Chapter 3
Emily Holt worshipped her father. Several days after school, she would go to his shoe store "to visit," and sometimes he would take her to the nearby chocolate shop for a fluffy, whipped cream-decorated soda.
These were important visits for her. He was big, handsome, impressive-looking to the shy little girl.
Then there was the day of the big PTA conference when the children were given the afternoon off. One of the clerks saw her and said, "Your father's pretty busy in his office today, Emily. Why don't you come back in a couple of hours."
"Oh he'll be glad to see me," she assured him with the confidence a 15-year-old beauty possesses.
The office door was locked. She knew there was a small window through which her father looked occasionally to see when the floor traffic was heavy enough to require him and to watch what was rung up on the register. She peeked through that window. The curtain was drawn.
But then a current of air from inside lifted the curtain for a moment and Emily saw her father, naked, atop a buxom customer, her plump legs encircling him, her blouse open, her skirts high, and her heels drumming on the base of his rump.
The curtain fell back again and, though Emily watched for a long time, no more cooperation was given her by the breeze. But that was enough. .
Stiffly she walked out the door of the store. The clerk was busy with a customer. In a dime store she bought a rubber hot dog and some vaseline. In the basement at home she undid her blouse, pulled up her skirt, put on black silk stockings and a pair of her mother's highheeled shoes. She lay on her back on a bench in the game room, her legs encircling an imaginary lover, while the rubber hot dog substituted for a big, handsome man. She even drummed her heels after awhile, after the thrill was beginning and the excitement was there.
But there were tears in her eyes while she did it.
Her fingers were light and gentle later as she searched herself for pleasures. She experimented with many devices, with a rubber filled with plasticine, with a bicycle handlebar grip, with a dozen devices, and always she was on her back, her heels drumming, the black silk stockings a part of the costume of pleasure, and the dream of a big. handsome man in her head.
It wasn't until college that she saw Gary Worthington, then a Junior, and she was a freshman. Physically he was the dream man she had always imagined. He would grab her, take her, enjoy her, do the wonderful things to her that her father had done to that buxom customer that day in the store. Of this she was certain.
From the women's dormitory to the lab it was a short, half-block walk. Gary had seen Emily, sensed the worship in her eyes, felt the need for this sort of appreciation. He was waiting when she came out, waiting with his big, colorful golf umbrella.
The library was three blocks away. Gary knew Emily had a lab class that morning. "May I escort you to your next class?" he asked.
"I was just on my way to the library," she said, looking up with violet eyes through long, natural lashes.
"Great," he said, grinning broadly. "That's just where I was heading."
They made a date for the next Epworth League weekend outing that day.
She wore his pin after that week-end.
They were married the day after he graduated.
A pretty little bride, sweet, gentle and adoring.
A big, handsome groom, self-confident and impressive.
A comfortable, king-sized bed.
The drinks had been strong and the music lively, the dancing had been spirited and the good fellowship plentiful.
Now Emily put on the beautiful white crepe gown with the lacy trim. Her hair was combed and brushed out, long and gleaming. She lay on the silk sheet, waiting while Gary shaved and showered, deodorized and brushed his teeth noisily.
He climbed in bed, kissed her, clambered atop her, pulled up her gown. She lay waiting, excited.
He knelt in the bay between her legs and began playing with himself, trying to get himself aroused. Emily gently took it into her own hands and began massaging it. Gradually it firmed up.
With sweet understanding she put her hand behind his neck and bent him over, fed it into her, squeezed him with her body. Awkwardly, Gary took about eight strokes, then he pressed against her hard and she felt the fluids quaking into her body.
He rolled over on his side, trailing a stream of lovejuice across her leg and gown and his own leg and the sheet. In three minutes he was sound asleep, snoring heavily.
Sadly the new bride went to the closet and opened her suitcase. Deep in the pocket in a corner she found a rubber hot dog from a dime store. Resignedly, she raised her gown to finish what Gary had started.
He was impressive looking. The company liked the way he got results. Promotions came, and then moves to larger cities, fresher, more inviting territories. Emily, shy and withdrawn, was a stranger long after Gary had made many friends there in town.
AB she had was Gary-and his insensitivity. "You know, Emily," he said one day, "you have interesting-shaped breasts. They're sort of cone-shaped. Different from other girls'."
"Have you examined many girls' breasts, Gary?" she asked her husband.
"Oh, sure, dozens of them. Some are like a spaniel's ears and some like cantaloupes. Some are almost the size of eggs and some are like orange halves. They're all sorts, floppy and sticking out, small and large, firm and flabby. Why if there is any part of the anatomy more varied than breasts, it would have to be ... "
He caught the look in her eyes then. His voice became less expansive and positive. "Of course all that research was before we were married, dear," his voice trailed off lamely.
"Of course," Emily said drily.
When her mother came to visit, she had maneuvered it so that they took on the guest bed and she could have the excuse of the squeaky spring to avoid his rabbit gratification that always had left her wanting and unfulfilled.
After Gary had left for work, Emily and her mother were sitting in the dinette having coffee.
"How is he as a lover, dear?" Emily's mother asked. "Fine."
"I've seen more enthusiasm over going into brain surgery," Mrs. Holt said shrewdly. "Can't you get some prostitute to come train him for you? Maybe join one of those switch and skip outfits that you always read about as lowering suburbia's morals?"
"Mothers aren't supposed to even think like that," Emily chided the woman.
"Listen, dear, your father and I had a good thing going between us for many a year. And I know that I didn't get all his business either. He was the world's least competent liar. Still that hanky panky of his taught him some things I benefited from, surely enough to offset the disadvantages of that time he caught crab lice and I had to soak in Blue Ointment, and make him do the same. How he hated it!"
