the nude who did

So, with three limp inches eager to regain confidence, Archer decided to hie his libido elsewhere. “I’m going out to play golf,” he informed his wife the following Sunday morning.

“Have a good time, dear.” Sarah Bernhardt had nothing on Llona when it came to acting. Neither her face nor tone of voice betrayed any feelings save wifely permissiveness.

Inside, though, Llona was seething. She’d seen Archer “playing golf” before. Sure as God made little wormy apples, Llona knew who her husband, the putz! would be putting! Shirley Simpell, pure-and-simple—-only not so pure!

Bikini’d like an angry Amazon, armed with binoculars, Llona marched up to the roof and reconnoitered the golf course. The wild hair of her rage focused the cross-hair of the field glasses on the rough beyond the fifth green. There they were! Archer in golf knickers, Shirley in a pinafore, pigtails, and pink ribbons, sticky-lipped innocence tongue-licking a peppermint candy cane.

Llona strained to read their lips. “Golly-gee . . . Mom’s apple pie . . . Holy Cow . . . Spiro Agnew . . . Ginger-peachy . . . Support our boys in sleepaway camp . . . ” was the best she could make out of what Shirley was saying. “Shee-it! . . . Legalize pot! . . . Mother fucker! . . . Lenny Bruce . . . Up against the wall! . . . Bring the boys home from Daleyland . . .” was her reading of Archer’s twisting mouth. Llona gave up the effort and concentrated on actions. Which speak louder than words anyway—except that Archer’s actions seemed to suffer from laryngitis.

With lowered knickers billowing out from his ankles, Archer was clutching Shirley's pigtails like a subway strap-hanger at the mercy of a heavy-footed IRT engineer waiting for the word to go out on strike. Her curly head was buried in his lap and her tongue was as busy as ever it had been with lollipop or peppermint stick. However, after a while, it became obvious that the flavor was eluding her. She was stuck with a Tootsie-roll lollipop with no filling.

Shirley tried. Lord knows she tried. Llona had to give her that. But in the end Archer’s whole body sagged as limply as his Benedict Arnold candy cane and his hands fell away from-the pigtails. Shirley arose, straightened her pinafore, shot him the contemptuous look hawks reserve for the truly effete, and drove for the sixth fairway. Archer sat for a while, dejected; finally he got up, pulled up his knickers, sneaked his golf ball out of the rough, and followed her.

Despite herself, Llona couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. The knowledge that she really had unmanned him stirred her conscience. The feeling would grow during the days that followed. But on this afternoon it was still only a flick of guilt, easily ignored. And Llona did ignore it when Archer arrived home later in the day.

“How did the golfing go, dear?” Llona greeted him cheerily.

“Lousy. I only hit two balls all day. And that was when I stepped on a rake hidden in a sandtrap.”

“That’s too bad.” The words were sincere. Llona really did feel badly for him. He looked so down.

Archer was down—but he wasn‘t ready to count himself out yet. He had a frigid ace in the whole, a straw nicknamed “Iceberg” to clutch at. He sneaked out of the house, called her up, and made a date to come calling.

What he didn’t know was that as soon as he’d hung up, Iceberg called Neva Holdkumb to alert her to their impending date. And as soon as Iceberg hung up, Neva-—naturally-—called Llona keep her abreast of developments. Llona heard the news with mixed feelings. But she withheld judgment pending the results of the date.

Archer rang the bell of Iceberg’s apartment three times before she finally answered. “Oh, it’s you.” She greeted him coldly.

“It’s me all right.”

She simply stood there, blocking the doorway.

“I can prove it,” Archer said after a moment of frosty silence. “Would you like to see my driver’s license?”

She ignored the sarcasm. “Well, as long as you’re here, I suppose you might as well come in.” She turned her back on him and led the way to the living room. She didn’t seem to care whether he followed her or not.

Archer shrugged and followed her. “You were expecting me, weren’t you?” he asked when they were in the living room.

“I guess so.”

“I mean, I did call, and you did invite me to come over.”

“That’s right.” She stared at him noncommittally. Her impersonality was lent additional coolness by the high-necked grey wool dress she was wearing. Its straight hues and unfashionable length completely concealed the shape of her body, a shape Archer remembered as having been quite nice when revealed in the nude during the marathon encounter. Her blonde hair was pulled back in an asexual bun which made her face look harsher than he recalled. “Sit down.” She indicated a straight-backed chair. When Archer was seated she sat down in a similar chair across the room from him.

There was a long silence. It didn’t seem to bother her. But Archer found it awkward. Finally, he broke it.

“About working our problems out together . . . ” he said hesitantly.

“It was a dumb idea,” she said flatly. “I don’t know why I suggested it. If you’ve any ideas about sex, forget them. I’m frigid and that’s it.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” Archer said morosely. “I’m impotent.”

“I know. Overpopulation has nothing to fear from us.”

“Even if we were the last two people left on earth, nothing would happen,” Archer sighed.

“Something would. The world would end.”

“Yeah. That’s how the world would end-—not with a bang!”

“You don’t have to shout,” she told him icily. “I’ve got neighbors, you know.”

“Sorry. It’s just that we’re so far away from each other. Couldn’t we sit closer together? On the couch, maybe?”

Iceberg considered it. “All right. But just for purposes of conversation. Remember, I’m frigid.”

“And I’m impotent.” Archer moved to the couch.

She joined him there, sitting against one arm, as far from him as it was possible to get. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked stiffly.

“Why don't we discuss our mutual problem?”

“ ‘Mutual problem’?”

“Yeah. Your frigidity and my impotence. Like you said when we were leaving the institute, maybe we can help each other.”

“I told you. I don’t know why I said that. I don't see how we can help each other. Men just don’t turn me on. I don’t enjoy sex.”

“Maybe you’ve just been running into the wrong man.” Archer shifted his position to the middle of the couch.

“All men are alike . . . Why did you move?”

‘I’m slightly deaf in my right ear,” Archer lied. “I have difficulty hearing on that side.” He moved again. Now he was right next to her, his thigh brushing hers. “All men really aren’t alike,” he told her. “For instance, how many men have you known who were impotent?”

“You’re the first.” She moved her leg away from his.

“Well, that makes our situation different, doesn’t it? I mean, you can relax with me. No matter how strongly I come on, you don't have to be afraid.” Archer moved his leg so that their knees were touching again.

“I suppose you’re right.” Some of the tension went out of her body. It brought her arm and shoulder into juxtaposition with his.

“For an iceberg you sure give off a lot of heat,” Archer observed after another moment of silence.

“It’s body heat.” Her tone was clinical.

“Really? Let’s see.” Archer slid his aim around her shoulders, stretching so that his fingers could touch the side of her wool-covered breast.

“I don’t like to be touched like that.” Iceberg tried in vain to wriggle away.

“It’s nothing personal. Just a scientific investigation,” he assured her.

“Are you sure? Then why are you squeezing my breast like that?”

“Testing the resiliency. What are you worried about? I’m impotent, remember.”

“I keep forgetting. With any other man I’d think he was making a pass.”

“But you know me better than that.” Archer dug his fingertips deeper into the grey wool until he found her nipple. Her breasts were long, as he remembered them, and it took him a minute. The nipple was also long, and quite hard, likewise as he remembered it. “Now this sort of touch by a man doesn’t lessen your feelings of frigidity at all?” he inquired in a carefully detached voice.

“No. It just tickles a little.”

“Tickles! Well now, that’s sort of interesting. A tickling sensation might be the beginning of an erotic response.” He thought a moment. “Now tell me if the sensation increases,” he said. And then he kissed her.

She submitted to the kiss, but she didn’t cooperate. Her lips remained closed to his probing tongue. And their temperature was chilly. “Why did you do that?” she asked when the kiss was over.

“I was hoping to evoke some response, to get some hint as to where the vulnerable point of your frigidity might be.”

“There is no vulnerable point. I’m just frigid. That’s all.”

“Let’s just see.” Archer moved his hand to the back of her dress and unzipped it. Before she could object, he opened her bra. Then he reached quickly under the dress, through her armpit and palmed the long, naked tip of her long, naked breast.

“I don't know what you think you’re going to accomplish by doing that,” Iceberg said. “I’m not going to let you make love to me, you know.”

“The question’s academic. I’m impotent. Remember,” Archer was cupping both breasts now, squeezing the nipples between his fingers.

“Well, it has no effect whatsoever.” She took a deep breath.

“Give it a chance.” He removed one of his hands and casually let it fall to her knee.

“You’re simply engaging in an exercise in futility.”

“Yeah?” Archer was getting angry. He slid his hand under the hem of the wool dress until it was wedged between the bare flesh of her thighs above the tops of her stockings.

He tried kissing her again. Her lips were a little softer and warmer, but not much. For an instant they parted, but when his tongue touched hers, she quickly pulled away.

The movement, however, afforded an advantage in another area. Her legs parted slightly and he was able to push his hand higher. His fingertips grazed the silk of her panties.

“Now I don’t like to be touched there by a man!” she protested. “You’re going too far!”

“Why don’t you just relax?” Archer found the outline of the pouting nether-lips under the silk and traced it. He probed between them until he found her clitoris. It was erect and straining. Breathing heavily now, Archer stroked it.

“Don’t do that!” Iceberg tried to push his hand away, but it wouldn’t let her.

“Stop worrying! I’m impotent. Remember.”

“You don’t look impotent!" Iceberg glanced meaningfully at his lap.

Archer followed her glance. She was right. A tree of lust had sprouted and was stretching toward the ceiling. The material of his pants was stretched seemingly to the breaking-point. “I’ll be damned!” Archer said.

He really was surprised. He realized that he was as excited as he’d ever been. Iceberg’s very coldness had dispelled his impotency. Her lack of passion had aroused his own. It crossed his mind that his reaction was perverse, but he dismissed the thought. He wasn’t about to look a gift stiff in the mouth.

“No, you certainly don’t seem impotent,” Iceberg insisted. “Just look at that!” She licked her lips, then caught herself. “It’s disgusting!” she decided.

“It excites you!” Archer hadn’t missed the gesture.

“It certainly does not!”

“Yes it does.” He leaned over her and pushed her panties aside. His fingers dipped into the honeypot of her femininity. “I can tell!” he panted.

“It doesn’t excite me!” Her breathing had quickened now too. “I don’t feel anything at all!” Her lips rose and fell in rhythm with his caress.

Beside himself now, Archer pulled up her dress and yanked off her panties. He took a long look at the blonde triangle and throbbing organs exposed to his view. Then he savagely pulled down his pants and jockey shorts and prepared to mount her.

“Oh, don’t!" she objected. “Oh, hurry!” she contradicted herself. “You’re raping me!” she protested. “Like this?" she inquired, forming her legs into parentheses. “I’ll scream!” she threatened. “Oh! Give it to me!” she pleaded.

“Give it to you?” Archer was brought up short.

“Come on! Push it! Shove it! Screw me! Bang me!”

“I thought you were frigid.”

“Damn you! Do it!” Iceberg’s nails ripped at his buttocks.

“You sure don’t act frigid."

“Come on, stud!” She wrapped her legs around him.

“You don’t act frigid at all.”

“I’m not! I’m hot as a firecracker! Now will you sock it to me!” Iceberg was slavering, her eyes rolling.

“You’re not frigid?”

“No! Never was!” Iceberg confessed. “Now come on before I explode!”

“I can’t.” Archer sat back on this haunches.

“You can’t? What the hell do you mean?”

“I’m impotent.”

“You weren’t impotent a minute ago!”

“It comes and goes!”

“You bastard!”

“Don’t curse at me, lady. It’s your fault. You acted like you were frigid.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“It excited me."

“My being frigid excited you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well what unexcited you?”

“You stopped being frigid.”

“Damn! I forgot! Because I was hot, you know. But look, I’ll be frigid again. Right now. See how frigid I am‘? Get your hands off me. I can't bear to be touched!”

“It’s no good,” Archer told her. “I don’t believe you anymore. And you don’t excite me.”

“Then get the hell out of here!”

“Why?”

“So I can masturbate, dammit!”

Archer left.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Woodrow Wilson was elected president on his campaign promise to keep America out of war. Subsequently he went before the Congress and asked for and received the Declaration of War which plunged the U.S. into the European holocaust. Adolf Hitler, publicly agreeing the German military strategists about the inadvisability of fighting on two fronts, signed a nonaggression pact with Stalin. Subsequently he reneged on the pact and the German Army was embroiled in the disaster of a two-front conflict. President Eisenhower decided that it was not in the American interest to fight a land war in Southeast Asia. Subsequently he backed up just such an involvement in Vietnam because it was in the national interest. Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater with the promise that American forces would not be committed in large numbers in Vietnam. Subsequently he committed over half a million troops to that fray at a cost of over 40,000 American lives.

