Chapter 10

For a few days it seemed as if Susan had actually received an unexpected bonus from the three-way adventure with Lucia Moreland. Gil, stimulated by the affair, was very amorous. The nights around the Emory house were quite interesting for Susan. Gil was so much like old times that Susan began to wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to seek some sort of outside stimulation every time their marriage began to go a bit flat in the bed department.

Then Gil had to go to the bank and borrow two hundred dollars to pay the taxes on his mother's house, and he was once again the old Gil, harried, worried, working late at the store.

Susan worked two evenings that week in Lucia's store. She was relieved to find that Lucia was not the sort who wanted to talk about the party. When Susan thought about the things that had happened, she got a little sick to the stomach. She didn't suffer from guilt or curse herself. There was just the little sick feeling when she remembered.

Lucia acted as if nothing had happened. She would touch Susan in that warm, friendly way of hers but she did not make any overt moves toward anything sexual.

The Friday-night steak-party came. Dinner was late because Susan had to stay at the store until closing time, but it was enjoyable, nevertheless. It was nice to get back into familiar routine with just her and Gil at the table, making conversation in a relaxed way.

The weekend began with a long Saturday at the store for Susan, and then there was a quiet Sunday. Gil worked the crossword puzzles and Susan scanned the paper from cover to cover, and there was a ballgame on TV to while away the afternoon. Susan, rested by the long, easy, loafing day, thought it would be nice to get into bed early for a bit of marital exercise. She suggested it.

It turned out to be a dismal flop. Gil wasn't really with her. His thoughts were a million miles away. Susan could almost see the worrisome dollar signs before his eyes. He was thinking about the shop, instead of about her. His love-making was weak, uninteresting. Susan felt almost cheated.

She found herself thinking seriously about Gil and herself the next day. After he went to work and she had done her work, she sat at the dining-room table with coffee and looked at the wall and thought, where are we going? Five years of marriage was only a beginning. She wanted to be able to celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary by getting mildly potted and taking her husband to bed. What would they be like in twenty years? Already, clouds were appearing on the horizon of their marriage.

She decided to be completely impartial and analyze the situation.

First, there was the worry of having to support Gil's mother and her house. This could be faced, although it had a direct and unfortunate bearing on her desires to have a child. So, her big complaint was that their marriage was not allowed to follow the natural course, the course which began with the birth of a baby and went on from there until they had the house as full of kids as they wanted it.

That, really, was the whole situation. Oh, she had some mild complaints about the sex life of the modern American housewife, namely herself....

Could it be that she thought too much about bed?

Well, what else was there? If you can't have a baby or redo the living room or take a trip ... The whole world was orientated around sex. All you had to do was pick up a newspaper, read a magazine, turn on the television, listen to the lyrics of the so-called music so popular with the kids.

Sex, sex, sex-it was used to peddle everything from automobiles to pills for constipation. The whole world told women to be sexy. Girls started dating at the age of 12 and got knocked up at 13 and no one seemed to be too upset about it.

Everyone, she thought, worships the great god, sex. Men slave to make money for sex, to be able to buy the prettiest woman, whether she be wife or just a one-hundred buck whore. Little girls were brought up to be good mothers, good, dutiful wives, but what was the first duty any wife was asked to perform? The classic position, flat on her young back, acquiescent and receptive.

Was she, herself, dotty about sex?

She hadn't always been. She didn't start dating until she was 15, wasn't allowed to date a boy in a car until she was 16. Other girls in her classes had steady boyfriends and were making it when she was allowed only to go to parties, then only when one set of parents picked her up and her own parents came to get her when the party ended at an early hour.

Her home wasn't a fanatically religious one, but she went to church almost every Sunday. There was a lot of good, plain, decent morality in her home. Her mother and father were happily married, easy together, happy with each other to this very day. She would have bet her last pair of nylons that her mother would have tackled a brace of tigers before she would have jumped into bed with a Lesbian, much less with a Lesbian and her husband.

She was confused. It was a little late to begin feeling guilty about the Lucia affair. That was over and done. She wasn't hurt. A bath the next morning, a complete rinse, inside and out, and she was like new. Gil, too.

But that was the modern way of thinking about it. Wash away the traces, and it didn't happen.

