The Good Life

by Gordon Merrick

  He grabbed a bottle of shampoo and poured out gobs onto his head to blot out the comical sight. They’d never used the bathroom at the same time, and he was as much embarrassed as amused by the intimacy. She reminded him of Tallulah. He had accidentally caught her in the same act, dressed not unlike Bet was now, but Tallulah had made it funny rather than ridiculous.

  Perry lathered his head and scrubbed his short hair vigorously with his fingertips, scratching into his scalp. His hair was just growing out after the shearing he’d received on his first day in the Air Force.

  With his head under water, he didn’t hear the shower door open or know Bet was with him until he felt her hand on his cock. It was still swollen from his idiotic striptease. How in the world did she get out of all those clothes so quickly?

  “Hey,” he cried. “You just scared the bejesus out of me.” She was pressed up behind him, her arms around him, and now she had both hands on his cock.

  “Well, you’re no Samson,” Bet said. “Nothing happened to this beautiful thing when they cut off your hair.”

  He turned his face toward hers pressed against his back, and he could smell liquor on her breath. Or could it be the beer on him?

  She wiggled in against him and kept her hands busy on him. Would his cock work its magic again just when he needed it to get their relationship back on some sort of even keel? He eased around to face her and leaned his head back into the jetting water to rinse out the soap. He could feel her tender, firm breasts — a bit bigger since Billy was born — rub against him and felt the nipples become hard as she slid down to her knees in front of him, her own hair as soaked as his.

  “Mmm,” she crooned. “Divine. Even the shampoo tastes divine.” Her words were slurred, and he wondered if that was caused by drink or by the impediment of the hard flesh she was talking around. “Not quite as good as the champagne I’ve had, but not bad.” It was the drink.

  “Where was all the champagne?” he asked.

  “Wedding reception. Friend of Mummy’s.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he said, stroking the wet hair away from her forehead. “Bad manners.”

  She lifted her face up, her eyes closed against the spray, and ran her hands up over his wet buttocks, reaching through his legs to his balls. “I’ve never understood why all this heavy stuff just doesn’t fall off. It seems stuck on. Like some sort of afterthought.”

  “Thank God, God didn’t forget it altogether.”

  “Oh, dear, what a thought.” She circled the base of his cock with her hands and then grabbed around under his balls. “There. See? I can hold on to the whole shebang with one hand. Amazing.” She gave him a painful little tug. “Dingdong,” she sang. “Hey. Shebang. Get it? She bang.” She roared with drunken laughter. It was so silly, he joined in.

  She held up a hand. “But wait. What’s it with boys? He bang?” They laughed again. She really was drunk. She gave him another tug. “Dingdong, bingbang. She bang. He bang. Ding ding ding.” She was playing with him and making him hard again.

  He laughed at her childish examination of him. They were like they were in Saint-Tropez, enthralled with each other’s bodies. Hers had filled out but still had its lovely long, lean line. “If you keep that up,” he said, “it really is going to come off.”

  “Not yet. Let me play. It feels so good under the water. Everything slick and sexy.” Her hands were all over his body. He wished she would stand up so he could feel hers in the same way. When he reached down to lift her up under her arms, she shrugged his hands off impatiently, fretfully, like a child. “Are they inherited?”

  “What inherited?”

  “Cocks.” She talked in a singsong, childish voice. “We inherit the color of our eyes, our hair, our general shape. Do you suppose Billy will have a cock like this?”

  “Like father, like son, so they say.” Talk of this sort of inheritance was safe. “Where is Billy, by the way?”

  She waved vaguely in the direction of downstairs. “He and Nanny came home with me.” She’d brought him to full erection and was teasing it with her tongue. “Was your father’s big?”

  “I never saw it.” She was getting really silly now. “Come on, honey, let’s go put this to proper use.” She slapped his hands away when he reached for her. “Do you want me to come like this?”

  “Mmm.”

  “That mean yes or no?”

  “Just mmm, as in Mummy.” She lifted her head and looked up at him slyly. “Am I as good at this as she was?”

