At seven that evening, Kit was dressed and waiting for Myra.
Sonny was asleep, out cold. He had said his prick was worn down to a nubbin.
She smiled.
She would have it out with Myra, try to explain that while she had certainly enjoyed the lesbian experience she could not become further involved.
Myra was late. Kit went to the kitchen and made a gin and tonic, not that she needed the calming effect of booze but because she was so deliciously sated, so absolutely jellied inside, that the drink would augment her feeling of sensual contentment.
Sipping it, she slipped a hand up under her skirt and felt her panty crotch. Soggy. Slippery with juice. She went to her bedroom for fresh panties. Peeling off the stained ones, she gazed at Sonny, sprawled naked on the bed, breathing shallowly in deep sleep. She could not resist going to him, bending down and kissing his genitals.
She sat on the edge of the bed sipping her drink, studying his beautiful young body, involuntarily dropping a hand into her crotch and massaging her pussy as she gazed fondly at him.
It was a silent hour, Sunday evening. She had bathed and put on a flowered print dress, very short, a clinging garment that molded to her shape. Her hair was brushed out, her eyelashes darkened with mascara. They had eaten only snacks today and this meager consumption of food contributed to her feeling of lightness and ease.
When she returned she would wake Sonny up, get fucked again. It seemed very doubtful to her that he would take any interest in Lily tomorrow, after a weekend like this one.
She fingered her hairy cunt lips together and pressed on her clit. A bubble of heat grew. She massaged it slowly, while sipping her drink and watching him. She began to hope that Myra had gone off on another tack. Maybe she would not show up.
The liquor warmed her, and by the time she finished, it had gone to her head.
She should not drink when she already felt this lazily content. Especially not when she had to make things perfectly clew to Myra.
Her hips were beginning to move, pressing her swollen clit into the rocky motion of her slippery cunt lips, when she heard the beep of a car horn out front.
Myra!
She sprang up, left her glass on the dresser, threw a silent kiss to Sonny, and dashed out.
She was on the front walk when she realized that she was not wearing panties.
It would be too much bother to go back. She climbed into Myra's car.
Myra twisted the steering wheel viciously, wrenching the car into a U-turn, wheeled out of it on screeching tires, and raced toward the avenue leading out of town.
"I bit him," she snarled.
"You what?"
"His cock. Don's. The asshole."
The car windows were open and Myra's blonde hair flagged out in a wind-tom banner. Her eyes were narrowed to angry green slits. She wore a white summer dress and as the car crossed a potholed intersection her big breasts leaped wildly about. She was not wearing a bra. Her hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white with tension.
She turned to Kit and snapped, "I phoned you all day yesterday. Where in hell were you?"
"Sonny and I went swimming."
Myra ignored the stop sign at the avenue, tooled out onto it, burning rubber.
She said, "Yesterday I needed you but you had to be off with your goddam kid."
Kit could only be amused by the other's anger. She owed nothing to Myra, and her scary driving was rather exhilarating. Lounging in her corner of the front seat, feeling the wind bat her hair, pleasantly clean, in a fresh dress, cool despite her drooling cunt, she did not mind Myra's ranting.
She said mildly, "Myra, why don't you fuck yourself?"
A green-eyed glance cut at her. "Some friend you are.
"We're not friends. We were lovers for an evening. Like a pickup, shackup. Period. I think you're griping to hear your own voice. Don seems very fond of you. He earns a good living. He probably has reasonable complaints against you, for instance your pot smoking. It's against the law and why should he risk trouble, losing his job or jail or what not?"
"Because I like smoking grass!" Myra shrilled. Her cheeks reddened with anger but shortly her foot eased on the accelerator, as though the outburst had eased her tension.
She slowed the car and scooped up her skirt.
Surprised, Kit saw a pink streak near her panty waistband. Myra dug in for it, drew out a skinny grass cigarette and handed it to Kit.
"Light it for me, will you?"
Kit took a pack of matches from the dashboard, bent down below the whipping air currents and lit up. She guessed a car was the safest place for smoking the stuff. If a cop car showed, the roach could always be flipped out the window.
