Joseph Cirelli - Attack from behind

Jesus, look at the bruises! If Don sees those, I'm a goner!

Afraid and nervous, she climbed into the tub and let her bruised and battered body slide beneath the soothing warm water. The bath had an amazing tranquilizing effect on, her nerves and for a few moments, at least, she enjoyed the luxury of a soothing respite from her nightmares.

Her mind reeled with countless images, as if somehow her unconscious suspected that flooding her with a million jumbled thoughts would save her from the torment of remembering the events of this night.

Most of her thoughts were of Don, of the first weeks they had enjoyed together, and she got the uneasy feeling that, like a drowning person, the best of her life was flashing before her eyes…

"There's a whole bunch of 'em, Diane! Three or four at least, and they've all moved into the old Raynor place until those new apartments are finished out by the school." Lou Ann Ledbeuer, the town's closest runner-up for the title of tramp, was wide-eyed with joy at the prospect of three new men in town. She had to be… because all the rest of them had had her and now no one would go out with her unless it was a sneak-date or a dark drive out to Johnson's Pond for some back-seat loving.

The teenage blonde was wiggling out of her pleated skirt, part of her cheerleading uniform, and her girlfriend Lou Ann was waiting for her. Diane was called a lot of names by some of the others for palling around with a girl like her, but she didn't mind. She knew that Lou Ann had her own peculiar set of problems and she liked her despite her trampish behavior. She had tried to change her, subtly at first and then more forthrightly, but nothing seemed to work. So Diane, in her fashion, merely shrugged and still kept her as her girlfriend.

"I don't really care, Lou Ann… I'll leave the new boys in town to you. That's your department." Diane often teased her now, but it was good-natured kidding, the kind that can pass between friends without hurting.

"They're not boys, they're men… all of them! And they don't know anybody in town. Wow, I wish I could meet them!"

"Why don't you stop by the Raynor house and tell them you're from the Chamber of Commerce," Diane teased.

"Do you think that would work? I mean, does Evansboro even have a chamber of commerce?" Lou Ann was half off the sofa with enthusiasm. Diane laughed until she cried.

"Lou Ann, you're too much… you really are! Listen, if you really want to meet those guys, just go over there – in the daytime, and tell them you'd like to welcome them to town, that's all. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you do it correctly."

Lou Ann didn't answer, but Diane could see from the glazed look in her eyes that her suggestion had struck home… or a home run, more likely. She didn't see her for three days; in fact, no one saw her except in the two morning classes that Lou Ann took as part of her Distributive Education program. She worked in the afternoons at the dime store, but she missed work for three days running and they were on the verge of firing her when Diane finally ran into her downtown… in the company of three men whom she had never seen before.

One of them was driving a sporty new Chevrolet convertible and Lou Ann was in the middle up front. But it was the quiet one sitting by himself in the back who caught Diane's eye.

Was it love at first sight, she would ask herself later. No, but it was at least hope… the hope of some chance of something lasting and special between them. He was nothing like the guys that she knew from town. He even talked different, not running all his words together like the rural types around here did. But he wasn't from up north… Lord knows, Mama would have fainted dead away if she had gone out with a yankee boy, 'cause everybody knew what they were like with Southern girls. They only wanted one thing!

His name was Don, Lou Ann told her later, and for days Diane was afflicted with that same ailment that seemed to plague her girlfriend almost all the time. Only it wasn't the same kind of general malady that Lou Ann had… hers was more specific. Don Willard, to be exact.

He finally asked her out, through Lou Ann's prodding, she suspected, though he never admitted it, and when he took her home – on time, with no arguments – Diane knew that he was the man for her. No hot breath in the face, no pawing and grabbing, just a gentle kiss on the lips like in the movies… and when she went inside to bed, her knees were wobbly with teenager love!

A year later, after she finished high school, they were married, and again like the movies, their marriage was consummated on their wedding night, in a resort called South of the Border in South Carolina.

He never asked her, then, whether he was the first, and she volunteered nothing, though the truth was that she had lost her maidenhood to a smooth-talking basketball player from another county hardly a month before she met Don. She eventually told him, and it pained her to see that look of despondency on his face, but he got over it and the subject never came up again.

But this… this was no one-nighter with the captain of a neighboring basketball team. This was adultery… and with a man as disgusting as Red Collins, it would kill Don if he found out! No, it had to be her secret, her lifelong cross to bear.

Don must never know, never!

Don took the three steps one at a time, like they were a hundred and he was shaky with age. But with each step up, the front door seemed to move backward away from him, like the house was amusing itself in a sadistic contest with its master as he returned home in no shape to argue.

"Goddamn… I'll never make it," he mum bled aloud, not caring whether the neighbors were all watching. "I'll have to sleep out here on the fuckin' steps. Serves me right, I reckon, it's better'n I deserve!"

He made the top step and braced himself around the square pillar that supported the front stoop. He swayed dangerously and once he nearly tumbled backward down the stairs but he caught himself with one arm and a leg around the pillar.

Getting the key in the tiny keyhole was an almost impossible task and it wasn't made any easier by his outrageous laughing at himself and muttering, "Put some hair 'round it, Don, ol' boy… then y'can find it!"

The living room light was switched on but there was no sign of Diane. He silently thanked whoever up there was listening to a drunk's supplications and stumbled into the bathroom to undress before Diane heard him and got out of bed. He left his clothes on the floor next to the hamper, forgetting to open the lid and toss them inside next to Diane's, and he edged along the wall to the bedroom like a two year-old practicing walking, step-by-step as he leaned against the doorways for support.

Diane didn't stir as he pulled back the covers and he tried to kneel on the edge of the bed and climb in without disturbing her, but he lost his balance in the dizzying darkness and he fell with a bed-tossing thud next to her.

He lay perfectly still, waiting for her to wake up, trying to stay conscious long enough to sound reasonably coherent. He looked at her, primly clad in her favorite nightie, but all he could see was the hazy image of Lucy the cocktail waitress stretched naked beside him. It was a haunting, shimmering image that seemed to come and go, but it nagged him and gnawed at his soul.

Oh, Don, I'm so sorry, I really am… I'm not asleep, but I want you to think I am. How could I face you tonight, how could I touch you or let you touch him after the sins I have committed… I'm not worthy of you any longer, Don, I'm dirty and unclean!

Don slid under the sheet and stretched out languorously beside his wife; when he closed his eyes, the room swirled drunkenly as if he had fallen onto an all-night carousel and was spinning around and around. He felt his wife's slender body against his, the frail warmth of her nakedness beneath her sheer nightgown, and he cringed away instinctively. Just the thought of making love to her, of trying to make up for his drunken ribaldry, was sickening… How could he make love to his pregnant wife with the same cock that he had used on that shameless tramp from the bar? He wanted to touch her, to caress her and hope for her tender forgiveness, but he stayed away instead, far over on his side of the bed.