Chapter 5

Between her encounter with her son and the following Saturday, Liz earnestly tried to interest Tom in coming home early from work, from dropping his poker game on Thursday night as well as avoiding the outof-town conference on the weekend. She tried to make her entreaties sound sexy, but Liz was sadly ignorant of exactly how to do that sort of thing. It might have been wiser to make a direct approach, to tell her husband exactly what she had in mind, which was, in fact, to experiment with her new sexual expertise. But how do you tell your husband that suddenly you have awakened to his way of life without explaining how this miracle so suddenly occurred? Liz Rouelle was so afraid that she would be backed into a corner with unanswerable questions by her husband, that she was too timid to even get answers out of him when she spoke, never mind win his interest.

Her failure with her husband was not particularly good for Liz's self-confidence or her self-assurance. Had what she done been the end of everything? Was she so evil that the very forces of the universe itself had turned against her, estranging her for all time from her husband? She was certainly having a lot of trouble getting his attention, never mind holding it. Perhaps after all, she needed time to think and sort the disorder of facts and feelings floating around now in her brain. She began looking forward to his weekend absence. The emptiness of the house would give her opportunity to really think things through without the interruption of any little chores.

And Saturday began that way. There was an air of contentment in the empty house that had not been there for a long time. She actually felt light hearted, and instead of sitting down and thinking things through the way she had planned, she decided that as long as she felt so good, she might as well do the things she felt like doing and save the thinking for later. She did a little reading in the morning, and in the late morning took a drive to the beach, rolling lazily along the shore road and stopping for a hot dog for lunch. She found herself interested in the people she saw as well as in what they were doing. Ordinarily she paid no attention to that sort of thing, always having been more or less wrapped up in whatever she herself was doing or thinking. It was very strange for her to find herself so objective.

On the way home, the question occurred to her whether her sexual satisfaction could have anything to do with the clear headedness of the day. But, no, it had been several days since her affair with her son. It couldn't be that. Or could it?

It seemed as though she had no sooner got in the door and was thinking of mixing herself some kind of drink when the telephone rang.

"Hi, Ma," her son said at the other end of the line.

"Hi," she answered carefully. "How is the new place working out?"

"It's really great. We're having a party to celebrate moving in tonight. Hope you're planning to come."

"Party? Well, I don't think so. Your father is away at a conference..." "Oh, Ma, come off it. You know better than that," Kevin said softly. "My father is going to be right here. I'm the one who is supposed to be out of town, but I just planned that excuse."

"Planned an excuse? Oh, Kevin," his mother scolded. "Is that any way to treat your wife!" She was, of course, thinking of the way Tom treated her.

"I just wanted to see if Pa showed up in my place," Kevin said lightly and bluntly. "I'm sure he will, and I was hoping you'd invite me home for dinner and a drink so that we could come to the party a little later ourselves and see what we run into."

"Well, you're always welcome here for dinner and a drink," his mother told him automatically, before thinking that things were not quite the same as they used to be. He was still her son, but he was something else, too, now. He was a kind of danger among other things.

"Thanks, Ma," he said quickly, before she could hedge. "I'll be over by six, is that okay?" He spoke forcefully, even with his question, so that she could do nothing other than agree. "Well, I... uh... okay, but..."

He had hung up.

Liz didn't really mean to go to any trouble. Yet she made a curried beef dinner that took her two hours to prepare. It would have been so simple to just throw on a couple of steaks, yet she was in the mood, she told herself, to do something special, something Kevin really liked. After all, he had showed her something she had not known about life before, the pleasure and satisfaction possible for her own body. How she wished that Tom would try to make love to her again so she could show him how she had changed. Well, it would happen in time. She was sure of that. Meanwhile, she had to be wary of her son but not ungrateful to him. So she made a lovely dinner, and after laying out the table and putting the curried beef on to simmer, she took a fast hot shower and chose her dress for the evening. It was almost six by the time she was dressing. The beef had been simmering a half hour, she figured to herself. That meant dinner about seven, which left an hour for cocktails. Well, this was going to be quite an evening. But why was she dressing up? She did not really intend to go to the party. Still, she was in such a good mood, and she had made such a beautiful dinner, that she might as well complete the evening by dressing. If Kevin had changed his mind about going home for his party, then he would be dressed, too.

