DL-194  The Rookie's Wife
[aka 'Night Game Girls']
(Cyril Hand)



NOTE in DL-194 "Gwynn Bunyard" is named "Sheila Hardin".




"I'LL GET YOU READY...." 

"I'll get you ready," Roy assured her, and used his hands to tip her head 
back. Then he kissed her lips in slow, unhurried fashion, reminding her that 
they did have plenty of time. She didn't have to get up to dress and hurry 
home to Clay. Not yet, anyway. 

Tannen trailed blazing kisses across her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her 
brow, the lobes of both ears. Gwynn parted her lips. His tongue, which made 
him shudder with its knowledge, its sheer awareness of her body's capacity 
for response. In short, firm motions, he began to tease the roof of her 
mouth. Her panties began to moisten. 


1 

Gwynn Bunyard failed to hear the phone when it rang the first time. Between 
the hair dryer and the top-forty station on the radio behind her, she 
couldn't even hear herself think. But the phone's shrill ring penetrated her 
consciousness at last. She reached up to turn off the dryer. Her long, 
chestnut-brown hair was almost dry again, anyway. 

Wondering who would call her when she was supposed to be at work, she 
removed the hood, switched off the radio and went to pick up the kitchen 
extension. "Hello?" 

"Missiz Bunyard?" said a husky male voice. "Missiz Clay Bunyard?" 

Gwynn's brows rose on her smooth forehead. "Yes, this is she. Who's calling, 
please?" 

"Never mind who I am, Missiz Bunyard," the voice chuckled, an ugly edge 
creeping in. "It's Clay we're interested in. Or do you want to see your 
husband's career ruined?" 

She caught her breath. Clay was a wide receiver for the New Orleans Seals of 
the United Football League's Eastern Conference. He would earn twenty-two 
thousand dollars playing professional football this year, and they needed 
every penny of it. Neither Clay nor-herself wished to see his career ruined. 
""What are you talking about?" Gwynn demanded. 

"I'm from the commissioner's office in New York, here to investigate some 
charges leveled against the franchise. One of the charges has to do with 
your husband. I want to meet with you somewhere and discuss it. Discreetly, 
of course. He doesn't have to , know. Can you drive to Tulane Stadium and 
meet me in the parking lot?" 

Gwynn was annoyed and suspicious. She had no intention of driving anywhere, 
to meet anyone. "No!" she retorted. "If you want to know anything about 
Clay, you'll have to ask him. I won't tell you. Goodbye." She hung up. 

With fists clenched, she returned to the' dryer. Only her heart thudding in 
her chest betrayed her alarm. She recognized menace when she heard it. For 
an instant, she considered calling Clay and telling him. Because he'd chide 
her for dragging him away from practice, she didn't. She wished Clay would 
come home soon, which wasn't possible. The wall clock read half-past two. 
Practice usually ended at six o'clock, and the drive back into town from the 
new, domed stadium took another hour. 

Before she could adjust the hood, the phone rang again. Angry and a little 
frightened, Gwynn hurried to wrench it from the wall. "H-Hello," she 
faltered, dismayed at her own lack of fortitude. 

"I'll expect you in an hour. Leave your parking lights on so I'll recognize 
you." 

"I'm calling the police!" 

"I don't think so. The publicity could be unpleasant. If Clay Bunyard is 
publicly linked to gamblers, his association with professional sports could 
very well be terminated. For keeps. We wouldn't want that to happen, now 
would we?" 

Gwynn passed a hand across her brow. Gamblers. Publicity. Terminated. None 
of this made any sense. "What do you want, in God's name? If this is 
blackmail, why don't you say so! Clay doesn't gamble and never has. You're 
trying to terrify me, and it won't work." But it was working. It was working 
beautifully. She happened to be terrified at that very moment. The autumn 
day outside had turned gray and blustery. There was a cold wind coming off 
Lake Pontchartrain. The night's low would be in the low forties-unusual for 
the Deep South. Her caller laughed. There was an easy insolence to the laugh 
which made it something else: a threat. 

"Calm yourself, Missiz Bunyard. I never blackmailed anyone in my life. And I 
really am from the commissioner's office. What I have to say will be of 
genuine interest to you. But first we must go where we can be alone. If you 
aren't at Tulane Stadium within the hour, I'll get my information elsewhere. 
And I'll share it with the sports editor of the States-Item. Good day, 
Missiz Bunyard." 

The phone clicked dead. Gwynn took the receiver away from her ear and stood 
rigid for a minute, eyes closed, lips trembling. She told herself that this 
wasn't happening, not to her. She was the young bride of a promising young 
professional football player, and no one in the world would want to harm 
her. But it was happening. And intuition told her she might be harmed if she 
kept the appointment at Tulane Stadium. 

She sat down to try and make sense of it. The caller had known something 
about her. A great deal, in fact. He'd known that she wasn't at work-she'd 
called in at eight a.m. with a "sore throat," which she'd probably have now, 
if she went out into the cold-and he'd gotten her number from either the 
insurance company she worked for or the telephone company. The number wasn't 
listed in the New Orleans directory. But why? Why had he selected her, and 
what did he want? There were other wives in the Seals' player organization, 
each of them supposedly as vulnerable as herself. 

Gwynn realized she knew none of the other wives well enough to call them 
now, certainly not well enough to confide in them and ask for advice. Even 
after eight weeks, there was still a lakeful of ice to be broken. She could 
call the crank calls division of the NOPD, but a call might mean 
complications. Embarrassing complications. Clay would be furious with her if 
she got them laughed at, if she panicked without cause. He'd advised her, 
when they moved into their lakefront apartment on the last day of August, to 
expect the unexpected. Big-city living, he said, meant a new challenge every 
day. She would have to learn to cope. 

Learn to cope? Gwynn wondered if Clay himself had "Learned to cope." Was he 
involved in any way with what a team spokesman in a letter to all players 
had once called "unsavory elements"? She didn't think so. And yet there was 
the caller's dark insinuation. The insinuation, like a snake for a child, 
held a dread appeal for her. Gwynn wanted to find out what, if anything, lay 
behind, it. She would find out, and now. 

She bound up her hair and went to look for her car keys. 

At a quarter past three-she'd set her watch before leaving the house-the 
Dasher Clay had given her for a wedding present became her only sanctuary. 
In a secluded area of Tulane Stadium's parking lot, Gwynn switched off her 
ignition and switched on the car's parking lights, as she'd been instructed. 
She waited. 

Precisely at three-thirty, a late-model sedan-she thought it was an Electra 
or possibly a Centurion pulled up behind her and stopped. After a few 
seconds, a man she'd never seen before got out. He was about forty and 
stockily built with black hair and smooth-shaven cheeks. He wore an overcoat 
over a business suit. Gwynn was instantly afraid of him, he wasn't smiling. 
She began to regret having come. 

The man opened the Dasher's door on the passenger side and climbed in before 
she could even think about working the ignition and driving away. He' closed 
the door and smiled a tight, self-assured smile. 

"Good afternoon," he said, moving thick lips around the words as though he 
dispensed them only after considering their impact. "I expected to find an 
attractive young woman, but hardly this." After locking the door, he settled 
back, still smiling at her. 

Gwynn resisted an impulse to shudder. "If you're from the league office, you 
must have some kind of identification. Please let me see it." Her caller 
shook his large, jowly head. 

"There isn't any identification, I'm sorry to say. And I'm not from the 
league office, either. But I am connected with football and gambling, in a 
professional kind of way. Your husband owes my organization five thousand 
dollars, Missiz Bunyard. I've come to collect." 

Stunned and confused, she needed a minute in which to recover. Realization 
came in a rush. Clay had bet on his own games, and lost. Only a confident 
rookie with an improving team would do such a thing. He'd been ashamed to 
tell her. He'd been ashamed to tell anyone. She'd had to find out this way. 

Her brain began to try to devise a way out. If they sold the equity on her 
Dasher, moved to a cheaper apartment and postponed a few luxury purchases, 
they could just make it. Gwynn passed a hand across her brow. "Three days. 
Give us three days, and you'll get your money." 

"I'm afraid it isn't that simple, lamb chop. Not any more. I don't want the 
money. It's too late to pay up. Five thousand dollars-Christ, what's that to 
me? A week's receipts. I don't come crawling on my hands and knees for a 
stinking five grand. Not when I've waited two weeks like a man. No, I want 
you. You! Do you understand? Or shall I start all over?" 

A re-explanation wasn't necessary. She reached for the Dasher's ignition. 
"You're crazy. I won't. You'll have to get out." The man on the other side 
of the shift laughed so hard a button popped off-his overcoat. But when she 
succeeded in cranking the little car, he stopped laughing. His hand 
disappeared under the coat. When the hand came out again, it held a gleaming 
black automatic with a peculiar elongation at the barrel end-a silencer. 

"Drive back out into traffic. Do it! And keep your eyes straight ahead." 

Gwynn began to shake with fear and apprehension, but she did as she was 
told, heading the car toward the Vieux Carre. A light rain had begun to 
fall, approximating in intensity the tears trickling down her cheeks. 
"P-please," she quavered, when they'd traveled less than four blocks. "Don't 
do this. Don't." 

"Shut up. I don't want to hear it. Take a left at the next comer. Without 
signals. If you try to use your horn or lights to attract a police car, I'll 
have no choice but to kill you. I can always run out and lose myself in the 
crowd, you know." 

She had no intention of trying to warn a police car. After waiting for the 
intersection to clear, she turned, without signals, onto North Rampart. For 
the next hour, she drove, piloting them across Canal Street and through the 
city's commercial district. When the tall buildings thinned out to less 
impressive structures, and motels began to abound on every corner, the man 
with the gun motioned her toward one. 

"In there. Drive around to the rear. To the rear. For your sake, little 
lady, do' as I tell you. I don't want to use this." 

Gwynn, realizing he wouldn't have to leave her to rent a room because he'd 
already taken one, knew she was trapped. There was no escape. But she made 
herself steer the Dasher through the entrance-way, braking it in front of a 
unit he pointed out for her. At his insistence, she even removed the car's 
keys and tossed them on the floor. 

"Stay where you are. I'll get out first." After stepping out and coming 
around to the driver's side, he opened the car door and grasped her by the 
arm, half-dragging, half-leading her toward the room-their room-cuffing her 
once when she briefly resisted. 

Gwynn opened her mouth to scream. She meant to scream. But no sound came 
out. And then it was too late. Much too late. Without once releasing her, he 
unlocked the door and pushed her inside. Before she could protest, before 
she could fight him, he followed her through the door, slamming and locking 
it. She whirled to stare at him, still doubting that this was happening, and 
to herself. "If you have a shred of decency-" 

"I haven't," he declared, and the declaration was no less chilling for its 
matter-of-factness. Grinning, he took bold inventory of everything she'd 
been born with, leaving out nothing. "Do you have a name?" 

Gwynn went hot and stayed that way. Not because he wanted to know her first 
name-as a further means of humiliation, no doubt-but because she'd never 
been so swiftly undressed before, by eyes so hard and ruthless. In spite of 
herself, in spite of her fear, she began to tingle inside. "Gwynn." 

"Well, Gwynn, take it off, like the boys say. Take it all off. I want to see 
what I'm getting for my five grand." 

The look in his eyes, the lust, made her freeze. She didn't feel capable, 
just yet, of carrying out the command. 

"Come on!" 

"I-I can't!" she quavered, flinching over the malice in her abductor's 
voice. 

"You mean, won't," he snorted. "If you won't do it, I will." In an ambling 
kind of stride, he started toward her. 

As he laid a hand on one of her breasts, she jerked away and began to 
undress for him, keeping her lashes lowered so she wouldn't have to see the 
effect her nudity had on him. When she'd laid all her things on a chair back 
and turned around to confront him, he'd undressed, too, and stood, legs 
apart, watching her. His own. excitement Was evident now, a huge amount of 
it. But it was the eager way he licked his lips rather than his quick 
erection which dismayed her. 

"Nice," he muttered. "Damned nice. Your husband is a fool. Or a boy." 
Shrugging, as though he really didn't care which, he advanced upon her once 
more. 

Even as she edged backward, to a haven which wasn't there, Gwynn was 
thinking. What if Clay didn't owe this man money? What if she'd been the 
victim of a cruel and clever hoax? The possibility made her stop and clutch 
at her throat. "How do I know--? " 

She expected a sneer, and that's what he gave her. "You know. I know. He 
knows. Let's get on with it." He lunged and caught her off balance, 
gathering her up in his arms and carrying her to the bed, dumping her on it 
as though she were a bag of cement. . 

Gwynn tried to stifle a shudder, and couldn't. The shiver racked her slender 
frame. He yanked her across the bed and held her against his body, forcing 
her to meet his malevolent glare. 

"Am I so repulsive?" he snarled. "Am I?" 

"N-No," she assured him, and tried to sound convincing. He slapped her 
across the face, proving she .hadn't succeeded. 

"Then act like it! Touch me!" 

He rolled into bed beside her and assumed an attitude which would permit it. 
Gwynn conquered her qualms and dropped a trembling hand to his penis, 
stroking the swollen shaft a few times. He grunted in satisfaction, if not 
outright pleasure. Then he thrust a hand between her thighs until he found 
the lips of her cunt and the little projection between, which he massaged 
with cunning skill. 

She discovered, after a few minutes, that fondling him was no longer quite 
so distasteful, even if the man himself still was. Gwynn set her teeth, 
closed her eyes and pretended he was Clay. But the rude way he closed rough 
hands on her breasts made her open them again. "I-I don't need that," she 
told him. 

He left off with her breasts and moved on top of her, intending, it seemed, 
to have her without any more delay. "Give me a good target!" he warned, 
beginning to breathe in noisy bursts. "Else I'll break something." With no 
further concern for her welfare, he pressed the head of his weapon against 
her cunt's inner folds. 

Gwynn moaned and made herself as available as possible. The strange penis 
still stretched her as it moved in, evoking a cry of mingled pain and 
pleasure, the latter real enough, whether she wanted to acknowledge it or 
not. 

"You like it, don't you, baby!" he chortled. "Yeah, you like it. You don't 
like me, but you like it. I can tell." And then he fell silent, giving out 
no sound save for a raspy intake and exhalation of breath as he slammed into 
her again and again. 

The room spun for Gwynn. She climaxed so intensely she couldn't remember her 
own name, or even why she'd been brought there. She felt her body's invader 
spend himself in one final lunge, then withdraw to clamber over her and land 
heavily on the floor. Disgust, nausea and a certain amount of self-loathing 
descended upon her. From afar, as though she were safe on another planet, 
she heard him give her one final order. 

"Lie there until after I've gone. Wait five minutes more before trying to 
leave. That's all, dumpling." 

When she opened her eyes, he was gone. A numbness pervaded her mind and 
body. She shook it off and rose to throw on her clothes, wanting only to be 
gone from the place. The motel manager, the police-no one mattered now. She 
just wanted to be gone. Clay, if she told him, could take whatever action he 
wished. Murder, even. She wouldn't try to stop him. 

The rain ended as she drove slowly toward the lakefront. So did her tears. 
Gwynn knew she was a tougher woman now than when she'd driven away. As 
darkness set in, she made a decision which would have sickened her just an 
hour before: she wouldn't tell Clay. He need never know she'd canceled a 
debt of his with her own body. 

He need never know. 

2 

Clay Bunyard started in motion from his flanker's position as soon as the 
ball was snapped. The play was a quarterback option, with the tight end, 
Gene Connally, as the primary receiver and himself as a safety valve in the 
event Brad Davis, the Seals' signal-caller, decided not to run with the 
ball. In practice, a quarterback hardly ever ran with the ball. Davis had a 
pulled thigh muscle today, making the option no option at all. 

The Seals' defense diagnosed the play very well. Connally was picked up by 
the right cornerback and left safety as soon as he broke into the secondary. 
The linebackers blitzed and forced and opening over left guard. Davis, a 
five-year pro from the University of Mississippi, had to scramble to avoid 
the crush. At the last possible second, he flipped a short pass out to 
Bunyard, who gathered it in at the forty-six, where he was tackled-the 
description was much too mild-by the left cornerback, a defensive end and 
the safety. The gain was eight yards, one of the longest of the afternoon. 
In recent trades, the Seals had gotten some pretty fair defensive players 
but few who could move the football. Their record, in spite of Fred Shank's 
rebuilding program, was 2-4, the worst in the Eastern Conference's Western 
Division. 

Bunyard picked himself up and limped back to the huddle. His left shoulder 
had gone numb and he was seeing stars. He thought it was still Tuesday, but 
he wasn't at all sure. He wanted to go to the sidelines, only his pride 
wouldn't permit it. Anyway, the Seals' coach, Fred Shanks, set a lot of 
faith on the toughening effects of contact scrimmage. North disliked 
malingerers. 

Davis glared at the two running backs who were supposed to have blocked for 
him on the last play. Because they hadn't, he'd taken a jarring spill., "Why 
don't you guys go to the showers?" he complained. "Or better yet, through 
the gate?" 

The backs had no replies. They were rookies, both of them. Davis was the 
team star with the two-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus and a fan following to 
prove it. The crowds might boo the team for a lackluster performance but 
never Davis. 

"All right, this one's a draw. I'll fake a hand-off to you, Walters, then 
give to Hancock. Let's try to look sharp, huh?" 

