I sprawled over her and her legs locked around my waist. They were long legs and they established a rhythm, goading my movements as if they were driving a piston. She moved under me with complete abandonment, holding me to her in a fluttering vise, first rotating with a grinding motion, then rising and falling like an ocean gone berserk, Her nails were punching holes in my neck. Her body began reacting like a series of increasingly powerful charges of dynamite being detonated. Each explosion brought me closer to a major one of my own. I was on the brink of it when light suddenly flooded the room.
“Oh! That’s blinding!” The voice came from the doorway. It was the voice of Rusty Roundheels, my hostess. “Vance, are you in here?” Evidently she still hadn’t managed to focus. And then she did. “Oh, there you are.”
Under the circumstances, I was lucky. Joy was completely buried beneath the pile of coats. I was also completely covered, except for my head, which was poking out of the mass of garments. That was the only part of me Rusty could see.
“There’s a call for you,” Rusty told me. “Long distance. Marcy.” She looked at me quizzically. “What are you doing there anyway, Vance?”
“I guess the liquor got to me,” I improvised. “I was feeling a little dizzy. I just came up here to lie down.”
“That’s a pretty peculiar position for lying down. Are you comfortable?”
“Sure. My chiropractor recommended it to me. It’s the one position that relaxes every part of the body.”
Beneath me Joy muffled a giggle.
“Oh. Well, you’d better come now,” Rusty said. I put my hand firmly over Joy’s mouth. “I’ll be right there,” I told Rusty.
“All right.” She closed the door behind her.
“Hurry up and go before she comes back,” Joy urged when I removed my hand.
“Okay.” Reluctantly, I relinquished the position we’d established and got to my feet.
That was a mistake. My pants were bunched up around my ankles. I immediately toppled over and hit the floor with the impact of a felled tree. Joy laughed aloud. She was still under the coats and the laugh was muffled.
Sitting on the floor, I pulled my pants up and buckled the belt. I’d just finished when the door popped open again. “Now what are you doing?” Rusty asked.
“Just getting the kinks out. My chiropractor says -”
“Never mind your chiropractor. Marcy’s waiting and it’s long distance. I told you.”
“Okay. Right there.”
She went out again and I got to my feet. “Joy?” I stood over the pile of coats.
“Yes?”
“Will you wait here? I’ll come right back.”
“All right. I’ll wait. By the way, who’s Marcy?”
“My ex-wife.”
“She must have super-sensitive antennae. Her timing’s devastating.”
“Yeah. I’ll be right back.” I left then, turning out the light behind me and closing the door. I went down to the center hall and picked up the phone. “Marcy?”
“Yes. Vance? What took you so long? I’ve been waiting hours. And this is a long-distance call.”
“With the alimony I’m paying you can well afford it.”
“Don’t be bitter, sweetie. What’s the matter, did I interrupt something?”
“Don’t be silly.” That was the damnedest thing about Marcy. When it came to logic she was nowhere, but her intuition was almost always right smack on the button. It was infuriating; it was one of the reasons I divorced her. “What do you want anyway, Marcy?” I couldn’t keep the edge out of my voice.
“Then I was right!” She picked it up. “Well, I can see that being divorced hasn’t cured your lechery any more than marriage did.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Being married to you almost did cure my erotic impulses,” I told her sweetly, nastily. “Now would you mind telling me just why the hell you’re calling me?”
“My philodendron.”
“Huh?”
“My philodendron plant. This time of year it has to be moved around to the side of the house so it’ll get enough sun.”
“Marcy, if you’re so concerned about your phi1odendron plant, why the hell didn’t you take it with you? I told you that you could have anything from the house that you wanted. You could have had the house too, for that matter. But you decided you’d rather have cash.”
“And I haven’t changed my mind either. But that has nothing to do with this. I don’t want the plant. I just don’t want it to die. If you don’t take care of it, then it will.”
“What the hell do I care?” I was exasperated. This kind of can’t-wait, middle-of-the-night call to a neighbor’s house was typical of Marcy. It was an echo of how she’d bugged me when we were married. “Damn thing uses up all the oxygen anyway,” I added.
“It does not!” She was almost shouting. “You always used to say that. And it’s so damn unscientific! Plants do not use up oxygen! You just say that because you always hated my plants. You still hate them. You’re trying to kill the poor defenseless things. Now Vance, are you going to take care of that philodendron, or not?”
“Why should I?”
“Because you have custody of it, that’s why!”
“I hereby relinquish it. I’1l send you an affidavit to that effect if you like.”
“You legalistic bastard! You always pull that lawyer talk on me when you know you’re in the wrong. Just cut it out and tell me what you’re going to do about the philodendron!”
I told her. “I am going to go home and pull that monster plant out by the roots. Then I am going to shred the leaves into cole slaw. The rest I’ll burn and scatter the ashes over the Bronx Botanical Gardens. And when I’m through, I’ll repeat the action with every other oxygen-gobbling piece of flora and fauna I can find in the house!”
She was sputtering in my ear incoherently as I hung up the phone. Rusty Roundheels was standing a few feet away eyeing me quizzically. “You two should have stayed married,” she observed. “It would have been cheaper than fighting long distance.”
“What I’d like to know is how she traced me here,” I remarked.
“My fault, I’m afraid. We’ve been corresponding. I’ve been keeping her up to date on Pine Glen.”
“And on me?”
“Well, not exactly. But she does ask questions. After all, you were married. And I guess Marcy’s still carrying a bit of a torch.”
“A blow-torch. Or, rather, a flame thrower. And she’d like nothing better than to incinerate me with it.”
“I’m sorry.” Rusty was chagrined. “I’m afraid I did mention this party and that there was a chance you’d be here.”
“Well, never mind. It doesn’t really make any difference. Marcy’s got bloodhound blood. She’d have traced me down sooner or later anyway.” I patted Rusty on the shoulder and continued on up the stairs. I was eager to get back to Joy and pick up where we’d left off.
The room was dark when I opened the door. I closed it behind me and didn’t turn on the light. I fumbled my way over to the bed and began feeling around the pile of coats. I figured Joy must still be under them.
“COOKAROOKOOTOO!” a female voice whooped.
“Shh!” a man whispered urgently. “Do you want us to be discovered?”
“Then don’t do that! You know it drives me out of my mind! I just go ape when you touch me there!”
“Where?”
“There!”
“Cleo,” the man’s voice protested, “I wasn’t touching you at all. At least I don’t think I was. It’s hard to tell under all these damn coats.”
“The hell you say! You grabbed my you-know-what. You know you did, Phil.”
“Your ‘you-know-what’? That’s not very scientific terminology for a lady doctor, Cleo.”