Chapter 3
"Okay, you can take an art course if you want, as long as it doesn't take you away from the house too much."
Vivian Lawler looked at her husband, who had just spoken. How kind of him! The great, domineering male! He had graciously granted her permission to do what she had been doing at the time she met him and started spawning his brats.
"Why darling," she purred, "how sweet of you. I wouldn't dream of letting anything interfere with the great responsibility of helping you feed your face. Don't worry; dinner will be ready per usual-unless I have something better to do."
He slammed down his cuff links on the bureau and whirled to face her. One of the links rolled onto the floor. His thick features collected into an enraged, ursine scowl.
"What the hell is the matter with you lately? Every time I open my mouth you come out with some bitchy crack. You sound just like those goddamn broads in that national man-hater group."
Vivian laughed. "You mean W.I.T.C.H.? Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell."
Timothy Lawler made a snorting sound of disgust.
"Oh, now genteel," his wife commented, wrinkling her nose. "Your catarrh again?"
They eyed each other for a moment in a mettlesome silence. She held his glance until finally, with a look that mingled sheepishness with brutal contempt, he looked away.
She waited; she knew it would come because he knew what he had done to her and he was compelled to make amends in spite of himself.
He spoke again, more softly. "Look, Vivian, I know what's eating you."
"Really? Who?"
He yelled again. "You know, you're developing a filthy mouth, you know that?"
"And do you know," she said slowly, "that you are a Puritan, and always have been?" She tossed her hairbrush aside and attacked him with a shaking voice, hating herself for losing her temper.
"The great crusading editor with political ambitions. Speaking out against X-rated movies and topless dancers, a one-man censorship juggernaut who wants to ride the crest of righteousness that's infected this whole damn area. Anthony Comstock Lawler, the great would-be book burner.
Yes, I have a filthy mouth, and a filthy mind, too. It's a natural reaction after twenty years of bigamy with the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost"
She saw his hand twitch, as though he wanted to ball his fist and strike her. "You know, you're jealous," he said. "Jealous because I'm running for the state legislature and because I'm successful. That's what's wrong with all of you damn women. You're dissatisfied-dissatisfied with what Nature gave you. You're not content to raise your children and keep a nice home. You've got to horn in on men's affairs and run everything."
She regained her temper. "Why don't you hit me with that hammy fist you're flapping?" she asked, glancing at his side. "Then you could write one of those great headlines of yours: Pusillanimous Pugilist Punches Presumptuous Prick-Tease."
He waved her down with a jerky, back-handed gesture of disgust and stalked out of the bedroom. At the door, he turned.
"No wonder the country's in such a mess today, with women turning into W.I.T.C.H.'s and God knows what else. You know what's wrong with you babe? You're going into the change of life," he shouted triumphantly. "You're not a woman anymore. You've turned into a whirling dervish."
"And you, darling, are a spiral agony."
Vivian stood smiling, listening to the door of the den slam shut. Then she shrugged and finished dressing.
She had him good ... oh did she ever! For the first time since her marriage, life was an unobstructed toboggan ride, and she intended to make the most of it. He wouldn't dare stop her, either-he couldn't. As long as she did the honors at his various political dinners, keeping her claws sheathed and playing the loving, devoted wife, she could do whatever she damned pleased.
And she just about had....
They had made a bargain the day her private detective provided her with those letters Tim had written to that woman. They were now in a safety deposit box, the key to which was in her lawyer's possession.
"You want to make it in politics, and I want to have fun," she told him. "Is it a deal?"
He had agreed. After that, Vivian embarked on a series of affairs, and Tim hadn't been able to do a thing about it. The two children-a boy and a girl-were both far away in college. The field was clear.
Swift Spunky Spouse Spites Shithead....
She remembered those letters he had written. They had contained all the four-letter words he had under-lined in a best-selling novel when he had spoken on decent literature before the city council. Tim had followed up the speech-duly reported by one of his own writers in the news section-with an editorial.
"....The author of such a book would make a good guest of honor at a necktie party," he had written.
Vivian brushed her ash-brown hair, admiring its chestnut lights. There was no gray yet, even though she was forty years old last month. Her age didn't Worry her; the heart-shaped face with its huge, luminous brown eyes looked like a girl's. She could match any twenty-year-old in anything.
