Chapter 2
Indeed it was Sara Broomley, speaking to her like a voice out of the past. It had been she and Sara and two other high school buddies who had formed the club they called The Wranglers, an exclusive little female club devoted to the pursuit of males.
"My God, Sara," Mary gasped, "where on earth and how on earth and when on earth did you-"
"Hey, slow down," Sara chuckled from the other end of the line, "one question at a time, honey."
"All right, how did you find me? And do you live here in the city?"
"That's two questions. But I can answer both of 'em real easy. I read in the paper something about a Walter Bates moving to town to be a construction boss on some damn building or other. I just had a hunch that it might be the same Walt Bates you were so gaggy over the year after we got outta high school. And the answer to the second question is yes, I do live here-and so do Joan and Priss."
The news almost floored Mary.
"Joan Wonger and Priss Sanford both live here?"
"Right. I ran into Joan about a year ago, and Priss and her husband moved to town last Christmas. Small world, eh?"
"That's hot the word for it! Lordy, you mean The Wranglers can have a reunion!?"
Sara chuckled again in that same old sultry, deep-throated way she had done back in high school. "You bet your booties, honey. Priss and Joan are as anxious to see you as I am. Say, speaking of booties, you don't have any little feet trampling around, do you?"
"You mean a baby? God, no. Not yet, anyway."
"Wow, I'm glad to hear that. Neither do any of the rest of us. So it makes for more fun time over cards and swimming pools and drinks and stuff. And speaking of that, what the hell are you doing for lunch?"
"Why... why, nothing."
"Hubby isn't coming home?"
"No."
"Great. How about meeting the rest of us at the Golden Drake cafe and bar. Know where it is?"
"Yes, but that's no cafe, is it? I mean, Walt and I passed it the other day and it looked like they serve you out of gold plates."
"They're overpriced bastards, if that's what you mean. But this is special, honey. You meet the three of us and we'll treat you to booze and food."
Mary laughed. "You haven't changed a bit, Sara. Still as blunt as bullet, aren't you."
"I'll drink to that."
"I'll meet you at the Golden Drake."
"See that you do. The four of us tramps can talk for a goddamn week without stopping, I figure."
Mary was still laughing when Sara hung up.
She still couldn't believe it, either. The Wranglers together again! My God, she thought, I haven't seen Priss and Joan in four years. And the only reason I saw Sara two years ago was because she came back to our home town for the funeral of her Aunt Martha.
She didn't even know if Joan was married-or if Sara was still married. She hadn't thought to ask.
"Oh, well," she sighed, dashing off to take the shower she had promised herself, "I guess I'll soon find out!"
The shower didn't take much time at all, but selecting something to wear turned out to be a monumental problem. Mary wanted to look her best, but not overly dressed. She wanted to look sexy and attractive, but not whorish. And above all, she wanted to make an impression that would make her friends suck in their breath with something between envy and admiration. So she wore her tight black dress with the red sash and matching pumps and purse.
She took a taxi to the fancy restaurant which was downtown. The second she entered the place she heard Sara yelling to her from a corner of the sedate restaurant-much to the irritation of the well-manicured, high-rumped hostess who glared at Sara over a stack of newspaper-sized menus.
Mary went over to the table, smiling from ear to ear at the sight of her three lost cronies. Sara was the oldest of them: an ageless twenty-seven, with red hair piled higher than ever, and with good cheekbones and greenish eyes that always looked hungry and lusty. Joan was Mary's age, twenty-five, and her smallish, cute face still looked the same in the soft circle of her dark black hair. But Priss was still the prize. At twenty-three she was the baby of the group, and her golden blonde hair looked almost too pretty to be real.
"Woo-hah, Wranglers!" Mary yelled, in only a half-subdued whoop, making the people at the next table look up and smile.
They went through an exhibition of hugging and kissing and all talking at once. They settled down only when the waiter came over to take the order for their drinks.
