Chapter 1
Fate has a habit of playing strange tricks on the destiny of mortals. If, on this muggy Friday evening in early June, the 6:15 hadn't pulled out of the Northwestern Station right on time, and if Chicago's snarled Loop traffic had been much more cooperative, four husbands might never have missed their usual train to the pleasant little suburb of Glendview. And therefore they would never have decided to while away the thirty-five minutes until the next available train by relaxing in the comfortable bar and grill just off the station lobby. Out of such a coincidental and inauspicious start, a swinging club was to be born, one which would change the lives of many of Glendview's most prominent citizens as well as those of their wives and comely daughters....
Jack Caspar glumly shouldered his way through the swinging doors of the dimly-lighted, red-carpeted bar and grill and made his way towards one of the stools at the far left end. He was stocky, had just turned forty, and had naturally begun to worry about both his growing paunch and receding hairline, though as yet there was hardly any trace of gray in his dark-brown hair. He had missed the Glendview express because the big boss of his advertising agency, Maxwell Denton, had called a four-o'clock conference to discuss new business prospects. True enough, there had been a little compensation for submitting to pompous old Maxwell's cliche-ridden discussion, because just as they were breaking up, the old coot had told him that he was in for a nice little bonus for having wangled the Stenmeyer Foods account.
Just the same, he'd really been in a hurry to get home on time this particular Friday evening. He had half a notion that his lush blonde wife, Marge, had got herself a case of the kind of Spring fever which made her cast flirtatious eyes at anything in pants, and he was just about ready to have it out with her. As he ordered a whiskey sour, he lit a cigarette and stared thoughtfully into the mirror ahead of him...
Pete Dudley was thirty-two, sleek, black-haired and wiry. A star salesman for the Emmett Electronics Corporation, his only real worry was the possibility of being given a wider sales territory which would mean a good deal more travel. And with the way his wife of two years, Eleanor, was acting lately, he wasn't certain it was such a good idea to leave her with so much free time on her hands. In fact, he had missed the train tonight trying to argue the big boss into letting things stand just as they were, but he didn't think he'd succeeded....
Dave Wormsley, toying with a half empty gin and tonic at the very end of the bar, was twenty-eight, towheaded, tall and rangy, and had been a star basketball player on his high school team a dozen years ago. But at this moment he was staring gloomily into his half empty glass, wondering if this weekend was going to be just like all the others over the past couple of years. His bespectacled but sexy-looking black-haired wife, June, had been getting more distant than ever when bedtime rolled around. He was beginning to figure that he'd been deceived by the old adage that still waters run deep in making such a pitch for her and taking six months before he learned that she wouldn't give until the wedding ring was put on her finger. That had been five years ago, and she still was just tolerating him between the sheets. She was bored and resigned and let him hump for all he was worth, and she'd never once had what he considered a real climax. In a way, he was glad he'd missed the 6:15, because now he had time to think up the dialogue for a real showdown with her tonight. She didn't want a kid; and what she did besides play bridge and do a slipshod job of housework and making dinner for him, while he was off slaving as a claims adjuster, for the Great Southern Casualty Company, certainly left her time enough to think about giving him a really good fuck just once....
Matt Tilden, thirty-six-year-old assistant loan manager for the Midwestern Home Savings and Loan Association, had also missed the 6:15, not because of heavy traffic or a sudden business conference, but because he'd been trying to call home and had no answer for the past hour. He had a pretty good idea why Dorothy didn't answer. She still thought he'd cheated on her with that pretty red-haired widow, Joanne Purviss, even though he'd told her every night this week that it was all a misunderstanding.
Mrs. Purviss had come into the office about three weeks ago to get a loan on her house so that she could make some improvements and sell it at a fair profit. She then intended to move to Los Angeles and live with a cousin. Her contractor husband had been killed in an automobile accident about six months ago, but had left her pretty well-heeled. Dorothy, he remembered, had contemptuously said, "She's not only well-heeled, she's round-heeled too, and you can tell her so for me, you ... you chaser, you!"
At any rate, the loan had been approved, and then Mrs. Purviss had called him last Friday afternoon just before quitting time to ask if he could bring the check out to the house in Northbrook. He'd called Dorothy to tell her that he wouldn't be home for supper and that he was on company business. Then, of all things, his car had broken down just after he'd pulled up in front of the widow's house. She'd cooked him supper, given him a few drinks, and let him know that she wasn't averse to a little necking as a way of consoling her for her bereavement and denial of bed pleasures for the past six months. Matt had manfully withstood the temptation of her middle-thirtyish-year-old buxom body, in a clinging black satin negligee saturated with a cloying perfume, and had been as tactful as he could in explaining that he loved his wife. Then he hoofed it to a nearby service station to get his car fixed.
As luck would have it, who should be in the neighborhood but old gossipy Mrs. Ames, who had already done more than her share in trying to break up his marriage by telling Dorothy every time she saw him with some female, even if it was only chatting pleasantly with a teen-aged cu-tie who happened to bump into him at the super-mart one Saturday. And sure enough, Mrs. Ames had gone right to a phone and given his wife an earful. She knew all about Mrs. Purviss. They were up in arms about her in Northbrook, and it was a good thing her husband had died mercifully and been spared the knowledge of what a tramp she really was. So, of course, Dorothy had believed that his long stay there had been due to his delivering the check and then getting his reward between Joanne Purviss's shapely thighs. And it was all a frame-up!
Matt Tilden made a sign to the bartender and pointed to his empty glass. Then he said aloud in a disgusted tone, "Women!"
He and Dorothy had been married seven years, and she was still a looker at thirty. Sure, there'd been times when he'd wanted an extra curricular piece of pussy, but so far he hadn't yielded to temptation, although there had been plenty of it for him. And then to get the name but not the game, and to have Dorothy huff off to her mother in Winnetka, where she would probably keep herself incommunicado for a week or so, was just too much to take.
"What's the matter, old buddy, wife trouble?" Dave Wormsley looked over and recognized his next door neighbor.
"Who ... hi, there, Dave! Didn't see you. Guess we both missed the 6:15."
"That's right. I gather you've got problems, too."
"You mean that cute better half of yours is making life tough for a handsome guy like you these days, Dave?" Matt Tilden wanted to know.
"You said it," Dave sighed. "It all goes to show you that you can't judge the contents of a package by its wrapper. You know what a sexpot June looks like. Well, I'm here to tell you, brother, she's anything but that. I know it's out of line to talk that way about one's own wife, but after five years of blah in bed, I've just about had it."
Tve had seven years, but they haven't been blah," Matt Tilden retorted. "Only trouble is, I've got a wife with a suspicious mind. You know when you deal with widows and divorcees in my loan department, you're bound to meet some sexy pieces. With a looker like Dottie, I've just given them the old eye and taken their clothes off in my mind, and that's it. Only now some old snoop of a neighbor has convinced Dottie that I've been screwing a red-haired widow, and she's off to Mother, and I'm off to an empty house. Hell, the way I feel, I wish that widow were around for the weekend. I'd really give Dottie a reason to be jealous."
At the other end of the bar, Pete Dudley and Jack Caspar had recognized each other though they were three stools apart. Each had already stood the other a round, and by now both were commiserating with each other on the fickleness of womankind.
As the big electric clock on the wall of the bar showed a quarter of seven, the four disgruntled husbands paid their tabs and made their way to the train gate. They didn't know it yet, but they were about to become the charter members and founders of the Spanking Society, Ltd.