Chapter 6
The disquieting thought took root in her mind and bothered her for some time after that. She'd cut short her holiday then, and flown back to the big Bal Harbour house in a glum and introspective mood. Was she turning? Was she undergoing some odd sort of sea change into a woman whose desires were primarily turned toward...other women?
What was happening to her? Was she only to be attracted, from now on, to men who cared nothing for her and whose disdain for her body and its needs would further add to her sexual and personal frustration...until she would inevitably be driven to the arms of another woman for comfort and solace?
Was this, in fact, what she really wanted? Was she deliberately seeking out ways of making sure her contacts with men were frustrating and unattractive?
These thoughts bothered her all the way back home on the big plane to New York. They dogged her footsteps on a brief shopping trip through New York (in which she quite deliberately avoided any opportunity of meeting either men or women on anything but the most mundane level), and they spoiled her subsequent plane ride back to Miami
Now, finishing her morning coffee alone in the upstairs sitting-room, she turned to the morning mail, left on a silver tray by the taciturn private secretary, Mills. But, sitting with the letters and the opener in her hand, she stopped again, as she had done so many times in the last few days, to think.
The house, the old routine-she couldn't go back to them. She felt, quite frankly, strangled by the web of Ed's old life every time she returned to the Miami beachfront home. There was no place there for Nan Mikell to be Nan Mikell, herself; there was only room for the widow of Ed Mikell, who had responsibilities, social commitments, something to Live Up To.
But where to go?
Could she trust herself, starting out somewhere new-even provided that she could find the sort of anonymity she sought anywhere? Would she get into the sort of trouble that had dogged her footsteps in France-letting the strange new personality inside her take over, getting into embarrassing, even dangerous, scrapes like the ones in Nice and St. Tropez? Would the perverse devil that shared her body with her keep leading her into bad associations? Into some sort of terrible, frightening sexual morass from which even Ed's money, eventually, could not extract her?
It was a strange and terrifying question. She simply didn't know who she was any more. She simply couldn't have imagined herself doing the wild and undisciplined things she'd done since that strange, fateful afternoon by the pool.. .
No, she had to get away from Miami, from the whole structured life she was in. But it had to be somewhere where she could work out her problems in a calm atmosphere, without having either the old structure or the new temptations to inhibit her growth and (there was no other word for it) her rebirth.
Thus thinking, she turned to the letters in her hand again. She scanned the return addresses, wondering which to open first: bills, bills, a couple of obvious solicitations from charities...and, near the bottom, an odd, rustic-looking, obviously hand-printed letterhead envelope (the legend added in tiny characters "Printed on Recycled Paper") from some sort of place in Studio City, California, called WomanSchool. Another sob story from a charity? She opened this letter first, on impulse.
The letter read in part:
Annie!! !
You can't IMAGINE how delighted I was to hear from you!! ! As you can see from the name, I'm once married, once divorced...and I took the settlement money and put it into this place. I'm having a marvelous time now-why didn't anyone ever TELL me it was so much fun to be single?
DO come out and visit. I mean, really!! ! Right now!! ! You'll have a MARVELOUS time!! ! The people here are just FANTASTIC and I'm sure you'll love every single one of them. Do write and tell me you'll come. We'll all be looking forward to seeing you-and me most of all!!! I can't wait, simply cannot wait, to see you!! !
Love and kisses Mary Alice Haslam
A postscript at the end said, "That's my married name. I'm getting my own back but that won't be for another couple of months. DO COME SEE ME!! ! "
"Annie," she said, staring at the wall. It'd been years since anyone had called her that How very little Mary Alice had changed from the girl, her roommate, at school. And-she thought with a sudden pang of her lost girlhood-how very nice it would be to see her. She'd write her immediately. It sounded like exactly the right tonic for her right now.
WomanSchool? she wondered. What was that? It sounded like something she had some sort of partnership in. Or perhaps she owned it A licensed school of some sort? She couldn't imagine. And where was Studio City? She reached for the almanac and finally found it: a small suburb of Los Angeles, separated from the main city by a sizeable mountain range but-if the highway map were right-not far from the Hollywood complex. She'd never been in Los Angeles. The one time Ed had gone there he'd gone alone; he had a speech to make at some dull convention and he hadn't recommended the trip as anything she might enjoy. Very well; very well.... She checked the letterhead again (obviously something done on a hand press, but not unattractive for all that). There was a telephone number listed. She picked up the desk set and dialed....