"Martinis all around," Sara informed the balding waiter, "and make 'em so lonesome for vermouth, they'll cry!"
The waiter smiled, and Sara watched him walk away with that same old lusty twinkle in her green eyes. "Well, he'd do in a storm, I guess," she cracked, "so get on your knees and pray for rain, gals!"
That dissolved the group in laughter again, and Mary felt that the four years had melted away like smoke.
"So who isn't married?" Mary demanded.
They all shrugged, looking eagerly at Sara to provide the usual joke.
"Wal," Sara hummed, "let's put it this way, Mary. If the three of us were any more married, we'd have to put zippers on our snatches!"
Priss giggled so long and loud that her pretty cheeks flushed the color of dark wine.
"Is everybody as happily married as I am?" Mary asked.
"I certainly am," Joan murmured. "My Bill is the best provider in town."
Sara grinned. "Yeah, and I've seen pictures of him. And I've got a hunch just what he provides every night, too."
"You mean you haven't met Joan's husband?" Mary asked Sara, a little surprised by the reference to pictures."
Sara chuckled and nudged Priss. "You tell her, honey."
Priss grinned, showing those perfect white teeth of hers that had driven the boys wild in high school. "To tell you the truth, Mary, none of us have met each other's husbands."
Mary gaped at them. "But why haven't you?"
"Because we want to keep it that way," Joan explained. "We want it to be just like it was-our own little closed clique. We thought if we started doing all those dumb things that married couples do, you know, patio parties and going out to dances and dinner, we'd take all the fun out of being together again. Lord, I can say things around you three gals that I'd never let Bill hear!"
"Same with all of us," Sara cut in. "My Christ, if Jim ever heard me tell about all those wild times we had in high school, he'd jet me to Reno with my hands tied behind my back."
Mary blinked, but she certainly understood the logic of their attitude. She knew that she wouldn't want Walt to know about some of the things she had done in high school.
"Remember Coach Henderson?" Priss whispered, her cheeks flushing all over again with naughty pleasure.
"Who could forget him," Joan grinned.
Sara chuckled. "I'll bet Buzzsaw Henderson never forgets us!"
Mary remembered exactly what they were talking about, and as the waiter brought the first round of strong martinis, she let her mind flit briefly back to that wild night when they decided that Coach Henderson needed to have his push-ups improved.
It had been the night of the big game at a neighboring town, and they had laid their plan of attack as professionally as a troop of whores stalking a lone marine. The high school football boys always called the coach Buzzsaw because of the size of his penis. They saw the coach's prick all the time in the locker room and the gym shower. Boys talk about things like that, and they go around comparing cock size among themselves the same way girls talk about tit size and pussy length. So the word had been out for months about how the coach's pretty young wife must get it every night like a buzzsaw. And The Wranglers wanted some of it, too.
Their plan had been relatively naive, but enormously successful. Since Priss was one of the cheerleaders for the football team, the coach knew her very well. So she was selected as the perfect decoy to get the coach into their clutches. The plan was simply for Priss to pretend to have a flat tire two blocks away from the coach's house. On his way home from the game the coach would see her, stop to help, and Priss would take over from there.
It was Priss' job to seduce the coach, and to talk him into taking her to a vacant house where they could fuck. If he fell for that-and they knew he'd have to be a superman not to-the rest of them would be waiting to have some fun, too.
The plan was wanton and full of all kinds of crazy dangers, but it worked. The coach was young and hot-blooded, with a nice but pregnant wife at home. He was more than willing to take advantage of some free, seventeen-year-old pussy if the price looked right. So he allowed himself to be taken to the house, allowed himself to be stripped down to a bare-assed screwing condition, and while he was lustily pumping away at Priss' spicy young cunt the others strolled in from a back room and demanded some of the action for themselves.
"Remember the look on Coach Henderson's face?" Joan asked, when the waiter had departed.
"Remember it," Priss breathed, "how could I ever forget it."