Bunyard lined up in his flanker's position, but this time he didn't try to 
confuse the defensive man assigned to him. Instead, he stayed around to 
block. The draw worked, or rather, failed to work, about as expected. 
Walters was bumped hard but not tackled as he ran through the line. The 
linebackers waited for Hancock and clubbed him to pieces. The gain was 
minimal. Hancock got up groggy. 

Bunyard had the satisfaction of stopping a defensive end with a clean block. 
When he gathered himself together, however, his vision was cloudy and his 
neck hurt. This time he did go to the sidelines. Slowly, so Shanks would 
know he wasn't faking. 

"You okay, son?" the coach inquired, peering inside the helmet. 

"Yeah," Bunyard mumbled, supplying the only answer Shanks was interested in. 
The question was not whether he felt okay, but whether or not he could play 
Sunday against the Bucks. He slumped down on the bench and watched his 
replacement jog in. The Seals' offense was only a yard away from a first 
down, so the "drive" would probably stay alive. 

"See Curtis if you're hurt," Shanks advised, and turned his back to confer 
with Jake Austin, an assistant. 

Bunyard heard rain start drumming on the domed roof high overhead. On an 
outdoor playing field, rain would send them indoors to work out minus pads. 
A covered practice area gave them no such respite. But since they had four 
additional days to prepare for the Bucks, Shanks might send them home early. 

Home. Home to a hot meal and an equally warm armful named Gwynn. Clay didn't 
know which he wanted most-the hot meal or the silken thighs beneath his, 
churning out yet another response to his lovemaking. The hot meal, probably, 
because without it he wouldn't be the man she expected him to be. 

The rain had begun to fall in torrents, running off the plastic panels up 
above and taxing the capacity of the rain gutters in the parking lot 
outside. An early twilight had set in which reduced visibility inside the 
dome to fifty yards. Someone was sent to have the stadium's lights turned 
on. When everyone's mind had turned to ways and means of reaching a dry car, 
Shanks used a bullhorn to announce that practice was over. 

* * * 

After Bunyard had showered and dressed, the . pain in his neck diminished to 
a dull ache in his head. He decided not to see the team trainer, Larry 
Curtis. Instead, he retrieved his car from the lot and-hair plastered to his 
head-pointed the year-old Grand Prix, a bonus for having signed with the 
Saints out of the University of Arkansas, toward the lakefront ten miles to 
the northeast. 

He glanced at his watch as he found a place in the expressway traffic. Five 
minutes past five. He'd be home an hour earlier than usual. In fact, if 
Gwynn was working late on her claim adjuster's job with the Great Southern 
Life Insurance Company, he'd probably be home before her. He'd greet her in 
a way she hadn't been greeted in weeks. 

After less than a mile, the lights of a bar beckoned. Bunyard ignored them. 
He passed the bar and another. A third. Then the chill and the pain in his 
head made him ask himself, With an hour to burn, why not? The alcohol would 
kill the pain and help him shake the tight feeling in his guts. Bunyard 
turned the Grand Prix in at the next bar. 

* * * 

As he touched his lips to a bourbon double, a soft hand dropped on his 
shoulder. He looked up, startled. 

"Why, Clay Bunyard, you're positively dreamy without your helmet!" 

Bunyard stared at the girl-she wore an ordinary knit suit and flat heels, so 
she wasn't a hooker-and couldn't place her. "Have we, uh, met before?" he 
asked, gazing into wide-set blue eyes underneath long, blonde hair. 

"Don't Jou recognize me?" The girl laughed. "I'm Rita, the head cheerleader. 
Or do you want me to turn a cartwheel across the floor?" 

He chuckled. "No, I'll take your word for it. And I do recognize you now. 
Can I buy you a drink? Just one?" 

Rita slid onto the stool beside him, wriggling clean hips until her feet 
were perched on the railing beside his. "Please. I saw your car outside, but 
I was coming in, anyway. Make mine a double, too." 

Bunyard inhaled the scent she wore and wondered if he'd be arriving home 
early after all. Rita, in her own exuberant way, was quite an eyeful. She 
wore an outfit keyed to the Seals' colors: old gold, red and green. He 
watched her sip the whiskey in tiny swallows, smooth throat contracting. 
"Mind telling me what you do in real life?" 

"In real life? I'm a reservations clerk for Delta Airlines." She smiled. 
"Your next question? Let me guess. Why do I cavort about in a skimpy outfit 
on a cold Sunday afternoon for a team that's won only two games and may not 
win another all season. That one's easy. Because I like it. And because it 
gives me . . '. " Rita wrinkled her nose. " ... a certain type of notoriety. 
Know what I mean? Men who might not otherwise see me as a challenge start 
thinking of me as one." 

Bunyard placed his left hand on the bar top so Rita couldn't fail to see his 
wedding band. As a matter of fairness-common sense, too, since he'd been 
married little more than a year-he didn't cat around on Gwynn. So no one 
would be picking anyone up. "I think I know what you mean," he said. "I'm 
glad for you." 

Rita looked strangely at him. "Are you?" She beckoned to the bartender. "My 
friend will have another one of those." 

Bunyard was annoyed, and opened his mouth to refuse the drink. Then he 
shrugged. He did need another one. His head still hurt. The alcohol's 
dulling warmth hadn't reached him yet. He drank the second bourbon double 
and felt much better, to the point where he didn't mind when Rita leaned 
over and ran her hands through his hair. 

"Clay, darling, did that mean ol' Shanks make you practice in the rain? No, 
of course not. Silly ol' me. I forgot the stadium's covered. But you had to 
run to your car, didn't you. Know something? My place isn't far from here. 
We could drop in long enough to towel you off. I wouldn't want the best 
flanker in pro football to catch cold and miss Sunday's game. "Deed I 
wouldn't." 

"No," he muttered, reddening at the suggestion or perhaps the attractiveness 
of it. 

She pinched his cheek and snuggled near enough for him to feel the imprint 
of her right breast, or rather, the bra covering it. "No, what?" 

"No, you're off base," he snapped, recalling everything he'd heard and read 
about football groupies. 

"You've got the wrong man, baby. I don't play that game." 

Rita affected innocent outrage. Her blue eyes sparkled with amusement. With 
exasperation, too, which she strove to conceal. "Did I say anything about 
that? You'll stay just long enough to dry those golden locks of yours. Then 
I'll see you on your way. What could happen, silly boy? We're all grown up, 
aren't we?" 

Bunyard felt his resolve weakening. Also, his hold on the glass. If he 
didn't go with her, everyone in the bar would soon know. They were the 
center of attention already. "Okay," he agreed. "But only for a few 
minutes." He called for the check, paid it, then followed her outside. Total 
darkness had set in now. No one would notice him or where he was going. He 
waited for Rita to climb into her car, a little roadster, and sent the Grand 
Prix in pursuit. He was sober enough to have almost full control of the 
vehicle, intoxicated enough to have no clear awareness of what he was about 
to do. 

* * * 

Bunyard eyed the odd-looking device with alarm which not even alcohol could 
dispel. "No. I don't want it." He edged farther down the sofa. 

Rita laughed and fastened herself to his shoulder so that he couldn't 
escape. "It's only a hot pressing comb, darling. Millions of women use them. 
Men, too, if they have hair as long as yours and their coaches make them run 
in the rain. Now sit still." 

He sat, allowing her to fuss over his hair in a way Gwynn never did. While 
she worked, he wondered where the situation was heading and why it had to 
head there. Why him? Rita would give herself to him, that much he knew. But 
she wouldn't throw herself at him. No more, that was, than she'd already 
done. She had pride, after a fashion. The first move would have to be his, 
and he wasn't even sure he wanted to make it. In this strange girl's 
apartment, with two double bourbons chasing one another through his head, he 
wasn't sure of anything, except that his headache had vanished and he felt 
great. 

Rita put the pressing comb aside and moved so that she-stood directly in 
front of him. She took his chin in her hands and made him gaze into her 
eyes. "Where does it hurt most? In the conscience?" . 

He shook his head. "You were cruising and I was the one." 

Rita's eyes flashed. "I'm not a tart, Clay. You can ask around. Is that what 
you think of me?" 

Bunyard squirmed. His prick began to swell to life, without his having to 
think about what he might do with it. "I think you're a nice girl. Nice." 
The words sounded so false, so insincere, his discomfiture deepened. So did 
the buzzing in his head. 

"I'm glad you don't think I'm cheap. I like you, Clay. I like you very much. 
When I like a man, I want to treat him well. I've been a fan of yours since 
before the season. Since you caught the pass that set up the game-winning 
field goal against the Mustangs." 

Bunyard had no trouble remembering that particular reception himself. 
Afterward, Fred Shanks no longer-frowned and rubbed his chin when he looked 
at him. "It was only an exhibition game. They don't prove a thing. And what 
you feel for me may just be admiration. It doesn't mean that you, that 
we..." 

"But it doesn't mean we can't," Rita said quickly. She leaned forward, 
before he could reply, and began kneading the sore flesh around his 
shoulders, the areas which took the worst beating from his pads when he was 
tackled from the side. "What is your wife like, Clay? Is she pretty? Do you 
love her a lot?" 

He set his jaw. Gwynn, as far as he was concerned, wouldn't be a fit topic 
for conversation while he was in another woman's apartment. "I won't say 
anything against her. But she's a looker. A lot of guys have told me that. 
And, yes, I love her a lot. I'm not ashamed of it." Bunyard inhaled, at that 
instant, the clean, fresh-scrubbed woman scent of Rita What-ever-her-name 
was, and wondered if he did. Did love Gwynn. A beautiful woman was easy to 
love, but sometimes the love wasn't love at all. But he'd married Gwynn, and 
that stood for something. 

Rita, without warning, jabbed a long, tapered nail into his cheek. "Damn 
you, Clay Bunyard! I'm here, and you don't even care! What does it take? 
What do I have to do? Tell me!" 

Bunyard jumped, sobered in a hurry. He rubbed his smarting face in mingled 
shame and anger, feeling suddenly reckless. Other men had conquests, didn't 
they? Casual affairs with girls who wanted neither marriage nor serious 
involvement? Why shouldn't he? Slipping his hands around Rita's sup-, pie 
waist, he locked them and looked up at her. "I warn you. I'm a hard man to 
start. But once I begin to move, there's no stopping me." 

"I don't want to stop you, darling," she insisted, smiling. 

"You won't drag me into the papers or call my pad late at night?" 

She shook her head. "I promise." 

He pulled her down on his lap and kissed her parted mouth. Rita's lips were 
warm and sweet, with an unmistakable taste of five-year-old bourbon. She 
returned the kiss with ardor matching his own. Her arms slid around his 
neck. When he thrust in his tongue, she welcomed the thrusting with her own, 
wrapping it about his so tightly that he had no choice but to leave it 
there. They kissed one another to a state of urgent need, of perspiring 
madness. If he didn't have her soon, he knew he'd go out of his head. The 
cock between his legs had turned into a-piece of cast-iron pipe, a tent 
which stretched his slacks' fabric to the bursting point. 

She took her mouth away, finally, and shook her breasts at him. "Like?" 

"Christ, you know I do." Bunyard almost tore the blouse getting it off. He 
wasn't a fetishist about boobs; he just liked them as well as the next guy. 
Maybe more than the next guy. When he unhooked Rita's bra and drew it away, 
he saw that her knockers were huge. Only now and then did a waist so slim go 
with boobs so generous. He admired them for a moment before taking one in 
his hand, rolling the sensitive tip between thumb and forefinger. The 
nipple, as he'd anticipated, sprang out to make itself more available. After 
a few minutes, he moved to the other one. 

"I like that. Clay, I really like that!" Rita said between clenched teeth. 

"Two of us, baby, two of us!" he panted. 

She began to squirm around on his lap, and the stimulation nearly made him 
come in his shorts. To distract himself, he tried to think of Sunday's game 
with Cleveland, the-in all-likelihood-pitiful contest between a protected Al 
Olsen and a harried 'Brad Davis. Then he bent his head and proceeded to 
suckle the breasts Rita offered him. The girl began to moan low in her 
throat. Her mammaries turned to hard-pointed cones which excited him all the 
more and gave him more to kiss. 

When he judged she'd taken almost as much of this as she could stand, 
Bunyard stopped and worked down the zipper of her skirt. She had to help 
him. Between them, laughing like children, they worked the garment down her 
hips without her having to leave his lap. She wore a half-slip underneath 
the skirt, however, so he had to release her long enough to allow her to 
stand. Rita stepped out of the skirt and slip, then stood in front of him 
clad only in a pair of black briefs. Her face was flushed with the animation 
that seemed to characterize everything she did. 

Without giving himself time to consider the consequences to himself or to 
his marriage, Bunyard hooked his thumbs in the briefs' waistband and tugged 
them down long, tanned thighs, exposing a lush growth of downy-soft, pubic 
hair. The panties fell to her feet. Before he could pick them up, Rita 
kicked them away. 

Lashes lowered, she pirouetted twice for his inspection. "Do you think I 
have a beautiful body. Clay? A Seals' body?" 

"You have a body fit for a seal," he quipped, "if seals go in for that sort 
of thing." Whether or not she had a Seal's body seemed irrelevant; 
possessing it was the part that mattered. He leaned forward to grasp his 
prize and bring her nearer, parting the folds of her cunt to expose the 
inner lips. While she writhed and twisted, he fingered the tender flesh 
until the excitement flowed. She implored him to stop, to continue, to do 
anything he wanted, and for as long as he wished. The way her hips moved 
made Bunyard's blood start to boil. He hadn't even touched her clitoris, and 
already ... He stood up to shrug out of his clothes. 

Rita lay down on the sofa in an attitude calculated to inflame him. She 
smiled in satisfaction when she saw him totally nude, totally ready for her. 
"You have a lot of meat, honey," she remarked. "You won't hurt me with that 
thing, will you?" 

"I may have to," he declared, to frighten her. But she didn't appear 
frightened. Satisfied, he climbed on the sofa and stooped to stroke her clit 
a few times. Rita twitched in time with his fingering, finally pushing his 
hand away. 

"I don't need that. I want you inside me. Now!" She gave him a starved look. 

Needing no more encouragement, Bunyard placed his legs between hers and 
knelt. In one lunge, he buried himself inside her, pausing for a moment to 
hang on to the load. Then, as Rita shuddered beneath him, he began to move, 
sounding her out in long, even strokes which speeded her excitement without 
hurrying his own. 

"Fuck me, football hero!" she begged, tucking long legs around his waist. 
"Fuck me until you can't fuck me any more!" 

He fucked her until she dug sharp nails into his shoulders and sobbed out a 
climax. He fucked her until she gurgled another climax which left her more 
spent, more sated than its predecessor. He fucked her until she came one 
last time, more intensely, if her single scream meant anything, than on the 
other occasions. Then he came himself, in four savage bursts which nearly 
ripped him in half. Afterward, he fell asleep. 

 3 

Gwynn Bunyard started cooking a pot roast as soon as she arrived home, 
wanting to get her numbed mind on something else even though there was cold 
meatloaf in the refrigerator, left over from the night before, and sirloin 
in the freezer. The roast simmered until six-thirty, when she turned it off. 

Seven o'clock came. Not so the man she expected. Seven-thirty. Gwynn began 
to be annoyed, then concerned. At eight, she called the stadium office. No 
one answered the phone. She went to find the Seals' directory, dialing 
everyone who might know where Clay was. No one could help her, although Fred 
Shanks did ask her to call him back if Clay wasn't home by midnight. 

"The police, too." 

At nine, frantic, she managed to reach Vic Pieper, the Seals' popular and 
personable equipment manager. "Please, Mister Pieper!" she entreated. "Tell 
me if you saw Clay leave practice with the others! Did you? And do you 
remember the time?" 

"I was on the sidelines with Clay at four o'clock, Missiz Bunyard. When we 
heard the rain overhead, the fellows lost their concentration, so Coach 
Shanks dismissed practice. I'm sure Clay went out with the others. That 
means he should have left around five p.m. But to be honest, I don't know. I 
went straight to my car. Got soaked, too. I hope you don't suspect...? " 

"I don't know what I suspect!" Gwynn snapped, and hung up. She wished a few 
minutes later that she hadn't been so rude, but Pieper probably understood. 
She was worried, and with good cause. The man who'd used her might have 
decided to collect his money after all, assuming there was a sum of money 
involved in the day's sordid happening. Clay might be bound and gagged in a 
car trunk somewhere, or lying in his own blood in a waterfront alley. New 
Orleans dealt sudden, violent death to quite a few. 

To keep from screaming, she put a record on the stereo and sat listening to 
it, lips compressed. Another hour passed. She turned the record over. The 
last notes faded and the changer turned itself off again. Gwynn went to the 
phone and began dialing the downtown station. Then she heard a car door slam 
outside. A feeling somewhere between gladness and rage came over her. She 
put the phone down and ran to unlock the door, peering out into the gloom. 
The car with the slamming door had parked directly behind her Dasher. "Clay! 
Is that you?" He climbed put so slowly and came toward her with such 
deliberateness that she was alarmed all over again. 

"Yeah, baby, it's me," he said, and his voice in the darkness sounded 
choked. 

Gwynn left the house to reach him, throwing her arms around his neck and 
trying to press her lips to his. Clay was six-two and she was five-six, so 
he had to bend his head. The kiss to her seemed cold. Heartbreakingly cold, 
in view of what she'd endured for him. "Darling, are you all right?" she 
asked, telling herself she didn't smell another woman's perfume clinging to 
her husband. 

