Chapter 2
"Hey Alicia, I'm over here!" a clear-toned woman's voice rang out from off to the left of where the tall, black-haired woman stood looking lost as she peered out among the confusion of tables and people in the large restaurant at the Garland Shopping Mall. She turned quickly toward the sound of the voice and immediately spotted her friend Belle Carper at one of the window tables.
"If you hadn't seen me, I don't know if I'd ever have found you in this mess," Alicia exclaimed as she took a seat across from the sleekly tailored Belle, who seemed even more diminutive than usual whenever she was with the statuesque Alicia Sturmon. "I don't remember it being this bad."
All around them people were wandering in with their children carrying wrapped articles they had purchased at one of the Mall's many stores, some of them in a hurry and talking loudly, while others drifted about looking dazed, as if they would accept a table only if someone would hand it to them without any trouble.
Belle laughed, looking around her meaningfully. "I wondered what you had in mind, choosing this place. It's changed a little since we used to come here."
Suddenly a waitress materialized beside their table and started to hand them blue menus, but Alicia held up her hand.
She asked her friend, "Has the menu changed much too?"
Belle smiled. "Only the prices."
The waitress was looking impatient, so Alicia asked for her old favorite, a bacon, lettuce and tomato, or BLT, and a glass of iced tea. Belle, seeming to sense the spirit of the occasion, also ordered what had been her "usual" when their crowd from high school had made this their favorite hangout.
A moment after the girl had disappeared, Alicia said, "The last time I was here was nearly four years ago, the night Mary and Ted got hitched."
"Feeling sentimental?" Belle asked. "It's pretty mysterious, you know, calling me up at nine in the morning and inviting me out to lunch. Come on, something's up. What's going on?"
Belle and Alicia had been friends for nearly seven years, and for six months or so they and their husbands had been involved in a weekly swapping arrangement that had drawn the two women even closer together. For these reasons, it didn't surprise Alicia in the slightest that Belle had sensed that there was something the matter.
She decided to come right to the point.
"Ted and Mary are in trouble."
"Ted and Mary?" the beautiful chestnut-haired girl asked. "What is it -money?" Already the generous Belle, who had married a successful car dealer nearly five years older than herself, was reaching into her purse for her checkbook.
Alicia reached across and stopped the motion. It was so much easier to believe that the Dawsons would have money troubles than emotional ones that Belle's reaction had been automatic. Aloud, she said, "I think we all liked the idea of the 'ideal' couple more than I know / ever realized I did."
At that moment the sandwiches arrived, interrupting their conversation and giving Belle a chance to absorb the implication that the Dawsons were no longer such an ideal couple.
"All right, spill it," Belle said with a grim look on her face. "If it's true, then we're going to have to do something about it."
"You bet your bottom we are," Alicia replied, and then while they ate she launched into a complete rendition of all she knew concerning the sexual problems facing the Dawson marriage, outlining what had happened during dinner and the movie.
Belle gave a ringing laugh upon hearing about Frank's sex film, since that was the way the Sturmons had seduced the Carpers six months before.
"Tried and true method, huh?" she her friend.
"Well, it didn't work last night," Alicia sighed, and then finished her story by telling what had happened when Mary had gotten to her feet and started screaming.
"God, she's really hung up," Belle whistled softly, thoroughly amazed even though everyone in school had realized that Mary was the class virgin. But they had all thought that the young blonde had kept her virginity as a means of holding onto the man she loved, so that he would have something to look forward to. And to tell the truth, there had been days after Belle had lost her own, in the back seat of a car at a drive-in movie, that she had envied her innocent friend. Belle was the most intelligent of the three girls, but she had also been the quickest to do things that she sometimes later regretted — like the time she had tried, and failed, to seduce Ted Dawson one afternoon after school in the gymnasium, even though Ted was already going steady with Mary.
Yet remembering this now suggested something to her, especially after she heard the conclusion of Alicia's tale — about Mary's confession in the bedroom while Ted and Frank had continued to watch their movie.
With a thoughtful expression on her face, she said slowly, "Maybe you and Frank were on the right track last night without realizing it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that the best thing, all around, for them, would be if someone could get them to swap."
Alicia did a double-take, then sputtered, "You used to be smart, Belle Carper, but—why, you're crazy! Mary'd go right out of her mind if she knew what Ted and I were doing last night, and you know it!"
"Calm down and I'll explain what I have in mind. I think it'll work."
Alicia grinned. "You fox, you've got a plan?" One of the reasons she had hurried the very next morning to see her friend was that she knew Belle's mind would leap to a solution. And if that solution happened to include Alicia getting to nibble on Ted Dawson's cock after all, why then, that was all right too! But still, it didn't make any sense-Belle Carper saw the puzzlement in her friend's eyes and smiled.
"It does sound crazy, doesn't it?" she admitted. "But from what you say I think the problem is a matter of education. All we've really got to do is convince Mary that sex can be fun."
"That's more easily said than done," Alicia frowned. "You weren't there last night. You didn't see the way she looked while she was up there screaming for us to turn off the movie."
Belle took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it with a small gold lighter. Blowing out the smoke in a thin blue-gray stream, the chestnut-brunette allowed a moment to pass, then asked, "Doesn't the plant have a cabin up in the mountains somewhere, where the guys like Frank and Ted can take their families on weekends?"
The tall beauty wondered what her friend was leading up to, but answered vaguely, "Yeah, they have some kind of rotational system — a couple of families at a time. Why?"
"Well, here's what I have in mind, for what it's worth," replied her petite friend matter-of-factly, and then proceeded to tell her.
Later that day, Alicia Sturmon paid a visit to her husband at the plant. She spoke with him earnestly for a few minutes, causing a light to come into his eyes as she spoke. He began nodding enthusiastically, and soon afterwards the tall, raven-haired woman departed, a pleased smile on her face.
Ten minutes later Frank visited Ted in his small office and invited him and Mary to join the Sturmons and the Carpers for a weekend at the High Top Lodge.
"Can you make it this week?"
Into Ted's mind flashed an immediate picture of himself, alone in the woods, suddenly coming upon Alicia, also alone. He forced himself to look Frank straight in the eye in order to keep from blushing guiltily, but it was plain to see that he had reached the end of his rope. He had been patient for as long as he could, but Mary's attitudes toward sex were so unhealthy and restrictive that he was champing at the bit with the feeling that it was his right to be feeling as he did, to be wanting to be racing like the wind. Maybe it was wrong of him to think of having an affair with one of his wife's best friends, but the other night had proved to him two things.
First, it had shown him that Mary was never going to allow him to do things with her that he had a right as her husband to do any time he wished. She had such a twisted perverted notion that various things were "dirty" or "obscene" that it had cast a gloomy pall over their whole sex life.
Second, the furtive flirtation in the dark during the movie the night before had demonstrated that Alicia, one of the most delicious-looking babes he had ever come across, was still as available as she had been all those times in high school when she had tried to seduce him.
God, what an idealistic idiot he had been! If Mary insisted upon separating love from sex, considering one good and one bad, then he was going to have to separate them too. Only both of them were going to be good! And this weekend was going to be his chance. He was sure to get at least one opportunity to shove it up between those lovely long legs of hers!
It had only been a second since Frank had asked him whether they could make it this weekend.
"You bet we can," he grinned.