Chapter Twenty-One
For some strange reason, after the Roy-Betsy extravaganza, the life had gone out of the party.
First Sam and Tommy left, making some mumbled apologies about having to go somewhere.
Then Kevin and Betsy left, politely enough, but showing signs of strain between them.
Then Roy, looking as if the effort of getting dressed had been almost too much for him, made aimless, limping conversation for a few minutes, attempted a couple of feeble jokes, then gave up, to sheer fatigue, Toby thought. He didn't even say good-night, just waved a weary farewell as he went out the door.
Toby had slipped back into her dress somewhere during the departures, and the wearing of that token concession to modesty seemed to bring her back to reality, or at least to some of the mundane aspects of it.
"I'll help you clean the place up, before your folks get back," Toby said to Steve. He'd made a token gesture toward convention, too. He'd gotten back into his shorts, damply stained though they were.
"That's nice of you," Steve said, looking around the big quiet room. "But there's nothing to clean up. Nothing to do, really." Toby laughed.
"You just don't see anything to do," she said, moving around the room, putting pillows back in place, picking up empty glasses and beer cans.
"Oh," Steve said, and started to follow her around, looking useless.
"Never mind," Toby said. "Just sit down, out of the way. I'll be finished in a couple of minutes."
Steve did as he was told. But he didn't look tired, Toby noticed, when she had a chance to glance at him when he didn't know she was looking. He probably wasn't tired at all, Toby realized. He'd been involved in a lot less action than the others. All he'd done was fuck Betsy, once, period. And that had been back during the beginning of the party's confused and frenetic festivities.
Toby emptied and cleaned the ashtrays, rinsed and dried the glasses, feeling relaxed and cheerful, padding contentedly on bare feet back and forth between living room and kitchen.
When she'd finished the chores she sat down next to Steve on the couch, gave his bare tanned knee a fond pat, and smiled up at him.
"Everything's in good shape now," she said. "Your folks'll never know you had company."
"They won't be home for quite a while yet, anyway," he said, and looked at her with something that appeared to be sadness. It was in his eyes, mostly.
"What's wrong, Steve?" she asked, letting her hand fall fondly to his knee again.
"I don't know."
"Sure you know. Tell me."
"Well." He shrugged his lean bare shoulders. "That was a pretty crazy kind of cocktail party, wasn't it?"
"A bucket of eels," she said, remembering.
"You couldn't hardly tell the players without a score card," Steve said, not smiling.
"Is that what's bothering you? The crazy mixed-up party?"
"Maybe. Partly."
"Well, it shouldn't. People should do whatever gives them pleasure, at the moment, and not worry about how outrageous it may look, to others. As long as what they do doesn't hurt anybody else."
She sounded like a goddam Sunday School teacher, for Christ's sake, Toby thought. Time to shut up. Her time for teaching the young was over, for good. And much better forgotten, for good.
"I said it was partly the party," Steve said, looking at her seriously. "But only partly."
"What else, then."
"Me."
"Yes. You."
"I don't understand," Toby said, leaning forward to light a cigarette. The young were full of mystifying notions, as well as surprises.
When she leaned back, she found that Steve had lifted his arm so it draped around her shoulders. Awkwardly, somehow. like a high school boy on his first date. And Steve was hardly on his first date, with her. Something was bothering him, badly.
Toby was, all at once, deeply curious to find out just what. But Steve wasn't saying anything. He was just sitting there, close to her, looking sad, with that clumsy arm around her shoulders.
"Why don't you tell me about it, honey?" she asked. The term of endearment had just slipped out, a complete surprise to her, but it had sounded quite natural. And, unintentional though it had been, it seemed to have done something for Steve. Gave him his voice back, anyway.
'Well, to begin with," Steve said, his eyes steady on her face, "I like you very much. But I don't have to tell you that."
"No, you don't," Toby said, feeling an unusual stirring of warmth in her chest somewhere. "But I'm happy to hear you tell me. I like you a lot, too, you know."
"I didn't know, not really," Steve said, dropping his eyes for a second. "Anyway, seeing you with those other guys..."
He didn't finish.
"Oh, oh," Toby said.
"What's that mean?"
"I hate to tell you," Toby said. "A swinging member of the jet-age generation, like you."
"Tell me anyway."
'What you're talking about is an old-fashioned thing called jealousy. Not just old-fashioned. Obsolete. Archaic. You know that. You've heard enough, or seen enough, or at least you've read enough, to know that."
"I do know it," Steve said. "In my head, anyway. It's just that the rest of me doesn't seem to know it."
Toby was quiet for a long moment, thinking.
"I don't know what to tell you," she said softly, at last. "What you were seeing was sex, pure and simple. Or maybe sometimes complex sex, not so simple. But it was just sex, sex for sensation, and absolutely for nothing else. Purely for pleasure."
"I know all that," Steve said. "In my head, anyway, I know all that."
"And what you're talking about is that old-fashioned jealousy, and I'm afraid that jealousy has its roots sunk in something deeper than simple, surface sex, sex for the sake of sensation."
"You're right," Steve said, looking at her steadily again. "You know you're right, and I know you're right. But just the same I didn't like it at all, watching you with those other guys."
"Steve, dear," she said, leaning more warmly into the curve of his arm, looking at him earnestly, "when you get sex mixed up with your emotions, when you confuse sexual pleasure, you're in trouble. You can give yourself a lot of grief, that way."
"I suppose so," Steve said, looking away, somber and sad. But he straightened up, after a moment, and looked at her cheerfully.
"You know something?" he asked, smiling now.
"What?"
"We've never been alone together, just you and I. Never before."
"That's right."
"This is the first time."
"Mmmmm."
"I like it, being alone together, just the two of us," Steve said. "So do I."
Steve leaned and kissed her, very tenderly, at first, and Toby kissed him back, warmly. She felt his tongue moving into her mouth then, and her own tongue flicked to meet it. Their tongues dueled for a moment, then probed, then wrestled. There was nothing tender about the kiss, any more. It became searingly urgent.
She felt his hand slide into the front of her dress, cup one lively breast. She felt the nipple stiffen, and let her free hand brush his lap. Aah, she'd known it. He had a raging hard-on.
She broke the kiss, smiling. Her twat tingled, but she was tingling other places, too.
But even now, feeling as strangely warm to this boy as she did, she had to tease a little. If only for a minute. It was part of her make-up.
"Would you like to put that nice hard young cock where it'll do the most good?" she whispered. "The most good, for the both of us?"
"Silly question," he said, in a choked voice, freeing a breast to suck the hard, puckered nipple.
"Slide it into my juicy cunt?"
He didn't answer. He was too busy, his mouth sucking, his hand sliding slowly up in the warm welcome of the soft, luscious flesh of her opening thighs.
"Would you like to fuck me now?" she breathed. "A nice, old-fashioned fuck, just the two of us?"
"Let's go into my room," he said, standing abruptly, then taking her hand to help her to her feet.