Chapter 10
Women, Bill Wilson reflected, were very good at communicating disapproval with their bodies. By a certain stiffness in their spine, a certain set of their shoulders, a certain briskness in their step as they walked around a room, they could let you know, better than any words possibly could, what a shit they thought you were.
The source of these reflections was Amy, now emptying ashtrays and tidying magazines in their living room, ashtrays and magazines that had all been emptied or tidied at least once in the past fifteen minutes.
The trouble was, good as they were at this body language, they were never content to leave it at that. Though she was communicating her disapproval eloquently with every move of her body, Amy was shortly going to start giving him a piece of her mind; and her mind was the last thing he wanted a piece of.
He had been trying to read a book, but Amy's brisk progress around the room had been undermining his ability to concentrate. He knew this when he realized that he was setting out to read the same sentence for the third consecutive time. He closed the book with a sigh and began to wonder if he could slip out to the corner bar, pleading some other errand, before the storm broke.
He made an elaborate pretext of consulting his watch. "Damn," he said. "I almost forgot. I've got to go and see Gruber."
Gruber was the darkroom technician who did Bill's color work for him.
"You see Gruber every day," said Amy, with the air of a prosecuting attorney dismissing a clumsy subterfuge.
"You can't be too careful," Bill said. "Especially with the pix for the oil company. Look at Cartier-Bresson. He hangs out in the darkroom every step of the way, telling the lab men just what he wants done."
Amy looked at him as if she wanted to tell him that he wasn't Cartier-Bresson, but she had the decency not to. Her look said it, though.
Bill knew he was a lousy liar. He composed his face into a mask of injured innocence, although he knew that Amy knew this expression indicated he'd been lying.
"I want to talk to you," she said bluntly, not even bothering to deal with the Gruber story.
"Well, when I come back," he suggested vaguely, getting out of his chair and looking around indecisively for his jacket.
"Perhaps I won't be here when you come back."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. Bill, I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you now."
Bill sighed and sat down with a show of saintly patience. He would have greatly preferred to conduct this conversation with a couple of drinks under his belt, but he saw that that was not to be.
"You've been to that place again, haven't you," she stated. "I saw the appointment card in your wallet."
His self-control was sorely tried. He was vexed that she should refer to Wanda's office as "that place," as if she were referring to some house of ill repute; doubly vexed because, although she didn't know it, Wanda's office could have been regarded as just such a place; and vexed again because she'd been poking around in his wallet. In the old days he would have met this assault with a brisk counter-attack. But Wanda's philosophy taught that a soft answer turneth away wrath; that the war between the sexes could be ended by unilateral disarmament.
"Yes, I have," he said.
"I thought I made my feelings quite clear on that subject," she said.
He looked up. She'd perched herself on a footstool a few feet from his chair. She was dressed in the jeans and work shirt and sandals she usually wore when she had no place to go. Even in that outfit, she used to be able to make his heart flop over. Today he found himself looking at her with detachment. It was a new feeling, or perhaps a new lack of one, and he wondered what was happening.
"Amy, we need help. I love you. I want to stay married to you. But this marriage isn't satisfactory for either one of us, the way it is now."
He frowned. The last statement was true enough, but he wondered if the others were.
"Help?" Amy demanded. "Does it help to go and talk about us to some stranger? To tell her all our secrets? Don't you have any pride-any loyalty to your own wife?"
That was laying it on a bit thick, certainly. The only real secret they had was the fact that she didn't want to fuck. It took an even greater effort, this time, for Bill to retain his composure.
"Amy, you make it sound as if I'm going around collaring strangers on street-corners and telling them that my wife eats crackers in bed," he said, trying to sound jollier than he felt. "This woman is a professional marriage counselor. She's heard it all. It's the same thing as a shrink, or a priest."
"Or a lawyer," she added pointedly, a brittle glitter in her eye.
