I could tell her family had indeed lived in a bigger, older home at one time, as the place was filled to overflowing with early American antiques. With the open-beam wood ceilings and all, the antiques looked great, and I would have moved into that house in a second. It was the sort of home I might have one day owned myself, if I hadn’t gotten into this mess.
The house had a strongly masculine look to it, with wood dominating both in the open ceilings and paneled walls. Even the master bedroom shared by man and wife had a dark, manly look to it. But the final room she took me to was so different in appearance it almost belonged in another house.
The only wood in the room was the open-beam ceiling, and the sliding doors of the closet, and this wood was that same dark masculine stuff prevalent through the rest of the house. But there was no wood paneling in here. In its place was ultra-feminine blue and white flowery wallpaper, with dark blue curtains on the windows and a matching blue, ruffly-skirted bedspread. The blue in the room was approximately the same color as Sue Ann’s eyes. The furniture was antiqued white wood: a dresser with oversize mirror; a chest of drawers; and a canopy bed. Double bed. The floor was carpeted in fluffy stuff that looked like whipped egg whites. It was a large room, as large as the master bedroom; an only child’s room. Very tidy, almost fussily so, except for a big bulletin board on one wall, haphazardly covered with withered corsages, buttons with funny sayings and/or school-related club names, and a lot of photographs of Sue Ann, as a cheerleader, majorette and in school plays, several apparently from that high school production of South Pacific she’d mentioned.
“This is your bedroom,” I said. (I catch onto things quick, as you may have noticed.)
“I said I saved the best for last, silly,” she said. She turned around. “Unsnap me.”
“Unwhat you?”
“Unsnap me. And then unzip me, too.”
She shimmied out of the sparkly majorette uniform. It lay in a patriotic puddle at her feet. She was wearing sheer panties under the uniform, but not for long.
She stood with her hands on her hips and let me take a long, lustful look at a perfect young female body, which she apparently was very proud of. And rightly so. Her skin was pale, but in a healthy way, and she was lean and shapely and smooth looking.
“Now don’t get any ideas,” she said.
I stood there for a moment and thought about what to make of a girl who takes off her clothes and says don’t get any ideas.
“I just thought that since I saw you naked, you ought to get to see me naked.”
“That seems fair.”
“But I think we ought to get to know each other a little better before it goes any farther than just looking. Don’t you, Fred?”
“I’m enjoying just looking. I’ll settle for looking.”
She came up and pressed herself against me and put her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss that would’ve melted a statue.
“Well,” she said, nibbling my ear, “I guess we could sort of get in bed and just neck a little. That wouldn’t hurt. But nothing else. Just neck a little.”
“That would be nice,” I said.
“Why don’t you just go ahead and take your clothes off, too. I think that would make the necking more pleasant, don’t you? But we’ll have to be good.”
“I think we could be good,” I said.
“At least,” she agreed.
I took off my clothes.
She got in bed and so did I and we necked. Nothing else. Just necked.
And if you buy that, I got some jewelry in the car to show you.
Chapter 30
I was not supposed to be in Sue Ann’s bed. I was supposed to be sitting on a bench in the park, watching things, the bank in particular.
But I was glad I was in Sue Ann’s bed, and not just for the obvious reasons, either. I was glad to get Sue Ann away from that crowded park, where she would be likely to introduce me to more and more of her friends, where eventually the streaking bit was bound to come up, in which case I could find myself all of a sudden a minor celebrity. The center of attention. Which clearly wouldn’t do.
Furthermore, I had no choice but to follow Sue Ann wherever she might choose to lead me (even into bed) because my presence in Wynning was explainable to her only by my being there to see her. So what else could I do but see her?
The unpleasant coincidence of her father being the local banker seemed somewhat irrelevant, as far as the immediate situation was concerned. It had its good side in that Sue Ann and I were guaranteed privacy in their house; but it also had its bad side, as eventually Sue Ann might discover the real purpose for my presence in Wynning, and her opinion of me would probably change.
At any rate, there was nothing I could do about being stuck in Sue Ann’s bed except enjoy myself. I even began to think everything might work out for the good, should Elam and Hopp get themselves caught and have the courtesy not to implicate Wheat and me. After all, I had an excuse for being here. Sue Ann. And Wheat had an excuse for being here, too: he was my friend, and along for the ride.
So I began to loosen up a little, put the worrying aside for a while, though the credit for that had to go to Sue Ann. I whole-heartedly recommend a few hours in bed with a beautiful girl to any guy caught up in a hopeless mess. It’s a terrific way to get your mind off your problems.
After that first hour in bed, Sue Ann asked me if I’d like some lunch.
Cotton candy was all I`d had to eat today, and since I seemed to have worked up an appetite somehow or other, I accepted her offer and we went down to the kitchen where Sue Ann made a submarine sandwich, a huge one stuffed with cheese and salami and lettuce and tomatoes and sweet peppers, and we shared it.
Sue Ann was sitting across the table from me, nibbling at her sandwich, wearing a baby blue terrycloth robe (I was in a similar, white robe — her father’s — and I admit I didn’t feel particularly comfortable wearing it). In between nibbles, she’d ask me questions about myself. Was I still in college? What were my plans when I got out? Did I have any other, serious girl friend? Questions like that. It was pleasant answering such questions. Made me feel alive again. I asked her what her aspirations were. She wanted to be either an actress or a wife. If the latter, she’d like to be married to an actor or somebody else famous or rich or both. She’d been going with a Shaker Saltz type named Bo Bo Harper, a Little All-American football player, but they had broken up several weeks ago, and for good: he was heading off to Michigan State on a scholarship and wanted to “date around” but Sue Ann was all or nothing, monogamous or forget it, Bo Bo. Her immediate plans were college at the University of Iowa, since she had graduated from high school that June.
The conversation went on like that. Nothing spectacular. I remember every word of it, and could bore you with it if you insist. But why not just leave it this way: we were getting to know each other, in a backwards way I admit, since we’d just come down from her bedroom; but nevertheless getting to know each other is what we were doing.
The impression Sue Ann had given me, up till now, was that she was not terribly bright and was somewhat conceited. Now that I was getting to know her better, I found I’d been right.
I also found I liked her.
For one thing, she was beautiful. The Sue Ann Wynnings of the world have not generally invited me to their bedrooms so early in the game. Or late in the game, either, if you must know. So her being beautiful, and her willingness to share her beauty with me, had a lot to do with my forgiving her flaws.
That is, if you consider her being less than genius material a flaw. The dumb blonde stereotype has always been attractive to me, and if Sue Ann fit that stereotype a little, it only enhanced her beauty in my eyes. And besides, she was no dummy. She was an A- student in high school, she said (although with her looks even her grade average may have come easy) and I began to realize her dumb blonde appearance was at least partially an appealing affectation, made so by the naive, practically childlike side of her which gave her an aura of innocence even as she was inviting me under the covers with her.