Chapter 7
Mavis Edwards sat gawking at her husband in absolute amazement. The severely attractive woman was not quite certain whether she had heard her dentist spouse correctly, or not. My God, he had to be pulling her leg! It was some sort of nauseating joke he'd warpedly decided to spring on her ... !
"You can't be serious, Gus!" she exclaimed, gaping across the living room at where he sat nibbling on the olive from his martini. "You must be drunk!"
"Of course I'm serious ... and I'm a hell of a long ways from being drunk on one cocktail!" he replied, angered by her immediate rejection of his little bomb without at least hearing him out. Hell, he'd known before he ever opened his mouth that she wasn't going to leap at the suggestion, but he had hopes of her listening to the pros and cons before turning thumbs-down and staring at him as if he'd suddenly become a satyr. "And for Christ's sake, stop looking at me as if I'd just raped your sister! The idea has merit whether you buy it or not ..."
"Merit ...! My God, what's wrong with you, Gus? D —Do you realize what you're proposing ... a ... a wife swapping party?" his ash-rimmed eyed, chestnut-haired wife gasped as she continued to stare at him in shocked disbelief. "I—I just can't ... can't believe it! Are ... have we become so ... so stale together that we have to resort to ... to outright debauchery?"
"Oh, horseshit, Mavis!" Gus Edwards disgustedly spat. "And suppose you answer your own question! Lately, anything remotely connected with sensual fulfillment and that sex act we muscle through once a week is purely coincidental, and you know it!"
"OH ... oh, my God ... ! I-I don't believe it ... !" Mavis choked, as much caught up in an immediate sense of aroused guilt by his lewd proposal as she was egotistically humiliated. Had he known of her little shopping trip side-affairs, that would have been one thing, but to suggest such an arrangement to his Christian wife whom he had no reason to doubt, was quite another, and nothing short of a belittling insult! "Of course ... ! It's been right there under my nose all the time and I never saw it! Helen ... Helen Trumble! That's it, isn't it? You want to get at Helen!"
Her use of the phrase want to get at quickly assured the dentist that she was in the dark concerning Helen and his secret monthly get-togethers, reinforcing his confidence. He said, with a graphic smile: "I wouldn't exactly kick her out of bed, but that's not to admit that I've been haunted with the obsession either. Hell, what is it they say about variety being the spice of life? And I think we've reached that milestone, Mavis. Anyway, better with friends than a couple we don't know ... that's what I say ... "
"Oh ... ! Goddamn you!" the infuriated woman bitterly spat at him in her uncontrollable disparagement. The guilt she had felt only seconds before had rapidly dissipated in the heat of her outraged pride. To hurt him ... to cut him at any cost was all she could" think of. "It's no wonder our own son is turning into a ... a pervert!"
She might have carved a chunk out of his belly with a knife; it wouldn't have affected him any more! Not that he was so close to Dickie, but the boy was his son! With a slap that cracked the stem of the sheer crystal, Gus Edwards brought the delicate martini glass down hard against the table. "What the hell are you saying, woman?"
"Yes! You heard me right, Dr. Edwards!" Mavis' acrid tongue lashed. "Something has corrupted our little boy, and up until now I didn't realize what! You! The poor lamb isn't to blame for a ... a depravity that he's inherited from his sire ... !"
"Goddamnit, Mavis, what're you getting at, anyway?" the big, white-haired man fumed, bolting to his feet, his liquor-tainted grey eyes blazing in mounting anger. "My son a pervert? What a horrible fucking thing to say!"
"You see ... you see? There you go with your filthy mouth!" the incensed woman half screamed in her wrath. "Is it any wonder that our baby sits and plays with himself half the time? You should have see the foul handkerchief I found tucked behind his bedroom mirror! Stiff and yellow with his young ... Oh God ... you know what I'm talking about, Gus Edwards! Ooohhh ... what have I done to deserve this ... ?"
"For Christ sake, shut up the martyr act for a minute!" the big man sharply ordered. "Let's clarify this ... this pervert accusation you just made!"
"Well what more clarification do you want than what I just told you?" His wife bitingly snapped. "That vile handkerchief that he'd used time after time ... !"
"For your information, woman, masturbation is not a perverted act! It's as normal as a good piece of ass, which I might add, would be goddamned abnormal for you!" he furiously charged. "And don't tell me you never fingered yourself. For all I know, that's probably what's the matter with you ... too fucking much private fingering!"
"Oh! Oh ... you ... you vile bastard! How dare you say such a thing to me?" Mavis squealed, her face blanching. "After what you just proposed, you accuse me of a thing like that?"