"More or less," he returned, his voice cracking. "I'll let you be the 
judge." 

"Where have you been?" Gwynn demanded. "Didn't you know I'd be worried sick? 
I even thought you'd been kidnapped or killed!" 

"Hush!" he exclaimed, and stopped her lips with his palm. "Just let me get 
inside. I think I can explain." 

"I think you'd better." She led him back inside to the warmth and the light, 
examining him with anxious eyes before closing the door. He looked all 
right, just tired, which was normal for a Tuesday practice. But Clay's 
fatigue tonight seemed to be more than surface deep. And she didn't like the 
way he avoided her eye. The perfume scent was stronger now. Unmistakable, in 
fact. "Explanation, please." 

He shrugged, making a vague gesture which pleased her even less than the 
perfume. "The injury isn't serious. I'll probably be able to play Sunday." 

"Injury!" Having expected a confession about the gambling debt which .would 
embarrass and humiliate the both of them, Gwynn expelled a breath. "Clay 
Bunyard, what are you talking about?" She watched him swallow twice before 
the words came. 

"I took a lick on the head this afternoon. That is, I think it was this 
afternoon. Anyway, when I left the locker room, I couldn't remember where it 
was I was supposed to go. My head hurt and I-" He stared at her as though he 
were seeing her for the first time. "It is Tuesday, the twentieth, isn't 
it?" 

She nodded, struggling to keep the skepticism off her face. "Yes, of course. 
Are you saying--? " 

"I drove until I ran out of gas. Back across the river, fortunately. Then I 
left the car and walked. I must have walked a couple of miles and then 
stumbled into a cafe. Luckily for me, an off-duty nurse spotted me, asked me 
a few questions and figured out what had happened. She gave me an aspirin 
and massaged my forehead. After an. hour, I felt well enough to come home. 
We traced my car through the police, and here I am." 

Gwynn made herself believe him. The story, after all, was borderline 
plausible. Athletes in contact sports frequently suffered injuries such as 
this. And yet..."Where did she take you for this massaging? To a hospital?" 
From the flush on Clay's face, she divined his answer before he gave it to 
her. 

"To the apartment. But we never got ideas, if that's what you're thinking. 
We didn't ball one another. Baby, I wouldn't lie to you.". 

"What was her name? Did you think to ask?" 

He snapped his fingers. "No. What a careless bastard I am. She practically 
saved my life, and all I did was thank her. I could have gotten her a pass 
to all our remaining home games." 

Gwynn stepped close to peer into his eyes. "And now? How do you feel now?" 
Clay grinned, or rather, forced his mouth to. 

"I feel fine, just hungry as a Cajun. What's for dinner?" 

Because she still loved him, she accepted his explanation. Her woman's 
intuition would make her doubt Clay's story later, but for now she believed. 
"Pot roast. And while you're eating it, I'm going to call the team 
physician. I think he should know what happened to you." Clay seemed to 
start, but she put it down to imagination. 

"No. It was nothing. Nothing to be excited about. If you make a fuss, you 
could knock me out of a starting assignment. You don't want that, do you? 
Besides, the papers might pick it up. Remember what our attorney told us? 
The slightest notoriety could make me an ex-Seal. Think of the bread, the 
life we planned together." He eased nearer and took her in his arms. "Let's 
not blow it, baby. It's everything we've got." 

Gwynn nodded, although she was fighting to hold back the tears. Something 
was wrong here. Dreadfully wrong. Just what, she wasn't sure. And after her 
own ordeal, she couldn't bring herself to force the issue. So she accepted 
Clay's perfunctory kiss and tried to ignore the cloying scent Which still 
clung to him. "Then come to dinner. I kept it hot for you." 

"You would, being you." He squeezed her arm and turned away. "I'm going to 
wash." 

* * * 

When he sat down with her to eat, Clay smelled masculine once more. He'd 
splashed himself with his favorite cologne. Now he smiled at her like the 
Clay she knew. "Care to tell me about your day?" he asked, loading his plate 
with biscuits. 

Gwynn considered the odds, then confessed that she hadn't gone to work. "I 
called in with a sore throat," she said. "It wasn't, really. Just a Tuesday 
funk." 

Clay frowned. "Oh? But you did move your car. I had to drive farther up to 
touch the bumper." 

Gwynn stared at her plate and wondered how he could forget his name and 
address for three hours, yet remember the exact spot her car had been parked 
when he drove away that morning. "I went to the hairdresser's," she fibbed, 
patting the home set. "Can you tell?" 

He studied her hair for a fleeting second. "Yeah. Sorry I didn't notice. It 
looks great." 

She wanted to throw the bowlful of beef gravy in his face. Only a dread 
curiosity as to what had really happened made her smile and look pleased. 
She needed time, time to think, time to check out at least one angle of his 
story. A woman with a marriage on her hands had to be sure before she acted. 
Or reacted. 

* * * 

She took longer than usual over her preparations for bed, wanting to see if 
he'd wait up for her. But Clay was snoring softly when she turned back the 
covers of their king-size bed. He lay on his back on the far edge, and even 
though he snored, his breathing was neither deep nor regular. 

Gwynn slid under the covers, yanking them out of his hands and pulling them 
up to her chin. She was so rough about it that he had to turn Over and gape 
at her. 

"Anything wrong, baby?" he asked with a yawn, and made the yawn a chasm of 
indifference. 

She shook her head, affecting a rueful cheerfulness. "Nothing, darling. I'd 
love to .go without for another night. If you'll just let me." 

Clay rolled near enough to kiss her over the eye. "I'm sorry, hon. I'm just 
not up to it tonight. If you knew the licks I took today ... Maybe tomorrow 
night?" 

Gwynn reached up and worked the lamp's switch, plunging the bedroom into 
darkness. In the dark, she could clench both fists without being-seen. 
"That's a promise?" 

"That's a promise." He rolled away and turned his back to her. 

When she was sure that he'd gone to sleep, she began to cry. She cried until 
there were no more tears left to cry, until the frustrations of her day had 
been washed away. Then she, too, surrendered herself to oblivion. 

* * * 

The next morning, before going to work but after Clay had left, she dialed 
the police station and asked for the stolen car division. A desk sergeant 
referred her to another office on the next floor. After more waiting, she 
was connected with a captain who asked if he could help her. Gwynn, wanting 
to hang up now that she was in so far, steeled herself to go through with 
it. "I'm not sure. That is, I don't have a car that's stolen. Not exactly. I 
just want to know..." 

"I beg your pardon, ma'am?" 

"If your division ... recovered a car last evening, a car that had been, 
well, misplaced, would there be a record of it?" 

"Of course, ma'am. We keep records of everything around here. That's why 
we're so slow. Do you have a description of the car, or possibly the license 
number and owner's name?" 

Gwynn read from the information she'd scrawled on a piece of paper. 

"Do you know the approximate time of recovery?" 

She had to think. "Nine p.m. or thereabouts. But I don't know where." 

"Give me a few minutes. I'll have to put the phone down, but I won't be 
hanging up." 

Gwynn waited five minutes, then ten. She waited until she was in danger of 
being late for work again. As her fingers crept across the cradle to break 
the connection-checking up on Clay in this manner was ridiculous, when you 
got right down to it-the voice from downtown came over the line once more. 

"Are you still there, ma'am?" 

"Yes! Yes, I'm still here. Have you found something?" 

"No, ma'am. There's no record. It hasn't been recovered. Does that help?" 

"Yes," Gwynn replied, dying a little inside. She'd never in her life felt so 
victimized. Clay had deceived her cruelly on the one night when she'd needed 
him most. She didn't think she could ever forgive him for it. "Thank you. 
Thank you very much." 

 4 

Clay Bunyard, still in street clothes, found his place in the Seals' 
conference room and sat down, flipping open his playbook, which he kept 
locked in the car trunk. For the next three hours, he and the others would 
analyze plays, plot strategy and in general ready themselves for the next 
game. Even the defense was expected to understand every Seal offensive 
line-up, in case an opponent copied it. 

Bunyard, sitting between Isaac Hayes, a corner-back out of Prairie View A 
and M, and Charlie Walters, a running back from Michigan State University, 
listened as Fred Shanks asked for their attention. The coach looked from 
face to face as he offered criticism of the previous day's practice, but his 
glance, to Bunyard, seemed to linger longest on himself. The latter tensed, 
fearing Gwynn had called the team physician after all, to relay the yarn 
he'd cooked up. If she had, then he, Clay Bunyard, was in the fire. Or had 
someone on the team'spotted him as he rolled out of the bar? A minor crisis, 
that. 

Another possibility gave Bunyard pause. If Fred Shanks even dreamed that 
he'd placed bets-large bets, losing bets-on two games the Seals had felt 
they could win, he was in trouble. He'd be placed on immediate waivers, if 
not suspended outright, and chances were, he'd go unclaimed, third-round 
draft pick or not. 

But if Shanks knew about the debt, then so did the league office. The 
commissioner's eyes and ears, the players liked to joke, were everywhere, 
including the bedroom. And as far as Bunyard knew, no one in the league 
office had ever tried to contact him, for any reason. As to the debt itself, 
well, he hadn't disowned it, he just intended taking his time about paying 
it. Anyway, the operator who'd sucked him in was hard to nail down. There 
was still time. 

The three hours passed slowly. Everyone in the room was grateful, to see 
twelve o'clock come. When the skull session broke for lunch, Shanks crooked 
his finger at Bunyard and beckoned him to the front, making a concession to 
locker room etiquette by waiting until the room had cleared to say what was 
on his mind. 

"You know our policy on moonlighting, Bunyard. Don't push us." 

Bunyard smiled in relief. His heart slowed its pounding. "I wish I knew what 
you're talking about." 

"Your wife couldn't reach you last night, and neither could I," Shanks 
returned. "You don't have to deny anything. Just don't let me catch you. A 
suspension means you won't start Sunday's game. Clear?" 

"Gwynn called you?" Bunyard felt guilty all over again. He hoped it didn't 
show. 

"Pieper called me. She called him, and you know what an ulcer case he is. I 
had to cut short a sauna session and calm him down. Have you taken a job 
your wife doesn't know about?" 

Bunyard shook his head. "No job. I had a few beers, forgot about the time 
and went home late. There was a little more, but you wouldn't be 
interested," 

Shanks crossed his arms and scowled, planting his feet like a lineman about 
to absorb a pass rush. "Try me. They weren't beers, they were hard ones. And 
you got so pickled you had to dry out before you went home. Yes or no." 

Bunyard flushed. "No. I haven't hung one on since I signed the contract. You 
know who the team boozers are, coach. I'm not one of them." 

"Then you shacked up with some dame and made a fool of yourself. No, don't 
tell me. I don't want to hear about it. And I'm surprised at you. I've met 
Gwynn, you know, and she should be enough woman for you. Maybe more than 
enough." 

Bunyard let his expression show where the conversation was going-straight to 
nowhere. He even doubled his fist and went about estimating the distance to 
Shanks' fifty-two-year-old jaw. A no-scratch contract made a man forget 
Louisiana's stiff assault-and-battery laws. 

Shanks glanced at the fist, and smiled. But there was no humor in his eyes. 
"Don't try it. I'd break your neck and then wipe my hands on your contract. 
But I admire you for thinking about it. A man who isn't reckless can't play 
for me. That's all, Bunyard. Go to lunch." t 

Bunyard stalked out with his head held high and the hair crawling. But with 
his pride intact. He and most other players hated the autocratic powers 
granted an UFL coach, but even he conceded the need for them. Otherwise, 
discipline would be a whip, and the roster a band of savage, brawling 
brutes. The fans, safe above the playing field, might love it. The players 
wouldn't. 

After lunch, the team and coaching staff watched game film clips for two 
hours, concentrating on the past Sunday's loss to Chicago, the Western 
Conference's Central Division co-leader. The resurging Bruins had dumped the 
Seals by three touchdowns. Not a man in the projection room was proud of the 
score, but few could argue that the Seals hadn't matched pads with a bigger 
line. Brad Davis had completed 16 of 37 passes for 212 yards, mainly in the 
second half. Bunyard himself had caught five of the passes.one for a 
touchdown. 

He watched himself race into the end zone, fake off one of the better 
safeties in the business, and gather in the ball, relived the thrill and the 
satisfaction. As before, congratulatory hands from behind and to either side 
thumped his shoulders. He wasn't ashamed right now of having wagered on the 
Atlanta and San Francisco games, only of having placed his bets with the 
wrong people. The wrong people. Jeez, but a guy had to be careful. 

Rita, for instance. If he was smart, or even half-smart, he wouldn't see her 
again. She knew he had a marriage and a career to protect. Rita was a nice 
little piece, but she wasn't worth the risk and the run-ins with Shanks. 
From now on, he'd do his pussy-chasing at home. That way, Gwynn wouldn't get 
any ideas of her own. He really wanted a stable, permanent relationship, and 
fooling around wasn't the way to get there. 

At three he dressed out with the others for the day's contact work, the 
least-loved part of a pro footballer's existence. While he ran his patterns, 
however, Bunyard thought of other things, such as the possibility of a dark 
blue Electra hardtop waiting for him in the parking lot when he walked out 
at six. The driver would be large, well-dressed and no one's sweetheart. 
Their conversation might go as follows: 

"You got the money, kid?" 

"Now? All of it?" 

"You're funny, kid. Real funny. If you didn't make your paycheck here, in 
front of cameras and writers..." 

"Yeah? Finish it." 

"I'll give you another week. With that straw in your hair, I guess you got 
it coming. See you." 

He found no Buick Electra, so he drove home whistling. 

Gwynn was quiet at dinner, so quiet he began to worry a bit. She'd never 
been the vivacious sort, anyway-talkative women put him off-even when he'd 
done something that greatly pleased her. Lately, he'd done very little that 
pleased her, unless it was to make himself valuable to a team that needed 
all the help it could get, both on and off the field. "Anything wrong, hon?" 
he inquired, watching her from across the table. 

She let half a minute pass before shaking her head. "No. Well, yes. It must 
be a virus or something. I just don't feel well." 

"Maybe you ought to see our doctor tomorrow," he suggested, although they 
had an agreement that she wouldn't get pregnant for at least another year. 
Gwynn seemed to start, pausing in mid-bite. Then she shook her head again. 

"It's not that." 

Bunyard remembered-guiltily-how he'd pushed her away the night before, and 
decided he knew what it was. Gwynn happened to have outgrown the dewy-eyed 
bride stage, probably to their mutual benefit. Now she was a grown woman 
with a grown woman's needs-and a girl's inability to communicate them"I dig. 
And I love you very much." He saw a nerve twitch in her cheek, and wondered 
why an assurance of love would make her react so. 

"I love you, too, Clay, only..." Gwynn pushed her unfinished plate aside. 
"I'm going to bed early. There's pie in the refrigerator, ice cream in the 
freezer." She got up and left the room. 

Perplexed, Bunyard finished his tuna casserole and went after the pie. The 
ice cream he decided to do without. After watching television until 
nine-thirty, he went to change into pajamas and slippers. When he crawled 
into bed, Gwynn's arm was flung across her forehead in an attitude of sleep. 
But he suspected she wasn't asleep. Gently, he removed her arm and kissed 
her lips. Gwynn's lips were icy. But she stirred and opened her eyes, 
blinking up at him. He kissed the eyes, too, before she could close them. 
"Like to tell me what's bothering you?" he invited. Her expression, in the 
light of a single bedside lamp. seemed oddly accusing. 

"Maybe you should tell me. You haven't been yourself lately, Clay. What is 
it? Can't you talk about your problems to your own wife? Don't you trust me? 
What's happened to us?" 

"Nothing's happened," he soothed. "And of course I trust you. You I trust." 
He reached to turn out the light, then realized she might read too much into 
the gesture. So he left the light on, meeting her gaze without flinching. He 
remembered, too, how long it had been since they made love with the lights 
on. Gwynn wore a lacy black negligee which he itched to get under. The gown 
set off her dark hair and contrasted with her pale, white skin. Bunyard 
grinned. "Now it's coming back to me. This is what I'm working for." He 
pounced. She fended him off for a few seconds, but he was much too strong 
for her. 

"Have ... to ... make ... me!" she panted between clenched teeth. 

"With pleasure," he chuckled, and raked the gown's straps off her shoulders 
even as she bucked beneath him. For him it was ell in fun, until she dug 
needle-sharp nails into the tender skin of his neck. Then he did something 
he'd never done before: he slapped her smartly across the face. The sharp 
report shocked him more than the expression on her face. 

"Clay!" 

Whether she was incredulous, pleased or just sur' prised, he couldn't tell. 
But she was struggling to put the straps back on her shoulders, which told 
him a lot. "I don't understand you!" Bunyard stormed, holding her arms by 
her sides. "One night you're practically falling all over me, the next you 
won't even give me a decent kiss! What gives?" 

"Then kiss me-if you're man enough!" she taunted, offering her lips to him. 

He bruised them with his own, forcing her head deep into the pillow. After a 
few seconds, she relaxed and kissed him back. Lips which three minutes 
before had been chilled with indifference warmed suddenly to fiery passion, 
astonishing him with their response. He stopped wondering and concentrated 
on kissing them, on tonguing their corners and nibbling their surfaces, on 
drinking the saliva which flowed nectar-like from her mouth to his. 

