Chapter 4

Sybil saw red with rage. What was Sid trying do to her? Drive her crazy? The rent was long overdue--one month to the day to be exact--and Sid hadn't given her a nickel to pay Mr. Hansen, the normally patient landlord who was quickly seeing red himself! The Scandinavian home-owner had phoned yesterday and today, intimating that he'd soon be forced into taking legal action if Sid didn't come up with at least half of the rent very soon. Where was Sid's mind these days, anyhow?

Sybil slammed her foot hard on the sewing machine's foot pedal, only to cause the thread to break in the needle. Damn! Couldn't anything go right? Now she'd have to tear out the zipper that was half sewn in and start all over again. More lost time and more lost money. The distraught housewife stared at the mountain of hemming, mending, and buttonless dresses stacked on the chair next to her... and cried. This was the last straw! How long could she go on nickel and dimeing it trying to keep the larder filled and the landlord off their backs with no help from Sid?

Her errant husband wasn't spending his money on clothes, and he didn't drink, or gamble, so what was happening to his income? Was he just so involved in his work that he'd forgotten to cash his checks... ?

Questions, questions, questions were wearing on Sybil's soul.

She was ripping out the zipper from the back of Mrs. Catkin's dress when she heard the tingle, tingle of the doorbell. Hastily dabbing away the tears that had brimmed her eyelids and trickled down her cheeks unnoticed, she opened the door with a leaden heart and greeted the man of doom, Mt. Hansen, with a forced smile. "Oh, Mr. Hansen, come on in...

His somber, black eyes lighted up in his rather long face, dominated by a large, patrician-shaped nose, below which a long, upper lip curled in a smile. His hair was once blonde but now was a soft platinum gray.

"Hello, Mrs. Sybil," he started in his sing-songy Norwegian twang. "I've come to collect the rent." His normally somber eyes showed no mercy now, and not waiting for an invitation, he went through her front door and beaded for a comfortable chair in the living room, surveying the house with shifty eyes as only a landlord can do. Sybil followed after him with trembling knees, knowing there was no escape from telling him the truth... that she could pay only fifty dollars of the rent.

Hansen eased his tall, thin, slightly stopped frame into the overstuffed chair next to the television set and asked, "Do you have it?"

"Oh... well... not all of it." She hesitated for a moment before going, "but I'll have the rest soon."

His good-natured smile was misleading, but his eyes spoke the truth. "Dis is the third time in as many months that you've been late. I have my mortgages to make on dis place, and you know how interest rates are climbing." With a gloating smile of anticipation, Hansen watched her as she crossed the room and opened the desk drawer. Her smooth rounded buttocks under her dress moved with a sexily unconscious undulation, and his hands itched to get hold of them to caress and massage them.

Hesitantly, Sybil took out the check book. "I can pay part now and after I've spoken to my husband, I'm sure I'll be able to get the rest."

As soon as I see my damned husband to talk to him, she thought to herself, realizing it had been weeks since they'd spent so much as an hour together. As it was, he'd been out at the Dunlap house from nine in the morning until late at night, leaving no time for settling accounts with the bank.

"De banks takes de money from me to pay for de house and I take de money from you to pay de bank." Hansen chuckled sarcastically, then his blue orbs sparkled. "But I can think of a better way to take care of dis business."

"Oh... ?" Sybil sparkled with hope. Maybe they could prorate the rent, or pay two months at once? If she doubled her alterations, which she could easily do, she could make at least seventy-five dollars a week. It wasn't much, but it would help.

"Yes... I could have you pay me in another way." He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair.

"Oh..." Do you have some mending... or... ?"

"No. I'm talking about going to bed with you!"

Unbelieving, Sybil stared at him for an instant. "You said... in bed... ? You mean... ?"

"Dat's right...

"No! I couldn't do that!"

Mr. Hansen's Norwegian fair-skin reddened with rage. "Okay, you won't go to bed with me, I'll have to ask you to leave dis house! Dis instant!" He pounded his fist on the arm chair."

Sybil spat back at him. "Never on my dead body!"

"Den tomorrow you'll get your eviction papers... unless you change your mind."

Sid steered his blue Chevy-Il into the Phillips gas station two blocks from the turnoff to the Dunlap mansion, and turned off the engine when he drew up to the gas pump. Rolling down the window, he yelled to the station attendant whom he'd gotten to know over the past six weeks of tutoring at the decadent Dunlap sisters. "Fill 'er up, Ed!" he barked, then let out a deep sigh of fatigue. Six weeks of making love to two insatiable girls was taking a toll on his physical well being. Muscles he didn't even know he had, ached.

Ed offered an apologetic grin and with a gentle shake of his head, "I'm sorry, Sid, but the boss got the word from the bank. No more credit."

