Soon we were in the Winters’ kitchen, sitting on stools at the counter in our respective robes (hers blue and fitting nice, mine white and, again, two sizes too small, my shoulders straining the seams), eating microwave dinners and drinking Diet Cokes. Nearby, the penned-up dog, although fully fed not forty-five minutes ago, was whining pitifully, as if it hadn’t had a meal since summer.
Janet, gnawing a leg of Swanson chicken, said, “Toss her a scrap, why don’t you?”
I speared a bite of Salisbury steak. “What, and spoil the bitch?”
“You’re evil.”
I didn’t feel like contradicting her.
We had cleaned up after ourselves, and were standing at the sink like an old married couple when I asked, “What do you have on under that robe?”
Her smile was pixie-ish. “Wouldn’t you like to know?…What do you have under yours?”
I opened mine and showed her. It was a good thing I wasn’t wearing David’s tiny trunks.
“You can get arrested in some states for that,” she said, but her eyes were big and pleased.
I opened the front of her robe and saw the creamy skin and lovely breasts and the wonderful Old School muff.
“That’s illegal in most states,” I said. “Pubic nakedness.”
“That’s public nakedness. And, anyway, this is private.”
I slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it slip down her narrow-waisted, full-hipped frame to puddle on the floor at her bare feet.
“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
In the Winters Family Rec Room, I took the time to get a fire going in the big rough-stone fireplace while Janet waited, naked underneath an Indian blanket. Then I joined her and we necked a while, romantically. When I finally kissed her breasts, the nipples were erect, damn near an inch long and hard, so hard. I kissed her neck, she kissed mine. I put my hand between her legs and the moistness there wanted attention. I buried my head down there and licked and sucked; then her head was in my lap and she licked and sucked. Things were getting serious.
“On top of me,” she whispered, her face looking up at me half-lidded, mouth open in terrible, exquisite pain. “On top…”
For all the moistness, she was tight-a little hand might have been gripping me down there-and she shuddered and cried in pain and delight as I entered her and slid myself slowly in and out. I cupped the full firm globes of her ass and nuzzled her breasts as she moved her hips in ways she hadn’t learned in the library, the inside of her sucking out the inside of me. The blanket had fallen away, and our flesh was reflecting the licking flames, one body with many limbs and so much skin, blushed orange, and after a while her eyes rolled up in her head so that barely anything but white showed as I plunged in and out of her with the blade of flesh.
We hadn’t talked about protection-we were just naked and together and the lust ran away with us and I’d been in her. And now my seed was in her, too. Some detached voice in my head said, She’s already dead, she doesn’t need protection…
Then we were on top of the blanket. The fire had dwindled to a nice comfort level, and we were wrapped up in a post-coital embrace, sleepy, at ease with each other, so much so that we could just laugh as we picked pubic hairs off our respective tongues. My efforts to cough one up off the back of my throat almost made her hysterical.
After while she had quieted down enough to ask, “Were you a soldier?”
“How did you know that? Surveillance?”
Her smile was sweet for a girl who’d just given me a royal fucking. She shook her head. “I just feel it, know it, somehow…My grandfather was in Korea. You remind me of him.”
“Well, that’s made my day.”
She laughed and her face crinkled apologetically. “No, no, no, I didn’t mean… that.”
She studied me; touched my face with a finger. Examining me. Like I was an old tree, cut in half, whose rings you could count.
Finally, over the sound of a crackling fireplace, she asked, “Vietnam? Are you that old? You couldn’t be that old.”
“But I am.”
“How is that possible?”
I shrugged. “I was a baby when I went in.”
She nodded wisely. “But not when you came out.”
“…I was stupid.”
Her brow tensed. “ ‘Stupid,’ how?”
I shook my head. “ Real stupid. Married a girl on leave, in San Diego? When I got home, she was fucking this guy.”
“Oh dear,” she said, as if reacting to my harsh language, which in part maybe she was. Her fingertips came to her lips, a dainty gesture for a girl who’d had my cock in her mouth not long ago. “I’m so sorry…What did you do?”
I shrugged again. “I went over to talk to him. Just reason with him. He was working under his car.”
Her brow tightened further. “What did you do?”
“Kicked the jack out.”
She didn’t draw away or anything. Didn’t even blink. Just asked, “…You got in trouble?”
One more shrug. “I didn’t do much time. But I was a kid, and didn’t understand.”
Nodding, Janet said, “You mean, how your wife could do that to you?”
“I mean, why killing people I didn’t know, in some other country, people who didn’t deserve it particularly, was cool. But kill one jackass back home who earned it, and I get shit.”
Her look of compassion, of sympathy, was so sincere, I could barely stand it.
She said, “I’m so sorry…You don’t have to talk about it.”
Surprised, I said, “I almost never do.”
I had opened up to her as I had my Vietnam pal Gary, who was the only other human about whom that could be said; even my late wife, the second one-the nice, stupid one-I’d never shared it with. Why the fuck had I tonight? Couldn’t be the little head controlling me, because it was all tuckered out down there.
Or anyway I thought it was.
Because all of a sudden Janet was crawling up on top of me, kissing me on the chest and the neck and then on the face, and the view of her, all that pale flesh, those breasts hanging down so full and beautifully shaped and gently swaying with those long tips sticking out at me accusingly, well, it woke the little head up, all right.
This time, however, having climbed on top, she stayed there. She was ready to take a little control.
And I was ready for somebody to take it.
Ten
Having been up and dressed a while, I was in the kitchen, at the stove scrambling eggs (bacon already made), when she drifted in in the blue terrycloth robe, hair looking nicely tousled.
Sleepily sexy, she paused to lean in the doorway and sniff the cooking smells approvingly.
“Wow,” she said. “You’re a surprise.”
“Coffee’s ready,” I said.
She made her way over to the counter where the Cuisinart coffee-maker dripped and helped herself to a cup.
The dog was penned up, and-despite the cooking smells-sleeping in its bed.
“What did you do?” she asked, nodding toward the dog, the mug of coffee in both hands, blowing at it a little. “Drug the mutt?”
“No. Just fed it. All it wanted.”
She laughed and risked a sip.