Two days later she walked down the ramp from her plane at L.A. International, her eyes eagerly scanning the crowd for signs of her friend and recognizing nobody. It was well after eleven p.m., but she noticed with a shock that even Florida's idea of informality (as reflected in her own ensemble, purchased in Miami Beach) was decidedly too studied for Los Angeles, if this crowd were any sort of accurate cross-section. The new short hairdo was all right, though: the only really nice thing she'd brought back from her European trip. It helped dispel the feeling of being horribly, pretentiously overdressed.
"Annie!" a voice said from down the way. Somehow even the voice-not unduly loud, but capable of carrying quite a distance, she remembered from all those years before-seemed to come with underlined capital letters and triple exclamation points attached. There'd been a strange Betty Hutton sort of competent-but-vulnerable air about her that her girl friends had found far more appealing than the men they met had. Suddenly, looking for her, Nan wondered what kind of man she'd married-and divorced.
Suddenly she spotted her. And she couldn't believe it
Mary Alice had been the neat type: prim whites and pinks, closed shoes even in hottest summertime, hair always just so. Now the woman who stood before her, her face split by a happy smile, wore a thin sweater with no bra underneath-showing nipples, even areolas, quite clearly under the semi-sheer cloth-and trim, but stained, blue jeans, with canvas shoes. Her hair was waist-length, but had been braided into a single brown pigtail that hung-not at all unattractively, Nan thought with a start-down one side of her neck.
"My...gosh!" Mary Alice said. Nan looked at her, her own jaw dropping, her own responses shorted out for the moment. "Wow...look at you, for Pete's sake! Just look at you!" The smile was genuine; it was as real as anything in the world. Nan couldn't be happier to see anyone she knew in the whole world. And, her hesitation over, she swept into Mary Alice's arms for a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek that wet her face with sudden salt tears.
"Oh, honey...I've spoiled your makeup...Tm so sorry, but I...."
"Oh, Mary Alice," Nan said, meaning every word of it, "you're the nicest sight I've seen in a year." And the two swept off, arm in arm, to get her baggage.
Mary Alice drove a Volkswagen bus. "You have to have something like this," she explained as they sped up the San Diego Freeway toward the mountains. "I mean, if you're hauling stuff around the way I am a good deal of the time. I'd like to have something with a little more poop, you know-but I've got every nickel invested in this place of mine. It's all I can do to meet the nut half the time. I mean, you wouldn't believe" (here Nan's mind supplied capital letters and three exclamation points again) "how many licenses you've got to carry here, how many taxes you have to pay."
"What kind of school is it?" Nan said. She'd shared some-but not many-confidences with Mary Alice so far; she'd mentioned losing her husband, for instance, but not that she'd gained something in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars in the process. She wasn't sure just why she'd held back.
"Well, gosh...you'll see. I started to get you a nice reservation at the Sportsmen's Lodge or somewhere, but I thought, gee, I couldn't just let you go the first night I've been so excited ever since I heard from you the other day, I just couldn't. I hope you don't mind staying with me tonight. I want to show you the place, and...well, gee. It's just fantastic to see you, hon."
"You too, dear," Nan said. And found herself meaning it. She was a sweetheart, just as Nan had remembered her. Only something had happened to make her open up even further. She'd been hurt, perhaps...and had recovered from it Nan sighed, thinking. When would she recover from Ed? Or were all these changes she was going through part of the process?
They were climbing now. "Hey, look up ahead, sugar," Mary Alice said. "I never get over how pretty this is. I mean, here you are right in the middle of this big fantastic city, you know, and all of a sudden they run his eight-lane highway over this whole cotton-picking mountain range. I mean look. And when we get to the top...there, look. Have you ever seen anything like it? That's the Valley. It's, like, only this teeny little part of L.A., and here its population's about the size of Baltimore's or something. It's nothing but this...this big damn sort of bedroom community, really, but you can find just about anything in it that you can find in Philly. Honest, hon, I love it. Gee, just look at that." And Nan had to admit to herself that the sight was impressive: a giant city, spreading out as far as the eye could see, visible from the top of the mountain they were crossing. The lights were as bright as those of an entire, large Eastern city, and they didn't stop for miles and miles.
