. "Water's great. You can change in the bathhouse."
"Don't need to change," Vicky said. "I forgot my suit."
"Well, in that case--"
"Well, in that case--"
"Don't worry," she said. "I can manage."
She stepped to the front of the pool, and her hands went to the buttons on her back. She pulled them open, yanked down the zipper.
The yellow frock dropped away. She felt the sudden coolness as her breasts were bared, and then the frock whooshed past her hips and loins, down her thighs, and dropped in a heap at her feet. Her body blazed from head to toe as Dan Connors' startled eyes came to rest on it. She bit her lip, then smiled, compelled herself to walk forward. Modesty could go to hell, she thought. She walked out onto the diving board, out to the very and.
She hefted up and down, feeling her big breasts jiggle. Then she turned and coolly walked back to the start of the board. She could actually feel Connors' gaze on her bare buttocks.
Lithely, she ran the length of the board, bounded high, came down, sprang outward.
She slipped neatly into the water. There was the sudden cold shock of it against her nipples, and then she was underwater, and as she breast-stroked through the clear green depths she could see Dan Connors standing in the shallow water with his legs slightly apart, and, as she had guessed, he was naked. Well, so was she.
She swam underwater till her lungs were ready to burst, then surfaced. She had reached the shallow end of the pool. When she rose, she was out of water to her waist. Sunlight glittered off the water droplets on her bare breasts.
Dan Connors was looking at her in fascination. She tried to pretend there was nothing out of the ordinary about standing naked in front of him.
He came toward her.
"That's a lovely bathing suit you don't have on," he said.
"I'm glad you like it."
"I adore it. It's my favorite fabric. There's nothing to match human skin."
"Especially female skin, eh?"
"Especially," he said.
He started toward her. She flipped over on her back and paddled away from him, pleasantly conscious that the tips of her breasts were above the water. He swam after her, not hurrying, and caught up with her in the middle of the pool. She let her feet grope for the bottom, but couldn't find it. Connors, who was six-three, was just about standing on tiptoes. He reached out for her.
"You're beautiful," he said softly. "I've known that for years, but yet I never really got the full impact of it until just a few minutes ago, when you were standing on the diving board."
"You never saw so much of me before," she pointed oat.
He grinned. "I knew there had to be a reason."
His hands closed gently on her bare breasts. Her nipples ached, throbbed, began to stiffen. It was the scene in front of the mirror all over again, except that this time it was real, and that was all the difference in the world.
Holding her breasts, he drew her body up against his. She could feel the rigid manhood of him, and a tingle of desire went through her. He began to swim with her, back toward the shallower water. In another moment they were standing knee-deep, and his wet body was tight up against hers, and he was kissing her passionately.
She had not thought that adultery happened like this. Somehow she had figured that there would have to be a long campaign of seduction first, and that when she finally surrendered she would have to dull her conscience with a few good slugs of whiskey. Only it wasn't happening that way. She had driven up, she had taken off her clothes and jumped into the pool, and now he was making love to her.
And before very long their bodies would merge.
Vicky could still tell herself that she was not yet unfaithful. True, she was naked in front of another man, but she undressed for her doctor all the time, and no one called that infidelity. True, he was holding her breasts, but what about those innocent New Years' Eve parties?
, Of course, he was naked too. Not at all like a medical consultation. And now he was lifting her, carrying her from the pool, up the steps. He was so strong, so tanned, the muscles rippling in his brawny body.
But I haven't been unfaithful yet, Vicky insisted inwardly.
He was putting her down, now, on an air mattress lying alongside the pool. She stretched out, enjoying the spongy feel of the mattress against her buttocks and the warmth of the sunlight on her bare breasts and loins. He stood above her, dripping wet, the hair of his body matted and tangled, and she looked up at him and saw the massive masculinity of him, and felt a little quiver of tear.
"Should get you a drink?" he asked. "No."
"Do you want anything?"
"Yes," she said. "You."
Blinking into the sun, she reached out for him. He knelt by her side. She felt his hand cupping her breasts again, and the other hand on her knee, rising swiftly, toward, her thighs, then reaching the junction of her thighs and gently moving her legs apart.
I still have not been unfaithful, Vicky thought.
She closed her eyes and sucked her breath in sharply as his probing finger found the most sensitive region.
"You like that, do you?."
"Very much."
"And this?" he asked.. "Yes. Yes. Oh, God--" He laughed, booming hearty masculine laughter He lowered his body alongside hers on the air mattress. His hands were everywhere on her, and his lips, and his cheeks, and his -- I am still a faithful wife, Vicky thought with curious clarity.
But not for long, she decided.
CHAPTER TWO
NOT FOR LONG AT ALL. Connors was unhurriedly exploring her body, learning the workings of it. But she was the one in the hurry. She moved her hand along his chest, down to his belly, then caught hold of the root of his being. Her tug was gentle but insistent, and he yielded to it and rolled toward her.
"Please," she whispered. "Please, Dan, now--" His weight was on her.
She opened her legs for him, gladly, willingly, ecstatically. At the last moment she felt fear. He was so big. What if he hurts me? What if I get pregnant? What if I'm too cold for him? What if -- Again, she shut the burst of fears off, telling herself irritatedly that she was acting like a scared little virgin. This wasn't her first time, after all. She was a wife. A mother. She had experienced the act of love hundreds of rimes, and with seven or eight different men, although most of them had been .long, long ago.
Her body tensed Rose to his.
He plunged forward. His gentleness was gone now.
She parted, yielded, gasped as the rigidity of him scythed into her. She could feel him inside her, now, big, bigger than she had expected, than she had ever known before. Her brain felt numb and bloodless, as though all her blood was in her congested loins now.
It's happened, she thought. Now I am an unfaithful wife. She had crossed the line and never could return. He had penetrated her, and by any definition of infidelity that had ever been created, she was now unchaste.
And enjoying it.
Her body surged beneath his. She trembled, and opened wider, and arched up away from the air mattress, driving him deep. She gasped as sudden eddies of pleasure rippled through her being. Seemingly he was spearing right through her body. She had never known a man like this before.
She locked her legs around him, digging her heels into the backs of his knees. He worked his hands underneath her, cupping her buttocks, and began to lift and release, lift and release, stirring and working her to the depths with each tension of his muscles.
Passion blazed in her. She dug her teeth into the muscular flesh of his shoulder, and hung on, going deep into the flesh. She heard his booming laugh as she bit into him. He didn't mind.
Their grappling bodies rolled and twisted and churned on the mattress. There was the warmth of the sun overhead, and the warmth of him in her, and the warmth of her passions, and she moaned and sobbed.
And felt the fulfillment coming.
She let a joyous, wordless cry burst from her Lips.
Bow long has it been, she wondered, since I knew this sensation? Eight months? A year? A year and a half? A lifetime?
But there it was, now, the tingling, the throbbing, the beat of inward drums, the solo in tom-toms that told of the approaching climax.
She tried to tell him about it. "I'm -- I'm--" , But she was gasping so much she could not get the words out. Even so, he understood.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I know. Go ahead, Vicky."
The dam burst. The torrent hit her. She shivered and shook, rocked and moaned, thrust and thrust again, accepting him to the depths of her and wanting still more. Then the spasm struck, the deep quivering contractions, the shaking, the crying, the stunning numbing force. She could vaguely remember having felt things like this before, long, long ago when life was new and interesting.
She arched her back and pushed toward him and thrust and thrust and captured every instant of it, the sudden savage burst of fulfillment.
Then she lay back, complete.
And realized he was still with her.
The shock of that was enormous. Always, always, with her husband or with the half-remembered boys of the far past, her climax had been the end of the act. She had not known there was any other way. Usually the man got there ahead of her -- especially her husband -- but even if he held off until she reached the finale, he never lasted past it. Never. But Dan was different.
Easily, gracefully, he was moving, and, unbelievably, he was reawakening, coming out of her earlier frenzy and starting to enter a newer one. And this one began where the other left off. She went spiralling up into undreamed of realms of ecstasy, every nerve fiber in her body tingling with unimagined sensations. And still he went along with her. His virility seemed to be inexhaustible. She was going almost insane with pleasure.
She cried out, suddenly at the peak.
Her shriek of pleasure echoed around the poolside. She quivered like jelly, pounded her fists into his back, arched her body and dropped it again.
Completion hit her like a lightning burst.
And this time he finished with her.
She had the impression he had perfect control over his body, that he had finished now simply because he realized that her nervous system couldn't take much more. She got the idea that, if she had been able to stand it, he would have gone right on with her, all afternoon if necessary.
But she had had it. Her pleasure-surfeited body went limp against the air mattress. She closed her eyes dreamily and smiled a smile of fulfillment. "Now can I get you that drink?" he asked quietly.
"Yes. Please. A gin and tonic. And strong on the gin, if you don't mind."
"Coming up."
She heard him padding across the tiles, going into the house. Vicky lay back, resting, eyes closed, the sun caressing the tips of her breasts.
If this is what it's like to be unfaithful, she thought dreamily, then being unfaithful feels good.
She was utterly relaxed for the first time in ages. And the feeling of boredom, of drab emptiness, was gone.
She had a purpose in life, an interest, a hobby --sleeping with Dan Connors.
"Here you are, Princess."
She opened her eyes. He was crouching at her side, still naked, holding a drink. She took it from him. It was ice cold and very strong and very good.
"What is this?" she asked. "Half gin and half tonic?"
"Pretty near. You said you wanted it strong."
"But not lethal."
"Sorry, Princess. That's my usual proportion."
She smiled and drank it anyway, faster than she meant to. When she put the glass down, she felt pleasantly woozy. Naked, they lay in the sun for half an hour more. She looked at his wrist watch Half past three.
"Let's take a swim," she suggested.
"Why not? But I want to see you dive again. That was a fantastic sight, seeing you naked on the diving board."
She didn't feel much like diving, but she gave in to his whim, and once again launched herself from the board, enjoying the sway of her heavy breasts as she plunged toward the water. They fooled around in the pool for a while, splashing and racing and ducking each other. He was strong, so terribly strong that she was a little afraid of him. "You know what I want now?" she asked.
"Can't guess."
"This," she said, putting her hand on it.
"At your service, madame,"
"In the water?"
"If you like."
"Why not?" she said.
He gathered her up, putting one hand under each of her thighs just where the buttock began, and lifting her to the height of his hips. Then he waded into shallow water. She put her arms around his neck, and locked her legs tight around his waist. He held her with one hand, put the other on her breasts. Her buttocks just touched the surface of the water.
He took her standing up, with magnificent ease. She kept her eyes open almost to the end, because she liked seeing him, liked his confident smile and the rippling muscles of his broad, hairy, tanned chest But then at the finish the sensation became too strong for her, and she had to close her eyes, and she hung on to him and went through the quivering ecstasies of her satisfaction, and felt him answering, and it was over.
They floated in the pool for a while. Then they lay m the sun by poolside, Vicky trying to dry her short auburn hair. At a quarter to five she said, "I'd better be going."
"All right. Will I see you again?"
"Tonight," she said. "At the party."
"I don't mean that. I mean in private."
"We'll see," she said, as she slipped her frock on. She waggled her buttocks at him, then pulled the zipper up. He pulled a pair of trunks over his nudity and walked around to the front of the house with her, and blew her a kiss as she pulled out.
She was in her own house a little before five. As she garaged the car and came up, she thought about the afternoon's experience. She felt strangely neutral about it. She had been unfaithful, she thought. She had cuckolded her husband. She had had sexual relations with the local Lothario. And yet she didn't feel guilty, didn't feel wicked, didn't feel self-contempt. It was as though she had gone to a particularly enjoyable Broadway play, or to a stimulating party. She felt refreshed, and more alive than before, and happier. She realized that this is not the way a wife is supposed to feel after she has thrown herself into an illicit affair on the spur of a warm Saturday afternoon.
Bill and the children were back from the concert. She could see Bill in the back yard, supervising the workmen. He looked competent and masculine as he directed them.
Other wives envied her for having Bill. He seemed so steady. And he was, she thought. Too steady, too sane. Most psychiatrists were nutty themselves, from contagion, but not Bill. He shucked his practice off every night as easily as thought it were a raincoat. He made forty thousand a year, was universally respected both as a man and as a psychiatrist, was tall and handsome and athletic, never forgot their anniversary or her birthday, brought her little unexpected gifts from time to time -- In short, a model husband.
But somehow Vicky had fallen out of love with him.
And now she had come to a point of no return, she told herself. She had deceived him.
Bill thought he was the only man she had ever slept with. He thought so because she had told him so, and he believed what she told him. Actually there had been others, of course, six or seven others -- she wasn't sure of the actual count, wasn't really certain she had slept with one of them in the real sense of the word -- but it had suited her to play the role of the virgin on her wedding night, and Bill was still complacently of the opinion that he was the only man she had ever had.
Not that it would have mattered at all to him if she had confessed her earlier romances. She realized that now. He was too sane to give a damn about anything she might have done before he had entered her life.
But what about now?
She wondered what he would say if she told him, "Darling, I slept with Dan Connors this afternoon."
He'd probably take it calmly, she thought. He always took everything calmly. He never lost his temper, never panicked over anything. She could confess adultery or tell him the baby's eye had been put out, and he would nod and accept the fact and begin coming to terms with it in his smooth, sane way. That was the crux of it. That was why she had stopped loving him. She could only love human beings.
She slipped into her dressing room and closed the door. Peeling off her frock, she got into a bra and panties, as if to symbolize her return to conventionality. Then, donning the frock again, she went outside.
She met her son in the living room. The little boy was sprawled out on the floor teasing the cat.
"Mommy," he said, and came to her.
She scooped him up. He was a husky little fellow, big for his age. As she held him, she felt the first pang of her guilt. Mommy's been unfaithful today, she thought. Mommy slept with someone who wasn't Daddy.
"Come on," she said. "Let's go outside and say hello to Daddy and Penny."
She went out back, carrying Billy. As she stepped onto the rolling lawn, six-year-old Penny came running up to her. "It was a wonderful concert, Mommy," the girl cried. "They played Mozart and Beethoven."
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," Vicky said distantly. She put Billy down and hugged the girl. Penny looked almost exactly like a six-year-old version of her mother. For a moment Vicky had a depressing look at the far future, Penny grown up, Penny married and bored with it, Penny slipping away to put out for one of the neighbors.
She glanced across the lawn at her husband. He grinned, waved to her, came over.
His kiss was chaste, brotherly. "Have a nice afternoon?" he asked.
"Not bad," she said, not meeting his eyes. "I went for a drive."
"Yes, Eloise told me." His bland, open face registered no shred of suspicion. "Vick, do you think we should put the bar over here where they have it, or maybe down by the rhododendrons--"
"Whatever you like, darling."
"I wanted your opinion."
"I think it looks fine where it is. And that it would look just as good over there. Whatever you prefer."
Bill shrugged. "Let's try moving it and get an idea of how it'll actually look," he said.
He walked away and started to explain to the workmen what he wanted. Vicky watched him. He was a big man, not so big nor as brawny as Dan Connors, but big all the same. He moved with a confident self-assurance. He was thirty-seven, and in the prime of his professional life. Most people who knew him, if asked to name the happiest person they knew, would unfailingly say Bill Wilcox. And he was happy, Vicky thought. Well, that makes one o) us.
She watched the job of sotting up the lawn for a while. But, despite Bill's attempt to bring her into the decision-making part of it, there was really nothing for her to do. There never was, anywhere. Bill and the servants took care of everything. She was purely ornamental.
When she grew bored with watching, she went inside, up to her room. She got out of her clothes and stepped under the shower. It was her second shower of the day. Some days she took four or five. Showers were a kind of drug for her; with cold water pelting down, she managed to forget her boredom, her emptiness.
She dragged the shower out until she started to fed waterlogged. Then, going into her dressing room, she sat down nude in front of the mirror and began to set her hair for the evening ahead. She was about half through with the job when there was a knock on the door.
"Who's there?"
"Bill."
"Come in," she said. "I'm setting my hair."
He opened the door. He was always so tactful about knocking first, never wanting to barge into her room when she had the door closed. She wondered about that. He acted as though if he entered unannounced he might catch her sleeping with the postman. It annoyed her. A husband ought to come barging in, Vicky felt.
He came in. She looked into the mirror and saw him standing behind her, grinning. He was looking at the reflection of her breasts.
Sudden horror ran through her. Suppose he wants to make love now, she thought? Above all else she did not want that, not now, with her body still pleasantly relaxed from Dan Connors' embrace. Bill's lovemaking would jangle her nerves and foul her up completely now.
Going up to her, he slid his hands under her arms to cup her breasts, and kissed the back of her neck. Dully she decided he did want her. Well, she knew a number of tactful ways of refusing, and Bill was too much of a gentleman to insist when his wife said no.
But then he released her breasts and straightened up. He had only been being friendly, it seemed.
He said, "Excited about the party tonight?"
"Why should I be? We've given plenty of them before."
"But this is our first this season. And the biggest we've ever given. Over a hundred people."
"Is it that many? I hadn't realized."
"You went over the invitation lists with me."
"Yes," she said, "but I guess I didn't pay close attention. -A hundred people. Imagine that! Do we have enough liquor for them all?"
"We've got enough for a regiment," he said. "Don't worry about that. What are you wearing tonight, Vick?"
"My black dress, I guess. And the jade earrings from Peru. They'll go well with the color of the grass out on the lawn."
He smiled. "And wear the gold necklace, too. I like the way it goes with the black dress."
"If you like, dear."
"I like you to look beautiful," he said.
She stood up, facing him full length. His eyes ran down the length of her body, from her face to her breasts to her loins to her thighs to her calves. She wanted him to say that she looked beautiful enough for him this way. But he didn't. He accepted the gift of her nakedness in that calm, easy way of his. Another man might have fallen on her body in passion, but not him.
She moistened her lips. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, and the tips became hardened.
She wanted to shock him out of his complacency, out of his composure. She wanted to tell him, while standing here stark naked with everything she had showing, that she had made love to Dan Connors, that she had opened her body to him, that she had taken him into her -- and that she had been thrilled more in half an hour by him than in all the seven years of her neat, nice marriage.
She wanted to throw all that at him and see if his bland composure held up under it.
"Bill --" she began.
"Yes, dear."
"I want to tell you--" She hesitated. She lost her nerve.
"-- that we ought to have a light snack around half past six," she said lamely. "I'm starved, and I'll never hold out until the guests start arriving."
He nodded solemnly. "I'm hungry, too. I'll tell the cook."
He turned. Started to leave. She continued to stand there, wishing that he would come over and kiss her breasts, or squeeze them again, or touch her thighs Now she no longer dreaded his embrace. She wanted to give herself to him, right now, on the floor it necessary. She stood there with her legs a little apart and her hands on her hips, waiting.
And he left the room.
Vicky shook her head What could you expect? In Bill's mind there was a time and a place for sex, and this was neither the time nor the place. He was so neat, so orderly, so well organized.
So cold, for all his kindnesses to her.
I'm glad I slept with Dan Connors, she thought defiantly. I don't feel guilty at all! Not one little bit! And I'll do it again and again. With Dan and with anybody else that's handy. And you can go to hell, William Howard Wilcox III. Go to hell!
CHAPTER THREE
THE GUESTS BEGAN ARRIVING about twenty minutes to nine. The floodlights were on, and the full moon lent assistance, so that it was nearly as bright as day in the back yard. The guests themselves glittered, nearly all the men in formal white dinner jackets, the women in sumptuous evening gowns. Dozens of expensive cars were parked along both sides of the road in front of the Wilcox house -- mostly Cadillacs and Imperials, but with a liberal sprinkling of Jaguars, Mercedes-Benzes, Humbers, and other upper-bracket foreign makes. There wasn't a Ford or a Chevrolet to be seen. Not in this neighborhood!
Vicky presided with grace and poise, knowing that the one purpose and function she had in life was to preside over just such gatherings. Slim and elegant in her finery, she greeted every guest, hugged the women, smiled meltingly at the men, told them how glad she was to see them, and conducted them toward the back, where Bill was waiting to guide them to the bar. By nine o'clock there were more than thirty couples there.
The party was in orbit, Vicky thought. Host and hostess could now disappear for the rest of the evening and wouldn't be missed. Everyone would think they were talking to someone else in another part of the garden. But, of course, Vicky had no intention of disappearing.
Dan Connors and his current mistress arrived at a quarter past nine. Vicky was curious to see his latest, his Linda. Until this afternoon she had just a normal feminine curiosity to see her. But now her feelings were entirely different. Now she wanted to size up her competition.
She watched them get out of Connors' custom-crafted Dual-Ghia and sweep up the lawn toward her. Connors looked impressive in his formal evening clothes -- but Connors would look impressive in anything, or in nothing at all, as Vicky had discovered that afternoon.
Linda looked impressive too. She was Vicky's height, but sturdier, broad of shoulder and hip. She was abundantly fleshed, too, with big, heavy breasts straining at the fabric of her gown, and ample buttocks all too evident lower down. She looked young, no more than 23 or so.
Vicky came up to them. "Hello, Dan. So nice you could make it." And she threw her arms around him, giving him the same friendly hug she had given everyone else tonight, except that there was" something somewhat more than friendly about the way she pressed her breasts into him, about the way she savored the rippling hardness of his muscles.
Then she released him and beamed at Linda.
Connors said, "Vicky, I'd like you to meet my friend, Linda Robbins. Linda, our hostess. Vicky Wilcox, one of my dearest friends."
"Pleased to meet you," Linda said in a phonied-up, stagy-sophisticated voice.
"I've heard so many wonderful things about you, Linda," Vicky said, smiling warmly. "I'd love to have a long talk with you some time. Let's go around back and I'll introduce you to my husband."
Vicky relaxed visibly, now that she had met Linda. The girl offered no competition at all, Vicky realized. She was a New York girl, probably a kid from the Bronx who had aspirations to high society. Maybe she earned her living as a model. In any case she had nothing to offer except breasts and thighs and a willing body. Vicky could tell at a glance, from a look at the way she dressed, the way she carried herself, from the way she spoke, that she was strictly veneer, and probably scared stiff to boot. The high-piled platinum beehive, the too-thick lipstick, the fake eyelashes, the overdressy jewelry, the spike heels, the husky voice -- these were all the marks of the social climber, the newcomer to sophistication. The other women at the party were in sharp contrast. Most of them had had money all their lives, and had moved among moneyed people, so there was no need to overdress. And their cosmopolitan sophistication was so deeply ingrained that they felt no compulsion to show it off by wearing the latest in hair styles or the most extreme in makeup.
So Linda was a phony. Surely Dan knew that, since his eye was unerring.
Which meant Linda was only a time-passer for Dan Connors. She offered him easy sex, and maybe some amusement, and so he took her in. But Vicky knew that he would soon grow bored with Linda. Maybe he had already reached that point. Vicky smiled. She could cut in on Linda any time she felt like, and have Dan to herself.
She steered her way over to the bar. "Collins," she said. "Strong on the gin."
"Coming right up, Mrs. Wilcox." The bartender smiled and set to work with his usual formidable efficiency. He was a fine bartender, and the Wilcoxes always used him at their parties. He had to be booked two months in advance, usually. Everyone in Connecticut scrambled for his services. He was a tall, gray-haired Negro who drove to his assignments in a sleek European sportscar as expensive as any that his clients drove. He probably earned nearly as much, too.
Vicky took her drink and wove her way through the little groups of partygoers, spreading smiles and good cheer wherever she went. The string sextet had arrived and was playing something vaguely Mozartish; a little later, they would switch to Strauss waltzes for the benefit of dancers on the patio, then, perhaps, gagging it up a little with a twist or a mambo for strings. They, too, were regulars at Connecticut lawn parties. Just one big happy family.
The guests were enjoying themselves. Why not? Everyone knew everyone else, down to the last dollar of income and who was sleeping with whom. It was a homogeneous group. Young -- nobody over 45. Rich -- nobody making less than five figures a year, and a few independently wealthy like Dan Connors. White -- of course. Anglo-Saxon -- but for a few exotic ones of German, Scandinavian, or Spanish descent. Protestant -- exclusively, and almost entirely Episcopalian. Republican -- except for a couple of maverick liberals who were tolerated in a good-humored way, chiefly because they were so rich it would have been a joke for them to vote Republican.
A nice little, tight little group, Vicky thought. They had certain mild predilections toward alcoholism and adultery, but that was only to be expected. It was all part of the way of life.
Up till now Vicky herself had not fully joined in that way of life. Her irrational desire to stay faithful to her husband had kept her away and apart. But all that was done with, now. Looking back, she found herself unable to imagine why she had bothered to remain faithful so long. Since she could get away with adultery, why not live it up?
