Eric Courtney - The married sister

They collapsed, Rod bearing down all his dead weight on his wife until he rolled off. Gail was almost instantly asleep, murmuring something like "bee", and crawling exhausted under the covers. Rod followed her, laying on his back, wearily reaching for and turning out the light. He lay still, catching his breath, feeling sleepy making everything fuzzy and incoherent.

His body flinched him awake and his mind was full of a yammering thought: she has been fucking someone else. She was never like this before.

He lay thinking, not sure he wanted a wife who acted like a whore; not sure he liked his wife begging him to commit sodomy even though it was exciting at the time. It was not normal. He frowned up at the dark ceiling and thought a long time before going to sleep.

The weeks that followed were spent in sightseeing in and around San Diego. Gail found herself constantly trying to break through Rod's increasing bitterness and depression. His confusion seemed to deepen and he refused, curtly, to talk of their future. "Plenty of time for that when I get my discharge," he would say, leaning his elbows against a railing and gazing at the gorillas which sat in their pit, picking at fleas or lost in a stupid reverie.

Gail, standing beside him, touched his shoulder lightly. "How long are we going to stand here looking at those apes?"

"I dunno."

"There are a lot of other animals to look at besides those hairy things."

"I like looking at them," he said with implacable finality, never wavering his gaze. "They're kind of locked up the way everyone else is."

A look of concern crossed her face. "Why do you say that? We're locked up? We're free. This is America. They're on one side of the bars, we're on the other."

Rod gave a secret bitter smile. "I know. Maybe we're all locked up."

Gail grew silent. She waited patiently while Rod moped, watching the great apes listlessly play with a car tire until he stretched and walked away. It was the same when she introduced him to her friends, proudly exhibiting her husband home from the wars. Rod was polite and remote, usually sitting silent behind a drink.

He seemed to regard the war with a sorrow and scorn and seldom talked about it unless they were alone and he was drinking. Then, he would go off on harangues. "I had a buddy over there. Bill Peterson. Nice guy from Minnesota. We were going to go fishing up in his neck of the woods when we got back. Lakes freeze over and you pitch a tent to keep out of the wind and cut a hole in the ice. Drink brandy to keep warm. Bill was more than a buddy, he was a friend. I don't know why, we just got along. Talked a lot and he was pretty cool about everything. He didn't dig longhairs, neither do I. He didn't especially like listening to politicians, neither do I. He wanted to work for himself. His old man was a druggist. He didn't want to do that when he got out. We had a half-assed idea that we'd do something besides fishing together when we got back."

Rod would look down at his drink a long time before saying anything. Gail had learned to sit quiet during these silences. He drank and went on. "We had our own apartment in Saigon that we shared. One day, we came back from some real rough runs. Three days straight. We were beat but we had to check out our choppers. Just a matter of professional pride. Like I said, we were both beat and seen enough guys blown apart so I suggested we flip and see who stayed behind and checked out both choppers. Bill agreed and I lost." A sad cynical smile crossed his face. "I won. I stayed at the base while Bill drove back to Saigon. Said he'd have a pitcher of martinis waiting. Bill put the key in the lock, opened the door and got his head blown off. Booby trapped while we were away. None of the little bastards who worked for us had any idea who did it."

Yet it was more than just the readjustments of a returning soldier, more than learning to live with peace after a year of constant war. He was sullen and their evenings were spent in silent drinking while they sat in the living room, never looking at each other, having the television as a constant excuse. To the other servicemen they knew, husbands of friends of Gail, Rod was bored with their war stories and often rude.

They saw less and less of friends, their life becoming insular, their nights spent in drinking, their days spent in quiet desperation. Rod seemed to avoid looking at her or talking to her as much as possible. During the day, he made excuses to get away from her. The car had to be taken in for servicing, he had to make trips to the base on vague business.

At night, they drank and. Rod avoided their having sex again. Each night they went to bed and she was refused, Gail's anxiety mounted. Since that first night, he had cut off all conversation about sex. Gail cringed inwardly, feeling she had given herself away. Yet she couldn't help it. With a sickening feeling in her stomach, she had to admit to herself that she only lived for lewdness, that she would gladly, fervently, perform any and all obscenities that Rod would ask her to do. With a shudder that made her wrap her arms around herself against a nonexistent cold wind, she thought she might be capable of performing any sex act that might be asked of her by anyone.

She knew she must be sick, she knew her desires and drives were not normal. Her body ached and throbbed for her brother Lee while her mind was revolted at her desires and lust.

They rose late every day, hung over, with Rod irritable and noncommunicative. He was sure, after the first night, that Gail had taken a lover or lovers while he was away. The thought, added to his already existing feelings about the war, only deepened his rage. Nobody at home seemed to have any idea of what the war was all about and the thought of his own wife fucking her hot little ass off, acting like a common slut while he was over there trying to do something about all that endless misery, was too much. It seemed to him that nobody cared, that everybody had their heads in the sand and were busy enjoying themselves, that the peace demonstrators weren't so much interested in ending the war as they were in tooting their own horn and cause.

Over all of this, hanging heavy on his ego, was the feeling that his wife was not what he thought she was. Certainly not the girl he had left behind. What they had done in bed together was something he had done with whores, common prostitutes that he had paid. She had outdone the biggest whores in Barracuda Mary's, a Saigon whorehouse devoted exclusively to oral sex. Was that any kind of a woman to be married to? Was that any way to build a future? No, she had been whoring around and he was going to bide his time, find the guy and then he was going to have his revenge.

Each day they arose late, Rod taking a hot shower against his ramming headache, downing several Excedrin and a glass of foaming Bromo Seltzer then dressing and strolling out to the mailbox while Gail showered.

Each day he went out, he caught sight of an old man in the yard across the street. Every morning, the old man pretended to be working but was always watching. Every morning, he seemed disappointed when Rod came down the drive. Can he be the one, Rod asked himself. Naw, too old. A good fuck would kill an old geeser like him.

One particular morning he came back into the house with an open letter in his hand. Gail was in the kitchen, washing dishes from the night before and preparing a breakfast of black coffee and orange juice. "Hey," he called, "we got a letter from your brother, Lee. He says he's coming out to visit us for awhile."

There was the crash – an explosion – and tinkle of glass from the kitchen. Rod ran to see Gail staring at him with a white face, shattered glass at her feet.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. Slipped. My hands were soapy and it slipped. Let me see the letter."