  He was stunned. What was she talking about? There was no way she could have heard about him and Arlene except from Arlene, and he knew that secret would go to the grave with her.

  “That champagne has really got your brain in a whirl. Come on, baby, let’s get out of here. I’m getting waterlogged.” He reached for the tap and turned it off.

  “No, seriously,” she insisted, “I want to know. When your husband has slept with your father and had his cock sucked by your mother, a girl would like to know about it. It’s all in the family. Was your father’s cock big? Did he sleep with you when you were little?”

  “Listen, Bet, this is ridiculous. You’ve had too much to drink. Come on. Move. I can’t get out of here. You’re blocking the door.” He tried to move, but she held on to his legs. He could hardly kick her through the glass door. He reached toward the door and opened it, hoping to be able to force her out onto the floor.

  “Don’t push me,” she said belligerently. “I like it here. Oh, look, your cock is going soft. I bet it didn’t go soft with Mummy, did it?”

  “Goddamn it, Bet. Move. I want out of here.”

  “She told me how big it was and that you made her suck it. She said you tried to rape her.” She was a little girl telling a dirty story.

  He snapped his head back, fully alert and on-guard, staring down at her. It was a trick. She couldn’t know anything. It was a drunken game she was playing. Dealing with drunks was one of the most tiresome chores in the world, and Bet drunk was more tiresome than most. He didn’t want this to lead to another knock-down-drag-out, and the only thing to do was humor her.

  “Where in the world do you get such ideas? In the first place, what a thing to say about your mother.”

  “What’s wrong with it? You’ve done it. Daddy’s done it. I’ve done it. Everybody does it. Why not Mummy? Why should she be denied the joys of life?” She giggled and grabbed his cock again. “And right here is our joy. All the whole fucking family’s joy. You didn’t marry me, you married my whole family.”

  Humoring her was not going to be easy. “Yes, dear, I married the whole family.”

  “And fucked the whole family.”

  “Yes, and fucked the whole family. Now budge.” He managed to free one leg from her grasp and stretched it over her shoulder — one leg in the shower, one leg on the bathroom floor. Some progress.

  “Aha. So now you admit it. You did go to bed with Mummy.”

  “You said it; I didn’t say it.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know for sure. Not till now. Ha, tricked you.” Her voice was turning nasty. “It’ll look pretty damned sensational in the headlines when I name both my father and mother as corespondents in the divorce case.”

  His heart stopped. “What divorce case?”

  “Mine.” She had a smug grin on her face. “Ours, if you’d rather.”

  He jerked his other leg away from her painfully. There was an ugly scratch from her nails all the way down his leg. He turned his back on her and pulled a towel off the rack. He couldn’t look at her. She seemed more insane than drunk. The clothes she’d been wearing had been thrown into the bathtub. The fur looked like some dead animal lying there.

  He rubbed his head vigorously, trying to think of the right approach. When she was in this sort of mood, anything was dangerous. She was asking for trouble, and he didn’t want to be goaded into giving it to her.

  His being away hadn’t worked the miracle he’d hoped. Nor had his cock. Sh
e’d used it to try and trick him into some confession about Arlene. Now she was talking about divorce. He decided he’d better let her continue to do the talking until he could figure out what she was really up to.

  He heard the water splash on again in the shower and straightened, lowering the towel to his shoulders, and saw Bet standing with her face lifted to the full blast of the shower. Her hair streamed from her forehead and down her back. She looked as though she were surfacing from a dive in clear water. She didn’t move. She stood, taking the punishing spray for a long time before turning her back to it. He could see she was getting gooseflesh. A freezing shower. She needed it.

  He turned from her again and moved into the bedroom with the towel. He was bent over drying his legs and dabbing at the bleeding scratch on his thigh when he felt her standing in the bathroom door. She was drying herself thoroughly and methodically.

  “I’m not joking, you know,” she said. “I’m getting a divorce.” Her slurred speech had been replaced by a businesslike crispness. The cold shower had done its job.

