The Hungry Husband

Norman Singer

ONE

David Fortune was having a wet nightmare. To wake up shrieking and ejaculating at the same devastating split-second was petting rather wearing on the nerves. Luckily, he and his enchanting blond wife Linda believed in the militant hygiene of twin beds. Consequently, she never got a peek at his swimming sheets until the next morning, by which time both the Fortunes and the sheets were comfortably dried-out and starchy looking.

But tonight the sweet agony of his cries had awakened her, which meant that he had to be ready with a few consoling lies: sweat plus anxiety, old paranoid fears about losing their magnificent home, his brilliant career as an insurance executive, neither of which were the product of his own initiative, but had been generously forced on him by an overloaded father-in-law.

"Oh David, don't tell me you're having that same nasty dream again," said Linda, slipping out of her bee and rushing to his side. Her high, pendulous breasts wobbled gorgeously beneath her silken nightie, and as David eyed their crests, he wearily wished she hadn't sworn such fervent allegiance to the Health Department on the day they'd taken their vows.

"Yes, it was the same dream, dear," he said as she switched on the small lamp near his bed. "Same old hobgoblin threats to our future…" He gazed up as the light reflected on her face, and at once felt the deep sense of relief which his wife's sculptured beauty inevitably brought to him. With a sigh, his trembling ceased, and the hidden mound of his erection, which had been bulging like a covered-dish under the sheets, now sank slowly downward. Once more the atmosphere in their bedroom reflected the safe limbo-plateau of a suburban marriage: David and Linda, those bright young neuter-weds up the block. Two pals bunking together in the night, two campfire chums rubbing their fungus-repellent Ids together to build the fires of caution.

Nevertheless, for David there was never a tonic so potent as the sight of Linda playing nursemaid in the middle of the night. Even with the golden ripples of her hair caught up in those atrocious pink rollers, and her pretty, sensual features gleaming with skin-cream that smelled vomitous and sweet, the over-all repugnance still meant security to David Fortune, meant 'home.' He now decided that at twenty-seven she looked just the same as the day he'd married her. How accommodating of the dear girl to have frozen his original image of her, although he knew that deep inside Linda couldn't really be just the same-not after giving him three exquisitely-formed children, all of whom had been beautifully scented and deodorized since birth. He had to be fair about it; aside from producing off-spring, there'd been many other changes during their eight years together…

… Name one, said the nightmare-voices…

Well, their fantastic five-bedroom, four-bathroom house had been given two pictorial displays in Town and Country and was all paid for. And only last year he'd studiously watched those workers put in his pool and patio, with only the most minimal assistance from his filthy-rich in-laws. At twenty-seven, he was a junior executive at All-Planet Insurance Company, the best known firm of its kind in the world, and everybody knew it was by the sheerest coincidence that Linda's father happened to be the president of this corporation. Of course, going into the insurance business had never been his most burning ambition. As a kid, the world of the jazz musician had always been his special goal; God, how hungry he'd been to study the French Horn! He'd hoped to go on tour, giving recitals, concerts. Brand-new concept in sound.

David and Linda met in the third grade and, at first sight, fell passionately into a habit-pattern that was to anaesthetize them for nearly twenty years. Despite the marked difference in their parents' bank-balance, these two children of the Fates remained as constant to one another as Damon and Pythias. And to David, it had ah ways seemed so "right" to be seen with the spectacular-looking Linda Montclair, that he never had cause-or the good common sense-to search elsewhere.

"You dreamt the house was on fire again?" Linda was saying now.

"Yes," he said, preferring this lie to the shattering truth; but also welcoming this chance to tease his wife, who never knew it was happening, that sweet, sheltered frau. "ft was ghastly. There was this enormous epitaph in huge blazing letters across the roof: 'Here Lie David Fortune and Family. They Couldn't Wait to Die, So They're Decomposing Now!' "

Linda listened and shuddered. "Oh for heaven's sakes… Did you ever hear such nonsense?" Then forced a chuckle. "And what of the children, dear? Were they involved again too?"

