Chapter 8

The rain stopped and the summer heat began to return before dawn broke. Leslie had turned on a small space heater, and when the first light of day appeared, Max got up from the bed and flipped off its switch.

He looked at the magnificent body of the woman on the bed, a body strong-limbed, healthy, magnetic. Her eyes were closed but she had a faint smile on her face, and he didn't think she was sleeping.

Did he love her? He didn't know. The concept of love now seemed to have no real meaning to Max Flagg. It was too vague, too shopworn, too often and too long abused. It had been used in so many different ways to signify so many different things. Sometimes it referred to pure self-interest of a sensual order. Sometimes it refrerred to a sublimation of the physical impuse, at others, to bed, and nothing more.

And occasionally love referred to a strange and perfect fusing of all the things included in the narrower definitions, as if spirit and flesh had achieved a perfect unity-both within one person and between two persons.

At this moment, it seemed to Max that he and Leslie might have achieved such a love, but he banished the thought from his mind. He didn't want to think. He wanted to be free of all the agonies of mind and body he had suffered during he past years. He wanted merely to exist-as a freely functioning, joyously functioning, uninhibited human creature. He didn't want to think of Doris or yesterday or tomorrow. He wanted merely to live-with this woman in this room at this minute.

She had told him to do with her as he pleased, and that was precisely what he had been doing. And from the first moment, she had raisen to the occasion and proved herself a scientist-no, an artist-at the craft of love.

As he looked at her, she stirred, shoulders shrugging, heels digging, back twisting, and her mountainous, breasts moved on her chest. Max responded to the sight with fresh desire.

There was no hurry. There had been no hurry in their loving since the first time. Like most men, Max had had most of his loving corrupted by clocks and schedules. He had been bound by office hours and television programs and necessary bedtimes and so many other dubious blessings of a timetable-civilization. Love had had to be fitted in. But not so love with Leslie. With Leslie, everything else had to bow to and give way to love.

He stepped up on the low bed, walked to her, and stood gazing at her, his feet against her warm flesh; and Us passion increased as he looked. He had no plans, no idea of his intention. He would let love direct itself.

He kneeled, carefully, lightly, his knees near her shoulders. As he touched her, her smile grew and her arms closed around his waist. She was awake, though her eyes were still closed.

He took a breast to each hand and he moved them. He carefully rolled them, twisted them, and drew at them, feeling the nipples harden for his palms. He plucked at the nipples and pinched under them, and Leslie sighed and twisted.

She brushed his hands aside, and took her breasts herself. She pressed them together and pressed them on him great, soft, hard-cored, hard tipped globes of burning velvet, and he shuddered with pleasure. He groped blindly for her, and she responded to his touch. She mewed and twisted. Suddenly, she grabbed his hips and threw him to his hands and knees. He was caught by a warm kiss, wild and slashing.

That was almost too much for him. He yanked away from her and fell to the bed. Then they were fighting, scrambling, to get at one another once again.

Then they paused, relaxed, smiled again, as they lay in warm embrace. They had plenty of time, all the time in the world, before they built to the final tearing moment.

After breakfast, he phoned Doris at the hotel. His tone was cool, disinterested, and impatient. He couldn't help it and he didn't give a damn.

He let her know that he was calling to tell her he was all right, in case she were worried. He had run into someone he knew had a few drinks, stayed the night, etc. When would she see him? Sometime during the day, he supposed Would he be at the Faculty Cabana Club? He supposed so yes: sometime this afternoon.

Still unclothed, he walked out onto the rear veranda. A moment later Leslie, who had been ironing his slacks and shirt joined him. She was wearing some of the underwear he had helped her to select: the Iess-than-modest black brassiere, bikini-type black lace panties, and a shortie nightie made of a single layer of transparent red nylon.

"You're all dressed up and going nowhere," he said. "Why the clothes?"

"The better to tease you with, my dear."

She came toward him. her gaze raking his body like finger-tips. She reached for him and he immediately responded.

"My God, what a man, what an animal, what an insatiable beast you are!"

He took her into his arms, supped one hand over a bare buttock, used the other to toy with her breasts. "The better to love you, my dear."

Laughing, she tore away from him and ran down into the yard. He went after her, and the grass was still delightfully wet on his feet the air sweet on his body He caught her and they wrestled and grabbed at one another, still laughing, and he tore away again.

