Chapter 9

It was Tuesday. Ann had been torn between going Monday and getting this business with Mike Refizzo over with as soon as possible, or putting it off to Thursday, hoping he might get hit by a car, or something. But she finally decided the Devil protected his own, and nothing was going to happen to the scoutmaster. David would be working late that night, and Chris was having supper at Timmy Walker's house, and Ann knew she would probably not have another opportunity like this all week. It would have to be this evening, or else risk what he would do with the pictures. She had no doubt the man would do something unsavory with them, and not wanting to risk losing her new-found happiness, she took a long bath, then put on a gray woolen skirt with a pearl-gray or Ion blouse, slipped on a sweater, got into her new Reliant wagon, and drove over to Mike Refizzo's apartment house.

The downstairs directory said Refizzo lived on the third floor. Trying to delay the inevitable as long as possible, she took the stairs instead of an elevator. Once on the third floor, she searched for his apartment, found it, and pushed the door buzzer.

After what seemed like forever the door opened, and Mike Refizzo, still sweaty from work, his brown hair matted, his twitchy mustache droopy answered. His eyes were dulled until he saw her, then they lit up. He was still wearing his work clothing, in this case a pair of old, faded dungarees, and a weird looking red and black shirt that was halved in the middle horizontally.

"Well, so the lady got smart and came," Mike snorted. "Good thing, too," he told her. "I'm all sweaty, and I wanna take a shower, and if you'd come a half hour later, I'd have already taken the shower and I'd have to take another one. This way I fuck you first, then I only gotta take one shower."

Shuddering, Ann walked into the apartment, and when he shut the door behind her, she had the feeling she had walked into some kind of horrible trap. This was one of the most difficult decisions of her life-hard to make, harder now to carry out. But it was something that had to be done if this animal was to be prevented from showing those pictures around.

"You tell your husband about you coming on the scout camping trip?" he asked.

"Yes," she nodded, sighing, wishing he would just come ahead and get his part of it over with. "It's all right, because David claims that if I go with Chris this weekend, he'll get ahead in his work, and we'll be able to spend future weekends together for a long time to come."

"Well, y'see that," Mike smiled. "As a scoutmaster I'm doin' my good deed for the day ... actually for the month. Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you back all the photos except two ... just in case ... as a sort of evidence of my good faith. I believe you. Here!" he said, pushing six photos across the table in his small hallway/dining room. She reached out, took them, looked at them, and was aghast at how clearly her face showed in all the shots. Yes, there she was, with Robert Lander sucking her breasts; with her hand on the boy's penis; with her mouth on the boy's penis; another with her mouth on the penis; sperm seepage on her face as she lifted her face for a moment to lick the semen in; and finally, her tonguing the boy's balls clean, afterward.

Mike gave her a match and let her burn all the pictures in an ashtray on the table. He had ashtrays all over the house, all filled with stale cigarette butts, the stink of which filled the entire small apartment.

Mike led her into the living room, then turned to face her, grinning. Without a word, he reached for her, and she had no choice but to go to him. He pulled her with him onto the sofa, a brown, ratty thing that had probably been old in Teddy Roosevelt's time. His mouth clamped itself on hers, and she tasted the sour breath he had from too much coffee, as well as the stale stink from too many cigarettes. There was also the taint of beer odor on his breath. His hand wasted no time filling itself with the fullness of her round breast. His fingers dug into her flesh through her clothing.

Ann was certain she would never be able to stand it. The man was a total beast. He stank, he was grimy, his breath was vile, yet she had no choice but to submit.

For a moment she struggled against him, hating the way he manhandled her, doing her best to escape his pillaging tongue as his rapacious hands continued running roughshod over her soft body, but she knew any struggling at all was futile. She had made her bargain with this spawn from hell, and she would keep it.

She was doing this to save her marriage, a marriage which she had more than once brought to the brink of divorce because of her constantly refusing her husband-or so she thought. Now that things were smooth between David and herself again, she had to submit to this degradation in order to once again keep her marriage from dissolving. But after she was finished with Mike Refizzo, by Sunday, she would never again do anything to muddy her marriage.