He nodded grimly. "And in exactly the same way, dashing out the back door to their playpens, screaming little fireballs in the sunshine. I think it's all that damned aerosol stuff you use on them, Linda. It's inflammable, you know."

Linda stared quite seriously at him; and then, with a frown and a lovely pouting underlip, she staunchly closed her eyes and transcended the whole grisly picture. An instant later she gazed with pleasure at her husband's handsome face and smoothed back the moist blond ringlets that had fallen over his forehead. They were both natural blonds, the shades so identical that an outsider might swear they wore matching wigs. Linda had always felt properly grateful to have married a man as stunningly attractive and husky as her David. She'd never seen a man who could look so beautiful and rugged at the same time. He had the bluest eyes and most classic aquiline nose, and lips that were much too full and perfect for an insurance executive. He could have been a model, she thought, or a superstar, or anything his heart desired.

Gently, she placed a hand on his big broad shoulder, taking a proprietary air in the feel of it. The two had often played tennis together in their teens, and Linda was proud to note that his sturdy chest and biceps were as hard and muscular as ever, due, of course, to his rigorous weekly work-outs at the gym. On the other hand, it had never once occurred to Linda that about nine-tenths of all this male pulchritude and largesse was going to waste under her limited care and feeding.

"Well now, David, a dream like that only proves how very much you love your home and family," she said cheerily. "You're afraid of losing everything we have here…"

… Or I'm afraid of keeping everything we have, he thought, taking her hand and pressing it to his cheek; afraid of maintaining this gilded status-quo, this sky full of riches and premeditated ease, this world I never built.

Vividly, he now reviewed the true spectral imagery of his nightmare, wondering if he'd ever have the guts to describe the gory details to Linda. Even now with the touch of her cool hand on his cheek, he could hardly bring himself to recall the dream, for it seemed so disloyal to him, so grotesque and utterly senseless. He'd been in bed with Linda's mother and father. The three of them, stark naked and tumbling, as they bandied his body between them while he alternately fucked and sodomized first one and then the other. Oh good God, would he ever forget the shame of it, the demoralizing descent into lunacy and filth! Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Multi-million-dollar-Montclair of Hillsborough, in their proud, disdainful fifties, and there they were, those royal highnesses, flipping and twitching in their king-sized master-bed for every throbbing inch he gave them, until they began squawking and haggling for his ample stiff favors, clawing and tearing to get at their daughter's most prized home-appliance of all… this husband-fixture which they had bought and paid for. He was their property to apply or dispense at will…

David's trapped penis had felt so very alive and dimensional in the deep nagging recesses of his mother-in-law, and he could still hear her exalted shrieks as he thumped all the airy elegance right out of her. The old man knelt beside them and watched, furiously beating his big barnacled peter up and down… "Oh sweet Jesus!.. Does anyone know what this Sexual Revolution is doing to the Elderly? It's like giving Medicare to the Ancient Greeks… mythological treats instead of iron-tonics and physics! Me next, boy! Get off her… She's spoiled enough as it is…!"

Too snarling and impatient to wait his turn, the old dragon kicked his writhing empress out of bed and promptly sat down hard on his son-in-law's rigid thick identifier. "Ooumghff!" said the white-maned patriarch, grunting out his excruciating joy as David's stout bombardment surged up against his weathered colon. And while David bitterly shunned the thought later, at this moment he had to agree with the rangy old guy… because ooohWOW!.. did it ever feel wild and tight in there as he banged and popped his hips like a madman, jammin' right up Linda's ancestry… Aw, up your old dynasty, Dad… up it!.. And oooh!.. Aw man, what a generation-gap!.. Oooooh!.. The King is in his counting-house and I am in the King… Li'l David blow up your in-laws, Li'l David Blow!

And dammit-all, he just hated to think about that part of it later, because it was during that blistering ecstasy of screw-punishing his own nobly-born father-in-law that David screamed, awoke and came all in one horribly delightful instant. If only he'd reached his climax with Linda's mother instead of her father (his boss!), the portent of these dreams mightn't seem quite so harrowing to him.

