Nikki (22 page)

Dolores and Jim were in chairs ten feet apart, watching TV, and the kids, in pajamas, were on Jim’s lap. Dolores was curled in her chair, a cheek rested moodily on her propped fist. Glancing at her motionless profile, Nikki remembered the Taffy Head’s half-joking observation that Jim gathered the kids around him like a shield when he was feling himself an abused, understood husband. Not misunderstood, understood. Nikki stopped, wanting to back out of the room.

A commercial began, and little Val, holding the remote-control box, cut off the sound, as Jim always did, causing the huckster to gesture, smile, frown, and mouth the air meaninglessly.

Val twisted gigglingly around for her Daddy’s approval, spotted Nikki, and screeched. Dolores bounced angrily upright in her chair, her head swinging around so fast her hair sailed.

“Don’t do that!” she said, meaning Val, but looking at Nikki, who felt herself tense like a caught thief. “Oh, Nikki, you’re up! You had a good sleep.” Dolores’s smile looked tired. Her eyes seemed thoughtful.

“Yes.” The corners of Nikki’s mouth seemed weighted as she smiled.

She hurried to answer the command of Val’s stretching, outspread arms and clamoring voice. The children stayed on Jim’s lap as she hugged and kissed them, and she was too aware of the glow of desire for her in Jim’s dark eyes. His expression was concealed from Dolores by his angle in the chair and by the dim light, but Nikki could feel Dolores there at the edge of her vision, studying the tableau of her husband and her children and another woman.

“Now kiss Daddy,” Val prompted. Nikki gave Jim a light, laughing peck and stepped her full weight angrily on his foot when he slyly got her hand and tickled her palm.

“Now Mommy?” Nikki inquired. The kids agreed and scrambled down and followed her as she bent down and puckered. Dolores was annoyed, but Nikki had put her on the defensive, and she received her kiss. Nikki stood up and asked brightly, “Can I bring anybody anything? I’ve got to have coffee myself.”

Jim heaved out of his chair. “Good idea.”

“Sit tight, sit tight,” she cried. “I’ll bring it. What for you, honey?” she asked Dolores.

“Nothing. And nothing for the children,” Dolores said, her attention on Jim, who hovered, then shrugged and flopped back in his chair.

Nikki was in the kitchen when Dolores brought the children in to say good night. “It’s past their bedtime anyhow.”

“Can I go up and help?”

“It’s no trouble at all.” Dolores herded them out.

Nikki stood, feeling slapped, and bit her lip. She carried coffee in for herself and Jim.

“What’s wrong with her?” she whispered.

He put a forefinger to his lip, frowned warningly. An instant later she understood. Dolores entered the room; she couldn’t have had time to go upstairs with the kids. Dolores hurried to the chair she’d been sitting in, got a pack of cigarettes and the entertainment section of the paper, left the room again.

“Didn’t catch us that time,” he snickered. Nikki glared at him and paced away, sipping coffee.

Dolores wasn’t back for fifteen minutes. She’d changed clothes and was wearing a little gray bolero suit with a frill-front blouse. She switched on the overhead lights, stood looking down irritably at her wrist, trying to hook a bracelet.

“Let me,” Nikki said, hastening to her. Dolores jerked her hand away, gave her a cool look and called to Jim, “Turn that damned thing off.”

He turned off the TV and unsprawled himself from the chair, coming warily upright and looking at her. “What’s with you?”

“Oh,” Dolores said, dividing a tired, scornful look between him and Nikki, “don’t make me laugh. Don’t give me that injured innocent ‘What’s with you?’.” She returned her attention to Nikki with a slow glacial movement of the head. “Well, did you take him out of his misery? Did you promise faithfully never to cheat on him again?”

Nikki squeezed her eyes shut, opened them and shook her head. “Cheat on him?”

Dolores made an ugly hawking sound, stepped away jerkily as if she couldn’t bear the sight of her. She walked to the end of the room, cracking her knuckles.

“Don’t do that,” Jim said, irrelevantly. “What’s eating her, Nikki,” he said, assuming a stern look, “is the fact that I was concerned, that it worried me when you came home from the date with Archer Cole. You were all upset. You’re part of my family.”