"Any mother who'd call her son perverse because he masturbates like a normal boy does, has got to have something wrong with her thinking!" he threw at her, stumbling in his own rage. "I don't know what queered that brain of yours, unless it was playing with your own self too much! And what ever I proposed, forget it, Mavis ... just forget it! I'd rather buy one of Harry Evan's whores a couple of times a month! At least, they know how to pretend a good fuck ... !"
"A good fuck! That's all you think of, isn't it? You ... you depraved whoremaster!" his blazing-eyed wife spat, having all she could do to keep from spewing out what she had been forced to suck to for sexual gratification. "Well, you better just listen to a little bit more before you go off half-cocked, Dr. Edwards! You can call me whatever you like, but you can't deny the facts! Don't you suppose I know why you wanted Dickie to take music lessons from Janice Arlen? Do I look that stupid ... just because I go to church?"
Gus stared at her from the bar where he had gone for a new glass and replenishment from the martini decanter. What the hell was she getting at now? "For Christ sake, what's that girl got to do with it?"
"Plenty, and you were so damned insistent that Dickie take piano from her!" Mavis bitterly blamed. "Don't you suppose I could see through that?"
"Through what?"
"Oh damn, Gus! Stop acting as if I were some sort of ignoramus, will you? All of you, every man in the neighborhood, has sniffed along behind her any chance you got! What do you think we wives are, anyway, absolute idiots?" she blindly poked, feeling herself crawling onto solid ground, even though she knew what she said was unfounded. She read the astonished look in his bloodshot, grey-eyes and knew that she'd completely tongue-tied him. "All right, you want to see ... to know what a mother bases her fears on! I'll show you, then! Though I had no intentions of it, and that's the truth! It's high time you wonderful fathers learned first-hand what devoted wives and mothers have to fear ... !"
Gus Edwards gaped after his wife as she leaped from her chair and stormed from the room, her ridiculous allegation regarding Janice Arlen still spinning in his brain. Hell yes, he'd looked at her plenty ... had even imagined what it might be like crawling between those young white thighs of hers, but he'd had no fixation about her! Christ, he wasn't stupid enough to think that a young chick like her would have anything to do with the likes of him. That was a whore's game, and she was no whore. Helen Trumble was one thing, but Janice Arlen?
"Here! Look at these!" Mavis said, stomping into the room holding forth what undoubtedly were a pair of black bikini panties. "Well ... take them and look at them, Doctor!"
Gus did, their sheer nylon softness sending a little electric-like charge of arousal soaring through him. He looked down as he fondled them in his big hands. "Well ... ? What am I supposed to do?"
"Just this, father! They were hidden under the mattress of your son's bed! And they belong to Janice Arlen!"
Gus stared into his wife's distorted, yet almost triumphant, face. He suddenly felt totally inadequate, though he wasn't quite sure why, except that he knew that his wife of twenty-years would never have made that statement if she were not sure. Abruptly, his own licentious suggestion to her in the beginning came back to him and he sensed a wave of shame wash through him. Christ, she wasn't that type of woman ... though, he couldn't help wishing that she were! But he still had Helen once or twice a month ... and he ought to be thankful he had a wife and mother at home looking after things! He gaped down at the flimsy little garment in his hand, the thought occurring to him that they could belong to anyone! With a jerk of his eye, he said:
"How the hell can you tell whom they belong to? By the contours of the ass-covering?" Gus questioned, his anger subsiding into actual curiosity.
Mavis' smile was more satisfying than vindictive. "Look," she said, snatching the panties from him and holding them up, displayed so that he couldn't help but see the embroidered initials. "J.A.," she half-hissed. "And how many women or girls do you know in Shale Canyon with those initials ... girls or women that Dickie would know?"
"Well ... maybe ... maybe, he found them ... or took them out of her clothes hamper ... ?"
"And that's a perversity, Doctor!" his wife shot at him. "On the other hand, maybe he didn't take them from the clothes hamper! He could have taken them from her ... now couldn't he?"
For a long moment, Gus Edwards stared at his gleaming-eyed wife. Christ, he couldn't believe that. The kid was only fourteen ... and taking the panties off a dish like Jan Arlen ... ? He started to turn away at the same time as he made a gesture of ridicule, but she caught at his arm and held him.
"Well ... ?" he managed, what do you want me to say.
"I want you to act like a father with a son who has a problem!" she shot back at him. "My God, you can't call a thing like this normal, Gus! Either that woman has some ... some sort of hold over him, or Dickie has come by some terribly debased ideas ... !"
