Chapter 9

Sleeping peacefully on the living room carpet, his long brown legs drawn up in a nearly fetal crouch, Rich scarcely resembled the man whom she had alternately loathed and loved earlier that afternoon.

Valerie sat on the couch in one of Jeanne's bathrobes, staring at her sleeping brother-in-law with a mixture of wonder and fear. For a while she, too, had slept, but it had been too warm in the bed with both her father-in-law and her dozing roommate. Now she leaned back against the soft green cushions of the sofa, a half-empty tumbler of red wine on the coffee table beside her. She had expected to feel bruised and raw, so she moved gingerly as she crossed her legs, even though she had no aches and she felt strangely calm and relaxed.

I should be screaming, she thought. Or calling the police. Or something. But she couldn't make up her mind whether she had been outraged by the behavior of the others and herself, or secretly pleased. She knew she would never admit to herself or anyone that she had enjoyed what had happened to her. But, even so, she could not suppress a strange smile of satisfaction that formed on her lips.

When she became aware of the smile she reached for the glass of wine. Except that my lips are so dry, she told herself, I feel better than I have since I left Jim. Can it be true that a woman needs sex just as much as a man? That would account for my sense of... well, almost relief at being used so thoroughly. She had long advocated the position of Women's Liberation groups that women should be as Bee as men to decide, and demand, sex when they felt the desire. But it was only now that she began to believe in the position herself. It seemed odd to her that, despite the fact of her adamant stand on the issue, secretly she had always believed that, sexually anyway, women were really not psychologically equipped to be anything but receptacles for a man's camel cravings.

"That kind of thinking," she whispered to the wine glass, "is pure shit." And she added silently, And it's probably a big part of the reason you left Jim. How can you hope to live with a complicated human being if you can't even recognize something as simple as your own sex drive? She shook her head in self-mockery and took another sip of the wine. Well, she told herself, looking once again at her sleeping brother-in-law, at least you know that you must be a good lay. She shook her head, thinking, So many times!

I must've lost weight, she thought. So many times, so many different ways! It's a wonder my cunt doesn't look like raw hamburger. She glanced at Rich to make sure he was still asleep, then parted the bathrobe and looked down at her cunt. She had examined it once already when she washed, but now she spread her thighs a little and looked down at it again. It's not as pretty as a cock, she thought, But it's a pretty cunt. She touched the silky pubic hair with her delicate fingers, then gently parted the folds of her labia. She couldn't see it very well without a mirror, but she examined it as best she could from that position, looking for any traces of damage. Except perhaps that it looked slightly mote red than usual, she could detect no drastic change.

Then she looked over at her brother-in-law, who was still asleep on the rug, and she thought, That is a good fuck. That's about the best fuck I've ever had.

When she fumed her head and reached for the wine glass she saw that her brother-in-law was awake and watching her.

"Don't you know you'll get zits if you play with yourself like that?" he asked her.

She was embarrassed that he had seen her looking at her pussy, but she said, "If you can scratch your balls all the time, I can certainly look at my cunt when I want to."

Rich almost laughed. "That's pretty nasty talk for a Catholic girl," he said. "Where's my dad, and what's-her-name?"

"Her name is Jeanne, and they're both in the bedroom. Still sleeping, I guess."

"What time is it?"

"I don't know. About five, maybe. The sun's starting to go down."

"I'm hungry," he said. "Why don't you rustle us up some chow?"

"Why don't you go home to eat?" she asked him, picking up her wine and taking a long sip. "I don't think there's anything to eat here, and anyway, Frances will be waiting supper for you."

"Give me some of that, whatever it is," he told her. "I feel like I'd slept with a pair of dirty socks in my mouth."

She handed him the wine and watched him drain the glass, his Adam's apple bobbing on his bull-like neck.

"Thanks," she told him when he set the glass on the table, where it made a purple ring on the glass, even though she hadn't noticed him spill any.

Rich stretched his long legs, worked his shoulders in circles for a moment, then said, "There must be something to eat."

Valerie nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

"See for yourself then," she said carelessly. "The cupboard is bare. We don't eat much here."

Rich groaned a little as he got up, his heavy balks swinging between his thighs. He stretched again, then started for the kitchen, which was at the other end of the room.

"Take this with you," Valerie said, handing him the wine glass. "I'd like some more. And when you come back, bring the bottle with you. It's on the counter by the sink."

Rich looked down at her for a moment, apparently evaluating whether or not his sister-in-law was actually giving him an order.

"No woman gives me orders," he said.

"Don't be such a macho klutz," she said, pressing the wine glass into his hand. "I think there might be some yogurt in the refrigerator if you want that."

Rich hefted the glass in his hand, looking down at her. "Yogurt?" he said incredulously. "Isn't that made out of spoiled milk? You don't actually eat that stuff."

"I've eaten worse today," she said.

Rich gunned at her. Then he went into the kitchen. She didn't watch him, but she could hear him blanking the wine bottle and glass together on the counter. And as though she were looking out the paisley-painted window and at the red and purple stain it cast on the floor near where he had been sleeping, she could visualize him as he opened the refrigerator door and bent down to see what was inside, his buttocks bumping the cold handle of the oven behind him.

When he came back he sat down on the carpet beneath her and poured some wine in her glass. He took a swig out of the bottle, which looked ridiculous since it was an expensive brand which one of Jeanne's dates had given her, and the mouth of the bottle was not shaped for drinking. He had found a plastic basket of cherry tomatoes and an unopened can of Vienna sausages, and when he pulled the spiraling aluminum from the sausage can he cut his thumb a little.