She took a deep drag before handing it to Myra, held it bottled up deep inside her, hoping she would again get the movie-camera effect and turn colors inside out the, way she had the abstract paintings at Myra's house. She had no interest in renewing their lesbian play. She simply felt so good that she wanted to try out the psychedelic color effects again.
By the time they had smoked half of the stick, she had it. Trees along the highway, drab, dusty things, were Technicolor to kelly green. Wind stripped clouds miles above turned pastel, gorgeous dusty-blue and baby-pink, lowered until she could touch them. She was in marvelous shape when Myra at last threw away the roach. Slouched in the seat, an arm out the window, legs spraddled, breezes cooling her, Kit lost all sense of time and space as she gazed at the magically transformed world about her.
Myra said, "That beautiful pussy of yours! Move over here. Let me pet it as I drive."
Kit realized that her skirt had blown up. She gazed down at her crotch. Her muff was pure spun copper and drawn gold, shadowed with green and mahogany, colors that had never naturally adorned any twat unless seen through the kaleidoscope lenses of pot and hash.
She spread her legs wider and slid a hand over her thigh, caressing the silky tangles of pubic hair, saying, "I'll do it myself, Myra. I like to."
"You gorgeous piece, you're teasing me, you mouth-watering bitch!"
"No. I'm through with girlie stuff." "You have something new?"
Kit nodded.
"Who is he?"
"Santa Claus." Kit forked her index and middle finger on her pussy lips and slowly rolled them, as she had been doing before Myra arrived at the house. Quickly her clit stood up into the oily friction.
She ignored Myra, gazed at the Technicolor landscape and toyed with her cunt, not rising to orgasm, just simmering happily along, as the car raced over the milky white ribbon of highway, sweeping over hills and careening into the valleys beyond.
Myra at last wheeled the car into the parking lot of a fake log-cabin roadhouse.
Kit straightened, adjusting her skirt and using a big white comb on the dashboard to arrange her hair.
"Where are we?"
"You'll see.
They got out and Myra led her to the door of the place, which was marked, "Mona's Grill". Drawn curtains hid the view through the windows. But inside she got it instantly.
The joint was all female, two or three dozen woman customers, not a manin sight.
At the bar they were waited on by a butch-dyke wearing a shirt and black shoelace tie and a red vest. She was built like a fire hydrant.
"Myra!" she called. "Sweetie! Give me a kiss, baby."
Myra leaned over the bar and kissed her full on the mouth.
So that was how this place was, Kit thought, climbing onto the barstool, smiling politely when introduced to Mona herself, the bartender and proprietor, but not offering a kiss. Myra ordered drinks and stood beside Kit, man-style, an arm about her.
Soft music was playing. A few couples danced. In darkish booths around the walls, women in pairs sat close together, whispering in each other's ears, caressing, occasionally kissing.
Kit had never been in a lesbian place before. It was amusing and her turned-on state fitted the languorous female movements. She guessed that if a man strode brusquely in she would be startled.
They sipped their drinks in silence. Myra seemed to have drawn into herself, frowning, a muscle quirking in her jaw. Thinking of Don? Well, if she were basically lesbian, her marriage to him was pretty impossible.
Abruptly she asked, "Kit, do you want to dance?"
"With you?" Kit giggled.
"What's the matter with me? Why do you hate me all of a sudden?"
"Myra, don't get paranoid. I meant, it seems funny to dance with a woman. I haven't since I was about twelve and we girls did it to learn the steps."
"Please?"
Kit shrugged. She finished her drink and slipped off the barstool and let Myra take her to the meager space between tables and booths where others were dancing to syrupy-slow music. There Myra took the male role, right arm about Kit, left hand holding hers. They drifted together and Myra stepped into the music.
Kit's forehead touched the taller girl's cheek. They swayed and Myra's arm drew her close. She let herself curve against the other and soon found it pleasant. The drinks and pot had helped, of course. She slid her hand from Myra's shoulder up to her neck and caressed the nape under the flow of blonde hair.
They moved like that until the music ended. They waited in close, comfortable embrace for the next piece.
