Chapter 8
John never remembered, clearly, the drive back to Norma's place from the restaurant. The moment he stepped into the night air, the drinks seemed to come down on him and numb his feelings. He did recall flashes of being at the wheel, driving slowly and carefully. Opening the door to Norma's apartment, he struggled to remember the drive back but couldn't.
As they moved into the light of her living room, Norma turned to him and surprise crossed her face.
"John ... are you alright?" Then, with a little laugh, she asked: "What happened ... did the drinks get to you?" He had started to sway slightly and couldn't get his eyes focused clearly on Norma.
"I-I guess they must have," he said, "b-but I didn't think I had all that much to drink...." Norma steered him to the sofa and sat him down.
"Probably the accumulation of a lot of things the past couple of days," she daignosed. "You rest easy and let me put up a pot of coffee...." John watched her graceful movement toward the kitchen and leaned, carefully, back against the sofa. The next thing of which he became conscious, was Norma, shaking him gently.
He drank the hot coffee gratefully. When he was on his second cup, he tried to apologize:
"Norm, I'm really sorry about this." Norma smiled in relief.
"John, think nothing of it," she said, "I'm just relieved that it's not something serious."
John felt strange; while he could think clearly and talk without difficulty, yet he was possessed by a great lassitude and had no desire to attempt to move.
"It does strange things sometimes," Norma was saying, "that combination of stale liquor and fresh air. You know, John-it might be best if you stayed here, tonight. I don't think you ought to try to drive anymore. I didn't realize how you felt." Norma stood. "I'll make you a pallet, as they say in the cowboy songs, but not down on the floor...." She went for bedding as John moved, laboriously, from the sofa to a chair and returned to make up a bed on the soft sofa pillows.
"Thanks, Norma," John smiled, thinly. "I sure hate to trouble you...."
She came to him, smiling, to lean down and look into his eyes. His own glance could not resist darting to the bodice of her snug gown, which gaped a bit as she supported her weight with her hands on the arms of the chair. His interest, though, in the attractive bulge of her firm, medium-sized bosoms was, at that moment, entirely academic. Norma noted his quick glance and her smile broadened.
"Better get into bed, you peeping-John, you," she said, softly. He grinned into her eyes.
"Just can't resist beauty, I guess," he said, half-apol-ogetically.
"Your'e a nice man," Norma said, dropping a light kiss on his lips, "and it's a nice change to have one around the house." Then she was gone, closing her bedroom door behind her. John sat for a moment, then got out of his clothes and into the temporary bed she'd made for him. Lying in the dark, he felt the room move slowly around him. He felt as though he were falling through an endless, black shaft to nowhere.
Norma lay for a long time, staring into the darkness in her bedroom, her mind turning with what had almost happened-and what she had wanted to happen. A little disappointed, she was also somewhat relieved, as though an imminent and grave decision had been postponed due to something beyond her control. There was a great mystery, she concluded, to timing and atmosphere and state of mind and condition of body chemistry, which helped to make sex the more complicated, the more mysterious, the more difficult and the more desirable. It was not, she thought, something which everyone could turn on or off like a table lamp. Sex, it sometimes seemed, had a mind of its own....
How long he had been asleep, John didn't know. He looked at his watch, but the faint glow of the luminous dial was so feeble he couldn't easily make it out and he gave it up. As he lay there, the strangeness drained away and he remembered where he was-in Norma's apartment-on Norma's sofa.
Then his mind turned to the lovely woman in the other room, asleep and, now completely in control of his faculties, John slipped quietly from the sofa and moved to the bedroom door. Silently he turned the knob, opening the door and tiptoeing in to stand beside Norma's bed. As his eyes became accustomed to the light, filtering faintly through the closed edges of the Venetian blinds, they eagerly searched the form of the sleeping woman. John noted, with approval, how graceful Norma looked, even when completely relaxed in slumber. The cover had drawn away from her figure and he could make out the pointed tips of her breasts as they lifted the sheer material of her night gown. Her lips were slightly parted and her breathing was deep and regular, She was a lovely vision and John stood for a long time, looking down on her, feeling a little guilty at intruding to stare at her as she slept.
He stifled the urge to lean down, kiss her breasts, her throat and her lips; to blow on the spark of desire he'd sensed in Norma and bring it to full flame and then let the fire consume their hungers.
Again he was cognizant of her loveliness and, as his desire began to exert an inner pressure again, John forced himself to turn, silently and retrace his tiptoe steps back to his own bed.
It wasn't that his desire for Norma was something he could stifle that easily. There was something else which nagged at him, around the edges of his hunger, distracting his impulses. There was something about the thing he wanted to do, which just didn't seem right. It was too much like taking advantage of Norma, after she'd been so considerate of him.
A warm affection for the graceful, lovely woman suffused him as he completed his silent trek back to the sofa and eased himself down at one end of his bed, cigarette and lighter in hand. He lit the smoke, after a moment, reflecting as it burned down under repeated drags, how unsatisfactory it was to smoke when you couldn't see the smoke. It actually, John reflected, diminished the taste of tobacco, when you smoked in the dark.
As he finished the cigarette and was crushing out the ember of it in the ashtray on the table beside him, he sensed her presence, the fragrance of her and, startled, looked up to see the faint blur of her figure, standing light against the enveloping darkness.
Rid of the cigarette, John stood as Norma took his hand to pull him forward. He followed as she led him to her bed, stopping at the side of it to turn to him, her soft arms going around his neck, the tenderness of her soft kiss tempering the hot desire which suddenly burgeoned within him.
When they broke their embrace for breath, Norma turned swiftly to take his hand again, and, like a little girl, bounced onto the mattress on her knees, pulling John, urging him to join her....