Free The Three Sirens by Irving Wallace

with sleepy boredom, the portable television’s screen. None of this had been changed by Easterday and The Three Sirens.
    Yet, Claire was positive, something had changed for her. It had nothing to do with daily routine. It had to do with a feeling—almost a tangible effervescent sac of emotion—inside her being. She had been Mrs. Marc Hayden, officially, legally, for better, for worse, forever, for one year and nine months now. With the marriage—“a good one,” her mother and stepfather had decided—the sac of feeling within had been buoyant and fun, like a bubble that carried you up, up, up, and all below was marvelous. But gradually, in the aging of her marriage, the bubble of buoyancy had subsided, settled, flattened into a dreary little puddle that represented nothing at all. That was the look of the bubble: nothing. That was her feeling toward everything: nothing. It was as if all excitement and possibility of joy had fled. It was as if all of life was predictable, every day ahead, even to the last day, and there was no hope of wonder. This was the feeling, and when she heard new mothers discuss post-baby blues, she wondered if there were post-marriage blues, also. There was no one to blame for the disappointment—surely not Marc, not Marc at all—except possibly the inexperienced bride herself, with her wilting bouquet of over-romantic and great expectations. If she had the money, she thought, she would finance a team of experts to find out what happened to Cinderellas after they-lived-happily-ever-after.
    But five weeks ago, or thereabouts, something good had happened to Claire. Its effect on her whole person was immediate, but hidden from those around her. She felt awakened. She had a feeling of well-being. She felt that there was going to be more to life than unfulfillment. And she knew that the inspiring element had been the Easterday letter. She had lovingly typed abridged copies, double-spaced, of this letter. All that Easterday promised, she knew by heart.
    Except for one week-long trip to Acapulco and Mexico City, with her mother and stepfather when she was fifteen (she remembered the Pyramids, the Floating Gardens, Chapultepec, she remembered not being alone one instant), Claire had never been outside the United States. And now, almost overnight, she would be transported to an unknown and exotic place in the South Seas. The promise of change was unbearably stimulating. The actual details of The Three Sirens had little reality, and therefore little meaning to her. They resembled too closely the thousands of words in Maud’s books, in countless other anthropological volumes she had perused, and they seemed like mere history and the ancient past and no part of her present life. Yet, the date was drawing nearer and nearer, and if Easterday was not the “romancer” that Marc had labeled him, if these things were real things and not word things, she would soon be in a sweltering hut, among almost naked men and women, who took food from a common storehouse, who regarded virginity as a defect and practical education in sex a necessity, who practiced love in a Social Aid Hut and at an uninhibited festival (with a nude beauty contest, no less!).
    Claire glanced at the enameled clock beside the wash basin. It was nine-fifteen. Marc’s early class would be over. Today, he would have four hours before his next class. She wondered if he would return home or go on to the library. She decided that she had better dress. Reaching out, she spun the lever beneath the faucet, and the outlet clanged open and the water and suds began to gurgle down the drain.
    She pulled herself erect, gingerly stepped over the side of the tub, and stood dripping on the thick white mat. As the rivulets of water rolled downward across the curves of her glistening flesh, her mind returned again to the Easterday letter. What was it that he had said of the mode of dress on The Three Sirens? The men wore pubic bags held loosely in place by