Chapter 15

SEVERAL DAYS went by, and Rodney Barrett was disturbed. He knew that in actuality what had occurred in the deep woods near the old gravel pit amounted to a tremendous emotional cleansing. He admitted to himself now that he was in love. By rights, then, he should at long last be free of his fixation, of the fear of emotional entanglement. Yet doubts and trepidations still troubled him.

Tangi did little to help. After he had retired to his room that night, she slipped in without knocking. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it in a pose artlessly but heartbreakingly graceful.

"I watched you at supper," she said softly.

"You did?" he asked, his voice lifting spuriously in a weak attempt at lightness. "What did you see?"

"A man whose mind wasn't on his food. It wandered."

A single lamp was lit in the sumptuous old bedroom. Its light bathed Tangi in a golden glow. The sight of her reached inside him like a barbed hook. "You see too much," he said.

"No. Only that you seem confused. And in pain. Maybe I can help... like morphine."

"Tangi, I've told it to Missy and now I'll tell it to you. I could fall in love with you."

"I know. Practically every man reacts that way to me.

"Well, Dr. Hackthorne says that's exactly what love is. A reaction... a very special reaction intended to perpetuate the human race."

She smiled. "He left out one thing."

"What's that?"

"Give a man the right sort of love, and he wants it all for himself. Even when he is physically not deserving of it, he still wants it to the exclusion of all other men. What's that got to do with perpetuating the race?"

"But aren't women as guilty? I mean, don't they want one man exclusively for themselves?"

She shrugged. "Not this woman. I've never seen a man I'd want exclusively. I may be fickle-or maybe I'm just too much woman for one man. Or maybe my vanity is such that I need lots of men to stroke it. Anyway, right or wrong, that's me."

"And did you come to this room to tell me that?"

"Oh, no," she said, stepping forward into the room. She unsnapped a snap and unzipped a zipper, and her dress fell, pooling about her feet. "That was so delicious the other night, I thought I'd try some more of it."

Rod was sitting on the chaise. She deposited herself on his lap.

Convulsively his hands stroked her flank, fondled the lush swells of her hips. Then his palms lifted to her leaping, erect breasts. She shuddered with utter delight. For an instant, with a pang of guilt, he remembered his beloved Nola. But it was as impossible to resist the nude, magnificent Tangi as it would have been to resist Venus herself. Tangi was not of this earth. She was a goddess sent to delight mortal men and take delight in them-as she was doing now.

For an hour she bestowed on him the sweetest, sauciest and sharpest pleasures of the flesh, and drew them from him, too. She whipped his nerves to frenzies of which he had never known himself capable. She worked his body as if it were an inexhaustible mine of fiery bliss, worked it from end to end and back, inspiring him to mighty feats as only a goddess can.

And when it was over, when they were lying lax in each other's arms on the bed, recovering breath and strength, she kissed him gently.

"See?" she said. "The pain is cured."

He sighed jerkily. "Yes. But another has replaced it."

"And that is?"

"The pain of craving possession... just as you predicted. I can't bear the thought of sharing you. I want to growl and show my teeth at other males."

She brushed his cheek with a soft hand. "You'll get over it. There haven't yet been any fatalities from it."

She was teasing him. Strangely, at the time, it made him feel better. But after she had gone he felt worse- because now he was certain he was in love with two women.

And he was the guy supposed to fear lovely females!

The following Saturday was a day many would long remember. But it dawned just about like most days in that part of the world. Dewy and misty at first, then gradually clearing. By late morning, the sun was bright and hot. It caught Nola Pilgrim in town, buying a party dress. She was determined to look her best at Missy's affair that night.

Rod and Nola had learned they would receive no invitations from Missy Blumendahl. They also had learned they would be welcome along with everybody else in the county. She never sent invitations, just let word of mouth pass around.

During the preceding few days, though, a coolness that Nola Pilgrim found harassing and inexplicable had sprung up between Dr. Barrett and herself. He dutifully picked her up every morning. They worked side by side getting the office ready. Already she had made sixteen appointments for the week to come, and she could not understand why he did not seem as excited about them as she was. He lived in a state of preoccupation so thick that she was not able to penetrate it.