Lately, all of his dreams had involved sex. If not with his in-laws, somebody else's. And always someone in high authority, someone he could maim or cripple or topple with his hard, steam-driven appendage. Show'em what-for, David!.. You've got the weapon!

He preferred to see these bestial fantasies as a pageantry of protest, an adolescent attempt to escape the rigid conformities that had been thrust on him by his elders. But he refused to believe the dreams had any real sensual significance in themselves. Since Linda had a beautiful and exciting body, it was impossible for David to consider that he, of all people, might be sexually repressed. Who among his contemporaries could boast a more appealing or curvaceous young wife? Everyone envied him this dazzling creature, she with the entrancing, full-bodied figure, the winsome smile that had gotten her everything she'd ever wanted out of life.

How could any man married to such a healthy, busty beauty be plagued with sex hang-ups? With Linda there'd never been time to feel lonely or unwanted. She'd always been there and pretty and blooming whenever he'd needed her. Why hell, he couldn't even remember their first date. All through high school and their first year at Stanford-during which term they were married-it had been like one long continuous date. And, as Linda was so fond of saying: "David and I each married our best friend. That's why we're so compatible!"

It was during the late 'fifties that these two tender comrades quite self-consciously described themselves as "courting." David, the more socially advanced of the two, preferred to think of it as "going steady." He stuck her only with his fraternity pin. And yet, in view of the standards still prevalent in the 'fifties, theirs might have been considered a rather daring engagement, if some of the lurid details had been made known: they'd indulge in flagrant premarital kissing and fingerplay, though never to climax, except for David, who wended his way swiftly home to masturbate in the cellar, praying that the gossamer-Linda would never suspect him of such gross excesses. Linda always looked so fastidious and neat, and his semen looked so messy, how would he ever be able to get the two of them together?

Once she'd let him slip his tongue between her lips while kissing. But afterwards she'd given him a fierce lecture on the perils of mononucleosis, so it had never happened again. As for the more primary penetrations, Linda remained adamantly chaste until their wedding-night. And for a tussling ten nights thereafter she was still, technically speaking, a virgin. Despite their having been intimate buddies all their lives, these two adoring youngsters hadn't gotten around to measuring their respective diameters and circumferences. David possessed what Linda insisted on calling an overly inflated and quite untenable penis, a description which almost made him feel ashamed of his eight-and-one-quarter inches, although until then this part of his architecture had given him a sense of smoldering power. But, alas, Linda's main freeway seemed to be barred to him by a bit of a taut buttonhole, from which narrow viewpoint his mammoth hunk of adoration must have seemed destined for nothing but breeding bulls. Since it stood to reason that his dimensions were not going to shrink in order to fit an hysterically tightened bride, David realized there was only one alternative-an exhaustive course in advanced anatomy; i.e., his anatomy advancing into hers. And if he could divide and conquer without killing her, he was game to try.

Finally, after a great deal of faith, tenacity and coitus-abortus, David managed to dig the full wedge of his tool straight up the shrieking pores of her sub-deb vagina. Habitually well-mannered, the girl retained a polite, sophomoric smile right in the middle of a scream. From the beginning, David sensed that she merely pretended all this sexual revulsion for fear she might lose his respectful friendship if he found out how much she enjoyed it. But he could never be sure of this; and, indeed, if his wife really was on the frigid side, far be it from him to become a rampaging beast in bed just to satisfy his own violent lusts. It was one sure way to lose the greatest pal of his life, so he policed himself accordingly.

However, for months afterwards Linda looked as if she were on her way to the dentist whenever they made love. Yet, when he thoughtfully suggested a dash of novocaine, she vehemently declined: "Not on your life, darling. This is what I was made for, to lie here while you take your rightful pleasure…" So, guiltily, David let her suffer in his heat, his rampant member usually so afloat in lubricant, it was often like having intercourse with a tiny jar of hormone cream.