Changing her mind, the saying has it, is a woman’s prerogative. The inference is that it’s a female characteristic. The evidence? Help a lady arrange furniture. Tag along when she selects a new hat. Count the numbers of lady drivers who signal left and turn right. When a lady changes her mind, the presumption is that she’s “doing her thing”--and the presumption has a built-in snicker. On the other hand, as the previous paragraph demonstrates, men also change their minds—-powerful men whose changes of mind affect the destinies of millions. But of course men don’t do it on frivolous impulse. Do they? Men weigh alternatives and consequences very carefully. Don’t they? You can’t really equate a decision to move the piano from one wall to another and back again with a decision to stay out of war followed by a decision to declare war. Can you? . . . Well, can you? . . .

In any case, women have few enough prerogatives all their own. Let’s leave them that one. Okay, fellas? Okay. Changing her mind is still a woman’s prerogative . . .

So Llona trotted out the prerogative and changed her mind. She changed her mind because she’d had a change of heart. Llona‘s change of heart followed a conversation with Neva Holdkumb which was preceded by a call from Iceberg to Neva in which Iceberg related her experience with Archer and threw in the towel on any future bouts with Llona’s husband. Neva passed on the details to Llona.

After Llona hung up the telephone, she sat down and made a conscious effort to think things through. It was true that Archer had cheated on her with at least one girl, and had attempted to break his marriage vows with another. It was true that such duplicity entitled Llona to revenge. The question was, did she really—deep down— feel that vegeance was a desirable end.

Llona sighed to herself. Her time was growing short. Was she really so sure she wanted to bequeath Archer a legacy of misery?

Llona was a sensitive girl. She could empathize with what Archer must be feeling after his latest sexual fiasco. She could see it in his face as he dragged around the house. He was a beaten man. As much as she could justify his punishment to herself, Llona nevertheless was forced to admit that it made her feel guilty.

Was Archer’s crime really so great that he deserved the penalty of lifelong suffering? Llona decided that it wasn't. In spite of everything, she loved him. And so she turned herself around and went back to her original resolution. She would still try to find a wife for Archer, a successor to herself, since he was so obviously incapable of taking care of himself. But she would no longer emphasize the punitive effects of the successor. With what time she had left, Llona decided to find someone for Archer who would make his life happy, someone who might even restore his manhood to him.

Having reached this decision, Llona felt better. But she had reckoned without that old basic law of physics and human relations: a force set in motion tends to stay in motion. Llona had told the complete truth about both her own doomed condition and Archer’s unfaithfulness. And Llona had asked Olivia to help her arrange Archer’s future to insure a maximum of suffering.

This had slipped Llona’s mind, but it hadn’t gone out of Olivia’s. It was just the kind of anti-husband situation Olivia took pleasure in getting her ersatz dentures into. So while Llona was reversing herself, Olivia was just geting up steam preparatory to charging full speed ahead, straight toward a metaphorical Archer tethered to the railroad tracks.

At first Olivia only had a vague desire to help Llona. But the vague desire took on the form of planned strategy a couple of weeks after she became aware of Llona’s situation. That was the night Olivia attended—as she did once every month—-the regular meeting of the Castrators’ Defense League and made the acquaintance of Senorita Marguerita Penibita.

Olivia’s membership in the Castrator’s Defense League was a natural extension of her marriage to Archer’s cousin Mortimer. Without going into too many of the details, Mortimer was a jerk. What’s more, he was a bigoted jerk. He hated blacks, Jews, Italians, Greeks, the Irish, Orientals of every ilk, Indians--both American and Asian —Poles, Germans, and Eskimos. But most of all he was prejudiced against women. Being married to one, he naturally zeroed in on Olivia as the target of this prejudice. Pushed to the wall by daily lectures on her inferiority, Olivia joined the Castrators’ Defense League for just that—defense—self-defense.

The Castrators’ Defense League was a splinter group which had broken off from WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), an ultramilitant group in the over-all Women’s Liberation Movement which evolved from the work of Betty Friedan. To understand the position of the Castrators’ Defense League, it’s necessary to take a look at some of the in-fighting which continues to fragment the Women's Liberation Movement. In 1963, following the publication of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) dedicated to obtaining equal rights for females. In 1968, an organization calling itself Feminists broke off from NOW because they felt it wasn’t radical enough. From this initial fragmentation evolved such groups as the Redstockings, the Women’s Radical Action Project (WRAP), WITCH, and others.

WITCH is dedicated to an extremely hard line. The girls who join participate in karate classes, burn their bras, stage protests against such things as beauty contests and the Playboy philosophy, recruit topless dancers to press home their point that women have as much right to bare their chests as men do, distribute threatening handbills to men (i.e., “Watch out! You may meet a real castrating female!”) and generally take the tack that no oppressed woman can feel truly liberated until she has tasted the blood of at least one of her male oppressors. WITCH also takes an anti-sexual view, encouraging its members to eschew sexual relations with men on the grounds that the women are always-—inevitably in this male-dominated society — exploited in such erotic relationships. This has led some of WITCH’s critics to accuse the female members of Lesbianism. The charge is unfounded. They simply adopt an asexual stance until such time as they attain at least an equal degree of control (and some WITCHES insist on superior control) during the sex act.

The schism in WITCH stemmed from disagreement with two policies: castration and anti-sexuality. The dissidents claimed that while the organization talked about castration as a weapon in the struggle against male oppressors, they were doing nothing concrete to effectuate it. And they took issue with abstention as a means of fighting sexual exploitation, pointing out that Lysistrata had been written by a man who naturally took the view that sex was more important to men than to women and that women who frustrated men sexually would not be suffering as much frustration themselves. The dissidents added that WITCH was missing the point that if sex could be a weapon for exploitation in the hands of men, it could be just as effective a weapon for liberation in the hands of women. Indeed, it could be more potent since women were the superior sex. And so the dissidents left WITCH and formed the Castrators’ Defense League.

The League actively promoted two programs. It sought out cases of extreme abuse of women by men-rapes, seduction, desertions, the more outrageous acts of employment discrimination, anti-abortion actions by male legislators, etc.—tried the male perpetrators in absentia, and if they were convicted condemned them to punishment by actual physical castration. None of the punishments had yet been carried out. The League was still in the stage of training an elite group of female members to administer the punishment when the time was ripe—such time being when female America arose en masse to storm the Bastille of male domination. Meanwhile, careful dossiers were being compiled and lists kept to determine the priority on the chopping block of the gonad guillotine. (It’s interesting to note that based on Olivia's testimony, her husband Mortimer was quite high on the list—not as high, of course, as Hugh Heffner, but still rated between a surgeon famed for performing hysterectomies and a girdle manufacturer.)

The other program promulgated by the League was a training program aimed at developing a group of female commandos schooled in the use of sex as a weapon against men. (Some of the Castrators saw this as only another part of the over-all de-balling program; the psychological phase complementing the actual act of castration which would one day soon occur.) The program encouraged members to have relations with men and included such courses as “How to Subvert the Male Orgasm,” “The Queen Bee and the Drone” — a seminar on how to entice males into sexual over-exertion leading to debilitation and death-—“How to Make Oedipus Wrecks”-- a course for mothers of sons which many in the League thought superfluous—“Female Cooperation in Pitting Man Against Man”-- a study of techniques by which women cooperate in their husbands’ adulteries for the express purpose of convincing husbands and lovers that they are sexually inferior to one another—and many others similarly aimed at downgrading the male’s superior role in sex.

Once a month the Castrators’ Defense League held a general membership meeting. The purpose of the meeting was twofold: it was an opportunity for the girls to rap with one another and reinforce their anti-male attitudes and plans for revenge; and it usually featured an outside speaker who presented new tactics in the struggle for the consideration of the ladies. The speaker, that night when Olivia was still wondering how she could help Llona revenge herself against Archer, was Señorita Marguerita Penibita.

Marguerita—-she didn’t stand on formality, she told the group, and so that’s what they called her--was a most imposing figure; as a symbol of femaleness, of the superior Amazon if you will, it would have been hard to find a better one. She was a tall girl, a fraction of an inch short of six feet, with a sturdy figure that was both generous and extremely well proportioned. Her hair was very black and very long, worn in the loose-flowing style of a Spanish gypsy—-which in one sense she was. Her skin was startlingly white with a translucent quality, the whiteness relieved only by the color of her lips——an almost purple-red, as if stained by wine-grapes—and two natural spots of color on her cheekbones like a patina of maraschino cherry juice blending over vanilla ice cream. Her eyes were the stereotyped eyes of the Spanish dancer--which she was—-jet-black, flashing, flirty, and deadly at the same time.

She wore the low-cut, loose-fitting white blouse which is the uniform of Spanish peasant women. It was obvious-—and in keeping with the League’s anti-bra policies — that she wasn’t wearing a brassiere. It was also obvious that her breasts were very large, carried unusually high, and tipped with combination roseate nipples that were arrogant m their circumference and pointiness. Her long legs were the strong limbs of a dancer--lightly muscled, but slender and shapely. Her multi-colored skirt fell to the knee, but when she moved it billowed out to reveal strong thighs and a high, compact derriere. Its flare seemed to start with the flare of her sensual hips from her small waist.

Marguerita started out by telling her audience some basic facts about herself. She was twenty-four years old and had been born in Andalusia in southern Spain. Her family might loosely be termed Gypsies, but they were Gypsies of a very special kind, quite distinct from the run-of-the-mill Gypsies who for centuries have wandered over Spain and Portugal.

For one thing, the group to which Marguerita’s family belonged was nomad in only a limited sense. For centuries they had maintained a home base in the hills of Andalusia--unlike most Gypsy tribes, which are constantly on the move. They lived in the caves there, and Marguerita’s formative years were spent in a cave dwelling which was as much home to her as a split-level is to any American suburban child.

For another thing, the particular Gypsy tribe to which her family gave allegiance was composed of the keepers of an art form which tradition had made their exclusive possession. The art form was flamenco dancing. For centuries--nobody knows how many—-it had been passed down by the tribal families of the Andalusian caves from one generation to the next.

In the 1850s the art form was “discovered” by tourists in Spain. But the Andalusian cave dwellers refused to teach the dance to outsiders. Nor, with the passage of time, has this attitude changed. These Gypsies may, from time to time, wander far from their borders, over the face of Europe, as far as the United States, performing the flamenco for varied audiences of many nations, but the intrinsic secret of the dance has never been betrayed to an outsider. The most an Andalusian Gypsy will tell anyone not a member of the tribe is that the flamenco is unteachable because it depends on spontaneity for its uniqueness. Yet children of the tribe who are only five to six years of age seem already to have mastered many of the intricacies of the dance.

However, the claim to spontaneity being the secret of flamenco dancing is a legitimate one. The dancer — either a man or a woman—improvises the steps according to his or her mood. The improvisations take place within a framework which is incomprehensible to the outsider, but which is really a series of variations on a theme the Andalusians understand perfectly. These variations are cause for admiration, or laughter, or even tears among the Gypsies watching—reactions which themselves are beyond the understanding of the non-Andalusian onlooker.

The performers usually start out singly, although others may join in the dance as the fancy strikes them. Still, the major part of the dance is performed by one or two people. The dancers wear brilliantly colored, fanciful costumes and are accompanied by a guitarist. (The playing of flamenco guitar is an art form in itself.) The other Gypsies form a circle and clap their hands, sing, and shout in rhythm. The flamenco dance is always amorous, erotic, and highlighted by openly sexual movements and gestures. (This is in contrast to classical Spanish dancing which expresses lust and passion only by the most oblique and delicate means.)

“Mention flamenco dancing to the average American,” Marguerite told the assembled Castrators, “and to them it means José Dreko. It means stamping the foot on the floor like an angry bull. It means the no-hips of the man remaining motionless while the hands clap, and the body moves with seemingly smooth and fluid jerks. But José Dreko is not admired by the Andalusians. His flamenco is too stylized. It is basic, but it lacks spontaneity. It has been Hollywood-ized for too long. It is like the brushstroke of a copyist—the result may be an exact reproduction of a Matisse, but it lacks one thing: the genius of the original. So it is with José Dreko. To the genuine flamenco dancer he is one who has sold out. But then what can you expect? He is, after all, a man. And that is what men do best. They sell out themselves. They sell out their art. And most of all they sell out their women.