Why not?
Of course, nothing went on at a party, at least on the surface. This wasn't any beatnik get-together that ended with everyone coupled off and making love in the open. Perhaps an impatient couple might sneak off into the woods or into a parked car, but it didn't happen often. There was too much danger of telltale grass stains on a dress, creases on an impeccable jacket. No, at a party like this the infidelities were more subtle. They consisted of gentle propositions for further rendezvous. Everything was done in a genteel and polite way, of course.
Nothing vulgar. Oh, no, never!
All the same, a good deal of the business being transacted at the party was the business of sex. Couples formed, split apart, re-formed. Negotiations for short-term mergers were entered into.
Vicky was on her third collins of the evening when Dan Connors finally was able to draw her aside. They walked off unobtrusively to the rose garden in the rear.
Connors said, "Well? Any after effects of this afternoon?"
"Such as?"
"I don't know. Creeping conscience pangs, maybe."
"No. Not a thing."
"I'm glad." He grinned. "Did Bill ask where you had gone today?"
"He wasn't interested. He never is."
"Poor Bill. He must have plenty of horns by now."
Vicky glared. "You think I'm a tramp?"
"I think you're a passionate woman," Connors said. "And I know Bill Wilcox is a calm, reserved man. Oil and water. So you must have --"
"Never," Vicky snapped. "You were the first. The first since my marriage. I swear it."
Connors looked startled. For a moment he said nothing. Finally, stroking his chin, he said, "I'm flattered, then. More than I can easily express."
Vicky shrugged "I didn't want to be like all the others. But now I see it's the only way."
"Yes," he said. He turned away, lifted a drooping rose. Then he said, "What did you think of Linda?"
"You want my honest, objective opinion?"
"Naturally."
Vicky smiled. "She's a silly little witch. She's way out of her depth here. Are you that hard up for sex, Dan?"
"I figured you'd say something like that."
"It's the truth," Vicky said.
He nodded. "Yes. It's the truth. Linda's got no poise, no finesse."
"Then why keep her around? Except for the sex, that is?"
"Well, yes," Connors drawled. "She's pretty good in bed I must admit. And getting better all the time. But I keep her around for creative reasons. I'm trying to shape a cultured woman. She was just a stenographer with a sexy body when I found her. I'm trying to turn her into something that could pass unnoticed at a party like this."
"The old Pygmalion routine?" Vicky grinned.
"You might say so."
"You aren't doing so well so far."
"I've only been living with her six weeks," Connors said. "It takes time. I can't hurry her or she'll rebel. And she's made tremendous progress. You should have seen her in April."
"She's got a long way to go," Vicky said. "Get that beehive off her head. And those eyelashes. And teach her how to talk. And how to walk in high heels."
"Patience, Vicky. Patience. It takes time." Connors lowered his voice and said softly, "Let's not talk about her. When will I see you again?"
"When do you want to?"
"Tomorrow?" he said.
"Impossible. It's Sunday."
His eyes sparkled. "Never on Sunday, eh?"
"I'll have to spend the day with Bill and the children. It's traditional."
"All right," Connors said. "Monday, then."
Vicky felt a little dizzy. It was one thing to call a man up on the spur of the moment and say you were coming over, and then to go to him before the impulse could fade. But to arrange things in advance this way, like a commercial transaction, a deal in flesh -- now she saw the real sordidness of suburban adultery.
But she had gone too far to draw back. "Monday," she said. "All right. At your place, of course."
"No. Let's not. Let's go to a motel."
"For God's sake, why?"
He shrugged cheerfully. "That's how it's supposed to be done. At motels. Don't you want to do it right?"
"It seemed pretty right to me this afternoon."
"But Linda'll be around on Monday. I can't keep packing her off. And I can't just have you over while she's there. She's still bourgeois. It would jeopardize my whole project is she found out I was -- unfaithful." Connors chuckled. "You don't mind, do you? She has a fascination I can't resist, even if it's an entirely different fascination from yours. I get a creative joy out of remodeling that girl. Let me have my fun."
Vicky sighed. "What motel?"
"You know the Spofford, on Route 21 about eleven miles east of here?"
"What time?"
"Say, one in the afternoon?"
"Okay. How do we work it?"
"I'll park outside the office and wait for you. Well go in together. Don't be late."
"I'm a very punctual person," Vicky said.
So it was all arranged, she thought, as they drifted back to rejoin the party. Signed, sealed, and on Monday delivered. She would meet Dan Connors at a motel, like all the tail-happy wives around here, and she would enact the ritual of adultery that was mandatory sooner or later. She didn't like the motel idea. It had been so much fun by the side of his swimming pool. But she couldn't be too choosy. And there might be a certain kind of shabby pleasure involved fn going off to a motel for the afternoon.
She got herself another drink.
The party was going well, she thought. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. There were smiling couples all around. A glance at the stack of empty liquor containers behind the bar told her that everyone was well oiled, too. At their lawn party last year, eighty guests had managed to run through a hundred twenty fifths of liquor during the course of the evening. Of course, that included a lot of spilled drinks, and unfinished ones, but it was still a hell of a lot of booze going down the hatch. Vicky suspected that that record would be topped with plenty to spare tonight.
And, of course, as the empties piled up, inhibitions went down. At least on the verbal level. In their set no one ever stripped to jump into the swimming pool, or any thing like that. But the talk got rougher, and the propositions flew thick and fast. Vicky had never yet been to a party where someone had not offered to go to bed with her. She had always treated the offer as a big joke, until today, with Dan Connors.
But, as she expected, there was another offer before the evening was out.
It came from an unlikely source -- Ted Frye, the magazine editor. Frye was a short, fleshless little man in his middle forties, with a sour-apple face and cold, slitted eyes. His wife was a notorious tramp, a big-busted wench who had slept her way through half of Connecticut by this time. Frye himself was mild-mannered, withdrawn, keeping his obvious dissatisfactions and bitternesses strictly to himself. Vicky had hardly ever spoken to him. He seemed afraid of her, afraid of all beautiful women.
But tonight he seemed at least four and a quarter sheets to the wind. He came unsteadily up to Vicky about half past eleven and said, "Let's dance?"
"I'd love to," Vicky lied.
They put down their drinks and made their way to the paved dance patio. The string sextet was playing a slow fox-trot, and they glided out among the dancers. Frye was very looped. He kept stumbling over his own feet, and Vicky had to take the lead, and keep him from falling.
He was dancing very close to her, too. Her breasts were tight against him. He was giving her belly and groin, and she found the contact repulsive. He was obviously in a state of sharp sexual need. She could feel it. She hated that kind of intimacy with a man she disliked. She hated being so close that she could measure him.
But there was no escaping it. She had agreed to dance, and she had to dance his way. Her breasts hurt from the close contact.
He said, "You're so beautiful, Vicky. I could cry, you're so beautiful."
"Why cry?"
"Because you belong to someone else," he said. "It makes me want to break things and throw them around to think of it. That something so beautiful should exist, and not be mine. Do you know, I think I love you, Vicky?"
She tried to laugh it off. "You've had too many martinis, Ted."
"No. I'm serious and I'm sober. I'm in love with you."
"You don't even know me."
'I don't need to. Do you need to know the Venus de Milo to fall in love with her?"
"At least I've got arms."
"Don't joke. I'm mad about you. Vicky You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to run a portfolio of pictures of you in my magazine."
"You aren't editing Playboy or Rogue," she said. "You run a woman's magazine."
"All the same. It would show the abstract ideal of nude feminine beauty. You."
"Somehow I don't think my husband would approve," Vicky said.
"Maybe he would. Suppose he did? Would you agree?"
Vicky smiled. "Don't be silly. My body is my own business. You think I want it in every beauty parlor?"
Rebuffed, Frye changed his tack immediately. "Then come away with me, Vicky. For a couple of days. We'll run down to Nassau together. Bill doesn't need to know. Tell him you're visiting a sick uncle. It'll be a grand time, Vicky. I'll see to that."
"Ted --"
"We can leave on Wednesday and stay through the weekend. And --"
"No, Ted. Absolutely not. I'm sorry. It's impossible. I'm not the kind of woman these others are, I guess. I don't deceive my husband." The words rolled easily off her lips. They had been true until so recently, after all.
"Is that final?"
"Final," she said.
She managed to get rid of him when the dance ended. He looked terribly hurt at her refusal. Well, she thought, there was no helping it. Let him take his bulging trousers somewhere else. The thought of spending four days alone with Ted Frye -- or even four hours--depressed her. He was a pitiful little man, and she felt sorry for him, but she couldn't help him out. There were plenty of women here who would -- women who didn't mind his looks; maybe even women who were charmed by his runty ugliness. Let them have him, she thought.
She forgot all about Ted Frye.
The party started to break up around half past one, as the early birds departed, those who absolutely had to be on the golf course at eight the next morning. By two, the guests were about half gone. But now a hard core remained, and getting rid of them was a slower process. By three in the morning there were still a dozen couples, sitting around in the lawn chairs grimly downing their last drinks. It was not until almost half past four in the morning that the last of them had left. The bartender was long since gone -- he never stayed past three, and the guests had to mix their own after then. The musicians were gone. Everyone was gone. The lawn was a mess. The party had been a great success.
Tiredly, Bill and Vicky Wilcox went upstairs and to bed.
Vicky kicked off her shoes, unfastened her jewelry, undid her gown. She stepped out of it and carefully put it away. She and Bill shared the same bedroom, but each had a private adjoining dressing room and bathroom. Vicky debated taking a shower, decided against it, and gave herself a good scrubbing at the sink instead.
Nude, she entered the bedroom. She walked to the window, and looked out at the lawn below.
Bill came in from the other side. He was nude too. His big body looked lean and healthy.
"Good party," he said.
"Mmm. You see how many cases of Scotch they put away?"
"Scads. And rivers of gin. I hope they all get home alive."
"Most of them will," Vicky said.
"It's safer to give parties than to go to them," Bill said. "The roads around here on Saturday nights are real deathtraps."
"It's cheaper to go to them, though."
"It all evens out," Bill said. "If you don't give parties, sooner or later you stop getting invited to them." He turned down the coverlet, got into bed. Vicky joined him.
"Sleepy?" he asked. "Yes."
"Too sleepy?"
She knew what that meant. He wanted to make love She sighed. She didn't particularly want to, but she didn't want not to, either. She simply didn't care.
"If you'd like to," she said.
"I'd like to."
She turned toward him. His hands stroked her body expertly. There was nothing passionate about him; even making love was a job requiring skill rather than fire. He knew which parts of her body to touch, how to arouse her. She never left his embrace feeling ungratified. But she was never gratified very deeply, either.
One big hand was on her breasts, the other on her legs. She lay back, passively accepting his caresses, and wishing vaguely he would get it over with. She was sleepy. She didn't need sex now, not after this afternoon. Finally, to hurry things along, she began to pretend to an arousal she didn't actually feel.
Bill took it as his signal. His weight descended on her, gently, and he entered her. He began to move back and forth. Vicky matched his rhythm. She felt little excitement. There was a man moving in her body, that was all. She was far removed from what was taking place. She felt the hardness of him penetrating her, and for an instant there was a stir of excitement in her, and it stirred answering excitement in Bill, and with a flurry of movement he reached his fulfillment and withdrew from her.
He kissed the tips of her breasts lightly.
"Good night, darling."
"Good night, Bill." Some gesture of affection was needed, she knew, and she ran her hand over his body. Then she turned on her side. What a bore Bill was, she thought.
She thought of Monday, and Dan Connors.
She thought of making love in a motel room. And a quiver of lust shook her for a moment, before sleep claimed her.
CHAPTER FOUR
M-DAY CAME.
M day for Monday. M for Motel.
A lot of other initials wandered through her mind as Vicky got ready for her excursion. D for Dan. A for Adultery. S for Sex.
It was a fun game, she thought. I for Infidelity. 0 for Orgasm. U for Unchastity.
She dressed lightly -- a loose silk blouse and a pair of tight toreador pants. She didn't bother with underwear. She didn't like to wear it in warm weather Her breasts were so good that a bra was superfluous anyway, and she hated the way panties showed under tight pants.
It was half past twelve when she left the house. She doubted that it would take her that long to drive to the motel, but she wanted to leave time tot taking wrong 45 turns, meeting people on route, and so forth. She stopped off in the back yard to wave good-bye to the children. They waved back vaguely. Her comings and goings didn't matter much to them. Let their nurse take a weekend off and they'd get upset and depressed, but Mommy could go away for a week or a month, or vanish entirely forever, and they probably would hardly notice.
She got into the Jaguar.
She started the engine.
Here I go, she thought. Off to meet a man at a motel.
There was a tingle in her body. She enjoyed the illicit nature of what she was doing, the aspect of the forbidden, almost as much as the physical satisfaction of it With a whoosh, she spun out onto the highway. She tromped down hard on the accelerator, revelling in the sudden surge of power.
The road was empty. It was a bright, hot, early-summer day. The elms that lined the road on both side were swaying with the fullness of their leaves, their tops almost touching to form a bower above the road. Birds chortled overhead. Squirrels and woodchucks scuttled across the road and into the underbursh. A beautiful day, Vicky thought. A fine day for getting laid. The miles whizzed by. She realized they were going by a little too fast. She'd be at the motel, soon, and she felt a little apprehensive about that. Suppose something went wrong? Suppose the desk clerk refused to admit them? Or maybe the police would pick today to raid the motel and demand to see marriage licenses. She had heard that they sometimes did things like that. She didn't know much about motels. When she and Bill travelled, they always stayed at the best places.
A billboard told her that the Spofford Motor Lodge was two miles ahead. She slowed to fifty, then to forty, The two miles became one. Half a mile.
Then she saw the motel. It was an ordinary motel-looking motel, a long low building in the shape of a U. with a freeform swimming pool in front. Vicky slowed and drove in the front way. She was early. It was only a quarter to one. She had not needed the extra time.
The place looked quiet. There were no more than half a dozen cars parked in the stalls outside the units, and none of the cars was Dan Connors' Dual-Ghia.
Vicky pulled her car into a vacant stall. Feeling tremendously self-conscious, she got out and strolled slowly around the center court. It seemed to her that a million pairs of eyes were peering at her from behind the slatted blinds of the motel rooms, and that everyone could tell just from looking at her that this was a young wife who had come here for the purpose of committing adultery.
She was afraid to go inside. She walked completely around the court, then went back to her car and leaned against it, trying to look calm and unconcerned. Maybe he won't come, she thought. Maybe he forgot about it. Or maybe he's busy with Linda -- The image burned in her brain, Connors on top of Linda, the girl's knees jutting into the air. His hands were on her huge breasts, and his hips were pistoning, up and down, up and down, thrusting, thrusting, and she was thrusting back, and the hours were going by and their love-making was endless. Vicky could see it sharply, with a clarity that surprised her -- the little details, the puckering of the other girl's nipples, the cleft of her buttocks, the roll of fat at her waist.
Then Connors' car pulled into the motel. The time was five to one.
Connors hopped out, a jaunty figure in polo shirt and slacks. He saw her at once, waved, trotted over to her. She grinned at him, and, in her belief at no longer being alone in this strange place, threw her arms around him and kissed him eagerly.
"Been here long?" he asked.
"About ten minutes."
"You really are punctual, aren't you?"
"I thought I'd have trouble getting here," she said. "I allowed extra time. But as it turned out I didn't need it."
He grinned down at her from his towering height. "Well, we might as well go in."
"We might as well," she said.
They marched into the office like man and wife. Vicky had expected all sorts of embarrassments during registration, but everything went off as though on wheels. Connors asked for a double room, was told the price, gave the clerk fourteen dollars, and signed the registry book. Vicky noticed that he signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Benson, without even pausing to invent the name, so probably he had done this many times before.
"It's the twelfth door to the left of the office, Mr. Benson," the clerk said, handing Connors the key, Connors thanked him. He and Vicky set out for their room.
"Isn't he suspicious?" Vicky asked. "Seeing us arrive in separate cars?"
Connors shrugged. "These guys don't give a damn.
So long as we claim to be man and wife, and pay in advance for our room, and seem to be over 21, it's none of their business. A place like this would go out of existence in a hurry except for the local couples who use it. I bet it makes up half their income. More than half."
They reached their room.
Connors opened it.
"Well, here we are," he announced.
It was a room-shaped room. It was medium big, about fourteen by twenty, with a bed, a chest of drawers, a desk, an armchair, two lamp tables, two lamps. An air conditioning vent purred softly. A door to the left led to the bathroom.
It all seemed pretty crude to Vicky. The bed too straightforwardly proclaimed its purpose. It was nice and wide, and probably had a sturdy mattress, the best kind for sex. This whole motel seemed designed for sex.
Connors closed the door and locked it. "Pity there's no room service here," he said. "I bet you'd like a drink now."
"I sure would."
"I've got a fifth of gin in the car. And there must be an ice cube machine around here somewhere. We can fix our own. Be right back."
He left. Vicky wandered around the room. She wondered if she should get undressed while he was gone. No, she thought. Let him undress her. Do the thing properly.
She waited. Connors came back in five minutes, with a bottle of Beefeater in one hand and a paper box of ice cubes in the other.
"There," he said. "Refreshments."
Vicky fixed gin on the rocks for two. They drank them slowly. She sat on the armchair, he on the window ledge. They looked across the room at each other. Vicky felt uncomfortable, but the gin took the edge off her discomfort. She finished her drink. He drained the last of his.
He came toward her.
She met him in the middle of the room. Her body seemed to flow into his. He slipped one arm around her shoulders and put the other on the front of her blouse, grinning broadly as he made the discovery that she was naked underneath. She lifted her lips to his, and tasted the gin on his tongue as it plunged into her mouth.
Then he was unbuttoning her blouse, and easing it off her. Her bare breasts rose proudly into view. He cupped them in his hands, making baskets of his fingers to support the ripe, lush fleshy globes.
As he dongled her breasts, she opened his shirt, then drew his belt out. She sank to her knees. Her fingers explored for a moment, until she found what she was looking for.
He stroked her hair and sighed gently in pleasure. After a few moments he lifted her, embraced her again, the points of her breasts touching his bare chest. He drew her panties off.
"You don't believe in underwear, do you?."
"It gets in the way," she said.
She was naked now. A moment later, so was he. He carried her to the bed. She lay there, comfortable and relaxed. He stood above her.
"What a fabulous body you have," he whispered.
"Better than Linda's?"
"Better than anyone's. Where in hell did a slim girl like you get a pair of breasts like that?"
"I bought them in Saks Fifth Avenue," she answered. "They were on sale." She reached out and her hand closed firmly. "Where did you get this?"
"It's an heirloom, sweet. My daddy left it to me."
"Your daddy must have been quite a man."
"That he was, all right."
Connors laughed his hearty laugh and dropped down on he bed alongside her. He touched his lips lightly to her instep, then brought his head up, kissing as he went, to her calf, her thigh. He moved a little higher, over the satiny skin of her thigh, and then higher still.
"Like that?"
"Mmmm!"
"Want more?"
"Mmmmmmm!"
"Bill ever do this to you?" he asked. "Not often. He doesn't like it."
"But you like it?"
"I think it's the most wonderful feeling in the world," she said.
She closed her eyes and let the sensations throb deliciously through her. He was crouched over her, kneeling with one knee on either side of her shoulders. She drew him down into a more convenient position, their bodies curled like inverted commas. For a long moment the sounds in the room were hoarse, animalistic.
Her body was on fire. Looking at him, she could see that he was magnificently ready for her. It must hurt him to be swollen that way, she thought. She wondered what it felt like for a man. He was so big, so much bigger than Bill, bigger even than he himself had been on Saturday.
"I want you, Dan. Now!" He swivelled around to lie the same way she was. His hand came to rest on her, and she clamped her thighs shut tight around it. She put her own hand on him, and moved her fingers.
He turned to her.
Her thighs parted. She closed her eyes tightly, and her breath escaped her in a little hiss. She felt him at the entrance to her body. He was probing gently, delicately, as though afraid of hurting her.
"No," she cried. "Be rough with me! Rape me, Dan! Rip me apart!"
She pivoted her body high and put her hands on his buttocks, pushing him toward her. He caught his breath and rammed against her. There was a moment of pain as he burst through the barrier. But then there was only the feeling of completion, of fulfillment, of the filling of an aching void.
She clung to him.
She dug her hands into the rigid muscles of his back and locked her legs tight around his body, and pushed hard against him, trying to take him to the depths. He entered, but he was so ruggedly male that she could not have all of him. But some was more than enough.
Body strained against body. Passion mounted to the heights. The furious moment of gratification was only an instant away.
"Dan!" she cried. "Dan, Dan, Dan! Oh, yes, yes, Dan, yes, YES!"
She yielded to him.
She threw open her soul in complete and total surrender.
Their bodies merged. She had never experienced such utter unity. He was in her and on her and of her, one flesh, one flame of passion. Higher and higher they mounted, until she could take no more. She half-pivoted, and he spread the fingers of one hand out over the ripeness of her buttocks, the long fingers extending over both of the velvet cheeks, and she quivered and shuddered her way to an ecstasy of overwhelming power.
And then he was ready to lead her on to the next. And the next. And the next.
The revelation of Saturday had only been the beginning. He showed her now the full capacity of the flesh, the utmost extent of her ability to absorb pleasure. He carried her along, teaching her without words. She thought her brain would burn out at each summit, but there was always the next peak to climb, and the one beyond that.
And he seemed inexhaustible.
Until finally he whispered harshly, "This is it, Vicky -- this is the finish --"
"All right, darling."
"Standing up," he gasped. "Let's do it standing HP -- His bull-like strength was incredible. He seized her, swinging her off the bed without breaking the contact that linked them. He gripped her buttocks and held her aloft, jabbing and thrusting and plunging, and shivers of unimaginable ecstasy ran through her, and then she heard him gasp, a sound dredged up from the depths of him. His fulfillment was a colossal thing, a mighty convulsion of ecstatic energy. She held tight to him, glorying in the terrific intensity of that climax. Then they dropped back limply on the bed.
There was no question of an encore. They had been through a lifetime of sex in that single hour' They lay together, drained, exhausted. Happy.
He let his hand rest on her breasts. He was smiling, his eyes closed "I've never known a man like you, Dan." she whispered.
"Have you known many men -- this way?"
"Not really Half a dozen or so when I was a kid. Then Bill. And no more till you."
"How old were you when you first had it?"
"Seventeen," she said. "He was a high school sweetheart. I gave him me as his graduation present."
"He must have loved that."
"He didn't believe me at first," Vicky said. "I had to convince him I meant it by taking off my clothes. I was terribly scared, the first time. But I liked it. Then he went off to college and met a girl and that was the end for us."
"What about the others?"
"Kids I dated in college. When I felt serious about them, I did it with them. But there weren't many. Half a dozen altogether. And then Bill."
"And then me."
"And then you." She smiled and stroked his body. "And you're as good as all the rest of them put together, lover."
"Flattery will get you nowhere."
"It's already got me someplace," she said. She leaned over, kissed him. "Glad you decided to stop being virtuous?"
"You bet," she said "But I can't let myself get altogether sinful. What time is it?"
"Half past three."
"We better be moving along. I have to get back to my family. And Linda's going to miss you, I guess."
"Don't talk about Linda."
"I'm not jealous," Vicky said. "Not very, anyway. It's okay."
She rose from the bed, started to pull her pants on. Connors came up behind her, cupping his hands over the lush globes of her breasts. She twisted around to kiss him.
She wanted to tell him she loved him. But the words didn't come. It wasn't appropriate for a married woman to tell her lover she loved him, was it? Not unless she planned to marry him. And she didn't. She was too much afraid of his virility for that. And she couldn't leave Bill and the kids. No, this would have to be strictly an extramarital affair, she thought.
So the word "love" would have nothing to do with it.
She finished dressing. He was dressed a moment later, and they were ready to go.
She took a last look around. The motel room, which had seemed so bleak and depressing when she arrived, now seemed almost like an old and beloved home to her. And why not? She had spent the most passionate couple of hours of her life here.
"Kiss me," she said, as they started to go out.
He took her in his arms, and her body strained against his. The kiss was short but fiery. She let go of him reluctantly.
"When's the next time?" she asked.
"We'll work it out. Thursday, Friday, maybe. We don't want to overdo it. People would get suspicious."
He sounded a little casual, she thought. Was he growing bored with her already? Had she failed him in bed just now, in some way? Or was his cool tone just the after-effects of his lovemaking?
Probably nothing more than that, she thought. She couldn't blame him for being a little worn out after the performance he had given. Most likely his interest in her would return to full pitch in a couple of hours, when his body was back to normal.