He had made no further reference to the party at Missy's. So Friday evening, as he dropped her at the cottage she was obliged to ask, "Will you pick me up tomorrow night-or have you forgotten that you asked me to the party?"

He started guiltily. "Oh. Oh, of course. I definitely will pick you up. Seven-thirty be too early?"

"No. I'll be ready."

And that's why Nola went to Kenton early Saturday for a new dress. She was determined to look her very best that night and, hopefully, recapture Rod's apparently flagging interest in her. Bridge was good enough to drive her to the store and help her choose.

While they were engaged in that task, Bridge was being discussed on the telephone by Joyce Flemming.

"She thinks," said Joyce Flemming in guarded tones to Barry Norton, "that she's going to Missy's party with that Bridge Pilgrim person. But he's trash. That's what he is-trash!"

"The lowest kind of Yankee trash," agreed Barry readily.

"I'm not going to let him take Melody."

"How will you stop him?" Barry asked.

"I'll lock her in her room."

"Smart. Then I'd do better to go to your house tonight than to the party."

"Naturally. Melody sees you're determined, she'll give in. After all, you're a Norton. You're not trash like Bridge Pilgrim. You don't have to work for a living. Your family has lots of money-"

"Will you let me into her room?"

"Of course," she simpered. "You two are promised, aren't you?"

Fifteen minutes later she confronted Melody in the hallway. "Let's go to your room. I want to talk to you." She led the way and Melody followed, mostly out of simple curiosity.

Joyce did not close the door, stood with her back to it. "Now, you listen to me. I'm not permitting you to go to Missy's party. I know you're planning on it. Planning to go with Bridge. But you're to remain right here."

Oddly, the girl kept her temper. She found her mother actually amusing. "I am?"

"That's right."

"How will you make me remain?"

"This way," Joyce screamed, and with a speed unexpected in a woman of her ungainly weight, she backed through the doorway, slammed the door. Melody heard a key grate in the lock.

An incredulous smile touched her lips. Quietly she sat down on a chair and began to thumb through a magazine.

By midafternoon, according to Melody's calculations, Joyce would have drunk three or four stout highballs and would be snoring through her afternoon nap. Melody was correct in this assumption. When the time came she got up, went to the opposite side of the room. She opened a closet, took out a terrycloth robe and wrapped herself in it. She donned her heaviest boots. She found a big bath towel, twisted it around her head and face until she looked like a turbaned Arab. Then she carefully stepped through the newly glazed window.

There was the crash and tinkle of glass, but Melody got to the other side without a scratch.

She discarded robe, boots and towel, and ran to the kitchen. No one was in sight. She lifted the kitchen phone, called Missy Blumendahl and told her of Joyce's orders. "Missy, what do you think I should do?"

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to go to the party. And with Bridge."

"If you're locked up, how come you're talking to me?"

"I stepped through that same window. Don't worry. I'm not hurt."

"You're kidding!"

"No. You know, Missy, my mother is simply not all there. I hate to say it, but-"

"Listen to me, Melody. I think the time has come to tell you. A couple of us old-timers know it, and I believe you should, too. Joyce is not your real mother."

"My God, Missy. Is that true?"

"You bet. Ask Dr. Fontenot." Melody gasped.

"But I don't understand. I-"

"You see, child, your own mother died in childbirth. Joyce was hired to nurse you, and married your father. He made a lousy bargain, believe me. Feel relieved? I was when I heard it."

"Oh, Missy!"

"Now, tell you what. Go back to your room, pack a bag, and when it gets dark sneak over to Bridge's place. Make him or Nola drive you to my house. You're over twenty-one and can do as you please-and you can stay with me as long as you like. My home is your home, Melody."

"Oh, Missy, I'll never be able to thank you enough!"

"Forget it, child."

Melody cradled the receiver, returned to her room by way of the shattered window.

"One of these days I'm gonna quit this dad-ratted foolishness," said Missy raucously to Tangi, to Ella the cook and to Melody. The girl had been driven over by Bridge, who had left and who would return later for the party. Missy was red and sweating. Tangi and Ella were breathless with laughter.

"Looky there," snorted Missy. "Tore the hell out of my brand-new girdle-and now I feel like a gusseted horse in this other one. All so I won't look so much like a damned blimp when I put on my hundred and fifteen yards of chiffon." Her voice rose brazenly. "And if you creeps don't quit laughin' at me, I'm gonna brain you."

