David Martin - Loaned wife

"Well, I've got news for you, my hot little cunt," Tom sneered, "Gilson didn't take the deal."

"He stalled and I've got a feeling he'd going to dump it. So don't give me that shit about doing it just so we could get the account. You sure as hell fucked him, but that didn't get us the account!"

"But that son of a bitch." Her indignation was obvious, too.

"So I got news for you. You better think about what that guy said tonight. We may have to do it!"

"You mean you may need me to do it to bail your ass out of the debts you ran up gambling."

Tom crossed the room to his wife. "Well, my dear, keep in mind that they consider my family as collateral. That means you and Penny, too. So think on that, honey."

He left her and went up to the bedroom.

She fumed.

At noon the next day, Tom called the bank officer with whom he usually transacted his business and asked what the chances were of getting more credit.

The bank officer was frank – brutally frank. At one-thirty, the afternoon mail brought Gilson's decision on the account. No. The postmark was not from Texas. It was the substation at the airport in New York. Gilson had made up his mind even before he'd left.

He wasn't going to make the installment on time.

Tom had been counting on a positive decision on the Gilson account enabling him to reopen his credit applications file at the bank with an eye towards increasing his credit limit.

He pulled the card from his jacket pocket, with the telephone number on it. Tom placed the small white tag stock in the center of his desk and stared at it for a long time.

Finally, he put the card back in his pocket. When he got home, he took it out again, and handed it to his wife.

"What's this?"

He explained.

She hit the ceiling. She almost took a swing at Tom.

But in the end, she agreed.

Penny would be sent to stay with Janet's brother, Al, in New Jersey. Al hated Tom's guts with a passion, but he would never refuse Janet and he'd always seemed to take a special liking to Penny. Besides, Al had two kids of his own, one of them a girl Penny's age.

Then Tom called the number on the card. He used the phone in the guest room, the door closed. Fifteen minutes later, he returned to the kitchen.

"Well?" Janet demanded, her voice upset, yet somehow dull.

"It's set. Tomorrow night."

"Where?"

"Here," Tom said, "like you asked."

She hadn't wanted any part of the deal if it meant going into a stranger's house.

"Okay," she said, "I just wanted to be sun."

"They weren't happy about that, though."

"What does that mean?"

Tom hesitated. "Well, they wanted a concession from us."

"And?"

"And what?"

"What was the concession? Did you agree to it?" He nodded.

"What was it, Goddammit?"

"There'll be three of them."

Janet was stunned. Three men, three strangers, all of them hoods?

"My God!" she whispered, and sat back.

It was hours later, while she lay awake in the big bed beside her sleeping husband, that Janet realized something exciting and frightening about herself.

The thought of being forced to take on three men, all of them hoods, was terrifying.

And exciting.

"That sure was a surprise, Mom," Penny said.

She sat at the kitchen table. Her mother was making scrambled eggs and had her back to Penny.

"Why, Penny," her mother said, turning to face her. "I thought you liked to go to your Uncle Al's. You're always asking when we'll visit his house."

"Sure, Mom, but it's awfully sudden, isn't it?"

"Well, if you don't want to go, you just say so." Her mother's tone was all solicitation and mildness, as if she'd thought she was doing her daughter a great favor.

"No, really, I'd love to go, Mom," Penny said quickly. "When will I leave?"

"I thought you might catch the ten-thirty bus. Your cousin Mike will meet you at the terminal in Ridgewood."

Penny looked up at the clock in the stove top. "It's almost nine, now," she said. "I'd better get packing."

"Good girl."

At ten-thirty, Penny was waving good-bye to her mother through the window of the big, air-conditioned bus. As soon as they turned onto the expressway, she found her thoughts going to her cousin, Jennifer and Mike. She and Jennifer had always gotten along rather well. She'd always wished she could get along better with Mike.

Mike was big and tall and handsome and cute and muscular and so sexy. But, Mike was also seventeen, and he'd never pay any attention to a little cousin like her.

Still, she thought, you never can tell. She leaned back and opened the book she had brought. The cover said that it was about fashion. Inside was Candy.

Tom arrived home from work early. "Did Penny go?"

Janet nodded slowly. "On the bus just like we planned. She'll be back around noon tomorrow."

"Good," he said, for lack of anything else to say. He glanced at his watch. That reminded her.

"What time will they be here?"

"Okay," she said, and for the first time, Tom noticed his wife's speech was slightly slurred. But he could detect no odor of booze.

"Is that what you're going to wear?"

"Huh?"

"Is that what you're going to wear for them?" She looked down at herself as though she'd forgotten what she was wearing: a simple blue top and a pair of beige shorts. Then she shrugged. Her breasts moved within the top, unfettered, heavy and ripe and firm and tempting. Tom felt a sudden pang of desire for his wife and immediately began rationalizing that it was as much due to the fact that she was about to have sex with three complete strangers as much as anything else.

"Will you be here?" she asked. The question had occurred to her a number of times since the previous day, but only after six slugs of booze did she have the courage to ask.

He shook his head. "I'll be, uh, out for a walk."

"With that little cunt of a secretary of yours, I'll bet."

He flushed. He had thought of it, but had dismissed the idea.

What he was actually planning to do was circle back and watch. Tom knew, with a sudden shock, that he had truly reached a type of depravity. For some reason it was arousing to think of watching his wife perform with three other men.

He went up the stairs to change, and instead found himself lingering there, piddling about, killing time. It was a quarter to seven when he came down the stairs.

"I'm going now, honey," he said, and gave her a warmly appreciative peck on the cheek. He could smell the booze on her breath now: Scotch.

He ambled out through the front door and began strolling off to the west.

At five to seven, a car pulled into the driveway. Three doors slammed and then the doorbell rang.

"Mrs. Jamison?"

The short, wiry, dapper-looking man was the same who had called on them with the proposition the other night.

"Just call me Janet," she mumbled.

He smiled. "I'm Don. May we come in?"

She giggled inanely. "That's why you're here, right?" She threw the door wide open and made a sweeping gesture of welcome, bending as low as she did so. The blouse strained across her glorious tits and the three men trooped in. Don introduced them.

Jeff, tall, heavy set, with a big scar down one cheek. Pinky, also heavy set, but short and built like a barrel.

"Well, gentlemen," Janet said as they stood in the center of the living room, "shall we have a drink or shall we get right down to business?"

Jeff, the big one, licked his wide, thick lips and grinned. He hadn't taken his eyes off her since they'd entered.

Don got the message. "Okay. Show the way, Janet."

She smiled sweetly and led the first man off down the hallway towards the guest bedroom, calling back over her shoulder that the booze was in the kitchen and the other two were to help themselves. She snapped her head back towards the guest room and gave her hips an exaggerated sway – not that Pinky, the fist guest, needed the encouragement.