It was also very modern to think that she had been rewarded by Gil's new interest in sex, brought about, no doubt, by his stimulating evening with Lucia. But that was a bit sick, wasn't it? At any rate, it didn't last. Take that bit last night. They hadn't really shared the love-act. They were two separate people using each other's bodies for self gratification. She wasn't even sure that Gil had enjoyed it much.

Perhaps the trouble was with her. Was she unexciting to Gil? Without undue egotism, she rejected that. Men looked at her and liked her. She wasn't bad at all.

Why, then, was the honeymoon over? Why wasn't there a glow of warmth where there had once been bonfires? How could she help them regain that young zest which used to make their nights pleasant and exciting?

She could try harder. She had to admit that she, herself, wasn't as fiery as she had been. There had been a time in her life when just a look from Gil would start her steaming. Now she sometimes approached the sex-act with cold deliberation, doing it only because she knew, once it was begun, that it would be good, beginning it without the compulsion she had once known. It was fine once it was started, except for the vague feeling that she was using nature's gift for a cold selfish purpose. Sometimes Gil would say, "Hey, wanta do it tonight?"

And she'd say, "Yes, it might be nice."

It was crude. It was wrong, somehow.

Perhaps after two people lived with each other for a long time there was need for outside stimulation. Gil's fire and eagerness after the three-way party seemed to support that contention. But the stimulation hadn't lasted more than three days, and then things were back to normal.

Would they have to enter into a sex adventure once a week to keep themselves interested? And why worry about being interested? Why not just let nature take its course. If they both wanted sex, why not take it. If not, let it ride. Why was sex so important?

Because there was nothing else.

She was enough of a prude to rebel at that idea. She didn't like to think herself a slave to sex. She didn't like to think of doing the things they had done with Lucia. She didn't want to have to use outside erotic stimulation to make Gil want her. She wanted him to want her for herself, herself alone.

But, she thought, let's not blame it all on Gil. After all, she had been thoroughly stimulated herself. She had never been so wildly excited in her life. She had let herself go that night, for sure. Once with Lucia in the storeroom, twice on the bed. She had acted the part of the libertine very well.

There must be something to think about other than sex, she told herself. She poured herself another cup of coffee and thought about financial problems. She thought about Gil's mother and her house and the never-ending bills, the continuous drain.

From there, it was logical to go once again to Gil's refusal to let her have a baby and she was back where she had begun, with sex. Thinking about having a baby made her hope once again that perhaps the act would not be so meaningless, so purely pleasure-seeking, if it were being used for the purpose nature intended, that of making a baby.

She could think of nothing more wildly exciting than to be able to open herself, really open herself to Gil, and let Gil really have her, seep into her, seed her. That would be true togetherness.

Damn, damn, damn Gil and damn his mother!

Time and time again she had to remind herself that it wasn't Gil's fault. Actually, she was just overemphasizing sex again. She was letting sex be the dominant factor in her life when it shouldn't be. She would work toward more togetherness in a living way, a non-sexual way. She'd try to build the marriage in other ways.

They could live a good life. She would forget sex. She damned sure wouldn't ask Gil to take her to bed. She'd wait until he was ready and, perhaps, by letting him choose the times, he'd be restored, vigorous, aroused fully.

She tried it. She waited and waited. She tried to be sweet and very considerate, and she couldn't see any change. Things were not bad. They just didn't change. The days went by, and her naturally passionate nature began to make itself felt. She became resentful when Gil kissed her goodnight in a matter-of-fact way and turned over to go to sleep. She found herself snapping at him for no important reason, and he snapped back.

All right, dammit, she had tried. What was she supposed to be, a nun? She caught herself thinking erotically of the affair with Lucia. She tried to suppress die thoughts, but they were too stimulating. It was easy to remember the bliss of Lucia's lovemaking. The temptation to whistle for Lucia again was very great. She almost did, one evening when they had closed the store. She wanted, more than anything in the world, to go into Lucia's arms.

She decided, compelling herself to be strong, that forcing Gil to go to bed with her would be the lesser of two evils. At least, she would be keeping her desire at home. She didn't want to start the fires burning with Lucia again. She didn't want the guilt feelings nor the complications.

