Chapter 4
David sat alone in the Teacher's Lounge, going over some composition papers when Barbara walked in. As ever, the sight of her in her tight, leg-enhancing uniforms, gave him a lustful little start. He smiled, admiring her neat, unique upsweep of hair, the dark horn-rimmed glasses suggestive of an actress' prop, though he knew them not to be. Damn, she was beautiful...!
"No, don't get up, David," she said, walking to the coffee urn and drawing herself a cup, then joining him in the opposite chair, the lady-like position of her adjoined calves and knees eliminating his direct view, even as it modishly revealed a good portion of her nylon-covered outer thigh. "I-I have something to say to you ... and it isn't going to be easy...."
"Oh?" David heard himself respond, lowering the papers onto his long-legged lap, a nauseous little sensation glooming his abdomen. It was almost as if he knew what she were going to tell him before she began....
"For ... for reasons of my own ... reasons that I am unable to explain, David ... I can't marry you," she said softly, while he watched her beautiful mouth move, telling him exactly what he hadn't wanted to hear. A hurting lump had crept into his throat and he could only stare at her, a feeling of utter stupid emptiness washing through him. "I wish I could explain it all better ... but I can't. I-I'm terribly, terribly sorry, David...."
He thought he detected a teardrop. He tried to think of something to say ... Christ, he'd never felt so goddamned inadequate in his life!
Finally, he managed: "You ... you don't love me...? Is that it?"
"I didn't say that! I couldn't say that ... not really ... because I don't know!" she replied sincerely. "I've only loved one man in my life ... and I never thought I could love another ... just as you explained to me your feeling for Janet. But ... but that's not the reason, David...."
"Then what is it? Maybe I can help...?" he begged, leaning forward, certain of the tiny trickle of tears that were spilling from her eyes now.
For a moment, Barbara even debated that, the possibility of unburdening her heart and soul to him, and finding in his strong and understanding love the needed strength and solace she had lost in Carl's wasteful death. But then, Stevie's handsome, desirable face burst into her brain and she shook her head decisively.
"No ... you can't help, David darling!" She bolted to her feet. "No one can help! I'm sorry ... but please ... we better not see anymore of each other...! It'll be easier that way...!"
She was actually crying as she tripped across the room to the doorway, not looking back when he called after her, and practically knocking Mr. Stern, the Principal, one side in her exit.
"Well ... , " the stocky, little man said, pausing to pivot on his heels and gape after her. "What's with her, David...?"
"Oh ... upset this morning, I guess," the lanky, gaunt faced English teacher said, managing a feeble grin, while his guts churned in their bath of miserable dejection.
"Hmmm ... like my wife. She's going through the change, you know," he said, dragging his eyes away from Barbara's retreating figure and walking toward the coffee-urn. "Damned near impossible to live with ... but if she had legs like that...." He grinned over at David with a sly wink. "Anyway, I wanted to discuss the department curriculum with you, I have some definite ideas of my own, being an old English teacher, that I believe have merit...."
Orvie Gaylord was a two hundred and twenty-five pound, six-feet giant of nubbin-headed, barrel-chested muscle at sixteen, and the son of one of the more prominent state senators, a man who many thought was destined to be governor very soon. The boy was not as stupid as he looked, Stevie often reminded his buddies, and the fact that he had access to an unlimited supply of dirty pictures as well as pot entitled him to a few answers in a test now and then. After all, where would the gang be when they wanted a case of beer, or his father's hunting camp for their swinging parties if it weren't for Orvie?
In truth though, Stevie was only talking, trying to keep it all going till the day, or night, when he would get up the courage to fuck Lottie Barker, or one of the other girls, after he'd smoked a joint with them.
If, and when, he thought about it seriously, which he did a great deal lately, Stevie had decided it was all on account of his Mom's memory that he hadn't let himself go with the rest of the guys ... and the terrific thing about it was that they didn't cut him ... never put him down ... just seemed to understand.