"Now, don't start that, sweetie. Please. The only problem with this thing is that you're not going too. Dr. Fleurette-" he always made a point of using that title with Amy, even though Wanda took it lightly "-is only hearing one side of the story. She's given me-well, a certain peace of mind. Calmed me down. Improved my outlook. But she really can't get at the root of the problem unless she talks to you too. Unless you talk to her."
Amy looked away, brooding. Some of the starch of disapproval had gone out of her posture.
"You do seem less ... aggressive," she admitted grudgingly.
That was the sorest trial yet to his self-control: she was complimenting him on his lack of sexual interest in her. As he felt the pressure of blood rising to his face, he understood the cartoon convention of characters whose hats pop off their heads in anger. Fortunately, he wasn't wearing a hat.
But he succeeded in telling himself that her concession, no matter how offensive, was still a concession. He believed that his tone sounded reasonable when he said: "You see? She's all ready done me a world of good. You're not happy, Amy. I know that. Why don't you give her a chance? Just talk to her. You don't have to tell her anything, and you aren't obliged to follow any advice she might give you. Just meet her."
She looked at him speculatively for a moment. "There's something disgusting about it," she said. "Talking to people about their ... sex lives. Playing God with other people's marriages. All right. I'll go and see her. Just out of curiosity, you understand."
The shift was so sudden and unexpected that Bill felt a touch of disappointment. He was left with half a dozen good arguments that he'd had no chance of using. He knelt beside the footstool and gave Amy a hug. She stiffened perceptibly. Thinking about it in Wanda's office the next day, he began to wonder if the projected meeting between her and Amy was such a good idea after all. Perhaps what Amy really needed were the attentions of a psychiatrist. Her morbid fear of sex and Wanda's total enthusiasm for it suggested no middle ground for possible discussion. Amy would be repelled, horrified, disgusted. The inevitable result would be that he would have to make an absurd choice: between his marriage and his marriage counselor.
He was pretending to read a magazine, but most of his attention was surreptitiously fixed on Kathi Palmer, subbing for her mother today behind the reception desk. He'd heard the outlines of her strange biography, but this was the first time he'd beheld her in the flesh.
The flesh was quite impressive. Wanda's appeal was that of a radiant goddess, a perfection more than mortal, an angel come to earth-while Kathi was more obviously a native of that planet. "Earthy" was the word for her beauty. Her every movement suggested a total awareness of her body and its sensuous possibilities, the kind of natural awareness that cats have. There was a certain sullenness about the set of her full lips when her face was in repose, as if she resented the waste of time not spent in violent sexual activity.
If he gave up his marriage counselor, it would mean giving up Kathi, too. As a fanatical adherent of Wanda's teachings, she wouldn't be able to refuse him.
He felt a twinge of annoyance with himself. He was beginning to get an erection from his speculations about Kathi. Talking with Amy last night, he hadn't felt anything for her except irritation and occasional anger. Now he was being aroused by a stranger.
Now that he thought about it, that was the extent of the emotions he'd felt toward Amy since he'd started his course of therapy with Wanda: irritation and anger, interspersed with periods of boredom. He had once thought Amy the most desirable-no, more than that, the only desirable girl in the world. Now he desired Wanda. And he desired Kathi. Amy seemed hardly in the running any more.
For the first time since his initial visit, he had serious thoughts about abandoning this course of "treatment." He'd come here with the intention of patching up his marriage, and now that no longer seemed to matter-thanks to Wanda's influence. The only thing that mattered, the only thing that kept him coming back for more, like a carrot held before a donkey as bait, was the prospect of getting into Wanda's pants.
He realized that he'd been staring at Kathi, no longer quite seeing her, while these thoughts had been churning in his head. Now she was returning his stare, smiling. By the standards of this place, she was dressed demurely enough, in a ruffled white blouse and short red skirt, but no costume short of a nun's habit could have really minimized the sensuous curves of her delicious body.
"Penny for your thoughts," she said.