Myra whispered, "You do like me, don't you, Kit?"
She nodded, rubbing her cheek against the other girl's. "But don't expect a big involvement, Myra. It's pleasant. That's all. I have another life to live, complicated enough to suit me. Okay?"
Myra did not answer. Apparently she could not be that casual about it.
As the music started she asked, "Could we get rid of your bra? It makes your titties feel wrong, hard."
"You unfasten it."
Myra pinched the hooks free and it was a great deal pleasanter, their soft breasts rolling over each other. Kit's bra worked down and soon only dress material separated the raking points of their nipples. By then both of Kit's arms were twined about Myra's neck and she felt the pressure of a thigh against her pussy. Myra nuzzled her cheek, begging a kiss, and Kit turned, licking the girl's creamy lips, felt that sweet lesbian fluttering of lips and curling tongue tips.
They drew apart as the music ended. Kit sighed deeply, stood caressing the other's backside.
A girl appeared between them. Dark curls fitted closely as a cap about a pretty, sun-browned face. Violet eyes beamed at Kit. The newcomer was slender but plump breasts showed through a very thin blouse the color of her eyes.
She said, "Myra, introduce me to your yummy friend."
Myra looked daggers at her. But she said, "Kit, this is Grace.
Kit felt the girl's hand slide warmly up her arm. Her smile was brilliant.
She said, "Kit. The name fits you. Darling, could I-have a dance?."
"No!" Myra snapped.
Grace turned silkily to her. "Darling, don't be so wretchedly possessive. Besides, I have a stash of those little pink sticks you love so dearly."
Myra let the girl turn Kit away when the music started.
Kit soon found this was something else. Grace seemed to embrace her without touching, danced like a feather, flowed in and fitted to her as snugly as the clinging dress she was wearing.
As they drifted she thought of milkweed fluff blown on the wind. She closed her eyes and let herself go. Her hands were on Grace's shoulders, the girl's on her hips. Kit did not know who led and who followed. Damp, lips brushed her cheek. She turned, cupped her mouth on the other's and lost herself in a wobbly flow of honeyed lips and waving tongue tips. The kiss seemed natural, the thing to do. Shortly Grace's hands oozed up her body and caressed her tits. That too was expected, and welcome, silken strokings that raised her nipples to hard, throbbing projections.
Grace whispered, "I've taken a room upstairs."
"All right," Kit said.
Her eyes opened as they moved from the dance floor. She saw only Grace's brilliant smile and her violet eyes, which were long and slanty, so beautiful that Kit's gaze hung on them, enraptured. They entered a darkish hallway and climbed stairs, went into a room almost filled by a giant oval bed covered with apricot satin. There were lamps on small tables but no other furnishings. The rug seemed ankle deep. Kit toed off her sandals and squirmed her feet into the luxuriant nap.
Grace opened a table drawer and took out a pink cigarette and matches. She lit the stick and handed it to Kit.
Kit had sucked her lungs full when Myra appeared in the doorway, startling her. Recalling Myra's rages, she expected a scene but then saw a girl follow Myra in, holding her hand, a pretty, plump creature with soft brown hair. Kit handed the pot stick to Myra as a peace offering. Smiling, she accepted it and the four stood silently passing the hot cigarette about. The name of the brown-haired girl was Louise, someone told Kit. While dragging on the cigarette, Louise was caressing Myra's big tits.
Myra said, "This is good grass but I had better, Panama Red. My shitty husband burned it with lighter fluid."
Grace commented mildly, "What can you expect from a man but shit?"
Kit did not share their lesbian hatred of men but it helped draw them together into a frictionless community further lubricated by the pacifying marijuana. She watched Louise unzip the back of Myra's white dress. It fell, exposing those luscious big tits, the puffy aureoles and thick nipples that had reminded Kit of a cow's teats. Louise bent to them and sucked a breast.
Kit turned to Grace. The girl's transparent violet blouse did not reach her slacks, low-slung hip-huggers of dark velveteen. She caressed the bare, tanned flesh of her waist, warm, silky flesh, then slipped her hand up under the blouse and cupped it on the firmest, roundest tit of her experience.