They stepped out of the room and started to walk toward their cars.
Another car pulled into the courtyard, a shiny new Lincoln Continental. Two people got out -- a short, thin man and a tall, full-bodied woman.
Vicky recognized them.
The woman was Moira Dannon, the wife of a local lawyer. She had a reputation as an easy lay. The man was Ted Frye. "Oh, God," Vicky moaned. "What's the matter?"
"Don't look back. But Moira Dannon and Ted Frye just got out of a car and went inside.
"So? It's a popular place."
"You didn't tell me I was likely to be seen here!"
"They didn't see you," Connors said.
"I'm sure Ted did. He looked right at me. I couldn't turn away fast enough."
"What of it?" Connors asked. "He's in the same boat you are, isn't he? The pot can't go around calling the kettle black. He's here with somebody else's wife. He won't make any trouble for you."
But Vicky remembered how badly the little man had wanted her. And how she had protested that she was a faithful wife. And now, only two days later, Ted had seen her at a motel with Dan Connors.
There would be trouble. Vicky knew it.
Ted Frye would not feel above blackmail.
There was going to be big trouble. She bit down hard on her lip. Waving good-bye to Connors, she headed quickly for her car, and drove away from the motel and back toward home as fast as she dared.
CHAPTER FIVE
TROUBLE WAS NOT LONG arriving. Vicky fearer! the worst, and the worst came to pass.
It started coming to pass that evening after dinner. She was reading in the library. The children were asleep. Bill was upstairs in his study, going over the text of a paper he was going to deliver at a psychiatrists' meeting next week. The house was very quiet. Vicky was having trouble concentrating on her book despite the tranquil silence, though. Her mind was full of the events of the afternoon, of the incredible moments of flaming passion in Dan Connors' arms, and the instant of cold horrified shock when her eyes met those of Ted Frye.
Then the phone rang, spoiling the silence, splitting the air noisily.
Vicky jumped up tensely and grabbed it on the second ring.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Vicky." A soft, feathery voice. "Ted Frye here."
She felt the floor drop out from under her. Her first impulse was to slam the phone down on its hook. But that would be stupid, she realized. Frye would only call back again in a moment. And Bill, upstairs, had an extension on his desk. If the phone began ringing constantly, he might pick up and overhear -- "Yes?" Vicky said cautiously. "What is it, Ted?"
"You ought to know."
"I'm afraid I don't."
"I'm afraid you do. You were stringing me along at that party Saturday night, weren't you?."
"About what?"
"About being a faithful wife. That was just malarkey you were handing out to brush me off. I guessed as much, but now I don't need to rely on guesswork."
Vicky felt cold sweatbeads running out of her armpits and down her sides. She kept her ears cocked for the little clicking sound that meant Bill had picked up his extension. She said wearily, "What do you want with me, Ted?"
"Nothing that I'd feel like mentioning over the phone," he said nastily. "Look --"
"You look. Meet me for lunch tomorrow, Vicky. In the city. I've got some very important things to discuss with you."
"I'm not planning to come in tomorrow."
"Well, change your plans. I mean it. I don't want to have to argue with you about it. If you're smart, you'll meet me tomorrow."
She sighed. "Where?"
"You know the Rochet, on East 54th Street?"
"I suppose."
"Meet me there at half past twelve. I'll be on time and I expect you to do the same. Good-bye, Vicky. See you tomorrow."
The phone went dead. Vicky stared at the gaily colored receiver for a moment, then limply let it back into its cradle. Her body felt chilled. Her fingers quivered with fear.
No doubt of it now. It had been Ted Frye at the motel, and he .had seen her, and now he was going to make trouble for her about it. What did he want? Why couldn't he just live and let live? He had been at the motel for illicit purposes too, hadn't he? So how could he make any trouble? Dan had reassured her about that. He couldn't accuse her of anything without laying himself open to a charge of adultery too.
But still -- She was scared. Terrified. She went to the sideboard, reached in for a bottle at random, and came up with the sherry. She poured herself a glass and tossed it off as though it were fruit juice. But it failed to calm her nerves. Too weak, she thought. She knelt again, rummaged around the many bottles, and found the cognac. She filled a snifter almost halfway, and shakily sipped at it.
The combination of sherry and cognac is usually a pleasant one. But Vicky found it making her stomach queasy. Her tension increased. She glanced at herself in the mirror behind the bric-a-brac shelf, and was horrified at the sight of her face, the skin almost gray.
Pull yourself together, she told herself.
You look like your own corpse. Calm down. There's nothing to be afraid of. Ted Frye can't do a thing to you, not a single thing. He's just an evil little gnome with a filthy mind.
She returned to the couch, opened the book, forced herself to read. But the words danced meaninglessly on the page. They were like so many wriggling black worms writhing in front of her.
Bill came downstairs an hour later. "What was that call a while back?" he asked. "Anything?"
"No Nothing special," Vicky answered faintly. "Just someone wanting to talk."
He didn't press the matter. He wanted to read her the text of his speech. Vicky listened dutifully, although the speech made as little sense to her as the sentences of her novel had. She knew her opinions weren't wanted. He just wanted to hear how the speech sounded out loud, and he was using that desire as a convenient excuse to inflict the speech on her. Make it seem as though he needed her for something. But she wasn't fooled.
They went to bed early. As she turned out the light, Vicky said, as casually as she could manage it, "I'm going to go into the city tomorrow."
"Yes, dear."
She felt she had to elaborate on the brief statement. "I've got some shopping to do. I guess I'll be back around five-ish. Ahead of the rush hour, at any rate."
"All right, Vick Have a nice day."
As simple as that The man had no suspicions He was completely innocent. Vicky wondered what he would say if she told him, "I'm going into the city to have lunch with the eyewitness to the adultery I committed this afternoon. I think he wants to blackmail me somehow."
She didn't say it. She closed her eyes and curled up in a tight fetal ball with her hands clasped between her knees. She thought of Dan Connors, a mile and a half away. Right now Dan was probably making love to his Linda. He had recovered fully from his exertions of the afternoon, and now he was mounting his busty platinum blonde, taking her for a good ride.
Jealousy flamed in Vicky. Briefly.
She bit her lip. She forced herself not to think of Dan Connors' hands on Linda's breasts, of Dan Connors' body between Linda's thighs. She tried to think of neutral, sexless things. Cool, grassy fields. Meadows and brooks. Thick-bodied old oak trees.
Her mind was feverish. Naked images of Dan and Linda kept wandering through it.
And then she saw Ted Frye --or, rather, a creature with the body of a satyr, shrunken and wizened, standing on cloven hooves. The face was the face of Ted Frye, and he was terrifyingly masculine, and he was coming closer to her, closer, standing over her as she lay naked, and suddenly descending, plunging into her -- Finally she slept. Badly.
* * *
The morning was slow. There was little for her to do around the house. She wandered out into the garden and pruned the rosebushes for a while; the gardener didn't like her to meddle with them, but there wasn't much he could do to stop her. She slashed away at the thorny canes until that, too, bored her.
All around her the household activities were running smoothly. The children were playing with the nurse; the maid was tidying the house; the gardener was mowing Ike lawn; the cook was puzzling over menus for dinner. Everyone busy, everyone fulfilling an appointed place in the scheme of things.
Except me, Vicky thought.
Odd girl out.
She got through the morning, somehow. At eleven o'clock she changed out of her gardening clothes into something fit for going to the city in, and climbed into the Jaguar. Her hands were cold as she turned on the ignition. This whole trip was repugnant to her. But she had no choice. Ted Frye was gripping her by the short hairs, and twisting.
There was little traffic. She buzzed along the turnpike at seventy miles an hour, taking the curves recklessly, as though half preferring to get killed in a smash-up rather than to have to have lunch with Ted Frye.
But she made it to New York alive. She found a garage on 55th Street west of Madison, and left the Jag there. Then she headed for the Rochet.
Frye was waiting for her, at the bar. The restaurant was crowded -- a lunch time crowd of executives. Rochet's was too expensive for the ordinary wage-slave.
Frye grinned at her. He almost seemed to be drooling. "I've got a table reserved for us," he said. "Inside. The best room."
Vicky nodded without saying anything. Frye led her through the two outer dining rooms to a third one where the tables were widely spaced and fenced off by plush-walled booth partitions. A smiling waiter bowed to her, pulled out her chair.
"Would madame like a cocktail?" he purred.
"Martini," Vicky said. "Very dry."
"The same," Frye put in.
The moment the waiter left, Frye leaned across the table toward her. He looked like some wizened little gnome, Vicky thought. He was only about five feet seven, and sitting down he looked even smaller. But his usual wishy-washy, apologetic expression had been replaced by something new, an aggressive look, a triumphant look.
"You're very beautiful today, Vicky."
"You didn't ask me here to compliment me."
"No," he said. "But it's just a statement of fact. You're very beautiful. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever known, in fact."
A muscle in Vicky's cheek quirred irritably. "What do you want with me?"
"Just to talk," he said. The drinks arrived. He lifted his though expecting her to clink glasses with him. He kept on waiting. Vicky put her glass to her lips and drained off a third of the martini quickly.
Frye said, "You caused me great pain yesterday."
"How so?" Vicky said evenly.
"You humiliated me. You made a big pretense of being virtuous -- and then ran off to a motel a couple of days later with someone else. How do you think that makes me feel?"
Vicky shrugged. "Do you really think you're as attractive to women as Dan Connors is?"
"Of course not. But if you didn't want to sleep with me, you could have simply said so. You didn't need to give me an aria about your virtue."
"Maybe I was virtuous Saturday night. Maybe yesterday was my first slip."
"I don't believe that."
She looked at him steadily. "You don't know how close it is to being the truth," she said. "I'm not in the habit of being unfaithful. Since I've been married I've deceived BUI only twice. Both times with the same man. And both times in the last week."
"Regardless," Frye said. "You had already deceived him when you told me you were faithful."
"All right. I lied to you! I was trying to spare your feelings. Which would you have wanted -- that I tell you I thought you were ugly, or that it was a matter of principle for me to stay chaste?"
Frye considered that. "All right, then. You were sparing my feelings. The fact still remains that you've been unfaithful to your husband."
"Which now puts me in the same class as three quarters of the other women I know."
"Agreed," Frye said. "And since you've now openly admitted your lack of chastity, there's no reason why you can't go to bed with me."
"One reason."
"Which is?"
"That you don't appeal to me."
Frye scowled. "I'm not that ugly."
"You're not that handsome, either. Besides, I'm not promiscuous. One lover at a time is enough for me. More than enough."
"There's always room for one more."
"No room for you."
"You're so cruel! Hell, Vicky, what would it cost you? You don't know how I suffer. I can't sleep. I lie awake dreaming of you. Trying to imagine what its like to hold your naked body in my arms. Can't you give me one single hour, Vicky?"
"No," she said firmly.
"It isn't as though you're a virgin. You're an experienced woman. And you've been unfaithful already. So I won't change your status in any way. And it'll be such a marvelous thing for me. I've been living in hell, Vicky. You can rescue me. One hour. You can close your eyes and pretend it isn't happening. And then forget about it the moment it's over. But I'd remember. Please?"
Vicky had never heard this particular line of attack before. But novelty was its only appeal. The thought of sleeping with Ted Frye sickened her.
"No," she said. "I'm not a sex machine. I can't give myself to a man who doesn't attract me."
"Don't you feel at all sorry for me?"
"Why should I? You've got no business being in love with me. I'm another man's wife."
"Can I help that? Love isn't a rational thing, Vicky."
"I'm sorry. Stick to Moira Dannon. I can't go along with this, Ted. Don't throw Dan in my face. Because I went to a motel with him doesn't mean that I'm up for grabs for anyone who asks."
Frye's face darkened. He looked down into his empty martini glass. "You're a very obstinate girl, Vicky."
"I'm not trying to be. You're the one who's obstinate. You're demanding the impossible."
He toyed with his silverware. "What would happen," he asked, "If Bill found out you had spent yesterday afternoon at a motel with Dan Connors?"
Vicky gulped the last of her drink. She had known this would be coming along sooner or later. The blackmail pitch. It was so perfectly in character for Ted.
She said, "You wouldn't stoop that low, would you, Ted?"
"Wouldn't I?"
"Do you really want to go to bed with me that badly?"
"You can't imagine how badly."
"No, I guess I can't."
He tapped the table top. "I hate to, use a power play on you. But this is driving me out of my mind. Sleep with me, Vicky. Or I'll have to tell Bill."
"What do you think that'll accomplish?"
"It'll make trouble for you. Trouble that I'm sure you want to avoid. It would be so much simpler for you just to give in and avoid a fuss."
"How do you know Bill isn't already aware of my affair with Dan?"
Frye blinked at that. Then he said, "That's a bluff I can call, Vicky. If he already knows, then it won't matter much if I call him up and tell him about it. The waiter will bring a plug-in phone to the table, and we can end the whole matter right here. Waiter! Waiter!"
He snapped his fingers. A waiter turned.
Vicky said anxiously, "No, Tea! Don't call!"
Frye grinned demonically, triumphantly. As the waiter came over, Frye said, "We'd like to order, please. Could we have menus?"
"Of course, sir."
Frye turned back to Vicky. "So you don't want me to call him?"
"No."
"He doesn't know, does he?" She stared over his sloping shoulder. "No. He doesn't know."
"And if I told him, it would really kick over the apple cart, wouldn't it?"
She was silent. She didn't know how Bill would take it at all. Maybe he would be furious. More likely he wouldn't be. Perhaps he wouldn't even believe Frye's insinuations.
But it was something to be avoided. Bill trusted her. She didn't want that trust shaken.
She said, "You can't hope to gain anything by this. Do you think breaking up my marriage will get me into your bed?"
"No. But maybe you'd be anxious to avoid that breakup. I don't want to tell Bill anything."
"You know, this works both ways. Suppose I told Moira Dannon's husband that I saw her with you at a motel? Or your own wife?"
Frye shrugged. "No good. Everyone in the state knows that Moira Dannon's a slut. Including her own husband. So announcing the fact to him would just be a waste of time. He's not interested. And neither is my wife. She doesn't give a damn what I do as long as she has her freedom. So you've got no hold on me."
Vicky stared at him bleakly. Dan had been so confident that Frye wouldn't try anything, for just that reason. But Frye had side-stepped her whole thrust.
Maybe he was bluffing too. Maybe.
But somehow she didn't think so.
She said, "Do you know how much I despise you?"
"I can guess."
"And you still want to sleep with me? Knowing that I hate you?"
"It's an obsession with me, Vicky."
She looked at him. The little beady eyes, the thin gnomish lips. The thought of going to bed with him was disgusting. To think of those spidery hands crawling over her breasts, touching her nipples, parting her thighs -- to think of his body covering hers, his nakedness against her, his maleness pressing into her -- She shuddered.
Frye saw the shudder.
She said, "Why won't you leave me alone?"
"Because I can't. I've got to have you."
"And your terms are?"
"Sleep with me and I'll forget I saw you at the motel yesterday. Turn me down and Bill gets the full story before midnight."
"You stinking louse!"
"I'm sorry. I can't help myself."
Vicky was silent a long moment. Then she said, "I could murder you, you know?"
"I suppose you'd have motive. But murder's a risky business. It's so much easier just to give in and get it over with."
"Yes," she said. "Yes. So much easier." She turned tortured eyes on him. "All right. You miserable toad of a man, I'll sleep with you. When?
His eyes blazed. "Today.!"
Vicky was taken aback. "So -- soon?"
"Why not? Should we wait till Christmas? Till next Easter? We'll do it today. We'll end the whole matter right here and now."
Her lips trembled. "I've got to get back home by five. I can't stay when we're finished with lunch Well be through in plenty of time for you to go home to the kiddies."
"You reserved a hotel room for today?"
"Of course."
"You knew I'd give in?"
"I hoped you would," he said.
The waiter returned. They ordered, "The menu was a long and lavish one, but Vicky had no appetite She ordered another martini and a chef's salad. Frye ordered a full-course meal, though. As though he wanted to bolster his virility with plenty of calories. Vicky sank back against her chair, numb with shock. She felt as though she were a slave who had just been sold at public auction, her nakedness displayed to all eyes in the market place.
I'm going to bed with Ted Frye, she thought in wonder.
It was hard to believe. Only a week ago she had been so chaste, and now here she was agreeing to sleep with the least attractive man in the state of Connecticut. It was insanity.
But it was real.
She saw that she was caught in a web of passion. One thing was leading to another If she hadn't slept with Dan Connors on Saturday, she never would have gone to the motel with Dan on Monday, she wouldn't be about to give herself to Ted Frye in a midtown hotel on Tuesday.
Where did it end?
Would it go on and on. an interweaving chain of sins? Was she going to be doomed to an endless life of too much sex, too much drinking, too much sin?
I was bored being chaste, she thought But at least I didn't have to sleep with men like Ted Frye.
She wandered for a moment whether boredom was better than degradation.
She toyed with her salad. Frye was rapidly polishing off a filet mignon.
"Come on," she said in a rough voice. "Finish your meal. Let's get out of here. Let's get this thing over with."
CHAPTER SIX
FRYE HAD RENTED A ROOM in one of New York's most j. expensive and most elegant hotels. It figured. Small men have transparent ways of making themselves look big. And Frye had plenty of money to throw around.
It was only five blocks from the restaurant to the hotel, and they walked it. Vicky moved along in quick, nervous strides, Frye tagging at her side. She tried not to look at him. They entered the hotel, and Vicky's cheeks blazed as she saw the lounging bellhops staring at her. It wasn't any trick for her to read their minds. They were all wondering, she knew, how come a spectacular-looking girl like her was going upstairs with a little nothing like him. Most likely they figured she was a call girl, Vicky thought. Or else out for Frey's money. She certainly couldn't be going to bed with him for his looks.
They got into the elevator.
"Nine," Frye said His voice was crisp and commanding He was very much the man of authority now, the Napoleon at the scene of victory.
Vicky hated him more and more every minute.
They reached the ninth floor. Got out, walked down the hall. He opened the door. The room was tremendous, and very old-fashioned both in design and decor. It had a bed, though. A big bed.
Frye locked the door.
He turned to her and said, "I beg you, Vicky, don't hate me for this."
"Let's get on with it. Do you want me to take all my clothes off or just some?"
"All. Everything."
Vicky shrugged and put her hands to the buttons of her dress. She stepped out of it. Frye was watching her, beady-eyed, almost not breathing. Vicky was sick with contempt and anger. To strip herself in front of this man: to give her body to him -- it was a blasphemy.
Mechanically, she forced herself to do it. She knew she had no choice. He could make big trouble for her This was Dan Connors' fault, she knew. Why did he have to take her to a public motel? There were so many other places they could have done it. Private places.
Too late for that now She drew off her slip, then paused, unwilling to go further Frye's eyes were glassy with lust. "Go on," he whispered. "The rest of it. All of it."
"You slimy worm," Vicky muttered.
Her hands went to the hasps of her bra. She opened it, and the cups dropped away, baring the high mounds of her breasts. Frye's eyes widened as though he had never seen a woman's naked breasts before His face was flushed and his breath was coming in little ragged bursts.
Vicky felt numb. Now that her breasts were exposed, the rest didn't matter. Almost in a daze, she drew down her panties to reveal the dimpled swells of her pink buttocks. She unclasped her garters, took down her stockings, finally threw the garterbelt aside.
She was as naked as the day she left the womb.
Frye's eyes drank in the sight. He was making hoarse and rasping sounds of lust.
"Turn around," he said. "I want to see everything."
"Stop drooling and let's finish."
"No rush," he said. "Let's do it the right way. Turn around."
Reluctantly, Vicky turned. She showed him the profile of her breasts, the two heavy globes outcurving, rising at the tip-tilted nipples. She turned and felt the sting of his eyes on her slim back and on the fleshy abundance of her buttocks. At least he hadn't touched her yet, Vicky thought.
Not yet.
But now he began to undress.
Vicky watched in horror. She stood still, naked in the middle of the room, her breasts rising and falling slowly. He was stripping quickly. She had the same kind of revolted fascination with which she would look at a praying mantis or a scuttling crab. He had his shirt and undershirt off, now. He was opening his belt.
He dropped his trousers. His body was skinny, absurdly skinny, the legs and arms like pipestems, the chest hollow. She doubted that he weighed a hundred twenty pounds. He was literally skin and bones. She stared at his nakedness. And she saw that incredibly, improbably, he was as vigorously male as anyone she knew, even including Dan Connors. Suddenly she understood the secret of this ugly little man's appeal for women. She knew how he had been able to seduce Moira Dannon and the others who were known to have succumbed to him. Nature, which had been so cruel to him in so many ways, had endowed him magnificently in one way.
Now he came toward her, gloating over his nakedness and obviously enjoying her surprise at the revelation of his own body. He reached out for her. His hands touched her breasts, cupped them.
She shivered in revulsion.
"It isn't that bad," he whispered soothingly. "Pretend I'm Dan. I'm as good as Dan where it counts. Close your eyes and forget what I look like."
He was squeezing her nipples, trying to make them hard. But she felt no desire for him When he took her, she knew, it would hurt. She would be unready, and he was so big -- His hands stroked the soft flesh of her buttocks. He was pressing up against her. She felt his lips on one of her nipples, the tongue toying with the little button, and despite herself a ripple of desire passed through her, a purely automatic response She bit her lip and tried to blank out the sensations His hand passed down her buttocks, between her thighs..
Then he guided her toward the bed.
She did not resist She lay down on her back and stared up at the ceiling It was a tiled ceiling, and she counted the cubes, and studied the patterns He crawled all over her His lips touched her breasts, and then he moved lower. She felt his cheek against her thighs. He was parting her legs, now. His mouth was on her.
"There," he said, lifting his head after a moment. "Do you enjoy that?" She didn't answer.
"I know you enjoy it. I can tell. Why won't you give me the satisfaction of saying so?"
No answer. She stared at the ceiling.
"Damn, you're gorgeous," he said in a hushed voice. "In all my dreams I never imagined the half of it. Those boobs. And your legs. And everything. There isn't a part of you that isn't beautiful. Not even--" He touched her again. "All of you. Beautiful."
She finished counting the horizontal rows and started on the vertical ones.
He knelt above her. His hands, his lips, were everywhere. And the thick hairy thrust of his body hovered near her soft flesh.
"Go on," she said coldly. "Do it, will you?"
"All right," he said. "Turn over."
"Turn over?"
"Yes. That's the way I like it."
"I don't understand."
"I'll show you. Turn."
"Wait a second," she said. "I'm not sure what you're up to, but there was nothing in our deal about off-beat stuff."
"You agreed to sleep with me. You'll do it my way."
"Look here--"
"Turn over!" he hissed. "You think your way is the only way? It's time you learned a thing or two. I'll teach you."
He grabbed her by the hips and started to twist her over For all his scrawniness, he had immense strength. He heaved her over. Vicky lay still, frightened, yet actually a little intrigued.
Frye was panting. "You mean you've never done it this way?"
"No," she said. "Do you have to?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
His hands were on her buttocks, now. fingering the soft tender globes, gripping them, and then, suddenly, drawing them apart. Vicky contracted every muscle in fear. He was above her, getting into position. She felt him lowering himself onto her, settling his skinny body onto the plump cushions of her buttocks.
She waited. His hoarse breathing sounded in her ears.
He said, "Relax, now, Vicky. This is the moment I've been waiting for for five years. You don't know how happy you're making me."
A long pause.
Then he plunged.
Vicky felt excruciating agony as pain lanced through her body. It was like a fiery sword being rammed to the depths of her. She writhed in a sudden convulsion beneath him. She whimpered in pain. Then he thrust again, and it was ten times as horrible as the first one.
Vicky screamed.
"Shh. Gently, gently -- the worst is almost over," he murmured.
Vicky bit down hard on the pillow and nearly lost consciousness as the terrible pain blazed through her But then she felt the hellish agony diminishing. He was past the barrier. He had taken her. She could feel him moving, back and forth within her.
It was a weird feeling.
It was like sex, yet not sex at all, really. An entirely different set of nerves had come into play. Yet she found it curiously exciting. Her body throbbed. She quivered in a kind of pleasure.
No, she thought.
No, don't let yourself enjoy it. This is filthy It reeks, like everything about Ted Frye. It was bad enough you had to sleep with him, but not this way -- and you're enjoying it! It was true. She was breathing hard. He worked his hands underneath her to grasp her breasts, and rocked up and down atop her The pain was receding, now There was still some discomfort, but it was masked by the strange stimulation she was receiving.