Tangi ran and Ella choked back her guffaws. "Er, Mose asked how you want the barbecue? Well-done or rare?"

"That's just a hod-blasted he to get you off the hook. Mose knows damn well how to do the barbecue. He's been doing it for thirty years! Why ask me now all of a sudden? Get outa here and see to that potato salad." Ella, her face buried in her apron, her eyes streaming with tears of mirth, trotted from the room. Melody, however, sat down with a thump and screamed her hilarity.

"Missy, I'm sorry! But the sight of Tangi and Lula stuffing you into that new girdle... then when you let your breath go, it just split right down the side and you poured out... I just can't help... " She dissolved into fresh blasts.

"Have yourself a treat on me," bawled Missy. "Treasure the sight. And when you're finished amusin' your skinny self at my expense, you may continue with your story about Joyce and Barry and what-all."

"But I've told you everything." Again she related the details of the night Barry had burst into her room and Bridge had chased him off.

"Should have broken his neck," Missy growled. "Only confirms what I believe-that Barry is the one who raped you in the barn. Someone will have to kill the bastard. There's no other way. We can't convict him in a court of law. No evidence. Do you reckon he's really that smart?"

"I know him better than any of you, Missy. He was brilliant in school. And after that, for a long time, he clearly hid from me how awful he is. Yes, he's smart."

"I've discussed Barry with our new young psychiatrist several times," Missy confided to Melody. "You know, one reason I wanted Dr. Barrett to set up shop here was to get the goods on Barry. But maybe it's too tall an order-"

"Oh, if anybody can manage it, Rod's the one," Melody said worshipfully. "Look what he did for me. Got rid of my scars outside and inside. I'd set my cap for him, let me tell you-if it weren't for Bridge." With the mention of Bridge's name, her voice had become even more worshipful.

"Well, let's hope for the best." She raised her head and trumpeted, "Tangi! Where are you? Come on back here and finish dressing me!"

Joyce had awakened with a grouch and had started feeding it bourbon immediately. Pretty soon she remembered that she had locked Melody in her room and, feeling contentious, walked through the house with hot argument in mind. She would show the girl who was boss around here.

She unlocked the door and walked in. Her face slackened stupidly. The room was empty. The window was smashed.

She began to talk to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. Then she turned, still with that stupid look on her face, and went down to the front veranda.

Barry Norton sat in his hidden attic studio, staring at his painting of the rape of Melody. It filled him with a vast, gluttonous satisfaction. Soon it would be repeated, he promised himself, this time to his specifications.

He was fearfully annoyed when his mother appeared at the foot of the ladder leading to that section of the attic. He had forgotten to lock the door below.

"You've been drinking my whiskey," she yelled up.

"No," he lied. He rushed to the ladder, stared down. What a hag she had become, he thought. Dirty, a veritable witch, long stringy hair falling uncombed over her eyes.

"You or your father, you've drunk my whiskey." She rubbed her mouth with a dirty hand. "I think it's you." She began to climb the ladder. Reaching the top, she looked narrowly at her son. "Got any whiskey?"

"No. Go away." He was exasperated. To think that he had such a hag for a mother. "Go away or I'll show you the portrait."

This time the threat did not work. She was too desperate for alcohol. "Give me my whiskey, son."

Infuriated, Barry dropped the painting of the rape of Melody. He snatched up the portrait of his mother, the one he had doctored to make it even more horrifying. He held it up for the woman to see.

She shrieked insanely. Throwing her hands up before her eyes, she backed toward the ladder.

There was another scream, a crash, and the thud of her body as it struck the landing below. Then she lay still. Quite casually Barry descended the ladder, stepped over her gingerly. This time he did not forget to lock the door. It locked his mother in there, he thought, just as Melody was locked in. The parallel amused him. To give himself a treat, he took the station-wagon instead of his jeep.

Joyce Flemming was still simmering with the ingratitude of humanity in general and her daughter in particular. After Lora, having finished the dinner dishes, had gone, Joyce started restlessly for the front veranda. She almost ran into Barry, who stood quietly in the hall.

She gasped, backed away. "My God! Don't you ever knock?"

