The Houseguest (10 page)

Fortunately, his formerly elongated body had lately dwindled to be hardly more than hers, and with a great heave that used more strength than she ordinarily commanded, she dislodged him and rolled out from under, over the edge of the bed, hit the floor, and was up instantly and in a rage.

But he was not Bobby. He was Chuck Burgoyne.

Lydia was aware that she had license to faint at this moment: it was not fair that all these things could happen at once, if ever, to a person like her, who always tried to do the right thing. But she was also aware that on awakening again she would never be able to find more than a few fragments of her former self.

Chuck was spread-eagled on the tangled bedclothes, which included the damp towel in which she had earlier come from the shower. He too was visibly damp at the groin, with matted hairs, and some of this wetness was surely of her own secretion, her property, to be dispensed only of her own volition. He was therefore a house-breaker.

He grinned and spoke genially. “You must have liked it: you came three or four times.” He reached for her at the lower thigh and was rapidly ascending as she jumped away.

She went even farther from the bedside, but made no move towards her clothing or even to cover herself, modesty being beside the point now. “I could kill you for this,” she said. Her breast was stinging where he had bitten her, but that was the least of it.

At last he began to suspect that her reaction did not honor him. He jeered. “Kill me? I just saved
your
life. That means you're
mine
, I've got a right to you. Just think about it, and you'll have to agree.”

“No, I don't!” she cried. “I don't
have
to do anything.”

The statement made him smile. “Come on, we've got something, you and me. We're not like
them.”

Lydia was breathing as rapidly as if she were still performing the act of copulation. “I'm not like you,” she said. “Don't ever think that.”

“Hell,” said Chuck, stretching, yawning, “you don't know me. But that can be easily corrected. Meanwhile, just get back over here. Don't worry about that prize husband of yours: he's occupied. He won't walk in on us—not that I'd care much if he did.”

In truth she had not yet given Bobby a thought, but now, guiltily, she cried, “You haven't hurt him?”

He guffawed. “What would you care? You're out to take him for all he's got. You haven't fooled me for a minute.”

“Where is he? Have you done something to him?”

Chuck compressed his lips, then opened them to say archly, “You've got to come over here to find out.”

Lydia was beginning to feel her nakedness in a moral way. She backed towards the built-in dresser drawer that held her underwear. Somehow she believed her least vulnerable side was that which gave clearest access to her sex organs, perhaps because he had already used them. She bent slightly at the knee, and with a hand behind her, opened the drawer. Funny how vanity could not be forgotten altogether no matter the extremity: by touch alone she tried to find one of her more attractive pairs of pants. Obviously this was not for the purpose of inciting his ardor, but rather an honoring of her mother's principle that the victim of an accident need never feel shame when wearing clean underwear. For what had happened here was a terrible accident, of which she had clearly been victim and not perpetrator, but then why did she suffer from such guilt? How could she, in a state of pristine ignorance, have failed to respond to him? Oh, retroactively it was easy enough to recognize the many differences in touch and rhythm and warmth and texture and on and on, including smell, Bobby being virtually odorless while Chuck had in recent memory used shaving lotion or cologne and soon exuded the natural musky scent of sex. But in the heat of the encounter details were as nothing; ripeness was all.

Damn, she could find nothing identifiable with the groping hand behind her back. She turned and seized any old pair and climbed into them. She whirled around, now in the white hip-huggers but still bare-breasted, and shouted at him, “All right, you saved my life. You have a right to my gratitude, but not to my person! I don't care what your theory is!”

“I hope,” said Chuck, “you're not going to claim you didn't enjoy it.” At least he was finally limp by now, and consequently not quite as arrogant, and he had lost his grin. His hair had stayed perfectly combed. Lydia's own was undoubtedly a mess: soaked in the sea and then the shower, roughly rumpled by towel, then slept on, then whatever happened to it during the act. She could not yet bear to look at herself in a mirror.

She stared at Chuck. “You raped me, you bastard. I was sleeping!” Which though not exactly true in particular, did support the general incontestable point, namely, that one's body was one's own, and lawful access to it by another could be gained only by permit, real or genuinely implied. Nowadays not even marriage provided unconditional license to one spouse to use the other without the latter's agreement. “I never did
one thing
to suggest I wanted your sexual attentions. Not
one thing!
God damn you.”

There was an awful feeling in the crotch of her underpants. For an instant she believed she had, humiliatingly, urinated in the emotion of the moment, but suddenly understood that it was instead the emerging of the semen that had been injected into her, under false pretenses, by the man on her bed, and she was on no contraceptive medication; Bobby nowadays used condoms, his idea: the constriction helped keep him firm… . God, she was full of the stuff, her pants were soaked, and one only microscopic spermatazöon could do the job of procreation. What if she became pregnant by reason of this scum's scum?

She rushed into the bathroom, tore off the pants, used the toilet, then quickly douched, but the complexities of the process of generation were such that none of this provided any insurance whatever. At last she stared at herself in the mirror. She looked exactly like somebody who had been drowned, brought to life, and raped.

