We lay there, side by side, unmoving, for perhaps fifteen minutes, and then Jodi exhaled in a long sibilant sigh and whispered, “My God, it feels good to lie down.”
“This sure turned into a mess,” I answered. I was beginning to feel very sorry for myself.
“Poor Harvey,” she murmured. She rolled over her side — demonstrating, in the process, that we were aboard a bed with a particularly virulent squeak — and patted my arm consolingly. “Fate was against us,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry about that thing in the park,” I said.
“Hush. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Damn it, Jodi.”
“Poor Harvey,” she whispered again, and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. When she did so, her breast brushed my arm, hard and electric.
Passion, in a manner of speaking, came back in a rush.
Squeak! went the bed, as I flipped over onto my side and gathered Jodi into my arms. Squeak! it went again, as she pressed herself close against me, and then all was silence as we kissed, kissing with lips and tongues and hands and pushing bodies.
The feel of her beneath my hand, her breasts crushed against my chest, her hair around my face, drove me in seconds to the same fever pitch that had originally taken me all afternoon to work up. I kissed her, caressed her body, and she responded like the passionate nymph she was.
Squeak! went the bed as I pushed her over onto her back again, and squeak! it went once more, as I followed, moving at her and squeak! and squeak! and squeak! and squeaksqueak-squeaksqueak...
Long and painful as the frustration of the afternoon and evening and night had been, I was suddenly grateful for it. If I had been able to take Jodi at once, this afternoon, right off the bat, it would have been fast and furious and finished before barely begun. Even had our commingling in the park been consummated, it wouldn’t have been the love that lasts. But the day’s events had temporarily aged my body somewhat. No longer the randy rooster, picapicapicapuc, I was now a mighty javelin in my very first marathon mating.
The sweat started from us, our bodies were slick and hot in the dark on the wrinkling sheets. Jodi, but eighteen then, was even less experienced than I, and at first she simply lay passive, receiving me, but the force of the rhythm awoke her body, and all at once she surged beneath me, and the bed screamed, and she moved as lustily as I. Her moaning gasping breath was hot in my ear, her arms clutched my back, her body drove and drove. Like a rolling liner on the rolling sea we rolled together.
I felt her passion climbing, up and up, and knew myself to still be strong, and knew I would last, and when she went rigid beneath me, nails sunk in the flesh of my back, legs straining upward, head arched back, I only drove harder and harder and harder still, and it wasn’t till the second time for her that I finally surged to immobility, and held my breath, and squeezed my eyes shut, and bit the soft flesh of her shoulder.
We lingered together, calming slowly, our breathing gradually becoming more normal, and at last I moved over to my own side of the bed again, and Jodi kissed me, and we fell asleep in one another’s arms.
We awoke late the next morning, both ravenous. We left the bar-hotel, had breakfast together at a diner, and I called one of our compatriots from last night, who promised to drive out for us at once. While waiting, Jodi and I, incredibly conspicuous on the quiet streets of Ylicaw in our bathing suits, strolled and window-shopped and held hands and, whenever no one could see us, touched one another in fond reminiscence.
Our driver, apologizing profusely for last night’s oversight — for which we were, of course, no longer angry — arrived at about two in the afternoon, and drove us back. We had already worked out our story, and told everyone that we had been picked up by the police for wandering around in bathing suits in the park at midnight, and had spent the night in separate cells in the local hoosegow. Jodi told all her girlfriends that, and I told the same story to all the guys in the dormitory. But I, in my telling, made damn sure no one was going to believe me. Jodi was too lovely a conquest, too desirable a bedmate, for me, at callow and loud-mouthed nineteen, to be able to keep it all a secret...
Talking together now, Jodi more desirable and more exciting than ever in that green knit dress with the revealed expanse of thigh, we laughed over that first time, and Jodi said, “In a way, I’m glad the cop caught us. That bed was a lot softer than the ground in the park.” She gave me a melting smile. “And you were a lot firmer.”
Two
If Helen had been waiting for me, preferably nervous and dynamically concerned, I could at least have permitted myself the luxury of delicious guilt feelings. But such luck was not to be mine. The train let me off and the chrome-plated ranch wagon was waiting for me, emptily metallic. I turned a key in it and drove along tree-lined streets to our little hate-nest among the crab grass. I buried the car in the carport — garages are sadly out of style; all that space to waste on cars that don’t fit in them anyway — and I walked around to look at the outside of our deluxe split-level colonial.
There is something reassuringly schizoid about a split-level to begin with. Ours looks as though it couldn’t possibly continue to exist if the various floors were level all across the board. The imbalance of its design is essential if it’s going to survive all the concentrated imbalance of the people who live in it. But when you take this split-level and make it colonial as well — colonial, for the love of the lord — well, the result is nice to visit, but wouldn’t you just hate to live there?
The other car, Detroit’s most recent attempt to barrelhouse into the compact field, was missing. It stood to reason that Helen was missing as well. She never goes anywhere without the car — in fact I was once thinking of buying her a bicycle to get into the house from the carport — and by extension the car never goes anywhere without her. I rang the bell anyway, sort of for the hell of it. If a doorbell rings and there’s nobody in the house, did it really ring? It really rang. I heard it. Then I opened the door with my key and went inside.
Experience told me to go first to the kitchen. It’s an electric kitchen, of course. Electric range, electric icebox, electric garbage disposal, electric washing machine, electric dishwasher, electric frying pan, electric sink, electric pop-up toaster. The sad thing is that if you put your head in the oven you can’t turn on the gas. You can only turn on the electricity. Shocking, but harmless.
The kitchen had a pegboard. It came with the kitchen, of course, and it is a huge flattened-out cork shaped like a kidney where husbands and wives leave notes for each other. A last-ditch attempt at eliminating conversation forever from the domestic scene. I looked at the pegboard and there, of course, was a note from Helen.
Harv — it began, quaintly enough. Couldn’t wait dinner for you. The girls are playing at Betty’s tonight. You know the number if something comes up. Now what in the world could come up? I pushed onward. There’s a teevee dinner in the fridge. Just pop it on the stove and eat hearty. The note was unsigned but I had a fairly sound idea who had written it.
I opened the fridge and stared thoughtfully at the teevee dinner. It was a Dexter Frozen Dinner. A Square Deal on a Square Meal, I thought. And just how square could you get? It was unsettling. I was selling my own wife.