She went home that night determined to vent her pent-up need on Gil, and she found that she didn't have to make the first move after all. The foundation of a game of mattress polo had been laid for her by the tabloid paper which she had bought at the supermarket days ago. She had never shown it to Gil. She had pushed it into the drawer with her cookbook and forgotten it. Gil was seated at the dining-area table when she came in, reading the paper. "Hi, honey," she said.

"Pretty spicy reading material you've been hiding around the kitchen," Gil said, grinning at her over the top of the paper.

"I wasn't hiding it," she said, resenting the accusation. "I bought it and forgot all about it. I brought it home for you."

"For me?"

"I thought you'd get a laugh out of it," Susan said. "That big story on the front page, especially."

"You think it's funny?"

"Yes."

"You mean funny ha ha as opposed to funny peculiar."

"Funny ha ha," Susan said. "I'll bet they made it up. Can you imagine a grown woman doing those things with little boys?"

"She was one sexy bitch."

"I think she was one crazy bitch if she really did those things."

Gil lowered the paper. "Seems pretty sexy to me," he said. "I can just imagine that girl's pants sizzling. She must have been really stirred up. I get quite a mental picture, just imagining how they must have looked."

"I get sick," Susan said.

"That's because the average, normal woman can't really understand a truly sexy woman," Gil said lightly.

It hit her squarely in the seat of her frustrations. "What? What did you say?"

"What I mean," Gil said, "is that you're a normal, healthy woman. You don't let sex become a big thing with you."

"You're implying that I'm not a very sensual woman?" Susan said.

"I don't mean that at all."

"Well, what do you mean?"

"I mean that there are people in the world who are a little nutty on the subject of sex, that's all. This old gal in the story, for example. I'd like to have been there when she got that case of hot-pants. She wouldn't have needed a bunch of Cub Scouts, you can bet that."

Swift anger sent the blood to Susan's face. Here she was, about to perish from need for him, and he was telling her she wasn't really sexy. He was saying that he could be excited by a slut of a woman who did things with little boys, but that he wasn't very worked up over little, normal Susan.

"Does that type of woman appeal to you?" she asked, keeping her voice low with effort.

"There's something about a promiscuous woman which brings out the beast in a man, I guess. They're like a bitch-dog in heat. They put out something which appeals to men the way the scent of a bitch attracts old stud-dogs. A truly wild woman makes a man feel his oats."

"Do you put Lucia in that class?" Susan asked.

"No, not really. She's a hot number, though. I'd guess she's pretty careful about whom she plays around with because she's a level-headed girl. A real nymph doesn't care about anything except getting it."

Susan felt as if she had been rejected, in a way, by the man she loved. She was hard hit. Something, however, drove her on. Coming on top of all that had happened, the lapse into immorality with Lucia and the three-way party, coming after her agonizing self-appraisal and her unsuccessful decision to make sex less important in her life, the realization that Gil was more excited by the thought of a slut than by her was a blow.

There was, in the male animal, a strangeness she had never been able to understand. A male can be excited by pictures, by simple, arty shots of a nude woman. A male can be excited by smutty stories. A male can be excited by so many things that have little or no effect on a woman.

She wasn't ready to accept the fact that the story of a middle-aged nymphomaniac taking on a Cub Scout troop could excite her husband when the clean, willing body of his not unattractive wife could not.

"But Lucia excites you," Susan said, trying to understand.

"She did a fine job one night, didn't she?" Gil chuckled.

Susan smiled disarmingly. She had to know more about his thinking. "Would you like to do that again?"

"I don't know, honey. Would you?"

"It was more your party than mine," Susan said. "After all, you had two women."

"You didn't do badly," Gil said, acting as if it were all one huge joke. "You should have seen yourself go into orbit when Lucia was working on you."

Just how far had he grown away from her? "Was it exciting for you when she was making love to me?" she asked. "It was interesting."

"You could have joined us," she said, leading him on. "How?"

"Well, when she was kneeling over me you could have come up behind her and...." She made a suggestive motion with her hands.

Gil licked his lips thoughtfully. Susan studied his face as she continued talking. "Just think. Lucia's nice, full body and you taking her while she was doing me."