  She bent over, flinging her hair forward, and brought the towel up to the nape of her neck, creating a turban as she straightened up. She looked curiously regal in the white turban as she walked naked across the room and lit a cigarette, turning on the heavy bronze cherub lamp on the table next to the bed.

  The cigarette was something new. The lamp, made from a charming candlestick, was old and one of a pair they’d found together in a junk shop on Third Avenue. Everything in the room — in the entire house — they’d found and worked on together, and now she was threatening divorce.

  How serious was she? Indeed, how drunk had she been in the shower when she was behaving so strangely? What was she up to? He had to play it cool and let her lead the way.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and took a long drag from the cigarette. As she exhaled, she swung her legs up onto the bed and leaned back against the headboard. “This is as good a time as any to talk. Let’s get it over with.” He stood where he was, holding the towel casually in front of himself, and nodded. “Okay. Tony has asked me to marry him. I’ve accepted. As soon as the divorce is final, we’ll be married.”

  “You’ll do it here in New York?”

  “No. It takes too long, and you have to build up such a case. Reno.”

  “I see.” He didn’t move. He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t make his mind work. Her businesslike manner made him realize that she was dead serious. “That means I’d have to consent to it.”

  “Of course.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “I can do it here in New York if you insist on contesting it. Think of the headlines, though. I’ve already given you an idea of what they might be like.”

  “You wouldn’t insult the memory of your father by making that sort of accusation. You couldn’t.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t I?” Her chin jutted with fierce determination.

  “Or plaster your mother’s name all over the papers? You surely wouldn’t do—”

  “If you care all that much, then you’ll just have to give your consent for the Reno divorce. I, frankly, don’t give a damn.”

  “Bet, don’t talk like that. You’re not a heartless woman.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t work very well. “You’re sounding like those women in that Clare Boothe Luce play. All those hard-hearted bitches.”

  “The Women.” She took a theatrical drag on the cigarette. “That’s us. That’s the way we are.”

  Now she was playacting. There was no way to deal with her reasonably. He threw down the towel and started looking around for his uniform. “Oh, shit, Bet, I give up.”

  “I gave up long ago,” she snarled. “Trying to make a life with a fucking fairy is quite a fairy tale.” She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “Knowing what I know about you, well, hell, I could probably have you put in jail.” Her voice was getting out of control. “And I’ve got proof. That paper you forced Daddy to sign. Pure extortion. Don’t look so shocked. I’ve talked to my lawyers about it. It’s easy to prove that you used physical force on him.”

  “Be careful, Bet, you’re getting out of your depth.”

  “I am, am I?” She sat forward, eyes blazing, her words slurring again. The effects of the cold shower were wearing off. “Don’t you think I know what you and Daddy did? How stupid do you think I am? Do you still think I’m just a silly schoolgirl insane about your cock?”

  “You made a pretty good imitation of liking it.”

  “As much as Daddy? At least you didn’t use a whip on me. You beat me with your bare hands, you stinking shit.”

  “Bet, lower your voice. Nanny will hear you.”

  “She’s deaf as a post.”

  “Well, have some consideration for Billy then. Don’t frighten him.”

  “Frighten him?” Her feet were on the floor now. She was crouched toward him, screaming. “I’m doing this to save his life. Save him from you.” She jabbed the cigarette out in an ashtray. “Do you think I want him to be like you? You’re filth, and you’ve ruined my life, and I won’t let you ruin Billys. Before I’d let him grow up even knowing you’re his father, I’d kill him first. You hear me? I’d kill him.”

  She was hysterical, bouncing on the edge of the bed, tearing at the towel around her head, ripping it off, and flinging it toward Perry. Her hair fell across her distorted face. “I know how these things happen now. I’ve talked to people — to doctors and lawyers. It all happens when they’re young. Something happened to Daddy that made him the way he was. He went through life liking to be punished. He got his kicks having whores like you beat him with a whip until—”

  “Shut up, Bet. What are you talking about? Haven’t you any respect for—”

  “Sylvain told me, you stupid shit. I’ve known all along what you were doing.”