Grace dragged on the pot stick, smiling as she watched Kit toy with her breasts, then gazed at Myra, who now held a big tit in her hand and pushed it into Louise's yawning mouth.
Kit thumbed the girl's dark tit points to stiff-rubber pegs. Grace vined against her, nuzzling her cheek. Kit watched her fingers wave about under the blouse, following the rounds of tit. She became aware that she had entered the time-lag phase of the narcotic. For a minute or an hour she toyed with the firm globes, then slowly-or perhaps rapidly-stroked down her belly, fingered her deep navel dimple, found her zipper and shoved it down, exposing violet panties, the centerline ridged by a narrow band of dark hair.
She fingered the panty crotch. It was surprisingly dry.
She told Grace that.
The girl whispered, "I don't get steamy until there's tongue in my slit."
Kit's mouth watered as she gazed at the plump little lips between her fingers.
They were nude and Grace lay passively sprawled on the bed, waiting. Kit crouched over her, studying the dark-pointed tits and narrow pubic pelt. The hair was thick enough to be dark only on the mid-line of Grace's mound and on her cunt lips, which were still closed and hidden by the hair furrows. Curiously, Kit was the aggressor. The other stared at her dangling tits and wet snatch but made no move to touch her.
Kit lowered and lipped the sharp nipples. Hard. She sucked them and the small aureole circles, heard Grace moan softly and felt her squirm, but she remained inert as Kit kissed down her soft belly to her silky mound bush.
The smell of cunt was mild, almost hidden by a woodsy perfume. Grace's legs spread and yet her twat lips clung firmly together until Kit thumbed them apart, and in the narrow slit saw a glimmer of juice.
She tongued in between the hairy gates of the girl's cunt.
Grace's reaction was violent. Her hips gave a jerk and her legs heaved up, her heels falling on Kit's back, digging into her flesh.
"Sweetheart!" she cried. "That's it, lap my cunt!"
Kit's tongue swabbed up and down. Magically, the girl's pussy lips swelled out, forming a glistening teardrop-shaped trough, soon as sloshy as Kit could desire. Her clitoral hood drew upward exposing a pink bubble that grew immensely under Kit's sucking kisses. Soon she was Upping and licking a clitoris that seemed a match for Myra's. Did sucking enlarge clits? Or did the narcotic allow her to mentally transform flesh to fit her desires?
She experimented by closing the girl's lips on the turgid nubbin. It protruded. Holding the lips closed, she could still suck it through the tangle of hair.
Puzzled, she raised up from Grace's crotch and looked about for Myra. Myra, naked, was lying on the huge bed, legs raised and apart, her gaping, blonde-haired cunt toward Kit. Louise was still sucking Myra's tits. Kit eyed the dripping pink projection at the top of her slit. She had to find out. She began crawling out from between Grace's legs.
"Don't leave me!" Grace cried, trying to vise her thighs on Kit's head. But Kit wrestled free, climbed over her toward Myra s scarlet gash. Grace was clutching at her but she continued on and mouthed her friend's slobbery twat.
Myra loosed a groan and arched up, shoving against Kit's face.
Kit sucked the girl's clit out to finger form. She closed the lips on it; Like Grace's, it protruded far enough that she could still mouth it.
She heard Grace sobbing. "You've abandoned me, Kit! Please, please tongue my hole!"
Then Myra spoke. "Quit sniveling, Grace. You expect everybody to do it for you. Get down and eat some hair pie and then you'll get yours."
The girl still whimpered as she crawled between Kit's legs and suckered onto her cunt.
Among Kit's hallucinations was the growth of her clitoris to the size of one of Myra's breast points. Eventually it became a cock and she fucked Grace with it. At least, they were in fucking position, she between the girl's legs, ramming the growth protruding from her split into a seething, squirty hole.
Through most of the orgy she could not sort out her impressions. At one time someone was licking her cunt and fingering up her asshole while a mouth sucked each of her tits. She blacked out on that come. Later she was part of a daisy chain of writhing flesh, and the twat she was lapping seemed to be Louise's.