"I was just thinking that you'd look sexy even in a nun's habit," he said.
"I thought you were thinking something like that. I guess you're ready for your session."
She stood up, beckoning him toward a far door. Bill never knew what to expect at one of these sessions, except that some form of sex would be explored-never yet, unfortunately, with Wanda. She usually stood in the background, taking notes or giving pointers, while he engaged in sex with one of her assistants or one of the other clients.
He'd progressed beyond the use of the F-meter. It had been a strange experience, fucking Julia while holding on to those two tomato-cans, as he'd been required to do in his second session. He'd determined that the F-meter measured the galvanic skin response. That was one of the physical responses measured by a polygraph, or lie-detector, and apparently it did have some correlation with emotional activity. He believed, however, that Wanda used it merely in order to make fools of her clients and put them in a properly humiliated state of mind in which they would be more receptive to her authority.
"Mmm, you are ready for your session," Kathi said when he came alongside her, and she gave his hard prick a quick tickle before the shock made him jerk away.
She pouted. "You have problems. Don't you like girls to touch you there?" she asked.
"Of course I do. It's just that you surprised me. It was unexpected, that's all."
"Defense mechanisms. Body armor," she said darkly. "You have to work at breaking all that down, so that you feel completely free with other people."
This little lecture annoyed Bill, who was already in a bad mood. When she turned away, he slipped his hand into her crotch from behind and gave her a squeeze. But he got no revenge that way: she merely looked over her shoulder, smiling at him, and made him feel foolish.
"You see?" she said, rubbing it in.
He'd been keeping himself bottled up too much recently, and now he couldn't resist the impulse to lash out: "Has it ever occurred to you that it might be anesthetized from overuse?"
He saw that he couldn't throw her off stride, no more than he could have done that to Wanda. "On the contrary," she said, "the more I use it, the more responsive it gets. It feels very good now, to have you holding it like that. But why don't we go inside, so I can take my panties off? It'll feel even better then."
Bill forgot about his attempts to regain his self-respect. Perhaps, as Amy said, he really had no pride, because now the idea of getting Kathi out of her panties took precedence over everything else in his mind. He'd been disappointed too often by Wanda to dare hope that this juicy little morsel would be his sex partner for the after noon's session. Even now he tried to keep some restraint on his hopes, knowing that Wanda might have other plans for him. But he couldn't keep any restraint on his prick, which bulged up to its full thickness and rigidity at the prospect of fucking Kathi. He didn't jump this time when she tickled it again.
"That's better," she said, walking to the door she'd indicated earlier as their destination.
Wanda had several "consulting rooms," as she called them, all of them done up in one way or another as bedrooms. Today he was ushered into the red-draped room, reminiscent of a Victorian brothel, where his first session had taken place.
He forgot about Kathi momentarily, because Wanda was waiting for them. She was lying naked on one of the couches, her pose perhaps consciously suggesting Goya's Naked Maja, with the exception that she was smoking a cigarette in a holder.
"Take your pants off, Bill, before you bust out of them," Kathi suggested.
She hardly needed to suggest it, because Bill had come to anticipate spending these sessions in the nude. Sometimes Wanda disrobed, sometimes she didn't, but he always did; he felt that this was another of her ways of gaining the psychological upper hand. The most important way she did this, of course, was in persisting to refuse to let him fuck her. He wondered if he would be able to break her hold over him once that happened. He doubted it.
As he draped his clothes over a convenient chair, he saw that Kathi had already removed hers. She stood waiting for him, her pose slightly hipshot and openly provocative.
"Do you like her, Bill?" Wanda asked, with a slightly proprietary air, as if she were showing off some newly acquired and impressively valuable possession.
"Obviously," Kathi purred before he could answer, her eyes fixed on his big, bare prick.
"Come over here, children, so I can get a good look at you," Wanda said.
"Sometimes I think she likes watching people fuck better than she likes doing it," Kathi murmured as she led Bill to the couch.