Gil laughed, somewhat nervously, Susan thought. He rose from the chair. She saw with grim satisfaction that he was aroused. She was sickened. She evaded his grasp at first, but he caught her and pulled her to him. She could feel his apparent readiness.

When she was only a child her mother caught her watching two dogs coupling on the lawn. Her mother's shocked, angry words had made an impression on her. She had been sent into the house as if she had been doing something wrong, when all she was doing was watching something she had never seen before. It made her feel dirty and shameful.

Now she knew that feeling again, knowing that her husband had been stimulated by the story about a woman who did things with little boys. She resented being made to feel that way. Sex shouldn't be dirty. Sex was a clean, healthy game to be enjoyed by married people. Gil had no right to dirty it. She tried to escape, but he held her. He was pressing against her hard, demanding her surrender with his lips.

Finally she relaxed and accepted his kiss. She didn't return it, but he persisted. His tongue tried to arouse her, and when he lowered his hands and lifted her into place by the round, smooth handles which were the curves of her rump, she knew that she was going to be responsive. The awareness was there. There were strong indications that the wild storm of passion would be set into motion quickly.

"I've got to fix dinner," she said when he broke the kiss for a moment.

"Not now!" His lips brushing her ear, sending shivers running down her neck.

"You need food after a long day's work."

"We'll send out for a pizza later," Gil said. "Or maybe I'll just make you my dinner."

Well, it was nice. It was fine, very fine, to feel his passion, to know that he wanted her, wanted her badly enough to forget dinner. She let her body flow inward to curl against his, to feel his hard chest pressed against her breasts.

She gave herself to him, accepting the fact that erotic stimuli, not her own body, herself, had aroused him. She followed him eagerly to the bedroom and undressed swiftly.

It was one of those lovely times when two persons seem to melt together and become one entity, when two bodies weld themselves with such heat that nothing, it seems, will ever make them two again. Soul-love poured out of her, responding to the stimulus of body-love, and she felt that her great well of love could not help but be shared by Gil.

Then Gil blew the entire, beautiful moment.

"Let's have Lucia over Saturday night," he said.

"What?" she gasped.

"Let's have a party with Lucia again."

"Oh, Gil!" It was horrible. He had destroyed all that beauty with the revelation that he had not even been thinking about her. He'd been thinking about Lucia!

"What's wrong?" He slowed his movements. "Are you trying to tell me you didn't enjoy it with Lucia?"

"Let's-don't-talk," she said, fighting to regain the reality. She wanted to return quickly to nirvana.

"It makes me sexy to talk about it," Gil said.

The damage was done. There was passion left. She couldn't be brought to a physical peak and then have it die entirely. But the sheer loveliness was gone. Now it was mere mechanical, physical satisfaction. She continued her motion.

"Why do you like to talk about it?" she asked.

"It was kind of exciting, don't you think?"

"Yes, it was," she admitted.

"It was damned exciting," Gil said. "And the best part of it, I think, was when she went with you. Man, you were hot."

"Yes, I guess I was."

"You guess?" He chuckled. "Hell, you were sizzling."

She finished unexpectedly. One moment she was striving for it with mechanical determination, lunging into his body, then it was there. One moment she was reaching, the next she was gasping, mouthing his lips hungrily while it pounded inside of her. It was good and powerful, but it wasn't complete. It was just release.

"Hey!" Gil said.

"It was a quickie," she told him.

"Sneak up on you?"

"Yes."

"You don't mind if I continue?"

"Silly," she said. She made it good for him. He went on and on and, try as she might, she could not recreate any interest. She begrudged the waste. Any other time, she would have been happy that he took so long. Any other time, she would have gone twice, but now she was dead inside. Everything about it had lost interest. She didn't have time, then, to think about it. She was too busy making it good for him.

"Wouldn't you like to do it again with Lucia?" Gil asked.

"Tes." That was what he wanted her to say. "Really?" His movements were more firm. He was near the verge. "I'd like it."

"Saturday night," Gil said. "We'll have a party and...."

He told her what they would do. He put it in basic language. His movements were wild. He was making himself passionate by thinking of Lucia.

Well, damn it, if that was the way he wanted it....

"We'll all get naked," she began. "You can take me and then her."