“Their women!” Marguerita snorted angrily. “In the milieu of the flamenco dancer, the truth of that role is right on the surface. The females of my tribe were considered property, chattels, nothing more. While still in my teens, I was a star performer of the group. By the time I was twenty I had performed all over Europe and in the United States. Yet I had absolutely no control over my life. All decisions were made for me by the men of the tribe. Sometimes decisions were made by booking agents and the like, who were not members of the group, but who were also men. Never did a woman -- not even my mother—have anything to say about her fate, or the fate of her children.

“The discipline was very strict; the men of Andalusia are very jealous of their women. But this is not flattering. In practice, it merely means that they feel free to use them-—yes, sexually — and exploit them and dictate to them their every movement. All through the years I traveled around the world I was forbidden to speak to any person—man or woman--who was not a member of the group. Even my food was ordered for me. Direct conversation with the waiter was forbidden!”

Marguerita’s eyes flashed with anger at remembered indignities as she continued. “Sexual exploitation! Nobody in this room is as expert on that subject as I am. From my sixteenth year, my sexual experience was ‘overseen’ by the leader of the group, a man of fifty-odd years. He was a very cruel-man and the exercise of this cruelty was very important to him in satisfying his erotic appetites. I was whipped frequently. I was subjected to all sorts of physical indignities on top of the mental indignities which were taken for granted for women in our culture. I was — of course—not allowed to have anything to do with any other males in our group.”

A half-smile crossed Marguerita’s lips. She sighed, recalling now a fleeting pleasure. “There was a boy. He was my own age. He was still too young to have developed this masculine arrogance. He worshipped me. I was attracted to him. We arranged to meet in his cabin aboard ship one night. The old man, the leader of the group, discovered us in bed. He killed the boy. Oh, yes, such things happen. The body was thrown overboard. The crime was never discovered. The boy was never missed. After all, what was one Spanish Gypsy more or less to the authorities who ran the ship? Naturally it was known within our group, but none of us would ever have dreamed of breathing a word about it to anybody else. Such was the power of the man who was our leader. And, anyway, the men of the tribe agreed that the punishment was fitting. And the women had no opinion because they were permitted to have none.”

Now Marguerita’s anger made her voice tremble. “The leader punished me too. He called me a ‘puta,’ and sold my favors for money to the other men. I was forced to submit to the caresses of the old and the fat and the foul-smelling and to perversions of the sick and the impotent. At this time I had star billing and we went on tour to the United States. I was becoming known by fans of the flamenco art. And yet when I was not on stage I was no better off than the lowest prostitute in the worst ghetto in the cities we passed through. My body was a chamber pot for the sexual waste matter of the most disgusting male organs. Every orifice was assailed and violated and desecrated nightly. Sometimes I had to submit to as many as eight or ten Gypsy men in one night. And do you know what finally put a stop to it, ladies? Do you think I simply rebelled? No! I caught the Spanish disease which, if you happen to be Spanish to start with is known as syphilis.”

Marguerita’s face was grim. “After that, the men didn’t bother me anymore. But remember, I was little more than a child. I had no idea of what to do about this disease. And neither the head of the group, nor any of the other then offered me any advice. They simply shunned me. And every night I danced . . .

“Finally one of the women whispered to me that she had heard of a place where I might be helped. A few nights later I managed to sneak out to a clinic in the city in which we were performing. Here I met the woman who changed my whole life.

“Her name doesn’t matter. She is a saint. She helped me to get medical treatment which—-fortunately-—-was obtained in time to clear my condition. Within a year I was completely cured. But more important, my benefactress-—who was a nurse — talked to me. She showed me the truehorror of my situation. She made me realize what had been done to me and who had done it. She identified the devil for me. And the devil—heed this, ladies--the devil is Man! All men!”

Marguerita paused to let it sink in. “This woman changed my life in many ways. I deserted the troupe and began to perform the flamenco on my own. I still had to deal with men, and they still tried to take advantage of me—and often succeeded--but at least I had the freedom to fight them.

“My benefactress was a member of this organization. She told me about it. She told me of how women have banded together to fight the devil. ‘Never, under any circumstances, trust a man!’ That’s what she used to say. And she was fond of paraphrasing the suffragette leader Emmeline Parkhurst, and adding that if a woman had to trust anybody, she should ‘Trust in God because She will provide!’”

There was a wave of ironic laughter and Marguerita waited for it to pass. “At first I decided to eschew any contact with men—-certainly any sexual contact. But then I began to realize I was neglecting my duty to other women, to other female victims. With my experience, sex was a weapon. I didn’t have the right not to use that weapon. As I became more deeply involved with our group, I came to appreciate that. And so I decided to come to grips with the enemy, the devil, Man, once more. Only now I would be using him, his body, and I would be using it both for my own carnal satisfaction and for the satisfaction of helping him to destroy himself. Tonight I want to pass along to you a few of the things I’ve learned since I came to this decision. I tell them to you in the hope that you may adapt them to your own purposes in the ongoing battle against the male oppressors.

“One of the first things I learned is that the language of lovemaking can itself be used as a weapon. There are certain key phrases. The male organ should always be referred to as his ‘cute little thing.’ Stress ‘little.’ All men secretly worry about being under-endowed.

“Timing is important. Sometimes it’s not so much what you say as when you say it. For instance, just after a man has had a truly explosive orgasm, the woman should ask: ‘Are you ready to come yet, darling?’ Also, when he first reveals with that typical male arrogance that he is erect, the woman should look at it with disappointment and say ‘It’s my fault; I guess I just don’t excite you.” And when making oral love, when you feel his response reaching the exploding point, you should raise your lips and deliver a non sequitur like ‘Do you think collies are so nervous because the breed has been overbred?’ or ‘Have you ever wondered just how much genetic damage cyclamates caused before they took them off the market?’

“Fear is the emotion we want to make men feel. It breaks down their confidence. In bed, fear may be engendered in many ways. Fear of consequences: as soon as the sex act is over, confess to him that you forgot to take your birth control pill that morning. Physical fear: Using both hands, grasp his scrotum firmly and question his firmest conviction. For example, if he's a Republican, tell him you think Nixon’s mining the country and when he starts to object, squeeze hard. Fear of female envelopment: As soon as the act is over, cross your legs and prevent him from withdrawing; no matter how he struggles, hold him as long as you can; when he finally pulls free, look at his mangled member pointedly and let him know that you can feel no difference between his tenancy and his vacating of the premises.

“I should point out here that having sex with a man is not the only way to wage sexual war against him. Denying him sex can be equally effective if it’s done strategically. The thing is to first tease him beyond endurance. Use all your wiles. Wear something low-cut and bend over so he can glimpse your bra-less bosom. Let your ride up just far enough so he can tell you’re wearing transparent panties. Tantalize him with perfume. Let him feel the heat of your body. Lead him on with kisses. Permit caresses. And then, at the last minute, let him know that you’re not that kind of a girl. Pant heavily as though suffused with desire, and at the same time appeal to his sense of chivalry not to deflower you. Send the poor boob off with blue balls heavy as lead. And the next day hop into the sack with his best friend and make sure the best friend tells him how great it was.

“Married men are particularly vulnerable targets. When having an affair with a married man, constant reference should be made to his wife and how you identify with her and how sorry you feel for her and how guilty you feel, and doesn’t he feel guilty too? If you work it right, no matter how unguilty he felt before, he should be filled with guilt when you finish with him. Also, if he’s older and has a daughter, keep reminding him how close in age you are to his daughter. Ask him how he'd feel if she made it with some married man. Pooh-pooh all of his protestations about how pure and sweet and virginal his daughter is.

“Sooner or later with married men, you can get down to the real dirty pool. Call him at home in the middle of the night. ‘I only did it because I miss you so much, Sam. I just couldn’t stand it, you being in bed with another woman, even if she is your wife.’ Have a friend call him at the office and say she’s a friend of his wife’s and that she saw him kanoodling with you in your favorite cocktail lounge. Or have a friend call and say her brother is your boyfriend and he’s found out this married man is making it with you and he says he’s going to kill the married man . . . and be sure that she adds her brother is an armed policeman, a former Marine who won his unit citation for pistol marksmanship. Or . . .”

In the audience, Olivia’s mind was drifting. Up to this point she’d been listening carefully, but now she tuned in and out thinking about the punishment of Archer. She thought about enlisting Marguerita’s cooperation. She mulled it over all through the rest of Marguerita’s talk. When the question and answer period which followed the talk was over, Olivia contrived to talk to Marguerita alone. She came straight to the point. “I have this girlfriend who’s been told she only has a short while to live,” she began. She went on to tell the militant Andalusian feminist the details of Archer’s infidelity and Llona’s desire to be revenged in death.

The more Olivia talked, the more intrigued Marguerita became with the situation. Her small, sharp, extremely white teeth ground together as she contemplated yet another masculine aggression perpetrated against yet another pitiable female—this one made even more pitiable by the imminence of death. When Olivia had finished, Marguerita allowed herself a small smile. “I will help,” she told Olivia. “This man shall be punished.”

“How?”

Marguerita proceeded to tell her how. Even Olivia, hardened feminist that she was, found herself shuddering as she listened to Marguerita’s diabolical scheme. For a moment she was so repelled that she almost reneged. But she remembered that this, after all, was just what Llona had said she wanted. It was the ultra in revenge. She told Marguerita she would do her part.

The following morning she did just that. She called Archer at his office. “Will you do me a favor, Archer?” she asked.

“Sure, Cousin. What is it?”

“A friend of mine needs some advice. Her name's Señorita Marguerita Penibita. She’s going to call you and —“

“Call me? Why me? What’s her problem?”

“She’ll explain. Be nice to her, Archer. She’s a very sweet person.”

“Is she?”

“Yes. You'll like her very much. I know you will. Men always do.”

“Sexy, hey?” Archer chuckled, intrigued. Momentarily, he forgot his potency problems.

“Very. I wanted to suggest that you take her out to lunch so you can discuss her problem in an informal atmosphere. Would you mind, Archer?”

“Not if she’s as sweet and sexy as you say she is. I dig Spanish señoritas.”

You bastard! Olivia’s doubts about Archer’s punishment were dispelled by Archer. You deserve anything you get! And you’re going to get plenty! “Then you'll just love Marguerita,” Olivia replied sweetly.

“Will she love me?” Archer was kidding -- but his tone said he wasn’t altogether kidding.

“She’ll love you to death,” Olivia assured him. “She’ll love you to death!”

CHAPTER NINE

“How do you know my cousin-in-law Olivia anyway?” Archer asked.

“We met at one of those women’s club things,” Marguerita told him. “You know how women are with those silly little organizations. Busy work and all that.”

“The devil doesn’t find work for busy hands,” Archer paraphrased.

“I guess it keeps a lot of women from getting into trouble,” Marguerita agreed.

“Some women don’t mind a little trouble, if you know what I mean,” Archer winked.

“I think I know what you mean.” Marguerita looked at him boldly.

They were seated in a rather dark and intime little restaurant near Archer’s office. When Marguerita had called Archer, he’d been intrigued by the throaty quality of her voice and had decided to gamble on her living up to it in person. So he’d asked her to lunch at this place where the food really wasn’t too good, but where the cocktails were generous and the corner tables small enough to force a snuggly coziness.

“You speak English remarkably well for a girl who was born and raised in Spain,” Archer observed. “You have no trace of an accent at all.”

“My people are naturally multilingual. I was brought up speaking many languages. Also I traveled a lot and I’ve spent the last few years in the United States. I don’t have to translate in my head the way many people do when not speaking in their native tongue. I think in English.”

“My cousin said you wanted to ask my advice.” Archer sipped at a martini.

“Yes.” Marguerita stared down into the olive-murked gin of the cocktail glass in front of her and managed a blush. “It’s very embarrassing. Now that I've met you, I don’t think I can tell you about it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I was expecting an older man. Someone more mature and—-umm—stodgy. What I mean is that you're an attractive man, Mr. Hornsby, young and virile, and I don’t think I-—” Marguerita’s voice trailed oft in a pretty confusion.

Archer really dug the way her cheeks burned red against the ivory skin. Also, that “young and virile” hadn‘t been lost on him. This girl really did make him feel virile again. There was something about her that dispelled his self-doubts about his sexual prowess. It had to do with her appearance, which was blatantly alluring. And it had to do with her manner, which all along had been conveying what she had just put into words: She found Archer attractive.

“Now, now. Don’t be embarrassed." Archer took her hand in his and squeezed it reassuringly. “Look on me as a friend.”

“Can a man really be a friend to a woman?” Marguerita asked, wide-eyed.