  “Well, if you knew—”

  “Sylvain told me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “But I didn’t believe him. I didn’t want to believe him.”

  Her voice filled the room, the house, making his head echo with her words. “Okay, okay, just stop screaming, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You were fucking Sylvain too — both you and Daddy — and making me do it with him.”

  “Making you? Oh, Bet. Oh, my God. If you knew all that then, why did you marry…why did you want to marry me?”

  She let out a long wail and crashed her fists onto her thighs and dropped her head. He could tell by her shaking body that she was crying. He wanted to go to her, to hold her, but he didn’t dare. She threw her head back and screamed at the ceiling. “Because… because I was stupid. But I thought I was in love…in love with you.” She whipped her head down and to the side, her hair covering her face. “Yes! In love with you. In love with a freak, a pervert, a whore…” The words bounced off the walls.

  “Listen, Bet. Please just listen…”

  “You listen yourself.” Her voice soared above her sobs and had reached such a pitch that there was nothing else he could do. “I’m getting a divorce, and if you want me to make it ugly, it’s going to be the goddamndest, ugliest divorce case in the history of New York. I’m going to see to it that you never get to see Billy again.”

  Her words bit into his soul. She was going to try to take the one thing he had left in life.

  “I’m doing it now while he’s still young so that he’ll never know you were his father.”

  “But, Bet, if I agree—”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you do. I just know that I’d kill my own child before I’d allow you to have anything to do with him.”

  She grabbed the ashtray and hurled it across the room at his portrait, cutting into the canvas. She was totally out of control, and Perry was frightened for them both. She’d worked herself up into a murderous rage.

  “I know how it happens. Like I said in the shower…I know how it starts. It’s the father that starts teaching the boys things. That’s how it works. I’ve talked to lots of peopl
e, and that’s what you want to do with Billy. Oh, I’ve watched you with him. You’d be having him now if you could. You’ll wait, and then slowly as he gets about six, seven, along in there, you’ll have him sucking your cock like you had Daddy and Mummy and—”

  “Stop saying that! It isn’t true — any of it. You’ve lost your mind.”

  “Mummy had to tell me a bit because Sylvain tried to blackmail her. He wrote nasty things — about beatings, dope, and God knows what all — and said he’d turn the story over to the newspapers if—”

  “Sylvain’s a criminal, for God’s sake—”

  “So are you, you filthy prick. You fucking fairy. Dirty whore.”

  She swung around and grabbed the heavy bronze lamp, wrenching the plug from its socket. She was crazed. She was a wild woman, violent, determined to commit violence.

  She swung the lamp above her head. Perry ducked and jumped out of her way. She was thrown slightly off-balance, but she righted herself, and her face lit up with murderous determination.

  “I’ll do it now,” she screamed. “I’ll kill Billy now. Before I’ll ever let you lay a hand on him.” She whirled and dashed toward the door. “I’ll bash his head in while he’s still innocent. I don’t want to live with this sort of filth anymore.”

  Perry was frozen to the spot. She’d gone beyond hysteria. She was in an insane rage, demoniac, uncontrollable.

  “You’ve ruined my life, but I won’t let you ruin my son’s.” She wrenched open the door and screamed at the top of her voice, “I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill my own child before I’ll let you corrupt him and turn him into the same sort of filth you are. I’ll—”

  Perry lunged toward her. He had to shut her up. With the door open they were bound to hear. Deaf or not, Nanny would feel the walls trembling. Bet’s screaming could be heard blocks away. Billy would be terrified.

  He took a running leap at her from behind, bringing her down in a heap, half in the room, half in the hall. He grabbed her and dragged her back into the bedroom kicking and screaming and fighting him with amazing strength. He managed finally to kick the door shut.

  “Shut up, goddamn it!” he shouted as he slapped her back and forth across the face. She was sprawled out on her back, and he was straddling her, bent over her, trying to shut her up.