Chapter 2
For the next two days, Jeff was like a caged lion with a bad case of the hives. He snapped at Anne or ignored her. Coming home from work, he would jog for miles in the park until he thought he was going to drop. At home, he hid behind the paper or watched TV, and Anne told herself that he was coming down with the flu or things were going tough for him at work.
Actually, things were ridiculously easy for him at work and he found himself in a frenzy of energy and effort in order to fight down the heaving sexual drive he felt in himself.
He visited the post office on his way to work. He visited it three times on his lunch hour and once more on his way home. He ran to his box on his coffee breaks. In between, when at the office, he called the post office constantly, asking them to check his box.
At home, late, he slapped his pockets and made a face, getting up. "I'm out of cigarettes."
"I have some," Anne said brightly. He had been sitting brooding for over an hour.
He stared down at the pack for a moment before saying, "Those are plain. I want mentholated."
"I think there's a pack in the bedroom. I'll get them for you," she said, getting up and smiling at him over her shoulder.
"Never mind. They're not my brand."
She turned and looked at him with her clear blue eyes wide-set and puzzled. He looked at her standing there, her breasts thrust out in open temptation under her dress. There was no way around it; she was a knockout: a cold-blooded, frigid, inhuman knockout. It just wasn't right; nobody with her build should be so asexual.
"What?" she asked.
"I said, they're not my brand."
"But you just bought them yesterday."
"I know," he lied, "and I don't like them. In fact, I hate them. I like another kind."
"Okay," she said brightly, turning back toward him on liquid hips, her breasts swinging with her shoulders and bunching and shifting under her dress like two lovely balloons filled with warm oil. "I'll go with you."
"Naw," he said, backing off. "It's late and you're not dressed and I'll only be a minute and that way you can get dressed for bed or... something."
"All right."
"Anything I can get you?"
"No, just hurry back."
Jeff hurried. In fact, he drove like a madman, speeding past the drugstore doing sixty. He zipped downtown, ran into the post office, peered into his box like a man squinting to see a peep-show, slammed his fist against the wall as he said, "Son-of-a-bitch!" and ran out to his car to drive back home at breakneck speed, park, run up the stairs because he couldn't wait for the elevator, pause outside his door to catch his breath, and step in.
Anne was in the bedroom, in bed. She was lying on her side, curled up, reading a magazine as he came in. She looked up, smiling, her head falling back and her hair spilling out over the pillow. "You were gone long." "Was I? Well, they didn't have the brand I wanted so I drove to another place."
"Oh. Did they have them?"
"Huh? No, actually, nobody had them. I'll have to get them downtown."
All the time they had been talking, Jeff had been looking down at his wife and the deep rich cleavage that spilled out of her negligee and at her hip jutting up under the sheet and her long thighs as graceful as swans, and he wanted her hot body under him. Again, he felt the urge to rape her, to fall on her and rip her clothes away and force her to do whatever he wished.
Perhaps if, at that moment, Jeff Haines had obeyed his unreasoning impulse and forced his wife to have sex, perhaps their lives wouldn't have undergone the change that was in store for them. Perhaps. There is no way of knowing. Perhaps they would have met the Johnsons anyway.
But he didn't throw himself on her and talk dirty and tear off her clothes and rouse her to states of ecstasy. He went to bed.
Jeff Haines went to bed a sour frustrated man and tossed restlessly, to rise before the alarm the next morning and hurry through breakfast and race to the post office to find the box empty. "Empty," he mumbled to himself. "God-damn thing is empty. Nothing. Think I could get a lousy piece of mail, some 'boxholder' stuff. Nothing. Empty." He went away muttering.
At the office, he tried to look up Rick Johnson in the phone book. There was no end to the Johnsons in the book. Plenty of R. Johnsons, but no Rick Johnson. He decided to wait one more day before calling all the R. Johnsons.
As he hurried into the post office on his afternoon break, he saw a corner of something white in the box. He bent one nail back twirling the combination and getting the box open. He ripped the envelope apart. "Dear Boxholder," the letter began, "The enclosed coupon entitles you to..."
"Shit!" he said, throwing the letter away. "Cluttering up your box with a lot of crap. Shit!"
By the time the day was over, he was weary. He hadn't slept well in weeks and he was tired and irritable as he walked into the post office, trudged to his box, looked, and turned resignedly away, making a face. He did a double-take and spun back to the box. There was a letter there.