She pulled on the white sleeveless form-fitting sheath that she had chosen for the evening and quickly surveyed herself in the bedroom mirror. It was too bad Tom could not see her, she decided. She had never looked more beautiful. She felt it. She felt both beautiful in a modest way and desirable in a not so modest way. She laughed for her own ears aloud. Her voice tinkled like a delicate bell. Goodness!

Her trim smoothly tapering legs flowed down from lushly curving hips as she turned in the mirror. She admired her firm uplifting tits that stood out just perfectly beneath the tightly pressing white material. She got her brush from the dresser and began brushing his rich auburn hair in the mirror. How beautifully it shone with its red highlights against the pure white of the dress. Good God, she suddenly thought. What was the matter with her all of a sudden? But she had no time to worry about it. Before she had time to slip into her shoes, the front door opened and she heard her son the length of the hall.

"Hi, Ma!" he called. "You getting dressed?"

She picked up her shoes and carried them with her out of the bedroom toward the front of the house.

"Yes, I'm getting dressed, but only for dinner," she told him.

"Aren't you coming to the party?" he asked dumbfounded, or so it seemed.

"No, I..." she started to say, and then she stopped. She couldn't remember what she had told him about that. She thought she had refused, but she had done so much talking to herself since he called, that she wasn't sure what she had told him and what she had simply mused on.

"Why not?" he asked innocently.

"Kevin, if your father is there," she said, surprising herself by how unfalteringly she was able to speak of such matters, "I don't care to surprise him.

"Ma, the lights will be almost non-existent. We have a colored strobe, and you'll be able to see in about a three foot radius, period. Don't worry. I dare say Natalie will keep him so busy that neither one of us will be the least bit noticeable. You know," he took her face in his hands. "It's my house and my friends, and I don't expect Natalie will know I'm anywhere around."

"Well," she sighed uncertainly, pulling away out of danger, "let's worry about that later. What would like for a cocktail?"

Liz Rouelle might have known from her moment of uncertainty that she was placing herself squarely in the hands and plans of her son and would be at that party. For one thing, Kevin made her too many martinis, and they drank for two hours instead of one while Liz told him about her drive to the beach, and she learned in her turn about many of the beach parties and dances and so forth that her son had attended for the past five years and about which he had never told her before. It was odd that he had never mentioned any of it around her, but their relationship had changed within the last week in more ways than one. They were more companionable as equals. And, she recognized suddenly, she was no longer in a superior, teaching, patronizing position. He had taught her something and had taken a leadership role with his mother.

They arrived late enough so that they could hear loud music and laughter coming from the hallway upstairs while they were entering the front of the building downstairs.

"Won't someone complain?" she asked naturally. "I mean, that very likely is your party!" She had taken one too many martinis.

"That is our party," he agreed. "We've invited everyone in the building, so there is no one left to complain." He had taken one too many martinis, too, she suspected with a smile.

"It sounds like everyone's having a good time," she noted congenially. "Excellent. They all sound too drunk to notice us at all!" he said. Liz couldn't tell whether he was trying to assure her that they would get in unnoticed, although she cared about that much less now than she had, or whether he was disappointed that he was financing a party no one would even notice he was attending!

The party, they found, had spilled out into the hallway, in fact. The door was open, and the apartment was so dark inside that it was probable, Liz thought, finding her observations remarkable, that people stepped out in the hall in order to see each other. She made a hurried survey of the group outside the apartment, to see if Tom were among them. Yet, so what if he saw her? What was the reason she didn't want to catch him doing anything wrong? She could no longer recall. It had something to do with not wanting to make him feel guilty, but she could not for her life remember why that was so important. She would think about it tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow morning, she knew, would be consumed by ridding herself of her hangover.

"Let me peek inside, Ma," Kevin suggested.