And she damn well outdistanced them in the sack....
She left the house, hearing the clack of Tim's typewriter from the den as she walked down the hall. Another alliterative masterpiece was cooking under those keys.
She drove to a small, out-of-the-way motel a few miles off the cloverleaf beltline. Next to the motel was a drive-in eatery with a sprawling parking lot. Vivian pulled into it and saw the car she sought. A smile stretched over her mouth as she saw the man in it open the door and get out.
She parked her own car and slid into the seat beside the black-haired, swarthy man. His hair and small, pointed goatee were salted with gray, so that he looked like the original Don Juan-which he was. His name was Louis Jory.
He was also a good lawyer and Keeper of the Key.
"God, I've missed you, Viv," he said softly. "It's been a long time."
"Too long," she murmured. It was true enough. It was two weeks since they had met. It was a good thing she had more than one lover.
They drove immediately out of the lot and into the motel.
"What are you telling the darling little man who runs this place, anyhow?" she asked.
Lou smiled. "That I'm writing a novel and I have to isolate myself from my lively family of six children."
"Oh, come on!" she laughed. "No lawyer would gild the lily like that."
"Course not. I'm not telling him anything. There's an honor among men, you know, darling? They stick together about things like this."
"Yea, verily," she replied drily.
They got out of the car and scurried into the brightly lacquered red door. How apt, she thought, as she glanced at the pulsating crimson.
When they were inside, Lou pulled her to him and clutched the soft twin mounds of her buttocks. He pressed his hips into hers and strained against her, panting. She felt his sex pushing into the top of her thighs, demanding and rock-hard.
Quickly, she pulled away and reached for her zipper. They undressed in a frenzy of heat, their eyes on each other. When they were both naked, she let her eyes trail down to the dark pink cock that stood ready to plow into her.
Lou grinned. "Big enough for you?"
"You must have had to turn sideways to pass the bar."
He came toward her, grinning. "Sarcastic as usual, huh? I'll teach you."
He pushed her down on the bed and knelt over her, holding her hands locked above her head while his mouth came down on her turgid nipples. His lips pinched the stiff peaks until Vivian's back arched up against him, thrusting her breasts into his face. His hips relaxed as he let his erect prick trail through the thick brown mass of her mound, pushing enticingly against her rapidly swelling sex lips.
He barely touched her, but the insistent grazing had its effect. He chuckled softly as he felt her rise and push against him, her whole body a trembling hint of what she wanted him to do to her.
Goddamn him and his triumphant chuckle! Goddamn them all! They all did that; she had never seen it fail. As if they were laughing at a woman for responding. It was enough to make her so mad that she'd never hand out another piece again as long as she lived!
Laughing in victory, because they had "made" you. ... That expression, "make." I made her, they were always saying. It implied that the woman had been taken against her will; that she had no will, even.
Ugly rage soared in her. Oh, damn! Damn, damn, damn! Why do I do this? Why can't I stop? I enjoy it while it's going on, but it doesn't mean anything afterwards. It's like eating dinner....
He ground against her, pushing her legs wide apart. She felt his heavy weight on her thighs as he pressed against her, ramming himself into her body with a hoarse grunt of delight. His eyes were closed and the tendons in his neck stood out like ropes.
Her hot, wet cunt opened under his onslaught and drew him in deeply. Vivian groaned against the impact of his prick and began to clutch the muscles in her buttocks. Her torso wriggled and squirmed as she heaved against him, rubbing like a cat and grasping him with her flailing legs. He moved in deep, hard-thrusting pulls in and out of her, until the bed began to collide rhythmically into the wall.
Suddenly, in the midst of her heat, an eerie sensation of detachment struck her. Ii was as if she were two people, or two halves of the same person-one here, with him, and the other far off, observing the bucking spider of arms and legs on the bed.
What did the English call it? A four-legged frolic. ... That's what it felt like. As though her body had come apart, divided at the waist. On the bed, the lower half of her was a crawling mass of lust and sinuous intensity.
But the upper half. ... The part that contained her heart and her brain. Where was that part of her? One half of her was mindless, gelatinous, capable of nothing except automatic response. She would keep on dividing into halves until there was nothing left of her!