“Yes.”

“Just a friend?” She squeezed his hand.

The squeeze zipped right along Archer's erotic ganglia and caused a reassuring muscle spasm in his groin. “Tell me about your problem,” Archer said, moving just the fraction of an inch necessary to graze her thigh with his.

“I just don’t know how,” she murmured, her eyes soft and pleading as they gazed into his.

“Start at the beginning.” Archer flexed the muscle of his leg and felt an answering pressure. There was a sudden gratifying movement in his jockey shorts.

“Well,” Marguerita took a deep breath. “I suppose I’m very ignorant compared to the average American girl --”

“Ignorant?”

“About things between men and women, I mean.”

“I see.”

“Yes. Andalusians are very puritanical, you know. Young girls are kept in a state of strict innocence until they marry. All the years I traveled and did what some might consider erotic dances for audiences, I never even thought about the possibility of not remaining pure,” Marguerita lied.

“Traveled? Dances? I’m sorry, but I don’t quite -”

“I’m a professional flamenco dancer. I thought Olivia told you.”

“No. She neglected to mention it.”

“Well, I am. Do you like flamenco dancing?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve only seen Jose Dreko in the movies.”

“Then you haven’t really seen flamenco dancing. I will dance for you sometime if you’d like.”

“I’d like.”

“Soon,” Marguerita promised. “Anyway, I remained virginal well into my twenties. Until just recently, to be quite candid about it. That’s when I met Kevin.” Marguerita paused, sipped at her drink, and swallowed hard. She seemed to have difficulty in continuing.

“Go on.” Archer put a sympathetic arm around her and squeezed her shoulders. “What about Kevin?”

“He had been studying for the priesthood. But he had no real call. He faced that before he took his vows and dropped out. So you see, when I met him, he was just as virginal as I was. He had no experience. In matters having to do with men and women he was probably the most innocent twenty-odd-year-old man you could find.”

“What happened?”

“We fell in love,” Marguerite? told him simply. “We still are in love.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Sex.” Marguerite nibbled on her grape-tinted lips, conveying more embarrassment.

“Ahh yes.” Archer pulled her head to his shoulder and stroked her hair reassuringly. “You can tell me about it,” he crooned, a younger Bing Crosby playing the sympathetic friend.

“I have to tell you about it. You’re the only one with the -- what do they call it?—expertise-—with the expertise to advise me.”

“I am?” Archer didn’t quite understand that.

“Yes. Because of your business.”

“My business?”

“Yes. Your cousin told me that you are involved with—with—with—you know, those things men use to—to--to--for making sure the girl doesn’t get pregnant.” Marguerita blurted the last phrase out and then hid her face in her hands.

“Now you mustn’t upset yourself,” Archer soothed her. “There’s nothing wrong with talking about these things. It’s true my work is concerned with male contraceptive devices. What is it that concerns you about them?”

“Kevin doesn’t seem to know how to--how to—-”

“How to use them?”

“Yes. It’s terrible. It’s destroying his confidence in himself. It’s ruining sex for us.”

“What exactly seems to be the trouble?”

“Kevin thinks he’s built too small. Abnormally small.”

“Is he?”

“I have no basis for judgment. I don’t care if he is. I love him.”

“Many men are concerned about being too small when they’re really quite average.”

“I don’t know. I think maybe he is small. But if he is, then I am too. What I mean is that we seem to — umm — to—to fit all right together.”

“Then why worry?”

“The contraceptive . . . that’s what worries us. Kevin can’t put it on. It doesn’t fit all the way."

“Oh! I see!” Archer stifled a chuckle. “You mean he's been trying to unroll it to its full size and then put it on?”

“Yes. Isn’t that right?”

“No. It’s simply supposed to unroll to the size of his organ. And it’s not supposed to be unrolled first and then put on. It’s supposed to be unrolled right onto the organ itself.”

“Oh, dear. It sounds awfully confusing. And we're so afraid. You see, when we make love, it always seems to come off. We find it in the damnedest places. I can’t tell you--” Marguerita was positively squirming with embarrassment now.

“You lose it because Kevin isn’t putting it on the right way and probably isn’t using it right after it’s on.”

“What do you mean?”

“It isn’t something I can really explain,” Archer told her. “I’d have to demonstrate it.” His mind had been racing up to this point. He’d thought of raising the question of alternative methods of contraception—diaphragm, the pill, etc.-—but he really didn’t want to solve Marguerita’s problem too easily. He certainly didn’t want to solve it in a way that would hinder his own chance of seducing her.

Marguerita recognized exactly where he was at. Her face didn’t reveal it, but the smile she was smiling at herself was smug and sadistic. So far everything was working out exactly according to the plan she’d outlined to Olivia. And now it was time to move into phase two of that plan. “Demonstrate it?” she asked with feigned innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I’d have to show you how to use it properly.”

“You mean you’d show Kevin and me? That’s terribly nice of you!” Marguerita really enjoyed watching him squirm at her having brought Kevin into the picture.

“Well—-Uh—that’s not exactly—-You see, I feel that you and I have this rapport and so while I wouldn’t mind--” Archer took a deep breath and composed himself. “The truth is I’d rather Kevin wasn’t present. I’d feel like some kind of an exhibitionist, a pervert, see what I mean? But I wouldn’t mind showing you, and then you could show Kevin. How would that be?”

“I think that would be terribly, terribly kind of you. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Shucks.” — It was a word Archer had picked up from Shirley Simpell. -- “I’ll be glad to be of service."

They arranged for Archer to come to Marguerita’s hotel that evening for the “demonstration.” They finished their lunch, talking of other things, and then Archer paid the check. They parted in front of the restaurant and Archer watched Marguerita walking down the street, drawing stares with her fabulous legs and delectable derriere jiggling under her miniskirt. Man! He could hardly wait. He just knew that this time it was going to work and that would be just the treatment the doctor ordered!

When she’d rounded the corner and was out of sight of Archer, Marguerita sought out the first telephone booth and called Olivia. She told Olivia that everything was proceeding according to plan and outlined once again what was going to happen that evening. When Marguerita hung up, Olivia called Llona and reiterated what Marguerita had told her.

Llona was appalled. She’d forgotten all about Olivia. It had never occurred to her that Olivia would go ahead on her own and arrange Archer’s punishment without consulting her further. Llona had been too busy changing her mind, deciding she didn’t want revenge on Archer, figuring out ways of finding a suitable mate for him to take her place after she was gone. And certainly she’d never have okayed the heinous punishment Marguerita was going to inflict on Archer.

Llona tried to tell Olivia all this. But Olivia wasn’t receptive. Llona might have changed her mind, but Olivia hadn’t. She owed something to the Castrators’ Defense League. She owed loyalty to Marguerita. Nothing had changed. Archer was still the same guilty devil he’d been before. Olivia refused to intervene. All Llona’s pleas were to no avail. Archer’s punishment would take place as scheduled.

It had been contrived so that Llona might view the finale of it. But there was no way she could stop it. She didn’t even know Marguerita’s name, or what she looked like. There was no way she could save Archer.

The “innocent” victim arrived at Marguerita’s hotel on schedule. The lobby was pandemonium. It was filled with well-dressed, shrill-voiced, cackling, elbowing women.

“Archer! What are you doing here?”

The voice at his elbow brought him up short. He turned around to find Shirley Simpell looking up at him. “I have a business appointment,” he improvised. “What’s going on? Where did all these women come from?”

“It’s an all-state DAR convention. All these ladies are Daughters of the American Revolution.”

“They look more like relics of the American Revolution. Present company excepted, of course.”

“That’s just what I’d expected from a Red dupe like you!” Shirley turned on her heel and walked away from him.

Archer elbowed his way through the crowd of women to the wide staircase. He walked up the one flight to the mezzanine floor where Marguerita’s room was located. As he waited for her to answer his knock, he wondered why the devil she'd chosen to stay at a hotel where a convention was in progress and why she’d taken a room on one of the lower floors where the noise level would be so great. He decided she probably just didn’t know any better. He was wrong, of course. Marguerita had selected both the hotel and the room very carefully. She had known exactly what she was doing. And she had known why she was doing it -- which was something Archer didn't know.

“Mr. Hornsby. Please come in.” She opened the door wide and received him with a flourish of hospitality.

Archer entered and turned to face her as she closed the door behind him. The curtains were drawn and the room was lit by a couple of small lamps. As Marguerita crossed between Archer and one of the lamps, he gasped.

She was wearing a low-cut white peasant blouse and a multi-colored skirt which reached to her knees. The skirt flared out even with the few steps she took to cross over to him. It was made of the very thin silken material favored by flamenco dancers. The lamplight rendered both blouse and skirt transparent and revealed that Marguerita was wearing absolutely nothing beneath them. Thus Archer’s gasp.

“It’s so very kind of you to come here and help me with my problem, ” she told Archer.

“I think maybe you’re going to be able to help me with a little problem of my own,” Archer replied.

“Oh? And what would that be, Mr. Hornsby?”

“It’s not important . . . And why don’t you call me Archer, Marguerita?”

“All right, Archer.” Marguerita went over to a small, portable record player and turned it on. The record was already in place. “I remember you said you’d never seen a real flamenco dancer.”

She smiled at him. “And so I thought that to show my appreciation for the favor you’re doing me, I’d give you a demonstration of the art.” Slow and soft, the strains of a flamenco guitar became audible. Only the strum, the strong beat behind the melody, hinted at the extent to which the tempo would eventually build. “Sit down and relax.” Marguerita motioned him to an armchair. When he complied, she raised her hands over her head and clapped them together very slowly, picking up the beat.

At first Marguerita’s hands were the only part of her body that moved. The arms stretched over her head, however, pulled the material of her blouse tight over her breasts and Archer found himself staring at the outline of the wide roseates and pointy nipples and missing the artistry of her hand-clapping. But when she lowered her arms slightly and started snapping her fingers instead of clapping her hands together, he refocused to take in her entire figure.

Calculatedly, Marguerita used the lamplight to teasing advantage. She stayed in front of it for only a split second at a time, but she crossed often enough for Archer to become excited by the glimpses of the luxurious ebony triangle seen through the skirt at the juncture of her rip- pling thighs. Still her movements remained quite slow. The skirt flared slightly. Her hips and breasts and derriere moved subtly under the material of blouse and skirt, promising much, but as yet revealing only a little.

The tempo of the guitar speeded up and Marguerita’s movements began to flow more freely. Balanced firmly on one leg, she stamped the other one, bending the knee and sliding forward toward Archer, her hands sliding the material of the skirt up her thigh so that it flared out from one cheek of her buttocks, revealing the tantalizing vibrations of the firm flesh. Slowly, she pirouetted in this fashion, her outstretched leg almost parallel to the floor, her head thrown back, long black hair cascading over her shoulders, breasts expanding more noticeably now with the controlled energy she expended.

Archer licked his lips and continued staring. Momentarily she returned his stare, a hostile look, almost a snarl, half the traditional sexual aggression of the flamenco dancer—-the erotic contempt of the participant for the non-participant—and half the hatred for men which Marguerita felt. Archer, however, took the expression as part of the performance. He reacted to its sexuality without comprehending its very real hostility.

His reaction became so manifest that Marguerita could see it. The noticeable bulge spurred her on to greater activity. The music was quite fast now, wild and abandoned as only a flamenco guitar can be.

She straightened up and threw her head back. Her hands traveled insinuatingly up and down the length of her body. That she enjoyed this erotic maneuver was obvious. Her hands moved faster and faster, nails digging into her thighs and hips, palms clutching her breasts, kneading the nipples, pushing them up until they were almost—but never quite-—free of the low-cut peasant blouse.

Both her hands fastened on the hem of the skirt and she spun about several times, very quickly. Archer gasped at the revelation of her naked buttocks as the skirt flared out from them. He bit his lip as she raised and lowered the skirt in front to reveal and conceal the lush growth of her pubic mane.

The music slowed abruptly. The melody all but faded away. The strong bass beat took precedence, loud, insistent, pounding almost like a drum, basic in its sensual thrum. Marguerita stood in one spot and responded to it. Her whole body moved and rippled sensually. The peasant blouse slipped from one shoulder, and then from the breast itself, leaving it bare. She seemed not to notice. The ivory globe seemed to ripple and move with a life of its own. The cherry roseate widened and almost seemed to roughen in texture as though the pores were opening to breathe. The purplish nipple arched toward the ceiling and seemed almost to be straining to escape the flesh of the hard-panting breast. Archer’s hands began to sweat with the effort of restraining himself from reaching out to grab the naked breast.