"No, I'll go in with you," she said boldly. "What difference does it make?" He either refrained from reminding her that it was she who had been skeptical about running into her husband or he had forgotten all about her reticence. He took her gently by the elbow, steered her by the doorway crowd, greeting everyone briefly, those who greeted him first, and into the dark room where the colored lights of the hired strobe glittered colorfully around and around the walls and barely recognizable faces of his guests. Liz did not see Tom at all, but she was surprised to see so many people in the one room. A few couples were dancing in the middle, but almost everyone else was sitting and standing around and... and there was a good deal of petting going on.

"Where did you get all the sofas and overstuffed chairs, Kevin?" she asked surprised, just before he left her to get her another drink.

"All borrowed, Ma. Can I trust you to sit here and be good while I get you a drink?" "Oh, silly," she giggled. He was treating her just like a school girl. She was beginning to feel more like his younger sister than his mother, but then, she had felt that way even before dinner tonight. It was so very pleasant. She couldn't remember when she had last felt so lighthearted and pleasant. She sat on one of the sofas, and he left.

It didn't take him long to get the drinks, and he looked a little serious when he returned.

"Don't look now," he whispered as he sat down, very close to her as though it was important that his voice be as still as possible. She was already light headed from her martinis before leaving the house. He had just handed her another. She heard an ominous tone in his whisper, and she felt a small knot of fear growing in her stomach. She was remembering vaguely, something about guilt driving a person away and that had to do with her husband, and now there was something in Kevin's tone that told her before his words did that he had seen Tom. Trying not to raise her chin, Liz looked from the top of her eyes around the crowded room for a sign of her husband, but most of the corners and the faces were so in the dark that it would be impossible to find him, she decided, unless he fell over them here on the couch, God forbid! She watched her son raise his glass to his lips and take a deep swallow as though he were nervous. She did the same, trying to look in the same direction his glance took, but she saw nothing.

"Don't look at what?" she ventured in a whisper somewhat louder than his had been. She took another generous gulp of martini. "Go easy, Ma," he cautioned her with a chuckle. "You'll have me running constant waiter for you, refilling your glass."

"Oh, no," she said. "I'm not going to drink a lot. I know better than that. What did you see?" she insisted. "Tom?" Then she seemed to forget her question as she leaned back and rested against Kevin's arm, feeling more relaxed and slightly lightheaded. She was feeling the loveliest glow! A new giddiness was pervading her body somehow, and she sipped heavily again as she felt her son's arm wrap gently around her shoulder. She kept thinking that she ought not to let him do that in public, but her thought seemed incapable of translating itself into any kind of palpable objection. She seemed completely unable to say anything or to even pull away.

"I think I saw Tom," he whispered then, and that gave her the energy she needed to move.

"Kevin, I don't think we ought to behave so cozily," she said, trying to scold good-naturedly and pushing his arm off her shoulder with a gentle movement of her hand.

"We don't want to look conspicuous," he explained. "If we sit here like two watchbirds studying the room and everyone in it, somebody is going to suspect something, and Tom and Natalie's attention could be brought to us." "I suppose," she agreed. It did make sense. She relaxed again and was glad she had found an excuse to do so with a clear conscience.

Liz Rouelle strained again to see if she could find her husband in any of the groups of three or four people talking on the open space of floor in front of them. It was the best lit area, and she noticed that she and her son were more or less protected by shadow. She began to feel uncomfortable, though, as once in awhile someone would look their way. Her son was pressing insistently close to her, and she wondered if anyone knew their relationship and what they would think if they did. "We can't see anything from here," Liz said nervously.

"You stay right here. I have an idea," Kevin said suddenly, and he got up briskly.

