Chapter 4

Seven more days until Rod came home. Then it was six. Then five. And four. Three, two one. And she was wide awake, opening the drapes in the bedroom to allow the first rays of morning sunshine in and, today, Rod would finally be home.

The time had passed so fast and Gail had tried to cut down on her nightly drinking but found it impossible. To compensate, she became maniacal about cleaning the house and having everything neat and in its place. She made endless trips to the Laundromat and spent hours scrubbing and polishing the floor. She sat, drinking, planning the home coming meal in her mind with endless changes. She polished what silver they had for three nights running. And tried to decide what she would do.

And, now, she stood in her nightgown, rubbing her eyes and looking at the morning sun over the city. In the year since Rod had seen her, she had changed. Her face was somehow older with the beginnings of hard lines on her cheeks and an odd look in her eyes. It seemed sad at times. Other times it seemed to smoke with a repressed emotion. A kind of masochistic smile on her lips when she looked that way.

And Rod had changed. Driving to the airport, she didn't know what to expect. Rather, she imagined they would see one another and rush into each other's arms. Or, she would see him and rush at him, that old feeling for him real when she was in his presence. Somehow, it wasn't at all like that. She had stood in the airport lobby, listening to the great whoosh of incoming planes and the rising, screaming whine of the great jets taking off and absently glanced around and saw him, Rod, standing looking at each other.

They walked towards each other slowly, each intent on the other, each knowing that the other had changed. They walked toward each other like people who had dated once years before. Gail's smile was warm and friendly. "Hi.".

Rod stood looking down at her. His face was older, harder, thinner. Also, he seemed taller. "Hi."

"You've lost weight," she said.

"So have you." And, for the first time, he smiled, crow's feet appearing at the corners of his eyes.

"Welcome home, Rod."

"Good to be home, darling."

"Are you all right?"

"Of course I am," he scoffed. "How about yourself?

"I'm fine now that you're here."

"Same here." He stepped forward to take her in his arms.

"Rod?" And her hand shot up, stopping him.

"What?" he asked, squinting.

Gail hesitated, opened her mouth, closed it and, as glimmers of tears danced in her eyes, she said, "I love you."

"And I love you, honey," he said as he took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Rod?"

"Yes?" he murmured, fighting for her lips.

"I need you!"

Rod gave a satisfied little laugh and hugged her tight. "And I need you too. Boy, did I miss you!"

"I mean I really need you!" she sobbed.

"Okay. I'll never go away again."

"Promise?

"Promise."

They left the terminal arm-in-arm laughing. Rod drove home with Gail snuggled close beside him, trying not to think of what she had done in the car.

Rod insisted on carrying her into the apartment and put her down, taking off his tie and coat. "Wow. I don't believe it. Fix me a drink after a nice long kiss."

She had stepped into his arms and felt his kiss and sensed his lack of ardor. Something, a little indefinable something told her that all was not right. Fearful that she might, in some way, some reserve, give away the all consuming lust she had had for her brother, she rubbed her hips against him and brushed her thighs back and forth.

Now, it was he, who pulled away. Her first numbing fear was that, in some way, he knew about her and his brother-in-law. If Lee had told him! She stood frozen by fear, waiting for the scalding word to come out of his mouth. Incest!

Instead, he waved a hand and said, "I'm sorry, it's me. Look, a lot has happened and it was a long flight and I'm dead on my feet. How about that drink?"

She exploded in relief. "Of course! How would you like it? On the rocks with a little soda?" That was the way he used to like his drink.

Rod looked thoughtful. "Better make that neat."

"Neat?" She looked at him questioningly.

He nodded. "Neat."

He looked so different to her standing in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. Thinner, yes, but changed around the eyes and mouth. Even his attitude was different. She smiled and spun from him, saying, "One neat scotch coming up." In the kitchen, she poured herself a drink that was pretty generous. To cover up, she poured more scotch in his glass.

They sat on the couch together, holding hands, eagerly telling each other any and all big news they had. Rod said he was on leave for a month then only had to report back for processing on his discharge.