Still standing in one spot, Marguerita’s feet began to move like castanets. The skirt billowed up and down. The blouse worked free from where it was tucked into the skirt and hung loose. The waistband of the skirt hiked up on one side and slid down on the other, revealing a naked hip moving frenziedly, and then the rounded top of one buttock, which looked as if it had been caught in a mid-orgasm all its own.

A patina of perspiration, a light, sensual dew, covered Marguerita’s flesh now. It heightened the erotic appeal immeasurably. It was as if her slippery thighs, the gateway to her femaleness, had been oiled for easy access. It was as if her naked breast had been lightly coated with honey, just begging to be licked away. Contemplating this, Archer all but choked on his tongue.

The melody filled in the spaces of the beat now and grew louder. The music was building to its climax. Marguerita abandoned all restraint. Her ivory body, red-teated, purple-nippled, ebony-curled, sex-sweated, moved as if in the throes of an uncontrollable—-almost unbearable—seizure. Its erotic parts seemed to jerk every which way at once, and yet she never lost the beat, never departed from the flamenco rhythm, and the series of spasms melted into the fluidity of the dance in such a way that the seeming lack of control of individual movements became a quite strict control over the total effect.

Archer’s eyes darted over her body now. He focused and refocused, drinking in the whole, zeroing in on a hard nipple, a pink-glowing nether-cheek, a wine-colored clitoris peeping from ebony shrubbery and then retreating. He was forced to sit with his legs apart, and his excitation was such that he didn’t even think of trying to hide it.

Marguerita spun wildly with the crescendo of the music and with the last strum she seemed to release the energy of her body the way a taut bowstring is released, with a sudden twang of collapse that left her stretched and panting on her back across Archer’s knees. He couldn’t tell whether she had fallen there deliberately, or if her exhaustion had been so great that she had simply collapsed and sprawled over his lap by accident. Archer didn’t dwell. on the question. One of his hands fell on her naked breast and the other atop her skirt where the material clung to the ebony triangle. His mouth was on hers before she had a chance to get her breath.

Throughout the long, deep kiss, however, Marguerita was far from being in as mindless and animalistically passionate a state as she seemed to be. Her exertions had tired her, but they hadn’t exhausted her. She was used to expending great amounts of energy when she danced. And this time she had made sure to conserve enough to leave her mind free to carry on with the plan she had evolved for Archer’s punishment.

When the kiss was over, she pushed Archer’s hands away gently and removed herself from his lap. She stood up and adjusted her blouse so that her breast was covered. She was quite calm. It was as if Archer hadn’t made a pass at her and she hadn’t responded. Archer was confused—just as she’d meant him to be.

“So now you’ve seen a genuine flamenco dance.” She walked across the room and turned off the phonograph. “What did you think of it?”

“Magnificent.” Archer became aware of the tent of his trousers and was momentarily embarrassed.

“I can see that you liked it.” She stared at his clasped hands which were trying in vain to conceal his arousal. “But now, if you don’t mind, I think we should get to the reason for your coming here.” She crossed over to a bureau and took out a small package of male contraceptives and held them up for him to see.

“I don’t mind.” Archer’s heart was beating very fast. He knew, beyond question, that at last his problem was licked — or would be very soon now.

“This is the brand your company puts out? I did get the right kind, didn’t I?”

“That’s it. The best brand on the market.” Archer swelled with pride in the Company.

Noting the additional swelling, Marguerita squelched the impulse to smile. Casually, she leaned the hand holding the packet of contraceptives on the radiator. You smug, lecherous, male bastard, she was thinking. Oh, you're going to get what you’re slavering for, all right! And a little more! A little something that you didn’t bargain for! “Then will you show me now the proper way to use it?” she asked aloud. “So I can show my lover Kevin.”

“Sure. But you’ll have to cooperate.” Archer decided that if he wasn't going to be able to make love to her spontaneously, as a natural outgrowth of the excitement brought on by the dance, then he’d work it out calculatedly. But he was going to make love to her! Of that he was sure!

“Cooperate?” Marguerita removed the packet of contraceptives from the proximity of the radiator and crossed over to him. “How?” she asked with a wide-eyed innocence behind which lay both amazement and contempt at Archer’s easy acceptance of it. That old folklore is true, she reflected. The aroused male sex organ has no brains! “How can I cooperate?”

“Umm . . . Well, you see, in order to put the contraceptive on, the organ must be in a state of excitation. An outside stimulus is required to keep it in that state. That’s where you come in. You’re the outside stimulus.”

“It doesn’t look like an outside stimulus is needed.” She stared at his lap.

“You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“Can’t you provide your own stimulus?”

“Maybe some men can. But they’re onanists. That’s not my bag.”

“Never?”

“Well . . . Hardly ever . . . And since you are here, there's no need. Is there?”

“I guess not. What is it you want me to do?”

“Well. .. Uhh ... Well .. . Uhh ... Well, just be sexy, you know. Do sexy things.”

“Like this?” Marguerita slowly raised her skirt and lowered it. “Or this?” She pushed one of her breasts up out of her blouse and licked the nipple with her tongue.

“That’s very good,” Archer groaned, reaching to unzip his fly. “But maybe more direct contact . . . ”

“Oh, I see what you mean.” Marguerita reached inside his pants and gently stroked him. “Like this!”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! That’s it. Faster . . . Ahh . . . ”

“I'd better stop now,” Marguerita murmured. “Or else you'll . . . you know . . . and then you won’t be able to show me . . . ”

“I suppose you’re right,” Archer panted. “Well, I think I can show you now. If you’ll hand me one of the — uhh -- devices."

“All right.” Very carefully, Marguerita selected one of the rolled-up contraceptives and handed it to him.

Archer removed the wrapper. “Now watch carefully. Starting at the tip, it should be unrolled slowly, smoothing it as you go so that there are no Later, you see, in the act itself, wrinkles can be abrasive and that can be a distraction. Now you unroll it to the base, like this. And you’ll notice there is an excess which doesn’t unroll. The contraceptive is always made larger than the organ.”

“I see. That's where Kevin was confused. He really isn’t undersized. But he certainly isn’t as large as you are.” Marguerita made her black eyes go very wide as if she was tremendously impressed.

"Now as to the proper way to use it —” Archer had her hand and was tugging her toward him. He was already reaching under her skirt.

“Wait a minute.” She pulled free without seeming to make an issue of it.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just want to make sure I’ve got it absolutely right.” Making it a caress, Marguerita reached down and pulled off the condom. She stroked him for a moment, and then reached into the small packet for another contraceptive. For some reason the one she fished out didn’t seem to be what she wanted. She tossed it aside and took the remaining one from the box.

Marguerita removed the wrapper very carefully and knelt in front of Archer. His organ was quivering like a tuning-fork. Slowly, and with infinite care, she rolled on the condom. “Is that right?” she inquired sweetly, keeping a firm grip on the unrolled portion at the base of his manhood.

“That’s right,” Archer moaned, squeezing the muscles of his thighs and buttocks to keep from releasing his passion prematurely.

“This has been awfully kind of you.” Marguerita stood up. “But there is one other problem that Kevin and I have. I hate to presume on your time anymore. But I wonder-—”

“That’s all right!” Archer panted. “Anything to be of service!”

“Well, we always seem to have this problem of losing the thing while we’re making love. I wonder if —”

“Absolutely!” Archer ripped her skirt off with one violent motion and pulled her down on him. “But not like this,” she protested. “I mean, if it’s going to be meaningful in my future relations with Kevin, we should do it the way Kevin and I always do it.”

“Any way you say! Any way you say! Only let’s hurry! I don’t know if I can hold --”

“Like this then.” Keeping a firm grip on his manhood, Marguerita led him across the room to the wall. Here she turned and faced him, bending her knees with her thighs wide apart. She dug her nails into his buttocks, drawing him to her. As soon as she felt the desired contact, she locked her hands around his neck and jumped lightly so that her knees were secured around his hips and she wasn’t touching the floor.

Archer supported her plump, burning buttocks with both his hands. Her back and shoulders bounced against the wall as he pounded her. Marguerita reached behind her and between his arms with one hand and hooked her fingers in the rolled rim of the condom. Seemingly, she was only heightening his excitement by stroking his testicles. But actually she was making sure that the contraceptive remained firmly in place.

“That’s it!" Archer strained breathlessly. “You hold it in place! That leaves the man-—Kevin, me-—free to do it right. Ahh ... Ahh ... Ahh ... AHH!!!...”

“OOOHHH!” Marguerita responded in kind.

With one last, mighty lunge from Archer, one tight, corkscrew spasm from Marguerita, they attained the pinnacle of their passion with such ferocity that they knocked loose some of the plaster from the wall against which they were propped. When it was over, they crumpled to the floor together. After a moment, Marguerita reached out and smoothed the contraceptive. “I see how,” she said. “It’s still in place. All I have to do is remember to hold on to it while we’re making love — Kevin and I, I mean.”

“That’s all,” Archer panted. He reached down and started to remove the device.

“Don’t do that here!” Marguerita’s voice was unusually sharp. “Please.” Her tone softened a little, but it was still quite firm. “You’ll make a mess. Take it off in the bathroom.”

“All right.” Archer shrugged. He didn’t really like the way she seemed to be ordering him around. But he was too happy at having finally overcome his impotence to bother taking umbrage. He got to his feet and started toward one of the doors across the room.

“Not that one,” Marguerita told him. “That leads out to the balcony. The other door is the bathroom.”

Archer shrugged again and went out the other door. Before it had even closed behind him, Marguerita had leaped to her feet, slammed the door through which he’d gone, and bolted it. She ignored the pounding from the other side. Quickly, she slipped into her skirt, blouse, and shoes. She grabbed up a suitcase which was already packed and waiting and left the room at a hurried pace.

Half running down the staircase to the lobby, she paused for only an instant at the bottom to look through an archway at the growing commotion beyond. Beyond the archway was a large interior courtyard of the hotel. Several tables had been set up here to accommodate a dinner for the ladies attending the DAR convention. The dinner was in progress.

Or, rather, the dinner had been in progress before Archer's sudden appearance on one of the mezzanine balconies overlooking the courtyard. Each of the rooms on the mezzanine had such a balcony, each separated by a few feet from the balcony of the room next to it. Now Archer stood there stark naked-—save for the contraceptive still limply affixed to his member.

Initially, his appearance might have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t reacted so loudly to his discovery of his predicament. But his pounding on the door and shouts to Marguerita to let him back into the room had attracted the DAR ladies’ attention. And now there were shrieks of pandemonium at the sight of his naked body dancing in panic on the balcony overlooking them.

As the waves of their reaction swept over him, Archer was immobilized by his panic. He stood frozen, rooted to the spot, his jaw hanging open, only his eyes moving, rolling wildly, yet managing to focus on one or another of the outraged faces screaming up at him. He saw Shirley Simpell shaking her fist. He saw Olivia smiling with sadistic satisfaction. And he saw Llona beside Olivia, Llona, his wife, with her face contorted more with fear and apprehension than shock.

Llona’s reaction stemmed from the same knowledge which propelled Marguerita from the scene, out of the hotel, into a taxicab to the airport where a plane would take her out of this city, never to return. Marguerita had good reason to flee. Any second now the exclamation point would be put to her diabolical scheme. Any second now Archer's punishment would be horrifyingly executed.

The exclamation point, the final punishment, had been attached to Archer from the moment Marguerita had rolled on the contraceptive. Archer didn’t know it, but within the unrolled portion of that condom, still adhering to the base of his manhood as he stared naked from the balcony, was a very special chemical paste which was of itself a powerful explosive device. Marguerita had used it sparingly. She didn’t want to blow up the hotel. She didn’t even want to kill Archer. All she wanted to do was explode his manhood!

The explosive would only go off when it cooled. Heat kept it in a dormant state. That’s why Marguerita had held the box of contraceptives over the radiator. She had known that the body heat generated while they were making love would keep it from going off prematurely. She also knew that as passion cools, so does body temperature. At a certain point in this cooling process, the explosive would detonate and Archer’s gonads would be blasted apart.

Standing on the balcony, Archer shivered. It was partly humiliation and partly the breeze in the courtyard, but he was suddenly aware of how cold he felt. Every part of his body seemed chilled. Even the most private parts. It never occurred to him to throw the contraceptive. He had no idea, of course, that it was a genital bomb. Besides, it wasn’t much but it was the only thing between him and the coldness.

So he simply stood there, frozen to the spot and freezing, a naked man, embarrassed, with the reason for his embarrassment about to be exploded from the rest of his body! Proof positive, fellas, that the little Liberation ladies aren’t fooling!

