Free Community of Women by Lawrence Block Page A

Point songwriter’s own, and they were obscene. The first line ran You’re the top, you’re the mound of Venus, and the song moved onward and upward from that point, reaching delirious heights.
    For awhile, the audience laughed. Then the audience began to get a bit worried. Then the songwriter stood up shakily, staggered away from the piano, and grabbed the first woman he saw. He took hold of her by her big breasts, kissing her passionately, and propositioned her in words substantially the same as those he had used in his parody of the Cole Porter tune.
    The woman happened to be his own wife. This fact eased the tension in the room, and no one really minded when the songwriter and his wife hurried off to a convenient bedroom to ease the pangs of sexual abstinence. But the songwriter had not realized that the woman he selected was his wife. The possibility never occurred to him. He took her to bed, made love to her, and rolled off sleepily.
    “God,” he said to her, his eyes shut tight. “God, my wife’ll kill me when she hears about this. But you’re worth it, baby. You’re the best I ever had.”
    His wife, basking in the afterglow of inspired sex, did not hit the roof. After all, she had just been complimented, albeit in a left-handed fashion. Besides, her husband earned forty-five thousand dollars a year. Husbands like that were hard to find.
    She dressed quickly and let him sleep it off. She did not want him to find out, when he awoke, that his great adventure had been with his own wife.
    It would be better to let him feel guilty.
    That example should give you the general idea. Or take the case of another woman, a senior editor at a respected hardcover publishing house who was married to a mousy little partner in a third-rate advertising agency. This woman worked under enormous pressure, staying late in New York three nights out of five. When the weekend came, she let herself go. She drank.
    She started drinking Friday evening, in the club car on the way home from the office. She went on drinking through dinner, and then she and her husband went to a party where the liquor flowed freely. In no time at all she was feeling no pain.
    She behaved herself that Friday night. But Saturday, when she awoke, she was thrilled to discover that the hangover she had every right to expect had not yet arrived. The alcohol was still circulating in her bloodstream, and instead of being hung over she was still drunk.
    She had no intention of letting such a head start go to waste. She went downstairs wrapped up in a nightgown, found a bottle of gin, and made martinis for breakfast.
    She kept drinking all day long, never going over the edge but always staying on the drunk side of the spectrum.
    That evening, at a party, she went over the edge.
    She did a great many things, most of which should be mercifully forgotten. She found magnificently vile things to say to a wide variety of people, including her host and hostess. She danced obscenely on a table top, screamed at the top of her lungs, broke out into horrible fits of crying and then began laughing hysterically. Her meek and mild-mannered husband finally led her out of the house after she climaxed things by leaping gaily onto the dining room table, hoisting her skirt over her head and soiling the punch bowl. This was a little too much, even on a weekend in Cheshire Point.

12
    T HE weekend.
    Roz Barclay was home, alone. Linc had gone down to the tavern. She knew that he would not be there long, that he would not get particularly drunk. She knew, too, that she was home alone, that she was bored, that she was frustrated, and that she was about to go out of her mind.
    She took a deep breath.
    Other women, she thought, had it easier. More than a few Cheshire Point women had more than one man on tap—Roz knew this for a fact. She knew it about the ones who damn near advertised. She’d seen Harry Barnes, the plumber, go into Mindy Pierce’s house at least twice a week for the past two