Chapter 9

Ed Boland watched with relish the exposed body of his wife, draped in the morning sun over the patio lounge. He liked the thought of eating his breakfast and watching her, sometimes in shorts and halter, sometimes completely naked, depending on her whim.

Her nudity was in his mind as he sat at the patio table, pouring himself another cup of coffee and spreading marmalade on a thick slab of wheat toast, raising it to his crumb coated lips.

Not fifteen feet away from him, in the full sun, Lilly stretched her full, lithe body luxuriously like a cat, and Boland felt a surge of desire. There were times when he tried to see her as a child in this glorious body, part of some terrible mistake, some grotesque masquerade, some game of dress-up, but always he returned to two things, forgiveness and the sure knowledge that he prized Lilly and her fine body more than anything else. Hadn't there been ample proof of this from the very beginning? Hadn't he given up a great deal for it? And look what it had gained him-a successful practice, nearly paid-up ownership of an old but stately house in Beverly Hills, freedom from all his Hurley, Minnesota debts, and another of the great pleasures of manhood, the day when he told Lilly, "There's no reason why you should work if you don't want. How about being a housewife for a while?"

Lilly agreed with alacrity and the results had been more than even Boland could have hoped for before. If his new world was built on shaky foundations, there was money in the bank and property under his feet to shore it up, a practice to look forward to.

What had it really cost him? The pain of knowing other men had, in the past, shared Lilly's bronzed body and partaken of it for a price.

Did the ends justify the means? Was a successful conversion of Ralph Hooten from a swishy homosexual into a loving husband and father a reward? Was the removal of tenseness from his life with Lilly worth the price?

The luxury of it all told him yes. It had been difficult to realize one compromise could open so many doors to so many others. It had been difficult to accept the fact that a relatively worthless degree could lead to Lilly's affair with Wyckoff. But now the luxury of the past six months served as an insulation against the past compromises and Boland believed the compromises had finally come to an end.

Finishing his toast, he sipped coffee, dabbed at his lips with a napkin and rose, moving toward the lounge where Lilly lay, basking in the sun. A feeling of danger shot through him. He knew he'd kiss her. But where would the excitement lead? Yes, this was pleasure.

Lilly accepted his kiss eagerly, her arms quickly reaching for his neck, pulling him closer to her. Athletic and limber, she rose, moving against him. Boland was aware of an amusing fear. Sun tan oil on his clean shirt. It was grand to be free at last.

Lilly's lips met his hungrily, her tongue probing his mouth with determined flickerings. Affectionately, he patted her firm buttocks and drew away. "I've got an early appointment."

Lilly frowned. "Last night, you had a late appointment. You didn't get home until ten."

Boland was still amused. "That didn't stop us, you'll recall."

"That was last night. It isn't fair to get me excited then run off."

"I wasn't trying to get you excited, darling. I was simply kissing you good-bye. Wives constantly complain about not being kissed good-bye and that's one sin I won't be guilty of."

"But now I need you, Ed. It isn't fair to tease."

"Baby, I'm not teasing. Look, I'll be through early this afternoon. My last appointment's at two. I'll be back here by three-thirty. We'll have all afternoon together. You be in bed waiting."

"I can't. I'm going shopping. I won't be home until at least five."

"Okay, so we'll have a late dinner."

"Ed, that's hours from now. This minute is what counts."

Boland sighed. "Look, you've gotten oil on my shirt."

Lilly did more than that. She embraced him. Now there were several oil stains on his dacron suit. "You'll have to change now. Ed, forgive me, but I need you. Is it so much to ask?"

"I was under the impression we had a pretty good, full sex life."

Lilly's arms went about his neck again. "Don't you see, Ed? It's important that it stay that way."

Boland felt somehow deflated. The joy he'd just felt slowly oozed out of him as he followed her upstairs to the bedroom, removing his oil stained jacket, tie and shirt. He tossed them aside, knowing he'd next see them cleaned, neatly pressed and hung in his dresser. But now, he felt as though an unreasonable demand was being made.

Lilly toweled most of the suntan oil from her body and quickly unhitched her halter, then stepped out of her shorts. By an agreement they'd made last month, she took no precautions, but simply lay down on the bed, properly postured and waiting for him.

For a long moment as he removed his shoes, trousers and shorts, Boland tried to write this off as her intense desire for a child. That lasted nearly a full minute. She'd been like this before. It was one of those nameless things he hadn't dared consider too closely.

As he knelt beside her, Boland felt mechanical and put upon. He found himself resenting the obvious charms of the woman now, resenting the fact that the sight of her had him aroused. She was deeply tanned all over her body. The strips about her bosom and loins was simply less tan than the rest of her, but still deeply bronzed. She drew him to her and the demands began with an immediate writhing and incessant plunging. It was sex under high pressure and he could tell it was different from the usual for both of them because release was so delayed, the entire process so mechanical.