When he drove his tongue past her teeth, she bit him, hard enough to hurt 
but not hard enough to draw blood. Bunyard had to remind himself not to hurt 
her back. Instead, he stroked the roof of her mouth until she stopped biting 
and began stroking back, fighting a furious duel of love with him which 
neither could lose. 

Finally, needing to catch his breath, he tore free of her. Glancing down at 
her breasts, he saw that they were red and swollen. She wasn't faking. He 
really had rung her bell. Bunyard bowed his head and proceeded to suck like 
a baby, moving from one tit to the other. Gwynn knotted her hands in his 
hair and whimpered encouragement. Excited, he used the shaft of his tongue 
to rake her turgid nipples across the roof of his mouth. He couldn't be 
sure-a man rarely could-but he thought she came off about then. The 
convulsing motions were his clue. 

More stirred than she usually left him, he paused to roll back the covers. 
The negligee was up about her-hips, anyway, so he held her up with one arm 
and rolled the garment the rest of the way, sliding it over her head and 
tossing it on the headboard. Then he rolled out of bed to shuck away the 
pajamas and the satin shorts the rest of the team kidded him about. Naked at 
last, he had to smile at the way Gwynn was watching him. Now she was 
wide-eyed and rapt with interest. This was how sex had been for them once, 
before a year of marriage and too much familiarity took the edge off. "How 
am I doing?" he asked, pretending to be anxious about the size of his 
erection. She laughed out loud. 

"Come nearer and let me feel." 

Close behind a stiff prick, he ambled around to her side and let her grasp 
him with warm fingers. Using both her hands, she twisted lightly in opposing 
motions. But she made no move to take his manhood into her mouth, or even to 
kiss it. He was disappointed. Going down on a man, he supposed, wasn't every 
woman's bag. It certainly wasn't Gwynn's. 

While she stretched and teased him, he eased a hand between her thighs. 
After the mood she'd been in, he didn't want to rush things. But she 
permitted him easy access to her cunt. He inserted a finger, another and a 
third, discovering the outer lips to be moist and supple. She quivered when 
he found her clitoris. Her hands faltered at their task. Encouraged, he went 
to work on the boatman's shaft with all the skill of his twenty-three years. 
He made her gasp, he made her swear, he made her beg him to do it. 

"Do what?" he asked, leaning over her, wanting to hear the words. "Fuck me!" 
she entreated. "Fuck me hard!" 

He pushed her farther back on the bed and crawled on top of her. Gwynn 
spread her thighs for him and arched them upward in surrender. But she 
turned her face away and closed her eyes, as though not wanting to view the 
actual possession. Bunyard, angered, had no time toconsider the 
implications. Bracing his knees, he stabbed through her cunt's lips and 
drove himself deep inside her. Rita or not, he had to stop and think of 
other things for a few seconds to keep from erupting. When he thought he had 
the control he needed, he began to move. 

If he'd ever fucked her better, he couldn't recall the occasion, unless it 
was the third night of their honeymoon, when he'd finally gotten a normal 
hard-on rather than a permanent-and painfulerection. This time he made her 
implore him to, "Keep it up, keep it up! Don't ever stop doing that for 
me!", something she hadn't been able to bring herself to do during the 
honeymoon. He kept it up for almost an hour, wringing at least three 
climaxes out of a woman who usually came off just once, if at all. He 
groaned out his own finish while there was still enough of him left to drag 
out of bed on Thursday. 

He went to. shower and eat a sandwich of cold cuts. When he returned, she 
was fast asleep, still in the same position in which he'd left her. Bunyard 
was mildly appalled. Never, to his knowledge, had Gwynn been a wanton. Had 
she become one now? He went to sleep troubled over the possibility. 

5 

Gwynn Bunyard overslept Thursday morning. The fault, if a finger had to be 
pointed, was less her own than Clay's. Not in months had he so drained her 
of tension, left her so sated in mind and spirit. And yet she loved him no 
more than before. She even thought she loved him less. 

When she opened her eyes, sunlight bathed the room. The bed was empty beside 
her, the apartment silent. Then she realized why the sheets felt so 
smooth-she wasn't wearing a stitch. The shame lasted for only a second. 
After her humiliation in the motel room, nothing could ever shame her again. 
Nothing. She would fight the emotion and win. 

She rolled near the electric alarm and compared its time with her wrist 
watch nearby. A quarter 'til ten. She'd called in sick once already this 
week, so she couldn't use that again. Nor could she expect anyone to 
understand if she confessed the truth. Great Southern Life Insurance Company 
employed her as a claims adjuster, not to sleep late on brilliant autumn 
mornings. 

She found her negligee on the bed's headboard and put it on. Then she got 
back under the covers and considered her choices. First a hot breakfast. 
Without eggs or cereal, or at least a cup of coffee, she wasn't of much 
value to anyone, not even herself. 

* * * 

Between cups of coffee-black, no sugar-Gwynn brooded over the absurdity of 
the' situation: her working as an $8,000-a-year claims adjuster, helping 
process hundreds of death certificates every day, and Clay's job as a 
$22,000-a-year receiver, masking his pleasure under the guise of "business." 
Pro football, everyone said, was a business. She wasn't convinced. The 
unfairness of the arrangement had always infuriated her, right now to the 
point of desperation. 

The phone rang on the nightstand nearby, but she didn't answer it. Before 
her supervisor at Great Southern could call again, she dialed the company's 
personnel director, a Gordon LaRose, and told him he could mail her check, 
that she wouldn't be in again, ever. LaRose didn't seem to understand. 

"I beg your pardon, Missiz Bunyard? Did you say you were leaving us?" 

"I'm going to have a baby. The doctor told me this morning." 

"But you needn't leave so soon. You-" 

"Goodbye, Mister LaRose. Don't forget my check." She hung up. 

In midafternoon, she went looking for a job. In the course of her looking, 
she tried every employment agency in town, plus the Louisiana Employment 
Commission, filling out application forms until her fingers ached. The 
results weren't encouraging. The positions that were available either paid 
poorly or called for experience of a sort she didn't have, indeed couldn't 
have until this one, maddening requirement was waived. 

She even bought an afternoon edition of the States-Item and checked the 
help-wanted columns. Nothing. Nothing, at least, that she was interested in, 
nothing she could tell Clay about and not be ashamed. But in another section 
of the paper, her aching eyes fell upon what Gwynn felt was her last chance: 

Girl Friday wanted. Must be single and attractive. Experience in typing and 
dictation desirable but not essential. A good business head a must. This 
position is a career opportunity with executive possibilities. Curiosity 
seekers need not apply. Salary open. Call 367-9853, Algiers. Ask for Mr. 
Tannen. 

She wrote the number on a page comer, tore the comer off and went into a 
phone booth to dial. While the all was going through, she fidgeted, aware 
that her palms had gone moist. Gwynn argued to herself that she filled most 
of the requirements, so why not let this Mr. Tannen, whoever he was, think 
she'd never been married? Why not, indeed. 

"Tannen Enterprises Executive Suites. To whom do you wish to speak?" 

Gwynn winced. Tannen Enterprises? 'To Mr. Tannen, please." 

"Just a moment." 

She waited, and wished she hadn't called. But since she had...."Yes?" 

The new voice was a pleasant male voice, so she took heart. "Mr. Tannen? I 
saw your ad, and I ... think I may be the girl you want." 

"Oh? What is your name, young lady?" 

"Gwynn. Gwynn Bunyard. I'm calling from downtown. Do you want me to--? " She 
heard Tannen laugh. 

"I can't tell very much about you on the phone, can I? I'll be in my office 
until six o'clock, if you care to drive over. But I warn you, I've already 
rejected seven applicants today. I'll probably reject you, too.-Come at your 
own risk." 

"I'm coming," Gwynn declared, and broke the connection. She stepped from the 
phone booth and started back up Bourbon Street toward the parking lot where 
she'd left her car. Dusk was approaching. As she walked through the canyon 
of buildings, she remembered to slip her wedding ring off her finger and 
drop it in her handbag. The place where the ring had been felt curiously 
naked without it. 

* * * 

R.E. Tannen locked his well-manicured hands together and appraised the woman 
in front of him with eyes that seemed to miss nothing. The eyes were brown 
and set rather deep in his head, accentuating an impression of depth. The 
rest of Tannen, the visible part, anyway, was vintage executive, from his 
crisp, shortish hair style to a tailored Hart Schaffner. On his feet, one 
had to suspect, were a pair of the best English leathers available. 

He smiled. "So much for poise and appearance. You pass muster, needless to 
say. But sc did the others, and none of them lasted. None." Tannen beckoned 
her nearer. "Tell me why you're here. What was it about my ad that made you 
check it out? The money?" 

Gwynn colored, looking away to conceal it. She didn't think she'd ever seen 
a more handsome man, a courtlier man, than R. Evans Tannen. He wore no 
wedding ring, either, which made her wonder. She brought her eyes back to 
his face, and nodded. "Well, yes, I want to be honest. The money. The salary 
and the status appealed to me. My old job..." She shrugged. 

Tannen nodded, appearing to suppress a smile. "Then you are honest. The 
others tried to con me with cute talk about 'challenging careers' and 
'stimulating surroundings.' What kind of job was your old job, if I may 
ask?" y She hesitated. "I was a claims adjuster for a life insurance 
company. I left them this morning. And I wasn't fired. I can give you a 
number, if you want to check." 

"I think I'll let your honesty cover for you on that score. You take 
dictation, I suppose, and type. How many words a minute?" 

"I know Gregg and Speed writing," she replied. "I type ninety-five words a 
minute, electric. Seventy-five, manual." 

"Excellent, excellent." Tannen tipped his chair back and flicked an 
imaginary speck off his suit front. "You won't be typing a great deal, 
though. Mostly you'll be on the phone, talking to various clients. Your 
phone personality seems nice enough. How are you versed in business law? Do 
you understand the rudiments?" 

Gwynn was suddenly glad-that she'd taken both the required business law 
course and the advanced while in college. "I can almost recite the Uniform 
Commercial Code by heart,", she admitted, and boldly appended a clincher: 
"My senior thesis dealt with court decisions relating to corporate 
prerogatives." 

Tannen's eyes gleamed with wry humor. "Careful you don't hurt yourself 
falling off your senior thesis. All right, so you meet our standards. Our 
executive standards, if you please. I still haven't told you the two chief 
requirements for the job. You must know me so well that in my absence you 
can make the same decisions I would. That's one. In order to meet this one, 
you must fulfill the last, which is a little more difficult. You'll have to 
enter into a, well, a love relationship with me. Yes, you heard me right. 
Now I'd like to hear your reaction." 

Gwynn stood up at once, face flaming, realizing she should have known there 
was a catch. R. Evans Tannen, for all his fine trappings and studied 
suave-eness, was just another man on the make. His clever come-on might fool 
many girls, but she was nobody's fool. "My 'reaction,' as you call it, won't 
make you happy, Mr. Tannen. You've made yourself very clear. Thank you for 
your time." She picked up her gloves and handbag, turned to leave. 

Tannen's handsome face crinkled into a smile. 

"You're leaving before we even discuss salary? I'm prepared to offer twenty 
thousand a year. Good talent is hard to come by, and when I find it, I pay. 
I suspect that's three times what you were making as a claims adjuster." , 
"But at least my body was my own!" she retorted. "You don't want a Girl 
Friday. No, not you. You want a pro. A pro who's always available. I can't 
fill your order, Mr. Tannen." 

Before she could open the door, he sprang up to circle the desk and grasp 
her by the arm. On his feet, he wasn't as big as she'd expected, just 
perfectly proportioned. And the shoes were top-grade English leathers. "You 
seem to be a person of some refinement, Miss Bunyard.-At least, your manner 
of speech says so. You probably expect more in the way of amenities. Forgive 
me if I was too crass for your taste." 

Crass? Gwynn thought him a master of understatement. "That's not the word 
for it!" she fumed, struggling to escape. But for all his lack of size, he 
held her as easily as he would a child. Before she could twist free, he 
turned her to him and pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was as fiery as the 
expression on his face, an intense, calm look of a man who always got what 
he wanted. She wrenched' her mouth from his and tried to push him away by 
placing her palms on his lapels. "Please," she said shakily. 

"Please, what?" he inquired, smiling. "It's plain we have nothing to talk 
about. Please let me go." 

Tannen shook his head. "On the contrary, I think we have a great deal to 
talk about. Have you ever been married, Miss Bunyard?" He leaned close to 
examine something in her throat, and grinned. "Yes, I can see that you have. 
Your responses, as they say, have given you away. Your pulse is going wild 
and your mouth is probably dry. I think you may be interested in my offer 
after all." 

"No!" she whispered, but his hand went to the thick, paneled door and shot 
the bolt. Gwynn realized she was trapped-for the second time in a week. 
Lately, her life seemed to be a series of traps. I Tannen's office-actually, 
a suite of offices on the 

Tannen Building's eighth floor-was inaccessible except by elevator and 
locked stairs. The building had been emptying when she came up. By now... 

He picked her up in his arms and carried her to his desk top. As casually as 
though he'd known her for years, Tannen began to undress her, starting with 
the coat. "You're going to stay a while with me, aren't you? Then you may as 
well be comfortable." 

Jolted out of her state of inertia, Gwynn began, to fight him, landing 
ineffectual blows to his head and chest. He shrugged them off faster than 
she could lay them on. Desperate, she tried to think of a way to inimidate 
him. "I'm going straight to a lawyer if you don't stop at once! Do you hear? 
A lawyer!" 

Tannen laughed. "I hear you. Chances are. I'll know your lawyer. I can 
probably pay him more than you're worth to him. Let's be reasonable, shall 
we?" He made his fingers fly across the buttons of her blouse, freeing the 
garment in seconds and laying it on top of her coat. Then he pushed her slip 
straps off her shoulders and started on her bra. The latter delayed him no 
longer than the blouse and coat. He lifted it off, inspected the two 
milk-white globes inside, then smiled into her eyes. "I've never seen a 
finer pair, my dear, and I've seen many pairs. I'm not boasting, understand, 
just stating a fact." 

For her, the fight had long since been lost. She'd lost it when she came 
through the door, when he glanced up and planted those hypnotic eyes on her. 
She stopped struggling and raised her chin to his. "Mr. Tannen, I-" 

"Roy. Call me Roy." 

Roy. Of course. A man with this much flair would like to be called Roy. 
Gwynn passed a hand across her forehead. "You don't mean to have me this way 
... Roy. You aren't serious." But she felt a vein pounding in her neck, and 
knew she'd hate and despise him if he didn't. This wasn't rape-rude, violent 
coupling with a stranger. This was a spirited conquest. The new Gwynn 
welcomed it, although she couldn't let him know it. She couldn't even let 
herself admit it. 

"I do mean to have you this way. Watch." He bent over her breasts and lapped 
a nipple into his mouth, caressing its rubbery surface between his lips. The 
nipple, discovering a mind of its own, strained to show appreciation. After 
a minute, he bestowed similar attention upon its fellow, with identical 
results. 

Gwynn remembered the debt she'd paid for Clay, the debt she'd wiped out with 
her own pride, and clenched her teeth, determined to enjoy whatever Roy 
Tannen did to her. She had this coming to her. She felt her thighs grow 
moist with excitement, and wasn't ashamed. Married, widowed or divorced, Roy 
certainly knew how to reach a woman. But why did he bother with the charade 
of a job offer? Was he really in search of a Girl Friday, and was she the 
one? 

He returned to her lips, kissing them from the front, from the corners, 
every way she'd ever wanted to be kissed. Her eyes, too, and nose, throat 
and earlobes. The latter he nipped lightly at until she was ready to kneel 
down for him, to scream her readiness, her eagerness for anything he might 
have in mind. Then he found her mouth again and slipped his tongue between 
her lips. She was only too happy to admit it. 

While he explored the roof of her mouth in slow, sweeping motions, his hands 
were busy elsewhere. One supported her back, massaging the-firm flesh below 
her shoulders. The other he wormed beneath the. waistband of her skirt, 
searching, searching, gliding on until he reached her panties and the 
quivering moistness beyond. Then he stopped frenching her. 

Gwynn sighed, unable to maintain even a pretext of resistance. "Yes. Yes..." 

"Call me Roy, darling," he coaxed, working two fingers inside her vagina and 
using one to stroke her clitoris. "Say it." 

She trembled at the contact, and wasn't able to stop her trembling. "Roy, 
darling, Roy, darling, Roy, darling. Don't stop, Roy, darling.-Please don't 
stop." 

He resumed tonguing the roof of her mouth, coordinating the action with a 
slow, deliberate stimulation of the entire clitoral area. A fire began to 
grow inside her, a fire she'd never experienced with Clay, through no fault 
of her own. The fire smoldered and grew, bursting finally into full flame. 

"Now!" she groaned, tearing her mouth away. "Take me now!" 

He transferred her to a big, leather-covered couch. There he finished 
undressing her and then started on his own elothing. Gwynn watched, 
fascinated. Roy took off everything: jacket, trousers, shirt, tie; tie 
clasp, blue satin jockey shorts, socks and shoes. The man he revealed to her 
was tanned and astonishingly trim. 

He smiled at her, waggling an erection which, if it wasn't the largest she'd 
ever seen, came close. The organ fairly strained to get at her. "Once I felt 
I wasn't as well-hung as other men," he confessed. "Do you think I'm 
well-hung, Miss Bunyard?" 