Nothing left! Why was she like that? As much as she liked sex, liked the admiration her body stirred in men, liked the tactile sensations of cuddling up to another warm body-even her husband's, at least in the early days of their marriage, and even those bodies of her two children--liked coming to orgasm, oh she liked that best of all, and who didn't? Still, there were things she hated about sex, and this was one of them-the feeling of becoming helpless, of her body pulling away from her mind and going off into realms of its own.
"You love it, baby, don't you?" Lou panted in the midst of his exertions, in the midst of his pushing and shoving at her like a huge animal. She wasn't sure what sort of an animal he reminded her of-perhaps a pony, or just a huge furry St. Bernard, but some dense thick-pawed creature, incapable of any subtlety of movement.
"Oh ... oh...." she cried.
"I know you love it," Lou said. His voice was low, almost a growl. Perhaps, she thought, he is more like a brown bear....
Still, despite the far-away racing progress of her mind, her body was reacting to his insistent fucking. In and in and in and in....His cock battered her cunt and his big strong muscular legs held her prisoner. His hands were gripping her so hard she couldn't move and when she tried to struggle a little it excited him even more and he writhed with pleasure, squirming and humping all the harder.
"Lou ... Lou ... Lou...." she cried out. She didn't know what she wanted him to say, really, but something. She knew something was missing, lacking. There was something more she wanted out of sex, and something Lou wasn't giving her.
"You are such a sexy bitch," he said. "I love to fuck you!"
She felt herself withdraw even further. Whatever she had wanted to hear, at least in her mind, that wasn't it....She felt worse than before, more split apart, more fragmented, and more alone.
How long had she been feeling this way, she wondered. It wasn't a new feeling and if she'd thought that sex would make it better, she'd been wrong. Sex was making it worse.
Lou grunted and more than ever, he reminded her of an animal. He was so strong ... most men were so much stronger than women ... really, it was frightening, in a way. She was helpless, she was trapped here, under the hot sweating body of a male animal in heat, and she was bound to take any punishment he dished out.
He was beginning to hurt her. His cock was so big and forceful that it was slamming against the very depths of her cunt, ramming against her soft, sensitive walls. When fucking was sc hard as this, she couldn't really enjoy it. Fear mounted in her, instinctive fear, and it blocked out her usual anticipation of climax.
"So good...." Lou moaned.
She was horrified. How could they be so out of synch?
"Are you ready?" Lou asked. "Can you come with me, baby?"
"Ummmmm-" she murmured, to avoid answering. She squirmed, trying to get a bit away from his weight. He was solidly planted in her, their pelvic bones were almost locked together. She felt more helpless than ever, and more alone.
She cried out, staring wide-eyed into the twilight gloom of the unlighted room.
"You feeling it, aren't you, baby?" he panted.
"No., no...."
"Yes! Come on, now! Now!"
Suddenly she felt nothing. Her pulsating sex went numb, and she lost it. The excitement that had almost peaked seconds before now vanished.
He pulled her legs back and churned against her upturned parts; the room was filled with the slapping sound of culminating sex. His teeth were bared ... like a beast's.
He spilled into her, his rhythmic pulls changing into sporadic jerks. In a moment, he was heavy on top of her.
"What's the matter?" he said at last. "You didn't come, did you?"
"No." She sighed and turned away from him. "Mood, I guess."
Again, that confident chuckle. "You women. Moods."
His words isolated her. How alone she felt! Why must he emphasize their difference it a time like this?
He lay quietly for a moment. Vivian could tell that he was getting ready to say something and searching for the right words.
"That never happened to you before, darling. I can't stand to think that I've left a woman unsatisfied."
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. He couldn't care less whether she enjoyed it or not! It was his reputation as a lover that he cared about.
He pulled her legs apart and sought her entrance with his fingers. "Here-"
"No!"
She sat up, shrinking away from him. "What-?"
"Nothing," she muttered. "Just-don't do that. It's not important. Don't worry about it."
They lay back down. She knew he would want to stay a couple of hours, and make love a second or even a third time. But she couldn't stand it! The room ... it was so dark, and yet it wasn't dark, not outside. It was that depressing time of night impending, more lonely than night itself could ever be.
She felt helpless as the thoughts came to her. The memories came back, as the beginnings of a bad dream attack a helpless sleeper.
Oh, no! Not after twenty years and two grown children!