Chapter 3

Weak with physical relief from my orgasm and trembling from delayed reaction at what I'd watched, I edged toward the arch to get away. Rolf sank limply to the couch and Rose cuddled against him, her ass still winking with after-twitches and the continued presence of the softening cock in her pussy. She caressed Rolf's jaw line with her fingertips and dragged her tumbled hair across his hairless chest.

"Darling boy, darling boy," she crooned to him. "I'll have to write a different poem about you."

"Huh!" Alarm leaped to his eyes. "About me!"

"Of course, darling! You'll live forever!"

He objected. "Not me! I don't want everybody reading about the first-" He stopped abruptly. "You couldn't, Mrs. Duncan! You just couldn't! Mr. Duncan and the Gamiskis and-and-they'd all know!"

Good God! I thought. They would! And we'd be on our way back to Cleveland!

But Rose laughed with delight. "Oh, Rolf! You dear, dear boy! You're just absolutely delicious!" She wiggled, deliberately scrubbing her pussy on the base of his shrunken cock and rubbing her boobies-such as they were-on his chest. "Darling, don't be old-fashioned! We're all free spirits at the Casa! Even the ghosts!" She laughed again and shivered happily. "You'd really like it if you could learn to think the way we do."

"How?"

"Live, love and laugh! Except when you feel poetic, of course," she added hastily. "Do your own thing! Darling, you've got to get rid of all the quaint old ideas!"

"Like-like-"

"Like everything, dear boy! Be free! Think of the things you wouldn't dare do and go do them! Go make love to your mother!"

"Mother!" His eyes widened and his mouth stayed open.

"Darling, you know what? I'll bet she'd be wild about it. Why not? Be honest. You've thought about it, haven't you?"

"I-I-" His face turned crimson.

I imagined I could feel the heat of the flush clear over at the arch.

"Honest, now!" She persisted.

"Well-well, sure. I guess so."

"Still gets to you when you think about it, doesn't it!"

"Uh-"

"It does, darling! I can feel your pecker twitching when I mention it!"

"Uh-well, yeah-but-"

"Try! Oh, don't go and grab her and say, 'Hey, Ma, let's fuck!' That's dumb! And don't throw her on the ground and start tearing her clothes off!" She paused a moment with a musing expression. "I don't know, at that. That's something Anne might get real excited about. No! Don't risk it! Just be real confidential and close and take advantage of every little bit of encouragement. Dear boy, I know women! I'm a poet. I act like a poet's supposed to act, too. But I watch. And I know women. Your mother would let you fuck her at the drop of a hat!"

Rolf shuddered and swallowed. I guessed he was turning the idea over in his mind and visualizing me in the parental, disciplinary role. He breathed raggedly and his fingers worked where they gripped Rose's buttocks.

"Naw. Mom wouldn't let me do that. Mrs. Duncan, I-"

"Rose, darling! Rose! Isn't it silly to call me Mrs. Duncan when we're lying here like this?"

"Okay. Rose, I've never even seen her in her underwear! Not unless it was when I was too little to know! I couldn't!"

"You wouldn't want to?"

He was glassy-eyed. And as Rose thrust her shoulders back and cocked her head to watch his expression I knew she was seeing the same awe-stricken set to his jaw as I did.

"God! I mean, golly! Would I! Sometimes I wake up shaky and all wet with sweat from dreaming about it!" He grinned, abashed. "Only they weren't much, for dreams. They weren't anything like the real thing!"

She giggled and touched his lips with the tip of one finger. "I'll bet the next one's accurate!"

"I dunno; you and Mom aren't built a whole lot alike."

"Silly boy! When that sweet pecker of yours slides into her you're going to find out she feels just like me!"

"Maybe." But his tone held distinct reservations.

And I agreed mentally with him. If my pussy felt the same to a man as hers it would surprise me. But if it did, nothing else about us would feel or look alike! The momentary relief from tension my orgasm had provided was gone now. If Rose succeeded in giving Rolf the courage to make a pass at me I knew how it was going to end. And the idea of that youthful body I'd given life to pressed between my thighs and that eager young cock buried in my cunt made me ache all over with desire.

"Now I know the way you and Anne have your confidential little chats, darling. You have any idea how important those are to her?"

He cackled with boyish tolerance. "Sure. She-omigosh! Rose, what time is it!" He started up with alarm.

"Darling! Rolf, darling!"

"Good gosh! It's almost forty-five minutes since she finished work in the library! She'll be looking all over for me! Maybe even here!"

Reluctantly, Rose let him thrust her off. He scrambled for his clothes but slowed under the soothing insistence of her voice.

