Grant Roberts - The wayward wifes

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."

“You're very kind,” Patty said. Her tone was mechanical.

"Not at all," Renault beamed. “Now then, would you care for a drink? I have some fine imported brandy from France, or some excellent Scotch.”

“No, I don't think so.”

Renault steered her gently toward the couch.

"I have something else, then, which you might enjoy," he said. He waited until she had seated herself, sitting rather primly on one of the cushions, and then he moved away, only to return moments later with the same sculptured silver cigarette box he had passed around last evening. He flipped the top open, extending the box to her.

"These are Acapulco Gold, my dear, the finest quality marijuana you can buy. I only use them on, ah, somewhat special occasions."

Patty stared into the box with a faint revulsion. She was about to decline his offer, tell him to take the marijuana cigarettes away, but then something strange and perverse seized hold of her. A part of her brain recalled the pleasant, euphoric feeling the grass had induced in her the previous night, the total relaxation she had experienced, and suddenly she wanted one of the little brown weeds; perhaps it would snap her out of her abject fatalism, at least momentarily, give her a moment's respite from the terrible, utter feeling of desertion, of emptiness which was now consuming her body and her very essence.

She reached out and selected one of the cigarettes, placing it between her lips. Renault smiled, moistening his own lips, touching his gray mustache with the tips of his fingers. He produced a gold lighter, snapped it open and flicked the flint wheel; flame burst upward and he held it to the tip of the cigarette. Patty sucked the sweet, hot smoke deep into her lungs, held it there, released it slowly the way she had been taught the night before. Then she expelled it, inhaled again, repeating the process.

Renault sat down beside her and lit one of the muggles for himself. He inhaled deeply, watching Patty covetously out of the corner of his eye. They sat in silence, smoking in the darkened room, and as the brown cylinder burned down almost to her fingers, to nothing more than a thin ash, Patty began to experience a certain diminishing of her depression. She was feeling better now, yes, she was feeling much better… but not quite good enough. She turned to Renault, smiling a little. "Would it be all right if I had another, Rick?"

"Of course, my dear," Renault said with solicitous enthusiasm. He opened the box again, waiting until she had taken another marijuana cigarette from inside, and then lit it with his lighter.

When that second muggle was nothing but dead ash, Patty was feeling buoyant, almost happy, almost alive again. She closed her eyes, leaning back against the pliant cushions of the couch. She began to giggle softly, for no apparent reason, luxuriating in the coolness of the leather against her neck, beneath her hands. She said between the soft girlish sounds, "You're a very nice man, do you know that, Rick? You really are a very nice man to make me feel this good when I was feeling so bad."

"Thank you, my dear," Renault said. "But why were you feeling so bad?"

"It's a long story," she told him. "A long, long story. I'll tell you about it sometime. But not now, okay?"

"Okay."

"You're a very nice man," she repeated through her rising haze. "I like you, Rick."

He touched her hand, and his touch seemed somehow to cause little tingles of electricity to course up along her arm. She could feel a warmth growing in her belly, and she knew that it was the beginnings of sexual arousal, unwanted arousal that she could not stop. She had a sudden, desperate urge to run, to get out of there, out of that house, away from this man, but then the urge passed and she felt good and warm again, letting the prurient sensations drift downward into her vagina and begin the first flowings of her feminine juices from her naked crotch beneath the short skirt.