He was hurt by the animus in her voice. This was not like Joyce. Usually she fawned on him. "Let me in to see her," he said tightly.

"She's not here," Joyce mouthed complainingly. "She got out. She broke the window and got out."

The news jolted Barry. "Imagine that!" He did not believe for an instant that Melody could have escaped without connivance. So Joyce had tricked him, had she? She had conspired with her daughter to make a fool of him!

Frightened by his expression, Joyce said weakly, "Well, I tried."

He stared at her. Melody had suddenly slipped his mind. Joyce was not just a fat blob of a woman any more. She blossomed with violent, vibrant color. She had taken on all the bizarre shadings and hues of his wilder paintings. A twitching smile showed on his mouth, and with all his strength he swung a blow at her soft belly. It knocked her to the floor.

She had not the breath to scream as he dragged her into the living room. He tore off her dress, ripped away the big hammock of a brassiere supporting her enormous breasts. "Don't," she whimpered. "Don't, Barry-"

"Shut up," he said, letting down his trousers. "Don't make a sound or I'll beat you to death."

Grabbing her hair, he forced her to a kneeling position, the huge fatty breasts swaying and billowing, white as milk, each with a brown nipple long and thick as a man's little finger. Seizing the obese mounds, he sunk his swollen staff between them, rubbing and massaging it with plump handfuls of the marshmallow flesh. In moments the lascivious friction had him at the point of climax, but he bethought himself of something that would punish her more, humiliate her. "Lick it," he rasped, pushing his groin toward her mouth. "Lick it! Kiss it!"

"Madman," gasped Joyce. "No. I-" His backhand blow nearly tore off her head. "Want me to kill you?" He backhanded her again. "Do as I say!" Fearing for her life, Joyce opened her mouth, took the engorged member between her lips. Responding to his commands, she licked with her tongue, kissed, slobbering and suckling like a calf at its mother's teat. Barry squealed with bliss. He lifted the huge soft breasts, pressed them to his thighs and scrotum. Riding them triumphantly, he rammed into Joyce's gullet, all but choking her as his hot juices spurted.

Joyce expected his shuddering ecstasy to end her torture. She was mistaken. With hardly a pause, Barry slammed the quaking woman to her back. Though wet and soiled, his rampant member was still fully erect as he poised above her. Fat and a drinker, Joyce nevertheless was healthy. She could not fail to be aroused physically by Barry's hard young lust. And psychologically she was stimulated also. Never had a man so dominated her. Perhaps it was the kind of treatment she had needed all her life.

For when he fell upon her, she spread her great hams to receive him. A fat obscene blob on the carpet, she whined and protested-yet gurgled her gladness as he plunged the full length of his phallus deep into her moist viscera.

He withdrew halfway, then plunged again, muttering crazy obscenities. "Fat bitch. Rock that fat ass. I'm going to fuck you till you bust." One hand was mauling and savaging Joyce's tremendous bosom. With the other he began to slap her face, a slap for each stroke of his loins as he pumped convulsively.

She gloried in the pain. Her fat thighs ecstatically clamped his driving hips. At the shuddering peak, her joy was as insane as his.

Nola and Rod drove to Fahenstock in relative silence. The cool distance between them seemed greater than ever. That the fault was his, Rod knew, but he could not conquer his uncertainties.

As they walked into the enormous living room, it seemed to Rod there must be fifty people of all sorts and varieties there. The halls and the other downstairs rooms, as well as the verandas, were equally thronged. Laughter and conversation assailed the ears like roaring tides. Glasses clinked. Above the tides, people called greetings to one another in uninhibited yells.

"There he is," Rod exclaimed, pointing.

"Who?" asked Nola, lovely in a seductive sheath of dull rose.

"Dr. Hackthorne." He was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair. He was strapped into a heavy surgical corset Dr. Fontenot had wished on him, a fact he was trying to hide from the four or five girls of the younger college set who were crowded around him. Hearing of the great man, they were ganged up on him in an effort to learn things about that fascinating subject, psychiatry.

The master was delighted by the youthful pulchritude displaying itself to him at such close range, and also by the quality of the whiskey in his glass. Accordingly he was filling the young ears with thumping tales calculated to make them blush, although not one of them was more than half true.

Rod approached with Nola and they both smiled at the older man. At the same moment, Missy Blumendahl herself grandly approached. The young things, overawed, fled in search of other male company.