And now, seated on the side of his bed, Linda slipped an arm about his waist. "You poor dear, you look so tired and spent. These dreams are beginning to sap your energy, David. Perhaps you ought to see a doctor. I mean really, darling, it's a little ridiculous for a man who has everything to be having nightmares…" Then her eyes fell on the extensive dampness of his sheets. "Why, good heavens, dear, you've been sweating like a horse! Even the bedding's wet, Here… feel it?"

He let her guide his hand along the sticky moisture, going shaky again with quavering thoughts of his father-in-law, but grateful that the perspiration oozing from his upper portions made his general outpouring look quite legitimate.

"You get out of those wet jammies this instant and you…" she paused and took a deep breath, as if about to make a radical decision… "well, you… come over to my bed, David." Bravely thrusting out her chin. "Mommie's got just the cure for her sensitive, handsome sweetie!"

David couldn't believe his ears, and for a minute he thought he was having another drenched, erotic dream. Then his heart started pounding and he shot up in bed, his eyes bulging with surprise. "But honey, wait!.. I mean, listen, it's Thursday!" He thought it only fair to remind her she'd gotten her wires crossed.

He and Linda usually made love at eleven o'clock every Sunday evening, right after watching 'Mission Impossible.' They had chosen this time-slot several years ago, ever since the Weekend News Roundup had become so bloody. They found this familial act as comforting as renewing an expired subscription, and each time it happened, Linda christened it with the same coy label, gaily pretending it was a purely spontaneous bon mot: "How about it, non?" she'd twinkle. "Do you feel like being convivial?" This preamble never varied, with the result that David became so programmed by the word "convivial," he got an unthinking hard-on whenever he heard it.

"Now dearest," she said, "in an emergency like this, who's to say we can't be convivial on Thursdays as well as Sundays?"

David felt the instant-mushrooming between his legs. He sat up in bed and tore swiftly out of his pajama-tops. Then he peeled off the bottoms and leapt to his feet, standing there before her in all his rearing hot-tipped majesty. Ahhh, but easy does it, he cautioned himself… easy, boy! Sure, she's your own wife, but don't muff it!

TWO

Still feeling the gamy fevers of his nightmare, David gazed eagerly at the superb dips and ovals of Linda's body as she stood before him in her flimsy nightgown. His eyes gleamed obsessively as he thought: God!.. What phenomenal boobs for a woman who's been married all these years. They looked so full and untouched, so rosily nipple-peaked. Two vanilla-cream sundaes, undisturbed and untasted. Due, of course, to the minimal use to which he'd put them. Linda only permitted him to kiss those burning cones. Devotion, not devourment. That was her bed-time motto, and it clung to their chaste amours like an invisible sampler. No lewd oral experiments in her shiny house of controlled electronics and detergents, and everybody brushed after eating.

For David, this was an old edict of doom, and translated it meant that tit, tongue and clit-sucking were all off-limits in his pretty pink-and-white paid-up gift-horse of a home, his soul's anchor, wherein dwelled his virginal stacked wife and mother of three issues in his image… (O watch it, ganglayers, don't spread her like that… she's somebody's Mummy!)

Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he'd always sensed that Linda would go ape for those wild diversions, if she ever stopped playing Lady Guinevere long enough to relax and let them happen. But David was still too greatly in awe of his wife's antiseptic deportment ever to force his crude curiosities on her. Moreover, he valued her opinion of him much too highly to indulge in such base, secret urges as swabbing his old pirate-tongue in and out of the untrammeled crevices of her flesh. But oh man! How desperately he longed to tamper with this ripe, alabaster vessel that was Linda's body! Mightn't it be a healthy release for them both to let her know that the little boy she'd adopted at the altar had turned into a carnivorous, salivating beast? Oh Christ no, she'd be horrified…

Cool it, he warned himself. You don't really know that much about her to plow right in…

After dousing the bed-lamp, Linda removed her nightie. And then, to keep out that old voyeur Moon, she drew the drapes across the already-drawn blinds. For her, fornication must remain the enshrouded transaction it had always been. Consequently, since this storybook couple rarely toyed long enough for David's eyes to become accustomed to the dark, he could only imagine what she looked like completely nude. Damn! If only his hands had eyes, he could make do with the mere feel of her shadowed topography. But this wouldn't have been too feasible either, unless he'd tried hypnosis or chloroform; for Linda considered too much fingerplay highly juvenile: "Darling, now that we're married, we don't need all those preliminaries!"

