Grace Wilkinson - The late-late family show

Abruptly the troubled newscaster decided to take full advantage of his gain in the strange game he was playing with his wife. Now was the time, he told himself, to make her pay for the anguish she had caused him.

While dinner was cooking, Lola decided to take a quick shower. She felt good, buoyed up with that happy feeling she always had after making love. But this happiness was to the joy she felt knowing that Andy was going to see old Foster about her brother. This made her feel like singing, and the pretty weather girl could hardly wait to call Rudy up and tell him the good news.

"Hungry?" she asked sweetly as she emerged sometime later from the kitchen. "I think you'll like what I have tonight."

Andy looked up at her with a wicked grin. "What I like that you have is your pussy. Right now I'd like to ram my cock up in it."

"Andy! Really!" She was shocked at the words, but more so because Andy was using them at such a time in such a manner. Sometimes they both used such phrases in the course of their love-making, but not at any other time. And too, now that she thought about it, Lola felt fatigued. She certainly didn't feel like making love again. Right now what she wanted to do was to go upstairs and call Rudy, then take a shower and reflect on the fact that soon her brother would be working at the station with her. He was bound to make a fine reporter.

Her thoughts were interrupted as her husband reached out and pulled her down toward him so that she was forced to sit in his lap. She couldn't protest too much without seeming bad-tempered, and she was sure that Andy had had enough of her bitchiness. She didn't want him going back on his promise now, so Lola smiled sweetly and tried to push his caressing hands from her breasts.

"No, no!" she said laughingly. "Don't, you sex fiend!"

"That's what I am – a sex fiend," Andy replied, nuzzling his nose and mouth into the crease of Lola's neck where he could smell and taste her perfumed perspiration.

Lola struggled against her husband's enfolding arms, but it was futile against his superior strength. "There's something in the oven!" she said weakly, not really believing that this would deter the passionate man who was cupping her tingling breasts, kneading the mounds of the resilient flesh beneath her pink cashmere sweater.

"It's me that wants in your oven," Andy whispered lewdly into her ear, and Lola might have laughed were it not for the demanding tone in which he said it. She had thought she'd vindicated herself sufficiently with the impromptu scene in the car in front of the house. That had been scarcely a half hour ago; now Andy wanted more!

Before she realized what was happening, she was being lifted in the air; then Andy was carrying her upstairs.

"Andy! Stop!" she shouted, kicking out at him. But he carried her easily and she saw the determination in her husband's eyes as he trudged up the stairs to their bedroom.

Andy thought to himself, Maybe I've been seeing too many 40's movies, but what the hell! I've been too polite with her up 'til now. The cave man approach may be what she wants. It was contrary to his character and he knew it. Yet, Andy was determined to play the role. Lola seemed almost too stunned to resist him anymore, and even though he felt like chuckling out loud, he refrained from doing so, retaining his serious expression.

Once in the bedroom, Andy nudged the light switch with his shoulder and headed toward the big double bed. Over the bed a giant blow-up photo of Lola smiled sweetly at them. Without hesitating, Andy plopped his wife down in the middle of the bed and ordered her to undress.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Lola snapped. But impatiently, Andy leaned over to strip off her clothes, starting with her stockings and tugging on them until, off balance and angry, Lola put up a hand in protest.

"All right! All right!" she shouted. "You don't have to rip them off! Why are you being such a beast? What's gotten into you?"

"The devil," Andy replied, stripping off his clothes quickly.

Lola bit her lips and reluctantly began undressing. And to think that she could be taking a nice shower. Fortunately, she had left the oven downstairs on automatic turnoff, after phoning her brother to tell him the good news. She felt that their sexual needs had been adequately taken care of earlier and stared at Andy with disgust as she slowly tugged off her clothes.

"What's the matter?" snorted the newscaster. "Any wife who loves her husband would look forward to this. Don't you love me?"

"That has nothing to do with it!" she replied angrily. As she knelt on the bed, only her brassiere remained and she begrudgingly reached behind her for the clasp.

Why were men always asking her if she loved them? Lola wondered. Of course I love my husband, she told herself. Truth was, she wasn't sure just what men meant by love. One thing she knew for sure was that she wasn't always ready to give them what they wanted in exchange for those silly words. Oh she loved Andy enough, and had always cared for him in her own way. Why else would she have married him? Of course, his being something of a celebrity had been important to her too! But it wasn't only that. She'd guessed what her life style would be, what her social and economic advantages would be with Andy Taberon, and wanted it. Together they made a handsome couple, no doubt about that. And she had her own little convertible Firebird to run about in, the adulation of many men and women too, without having to do anything or cope with it all because, after all, she was married to Andy… and as the "weather girl", she was important in her own right.

Lola knew that there were those who might think her cold, but she knew that she was only practical. She couldn't be otherwise. Blind love for its own sake had never touched her, except in one case, and that could hardly count since it had to do with family. She loved her brother deeply, and although she was no specialist in psychology, Lola knew enough to reason that it was because of her extreme hatred of her father, who had also hated Rudy. In addition to these unfortunate circumstances, Lola had a deep-rooted scorn for her mother, who had put up with her father's nonsensical bullying until the day of his death. She and Rudy had been respectively 14 and 17 when their father had died prematurely, and secretly, they had been relieved by his sudden departure. They suspected their mother was too, since she became almost immediately more alive herself after the funeral.

Lola had always felt that it was Rudy and her against the world, and in a way it was. She had fought her way to the position she was now in, using everything she had, both brains and body to help her. Somehow Rudy hadn't made it yet, but she was determined to help him. In fact, she thought of little else, visualizing the day when she could relax and cease these heavy calculations. That day would be the day both she and her brother were fully recognized by the world and judged at their true value. Lola considered that she had "just about made it". Her long range plans included Andy's moving to a major coast to coast network while she herself became a female news commentator, starting out on the small network and moving up as she gained in popularity. It was a feasible dream she felt. But Rudy, her brother, had to get into the picture too for it all to be perfect.

And now here she was acutely aware of the fact that her husband was taking advantage of the fact that he had agreed to help her brother. In a way, she felt, it served her right. Hadn't she deliberately withheld herself from him toward those ends? She would swear to the contrary on a stack of bibles, but deep down inside, she knew it to be true.

Selfish, she thought, tears brimming in her blue eyes. I'm selfish! But I have to be. I just can't help it!