Chapter 5

Monday's events from Earl's point of view.

In the past Earl had always felt good as he set off for work; today all he could manage was relief. He wasn't just going to work, he was escaping from a wife he didn't understand, maybe never had understood. The two days' uncertainty about Sue's actions had been so bad that as they dragged by he couldn't imagine anything worse; now he saw that they had just been a beginning! Naively he had thought she had some understanding of his life and her place in it. Her enthusiasm in bed last night and again this morning had shown that she could still delight in some of that place but she had been convinced by feminists that to be at the centre of a good man's life was not enough. Then it had only taken one opportunistic bastard like Stickitinher to take advantage of her naiveté to destroy her life and with it her loving husband's. Or should that be destroy her husband's life and with it hers. For the present the foolish bitch thought she was riding a wave - but all waves break!

Even a man in the throes of possessive jealousy could see the problem with this metaphor: waves break on the shore while he believed that he wanted to be the shore on which she could rest - for ever.

Whatever it was exactly that he was feeling it was bad. His wife, any man's wife, should be as he needed her to be, as he could support her to be; it was simply wilful of her to set up in opposition to him. It was worse that he whose business skill was fixing difficult situations had no idea how to put this one back to the way it should be. The way it had been until she was given a fantasy title in the firm of paper-pushers who employed her and a ridiculously inflated salary to go with it.

As he thought back he realised that he had allowed himself to seem a caricature of the man he knew himself to be. He was a man, he knew that, always had but he'd never before felt that he needed to prove it to anyone else. Now he found himself repeating the sayings of his father and men of his generation about the role of women in life and home. He hated the descriptions that so many of the men he knew used of powerful women; 'ball crusher' the most common. So far as Susan was concerned, that one at least was strictly untrue. He could still fuck her to his own satisfaction - and hers, judging by the frenzied response he had got twice in the last twelve hours.

When he had nervously called her cell late Sunday evening he had been surprised to be answered at all after having been told so forcefully to leave only a few hours before. Greeted by the single word "Hello." he had had no idea what to say next and staggered into a request that seemed foolish except that the answer, again one word: "Yes." So he drove over to Jennifer's hoping Susan herself would open the door but unsurprised when it was Jen. It had been a surprise though when she winked and said "OK! You've lost me ten bucks you bastard! She's in the room straight up the stairs."

When he opened the door Susan was lying under the comforter on a king size bed which left little room for the giant flat screen TV that she continued to watch in silence. So now what? She had said "Yes!" when he asked if he could come over for sex so he started to undress ready to join her. As her response to his actions had been to turn the set off, still without saying anything, he had felt confident enough of some sort of success as he had lain down beside her. The sex had gone well; he hadn't time to feel more jealousy as they both were immediately wrapped up in the familiar acts and fell quietly to sleep after they had come down from a sudden moment of satisfaction.

Susan had asked him when he needed to get up, telling him in reply that 7:30 would be ok for her too. He had been surprised at first to see that it was only 7 when he heard the first sound from the alarm on her mobile but he'd been alert enough not to ask silly questions when she said she needed to piss first. He did the same and immediately drove straight into her very ready cunt when he rejoined her in the big bed. Judging by her contented grunting this was as much the right thing for her as for him. She showered first leaving him wondering what came next and realising that he didn't really know what he wanted for himself; even less what she might want.

Downstairs at breakfast it did nothing for his self-esteem when 'dear' Jennifer gave 'dear' Susan the ten dollars she'd taxed him with, explaining that she was paying up after having been on the wrong end of a bet that Earl couldn't manage without sex for another night, never mind pushing his errant wife into a separate bed! More silence seemed best to him and he had fled to the safety of his office after drinking the cup of black coffee Susan assumed he would need.

He was torn; she was his wife so he had a duty to her. Could that override her failure in her duty to him? So much of what she said was simply balls or bullshit! Of course Stickner had lied about her work and promotion, used his authority to get in her pants. How else would she have chosen to go freely to a worn out old fart like him? It was true that she hadn't known that she was missing out on sex with a virile man in his sexual prime to tease herself with the drooping cock of an old has been, one who hadn't been able to keep his own wife.

No need to ask why the man had wanted Susan: when she wasn't being contrary, and it had happened way too much recently, she was a gorgeous piece of ass and bright as a button with it. Her paper qualifications were even better than his own but experience in the real world... A baby adrift among sharks and deceiving herself that she could swim as well as the men who held the real power. Surely it was his duty to be there to pick up the pieces, to share her lament for the money wasted on her 'partnership' - not that her savings could amount to as much as she believed. But it was going to be painful to be around her while she stood on her dunghill and crowed her triumph over her loving and always indulgent husband.