Gwynn nodded. She wasn't, at the moment, capable of words. When he came 
toward her, she closed her eyes, fearing she'd faint from the constriction 
around her heart, the fever in her brain. But she didn't faint. She was 
taken so gently, so skillfully, the possibility vanished right away. Without 
having to be instructed, she arched her back to help him. Inch by delicious 
inch, he took possession of her, balancing himself between her legs on 
careful hands and knees. 

"Now wrap them around my waist and lock them at the ankle," he ordered, 
seducing her all over again with that look of his, a smoldering, come-hither 
look which made her feel weak inside. 

She complied, although her body was really no longer her own. As soon as she 
had, he began to move. Not with haste or urgency, as though someone might 
interrupt them-no one would--but with art and tenderness, as though he were 
determined to cherish her whether she wanted it or not. Roy Tannen did more 
than plumb her depths. He awoke the perimeters of her genital zone in a way 
no one ever had before, causing her to respond totally and without reserve. 
When he lunged, she lunged with him. When he twisted, she twisted, too, 
without having to think about it. 

Finally, she was rent by an explosion which racked her from head to toe. She 
climaxed, literally, with her whole body, and needed a few minutes in which 
to recover. He gave them to her, and then they went at it again. Her next 
orgasm was much more intense, with spasms that lasted longer and drained 
away still more of her stamina. And yet he wasn't finished. Twice more he 
made her come, before turning into a human geyser, panting out a finish 
which, by some marvelous feat of control, he stretched into a full minute. 

"Terrific!" he praised, betraying a few signs of his exertion. "You were 
terrific." 

Afterward, they lay entwined in a sweaty embrace, loath, both of them, to 
break the connection. He brushed his lips across her face and eyes, evoking 
the last of her response. She shuddered and tried to push him away. "This 
was crazy. I don't know what came over me. Please let me up." 

"But it's done," he reminded her. "You've amply proved your qualifications. 
All of them. Now I want you to stay." 

Gwynn realized now what she'd let herself in for. He wanted her to live with 
him, to go wherever he went. But she couldn't. Not while she was still 
married to Clay. "I can't. I'm sorry. I fust can't." 

"Can't come to work for me?" Tannen stared at her. He appeared to be 
thinking hard. "All right. I'll do something I don't ordinarily do-I'll 
compromise with you. For now, you can keep your apartment, your friends, as 
much of your privacy as you feel you need. But you'll still be mine. 
Whenever I want you, you'll come. At once. Have we an understanding?" 

She wanted to shake her head, knowing the arrangement was madness, a recipe 
for misery. But she found herself nodding yes. 

"Splendid. As of now, consider yourself part of Tannen Enterprises." 

 6 

Clay Bunyard sat midway down the Seals' bench, and suffered. The sick 
feeling in the pit of his stomach-pre-game tension-wouldn't go away, not 
even after he patted the two white tablets tucked inside an envelope in his 
left sock. Bennies. One for the first half, one for the second. Other 
players were probably dosing up, too, as their teammates, not wanting to 
know for sure, looked the other way. No one wanted to commit perjury in the 
commissioner's office a year or two from now. 

Every coach the Seals had was in front of the bench, talking as fast as his 
mouth would permit. No one could hear a word. Fifty-five thousand noisy fans 
were seeing to that. The dome wasn't filled to capacity, however. There were 
ten thousand or so empty seats on the other side of the playing field, in 
the Cleveland cheering section. The kick-off was just fifteen minutes away. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, the starting line-ups for today's game ... For the 
Cleveland Bucks, leaders in the Eastern Conference's Central Division..." 

The crowd's deafening roar subsided to a distant rumble, like thunder on the 
horizon. After each name on the Cleveland line-up, a raucous group of fans 
behind the Seals' bench heckled profanely, reserving their worst language 
for the Bucks quarterback, Al Olsen, and ace receiver, Dave Grady. Bunyard 
wondered how much the stadium security people would tolerate before they 
started booting bodies and refunding tickets. 

The heckling stopped when the game announcer began introducing the Seals' 
offensive starters. Bunyard crammed his helmet onto his head and jogged onto 
the field for the pre-game warm-up detested. But at least the warm-up 
settled some of the queasiness in his belly. While he ran simple patterns 
the Cleveland coaching staff wouldn't take note of, he thought about other 
matters, particularly Gwynn's new coolness toward him. In the past three 
nights, she hadn't made even one move toward him. He wasn't concerned, just 
curious. He was sure she hadn't found someone else. But how had she learned 
to cope? Sex to Gwynn, he knew, had r ever been an urgent thing. For him, 
yes. But he had periods when he couldn't get it down, and periods, like now, 
when the next game was the only thing that mattered. 

He saw the trainer, Larry Curtis, beckon to him from the sidelines, and ran 
off the field to see what Curtis wanted. 

"How's the ankle?" 

Bunyard jumped up and down on the ankle he'd bruised in Friday practice to 
show that it was okay now. "Never felt better!" he shouted back. 

"Gives you trouble, we tape!" the trainer suggested, and whirled to inspect 
his roll-about dispensary. Three assistants hovered nearby, one occupied 
with flexing the stiff knee of a rookie tackle, the club's most recent knee 
casualty. 

"Sure," Bunyard said, and couldn't even hear the reply himself. He loped 
back out onto the field to complete the warm-up. When the playing surface 
cleared for the coin toss and the invocation, he went to sit down. Fred 
Shanks and his staff were conferring behind the benches. When Bunyard saw 
that Curtis wasn't looking, he popped his first bennie. The inanity of grown 
men earning their living this way struck him then, but he neither smiled nor 
shook his head. There was time for neither. 

* * * 

The Bucks won the toss, which surprised no one who followed the team. They'd 
won the toss in all their road games. The road games, too, and that was more 
to the point. Their record was a comfortable 5-I. Sports scribes felt the 
Seals would help make it 6-I. 

Bunyard listened to a rendition of the national anthem, and wished his thigh 
pads didn't chafe so much. 

When the music was done, he prepared for the kickoff. 

* * * 

The Seals' field-goal and kick-off specialist, Danny Sloan of the University 
of-Arkansas, lifted a high, spiraling kick that carried to the Bucks' 19, 
where it was gathered in by Bailey Howell, a triple-year Heisman Trophy 
winner out of the University of Okalahoma. Howell eluded the Saints' rush, 
reaching the 27, where he was wrestled to the artificial turf by Rex Hardin, 
the man who'd held for Sloan. 

The Bucks' Al Olsen trotted onto the field, and the crowd shrilled its 
scorn. Olsen paid them no mind. He huddled his team, set up the first play 
and stepped behind center Ted Matthews. Matthews snapped the ball, and Olsen 
handed off to Lou Waters. The free agent with no college experience ran 
around left end behind exceptional blocking and wasn't dragged down until 
after he'd crossed the 35. 

The next play, was an audible. Olsen crouched behind Matthews, but wasn't 
able to make himself heard. He stepped back and raised his arms for quiet. 
The crowd went crazy, and the host team was penalized five yards, giving the 
Bucks a first-down on the 40. Someone on the Seal bench-Bunyard thought it 
was Reed Kimbrell-swore. 

On the very next play, Olsen lofted a high, floating pass to Gil Stark, and 
the Southern University product raked it in from over his shoulder on the 
Seals' 38-yard line. Another first down. Surprising almost everyone in the 
dome, Olsen thereupon ran an option play, delaying until the last possible 
moment, then churning straight up the middle himself. The linebackers 
reacted too late. The gain was six yards to the 32. 

"The mother's good," someone muttered on Bun-yard's right. 

The latter felt that Cleveland's making the playoffs year after year spoke 
for itself. Olsen was indeed good, although not perfect. The Bucks' 
signal-caller could be blindsided, and sometimes was. 

On second-and-four, Olsen retreated into a pocket and threw long for Dave 
Grady, the wide receiver out of Arizona State. Grady was bumped by the 
Seals' safety, Ray Newcomb, and couldn't hang on. The Bucks' coach, Claude 
Gifford, came off the sidelines and onto the Held a couple of yards. The 
official advised him to sit down. No pass interference was called. 

With third-and-four, Olsen called another option, faking Carl Crenner into 
the line and following him with the ball. The Seals' defense smelted the 
play, but wasn't able to stop it. The gain was so near the 28 that a 
time-out was called for a measurement. The crowd booed to a man when 
informed that a first-down had been registered. 

On the very next play, Olsen drilled a hard pass to Grady, who evaded the 
Seals' cornerback, Isaac Hayes, long enough to race to the Seals' 16-yard 
line. Two tosses into the end zone failed to produce a score, however, and 
an end sweep by Marvin Miller netted only four yards. But the Bucks kicked a 
22-yard field-goal and led 3 to 0. 

The Seals' kick-off and punt-return specialist, Reed Kimbrell, took the 
ensuing kick-off and ran it back to his team's 39-yard line, an 
eighteen-yard effort. The fans made the dome's foundations quiver. But Brad 
Davis called an option play which went nowhere. Cleveland linebackers Dennis 
Tyler and Rick Martin came charging in to nail Davis for a loss of four back 
at his own 35. 

With second-and-fourteen, Davis faded behind good blocking and threw long to 
Gene Connally, the tight end. But Connally was delayed by defensive end Hamp 
King and ran his pattern tardily. The ball overshot the intended receiver by 
three feet. Clay Bunyard, running from his flanker's position, had been the 
safety valve, but Davis hadn't seen how open he was. 

Bunyard jogged back to the huddle and listened as Davis hoarsely outlined 
the next play: a down-and-out quickie to himself designed to net a first 
down and nothing more. If this initial drive failed, as in all-likelihood it 
would, Fred Shanks would call every play from the bench from here on out, 
using substitute players to relay the calls. 

Cleveland's linebackers began stunting before the ball was snapped, 
necessitating some adjustment on Bunyard's part. He delayed a second before 
going in motion, to draw in Mike Smith. Then he went outside as fast as his 
legs would take him, faked to the middle of the field after the linebackers 
passed, turned outside as soon as Smith committed himself. Davis hurled the 
ball at Bunyard, who had to scoop it from atop his shoes at the 48. As he 
straightened, Vernon Stroud, the Bucks' cornerback, 3macked him out of 
bounds. Bunyard felt his neck twist and most of the sensation leave his 
hands. The ball spurted loose, but the play had been blown dead, a yard 
short of the first-down. With Cleveland holding only a 3-0 lead, Shanks 
didn't want to gamble. Wayne Jennings came in to punt. 

With 6:43 left in the quarter, Olsen moved his team from the Cleveland 7 to 
the New Orleans 37. On third-and-two, he dropped into a pocket to pass long. 
His feet slipped out from under him. The crowd whooped for nearly a minute, 
and not even the officials could stop them. The Bucks now faced 
fourth-and-eleven from the Seal 46. Proving they had some respect for a 2-4 
opponent, Jim Elliot was sent in to punt. 

* * * 

Four minutes into a see-saw second quarter, Bunyard felt the bennie take 
hold. His eyes had dilated, because now he saw the action on the field much 
more clearly. He could run faster, although that was probably his 
imagination. He even fancied he could fly into the end zone if the notion 
struck him. A few minutes later, he experienced a feeling of giddy 
exhilaration, a friendly contempt for Fred Shanks and his "game plan." 

The feeling seemed justified when Olsen was intercepted at midfield. The 
Seal cheerleaders turned cartwheels in the end zone and everyone who had 
lungs used them. Brad Davis and the offense swarmed onto the field. Davis, 
bringing with him Shanks' own play, wasted no time in putting it into 
motion. Falling back to the New Orleans 40, he looked deep for Connally, who 
was covered by both Vernon Stroud and Paul Griffin. 

Connolly wasn't the primary receiver, however. Nor was Bunyard, who'd been 
instructed to make frantic catching motions on the Cleveland 45. Instead, 
Davis threw to the other wide receiver, Carver Casey, who had lined up as a 
tight end. The pass was completed and Casey, breaking two tackles, churned 
to the Bucks' 29, the Seals' deepest penetration of the day. A record for 
crowd noise was promptly established. 

Bunyard whacked Casey on the shoulder pads when the latter returned to the 
huddle. But he wondered how many bennies the third-year man had popped 
before kick-off, if any. One bennie meant a superior performance. Two or 
more meant a superhuman performance, and possibly an injury as well. 

North on the bench called for an off-tackle slant, with Charlie Walters the 
ball carrier. That's what he got. The gain was six yards to the 23. 
Cleveland asked for a time-out. Bunyard saw his substitute dash in from the 
sidelines, and knew that he, Clay Bunyard, figured in Shank's scoring 
strategy. So he reported to the bench to hear the pitch, remembering to keep 
his eyes lowered so the coach wouldn't notice his pupils. Most UFL mentors 
never discussed bennies if the subject wasn't brought up. 

"Remember the cross-buck we worked on Friday?" Shanks yelled. 

Bunyard nodded, to show that he did. 

"It doesn't have to set the dome afire, just get the first down! Go!" As 
though he were a high schooler whose pop was sitting somewhere back of them, 
taking notes, Shanks pushed him back into the fray. 

Bunyard arrived in the huddle just as the Bucks' official time-out expired. 
He explained the play change and heard Brad Davis say something that wasn't 
in the play book. Bunyard shrugged and made sure his sub went off the field 
before the officials asked for the clocks to roll. While Davis gave the play 
signals, he, Bunyard, watched the ground rather than Hamp King, the man 
who'd probably cover him, or try to. 

The play began with Davis faking a hand-off to Charlie Waters, who plunged 
into the middle of the line, fooling, no one. Gene Connally, meanwhile, sped 
deep, as though he were the primary receiver. Carver Casey, the safety 
valve, ran a short, down-and-out pattern, then blocked Hamp King out of the 
play. Bunyard, pretending to be a blocking back, abandoned the ploy as soon 
as the middle opened. He began a cross-buck pattern which ended with Davis's 
getting the ball to him out near the 19. Bunyard sidestepped an onrushing 
cornerback and jiggled his way to the Bucks' 12 for a first-down. 

Shanks ordered them to test the middle of the Cleveland line, and they 
complied, earning a ragged "yard on the gritty running of Charlie Walters. 
New Orleans then called its own time-out. Davis left the field to confer 
with Shanks personally, jogging back with a determined, if somewhat pained 
look on his face. 

"We throw deep," he announced, frowning at the man to whom he'd throw. The 
man was Connally. 

In the curiously reverent way of home crowds everywhere, the fans around 
them fell silent, or at least to a comparative silence. The Seals' lined up, 
the center prepared to snap the ball, and Davis began a long count. The 
strategy worked. Mike Smith, the Bucks' defensive end, lumbered off-sides 
and wasn't able to get back in time. The visitors were charged a five-yard 
penalty, making the down second-and-four. But the play remained the same, 
even if the circumstances didn't, making, it was hoped, for confusion on the 
part of Cleveland's defense. 

Davis took the snap and stepped back five yards, looking left as though he'd 
toss to Casey. The latter wasn't especially well-covered, but Cleveland's 
Ken Claiborne soon saw to that, aided by Vernon Stroud. 

Gene Connally, in the midst of slapping shoulder pads and grunting men, ran 
a zigzag pattern to the goal line, where he was picked up by Steve Nichols. 
To divert Kay Sullivan, Bunyard ran a shallow pattern through the middle. 

While Ed Hancock and Charlie Walters held out Roy Prichard, Davis found 
Connally in the end zone with a perfect strike. The electronic scoreboard 
erupted with lights and strange noises, informing everyone under the dome 
that the Seals had just scored a go-ahead touchdown. The crowd approved. 
Thunderously. 

Trailing 3 to 7 when they'd been favored by seventeen points, the chastened 
Bucks took the ensuing kick-off and set to work. In seven plays, on the 
bullish running of Chris Vandemere and the fingertip catches of Dave Grady, 
they rammed across a touchdown, scoring with I:52 left in the half. New 
Orleans fans, in a characteristic turnabout, booed their own team. 

The Seals weren't able to move the ball once they got it back. With 59 
seconds left on the clock, they were obliged to punt. Al Olsen almost 
widened his team's lead with twelve and fifteen-yard completions to Grady 
and Wallace Randle, respectively, until a clipping penalty nullified much of 
the gain. When the half ended, the Bucks had moved to the New Orleans 31 and 
faced third-and-two. 

* * * 

In the second half, a defensive battle began. Cleveland moved the ball 
almost at will, but whenever Gifford's men neared the Seal goal line, 
something unusual would happen. Once it was a fumble, scooped up by 
linebacker Barry Nelson and run back to the 37. On another, it was an 
interception of Olsen's down-and-out pass to Grady by cornerback Isaac 
Hayes. Near the end of the third period, Olsen, going back to throw on 
third-and-five, was even dumped for a nine-yard loss on the Cleveland 29. 

The Seals, on the other hand, weren't able to mount a serious drive. Their 
deepest penetration through the third quarter was the Bucks' 36. Sloan 
attempted a 46-yard field goal which was short and to the left. The crowd, 
turning boisterous, began to throw apples and oranges onto the playing 
surface, most of them over-ripe. At one point, officials called a time-out 
to clean the field and issue a warning. 

As the quarter ended, the score remained 10 to 7, Cleveland. Clay Bunyard, 
getting a brief respite on the bench at the insistence of Fred Shanks, 
swallowed his second bennie. He was still feeling the first, and the 
cumulative effects of both, he knew from experience, would soon have him 
walking on the roof. 

