Chapter 2
Rita was no expert on the psychology or sex; neither, was she a fool. In the five years that she'd known Henry Ridgewood two of them worked in his downtown law office she'd been humiliatingly exposed to the man's sexual idiosyncrasies. She knew,' for instance, that despite the imperial hierarchy with which he ran his office, come bedtime: Henry Ridgewood was diametrically opposite. There existed in his craggy body that overpowering need to submit. And adding to the paradox, Henry insisted that Rita dress as a teenager a reversal of the roles of punishing father and obedient daughter.
Three years ago it had gagged her to submit to his fiendish perversions; but she had been bound to him by the need of a job and by his threats that he would make it impossible for her to get another. But that was behind her, she thought. Now, because of a change in personality that defied explanation, she was no longer afraid of him.
"Is it those pills? Is this why I feel powerful, why he seems so weak?"
She looked at him disdainfully. Henry hadn't changed. Not one iota. With the arrival of .desire, his watery blue eyes had grown sad and penitent: a little boy about to be punished. And fittingly, in a role that must have stretched to the foggy years of his youth, he now bowed his head and awaited her command to come forth.
In the past, she had enacted this role because she was forced to. But now it was something different. Now the power was real. And she could humble him at will, she thought Under the threat of exposure, she could make him crawl at her feet and kiss her boots. And while this "new feeling" puzzled her, she made no effort to conceal her exaltation.
Her breasts swelled as though suddenly infused with the milk of motherhood; to humble so politically mighty a man was as thrilling as anything she had ever experienced. It imbued her with strength the power to hurt.
"Come here, Henry." Her tone was impersonal, cold.
He did not move. Time was static and the sudden silence was overpowering.
Rita was filled with sudden anger. She remembered the humiliating experiences that Henry had subjected her to, the evil perversions he had reaped upon her, his threats: Either do it, or I'll fire you!
More forcefully, surprising even herself, she repeated her command. As though hearing her for the first time, Henry slowly raised his eyes. His face had grown flaccid; fear was ubiquitous.
Now, and obeying a will greater than his own, he came hesitantly from his chair and fell before her feet. He rested his withered face against her bare knees, cradled her legs in his arms. He was the simpering personification of abject humility, and if she had ordered him to grovel on his belly like some whipped dog, to lick her boots and cringe at her feet, he would have done no less.
Rita remained inert, choosing to savor this queenly moment of domination before it passed to the next. Her sudden passivity did not pique Henry's disapproval; instead, he sank deeper and deeper into his role of the beggar, bestowing on her white leather? boots a servile torrent of kisses.
Rita exacted new thrills from her cringing host She tugged at the shoulders of hissuit coat and forced him to kiss her curvy calves, then the bare sheen of her dimpled knees.
Henry Ridgewood was the compliant sycophant, the toad of her wishes; no degradation was too great, with he the slave and she the master.
Crawling on his knees, he proffered hot wet kisses up and down the pristine loveliness of Rita's bare thighs. Rita balled up her fists and closed her eyes, He was horrible and evil and it sickened her to hear him whimper his adulation. She pushed him away angrily.
"Why did you do that?" He looked ready to cry.
"Cause you make me sick!"
"Rita!"
"It's true. You do. I put up with these sick perversions of yours for two whole years, but that was because I needed a job. Because I was dumb and didn't know any better. But not now, Henry. From now on we're going to do things my-way."
He stood up, adjusted his clothing. "What in hell's name has got into you? It was your idea to come here. Remember?"
Rita said, "That's right, Henry. It was my idea. But not for this."
He slicked back his hair. He frowned. "Maybe it's time for me to leave."
"It's early yet. Sit down."
But Henry was glancing at his watch, frowning.
"Rita, I've more important things to do than play games." He glanced wistfully at her breasts. "This has evidently been a mistake, and I don't know why you asked me here and now I'm not sure that I care."
"It's, still early," she repeated.
"It is not early and please be' reasonable."
Rita felt a fresh invasion of anger. Be reasonable? What was that? Was it reasonable that Henry Ridge-Wood should now be able to make a hasty exit and return to respectability, to a $60,000 home, to security.
He was willing to reap perversions upon her and yet he was disinclined to help her open her shop for teens. Was that reasonable? And wasn't this dress shop a means for the very things that Henry already had: Security, wealth, position. Didn't he think she also had a right to them?