It was working. She made her voice soft and sensual. And, as she whispered the words to him, she felt his hard-driving body tense. It was like beating herself with a whip. It hurt. She went on, driven by some perverse wish to feel the full extent of Gil's treachery.

He climaxed. Then he sighed, made little after-movements, kissed her hard, then softly let his weight down on her, breathing hard.

After a long time he said, "Do you really want to, Susan?"

She knew what he meant. She had hoped that he was merely carried away during the heat of the sex act, that he would forget about it when the act, itself, was over, when he was sated. But he still wanted to talk about another party with Lucia. He wanted Lucia. He didn't want his wife. He had used his wife's body, just now, as a mere substitute for Lucia.

"If you do," she said wearily.

"I guess I do," he said. "Not as much as I wanted to a few minutes ago, but it might be fun to do it once more."

"Just once more?"

"I don't know."

Hurt and anger were strong in her. "I know something that might be even more fun," she said.

"What's that?"

She eased herself out from under him. She went, nude and angry enough not to worry about being seen through the kitchen windows, to grab the tabloid paper. On the way back to the bedroom, she folded the paper to expose the classified-ads pages.

"This might be more fun," she said, thrusting the paper into Gil's hands, pointing to the first ad in the personals column.

Gil read it aloud: "Fun loving Florida couple would like to meet broadminded couples interested in swinging parties. She's a swinger, thirty-six twenty-four thirty-six. He's considered handsome." Gil looked up at Susan. 'Tor Christ's sake!" he said.

"Well, do you expect to have all the fun?" She smiled at him, hiding the anger and hurt. "What do you think I am, some kind of queer? If we're going to have sex-parties, I'd like a more interesting partner. Lucia doesn't have the right body appendage for me."

"But this is an open invitation to swap wives," Gil said in disbelief.

"That's the way I read it," Susan said, getting some satisfaction from his shock.

"Dammit, Susan!"

"What's wrong, lover? I shared you, didn't I? You had your fun. Why can't I have some fun too, if we're going in for that sort of thing in a big way?"

She had won. She felt it. That, she thought grimly, hiding her true feelings behind an innocent smile, should stop the fun and games for a while. She wasn't going to let him know how she really felt. She would never tell him that going to bed with another man was the least of her ambitions.

Gil covered his confusion by reading the ad again. He was frowning. "This can't be for real," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Hell, why would anyone have to advertise?" He put the paper down. "Boy, what a blackmail situation this would be! You couldn't tell what kind of a nut would answer an ad like this."

"I suppose there are ways," Susan said. "I would imagine that there'd be preliminary letters and exchanges of pictures and then a meeting somewhere."

"I'll bet the editors of this paper just put in these ads to attract attention," Gil said.

"Could be," Susan said. She felt her victory slipping away with Gil's rising doubts about the authenticity of the ad. "Wanta try it and find out?" She moved to the dresser and began to apply cold cream to her face, getting ready for bed, forgetting, in her agitation, that it was early and that she hadn't fed Gil.

"What are you doing?" Gil asked.

"The usual maintenance work."

"It's a little early, isn't it?"

She remembered. "Hoo, boy!" she said. I'll bet you're hungry."

"Any stray bears better watch out," Gil said.

He sounded so natural saying that! She smiled at him. Perhaps she had made her point. Perhaps now they could work toward healing the small breach between them.

She didn't think any more about the paper. The last time she saw it, it was on the bed. She went ahead of Gil into the kitchen and prepared his meal. She felt sure that her suggestion she take on a man had stopped all Gil's thoughts about further sex-adventures. Gil wasn't abnormally jealous, but she knew from past experience that he was a typical enough man to think his wife was his own private property. She had, she thought, won an important victory.

So it seemed for the next few days. Gil didn't mention Lucia. When mutual desire put them into bed, he performed very creditably without once mentioning Lucia. In general, life in the Emory house returned to normal. She worked two evenings plus Saturday, and Gil put in a lot of extra hours at the shop. They had dinner with Gil's mother, and Susan listened patiently as the older woman complained about being alone with such a large house to keep. Susan suggested, for the 100th time, that Mrs. Emory sell the house and move in with them. Mrs. Emory made agitated talk about not being able to bear the thought of leaving her home. Susan told herself that, mother or no, she would wait no longer than one more year to start a family.