"Will you be going back to your old job? Have you written the advertising agency?"

Rod looked down at the floor, took a big drink, then let his head flop back on the couch. "No, I haven't."

"Are you going to call them?"

Rod looked vague. "No, I'm not."

"Why?" Gail bit her lip.

"Well," he gave a little laugh, "I don't think I want to be in advertising any more."

They both took quick drinks and Gail took their glasses to the kitchen and poured bigger drinks. Sitting next to him, she looked at his face and knew he was troubled, that he had come to some new understanding of himself. Having gone through the problem with horrendous consequences, she was sympathetic. Could she, for a few moments, forget her own deep problems?. "What do you want to do, then?" she finally asked.

He shrugged. "That's it. I don't know." He gave a little laugh. "I don't have the slightest idea what I want to do."

"Maybe you want to go back to school?" she asked hopefully.

He made a face and took a deep drink. "Nuts. All those long hairs running around and rioting and mouthing off about a lot of causes they don't even understand." Rod was up on his feet and it seemed like he was letting out some of what was bothering him so Gail sat quiet as he talked on. "I'm too old for that crap. Listen, to them, it's all a game. They're over here and bad mouthing and thinking they've got the problems of the world licked and they don't even know what it's all about."

He was striding about the room, drinking, staring off, shooting glances her way while he talked on. "There they are and there I am. There I am in my little chopper, taking off, doing it from the manual, doing just like in training only I'm not in training, I'm in Vietnam and my chopper is loaded down with wounded men. Men blown half apart by land mines and men with their faces blown off by booby traps and kids bleeding, their life blood spilling out of them."

He paused for a moment, drained his glass then went on. "Sometimes I was so loaded I had stretcher cases lashed to my landing pontoons. Sometimes I had such a load of wounded, I couldn't get too much altitude and I'd have to fly between the hills and I'd look out at those guys and see them looking at me with those eyes and sometimes those bastards up in the hills would fire on us."

He paused and Gail got up to take his glass. "Honey, I'm so sorry."

Rod raked a hand through his hair and scoffed. "I'm sorry. Doing a job like that day in and day out can warp your perspective."

Gail shuddered. "I'll bet. You've seen too much suffering."

Rod gave a harsh laugh as he followed her out to the kitchen and stood watching as she mixed the drinks. "It's more than just that. It's the whole God damn country. Corruption everywhere. In the towns, it's all black market, whores, and dope."

Gail looked at him. "Really?"

"The whole place is miserable. There isn't one decent person in that whole stinking country. Sometimes, I just wished I could put it all down and walk away from it. Just say the hell with it."

"What did you do to keep from going crazy?"

Rod took his drink, took a big swig then tilted his glass in a little ironic toast. "Well, booze, for one thing."

Gail cocked her head. "For one thing?"

Rod looked at her seriously. "Yes. Pot, for another. Don't look so shocked or upset. Everybody over there smokes it. The stuff grows wild all over the place. Everybody does it. And with good cause. Keeps you from going nuts and busting the place up."

"I... didn't know," Gail said, wondering if she should tell him she had smoked it, wondering if she should tell him anything about Lee having been there. "You never wrote me about it."

"It's something you don't write home about." With a shrug, he grabbed the bottle and walked back into the living room, sprawling on the couch and saying, "Let's have some music or television or something."

Gail followed him. Her mind was a mixture of emotions and conflicting thoughts. She had hoped he would be calm and strong and take charge of their life and be someone she could lean on; someone she could love and trust and perhaps, someday, confide in and tell all of what was burning in her soul and groin. She needed to tell someone what she was going through and that someone had been Rod. Now, here he was; restless, disillusioned, bitter, drinking, unsure.

The fact that he had confessed he had smoked pot in Vietnam had a double effect: first, a relief in that he had done it too; a way, in fact, of admitting she had done it with Lee and a way of opening up the subject. Yet, at the same time, there was the realization that, if he had smoked pot, he had felt the way she had and he could have found it easy to find willing girls.