One thing was clear: he couldn't face his family with this. They knew as well as him that he wasn't going to be able to try to beat sense into the silly cow in the feminist lefty US of the twenty first century but their attitude would be pretty damning that he had got into this state. His grandfather couldn't have faced such a challenge; his wife had stayed home from the first and taken to good works when the children grew up. Admittedly no one could really say that what she had done was worthwhile, altogether too much propping up the feckless, but it had kept her among other women who understood their role in society. Grandfather would have had no problem smashing Stickner though had the lecher found a way to try anything.

Even his own father, softened and accepting as he was, would have seen his way in this mess. Ways here in Seattle were so different and taking revenge on the guy couldn't be done without censure, maybe prison; there seemed to be no backbone or sense of responsibility. Both violence against a cowardly seducer and any attempt to discipline his wayward wife might at least lose him his job and his reliable, honestly earned income. At worst he, the only injured party in this mess, might find himself in court facing a fine or even prison. He needed his career, not just for himself as she saw hers, but for his family and, when her house of cards fell, she would realise how much she needed her man - and his money. He ought to be there.

Meeting his sisters' husbands was going to be even harder: how would they take the news that his wife was the whore they believed all women from California had at their heart? How could the news avoid disturbing their wives, endangering their sense of duty?

Then there was the sex; why had it been just as good as usual when he was so justifiably angry about what had happened and her total refusal to apologise for anything except the fact that he had found out and was hurt by the discovery. There was no attempt to conceal that she had enjoyed her screwing and her guilt had done nothing to deter her from taking the lead in violence as they fucked. Last night the stinging blows to his face seemed just as angry as the ones he returned; what right did she have to anger after she had wronged him? The morning had been different: no anger but a common search for gratification and even joy. Where had that come from? Why could he get it up and forget himself in lust after she had cheated on him, had spent two nights in a seducer's bed?

She claimed that there had been no intention to repeat the sessions but how naïve can an over educated woman get? Once in her pants how would she get her 'John' out? Didn't she realise that she was a sitting target for blackmail; for cunt not money but still blackmail. How could the man respect a married woman enough to be straightforward with her when she had proved so willing to use pussy-power to buy temporary business success? She had persisted in calling the bastard John though he had pointed out that such intimacy was not appropriate when talking to him about, someone who had wronged her and through her Earl himself.

He was her superior; she should really call him 'Mr' Stickner but that showed too much respect. Better she should just stop thinking about the limp dick and if she couldn't manage that at least she could shut the fuck up!

He wondered if 'Mr' Stickner had enjoyed her as much as he did. He had to admit that none of the women who he had thought he loved before they met were anything like as talented as her in giving pleasure and receiving it herself.

He hadn't expected much of the prostitutes he had been with back home, was often too drunk to do much more than squirt into them, or rather one of their ultra thick condoms, and go to sleep. He'd been fortunate that they were basically honest and hadn't robbed him. If they had thought of emptying his pockets they wouldn't have been put off by worry about lost repeat business. Hell! They knew he wouldn't remember what they looked like to know it was a repeat.

He'd been disappointed since; you would expect the girls hired to soften him up during difficult negotiations to be good at giving pleasure even if it wasn't good business for them to take much. No such luck! He'd been told that the whores on the west coast, even these pricy ones, were mainly lesbians in their sordid private enjoyments and it certainly showed. From their attitude you might think they despised the customers who kept them in something like luxury! His dealings with the ones in Seattle that he'd hired privately had been too much a repetition of those youthful drunken excesses for him to judge their performance fairly but he couldn't remember anything in their favour.

So! If he wasn't a caricature male chauvinist from the Deep Deep South what was he? Or was it more important to know what he would be? what Susan would be? Could he change? Well that's silly; everyone changes a little all the time; no one changes a lot though change in their circumstances may look like change in them. Has Susan changed? She still fucks the same; never once just laid back and accepted like the girls back home. For her it wasn't something she got but something she did. How could you tell? She certainly liked to be slapped around and he would always have thought that meant he was in control except that he'd had to have just as many 'accidents with doors' as her to explain black eyes or split lips! So the whore he saw now was the whore she had always been; this was just the first time it was rammed down his throat.