"Easy, dear boy! Easy! Don't be too fast or you'll do something wrong and give yourself away!" And she went back to the attack, making no effort to dress herself. "Just work the conversation around to sex, dear boy-like it's time you got to know more answers."

With a start of panic I realized he was nearly dressed. He'd be coming right through the arch I was hiding in! And I'd be standing there half-naked and trembling if I didn't do something! I jerked my bra into place and buttoned my dress at the waist. I couldn't possibly get all the buttons fastened before he got to where I was! And I'd rather have died than let him know I'd been eavesdropping!

I ducked into the hall and backed along the wall, my fingers working desperately at the buttons. First the one below my waist. Then the one above. Then the next one below it, a couple of inches above my crotch. And the one just below my boobies.

Rolf came out of Rose's study with a rush. His face was a mask of shock when he saw me. I faked near-hysteria and flung myself at him, my dress gaping where I hadn't been able to get it buttoned.

"Rolf! Son! Oh, thank God you were here!"

He caught me in his arms and let me cling to him. The trembling was real and the way I crushed myself to him. But the reasons I babbled were lies.

"Oh, Rolf! Rolf, baby! I was so afraid!"

"Mom! MOM! WHAT HAPPENED!"

"I couldn't find you! I thought something awful must have happened to you! I was changing clothes to go outside and look when I-when I wondered if you might possibly be visiting with Rose!"

He chuckled self-consciously. "And you came running." He held me away from him and surveyed the way my dress exposed my thighs and bra.

The heat in my face told me I was blushing. "I-I almost forgot my dress." I expanded the lie. "Got halfway down the hall before I realized I was just in my bra and panties. Oh, honey, I was so worried I didn't even want to go back and get it!" He replied in a low tone, the words hesitant. "Bet you'd have looked pretty good that way." And then, musing, "Funny how much difference there is in people. The way they're put together, I mean." His voice dropped to a near-whisper. "Like Ro-Mrs. Duncan. She's built nice, but not much meat. And Aunt Ellen in Cleveland. She was fat. You-you're like the kind they use for models in the photography contests."

"The nudes," I observed dryly. Ellen certainly wasn't fat. But she did have udders for breasts and pillows for buttocks. And as for photography magazines, I knew the sections he spent his time studying.

"Well, yeah. That's art. I guess that's the way the photographer figures the light and shadows make the best patterns."

We'd reached the door to his room. I stopped.

"Son, it's going to be time for supper in about twenty minutes. Better get ready." I glanced down at the flesh my dress was still exposing. "Maybe I'd better, too."

"Yeah. I suppose." He sighed. "A photographer's just as much an artist as a painter-or a poet, huh, Mom."

I nodded. I didn't trust my voice. He left me and went slowly into his room. I watched for a moment before going next door into my sitting room. As soon as the door clicked shut behind me I unbuttoned the dress again and slipped out of it. Carrying it in my hand, I went on into the bedroom. Rolf was wasting no time following Rose's advice. It began to look like he meant to start out with the nude photography approach. I had to admit it was a better line than the one Rose had suggested, but I was angry. I hated the woman! I'd worked hard to develop an atmosphere of honesty between Rolf and myself. He knew he could say anything-ask anything of me-without my criticizing him for it. I had probably denied his requests oftener than I'd granted them, but I wouldn't react to the fact he'd asked.

Sex had always been that way for me, too. With Rolf's father, during the few happy years before his death, sex had been a fine enough thing we hadn't played coy about it. And on the few occasions since his death when I'd abandoned myself to the pleasures someone had offered, it had been on the same frank basis. It hurt to feel Rolf couldn't trust our understanding enough to come out bluntly and ask if we could make love.

I was quiet at supper, still fretting about the way Rose had subverted my son. And I noticed three people demonstrating an awareness of that quiet. John was trying to decide whether I was showing another symptom of overwork and nervous tension, I knew. Rolf might be worrying about whether his quick introduction of the nude photography subject had been too abrupt after seeing me with my dress half-off. What Maria's special interest might be I couldn't guess. She was dividing her attention between John and me, though. And when she looked at him her eyes filled with adoration. Rose had said everybody at Casa del Gato did his or her thing; Maria didn't. Her thing was John, and it was obvious she hadn't gone to him with her love, any more than I had with mine.

After supper, John and I went through the ritual of locking the library. I closed and locked the windows and he checked them. I made a last careful survey of the room and so did he.

"Silly game, here," he muttered, as he had every time we'd done it since my arrival. "But when we're away-when we go maybe to Mexico City or Bangkok or Rome-or wherever we go to get the feel of the atmosphere and the stories next, you're going to have to watch me about this. I'm so damn careless."