He bestrode her with savage glee. His jubilant body rose and fell, rose and fell, thrusting again and again against the ripeness of her buttocks. He was stabbing her to the depths, but the mingled pain and pleasure held an eerie fascination for her, despite herself, despite her loathing for the man and her fear of the strange way he took his pleasure.
Suddenly she was on fire.
Suddenly she was gasping and thrashing on the bed. She found herself crouching on all fours, drawing up to present the most direct target for him, and he was hugging her, gripping her tightly, moving with redoubled energy now, grasping her breasts, crying out.
He plunged to the depths of her.
She felt sudden flame in her vitals as he reached his climax A moment later, a rippling eddy of pleasure came over her, and she shook with it, and flattened her body out on the bed, pressing her breasts and loins into the coverlet, rubbing them, wriggling until the inner explosion came.
Then she lay still.
Frye was panting above her. She felt sanity returning, now. and with it came a wave of utter revulsion. His body was still joined to hers, and the contact sickened her now that the pleasure had passed.
"Get off," she hissed.
"Vicky--"
"Get off! Get out of me! Out of my body!"
"Lie still, Vicky. You enjoyed it, didn't you? Wait a little while and well do it again."
"No."
"We can do it the regular way this time," he said hopefully.
"I want to get out of here."
"All right," he said, as though willing to settle for what he had already had. He withdrew from her and left the bed. Vicky lay stretched out flat, her head in the pillow. She knew he was looking down at her, gloating over the curves of her back and hips and bare buttocks, but she didn't give a damn. She felt soiled and befouled and degraded. There was a dull ache in her now, a slow throbbing of pain that she knew would not recede quickly.
He put a hand on her buttocks. "Let go of me," she said.
"Vicky --Vicky, you don't know how grateful T am to you for this."
She looked up. "You're proud of yourself, aren't you? You blackmail a woman into going to bed with you, and then you do it in that filthy French way of yours--"
"You enjoyed it."
"Shut your mouth," she snapped at him.
She felt sick to her stomach. She sprang up from the bed and rushed past him, into the bathroom. She slammed the door and locked it.
Crouching on the tiled floor, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed wildly Gradually, she came to see why she was so upset, why she felt so thoroughly shaken to the core of her soul.
It wasn't so much that she had given herself to Ted Frye. That was bad enough, but not so terrible that she couldn't survive it.
What was really stunning her was the way she had responded to his unnatural embrace.
She had enjoyed it.
It was frightening. Things were happening too fast. New vistas were opening, doors into physical worlds that she had never before explored. That was what was so distressing. She was being given new insights into the nature of her own sexuality, and too much was being hurled at her too fast. First Dan, showing her the extent of her own passionate nature. Now Frye, teaching her that there were many avenues of sensual gratification.
Life had been much simpler when there had been only Bill. Too simple, maybe. But at least she didn't have to face things like this.
"Vicky!" Frye called. "Vicky, are you all right?"
"Leave me alone," she muttered.
She knew it was irrational to be so angry at him He was a creep, of course, and only a very twisted man would have blackmailed her into sex like this. But it wasn't his fault she had responded this way. He had unlocked a door in her, and she was afraid of what else might be lying chained down there, and that was why she was so panicky all of a sudden.
She splashed cold water in her face She rubbed cold water over her loins and buttocks. She was still throbbing inwardly, still smouldering.
After a few moments more, she came out. Frye was half dressed He looked up as she emerged, and his eyes travelled quickly over her naked body, lingering at her jutting breasts and at the lush opulence of her body.
"Do you still hate me?" he asked softly.
"I detest you."
"It'll wear off. You'll be grateful to me. You'll come to me again and ask me to meet you here. I guarantee that."
"You're out of your mind. I'd be happy if I never saw you again."
"You enjoyed it," he said. "And now you're upset be cause you didn't think you would. You're wondering if you're some kind of freak Well, you aren't. Plenty of women enjoy it that way They hate to admit it, that's all because they think it's an unnatural taste. But it's not unnatural. Anything that gives pleasure is right and good."
"No," she said. "This is unnatural because it's against the design of nature Sex is primarily for having children The pleasure is incidental."
"You sound like a Sunday School teacher," he said, laughing. "You ought to teach Sunday School, Vicky. Dressed just the way you are I'll bet you'll have the biggest class attendance in the history of the Christian Church. They'll come from hundreds of miles around."
She reddened. Turning away from him, she looked for her underwear. His eyes remained beadily fixed on her nakedness, admiring the curves of breast And buttock, of belly and thigh. She had never seen a man look at her so hungrily before. Especially after making love. Frye was sick, she decided.
A very sick man.
Vicky dressed quickly, to get the contours of her body out of the range of those hungry eyes. Frye smiled at her and continued to watch her as she drew her bra over the heavy mounds of her breasts, as she pulled her panties on, as she donned her stockings and attached them to her garters. His look became almost that of a madman as she performed that last operation. He stared with lunatic intensity at the exposed portion of her thigh between panty and stocking top, as though he found it more exciting in some way than the total nudity of her that had been bared just a few minutes before.
"Ready to go?" he asked.
"Extremely."
They left the room. Vicky still felt some discomfort from the love-making. But there was a non-physical discomfort that was more painful than the other.
She realized that she had been changed. She had walked into that hotel room one kind of person, and had emerged different. Frye had revealed something to her about her own body that she had never suspected: that she was capable of responding to perversity, that she was capable of being thrilled by the unnatural embrace of a man she loathed.
They rode downstairs together. In the lobby, Frye said, "Care to have a drink with me?"
"Just go away and leave me alone."
"I wish you didn't hate me. You're such a wonderful girl, Vicky. You don't know what I'd give to be married to you."
She glowered at him "If you were my husband. I'd ruin you with my bare hands I might do it anyway, if I ever got the chance Think about it, the next time you work your blackmail stunt on me."
She walked away from him It occurred to her that this might not be the finish -- that he might come after her again next week, and once again threaten her with exposure unless she came across. It might never end. He could go on for years.
No, she thought. She would call his bluff the next time. Let him tell anything he wanted to Bill She'd take her chances. He had no proof, anyway. And Bill wouldn't want to believe it.
She realized she had been a fool not to stick to her guns in the first place. She had let Frey stampede her, panic her. And now it was too late.
What was done could not be undone. She was soiled for good. now.
She told herself that if Frye ever bothered her again, she would castrate him She closed her eyes for a moment, visualizing nails meeting in soft flesh, blood spurting, an agonized scream. The vehemence of her wish surprised her.
She realized she was being foolish What she really hated was not Frye. so much, as herself, for having yielded and enjoyed. She was shocked at her own perversity She went into the hotel cocktail lounge. She needed calming.
She had a drink. And another. And another.
Then she stopped. She had to start sobering up. It was time to go home, home to the kids, home to Bill, home to the nice clean wholesome world of reality.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DRIVE HOME WAS HELLISH. For one thing, she was half drunk. For another, her nerves were badly jangled by the Ted Frye episode. For a third, she had stayed around the city too long and now she was caught in the outward bound evening rush hour.
That last was a blessing in disguise, she realized. If the roads had been empty, she would have gone barreling along at her usual sixty or seventy miles an hour, and more likely than not ended up in the morgue This way it was a lot of start-and-stop driving at a snail's pace. Rough on the nerves, but a lot safer, from her point of view.
Finally she got home. It was almost six o'clock. Bill was not yet home. On Tuesdays he worked in the clinic until five-thirty, which kept him from getting home before seven. Vicky was glad of that, too. It gave her a chance to get herself under control a little, before he showed up. She garaged the car, came up the back way into the house, and popped into the shower quickly. She came out feeling refreshed and calmer, though hardly cheerful.
The episode with Ted Frye obsessed her. She kept going over and over it in her mind, trying to understand what had possessed her, why she had responded so vigorously to a man she hated and to an embrace she regarded as an obscenity.
Bill would know, she thought. Bill spent his whole professional life treating homosexuals and lesbians and nymphomaniacs and perverts of all sorts. Bill could sit down with her and help her to understand the strange passion that had come over her.
She smiled bitterly. That was all she needed: to go to her husband, explain in detail the adventure with Ted Frye, and ask for a professional consultation Maybe, she thought, he's got some book that would explain it upstairs.
His third-floor study was lined with his psychiatric books. Vicky almost never went up there Not that he would have minded. He had tried many times to interest her in his profession, but he simply had not been able to.
She hurried upstairs now It was an attic-room, low-ceilinged but running the full length of the house. Bill had had it lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and here he kept his professional library.
Vicky walked down the rows of books, eyeing the cloth bindings. Most of the titles were in Latin some in German, hardly any at all in English. She hadn't any idea of what book she was looking for.
One title caught her eye. Psychopathia Sexualis. It struck a familiar chord. Krafft-Ebing, wasn't it? He was the authority on all sorts of strange sexual practices and perversions.
She took it down.
It was a thick, heavy book. She carted it over to her husband's desk, switched on the lamp, and started to leaf through it. It was in English -- mostly. But long chunks of each page were in Latin. All the import parts, probably, Vicky thought.
She wondered where she would find a reference to the thing she and Ted Frye had done today. She turned page after page. Pederasty... sodomy... it had to be somewhere around here, she thought.
"Studying up?"
It was Bill's voice. Vicky looked upward, startled, and saw him standing at the entrance to the study, wearing a broad grin.
"You surprised me!" she said accusingly.
"I saw the light on up here, and you weren't anywhere else in the house."
She shut the book hurriedly. "I was just browsing," she said. Quickly, she carried it back to the place in the shelf, but not so quickly that Bill was unable to recognize the book.
He chuckled. "Krafft-Ebing? That's pretty heady stuff to be reading."
"I was just killing some time till you got home."
"Anything I can help you with?"
She shook her head tensely "No. I was only browsing around. Have you been home long?"
"Three minutes," he said. "Dinner will be served at quarter past. Plan to stay here much longer?"
"No. No, Fm coming down."
She knew he hadn't been fooled. He spent all his days among neurotics who tried to lie to him, and by this time he had developed a kind of sixth sense for seeing through flimsy and hastily improvised lies. So he knew she had been looking for something in particular in his library. It wouldn't be hard for him to guess that some problem of sex was troubling her. In his tactful way, he wouldn't press for an explanation -- but he might start keeping his eyes open.
They went downstairs for dinner.
Vicky's mood was a subdued, restrained one. She said little all evening. The memory of Ted Frye filled her mind, and it pained her to look across the table at her husband, so gentle, so trusting, and realize that this very afternoon, unknown to him, she had committed unmentionable abominations with a despicable seducer.
She went to sleep early. Bill had some reading to do, he said, and went upstairs. She did not know when he joined her in the bed.
Her dreams were uneasy ones.
Dan Connors called the next day, about mid-morning. Vicky was outside, killing time in the garden again, trying to use up the useless hours of another summer morning, when Eloise, the maid, appeared.
"Telephone, Mrs. Wilcox."
Vicky hurried inside, hoping it would be Dan. Her hope was fulfilled.
But the news that he had for her was not what she wanted to hear.
, "I'm taking a little trip," he said. . "Where?"
"Trinidad, Curacao, and Surinam," he told her. Vicky caught her breath. "For God's sake, why are you going there?"
"Linda wants to see them."
"But it's the middle of the summer Nobody goes to the Caribbean in the middle of the summer."
"Linda wants to go," Connors said. "I'm sorry. She's got a whim of iron."
Vicky said falteringly, "How -- how long are you going to be down there?"
"Three weeks."
"Oh, no! Dan, you can't do this to me! I need you here, Dan. You can't start an affair with me and then just charge off to Trinidad two days later!"
"Vicky, honey, I'm sorry. You don't know how sorry I am. But I had a terrific battle with Linda. She absolutely insists on going. Someone put a bee in her bonnet about Trinidad, and now --"
"Can't you make it two weeks, at least?"
"Everything's all arranged for three."
Vicky bit her lip. "I can't manage without you, Dan. I mean it. I'll go out of my mind."
"Three weeks isn't so long," he said. "Ill be back before you know it."
"Can I at least see you before you leave?" she asked.
"Afraid not We're taking the four o'clock jet. That doesn't leave much time for packing."
"I -- see."
"Vicky, listen, don't take it this way It's just a little vacation trip We've got plenty of time ahead of us, believe me. All those long winter afternoons when it's too cold to go outside. And --"
"All right," she said. "Three weeks. I guess I'll survive. Have a good time, Dan."
"Thanks," he said. "I'm sorry about all this. You know I'll miss you as much as you miss me."
"Sure," she said tonelessly, and put down the phone without waiting to hear if he had anything further to say. Limply, she sank down into the nearest chair.
Three weeks.
Three weeks without Dan.
She had wanted so badly to see him, to cling to him, to tell him about her nightmare with Ted Frye. She needed reassurance, she needed strong arms around her, she needed someone to lean against.
And he was going to Trinidad.
He's running away, Vicky thought suddenly.
The thought had flashed into her mind from nowhere. Yes, she thought. Quite likely Ted Frye had called him up and done some boasting. And Connors, seeing a potentially complicated situation developing, was scramming before he could get any more deeply involved than he already was.
That explained the haste with which he was clearing out. It wasn't Linda's doing at all, Vicky realized. Linda didn't have enough of a hold on him to be able to force him to go away when he didn't want to. Obviously he did want to. And as fast as he could get away.
Tears of self-pity welled into her eyes. Dan was throwing her to the wolves. If Ted Frye called up again, she'd be at his mercy. She had had visions of sending Dan to beat Frye to a pulp if he came bothering her any more, but Dan was running away.
A coward at the core.
And she was alone and helpless now.
Eloise entered the room. Seeing Vicky still near the phone, she began to go out -- and then, noticing the tears stopped.
"Bad news, Mrs. Wilcox?"
"Not -- not really Just a little upsetting."
"Hope it's nothing serious."
Vicky forced a smile. "No Not serious at all."
Eloise looked relieved. She was a good-natured girl, Vicky thought. A big, warm-hearted mulatto, very light-skinned and rather attractive. Vicky had never understood why a girl of Eloise's charm and beauty had remained single so long She was nearly thirty. She had worked for the Wilcoxes for four years, and Vicky still had no idea of the girl's private life Eloise had her own car, and every Thursday and Sunday she drove to New York City She was never gone overnight Two weeks every August Eloise went to Philadelphia, and sent them postcards, but Vicky had never learned why she went there, whether she had friends or family there, or perhaps a lover.
Vicky went out of the room. A black cloud of depression was settling around her She had been counting on seeing Dan some time this week, and now that bit of comfort had been shot right out from under her.
It was going to be a lonely three weeks.
I need a drink, she thought.
She didn't usually drink in the middle of the morning But she didn't usually feel quite as miserable and forlorn as this, either Going to the sideboard, she pondered the bottles for a while, then drew out the bourbon. She found a bottle of prepared collins mix, and fixed herself a bourbon collins, tossing in some ice cubes, stirring, and gulping.
It went down easily enough.
But it didn't make her feel very much better.
She put the bourbon back. Carefully she poured a pony of Benedictine. It went down smoothly, soothingly. A faint warmth spread through her body. She wondered if anybody had ever tried drinking Benedictine before lunch before.
She liked the idea. She had another.
But there was still that hard lump of loneliness back of her breastbone.
She was getting into an experimental mood now. A new hobby, she thought. See how much you can belt away without getting sick. With the exaggerated care of someone who is already fairly high, she poured a jigger of Cointreau for herself. That went down the hatch nicely too.
All the liqueurs were making her thirsty. Time for another bourbon collins, now.
Yes, very good, she thought. God bless liquor.
What's this bottle over here? The label's all blurred, damnit! Ah. Yes.
Rum. Bacardi White Label. Let's try a little of that. Looks almost like Cointreau.
Doesn't taste like Cointreau, though.
She shivered as the straight rum landed on top of everything else. For an instant she thought she was going to throw up. Then the spasm of queasiness passed, and she smiled, and hummed to herself. She took a highball glass out of the cabinet and quietly began mixing a super-cocktail for herself. She was feeling much better about the state of existence now. A jigger of rum, she thought. And some Grand Marnier. A little grenadine to give it that nice sweet taste. And bourbon for tang. Now a dash of bitters. Couple of ice cubes. And what about a nip of cognac too?
She tasted the drink experimentally. It is interesting, she thought. She put it to her lips again, drank more deeply.
Needs some more ice, she decided.
She dropped another couple of cubes in, and sat down quietly in the corner of the living room to enjoy her cocktail. She was about halfway through the tall glass when it suddenly slipped from her hand.
Vicky looked sadly at the stain on the rug. She got up, began to bend over to wipe it up with her handkerchief before it soaked in, And fell over.
She lay there on the floor, dazed, dizzy, the room spinning around her head. Eloise came running in. "You feeling all right, Mrs. Wilcox?"
"Just -- just a little dizzy."
The maid glanced around. Open liquor bottles were standing all over the sideboard. The room smelled like a distillery.
"Take me upstairs," Vicky murmured.
"Sure thing, Mrs. Wilcox. You're going to be all right. You just had yourself a little too much refreshment, that's all. Come on. Ill fix you up proper."
Vicky nodded. The colored girl dragged her easily to her feet, and slung one arm over her shoulders. Vicky staggered, almost fell, but Eloise, with almost a man's strength, supported her. Slowly, awkwardly, they began to move toward the stairs. Vicky swayed precariously.
She laughed. "I'm drunk. Stinking drunk. You know that, Eloise?"
"Sure thing, Mrs. Wilcox. Don't worry. I'll take care of you. What you want to drink so much for, anyway? Pretty girl like you. Want to ruin your health?"
"I was thirsty."
"Better things to drink than that. Drink orange juice. Milk. That stuff's just poison, Mrs. Wilcox. You ought to know that."
They were almost at the top of the stairs, now. Vicky lurched forward, but Eloise caught her, and together they stumbled to the landing, and on into Vicky's dressing room. Vicky broke away and went sprawling face down on the bed. She began to laugh wildly.
Eloise bent over her. Vicky felt the maid's fingers at her buttons. "What are you doing?" Vicky mumbled. "Undressing you. Give you a good cold shower, then put you to bed. Otherwise you going to have a hangover this big. Your head going to feel like a basketball someone blowed up too much."
Vicky made no attempt to resist. The girl's strong hands pushed and pulled her around, maneuvering her from side to side, taking off her blouse and her shorts. Vicky lay naked on the bed, smiling inanely and wishing the ceiling would stop wobbling so much.
Then she looked up and saw Eloise unbuttoning her maid's uniform; "What's going on?" Vicky said thickly. "Taking my clothes off. You think I going to give you a shower with my clothes on, Mrs. Wilcox?"
Vicky watched in drunken fascination as Eloise stripped. The girl was nude in a moment. Vicky managed to focus her eyes. She was startled by the beauty of the girl. Her skin was a light chocolate-brown, very creamy, more white than brown, but unmistakably not Caucasian.
Her shoulders were very broad, but then her body tapered in an astonishing V until the lush widening of her hips. Eloise's breasts were big and heavy, great swollen globes of flesh, bigger even than Vicky's, much bigger, but not gross or fat, because they were so firm, so taut-fleshed. The nipples were small and very dark The maid's legs were muscular but still somehow feminine. "Let's go!" Eloise said.
She caught Vicky and lifted her easily. Vicky staggered forward, and her naked body pressed against the girl's. Eloise's hard-tipped breasts came into contact with Vicky's own. Vicky frowned. There was something strangely pleasant about having another pair of breasts touching hers. Especially two big, hard breasts like Eloise's.
They went into the bathroom.
Eloise turned on the shower and guided Vicky under it. The water was cold. Vicky shivered and tried to get away from it, but Eloise held her firmly, pinioning her arms in her own. It was a kind of embrace, the big girl's naked body against Vicky.
Vicky felt a strange throbbing in her loins.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. But the alcohol had spun cobwebs in her brain. She stood like a statue, motionless now, while Eloise gave her a thorough soaping, rubbed her down, shook her, pummelled her. Vicky was aware of the colored girl's breasts jouncing up and down with every motion of her husky body.
Cold water streamed down Vicky, over her breasts, down her belly, past her loins. The water stung. She hissed from the pain of the sharp needles slanting into her tender nipples. Eloise turned Vicky's face upward, and the cold water hit her full force.
Then the water was being turned off.
Vicky let herself be led, like a sheep, out of the shower cubicle. She still felt woozy, still felt drunk. But the shower had been invigorating, in a way. Her skin tingled with electric excitement. Her nerves throbbed, and there was still that persistent quivering in her loins.
Eloise was towelling her off now, rubbing her with vigor, whipping the towel over her breasts, over her buttocks, between her thighs. It was interesting to stand here naked, being towelled by a naked girl, Vicky thought vaguely. It was nice. She liked it. She wished Eloise would give her showers more often.
"There," Eloise said. "Now you get into bed and rest for a while. Later I'll bring you some soup and some toast and you'll feel better."
Vicky nodded. She let Eloise propel her out of the bathroom, across the dressing room, into the master bedroom. Vicky sat obediently in a chair while Eloise turned down the coverlet. Eloise's buttocks pulled taut as she bent over, and Vicky stared at them in fascination, and at the heavy, swaying globes of the maid's breasts as she moved about the bedroom.
Vicky felt partly sober. Sober enough to remember that Dan had deserted her. Sober enough to remember why she had wanted to get this drunk in the first place.
But not sober enough to feel any inhibitions.
She rose unsteadily from the armchair and staggered across the room. She came up behind Eloise, and suddenly reached out and cupped her hands over Eloise's tawny breasts. The maid's breasts were so big Eloise's small fingers could not begin to contain them. The fleshy globes overflowed her hands.
Eloise looked up, startled.
"Mrs. Wilcox -- what you doing, Mrs. Wilcox?"
Vicky grasped Eloise's left breast more tightly and moved her right hand down the girl's body, down her bade to her buttocks, then suddenly inward.
Vicky laughed in delight.
Eloise panted suddenly.
"Let's go to bed, Eloise," Vicky said in a hoarse voice.
"Mrs. Wilcox --you shouldn't be doing this, Mrs. Wilcox -- " Eloise said haltingly.
Then the maid's inhibitions shattered. The two women toppled down onto the fresh linens.
And abruptly Vicky found herself embracing a wildcat.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CREAMY BROWN BODY seemed to throb with sensuality. Eloise's lips went to Vicky's breasts, and Vicky felt a soft suction at her nipple -- not hard, the way a man would do it, but gentle, almost a tickling sensation. At the same moment Eloise slipped one of her muscular thighs between Vicky's legs. Vicky tightened on it and started to move back and forth, enjoying the friction. Strange warmth spread through her entire body. She held tight to Eloise's breasts, squeezing, moving them from side to side.
Both women were panting now. Eloise lifted her head from Vicky's breasts and slid down her body. Vicky gasped in sudden delight as the softness of the colored girl's lips and tongue came in contact with another softness.
"You like that, Mrs. Wilcox?" the girl asked.
"Oh, yes, yes!"
"Then do it to me."
Vicky needed no further encouragement. She swivelled around, rubbing against Eloise's hard, muscle-ridged belly, and buried her face in the girl's loins. Eloise went rigid in immediate response. Her hands grabbed Vicky's thighs, dug into the soft flesh, then moved upward toward her loins. Vicky felt strong fingers probing the sanctuary of her womanhood.
She was growing more sober by the moment as passion burned the drunkenness out of her.
What are we doing? she asked herself.
For God's sake, what kind of dirtiness is this?
But the part of her mind that protested against this warped lovemaking was unable to control her body. Joyously, eagerly, she gave herself up to Eloise. The contact with the mulatto girl seemed to drain away all the loneliness and fear that Dan's phone call had generated.
And Eloise seemed so skilled, Vicky thought.
Eloise knew exactly what to do, where to touch, how to arouse passion.
Vicky had the feeling that Eloise had done this many times before, with many other woman.
"Put your hand here, honey," Eloise whispered in a thick, passion-choked voice. "That's it! Just like that! Now --" Body rubbed against body. Vicky took double handfuls of Eloise's breasts, of the nipples jutting against her palms. Eloise moaned, a deep, throbbing jungle sound of passion.
Legs intertwined. Hips began to piston in steady, insistent rhythms.
Mouth went to mouth. Tongues touched. Breaths intermingled.
The frenzy of ecstasy rose to the boiling point in both of them. The bed creaked and groaned in protest as the two wildly thrashing bodies rose and fell Vicky gave herself up completely to what was happening. Strange new sensations throbbed inside her.
Eloise was above her, now, pressing down as though she were a man. Her body touched Vicky's. Eloise began to move her hips.
"You move too, honey," Eloise whispered.
