The day after: An apocalyptic morning (48 page)

              "Jesus," Skip said, thinking that Paula was some kind of a witch.

              "It was also pretty easy to tell when you had your fight," she went on. "All of a sudden you weren't eating breakfast together anymore, you weren't looking directly at each other for any reason anymore. Although, if you watch, as I do, you'll see that both of you look at the other when you think they're not looking at you. If your eyes do happen to meet during such a look, you don't smile at each other. You look away. And then there's talking to Christine. It's pretty obvious that she's in the midst of a major depression. She hardly laughs anymore and her eyes have bags beneath them as if she doesn't sleep very well. You have the same thing, although your work keeps you a little busier than hers keeps her."

              Skip reached over and grabbed the bottle of tequila. He removed the cap and took a drink directly from the bottle. "Okay," he said. "So you know. What are you going to do now? Are you going to tell everyone?"

              She smiled sweetly, scooting back over to him. Her hand, which had never left his leg, suddenly moved all the way up to his crotch. "No," she said, squeezing and pinching his cock through the material, "I'm not going to tell anyone. That is not my place to do. What I am going to do is suck your dick. You could probably use a little relief after all those days of going without, couldn't you?"

              "Paula," he said, getting hard despite the underlying tone of the discussion. "I don't want to do this with you. You just told me you know about Christine and me. I am asking you to respect that relationship."

              "Oh I do respect it," she said, continuing to squeeze and feel him, bringing him to a full and painful erection. "I respect it greatly. It's almost like one of those crappy romance novels I wrote. It really is a shame that the two of you are still fighting over Missy."

              He tried to remove her hand from his crotch but she gently pushed him away. In truth, he really didn't try all that hard. She had been entirely correct when she'd said that he had not had relief in some time. He hadn't even masturbated in nearly a week. She began to pop open buttons on his jeans, releasing each one with slow deliberateness.

              "Why are you doing this?" he asked, cursing himself for not having the willpower to make her stop.

              "Because I want to," she said. "Remember that I haven't had any since the comet either. Despite what I said about my research tools and my self-gratification know-how, that gets old really quick. I've come to the conclusion that a woman just has to have a nice hard, warm, live cock once in a while." She popped open the last button, revealing his bulging underwear. "And right here is such a thing. All ready for me."

              He made one last feeble attempt to stop her when she pulled his pants and underwear down. "Paula, we're right in the community center in front of an open door," he said, watching as his cock sprang free into the air.

              "So keep an ear out for people coming down the hall," she said. With that she lowered her head into his lap and took him into her mouth. Her warm, wet lips closed around him and her tongue began to dance up and down the surface. She hummed contentedly as she tasted his member and he moaned in defeated arousal as he felt her go to work. Within a second or two he was completely lost in the sensation.

              Oral sex was something that his wife, as passionate a woman as she had been, had just not been too enthusiastic about. If he had been able to coax two blowjobs a year from her, he considered himself lucky. Nor had Christine been particularly fond of that activity either. She had mouthed it inexpertly a few times during foreplay once they'd moved into their home but she had never sucked it more than a minute or two and had never allowed him to ejaculate in her mouth. Despite her maturity in all other aspects of post-comet life and sexuality, she still considered sucking a cock to be somewhat "gross". He had never pushed the issue.

              But Paula apparently did not think it gross. She sucked expertly, in the manner of a woman that had made cocksucking a regular part of her sexual repertoire for quite some time. Her brown hair, released from the ponytail it was usually tied up in, cascaded over his lap, tickling his bare thighs as her head bobbed up and down upon him. She would deep throat for several strokes, swallowing his six inches whole and then slowly bringing her head back up, and then she would lick and suck on the head while jacking his wet shaft with her hands.

              "Ohhh," he moaned, letting his head fall back upon his neck, forgetting about Christine, his conflict with Jessica, even the possibility of someone catching them in the act. This was, without a doubt, the best blowjob he had ever had in his life. He let his hand fall into her hair, his fingers running through its silky smoothness. The honeydew scent that rose up from it told him that she had probably had her bath recently.

              "Mmmm hmmm," Paula hummed from around his cock. She began to deep throat less now and concentrate more on the classic motions of jacking and sucking. Her hand became a blur upon his shaft and her mouth became a soft, clenching orifice that tried like hell to suck the sperm right out of his balls.

              It didn't take long at this pace. As he began to spasm, his hips tried to rise up into the air, instinctively driving him in the age-old rhythm that accompanied orgasm. A wave of pleasure spread throughout him and, with a grunt and a groan, he exploded into her sucking mouth. She sucked frantically, her hands continuing their ministrations throughout, and she consumed every drop.

              She licked him completely clean and then slowly removed her head from his lap and looked up at him. She licked her lips once. "Did that feel good?" she asked him.

              "Yes," he admitted. "That felt absolutely divine in fact."

              "Glad to see I haven't lost the touch." She removed herself from his embrace. "My panties are completely soaked right now," she told him Micker-of-factly.

              "Uh listen..." he started, reaching down and pulling his pants up. "I think that things got a little out of hand here tonight. Maybe we should..."

              "Go back to my place," she said, standing. She began gathering up the tequila bottle and the glasses and the other supplies they had used. She quickly stowed them back in their proper places. She did not seem all that drunk any longer.

              "No," he said. "That's not..."

              "Walk me home, Skip," she told him, not even looking at him. "I need you tonight. And I think that you need me."

              "But Christine..."

              "Don't worry about Christine for the moment," she replied. "You need to come to my place. Believe me, I'm acting in everyone's best interest here."

              "Paula," he said. "I don't think that..."