Perhaps it was the wet grass that caused her to fall, perhaps her own wish. At any rate, she went down on her knees and one shoulder, red nylon flying over her head. Max fell down behind her and pulled the black lace away, seeking with his hands as she tried to escape. She laughed and groaned at the same time as he moved toward her....

And so they continued, uncounted times, whenever nature showed the propensity. They didn't strain themselves; they weren't out to set any records or score any gymnastic feats. They simply did what came naturally and they took their time and they did well, going through all of love without shame or reservation. For a time, at least, the Garden of Eden had come to life again in the home of Leslie Stanton.

Unhappily, they couldn't entirely ignore the demands of the reality principle. In the afternoon, Leslie had a seminar which she couldn't very well skip. So she dropped Max off at the pool and said she would meet him there later.

As Leslie had promised, Max found a pair of men's trunks that fit him in the cabana, and after putting them on he went to poolside, found a chair and settled down to doze. He was just dropping off when Doris came over to offer him a wan smile and to sit down beside him.

"Hi," she said. "You survived the storm, I see." Max made a sound which might be taken as an affirmative.

"Who did you meet last night? Some old college chum?"

"A friend."

The silence that followed was long, but it didn't disturb Max. He was refusing to be disturbed by anything or anyone. In a way, he felt like a wounded man who knew he could survive if he lay perfectly still and ceased all thought.

"Come join me in the water, Max!" Doris said with a note of forced enthusiasm.

"Later, maybe."

"Oh, come on!" She stood up and pulled at his arm, "Not itow. Go on, go away, will you? Just let me sit here."

There was no touch of bitterness or complaint in his voice. There was no anger. He had spoken the words as he might have said them to a stranger whom he would not be able to remember five minutes later. And perhaps for that very reason he felt a brief stab of guilt as Doris slowly released his arm and silently walked away.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that he was alive and the sun felt good and later he would be with Leslie again. He closed his eyes and simmered.

Three and a half hours later, Leslie appeared and they swam together for a while. Then Doris motioned for him to come to the side of the pool. She told him that they had an invitation to a party that evening. Max told her he was sorry but he had other plans.

"When will I see you?" Doris asked.

"I don't know. I may be out late again tonight"

"All night, you mean?"

Max shrugged. "Maybe. Look, you gs to your party and have a good time, eh? Don't worry about me."

After Doris had left, Leslie swam over beside Max

"Are you going to tell her about us? And when?"

"I'll have to tell her sooner or later, I guess. But right now I don't want to have any dramatic scenes. I've had enough dramatic scenes for a lifetime. Right now, I want simply to live, that's all. Just live."

When they were tired of swimming, they went to the cabana. Leslie went first and Max joined her, after a haphazard look around to see that he wasn't observed, a couple of minutes later. They stripped and admired one another without feeling any particular impulse to do more and without feeling that they had to force the urge. After showering together, they dressed and left the cabana separately, meeting at Leslie's car.

They went to a good short-order place and stuffed themselves with double servings of chili-mac and milk and black coffee, then Max took the wheel and they rode about some more, feeling like carefree wanders-which, for the moment, they were. Max drove out into the country, following side roads he had almost forgotten.

As dusk set in, Max found some lonely woods, and they left the car and strolled a short distance through thickets that separated them from the road, enjoying the sweet, fresh scent of the air. Suddenly Max noticed the look Leslie was giving him. It wasn't lewd, it wasn't suggestive. It was interested. So he stopped. She was wearing the loose brightly-flowered dress she had had on only the day before and she walked toward him, raising it to her waist. They caressed one another for a time, wordlessly, thoughtlessly, until they lay back against a slanting tree trunk.

It was almost dark when they finished. As he stepped away from her, she pulled her dress over her head and hung it on a bush He sat down and smoked a cigarette while watching the moonlight on her body as she poked about the woods. Fortunately, the ground was high and dry, so there were few mosquitoes, but Max laughed as he saw Leslie give two or three slaps.

When she pulled on her dress, he knew it was time to leave. He drove back to the house.

The night went as the last one had, with a little more sleep.

Leslie had to spend the next morning at the university, and the habit of going to the Faculty Cabana Club remained unbroken. Doris arrived soon after Max did. Thev traded listless and desultory words, and Max left her to go his own way. He felt something coming to a head, something which would upset the unthinking animal peace he had found, and he told himself, Not yet I Not yet!