He might as well have lighted a fire inside me! God! He really meant this secretary thing! He wasn't just thinking of it as a temporary expedient!

"John! John?"

"Huh? What's wrong?"

"That little candle lantern-that antique in the case-it's not here!"

"What! Jesus Christ, Anne! Where is it?"

"I've never seen it outside the case except that one time you showed me how it was made! And of course, I do dust it each day. You know how much dust seeps into the case."

"You dust it? Then it was there this morning?"

"Positively!"

He shook his head and stared perplexedly at the case. He even went to it and lifted the top. The felt showed the indentation the lantern base had made in the years it had been kept there, but there was nothing to suggest where the lantern was.

"Shit!" exclaimed John under his breath. "Why the hell would it be gone? I mean, there's nobody who'd want to steal it! Nothing to do with it if they did!"

Maybe I was looking for an excuse. I went to his side and leaned over the case, my head close to his. And I sniffed. There seemed to be an aroma around the case that was unusual enough to catch my attention. It wasn't an ordinary scent at all, but subtle and unique. I'd smelled it before, I was certain, but I had no idea where or when.

"John-what kind of perfume is that? Or what kind of a smell?"

"Huh?" He sniffed. "I don't smell anything."

"Come away from the case. Take some deep breaths and then go back."

He tried that. At the case again, he bent low and sniffed. "Well-I don't know. Maybe there is a scent-mighty faint, though-wouldn't want to have to identify it."

It wasn't that faint to me. It wasn't powerful, and the scent itself was the subtle kind, but it was there. And as far as I was concerned it was indentifiable. But there seemed nothing to be gained by pressing the issue. And John appeared ready to abandon his effort to guess what might have happened to the lantern.

"Hell, it isn't that important," he remarked. "Whoever borrowed it will bring it back sooner or later."

We finished the survey of the library and turned off the lights. John closed the door as we left and I locked it. When he'd checked and was satisfied it was locked, we were through for the night. We walked slowly and peacefully along toward the stairs and the living room. I paused when we started to pass the niche with the conquistador armor.

"John! That's where I smelled that scent! In that stairway that isn't here! And in the niche when we were looking at it!"

"Huh?" He reached the niche with one long step and sniffed audibly. "No smell but dust there now."

He was right. There was no hint of the delicate aroma. It couldn't have survived all day anyway, though, I thought. Not unless it had come from a liquid that had gotten spilled. And that wasn't the sort of fragrance it seemed to me. It was more like something a person would wear, leaving a tenuous clue in passing.

"How about a drink before you go up?" he asked in a solicitous tone.

"I don't think so tonight. Maybe the sleep would do more for me."

At the foot of the stairway, he hesitated for a moment and squeezed my hand. "Anne-" He could have been fumbling for words. "Anne, we're not the easiest people in the world to live with or work for. Don't give a damn for convention-don't think much of most people-do and say weird things. I mean, you've fitted in without a hitch so far. You seem to take things as they come. And everybody loves you." He grinned and seemed momentarily better at ease. "That boy of yours, too! He's like a breath of fresh air! Anyhow...." And it began to get difficult for him again. "Anyhow, no matter how weird and confused it seems-or what you might see-don't be too quick to bail out. Just remember, we do love you! All of us!"

Before I could tilt my face up, he kissed me tenderly on the ear and left me.

"Get a good night's sleep, baby. Don't do any work on anybody's manuscript tonight. Okay?"

"All right." I whispered and swallowed. Had he been talking about the secret stairs and the missing lantern and that scent? Had he been warning me in his own reserved way about Lolita's ghost?

I was slow going up the stairway. The tender warning and his exaggerated assurance of their feeling for me couldn't have put me more on edge. If there was something weird enough he felt he had to warn me about it-reassure me ahead of time-then it was going to mean more than a silly legend. And halfway up the stairs I recalled something else about that scent.

I'd smelled it in my room the night before! It had hung in the night air, so elusive I hadn't even been conscious of it, while I'd lain listening to the quiet sobbing. Three incidents, then, with nothing else in common, were somehow linked by a fragrance I'd detected under no other circumstances since I'd been here. Nor ever before, I reflected. I was certain of that; I'd never known that particular scent before coming to Casa del Gato. In a way, if a ghost existed it was that fragrance. That was the essence of the "spirit" that haunted the Casa.

When I went to bed it involved a struggle. I knew I must be overwrought, because I actually considered the idea of going next door and inviting my son into the sitting room for an evening of sex to go to sleep on! But I was sure such an assault would do more to terrify than to excite him. And there was a habit pattern I'd developed over a span of fifteen years; I was still a mother.

