She flicked me a longing little glance. “Nassau. A little month-long getaway.”
“Must be nice.”
Sighing, she moved to a corner where a palm-treelike number waited; from the size of it, this triffid could have walked to the kitchen to get its own goddamn water.
She was saying, “Hard not to envy Lisa and Dave- swimming and sunning and swimming and sunning and eating wonderful food and swimming and sunning some more.”
“Wouldn’t that suck,” I said.
She finished her rounds and I followed her to the kitchen, where she replaced the watering can under the sink. Turning to me with a lilting smile, she asked, “I bet you like to swim. You’re a swimmer, aren’t you?”
I frowned with my forehead and smiled with my mouth. “What are you, psychic?”
“No.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Maybe I’ve got you under surveillance…”
The swimming pool room seemed even larger when you were in there, an echoey cavernous dark-wood space with the lighted swimming pool a blue shimmering centerpiece.
Janet, in a light blue one-piece bathing suit, balanced at the tip of the diving board, bouncing a little, dark-blonde locks flouncing when I came in from the dressing room in a suit two sizes two small for me. Well, it made the package look bigger, anyway, even if it did cut off my circulation. Of course, cutting off the circulation would eventually not do the package any favors, either.
She didn’t say anything just grinned and bounced and laughed and bounced and laughed and grinned.
“Glad you’re having such a good time,” I said.
“Sorry…Dave’s not…not a big man.”
“Just in business,” I said, eyeing the vast chamber. I was standing at the edge of the pool like a guy on a building ledge contemplating suicide. I pointed casually toward her. “That Dave’s wife’s suit?”
“Yes. Lisa and me, we’re about the same size.”
“She has a nice figure.”
“Lisa thanks you, I’m sure.”
With this, she dove in, an admirable, even elegant dive.
Even so, she splashed me some, doing it; but I didn’t mind. The flecks of water were quite warm, really, even inviting.
I dove in.
The pool was as warm as a bath, lulling-actually, I prefer it a little crisper, but this was nice. Very nice.
For a while we swam, doing a few laps together, sometimes underwater or on our backs, and splashed and clowned around, the kind of capering kids get in trouble for from the lifeguard, only there was no lifeguard present. We laughed and teased and talked, enjoying the usual pleasing swimming-chamber hollow effect.
We were treading water, facing each other, when I said, “Nice perk, for semi-housesitting.”
“Swimming’s the best.”
“Oh yeah,” I agreed sincerely.
A little out of breath, face droplet-pearled, she could hardly have looked more lovely, even though the long hair was matted down with moisture, the makeup mostly gone from her heart-shaped face, an indicator of just what a striking woman this was.
Paddling there, blinking the big brown eyes, she said, “Nothing quite relaxes you like a nice swim. Really takes you somewhere else.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Treading doggedly, maybe a little tired now and having to work at it some, she said, “I mean, I don’t envy Dave and Lisa much, but to have this handy, right in your own house? To be able to-de-stress any time you like, and just feel…really free…”
“You know,” I said, a tiny bit out of breath myself, “you shouldn’t swim here by yourself. Dangerous.”
She laughed, treading water, more and more an effort. “What? You think I’m gonna dive in and klunk my stupid head?”
I plunge her head under water, my hand gripping the top of her skull and shoving her down, and holding her there; she struggles but can’t get anywhere, arms and legs flailing with fading force.
Finally, she is limp, dead weight, and I release her, and let her float to the surface, arms spread, reaching for nothing, tendrils of hair spreading like seaweed.
“Hey!” she said, bobbing there. “Aren’t you listening? Where did you go?”
“Somewhere else,” I admitted. “For a second.”
“I was just saying, I can fix you something, if you like. Have you eaten?”
Soon we were in the Winters’ kitchen, sitting on stools at the counter in our respective robes (hers blue and fitting nice, mine white and, again, two sizes too small, my shoulders straining the seams), eating microwave dinners and drinking Diet Cokes. Nearby, the penned-up dog, although fully fed not forty-five minutes ago, was whining pitifully, as if it hadn’t had a meal since summer.
Janet, gnawing a leg of Swanson chicken, said, “Toss her a scrap, why don’t you?”
I speared a bite of Salisbury steak. “What, and spoil the bitch?”
“You’re evil.”
I didn’t feel like contradicting her.
We had cleaned up after ourselves, and were standing at the sink like an old married couple when I asked, “What do you have on under that robe?”
Her smile was pixie-ish. “Wouldn’t you like to know?…What do you have under yours?”
I opened mine and showed her. It was a good thing I wasn’t wearing David’s tiny trunks.
“You can get arrested in some states for that,” she said, but her eyes were big and pleased.
I opened the front of her robe and saw the creamy skin and lovely breasts and the wonderful Old School muff.
“That’s illegal in most states,” I said. “Pubic nakedness.”
“That’s public nakedness. And, anyway, this is private.”
I slipped the robe off her shoulders and let it slip down her narrow-waisted, full-hipped frame to puddle on the floor at her bare feet.
“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
In the Winters Family Rec Room, I took the time to get a fire going in the big rough-stone fireplace while Janet waited, naked underneath an Indian blanket. Then I joined her and we necked a while, romantically. When I finally kissed her breasts, the nipples were erect, damn near an inch long and hard, so hard. I kissed her neck, she kissed mine. I put my hand between her legs and the moistness there wanted attention. I buried my head down there and licked and sucked; then her head was in my lap and she licked and sucked. Things were getting serious.
“On top of me,” she whispered, her face looking up at me half-lidded, mouth open in terrible, exquisite pain. “On top…”
For all the moistness, she was tight-a little hand might have been gripping me down there-and she shuddered and cried in pain and delight as I entered her and slid myself slowly in and out. I cupped the full firm globes of her ass and nuzzled her breasts as she moved her hips in ways she hadn’t learned in the library, the inside of her sucking out the inside of me. The blanket had fallen away, and our flesh was reflecting the licking flames, one body with many limbs and so much skin, blushed orange, and after a while her eyes rolled up in her head so that barely anything but white showed as I plunged in and out of her with the blade of flesh.
We hadn’t talked about protection-we were just naked and together and the lust ran away with us and I’d been in her. And now my seed was in her, too. Some detached voice in my head said, She’s already dead, she doesn’t need protection…
Then we were on top of the blanket. The fire had dwindled to a nice comfort level, and we were wrapped up in a post-coital embrace, sleepy, at ease with each other, so much so that we could just laugh as we picked pubic hairs off our respective tongues. My efforts to cough one up off the back of my throat almost made her hysterical.
After while she had quieted down enough to ask, “Were you a soldier?”
“How did you know that? Surveillance?”
Her smile was sweet for a girl who’d just given me a royal fucking. She shook her head. “I just feel it, know it, somehow…My grandfather was in Korea. You remind me of him.”
“Well, that’s made my day.”
She laughed and her face crinkled apologetically. “No, no, no, I didn’t mean… that.”