CHAPTER TEN

PEACENIKS BOMB

DAR CONVENTION

Last night’s gala convention dinner held by members of the Daughters of the American Revolution chapters across the state was thrown into pandemonium when a bomb was exploded by militant radical hippies, according to a confidential police source. Policemen attached to the special Department Bomb Squad rushed to the main courtyard of the Midwest Riviera Hotel within moments after the explosive device was detonated. Here they interviewed the female victims of the explosion, many of whom were still in a condition of shock, and pieced together the following story:

Shortly after eight p.m., as the DAR ladies were starting on the main course of their dinner -- a choice between Yankee Pot Roast and Southern Fried Chicken — a man appeared on one of the mezzanine balconies overlooking the area where the dinner was being held. The man was completely nude. (Police point out that this is a typical diversionary tactic employed by Yippies and other militant peace radicals, the idea being to cause maximum confusion and thereby increasing the effectiveness of the major action.) The DAR ladies were greatly shocked and agitated by the man’s unclothed appearance. Accounts of what followed vary greatly. It is unclear as to whether the man on the balcony was joined by a co-conspirator who threw the bomb, or whether he actually threw it himself and his cohort simply appeared in an endeavor to help him make his escape. In any case, it seems sure that the bomb was thrown from the balcony. It landed in a brandy punchbowl which was already flaming. According to police, this greatly increased the effectiveness of the device. The brandy was extremely inflammable and flames spewed out over the room. (Police say that the device of itself would have caused far less damage.) The DAR ladies fled the area screaming. Nobody was seriously injured, but the hotel suffered a still un-estimated amount of property damage and many of the ladies had their garments torn in the crush caused by the exodus. Some of them were blackened by the smoke resulting from the fire.

One lady whose face was blackened was Mrs. Shirley Simpell of this city. It was she who later identified the alleged bomber to the police as Mr. Archer Hornsby, a junior executive with a local drug concern. Mrs. Simpell also alleged that Mr. Hornsby’s wife Llona was a party to the crime. Police arrested Mr. and Mrs. Hornsby and subsequently they were released after posting bail.

It has been established that both of the accused are active in the local anti-war movement. Mrs. Simpell, in a later statement issued to the press, said that Mrs. Hornsby had tried to pull down a large American flag, a banner which had been draped from several of the mezzanine balconies to within about six feet of the floor below. (Investigation shows that this banner had indeed been ripped and torn to the point of desecration.) Mrs. Simpell further characterized the Hornsbys as “dangerous anarchists who will stop at nothing to overthrow everything this country means to decent people.” The Hornsbys refused to comment on the charges against them, or on Mrs. Simpell’s statement.

When Llona had finished reading the carryover on the front-page article, she flung the newspaper down with disgust. “The nerve of them!” she said hotly. “They make it sound like I ripped up that American flag on purpose!”

“Well, everything was pretty confused,” Archer replied. “I guess maybe it looked like that to some people.”

“Like your friend Shirley Simpell?” L1ona’s voice was overgranulated sugar, lumpy with sascasm.

Archer didn’t reply. He didn’t want to hassle with Llona. He felt guilty enough. She hadn’t asked for any explanations-—-yet. If she did, he didn’t know what he could say. He'd been caught—-literally--with his pants down. There would be no talking his way out of that.

More than that, Archer was really worried about the predicament they were in with the law. They’d been arrested pretty much on Shirley Simpell’s say-so, but he knew that as the oops continued their investigation they’d undoubtedly come up with evidence that would look pretty damaging in a court of law. They might even end up in jail! Archer wracked his brain for some way to alleviate that possibility.

Their legal predicament didn't bother Llona as much as it did Archer. The reason it didn’t was something of which he was still innocent. Llona was aware of the fact that the wheels of justice grind exceeding slow. She figured that by the time they actually came up for trial, she’d be dead.

It wasn't that she was unconcerned about Archer. She was concerned about him, but her feelings were mixed. On the one hand she didn’t want to mete out a lifelong punishment to him anymore. On the other, she thought a few months in jail-—certainly no more than a year -- might teach him a well-deserved lesson. Also, the fact of her death, of his being a recent widower, would undoubtedly get him the kind of sympathy which would result in a mitigation of his sentence.

No, her most pressing problem wasn’t the possibility of going to jail. It was the same problem she’d had right along. It was the problem of lining up a proper wife for Archer to replace her after her demise.

“One thing I really don’t understand-—” Archer’s mind had veered away from finding some means of avoiding a jailhouse future to a puzzled consideration of the recent past. “—- What were you doing at that DAR convention anyway?”

“I went there to save you from a fate worse than death--if I could—a feat I was by no means sure I could accomplish before the fact.”

“But how did you know I’d be there?”

“I have ways of knowing things.” Llona was evasive. She had no intention of telling him about Olivia and her role in arranging his punishment as a favor to Llona.

“How did you know that condom was really a time-bomb set to go off?”

“Don't ask so many questions!” A little nastiness became discernible in L1ona’s tone. “Or I’m liable to start asking some myself. Like what were you doing naked on that balcony with a used contraceptive? And just exactly what gives Shirley Simpell the right to be so vindictive?”

“It’s political with her.”

“You know damn well it’s more than that. But let’s just drop it, Archer. Let’s drop it before I start saying some truths that are better left unsaid at this stage of the game.”

“Okay. I guess you’re right!”

“You know damn well I'm right!”

“All the same, Llona, I want you to know I appreciate what you did. You know, when I saw you jump for that flag and pull youself up on it to the balcony, the way you were ripping and clawing with that frantic look on your face, I thought you were coming after me. I never thought you were really trying to save me. And when you grabbed for my equipment the way you did, I was sure you were trying to castrate me. Boy, was I ever surprised when you just yanked off that condom and flung it away and it exploded the way it did.”

“In the brandy bowl!” Llona giggled. “That sure was one hell of an explosion, wasn't it.”

“The way those DAR broads stampeded, it was like the shot heard ’round the world, like they just heard the British were coming.” Archer laughed with her.

But neither one of them laughed for long. Nor did their momentary togetherness last. They drifted back into the apartness which had become their lifestyle these last few months.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Pickle Finger of Fate had started its upward jab, the trek of the goose, shortly after the incident at the DAR dinner. At that time, Llona was filling out the COMP-U-MATE questionnaire. Archer was marshalling his energies to overcome the legal predicament he was in because of the explosion at the dinner. At a five-and-ten cent store in a small, rural Mississippi town, Rufus Blisternape, who had no children, was testing out yo-yos before selecting one to buy. Who is Rufus Blisternape? The Fickle Finger of Fate!

After due reflection, Archer had come to the conclusion that the key person in his trouble with the law was Shirley Simpell. It was she who had signed the complaint against him and Llona. It was her evidence which was most damning to them in the eyes of the police. It was Shirley more than anybody else who was rewriting the explosion -—which in some ways really had been an accident —to look like a plot fostered by the “Commie-controlled, subversive peace movement.”

Thinking about it, Archer decided that there might be psychological reasons, ulterior in nature, if not in intent, behind Shirley’s vehemence. The fiasco of the last time they’d tried to make love, he hypothesized, must have hit her, at some level, as a personal rejection. And it was this she was out to revenge, rather than the punishment for subversion she seemed to bi seeking on the surface.

If that was so, Archer concluded, the only way to turn her off was to regain her affections. So he set about to re-woo her. He launched an all-out campaign toward that goal.

He called Shirley. She hung up on him. He wrote her. She returned the letters unanswered. He rang her doorbell. She slammed the door in his face. He rang again. She sent her husband to answer it. The husband was a nine-foot-tall, ten-ton piledriver with atomic energy by Con Ed and HOSTILE stamped on his forehead. Archer fled.

But he didn’t give up. He simply took the precaution of checking up to find out when her husband left on his next out-of-town business trip. Such trips had always been frequent, so Archer didn’t have long to wait. When he was sure Mr. Simpell was safely out-of-state, Archer resumed his campaign.

Right about then, Rufus Blisternape was “walking the dog” with his yo-yo. Mrs. Rufus Blisternape, Cora Sue, was cursing him out for wasting his time with the yo-yo when he could have been out chopping cotton and earning maybe three dollars for the day which, coincidentally, was the price of that sexy cotton sundress she’d set her heart on in the Sears catalogue. Rufus kept “walking the dog,” giggled silently and lewdly to himself at the way her tits bounced when she was het up, but ignored her nagging.

The Fickle Finger jabs, and having jabbed, reams on . . . to the supermarket where she was handing out leaflets demanding the Attorney General Mitchell be impeached because he was “soft on Communist peaceniks.” The confrontation was far from satisfactory from Archer’s standpoint. But he supposed it was a beginning.

“Relationship . . . rapport . . . flesh-fitting-flesh . . . not going to let you destroy what we have . . . can’t throw it away . . . made for each other . . . ” Etcetera, etcetera . . . Archer said all the things a lover says when he’s trying to keep a good thing going with his turned-off inamorata.

“Anarchist bombs . . . chaos . . . Commie plot . . . decadent radical sapping of sexual energies . . . Marxist impotency . . . effete Eastern establishment . . . ” Etcetera, etcetera . . . Shirley was into her thing

“Politics . . . Intellectualism . . . Meaningless . . . body chemistry! . . . when we touch each other . . . ” Archer grabbed for a sweatened breast and a tweed-covered buttock. "

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!” Shirley bellowed.

A cop in a nearby bookie parlor dropped his daily payoff and jumped toward the sound. Two police cars, sirens screaming, raced toward the scene from opposite ends of the street and collided. A firehouse a few blocks away spewed forth men and trucks. Helicopters spun toward the supermarket like gyroscopes in the pull of some irresistible gravitational force. The early warning system at the Air Force base sounded Red Alert. Local civil defense officials scurried for their fallout-shelter cellars. The local boy scout bugle corps sounded out the call to battle stations. The ASPCA gassed thirty-seven kittens and then burned its records. The Navy’s nuclear subs headed for a preselected spot under the polar icecaps. Three IBM computers self-destructed. Bell Telephone suspended all but official, top priority service. Abbie Hoffman called up Bobby Seale, shook his fist, and said “Right on!”

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!…” The echo lasted a long time.

Archer dropped the breast and released the buttock. Archer turned and walked away from Shirley. If she was going to be like that . . . Obviously the time was not yet propitious. But he didn’t give up as he departed the scene. If at first you don’t succeed . . .

One day passed. Mr. Simpell was winging southward to make his second business call. Cora Sue Blisternape was brooding over her bad luck at having married a man who’d been a celebrity (Rufus had won the statewide yo-yo contest—“WHITES ONLY”—-three years back and his picture had been on the second page of the local weekly newspaper.) but who was now a has-been, a has-been who didn’t go out to earn the money to buy her the pretty things she’d thought she'd have when she married a celebrity, a has-been who was even more interested in playing with his yo-yo than in licking her honeypot the way he used to be so eager to do before they were married. Cora Sue sure liked having her honeypot licked! She got itchy as a ’skeeter bayou just thinking about it! Well, if Rufus would rather swing his string, then she guessed she’d just have to find some other stud with a sweet-tooth tongue! Rufus Blisternape just went on practicing figure-eights with his yo-yo.

And the Fickle Finger soared tookus-wards . . .

Archer popped up in the back seat of Shirley’s car as she pulled away from the DAR meeting. “Even though that wasn’t a very nice thing to do, screaming like that, I just want you to know I still love you," he told her.

“Get out of my car!” She hit the brake so hard he was thrown into the front seat.

There was a tangle of arms and legs. “Peace,” Archer murmured.

“Jeepers!” Shirley’s resistance wavered as Archer’s head wedged high under her skirt.

“It’s bigger than both of us!” Archer’s voice was muffled.

“Golly gee!” Shirley started to quiver. “Keep talking!”

“I gadt. I dod odd oddy gadt dawg, I gadt ebed breadg!”

“Holy cow!” Shirley panted. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m suffocating!” Archer’s head came up gulping air.

“Degenerate Communist eunuch!” Shirley immediately regained her antagonism. “You're not even a man! Gloryosky! This is the second time! Get out of my car and leave me alone!” She opened the door, braced her foot against Archer’s groin and propelled him from the car. “I’m a respectable married woman!” she called back indignantly as she drove away and left him sprawled and writhing in the gutter.

“Right wing bitch!” Archer moaned . . .

