“I’ve got the first page for the Thanksgiving issue,” Lois said, turning and walking to the desk. “It’s a honey.”
He watched her walk, and he realized that the removal of the jacket had revealed more than her transparent blouse and what lay beneath it. For whereas the jacket had successfully hidden her hips and buttocks, its removal just as successfully exposed them. The black skirt was very tight, and he could see the firm, rolled edge of her panties beneath the skirt. She walked, and her buttocks rolled, and the panty line rolled with the movement, a slow, insinuating movement. He watched the slender lines of her skirt, and the roundness of her buttocks and the tapering fullness of her legs and he knew very well what he was thinking but he thought anyway. What the hell am I thinking?
Lois turned suddenly, and he lifted his eyes too late, knowing he was too late, and knowing she found him watching her, but knowing at the same time she’d wanted him to watch her.
She held a sheet of paper in her hands, and her eyes met his, and she said, “It looks good, doesn’t it?” and she could have been talking about the first page of the Thanksgiving issue, but Rick knew damn well she wasn’t. It was all about as subtle as a rivet, and he knew that, and he resented her obvious tactics, but at the same time he enjoyed them in a strange, forbidden-cookie-jar manner. Except that the cookie jar was not forbidden, the cookie jar was indeed within easy reach, and the only thing that stopped him from reaching was something like an unwritten law, despite his appetite at the moment.
He did have an appetite, a very strong appetite, and Anne’s pregnancy was not helping that appetite in the least. If anything, it was making things worse because Anne’s flesh was still warm and soft and her breasts had become larger and fuller with nipples that hardened the instant his hands found them. And Anne still curled against him each night, curled in the arc of his body, and she was there but not there because she was really the forbidden cookie jar, with no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
And so he walked the tightrope of the celibate, with desire on one side, and here, now, temptation on the other side. He would be lying to himself if he did not admit that Lois Hammond was temptation. One of the things Rick had never done was lie to himself. He admitted this, and in admitting it he acknowledged the guilt that accompanied his sudden, unbidden desire for her, and he resolved to get the hell away from her damned fast because he did not like walking a tightrope.
“It’s a little early for Thanksgiving, isn’t it?” he asked, and he realized his voice was trembling, and then he wondered if his body were trembling, too. Lois studied him with a small smile on her face, a smile that told him she knew just what she was doing to him, and she was enjoying it immensely. But a smile that said she wasn’t kidding, and this enjoyment was just a small enjoyment, because she was not kidding and because she knew what she was doing.
And because he knew she was aware of all this, he was pleased deep within his masculine self, pleased that she was making an obvious effort, even though he disliked the obviousness of her effort, to display herself as a woman, even though she knew he was a married man. He was pleased because the smile on her face had not a damn thing to do with Thanksgiving issues, but with issues which might call for thanksgiving. He was pleased because her unashamed advances were telling him just what she wanted, and she wanted him, and he was married, and that combination appealed to his ego immensely.
But he was ashamed of himself for catering so to his ego, and ashamed of himself for even thinking what he was thinking because he knew he could never — in a million years, — not if she ripped off the blouse and the bra, too, not if she slipped out of the skirt, and then he realized he was hoping she would do just that, and this time his hands did begin to tremble and he was even more deeply ashamed of himself.
She held out the first page to him, the ink still wet on it. He looked at the large turkey there, drawn by one of the students no doubt, and at the pumpkins decorating the page, and at the banner and then at the lettering which told everyone this was the Thanksgiving Issue. And above the page she extended, holding it just below her breasts, holding it so that his eyes took in a panorama of mimeographed page and white cotton bra, above the page was the soft shadow, and the rounded mounds of white flesh on either side of the shadow. His eyes strayed from the page, and Lois said, “Do you like it?” and again her voice was low and insinuating, and he knew she was not talking about the first page but about what rested just above the first page, and he answered, “Yes, I like it very much,” and he knew, too, that he was talking about just what she was talking about.
“This is just the beginning, you know,” she said, skillfully twisting the knife of double entendre, her eyes on Rick’s face, the smile on her lips. “The ground work, so to speak. The rest will come later.” She paused and suddenly withdrew the extended page, reaching behind her to put it on the desk. She kept her arms behind her, the palms flat on the desk. “The rest will come later,” she repeated. And then she turned the full power of her gaze on him, and her lashes almost touched, and she wet her lips and added, “Before Thanksgiving.”
She pushed herself off the desk, standing erect, standing so close to Rick that her breasts almost touched his chest. He smelled the perfume of her hair, and for a wild moment he almost reached out and clasped her to him. But he stood there unmoving, a muscle in his jaw twitching, his eyelids blinking.
“I don’t want to keep you,” Lois said softly. She walked around him, her shoulder brushing his arm, and he turned and watched her walk across the room, watched the exaggerated swing of her hips, watched the rolled edge of panties, the straight seams of stockings, the high-heeled pumps. She walked to the chair and picked up her jacket, snuffing out her cigarette and then slipping into the jacket quickly, buttoning it with slender, red-tipped fingers, covering the blouse slowly, starting with the bottom button and working her way upward, closing the V over her breasts, hiding the bra, hiding the blouse, buttoning the jacket to her throat like a strip teaser working in reverse.
“I’ll see you,” Rick said tightly, and he walked to the door without turning to look at her again, angry at himself all at once, angry because he was behaving like a goddamned adolescent ogling a cheesecake magazine. He tried to put her out of his mind, but the anger mounted, a frustrated sort of self-incriminating anger which finally spread to include Lois Hammond and then focused on her alone.
He thought of her rich body, and then he thought of what she was trying to do, and he hated her intensely in that moment. He slammed the door behind him, and in his anger he almost missed Gregory Miller walking past the stairwell.
“Hello, Mr. Dadier,” Miller said, his eyes taking in the flush on Rick’s face.
“Hello, Miller,” Rick said briefly. “You cutting a class?”
“Why no, Chief,” Miller said. “I was just goan to the John.” He held up the large wooden room pass and said, “See?” And then he glanced curiously at the closed door of The Trades Trumpet and asked, “You... uh... cuttin’ a class, teach?”
“What do you mean by that?” Rick asked touchily.
“Why nothin’. Nothin’ at all, teach.”
“Mr. Dadier,” Rick snapped.
“Why, sure. Mr. Dadier. That’s what I said, wunt it?”
“No, it wasn’t what you said. And you know damn well it wasn’t.”
“You got somethin’ against me?” Miller asked suddenly.
“I might ask the same of you,” Rick answered, his anger forcing the words out of him.