Chapter 1
Bill Hodges looked covetously at the next house on his route, an enormous Tudor-style mansion with gardener-kept lawns and a formal garden. There was a winding brick driveway that led to the three-car garage. Outside the opening to one of the automobile bays, a uniformed chauffeur who looked to be of the pre-horseless carriage vintage, polished slowly and methodically the gleaming wax-coated finish of an immense Rolls Royce.
He supposed he should be grateful for the kind of job that took him to houses like this, but he wasn't... right now he would have traded it all for a cold beer. Cleaning and maintaining rich people's swimming pools was not such a hard way to make a buck if it weren't for all the stuck-up old farts he had to suck up to. Withered old women in bikinis that would turn a man's stomach and half-senile goats so old that the sun refused to even tan their leathery skin.
He shook his head disgustedly as he envisioned what would await him behind the redwood fence that surrounded the pool. He nodded courteously to the chauffeur.
"Hi... I'm from the pool service. Can I go in?" he asked, waiting for the old man to show some sign of recognizing him or even of being alive. For a moment he thought the old codger had died there leaning on that Rolls, and his arms were just working back and forth in a kind of chauffeur's death-dance. He laughed to himself at the vision of that old man just polishing away until the fender wore through and he fell onto the drive, still polishing.
"Yeah... and what's so funny, boy?" the chauffeur squinted menacingly. Bill knew better than to tangle with these old family hangers-on; often they were the real bosses in a house full of near-corpses.
"Nothing, sir... I was just remembering a joke I heard on the radio driving over. Is it all right to clean the pool now?" Bill asked officiously in his best serviceman's voice. The only thing missing was the click of his heels, and he thought of that but decided the old driver was not one to appreciate a joke.
"Go ahead... the lady of the house is by the pool, but she left instructions for you to be allowed in." He turned back to the mirror-bright finish.
"Thank you." I'll bet she left instructions... probably seventy years old if she's a day, and she's hoping I'll take my shirt off while I'm working... these old broads are all alike... horny as a roomful of sailors on shore leave!
From the corner of his eye, he saw the feeble old servant wobble over to an ancient wall telephone and crank the handle, pressing down a red button on its square black base. Bill laughed cautiously under his breath... probably calling his druggist for some more heart pills!
He pushed open the heavy wooden gate, lugging his tool box and managing a balancing act with the extension-type pool skimmer and vacuum. It took him a moment to see her as the sun caught him full-on in the eyes... when she came into focus, it was hazily, her voluptuous curves partially hidden by the late-afternoon sun.
"Come on in and shut the gate... Higgins gets apoplectic when he sees me like this," the beautiful blonde purred. She was stretched across an expensive chaise, her rich-girl tresses spilling over the sides of the padded mattress... and she was completely naked!
Bill did a double and then a triple take, looked away and coughed nervously. He had seen a lot of things on this job, but this was too much... she could have stepped off the centerfold pages of Playboy or Penthouse!
"Uh... is it all right for me to be here?" he managed, his voice cracking to his chagrin. "I mean... I could come back another time."
She lifted her head and looked at him and he stared back... a kind of potent animal magnetism seemed to pass between them like radiant energy. Bill was almost afraid to let his imagination run away with him. He had been warned that this job could go to a man's head... or to his crotch. And guys who fell prey to designing wives found themselves on the unemployment line... if they were lucky.
"C'mon in... there's nothing like the present. And don't worry about my husband getting annoyed. He's asleep in his study... with his brandy. Where he is every afternoon. And that door... well, it could be locked if you're worried." She smiled thinly, but there was a wealth of hidden suggestion behind it and Bill felt his cock harden under his workpants.
He smiled as enigmatically as he could manage and threw the lock on the door behind him. They were effectively walled from the outside world, with just one pair of shuttered windows overlooking the pool area from the main house. She saw him looking at them.
"That's my bedroom... and my husband never goes in there." Her legs parted almost imperceptibly. "Never... not even at night." Her voice seemed to richen and Bill could feel the heat of her ripe full nakedness from where he stood a dozen feet away. She was not a day over thirty-five, with the body of a twenty year old, tanned all over except the pink half- dollar-sized rounds of her nipples. And she was beautiful... breathtakingly beautiful.
She looked him over with cool, calculating calmness as casual as though she were fully clothed instead of completely naked. "You're new on this route... what happened to, uh, Harry?"
A flash of memory burst into Bill's thoughts — that's why the S.O.B. was reluctant to take that promotion out to Eden Valley! He didn't want to leave this behind!
"He's gone... he got promoted," Bill said, trying to match her coolness word for word.
"And you're going to take his place... permanently?" she purred.
"Maybe... what did you have in mind?"
She winced at his insubordination — this was supposed to be her show and she did not like being upstaged. "Don't be too sure of yourself, big boy. You haven't proved anything to me yet."
"What's to prove? I'm here to clean the pool... unless there was something else you wanted?" He grinned boyishly, showing his white teeth.
"Yes," she answered, a wicked smile playing across her naturally moist lips. "I'd like you to fuck me."
At the call from Higgins, W.F. Crosby Senior left his comfortable Sloane's chair in his walnut-panelled study and hurried as fast as his sixty-one years would allow to the corner bedroom suite his wife of less than a year occupied. He knew all the stories she had spread about him — the servants were faithful indeed after all these years, and nothing much was said or done on the Crosby estate without his knowledge.
This serviceman was a newcomer and Crosby hoped he would be as exciting to watch as the last one. That Harry fellow was a bit crude, but he offered an afternoon's entertainment cheaply enough... with the binoculars he always took when he peered through the shutters down to the pool below!
He seated himself next to the windows and opened the shutters just enough to rest the binoculars on the most convenient space between them. He twirled the focus knob until his wife's voluptuous body was clearly in focus.
He could see the look in her eyes, the licking of her lips... and he knew what he was in for. Another afternoon watching his young wife screw some half-witted serviceman silly!