"You scared them off," Dr. Hackthorne complained. "But I forgive you. Frankly, I prefer older and more substantial women. Like yourself, Missy."

"You old codger. According to what I hear, you're locked up in a corset that amounts to a chastity belt!"

"Well, at least it holds my spine together." Hackthorne now addressed Rod and Nola. "Have you taken yourselves a look around? My God, the people!"

Nola squeezed Rod's arm. "Get us a couple of drinks, will you, while I go look at myself in the powder room? I just saw Melody headed in that direction."

Rod set off toward the big bar that had been set up in the dining room. Missy ran interference for him, stopping every couple of seconds to introduce him to guests. They were everywhere-tall and short, thin and fat, young and old.

"Whoosh." Missy blew like a whale. "This is the one to end 'em all. Guess how many."

"Can't. A hundred?"

"Pretty close. A hundred and sixty-two at last count." She heaved herself through an opening between couples, and Rod followed. She was swathed in enough yard goods to provide sails for a fair-sized schooner. On most women, Rod thought, it would have looked ridiculous. On Missy it looked regal.

Thanks to Missy's influence, Rod managed to get two drinks quickly although guests were crowded ten deep around the bar. Carrying a glass in each hand, one for Nola and one for himself, he backed off carefully. Lifting his head, he found himself staring at Tangi.

She was separated from him by several couples. But even at that distance, the ravishing quality of her beauty, encased in a simple, skintight white gown, all but floored him. He felt as if he had been struck by a mallet.

"Shut your mouth, Rod," Missy commanded. "You look like the village idiot."

He gulped. "Who's that with her?"

"With Tangi? His name is Don Gann. He's the gym instructor and football coach at our high school."

Rod's jaw got hard and his eyes slitted. "Why, that bastard! Look at him. He's got his arm around her-"

"Hold it. Don has had troubles, too. He's been deeply hurt, like someone else I know-and Tangi is a good hurt doctor. Besides, you're here with Nola, aren't you?"

Rod felt stabbed. "I'm confused, Missy."

She snorted so loudly he jumped. "You emotionally bankrupt bastard. How in hell can you work people out of their troubles if you can't handle your own?"

Rod, suffering, pushed on back to the huge living room in search of Nola.

But at the moment she was in the powder room, and delighted to find no one but Melody there. Of course, "powder room" was a euphemism. It was actually a sort of lounge adjacent to two bathrooms, and built originally as a bedroom, but altered by Missy for just such occasions as this one.

Melody spun around. "Nola, guess what! Bridge just up and asked me to marry him. I came in here... "

She covered her face with her hands and burst into a fit of giggles. "I wasn't too sure whether I would laugh or cry, but I thought this would be the best place for either."

"Oh, Melody! That's wonderful!" Nola tried to keep her voice from breaking. "Congratulations, dear."

Melody looked at the nurse. "Say, what's wrong with you? You look miserable. Does the thought of me as a sister-in-law make you so unhappy?"

"You know that I'm delighted." Nola sat down on the nearest chair. "It's that brass-brained psychiatrist of mine. Of mine! Like hell. He's about as interested in me as he is in paper dolls. I'm so mad I could burst."

"Try crying," said Melody practically. "Or getting drunk."

Nola nodded. "I'll try the latter. Let's go wrap ourselves around a few tall ones. And Melody... I'm awfully happy for you and Bridge. He'll make you a fine husband."

Between the powder room and the central part of the mansion was a kind of foyer that opened on the long veranda. When the girls had passed through previously, it had been blazing with fight; now only a single dim lamp was burning. Both started to remark on it, but Barry Norton stepped out of the shadows and stood in front of them.

"Ah. My two beauties." He gave a short, hard laugh. His pale eyes were as blank as stones. "Melody, you're not supposed to be here. I'm taking you home. You too, Nola."

They stood in silence. Would the magic hold? Would the spell work, as it had in the past?

"Come on," he said dangerously. "We'll leave by way of the veranda."

Nola felt something snap. She was so relieved that she laughed.

Melody gave Barry a single scornful look and said, "Drop dead."

"That's a good idea, only don't do it here,' said Nola. Arm in arm, the girls pushed past him and through the doorway.