"All right ... I'll have a talk with him!"
"No!" she strongly insisted. "He has no idea that I found these, and I intend to put them back where he hid them. You will talk to Janice Arlen and get her story! We women already have decided that she's a bad influence in the community. But before we act, we'll wait to see what you learn ... and I trust that you'll keep your head in that learning?"
"Oh Christ, Mavis," Gus disgustedly answered, his revulsion as much of himself as with her. Damn, he'd really blown it, hadn't he? Hoping she'd lend herself to something as worldly as a swap arrangement ... and he really loved her, too. But the idea of Frank Trumble fucking her had, in the beginning, given him a hell of a fired feeling. Now, he wasn't so sure. That goddamned kid ... was he going to give him trouble ... after he'd just spoken at the City Club luncheon about youth and their parents that guide them? "Let's not make mountains of molehills, eh? There's a perfectly legitimate answer for these ... these things," he said, handing the panties back to her a second time.
"Of course ... of course, Gus ... if you say so," Mavis replied, her voice retiring to its more soft tones. "You know I wouldn't have bothered you with this if I didn't think ... it was necessary."
"Naturally," he replied, drinking from his glass and sitting down. "Naturally ... that's what husbands and fathers are for ... "
She smiled over at him. "You can be an awful ogre ... but I love you, Darling."
"Love ... yes ... that's what makes us tick, isn't it, Baby?"
"We both know it is ... love and spice and everything nice ... "
Her husband picked up his ears at the word 'spice'. "You mean, you'll consider my idea about the swap ... ?"
"No, Darling! I mean, I'll forgive you for making it. I don't intend sharing my husband with any woman, not even Helen Trumble! And you should love me all the more for that ... "
There was more, but Gus Edwards did little outside of smile at the right time and hold his wife's hand. In between, he thought a great deal of his son, and more warming thoughts of Jan Arlen whom he had never really let pique his desire before. She, to his way of thinking, had always been Frank Trumble's mind-bender ... suddenly, she was twisting his! Of course, there was a simple answer regarding Dickie, and he had his own way of finding out a few things that might be pertinent. He'd owned an apartment building in the Canyon for years and the Ronson boy, who worked for her, had once worked for him. The fact was that he could have had the boy sent-up for stealing but hadn't ... ? He'd have a talk with Felix ... though, he couldn't take a great deal of stock in anything the oaf said. All the same, he'd talk with him ...
Not until she was in bed, did Mavis give concentrated thought to the proposition Gus had presented. He had been serious, actually suggesting a wife-swapping party between them and the Trumble's! God, she thought, as her husband slept, it really wouldn't be that bad would it? Frank had his little traits that amused her; it was just that she'd never thought of him as a lover! But, he could be ... couldn't he? Yes! He certainly could ... only, how did she backtrack now, now with all the things she had said and done! God ... God, Mavis, you are a hypocrite after all, she sleepily thought as tiny fermentations quivered in her belly.
Four doors away in a second semi-luxurious home, Frank Trumble mixed himself a scotch-soda while his wife watched from her chair. He spoke with his back to the attractive, red-headed girl with the pale-blue eyes who sat watching his every move as if he were about to steal the silverware.
"I swung it, Baby ... just the way we planned ... and before I was finished I had Gus thinking it was his idea. But, no shit, he looked as if he'd just swallowed a golf-ball!"
Helen couldn't restrain her nervous little laugh of titillation. Poor Frank, he thought he'd smoothly put the whole thing over with Gus, when in truth, she had called her occasional lover at his office and had him all primed for her husband's approach. Actually, she had feared that Gus might get the wrong impression when Frank came off with it, thinking that he'd found out about their L.A. meetings, and unnecessarily give their well-kept secret away. Now, she breathed a little inner-sigh of relief; Gus had undoubtedly carried it off to perfection.
She still couldn't help the flush to her cheeks whenever she thought of it or they discussed the wild, sensuous plan. In fact, she'd probably looked to Frank as if she'd just swallowed a golf-ball when he'd casually began to hint at the idea of a swap arrangement with the Edwards, and right in the middle of their listless sex party the night before. Not that going to bed with Gus was going to be anything new to her, but having both Frank's and Mavis' sanction would make it more pleasurable and less risky. Besides, there was always the possibility of membership expansion, and that could offer some exciting, unexplored avenues of diversion ... If ... ?
"Well, am I to assume that Gus went for the plan, Darling?" Helen asked, sipping at a vodka-tonic and playing her part to the hilt.
