Chapter 6
It could have been morning; it could have been light; the light in the room was such as seeps into a room on a dark, cloudy day. The apartment seemed airless, stifling. Silent and oppressive. A carpeted tomb. Buried alive in a tomb, Lori thought. And she was alone nee again.
Lori swam up out of her sleep and abandoned the bed where all the action had been. She walked idly from room to room as if by remaining in motion she could prove her existence to herself. The silence bothered her lost. The sound of her own movement as she paced the floor in nervous frustration gave some echo of life to the apartment.
She lit a cigarette, puffed heavily, mashed it out and poured herself a drink. It was going to be a rotten day, she decided, and nothing was going to help it. It was going to be one of those long, dull, tunnel-like days that just had to be gone through. It stretched ahead of her, gray and lifeless.
She felt restless, edgy. Her conscience was attacking on all fronts, the scenes changing rapidly like television cue cards, reminding her of the many things she had done the night before. She had slept through most of the morning after Art had left and she had tried to cling to still more sleep even longer. She had bathed and tried to interest herself in breakfast but contented herself only with coffee and cigarettes. By mid-afternoon she had begun drinking and now even that did not help. She rubbed her elbows idly, itchy with nerves and tension. I'm lonely, Lori told herself. Just plain lonely. But she knew that wasn't all. It wasn't loneliness that drove her back and forth from the gray-shrouded window to the shining bottles on the bar. It wasn't loneliness that made her light one cigarette after another. It was something deeper, uglier, and harder to shake. Lori knew what was at the root of the bad feeling that kept her pacing relentlessly through the apartment.
The living room yawned in front of her, airless, heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke and liquor. Impulsively, almost afraid of her own action, she strode across the room and grabbed up the telephone. She dialed Jim's office. He should be back from his trip by now, and she was anxious to know if word had already gotten to him about her associations with his trusted employees.
"I'm terribly sorry," the voice came back to her. "Mr. Cameron is out of town and not expected back until some time late tomorrow. Is there a message?"
"No, I'll call back," Lori said.
She had thought briefly of Art, then of Ken. Both of them had helped. They had certainly given her a feeling I of being wanted and needed, she thought. Both had; given her a wildly enjoyable physical release that offset her own pervading loneliness most agreeably. And they had given her another possible avenue of revenge, a direct road through which to inflict pain upon Jim.
But she hung up the phone feeling more frustrated and nervous than ever. She had tried to contact Jim directly but had met with failure. If he didn't already know about Art and Ken, she could always tell him openly. It was too good a thing to keep secret.
She had no idea where Jim was. Maybe he was out of town and maybe he wasn't. With that cute little chick, Lil Turner, on the string it was just possible he was shacked up with her instead of out of town on business.
The girl at the office had been reluctant to give Lil's number to Lori, but weakened when Lori told her it was of the utmost importance. Within moments, Lori was dialing her phone.
A very delicate female voice answered.
"This is Mrs. James Cameron," Lori said. "Is my dear ex-husband there?"
"Jim's away on business. I think he'll be in his office late tomorrow," Lil said evenly. "Do you want him to call you?"
"Yes," Lori said flatly. "I have to talk to him about the divorce. There are some details."
Lil's young voice faltered a bit. "But I thought everything was settled."
"Relax, little girl," Lori said coldly. "The decree is final, but there are still some personal matters to go over."
There was a long pause, and when Lil did not speak, Lori thought she might have hung up. Finally, Lil said, "I think you'd better talk to Jim's lawyer first. I don't think either of you are supposed to discuss anything privately."
"What's the matter? Are you afraid to have Jim talk to me?"
"No, I'm not afraid at all," Lil said firmly. "But you're not supposed to. That's what lawyers are paid for."
"Well, for your information, I'm no longer interested in Jim Cameron. I have too many other male friends to let myself get worked tip over him. Your nasty little office affair can go on just like it has, and when Jim gets tired of you, he'll wander off and you'll be left alone. But there are other men around, men like Ken Bowman and Art Bond, in case you get lonely."
"Pooh, I know both of them and they wouldn't take a second look at you," Lil snapped. "And especially when they're working for Jim."
Lori laughed sarcastically. "Oh, kid, have you got a lot to learn."
"By the way, what did you mean by Jim and I having a nasty little office affair?" Lil asked.
"That's what it is, isn't it? You surely don't think Jim is serious when he says he wants to marry you. I knew him better than that You're giving him what he wants, but I know he gets tired of one woman pretty fast. When he gets a sniff of someone new, he'll leave you just like that."
"I find your language disgusting," Lil snapped. "But let's get this straight. Jim and I have a beautiful relationship together. We're very much in love and we're getting married to make a happy home together, with all the things that go into a marriage to make it meaningful and enduring."
"Oh, my God, little girl!" Lori exclaimed. "Where did you get that kind of line-out of a book?"
"Is there anything else?" Lil asked coldly.
"There's a lot more, but I don't think you'd want to hear about it."
"I don't know why you called, but if you think you're
going to hurt me and break up the relationship between Jim and me, you're wrong. He's going to marry me. That's what he had in mind when he divorced you. But if you think I seduced him and caused him to leave you, you're mistaken. You and Jim had nothing together and if you were honest with yourself, you'd admit it."
Lori smiled. The girl was getting riled. "Oh, we had a lot together, sister. Ask him to tell you about the things that went on in the bathroom. It's very interesting. You might be able to learn something from it."
The loud click at the other end of the line sounded at the same time Lori's last word came out.
"The little bitch!" Lori spat. But then she smiled again, satisfied that she had done her job well.
She fixed herself a drink as she planned her next move. After some moments, she rose mechanically and picked up the phone book. Her fingers raced through the pages. She found the number she was looking for, wrote it down, and slammed the book shut. She looked at the number while she sipped slowly on her drink. Then she dialed Cal Winston's number.