"Yes," Sara grinned, "I always did think we came in just at the wrong time. Those blue eyes of yours were going like sparklers, baby. Did we barge in before or after you got your jollies?"
"Sara," Mary gasped, flushing.
But Priss only grinned mischievously.
"All I remember," Joan continued huskily, "was that once that big stud got over his confusion, he was good for the night."
"I'll say," Priss whispered.
"You enjoyed screwing him, too, didn't you, Mary?" Sara teased.
Mary was still blushing. It had been too long since she had carried on such spicy conversations with her pals. But she was beginning to realize that they were used to the sessions.
"Well, I... "
"You did enjoy it, honey," Sara smiled. "Hell, I remember how you gave that poor dope a big hickie on his neck just as your hot doughnut started leaking like a faucet. Say, I wonder how the shit Buzzsaw explained that mark to his pregnant wife...?"
"Sara, you're awful," Joan giggled.
"I get worse. For example, remember the time we hijacked those two cute farm boys, those two brothers that lived out on old man Stone's place?"
"They were twins," Priss said. "Johnny and Jimmy Sizemore."
Sara grinned wickedly. "You would remember the part about size, dear. Not that I blame you. Lord, I've heard all my life about doubling your pleasure, but those two big-pricked young... "
The waiter interrupted them again, to ask if they were ready to order.
"Yeah," Sara snapped, "bring us another round of these soda pops-and for Pete's sakes put some gin in 'em!"
The waiter shrugged and sneaked away.
"Where was I," Sara grumbled. "Oh, yep, I remember. Those two twins, those cute farm boys. Hey, who did what to who up in that damn barn loft?"
"You should know," Mary breathed. "I remember that it was you who got Jimmy Sizemore to take off his overalls."
"Oh, yes," Sara grinned. "I guess I wasn't too subtle about it, at that. But when I saw that big bulge in his pants, I thought what the hell."
"Joan was the one that got the best of that deal," Priss insisted.
They looked at Joan, and she couldn't keep the naughty twinkle out of her eyes. "Well," she admitted, slowly, "I do seem to recall that Johnny and Jimmy both insisted that I come back out the next Sunday to learn to ride their horse."
"Ride their what," Sara grinned.
"I know it sounds silly. I don't expect you to believe me, darn it, but I really did think they wanted to teach me to ride a horse. They taught me to ride, okay, but it was back up in the barn loft, and it was two big horsies."
"Stallions, you mean," Priss breathed.
"I wonder what those two prize studs are doing right now," Sara mused, licking at the rim of her martini glass with the tip of her tongue.
"Either bailing hay or rolling in it," Mary smiled.
"Wish I was rolling with 'em," Sara shot back.
Mary kept smiling. "You know you don't mean that, Sara. You're happily married."
"Sure I am, but I'm not dead. And I'll bet Jim wouldn't toss off a little free pussy if he got the chance."
"Your husband?" Mary echoed.
"Uh-huh. And my guess is that he would be about as faithful as a tomcat if something bouncy walked by and winked."
All three immediately protested to Sara that she was probably mistaken.
"Wanna bet?" she responded, gamely. "Listen, a man is a man. What makes you think my husband, or your damn husbands, are one bit more holy than old Coach Henderson was? Hell, give 'em half a chance and they'd screw their way to China with anything in loose panties."
"Ahem," the waiter said, standing beside the table with his balding head turning pink. "Your drinks, ladies."
He put the drinks down, but Sara couldn't resist giving him something else to blush about.
"Hey, Mister," Sara whispered into the poor guy's ear, "your fly's unbuttoned."
He walked away like he had a crowbar up his ass.
"Honestly, Sara," Mary sighed, "you're going to get us thrown out of this place."
"Good. Then we won't have to pay for these sodas they call drinks. Now where was I? Oh, yep. Back to our faithful hubbies. I'll bet you a bag of rubies each that... "
"You'd lose," Joan said, curtly. "I don't know about the rest of you, but my Bill is as true to me as ever."