When it was over, he felt drained and slightly depressed.

"Ed," she said, "thank you. I know you're cross with me, but still, thank you for putting up with my moods. It's better now."

Boland dressed again, thinking it was also different. What a world of difference between their love making the night before and this. The most recent, when it cropped up, always reminded him of the way she'd come to him, wanting him to make everything better. Hell, that body of hers was part of the subterfuge, part of the difference. Perhaps if he could be more lenient toward her in his attitude then this too would pass away, leaving none of the consequences, only a clear road ahead for both of them.

But ii; had been happening too often lately and it preyed on his mind throughout the day, flaring up particularly large when he interviewed his last patient of the day.

Charlotte Stowe was a tall, angular woman of thirty-two. The only signs of age her body wore were tiny crow's feet wrinkles at the corner of each eye. Otherwise, she had the body of a teenager, long, smooth and slightly muscular. Her well developed breasts were neither too large nor conspicuously small for her body. She was one of a small handful of Boland's women who didn't take great pains to emphasize nor hide the bustline.

She sat before him, her neat legs crossed, a cigarette dangling from her long fingers. "We're legally separated," she continued. "I don't know what the chances of reconciliation are, but we're certainly going to be at a stalemate-which is sort of an amusing play on words when you think of it-for at least six months. He's in Africa, making a motion picture."

"Couldn't you join him?"

"They're on location."

"Couldn't you find some city close by and at least visit?"

"There are expenses, Mr. Boland, and children and a house to look after."

"Well," Ed said, surveying her, trying to decide what she wanted, "at least you'll have time to consider whether you want to remain married to him." I

"That's not the reason I'm here, not really. I suppose it would be nice if you could help us when he gets back, but there's something a bit more immediate."

Boland met her cobalt eyes head on. "Sex," he said.

"Exactly, Mr. Boland ... or should! call you doctor?"

"Mister sounds better."

"Well, Mr. Boland, do you think it wrong for a woman separated from her husband to have sex relations with other men?"

"Depends on the circumstances."

"I'm talking," she said, "about my circumstances."

Boland smiled. "Now we're getting somewhere. You obviously do think it's wrong or you wouldn't come to me seeking another judgment. Let's find out why."

Charlotte Stowe uncrossed her legs and stood with dramatic poise. Never mind the analysis or motives. You've given me my answer."

"Not all of it. You see, the responsibility rests on you. I believe people should have sex relations, as often as they want and with whom, but to me, sex should accomplish something loving and noble and in every case, people should be willing to accept the consequences of their sexual activity, be it in or outside the boundaries of marriage."

"Meaning it's all right if I don't mind being called a tramp?"

"Or the possibility of a black eye or so, if Mr. Stowe finds out."

She chuckled. "I think I'd almost like that. All right, now I see what you mean. Yes, the desire by far outweighs the fear of consequences. Next question is, how do I go about finding a compatible sex partner? Church socials are hardly the place to begin, and I'm sick and tired of cruising the bars, looking for pickups. They get all hot and bothered while they're after me, but suddenly, when I say yes, something happens and all that talk has gotten them nowhere. Two weeks ago, I went to a well known hotel in Hollywood and sat at the bar. I let a young man buy me a few drinks. I admit I was dressed for the kill. Black net hose, low neckline. We danced a few times and I knew he wanted me. I still believe it's up to the man to take most of the initiative and I don't feel like acting like a prostitute and saying come on, sonny boy, you've got me. I made some delicate hints that I had a bottle of scotch at home. I made some further hints that I knew a marvelous motel. All he did was dance. Then I finally got the idea. He was getting his jollies by dancing with me ... dancing very close. He could have had all of me and he chose that."

Boland smiled. "Wrong choice, for him and you."

"Do you find me attractive, Mr. Boland?"

"Outrageously so," Ed said, knowing he was walking on thin ice.

Charlotte Stowe smiled, sat down and crossed her legs again. She was justifiably proud of them. "Would you like to go to bed with me, Mr. Boland?"

Ed smiled. "Yes ... and no. Yes, I'd like to, no, I won't. Before you get any further than that raised eyebrow, I'll explain. You're a very esthetically pleasing woman, you've got sensuality and sex appeal. But then, so has my wife. That's what I meant before about consequences. I can take the consequences of not going to bed with you. I'm not willing to take the consequences of cheating on my wife."

Charlotte Stowe smiled ruefully. "I find you attractive, Mr. Boland and I'd happily take the consequences with you. But that brings us back to our original point, where does an attractive and eager woman find a lover?"