But there were times when he'd like to take a ball bat to old Orvie and club him right into the ground! One of them was right at that moment when they all stood in one comer of the gym in their trunks listening to Milo Wilson babble out a fantastic, if, exciting tale about Mrs. Lindsey seducing him the night before. Orvie was laughing and shaking his nubbin-head as if everything Milo said was a lie...!
"I tell you she did!" Milo spat angrily. "She put my cock right up inside her cunt, fucked me, then sucked it off!"
"Aw, come on, kid," Orvie belittled with a turn-away of his massive body. Then, coming back, he said: "Look the lady blew me right in her nurse's office. I had a pulled muscle from football and had to take my pants down. The next thing I know, she's got my cock out and sucking it! Okay? So I tried to feel of her pussy, but she wouldn't let me...."
"I did!" Bart Carter put in. "I sure as hell did! I had my finger right up inside it the night I went to her apartment! You remember, Orvie, she caught me with all those dirty pictures and told me I had to come to her place? Well, right there on the couch ... she sucked me off and I fingered her cunt...!"
"Yeah," Rocky Chalone laughed. "Big men. But did you ever actually look right up into her hole! 'Cause I did! She got up over me on the couch with her ass right in my face and I pulled her pants down and looked right up into it...!"
"Bullshit!" Orvie exclaimed. "The only hole you've ever looked up is Lottie's!"
It went on that way as Stevie backed away, his mouth falling open in utter astonishment. Crap, just listening to them talk was enough to stir his cock inside his jock. Man, he was thankful for that support right at the moment. At least, they couldn't see the way it was jerking and swelling.
The first inkling of an idea was coming into his mind! Dad could never put it down ... never fight it ... not with the guys backing him!
"Okay ... okay!" Orvie exclaimed, raising his hands for everyone to be quiet. "So we've had a ball with a nurse ... but have you guys ever stopped to think who was having the ball?" Shit, Stevie thought, Orvie wasn't so stupid. "That broad ... the nurse ... Mrs. Lindsey, is cutting her nuts at our expense! We're just her playthings ... and how come she got to you, Rock? Come on, tell us true...."
"Well ... I ... what the hell, I guess everyone knows! I knocked up Shirley Rade, then took her to Mexico for a two-buck abortion. And maybe if she hadn't been killed in Barney Landers' car, I might have married her! She was a doll ... and I don't know how Lindsey found out about it, but she did ... I don't have to tell you guys that my pop is district court judge! How do you think that would've gone down in my house...?"
Orvie laughed; Stevie didn't.
"Okay guys," the big boy said, crowding in close with his arms outstretched like in a basketball huddle. "We have to do something! The pretty nurse Lindsey has too much on us ... and how do we know what she's going to do with it if she gets up tight? I'll tell you ... we don't. We don't! ... But it's time that we did! She's dynamite!"
"Y-You got something in mind, Orvie?" Milo questioned thinking of his father.
Orvie Gaylord laughed. "Yeah," he said. "I've got a real thing in mind ... a spectacular that delicious bitch could never shake off...!"
Stevie heard all of their words only in the back of his mind. He could hardly believe that what they said was true. My God, his father ... his very own Dad was considering marrying the woman they were talking about! They were all lying, of course, making themselves sound bigger by convicting her, but in his own mind he was only concerned with the fact that she was trying to take his mother's place.
She wouldn't! He would never let her!
He had an idea of his own...!
David was not a drinker per se; a cocktail or an after dinner liqueur was generally his limit. His friends insisted that he could stretch one drink further than anyone they knew, and that he must hold some sort of record within the realm of sociable imbibers. He thought of them at that moment as he idly agitated the ice, scotch and water in the thin, narrow glass with the plastic stir rod. They might well change their opinions could they see him perched on a bar-stool in the Ming Tree, a Chinese operated bar with a Japanese motif, he mused sullenly.
This was his fourth in an hour, and he had grand intentions of reaching a dozen, providing he could remain intact on the stool. He had called Stevie from school around five, suggesting he go the hamburger and Coke routine downtown, then take in a movie. There was money in the top-drawer of the bureau, and if he wanted he could invite a friend. In all sincerity, David wasn't certain that he could even endure the company of his own son that night, not in the aftermath of Barbara's shattering refusal to marry him.