Another day passed. Mr. Simpell had rented a car and was making a series of local stops in the heartland of Dixie. Cora Sue Blisternape, drenched in perfume, was miniskirting her way from one roadhouse to the next, looking for some non-yo-yo action. Rufus Blisternape was perfecting a new yo-yo routine which he called “The Spiro Spiral," or “Lynch ‘N’ Order.”

The Fickle Finger was probing flesh . . .

Archer was in the branches of the tree outside the second-story window of Shirley’s bedroom. When the light in the room went on, he stretched precariously across the space between the branches and the building and tapped on the pane. Shirley opened the window and peered out.

“Repulsive!” she identified Archer. “Get out of my tree, or I’ll call the police!”

“If you do, I’ll tell the whole world what we’ve meant to each other.”

“Blackmailing Pinko goop!”

“Including your husband!”

“What about your wife? Peoople in glass houses . . . ”

“I don’t care about her. It’s you I’m mad about. I’m not going to let you destroy what we have because of some silly political disagreement!”

“Dialectics!” Shirley sneered.

“If you’d just let me take you in my arms, Pm sure everything would be all right,” Archer pleaded.

“If you were a man, I might!” Shirley unwrapped a lollipop and stuck it in her mouth arrogantly.

“Give me another chance.”

Shirley removed the lollipop and licked it, thinking. Slowly her face softened. “Oh, golly;” she said finally. “All right. I’ll give you another chance.”

Archer stared at her, surprised by her sudden change of attitude. “You mean I can come in?” he asked hesitantly.

“Holy Cow! What are you waiting for?” Shirley took a particularly suggestive lick of the lollipop.

Archer crawled out as far as he could on the branch, which dipped precariously under his weight. He reached out with both arms until he had a grip on the inside edge of the windowsill with both hands. Then he unlocked his legs from the tree branch and started to swing his body over.

Immediately, and with a savage cry that was quite out of keeping with her dimpled demeanor, Shirley slammed the window down on his fingertips . . .

Two days later Mr. Simpell was pulling his rented car up to a Mississippi roadhouse, intending to have a few drinks and maybe size up the possibilities of female companionship before having his dinner. At the bar inside the roadhouse, Cora Sue Blisternape, honeypot churning, was nursing a tall gin drink and hoping some nice man would come along to buy her a refill. Half a mile away, on the riverbank, Rufus Blisternape was working out intricate patterns with his yo-yo in the dark. A little while earlier he’d painted the yo-yo with phosphorescent paint and now he was excited because if he used this gimmick creatively enough, he might be on the road to reclaiming his championship and his picture would be in the paper again and people—-maybe his wife even — would look at him like he was a celebrity and not just a bum.

Later that evening, Mr. Simpell and Cora Sue Blisternape, their intentions sealed by a large and quick amount of tall gin drinks for which Mr. Simpell had paid, unstuck their behinds from the barstools at the roadhouse, wrapped their arms around each other as much for support as in the anticipation of passion, and thigh-rubbed their way out the door. They went to Mr. Simpell’s rented car and were soon wrapped around each other with the fervor of salmon-riding centipedes struggling upstream-—which is to say their limbs were as mixed as the metaphor. But there were problems.

“This is the last goddam time I rent a goddam Volkswagen!” Mr. Simpell panted, summing up the problems.

“I know a spot not far from here . . . ” Cora Sue suggested, untangling her honeypot from the shift-stick and realizing for the first time—-and with some disappointment -- that it wasn’t what she’d been reacting like it was.

And so, a few moments later the Volkswagen stood at the riverbank while its former passengers sprawled on the grass a few yards away and frightened the fish with the unbridled outcries of their unleashed passion. Those grunts and such attracted the attention of Rufus Blisternape. Without losing the rhythm of his phosphorescently flashing yo-yo, he strolled over to investigate the sounds.

He paused at the edge of the clearing they had selected for their lovemaking. There was no mistaking his wife’s face in the moonlight. Her head was thrown back and she was yipping like a banshee with a fishbone in its throat. Rufus Blisternape knew the sound well. It was the sound she always made when the last of the honey in her honeypot was being drained. Rufus Blisternape watched for a moment, the phosphorescent yo-yo bobbing calmly, going through one smooth pattern after another, never missing an intricate finger-movement, never the slightest sign of the lack of control that makes a yo-yo jerk, or sharl.

Rufus was a real pro. This may have been his finest moment. It was too bad there was nobody there to see it.

A large cloud blotted out the moon. In the sudden darkness the phosphorescent yo-yo danced across the riverbank clearing. For a few seconds it hobbled slightly over the figures of the lovers. Cora spent her passion, her eyes cleaned, and they focused on the yo-yo. Her scream shattered the calm.

Even as she was scrambling out from under Mr. Simpell, the yo-yo was swinging smoothly into the figure of “The Spiro Spiral.” Before Mr. Simpell could turn his head, the yo-yo cord had looped around his neck and cut off the air from his windpipe. Eyes bulging, he gasped his last as Cora Sue fled screaming into the woods and Rufus calmly maneuvered the yo-yo through the movements of its dance of death.

When the dance was over, when the last spasm of after-death was over and Mr. Simpell’s body lay quite still, Rufus Blisternape relinquished control of the end of the yo-yo string and knelt over the corpse to unwind the cord from the neck it had strangled. But it wasn’t possible. The string was too deeply and firmly imbedded in the flesh to be freed of it. The intricacies of “The Spiro Spiral” simply would not lend themselves to being untangled under these circumstances.

Rufus Blisternape scowled and cut the yo-yo loose; leaving the strangler’s cord with the victim. Too bad. It meant he’d have to break in a new yo-yo. And buy more phosphorescent paint. He’d be out maybe as much as seventy-five cents. Seventy-five cents! Cora Sue was sure ’nuf going to take a whopping for that! Nodding to himself, Rufus slowly followed her down the trail leading through the woods.

And now the Fickle Finger was buried deep in its target …

The next morning Llona was lying in bed and thinking about further revenge for Archer. At that moment, a Western Union messenger was ringing Shirley Simpell’s front doorbell. She went to the door, but she made no move to open it.

“Gee whiz, Archer, don’t you ever learn?” she shouted angrily. She was wearing a housecoat and she stood in front of the closed door with her hands on her hips, her fury so great that it obscured her dimples. “If you don’t leave me alone and stay away from here, I swear I’ll shoot you and tell the police you broke in and tried to intimidate me to keep me from giving evidence against you and that I acted in self-defense! I mean it, Archer!”

The chimes ding-donged again. This time their sing-song was matched by the sing-song of the messenger caroling “Western Unionnnnnn . . . Telegrammmnnnm …”

Shirley opened the door and signed for the telegram. The messenger whistled down the walk on his way to the next delivery as she was tearing the envelope open. He was gone before she actually started to read it.

But he was replaced as Shirley’s eyes focused unbelievingly on the words of the telegram. Archer leaped from the concealment of the shrubbery beside her front stoop and confronted her. “Shirley, you’ve got to talk to me!” he pleaded. “Our love is too important to—”

He stopped speaking abruptly when she looked up at him from the telegram and he saw her eyes. She looked as if she’d been struck some awful blow—which, indeed, she had. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came. Archer caught her in his arms as she fainted.

He carried her into the house and laid her down on the couch. He removed the telegram still clenched in her blood-drained fist and read it. Then he closed the front door, went into the kitchen, wet a cloth, came back to the couch and wiped Shirley’s brow with it.

After a while she stirred and moaned. Her long-lashed, childish eyes fluttered open. She looked at Archer for a moment and then they clouded over as she remembered.

“I’m a widow,” Shirley said weakly.

“Shh. Take it easy. Rest."

“Oh, Archer! What am I going to do?” All of her hostility toward him seemed to have vanished. In her grief she clung to him as the only support available to her. She broke into sobs and buried her face against his chest and clasped her arms tightly around his neck.

Archer noted that her grief had washed away completely the vindictiveness she had been displaying toward him. After a long while her tears subsided. She got to her feet, intending to go upstairs and repair the damage they had wreaked on her appearance. But her knees buckled and Archer had to catch her again. He carried her up the stairs to her bedroom, laid her down on the bed, and went into the bathroom to run a bath for her.

She made no protest at the symbolic renewal of intimacies when he stripped off her housecoat, carried her into the bathroom and deposited her naked in the steaming tub. Automatically, she sprinkled some bubble bath into the water until it was frothy with suds. Archer sat on the toilet seat and kept her company as the hot water sapped the tensions from her body.

Shirley closed her eyes and sighed. “You really are sweet, Archer. Sweet and tender. I guess I never really appreciated you. But I appreciate you now. I’m sorry I've been so bitchy. I'm sorry I made you trouble with the law.”

“I would have been in trouble anyway.”

“But I'm the one that made it stick. As soon as I get over the shock of this, I’ll go to the police and straighten it out. I’ll tell them I was mistaken, that I won’t testify. I’m pretty sure they’ll drop the charges then.”

Archer was more than grateful. He was genuinely touched. Considering the tragedy that had fallen on her, it was a testimonial to her character and to her feelings about him that she should be concerned with his welfare at this moment. On impulse he leaned over to kiss her to show his feelings.

He’d really meant the kiss to convey no more than tender appreciation. Her response took him by surprise. Her soapy arms locked around his neck and her tongue was feverish with raw sex hunger. Death affects some people that way; it fills them with the most basic life-urge, urge to sex.

Bent over the tub, Archer was off-balance. She damn near pulled him into the water, clothes and all. To keep from toppling he had to pull back and break the kiss.

But Shirley didn’t let go of him. Without a word, without a sign of shame or regret, she tore at his clothes, at the buttons of his shirt, the zipper of his pants, even the laces of his shoes. And when he was stripped, she pulled him into the soapy water with her with a splash that reached the ceiling.

She was slippery as an eel, an electric eel, quivering with the force of her lust. Her naked legs shot up out of the water and tried to lock around his neck, slipping and sliding soapily. Her hands grabbed his manhood—it was ready and hotter than the water in which it was immersed--and guided it between her raised buttocks to the oscillating mouth of her womanhood. Its tip bumped against her straining clitoris and she moaned aloud.

Beyond conscious design now, both of them thrashed about wildly in the water. Soap bubbles flew all over the bathroom. Their naked bodies rose and were submerged and rose and were submerged again. He licked the soap from her erect, red nipples, dug his nails into her vibrating buttocks, lunged again and again to the core of her. She bit into the muscles of his shoulder and held on like a bulldog. She slapped her soapy bottom against him with the force of Vesuvian lava reaching the peak of its eruption. Her hands clawed at his genital sack, trying to force it to be enveloped along with his penis. Finally they both slid under the water and came up gasping, their climax attained.

“Wow!” Archer said. It was the only thing to say.

“I love you,” Shirley said after a long silence, a note of surprise in her voice.

“I love you.” Archer was even more surprised to find that he really meant it.

The Fickle Finger, firmly embedded and right on target, was wriggling toward the fulfillment of its function now …

“What are we going to do?” Shirley Simpell asked, her soapy fingers playing idly in Archer’s submerged groin.

“I love you. I want to marry you.”

“What about your wife?” Shirley clutched his mouth to her sudsy breast.

“I’ll ask her for a divorce.” Archer grimaced as he tasted soapsuds along with the nipple of Shirley’s breast.

"When?"

“Right away. Tonight. I promised her I’d be home for dinner tonight. I’ll go home and tell her I want a divorce. I’ll tell her there’s somebody else I'm in love with and want to marry.”

Shirley thought a moment as their bodies slipped and slid against each other in the tub. A divorce wasn’t really necessary. Llona was going to die. Shirley knew that. At the moment she didn’t bother remembering how she knew it. She was concerned with whether, given this new intimacy between them, she should tell Archer. She decided against it. She’d seen how easily his sympathies were aroused, how sensitive he was. She didn’t want him feeling so sorry for Llona that it would delay their plans. Besides, if Llona had wanted him to know, she would have told him herself.

“I’ll ask her for a divorce,” Archer said, pinning her to the bottom of the tub again and forcing her slippery thighs apart. “I’ll tell her right out that I want to marry you!”

The Fickle Finger of Fate withdrew, its anal mischief completed!

CHAPTER TWELVE

Queen Elizabeth Second of England had no way of knowing the Beatles were smoking pot in the Buckingham Palace john just before the ceremonies during which she would confer honors upon them. The Queen certainly couldn’t have figured that the day would come when Beatle John Lennon would make this fact public knowledge. The Queen hadn’t reckoned with the fact that sometimes people make other plans besides those which have been made for them.

That afternoon Llona was in a similar position to the Queen. She was, albeit secretly, all set to confer the honor upon Archer of telling him of her intention to find him a second wife. She had no way of knowing that Archer, like the Beatles, was in a lavatory engaging in activities not fitting to the planned ceremonies.