Cal Winston was Jim's attorney. He had handled most of the details of the divorce because it was Jim who had laid them out for him. He was a man in his late forties, balding slightly, and was not much over five feet eight. He had a cherubic face that could not manage to be grim, even when he was deadly serious. He was a bit on the chubby side.
"But I've got to see you, Mr. Winston," Lori pleaded. "I just don't understand some of these things."
"I'll have my secretary set up an appointment with you," he said. "Is there any particular time that's convenient for you?"
"It's convenient for me right now, but I'm feeling pretty rotten. I don't think I could make it to your office," she lied. "A virus of some kind, I think."
The line was silent for some time. Cal Winston recalled Lori vividly. She had been to his office once and he had wondered at the time why Jim Cameron wou1d want a divorce from such a lovely woman. Then he recalled some of the things Jim had told him about her, that she drank too much, flirted with too many men. Jim had not been positive, but he thought Lori had been to bed with a number of men in the three years they were married.
"Are you suggesting that I stop by your place?" he asked.
"Oh, if you would, Mr. Winston ..." "Any particular time?"
"I'll be lying down because I'm not feeling well, but you can come any time it's convenient," she said.
"Good. I have a few matters to take care of first, then I'll drop by."
In the mirror, a beautiful woman with thick black hair brushed into glistening ringlets stared back at her. The woman's beautiful, abundant breasts showed pink and honey-gold above the open neck of her negligee.
Lori smiled at herself. She stood and let the negligee slip from her body like a veil of smoke. The smoke evaporated and Lori stood naked before the naked woman in in the mirror. There were two tiny dashes of blue, tiny tattoos from last night's passion still bruising her skin. Art Bond had been something, she told herself. And she trembled a little as she remembered the joy he had given her and the sense of well-being she had realized from his love-making. The woman in the mirror laughed with her as she gently touched her fingertips to the tiny hyphens that showed where Art's fiercely devouring teeth had sunk into her flesh.
Her hands moved over the curves of her body. Lori watched as the woman in the mirror duplicated the caressing movements of her own exploring, admiring hands.
Her fingertips left her breasts reluctantly and passed over the creamy ivory of her torso, curved gently over the flare of her hips and searched the tender flesh of her ass. She turned to admire her back, letting her fingertips trail deliciously up and down the curve of her hips, tracing the delicately shadowed valley that lay between the perfect, unblemished lobes of her well-formed derriere.
"All this," Lori said aloud. "Jim ... Jim, how could you have passed up all this for that little blonde fluff-pot?"
A small voice inside her whispered the truth but she ignored it.
But the woman in the mirror did not ignore her. She seemed to be talking to her now. The reflection was telling her the same thing the small voice had. It was leering at her, mocking her tortured smiles.
"Shut up!" Lori screamed.
But the voice seemed to be going on.
Lori reached for her glass and drained it. When she saw that it was empty, she rushed from the room and poured three full shots over the shrinking ice cubes. When she returned to the bedroom and looked in the mirror she saw her own reflection, smiling. Her naked body was still as appealing as she had found it before.
But the voice that had tormented her from the mirror went on.
Lori screamed insanely. She picked up her hair brush and hurled it violently against the mirror. The woman in the mirror leered back at her in a thousand shattered fragments, all of them mocking and vindictive.
"Oh, please ... shut up!" she screamed again. Her body shone whitely in the shards of shattered mirror.
"You know it's true," the woman in the mirror answered in a thousand fragmented voices. "You know you're only hurting yourself by trying to hurt Jim. The men in your life are after only one thing-sex. They want to use your body. A date with a man who goes to bed with anything that's warm and moves a little. You've only one way to go, Lori, and that's down. A lot of women have stood where you're standing right now and the only place they had to look was down. It's a fast trip, Lori."
"But I've still got my looks-my body," Lori yelled. "Look at it. Look at these nice, round titties." She took both of them in her hands and held them up. "Look at my beautiful figure. Look how nice my pussy hair fluffs between my legs." She dropped one tit and pawed in the dark, curly satin bed with coiled fingers.
"Yes, look at you," the voice said. "Your lips are swollen and red from sucking men's cocks, your body is bruised, your rear end is sore from the perversions you've engaged in ..."
"No, no, no! It can't be!" Lori screamed. She stared at the broken mirror a moment, then snatched up her drink and drank it down.
"Lori, why don't you quit lying to yourself? Go about the business of making something out of yourself other than a shop-worn whore."
"But I have to get even," Lori said quite calmly.
"And what will you have then?"
"Satisfaction," Lori said smugly, thrusting her chin out. "Just knowing that I've made someone else hurt as much as I have. I'm going to make Jim sorry he ever left me. How could he turn his back on me, on all this?" She swept her hands down over her body, then lifted her firm titties and pointed them at the mirror. "And I satisfied him with my body, too. I made love to him every way he wanted it. I did things for him other women wouldn't do. I went down on him. I sucked his cock and swallowed the juice he shot into my mouth. I licked his balls. I even stuck my tongue in his asshole and gave him kicks he never knew before. I licked him and kissed him and sucked him. Little Miss Twitchy-ass will never do all the things I did for him, you can count on that. Then he'll come knocking on my door one night because he'll be hungry for all those wild, lovely things we did together.'"
"Lori," the voice said, "you know what's wrong with you?"
Lori tottered slightly, refocused her eyes. She shook her head and put her hand to her forehead. "Huh?" she muttered. She closed her eyes, then opened them wide and stared at the shattered bits of her own image.
"You know what, Lori?" The voice repeated.
"Wh-what?" Lori asked blankly.
"You're drunk."
And she was.