Neither did she see the slender shadow which was beside the oleander bushes, next to the patio. She would have cared about the dark figure which lurked unobtrusively, for she had certainly never anticipated being seen in such a lewd, depraved act that she had just been a part of. But the night hid the man from her eyes, and he had wisely kept silent, but his eyes fairly glowed with lust and the saliva edged from his panting jaws and pooled upon the ground.
He rubbed his hands together, then as Patty burst apart with her climax and collapsed to the tile, he turned and with a dry, quiet chuckle walked back into the house.
Yes, he thought, that was a fine piece out there, a very fine piece of ass. I'd like to add that trophy to my collection. I'd like to feel her sweet young lips clamped around my cock, and see her suck me to cumming. Yes, and I'll have just that… or my name isn't Rick Renault the Third!
He wiped his wet chin and smoothed out the smog-gray mustache which lined his upper lip. He thought about ways of seducing the girl, turning over in his mind a thousand plots which the years of venal skullduggery had filed away. Then he hit upon one of the simplest, most foolproof of them all.
"All I need is a pretext to get her here," he reasoned to himself as he strode quickly to the bedroom where the guests' coats and belongings were located. "Now I believe her purse is in here. Hmm…
It took but one moment for the deftly fingered man to locate Patty's purse among the effects, and after making sure nobody was around, he took the purse and rifled it. He held up a small, gold compact, heavily scrolled and very beautiful. He opened it and read the inscription:
"'To my darling wife with eternal love, Larry.'" He smiled at the romantic thought. "Isn't that sweet of him?" he said. "Well, Larry, you don't know it, but your generosity is going to help me debauch your wife. You're going to betray her. Tomorrow!"
Renault laughed gleefully at the ironic thought, and pocketing the compact he put everything back as it was and left the room to rejoin the sleeping Barbara Davis…
Chapter 5
Patty was watching a game show on television when the telephone rang at one o'clock the next afternoon. She was drowsing in one of Marcia's easy chairs, not particularly concentrating on the flickering TV screen. She hadn't slept at all last night, simply lying awake in the large double bed next to Marcia, staring at the darkened ceiling and reliving in her mind the jumbled events of the evening… the marijuana, the lewd shameless orgy she had witnessed and been part of. The entire time, she had tried to make herself feel low, demeaned, the worst kind of harlot, "A gutter whore" as Tom Jennings, her father-in-law, had called her, but she had felt nothing. It was as if that evening, and all that had happened in that evening, had purged her of all guilt, all shame, all inhibitions yes, even all emotion. She was barren inside now, somehow void of any normal reactions to the totally alien acts which she had perpetrated upon her body and upon her mind in the past two days. She was a shell, a lump of clay, no longer even certain about her previously desperate love for her husband, Larry Jennings; no longer even certain that she cared for him at all, or that she cared for anything. She had moved about the house this morning in a kind of listless daze, causing Marcia to ask if there was anything the matter, answering that there wasn't, she was just not feeling too well, but nothing serious. Marcia had clucked sympathetically, smiled tenderly at her, and left for work. Patty had spent the morning just sitting in front of the television, staring at the rectangular tube, not thinking about anything really, her mind blank.
Now, as she passed slowly toward the hallway telephone to silence its insistent ringing, she was still not thinking, still not reacting. She was only existing.
She picked up the receiver and said hello, and a familiar male voice said, "Is this Patty? Patty Jennings?"
"Well, good afternoon," the voice said, and she recognized it then as belonging to Rick Renault, the graying, leathery-skinned man who had given the party the previous night. "How are you… feeling today, my dear?"
"Just fine," Patty answered automatically and without emotion.
"I'm glad I found you home," Renault said.
“My houseboy found something while he was cleaning up this morning and turned it over to me. I believe it belongs to you."
"What is it?"
"A gold compact," Renault told her. "It is inscribed 'To my darling wife with eternal love, Larry.' Your husband's name is Larry, is it not, my dear?"
“Yes. Yes, it is."
"It must have fallen from your purse somehow last evening. I'm sure you would like to have it back, and I thought that if you weren't doing anything this afternoon you might like to drop by and pick it up."
"Well…" Patty began, and then, "I'm afraid I don't have any way to get to your home…”
"If you would like to take a cab," Renault said, "I'll be more than happy to pay for it."
Patty considered. Why not? she thought, disinterested one way or the other. She didn't really feel much like sitting here in this lonely duplex, waiting for Marcia to come home from work, waiting for night to come, and night to turn into another day, and then into another night, and then into… Oh God, it was all so futile and useless; life was futile and useless, it seemed. It was really funny, she reflected, how a person can change so drastically in so short a period of time…
"Yes," she said at length, "I'd like to come out and pick up the compact, Mr. Renault."
"Rick, please," Renault said smoothly. "I'll send the cab for you directly, my dear."
She hung up and returned to the living room and stared at the television. She thought about changing out of the thin sweater and short skirt she wore, putting on the bra and panties she did not now have on beneath them, and perhaps a dress or something more appropriate for calling, but she didn't move from the chair. The social amenities, proper appearances, how foolish and unimportant they seemed to her now!
The cab arrived ten minutes later, honking its horn out front. Patty went out and got into the back seat, and it seemed that she had just closed the door when they were pulling up before the Renault mansion in St. Francis Woods. The driver tipped his cap, smiling, as he stepped out and opened the door for her; she only nodded perfunctorily and started up the winding red-brick path toward the wide oak front door of the dwelling.
Renault himself answered her ring. He was dressed in a mock turtleneck shirt and dove-gray slacks that matched his precise mustache and wavy hair, and he was smiling charmingly. "Come in, my dear," he said, taking her hand. "You look lovely, today."
"Thank you," she replied, knowing that she did not look lovely, that she only looked tired and harried and defeated. She allowed him to lead her along the marbled hallway, into the study where she had seen Marcia and Frank Harrel orally fucking the night before. The French doors were closed, the drapes drawn, but she was able to look through them in her mind to see the patio where she had permitted Val Robbins to mercilessly pillage her anal passage; and make her enjoy it, she thought perfunctorily. The study itself was very dark, and she noticed without really seeing then that a large 8-millimeter movie projector on a metal stand sat off on one side of the leather couch, and a wide viewing screen had been set up directly in front of it.
Renault smiled at her in his disarming way as they entered and he closed the door, closing off the light from the hallway. The room's only illumination was from a hammered curio lamp which sat on a table near the projector. Renault walked to the table and picked up the gold compact Larry had given her as a birthday present while they were still engaged, and brought it to her, saying, "There you are, my dear. I even had the houseboy polish it for you."