She did not know at what point she lost consciousness.
She awoke in glaring moonlight. Her mouth was on fire, burned dry, her tongue swollen with thirst. She needed beer, great icy mugs of it.
She sat up and saw that the three girls formed a triangle, the head of each between the thighs of another. They moved squirmily, very slowly, as though in the last stages of exhaustion. In the triangular space between them hands moved, caressing flesh, tits or bellies, whatever they happened to touch.
Kit stood up. Cunt juice spilled down her legs. Her twat was gaping but she felt no desire to return to the lesbian tangle, that meaningless plethora of soft flesh. She dressed. Finding Myra's purse on a table she took the car keys from it and left the room.
They did not seem to notice her departure.
Downstairs she went to the bar and asked the butch-dyke proprietor, Mona, for a bottle of beer.
Mona asked, "Did you have fun, darling?"
"I guess so," Kit said.
She drank the entire bottle of beer and went out to Myra's car and drove homeward.
She began to feel frightened. Yes, she had liked it. She had come more times than she could count. She had a leaning toward the lesbian bit, and maybe she would like having her clit stretched out to match Myra's and Grace's. Or had that been an illusion? Louise's had been small, though. Perhaps she was a new recruit.
But above all they, were simply bodies, not people, nothing to cling to, meaningless, and what frightened Kit was the voluptuous limbo, the cavern of delicious nothing that formed their lives, a place for drowning.
Arriving home she parked the car in front of her house where Myra could not miss seeing it, left the keys in the ignition, and went inside.
She paused on the porch, glancing next door to Bill Folsom's house. There were no lights. Bill, oh, Bill!
Bill was strong enough to save her.
Groaning, she went inside, locked the door behind her, knowing that Myra might well try to get in. She locked the kitchen door as well and took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and drank it down.
She undressed and climbed into bed with her son.
He slept as though dead. Worn out. Too much sex. Not a man, simply a boy with a man's genitals. She caressed his cock. The ropy limpness of it provided nothing to hearten her.
She turned from him. Soon her pillow was wet with tears.
She needed help. She simply could not do it all alone.
The day was already hot when Sonny awoke alone in his mother's bed.
The clock said ten. He got up feeling groggy, wandered out to the kitchen and found a note from her on the table, saying, "Sleepyhead! I've gone to work. Buy steak and tomatoes. Money in drawer."
He made breakfast and ate, thinking back over their crazy weekend of fucking. Where had Mother gone last night? He had awakened, watched a night ball game on TV for an hour, then went back to sleep.
Done eating he put on a pair of shorts and went out and sat on the back steps.
He saw Lily's white t-shirt moving about the greenhouse.
She must be mad as hell. She would probably throw a trowel at him. Well, he had to kind of explain. He angled across the lawn to the gap of the hedge and entered the greenhouse. It was steamy and Lily's tits were blackened by florists earth.
He sauntered to the aisle where she was seeding a flat. He leaned against a bench.
He said, "Lily, I'm awful sorry."
She gazed at him, shrugged. "Sorry for what?"
"Well, my mother had so many things to do."
"The way you're tangled in her apron strings, I bet you have trouble opening your fly to pee unless she tells you which way to zip."
He saw that she was wearing a bra, the way her titties protruded and did not dip or bob when she moved. He guessed that was to spite him.
Anyhow, she cared enough what he thought to wear a bra when he preferred her without.
He said, "Lily, I feel the same about you. I mean, you know how my mother is, I just had to go off with her Saturday, and then yesterday-"
"I haven't been lonesome," she snapped. "Well, I know you were busy, especially with me not here to help transplant."
"I mean, you haven't got the only prick in town."
She said it harshly but turned away, to hide a blush, he saw.
He pondered her meaning. As far as he had been able to keep track of her, she had been home all weekend.
Did she mean her father?
He would have to think about that. He said, "Let me sprinkle the dirt on after you seed."
"I can do it myself."
But when he took the trowel and began scooping dirt on the flat she had seeded, she moved to the next flat and began seeding it.