"But your school," she said. "You were going to tell me about it."
"Yeah," Mary Alice said. She took the off-ramp to the Ventura Freeway, heading East. She drove with a man's confidence and competence, Nan noticed. "Well, I had this idea, back when my marriage was falling apart and I needed something to kind of throw myself into. I'd always wanted to learn about ceramics, and nobody had any classes-oh, gee, wait'll you see this ceramics teacher I just hired, he's a dream-anyhow, I thought, why? Why weren't there any schools specializing in that? I mean for adults? No credit or anything. Just learn how to do it, you know, and learn well. Right? Yeah. But I learned Joe was gonna fight the divorce, and I got me this fan-tas-tick lawyer, and he soaked Joe for this nice big fat wad-oh, a hundred thou or so, you know-and I thought, Mary Alice, you're going into the school business. Anyhow, I had the house, and there was this crummy old motor court-remember those? With the little cabins and all?-next door, and when it came up for sale for delinquent taxes...."
The story waffled pleasantly on as the little bus sped through the night. At a particularly un-likely-looking off-ramp Mary Alice swung the wheel expertly to one side and steered them out of the traffic. In a few blocks she turned off, went up a long driveway, and pulled up in the middle of a nest of disreputable-looking shacks, parking behind a billboard advertising the school.
They got out, and Mary Alice insisted on carrying her bag. "Don't be to quick to judge it," she said. "I know it looks like a dump right now, but we're due for a paint job right after I make the nut on this quarter's taxes. And it's a great place, really, with terrific vibes. I can't wait for you to meet everybody. You'll just love 'em."
They ducked into a big old frame house situated to one side of the complex; it was large, roomy, and very nineteen-twenties. It reminded her (with a pang that surprised her) of small-town Pennsylvania, and the reminder was immediately reinforced by the interior, which was put together in old-fashioned furniture and cranky, un-matching objects d'art. It needed a sweeping. Nan vowed to give it one next morning.
They raided the icebox for salami sandwiches and beer, and they-just once-found themselves hugging each other and crying and saying sweet things to each other. Nan was touched, more than she could say. And just before bedtime, sitting before the fireplace-imagine! In what ought to be dead midsummer, you could have a fire!-in their robes, toasting their tired toes before the flames, they cracked open a special bottle of brandy Mary Alice had been saving for a real, live, Special Occasion, and toasted their new futures, whatever they'd turn out to be. And Mary Alice had got off a few tears again, and Nan had hugged her with a surprisingly genuine affection.
Bedtime. They kissed, and said good-night, and Mary Alice went to her own room after tucking Nan in with a warm kiss on one ear and some hoarsely whispered words of affection. And Nan, tired to the bone, slipped off to sleep almost at once.
Disquieting dreams bothered her again, though. They woke her four times in a row. They were dreams of the bad night on the beach at Nice, of the young man beating her. Of the horrors of her marathon night of cruelty and sadism at St Tropez. She woke up finally in a cold sweat sitting bolt upright
There was a noise somewhere in the dark house. A noise as of a child or an animal, whining in a low, nasal voice. Nan sat up, wide awake now, listening.
"Ohhhhhh....Ohhhh.. .
It was coming from a room down the hall. Nan got up in her nightie, disdaining the robe, and padded silently out of the room in bare feet. She wished she had a flashlight...but it didn't seem to be anything really dangerous. She went forward, spurred by curiosity.
"Ohhhhh....Ohhhhhhh...There! It was in the second room, after all. She tiptoed forward, opening the door slowly, as quietly as possible, looking in.