Forty-two seconds into the fourth period, the home team's luck folded. 
Cleveland's Gary Mclnnes broke through ineffective blocking to smear Danny 
Sloan's punt on the New Orleans 34. The Seal defense wore no smiles when it 
went on the field. The game rode right here, and even the hot-dog barkers 
high up in the stands knew it. 

To open the drive, Olsen called the play everyone expected: a hand-off to 
Chris Vandemere for five yards to the 29. But a quick toss over the middle 
to Dave Grady was batted down at the New Orleans 18 by safety Lou 
Shaughenessy. On third-and-five, Olsen sent Carl Crenner charging over left 
guard. The crowd exulted when Crenner was brought up short at the 26, two 
yards shy of the first down. Cleveland called a time-out to consider its 
options. 

Fred Shanks, usually no sideline pacer, jumped up to make one of himself. He 
seemed to think the Bucks would go for the first-down, and sent in reserve 
end Roger Flanagan to replace linebacker Frank Zimmerman. But Claude Gifford 
apparently felt there was plenty of time left. He ordered his team to try a 
field goal. The kick was good and the Bucks led 13 to 7, with 13:09 
remaining. 

The resulting kick-off was fumbled by the Seals' Reed Kimbrell, but picked 
up and returned to the New Orleans 35. The offense scrambled onto the field. 
It needn't have bothered. Brad Davis' first pass, a long, wobbling heave to 
Carver Casey, was picked off by Vernon Stroud on the Bucks' 23. The crowd 
let its opinion of Davis be known to the length and breadth of south 
Louisiana. 

Bunyard, racing off the field, was furious, too. He saw, if no one else 
could, how they'd win the game: short, down-and-out passes to Connally, in 
between off-tackle slants on the part of Charlie Walters and Ed Hancock. 
Climaxing the drive would be an end-zone pass to either Casey or himself. 
Any other way, in view of Cleveland's clear supremacy in the line, was 
lunacy. Yes, the means was clear. How to convince Davis and Shanks, that was 
the problem. 

Precious minutes ticked by. Bunyard wanted to scream at Shanks: Forget the 
long stuff! We don't have it! Ram the ball down their throats? They outweigh 
us fifteen pounds a man! Think, man; think! But all he could do was-sit 
there and stew while his head expanded and his pulse raced. 

The Bucks drove to the Seals' 27 and bogged down there, on the strength of 
Seal linebacker Ron Phillips' desperation tackle of Chris Vandemere after a 
meager gain. On third-and-five, Olsen, attempting to pass, was trapped for a 
ten-yard loss. Cleveland attempted a 47-yard field goal which was long 
enough but off to the right. The Seals took over on their 20. 

Time, as the old adage had it, was running short. The stadium clock read 
4:31, and moving. Davis, on orders from Shanks, threw out of bounds to stop 
it. He then laid out Shanks' notion of a game-winning strategy: a 
complicated series of screen passes and option plays which the bewildered 
Cleveland defense was supposed to stand and stare open-mouthed at. No one 
believed the strategy would work, not even Davis.-Certainly not Clay 
Bunyard. 

But he set his teeth and blocked as he was supposed to in order to make the 
first option work. The gain was six yards to the 26, but now it was 
third-and-four, with 3:56 remaining. Confounding everyone under the dome, 
Davis sent Ed Hancock off tackle in quest of the elusive first down. The 
Bucks chose this moment to turn in their best play of the day, a 
bone-crunching tackle of Hancock which stopped his advance at the 29. Now 
the Seals would have to punt. 

Bunyard lined up to block, but his heart wasn't in it. The game, as far as 
he was concerned, had been lost. He seethed inside at the incompetence of 
Davis, the stupidity of Shanks. When the ball was snapped to Sloan, he 
listened for the whomp of a leather-covered foot smacking a leather-covered 
ball. He never heard it. Bunyard looked around and saw that the ball had 
squirted loose from Sloan's flustered grasp and was rolling around on the 
ground. Danny picked it up, but now there wasn't time to kick. Mike Smith 
had Sloan dead in his sights. The rest of the Cleveland defense, including 
linebacker Rick Martin, was pouring in over right tackle. 

Bunyard thought with his feet rather than his head. He sprinted for the 
nearest sideline, turned and raised both arms. The ball arrived drunkenly, 
but at least it arrived. Bunyard tucked it under his left armpit and set out 
for the goal line seventy-five yards away. Someone hit him high, but he 
shrugged the someone off and gathered speed. Two others tried to trap him 
between them, and he ran over one. He ran until he saw the goal posts, until 
the crowd noise made his ears ring and his head throb. When he staggered and 
fell down, the entire Seal organization-players, coaches and 
trainers-descended on him. They pounded his shoulders and buttocks to a 
state of numbness, even carried him off the field. 

For interrupting the extra-point attempt, New Orleans was penalized five 
yards. No one cared. The kick was good, and the Seals led the Eastern 
Conference's Central Division's best. The crowd felt that a monumental upset 
had been registered, even if 2:14 remained. The noise wasn't to subside 
until the parking lot cleared. 

On the Bucks' first play from scrimmage, Al Olsen was dumped hard by an 
aroused New Orleans defense. Olsen limped off the field and didn't return. 
John Sherman, the ninth-year man from San Diego state, came on to relieve 
him. Sherman wasn't able to move his team, and Elliot came in to punt. The 
time remaining, I:27. The clock was stopped at Cleveland's request. 

The Seals took the ball and ran wide, sweeping plays that consumed time if 
not distance. They took too long in the huddle and drew a five-yard penalty. 
They dawdled after every play and fussed with their shoes and pads. They 
even managed to complete a 14-yard pass and delay giving the ball to 
Cleveland until only sixteen seconds remained. Then they punted, driving the 
visitors back to their twenty-one-yard line and virtually sealing their 
fate. 

On the game's last play, Sherman was intercepted while attempting to throw 
long to Dave Grady. Bunyard, lying alongside the New Orleans bench, didn't 
see it. He was suffering from a severe nosebleed. 

 7 

Gwynn Bunyard, sitting high in the stadium's reserved section-her season 
pass was free-listened to the bedlam erupting around her, and tried to grasp 
what had happened. Clay, her Clay, had just taken a punter's unsteady pass 
and weaved his way seventy-five yards for a game-winning touchdown. She 
supposed she should be thrilled, or at least pleased. But all she could 
think about was that awful man and his gun. He'd gotten to her because of 
Clay and his "sport." She didn't think she could ever forgive either of 
them. 

"Please remain in your seats. The game is not over. The visitors are 
entitled to the same courtesy we would expect in their city. Anyone trying 
to reach the playing field will be ejected from the dome by security 
personnel." 

Order, or a semblance of it, was finally restored. The home team kicked off 
to the callers from the north. The Bucks tried frantically to get the 
touchdown back, but the clock and something called fate were conspiring 
against them. The game ended the way Clay made it: 14 to 13. The Seals had 
improved their record to 3-4 and might even surprise their next callers, the 
Red Bay Panthers, who were coming to town for a nationally televised game in 
one week to officially open the dome. 

The setting sun cast a golden glow over the acres of translucent panels up 
above as the teams jogged off to their dressing rooms. The crowd of 55,000 
or so spilled from the exit ramps in search of half that many cars. Gwynn, 
her brow wrinkled in thought, filed out with the others. She wanted to get 
away from Clay for a few days, but couldn't think of a plausible reason. Roy 
had invited her to go with him to Chicago for an inspection of a brewery he 
owned there. She'd all but promised to go. 

* * * 

Clay eased down on the rug and propped his back against her bare legs, 
rubbing his head against her knee. He loved to watch television this way. 
"Visit your mother? But didn't you see her at the Los Angeles game? It 
certainly cost enough to fly her out there." 

Gwynn tweaked him on the ear and kept her voice light. "Ingrate. She was 
your loudest fan. Yes, but that was different. She was our guest, and she 
didn't stay long. We didn't have time enough to discuss old family secrets. 
You know, girl talk." She watched Clay's square jaw jutting out from beyond 
her knee, the narrowed set to his lashes, and held her breath. A half-minute 
passed. Then he nodded, although in somewhat grudging fashion. 

"I guess it's okay. Just sudden. I'll be the toast of the town tomorrow, you 
know. I'd think you'd want to stay around and help me celebrate. We could 
take out the laundry or something." 

Gwynn, remembering the lie she'd told Roy, experienced momentary panic. If 
Clay's name were splashed across New Orleans' sports sections, there-might 
be mention of her, the proud wife. Roy would be furious with her for 
deceiving him. He might even fire her out of hand, and how would she explain 
that to Clay-losing two jobs in one week? He thought she'd earned a two-week 
vacation from Great Southern. She would have to catch an early-morning 
flight with Roy, and before they returned from Chicago, think of some way to 
explain the new position. "I'll tell Mother how it happened. She'll be so 
proud of you. Of both of us." 

Clay tipped his head back and smiled up at her. He looked as though he 
wanted to burrow under her skirt, but wasn't in any hurry about it. Even 
with the new wall between them, the chill of growing indifference, the 
possibility wasn't entirely displeasing to her. 

"Yeah. Give me a good build-up, baby. But don't overdo it. I still have the 
old degree, remember. Someday I may even use it. I'm not your average 
meathead football player, whatever your mother thinks. I got class." He 
winked. 

Gwynn smiled, nudging him with a knee. "One more remark about my mother, 
hero, and I'll go to bed without asking for your torn jersey. Or anything 
else you happen to be wearing." 

"Ouch. When you punch, kid, you punch low. Press me, and I'll make you sleep 
in it." 

"Maybe you won't have to press me." 

Clay had no comeback. He fell silent, and so did she, their usual mode of 
communication these days. They watched a new program, and then he reached up 
to lightly stroke her knee. The interest came through but very little else. 
No fire and no menace. 

"What is it we haven't done in four nights?" 

The question was delivered with a yawn, and she hated him. Not for the 
yawn-for being so obtuse. Once he would have overwhelmed her rather than 
ask. Nowadays, sex to Clay Bunyard seemed to be a chore rather than a 
pleasure. He wanted to be coaxed and even begged. Only he might as well know 
one thing: she'd never beg him again. Never. She'd go without first. "I 
can't imagine." 

His head came back again. He scowled up at her. "Can't you?" 

Gwynn smiled down into the eyes when she really wanted to scratch them out. 
"Don't you think you'd better rest, dear? I wouldn't want you to break 
something after the longest reception of your career. A man should know his 
limits, I always say." 

Clay's head snapped down. He turned around to stare at her. "Christ, baby, 
what's come over you? A few nights ago, you were all-" 

"That was a few nights ago. Tonight I'm not in the mood." 

"I'll get you in the mood!" He seized her legs and tried to yank her from 
the chair. 

Gwynn gripped the chair arms and hung on. The two commenced a grim, if 
somewhat ludicrous tug-of-war which neither could win. He was stronger, but 
she and the chair, from their greater height, were too much for him. 
Releasing one of her legs, he darted a hand under her skirt, intending, it 
appeared, to rip her panties away and enjoy her right there on the rug, with 
or without her consent. 

"Never realized-game took so much out of me!" he puffed. 

"Clay, no! Don't you understand? I can't! It's that time of the month!" It 
wasnt, not by a week and a day, but if she were lucky, he wouldn't remember. 
Men were notoriously vague about such things. Clay Bunyard was no exception. 

"Well, shit, why didn't you say so?" he grumbled, letting go of her legs and 
turning back around. "Now I'm in a bad way," he complained to the television 
set. "You got me all worked up and then you told me. If I had any sense, I'd 
throw you across my knee and take it out of your hide." Clay clawed once at 
his genitals, as though to ease the congestion there. 

She found his actions distracting, and for an instant, she regretted the he. 
But she couldn't take it back now, not without alienating him further and 
perhaps provoking a real fight. Instead, she leaned down and trailed her 
fingers through his hair, intending to mollify him with an offer of relief. 
"If you want me to, I'll ... you know. Beat you off. I think I remember how 
you used to like it. Shall I?" 

Clay snorted, shaking his head. "I'm surprised as hell. That you remember, I 
mean. No, baby, I'll tough it out this once. And there's no need to feel 
guilty. These things happen. We can't have everything our way. That's what 
Shanks says when we recover a fumble and then give it right back on the next 
play." 

Gwynn wondered if he didn't mean his way. Clay, now that she'd had a year in 
which to analyze him, could be quite selfish. And quite unaware of it. But 
most men were, even Roy Tannen. A flaw in the species, she supposed. "I want 
to. If I made you feel this way, then it's my responsibility to do something 
about it." 

"It's kid stuff," Clay objected, but the disgust had left his voice. He was 
fast weakening, probably because four days was four days. 

"We weren't kids when we tried it," she reminded. They hadn't been. He and 
she had been college juniors, both twenty years old, and mutual masturbation 
had been a way station on the way to full intimacy. Their courtship had been 
a slow one, due mainly to her cloistered background. Not until marriage was 
a virtual certainty had she permitted full penetration. The fact that he 
sometimes seem to resent her for it still probably wasn't her imagination. 

"No," Clay chuckled, shaking his head. "I guess we weren't." 

Gwynn left the chair to sit down beside him, positioning her body at an 
angle perpendicular to his. She dropped one hand between Clay's muscular 
thighs and used the other to find his penis. Finding his cock was less of a 
problem than extracting it. The stiff thing poked so tightly through the 
fabric of his slacks that she had to struggle to get him out without hanging 
the sensitive skin. He had to help her, raising to provide a better angle. 
Finally the phallus popped free and Clay lay back down again. 

"He's all yours, baby. Try not to be too soft on him." 

Ignoring the feeble excuse for a joke, she took the penile shaft in her left 
hand and squeezed, causing the erection to become more so in less than a 
second. Then, with her right, she moved the prepuce back to expose the 
purplish head. Grasping the shaft firmly in both her hands, pulling away 
from his torso, she began to masturbate him, simulating the movements of 
love. 

"That's it, baby!" Clay groaned, quivering under her ministrations. "Give me 
a good one. You haven't forgotten how." 

She slowed her motions until the stimulation was enough to keep him excited, 
but not enough to make him come in her face. If she intended leaving him for 
three days, Gwynn reasoned, and she did, a proper leave-taking called for 
beating him off in a manner he'd remember. For five minutes, she applied 
everything she'd ever learned about "hand jobs." Ten. Her hands began to 
ache, but she kept it up. Clay began to breathe more heavily, until at last 
he was panting with every breath. 

"I have an idea!" he rasped, raising a clenched fist. 

She faltered for a moment, regained the rhythm a second later. "I'm 
listening." But she didn't like the narrowed way he was looking at her. 

"Suck me. Since you're going away, you can afford to give me a little head 
to tide ol' Clay over. How about it?" 

"No." Gwynn realized she put unnecessary emphasis on the no, but never in 
her twenty-two years had she taken a man's sexual organ into her mouth. She 
hoped to be able to say as much after the next twenty-two, no matter how 
hard Clay badgered her, no matter which manuals he quoted. 

"Have it your way, baby. It was only a suggestion." Clay's face, showing 
disappointment which he strove to masked sank back down. 

Gwynn, after the resentment and outrage had passed, tried to be 
dispassionate about the request. After all, he was her husband. Anything 
which was anatomically possible, and which harmed neither him nor herself, 
should be permitted to them. He' kissed her belly, even the insides of her 
thighs when he made love to her, didn't he? Wasn't she obligated to respond 
in kind? Still, she held off until the tension between them was a physical 
thing. He was waiting. He wouldn't try to force or intimidate her, but he 
was waiting. 

To prove something to herself, if not to him, she lowered her head and 
opened her mouth. Clay's penis up close was enormous, a bulging spike of 
smooth flesh topped by a purplish-blue glans. Gwynn had to close her eyes 
before allowing the thing to slide past her lips. Then she nearly gagged 
over the taste and feel, recovering, she hoped, before he could detect it. 
The taste of him, now that she had time to think about it, was reassuring: 
warm and a bit salty. Uncertain as to what she should do first, she applied 
slight suction and heard his sharp intake of breath. 

"No, baby. That's not what they mean when they say ... Use your lips. Blow 
on me while you're doing it. That way it lasts longer. Try it before you 
make up your mind. I liked muff the first time I tasted it. Honest." 

Gwynn grasped the phallus at its base and carried out Clay's instructions to 
the letter, using her lips rather than her hands to move the prepuce back 
and forth. Her tongue, she soon discovered, came into involuntary play. 
After less than a minute, Clay began making choked sounds. His teeth were 
chattering so fst he could scarcely speak. 

"We should ... do this ... more often!" he gritted. "More often." 

He tensed, and she realized he was about to ejaculate into her waiting 
mouth. Curiosity, and perhaps a reservoir of feeling she still had for him 
made Gwynn keep her lips clamped around his organ's head. The first spasm 
rocketed past her teeth and down her throat, surprising her with its fire. 
The substance of life. In reflex, to keep from choking, she swallowed the 
first and the second draft, continuing to swallow until there was no more 
left to swallow. The alkaline ejaculate was now in her stomach. 

Gwynn took her mouth away and filled her lungs with air. Then-she leaned 
forward so that she could gaze defiantly into his eyes. "Well?" 

"Baby, that was the greatest," he declared, going limp under her. "Maybe 
because you gave it, and I never thought I'd get that from you. Thanks, if 
thanks be necessary." 