Vicky moved. She bit her lip, and clutched the firm spheres of Eloise's buttocks, digging her fingers in deep, guiding the colored girl, moving her back and forth, back and forth.
Passions mounted.
Vicky felt a fire in her. Every motion Eloise made stoked that fire. Every time Eloise lunged forward, then drew back, it provided an exquisite stimulation in the most sensitive part of her body.
Vicky gasped. Eloise put her mouth hungrily, avidly to Vicky's, and her tongue plunged in deep, and her hips moved with frantic urgency. Vicky held tight to the mulatto's taut buttocks, gripping the swelling voluptuous flesh.
Eloise lifted her mouth a moment. "Is it happening yet, honey? she asked. "Are you feeling it yet?"
"Yes," Vicky gasped. "Yes --it's just beginning, now -- oh -- oh, God!"
"Keep moving! Don't stop! Don't --stop--" It was a headlong race to passion. Vicky felt the other woman's breasts rubbing against hers, and there was the scrape of loins against loins, and the fire was suddenly a raging conflagration. Vicky relaxed, surrendering to it, and it swept up out of her loins, to her belly, her breasts, then to her brain.
And it was happening It was different from anything else she had ever experienced. Different from Dan Connors' insistent, super-virile love-making, different from Ted Frye's relentless perversity.
Not better. But different. Not worse, either!
Her whole body trembled with the frenzy of it. For an instant she thought fearfully that she wasn't going to make it all the way to the top. that she was going to fall back before the summit was reached. But then Eloise went into a final furious spurt of activity, and that did it. Vicky approached the crest, topped it, and floated down deliciously into bliss.
Neither woman spoke. Vicky lay limp in the maid's arms, her strength drained by the savage intensity of their love-making. She felt embarrassed, abashed at what she had just taken part in.
Eloise whispered after a while, "'How did you know?"
"Know what?"
"How I like it?"
"I didn't know. I was drunk."
"You mean you didn't -- you aren't really like me?" Eloise asked.
"No. I've never done anything like this before. Never in my life."
Eloise laughed. "And here I thought you were. That you were one of the bunch."
"You mean you're a lesbian?"
"That's what I mean, honey. Didn't you wonder why I never have boy friends around?."
"Yes, I wondered," Vicky said. "And I wondered why you didn't get married."
"It's because I don't like it the regular way," Eloise said. "That's how come."
Vicky turned her head. She lay facing Eloise, who was on her side. Vicky stared at the heaviness of Eloise's breasts, oiled now with sweat. Eloise had a superb body, the body of a magnificent animal. She seemed to have been designed by nature for sex and sex alone. But something had gone wrong with the plan, obviously.
Vicky said, "Have you ever --had a man, Eloise?; Eloise laughed. "Bless you, honey, I've had plenty of them I"
"But you prefer women?"
"It isn't just that I prefer. It's safer with a woman, don't you know that?"
"Safer?"
"Plenty safer. A man, he gives you nothing but heartache. At least a black man. Most of them. You don't find a good man, like Mr. Wilcox. The kind of man I used to know, all they want to do is fill you full of children. And then they run away and leave you. They can all go to hell."
"You sound like you've had some bad experiences with men, Eloise."
The colored girl grinned. "Nothing but bad experiences. Starting when I was twelve."
"What happened then?"
"Three white boys raped me. About six times each. I couldn't walk for a week. That's a hell of a way to learn about sex, believe you me."
"Oh. Oh. I'm so sorry. Were they ever caught?"
"In Alabama? You still drunk, Mrs. Wilcox?"
"How terrible! You were a virgin when it happened?"
"I was only twelve. But after that there were some black men, they did it to me too. I had a big girl's body, but I was only a little girl. Everyone wanted to make me, and when I said no they made me anyway. Made me up and made me down. I tell you, I got pretty sick of it. Nothing but mess and pain. And getting knocked up."
"Were you pregnant?"
"Four times."
"What happened?"
"First time I had the baby. Next three, I got rid of it before it was born."
"Did the child live?"
"Uh-huh."
"Where is it now?"
"Alabama, I guess. I haven't seen it in fifteen years. A girl. They're probably raping her now She's old enough for it. My cousin brought her up as his own daughter. I got the hell out and came to New York." Eloise let her hand rest lightly on Vicky's belly. "There were men here, too. But then a girl taught me how to make love to another girl. I was twenty, and that was eight and a half years ago, and I haven't let a man touch me since."
"So that's where you go on your days off."
"Harlem. I got girl friends there."
"And in the summer?"
"Two friends in Philly. I go to live with them every summer. I figured you knew all that, Mrs. Wilcox. And when you grabbed me coming out of the shower, I guess you just decided you wanted some from me."
"No. I didn't know what I was doing. I was a little insane then, I guess."
"You didn't mind -- doing it with me?"
"No," Vicky said. "I needed something like that just then. I was all shaken up."
"That phone call?"
"Yes," Vicky said. "That phone call."
"I'm glad you did it with me, Ma'am," Eloise said. "You know, all these years, I've seen you running around the house a lot I've seen you naked sometimes. And I was hungry for you. But I couldn't go near you. I was scared to. I figured you'd murder me if I made a pass at you. Or have me arrested or something. I used to dream about doing it with you, but only dream."
"You undressed me," Vicky said. "You were handling me all over."
"It made me feel good. And you were so drunk, I figured someone had to put you to bed. But I never figured this would happen. You reached out for me and I never was so surprised in my life. But I'm glad. Did you like it too, Ma'am?"
Vicky smiled. "I liked it, yes," They lay still for a while. Vicky felt peaceful and relaxed, but with an undercurrent of tension beginning to make itself felt.
After a moment she said, "Eloise?"
"Ma'am?"
"We won't ever do this again."
"Whatever you say, Ma'am."
"It's got to be that way. I'm -- not really the same type of person you are. It's out of the question for me to have a love affair with my own maid."
"I get you, Ma'am."
"And we'll forget about what happened today I mean, we can remember inside, but we won't ever talk about it or refer to it in any way. That's important, Eloise. I'd hate to have to let you go, but I mould let you go if you ever brought today up."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Vicky moistened her lips. "We mustn't forget that you're just a maid. I don't mean to seem high-hat, but there's got to be a distance between us. Just as there was up till today. We can be friendly, but we can't ever be friends. You know what I mean?"
"I know, Ma'am," Eloise said.
"And one last thing. If I ever find out you've told anyone about today -- told one living soul, anybody in the world -- it'll go hard with you. What we did today has to be our secret. We can't let anyone else in on it."
Eloise nodded.
Then, leaving the bed, she said softly, "I guess I better get back to work now, Ma'am."
"I guess you better."
"You want me to bring anything up here for you?"
"That's all right," Vicky said. "I'm feeling a lot better now."
She lay back and watched Eloise dress, watched the rippling muscles of the girl as she got back into her uniform. The splendid lines of her body were really breathtaking, Vicky thought. She looked as perfect as a statue. Vicky wondered if she could arrange to have some sculptor make a life-size realistic nude of Eloise, for the garden. It would be a stunning piece. But she decided it wouldn't work out. Eloise would be embarrassed about it. The other servants would kid her. It was basically a good idea, but not one that could be put into practice.
Eloise hooked her bra, hiding the jutting cones of her breasts, and pulled up her panties over the lush abundance of her hips and buttocks. She donned her uniform and smiled at Vicky, not a familiar smile but a respectful smile, a servant's smile.
"You want me for anything, just ring, Ma'am." She went out.
Vicky lay naked on the bed. A gentle breeze crossed the room. She parted her legs and arched her back, letting the coolness penetrate her body.
There was still a feeling of warmth, a remnant of the sensations Eloise had induced. Vicky felt bewildered by what had just taken place.
It was shaping up to be quite a week, she thought.
On Monday a little adultery with Dan Connors.
On Tuesday a little perversion with Ted Frye.
On Wednesday a little lesbianism with Eloise the maid.
Vicky wondered wearily what in the world was left for the rest of the week.
An affair with two men at once on Thursday? An affair with two women at once on Friday? An affair with a green monkey on Saturday? A grand orgy on Sunday?
She felt dazed. She had plunged into depths of depravity that she had never dreamed of Her escape from the deadly boredom of her well-heeled suburban life had led her into a welter of strange sex practices, into a host of shady byways of eroticism.
Down and down and down. She was half frightened, half fascinated by what was happening to her. It was a kind of an education. She had never dreamed, for instance, that it could be so pleasant to have sex with another woman. It had always seemed a kind of disgusting thing to her when she read about it in a book, or saw it hinted at in a foreign movie, or noticed an obviously lesbian couple in the city. She had never been able to understand the appeal of the inverted way of love.
She remembered one summer, the summer she was fifteen, there had been a girl! like that at camp, one of the counselors. It was an exclusive girls' camp for exclusive girls, and, thinking back on it, Vicky realized that there must have been a lot more dyking going on that she, in her innocence, had suspected. But this was one incident she had known about. This counsellor had been in charge of swimming. She was a lean, raw-boned girl who could throw a baseball as far as any man could, or swim across the lake and back in less than half an hour. Everybody liked her in camp, but there were funny rumors about her.
And then, one night around sundown, Vicky and a couple of the other girls from her bunk had gone for a walk down by the lake. As they rounded the boathouse they saw the swimming counsellor on the ground with another counsellor, a plump little girl named Judy who was in charge of arts and crafts. The swimming counsellor was naked, and so was Judy. They were holding each other's breasts and kissing each other's bodies.
Vicky had watched in a kind of fascination. The swimming counsellor had very small breasts, almost none at all, and Judy was a very feminine kind of girl with soft jiggly buttocks and large breasts. So in a way it was almost like watching a man and a woman make love, and Vicky had long been interested in seeing that and finding out more about it. The swimming counsellor was built just like a man except in the one crucial place.
But the girls watching with Vicky had giggled and the couple making love had heard, and panicked. The swimming counsellor jumped into the water and began to swim along the shoreline, and Judy ran into the woods. Vicky still carried in her mind the image of Judy's jiggling buttocks, very white in contrast to her tanned legs and back, as she ran naked and frightened into the woods.
One of the girls with Vicky was a little tattle, and she told the head counsellor. That night both Judy and the swimming counsellor were fired. They left without saying a word to anyone. And the head counsellor called the whole camp together, even the six-year-olds who didn't know what it was all about, and delivered a long speech on the importance of "being good girls."
The head counsellor didn't come right out and explain what had happened. But the story was all over camp, and so most of the older girls understood. Vicky had felt very sorry for the two fired counselors, but she had also felt rather repelled by them because she couldn't understand why two woman would want to touch each other and kiss each other that way.
And now I'm one of the gang, Vicky thought. I've been initiated.
She closed her eyes and thought about Eloise for a moment. Would Eloise keep it a secret, or would the temptation to spill the beans be too great? Vicky hoped Eloise would hush it up. She didn't want to have to fire the girl, after all. But she decided Eloise was safe. She couldn't very well tell any of the other servants, not without advertising the fact that she was a lesbian. And she certainly wouldn't tell Bill or any of their friends.
Vicky could still feel the soft touch of Eloise's lips at her breasts, the pressure of the girl's body against her own.
God help me, Vicky thought What am I turning into?
She felt that she wanted another drink. But she forced the thought away. She had had enough to drink this morning to last her for quite a while.
She decided to go into the garden, instead. Pull some weeds for a while, steady her nerves.
She got dressed and went downstairs. On her way through the front hall, she passed Eloise, who was busily dusting the furniture. Eloise smiled at her.
It was not a lover's smile. It was a deferential maid-to-mistress smile, without any suggestion of a wink or a snigger about it.
Vicky was grateful. She smiled back, a properly aristocratic smile.
Then she continued out into the garden to take out her confusions on the weeds.
CHAPTER NINE
THE HECTIC PACE that had marked her recent life slackened off in the next few days. She was grateful for that. There were no new lovers, no new adventures in sex, no strange off-beat experiences.
Those few days provided a badly needed time of consolidation, of evaluation of what she had just been through. Vicky did more thinking about herself, serious thinking, in that half a week than she had done in half a decade.
She could see how one thing had led directly to the other. Her romance with Dan Connors had brought her to the motel, where she had been seen by Ted Frye, and subsequently forced to make love to him. And her despair and bewilderment over that episode led her to get drunk, thus setting up the lesbian interlude with Eloise. It was a chain of events, a chain of sin.
But now the chain seemed to be broken, Vicky thought. Dan Connors was out of town. She hadn't heard from Ted Frye, thank God, since Tuesday. And Eloise, after her moment of glory, had gone back to her role as a servant without any hesitation.
Vicky let herself slip back into the pleasant suburban routine -- the volunteer work at the town library one morning a week, the weed-pulling, the sunbathing, the party-going and party-giving, the smooth uncomplicated well-servanted life of a moderately wealthy young matron. As the days passed, she hoped that the five-day nightmare of sin and lust that she had been through would recede into memory and become just a faint part of her past.
But it didn't work out that way.
In thinking about the chain of events, Vicky had not stopped to consider the start of the chain, the first and fundamental fact, the fact of her boredom, the fact that her life had no real meaning or purpose. It was because of that emptiness that she had slipped into adultery in the first place, and started the chain of events.
Nothing had been solved by her brief fling. The boredom, the emptiness still remained.
She went through her days as the pretty young Mrs. William Howard Wilcox III just as idly as before, and the same discontents, the same frustrations, the same disturbances continued to trouble her.
She tried to force them away. She tried to pretend she was happy. She had it good, she kept telling herself. Fine car, fine house, fine clothes, servants to wait hand and foot, a gentle, loving husband, and all the spending money she wanted. It was a soft life. If she couldn't be happy with her lot, she asked herself, what about the people who didn't have a tenth as much?
It's because I have it too good, she thought.
Possessions and comforts were smothering her. She had no challenges, no responsibilities, no real reason for existing at all. She was purely an ornament, like the stone statue in the garden.
She had certain ceremonial functions. She hostessed, and she embraced her children from time to time, and two or three times a week she opened her body to receive her husband's embrace. But those roles didn't make her a person in her own right. She was an appliance. A robot could have replaced her easily.
One thing that could have helped would have been better sex with Bill. But somehow their love-making never worked out very well. Oh, he knew how to please a woman, and he was tactful and gentle and kind. That was part of the problem. She didn't want someone tactful and gentle and kind. She wanted someone alive, someone dynamic, someone who could set her on fire.
Someone as ruggedly male as Dan Connors. Or someone as spirited and wild as Eloise. Even someone as darkly warped as Ted Frye. Each had something in common with the other two, a reservoir of passion, a highly charged, passionately erotic energy.
Not Bill, though.
Bill made love like a gentleman. He painstakingly fondled her breasts and caressed her thighs, he stimulated her the way the textbooks said he should, he kissed her nipples, he let his fingers trail over her body, and then, finally, after a proper and approved measure of foreplay, he took her, gently and kindly, and their bodies moved in the usual rhythm of the act.
The trouble Was, Vicky didn't feel anything.
She didn't know why. He was a good-looking man, kept himself clean, brushed his teeth before going to bed. He was attractive in every way But somehow when he took her in his arms, it was as though a pane of flexible glass separated their bodies at all times Bill didn't even seem aware of the barrier For all his professional insight into human beings and their troubles, he didn't appear to understand that they weren't communicating on the physical level.
It was on Monday--a week, exactly, since her motel trip with Dan Connors -- that Vicky realized that once again something was going to give.
She had come through the weekend well enough. She and Bill had gone to a party, Saturday night, at the splendid home of Ron and Betsy Parker, one of the wealthiest couples in their set. Ted Frye had been there too. But though he smiled at Vicky and at one point exchanged a few words with her, he didn't attempt to dance with her, didn't make any sly references to their encounter last week, didn't in any way try to press an advantage.
Vicky was glad of that It gave her a creepy feeling just to see him. In her mind's eye she automatically and involuntarily stripped away his sleek dinner clothes and saw him standing there naked, skinny and knobby-kneed and so incredibly masculine And she felt a strange quiver in her buttocks, and a mingled mixture of desire, shame, and hot, surging anger.
Of course, she got propositioned at the party A party wouldn't have been complete without at least one offer of sex.
The offerer tonight was a man named Bruce Reynolds, a lawyer in his early forties, very tall, somewhat red-faced, and prematurely bald. Also very drunk. He cornered Vicky for a dance, held her too tight, obviously enjoyed crushing her breasts against him, and ended up by saying, "Would you like to meet me in the city on Monday for lunch?"
"I wasn't planning to go into town."
"Well, you could," he said. "There's a really fabulous restaurant right near my office. And I could arrange to have the whole afternoon free." He grinned affably. "We could have a good time together, you and me."
Vicky looked at him steadily. She knew exactly what his idea of "a good time" meant. He couldn't have been more explicit if he had unzipped his fly on the spot. She could easily visualize the two of them ending up in a hotel room somewhere in Manhattan, Reynolds standing naked and potbellied, drooling over her, then handling her breasts and buttocks, and telling her how lovely she was, and then settling down between her legs for a nice jog-trot of pleasure.
It was a depressing thought, getting into a sordid little affair with this uninteresting man.
Yet the strange thing was she was tempted.
You're grasping at straws, she told herself. Anything to give you some variety. Even him. Even this long-legged boor of a lawyer.
For a moment she teetered, caught between her lack of interest in Bruce Reynolds and her hungry need to get out of the plush-lined rut of her life. For a moment she thought she was going to give in. She almost said, "All right, what time should I meet you?"
Then she scraped up a couple of shreds of her independence as a person and decided there wasn't a reason in the world why she should accept this man's blunt invitation to a tumble in the hay.
She said firmly, "I'm sorry, Bruce. I'm going to be very busy all this week."
"Next week, then?"
"No I'm afraid not. Not at all. Bruce"
"Oh. Oh, I see. All right. I'm sorry, Vicky. Very sorry."
And at the end of the dance he smiled faintly and headed off to peddle his papers somewhere else. Vicky felt proud of herself. See? I actually said not But it had been not much of a trick to refuse red-faced, balding Bruce Reynolds. She wondered what she would have said if some more exciting man had chosen her as his target for the night.
Be that as it may, there were no other propositions. She went home feeling chaste and virtuous, and spent a chaste and virtuous Sunday.
But the boredom mounted in her.
All day Monday she thought she would crack It was a rainy day, and she spent it indoors, inventing household chores for herself to keep from going out of her mind completely She was in a bad state of nerves by evening. And then, at bedtime, Bill made love to her.
That was the finisher.
They undressed, and she looked at him, and she felt nothing at all Not a thing. Not hate, and not love Not desire, and not revulsion. It was a completely neutral feeling.
There he was, a naked man, a handsome man, her husband, aroused and ready for the act of love, and there she stood, naked too, and he looked at her, and she looked at him, and inwardly she felt -- Nothing.
What's wrong, she asked herself? Why am I so completely blanked out?
They got into bed. His hands went to her breasts. He encircled them, cupped them. He murmured little words of love He thumbed the nipples, tongued them, sucked on them, and they grew hard, but it was a mechanical kind of response that she did not feel related to in any way. His hands roamed her body. He did all the accustomed things, as he had done so many hundreds of times in the seven-plus years of their marriage.
And she felt -- Zero.
Null.
Void.
She tried to hide it from him. She didn't want to hurt him, because she liked him. Liked, if not loved. He turned to her, and his weight was on her, and he plunged easily into her, and she accepted him, and moved with him.
Nix.
Nada.
Niente.
A kind of numbness spread over Vicky, not a physical numbness but a numbness of the soul. She rocked back and forth with him, and felt his hands on her buttocks, lifting her, and she rose to him, taking him down deep, and he gasped and moved faster, and she continued to match his rhythm, and she saw that he was starting to reach his climax. There was no use asking him to wait for her. He could keep going for a hundred years and she would never get there.
So she faked it.
She gasped and moaned and throbbed and heaved, and in the excitement and frenzy of it he attained completion, and clung tight to her. After it was over he kissed her eyes, and stroked her hair, and cupped her breasts lightly, and told her he loved her.
Then he withdrew.
r "Good night, Vick."
"Good night, Bill."
He was soon asleep. But Vicky remained awake, a prisoner in her skull, going over and over the whole picture. She felt very close to cracking up.
What's wrong with me? she asked.
Why can't I enjoy myself with him?
Why do I need to be unfaithful in order to enjoy myself in bed?
She had no answers. She was baffled and hung up at every turn of the way.
She closed her eyes and pushed her face down into the pillow and waited wearily for sleep.
In the morning, she did something she hadn't done in many months. She telephoned her mother.
"I'm going to be in the city today," she said. "I thought I'd stop up and see you for a while."
"Why? Is something the matter?" mother asked, leaping immediately to the right track.
"More or less. Are you free?"
"You know I am. When will you come in?"
"I guess around noon," Vicky said.
"Okay Come up to my place. We'll meet here and go out together."
Vicky and her mother had had a series of relationships. At first, of course, they had been enemies, with the enmity of a child toward the parent that stopped her from doing what she wanted to do. Then they had been rivals, as Vicky grew toward adulthood and became ever more glamorous. And then they had grown apart from each other completely. Now they saw each other rarely. But Vicky had come to think of her mother now as a kind of older sister, or as an aunt -- a source not of authority but of advice, based on long experience.
Mrs. Avery was still a young woman -- and, like her daughter, looked even younger than her years. She had married at 19, had borne Vicky a year later, her only child. Now she was just a few months short of the half-century mark, but she looked no older than 35, perhaps 38.
She took good care of herself. She hadn't gained a pound within Vicky's memory, and still tipped the scales at a trim 119. Her hair was still a radiant auburn, naturally or otherwise. She had only one chin, and no roll of fat round her belly. Her body was firm and youthful. Of course, she spent her days in a never-ending round of beauty parlors and massage salons, but the results almost seemed to justify the means. She seemed to have found the secret of eternal youth.
Vicky knew that her mother had an active sex life, too. Mrs. Avery had been divorced from Vicky's father years ago. She had never remarried. But Vicky knew her mother well enough to be aware that she had not spent all those years in the refrigerator. There were men. Plenty of men, and mostly younger men. Mrs. Avery wasn't husband-hunting, not with divorce settlement that had left her independently wealthy. No. She wanted action. And she got it, with a succession of lovers who were perhaps not exactly gigolos, but not far from it.
She knew the pleasure-places of the world. Montego Bay, Cuernavaca, Acapulco, Nice, Biarritz, Lisbon, Hong Kong -- she had been around.
She was, Vicky considered, a wise old bird.
She was just the person to go to at a time of troubles.
Vicky drove into the city early, parked illegally outside the posh Sutton Place apartment where her mother had lived for the last ten years, and went upstairs It was a small terrace apartment, exquisitely and expensively furnished Mrs. Avery was still lounging around in a negligee when Vicky arrived. It was a transparent negligee, and Vicky was startled, as always, by the firmness of her mother's breasts, by the slim curve of her buttocks, by the tapering perfection of her legs.
Will I look that good when I'm fifty? she wondered.
She kissed the older woman, held her for a moment. Mrs. Avery said, "Sorry I'm not ready. I overslept a little."
"That's all right. Mother."
"Be right with you. Let me get some clothes on."
She slipped out of her negligee and went into the bedroom. Vicky marvelled at the supple youthfulness of her mother's figure, the trim line of breast and belly, and buttock. She sat down in the living room, studying the chic paintings, the statuettes, the bookcase full of fashionable but unread books.
Mrs. Avery came out fifteen minutes later, looking like the very model of the well-dressed East Side woman. She smiled briskly at Vicky and said, "Well, shall we go?"
We look like sisters, Vicky thought, as they left the apartment A casual observer would have thought that no more than ten or twelve years separated them -- that one was in her mid-thirties, the other in her mid-twenties. And the resemblance was a startling one, both in general physique and in hair and face. Vicky could understand now why her mother had hated her so much ten years ago. She must have been furiously jealous at the idea of having a daughter so much in her own image, but fresher and younger.
They said little until they reached the restaurant, a small, exclusive-looking cafe tucked away on a side street near York Avenue. They ordered aperitifs.
Then Mrs. Avery said, "Let's not beat about the bush, Vicky. What's the trouble?"
Vicky took a deep gulp of her vermouth before answering. She stared levelly at her mother.
"I'm frigid," she said finally..
An elegant eyebrow gently lifted. "You're joking," Mrs. Avery said.
"I wish I was."
"Frigidity isn't something that happens overnight. I know damn well you had plenty of sex before you were married, and you haven't been married two weeks either. You mean to say you've been frigid ten years or so and you're just starting to tell me about it?"