After stripping, Linda felt her way into their adjoining bathroom to flip in her diaphragm. A devout Catholic, she had shown her full support of the Pope by donating all her contraceptive pills to a home for unwed mothers. Upon returning to the bedroom she stationed herself halfway between the beds, where David also stood in silent waiting. And thus, with perfect synchronization achieved, this was usually Linda's signal to slip into her bed and receive him. But apparently David had forgotten something. Coquettishly, she reminded him: "Isn't Cleanliness still next to Godliness in our house?"

He got the message at once. Without a word he marched into the bathroom and soapily sponged his rapidly deflating penis. Although he showered and sprayed daily, David had learned never to argue with Linda in such a moment, as it did very little to heighten the immediacy of his passion. When he returned to the pitch-dark room, he stubbed his toe and swore. Linda, now mounted on her mattress, laughed pleasantly; but David could detect the customary apprehension in her tone. Suddenly he wanted to leap through the air at her, crying: "Here Come De Dentist!.. Would Milady prefer laughing-gas or a shot in the fanny…?"

He slipped in beside her, hearing his own compulsive murmurs of desire… "Oh honey, how I want you!.. Want you more and more every day…" (and get you less and less!) How he wished they could pretend they weren't married. Christ! They'd be ideal for each other!.. And imagine a couple of strangers in this bed, built as attractively as they were! What a ball it could be… David slid the palm of his hand along her belly. Linda seized his arm and entwined it buddy-fashion about her waist, as if they were a couple of Halloween-tots about to go trick-or-treating together.

She moved her face near his and offered him the full clean cushion of her mouth: their ritual ignition-kiss. David felt the soft fluttery velvet of her lips brushing against his and he moaned and shuddered and… he went a little wilder than he knew… yearning to open those tender convent-wife petals and swarm inside with his own stabbing heat and breath-flow. He was almost positive that a helluva lot of other couples in Hillsborough sucked each others' tongues without dashing out in the night to get a Tetanus shot. But Linda cringed and bit his thrust-out underlip. With a cry of pain, he pulled away from her.

"Now David, really!" she chattered in the dark. "What's gotten into you?"

"Aw… Fin sorry, dear, I lost my head."

"I think you've been watching too many of those Market Street Hippie-girls on your lunch-hour," she chastised.

They lay on their sides and, moving on cue, pressed their bodies amiably together. David gently drew her to him, trembling with the feel of her firm round breasts pushing against him, wondering why he must be plagued with a wife who had the body of a topless go-go girl and the soul of an evangelist.

Linda reached behind on her nightstand for the small jar of lubricant, subtly placing it on the bed between their destined crotches. David's cue to start buttering himself up for the butchery. Silently, he rubbed the stuff up and down his long meaty shaft, while she waited patiently, stiffly. She never did the rubbing herself, but oh wow!.. Just the idea of it made his balls dance! Unn… to feel her hands on it at last, oooh… loving it and squeezing and dabbing!

Respectfully greased-up, David handed her the jar and she returned it to the nightstand. Then he heard her tremulous sigh: Marie-Antoinette at the guillotine, murmuring 'Head-chopper, do your bloody worst!' Faithfully remembering their choreography, David reached down and gripped his tense member in his hand, aiming it slowly between her thighs until the swelling knob lightly scratched against her curling crotch-fleece. Like the child who cries out before it's hit, Linda whimpered a little overture.

"Am I there, baby…?" he whispered gallantly.