"So is Greg," Priss chimed in. "I'd trust Greg with a woman on a desert island. How about you, Mary?"
Mary took a deep, dedicated breath. "Walt has never even looked at another female." Sara let out a little muffled whoop of derision.
"Wow, what is this, a meeting of saints? Listen, I'll bet I could crawl into the sack with any man in this town, your hubbies included. And I'll bet they'd hump like they'd never seen an altar!"
"You're getting tipsy, Sara," Priss said.
"Drunk," Joan huffed.
"Like crap I am! You three trusting souls care to give me the signal to try my luck with your husbands?"
There was dead silence for a few moments.
"Well?"
"All I know is," Mary managed, "that Walt loves me and I love him."
"Who the Constitution is talking about love?" Sara snapped. "I love Jim, too, but I'm talking about a quickie. I'm talking about what Coach Henderson did with us. He didn't rush home and divorce his wife, you dummies. Hell, for all I know he appreciated her even more after we balled him. But the point is, he balled strange pussy-and so will any man alive with healthy balls!"
The people at the next table were looking, and the two men at the table were shyly grinning.
"See what I mean?" Sara whispered.
"Well, I wouldn't tempt Bill with anything like that," Joan said, primly.
"Sure you wouldn't," Sara shrugged. "You're afraid I'm right."
"It isn't that."
"I say it is. I say we oughta draw cocktail straws and play a little game at seeing how easy it is to play house with each other's husbands."
They stared at Sara as if she had just farted in a fishbowl.
"Are... are you out of your mind?" Priss stammered.
"Nope, I never felt more sensible. Hey, what's happened to the old school spirit, gang? What's happened to the old bang 'em, gang, ball 'em, gang jazz? We Wranglers used to hang together."
"But we're married now, for God's sake!" Joan grunted.
"So what," Sara purred, "so we're keeping it in the family because we're such good friends. Besides, every damned one of you has slipped a little after your marriage. I know for a fact, Joan, that you fooled around with a car salesman who worked for your Bill."
"Well, I... "
"And you, Priss, how's about that sailor last summer who followed you to a swimming pool?"
"That wasn't my fault."
"So why didn't you yell rape when you went with him to the motel, huh?"
Priss blushed. "Well, so I slipped once. But he seemed so... uh... lonesome. And he reminded me of my brother."
"Your nine-inch brother, no doubt," Sara meowed. "And as for our Little Miss Mary Sunshine here... "
"You haven't got a damned thing on me," Mary snorted.
"Listen to her," Sara grinned. "She wants the Virgin of the Year award, yet! Or do I have to tell the whole glorious story of you and your sexy brother-in-law, darling?"
"You leave Willy out of this," Mary snapped, shakily.
"Uh-huh. The cards go on the table. Would you believe that three hours before she married her husband, Mary was letting that lovely hunk of immorality named Willy Bates get a good-bye diddle between her legs. Lord help us, honey, did you do it with him in your wedding gown?"
Despite herself, Mary found her mouth twitching up in a helpless, defeated little grin.
"All right, you heartless bitch," she smiled, softly, "you win. We're still something like the old Wranglers, I guess."
"You're damned right we are," Sara breathed, earnestly, "and all I'm saying is that it might be fun to find out if our husbands are any better or worse than we were."
"Well," Joan muttered, thoughtfully, "I guess if Bill is capable of playing around, I'd rather find it out from one of you three than to find it out from a gossiping neighbor."
"How about you, Priss?"
"Same here, I... I guess."
Mary could feel a hot little knot of dull fear in her tummy, almost as if she dreaded to find out something like that about Walt. But she was still a Wrangler, after all.
"I'll go along with it," she said.
Sara grinned with the triumphant pleasure of a true nympho, the type who loves justifying the chance to fuck by calling it a necessary evil.
"Hey, waiter," Sara called, making more heads turn, "bring us something with four straws!"