Vicky said, "No, it hasn't been the last ten years. It's just the last few. And it's been creeping up on me slowly, getting worse all the time. At the beginning I would feel at least something. But these days there's no sensation at all. When he holds me I don't feel a thing. When he does it. It's a complete blank."
"You have any idea why?"
Vicky shrugged. "I don't know. I'm bored, I guess. Bored with him, with the house, with life. I don't feel connected to anything. And it shows up in my sex life. Last night was really bad. The worst yet."
"Does he know?"
"I don't think so. I haven't told him."
"Why not? He's a psychiatrist, isn't he? What better man to talk to?"
Vicky shook her head. "He can't look at it objectively enough. I don't want to discuss it with him."
"Well, hell, girl, you can't go on living without sexual pleasure. You've got to get some kind of help, and get it fast."
"Wait," Vicky said. "You don't know the whole story, Mother."
"Go on."
"I'm frigid only with him."
"You've had others?"
"Three of them," Vicky said. "All in the past two weeks. I was faithful up till then, all those years But then all of a sudden I couldn't take it any more, and I got myself a lover."
"Three of them in two weeks?"
"Three. I didn't want that many. It's a very complicated story."
"And you enjoyed it with all of them?"
"Yes," Vicky said. "With all three."
"It sometimes happens that way," Mrs. Avery said. "The routine of sex with your husband becomes a bore, but when you turn to other men--"
"They weren't all men," Vicky said.
"What?"
"One was a woman. A colored girl who works for me. I was drunk and she gave me a shower to sober me up, and then we started making love. And I enjoyed it."
"That's going a little far, isn't it, Vicky?"
"I'm a mixed-up kid," Vicky said. "There was something peculiar about the second affair, too. With a man, all right. But the way he did it --" She described Frye's preference crisply. "And I enjoyed that, too."
"A real sexual cannibal. What about the third one?"
"Just a normal man," Vicky said. "Great in the hay, but nothing offbeat."
"Thank God for that." Mrs. Avery sighed. "Okay, so you've got a problem. You're frigid for your husband but you respond to anything else that walks, flies, creeps, or runs. What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know. That's why I came to you."
"You know what I think you ought to do?" Mrs. Avery said. "The same thing I did when I found out I was tired of sleeping with my husband and enjoyed sleeping with other men. Get a divorce."
CHAPTER TEN
GET A DIVORCE.
The three blunt words hit Vicky with an unexpected impact.
"No," she said without even stopping to think about it. "No, I don't want a divorce."
"You don't love him and you obviously aren't happy with him. Why stick around?"
"Because -- because -- " Vicky hesitated. "I do love him, in a way. Not a sexual way. I guess it's more liking than love. But I wouldn't want to leave him."
"What better reason to leave him? Why should you wait until you hate his guts? Leave now. A nice friendly parting while you're both still young."
"I've got no grounds for divorce. He's always been faithful to me."
"How do you know?"
"I'm sure of it. Anyway, I couldn't prove he hadn't been."
"There's always mental cruelty, Vicky. Say he's been neglecting you, that he's been cold and indifferent. It worked for me, and it ought to work for you. You'll get the house, and the custody of the kids, and a couple of thousand bucks a month to keep ends meeting."
Vicky shook her head. "That's just it. I'm tired of the house. Tired of the kids. Tired of the whole goddamned fur-lined routine. I've got it too good. I'm bored silly, can't you see? Whatever I want, I get. Except happiness. And I'm cracking up."
Her mother's expression was cynical. "Whatever you've got, sweetheart, it's pretty damned complicated."
"I can't help that."
"Well, if you're not going to divorce him, you'll just have to go on having lovers. But that's risky, of course. If he finds out, you might go out on your ear, no alimony or kids or house or anything.
"I might just want it that way," Vicky said.
Mrs. Avery's eyes narrowed. "Careful, girl. All that horrid luxury may bore you right now, but at least you've got it. Try living without it for six months or a year and you'll miss it, believe me. You've never had to exert yourself for anything, and you aren't trained for hard work. You may think there's something glamorous about scrubbing pots and changing diapers, but you'd change your mind fast if you ever really had to do it."
Vicky shrugged. "So I'd marry another rich doctor."
"And find yourself right back in the boat you're in now, eh?"
"Well, what do you suggest?"
"I told you. Divorce. Take a year or two and travel around the world alone. Have lovers. Get to know yourself. Then come back here and find someone else, find a man who excites you."
"Bill excited me, at first. It wore off."
"So don't get married, then. Live the way I do. When you get bored with one man, chuck him and find another."
Vicky stared at her mother. The suggestion was a tempting one. Yet she couldn't go for it. She wasn't happy living the way she was, but she suspected that her mother's rootless, footloose existence would eventually become just as boring to her. The business of taking a series of lovers would seem horribly mechanical after a while.
Everything got boring sooner or later. Everything.
"Why bother to stay alive?" Vicky said, "I don't think I'd enjoy living your kind of life."
"What would you enjoy, then?"
"I don't know. I don't know at all."
"You're in a mess, then."
"That much I realize."
Her mother shrugged. "I wish I could help you out, but I can't. You've got to live your own life, Vicky. And find happiness in your own way." She shrugged and looked at her watch. "Let's order dessert. I'm supposed to meet a friend of mine in a little while at my apartment,"
"A male friend?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
Vicky smiled. "Mind if I go up and meet him too?"
"Why?"
"Just curious," she said. "I've always wanted to meet one of my mother's lovers. Does he know you have a daughter my age?"
"He knows I've got a daughter. He doesn't know how old you are."
"Are you afraid that if he sees me it'll give the show away?" Vicky asked.
"Not at all."
"Then you don't mind if I come back with you and stay a little while?"
"No."
"Positive?"
Her mother's face crinkled irritably. "I told you I didn't mind."
They finished their meal and left the restaurant. Vicky let her mother take the check. Slowly, they strolled back to Sutton Place.
The visit hadn't solved anything, Vicky thought. She was still as confused as ever. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was unhappy. But the dimensions of the bind she was in were more apparent now: she wasn't pleased with her marriage, but didn't want to break it up. Heads or tails, she lost.
"Want a drink?" Mrs. Avery asked.
"Wouldn't mind. Something tall and cold."
She fixed drinks. Vicky took hers --it was mostly rum and ice cubes, with some pineapple juice in it -- and gulped down half of it hungrily. Her mother looked tense, as though apprehensive about the coming meeting.
The doorbell rang.
"I'll get it," Mrs. Avery said.
She scuttled to the door and admitted a lanky young man, dressed very very Ivy League, in a crisp tan suit that must have been sewn to his body.
He was very young. Vicky realized with amazement that he couldn't be much more than thirty. If that much at all. He was practically her own age, which meant he was the lover of a woman just about old enough to be his mother. The thought chilled Vicky.
She was chilled even more to see him put his arms around her mother and kiss her -- not a filial kiss at all, but a deeply passionate one, mouth to open mouth. Vicky was embarrassed to watch it. Her cheeks flamed as she saw him drawing her mother tight against him, breasts and thighs and all. Then the kiss broke.
He looked at Vicky in surprise.
"Hello," he said. "Is this your sister, Wilma?"
Mrs. Avery shook her head. "No," she said in. a steady voice. "No. My daughter."
He covered his astonishment pretty well. "Oh, I don't believe that, Wilma. You can't have a grown daughter!"
"I do, thought," Mrs. Avery said. "Not only that, I have a 6-year-old grand-daughter."
Mr. Ivy League looked completely bombed, now. Vicky smiled realizing that her mother was deliberately testing the strength of her hold over this boy, deliberately showing off by demonstrating that she could boast about her age and still keep him.
Mrs. Avery said, "Vicky-, I want you to meet a very good friend of mine. This is Cal McKeown. He's a banker. Cal, my daughter, Vicky Wilcox."
Cal MeKeown looked abashed. He smiled at Vicky and said, "I'm not really a banker, Mrs. Wilcox. I just happen to work in a bank."
"Don't let him fool you into thinking he's a teller or something, Vicky," her mother said. "He's a vice-president. The youngest vice-president in the bank, as a matter of fact."
"Aw, Wilma, you shouldn't brag about me that way."
"I think you ought to be proud of having come so far so fast, Cal," Vicky said pointedly. "And call me Vicky, will you? To be a vice-president so young -- you're only around 30, aren't you?"
MeKeown reddened. "32," he said.
Wilma Avery shot her daughter a venomous glance. Vicky only smiled. She had deliberately gone out of her way to bring McKeown's age into the discussion.
A woman of 50, sleeping with a man of 32 -- it was... hideous, Vicky thought. Even a beautiful woman of 50. Obviously MeKeown didn't know Wilma's real age, but, even so, he must certainly have guessed she was at least 40. Eight years -- eighteen, in reality. Eight was plenty. What was his motive? Sex? There were plenty of younger girls around for that. Money? But if he was a vice-president in a bank he probably made good money, enough so he wouldn't need to act as a gigolo for an older woman.
Why, then?
Vicky shrugged to herself. Her mother said, "I'll get you a drink, Cal."
"That's all right, Wilma. I'll fix it myself."
Nimbly he long-legged it into the kitchen. The moment he was gone, Wilma Avery turned to Vicky and said in a low, hoarse voice, "You little witch, what's the idea of needling me like that?"
"You said you didn't mind this meeting me. You yourself told him about your grand-daughter."
"But you didn't have to ask him his age. You didn't need to embarrass us like this."
"You should have thought of that before you let me stay," Vicky said. "How long have you known him, anyway, Mother?"
"Six months."
"Is he good in bed, Mother?"
"Cut it out, Vicky."
"He must be awfully fascinated by you. Or is he the kind who goes only for older women? The kind with the Oedipus complex sticking out?"
"He likes me," she said. "I like him. We get pleasure from each other. When we stop getting pleasure, we'll stop seeing each other."
MeKeown came back into the room, carrying a pitcher of drinks and some glasses. He poured for all three of them without being asked.
Vicky studied him. He had a vaguely effeminate look about him, but she suspected that was just the effect of his tight suit, which gave him a pansyish look. He was basically well built and handsome. She couldn't blame her mother for being interested in him.
And she supposed she couldn't blame MeKeown for being interested in her Wilma was a damned fine-looking woman, both for her age and just in general. And in her fifty years she had probably compiled as extensive a sexual experience as any woman ever had. So she had plenty to offer a man. Even considering her age.
Vicky felt a flare of the old mother-daughter jealousy that had been so vivid when she was in her late teens. Then it had been a subtle, undeclared kind of war between the aging but still beautiful queen and the youthful princess. They had flirted with the same men, they had pretended to be interested in each others' companions. But there hadn't been any real competition. Vicky, at 19, was beautiful but too inexperienced, too raw. Her mother, at 39, had the edge in every respect.
Now it was different. Vicky had been around a little too. In at least one respect -- Eloise -- she had probably done something Wilma never had.
A sudden spark of mischief ignited in her.
She thought of a brand new way of coping with the deadly boredom that oppressed her.
She waited for her chance to put it into action. It came a few minutes later, when tie telephone rang in the other room.
"Excuse me," Wilma said.
Vicky and McKeown were left alone.
For a moment, they smiled uneasily at each other, unable to start a conversation against the background of awkwardness that existed.
Then Vicky took a deep breath, threw him a dazzling bedroom look, and said in a bland, conversational tone of voice, "How would you like to go to bed with me Cal?"
"What?"
"You heard me. How would you like to go to bed with me?"
"But -- oh, look -- I mean--"
"Afraid?"
"It isn't proper!"
"Why not? Here's your chance to compare mother and daughter. See how they stack up. Maybe I know a few tricks Wilma's forgotten. Maybe I'm springier and bouncier and juicier. Don't you want a chance to find out?"
"You're a married woman."
"Not necessarily a faithful wife."
McKeown fidgeted. "It isn't right, sleeping with a mother and a daughter."
"It isn't right for a man of 32 to sleep with a woman of SO, either. I'm only 29. Try me."
McKeown didn't answer. He seemed staggered to hear that Wilma was SO, and startled even to learn that Vicky was 29.
Wilma hung up the phone and returned to the room. McKeown looked tense and distressed. Vicky sat back, smiling, taking deep breaths to show off the steep curves of her bosom.
Wilma muttered, "The stupid idiots at the supermarket can't ever get an order straight, not once! I don't know how they make a profit. Vicky, didn't you say you had to be somewhere at two o'clock?"
It was a hint, and a none too delicate one. Vicky smiled at her mother. "Oh, it's not all that hard and fast. I can be a little late. Anyway, I love talking to your charming friend Cal."
She smiled warmly at charming friend Cal. Charming friend Cal looked more uncomfortable than ever.
The phone rang again. Wilma muttered something obscene and headed into the bedroom again.
Vicky leaned close to McKeown. "Well?" she asked. "Do you want to or don't you?"
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"Damned right I'm serious."
He moistened his thin lips. "Will she ever find out about it?"
"I won't be the one to tell her."
"All right, then. Where? When?"
"Today," Vicky said forcefully. She thought a moment. "I'll rent a hotel room." She named the hotel where Ted Frye had taken her. "You get there by half past three at the latest."
"How will I know which room you have?"
"Ask for me at the desk, silly."
"And suppose I can't get away from her?"
"That's your problem. If you want me bad enough, you'll figure out a way."
She winked at him. A moment later, her mother came into the room again.
Vicky drained her drink and stood up. "Well, I think I'll be running along," she said. "It's been good talking to you, Mother."
"I hope you'll get everything solved, Vicky."
"Oh, I'll manage." She smiled graciously at McKeown. "Nice meeting you, Mr. McKeown. Mother always has such interesting friends."
She left.
In the street outside, she wondered why she had propositioned McKeown. To hurt her mother? No reason why she should want to do that. To demonstrate that she herself was desirable? She didn't need any proof of that.
Why, then?
She knew the answer: she had done it just for the hell of it. She had been faithful for almost a week, ever since the Eloise episode, and in her present state of heightened boredom that was about as long as she could last without some kind of excitement.
She wondered if McKeown would actually come.
He struck her as a somewhat wishy-washy type, easily swayed. Wilma might cast a spell over him and keep him around all afternoon. Or she might haul him into bed with her so fast that he couldn't stop to wiggle out of it. He might not have the virility of a Dan Connors. He might not be able to make love to two women in one afternoon. We'll see, she thought.
She got into her car and drove crosstown, parking near Madison Avenue. As she entered the lobby of the hotel where Frye had taken her, exactly a week ago today, she wondered if they would rent a room to her at all. After all, she was an unescorted woman without luggage. It didn't take very much intelligence to guess that she probably wanted her room for immoral purposes. And this wasn't a come-one-come-all motel in Connecticut. This was one of New York's finest and oldest hotels.
Maybe because it was one of New York's finest and oldest, and because she was dressed in a style that not even the most prosperous call girl was likely to afford, there as no trouble.
She said, "I'd like a room for tonight."
"Of course, Ma'am. Single or double?"
"Double."
"Certainly." They gave her the room, and tactfully suggested that she pay in advance, in view of her absence of luggage. She handed over twenty dollars and registered in her own name.
She went upstairs.
The room was practically a twin to the one she and Frye had shared last Tuesday. Seeing the room again brought back memories of that encounter, and she shook her head, trying to rid her mind of them.
She closed the door. The time was two-fifteen.
She undressed carefully, hanging everything in the closet to avoid creasing it. There was a full-length mirror in the bathroom, and she went over to it, studying her body critically and comparing it to the way her mother's nakedness had looked.
She was sure she had the advantage. Wilma's body was sensational, but there were telltales of age that Vicky simply didn't yet have. Vicky eyed her breasts, high and round and close together. She put her hands on them, feeling the tautness, the resilience of the youthful flesh. She ran her hands down her flat belly, and over her curved luscious buttocks.
A good body, she thought.
A damned good body.
She got under the shower and gave herself a thorough scrubbing, soaping her breasts tenderly, savoring the sensuous pleasure of it.
Then, naked, she lay down on the bed to wait.
It was a quarter to three, now.
The minutes ticked past. Three o'clock. Three-fifteen. She wondered what McKeown and her mother had been doing all this time. Had they been to bed? If not, what excuse had he found? None, maybe. Maybe he wouldn't come.
Three-thirty.
No word from him.
Three-thirty-five. He was late.
I've lost, Vicky thought despondently. He isn't coming. She held on to him after all. She won. She -- The telephone rang shatteringly.
Vicky grabbed it. "Hello?"
A calm, urbane voice at the desk said in measured tones, "Is this Mrs. Wilcox."
"That's right."
"Mrs. Wilcox, there's a gentleman here to see you. A Mr. McKeown. Are you expecting him?" Triumph I "Yes!" Vicky said. "Yes, I am. Send him up! Send him right up!"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MCKEOWN LOOKED A LITTLE STARTLED when Vicky opened the door in the nude. He looked more than a little startled. His eyes widened, and in a quick involuntary gesture his glance swept down her body from her proudly bare, steeply outjutting breasts past the flatness of her belly to the voluptuous flare of her hips, the passionate promise of her loins, the firm columns of her thighs. A tinge of color came into his face.
Then he grinned. "You don't believe in wasting any time, do you?"
"I think it's a good body. I don't believe in hiding what I've got."
"It's a damned good body," McKeown said fervently. "I just didn't think I'd be getting to see so much of it so soon, that's all."
Vicky smiled. She turned, showing off the lush hemispheres of her buttocks, and walked slowly, languidly across the room. She draped herself on the bed in a Titian pose, one arm lazily curled behind her head, drawing her breasts stunningly outward and upward She said in a purring voice, "Did you sleep with my mother?"
"Today?"
"I wasn't asking about last February." He shook his head. "No. No, I didn't sleep with her today."
"How did you escape her clutches?"
"It wasn't easy. I told her I wasn't feeling well, and would she mind skipping it today? She minded. She minded very much. She's a very passionate woman, your mother. Not that I find it easy to believe she's really your mother. The mother of a woman of -- are you really 29? I can't believe that either."
"You'd better. I'm 29 and she's SO. And my oldest child is going on 6. Gospel."
"You and Wilma both look so much younger than your years," McKeown said. His eyes were roaming back and forth over the hills and valleys of her body in obvious delight.
"How old did she tell you she was?" Vicky asked. "She didn't say. I assumed she was about 40, maybe even a little younger. But 50--"
"That's old, isn't it?"
"Older than I figured on."
"But you knew she was at least eight years older than you, Cal. So why did you start an affair with her in the first place?"
"Because she's an attractive woman, no matter what her age might be."
"Still, though, an older woman--"
"I'd prefer not to talk about my affair with your mother," McKeown said a trifle prissily. "It makes me uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, it gives me the absolute creeps to sit here discussing it with you. So let's drop the subject. We've got much better things to spend our time doing. Okay?"
"Okay," Vicky said. "Shall we have some refreshments first?"
"Drinks?"
"Naturally. Interested?"
"I think so," he said with a smile. His eyes were still on the peaks of her breasts, on the slope of her belly.
Vicky revelled in her nakedness. Stretching like a big cat, she reached toward the nightstand, caught up the phone, and ordered drinks from room service.
The drinks came quickly. When the knock sounded, Vicky gestured at the avidly watching McKeown and said, "You take care of it."
"I thought you liked showing your body."
"Not to bellhops," she said. "Go ahead."
McKeown took the drinks from the boy, carried the tray into the room, and paid him. Vicky remained sprawled out on the bed. For one moment the door opened too wide, as McKeown handed the boy his tip, and the startled youngster stared in pleasant shock at Vicky Wilcox's breasts and thighs and loins. Then the door closed.
"Hand me my drink," Vicky said lazily.
As she sipped it, she stopped to consider the kind of act she was putting on. Her personality seemed to have changed entirely for McKeown's benefit. She was behaving like a sort of Cleopatra, imperious and totally amoral, purring in a sophisticated tone, ordering him about like a lackey. That wasn't the frightened Vicky who had given herself to Ted Frye's abominations, or the eager, almost virginal Vicky who had surrendered to Dan Connors, or the confused, foggy-minded Vicky who had been drawn into Eloise's lesbian embrace. She wondered why she was coming on this way.
Probably, she thought, because she felt a kind of contempt for McKeown. She didn't dislike him or despise him, but she could hardly feel respect for the manhood of a man who let himself be used as a middle-aged woman's gigolo. So she was talking down to him. And he didn't seem to mind it, which only enhanced her feeling of gentle contempt.
They sipped their drinks for a while.
Then Vicky said, "Why don't you take your clothes off and make yourself comfortable?"
"I was just thinking the same thing," McKeown said. "Why don't I?"
He loosened his tie and shrugged out of his oh-so-tight, oh-so-chic jacket. He hung the jacket in the closet with the clothes-consciousness of a woman, and unbuttoned his shirt. Then he stepped delicately out of his trousers, and a moment later discarded his underclothes.
He was thin almost to the point of being skinny. But he did not have a fleshless look about him. His limbs were long and muscular, but the muscles were long, flat ones rather than the thick, bunchy sort. A thin layer of fat overlaid his entire body. It was an interesting appearance, neither he-man nor skeleton, and Vicky liked it. From the looks of his body, he would be all right in bed. Vicky guessed that her mother was getting as good as she gave in her affair with him.
Vicky held out her arms to him.
There was a curiously tentative, almost coltish tone to his love-making. He came to her, and knelt by the side of the bed, putting his hands to her breasts, cupping them, squeezing them as though testing their firmness. Vicky reached out, sliding her hand along the smooth, almost hairless expanse of his chest, down to his thighs. He caught his breath sharply as she reached her destination. He let her draw him up, as though on a leash, alongside her on the bed.
He put his lips to her breasts. She smiled as he took the nipples one at a time in his mouth, rolled them gently around, tongued them. There was something terribly shy about his approach, and Vicky wondered if that was his normal personality, or if he were somewhat inhibited by the fact of having already had her mother.
His inhibitions dropped away from moment to moment. She could feel the pace of his body quickening, the blood beginning to flow more rapidly as he heated up. His hand wandered down the softness of her belly, finding the sanctuary. Vicky clamped her thighs tight a-round his hand, and let him move only within her.
"You enjoy that, do you?" he asked.
"Is there a woman who doesn't?"
"Never met one."
"I hope you never do," she said. "It -- oh, yes!" she sighed suddenly. "Oh, yes, I do like that! I do!"
His touch was incredibly gentle, incredibly sure. He had found the seat of her sensations, and now he worked on it with delicious diligence, with persistence, with precision, pinpointing the exact center of her most secret pleasures. Vicky wondered whether it was her mother who had taught him to be so skillful. Perhaps. Certainly old Wilma had plenty to teach, Vicky reflected.
She gasped in pleasure and began to arch her back, pistoning her hips against the thrust of his hand. But soon the sensation became too keenly ecstatic to bear, and she lapsed back motionless against the mattress, trembling, shivering in pleasure. He continued to excite her, tirelessly, patiently, and in a sudden shudder of voluptuous sensation Vicky felt her entire body reacting, and knew that she could not stand any more of the preliminaries.
"Please," she murmured. "Please --now--" She drew him down on top of her.
She was ready to receive him, and she accepted him easily, surprised at the gentle way he entered her, the reticent, almost apologetic way that he made his body one with hers. For a long moment afterward they lay still, simply savoring the pleasure of the union.
Then he began to move.
His long, slender body moved with the loose-jointed ease of a ballet dancer's. There was nothing rough and aggressively masculine about his approach, as there was, for instance, about that of Dan Connors. He swivelled his hips and pivoted his body, churning and stirring the depths of her, and Vicky responded with a series of long indrawn sighs of delight as successive waves of pleasure went roiling through her.
She lifted her legs, drawing her knees up practically to her breasts, canting her body upward to yield the maximum to him. It seemed to inflame him. His breath came in hoarse ragged bursts, and he rose, driving down into her, swording her gently and yet tremendously excitingly.
Her passions soared.
She closed her eyes, felt his lips against her own, felt his hand close tightly on one of her breasts, felt the thrusting manhood of him again and again finding harbor within her Then she was approaching a final fulfillment, and she quivered and said in a soft voice, "Now, Cal, now, this is the time--" He pegged to the depths of her. She thrust upward and outward, meeting his onslaught.
Their bodies, linked and intertwined, writhed wildly on the creaking bed.
Thrust was followed by counterthrust, and then a moment of tingling ecstasy, the anticipation of the full cloudburst of it, and then it came, the blessed release, first hers, and then, a moment later and of equal intensity, his, and after that a final quiver of hers. And then peace.
They lay still. He seemed tired now, as though his slim body had no reserve of strength. Vicky stroked his long arms, his thin back, his flat, hard buttocks. She felt strangely tender, oddly maternal toward him, and grateful for the pleasure he had given her.