"I do wish you'd stay a while longer," she said, holding her temper in check.
But he couldn't. His position must be clear to her, he said. She had worked in his office, therefore, she knew of his commitments. And now his tone was a scolding one.
Rita was disappointed, but not defeated. She crossed her legs, affording Henry a generous view of her svelte thighs, and she met his arguments with controlled sweetness. She pleaded for ten more minutes; but Henry was adamant; he must go and now.
Rita felt the tide of anger growing, sweeping out of control. Henry hadn't said a single word about her store and without his help there could be no store. He was only interested in his sick perversions and his public office that was all.
Why, she wondered, was he forcing her into the position of having to threaten him? It wasn't her nature to step on people to gain her way. Why was he making her be this way?
"Henry, if you could just spare five minutes ... .
"But I can't," he said resolutely, "and that's that!"
Rita angrily snapped a cigarette from her pack. She envisioned Henry Ridgewood sailing toward Temple Heights in his new powder-blue Cadillac convertible, being welcomed at the door of his luxurious home by a butler, being swept inside by his gray-haired elegantly dressed wife: Dinner at the Ridgewoods'.
"But what about my dress shop for teens?"
He scowled derisively a look that said: "That again?"
"I've already told you what I think of the idea. There's nothing left to discuss." Was he refusing to help?
Her skirt slid higher on her tanned thighs. "Henry, I think...." And she hadn't wanted to say this. "...I think you owe me something."
He scowled. "I owe you nothing!" And then he went to his soapbox. "You want me to condone that which is immoral, support that which, by its very nature, is tangibly illegal; in short, you want me to commit political suicide, and all to satisfy this idiotic whim of yours."
"It's not a whim!" Her eyes blazed. She came to her feet.
"Whatever it is," he said, making final adjustment of his necktie, "it hasn't a ghost of a chance to succeed. I won't support it, so don't ask me."
Her eyes narrowed, grew dark. He had refused her. The mutation of turtle to lion, she mused; but what a fool!
"I could make a lot of trouble for you, Henry. A lot-He was unimpressed, even managing a tight smile.
He said:
"I've thought that over, Rita. No one would believe you."
"And why not?"
The smile broadened. "Because I'm the Law Director here in Temple City, and you ... you're...."
"A whore," she finished. "Is that what you'd tell them?"
He shot her a cold empty look. "That isn't what I was about to say. But if the shoe fits...." He went to the closet for his overcoat. "...there's no need for a scene, Rita. This has been fun and . . His watery blue eyes flitted over her body. "...it ought to end with a smile."
She scorned his attempts to pacify her. Her threats had succeeded in drawing him to this motel and she was willing to grant that that had been an unworthy approach but now he had given the matter some logical afterthought, and he envisioned himself as safely in the "driver's seat".
With bitter contempt, she watched him don his gloves, the ubiquitous dark glasses. He exuded victory like an overripe grape, she thought. He was just as proud of himself now as he had been that first week she'd worked in his office, seduced her with the subtle (? ) guise of "valuing her job."
"Goodnight, Rita."
She was silent, letting him reach the door before she dropped her bomb. Then:
"Walk out that door, Henry, and you're dead!"
Henry was amused. He turned slowly. "Going to kill me?"
"Not in the way you're thinking." She leered. "But you'll be dead in politics. Dead in Temple City and dead wherever you go."
"You're making sounds like a Republican." And it was one of his rare attempts at humor.
"But I'll make others sounds, Henry." She smiled with malicious triumph and rushed on. "Remember, Henry, how you used to go to an outside phone booth and call me up and talk to me for hours on end?"
"So?"
"But do you remember the things you used to say, the things you forced me to say?" And, of course, he did, Rita thought. Henry had always drawn a kick out of filthy phone conversations another little quirk of his and one that she had reluctantly nourished. "You used to say, 'Rita, I'd like to...' And shall I finish, Henry?"
"Really, Rita...."
But she rushed on:
"Suppose I told you that I had tape-recorded some of those juicy conversations. What would you say?"
His political urbanity was unruffled. Smiling boldly, he said, "I'd call you a damn liar, Rita!"
"I kind of thought you'd say that." She reached into her purse and tossed Henry a roll of recording tape. "I've been hurt too many times, Henry, not to have taken a few precautions." She gave him a wan smile. "When you reach your office in the morning, you might play that."
