An officer did not take his loose women under the roof of a brother officer’s house, much less sleep with them there. And by sleeping with Doug at all, Charity Hoche would lose her status in Ed’s eyes. She could no longer be a “lady,” even though she and his wife had gone to Bryn Mawr together.
In the morning when Ed got out of bed, Sarah pretended to be asleep.
Fffleen minutes later, after changing Joe, he carried the baby into his and Sarah’s bed, his whoxy transparent purpose being to wake her up.
“When did Doug come in last night?”
“Very late.”
“I’m getting hungry. Do you think I could wake him up?”
“I think you ought to let him sleep,” Sarah said, hoping to delay the inevitable just a little longer.
To hell with it,” Ed said after a moment’s thought. KHE and Canidy have blasted me out of a sound sleep often enough. Now it’s his turn.
“Go ahead, then,” Sarah said. “I’ll have room service send up a breakfast buffet.
“And stretchers.
She heard him go down the corridor to Joe’s room and call Doug’s name, happily, cheerfully.
She picked up the telephone and ordered a breakfast buffet for four.
When Ed Bitter called his name and banged on the door, Doug Douglass woke up snuggled against Charity Hoche, her back to his belly, his hand holding her breast.
He carefully withdrew his hand and rolled carefully onto his back.
Oh, my God, he’s home! Good God, he’s worse than my father. When he finds out we’re both in here, hew shit a brick!
He looked at his watch. Quarter past nine. He looked down at Charity Hoche.
A stiff prick, especially your stiff prick, you prick, he thought, has no conscience.
He walked quietly across the room, picked up his zipper bag, and took it into the bathroom, carefully and as quietly as possible closing the door after him. He took out a change of underwear and laid it on the sink.
Then he adjusted the shower so that it was as cold as he could stand it, pulled the curtain in place, and climbed into the bathtub.
She’s liable to hear the shower, he thought. It sounds like the inside of a bass drum, and she’s more than likely going to hear it and wake up.
Charity Hoche had in fact been awake when he first stirred. She didn’t want to stir then though, it was too nice the way she was.
She’d experienced before a man’s hand cradling her naked breast and a man’s naked body warm against hers, and these had always been, she was wihing to admit, rather pleasant. But this was somehow different. She didn’t know how, but it was.
She remembered what she had said to Sarah the night before. Was it possible that she was telling the truth, in vino veritas, that this was something special to her? That Doug Douglass was not just one more terribly exciting young man?
She forced herself to breathe slowly, regularly, as if she were still asleep, and then she felt the bed rise as he left it. She waited until she heard the shower, then she rolled onto her back, twisted out of bed, and stumbled over to look at her face in the vanity mirror.
Her eyes were puffed, and her hair was mussed, and she cupped her hand in front of her mouth in a futile effort to smell her own breath.
She combed her hair as well as she could with her hands and pushed her swollen eyes with the balls of her fingers. Then she returned to the bed, straightened the mussed sheets, puffed up the pihows, arranged them against the headboard, and stepped back in, propping herself against the pillows, wondering if she should modestly pull the blanket up under her chin.
She decided there was no point in trying to pretend that her body was still some sort of secret to him. This was not the first whack he’d had at it.
And he also knows, she thought bitterly, that I pass it around like canape’s.
When he came out of the bathroom in his underwear, he did not look pleased to see her awake and half sitting up in bed. He was going to sneak out of here, she thought.