But then, as the ecstasy receded, she felt the Cleopatra-like arrogance returning.
She said, "You're pretty good, you know?"
"Thanks. I suppose."
"And what about me?"
"You're marvelous, Vicky."
"How do I compare to my mother?"
A long silence.
"Well?" she asked.
"I told you we'd be better off keeping away from that subject."
"I want to know. Am I better in bed than she is, or worse? Tell me the absolutely honest truth. I insist on it, Cal."
"Vicky --"
"Tell me!"
Another long pause Then McKeown said, "It's hard to compare the two of you."
"How so?"
"Because you're so different from each other."
"In what ways?" she pressed him.
"Vicky, I find all this terribly embarrassing."
"I don't give a damn how you find it. I want to know how my sexual performance compares with my mother's, and you're the only man in the world who can tell me. All my life I've been competing with her in one way or another. Now we've finally shared a man, and if you think I'm going to let you escape without telling me -- "
"Please, Vicky."
"Tell me!"
"No."
She smiled at him archly and let her hand rest on his loins. He stiffened in an automatic response, and she moved her hand back and forth, coy, mock-innocent.
She purred, "Do you ever want to see me again, Cal? To go to bed with me?"
"Of course."
She continued to move the hand. "Then you'll tell me what I want to know."
Sweat rolled down his lanky body. "You're a witch, you know that?"
"Just be careful how you spell that word."
He grinned despite his annoyance with her. "Okay. Okay. You win."
"Tell me, then? Am I better or worse than she is?"
"Not better. Not worse. Different, that's all."
"I want to know what you mean by different."
"Well, Wilma -- your mother -- is more artful than you are. You're more spontaneous. It's a hard distinction to draw, really. She does things with her body Inside. Amazing things. She's really an expert. But you just give yourself -- fresh, almost unspoiled -- am I getting across to you at all?"
"More or less. But tell me this: if you had your choice, which one of us would you want to sleep with?"
"Depends on my mood. There are times when I'd go for experience and art, other times when I'd rather have youth and passion."
"And which more frequently?"
"About half and half," McKeown said.
"You're too diplomatic. I don't think you enjoyed sleeping with me at all."
"Don't be silly, Vicky."
"You don't think I'm skillful enough," she pouted.
"I never said that. I just said that compared with your mother, you were more spontaneous and less artful. You've got to realize that she's the most experienced woman I've ever known. Probably one of the most experienced women in New York. But I'd put you second only to her in technique and skill. And I'd put you ahead of her in vigor and excitement. Which makes you about even."
"You sound like a bookkeeper drawing up a balance sheet," Vicky said.
"You asked for an honest comparison. It wasn't my idea."
"And have you had many other women besides the two of us, Cal?"
He smiled, and colored boyishly. "My share."
"How many is that? Ten? Fifty? A hundred?"
"I don't keep count"
"Make a guess."
"Vicky, I've never known anybody so prying, so troublesome --"
"Make a guess."
"Oh, maybe fifty or a hundred," he said. "I don't know. I've never thought about it."
"And how many men do you think I've had?" she asked him.
"I can't imagine."
"Guess, then."
"How can I?"
"You've just slept with me. You can tell whether I'm a novice or not."
"You've been married a long time. You could have learned everything from your husband. For all I know, I'm only your second."
"You aren't."
"I didn't really think so."
"How many do you think I've had, then?"
He began to look irritated. "I don't know. Five, maybe. Is that close?"
"You're the eleventh," she said. "I think. I'm starting to lose count. Maybe the twelfth or even the thirteenth." And not all of them men, she added silently No need to tell him that. "At any rate you're the fourth person I've been unfaithful with."
Vicky was bothered by the tone of smugness, of boastfulness, that she was using She felt a little giddy, and realized that she was putting on a very wanton show for him. She wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that he disliked her intensely. She had certainly given him plenty of reason. She didn't even like herself, behaving the way she was.
She rose from the bed and walked to the window, looking down on busy Fifth Avenue.
"Getting late," she said. "Domesticity is calling. I've got to be on my way."
"The same here."
"How come the bank can spare you on a weekday afternoon?"
"I've got some overtime accumulated," he said. "I take it whenever I please."
He came up behind her, and spread his hands out over the globes of her buttocks. She pressed her back against his chest, then turned so the tips of her breasts grazed his body.
She said, "Are you going to tell Wilma that you had me, Cal?"
"Are you out of your mind?"
"What would happen if she found out?" MeKeown shrugged uncomfortably. "I can't imagine. But it wouldn't be pretty. She's very dependent on me, and I imagine she'd claw like a wildcat to keep me where she wants me. You might suffer for it."
"She wouldn't claw her own daughter, would she?"
"Of course she would," MeKeown said.
Vicky nodded. "Yes. I guess she would."
"You aren't thinking of telling her, are you?" he asked her.
. "No. I was just wondering if you were."
"Well, now you know."
"So it's a secret between you and me," she said. "Do you want to see me again, Cal?"
"Certainly I do."
"When?"
"What about Thursday?"
"Same time, same place?"
"Okay," he said.
She stared levelly at him. "And when are you seeing my mother again?"
He hesitated. "Tomorrow."
"To make up for disappointing her today, is that it?"
"More or less."
"So you'll have me on Tuesday, Wilma on Wednesday, me on Thursday again. Do you think you'll be able to stand the pace, Cal?"
"Ill manage somehow."
"It might wear you down."
"I'll take vitamin pills, then." He put one hand on each of her breasts and squeezed gently. "I'm not ready for the monkey-gland treatments yet," he said. "Ill be able to get along."
"An affair with mother and daughter. You never dreamed you'd ever get into something like that, did you?"
"No," he said. "Or that both mother and daughter would be so desirable. And so passionate."
"But we have to keep it a secret from my mother," she said.
He nodded. "Mum's the word."
"Exactly."
They kissed, and he stroked her satin-smooth buttocks a moment. Then they drew away.
He dressed quickly and watched her get dressed, taking evident delight in each motion of her body, obviously enjoying the drawing-on of the stockings, the fastening of the garterbelt, the hooking of the bra over the jutting breasts. They kissed again, and left the hotel separately.
Vicky headed for her car.
Stranger and stranger, she thought. Now an affair with her mother's lover.
Well, it promised to be interesting. She rather liked him, she realized, though he had struck her as a simp and a gigolo at the outset. He was all right. And one thing was sure --she wasn't going to be bored for a while.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS were two of the most tranquil ones Vicky had had since the entire period of restlessness and boredom had begun. The weather was perfect -- sky blue and clear, sun bright and hot -- and she lazed around the house without any inner tension, looking forward to Thursday and her second meeting with Cal McKeown. During those two days nothing seemed to bother her, nothing could get under her skin. She almost felt happy again.
Wednesday night she and Bill went into the city for dinner and a show, as they did two or three times a week. It was a perfectly pleasant evening, a marvelous French dinner followed by a funny play, and she felt mellow and relaxed throughout. They had dinner at a restaurant across the street from the hotel where Vicky had made love first to Ted Frye and then to Cal McKeown, but she was able to walk past it with Bill without feeling a quiver of embarrassment.
When they got home that night, they made love. Vicky initiated it -- her way of rewarding her husband for a good evening's entertainment. As she lay in his arms, she felt nothing again, no sensual throb, no tingle of excitement. But she pretended. Bill didn't seem to be aware of the deception. She hammed her way through a mild climax, and kissed him tenderly good night, and went to sleep looking forward to better things the next day.
Thursday. Cal-day.
Vicky's cheerfulness was still with her as the day began. She leafed through the mail, found a postcard from Dan Connors in Curacao, tore off the stamp to give to the little boy of the gardener's who saved stamps, and tossed the card away without giving much thought to the man who had sent it. Dan Connors' cowardice in skipping town the moment things looked the least bit complicated had not endeared him to Vicky.
She was sunbathing in the garden, at mid-morning, when she heard the phone ring inside. She got lazily to her feet and began to walk toward the house.
Eloise appeared. There was just the shadow of a look of desire on the colored girl's sensitive face as she took in the sight of Vicky stripped down to a skimpy bikini. But the maid wiped the expression away a fraction of a moment after it had appeared.
"Telephone, Mrs. Wilcox"
"Thanks, Eloise. Who is it?"
"A man, Mrs. Wilcox. He didn't say."
A chilly panic gripped Vicky as she hurried to the phone A man? Ted Frye, maybe, getting hungry for her and calling up to see if his blackmail stunt would work a second time? Vicky tensed By the time she picked up the receiver, she was positive it was Ted Frye who was calling her.
"Hello," she quavered.
"Hello, Vicky." A man's voice, bland and unfamiliar, certainly not Ted Frye. "Who's this?"
"You mean you don't recognize the voice?"
"I'm afraid not."
"What a short memory. Only two days and I'm gone from your mind."
"Cal?" she said "Who else?"
"How did you get my number?"
"It wasn't hard. I knew your name and approximately where you lived. The phone company has a service called Information that tells you--"
"All right," she said. "Is something wrong? Are you cancelling for today?"
"No," he said. "Not in the least. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact."
"I don't understand."
"I'm calling to find out if you can come into the city a little earlier," McKeown said. "I've got the rest of the day free. No use waiting around till late in the afternoon to get together, is there?"
"No," Vicky said. "I guess not. What do you want to do, then?"
"Well, let's meet for lunch now. Then we can go over to the hotel around two o'clock. Okay?"
"Okay," Vicky said. "But I can't meet you until around half past twelve. I've got to get dressed, and then M's a long drive to New York --"
"Half past twelve is fine," McKeown said. "Want to meet me at the bank?"
"Where's that?"
"Fifth Avenue and 53rd," he said. "Not far from the hotel. There's a big clock in the main concourse. Meet me by the clock at twelve-thirty." He blew her a kiss. "Don't be late, now."
Vicky put down the phone and hurriedly jogged upstairs to get dressed. She had been surprised to hear from McKeown, but was glad he had called. This way they would have much more time together than was originally scheduled.
It was strange, Vicky thought, how important McKeown had become to her, in how little time. She wondered why. It couldn't be entirely for his own sake, because there wasn't that much to him. He was a nice guy, reasonably good-looking, reasonably talented in bed, but nothing to get all that excited about. And yet she was deeply involved with him. Vicky suspected that the real reason had Something to do with the fact that he was her mother's lover too. She was competing successfully with Wilma in the bedroom, and that was the source of her fascination for McKeown. He was the symbol of her triumph over her mother.
Whatever the reason, Vicky thought, she was glad to have a little extra time with him. She jumped into the Jag and hustled down to New York City over practically empty roads.
The city was somewhat more crowded. Finding a parking space was impossible -- there weren't any legal ones to be had, and even illegal spots were nowhere to be found. Vicky stowed the car in a garage on 55th Street and walked down Fifth toward the bank.
She got there at twelve-twenty-eight, according to the big clock in the lobby. The bank was of the modern design -- no bars in front of the tellers, simple architecture with lots of shiny surfaces, wide open vistas everywhere. Vicky took up a post under the clock and waited.
She didn't have to wait long. In about three minutes she spotted McKeown's long-limbed form on an escalator descending from the upper level of the bank. He came striding toward her, wearing a tight suit that was a carbon copy of Tuesday's, only in green rather than tan. He looked suave and confident on home grounds, with a cocky lilt to his stride as he crossed the bank floor.
He didn't kiss her. He smiled and squeezed her hand and said, "So you're right on time. Been waiting long?"
"Just a couple of minutes."
"Hungry?"
"Moderately."
"Let's go this way. It's quicker."
"Where we eating?"
"A club for executives," McKeown said. "Not open to the public I think you'll like it."
They angled around the bank and went into another entrance of the same glossy building. An open elevator, half full, was waiting for them. McKeown and Vicky got in.
"Penthouse," McKeown said crisply.
Up they went, up, up, up Vicky watched the indicator as they climbed to the 20th floor, the 25th, the 30th. At 37 the elevator halted. They got out.
"Next elevator," McKeown said. "Where are we eating, heaven?"
"The next best place."
The littler elevator took them two more floors, and they emerged in the penthouse, a quiet, window-walled restaurant with an astonishing view of most of Manhattan. The suave maitre-de greeted McKeown by name, smiled unctuously at Vicky, and led them to a table by a window.
"Would you care for cocktails?" he murmured.
Vicky nodded. "I'll have a Bacardi," she said.
"Dry martini for me," McKeown said.
The drinks seemed to arrive almost immediately. Vicky sipped hers -- it was very cold, very good -- and said, "This is quite a place. You eat here often?"
"Whenever I can manage the time."
"Is it expensive?"
He nodded. "I'd say so. But worth it. You never have to worry about getting a table, never have to stand around, never have the wrong kind of people eating here. Admission's by membership only."
"I suppose they're terribly exclusive," Vicky said. "Discriminate against Negroes and Jews, that sort of thing?"
"Oh, no," McKeown said. "They only discriminate against people without money. Anyone who holds an executive position with one of the companies with offices in this building can join. No stenographers wanted. But two of the officers of the club are Jews themselves. And there are three Negroes sitting about five tables behind you. Former baseball players. They have their own public-relations firm now, and they're each millionaires. No discrimination ethnically here at all, I assure you."
Vicky nodded. The menus arrived. No prices listed, she noticed. If you could afford to eat here, she thought, you didn't need to care what they charged you for lunch.
She ordered in a carefree way --caviar, lobster salad, and tortoni. The caviar was the real thing, she noted, the imported article, served on ice with wedges of toast and slices of lemon. McKeown didn't seem to be troubled by the fact that she had rung up a $5 appetizer at his expense. Maybe he had some way of charging his meal to the bank as a business lunch, she thought.
Vicky said, "Have you ever brought my mother here?"
"Quite often."
"She likes it, I bet. This sort of tasteful luxury always appealed to her."
"It appeals to me too," McKeown said.
"And to me, for that matter. Did you see her yesterday as scheduled?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"And what?" he asked.
"You went to bed with her?"
"Look, Vicky--"
"Embarrassed again?"
"There's such a thing as decency."
"There's such a thing as curiosity, too. I want to know all about it. Did you do it with her yesterday, Cal?"
"If you have to know, I did."
"And how was it?"
"Vicky I"
"How was it?" she prodded relentlessly.
"Very -- nice --"
"Better than with me on Tuesday?"
"Will you cut this out, Vicky?"
"If you want me today, you'll answer me."
"For God's sake--"
"I'll go home right after lunch," she threatened. "I mean it."
"Please, Vicky--"
"Tell me about it," she said. He was so easy to bulldoze, she thought.
He said reluctantly, "It was very good. But neither better nor worse than with you. I told you. Different, that's all."
"Tell me about it," Vicky said amiably. "How do you do it? Were you on top or was she?"
He blushed furiously. In a low, angry voice he said, "I was on top. I wish I understood why you have this morbid interest in--"
"Does she respond right away, or does it take time? And what does she say when she's doing it?"
McKeown stared at her for a long moment without saying anything. Finally, in clipped tones, he said, "This conversation is going to end right here. If you don't like it, you can walk out any time you please. I'm damned if I'm going to let you be a remote-control Peeping Tom on your own mother. Next you'll be asking me to hide you under the bed with a periscope."
She realized she had pushed him too far. She realized that she was a little drunk, too, which was why she had gone beyond the bounds of decency.
She watched him for a moment.
Then she said, "All right. I'm sorry. I was getting a little rough."
"You sure were."
"We'll drop the whole thing, shall we? T won't ask any more nasty little questions."
"I'd be very glad if you wouldn't," McKeown told her. He still looked uneasy.
Vicky tried to imagine her mother making love to him. It was hard to picture. She knew that her mother was a desirable woman, an attractive woman, but she couldn't imagine her in the act of sex, with McKeown or anyone else. It was a natural kind of blind spot.
They finished their meal and left. No check to sign, no tip even. Everything handled tactfully with a monthly bill, Vicky figured. It was a good place to eat, she thought. It lacked the high-pressure elements that could make lunch in Manhattan such a strain on the nerves.
They went over to the hotel. This time McKeown checked in, while Vicky lingered at the shops in the hotel arcade. She watched him pay for his room and go upstairs. She wondered just how many of the clients of this elegant hostelry were here for illicit purposes. This was the third time she had used the hotel this way in a little over a week, and there were probably plenty of others who relied on its no-questions-asked discretion.
She let a few minutes go by. Then she walked over to the desk No one recognized her She picked up a house phone and said, "I'd like to talk to Mr. McKeown, please." She spelled it. "He just checked in."
There was a pause while the operator looked up his room number. Then the phone clicked and McKeown said, "Yes?"
"Cal? What room are you in?"
"1401."
"Okay. I'm on my way up."
A high-speed elevator streaked her skyward. She walked down the corridor, knocked on 1401. "Come in."
She opened the door. MeKeown was waiting for her, grinning broadly and stark naked.
Vicky looked him over from top to bottom. "You don't believe in wasting any time, do you?" she asked.
"Seems to me I've heard that line before."
"Seems to me you have," she said. She locked the door, kicked off her shoes, and went over to him. One hand slipped to his body as they kissed, and she felt him, ready for her.
He undressed her.
He did it quickly, deftly, peeling away one garment and then the other, baring her body rapidly to his eyes and to his bands and to his lips. When she was naked, he carried her to the bed. Again, there were the same half-hesitant preliminaries, but soon his passion was at full force. His hand explored the forked wonder of her thighs, touched the mound of her womanhood, brought her once again to a fever pitch of anticipatory excitement.
Then his questing hand parted her thighs. He lowered his weight onto her.
He plunged in.
She gasped as the manhood of him ploughed her. He was much more aggressive in his love-making today, actually almost hurting her. But it was a pleasurable pain.
His lips went to hers. His tongue drove deep into her mouth. His hands cupped her bottom.
Their intertwined bodies lurched and bucked on the bed. She pulled her mouth away from his, gasping for breath, sucking in air.
"Wait--a--sec--" she panted. "Something wrong?"
"Getting too excited too fast."
"No harm in that."
"Wait," she begged. "Got to catch my breath."
Her heart pounded furiously. He was unlocking new passions in her, and it was a strenuous matter to ride out the storm in her flesh.
She thought of her husband. Poor harmless cuckolded Bill.
She thought of all the other men she had had. Ted Frye and Dan Connors and the boys of her remote and mistily distant past.
She thought of Eloise.
Then she locked MeKeown tight in her thighs and held him in the tender prison of her body and they went gasping away together to bliss.
When it was over, they lay together for a long while, resting. His hands cupped the high mounds of her breasts. Her nipples still felt stiff. She curled up against him, relaxed and content.
By now she had committed so many sins that she did not stop to worry about the sinfulness of them. She had met a man, and she had given herself to him, and it had been good. That was all.
She lay back, her legs apart. He rested one hand gently on her, but there was nothing sexual about his touch. She could see he was tired. Wilma yesterday, herself the day before yesterday -- it was a life to run a man ragged, and he was obviously showing the effects.
"When will I see you again?" she asked.
"How about Tuesday."
"So long?"
"I can't manage it any earlier."
"Because of your obligations to my mother?"
"Vicky, please. You don't expect me to break up with her, do you?"
"No. No, I guess not."
"So I'll see you Tuesday. We can meet at the bank again the way we did today. Okay?"
"Okay."
"And we'll have a good time together. If only you won't ask so many prying questions."
"Okay," she said. "Kiss my breasts."
He kissed them.
"Now kiss me there."
He kissed her there.
"Tell me you think I'm good in bed."
"I think you're tremendous," he said.
She rose. "Okay. I'll accept that. Let's get moving, now. Time to head for home. Where do you live, anyway?"
"The East Side. Not very far from your mother's apartment."
"How convenient."
"Now, Vicky--"
"Okay. Okay. I'll pull in the claws."
They dressed and left. Vicky was in a good mood. She had had a successful round in the sack, and now she had a project to occupy her time: the project of winning McKeown completely away from her mother, and making him hers on an exclusive basis. She didn't know if she could do it, but at least it was a goal to work toward, and she badly needed some sort of goal in life.
But there were complications.
The first complication came the following afternoon, around four. Vicky had had a pleasant day in the sun, and she had come indoors to mix herself a daiquiri, when the phone rang.
"Hello?" she said.
"Hello, Vicky."
"Oh. Mother. How nice of you to call."
"You sound so goddamn innocent, you know?"
"Is something the matter?" Vicky asked tensely.
"You know damned well something's the matter," Wilma Avery said. "Listen, girl, and get it straight the first time. Cal McKeown is mine. I don't want you fooling around with him. If you see him again, I'm going to make big trouble for you, Vicky. Bigger trouble than you're bargaining for."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
VICKY GRIPPED THE RECEIVEE tightly. A sudden wave of vertigo swept through her, and she swayed dizzily, almost fell.
She fought silently for control.
After a long silence she said, in a cold, taut voice, "I don't know what you're talking about, Mother."
"Don't bother pretending, Vicky. I know the truth. Cal himself told me. You saw him on Tuesday and yon saw him on Thursday. And you're supposed to be seeing him again next Tuesday."
There was a second wave of vertigo, and Vicky thought she would blank out altogether. So Cal had told her. But why? What had he hoped to gain by a fool trick like that?
Vicky said, "If Cal told you that, he was making up a lot of foolish nonsense."
"There's no need to deny it. I know the whole story. I know how you propositioned him that afternoon at my place, and what hotel you've been going to, and where you had lunch with him on Thursday, and even what you had for lunch. Nothing slips through my net, Vicky. You should have realized that by now. Nothing."
Vicky moistened her lips. There was no sense in bluffing through it now.
She said crisply, "All right. I went to bed with him. I like him. What of it?"
"Plenty of it, Vicky. He happens to be my lover, not yours. Keep your filthy little hands off him."
"You don't own him."
"As a matter of fact," Wilma said, "I do. I own him lock, stock, and barrel. And if you don't keep away from him, I'll play rough both with him and with you. Is that perfectly clear, Vicky? I won't tolerate competition. And even if the competition is my own daughter, I'll crush her ruthlessly."
"What do you mean, you own him lock, stock, and barrel?" Vicky asked.
"Never you mind that. Just listen to what I say: keep away. Private property."
"I don't understand how my seeing him now and then can injure you in any way, Mother."
"On Tuesday he told me he was too tired to go to bed with me," Wilma said. "Then he visited you and proceeded to go to bed with you. That injured me in a very direct sort of way. It directly deprived me of his -- company."
"Only once. We've worked it better since then. We can share him."
"No. He's mine and all mine. I don't want you sleeping with him, and I don't want you pumping him for information about me. You don't have any sense of decency at all, do you? Aren't you disgusted to sleep with a man who only the day before had been sleeping with your own mother?"
"So long as he's not my father, I don't see what difference that could make."
"It makes a difference. You've been warned, Vicky. I don't fool around. Ill slap you down if you get in my way again. Don't forget it."
The phone went dead with an emphatic click. Slowly, Vicky replaced the receiver.
She felt dazed and shaken. Everything had been going along so smoothly -- and then Cal had to spill the beans. Why? For God's sake, why? They had discussed this very thing, they had both agreed it was important to keep Wilma from learning of their affair.
And then he had turned right around and told her everything.
Why? Why? Why?
Vicky walked to the sideboard. But instead of muting the daiquiri she had planned on, she poured a tall shot of vodka for herself, put it down straight, and then downed another one.
There, she thought. That felt better.
She waited a few moments to let the vodka settle and start getting around her blood stream. Then, feeling less tense, she went to the phone, looked through the Manhattan yellow pages under Banks, found the number of the bank where McKeown worked.
She dialed it.
"I'd like to speak to Mr. McKeown, please," she told the secretary who answered "Is that Calvin McKeown you want, or Jonathan McKeown?"
"Calvin."
"Just one moment, please."
Vicky waited. Cal's voice said, "McKeown."
"Cal? Vicky."
"Oh. I didn't think--"
"My mother called me just now, Cal."
"Oh."
"Why did you tell her?"
"Listen, I can't discuss that with you now It's Friday and things are terrifically busy here."
"Why'd you tell her, Cal? That was a crazy thing to do and you know it."
"Please, Vicky. I can't talk now."
"When can you talk?"
"Some other time."
"Meet me in the city tonight," she said promptly. "I'm afraid I can't do that."
"Busy?"
"Yes, busy."
"With Wilma?"
"Look, Vicky --"
"All right. All right What about tomorrow, then? Will you see me tomorrow? Or are you afraid she's put detectives on your trail?"
"Tomorrow will be fine,' McKeown said. "Ill explain everything."
"You'd better have a good story," Vicky said "I'll meet you -- where? How about your apartment? I'm tired of renting hotel rooms."