Before his mother could utter a single protest about being left alone, he had disappeared out of the room. The groups of people standing around in front of her were breaking off into couples, she noticed, and some of them went into the interior of the apartment while others began dancing closely to the slow insistent beat of soft music coming from the stereo set. There was something openly provocative about how the dancers thrust their bodies up against one another in a kind of grinding movement that matched the sensuous rhythm of the electrified music. It was as though the dim colored lights in the room had given them new identities and they were free to do what they pleased in the shadows. Through the hallucinatory flicker of the strobe light, Liz made out the embracing forms of one couple who appeared exceptionally engrossed with each other. The man ran his hands over the woman's full sensuous tits, and the woman wrapped her hands around the man's asscheeks, pulling his groin to hers as though they were in a standing copulation position. Good God, the two of them were actually dry humping right out in the open where everyone could see! But Liz doubted whether the others paid the least attention. They were too much a part of the pulse of the music to be aware of anything but the rhythm of their own bodies.

"Isn't it interesting?" Kevin asked with a kind of animal purr in his voice when he sat down again beside her, another martini for her. He took her emptied glass from her hand and gave her the fresh one.

"I... I didn't even know you'd come back," she stammered and automatically took the drink from him.

"Oh, you were preoccupied with not missing anything," he laughed, gesturing his head toward the couple she had been watching. "But see there. That couple you can barely see over there should be of interest. The blond hair is clear."

The dimness of the room and the constant flicker of the strobe made it almost impossible to discern more than the obscure outlines of the two bodies he was indicating, but they too were thrusting back and forth against one another in time to the music. But eventually, as though she were putting together a puzzle, Liz focused with some clarity on the man's body. His clothing was too usual for its familiarity to mean anything, but she was soon certain that it was indeed Tom's body. It was Tom's mouth pressing against the blond woman's lips. After all her years of marriage, she would recognize him in the dimmest corner.

Kevin sensed her sudden tensing and slipped his arm across her waist as she sat up and leaned forward on the couch. Her response had been automatic, however, and she made no move to resist Kevin's cautionary gesture. Furthermore, she found that the shock of suddenly recognizing her husband's form made her legs feel strangely watery, as though if she tried to stand she would collapse. She had not expected to feel that way. Then she felt the softness of her titties crushed tightly against Kevin's chest and she pulled back.

She recklessly gulped down her drink although she knew she was several martinis over her limit now. She sat for a moment in stunned silence as Tom and the other woman continued dancing to a low primitively sensual voice on the stereo. The arms of the couple were hooked around each other's backs, their groins locked in an obscenely gyrating embrace. Wild thoughts of abruptly denouncing Tom in front of everyone raced through Liz's mind, but she knew she had decided against such a course of action in more thoughtful moments. Yet something was happening to her that she didn't understand. She was feeling a totally foreign recklessness. What would he do next, she wondered! She didn't just wonder, either. She was positively famished to know!

Then, dumbbell that she was, it hit her like a bolt of lightning that the little blond he was dancing so obscenely with was, of course, Natalie! Her large, full upswinging tits were barely reaching to the base of his chest, and the long swathe of bleached blond hair that hung down her back obviously belonged to her daughter-in-law. Now, did she have to ask what was going to happen next?

"That's Natalie, all right," Kevin sighed as though reading his mother's thoughts.

Liz had been so involved in watching Tom and Natalie that she had not noticed another couple to the right of them who had been putting on a similar performance. Everyone seemed to be getting to that sooner or later, she thought wryly. She felt Kevin's arm nudge her softly in the side, however.

"Looks like the exhibitionists are taking over," he said with a mock innocence that was almost funny to her reeling, changing mind.

Liz sipped from her new martini and peered through the darkness at the figures of a man and woman arched in a bending embrace to the side of a neighboring couch. The woman was running her hands rapidly up and down the man's groin. She had pulled the front of her dress right down to her waist, and he squirmed his fingers into her widespread and openly exposed loins. Suddenly, the man reached toward the girl's frilly blouse and pulled it completely open. The young woman was wearing no brassiere, and her naked tits popped out, quivering slightly, and the room seemed silent. A new record began playing on the stereo. It sounded strangely unfamiliar in style to Liz, exotic, and its rhythms matched the lewd uninhibited movements of the lovers who had slipped to the couch. "This is the second stage of the party," Kevin said almost inaudibly. "After this comes stage three when everyone disappears into the bedrooms and down the hall into a friend's apartment or just curl up on the couches right here."