Just before lunch, Leslie appeared. They spent a couple of afternoon hours at the pool. Doris once approached him and asked him his plans, and he told her he'd probably be out quite late that night, but-with a stirring of worry? of conscience? that he'd try to make it back to the hotel. After Doris had left, he and Leslie returned to her house. There they loved, napped, ate, and loved some more. They had practically given up drinking and they did little smoking. They wanted nothing to dull or reduce the hours together, the moments of love.

Doris was defeated.

Once she had loved, or thought she had loved, Jack Home. Their affair had been unsatisfactory for her.

She had fallen in love with Max Flags and their affair had been equally unsatisfactory, but she had married him. She had fought to become the adequate female she needed to be, but without success. She had undergone therapy. She had spent hundreds of hours painfully wrestling in bed. She had undergone the bitterness of virtual certitude that her husband had taken up with another woman-a bitterness made all the more unbearable by the thought that perhaps she couldn't altogether blame her husband.

She had undertaken a second honeymoon, and what a delusion, what a folly, that had proven to be! Never since meeting him had she felt more separated from her husband than she did now.

The first night Max had stayed out, the night of the storm, when she had refused him, she had been certain that he had gone to Leslie, but she had fought against the conclusion.

The second night, she had ceased to fight. Max was giving the love that rightfully was Doris' to that damned witch.

Now, tonight, he would be with her again. They were together all the time. Leslie Stanton appeared to be a very alluring dame and Max had a strong drive quite likely the two of them did little other than stay in bed.

Once the thought and the images which the idea brought to mind would have driven Doris mad with jealousy. Now they drove her to despair.

Jack Home asked her to spend the evening with him. She had nothing better to do, and she accepted. They had dinner together and went to see a movie, a double-feature of old big-budget westerns, and Doris found that for a few hours she could forget Max and the troubles they had. Afterward, feeling like a fool, she asked Jack to stop by the hotel before they went out for a drink, so that she could find out if Max were there.

He wasn't.

They went to a quiet bar and Doris nursed her drinks. Her deep despondency had returned and she felt too sad even to get drunk.

They stayed together until the bar closed, and Jack suggested that they go to his place for a nightcap. Doris refused. She wanted to get back to her hotel room-and, she hoped, though she didn't say so, find Max.

As she was getting out of Jack's car in front of the hotel, he stopped her for a moment. "Doris, if he isn't there-or even if he is come back and tell me, will you?"

Doris nodded. She went into the hotel.

The room was dark when Doris entered, and Max wasn't there She didn't turn on a light. She sat down in a chair, feeling sick and frozen, deserted and alone.

How long she sat there, she couldn't have said, but she remembered that Jack might be waiting, and she left the room.

His car was still parked by the curb. She opened the door and entered it without a word, and without a word Jack started the motor and drove away. She didn't protest when he pulled up m front of his apartment building and helped her out of the car.

Neither said a word until they were in his living room and he was handing her a Scotch and soda. Then, "Jack " she said, "I've 1ost him haven't I?"

"It's not for m" to say. Doris."

"I've lost him." She sipped her drink and wandered about the room, trying to get used to the idea. "I suppose it must be more than just physical. I mean, I can understand Max being attracted to another woman, but I can't understand his being with her so much unless he were deeply entangled. unless he were in love, and I...." Try as she might, she could not keep her voice even and calm.

Jack kept quiet and let her suffer it out.

"Oh, I hate him. Jack! But how can I blame him? I tell you, I'm a lost cause! Remember what I said? A lost cause...."

Then she was weeping and trying to drink her whiskey at the same time. Somehow, she made it.

Jack handed her a handkerchief. "Not a lost cause. Never for me."

"Oh? You still want me, Jack?"

"Yes."

"Nice to know somebody wants me. If only for the first night. Sure you want me?"

"I want you. I love you. I want to make love to you."

Hardly knowing what she was doing, she tilted her head back and gave him a sideways look, directly in the eyes.

She shrugged.

It was a commitment, and she didn't have sure knowledge of why she had made it. Out of loneliness, possibly, or because Jack wanted her and she didn't wish to feel useless in the world of male and female. It wasn't because she had any physical desire for Jack or any other man at that moment. Quick to excite though she was, at that moment she was completely disinterested.

Jack kissed her mouth and she neither responded nor drew away. "Would you like another drink?" he asked, and she shook her head. He took her glass and sat it down with his.

He took her arms in hand and he kissed her again. His mouth went to her closed eyes, to her throat, to her right ear.