"You're welcome." Gwynn stretched so that she could kiss him on the lips. He 
kissed her back, but now he seemed drained of energy, a docile, little-boy 
of a lover who'd give her no more trouble this evening. For the second time, 
she regretted promising Roy Tannen that she'd fly north with him. But she 
would cancel everything-the job, the trip, the relationship, everything-if 
there were a chance, however slim, of salvaging a workable relationship with 
Clay. All he had to do was confide in her, confess his indiscretion in 
regard to the wagering incident, and she'd forget she ever heard of Roy. 

"CUy, darling..." 

His head lolled to one side. He seemed half-asleep, already. "Um?" 

"Look at me," she commanded. 

He looked, blinking wearily up at her. "Yeah?" 

Gwynn tried to choose her words. "The past few days, you haven't, well, you 
haven't been yourself. Is something bothering you? Something you want to 
talk to me about? If there is, don't be ashamed. We're human, all of us." 
Alarm, for an instant, . seemed to flicker in Clay's brown eyes. 

"No," he replied, giving her a smile that seemed forced. "Nothing's 
bothering me. Just the usual tension. Blazes, but it gets worse by the week. 
I'm not sure I can survive this racket. At first I thought I could. Now I'm 
not so sure." He grinned. "I may be the world's first twenty-three-year-old 
with an ulcer and not know it." 

Gwynn dropped her head on his shoulder so he wouldn't see the tears in her 
eyes. He took the gesture as proof she'd been reassured, and cuddled her 
like a child, stroking her hair with hands large enough to wrap halfway 
around a foot ball. After a minute, the tears dried and she pulled away from 
him, dropping her gaze so he wouldn't notice the redness. "I'm going to 
bed," she said. "I have a flight to catch. You can stay and watch the movie 
if you like." 

"Sure, sweetheart." He rapped her on the thigh as ' she left, then put his 
"problem" back inside his pants. 

She lingered at the door to see if he'd come after her, but Clay wasn't even 
looking. Already he was absorbed in the television movie. Gwynn, lifting 
angry shoulders, went to wash the taste of him out of her mouth. Something 
had died inside her, and inside their marriage as well. She doubted that it 
could ever be resurrected again. Or that it even mattered. 

* * * 

When he came to bed two hours later, she pretended to be asleep. As soon as 
his breathing turned regular, she got up to go, intending to sleep on the 
living room sofa with only the mice for company. Clay stirred and mumbled 
something as she tiptoed out of the room, but it wasn't her name. 

With a blanket, a pillow and the travel alarm she'd take with her, she 
stretched out on the sofa and prepared to spend an uncomfortable night, the 
rest of it, anyway, as far from Clayton Kingston Bunyard as she could get. 
After what she'd done for him tonight, the concession to pride was a small 
one, Gwynn acknowledged. But one had to start somewhere. 

When she was unable to sleep, she groped for the phone in the darkness 
and-thankful for a lighted dial-pecked out Roy Tannen's unlisted number. The 
one scrawled on a back page of her mind because she dared not write it 
anywhere else while still living with a man who prowled through her 
correspondence on occasion. The phone rang emptily at Roy's end, however, so 
she put it down before the buzzing woke Clay. Returning to the sofa, she 
gave herself up to hours of tossing that ended only when sunlight peeked 
under the shades and her travel alarm signaled its message of a new day. 

Groaning, reaching out to turn the device off before rage made her smash it, 
she got up to find out how strong she was. When she saw herself in the 
bathroom mirror, Gwynn didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Makeup she'd 
forgotten to remove was plastered across her face in a grotesque pattern. 
She rinsed it off and rinsed away the rest of her illusions with it. 

 8 

Clay Bunyard awoke by degrees, slipping gradually from an unconscious state 
to a conscious one. He wouldn't have to go to the stadium this morning. It 
was the first thought that came to mind. This afternoon he and the rest of 
the team would view the game film, but no one except those on the taxi squad 
had to dress out. Fred Shanks would be hail-fellow-well-met until Tuesday, 
when the snarling would resume. After all, they were only 3-4, with the last 
half of the season yet to come. 

Bunyard stared at the empty place beside him in the rumpled bed. Gwynn had 
risen at six-thirty to catch a Delta flight to West Memphis, Arkansas. He'd 
been so drugged with fatigue-and something else-that he hadn't even heard 
her electric alarm. He touched the place where she'd been. The spot was 
cold, the way her love seemed to be these days. But she had sucked him off, 
something he hadn't thought he'd ever get from Gwynn, short of putting a gun 
to her pretty head. 

He lay back and smiled. Yes, indeed. Gwynn Caldwell Bunyard, once the most 
reserved little wife in the eastern United States, had gone down on him. He 
supposed that next she'd want him to reciprocate. He wasn't sure he would. 
Some things were manly, some weren't. Muff-diving, in his opinion, wasn't. 
Nor, on the other hand, was it worth worrying about. 

But why this sudden trip to her mother's? Was she trying to punish him for 
giving so much of his life to sports? If so, she hadn't. Pro football, right 
now, anyway, was his life. He loved Gwynn and football, too, and he wasn't 
sure which he loved most. But he did know one thing-few mechanical engineers 
earned twenty-two thou a year out of college. None were ever treated to new 
automobiles or five-minute sports interviews that he knew of. None. 

The phone jangled on the nightstand next to Gwynn's side of the bed. Making 
sure none of his bruised muscles ended up on top of or underneath one 
another, Bunyard reached across the bed to pick it up. She had promised to 
call as soon as she stepped down off the plane at Memphis International 
Airport. "Hello?" 

"This is Greg Ward of the Times-Picayune. How does it feel to be immortal 
this morning, Clay?" 

"Great," the latter mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Just great." He was both 
pleased and disappointed to hear Ward's voice when he'd expected Gwynn's. 

"Did you honestly think you'd reach the goal when you caught Sloan's pass, 
Clay?" . 

Bunyard considered his reply before answering. To be quite truthful, the 
bennies in his blood stream bad curtailed rational thought in the closing 
minutes of the fourth quarter. He'd felt only an exuberant optimism. "No. It 
was a busted play in every sense of the word. I hoped to take the ball 
across midfield and get us out of trouble. The goal line, no." 

"But you scored, the Seals won and now you'll be asking for a raise, eh?" 

Bunyard rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "Not quite. I'm a wide receiver, not 
a runner, remember. I did very little receiving yesterday."' 

"What did your wife think of the feat, Clay? You are married, aren't you?" 

"Yes." Bunyard grimaced. "You might say she took it in stride. So much so 
she left town this morning." He heard Ward laugh. 

"Well, she probably knows you better than we do. Okay, Clay, I'll hang up 
for now. There must be others. Thanks for talking to me." 

"Sure. Any time." The phone clicked dead, and Bunyard replaced it on the 
stand. He studied his watch. Five minutes past nine. If her plane had lifted 
off at eight, Gwynn should be in West Memphis by now. The airport wasn't far 
from her mother's house, so he could expect a call within fifteen or twenty 
minutes, a half-hour at the most. Expect one, but not necessarily get it. 

The discipline of habit brought him out of bed and into the kitchen, where 
he scrambled a couple of eggs and poured some cream over his cereal. This 
morning seemed more welcome than any of the others, possibly because he'd 
taken more punishment than he'd realized. There was no major damage, 
however, and for that he could thank Fred Shanks' conditioning system. That 
and a lean, six foot-two frame covered by one hundred and ninety pounds of 
well-conditioned flesh. 

The kitchen extension rang while he was cleaning his plate. Thinking about 
more Greg Wards with more congratulations, Bunyard let it ring. When the 
caller persisted, he crossed the room to snatch the intrusion off the wall. 
And wished he hadn't. Some guy whose name he'd never heard, from a 
television station whose call letters were unfamiliar to him, had a 
proposition that was: 

"What are our chances of having you on our sports show today? Think you can 
make it?" 

Bunyard watched a fly light on a piece of leftover toast, and scowled. He 
would no more appear on live television and risk saying the wrong thing than 
he would fuck a fly. "Uh, well, actually, I'm tied up all day. I don't think 
I can-" 

"We'll be happy to send a car for you. And a young lady to drive you. 
Provided your wife doesn't object, of course. Never meddle in a marriage, 
that's our policy, hah hah, hah." 

"Thanks, but some other time." Bunyard broke the connection before he forgot 
himself and broke Louisiana's law against telephone obscenities. His coffee 
was getting cold, so he went through the apartment removing extensions as a 
means of protecting what privacy he had left. 

* * * 

As he drove back from viewing the game film, a devil called temptation 
wriggled through a vent and pranced across the dash. Gwynn was gone and 
there was nothing to prevent him from dropping in at the same bar where he'd 
stopped on the preceding Tuesday. If Rita Whatever-her-name-was happened to 
find him there, why, where was the harm? 

He had trouble locating the bar, and had to double back twice, finally 
recognizing it when darkness set in and neon lights twinkled on. Bunyard 
parked and went inside. There were no women present at the moment, amateurs 
or pros, but he climbed on a stool, anyway, and to dispel his former 
impression, ordered a Scotch and soda. He drank it slowly, keeping one eye 
on the exit. Half an hour passed. Just as he was about to give it up, Rita 
walked through the door. Alone. She looked even better than he remembered, 
although her bar-touring habits were beginning to trouble him. 

She spotted him right away, smiled and came toward him. Bunyard ordered a 
drink for her, carrying both of them to a booth where they'd have privacy. 
She sat down and waited, face expectant. This time he had taken the 
initiative. Both of them sensed a change in their relationship. 

"I've been thinking about you," he confessed, admiring the way her clean, 
blonde hair caught the light. Rita smiled back at him in frank, open 
fashion, making him wonder how many others shared it. The smile, not Rita. 
The girl laughed. 

"And I've been reading about you, darling. Have you seen the afternoon 
sports' sections? Or the morning? I don't even believe some of the things 
they're saying about you." 

Bunyard shook his head, past being embarrassed by someone who could reach 
him in other ways. "I don't read a lot. And I never read bullshit if I can 
help it. Let's talk about you. What are you doing tonight?" 

She leaned across the table and took his chin in her hand. "Let's just say 
I'm available. But only if you have more than an hour for me. I have a 
little pride, in case you hadn't realized." 

"I have all night for you," he declared flushing. "My wife's out of town. 
Gone, to visit her mother. We can go to my place and stay the night. The 
lake-front. Interested?" 

Rita reached for her drink. "Lead oh, hero. I'm interested." 

* * * 

Bunyard experienced only a twinge or two of guilt at seating Rita on the 
sofa where Gwynn usually sat, where he'd once lain with his head in her lap, 
dreaming about the treasures underneath. He sat down beside her and looked 
at his watch. "The fact is, I'm expecting a call from my wife in a few 
minutes or so. For your sake, I'll try to keep it brief. Then we'll broil a 
couple of steaks and make a real occasion of it." 

She smiled. "I can wait. Meat like that a girl can always use." 

He threw back his head and enjoyed the only good laugh of a lackluster day. 
They waited until half-past six, but the only call was a radio station's 
sports desk wanting a point spread on the game with the Panthers. Bunyard, 
after glancing at Rita, gave them one: he predicted the Seals would upset 
the Panthers with a field goal. Then he hung up and went to sit back down, 
beginning to be concerned over Gwynn's failure to call. She knew he wanted 
to know if she'd arrived safely. He still cared about her personal safety. 
He still cared about her. "Maybe we should turn on a radio," he fretted. "If 
there's been a crash..." 

"I'd know about it," Rita assured him. "An airline safety director calls us 
whenever there's been an accident." 

Bunyard grinned with one side of his mouth. "No airline safety director 
could reach you here, doll. Not without walking over me first. And I don't 
play dead unless there's a check involved." She leaned to kiss him, but 
there was no more fire on the kiss than on the steaks defrosting in the 
kitchen. Gwynn, by not being there, and by failing to call, had somehow 
managed to come between them, casting a chill over things. 

"I don't think you ever play dead, Clay, honey. I saw you yesterday and it 
really set my teeth on edge, let me tell you." 

"Teeth!" He jumped up. "Let's eat before I start drooling on you." 

He and Rita used the microwave oven to cook the steaks. They ate them so 
fast, he figured she wanted a screwing at least as much as he. The dishes 
had begun to pile up, anyway, so he stacked the latest ones on top and led 
his guest back to the living room. They sat and watched television until ten 
o'clock, he on the sofa, she leaning against his shoulder. The phone rang 
once. It was a wrong number. 

At a quarter past ten, as Bunyard grew increasingly on edge, Rita's hand 
found its way into his lap. He relaxed. The evening-and his self-esteem-had 
salvaged. He said nothing, just let the hand and her. imagination work their 
magic. She applied light pressure, then deftly lowered his fly. His prick 
swelled to life when she found him. Rita sighed and took the swelling out of 
his shorts. He noticed she had no trouble working him free. Practice? 
Possibly. Too much practice? Maybe. 

"I think you have a beautiful cock, Clay." 

Bunyard fidgeted in her hand. "I bet you tell every man that," he scoffed, 
although he didn't intend to hurt her. His mind was just elsewhere tonight. 
Rita winced, however, letting go of him as though he'd burned her. 

"Please, Clay. I'm not cheap, whatever you might think." 

He patted her arm. "I never said you were, babe, I never said you were. When 
I open my mouth, sometimes I put both feet in. Didn't I bring you home for a 
steak and the works? Sounds like a lot of respect to me. Some for you, some 
for me." 

"Just be careful when you open that mouth of yours. I have feelings, too." 

"Like, if someone drops in? I'll have to introduce you, you know. What do I 
tell them?" 

She smiled. "That I'm a cheerleader, and you're teaching me some new 
cheers." 

"I could take you to a lounge over in Gretna where no one would recognize 
us," he suggested, ignoring the humor. "I have to warn you, though, I'm no 
dancer. I'm not even a promising beginner." 

Rita snuggled nearer, returning her hand to his prick. "I don't want to be 
taken anywhere. Really I don't. I just want you. Don't you understand?" 

"Yeah." Bunyard sat quietly and enjoyed the feel of a warm female hand 
fondling and caressing the most sensitive part of his body. His erection 
became rock-bard and ready, although he was in no danger of losing control. 
The easy, restrained way she handled him seemed designed merely to 
stimulate, not to make him come. When he couldn't stand any more without 
exploding, he pushed her back on the sofa. Closing his mouth on hers, he 
kissed her wetly. She parted her lips at once to admit his questing tongue. 
They licked and sucked one another to a state of clawing, moaning desire. 
Bunyard stopped worrying about the call he was expecting. 

Rita's skirt had hiked to her hips. He thrust in a hand and worked it 
between her thighs, burrowing under the tight edge of her panties. The pussy 
he found was moist and steaming. She was at least as far along as himself. 
Encouraged, he applied the point of one finger to her clitoris. She began to 
quiver in time with his fingering. When he coordinated the action of tongue 
and digit, she jerked and cried out, experiencing, he suspected, a powerful 
climax. 

Recalling her enthusiastic response to breast stimulation, he stopped long 
enough to open her blouse and unhook her bra. The succulent globes which 
spilled out attracted his mouth and teeth. Until his tongue and jaws began 
to ache with fatigue, he suckled the firm, young boobs. He believed that she 
climaxed at least once more, but he couldn't be certain. 

When delaying another minute meant losing the greatest hard-on he'd had 
since the exhibition season, he drew away to wrestle off his clothing. He 
tuned back to find a totally nude Rita smiling an invitation for him. 
Bunyard needed no further encouragement. He climbed back on the sofa and 
moved on top of her, spearing her slim, available body. They began to move 
in hasty concert. 

He imagined, when they were near the bursting point, that he heard the phone 
ringing. Not that it mattered. Shutting out all distracting sounds and 
thoughts, he gathered himself for a final minute of driving which brought 
the cum boiling to the head of his tool and an involuntary sob from Rita's 
parted lips. Then he sent them both over the edge and heard her whoop a 
finish which made the hair rise on the back of his neck. Gwynn never 
responded this way. Never. He could make her climax, sure, but only by 
working at it. Sometimes, it seemed, by having to work too hard. 

They lay in a torpor until their blood pressures and respiration rates 
returned to normal. Then she brought her mouth to his ear and nibbled 
lightly. 

"On a scale of one to ten?" 

"About thirty-five," Bunyard quipped, to please her. With very little 
passion now, he trailed subdued kisses down her face to her neck and throat. 
The morality of the situation, which hadn't troubled him before, returned to 
bother him now. But at least, he argued, he hadn't laid Rita in their bed, 
his and Gwynn's. If they slept in that bed, they'd do just that-sleep. "Care 
for a drink?" 

She nodded. "Please." 

He put his' clothes back on and went to the portable bar in the corner to 
splash bourbon into a couple of glasses. When he brought the two glasses 
back, Rita had dressed and sat waiting for him. But she looked thoughtful. 
Questions leaped from her blue eyes. When she accepted the drink, one finger 
crooked to draw him closer. "What is it?" Bunyard asked, curious. 

"Your wife-what does she look like?" 

"Tall and well-built. Long brown hair. Dresses better than most when she 
wants to, but no clothes horse." He smiled ruefully. "In all fairness, she's 
a knockout and I'm a heel." 

"And she took the eight a.m. Delta flight to Memphis? Coach?" 

"That's right." Bunyard tensed, puzzled as to where all this was leading. 
"Don't, for God's sake, tell me you sold her the ticket." 

