Chapter 24

Renee stood looking down at Alex, listening to the wind howl in cold fury outside the house. It was a bitter, frightening sound. One that she had heard a lot of since returning to Eureka.

It had been no joke getting Alex here. All the way he had been gray, ill. His skin clammy with a cold sweat breaking out at the hint of a harsh word.

They would have helped him. She and Fran were willing. But it was impossible on the crowded railroad car. When they dragged him off the train Renee had been scared for a moment that his first real taste of Montana weather would kill him in his weakened condition.

As it was, she had to take time off from school to nurse him. But they had been very understanding when she told the principal she had to stay home to nurse her brother, who was apparently suffering from physical exhaustion and the bitter cold weather.

The principal, a transplanted Southern Californian himself, sympathized with her and gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder sending her home.

She sat beside Alex and carefully began to spoon the warm soup into his mouth. He swallowed gratefully and hastily lowered his eyelids to hood his thoughts when he saw she was looking.

Renee sat beside him and held his head, rocking quietly and singing to him. As soon as he slipped off into sleep, she roused herself and began to get things ready for Fran's return.

She didn't really understand how things had gone so wrong. It had seemed so simple at first. Alex was slowly but successfully weaning them of their drug addiction and both of them had come to love him with overpowering intensity.

Until... she looked at herself in the mirror as she stripped her clothes off, noting the tiny wrinkles around her eyes, the almost unnoticeable scars on her body. Everything had been all right until the two of them no longer needed the belt or the lighted cigarettes to live from day to day.

She remembered the terrible shock on that first day when she told Alex they were... cured!

She'd celebrated by taking Alex to bed to make love to him. And he couldn't.

They'd noticed, she and Fran, that his virility had been tapering off. But they'd decided it was normal. The two of them had been making too great demands on his libido.

And then he started getting sick. And there was no mistaking the symptoms. He looked like she had when he first got her out of Mexico. Tenderly Renee stroked her breast, touching an almost healed bruise gingerly and only wincing slightly.

It was a psychosomatic transference. Their ills to his body.

They were scared, all right. Because Alex really looked like he was going to die. And then Fran had the idea. She'd gotten it from some half-forgotten psychology class in abnormal behavior.

She had stood in front of Alex's bed and spread her legs. "Hit me!" she ordered him.

He looked up at her weakly and she ordered him again to do it.

Alex had snapped his palm in a ringing blow against her exposed cunt and Fran bounced in pain. But she held her position, letting Alex pound of her with his hands until she couldn't stand anymore.

After that, the two women switched off taking care of Alex's needs.

But the long train ride! Renee leaned her head against the mirror and remembered the way he seemed to shrivel up in bitter silence. He'd been so well. They'd thought just for three days he would have been all right.