Chuck entered while she was so engaged, marched to the toilet bowl, and grossly, with a powerfully pressured torrent, began to empty his bladder. Had she possessed a weapon, the time to get him would have been now, as he spread-legged himself before the toilet bowl. But if the weapon had a keen edge, what a mess there would be! A bludgeon might be aesthetically preferable, but would she have had the strength to deliver a lethal blow? That he would get away with this vile deed, however, was insupportable. It went without saying that her father and brothers would be eager to avenge her, but this was precisely the kind of shame that she would do anything to keep secret from those of her own blood, for irrespective of the necessity for revenge, no male of her family would
really
believe her account, given the peculiar circumstances. To begin with, her father had always thought her too tarty ever since the onset of her pubescence. First she had been indecently premature in wearing a brassiere and makeup; then when, after a few years, she gave up the former altogether and the latter in part and shortened her hair, she “looked like a boy,” and that was perhaps even more immoral. Taking up with Bobby Graves was the ultimate example of character failure: the Graveses would have been unpleasantly astonished to know how poorly they measured on the gauges of religion, culture, and even social status when the criterion was “our own kind.” “You know what
they
would call
that,”
Lydia had blurted in sheer exasperation. “Gangsters!” At which her mother said her mouth should be washed out with soap, and her father had not subsequently spoken to her though had sent an outlandishly large check on hearing she had married the guy. They had yet to meet Bobby. On this visit she was meeting his parents for the first time. And within a week she had been raped by another guest under the same roof.

She silently left Chuck where he was and went out to the bedroom and quickly covered herself with beltless jeans and an oversized man's blue workshirt. While this was under way she heard the sibilance of the shower. His effrontery was, alas, impressive. Obviously he had no concern about Bobby's return. Chuck's contempt for her husband could not but have its effect on Lydia, who blamed Bobby now for not having been at hand—while worrying that he might return and catch her within a private enclosure with a naked man. Somewhere here too was a concern for his emotional well-being. Physically he was at least a match for Chuck, who unclothed was even shorter and slighter of build than when dressed, as opposed to the way it was with her brother Tony, who pumped iron but looked deceptively slender in a dark suit. On the other hand, Chuck was psychically a thug. She must get out of this room and find her husband, forestalling a confrontation until the ground had been well prepared.

But the person she found first—he was just coming into the main sitting room from the deck—was her father-in-law. For the first time he appeared not quite well groomed, though no detail supported this impression: it was one of mood.

They spoke at the same time. Doug could not distinguish her words. What he said was, “Have you seen Bobby?”

Obviously she had not heard the question, for she broke off and then resumed, with her own version of what he had said to her. “I'm looking for my husband.” She had been briefly attractive when seen in the swimsuit, but now she was back to being even less fetching than usual: hair damp and disordered, her face blanched, eyes reddened. If she was a confederate of Chuck's, she had none of his style.

“I just asked you the same,” Doug said, with a chilly elevation of his chin. There was no longer any reason for courtesy if she was a participant in a conspiracy to take power in his home. She might be the weakest link, easily overwhelmed unless she too was carrying a concealed weapon, but before jumping her he would remain cautious until he could define the precise nature of her role.

As she stared at him now her eyes began to fill with tears. Of course it could be a hoax—he had had more than one mistress for whom weeping was but another manipulative device—but his daughter-in-law suddenly seemed genuinely forlorn.

Nevertheless, he stayed his distance, asking warily, “Why are you crying?”

She hung her head and spoke as if to her modest bosom. “Oh, God, how can I …”

“I heard about your problem with the undertow. Bobby really should have made it clear that swimming there is ill-advised.”

“Chuck,” Lydia began chokingly, as if she could hardly rid her throat of the name. “He—”

Doug was icy now. “Oh, yes,” he said, “your friend. He supposedly saved you, didn't he? Well, you're partners after all, aren't you?” She certainly looked vulnerable at this moment. Surely he could deliver a disabling blow before she could draw the gun she carried in the waistband of the jeans, under that oversized shirt.

Lydia raised her face and asked, “
My
friend? He's my
friend?”
Her tears had stopped flowing.

Doug could make no sense of the shifting emphasis. “Well,” said he, “he's hardly mine. Furthermore, he pulled a gun on me. Can you imagine that? A guest in my house? Threatens me with a gun?” This incident had continued to burgeon in memory: Doug had by now convinced himself that Chuck had thrust the muzzle at him and cocked the trigger. “How's that for a Sunday at the shore?” he asked. “You can get your head blown off
for no reason
, by a houseguest
you don't even know.”

Lydia was frowning. “Then whose friend is he?”

“He isn't yours?”

His daughter-in-law glared at him. “He just raped me.”

Doug accepted this startling announcement with exterior aplomb, though within he was agitated morally and erotically. “Would you like to lie down?” he asked. “I'm afraid we can't call the police: he's done something to the phones. I don't have any weapons. Maybe I can get out to the cars before he spots me, and make a break for help.”

“He's put at least one of them out of commission,” Lydia said. “That's why Bobby couldn't get to the club. I'll bet the other one won't run, either. How did he get here himself? Where's his car?”

“I suppose he got a ride,” said Doug, thinking of this matter for the first time. “He has a confederate, you know.”

“On the property somewhere?”

“I don't know, but we're in an extreme situation.” She had begun to weep softly again. He had to do something by way of comfort: she was young and female and a relative. He touched Lydia at last: he took her cold hand. “We'll get him, dear. We'll get him.”

Lydia's fingers stirred within his grasp. “I didn't see his gun.”

“Carries it in an ankle holster,” said Doug, releasing her, not wishing to convey the wrong idea. He had actually started to feel protective, an emotion unique for him.

“Damn!” she said. “Then it must have been someplace in the pile of his clothes on the floor. If only I had known!”

“Would you have shot him?”

“Sure!”

Doug was impressed by the girl's spirit. “All right,” he said. “Good for you.” He was not himself the kind of man who could take a woman against her will. The thought was repugnant to him: he could scarcely desire a female who had to be forced to accept him, which would be the nullification of all that he sought when resorting to the opposite sex.