"Okay," he said, as though agreeing to anything to get rid of her. "My place. Around one-thirty. Is that all right?"
"It's fine, "she said. "One more question now."
"Yes?"
"Who's Jonathan McKeown?"
"My father. He's a senior vice-president here."
"Oh. Okay, Cal. Tomorrow at half past one."
Vicky hung up. Interesting to learn that McKeown's father was a bank executive too. That might explain how Cal had become a vice-president so fast.
Damn him, she thought. Why did he have to spoil everything?
She wondered what Wilma could do to prevent further meetings. For a moment Vicky felt like a ten-year-old girl who has done something very, very naughty, and whose mother has just found out about it. A punishment has been promised, but not specified--and somehow the awful uncertainty of that was worse than any actual chastisement could be.
Vicky drove into the city early Saturday morning, around ten. There was some legitimate shopping she had to do, anyway, so the trip wasn't entirely for adulterous purposes. But as she wandered around the chic 57th Street stores she felt only a vast boredom at the idea of buying more clothes, more decorations for the house, more little luxuries. It was all so meaningless, these superficial trimmings of existence. The old sense of hollow-ness was creeping back, poisoning her enjoyment of life.
She drove over to McKeown's 61st Street apartment at quarter past one. The building was one of the newer ones, three or four years old, a tower of yellowish brick, with terraces and air-conditioner grills running up the side. She went in, found his name on the directory, and rode swiftly up to the sixteenth floor.
He was fully dressed, and his face looked grim. He let her into the apartment without kissing her.
She looked around. It was a tiny place -- two rooms and a terrace -- and she got the impression he didn't spend much time here.
He said, "What would you like to drink?"
"Anything handy."
"I've got some gin and some tonic, if you'd like."
"AD right. Good enough."
He handed her a drink. She tasted it and said, "Put some more gin in it."
"If you want."
"I want."
He dumped the equivalent of a martini's worth of gin into her drink. She tasted it again and nodded her approval. Then she looked up at him.
"Why'd you tell her? "she asked bluntly.
"She forced me to"
"What do you mean, she forced you? Slivers of bamboo under your fingernails? What made her think we were seeing each other, anyway?"
"She guessed," McKeown said bleakly. "I started making arrangements for when I'd be seeing her, and she sensed I was holding back Tuesdays and Thursdays. She jumped right away to the conclusion that I was seeing you those days."
"Couldn't you have told her the bank has special meetings on those days?"
"I tried to bluff. But she kept hammering at me. The same way you hammered at me with all sorts of questions. Like a power drill. Once she got an opening wedge, there was no stopping her. She kept at it. And finally I had to tell her. She would have driven me out of my mind otherwise, Vicky."
"All right. So she nagged you into it. What now?"
"Well have to be very careful," MeKeown said. "She mustn't find out we're still seeing each other."
"I don't see what there is to be afraid of."
"There's plenty to be afraid of," MeKeown said. He turned, walked to the window, sloshed the ice cubes around in his drink. "She's got tremendous power over me. She can destroy me with one phone call. You want to know the whole dirty story?"
"I think I ought to."
He took a deep breath. "AD right. A couple of years ago my father and I made a joint investment. We bought a hotel in the Caribbean, in Jamaica. The opportunity came up through the bank, and it seemed too good to pass up. So we went into hock on practically everything we owned, and bought it. He's got a sixty per cent share, I've got forty. It turned out that the hotel needed extensive renovations. We borrowed more money and poured it in. Since the hotel was already mortgaged to the hilt, we put up common stocks as collateral for the loan.
"Then I met your mother. She was an investing client of the bank, and I was handling some of her accounts. We got -- friendly. Then one night we were conferring over some investments, and got drunk, and went to bed together. It was the kind of accident that sometimes happens. I felt bad about it. It seemed like a breach of professional ethics, or something. Besides, I knew she was older than I was, though that didn't really matter too much.
"Well, then came the stock market crash. All of a sudden the collateral we had put up was cut in half We started getting margin calls. You know what a margin call is, Vicky?"
"I've heard the term," she said coldly.
"All right. We had to put up a substantial sum of money right away or else be sold out. We would lose the hotel and we'd be forced to sell our stock holdings at abnormal low prices besides. We had nothing left we could borrow against -- not that much money."
"Quite a lot," MeKeown said. "And no place to get it, this side of bankruptcy. But then your mother wormed the story out of me. And offered to put up the money."
"All of it?"
"Eight hundred thousand," MeKeown said. "At seven per cent, with no collateral, and the loan to be amortized steadily out of the profits of the hotel. She wrote out a check that afternoon and we were saved. But as part of the agreement -- an unwritten part -- I had to become her lover."
Vicky stared at him in surprise. "You sold yourself to her, then!"
"I had to. We'd have been ruined otherwise."
"So that's it. So that's the secret of her magic appeal. It isn't sex. It isn't her pink bottom and big boobs. It's money! She bought you!"
MeKeown scowled. "ATI right. She bought me. There comes a time when a man has to swallow his pride or else be crushed by debt. But you see what kind of position I'm in now, don't you?"
"I'm afraid I do."
"For some reason, your mother is fantastically jealous of you. She can't bear the thought of losing me to you. And so she put it to me in no uncertain terms. If she catches us together again, she'll call in the loan on one day's notice, as she's entitled to do. Well have to liquidate everything. That's the hold she has over me."
"In that case," Vicky said bitterly, "aren't you taking an awful chance by letting me come here today?"
"I wanted to see you, Vicky."
"But if you can't keep secrets from her, don't know how to lie to her--"
"I'll manage. Somehow. I couldn't give up seeing you, Vicky."
"But the risk --"
"We'll see. If she forecloses, she'll lose me entirely, and I don't think she wants to do that. So maybe I can string her along, keep her from finding out, and somehow jolly her if she does find out. Meanwhile we can still go on seeing each other, if we're careful about it. Unless you want to call it quits. Do you?"
"No."
"Neither do I," McKeown said. He smiled for the first time since Vicky's arrival. "We'll work it out one way or another, Vicky."
"I hope so."
She moved toward him and took the nearly empty glass from his hand, setting it down on a table.
"Do you realize," she said, "that you haven't kissed me since I walked in, and that was fifteen minutes ago?"
"I realize it."
"Well, do something about it!" His arms encircled her. His head lowered, hers tilted, and lips touched lips. At first the kiss was tentative, probing, more the kiss of two strangers embracing for the first time than the kiss of two lovers. Then it grew warmer. Vicky opened her mouth, admitting the eager thrust of his tongue. His hand slipped between their tightly pressed bodies to cup the swelling mound of her breast.
He began to undress her.
He was unhurried, and Vicky gave herself up to the undressing as though she were a queen being ceremonially disrobed by slaves. In a few moments her breasts were bare, and he was tenderly encircling them with his long, bony fingers, drawing the fingertips together to compress the hard, extended nipples.
Then he finished the job. Garment after garment dropped away, until nothing but a garter-belt and a pair of stockings stood between Vicky and total nudity. Dropping to his knees, McKeown took her smooth cool buttocks in his hands and brought his face forward, to do homage to the mystery of her womanhood. Then, after a long, delightful moment, he unhooked her garters, rolled the stockings down the tapering, flawless legs. Vicky kicked them off gaily.
He undid the garter-belt.
She was naked.
"Now your turn," she breathed.
Her nimble fingers pulled the clothes from him impatiently. In a moment she was down to his underwear, and then she had stripped him naked. His lean, smooth, nearly hairless body surrendered to her touch. Her fingers roamed everywhere -- with her mouth not far behind. She covered him with kisses.
They embraced in the middle of the room. Body was right against body. Vicky could feel the insistent pressure of his manhood at her thighs, the rigid arc of him as he held her close. Her breasts bored into his body, the hard nipples like two augers. His hands tightened on the globes of her buttocks.
She looked up at him. She smiled at him.
They moved toward the bed.
Vicky stretched out voluptuously and drew him down on top of her. His hand reached for her womanhood, but she coyly clamped her thighs shut.
"Naughty! Mustn't touch!"
"Want to!"
"Little boys shouldn't"
"I'm not a little boy."
"Prove it."
"Give me your hand," he said. "Here."
He moved it to his body. "There," he said. "Am I a little boy?"
"Oh, no," she murmured. "You're a big boy. A big, big boy."
"Open up, then."
She opened to him. Opened first to his touch, to the probing hand with its long fingers. Then, as the heat of passion swept over her, she squirmed against him, stretched, arched her body, pistoned her hips in a solo version of the act of love.
"Come on," she whispered.
"Any time."
"Right now."
"Will do," he said.
He rolled over. She felt his slimness atop her--he could hardly weigh as much as 150, she thought, and he was well over six feet tall -- and then she felt him approaching her, seeking entrance, gliding easily to his goal. Her body went taut.
Her thighs parted, and her legs locked tight around his slender body.
They began to move, slowly at first, then accelerating in tempo as the fervor of it began to infect them both. Vicky closed her eyes. It felt good, she thought, so good to have a man moving within her, and somehow it felt doubly good to know that she had stolen this man from her mother. Let the old sexpot look somewhere else, Vicky thought The waves of sensation welled up quickly, and Vicky suddenly felt light, detached. Funny, she mused, so funny that after all these years I'm finally winning. The thought excited her, adding to the rising waves of delight rolling through her. She had come to a direct conflict, and had won. This man was her mother's. Wilma had given Cal everything -- pleasure, love, money -- and Vicky still had the man in her arms. The thought of the money pulled Vicky from the complete pleasure of triumph for an instant. Could her mother, she wondered, still win with her only remaining weapon, the money? The thought chilled her for a moment, pulling her still further into reality.
She wondered how she could break Wilma's hold entirely. That eight hundred grand loan was a nasty complication that Vicky hadn't figured on. It represented a sword constantly dangling over McKeown's head, unless the market rallied and he could sell enough of his stocks to repay her. Maybe, Vicky thought, she could raise the money for him somewhere else. Bill might be willing to lend it. She didn't know if Bill had that much liquid cash, but it was possible. Would he lend it to a stranger on Vicky's say-so? She couldn't very well tell him it was a loan to her lover.
Problems, Vicky thought.
She pushed them out of her mind and concentrated on the business at hand. McKeown still embraced her, moving steadily, each thrusting stroke stirring her to the depths, bringing her closer and closer to the final explosion of blissful passion, of passionate bliss.
Closer.
She didn't want problems, not then, not there. A man was with her, exciting her, delighting her. There was nothing, she thought, that she wanted more than to lose all thought, all problems, all boredom in her love-making. She was suddenly very much aware of Cal, of the warmth, of the growing passion. Again the fervor rose and the problems began to fade.
His left hand tightened on her breast.
Closer.
His body strained between her thighs. Closer.
Her lips glued themselves to his. Closer. Closer. Closer. The moment was near.
Then, unexpectedly, Vicky heard a commotion in the hallway, and the next moment the door to McKeown's apartment burst open.
Two men were in the room. They were smiling. They carried cameras.
A flashbulb exploded. A camera's staring eye recorded a view of McKeown and Vicky, naked and locked in the act of sensual love.
They rolled apart and leaped to their feet. Another flash.
A shot of Vicky and McKeown, stark naked, side by side, Vicky's breasts bobbing as she gestured.
Another flash. Another. Another.
Then the two photographers were gone, leaving Vicky and McKeown stunned and naked and blinking at each other in bewilderment and sudden panic.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT HAD ALL HAPPENED QUICKLY, so terribly quickly. They had come and gone.
There was no question of continuing the love-making after the invasion of the photographers. Vicky's loins ached from the frustration of being interrupted so close to the finish, and from McKeown's excited condition it was obvious that he was uncomfortable too. But the mood had been thoroughly and permanently shattered.
McKeown said dazedly, "Who -- what--?"
"Maybe my husband sent them," Vicky said. "Maybe he's been taking more of an interest in my comings and goings than I thought. And he hired photographers. Now he's got divorce evidence."
"No," McKeown said. "They must have been sent by your mother."
"What would she want photos of us for?"
"I don't know. Blackmail, maybe."
"They got beauties," Vicky said. "The first one had you right on top of me. And then they got front views of both of us. They'll have a hot old time developing those prints."
"What are we going to do?" McKeown asked, his voice almost a whine.
Vicky shrugged. "Wait and see. That's all.' He looked at her, made a half-tentative gesture toward her nakedness. She shook her head.
"No," she said.
"But--"
"I can't help ft. I don't want to, now. Fm going to get out of here."
"Vicky!" he begged.
"Sorry. I'm not in the mood now."
He bit his lips and fidgeted and pleaded with her. But she insisted on leaving. She dressed quickly. The ache in her loins was fierce and savagely insistent, but she forced herself to ignore it. McKeown was visibly in need of her. She looked away.
"At least a kiss," he said.
"Let me go, Cal."
"Please, Vicky."
"No. Can't you see, I want to get out of here? Men saw me making love to you. Men took my picture. Now let go of me. Let me get out."
She left.
The ride home was a miserable and fearful one.
But if BUI had sent the photographers, he was certainly playing a cagey game. He greeted her in his mild, friendly way when she got home, and asked her whether she had had good luck on her shopping expedition. That was all. No sneers, no insinuations. It was impossible that he could have sent the photographers, Vicky thought. He wasn't that good an actor. If he was aware of her infidelities, and cared enough to be on the verge of divorcing her, then he certainly couldn't give such an appearance of calm.
That night, in bed, Vicky turned toward her husband. Her body still was tense and in a powerful condition of need; McKeown had brought her within moments of the climax when they had been interrupted, and in the endless hours since that interruption her loins had pulsed and throbbed with desire. She had hardly been able to wait for bed time. And now, as she accepted Bill's weight and felt his body slip within hers, there was a sensation of immediate relief, of ecstasy, of satisfaction.
No need to fake it, this time. For the first time in months, her body was genuinely and fully responding to his. She entangled him, writhed under him, clung to him, and gasped out the ecstasy of her passion.
It was only partly the fact that another man had begun the job of arousing her that was responsible. There was something else -- fear, the need to shelter in Bill's strong arms, the feeling that she might soon lose him. She held him tight. Her body went gyrating through whirlwinds of delirious frenzy.
"I love you," she moaned, at the height of it.
He kissed her breasts, mouthing the rigid, rock-hard nipples.
"I love you," he whispered. "Sleep well, Vick. My darling."
But she did not sleep well. She slept as badly as she had ever slept in her life. There were fitful hours of sleep, punctuated by the blare of exploding flashbulbs and interrupted by what seemed like years of mind-fogging wakefulness, of tossing and turning, of anguished unsleep.
And in the morning there was a special-delivery packet.
Vicky distantly heard the downstairs bell ringing, but she ignored it. It was Sunday morning, and who would ring the bell on Sunday morning? Groggy and half asleep, she rolled over and hid her face in the pillow. But she was dimly aware that Bill was getting out of bed, going downstairs.
He returned what seemed like a long time later.
-Who was that?" Vicky asked.
"Special delivery letter for me. Nothing important, drought."
"Mmmph," Vicky said, and dropped back into sleep.
It seemed to her, later in the day, that Bill was moody and preoccupied, at least to a certain extent. But, by and large, the Sunday proceeded normally, with plenty of family fun, and dinner cooked outdoors on the back yard patio, sizzling charcoal-broiled steaks.
Then it was twilight, and the children were being put to bed, and the long day was shading into night.
About nine o'clock that evening, Bill said, "Vicky would you come upstairs for a little while?"
"To your study?"
"Yes. To my study."
She frowned. He almost never asked her up there --� and hardly ever went there himself on a Sunday evening. What did he want?
They jogged silently upstairs to the top floor of the house. He switched on the light, and they entered the book-lined study where he had once found her reading through Kraft-Ebing.
There was a manila envelope on his desk. He picked it up, opened it.
Vicky's heart leaped wildly in panic as she saw him withdraw a sheaf of large, glossy photo prints.
She didn't need to look at them to know which photos they were.
But his face was still calm, his voice mild as he said, "These came this morning by special delivery, Vick. They're very interesting, in a morbid kind of way. Would you like to have a look at them?"
"No, I'd -- oh, all right. Let's have them." He handed them over.
Vicky's face flamed as she leafed through them. There were five of them, black-and-white prints of razor-sharp clarity. The top one was a view of Cal McKeown's bare back and buttocks, with Vicky's knees and thighs visible on either side of his body, and her face visible over his left shoulder. It was all too apparent what they were doing.
The second shot showed Vicky and McKeown side by side, leaving the bed. Every anatomical detail was perfect, down to the pucker of her nipples. Her face was a study in shock and anger.
The third, fourth, and fifth shots showed the two of them milling around in the room, ineffectually trying to drive the photographers away. One shot, taken at point-blank range, showed Vicky's hand over her face and loins. Her breasts were exposed, though, the nipples almost touching the camera lens. Another shot caught both of them face to face, looking startled and appalled. The third was similar.
The photos were vulgar masterpieces, the kind that private collectors would pay high prices for.
Vicky's hands shook as she handed them back to her husband.
"All right," she said. "I guess it's a pretty ugly business."
"Who is he, Vicky?"
'His name is Cal McKeown. He's a friend of my mother's. I met him at her place."
"Your mother has very youthful friends, doesn't she?"
"You know what sort of woman she is." Bill nodded. "But I didn't think she'd stoop to blackmailing her own daughter."
"She sent them?"
"Yes. With a little note attached. She thought I'd be interested in seeing how my wife spends her spare time." Bill tossed the photos contemptuously to the desk. "It's a strange mother who'll try to break up her daughter's marriage," Bill said.
Vicky stared at him. He seemed so calm about it all -- more annoyed with Wilma for sending him the photos, apparently, than he was with Vicky for having taken part in the scenes depicted in them.
Vicky said, "She's jealous."
"Jealous?"
"That's her lover. She found out I was also seeing him, and warned us to break it up. I guess she meant it. She must have sent the photographers." Vicky wondered what she had done to McKeown. Called in the loan, maybe? She sank down tiredly into a chair. "All right," she said. "Now Mother has had her revenge. And you've got your divorce evidence on a silver platter. I guess I'd better find a lawyer."
"Who said anything about divorce, Vicky?" She blinked. "Well, it seems like the obvious next step. I've been unfaithful to you, and you've got the proof, those disgusting photos. Doesn't a man usually divorce his wife when she cheats on him?"
"It depends on whether he still loves her or not."
"And?"
"And I still love you," he said. "So I'm not running off to a lawyer just yet." He swung around, leaning down, his deepset, hypnotic eyes peering into' hers. "What's been troubling you, Vicky? What's wrong? You never tell me anything. You just go along your own way."
She shrugged. "I was bored, I guess. I don't know."
"And you thought being unfaithful would cure it?"
"I thought I'd try it." She stared at him. He didn't seem even annoyed. Wasn't he human? Or had he forgotten that this was his own wife who had committed adultery, and not one of his patients? She said, "You're taking all this so calmly, Bill."
"Would you feel better if I beat you up?"
"I don't mean that. But doesn't it bother you at all?"
"Of course. It hurts me because it demonstrates my own inadequacies. But why should I get angry? Nine-tenths of the trouble in the world results from people taking their own inadequacies out on other people, instead of hunting for the causes." He shot a glance at the explicit, erotic photos on his desk. "You had an affair with a man. All right. That means you were seeking m someone else things you didn't find in me. I hoped that sooner or later you'd come to me and we could discuss it. But you didn't. You just went on from man to man. Whatever you were looking for in Dan Connors, you didn't find it, so when he vanished you turned to this friend of your mother's--"
"How did you know about Dan Connors?" Vicky said, appalled at his apparent omniscience.
He smiled. "Ted Frye told me."
"Ted -- Frye -- told you?"
"That's right. He said he met you and Dan at a motel. And then he forced you into going to bed with him in a perverse way as the price of his silence."
"But he didn't keep silent anyway. He told you. Why'd he do that?"
"Because he wanted to make me so disgusted with you that I'd divorce you," Bill said. "He's in love with you. He wants to marry you."
Vicky shuddered. "That horrible little man!"
"So he came to me a few days ago and spilled the whole story. Then he sat there waiting as though he expected me to start divorce proceedings on the spot. I threw him out. I'm afraid I lost my temper with him"
"You didn't tell me anything about this."
"What was the good of it?" he asked. "You were obviously embarked on a pattern of compulsive sexual promiscuity. I couldn't step in. All I could do was watch, and hope you wouldn't get badly hurt."
"I suppose you know about Eloise too, then?"
Bill lifted an eyebrow. "Eloise?"
"You don't know?"
He shook his head. "No."
Vicky bit her lip. "I should have kept my big mouth shut that time."
"We can forget you ever mentioned Eloise."
"No," she said "No, this is soul-baring time. I might as well tell you. Eloise and I made love one day."
"Really?"
"It was my fault," Vicky said quickly. "I was drunk, and I led her on. She's a lesbian, you know."
"I rather guessed she was."
"But she never made a pass at me, or misbehaved in any way. I seduced her, almost."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"Yes," Vicky said, not looking at him. "I mean -- physically. But I felt all guilty about it. Oh, Bill, I'm so mixed up! So goddamn mixed up! All these affairs and dirty little things! Will you believe me when I tell you I was never unfaithful to you until a few weeks ago? Until Dan Connors?"
"And then you went blooey."
"That's right. I couldn't help myself."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I felt that life didn't have any point to it, that I would die of boredom. I felt like I was choking in my own comforts. I wanted to break out. So I did. I broke out sexually."
"Do you still feel so bored?"
"Sometimes," she said. "But not now. Not when I'm talking to you like this. Do you realize how little we talk to each other about anything important?"
"You've been behind a mask, Vicky. I didn't want to get behind it until you wanted me to. You're not my patient, you know. You're my wife."
"Do you think I need a psychiatrist?"
"I think you need love."
"And you're not going to divorce me?"
"No," he said quietly.
"Not even if I keep on having affairs?"
"That's a matter between you and your conscience, Vick. I'm not your keeper. If you feel you have to be unfaithful, it's not up to me to stop you. Naturally, I don't like the idea of your going to bed with other men -- or other women. But so long as you can still play the part of a wife and a mother, I won't interfere. If you started having lovers on the front lawn, with the children watching -- well, I'd have to take steps. But not otherwise."
"So all the blackmail threats don't matter to you?"
"Not at all. I love you, Vicky."
"You know something, Bill? Right now I don't feel the slightest urge to be unfaithful."
"I'm glad."
"I mean it. I feel wanted. By you. And I wouldn't hurt you for all the world."
"Good, Vicky."
"Well talk it all out," she said. "There are things bothering me. I need responsibilities. You've made things too easy for me, and that's the trouble. I've got to have more to do. I've got to feel closer to you, too. As close to you all the time as I feel right now." Her eyes were sparkling. "And well hold together, Bill. Because I love you so very much."
"I love you, Vicky."
"Let's go to bed," she whispered. "Right now. No, let's not even go downstairs. Right here on the study floor. I want you, darling. I want you so very badly."
She held out her arms to him.
The nightmare was ending, she saw. Thanks to his patience, to his wisdom, she had come through. He was a man in a million. He had let her have this little fling. And she had gone about it in a big way. A self-centered man like Dan Connors, a pervert like Ted Frye, a whining weakling like Cal McKeown -- she had given herself to all of them, had taken pleasure from them in return.
But hollow pleasure. Meaningless pleasure. Because it was sex without love, without fondness.
And they had each betrayed her in turn. Connors by running away, Frye by going to Bill with the story, McKeown by letting Wilma know. Only Eloise had kept faith -- but that had been a side issue from the beginning.
Good-bye to all three of them now. Let Connors have his Lindas. Let Frye find someone else more to his special tastes. Let McKeown work out his own headache with Wilma, and sell himself to her all over again.
She had something more precious.
She had love.
The invisible wall that had separated her from Bill was crumbling, now. And they could found a new relationship on honesty, on mature understanding of one another.
Her clothes fell away quickly and easily.
His hands were on her breasts. Her body was alive to his touch, alert, responsive. She quivered, and put her mouth to him, and kissed him, and felt the broad-shouldered strength of him.
She had been through a great deal, and had done some suffering, and had even learned a few things. And it had all served to bring her closer to Bill, so in a sense it had all been worthwhile.
Their bodies joined.
Vicky wrapped her legs around his, arched her back to accept him to the utmost. Her body trembled, and she felt the inner quivering, the palpitation, the moist hot excitement of love. Her breath mingled with his. Then came the sudden thunderous moment of the climax, for him and for her, and tears flooded her eyes at this reaffirmation of love, tears of joy, of joy, of deep and lasting joy.