"Watch out!" she said, too late.

Rich sucked on his thumb, and with the other hand pulled one of the jellied sausages from the densely packed can. She watched him tilt his head back to drop the sausage, whole, into his mouth. Then she reached into the green plastic basket and pulled out a tomato, her fingernails holding it by the tiny stem. She took a sip of the wine he had poured her, then bit off a third of the tomato, still watching him eat the sausages.

"I wish you had some potato chips," he said, washing down the sausage with a swig of wine from the bottle.

"Did you ever see Tom Jones?" she asked him, holding the cherry tomato against her lips. "The movie with Albert Finney, I mean."

"Isn't that the one where they go deer hunting on horses and that skinny blonde chases him all over to get him to marry her, only he's fucking everyone else and gets hung in the end?"

Valerie grinned at his synopsis of the movie. "I think it was a fox they were hunting," she said. She was fascinated with the way a tiny diamond of jellied grease clung to his lower lip as he talked.

"Why would anybody want to hunt a fox?" he asked. "They don't eat them, do they? They eat rats sometimes in Nam," he told her. "And cats, too, even though they're harder to catch than dogs. Rats are even harder to catch, but they eat them sometimes. I've seen it more than once."

"Didn't you think it was sexy?" she asked him, leaning down a lime, her hands on her knees, as she watched him eat another sausage.

"Rats? Eating rats?" he asked her, his sun-bleached eyebrows arched incredulously.

Valerie smiled. "No," she said. "I mean the movie. I remember I thought it was just about the sexiest thing I'd ever seen when he was eating the pear with his mother."

"Those were oysters," he told her. "I remember that part, too, because it made my girl friend hungry, and I had to put my pants on and go to the snack bar to get her some potato chips. I wish you had some potato chips now, come to think about it. And anyway, your memory isn't so hot, because that was the old maid he was eating the oysters with, not his mother." He chewed on a tomato, then said, "What was the name of that movie again?"

"Tom Jones," she told him. "But didn't you think it was sexy?"

"I would've felt a lot sexier if I hadn't had to go get those damn potato chips at the snack bar."

"Look," she said, taking the tomato out of his hand as she slid down on the floor beside him.

"Hey! Whatcha doing?" he protested, leaning a little away from her.

"I want to show you something," she said, fishing a cherry tomato out of the green plastic basket. As she pulled off the tiny leaves and the stem she said, "Didn't you ever think that food could be sexy?"

Rich looked at her suspiciously, the can of Vienna sausages in his hand. "You wanna screw again?" he asked her. "Wait 'til I get something in my stomach and then--"

"No, no," she said, grinning. "But look." She pushed the cherry tomato against his lips, but held it back as he looked suspiciously down at it. "When you get it in your mouth, don't bite it. Push it against the roof of your mouth with your tongue and break it open that way."

"What's that supposed to do?"

"It's sexy," she said. "Try it." She pushed the tomato into his mouth and watched him hold it there for a minute.

"Who ever heard of a sexy tomato?" he asked, talking around the tomato.

"Go ahead and try it," she urged him. Then she watched his face as he broke the tomato against his palate. "Well?" she asked when he had swallowed the tomato.

"A tomato," he told her. "Nothing sexy about that."

Valerie sighed. "Look," she said, taking another tomato out of the basket. "This time I'll do it; then you kiss me and break the tomato with your tongue."

Rich laughed. "Okay," he said. "But then I want to eat in peace. If you want to feel sexy after that, then we'll fuck some more."

Valerie put the tomato in her mouth and leaned forward a little to kiss him. His lips tasted of Vienna sausages, but his tongue was hot as it slipped past her lips and pressed against the ball of the tomato. She helped him break the tomato by holding it in place with her own tongue, and she shivered a little as the tart juice exploded over their dueling tongues.

"How was that?" she asked when they had parted lips.

"A lime sexy," he admitted. "But it was because we were kissing."

"Do it again," she told him. "Only don't think about the kiss. Concentrate on the texture of the tomato, how firm and smooth it is at first, and then the pressure it takes to break it and the sort of salty-sour taste of it and the feel of the insides against your tongue."

They did it again and when the tomato was broken, Valerie pushed it into his mouth with her tongue and rubbed the tomato flesh against his palate and over his tongue.

When he had swallowed the pulp he smiled at her and she said, "How was it that time? Didn't it feel even a little bit sexy?"

Rich grinned. "Without the seeds," he conceded, "a warm tomato tastes sort of like a cunt."

Valerie giggled a little. "That's more or less the idea," she said, "though I think you could've phrased it more delicately. I suppose if they could grow hairy tomatoes without the seeds, you'd never have to bother a woman again."

Rich eased his hand through the folds of her housecoat and said, fingering her silky pelt, "It doesn't replace the real thing, Sis."

Valerie pushed his hand away from her cunt. "Eat your sausages," she said. "And wipe your mouth off. You've got grease or something on your lip."

"Now if you want to try something sexy with food..." Rich said, grinning. He waited until Valerie reached for her wine glass; then he flipped the hem of her bathrobe up and deftly stuffed his Vienna sausage into her cunt.

Valerie nearly spat her wine all over him. "Oooo!" she gasped. "That's cold."

"It'll warm up in a minute," he said, pulling her hand away when she tried to pull the sausage out. "After you marinate it a little."