Boland thought for a moment, an answer popping into his mind. He sat watching the magnificence of her body as he wrestled with it. Was it right? Was it ethical? Was he willing to take the consequences for the suggestion?

Joel Steele, another of his patients, was a handsome young man of thirty-five. Joel found himself attracted to women, but also haunted by the fear that he was a homosexual.

"Mrs. Stowe, I'm going to introduce you to someone," he said.

Her thin brows lifted. "Someone good?"

Let's say, someone who could give you everything you wanted in the way of justification and satisfaction. Suppose your going to bed with someone could help him restore his confidence in himself?"

Charlotte Stowe moistened her lips. "You mean I'll be doing a good deed as well as getting my jollies."

"If you'd like to put it that way, yes. Now listen to me...."

"I tell you, Mr. Boland, she's terrific," Joel Steele said with gripping enthusiasm. He was perched on the edge of his chair, a handsome young man with a lean jaw and thinning hair. He worked in an electronics factory in Santa Monica and was one of Boland's few five dollar an hour patients. "As she may have told you, the first few times weren't too good, at least, not from her point of view. But man, oh, man, there's something about the sight of a beautiful woman undressing in front of you and giving it the real business, you know, making a production of the bra and panties and garter belt and stockings. Then she tells you it's all for you, that she wants you to feel great about the whole thing. I tell you, Mr. Boland, I feel like the guy in the Charles Atlas ad. Bring 'em on, I'll clobber 'em."

Boland, although he did not tell Steele, felt relieved. It had been a real gamble. Most therapists did not permit their patients to meet. Suggesting two of them actually have sex relations was daring and unorthodox, to say the least. "I'm glad it worked out for you, Joel. Now you know you can attract a woman like that and keep her. What next?"

"That's the thing. I'd been dating this girl Sylvia on the side, and it was all casual stuff. I could tell she was beginning to get bored with me. There was never any question of sex. I'd kiss her a few times and that would be it. Well, last week, that all changed. I told her point blank that I wanted her. And by golly, Mr. Boland, she wanted to know what the hell I'd been waiting for. It's worked. It's really worked. Then I decided to take a gamble on my own. Wow, did the sight of Charlotte ever get Sylvia's back up. She insisted we be married right away. Later, when I told Charlotte, she cried and said she was happy for me and wished me luck. What a great woman."

Boland flipped his notebook on Steele closed. "I have a feeling, Joel, that I'm not going to be seeing a hell of a lot of you anymore. You don't need help any longer."

"Mr. Boland, you'll always have my gratitude, and if I ever run across some friend who's as screwed up as I used to be, I know where to send him."

Boland felt a surge of warmth and pride. This was the greatest reward of them all. More than anything else, this was the feeling of honesty and success.

He turned out the lights in his office and fired up his car, the new Jaguar Sedan Lilly had insisted on for him. If everything else was a sham, this feeling was real. He was taking chances, but by golly, they were working, and he had Ralph Hooten and Joel Steele, amongst others, to prove it.

But the drive into Beverly Hills, toward his home, gradually began to give him a grating feeling, robbing him gradually of the feeling of accomplishment. Home to Lilly. Home to one of her evenings planned down to the last minute. Fifteen minutes for a drink. Ten minutes for a shower, then half an hour for making love before they'd sit down to a dinner of salad and cold chicken before leaving for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl with the Merton's, socialite friends of Lilly's.

Boland shuddered at the thought, realizing the aspect of the schedule he dreaded the most was the half hour allotted for love making. What a farce it was, going through such motions. In a way, it was reminiscent of things he'd read about drug addicts. Lilly, with no sex to count on, was almost sure to have some sort of withdrawal pains.

He arrived home earlier than he'd expected, thinking with amusement that already Lilly's plans were foiled. She'd have to let him have two drinks? Or would she want to make love twice?

Her Sunbeam sports car was not in the drive. He was greeted at the door by Rose Keller, the maid. Removing his jacket, he sat in the den, flicking on the FM radio and pouring himself a drink, a good stiff one. Half way through it. he heard the whine of gears as Lilly down shifted on the Sunbeam and roared into the drive, sending her usual clatter of pebbles.

He heard the sharp clatter of her heels on the tile floor of the entrance and hallway. As she appeared in the den, he noted her tanned limbs, displayed in hauntingly beautiful contrast to a lime colored summer dress.

Suddenly, he was drawn to notice details. When he'd left the house this morning, she'd already had on the lime dress and was seated by her vanity, peeling stockings over her slender legs. Now, she wore no stockings.

Her hair, set only the day before and guarded jealously the previous night, had been pulled into a simple horse's tail, virtually ruining the elaborate setting.

Then he saw the expression in Lilly's eyes and knew ..hat had happened.