“Oh, the virtue of you! Your only concern was that our little girl Nikki wasn’t mistreated in any way by that scoundrel. By God, you’d show him how to treat Nikki, if he dared show his face around here. Reassure him, Nikki.” Dolores spun on her. “Tell him you didn’t let the beast get fresh with you. He can’t bear thinking an innocent little thing like you might have had her pure lips sullied. Tell him, tell him! He’s been fretting and sweating all day long.”

Nikki laughed shakily. “I’m still pure and unsullied, brother dear. Now you won’t have to get the horsewhip.”

Jim guffawed.

“Well, if it’s brother and sister,” Dolores said tightly, “the word for it would be what? Nikki, you’re a Phi Beta Kappa; you tell me the word.”

Nikki shrugged, lifted her palms. “Relativity?”

“Funny, funny, funny. The word would be incest.”

“That,” Nikki said, staring soberly into Dolores’s eyes, “is a very serious thing to say. You’re terribly upset, honey.”

“It’s a goddamned outrageous thing to say,” Jim blustered. He strode over to Dolores menacingly, his mouth tight, his eyes hard.

Dolores tossed her head and turned her back on him. “Do you both think I’m blind? You wagging your tail around and being so adorable, and him looking like a sick-eyed dog at you.”

“Which would make me the female dog; translation, bitch.”

“Well, so it would.”

“Now you listen to me, Dolores,” Nikki said gravely, knowing she must convince her, not only for her own sake but for the Taffy Head’s. “You knew when I came here that I’m a good-looking, sexy girl. You knew for sure that you’ve got a healthy man for a husband, and his eyes weren’t removed when he took his vows. He enjoys a pretty girl in the same way that every other man in the world does, and I respond to a virile man automatically, and the more so when I can respect and admire him.

“I don’t know that you find your man so unattractive. Well, neither do I. Let’s face it. As close as we always were, how could I help liking what you like? But these facts of nature don’t make us guilty of anything, honey, and you know it! I think you have a beautiful marriage and that you’re both wonderful people, and I love you.

“And for you to think that I could want to destroy your marriage, or for you to think that
he
doesn’t cherish you and his children and his home so dearly that he couldn’t imagine himself jeopardizing it …” She paused for breath. “He couldn’t be tempted. Even if I set out deliberately to take him away from you, I couldn’t.”

“You can say that again,” Dolores said, but something in her had been appeased, and Nikki exulted and rushed on.

“Don’t I know it! Good gosh; honey, you’re under a dreadful nervous strain if you’ve lost sight of the fact that this man would give his very life for you. I don’t have to tell you that.”

“I’ll tell her!” Jim said. “I’ll tell you, Dolores, if you need to hear it. I don’t and never will love any other girl but you.”

“But,” she said in a sing-song jeer, “a man is human after all, and so’s a girl’s best friend, so if we play around just an itsy-bitsy bit …”

“Not even that.”

“Not even a kiss in the corner? Not even a quick little feel? You’d be the first man who could ever keep his hands off her, and the first one she ever tried to
make
keep them off.”

The ice-blue disdain in Dolores’s eyes made Nikki catch her breath. There was a sharp, twisting pain just under her diaphragm. She tried grinning; her lips were stiff, they began trembling. She bit at her lip, laid a palm against her abdomen.

“Whew! That got me.”

Dolores looked slightly guilty. “Well, I went too far. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Nikki lowered her eyes and laughed nervously. “No, because it’s not true. There was this guy in the circus—he was seventy-six men ago—and I pushed one of his hands away. You see, I didn’t think it was fair. He had three hands.”

“Don’t try to make me laugh.” Dolores faced Jim. “Have you kept your hands off
entirely?
Liar!”

He looked narrowly at her, then shrugged, turned his eyes. “Once. Nikki was crawling on the floor with the kids and it was a quick impulse. But I did it in almost the same mood as I’d pat Val’s little fanny.”

“Almost! Well, I’ll tell you, you two get along so well together, and you’re so good at championing each other, that I’m sure you’ll have a lovely evening alone together. For my part, I’ve had all I can take of everything, and I’m going to get out of here.”

“You’re talking nonsense!”

“Don’t get so hopeful. I’m merely going to a movie.”

“I’ll go with you,” Jim said.

“I’m going alone, and maybe I’ll pick up a man and be instinctive and understandable.” She hurried out into the hall, back to the rear entrance, with Jim in pursuit.

Nikki stood numbed, listening to them argue. Then the car was starting and Jim came back into the house.

“Don’t look so woebegone. She won’t pick up anybody.”