At the office Kit buried her troubles in work until mid-morning, when Myra phoned.
"It's all your fault, you bitch!" Myra screeched. "Myra, this is a switchboard phone. Be careful what you say."
"He blacked my eye. I have ice cubes on it but it's all blue and ugly. What do you mean by stranding me miles from home? That's why he beat me up.
Kit could not make sense of it. She had seen Don an hour before, his eyes red and his face puffy from booze. Apparently he had gotten drunk- Myra was simply looking for somebody to blame things on.
Kit said, "You found your car, didn't you?" "Yes, Grace drove me, but listen, you cunt lapping bitch, I'll get even-"
Kit hung up.
Shortly Myra was on the phone again, quieter now. "Darling, it was all groovy, wasn't it? And listen, Grace is madly in love with you-"
Kit dropped the receiver once more. She buzzed the switchboard girl and told her that if any woman called, no matter whom, she was not in the office.
But just before noon a man called her.
It was Harry, her ex-husband, saying, "I want to have lunch with you, right now. I'm at Barney's, the place your office gang goes to."
Kit was startled. Harry lived in a town some twenty miles away. She had not spoken to him in three or four years.
She said, "I'm terribly busy, Harry."
His voice became a snarl. "You better get your ass down here."
The receiver clicked. He knew something! Kit immediately thought of Myra. Had she phoned Harry?
Fortunately her boss had gone to lunch. She hurried out to Barney's and found Harry sitting in a booth drinking beer. He was a lean, blondish man, a larger version of Sonny, looking a bit jowly, she thought, but still attractive, and prosperous, to judge from his clothing.
Except for the anger in his eyes, he seemed utterly bland, merely the shell of the man she had once loved. She felt absolutely nothing for him.
But her belly quaked with fear.
He said stiffly, "You were always a whore, Kit. But not perverted, at least not that I knew of."
"Harry, you're being a bore." Her voice sounded feeble, she thought.
"Divorce law is such that I have a right to intervene in matters that affect Sonny."
Myra must have called him. But there was another possibility. He was an insurance adjuster and often worked with private detectives in investigating fires, thefts, and the like. Could he have someone spying on her?
She said, "You might tell me what I'm guilty of, Harry."
His eyes narrowed. He poured the last of his beer, gulped it down, and rose.
"I was going to have lunch here but you turn my stomach, you and your sluttish look, like a whorehouse blowjob expert. No, I won't tell you what part of your filthy sex life to cover up. You'll learn that in court if it comes to that."
With this threat, he strode out of the place.
Kit sat with tears streaming down her face.
She needed help, needed it desperately.
Lily found the greenhouse work proceeding rapidly. Sonny worked, so well with her that it was like having four hands.
And he had such lovely brown eyes!
It was a hot day and her undies kept her breasts and crotch steamy. Not the sweet steaminess of sex but hasty, wet, itchy. She tugged her bra, trying to let some air in. Sonny saw the movement. That infuriated her. But she could not go indoors and get rid of the undies. She had to spite him.
Thus she suffered until they finished. Then she thanked him grudgingly and went indoors and got out of her mucky clothes and into the shower.
It restored her spirits. Coolly naked, she hustled about the kitchen preparing Daddy's supper, something he loved, pot roast and potato salad. While boiling potatoes she fingered her Nat. It was soft and damp, her hole quite open. It should be, after the reaming it had taken from Daddy's big cock yesterday.
It was a tiny bit sore but she hoped to have a cuntful within five minutes of his arrival home from his hated work as an accountant.
She planned to greet him like a wife. What to wear? She would absolutely not be in t-shirt and denim skirt. She riffled through the dresses in her closet, chose a featherweight print, a faint amber design on ivory. Trying it on she liked the way it hugged her breasts but the skirt was too long. She got out her sewing kit and went to work, snipping off six inches, basting, modeling it, cutting again. When it was finally sewed and pressed the skirt hem was a half-inch below her crotch. Her cunt hair would show if they were dry and fluffy but not if flattened by cunt juice.
She felt sure the hair would be plastered tightly to her lips.