Bill wondered if that was meant to be a barb, but Wanda didn't take it as such. She stretched back on the couch and laughed. By what he'd learned from all his experience with Wanda, Kathi's statement was probably accurate.
As if they'd rehearsed the scene or at least prepared it-and Bill was sure they had-Kathi slid a straight chair in front of Wanda's couch and directed him to sit on it. He was hardly settled before Kathi was lowering herself over his upright prick, gliding it up into her cunt with her hand.
"Your fantasy from the first session, Bill," Wanda said.
Except, Bill reflected, that Wanda wasn't in it: but that consideration hardly mattered as the luscious teenager impaled herself on his hot prong and slid, wiggling, downward. She was wet and wide open already, demonstrating either a high degree of control over her pussy or else, more likely, a perpetual case of hot pants, from all that he'd heard about her.
He licked his dry lips with an even drier tongue as he feasted his eyes on the nude girl straddling his knees. Her face was slightly flushed with sexual heat, her lovely chestnut hair was slightly in disarray, with wisps of it falling carelessly over her forehead. Her long lashes were lowered on her rosy cheeks as she looked down to watch her crotch come slowly into closer union with the big, upright cock slipping into it.
His eyes wandered over the lovely curves of her body, noting how her golden tan shaded to ivory at the outline of the brief bikini she must have been wearing in the sun this summer. The whiteness of the skin at her loins contrasted sharply with the darkness of the fluffy bush on her cunt. Looking down beneath the curly shrub, he could see her clit peeking out, just as red and swollen as it could possibly be.
He held her luscious ass in his hands, guiding her down now, even though she really needed no guidance.
"Ooh, you're just filling me up already, and I haven't even got all of it yet!" Kathi exclaimed as she reached back to inspect the root of his prick still not sheathed in her slushy hole.
"Keep trying," he murmured, and he exerted pressure on her smooth hips until every last inch of his prick was buried in her pussy.
Without waiting for him to do anything, Kathi began moving up and down on his hard cock, gritting her teeth with her furious efforts. She humped up and down faster and faster, slapping her ass against his thighs every time she came down hard on his stiff rod.
His eyes were fixed on the sway and quiver of her big breasts. He drew her toward him until he could reach one of them with his mouth. He sucked in just as much of it as he could and went to work on the pink nipple with his tongue. At the same time he ground his hips around in slow rotations while Kathi pumped herself up and down on the hot column of flesh that filled her up the middle.
He kept switching his attentions from one of her big tits to the other. She arched her back to shove them right out and present them for his licking and sucking. She flipped her hard nipples back and forth against his face, giggling.
Suddenly he felt a new and entirely different kind of touch on his prick. He came to the ecstatic realization that Wanda was leaning forward from the couch and licking his cock whenever it appeared from the depths of the teenager's hot cunt. When it was buried inside Kathi's pussy, she devoted her attention to his balls, licking them all over and kissing them. It was the closest he'd come yet to getting a blowjob from the exasperating blonde, and it excited him even more than Kathi's fucking.
The combination of sensations was more than he could stand. He cried out as he felt his self-control dissolving, and Kathi gasped as the streaming, shooting pillar of flesh splurged its hot gism up into her pussy. Wanda buried her face into the unctuous junction of their crotches and licked them madly, sucking up the excess of juice that squeezed out of Kathi's pussy from Bill's erupting cock. At just the right moment, she inserted her hand into the squirming, rocking mass of soft flesh and wet pubic hair and clasped the teenager's swollen clit between two fingers. She gave it a rub that sent Kathi right over the edge to dissolve in the grip of a climax.
Bill and Kathi both wanted to keep hammering their bones against each other, but the rapid violence of their fucking and the explosiveness of their orgasms had left them without muscular strength or coordination. They sagged in each other's arms.
"Your cock tastes good, Bill," Wanda purred. "I think I'll have to start kissing it more often."