"And what else did you do?" she asked, sitting next to him and beginning to feel the blissful relief and relaxation from the booze.

Rod looked mystified. "What else did I do?"

"To keep from going crazy."

"Over there? Oh, the usual. Crap games, card games. I told you about the boozing. Movies, when we could get them. And the dope," he added, waving the bottle a little drunkenly.

"And what else?"

He looked at her owlishly. "What do you mean, what else?"

Gail tried to look coy. "No women?"

Rod gave a humorless laugh. "Naw."

"Come on, you can tell me."

"Say," he said, pausing to drink, "What kind of guy do you think I am?"

"Like every other husband far away from home and lonely, and upset," Gail said with an expansive and tolerating wave of the hand.

"No, not me," Rod answered, looking down at his glass.

"I hear those Vietnamese girls are pretty cute. I've seen them on the news. Some of them are knockouts," she said, teasing, moving closer and letting her hand stroke his thigh.

"Yeah, some of them are, but those aren't the bar girls. You can't get near those girls."

"Yeah, but I bet you didn't have any difficulty getting near those bar girls."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Oh, a couple of times we fooled around. Couple of the guys used to make out, but I never did more than buy them a couple of drinks."

Gail threw her hand to her mouth and laughed. "I bet. Come on, Rod, I love you. Are we going to have secrets from one an other?" she asked, amazed at her own excitement and lack of guilt. A wild thrill ran through her. She felt like Lee. It was a lewd thrill that made her lean forward, her lips wet and parted, her eyes half closed, her breast brushing against his shoulder as she whispered, "Come on, tell me about it."

Rod burst away from her, getting to his feet. "All right," he said, waving his glass. "So I did. Just once. That's all. I was drunk and lonely and hadn't heard from you for a long while and I met this girl and went and did it."

"I wrote you every day," she said, a little defiantly. Even though it appeased her conscience a little to know that he too had been unfaithful, it hurt her pride and she felt a pang of jealousy creep into her being.

"The mail was held up lots of times and I'd get a whole lot of letters at once," he alibied. "Anyway, that's no excuse. Honey, forgive me. Try to understand. She meant nothing to me and I was lonely and I didn't even enjoy it."

Triumph, a lewd and wicked kind of triumph came over her. With a lewd smile, she knew she had him. She got up off the couch, put down her drink and walked to the bedroom door. Turning to him, she began to languidly unbutton the front of her dress. "Was she any good?" she asked in a low voice.

Rod, still standing in the center of the room, watched her with narrowing eyes. "No, just a girl."

"A prostitute?" she asked, slipping one snowy shoulder free and revealing she was wearing a black half-bra that barely caught and contained a rounded and billowing breast.

He drank from his glass, watching her with greedy eyes over the rim. "Yeah, she was a prostitute." She slipped her other shoulder free and stood with the dress falling past her tight slim waist and catching on her beautifully rounded hips. "What did she look like?" she murmured.

He grinned sheepishly. "Oh, all right. Say, what are we talking about her for?"

Slowly, provocatively, she shifted her weight from hip to hip and Rod felt his cock give a jerk as he saw the red of one nipple working its way loose from her bra and the dress slipped lower on her hips, revealing she was wearing a scarlet garter belt. "Was she good looking?" she persisted.

He was now looking at her body, at her inviting, bare midriff that undulated as she moved her hips in time to the music. "I already told you," he said, finding his mouth suddenly dry.

With a slow, shimmying movement, the dress slithered to the floor and she stood in stockings, high heels, black bikini panties, red garter belt and a flimsy half bra that her heavy ripe melon-breasts were bouncing out of. "Did she look as sexy as me?" she asked, her voice low.

Rod gulped at his drink, draining it and standing looking at her loveliness. Her long tapering legs seemed to curve all the more as she raised one and bent the knee across her body, seeming to hide her private loveliness but only exposing one taut cheek of her buttocks as the panties rode up into the deep crevice. With an enticing look, she whispered, "Why don't we go in here and talk about it?"

