Peter Jensen: The blackmailed wife

The brilliant California morning sun streamed in through the large open window. A slight, cooling breeze was blowing outside, rustling the rose bush that sprouted up over the hill. Its leaves cast small, dancing shadows against the far wall of the room.

Ann Morrow turned on the bed, squinting and shielding her eyes from the brightness that played over her face. Her long, satiny blonde hair cascaded over the pillow, forming a soft cushion for her head that lay heavily back against it. A thin sheet shielded her body from the breeze that blew gently in from the open window.

She had the body of a lush young Venus which an invisible observer hovering over the bed, could have traced in detail through the clinging sheet. It barely hid the high-set, round, widely spaced breasts whose rose-tipped nipples clearly showed through the thin fabric. The sheet tapered down over a slender, girlish waist to round, luscious hips, a flat, smooth stomach and long full-swelling thighs; breath-taking curved calves tapered down to thin, well formed ankles. It was a body that would attract admiring attention from the most discriminating men – and envy from women.

The honey-blonde hair on the pillow framed a heart-shaped face that would cause any male to turn his head when she passed. Her hazel eyes were set slightly apart, she had a dainty, almost classical Greek nose, a full ripe mouth with the lower lip protruding slightly in an almost perpetual little-girl pout, a round dimpled chin, and a soft slightly tanned ivory complexion.

But her eyes were perceptibly puffed around the lids and tiny lines had begun to thread out from the outer corners reaching toward the temples. The thick, pancake makeup, to cover these tell-tale signs of premature wear, was smeared and had rubbed off on the pillow during the night. Her hazel eyes blinked painfully at the sunlight. She had a bad hangover.

A bell was ringing in the distance, reverberating down the hallway from the living room. It had awakened her, but in her heavy stupor, it seemed to be a great distance away and not part of reality at all. Suddenly she realized it was the doorbell and after several moments of waiting and hoping whoever it was would go away, she resignedly arose, threw on a robe carelessly, forgetting to tie the belt, and walked down the hallway to open the door.

"Express telegram for you, Mrs. Morrow," a smiling Western Union boy said, with a slight smirk at her condition.

His eyes blatantly traced the contour of her throat down to the cleavage between her full breasts under the thin negligee.

Ann drew her robe around her tighter, grabbed the envelope, and closed the door abruptly without a word or even tipping the boy. But the bell immediately began to ring again.

Oh, damn, she thought, I forgot to sign for it! She opened the door again and the boy arrogantly pushed his book at her. He held out his pencil and when Ann reached for it, flicked it slightly with his thumb so that it flipped down the front of her robe and lodged between her breasts.

"Get it for ya, Mrs. Morrow," he said cockily.

"You get out of her, you little beast!" she scolded, "Or I'm going to report you to your company!" She slammed the door shut, not bothering to return the pencil, which had fallen to the floor.

Ann slumped down on the couch and held her head in her hands. My God, she thought, have I gone so far down that a delivery boy doesn't even respect me in my own home? Recently the remarks and looks she got were not just innocent flirtations, they were outright lewd offers to go to bed. She had been almost manhandled in the street several times in the last week. Had she really come to look that easy? Too much was being demanded of her and she had vowed she was going to see Julia and put a stop to it.

She suddenly remembered the cable she had wadded up in her hand. She opened it and read it slowly.

War's over for me darling I'll be home in ten days – can't wait to get at my neglected wife!

Love, Dave

Ann's eyes were welling with tears. This was what she had been waiting and praying for, so long. He had been gone over a year now, flying in Vietnam and each day had been a new dread that she would receive notice from the Department of the Navy that he was a casualty. She had not even been able to read the newspapers because there was always news about the number of planes shot down.

"Oh, thank God, he's safe and coming home!" she kept mumbling over and over to herself between sobs, "Thank God!"

This would end all of her problems. She would be free of Julia and could become her old self again. She knew she could never recover the self-respect she had lost but she would be a good wife to Dave and they could have their children now as they had planned before he left. She would try so hard, she would love him almost to death. He would like that – he wrote about it all the time in his letter what their life would be like when his tour of duty was over and he was out of the Navy. Now it was all coming true, Julia had promised to return those awful pictures of her as soon as she knew Dave was coming home. This would release her hold on her and she would be free.

She felt like calling Julia right this minute and telling her but it was only nine o'clock in the morning and she knew Julia would be angry with her for waking her. Ann hummed all the way through her shower, and stood nude in front of the mirror to admire her voluptuous body. She placed her palms under her full, well rounded breasts and lifted them slightly until they stood out in full bloom. She held the nipples between her thumbs and forefingers, tweaking them gently into erection. It was exciting to know that soon Dave would possess these again and that his love would wash from her the degradations she had been forced to submit to in the last few months. The very thought of Dave's love excited her and her hands moved down from her breasts to her smooth stomach, through the soft golden down at the vee and across her full, well rounded thighs.

She felt like a kitten, rubbing herself this way and she could notice in the mirror that some color had returned to her cheeks already. She knew it would be good for her to get Dave back. If just the thought of him coming home did this to her, his real arrival should be absolute heaven.

She shuddered from the movements of her hands across her body and forced herself suddenly to stop the warm stroking. I must save all my feelings for Dave now, she thought happily to herself.

She toweled herself dry and went to the closet to choose her dress for the day. After rummaging through several, she chose one of the new orange color. It was the latest mini-thing and she had just bought it only a few days before. It made no pretense of hiding her charms and she almost thought it too daring, but she remembered that Dave had always told her not to be ashamed of the gifts that God had given her.

"Just don't show too much of it to these lechers around here while I'm gone," he had added jokingly, "they'll eat you alive in this Navy town."

She had intended to save it for his first day home but felt so gay today that she convinced herself it needed breaking in. She left off most of the make-up she had been resorting to lately to hide the results of her late evening dissipations with Julia and her crowd. It seemed that just the news of Dave's coming had taken away the puffiness from her eyes, her facial lines had softened – and her youthful freshness had returned.

Later, on her way to the market, she noticed the looks she was getting. They had changed to reverent admiration. She could always tell when a man felt something was unattainable. The spring in her walk helped, they knew when a woman was confident of herself, and they could tell when she belonged to someone else.