It had been a horrible day. A half-dozen times he had set out for her office to plead for reconsideration, but something of pride must have waylaid him in route, because he'd never made it, and by three-thirty he was more angry than crest-fallen.
To hell with her! If her reasons, whatever they were, could be stronger than her feeling toward him, then it was best that they forget the whole goddamned affair. She was right! They shouldn't see anymore of each other! Love had to be a rooted, shared bond, so strong as to endure the stress of any conceivable problem ... such as Janet and he had enjoyed ... and in their relationship it undoubtedly did not exist ... at least from her standpoint.
He sucked at his pipe, then swallowed from the glass. His mind had moved onto a velvety plane in the efficacy of the liquor. Actually, he didn't want to get drunk, only drown his anguish. He raised the glass again and drank heavily. Oriental music, faint and intriguing, seemed to exude from the mural walls and sky blue ceiling. The little toothy man behind the bar in his white jacket hustled industriously to keep David's compatriots down the leather seat counter in jovial contentment. They were six of them, three young typewriter-oriented girls in sexy mini things, and three older men beneath thinning, graying hair, flashing substantial green-bills of currency on the polished mahogany, as if it were something from a Monopoly game.
They laughed often, the girls, and that was pleasing to David. They were, he decided, trying to show their male partners that they appreciated their company. He glanced in their direction to observe the men. The least of the three, a tall, gangly individual much as his own self, was nearing baldness and less than a shade from fifty ... maybe more. Her eyes were sunken and his thin-lipped mouth like a gash in a skull. But he smiled warmly and the girl beside him responded. Perhaps, she valued the two-hundred dollar suit, the twenty-five dollar shirt, the fifteen dollar tie he wore!
David couldn't help but reflect upon his own appearance, his shoddy shoes and unpressed trousers, his wrinkled collar and outdated tie, his tweed jacket with its leather reinforced elbows. Christ, no wonder Barbara had shied away from him as if he were a virus!
But ... clothes didn't make the man! he consoled himself. Three salesmen enticing girls and violating the principles of their families at home, didn't quite make them men!
And what was he? Any better or any worse? At least, they accomplished their sexual goals ... or it would seem as so ... while he contemplated a journey into the metropolis to root out his whore...!
He intended to go! His loins were fired in their need. It hardly made a difference any longer what Barbara might think, did it? ... Or what anyone thought....
"I'll eat your little cunt right up to your navel!...." David heard the masculine voice nearest him promise whisperingly as he watched them, the redheaded girl who could not have been over twenty clinging hotly to the fattest of the three men.
"Do you like to eat pussy, Darling?" she hissed, her words carrying throughout the room above the stringy musical sounds raining down upon him.
"Yours, Angel! I'll eat it like you never believed possible!"
"Oh ... oh, you wild lover!"
Goddamn! David cursed inwardly, her words ricocheting wildly in the rotunda of his skull! He drained his glass and the slender, smiling, toothsome boy stood before him.
"Another," David said.
"Velly well, velly well," the little fellow replied, bowing, then bowing again as he retrieved the glass.
Stevie didn't go to a movie. In fact, he didn't even call a friend to have hamburgers and Cokes with him; instead, he walked downtown by himself so that he could think, uninterrupted, his keen young mind functioning collusively as it fitted together the steps necessary to his scheme. It would work, he felt certain, and there would be no way that his Dad could ignore the results. The guys would back him, too, and that would be the end of Mrs. Lindsey altogether...!
He had two hamburgers and a giant Coke at The Haven, then went back to the house and tried to watch TV, but couldn't concentrate on the program; his brain was too taken up with the exciting aspects of his lustful plan. He couldn't keep the mental visions of her doing all the things the guys had said that she did out of his thoughts ... sucking their cocks ... letting them put their fingers right up her cunt ... and old Milo actually fucking her!