"You're… close," she said through romantically clenched teeth. "Push a little."

David pushed, and the fat top-wedge of it oozed into her.

"Oh God Save Me!" gasped Linda, and while David sensed she was smiling socially in the dark, he always had the feeling she'd like to be saying her beads in this moment of peril.

Now their marital ballet revolved and shifted, and with David securely hooked to her, Linda rolled over on her back and let him slip into the driver's seat. Horse-and-Buggy-style. Old-fashioned homestead-pumping, like it said in the Bible and Family Circle. He let his greedy bloated rod graze gradually up her womb, the warm resilient chasm not nearly as tight as she liked to pretend. No-siree!.. That wasn't a mini-pussy down there any more, not after all his ramming alterations. Why hell, she was ready for a whole fleet of joy and jabbing up there, and by God, he'd tell her that some day, even if it made her spit-up and run home to her high-bosomed Mama and take the kids and the house and his gift-wrapped future along with her. He'd have to teach her how not to turn this bed into an operating table whenever they screwed. Of course, first he'd have to learn how himself; since, until now, all he had to go by were a bunch of gooey dreams and fancies.

"Ooooohhhahh!.. Dear Jesus in Heaven!" she wailed conventionally, and David hoped to hell she wasn't about to recite the Lord's prayer just because he'd finally shuffled all his inches up her sweet and holy twat!.. Unnnn!.. Christ, it felt so wild and juicy in there now, and the hell with her attitude. Friction was friction, and she was there and limp and letting him in her. Big thick untenable cock all lodged and rumbling inside the belly-hearth of this damned bitch-beauty who assigned him the bloodless roles of "Daddy" and "Husband," but never lover!

David pressed his soft hot mouth down on hers, but kept obediently close-lipped, like nephew-to-aunt. Linda suffered him to kiss her, while he militarily crammed his pulsating weapon in and out… his round hard buttocks humping now up, now down, loin-path straight as an arrow… no distorting side-detours, no pushing those glorious white thighs up against her bobbing breasts where he wanted them… nothing more urgent than this even keel, to-and-fro… and ooh damn! As far as it went, it was great and it was tingling… He had to give it that… because feel how wet she was getting in there… and damn her, she was always the one to oil up before he did, which meant she was a lot hotter than she knew…

"Ooooh no, David! There's so much of it!" she groaned, and with his lips dabbing at hers David dearly longed to use the words on her and tell her exactly what he was doing to her, with his mouth planted on hers, his lips pressing to feel the perfect lush delicacy of her lips… and, to himself, he let loose with some of these words as he plunged his phallus more fiercely into her… Ahhh!.. The little Mommy's getting fucked on her sweet scented sheets! That's what the head of your household's doing to you, baby… pounding his ding-dong right up your bubbly Vesuvius! And who the hell cares if your ancestors came all over the Mayflower, they all did it… like this… and this… squirty slamming flesh… flopping in and grinding it, then flopping out again…!

And now, as often happened when he neared a climax with Linda, David cast out the limited boundaries of reality and summoned up a much more satisfying internal vision. Still his plummeting member and her voluptuous body, but in this quick fantasy he was hurling his cock in and out of the dearer, warmer receptacle of her mouth. Ooh Jesus, baby… look at you! The winning of Linda Fortune at last… his prick easing softly in and out of her full flaring mouth, instead of that clamped-up compulsion of a hole down there… unnn! Look at that lovely-lady-action… velvety girl-petals receiving the head of it… see that racy hoarded tongue flick out and caress as he sank slowly deeper and she gulped and thirsted for it, sobbing out her cries of gratitude and fulfillment… home's harlot unveiled at last, ahh!.. her dearest wish come true: to drink the flavors of her tall clean blond-boy husband, to digest the very heart of him… that's what her lips were made for, curved for… and to think how cruelly he'd denied the poor girl…!