“I guess not. But she doesn’t know a thing, so where does she get off with all that nasty stuff? I’m a bad husband, I suppose. Why, dammit, three out of four of the wives she knows have put up with their men chasing all the time, or part of the time. She never had to put up with that from me. If I did stray once, just once, and she caught me red-handed, what the hell kind of love has she got that she can’t forgive it?

“Wives who don’t, theoretically, care a tenth as much about their men as she does for me are willing to forgive them for real affairs. Some of the men keep steady mistresses. I never knew Dolores’s love could be so
small!
”

Nikki shut her eyes and moaned, “Men! Good God, you’d think you caught
her
at something.”

“She didn’t catch me. She has no proof.”

“She doesn’t have to see us wrestling naked to get the idea. She’s right as hell without court-proof evidence.” She took a few steps in the general direction of the hallway. Then she stopped, looked back at him wistfully. “It sure leaves an awful feeling, huh, Jim?”

He nodded. He strode over and put the TV control box on the set. He stopped and looked around the room, then at her.

“Maybe I ought to get in my car and follow her.”

“That sounds good. Somebody’ll have to be here with the kids, but meantime I’ll be all packed. Soon’s you get back in, call a cab for me and I’ll go wait outside so she won’t have to see me.”

“No, to hell with it. Walking out like that! Let her come back to her senses and to her home where she belongs.”

“And while I’m waiting for the cab I can fill in my spare time learning a new language. I saw an ad about that in the paper today.”

He came over to her, caught her roughly in his arms and kissed her mouth. He drew back and said angrily, “I’ve got the name, might as well have the game!”

Her eyes flooded. “Please don’t, Jim.”

He kissed her harder and mashed her body up close against him. The feel of him dizzied her with desire. Waves of heat swept up over her breasts, down across her belly and genitals. She pressed her thighs and knees tightly together, resisting the sensations. He broke free, started for the stairs. She stood with her feet apart, rooted.

He said impatiently, “Come on!”

“No.”

He snapped off the overhead light, came back at her with his chin thrust out. He stooped, caught her under the knees, and across the upper back. His manly sweep thrilled her. She put her mouth to his ear, kissed it, nibbled it affectionately.

“You love me very much, don’t you?”

“Yes! I can’t help it!”

“Were you really jealous of Archer?”

“I could kill him!”

He was midway up the stairs. He looked at her with a sort of anguished yearning, and kissed her. He went on up to the second floor with her.

“Did you think I’d let him have me? After
you?
Silly!”

His tightening arms almost crushed her. As he reached the door of her room, she braced her hand against the jamb.

“No!”

“Don’t torture me, Nikki. You know I have to have you!”

“Not here,” she whispered. “The big bed.” Her heart began to beat wildly.

“Not that. Please, Nikki, don’t ask me that.”

“That or nothing!” Her eyes glistened.

There was a long, tense pause, then she felt the powerful lift of his chest as he drew a breath. He carried her down the hall to the master bedroom and seated her on the big oval bed.

She sat, extended her feet. “Kneel,” she commanded in a whisper. “Kneel and kiss my feet! Then undress me and beg my permission to come into the big bed.”

He shook his head, made an inarticulate sound, but he was pliant with desire and presently he knelt and bent his head and kissed her feet. She sat exultantly tall, a bitter smile on her lips.

He began to undress her.

“I’ll undress myself. Hurry out of your own clothes.”

She stripped and lay on her back in the dimness. Her red hair caught glossy curves of light and her long-lashed green eyes glinted with excitement. There was a sharp whiteness about her dramatically beautiful face, and the skin of her slender young body was luminous, its cups and hollows brushed lightly with shadow. A hard quick pulse drummed in her ears and jarred within her rib cage with such force that the flesh of her upthrust breasts vibrated delicately.

Her breath came warm and quick through her parted lips, and an urgency in her belly gripped her limbs. She slid a bare foot forward and back, forward and back, and one raised, angular knee swayed very slowly and sensually from side to side. A steady current-like sensation tingled along her back at the feel of that bed, that big bed, like a queen’s throne under her.

He was naked and coming with towels to protect the big bed. She angled her body around and extended one long leg upward toward him.

Lying with their interlocked bodies moving in a slow, powerful, sensual rhythm, she was detached. She whispered, “Kiss me with your mouth open, and don’t draw away till I tell you.”