Sid stiffened. Wasn't listening to his wife nag and bitch about his irresponsibility with money insult enough? What was this, a conspiracy? His temper reared its ugly head. "What are you talking about, Ed? I thought we were friends?" Angrily, he stuffed his wallet back in his pocket and turned on the ignition. "Fine... that's just fine!" he spat. "I'll take my business somewhere else."

Ed shrugged and threw up his hands. "Sorry, pal... but I ain't the boss..."

The Chevy's tires crunched on the shoulder gravel of the driveway leading to the Dunlap's sumptuous grounds while its driver steamed and seethed. Just when everything seemed to be going his way... at last... the world seemed to turn against him. Why?

The answer hit him between the eyes like a single bullet, and he threw back his head, slapping his forehead and wincing. Christ! It's the first of the month already. Rent... credit cards. Damn! I've been working for the Dunlaps for nearly two months and I haven't been paid yet. Shit, no wonder Sybil's been on my ass about the rent! Worse: oh, Jesus we haven't even gotten to Lesson Five yet,

True. The threesome had been frolicking like monkeys on a warm summer's day, forgetting about time, thinking only of pleasure. The only French the girls knew, was 'would you like to go to bed with me, ' 'fuck, ' 'screw, ' and other expletives that Mr. Dunlap wouldn't be pleased to hear... nor would their school teacher in sophisticated Paris.

Sid did some quick soul searching in the moments it took to park his car in the service area and gather up his brief case and books. He'd always been this way--dreamy, moody, forgetting about Cub Scout meetings when he was a child, late with his newspaper route. Only now he was indulging in the unreality of making love to a pair of girls half his age! Reality, cold and sharp was edging its way into the idealism of his windfallen luck.

Mad at the station attendant for his blatant insolence, and mad at himself for his spaced-out lassitude, he headed for the back door of the Dunlap's house, determined to set things right. Today there would be no playing around in the study, no drawing straws for who got which end of the tutor. No funny stuff--just straight knuckle-cracking studying. Business had to be taken care of NOW!

Sid's knuckles were white from knocking on the door when it opened to a half naked June.

"Hi there!" she said with feigned sophistication, offering him a Bloody Mary with one hand while guiding him into the hallway with the other. "You're just in time for our going away party. Come on... there's lots of people here you'll like."

Sid's forehead furrowed and he spun June around with a force that sent her drink splashing to the carpet. "What's wrong with you? Don't you realize how much work we've got left... Christ, you girls haven't studied more than fifteen minutes since I've been here. What the hell is your father going to say?... And besides that, little girl, I'm depending on this gig for money-- now maybe that doesn't mean anything to you, but..."

June's eyes became narrow slits, though she tried to conceal her own rage at his clumsiness spilling her drink all over the carpet and yelling loud enough for her friends in the next room to hear. She drew in a deep breath, making her breasts swell out. "Now are you going to be a gentleman and come meet my friends, or will I have to tell Daddy that Sid gets a C..." Coquettishly, she pooched out her lips and stood on tip-toes to give him a kiss on the cheek.

Sid melted, and let her slip her arm through his and lead him into the room.

The first guest Sid saw was George, a man of about thirty. Sid could see that he exuded a kind of magnetic sexuality and overpowering maleness. Stark naked with a drink in his hand, he cheerfully ushered Sid in. His prick lay semi-erect, dangling down under his belly, and Sid could tell that he was well hung. Sid was far more interested in Sharon, a rather petite, dark- haired girl who wasn't older than June. Her pert breasts jutted out in greeting... creamy rounded orbs, her dark pubic triangle a striking contrast to the ivory of her skin. She was tailing animatedly with May, and June engaged in quiet conversation with George. The girls were almost naked--only a terry swim robe covering their perfect flesh.

"Why don't you have a drink, Sid... and then perhaps you'd like to learn something by watching!" May suggested. Hoping that he wouldn't miss anything, but still shockingly dumbfounded by the blatant decadence of these two wealthy girls, Sid sat down in a chair in the corner, feeling ill at ease being the only clothed person in the room.

Sipping his drink he watched intently the two sisters as with mature sophistication they replenished drinks for their guests-- all of whom were older than they, with the exception of Sharon. Sixteen and thirteen, he thought, taking another deep sip of his drink. How could a teenager, a mere thirteen year old be so wanton? He recalled then, after the first time he'd been tricked into making love to May, her response to that very question.

She'd lost her virginity, she'd told him, to a man thirty- eight years old. Under some crazy circumstances in Madrid, she'd been left alone in a hotel room and the desk clerk, knowing she was alone, had stolen up the steps to the suite she shared with her parents and taken her by force. Later though, she admitted it 'wasn't exactly by force... ' some people get drunk from sniffing the cork, and some girls become debauched from one night, philosophized Sid watching with bewilderment as George and Sharon spread a blanket on the floor and were locking together in a tight embrace.