Susan Carter - A helpful wife

"Tim! No, please don't!" Melanie Cartwright protested.

She struggled for a moment with his hand, pulling it with hesitant force from beneath the top of her thin, low-cut dress. Tim Cartwright resisted somewhat drunkenly, and then let his hand be pushed limply away.

"Melanie, for God's sake!" the young man thickly hissed. "We're married, aren't we? Jesus, you act like we were still going steady."

"Oh, darling, it's not that," she moaned in a soft whisper against him. "It's that we're in a public theater, that's all."

"What's that got to do with it?" he growled in a low voice.

"I mean… I mean, it's not even a drive-in! We can't… we can't make a spectacle of ourselves in front of all the others here. We're not teenagers any more, you know."

"Not by very much," he chuckled wetly against her ear. "I bet you just don't want your new boss to see you necking, right?"

Melanie flushed slightly, feeling her rosy cheeks flare with heat in the darkened movie theater. "No," she protested, "it's not that at all. Mr. Andersson is a married man. He knows all about love." She dropped her head to his shoulder and began to sigh gently, trying to show her husband she wasn't such a prude as she sometimes sounded. "We'll have plenty of time for loving later, when we get home!"

"Think you can stand seeing sexy films like this every night while I'm gone?" her husband, Tim, whispered suggestively.

"You… you know I don't like them, Tim," she replied, stiffening. "Besides, I'll be out in the lobby all the time I'm working. Now hush and watch the movie. You're the one who wanted to see it so badly."

"Yeah," Tim breathed huskily, looking back to the screen with liquor-dulled eyes. "And man, it sure is a hot one, isn't it?"

Melanie Cartwright didn't answer, again feeling a rapid sensation of blood rushing to her face as she blushed with embarrassment. She'd never seen one of these so-called "art" films before, but avoided them by telling Tim that she was not interested in the more lewd and prurient side to love-making. But the curvaceous blonde wife, only twenty years old and married just one month over two years, had been continually urged by her handsome, twenty-two year-old husband to at least try one before she dismissed the whole idea. And her girl friends, those other young wives and mothers who lived in the apartment-house complex with her and Tim, always seemed to be talking in hushed giggles about the candid versions of wild erotica which their husbands were taking them to. In spite of her deeply religious upbringing and her own ingrained sense of what was decent and what was not, she couldn't help admitting that she had been secretly curious about what such films were like, titillated by their come-on newspaper ads.

Now, tonight, there had been no way of avoiding seeing one such movie, even if she had desperately been against the idea. For one thing, she hadn't been able to find the proper words to argue after all the drinking they'd done during dinner. Tim had taken her to a fancy restaurant before coming here, and they had lingered over their tasty food with different wines with every course, not to mention the before and after cocktails. Tim had more to drink than usual, and Melanie could see he was not very sober, but she, too, was feeling the alcohol's effects to a marked degree.

For a second reason, he had insisted that he wanted to go here, and she didn't have the heart to turn him down, as this would be Tim's last night with her for the next four months. Her husband would be away from home and bed for almost the coming third of a year, and of course Melanie had wanted to make this the best possible going-away night she possibly could. The reason her husband was leaving was one of those minor tragedies that can strike young married men "on their way up" who must sacrifice personal pleasure momentarily for a more secure and richer future. There had been many tears and even a few arguments ever since Tim had told his wife of the necessary parting, but they both knew that it would be best in the long run, a temporary parting that would only make their marriage happier later.

Tim Cartwright had left his menial job as warehouseman at McHugh Plumbing and Heating to join a new, progressive and energetic firm of plumbing representatives, Flynn amp; Associates. It was a real chance to make something out of himself, Tim had told Melanie; perhaps the only chance he'd have before he was twenty-five and most of the trainee positions were being filled by younger graduates. But as a new representative of many different plumbing manufacturers, he had to go to New York City and start learning a thousand different details at the parent office of Flynn amp; Associates, and travel all over the country visiting the multitude of factories for further teaching.

If Melanie could have gone with Tim to New York, there would still have been frequent times when they would have been apart. But a warehouseman doesn't make much money, and there hadn't been the savings available to allow her even that much. The sad fact was that there was hardly enough money to buy Tim the new suits he needed and send him to the other side of the nation. Melanie would have to stay in California, in the small suburb of Greenridge, and keep their tiny apartment for when Tim returned to his new sales position in the area. Partially out of a desire to keep her mind occupied and partially to help meet financial ends, Melanie had taken a job.

The new job to which Tim had just referred was the second reason they were at the movies tonight. Melanie had a high school education, having married Tim almost the moment she'd graduated. She didn't have the skills or the diploma necessary for many of the positions that were offered, and in a residential district such as Greenridge, there weren't many openings for the few things she could do, such as typing or filing.

Both Tim and she had felt very lucky that the Bijou Theater in the small downtown shopping area had needed a girl to take tickets and operate the candy and popcorn concession in the lobby. The owner, Amos Andersson, had wanted somebody to replace his wife, Syble, from the chores, and was most pleased that someone as smart and beautiful as Melanie was available. Older women, he'd said to her, were continually getting sick or baby-sitting their grandchildren, and teenagers from school were eager, but often irresponsible. Melanie was, as far as Amos Andersson was concerned, the perfect combination, and he'd been glad to allow her the few extra days – and nights – with her husband until Tim left. But tomorrow evening she would be going to work at the Bijou, and the theater was the leading movie house for erotic, sex-oriented films…

After watching the picture, SINNING STUDENTS, for almost an hour and a half tonight, Melanie was beginning to feel slight twinges of doubt about whether she should have agreed to see it with Tim. Or, for that matter, that she should have taken the job at the Bijou at all, considering the kind of movies they were showing! She had told her husband the truth about working out in the lobby, closed off from the images on the screen by the closed swing-doors – but still and all, just knowing this was the type of films the customers were viewing would be a shameful thought continually torturing her mind. The soft mewling sounds coming from the other women in the audience around her, and the grating noise of heavy deep breathing from their male escorts was telling enough of the effects such eroticism was having. She could see through the dim light the vague shapes of other couples wrapped in tight embraces around the darkened theater.

Her eyes glanced back to the screen just as the climactic moments of SINNING STUDENTS were being unreeled in vivid color. It was the age-old story of seduction behind the stone walls of an exclusive girl's school. There had been the usual scenes of teasing foreplay with different young teenage girls, all of them beautiful in their youthful, firm innocence, as they fought for all they were worth against the perverse temptations that were continually being forced upon them. Melanie had been watching a number of scenes where one after the other of the girls were shown in various stages of undress, with their budding, tautly uplifted little breasts often filling the screen in larger than life detail, or fleeting glimpses of their hair-fringed pubic mounds and lithely rounded buttocks as they nakedly displayed their nubile young bodies.