Slowly, she turned, revealing the full impact of her pert buttocks half naked and alluring, and walked into the darkness of their bedroom. Without a word, Rod watched her go, watched the rhythmic rise and fall of the naked cheeks of her buttocks. Hastily, he poured himself another drink and gulped it down and followed her into the bedroom.

He found her on the bed, on her back. Her huge breasts had flowed out of the bra, her nipples red and distended. Her breasts seemed higher, jutting upward with the help of the bra and she lay with one leg bent and across her body. Slowly, she straightened the leg and spread both of them. He was standing at the foot of the bed, looking at her body, his eyes zeroing in on her crotch where he could plainly see the imprint of her vagina on the tight black band and several tiny curling strands of her pubic hair sticking out. And, as he watched, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, she let her hips undulate ever so little.

With a cry, he was on the bed and crashing on top of her, fully clothed, his mouth on hers and his hands running up and down her body. He was shocked and surprised with the intensity and abandon of her response. She ground her hips up against him and her hands pawed at his clothing, trying to get it off him while her open mouth kissed him and her hot tongue ran wild in his mouth.

They writhed together, as he felt her hip bones jutting up and his hands ran wild over her body, rudely grabbing her breasts, her buttocks, then, with a guttural cry, cupping his hand over her cunt and feeling it hot and swollen and moist under the panties. He rolled off her and was surprised how quickly she sprang to help him out of his clothes. Stripped to his shorts, his cock bulging beneath them, it was Gail who fought his hands away and forced him to lie back while she pulled them down, his cock flopping into sight and waving erect.

She threw his shorts on the floor then propped herself above him on her arms, smiling down at him. Tantalizingly, she let her breasts skim over his chest, her nipples being prickled by his chest hair. "Was she good to you?" she asked in a whisper.

Passionate, drunk, he was bewildered.

"Was who good to what?"

"The girl, the prostitute," she said with a smutty smile. "What did she do to you?" As an incentive to answer, she lowered her body until her hot silky stomach was just touching his cock. She rocked slowly back and forth and then up and down, applying just enough pressure to tease him and roll the foreskin back. Rod groaned. "Oh, wow, it's been so long. What difference does it make what she did?"

"None," she cooed. "But I want to hear what she did to you?" she asked, putting her stockinged knee between his legs and forcing them apart. Slowly, she let her weight come down on him, her breasts bulging in front of his face.

"The usual," he said, running his hands down her back and snapping her bra loose and letting his hands go on down to where they touched the top of her panties. Slowly, he tugged them downward as she lifted her hips to allow him to do so.

"And what's the usual?"

"You know."

"No, I don't. Tell me."

"You know."

"Tell me!"

"They... they did what most of the girls do."

"What's that?" she asked with smokey eyes, feeling her excitement mount. It was almost as good as being with Lee. She would get him to tell her what the girl had done to him and she would, in a kind of subjugation, do the same to him.

"Well, they sort of make love to the guy."

"How?"

He closed his eyes. He was being driven mad by her writhing body. Half drunk, having confessed to sex he thought: what the hell. "They sort of put. Well, they used their mouths."

"Ohhhhhhh." It was a low exclamation of understanding and pleasure that came from his wife. Slowly, she began slipping down the length of his body, her mouth licking, kissing, biting. She paused to nibble at his chest, sending a crude feeling of lust scorching through his groin. She made a wet trail across his stomach, pausing to probe her tongue into his navel, then slip on down to, with a jerk, and a moan, he felt the hot wet tip of her tongue flick across the end of his cock. He raised his head with a dazed expression and saw her over his cock, her mouth open, her tongue out, her eyes closed and her face radiant with lust. While he watched, he saw her wet her lips with her tongue and slowly open her mouth wide and take his cock in her mouth where he felt a rubbery wet softness. Slowly, her lips taut as a rubber band, she began to bob her head up and down.