When she heard her father drive up, Lily hurried to the front door, stood smoothing her skirt on her hips, tugging it down just a little. Her heart was pounding. She heard him run up the steps. Peering through the curtain she saw his grin. Her lover! As always he wore a jacket and tie that looked out of place. He made dressy clothes seem overstuffed. His chest and neck were simply too big, She opened the door and drew back to the wall, gazing at him, blushing, suddenly tongue-tied, aware that a full day had separated them since dawn when he had pumped his load of jism into her cunt.
He handed her a flat box wrapped in tissue.
"A little gift," he said, not quite meeting her gaze.
She took it and tore it open. A nightie, a featherweight thing like a white mist. Swallowing down her pleasure, she crushed it to her bosom.
"Don't you like it?" he asked.
She choked, "I'd rather have a kiss, Daddy."
He bent down and pecked her cheek. Alarmed, she let the nightie fall, seized his lapels and clung.
"Daddy, I mean a real kiss."
"Honey, listen. I've been thinking. I wonder if we shouldn't ease up. Think things over. I love you too much-you see, honey-"
Without finishing, he thrust from her, strode toward the bedrooms.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. It had ended. He had not even looked at her crotch-length dress. She picked up the nightie and sat in the chair by the phone in the hall, sniffling.
Shortly he emerged from his room wearing only a pair of shorts, barefoot.
He said, "I'll work in the greenhouse until supper."
"No!" she cried.
He paused, biting his lip. He was looking at her dress. Rather, looking at her exposed twat, for the dress had pulled up when she sat. She saw a darkness in his eyes. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.
Was he changing his mind?
Then she heard a voice at the kitchen door.
It was Kit, calling, "Bill, could I speak to you for a moment?"
He turned and strode toward her. Lily sprang up, reaching out toward him but he kept on going to the sound of Kit's voice.
Kit was trembling all over. She guessed she looked haggard. She felt it. She stood on the steps from the greenhouse to the kitchen door and saw Bill appear, a hulking, hairy-chested man in blue denim work shorts.
She gasped, "Bill. Do me a favor? A big one?"
He opened the screen door. He was grinning at her. "Hell, Kit, you can have anything except my right arm. I need it. Come on in. We'll pop a beer."
"Bill, I've mixed cocktails. I want you to come over and have a drink with me. That's the favor."
"I must say, you're demanding an awful lot." He grinned, turned back and called, "Lily, I'm going over to Kit's for a minute."
Kit led him out of the greenhouse.
In her kitchen she took the tray of dry martinis she had already poured, handed it to Bill, and went into the living room, where Sonny was watching the afternoon ball game on TV.
She said, "Darling, I want to talk to Bill. Would you please go help Lily make supper, or watch her TV-"
Sonny looked surprised but obeyed without a word. When she heard the kitchen door snap shut she took her drink from the tray Bill had set on the coffee table. They tinkled their glasses together and far a moment she met his eyes over the urns of their glasses, gray eyes with a twinkle in them, handsome eyes in a squarish brown face, a good, clean, honest face.
She said, "I've been a terrible fool, Bill."
"Welcome to the club." He settled back against the cushions.
"Bill, I despise myself."
He scanned her. "I don't see anything to despise, just the prettiest woman in town.
"Do you know why I'm divorced? I mean, why my husband insisted on it?"
"Sure. Because you had too much spirit, too much independence for his liking. You wanted to pay your own way, which you do now, but he wanted to keep you in your kitchen."
She smiled. "You're good at telling me what I want to hear."
"I'll tell you something you don't want to hear. Your martinis are too small."
Impulsively she bent over him and kissed his forehead.
He looked up, surprised.
"Thanks, Bill," she said. She could not explain how he had, with a few words, lifted her spirits. He liked her. She knew he did, liked her as a person, respected her. That was what counted. Dropping down on the couch beside him, she said, "You'd make my day if we could extend the favor a little. Stay to supper?"
"Lily has ours ready."
"Let the kids eat it. You and I-please, Bill? r need time to tell you things."
"Don't tell too much," he warned. "And don't run out of gin."
Smiling, she nodded agreement.