"You bitch!"
She almost laughed. The monumental pillar of legal efficiency had at last crumbled.
"I know it's inadmissible as court evidence," she continued, "but don't you agree that it'll raise a few eyebrows?"
"You blackmailing little bitch!" he spat.
"Tsk, tsk."
"You won't get away with this." 'Stop it, Henry. You sound like a soap opera." His face grew red. Suavity was gone. He threatened to explode.
Rita studied him, watched anger subside to resignation. She walked slowly toward him.
"Sit down, Henry. It's early." And then, as he slumped resignedly into a chair, she rushed for the suitcase she'd brought along and opened it. In breathless exhilaration, she showed Henry some of the articles that her new teen shop would handle. "Just feel those slippery patent leather shoes, Henry. Don't they do something to you? ... and this rubber girdle ... girls love black. It'll sell like wildfire!"
And then there was other wardrobe: Lacy silk negligees for the up-and-coming teenager; a French bra that would titillatingly expose her rosy nipples; and finally, a daring black sheath of scintillating satin.
"Can't you imagine what these clothes will do for the teenager's ego?"
Henry Ridgewood had remained uninterestedly silent throughout Rita's demonstration of her fetish wardrobe, but now he was obliged to speak: .
"Rita, I don't know what's come over you, but this is dynamite of the worst order. It will blow the lid off this town, and me with it. It-it's crazy!"
A reckless impulse maybe those pills, she thought stirred Rita to new mischief. She closed her suitcase and went to his side. She began unbuttoning his overcoat.
"Anything is possible if you work at it, Henry." She loosened his necktie. "And speaking of things working...." And it was off with the dark glasses. "...I know you're capable of re-election, but what I'd like to know...." She pressed her warm breasts against his face. "...are you capable of something else?"
Without uttering a word, Henry rose indignantly from his chair and slammed his way out of the motel. Rita heard his Cadillac tearing hell out of the gravel. Then he was peeling onto the highway, speeding into the night.
For a full five minutes, Rita was swept with laughter. She had put him properly in his place, made a fool of him; and questioning his virility, or the lack of it: What greater wound could she inflict to a man's ego than this?
She danced in glee, stood at the Venetian blinds to stare out at the lights that pinpointed Temple City, felt a power and strength she had never before known.
She had Dr. Grossman to thank for this, she thought. Dr. Grossman who, for all his caution, had converted her from introvert to extrovert, from a weakling to a pillar of strength. And besides that and she hadn't told the doctor this the pills had awakened a new sexual desire; and for once in her life, she felt like a woman.
A month ago, before the pills, she'd never had the nerve to complain about a poorly cooked restaurant meal, or the lousy service work on her car. She had no confidence in herself, was begrudgingly content to accept life as it was: a meager existence from a failing dress shop.
But that was all changed now. An incredible bottle of pills it seemed impossible. But she'd flattened Henry Ridgewood, so there was the proof. He had ruthlessly dominated her in years past; now he was nothing. And he'd help her because he had to. There was no choice left for him.
Springing away from the window, she waltzed around the room, her heart singing a melody of new life. It was like a rebirth; and her new store would be a success. She just knew !
Hurrying to the bathroom, she slipped out of her clothes and prepared for a shower. She wanted to cleanse her body of Henry's perverted kisses, to wash away the evil that he had so continuously represented. And if the voters knew ... if they only knew.
She stood naked before the bathroom mirror.
"I've changed mentally. Have I changed physically?"
She couldn't decide. Her gleaming elegant breasts stood up just as proud and awe-inspiring as they ever had. But wasn't there something more majestic about them now? Didn't the pinkened nipples seem more nubile, more provocative?
She turned sideways. The blushing perfect symmetry of her body sent a chill of proudness into her loins. She'd always been ashamed of it; embarrassed by it. But there was nothing to be ashamed of, was there? Her buttocks, lingering for caresses, were carved with Grecian accuracy for beauty: divinely sculptured in animated alabaster, jiggling with sin.
And now the mood, the moment, perhaps Dr. Grossman's miracle drug, combined together to capture her in narcissistic wonderment. She brought her moist palms to the lush hotness of her breasts. She squeezed and moaned. And then to a mirror that provided no answers, she said:
"Yes, I have changed. And I'm going to keep on changing...."