always pulling down the shades.’
I gulped. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now, my love, if it is true, as you assert, that Hal Andrews causes your gizzard to
throb but that you are avoiding the temptation on my account, then be assured that
your forebearance gains you no stars in your crown. We both know Hal; he’s a
gentleman and he keeps his nails clean. He’s polite to his wife. If you don’t mean
business, quit flirting with him. But if you do want him, go get him! Don’t mind me;
I’ll be busy. Jane is as delectable a piece as I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve
hankered to bisect her angle from the day we met them.’
‘Briney! Is that true? You never showed it. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘And give you a chance to go female and jealous and possessive? Sweetheart, I’ve had
to wait until you admitted out loud, with no coaxing or coaching from me, that you
were feeling a deep curiosity about another man… with a suggestion that perhaps I
might feel the same way about his wife. It turns out that I do. So call Jane and
accept their dinner invitation. We’ll see what develops.’
‘But what if it turns out that you like Jane more than you like me?’
Impossible. I love you, my lady.’
‘I mean what she’s sitting on. How she makes love.’
‘Possible, but unlikely. If I did, I would not stop loving you or lose interest in
what you are sitting on; it’s special. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try
Jane; she smells good.’ He licked his lips and grinned.
He did and she did and we four did and they remained our loving friends for years
although they moved to St Joe two years later when he got a better offer from the
school board there. That put them too far away for quiet family orgies, mostly.
Over the course of time Brian and I worked out detailed rules about how to handle
sex, all of them intended to avoid the hazards while leaving both of us free to
‘sin’ – not carelessly but prudently, so that we could always look Mrs Grundy in the
eye and tell her to peddle her papers elsewhere.
Brian made no concessions whatever to the prevalent belief that sex was in some way
innately sinful. He was utterly contemptuous of popular opinion. ‘If a thousand men
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believe something and believe otherwise, then it’s a thousand to one that they are
wrong. Maureen, I support us by having contrary opinions.’
When I told Briney about being locked in that closet, he sat up in bed. ‘That
bastard! Mo, I’m going to break both his arms.’
‘Then you had better break mine, too, as I went there intending to do it. I did it.
The rest derived from that bald, inexcusable fact. I took a risk I should not have
taken. My fault at least as much as his.’
‘Yes, yes, but that’s not the point. Sweetheart, I’m not faulting him for screwing
you; any man not castrated will screw you if he has a clear chance at you. So your
only protection is not to give him that chance if you don’t want him to take it.
What I’m angry about is his shoving my poor baby into a closet, into the dark,
locking her in, frightening her. I’ll kill him slowly. God damn him. I’ll nut him
first. I’ll take his scalp. And cut off his ears.’
‘Briney -‘
‘I’ll drive a stake – What, dear?’
‘I’ve been a bad girl, I know, but I got away with it cold. I didn’t get pregnant
because I am pregnant. No disease… or I don’t think so. I’m almost certain nobody
twigged, no scandal. I would like to watch you do all those things to him; I despise
him. But, if you hurt him even a little bit, even punch his nose, it’s no longer a
secret… and that could hurt our children. Couldn’t it?’
Briney conceded this pragmatic necessity. I wanted us to leave that church. Briney
agreed. ‘But not right away, love. I’ll be home for the next six weeks at least.