And when his breath hit her ear, she felt the familiar stirring.

I don't care, she thought. Useless to try. So I won't try. Let him take all the pleasure he wants-but I'll just take whatever there may be, try to take no more, and cut the suffering to a minimum.

His mouth was on hers again, and now she was responding. She let her body sway against him and raised her forearms to clasp his waist.

How strange this was! She was back in arms she had known over four years ago, arms so different and yet so familiar. And how differently she felt tonight about things.

His arms slid around her and tightened. His mouth opened and she welcomed his kiss with increasing eagerness. Pangs of pleasure began to dash over there, and her mind grew dazed. But the reaction was purely automatic. She wasn't preparing herself for more than she had ever experienced, because she knew that only by a miracle would she be able to find more. She was allowing her body to do as it pleased and asking no more.

The handkerchief he had handed her, still in her hand, fell to the floor as her body, through no volition of her own, began to twist from side to side against him. Her breasts, separated from him by at least three layers of material, felt heavier and fuller. Her lips, too, felt fuller and almost bruised. The sensation grew as his touch went over her spine and cupped her hip.

"I love you, Doris," he said in the faintest of voices. "Always know that I love you." And with that, he walked her, danced her, back to a couch and made her sit down.

He sat beside her and they kissed again as he caressed her chin, her throat, the V-neck of her white shirt-blouse. Fis fingers found the first button and unfastened it. They drifted over the center of her brassiere, found he second button and did the same thing. Each slight touch on her flesh shot a kind of spark through her, and she found her own fingers going to the buttons of his shirt. He found her third button and, after a little tug of the material from her waist, the fourth and final one. He opened her blouse all the way.

Reaching under the blouse and around to her back, he located the hooks of her white cotton brassiere and deftly disengaged them. The cups lost their fullness and the bottoms of her breasts, milky-white against the tad of the rest of her skin, showed beneath them. He raised the brassiere to her shoulder-level.

"God, you're beautiful. Even more beautiful than I remember. So beautiful...."

She felt the increasing warmth of his breath as his face moved closer to her exposed bosom. Her nipples, more pink than brown, had grown pebble-hard, and he took the right with his mouth, warming it, moving it as if to erode or melt it, but it only seemed to grow more sensitive.

He moved his lips back to hers, scarcely touching her. He turned her shoulders and helped her lie back across his arm. She kicked off her shoes and swung her legs to the couch, a careless, reckless move, letting her skirt slide off of her hips.

As his kiss moved over her face, his hand continued to build her warm untanned breasts and nipples. When his kiss returned to her breasts, his hand plucked her skirt farther and moved over her waist with a feathery touch. And when his kiss moved back to her ear, flooding her with shivers, his fingers dipped toward the elastic of her panties. He was teasing her.

She was panting and shaking in his arms. She wanted him to go farther. She wanted to twist in his arms tear open his clothes, and caress, kiss him. The old habit of straining for satisfaction, the old dream of achievement haunted her. Should she try one more time? Should she toil, strain, make one more mighty effort?

No. That would kill her or drive her crazy. Tonight she didn't have the strength to survive the ordeal. She must relax as much as possible to keep that ancient battle from starting. She must simply let happen what would happen, and then maybe Jack wouldn't be to disappointed in her.

He made her sit up again, her back to him. He pulled off her blouse and she shrugged away her brassiere. She was wearing no socks or stockings. She stood up, unzipped her skirt, and stepped out of it. Now she was clad only in simple white panties.

She turned and walked back to where he was still sitting. He reached for her and she expected him to pull her panties off, but he didn't. He lowered the top edge only enough to kiss her navel as he clutched at her buttocks. Her need grew to such an extent that she wished he would throw her to the couch and take her immediately so that she could be at ease again.

But he did no such thing. He shoved off his shoes and stockings and stood before her. Her hands knew what to do. They finished the job of unbuttoning his shirt, taking their time, then pushing it back off his shoulders. He wore no undershirt, and they stepped together, breast to chest as they kissed. And, as they kissed, her nails furrowed over his chest, and she found his belt buckle. Then his zipper. He ridded himself of his trousers.

Now? she wondered. Right now? she hoped.

But now wasn't the time. He picked her up, an arm under her shoulders, another under her knees, and carried her through a short hallway to the dark bedroom. She whirled blindly in his arms and then settled lightly on the bed.

