Sally was so confident Ray would hear from the bank the very next day that she kept half-listening for the sound of his feet pounding up the stairs to tell her they had got the loan. Then, her sacrifice would all be worth while, she would know she'd done the right thing, the only thing, under the circumstances. But the day passed like any other, and so did the next and the next until she was fuming with suppressed anger at Blodgett's delay.
On Friday morning she did her marketing and stopped in the drugstore to pick up some household items. Ray was busy behind the prescription counter, so she merely waved at him to let him know she was there and spent a few minutes chatting with Miss Minnie, of whom both she and Ray were quite fond. Miss Minnie had given the couple many valuable tips about the best places to obtain various items in Quiggville, a good doctor and dentist and so forth.
«I believe I'll have a sundae,» Sally said, sitting down at the fountain and arranging her parcels on the stool beside her. The girl loaded the concoction with extra hot fudge and whipped cream and she thought ruefully of the calories as she dipped her spoon into the luscious combination. «Won't you join me, Miss Minnie?»
«Just a black coffee for me,» the clerk said, «I don't never eat any of that sweet stuff. Where would I be now if I'd of been eating them sundaes for thirty-three years?»
Sally paused, spoon raised. «How long did you say?»
«Thirty-three years. I been working right here in this store since I was fifteen years old, Miz Denham. 'Course I don't expect to be here much longer … it looks like my career is comin' to an end, don't it?»
«Why do you say that?» Sally questioned, frowning.
«Well, who knows, when the new owners takes over?» the older woman shrugged philosophically but her down-to-earth voice quavered slightly as she spoke of the impending change. «They was in here yesterday,» she leaned forward confidentially, «poking into everything and writing it all down … asking a lot of stupid questions.»
«Men from the drugstore chain were here yesterday? Why, that's funny, Ray never mentioned it …» Sally broke off in mid-sentence.
«I reckon not. Probably didn't want to upset you, but he was lookin' awful gloomy. It's a crying shame the way John Blodgett has done you two, but at least you can be thankful you ain't put thirty-three years into this place like I have.»
«Miss Minnie, the sale of the store isn't final,» the young wife assured her, «and I have good reason to think that Ray will be the new owner after all. We expect to have some good news very soon, so keep your fingers crossed!»
«I hope you're right, Miz Denham,» the spinster muttered doubtfully, «but you don't know this town like I do. When Mr. Blodgett makes his mind up to do something, he sees it through.»
Miss Minnie got up to wait on a customer who had just entered and Sally finished her sundae in a thoughtful mood. Well, she could see a thing through herself, if it came to that! Easing herself from the stool, she smoothed out her skirt which was clinging to her perspiration-damp thighs and gathered up her purchases. Once again she stopped briefly to see her husband and Ray looked up from his drug preparations to smile at her.
«I won't be up for lunch, honey, I'll just grab a sandwich here. Really got a lot of work this morning … must be a lot of sick people in Quiggville.»
«OK – just don't forget your lunch altogether,» she admonished. «I declare, Ray Denham,» she put on a fake southern accent she sometimes used jestingly and which he enjoyed, «you are just gettin' positively skinny.» She wouldn't let him know how worried she was about Miss Minnie's information and the fact that he hadn't told her about the visitors in the store.
Upstairs, she dropped her bundles in a heap on the kitchen table and went immediately to the wall telephone, picking up the thin Quiggville directory. Blodgett's office did not answer and she next dialed his residence. A servant answered and at her request called John Blodgett to the phone.
«This is Sally Denham,» she announced. «Why haven't I heard from you?»
«I can't talk now, you should know better than to call here,» he growled and promptly hung up on her. Sally stared at the dead receiver, a growing premonition seizing her that things were not going as she had expected. Very well, she would give him until Monday … no longer.
At the other end of the line, Blodgett was also uneasy. Her boldness in contacting him at home surprised him … she had more spirit than most of her sex and it was that very thing about her that had made it so pleasurable to seduce her. He did not anticipate real trouble … but you never knew when one of the bitches would turn on you. «Eula!» he called sharply.
The maid appeared soundlessly behind him. She was a strikingly beautiful young black woman … skin that seemed to change from coffee to bronze and flowing blue-black hair that was now forced back into a confining hair net. The white nylon uniform that Lauralee Blodgett required the girl to wear molded itself to every hollow and curve of a figure that was unbelievably full-breasted above a minuscule waist and flaring, generous hips. If Eula had had the opportunity to get away from Quiggville and go north, there was no doubt in Blodgett's mind she could have gone on the stage. Instead, she had married her local sweetheart at an early age and now worked for a low wage in the Blodgett household.
«Eula, if anybody calls here for me, I want you to be sure to ask who it is – and if it's Miz Denham, you tell her I'm not home. You got that?»
«Yes, sir,» she said quietly, but there was a quick flare of interest in her downcast eyes that her employer did not see.
«Where's Miz Blodgett?» he questioned.
«Oh, she left for town a half-hour ago … thought you knew.»
«No, I didn't,» there was an instant relaxation of his big body, a subtle yet distinct alteration in the master-servant relationship between the two. «Come here, Eula,» he said in a softer tone and the woman obediently moved toward him to receive his embrace. He kissed her full on the lips, forcing his tongue inside the warm wet cavern of her mouth and sliding it back and forth in a lewd semblance of oral copulation while his fingers rapidly undid the buttons of her uniform and went familiarly to her straining breasts that were too large for even his big hands to encompass. Below his belt he felt his cock jerk and swell to instant hardness as he began to breathe in short, heavy rasps.
«Come on, girl,» he muttered, «let's go in the bedroom … I got some business with you 'fore she gets back.» Smiling loosely down at her, he took Eula's hand and guided it to his stomach, forcing her to grasp his throbbing penis. Her dark eyes widened, though she knew well from experience the inhuman dimensions of his instrument, and an involuntary little shiver rippled over her body. Such was Blodgett's dominance over her that she could look forward eagerly to the things he would do to her on the big king-size bed while never letting up for one second in her steady hatred of the system which allowed her to become a mere chattel and plaything of her corrupt employer so that he enjoyed her body equally as often as her own husband. Eula liked to think that every time Blodgett fucked her, she drained him of a little bit more of his life fluid, his lewd sperm that he filled her belly with … although he certainly seemed to have an endless supply of it … but never mind, one of these days her time was coming! She still had a simple faith that justice would be done.
They entered the exquisitely decorated master bedroom and Eula automatically finished stripping, laying her clothes out neatly over a chair. He sat on the edge of the bed waiting for her, eyes sliding lasciviously over her dark perfection that was always so excitingly forbidden to him that he had to have it again and again. «I want you to suck me off, Eula,» he instructed her exactly as one might tell the maid how to go about polishing the silver, «yes, sir, that's what I crave today.»
Eula dropped to her knees in front of him and settled back on her haunches as she reached out to take the blood-filled, lust-thickened penis and guide it toward her lips that were already forming a soft oval to receive the hard bulbous head. As her pink tongue flicked out, the woman found that a totally irrelevant thought was running around in her head. I wonder, she puzzled, what this business is with Miz Denham?