Rudy brought a finger to his lips. “Keep your voice down. He might hear you. You’ll hurt his feelings.”
“God,” she lapsed, paling. “He takes forever sometimes, and—” she gulped “—he’s—he’s—he’s just so…
“Beth, oh Bethieeeeeeeeee!” called out the familiar nasal warble from downstairs. “Wither thee, my sweet beatific vision? My lovely, lovely Beth of the light-brown hair?”
“Oh, no,” Beth croaked.
“Leave me in turmoil no longer, oh, my wondrous angel, so lovely of countenance and sweet of loins. Come! I beg thee! Come assuage my beckoning fancy.”
Rudy cocked a brow. “Assuage my beckoning fancy?”
Beth glared at him. “That means he
“Dearest Beth,
Beth’s disdainful glare focused. “And you, you fucker. You haven’t made love to me in months.”
Rudy shrugged. It was not an easy thing for a man to rise to the occasion when he knew his squeeze was doing the bop with a naked torso.
“Wondrous Beth!” the torso whined on, “my passion throbs for thee! Oh, let thy lovely loins be wed again to mine! Let your angel’s lips give succor to my manly love, and drink of my warm and copious seed!”
“You better get down there,” Rudy advised, “unless you want me to lose everything on the next race.”
Beth stared at him, her shoulders slumping.
“I hate you,” she said.
««—»»
One thing Rudy had added to the new house, unbeknownst to Beth, of course, was the hidden video camera in the basement. Rudy, after all, was a successful man now, and successful men didn’t watch their girlfriends tuck torsos through mere cracks in basement doors. No, they watched with state-of-the-art video equipment. And Rudy had a lot to watch…
Despite his arousal, Rudy could no longer deny that watching Beth’s sexual feats maintained in him a necessary level of disdain for her. It didn’t matter at all that he coerced her to tend to Gormok—that was beside the point. And so was logic. He needed to hate her as much as he could in order to compel her to continue. In truth it was money, not love, that made the world go round, and Rudy liked the world very much.
Sometimes, though, the things he saw on the screen really bothered him. Like right now, for instance. Beth was performing an act of fellatio on Gormok the likes of which would make Linda Lovelace look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. “Goddamn! can she smoke a pole,” he whispered aloud. And he saw with even more distaste that her earlier claim was no bull. To describe Gormok as huge was sheer understatement. Try hung like a fucking Clydesdale stallion.
And Rudy’s hatred did not abate in the least as his hand assuaged his own beckoning fancy.
As was his habit now, Rudy pretended it was the pillar of his own manhood that was being so fastidiously gobbled up by Beth’s suck-to-wake-the-dead yap; it was the only way he could tolerate this—to fantasize. But when he eventually relocated the wares of his prostate gland and balls onto the Scotchguarded carpet, the fantasy shattered. His own release was a mere dribble compared to Gormok’s veritable whale blasts of sperm, which Beth allowed her face to be showered with as the alomancer gibbered in glee…
VII
Rudy knew it would happen eventually, but he had a contingency plan for that too. One night he woke to find Beth staring at the big bay window in the bedroom.
“Honey?” he feigned. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t even sleep anymore. I can
This in fact was true. Even from the basement, Gormok could be heard mattering inanities in arcane languages, and bubbling nasal laughter.
Beth sat on the bed and began to cry.
“Sweetheart,” Rudy offered a phony consolation. “Don’t cry.”
“You said we’d get married,” she sobbed. “You said we’d have children.”
“Honey, we will.”
“When, Rudy? I need to know when.”
“Soon, I promise.” He stroked her hair, kissed her teary cheeks. “I’ve got a plan,” he whispered. “The race track, the ball games and all that? That’s smalltime.”
“What are you talking about?” she sniffled.
Rudy reached into the nightstand. “See this? It’ll set us up for life in no time, honey.” What he showed her was the NASDAQ Index of
“Please, Rudy, please,” she sobbed, hugging him back.
“I promise,” he reasserted. “But you’ve got to give this just a little more time. Okay?”
Beth’s sobs began to abate.
“Honey? Okay?”
“Okay,” she croaked.
“Oh, Bethieeeeeeeee!” shot the voice from below. “Come hither, please!”
VIII
Within a few months they’d moved out of the A-frame in favor of a waterfront estate. The his and hers Mustangs were replaced by his and hers Lamborghini Diablos. Rudy merely had Gormok perform a few divinations, then laid his money down at a broker’s. It didn’t take long. Blue Chip stocks. Municipal bonds. T-Bills. Not to mention the thirty-million in 6-month CD’s. Even in the highest federal and state tax-brackets, Rudy had enough to keep them pig-shit rich for life. And that bevy of call girls? Well, now they were