Weeks after, Emily thought about her mother's advice and then she went downtown, looked on the newsstands for particularly lurid tabloid weeklies with national circulation and brought some of the more flamboyant home.
"Here's an interesting thing, Gary," she said as he finished a can of beer and shut off the TV set. "It tells about how the couples in an organization teach each other all sorts of sexual tricks so that they're better equipped to gratify their own husbands or wives. It even lists where you can get in touch with people like that. I wonder how such people get along after they've been playing around that way. Do you think it would be better or worse?"
"It all depends on whether their mothers-in-law drive them from their own beds, I'd say," Gary remarked, bitterly.
Emily rose, putting the paper on the footstool before him so that he could at least see its name. Then she sat on his lap and put her arms around his neck, trailing her full silken housecoat across him. She kissed him and started to go. Then she returned and picked up the paper. "I'd better throw this out," Emily said, "before you get any ideas and become an even worse Don Juan."
"Yeah," Gary said, archly, "get rid of that junk."
She noticed in the mirror how his eyes followed the paper in her hand rather than her own shapely behind.
If Gary had had it etched on his forehead, the time of his first infidelity couldn't have been more evident to Emily. Not that his technique had improved appreciably. It was mainly that it took him so long to complete the act that he used to finish in a minute or two that Emily actually had time to engineer her own orgasm.
"You get better at this all the time, darling," she had told him. "I have the feeling that you're on your way to becoming a great lover."
"Think so, dear?" he asked, pleased with himself. She saw the way he glanced at the mirror, actually giving himself a look of congratulations at having accomplished his duplicity this ably. Her reaction mingled amusement with annoyance and pity.
It was several weeks before she suspected Gary of playing around again. That was the time his laundry showed one pair of shorts missing-the count of undershirts and socks being one number higher. He'd fallen asleep as scon as he got home the one evening that week, claiming to have caught a cold, but his handkerchiefs were untouched and there wasn't a sign of sneeze or sniffle.
And hen she found pair of his shorts in the laundry that had a tell-tale area of stiffness in them a week later. Oddly, it was Emily, not Gary, who first made coa tact with-not Mildred, but-Charlie Greco.
She had answered an ad. "Wanted, beautiful girl to serve as receptionist for a big, loud phony in a fancy new office. I need someone to make me look good so my clients will think I'm respectable. Can you pull this off for me? If so, I'll overpay and underwork you. Passes guaranteed only if you appeal to the beast in me."
She was one of forty applicants interviewed for the job in the newly decorated offices. She liked the man who conducted the interview for his rough honesty. He wasn't particularly tall, not nearly as impressive as Gary in his appearance. Yet there was something of quiet authority in the way he spoke that you overlooked his incipient baldness and his tendency toward pudginess. Charlie Greco was all man.
He took Emily's name and address and asked her the conventional questions about her employee skills, shorthand, typing, PBX, bookkeeping. "You're a little light in the experience department, honey," he said. "I hope that's just confined to your office skills."
"If you mean by that do I screw around a lot," Emily said, her violet eyes innocent through their dark fringes, "the answer is I haven't yet, but there may be a time when I want the opportunity. I'll let you know. You're rather interesting."
Still appearing shy and soft-spoken, she gathered up her purse and coat and left. Charlie Greco spent several minutes thinking over that sweet little departing duff before he called in the next candidate. And Emily's application wasn't thrown away after he made his selection!
How did they get together? It was months later. Em fly was in the beauty parlor and she heard a voice in the next booth saying, "You'll find that your husband doesn't like hair that short, Mrs. Greco. I hope you have a few wigs around."
"Listen, darling, before I landed Charlie, I made a study of his special wants detailed enough to rate a Ph.D. if I could do it as a thesis," a woman replied. "I have four wigs, all long-haired. I'm a redhead, blonde, brunette and prematurely gray, and I style them differently every night. That man loves variety!"
Sitting there under the drier, Emily thought of Gary, tearing off his quick ones before he fell asleep, night after night. If Charlie Greco were in the market, at least he'd have some idea of how to pleasure a woman!
When a pretty little brunette, short-haired and sharp-looking came by, Emily asked, "Are you Mrs. Greco?"
Mildred stopped and took in the sight of a pretty face and shapely legs, a well-made figure and violet eyes in dark fringe lashes. "Did you know Charlie at some time in your past?" Mildred probed.
Emily smiled shyly. "Once he interviewed me for a job, but I wasn't experienced enough for him."
"I won't even ask what you mean by that," Mildred said. "I actually believe that you were referring to commercial-I mean office skills."
"He seems a mighty attractive man," Emily said. "You're lucky."
"Why?" Mildred asked, quickly noting Emily's wedding band. "What did you get? Quasi-what'sisname from Notre Dame?"
"No, my husband is the handsomest man I know," Emily said, fishing into her purse and producing a photograph of Gary.
Mildred studied it carefully. "Want to swap some week-end?" she asked.
"Might be fun," Emily sighed. "Your husband has my application in his files, I suspect."
"This time I'll not even ask 'application for what'?" Mildred said. "Whatever it says on the top I'll be suspicious."
Emily smiled shyly. "There are times when I almost feel that there's some foundation for those suspicions."
Mildred took another look at Gary's picture. "Tell me, isn't your greatest rival for his affections him?"
"There are times you'd almost think that," Emily admitted. "But probably the fault lies with me too. I'm really not very experienced."
"That, I can assure you, is something my Charlie knows exactly how to correct," Mildred said.
They exchanged names and addresses and phone numbers just before the operator freed Emily from the dryer and started her comb out.
After Mildred left, the operator asked Emily, "Have you any idea of what you're getting into when you deal with people like Mildred Greco?"
"I think I do," Emily replied. "It could be very interesting."