              "Don't think right now," she said, walking over to him and giving him a teasing kiss upon the nose. Her breath was warm and smelled of semen. "Just come home with me. I've wanted to do what I'm doing for some time and tonight the booze has given me the courage to do it. Everything will be made clear soon."

              Paula, like the majority of the town women, lived in the same house that she had inhabited before the comet. Hers was one of the top-of-the-line models, not quite as much square footage and as many upgrades as Jessica's, but it was close. It was a tri-level located near the southern portion of the park that surrounded the community center. The walk to it was short but several times Skip tried again to bow out of what was to follow.

              "I can't, Paula," he cried at one point. "I've already betrayed Christine once and look what that did to us. You know as well as I do that somebody is noticing us walking to your house. If I go inside, that's it. By tomorrow, everyone will be saying that you're the one and I'll lose her forever. She might put up with one betrayal, but she won't put up with two."

              "That depends on what you consider a betrayal to be," Paula answered. "Trust me. I am well aware that our trip is being noted right now and it is part of my plan."

              "Your plan?" he said. "Just what kind of plan are you talking about? You're stealing me!"

              "I am doing no such thing," she said. "Now take my arm. Make it look good."

              "Paula," he said, stopping in his tracks. "This is crazy."

              "Crazy or not, it needs to be done. Now do what I say. Everyone already will have an earful of you and I based on what Jessica will tell them tomorrow. That in itself will be enough to drive Christine away from you. I don't want that to happen, Skip. I really don't. If you want to keep her, you need to follow my lead and take me home."

              "Paula," he said, "you sound like a defense attorney telling a murderer that he can escape the electric chair if he just kills a few more people."

              She laughed, slapping at his arm. "That's funny, Skip," she said. "Good analogy. You ever thought about being a writer?"

              "Paula!"

              "Sorry," she said. "Listen, my plan may seem strange right now, but it will soon make sense to you. Just remember and try to accept that you and Christine are as caught up in pre-comet morality as everyone else in town. The difference with you two is that you try to honor it while the others only pretend to. You will have to come to some accommodations with some new realities here, just like everyone else does. In the meantime, what I'm doing will protect you and your lover as well as give me what I need. Everyone will win, okay?"

              "Now you sound like a used car salesman."

              "Saleswoman," she corrected, sliding her arm through his. "Now see me home, Mr. Most Eligible Bachelor and try to pretend that you don't think anyone sees us."

              She gave a tug and he started moving, propelled along more by his drunken lack of judgment than anything else. Soon, they reached her front door. She opened it with a key and led him inside.

              Like every other house in Garden Hill these days, Paula's had a clothesline strung through the formal living room, attached by molly bolts into the plaster. Her shirts, pants, bras, and panties hung drying in the air in what had once been the room designed to impress visitors with a display of expensive, uncomfortable furniture, usually antique and usually the kind that no one was allowed to actually sit upon. In every other house that he had been in, despite the clothesline, the furniture had remained, as if the women needed to show that even though civilization had collapsed, they had possessed taste and money before. This was not so with Paula. There was not a stitch of furniture in her living room, only other clotheslines with sheets and comforters hung upon them. They had to duck in order to get under all of it.

              "What's with all the linen?" Skip asked as she lit an oil lamp and led him through the maze.

              "It helps my clothes dry faster," she said. "And keeps the humidity down in the house." Humidity from air drying cloth was one of the scourges of Garden Hill life. It would peel wallpaper from the wall and make you sweat sitting still despite the chilly temperatures.

              "Say again?"

              "It's like hanging clothes that are still damp in your closet," she explained. "The dry cloth helps soak up the moisture. You'll notice that its quite humid in here but everywhere else in the house is quite dry. I've suggested the technique to some of the other women in town but they won't do it because it clutters up their living rooms."

              He followed her into the family room of the house and found that it was indeed quite dry in there. There was no thick haze of cold, muggy air pervading the atmosphere, making it feel like you were in a fog bank. The air temperature was actually quite pleasant in a relative sort of way. Over the past few weeks the ambient temperature outside had dropped by about ten degrees, making everyday life in a town without propane or electric service a challenge. But in Paula's living room, it was almost comfortable.

              "My plants," she said, pointing around the room where sickly looking houseplants were everywhere. "They don't do all that well since there isn't any sunlight, but the firelight and the lamplight during the hours I'm home keeps them alive. They, in turn, generate a little heat for me and keep the air nice and fresh. Again, something I've suggested to the other women but it takes a little too much effort for them."

              "Amazing," Skip said, almost forgetting the circumstances that had brought him here. His respect for Paula, which was already quite high, kicked up a few notches.

              She tapped the side of her head with her finger. "See what you learn when you read a lot," she told him. "Why don't you start us a fire? I'm going to go change."

              That suddenly brought him back to what he was doing here. "Listen, Paula," he said. "Maybe we should talk about what this great plan of yours is first."

              "Maybe we shouldn't," she said, starting to unbutton her flannel shirt. "Start us a fire, Skip." With that, she disappeared into the bedroom.

              Left with nothing else to do, Skip picked up some dry kindling and newspaper from a stack next to the fireplace. Wood gathering and drying was a major consumer of daily labor in Garden Hill, not just for the personal use of the inhabitants but also for the three large fires at the community center that needed to be kept burning day and night to heat hot water for bathing and cooking. The wood was chopped from the many fallen trees around the perimeter of the township. Putting it near one of the fires dried it, although even this could not get all of the moisture out of the pine and sequoia. He arranged the kindling and the newspaper expertly and then put a log on. He lit the scraps of paper with a lighter that Paula kept nearby and a moment later a nice blaze was beginning, providing both light and warmth.