Peter Jenkins - The reluctant neighbor

The voice on the phone came to her in a rush, seeming to fill her whole head with a loud roar. "Hello, Marily – if I may call you that – I'm Vivian, Mrs. Aiken from next door. I saw Peter talking to you in the drive way and," Marily gasped, an instant vision of her whole world falling in on her, clouding her mind, then stammered without making sound and then listened as the voice continued, "I'm sure he told you about dinner tonight. So, I'll expect you about seven-thirty and we'll have an early dinner and the other guests will start arriving about nine but that gives us time for a drink and a little talk and I have to do a great deal today because I have a meeting with the League of Women Voters in half an hour and I must rush now. See you tonight." The voice stopped as suddenly as it had started. Marily stood several minutes with the instrument still in her hand, then slowly replaced it. She was stunned. The woman sounded over the phone just as she did in the yard, talking and never stopping and making everything into one sentence. She poured herself another cup of coffee and drank it slowly, along with smoking a cigarette – she could get the odor out of the house before Fred returned – and wondered about the coming party.

She dressed carefully for the party. She had luxuriated in a bath for over an hour, had shaved her legs carefully and under her arms, and had creamed her face and made it up very carefully. She decided at the last minute not to wear a girdle, giggling to herself as she made the decision, even though her black, clinging dress did look better with one. She made herself one small martini just to steady her nerves and sat, listening to the stereo, and drank it and inhaled deeply of her cigarette. She was looking forward eagerly to the party, if not to the dinner. She needed courage, she felt, to face her neighbor's wife after all that had happened and his candid admission that she knew all about it.

At seven thirty-five she presented herself at the door of Peter's house. Much to her surprise he answered the door, took her hand and tenderly led her inside. "Our guest has arrived, Vivian, and she is the picture of loveliness," he called over his shoulder, then bent and kissed her hard on the month. Marily drew back as though he had slapped her. She saw Vivian standing in the doorway, her arms extended. "You're quite right, Peter, she is lovely. Come in, dear, come in. What have you been doing all day besides making yourself lovely for us Peter get her a drink quickly and let's go in here I'm taking her away from you Peter if you're not going to join us in the kitchen and sit here, Marily, you are beautiful." She ran down or stopped of her own accord and her eyes took in the whole of Marily, her stately figure, her large firm breasts and her flat stomach and her long, slim legs. She shook her head and turned and went to the stove.

Peter came through the door, smiling, and winked at her, put a martini in her hand, then sat down beside her. He put his arm behind her back and then over her arm and pulled her to him. Marily was sure he was crazy. He kissed her right there, in front of his wife who had her back turned to them but who could and did turn around in time to see him kiss her.

"What… what on earth…?" she stammered, trying to meet the eyes of Vivian. She felt as though she could crawl through a one inch hole in the floor if there happened to be one.

"Peter, don't be naughty and embarrass her and muss up her clothes and we haven't even had one drink yet to say nothing of dinner don't mind him, Marily, he's always the same but you should have worn coveralls if you didn't want him pawing at you all evening he's that way you horny old man you let's all go into the other room until the dinner is ready."

Vivian led the way, taking them through the dining room, where Peter grasped Marily's buttock provocatively in his hand, in to the living room and they all sat. Peter put on a record and Vivian was still completing a sentence that had started fifty thoughts ago when she somehow announced dinner. They went into the dining room, Marily almost physically ill from the talk and the drink and the tenseness from being close to Peter in his own house with his wife there. She asked where the daughter was.

"She's at my mother's I had to take her there after school and then rush around to the store and buy all the food for dinner frozen though it was it wasn't bad and get home and prepare everything for the party and now if you'll excuse me I have to go change clothes and Peter be nice." Vivian was half-way up the stairs by the time they heard the last of her voice, but she started talking again before she disappeared through a door at the top of the stairs.

Peter smiled at Marily, made a gesture that indicated how hopeless it was to listen to Vivian or to try to answer her. He enveloped Marily in his arms, drew her body to his and kissed her tenderly. Marily stood as he took her, arms hanging down the side of her body, stiff, her mind in circles and images of Vivian catching the two of them, there, in her own house with her husband kissing her. She drew away.

"What's the matter, darling?" Peter asked in all innocence.

"Peter, you must be crazy, doing that here with your wife upstairs." Marily said nervously. "What if she should see you… us, like that?" She put a cigarette in her mouth and Peter leaned forward to light it for her.

"Dear girl, she doesn't care. I thought that I had explained…" he began, but his words were chopped off by the ringing of the door bell. He went to the door, Marily straightened her skirt, ran a hand through her hair and sat very straight on her chair. Marily looked up as they entered and saw one of the most striking couples she had ever in her life seen. The woman was tall, almost six feet Marily would have guessed, every part of her body was well proportioned, her hair was raven black, her eyes green and her complexion as white and unblemished as a baby's skin. Her husband was her opposite, blond, taller than his wife, blue eyed, broad shouldered and handsome. He spoke not to Marily directly, but around her, saying to Peter but looking at her, "What a lovely woman, Peter. I know not how you do it." He spoke with an accent, not a heavy one, and Marily noticed immediately that he was an educated European, of what origin she had no idea.

She turned her attention from him, momentarily, and saw Peter in a passionate embrace with the beautiful woman. She gasped, anger rising in her. Peter released the woman, removed his hands from her buttocks, and introduced them to Marily: "Darling, this is Hans and Anna Shiller. And this is our neighbor, Marily." He smiled, looking down at Marily, but she couldn't meet his eyes.

Hans dropped into the chair next to her and asked her about herself, then wanted to know if her husband were there, or would he be there later on. "No," Marily had answered, then had started to explain that he was out of town for the week-end and would not return until Tuesday. She was interrupted by the arrival of guests, all couples, and the introductions that followed. Everyone seemed to know each other, intimately. They all kissed, ran their hands over buttocks and pulled another person to them, against them, both the men and the women. Marily tried to accept their actions in her own mind, tried not to see anything wrong with the friendliness they apparently felt for each other. She reminded herself that she and Fred had not been hitting the social circuit for a long while, since their marriage, and that maybe, in the short span of two years, things were changing. Hans interrupted her thoughts.

"I am glad to find you the extra women. It is wonderful. You are as lovely as Peter said you were." He looked levelly into her eyes, sending goose bumps over her bare arms and back. She started to answer him, but he continued, "Peter and I, we shall be together tonight. We will not permit hurt to you. You shall see." He smiled, then stood and walked away from her.