"Sorry I'm late," she said, "but everything should come off on schedule anyway; the Merton's will meet us at the Bowl, we won't have to pick them up." She kicked her pumps off, mustered a large smile for him and padded across the floor, making an exaggerated pantomime of describing how the cold of the tile floor felt on her bare feet. She sat on his lap and leaned to kiss him, her body warm, her hands bold and daring in their maneuvering. "There are some schedules I absolutely don't want to upset," she said, deftly probing his loin. "Just making sure, darling."

Boland took another pull on his drink and set it down on the end table, already shaky with the knowledge of the truth. "Who was it this time, Lilly?" he asked solemnly.

"Who was what, darling?"

"You were with a man today. You went to bed with him. I-I can tell."

Lilly's face tightened. "You're guessing, Ed. That's not very nice of you."

"I'm not guessing, Lilly. I know. I can tell."

"You think you're a mind reader, don't you? You get some of those patients of yours are" work out their problems the way they do on TV and all of a sudden, you're a mind reader, you know everything I do."

"Lilly, a lot of what I do with my patients is frankly intuition or guess work. I can't read anyone's mind and if I've had some successes, a lot of it is due to luck. But I know you were with a man today. Do you want to tell me who it was??"

She bounded from his lap and began searching nervously in her handbag for a cigarette. Finding one, her hands shook as she held the lighter to her lips.

As Boland watched her, numbed and tired, he wondered what it was this time, what price she was paying, what new consequences there was.

At length, Lilly let out a long plume of smoke. "All right," she said, "there was a man. At least, I suppose you can call him a man. He was only twenty years old."

"That says something," Boland said.

"Oh, stop it, Ed! I can tell the expressions you use when you don't know what to say next."

"I'm just trying to find out reasons, Lilly."

"Suppose there aren't any? Suppose it just happened?"

"But it didn't just happen, did it?"

"I went shopping with Agnes Milner, just as I'd planned. We were in Beverly Hills around lunch time and decided to eat at the hotel. The waiter showed us to a table by the poolside. After a few drinks, we ordered our lunch and Agnes left to make a phone call. Then I saw him, staring at me."

"Who?"

"The life guard. I knew he didn't mean to be rude, but I am an attractive woman. I even tried to hitch down my skirt and turn my collar so he wouldn't be looking at my legs."

"Obviously it didn't help."

"I tried, Ed, but he kept looking at me in that hungry way of his and it got me unsettled."

"Of course, you had to stay there, didn't you? You had to talk to him. You had to get him to tell you what he wanted?"

"I knew what he wanted. I knew from the beginning. Can't you just let it go at that?"

"Not when we're getting somewhere."

"Where are we getting, Ed ? I'll probably never see the boy again. It was just one of those things.

I'll try not to let it happen again."

Boland was on his feet, his hands gripping her by the shoulders. "Honey, you've got the wrong idea. This isn't a mistake like the time you took my shirts to the laundry and had them starched. This is a little more serious. This is called adultery ... cheating."

She suddenly went soft beside him. "Ed, please, if I tell you everything, will you help me?"

"What do you mean by help?"

The life flared into her eyes again. "You know damned well what I mean ... take me to bed. Make love to me. Make it all right again. Make it so I can always be just yours."

Boland followed her toward the flight of stairs leading to the bedrooms. He was particularly conscious of the liquid sway of her hips as she climbed the stairs. It was all part of a marvelous display she was putting on for his benefit. Or was it strictly and selfishly for her own?

"I'll listen to you, anyway," Boland said, thinking now that this time all he would do would be to listen. He felt it with a pang of sorrow, a moue of regret. It meant something in their attraction for each other had been lost.

But what the hell, how many hundreds and thousands of wives didn't cheat on their husbands, just because some young kid looked at them with desire ? There were text books and studies and case histories on that, too. And on his own, Boland had learned from experience, the guys most cynical about women cheating and being-promiscuous were of two distinct types: homosexuals and men who were pretty unsure of themselves. Two types who were hardly qualified for unbiased commentary. It was very much like having a Democratic guest of honor at a hundred-dollar-a-plate Republican dinner.

He watched Lilly's lush hips, moving enticingly as she gained the landing, then turned anxiously to see if she had his attention. She'd gone shopping and had been unable to resist a twenty year old life guard who stared at her legs.

As Boland followed her to listen to the rest of her story, a sudden shattering thought hit him that was much, much more damaging. It had his heart beating wildly. Why was it, he wondered, that Lilly was so easily discovered? He'd known instinctively each time she'd cheated on him. And there'd been times when she'd told him by mail. She didn't want to get away with it undetected. Part of the pattern definitely included his knowing. Why? What was it?

At the entrance to the bedroom, Lilly stopped and turned to embrace him. When he was able to avoid her, there was an unquestionable trace of letdown in her face. Why? What was it?