"Yes, sir," he said to himself, "there very definitely is a letter there." He looked at it, excited, smiling. It was a beautiful-looking letter and it was very surely a personal letter. By its size and shape and color he could tell it was no mail-order letter or any kind of boxholder flyer: it was a genuine, bona-fide personal letter in a dusky pink envelope and, if he stopped and craned his head, he could see it was addressed in a flowing handwriting.
He straightened up, looked around, licked his lips, and, with his fingers trembling in fine spasms, dialed the combination and took out the letter.
Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Haines
Like an invitation. He looked at the fine controlled feminine hand and turned it over to the sealed side and saw a return address and the narrow long V along which her ruby tongue had slid, wet and sexual, to lick the envelope and seal it.
He walked, trying not to run, to his car, putting the letter in his breast pocket as if he had just received atom-bomb secrets. Jumping in the car, he careened out into traffic and sped to a shopping center and parked at the far, deserted end of a supermarket parking lot.
Then he opened the letter. There were two photos enclosed with the letter and he looked at them immediately, his fingers trembling. A low sound, a kind of growl-moan came from his lips as he looked at the first photo.
It was a picture of Carol. She lay sprawled on a bed, stark naked, a lascivious grin on her face with the phone cradled next to her ear. All Jeff could think about was: My God, he was taking the picture when she was talking to me! The sheer lewdness of the idea and her sensuous abandoned pose was too much for him. He felt his cock swelling hard and bigger than ever before as he took in each detail of her curving figure. A bra and panties were on the counterpane next to her, carelessly thrown aside, and she lay on her back, her head of long red hair splayed out on the pillow, framing a sleek wild face with orange lipstick and slanting blue eyes. She wore makeup, lots of it, but it was right for her kind of face and personality.
And it was a wild gypsy kind of face; a face with a long slim nose that tilted up at the end in a pert kind of defiant lewdness that was heightened by her smug smile and the way the tip of her pink tongue licked at her lips, moistening them.
She was more than just naked; she was brazen, for she lay on the bed without shame, grinning up at the camera with an expression in her eyes which seemed to say: See? Here I am and I'm all yours.
His eye travelled down over her long elegant neck, his breath coming hard through his nostrils as he held the picture down below the steering column in case someone came over to the car. Her bare shoulders were well shaped and soft, and he liked the way her collarbone jutted out.
Her naked breasts were big and full and sprawled in a provocative way, and the nipples were distended and shaped liked bullets and tipped upward. There was a sheen to her skin where her cleavage began. He could imagine his hands all over her breasts, and, as he shuddered with excitement and shifted in his seat to release his erect cock and get it in a more comfortable position, he thought of his lips and mouth closing over those nipples and sucking on them and feeling her body under him.
Her body! Under her half-moon breasts was the delicate and curving configuration of her rib cage, and her stomach was curved and taut. His eye travelled down, down, and he saw the jutting protruding mound of Venus covered with soft red hair.
And there, there at the apex, the center, where her thighs and pubic hair met her torso, there in detail was her cunt. And she was excited. He could clearly see the soft folds of her vaginal lips under the hair as they were swelling and framing the entrance to her cunt. Her legs were spread so wide that he could see the long glistening slit of her cunt, a bright pink among the pubic hairs. He looked closer and could see the nib of her clitoris glittering with moistness.
And her thighs, her long curving legs and slim ankles! She was obviously a tall slim woman a few years older than he, with a form beautifully endowed by nature and obviously improved by athletics and diet. There wasn't an ounce of fat on her nor any harsh lines.
Jeff closed his eyes and tried to think. He had found somebody fantastic. It was too good to be true. He looked at the other picture. It was of a manRick, obviously. He was in his thirties, tall, well-builtalmost too well-builtand he was sitting on the bed, smiling at the camera, naked, except for a towel around his waist. Jeff didn't like him immediately. He was too well-built, in enviable shape, and too good-looking. He had a cocky look on his face and a peculiar glint in his eye that told Jeff he was used to getting his way.
He didn't spend too much time looking at the picture, snapping Carol's picture back into view instead. After another long look at her relaxed, utterly lewd pose, he opened the letter.
Dear Jeff, If you're still interested after knowing what I have to "offer," you can call this number and we can arrange a meeting.
Carol
The phone number was pencilled down in a corner.