He turned on the bedside lamp and they stared at their familiar bodies, so long lost to one another, and he murmured that she was " ... glorious, glorious...." She hoped he would finish denuding her, and he did. Poised on the edge of the bed, his back to her, he put a hand on each of her hips and, as she helped, slid her panties down. When she married Max, she had thought that no other man would ever again look at her. but now Jack was going down to kiss her and she was going wlid at the prospect. She quickly pulled his briefs down to grasp in haste.

After a moment, he freed himself from her grasp and pushed off the last of his clothing as she kicked off hers. His kiss return to her, setting her muscles to involuntary shuddering. His mouth traveled over her ribs, over her breasts to her neck, and they were almost ready. She pressed against him and heard herself begging: "Oh, Tack, take me, don't make me wait any longer!"

She reached for him and brought him nearer. Slowly and gently, he took her.

He was so good that she wanted to cry out. She wanted to make that better and better, wanted to struggle up that Everest the peak of which she had never achieved.

But she mustn't. If she did, the terrible rasp and jangle of her nerves would be far worse than otherwise, and Jack had raised her to such a level already that the counsequences would be bad enough. If she fought to make that distant summit, she didn't know what kind of fit she might throw afterward. She might go into one of her murderous rages. When she had tried to hold herself down for Max's sake, matters had turned out badly enough-such a thing must not happen tonight with Jack.

So she managed to refrain from the big try She rode with what was happening. She matched his mood with one of her own, with the rhythm they had instantly achieved. And with each moment, she rose a little higher, like an air balloon rising into the sky in even steps. She went up, up, up.

Higher and higher. She rolled on her rising white cloud, floated higher, breathing hard and hoarsely in that rarified atmosphere of love, higher and higher, stronger and stronger.

Her voice was a terrified wail.

Something had broken for her, snapped, shattered, and she was blowing to pieces. She was going into convulsions. Her body was hysterical.

And she knew she was there. She was at the summit. She had ascended Everest. She was in the throes of complete ecstasy. She grabbed Jack's back and yanked him closer, going and going-

And at that very moment

Leslie abruptly stiffened on the Japanese bed. Then her nails snapped up to dig into Max's back. Her naked body dancing with ecstasy in the final moment, lost to everything but that moment, as she clutched at him and consumed him and tried to keep him with her forever-

And at that very moment

Jack got what he wished, what he had dreamed of, what he had worked for.

He recognized what was happening to Doris, as that happening itself set him off, and he was all one yearning, finishing delight. He hurled himself and his thunder to the sweet darkness, not knowing how often, knowing only that he was going, going, and that was the greatest thing he had ever done or that had ever happened to him. as he kept going, going-

And at that very moment.

The eighth beautiful woman was too much for Max, or enough as his ultimate pleasure arrived.

Nothing else matter, nothing else existed to matter. The only thing that existed was this great cataract of pleasure which they were sharing.

And then that was over-

Doris sighed and held her lover's head against her. She purred and said. "Oh. Max. Max. That was good!"

Jack kissed the breast he found near his lips and whispered. "Oh. you sweet baby, you finished, didn't you?"

Max smiled, contentedly.

When Doris came out of her trance she stretched herself out on the bed beside Jack, luxuriously.

For now, she thought. I'm happy. I'm not going to think of a thing except what's happened to me. The wonderful thing that has happened.

Why that had happened, she didn't know, and she didn't want to stop to figure things out. Not now. That might spoil her joy. And right now all she wanted was to enjoy her maturity, her full womanhood, the fulfillment for which she had striven these many years.

"So, you're happy, eh?" Jack said, handing her a cigarette. "Yes."

"I told you that you might I 'Md you-"

"Please. I don't want to talk."

"No. Of course not."

"Except, maybe. about how good you were. And she told him while he listened quietly, his head near hers.

And then, abruptly, she was hungry. She dragged Jack from the bed and out to the kitchen, where she made cold-cut sandwiches and ate three huge ones, washing them down with almost a quart of milk. Later, Jack put some records on his player and, still unclothed, they stepped into one another's arms and danced.

Their closeness warmed her. Her eyes grew heavy-lidded, her lips and nipples thickened, the feeling grew. Her right hand feel from his, reviving his passions.

"You like that?" he whispered.

"Yes, Jack, I do."

He touched her. "You like this?"

"Yes, I like...."

"And you want me to make love to you again?"

"Yes, yes...." She went groggy, aware only of her powerful yearning. "Yes, please, again...."