Even though the room was still too dark to see, David kept his eyes tightly closed to be sure that when he shot his raging manly load it would go right down this envisioned dream-throat of his wife… her silky blond hair not in ugly rollers now, but wild and flowing all over the pillow… his furry pubic nest covering her mouth as he jabbed thickly in and out, the heavy droop of his balls cuddling gently under her chin as she sipped and milked him… and damn!.. what a cameo-shot this made, this sweet little P.T.A. President with her lips all blooming and full of him… and aw… David was close now and kept telling himself: in her mouth, not up her pre-scheduled sacrificial belly… between her baby-kissing lips… crowding her tongue… oh God, I'm married after all… 'cause my prick's in there, and see how the fashionable young matron kisses it… oooh and kisses… ahh Linda waiting for the flow…!

They were both startled by the shrill, gurgling squeal of a baby from the next room, which happened to be the nursery. Linda pushed him up, off and away from her, only seconds before David's painfully thwarted explosion.

"It's the baby!" she cried. "Oh, it's his colic, David, I must go to him!"

She was up in a flash, leaving David in a slumped daze, his penis still athrob and half-adrip, ready and burningly poised for eruption… and still in her dreamed-up mouth, Goddamn her, even though she was out of bed now and moving about the room.

"What baby, at a time like this?" he groaned, feeling the clutch of orgasm-amnesia. "Oh honey, Flora will take care of the stupid baby… what the hell're we paying a sleep-in nurse for, if you're gonna go running to him every time he opens his mouth?"

She gave him a stoic leer. "There's a time in every infant's life when it must be his mother who comes in the night," she informed him.

"Oh?" said David, giving this some thought while still holding onto his cock to press back the trickles. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

Considering all this semantic-wise, Linda slipped into her robe, switched on a light, and said: "Don't be obscene, please. It's simply that I refuse to let that baby start nursery-school with a rejection complex. It's his Mummy he's crying for, not his Nanny…"

"Yeah…? well then send his Nanny in here to me, maybe we can trade emergencies!" But she'd already left the room, slamming the door on his ungainly proposal.

… Goddamnit, even old Flora'd look good to me right now, he thought. He knelt there on the bed, feeling foolish and hot and ape-like, his prick still achingly hard and ready to foam over. Then he stared down at Linda's lovely tinted sheets and saw the patch of dampness where her Ladyship's crotch had been. By God, then that icy bitch of a Mommy did come in the night! That sure's hell wasn't his flood down there, because his hadn't happened yet. He was just about to spurt right between her angelic red lips… wasn't that the dream on the dais just before the baby blew it? Sure… not his wet, dammit, but her wet! No wonder she was so eager to play Mother McCree, that phony little closet-degenerate… gettin' her jollies and hopping off to the nursery! The hypocrite, she'd have a baby on each nipple for the rest of her life if she thought it would keep him away from the truth of her flesh, the ripe buried needs of her… In a fury, David seized Linda's pillow and started to beat it and crush it and straddle it between his legs, until he was crazily masturbating himself with it. But to get back at her… (Oh, that psalm-faced gingham Miss!)… he summoned up another hot charade of retribution, but this time found his vengeance while fully awake. Her imperial family again, the idol-figures, economic backbone of his marriage and his success. Ooh… get 'em where they live and where they sit! Yeah… there they are, Papa and Mama in-laws, whirling beneath him. Get them to kneel and offer up their plush-lined rumps for the final indignity. Thought they could buy him and trap him and nail him, did they? Aw… How sweet it felt to violate them and slash and ravish their innards, oooh!.. Shove it up their fat expensive plumbing… Dig it and thump it and… Oh God, he was too close to shooting to enjoy it any longer… had to let it loose now, right up that complaining regal back-buff… ahh!.. Pow and thud and bang it up that tired old valley… in there now… awwoooohh!.. all of it… and… oh more… and more… and unnngf!.. lost…

But afterwards, David realized that once again the fantasy-body he'd penetrated had become that of his father-in-law. White shaggy mane, hoarse barking grunts. No mistaking the old guy. It was him, all right… Oh God, he thought, feeling shabby and contrite… why couldn't it have been her mother this time? Weren't there enough pressures crowding in on him without adding this new anxiety? And Jesus, what the hell kind of reasoning was this: If he couldn't get what he wanted from his wife, he'd go rape her father?

