Mrs. Witherdine rose alone. Her eyes were cold but her voice betrayed none of her inner emotion. "It is too bad, Mrs. Howard. I had hoped he could join us. But now I must go. I know how crowded it is, with three instead of two, at our ages."
Mrs. Howard did not try to persuade her friend to stay.
"Thank you for the invitation," Mrs. Witherdine said.
Mrs. Howard said, "Perhaps your good friend will be waiting for you at your home. Perhaps he was merely detained a short while"
"Thank you." Mrs. Witherdine shook hands with Mrs. Howard. She looked briefly at the lover, a young man cut a little too femininely for her own tastes. She shook hands with the lover, feeling rather strange since the young man was standing naked. "Good night," she said again.
She left. Her chauffeur drove her back to her hilltop mansion where she put out the lights and went to bed alone.
Chapter 9
Rick woke bright and early the next morning. The orgy on Fisherman's Walk had taken most of the starch out of, him and his morning erection went away as soon as he took a leak. He felt only mildly horny thinking of Emma and Donna. Especially Donna, he thought. Their bodies had done him a lot of good, banging his belly against their tight little frames, feeling their firm and strong thighs grasping his hips had given him back his own strength.
They had given his youth back to him. And he chuckled to himself when he thought of the crisp new ten-dollar bill the skinny maid had slipped into his hand as he pulled on his clothes. It seemed to him that the less you did as a gigolo the more you were paid, and the better the fucking the more meager the money.
Before breakfast he walked down to the beach. Walking along the edge of the ocean, barefoot, his feet splashing in the cold, gentle waves that washed ashore, he thought about his future, about his career as a gigolo for old ladies. He imagined rows of them waiting on satin sheets, four-poster beds in expensive Miami hotels and New York apartments, on the Riviera and the Mediterranean shores of Greece. Widows of oil magnates, men who had polluted the very ocean he now waded in. He would plunge into holes those men had plunged into until their deaths. He would please women whose men had never been able to please them. He would reap the benefits of all their collected wealth. Speculators in slum real estate. He would let their widows gum on his cock, suck his come out of his balls. He would get rich in the baths of women whose husbands had made fortunes by raising the price of bread.
And occasionally, when he needed it, he would seek out their grand-daughters in their virgin beds and take a young sleek and firm body, a tight cunt and a virgin mouth. It would revive him so he could plunge once more into the peculiar, inventory the minds of old ladies could think up for him to do.
He gave his classes in the morning and by noon he remembered the promise that Mrs. Witherdine might do more for him than she ever had. He felt horny for her mouth. He was greedy. He wanted to see if she would really suck him off and swallow his come and he thought if she did he could make an easy hundred, plus perhaps a bonus if he shot off hard against the back of her throat. And he could be back at the club in time for his two o'clock class.
Marie was surprised to see him at the front door.
"You'd better come around back," she gasped. "Missus don't like for you to be coming in the front."
Rick stepped past her. He wished he had worn a hat so he could have handed it to her and reminded her that she was the maid and he the guest. The honored guest. "She won't mind this time," he said. "Don't worry about it, Marie. I'll handle the Missus for you."
Marie's exasperation turned to surprise. "You will? Mr. Temple, I'd like to see that. That's something that I just don't think can happen."
Rick waited while Marie struggled up the main stairway to inform Missus that her lover was on the premises.
He thought it was much nicer and more formal coming in the front door.
A tall pier mirror with carved walnut frame stood beside the entrance to the parlor. Rick looked through the wide door and saw plush, soft furniture that had been reupholstered probably every twenty-five years of its existence. A fireplace with a carved marble mantel stood against the far wall and over it was another pier mirror, this one mahogany. He thought that these people had really know how to live in the '70s and '80s, and that their descendants had had more than common sense to be able to hold onto the wealth all that time since.
Marie gestured from the top of the ornate staircase. She wore a smile of vindication on her face. "Missus said for you to come right on in, Mr. Temple."
Rick grinned up at her, then took the stairs two at a time. At the top, he paused beside the maid to pinch her black soft cheek. "You're all right, Marie, you know that?"
"Sure I do. Always knew that. It's you that has the problem."
Rick studied her a moment trying to understand what she meant. He decided it was hopeless, that she was as fathomless as others of her race and that she had meanings in her speech that no one without the precise experience of her kind could ever hope to understand.
He knocked on the door of Mrs. Witherdine's office-bedroom-sitting room.
"Come in," she said.
He stepped in and closed the door behind him. He walked quickly to her side and kissed her, before she could get to her feet.
She pushed her light-weight chair behind her and rose. "Goodness," she said, "you don't even let Marie show you in anymore?"
"Well, I'm in kind of a rush, Mrs. Witherdine. I have to be back at the resort for a two o'clock class."
"You'd better hurry." Mrs. Witherdine looked at a very small, very expensive watch hanging between her breasts on a very tiny and frail gold chain. "It's already a few minutes after twelve."
"I wasn't able to come by last night, like I said I would." He kissed her lips again, but she did not respond.
"I was really hung up yesterday," he said, laughing a little and shaking his head. "Took three kids in my class out in the bay to show them how to set a spinnaker in the wind and wouldn't you know it the damn wind died on me. We didn't get back in until way after dark, then because it was so late I had to take them home." He paused to see how his story was going over, then pressed ahead. "One of them lives way up the other side of the city and I didn't get back until after midnight and I thought that was too late to come over."
"What do you want to do now? You know I work through the day unless I call you."
"Yes, but since I had a little time free, a couple hours, and since I haven't seen you in over a week, well. And our last two appointments I haven't been able to keep."
"Why did you lie?"
Rick was taken by surprise. "What do you mean? I was out in the boat."
"Now you are lying again. Don't keep it up, it's only foolish."
"What do you mean?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean. Stop lying to me."
"I haven't been. I was caught with no wind… "
Mrs. Witherdine moved away abruptly. She made a cutting motion with her hand, forcing Rick to swallow the rest of his sentence.
"I did not invite you here today," she began. "I especially did not invite you here today to lie to me. I can-` not abide liars. You not only failed to appear for our last two appointments, you have stood here today and lied to me three times about what happened to you last night. Until you lied to me, I did not care a whit where you were or what you did last night. The fact that I had expected you and you did not appear was disappointing to me, of course, but I understand that being your age you cannot be expected to be punctual, remember appointments, or resist greater temptations. You haven't had the upbringing for that, nor do you have the experience or background to submit to your responsibilities. I excuse that."