When evening came, however, Llona couldn't help but recognize quite early that the situation was not unfolding according to the way she had connived. She was busy fussing around the kitchen when Archer came home. He seemed a little agitated and told her there was something he wanted to talk to her about. But she brushed him off, telling him she was too busy fixing dinner to talk then, and he grimaced and left the kitchen to go upstairs to change. He seemed miffed. That in itself was odd; since Archer was usually quite reasonable about such things.

“What’s with you tonight?” she demanded later. “You’re downright boorish.”

“I’m sorry. I have something on my mind. I have to talk to you, Llona.”

He chose that moment to tell her bluntly that he wanted a divorce. Llona looked at him with her mouth open. She hadn’t figured on this. She was stunned.

“But why?” Llona found her voice.

“I’m in love with somebody else.”

“You mean there’s somebody else you want to marry?”

Llona sat down in a living-room chair.

“That's right.”

“Who?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Don’t I have a right to know?” Llona asked him.

“I guess so. Well-—” Archer took a deep breath. “—it’s Shirley Simpell.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes.”

“Shirley Simpelll” LIona’s worst fears for him were coming true. “But she’s all wrong for you, Archer!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Her politics, for one thing.”

“That’ll work itself out. It’s probably the least important aspect of a relationship between a man and a woman.”

“Her personality then. That simpering childishness. It’ll drive you crazy!” Llona honestly believed it would.

“I think Shirley’s personality is very cute,” Archer said stiffly. “It’s one of the things that most attracts me to her.”

“She isn't built as well as I am,” Llona said weakly. “She isn’t as pretty.”

“A man’s tastes change. To me she’s beautiful.”

“What about her husband?” Llona remembered. “Is she going to ask him for a divorce too?”

“He’s dead. She just got a telegram saying he'd been killed this morning.”

“She certainly didn’t waste any time!” Llona flared up.

“There’s no point in getting angry, Llona. And there’s no point in making snide remarks either. You can make things harder, but you can’t stop me. I want a divorce and that’s all there is to it. I’ll give you a chance to adjust to the idea. I know this must be a shock to you. Sleep on it. We can talk about the details tomorrow.”

But Llona didn’t sleep on it. On the contrary, she stayed very much awake with it. Her mind went over the ironies like a tongue with a sore tooth.

She thought about how she had started out wanting to find a wife for Archer who would look after him properly after she was gone. She remembered how she’d seen him making love to Shirley on the golf course through her binoculars, and how deep her desire for vengeance had been. She’d wanted to tie him up to a woman who would make his life a living hell. And then she’d relented. She’d felt sorry for him and gone back to her original plan. Now here he was intending to share his life with Shirley, one woman Llona was sure really would make his life a living hell.

Shirley Simpell! He deserved her! She really would make him miserable! And he’d make her miserable too! They deserved each other! There was justice in the world after all, even if it hadn’t been administered by Llona.

She chewed on it for a long time. It was almost dawn before she finally fell asleep. When she awoke, Archer was already gone. She felt better about things as she faced a new day. The only part of it that really bothered her was that she’d lost out in a competition with that bitch Shirley Simpell! That was a blow to her ego. However, later in the day, even the hurt to her ego was alleviated.

She had an appointment to see the specialist in the late afternoon. Despite the intervening visits since the day he’d told her that her case was terminal, the doctor's attitude had remained hostile to Llona. It remained that way when he admitted her to his inner office.

“Have you had any discomfort?” he asked.

“No.”

“Too bad. Maybe if you had some pain yourself, you wouldn’t find it necessary to be such a bleeding heart for all those Commies in Vietnam.”

“Let's not discuss politics, Doctor. Let’s stick to business.”

“All right then. I have bad news.”

“Bad news? That’s hard to believe. I thought you’d managed to already give me all the bad news you could muster. How can you give bad news to a woman you’ve already told is going to die soon?”

“That’s the bad news. You’re not going to die.”

“What!” Llona’s knees gave way and she sat down on the edge of the X-ray table.

“That’s right. Believe me, I hate to tell you this. People like you shouldn’t be allowed to live. But there it is.”

“But what--?”

“I made a mistake.” The doctor shrugged. “Sue me. It happens. The old X-ray switch. You’ve seen the movie a hundred times.”

“Do you mean you mixed up my X-rays with someone else’s?”

“That’s it. Crummy plotting, but there it is. Don’t look at me like that! Didn’t you ever make a mistake?”

“Not where life and death were concerned!”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“You’re not much of a plug for the AMA yourself. And neither is your attitude.” Llona was angry. All those months thinking she was doomed—the mental agony of it!

“You should be happy, not mad. Think of the poor girl whose X-rays I got mixed up with yours. She thinks she’s okay and now I have to tell her she’s only got a few weeks left. She was a lot more sorry for you than you seem to be for her.”

“She was sorry for me? Why? She doesn’t even know me.”

“She saw you coming out of my office that day I told you that you were going to die. You looked pretty upset, I guess. Anyway, she asked me about you and I told her what the prognosis was. She was really sorry for you. But then she’s a fine person. She’s dedicated to the American way. She no pinko like you!”

“What happened to her? I mean, what caused her condition?”

“She was struck by a golf ball on the ninth hole. Pity. Knocked her out. She couldn’t finish the game. And she was playing under par too.”

“Well, it is a shame that she’s going to die,” Llona said. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad it was her and not me.”

“Just about what I’d expect from a hippie peacenik like you. At heart you’re all selfish. You don’t care that tomorrow she’ll come in here and learn she has only a few weeks to live. You don’t care about Mrs. Simpell at all!”

“Who?!!!!” Llona jumped up from the X-ray table. “What was that name?”

“Simpell. Mrs. Shirley Simpell. You wouldn’t know her. She’s not your kind. She’s a decent upstanding American!”

“Shirley Simpell!" Llona started to laugh then. She couldn’t control it. Tears flooded her eyes but she kept right on laughing.

“I know you radicals have no respect for human life, but don’t you think you’re over-reacting?” the doctor inquired.

“I’m sorry,” Llona gasped, still unable to control her laughter. “But Shirley Simpell!”

“Do you know her?"

“Uh-huh. Sort-of.” Llona went off into another uncontrollable spasm of mirth.

“You’re hysterical,” the doctor decided. “If you don’t stop that obscene laughter, I’m going to slap your face.”

But Llona couldn’t stop laughing.

“I warned you.” He slapped her hard across the face.

She slapped him hard right back and went off into another gale of laughter at the look of surprise on his face.

“Stop it!” He slapped her again.

“I can’t!” Again she slapped him back and kept laughing.

“Ouch! That hurt!” The doctor grabbed her wrists so she couldn’t hit him again. He held them in one of his hands and slapped her a third time with his other hand.

She kicked him in the shins. And she laughed louder than ever as he started hopping around the room. She was still laughing when he came up to her again, but then she did something that really surprised him.

Llona put her arms around his neck and thrust her moist mouth at his. “All this physical activity is arousing me,” she told him between laughs.

The doctor found himself kissing her. It didn't stop the laughter, but somehow he didn’t mind. Maybe it was because one of his hands had found its way to her breast. Llona didn’t protest the intimacy. For one thing, she had been aroused by the inter-action of the slapping. But more than that, Llona’s mind had been reviewing a few interesting facts behind the laughter.

She remembered that Shirley Simpell, like the doctor, had been an ardent conservative—if not far more into the right wing -- when she met her. And she recalled that Archer’s affair with Shirley had started with his determination to change her views. So the disparity in their political views had led them to bed.

Well, Llona reflected, she and the doctor had a similar disparity going for them. And sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose. It was only just that she be unfaithful to Archer in the same way that he'd been unfaithful to her.

And it would be being unfaithful to him. He wouldn’t be wanting a divorce now. Shirley Simpell was doomed to death. So Archer would remain married to Llona.

That was all right. Llona really loved him. But she wanted their marriage to be an even match. Making it with the doctor would even the score between her and Archer. Llona’s laughter subsided and she turned her complete attention toward that goal.

The doctor’s hand was inside her blouse now, fumbling with her bra. “What are you doing?” Llona teased him with wide-eyed innocence.

“Laissez-faire," The doctor was breathing hard, groping the soft breast flesh inside her brassiere now.

“I suppose you’re against socialized medicine too.” Llona shrugged her shoulder so the bra strap fell loose and his hand cupped the whole of the large, firm breast.

“Damn right!” He kissed her again, his tongue probing deep. “It would lead to anarchy in the field.”

“God! How can you be so selfish? So unaware of the needs of the society around you?” Llona slid her hands inside his shirt and trailed her fingers over his chest.

“Look who’s talking about society! You know people like you have no respect for society. Society is founded on law and order and you flaunt law and order all the time.” The doctor slid his hand under her skirt and kneaded the warm flesh of her thigh.

“You call waging an illegal, immoral war law and order!” Llona slid her hand lower, under his belt, until the fingertips grazed the hair of his groin.

“It’s a war to stop Communism! If we don’t stop them now, we’ll be fighting on our own soil!” He stripped off Llona’s blouse and skirt.

“That’s Stone Age thinking. Haven’t you ever heard of co-existence?” Llona opened his belt, unzipped his pants, and let them fall.

“You can’t co-exist with the Communists! They won’t stop until they conquer the whole world!” He stepped out of his pants and removed Llona’s shoes and bra.

“Communism’s not some monolithic monster! And we can co-exist. We co-exist with Yugoslavia, and they’re Communist.” Llona removed his shirt and bit the nape of his neck.

“You people didn’t learn anything from Munich!” He kicked off his shoes and socks.

“And you people didn’t learn anything from the Nazi takeover of Germany. The first thing they did was suppress dissent!” Llona reached inside his jockey shorts and reassured herself that he was ready.

“You call it dissent! I call it treason!” He shipped off her panties and laid her down nude on the X-ray table.

“You’re the ones who are traitors! You’re betraying everything this country is supposed to stand for!” Llona watched him pull off the jockey shorts and her legs fell apart to admit him as he climbed onto the X-ray table.

Verbally, the argument ceased as they made love. But even while they were so engaged it continued in their heads, interior monologues buttressing each of their positions. Their bodies moved in rhythm, but their thoughts, stemming from their convictions, were worlds apart.

Llona’s thoughts were jumping ahead to her next meeting with Archer. What would it be like? Would he be as adamant about the divorce, as eager to shuck her in favor of Shirley Simpell as he had the previous evening? She supposed he would. But now she knew something Archer didn’t know. Knowing it, what should her attitude be? Gasping for breath, mounting to their mutual climax, Llona’s mind reverted to the most simplistic form of the question: Can this marriage be saved?

She wasn’t long in finding out the answer. Once their passion was spent, she and the doctor had precious little to say to each other. “Hopeless hawk!” Llona pulled on her bra and panties. “Commie symp!” The doctor adjusted his jockey shorts. A few moments later they parted with a snarl.

Archer was in the backyard when Llona arrived home. He was picking through the pile of extra tiles which they’d never gotten around to removing from the patio. He started guiltily at the sound of Llona’s voice.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I was getting together some tiles for Shirley,” he confessed, caught in the act, blurting it out. “I didn’t think you’d mind. I mean, we—that is, you--have no use for them. And she wants to tile her front walk.”

“Why are you taking the ones with letters?” Llona wondered, noticing.

“Uh, she wants to spell out a slogan.” Archer had the good grace to hang his head. “LOVE AMERICA, OR LEAVE IT.”

“That’s what I like about you, Archer,” Llona commented sweetly. “You’re a man of firm principle . . . who’ll go whichever way the wind blows the perfume.” Only the wind would soon be blowing Shirley Simpell’s perfume clear out of the picture, Llona reflected. A sudden gale was coming up, blowing Deathwards.

What then? Why, Archer would waft right back and settle into the home nest like a leaf come to rest. But did she want him? He was a philandering, bumbling, emotionally unstable bastard! But she wanted him all right. With it all, Llona had to admit to herself that she loved the simp even with his see-saw libido. She’d take him back. They’d live happily ever after. She’d live happily ever after -- making Archer pay . . . and pay . . . and pay!

“What are you smiling about?” Archer asked. “Don’t you realize our marriage has broken up? I’m leaving you for another woman! That’s nothing to smile about!”

“Isn’t it?” Llona kept smiling. “Isn’t it, Archer?” And the question flashed through her mind again: Can this marriage be saved? The answer, Llona knew, was simply that —

There’s more than one way to skin a cat!