"Like I said, I had him thinking it was his idea," Frank Trumble grinningly replied as he walked to a chair and eased down into it. "But he wasn't sure how Mavis was going to take to it. You know how she is, he says, with her crazy church crap ... "
"And that's just what it is, too ... !" Helen derided. "She'd like to give the impression that she and Gus have the perfect sexual relationship, but I have my own opinions on that."
"Come on, that's no way to talk about your best friend," Frank said, still grinning.
"And the woman you want to go to bed with ... let's not forget that part of it," Helen jealousy jibed, the thought of her husband and. Mavis Edwards making naked love together the one aspect of the arrangement she hadn't found too palatable. Frankly, it wasn't so much the thought of him actually doing it to her as it was the realization that he wanted to. After all, he was her husband ...
"Hey, do I detect a note of jealousy in that tone of yours?" he teased, then sipped at his drink. "I thought we both agreed that there'd be none of that. A little change of scenery might fire some new zest in both of us ... isn't that what you said, Baby?"
"That, Darling, was what you said, remember?" Helen quickly corrected. "I merely agreed that if it was what you wanted I was willing to try it."
Frank Trumble shrugged. "Same thing ... anyway, it's all set but the final arrangements, providing Mavis doesn't throw a wrench in the works."
"And she's very liable to do that," the attractive red-head snapped. 'That would be typical of Mavis ... pretend to be awe-stricken by the whole 'lurid' idea. Of course, it would be just an act, but she seems to delight in taking the contrary side of any issue ... the way she did yesterday when we girl's got together to discuss that music teacher, Jan Alien."
Frank immediately picked up his ears at the mention of the gorgeous blonde's name. "What about Jan Arlen?" he questioned.
"Well, the day before, Jenny Evans, Mavis and I were sort of analyzing the lovely blonde doll ... you know, the fact that she doesn't have male friends, is seldom seen anyplace, and so on. Quite honestly, we were wondering if she was a good influence in the neighborhood, working with the children ... "
"A good influence?" Frank interrupted, sensing his ire beginning to rouse. "Now, who and hell came off with that bit of shit?"
"Thank you, husband for interrupting! And I came off with that bit of shit!" Helen snapped. "But if you'll just be gentleman enough to hear me out first ...?"
"Okay, okay, go on ... I'm listening."
"Thank you again, Helen sarcastically replied. "Anyway, Mavis immediately took sides with the girl, pretending that she couldn't understand why we should be so concerned ... "
"And neither can I ... "
"Will you please shut up until I'm finished!" Helen angrily spat, while her husband shifted uneasily in his chair. She sighed and continued. "After thinking it over myself, I agreed with her. Just why should we be so concerned? After all, the girl minds her own business, and we would do well to do the same ... "
"Now, you're making sense," Frank said, gulping at his drink.
His wife merely glared at him. "To finish my story, yesterday, Mavis came over here with fire in her eyes. She had taken the complete opposite stand from mine. Janice Arlen had to be run out of Shale Canyon and the sooner the better! She was a menace, a bad influence, and I don't know what all ... "
"But why? What the hell did the girl do?" Frank questioned, leaning forward in his chair with concern.
"That part, I never learned. Your ... your future bed-partner refused to tell me," his wife informed with a little smirk.
"Well what do you think it was?"
"I have no idea ... except what I said about Mavis in the first place," Helen said. "I think she argues for the sake of argument, and that she has to take the controversial side of any issue. In short, I believe she's sexually frustrated and a hypocrite! Being at variance with anyone and everything, along with, as Gus puts it, her church crap, is the way she gets her kicks."
"Oh hell, I can't go along with that, Helen ... "
"Of course you can't Darling, not when you have designs on getting inside her little panties," his wife snidely purred. "But you're going to find out that I'm right just the same'"
"So what about the Arlen girl? What was decided?" he pressed, ignoring her jibe.
"Nothing was decided. I flatly told Mavis that I withtracted every thing I'd said about her and that I wasn't going to harass the poor girl in any way."
"And what did Mavis say?"
"Nothing. She merely stormed out of here in a hell of a huff ... but later, she called me and apologized for her actions," Helen finished, taking another long sip from her drink.
Frank Trumble grunted to himself. "Well ... she'll get over that ... what ever was eating her," he said, drinking from his own glass. "And don't worry, Gus'll wheedle her into our swap party." A lewd grin broadened his slender face. "He's had his eyes on you for too long, Baby, to let Mavis stop him now."
Helen felt her breath catch in her throat. She stared at her husband's shrewd eyes for a long moment, wondering what depths of meaning lie .behind his statement, .and just how much he really did know about her and Gus Edwards?