Shaken by John's warning, I left a dim light burning over my desk in the sitting room. And I left the door between the sitting room and my bedroom open when I turned out the bedroom lights. As if the previous night had established a precedent, I slept nude that night. And I think I slept without disturbing dreams.

But I awakened sometime long after midnight, as suddenly and completely as if somebody had taken my by the shoulder. Someone was sobbing. The same woman whose sorrow had kept me awake the night before had yielded to it again. I could do nothing but listen and perspire.

I couldn't pinpoint the moment, but the fragrance gradually forced itself on my consciousness-faint and elusive but unmistakable.

When the sobbing stopped-and it lasted for only a short time-I had a sense of apprehension I couldn't get rid of. Either I was getting sensitive to the scent or it was getting stronger, but I couldn't ignore it. And I lay silently, my fists clenched and my breathing hushed, for what seemed an eternity.

Some muffled sound floating in through my window brought me upright, the hair on the back of my neck prickling and goose bumps covering my skin. With an awful sense of dread I arose and tiptoed to the window. Near the far end of Maria's long cactus garden, in the direction of the old de Vasca crypt, there was a faint light. It moved slowly and hesitantly, floating toward the house as if somebody were coming along one of the uneven paths. And as it approached, I thought I could make out the hint of a figure behind it.

Without a moon, there was no hope of seeing very much. But I convinced myself I was looking at a lantern, hooded to deflect its feeble rays away from whoever carried it. And it was impossible not to yield to the idea it was suspended from the hand of a robed woman.

As the light neared the house I realized the sitting room window would afford me a better view. I rushed to it, fearful of getting there too late to see where the strange figure went, but I was in time. To my utter disbelief, she-if it really was a woman or a woman's ghost-seemed to walk directly to the library wall and disappear! I dropped to my knees and lay on the low sill, my head and shoulders hanging outside while ' I satisfied myself that the apparition wasn't simply creeping along next to the wall. But there could be no doubt; "she" had vanished-vanished into the library wall!

The fragrance was still all around me. It even hovered around me where I hung outside the window. And I stayed there for a time, gasping while all the superstitious terrors out of a child's nightmare washed over me. There was a ghost! Lolita had hounded Jennifer to death for stealing Juan. And Maria, who "took after Lolita more than she did her own mother" was in love with John! Lolita, Maria's spirit-mother, knew how I loved John, myself, and after these many years of rest was coming back to haunt the Casa until I gave up!

I couldn't bring myself to face the sitting room; there had to be a ghost in it. But inch by desperate inch, I drew back through the window and forced myself erect. And when I turned, the room was empty. The best I could do, though, was to press my back against the edge of the window niche. The fragrance was all too evident for me to feel alone.

And at a moment when I was certain the scent had thickened perceptibly, I heard a single muffled thump that seemed to come from the wall that separated the sitting room from Rolf's bedroom. I had to stifle a scream. With the interior walls as thick as the exterior-and constructed of the same sound-deadening adobe-it was inconceivable Rolf could have made such a noise in his sleep. He might have made it by smashing a chair against the wall, but even that seemed doubtful. Still, I'd heard the thump! And I cowered, hoping the ghost would go away.

The door to the hall burst open and Rolf appeared, his eyes wide and startled-looking. "Mom?" he called without looking in my direction.

"Rolf! Oh, Rolf, thank God you're here!"

He tensed, cords leaping into prominence in his neck and his face turning pale. Very slowly, he turned his head, his stare sliding from my dark bedroom doorway to the window where I stood. When he saw me his mouth dropped open and he gasped violently. His gaze traveled over me while an expression of incredulity spread across his face.

Only then did I remember I was naked. My hands fluttered as if to snatch at something to cover my body with, but I stilled them. My terror had dissolved; there was no ghost that could hold a threat either for Rolf or me when we were together. And Rolf had seen-in that matter of seconds-everything there was of me to see.

With deliberate calm, I moved away from the window to the center of the room. "How did you get here just at the right time, hon?" I asked.

"Right time?"

"Honey, I was scared to death! The last thing was a thump from the wall! I don't know what I'd have done if you hadn't come in!"

"I heard it, too! The thump. Mom, I was afraid something had happened to you!" He looked worried for a moment as if the memory of his concern had returned. But his face cleared and he grinned shyly. "I can see nothing did."

"Huh?"

"Nothing wrong with that, Mom! "And he ran his gaze slowly over me again, making no effort to hide his fascination.