Jeff was out of the car and striding across the parking lot putting the pictures in his pocket while he fumbled with the other hand for spare change and his head swivelled around looking for a telephone booth.
He found an outdoor phone and dialed, hanging up twice and waiting for his dime to return before he got the number right. The phone rang once and was snatched up. "You got the letter," Carol's voice said. Jeff was taken aback. "How did you know it was going to be me?"
He could almost hear her smirking. "Easy. You sounded so eager the last time."
"You were taking a chance. Supposing it had been someone else?"
"Not really. I would have said I was expecting a call, that's all. Oh, thank you, darling."
Jeff listened and heard the sound of ice cubes clinking in a glass next to the phone.
"Well, cat got your tongue?" she asked.
"No, not really."
"Well, come on over and this cat will get something more than your tongue."
He laughed. "Wow, the way you talk."
"Honestly," her voice came back, husky and purring. "And it's the only way I talk. Straight and honest." "I like that."
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"How about some straight and honest talk from you?"
"Yeah. I don't know what to say."
"Why not ask a question? Like, how about if the little woman and I stop by for a drink?"
Jeff grinned into the receiver. She had such audacity and directness. "Okay, how about if we stop by for a drink?"
"Fine. Say, oh, about an hour. Dress is informal and, frankly, frowned upon."
"Whoa. Wait a minute. I... I... don't know. I mean about right now. I didn't think..." He bit his lip. In his horny excitement, he had forgotten all about Anne! Anne would never put up with this! Then, at what he thought was his most desperate moment, his darkest hour, the moment when he could lose the prize the first time it had been offered, he was hit by a brainstorm. He actually laughed out loud, wondering why he hadn't thought of it before! It was all so simple!
"Fine. Okay. Where do you live?" She told him, and he hastened to add, "Okay. I hesitated because I'm not sure what tonight's plans are like," he went on, lying smoothly. "If we can't make it, I'll call you and we can set something else up."
"Good. I'm eager to meet you, Jeff," she breathed into the mouthpiece. "And Rick is dying to meet... Anne, isn't it?"
"Yeah. In one hour."
He hung up in a kind of insane glee. No longer was there any thought in his mind about right and wrong, nor was there any thought of the dangers involved. The only thought in his mind was the thought that he could pull it off.
He made one more call: to Anne, telling her at length how an emergency had come up and that he had to work late and that the switchboard was shut down for the night and that he would call her when he got through. It seemed that they talked endlessly, and he felt that Anne would never get off the line, that precious seconds were ticking away and that he would be late. Yet, when he hung up, he glanced at his watch and was amazed to see that only two minutes had gone by.
He drove to the address that Carol had given him and saw that it was a house, set back from the street in a respectable and well-to-do neighborhood of Los Angeles. He could see lights burning in the windows as he slowly drove past for a second time. He had half an hour to kill, so he drove up into the hills above and behind the Johnson house and parked, looking down and locating the house. It had a swimming pool and lots of garden all around it. Perfect, he thought, lots of privacy.
And he still had more than twenty minutes to kill. He drove to a nearby shopping center and sat in a luncheonette, sipping coffee and tapping his feet as he watched the clock hands above and behind the counter move as if they were thick with glue.
Finally it was time. He stubbed out his cigarette, left change on the counter and started out, his heart pounding as he lit still another cigarette. He drove ultra-cautiously to the Johnson house with his head giddy and his mouth dry.
He eased up the long driveway and parked in front of a large ornamental door. Whoever the Johnsons were, they obviously had money. He pressed a button next to the door, chimes rang deep inside the house, and he waited, puffing on his cigarette, until he heard footsteps echoing across tile, coming to the door.
It opened and Jeff found himself looking at the smiling face and the tall heavy figure of Rick Johnson. "Hi. You're Jeff," he said, holding out a hand and giving Jeff a firm bone-crunching handshake. "Come on in." He stepped outside, holding the door open as he looked beyond Jeff, his smile suddenly vanishing. "Wait." The calm steel that was in his voice, the way his hand shot up like a policeman directing traffic, and the way his smile vanished and his face darkened told Jeff immediately that this was no man to trifle with, and, for a moment, he felt his plan was going to collapse before it ever got started.
Rick stepped out and looked up and down the driveway, then back at Jeff, his eyes narrowed and his broad shoulders hunched the way a fighter's would when he was moving in for the kill. "Where's your wife?" he asked suspiciously. "Where's Anne?"