Linda returned to the room, all smiles and neatness. "Jaimie's asleep now, the angel. It was really so easy. Flora said I was a wonder. All he had to do was sense my presence, and off he went…" She eyed David and her tumbled-looking bed. "What happened here, some sort of accident?"

"Yeah, an accident," he said, gazing up at her glowing, pristine purity. "I fell and hit my climax."

She began to giggle deliriously. "Oh David, you're a riot! And here I was afraid you'd had another nightmare…" Then more soberly, after turning over her creamy-wet pillow… "We've really got to do something about that, you know. Your nightmares, I mean… Either tranquilizers or a good neurologist, I'm not sure which."

A concubine, thought David… that's what I need. No doctors or pills, just someone to swallow me alive three times a week and show me where to send my body…

Linda crept into her bed and dimmed the light, spraying the room with silence. Crypt connubial.

Breakfast in the Fortune household the next day was the typically hectic skirmish it always was during the children's summer vacation. As he came down the stairs, David could hear Linda giving the kids their daily instructions, knowing that she and Flora had already officiated at the feeding of their youngest an hour earlier. He told himself that the comforting sound of her morning-voice washed away all the problems that haunted their dark and tangled bedtime hours. The house was bright and spotless, Linda having decorated the place herself in a style that could only be called Early Sunkist. Everything was done in a symphony of yellows-sometimes riotous, sometimes muted, as if the walls had been painted-or brainwashed-with a kind of totalitarian optimism.

Although the Fortunes employed sufficient personnel for housecleaning and child-care, Linda insisted that the kitchen was to be her special domain. Not for nothing had she been a whiz in Home Economics in High School, and a Dietetics Major in college. No cooks or serving-maids for her, since she was fully equipped to cook for a healthy family of five. No cake mixes or packaged foods either; everything was fresh and new, including the vegetables they ate, which came from the garden that she and David tended together. One of their favorite Sunday hobbies, planting and weeding away the hours together. David saw all these efforts as zealous labors of love, and he was mighty proud of Linda. Wasn't he?

He paused in the doorway of the breakfast-room for a moment to listen and watch, wanting to remind himself what a glowing treasure he possessed here in this house. Seven-year-old Janice-a perfect miniature of her mother-and her six-year-old brother Larry usually rose early during vacation-time, just to stare idolatrously at their handsome, broad-shouldered Daddy. However, his little daughter's stare had seemed much more penetrating to David ever since the day she'd unexpectedly opened his bedroom door and found him standing there, completely nude. She'd stared at his long plump penis with unabashed interest, as if it might be a pliable new doll she could add to her collection. Then she'd giggled and said, with a rather clannish conceit: "I got the biggest Daddy in the world!" And left the room. Strange to think one's little girl had confronted one's genitalia with such equanimity, when it still scared the living daylights out of her mother.

Linda looked up and saw David enter the room. "Oh, there you are, dear." She glanced up at the sunburst-clock on the wall. "You're about eight and a half minutes late, aren't you?"

"Roger," he said, kissing the reflex-offering of her cheek. "But I'll make it up on the freeway, if I'm lucky."

"The way Dad's got it made at All-Planet Insurance, he could be late every day if he wanted to," said Larry, "and nobody would say anything. Huh, Dad?"

Seating himself at the table, David glanced at the boy, deciding this had to be a burst of loyalty, since the child was too young to be making snide remarks about nepotism. "Well, I don't know about that, son. I wouldn't be setting a very good example, would I?"

"Of course you wouldn't," Linda put in hastily. "Don't talk so foolishly, Larry."

Everyone ate in silence for a moment.

"Hey Daddy, is it good or bad if somebody calls you a 'company man'…?" asked Larry.

Everyone stared curiously at the boy.