Man! His prick was rock-hard again, just thinking about it. He twisted in the chair to loosen the straining crotch of his pants, then pressured his hand against his swollen organ. Crap, imagine having a bitch like her for a stepmother? But he knew his father would never believe him if he told him ... and that's why he had to do it!
A sensation of emptiness echoed through his belly. Frig! Did he have the nerve to ... to trap her that way, then tell his father the whole thing ... how she seduced him and all about it...? Dammit, yes, he did if he had to ... anything to keep her out of his Mom's bed!
Only ... he didn't have to do it yet, Stevie satisfied himself, while he continued to rub his hardened cock through his pants. She hadn't agreed to marry his Dad to that point, and maybe she wouldn't ... then, he wouldn't have to do it at all ... but crap, he wished he had the guts ... he'd do it anyway...! Man ... her pretty mouth sucking his cock while he fingered and looked right up her cunt...! She'd get up over him the way she did with Rocky, with her ass above his face and he'd pull her panties down ... maybe he'd even stick his tongue in her pussy and stare at her naked little asshole while she sucked him...!
Oh, frig, he had to do it to himself! He could hear his Dad's car if it came into the driveway...! Crap, he had to...! His prick was so hard it was beginning to hurt, and pretty soon his balls would start to ache if he didn't, he reasoned, switching out the light and taking out his handkerchief before unzipping his fly and releasing his rigid shaft of hot, boyish flesh.
Then, he stretched out his legs and by the light from the TV screen, began to stroke his cock vigorously, while his brain conjured licentious scenes of Nurse Lindsey sucking him as he performed every lewd thing he could imagine on her...!
Barbara's day had been one of the most miserable she could remember. Alone in her little office, she had wept silently for two hours after telling David that she couldn't marry him; but as painful and disgusting were the vivid recollections of her depraved ravishing of Milo Wilson the night before ... perverted acts that she couldn't begin to hold in check once her lecherousness reared its ugly head ... and it was doubtful that she could ever change.
The acceptance of that horrible fact had led her, sometime during mid-afternoon, to consider resigning her position and leaving Santa Lenora altogether. Though she had no intention of making a hasty decision, she had resolved to decide it that night, and there was small doubt in her mind what the outcome had to be.
She thought about it now, sitting in her flimsy nightgown and negligee in the apartment living room, a third martini in her slender, delicate hand. She had ignored dinner entirely, the thought of food nauseous to her in her present mood, the effects of the gin and vermouth far more appetizing as well as consoling.
Oh Carl ... Carl ... if only he were there to help her! God, she felt like throwing herself down and crying her heart out ... and probably she would if it would do any good! The truth of the matter was, that if she were not already in love with David Hamilton, she soon would be if she remained at the school, or even in Santa Lenora! To say that it was better for them not to see any more of each other was a simple thing, but to follow through with that platitude was another ... and she had to think of Stevie!
Dear God, there was no question but what she couldn't any longer trust herself. Like the fabled vampire's curse, there was nothing she could do to stop it once the vile urge came over her ... and no pledge or vow she might make herself could ever endure long in that handsome darling's presence. In the end ... Lord, what would it be like in the end...?
It had been so long since she'd had a normal sex act with a man ... since Carl ... and the odd part was that she'd had no desire that way ... only her young boy-cocks haunted her passion, practically driving her mad with desire ... Even David, as much as she thought of him, hadn't aroused her libido ... not that it was impossible if he tried, but he hadn't ... and in a way that had surprised her, too. Though, she hardly knew what she would do if he had; it almost seemed as if she would be violating her Carl's memory...!
God, what a weird sense of propriety she had developed!
The thought of going to bed with a man was offensive, leaving her empty, but committing abnormal acts with and on his son could set her right off, and be-damned with the consequences!
Suddenly, she drained her glass and poured another, her eyes puddling in the maze of her distressed thoughts. Oh Carl ... Carl ... what's going to happen to me? Please, help me...? Tell me what to do ... before it's too late...?