The moon was nearly full it seemed. It was certainly bright. And it shone through the open window on Mary Alice's contorted face, shining with cold sweat in the white light. She was stretched out on the bed, naked, her head rolling back and forth as the moans escaped her lips one by one. In the moonlight the lovely, round, womanly breasts looked even more grossly sensual than they had through her thin sweater at the airport. And as Nan watched, Mary Alice's sleeping hand stole to her crotch, to burrow deep into a thick, coarse mat of curling black hair between the sturdy thighs. The sight was one which should have roused Nan to pity; the cries escaping from Mary Alice's lips were agonized, unhappy cries for help. Instead, Nan found her pulse pounding all of a sudden. The view was...was incredibly smutty. Sexy. Whatever you wanted to call it. Mary Alice's body had none of the fashionable skinniness she'd seen everywhere on the beaches of the Cote d'Azur. It was the full, womanly body of a peasant: gross, physically demanding.
My God! Nan said to herself. What am I thinking? "Ohhhhh...Ohhhhh...."
And then compassion took over-that and the affection she'd already begun to feel again for her old school friend. She was, after all, so unpretentiously decent a soul-there was hardly another word for it-that Nan's heart instinctively went out to her. She remembered Mary Alice well; there'd hardly been a selfish bone in her body. When her friends had suffered-poor grades, broken romances, the whole innocent tragedy of girlhood-she'd suffered with them, and stayed up crying with them until they'd been restored enough to face their problems. A good-hearted person.
Nan couldn't help it She approached the bed and sat gently down beside her friend.
"Mary Alice," she said gently.
The body beside her shook, shivered, sobbed, and came awake. And, shocked, frightened, she sat bolt upright a look of terror in her eyes. "I. . . "
Nan held her gently in her arms, patting her softly on the back. "There, there. There, sweetheart. It's all right I'm here."
"Annie..." There was a flood of tears and Mary Alice snuggled her head into Nan's neck. "I kept...I kept dreaming.... I dreamed I'd lost the place..." And she hugged Nan hard. Nan felt the big gross breasts, with their dark, hard nipples, pressing sensuously against her own. And felt her own nipples harden at the sensation.
"There, there, sweetheart..." Nan said. And she pulled back to look Mary Alice in the eye. "You won't lose the place or anything else, sweetheart. Tm here to help you."
Tears gleamed in her friend's eyes. She couldn't understand...Nan now remembered she hadn't told her that she'd come into money, more money than Mary Alice had ever heard of in her whole life. She was about to explain this, gently, when Mary Alice herself took the initiative. She leaned forward, her eyes brimming with tears, intently fixed on Nan's, and kissed her.
It wasn't a friend's kiss. It wasn't even the sort of kiss women give each other on the rare occasions when they kiss each other on the mouth. It was the kind of kiss a man gives to a woman. The lips bruised hers; Mary Alice's tongue shot deep into her mouth, and Mary Alice's hand went to Nan's breasts: caressing, exploring, touching, and tweaking the tender nipples. "Oh, Annie...you're so lovely..." Mary Alice said. And her hands went under the nightie, swept it up and off, baring Nan's body in the cool night air. "Oh, Annie...darling...stay with me...." And Mary Alice kissed her again, harder.
Nan, her heart melting, came, shuddering, crying aloud, at the kiss, at the feel of the warm fingers on her nipples, at the sound of the soft and loving voice. And she rolled over on the bed, spreading her legs for her friend's kiss, which roamed over her body, touching here and there, before coming to rest in her yawning, wetly glistening patch of auburn pubic hair. Once there, her friend's broad tongue went to work, licking her clean, licking every drop of juice from her warm and slippery hole before running up between the lips of her cunt and going ferociously to work on her clitoris, with little cries of delight and appreciation. "Annie...darling.. .she said, between juicy and unbelievably sensuous licks at Nan's eagerly trembling crotch. "Annie...I can't believe you're here, sweetheart...I've always loved you..." And the ardent attack brought Nan off twice more before Mary Alice was ready to raise her head from Nan's dripping and satiated lap and kiss her again on the lips, her mouth still reeking (and how incredibly sexy it was!) of Nan's own bodily juices, her trembling breasts pressing against Nan's own in a pagan and uncontrollable abandon. Then, falling to the pillow in each other's arms, they slept, kept warm by each other's bare flesh in lieu of cover....