Rita put down her drink and smiled a smile which wasn't a smile at all. "As 
a matter-of-fact, love, I did. Or rather, the girl out front did. It was my 
morning to check reservations. But I glanced out about seven-thirty and saw 
a woman who may have been your wife. There ... was a man with her. They both 
purchased round-trip tickets to Chicago." 

Bunyard put the bourbon glass down very carefully, not wanting to drop it 
and make his state of mind known. He stared at Rita and struggled to keep 
his voice normal. "What are you trying to say? Why would Gwynn buy a 
round-trip ticket to Chicago when her mother lives in West Memphis? If you 
saw a man with her, then obviously it wasn't Gwynn. Anyway, how do you know 
he was with her? He had to use the same counter, didn't he?" 

Still with a cryptic half-smile on her lips, Rita picked up her drink and 
placed it to her lips, saying nothing. 

Bunyard, for only the second or third time in his life, experienced blind 
rage, an urge to commit murder. He balled both hands into fists that would 
have been more than large enough for the purpose. "I asked you a question, 
didn't I?" he stormed. "Answer me! If you're having a joke at my expense, so 
help me, I'll." 

"I'm not joking, Clay." 

He realized, from the tone of flat assurance in her voice and the expression 
on her face, that she wasn't. His face worked and he couldn't control it. 
Bunyard stared into the bourbon until he could trust his own voice again. 
"There's only one way to find put. I'll call West Memphis, and ask. Go take 
a hot shower or something. Anything. Just don't listen on the extensions." 

While she went to do as he ordered, he dialed a number in West Memphis, 
Arkansas, which Gwynn had given him some months before. He dialed and 
waited, aware that it was eleven-thirty, almost midnight, and Gwynn's 
mother, particularly if she were asleep, wouldn't be happy at the 
interruption. Nor would she be happy at the implication. But he had to know. 
When she picked up the phone four hundred miles away, he identified himself 
to Mary O'Bannion and blurted out the question uppermost in his mind. Mary's 
answer-"No, Clay, she's not here. Why, has she left you? Clay? Clay?"-sent 
him reeling from the room. He didn't even remember to break the connection. 

In a state of mild shock, he stumbled through the apartment to stand outside 
the shower where Rita was bathing. He could hear her humming inside, 
something else Gwynn never did. Further comparisons of the two might be made 
now, for whatever it would prove. Actually, any comparison of the two had 
now been rendered meaningless. 

"Clay? Is my towel ready." 

"Yeah, it's ready." 

He began to wonder who was cheap and who wasn't, what mattered and what 
didn't. 

 9 

Gwynn Bunyard watched with conflicting emotions as her escort signed the 
hotel register Mr. and Mrs. Roy Tannen. Then she looked away, so she 
wouldn't have to meet the desk clerk's curious stare. But when she 
remembered her humiliation in faraway New Orleans much of her embarrassment 
vanished. 

"We'll have your bags sent up right away, sir." 

Tannen took the promise the way he took her arm-with confidence that he'd 
have his way. He wore a conventioner's straw hat, and appeared more relaxed 
than she'd ever seen him. He led her toward one of the Sherman's elevators, 
advising, from the corner of his mouth, "Stop looking so furtive. People are 
beginning to notice." 

"I can't help it," she confessed in a whisper. "The truth is...." 

"You've never done this sort of thing before. A-likely story. Come along 
with you." 

"Go to hell, Mr. Tannen," Gwynn said with calculated sweetness. But she 
followed him into the elevator. At this point, what choice had she? But 
Gwynn only wished that she'd been able to reach Clay by phone during the 
Memphis stopover. The failure might prove to be a costly one, for her and 
for their marriage. 

When the elevator door closed, Roy pushed the button for the seventh floor 
and then took her in his arms. "We'll spend the afternoon sampling the 
output," he said. "You can imagine how we'll feel tonight. No, I guess you 
can't. You've never been north with me before." 

"There's something I don't understand," she said, palms on his chest. "Why 
the Sherman? Why not the La Salle? Or the Congress? I mean, don't you 
remember any history at all?" 

"Why not?" Tannen chuckled. "The way the bastard rode through Dixie, I think 
it does something for my you-know-what to stay in his hotel." 

Gwynn pretended to be puzzled. "Your you-know-what? I don't think I follow 
you." She followed him, all right. The way he crushed her breasts against 
his broad chest told her exactly what he was talking about. Where Roy 
Tannen, age fifty-four, got his potency was an ever-deepening mystery to 
her. He'd mentioned apricot nectar and a concoction made of peanut butter, 
chopped nuts and chocolate syrup. She felt there was more. 

He attempted, only half in play, to lift her skirt while the car was still 
in motion. "I can't tell you, but I can show you." 

Gwynn wrested herself free of him and retreated to the other side of the 
car. "No. Non. Nein. Nyet." 

"Give me one good reason," he challenged, while the car was passing the 
fifth floor. 

"We're supposed to be married. And how many married couples act this way?" 

"Devastating logic," Tannen admitted. "Okay, two good reasons." 

"I want to see the Loop. No, I want to have lunch there." 

"You're on," Roy agreed, releasing her when the car stopped and the door 
opened, revealing two hotel security men waiting to descend. "Afternoon, 
gentlemen. Morning, I should say." 

Gwynn smiled in the other direction. 

* * * 

Lunch was two-inch-thick steaks in a Loop restaurant which didn't bill 
itself as the world's finest, but might have. Gwynn ate until her sides 
ached. Even Roy was surprised at the size of their bill. "Know what we could 
have bought with this when I was growing up?" he grumbled, squinting at the 
figures. "Two sides of beef and a smokehouse to go with it. But maybe some 
stock comes with the receipt. I'm thinking of the paper kind." 

"I'm thinking of the Sears Tower-the World's Tallest Building." 

He leaned across the table. "And me? Are you thinking of me?" 

Gwynn gazed into his eyes, at the salt-and-pepper hair, the broad shoulders 
in their tailored jacket, and decided that she-was thinking of Roy Tannen a 
great deal. Not to the point of loving him, of course. It was much too soon 
for that. "Yes. But I'm still thinking of the Sears Tower." 

"All right, all right. I'll take you there as soon as we finish our coffee." 

* * * 

The brewery Roy owned was located in a suburb called Chicago Heights. He and 
she took a taxi there and were met in the brewery office by a surprised 
manager who hadn't even known they were coming. The latter, unless his smile 
masked the suspicion in his heart, accepted Gwynn as advertised: an 
executive secretary, neither more nor less. 

"We came to inspect the new vats, Arthur," Roy told him. "Miss Bunyard here 
isn't a beer drinker, but maybe we can make one of her." 

"We can try," Arthur agreed, and he led them, from the suite. 

Armed with a china mug, which she was invited to keep as a memento of her 
visit, Gwynn followed the men through the entire brewing process, from the 
receiving department where the hops and malt were graded and processed, to 
the vats-open tanks so huge a person could drown in them. One man, Arthur 
related solemnly, had. Take-off taps were plentiful, and so were the 
occasions to use them. She drank much less than the men, but still arrived 
back at Arthur's office in a state of near-intoxication. 

"Did you like it, my dear?" Tannen inquired, forgetting to keep up the 
pretense by dropping an arm across her shoulder. 

Gwynn staggered under the unexpected burden, nearly losing her mug. 

The men laughed. Roy kept her on her feet with an arm around her waist. 
"We'll be back again to morrow," he told Arthur. "Right now I'll take her to 
the track to use the ladies' room." 

She was only too glad to crawl into a taxi thoroughly ashamed at having 
nearly made a spectacle of herself. Somewhere between the brewery and the 
race track, she even lost her mug. Tannen, as he helped her to a window, 
promised a dozen more just like it. 

* * * 

Roy lost a substantial amount on the sixth race, having bet on a horse which 
finished fourth, while she won a modest sum on a long-shot who placed 
second. "You've just proved something about tippling," he complained, 
watching her count her winnings. "Only I'm not sure what." 

Gwynn, her head cleared by an hour of fresh air and the exhilaration of 
winning, stood on tip-toe to kiss him on the cheek. If she thought about 
Clay now, it was only in a detached kind of way, as though he belonged to 
some buried part of herself which needn't concern either of them any more. 
"Thank you for bringing me to Chicago. I feel like a little girl again. A 
naughty little girl." 

"I suppose that makes me your father," Tannen winced, glowering at her. 
"Where does that leave us for tonight? After the bedtime story, I mean?" 

"Free," she promised. 

The pair drove back into town and spent the remainder of the afternoon 
touring McCormack Place, Shedd Aquarium and the Chicago Natural History 
Museum. Twilight found them strolling, arm-inarm, with the students of 
Loyola University. Then they returned to the Sherman, where he dined her 
prior to coaxing her onto the dance floor. 

While they were swaying cheek-to-cheek, she reached a disturbing conclusion: 
she was in love with Roy Tannen. Love him she would. Tell him she wouldn't. 

* * * 

An awkward stiffness came between them when he closed and locked their door. 
Tannen tried to make it go away with a smile and a quip. "Know where I'd be 
if you hadn't invited yourself along? In any one of two dozen State Street 
dives, that's where. Having the time of my life. Or down in the tenderloin 
district, having a go at that other Chicago. You really know how to spoil a 
man's fun, cupcake." 

"Invited myself?" Gwynn reached for her jacket and started putting it on, 
until she realized he was trying to provoke her. He liked his women angry, 
Roy had once confessed. "You can take your three-day trip and fly home with 
it, for all I care!" 

Tannen snatched the jacket out of her hands and laughed. "That's the kind of 
answer I've come to expect from you. I rather like you for it." He came near 
and pulled her to him until their middles met. An erection, or the beginning 
of one, made itself felt through his trousers. He winked. "But I'm not going 
to fly home with it. Not yet." 

"I don't think I'm in the mood," she objected, backing away. Actually, she 
tingled inside from the very nearness of this man and would have gone down 
on him at that very instant if he'd asked her to. 

"I'll get you ready," Roy assured her. and used his hands to tip her head 
back. Then be kissed her lips in slow, unhurried fashion, reminding her that 
they did have plenty of time. She didn't have to get up to dress and hurry 
home to Clay. Not yet, anyway. Tannen trailed burning kisses across her 
eyes, the bridge of her nose, her brows, the lobes of both ears. When he 
returned to her mouth, Gwynn parted her lips for him. His tongue which made 
her shudder with its knowledge, its sheer awareness of her body's capacity 
for response. In short, firm motions, he began to tease the roof of her 
mouth. 

In a matter of minutes, she felt herself near a climax, the first time in hr 
life she could recall such total, undistracted arousal. The points of her 
breasts, even before he placed his palms over them, swelled to strain at the 
bra cups holding them. Panties which had been dry a few minutes before were 
now soaked with the proof of her excitement. And still he continued to 
french her, and she to strive feebly to get inside his mouth. This, too, 
surprised her. With Clay, she was usually passive. He led, she followed, 
like a good wife. 

At last she did climax, jerking spasmodically in his arms while he made the 
sensations last and last. But she found, when the orgasm ended, that she was 
just as hungry for him as ever. Roy, however, released her and stepped back, 
smiling, to survey the results of his efforts. 

"I think you said something a few minutes ago, about not being in the mood. 
I wonder if you could tell me what you're like when you are in the mood. 
Provided it's no trouble." 

"If you can tell me what it is you could have found in the 'tenderloin' 
district!" Gwynn retorted, shivering under his bold inspection. 

Roy shrugged. "Excitement. Variety. Something I couldn't see back home, 
except in the Quarter. But I don't have to tell you about the Quarter, do I? 
We both flew in on the same plane." 

She struck a disdainful attitude-hands on her hips, legs spread wide apart, 
head flung back. "I don't know anything about what goes on in the Quarter. 
Or what comes off. I understand that's what makes the men pant. And what 
turns them into beasts." 

Tannen laughed, tugging at the crotch of his tailored slacks. "I get it. All 
this time, I've been whistling up the wrong sycamore. You're a sheltered, 
naive girl who's led a straight-and-narrow life. But someone's taught you 
something. Maybe more than something. And now I suppose I'm responsible for 
the rest. Very well." He started toward her, stalking his prey like a 
primitive hunter. 

Gwynn backed away until she came up short against the door. With no place to 
run, she let herself be captured, mauled against his chest, and soundly 
kissed. Almost brutally kissed. Roy's lips weren't gentle any more. Now they 
came at her with little tenderness and no mercy. While he kissed her, his 
hands were working the buttons of her suit top, plucking each one from its 
hole. "Mmmmmm," he said into her mouth. 

Gwynn shuddered as he drew away the top, then easily removed her bra. Roy 
grasped the nipples of both breasts and proceeded to squeeze the rubbery 
points to hardness. When they were tight enough for his satisfaction, he 
lowered his head and lapped in first one, then the other, using his tongue 
to grind die buds against the roof of his mouth. Standing on tiptoe, she dug 
her nails into his shoulders and closed her eyes, giving herself up wholly 
to his attentions in whatever form or fashion they might take. 

His hands, meanwhile, began to toy with the zipper on her skirt. He worked 
the garment down her hips until it fell to the floor. She wore a half-slip 
which he was obliged to raise before he could reach her panties. Arriving at 
the latter, his fingers burrowed underneath the elastic until they found 
what they sought, the lips and folds of her cunt. 

"Yes," Gwynn sighed, struggling to make herself more available for him. 

Applying a rigid finger to an area just beneath the clitoral prepuce, Roy 
made the digit and his tongue speak to her soul. She climaxed once more, 
this time with almost frightening intensity, thrashing in his grasp like 
some landed game fish. He waited until the tremors had left her body before 
continuing. Then he carefully removed the rest of her clothing and laid it 
across a chair back. Picking her up in his arms, he carried her to the bed. 
"Now?" 

"Now!" she begged. 

Because he was still fully dressed, Gwynn hardly knew what to expect. She 
felt dazed and delighted when he grasped her naked legs and pulled her torso 
to the bed's edge. She'd never been orally stimulated before-the one area of 
premarital experimentation Clay had never been able to coax her into-but 
somehow she knew how Roy's mouth would feel: warm and hard, with a 
suggestion of bristle from half a day's growth of beard. The anticipation 
proved correct. 

Her first, greedy response was to try and get closer to him, working herself 
into more intimate contact with the devouring mouth and swirling tongue. 
Undaunted, Roy kept his lips fastened to her cunt, drinking her love dew as 
though it were nectar, poking his tongue into every nook and cranny within 
reach. There was an urgency about his actions which hadn't been in evidence 
before. 

Gwynn felt his rough tongue lashing her clitoris, sliding up and down the 
shaft, and wondered if it were possible to lose one's mind from pleasure. 
Before she had time to reason it out, the room began to spin for her. In the 
space of an instant, she turned into a writhing tigress of passion, unable 
to control her own tossing. With the 'lan she'd come to expect of him, Roy 
stayed where he was until she ceased to thrash, until there were no more 
ecstasy signals being transmitted to her brain. Then he raised and stood 
gazing down at her. 

"Are you ... finished?" she whispered, because now there was a look of 
purpose about him, almost sinister in its impact. 

He shook his head and began removing his clothes. "As a matter-of-fact, no. 
I've only just begun." 

Gwynn didn't know if she'd heard right, but she prayed that she had. 

 10 

Clay Bunyard ran his patterns Tuesday afternoon, but he heard neither the 
contact on the field nor the coaches' orders from the sidelines. His 
mind-the parts of it that weren't numbed by mangled pride and hatred-was on 
a hotel room in Chicago. Yes, it had to be a hotel room. They'd purchased 
round-trip tickets, Gwynn and her paramour, so the rat probably didn't live 
up there. 

What was going On between them at this moment, and how had it come to pass? 
Why had he, of all men, been singled out, midway through a difficult first 
season, for such a shafting? Losing Gwynn would throw his whole career into 
a tailspin. Had he lost her? Or had he driven her away by some careless 
remark, some act of commission or omission? 

Bunyard tried to tell himself that he wasn't the first man to be cuckolded, 
and he wouldn't be the last. Millions of women cheated, in hundreds 
ofingenious ways. It was human nature to seek romance, if not with lawfully 
wedded spouses then with strangers. Strangers without scruples. But no 
matter how hard he rationalized his misfortune, Bunyard succeeded only in 
making himself doubt his own masculinity, in working himself into a 
murderous rage. If Gwynn and/or her lover were there on the field with him, 
he had no doubt that he'd kill them both. Cleanly, of course. 

She had no right to do this to him. Whatever he'd done to her in the past, 
she had no right to do this to him now. But she had, and his problem was 
what to do about it. See a lawyer? Move out of the apartment at once? Moving 
out would alert them. He wasn't ready to alert anyone. No, better to go on 
being the big, dumb football player who didn't know what was going on. At 
least until- 

"Bunyard!" 

He looked around, startled, and saw that Brad Davis had huddled the offense 
for another play. Without him. Fred Shanks, because he was Fred Shanks, 
wanted an explanation. Pulling a long face, Bunyard jogged off the field and 
pulled up beside the coach. He could have faked a minor injury and gotten 
the rest of the day off, but Shanks could spot malingerers in the next 
parish. 

"Something bothering you, son?" 

Bunyard nodded. He almost had to, because something was so obviously eating 
him. "A financial problem. I can't figure where it all goes." 

"Get yourself a lawyer if you don't have one," Shanks advised. "If you're in 
really hard straits, I can arrange an advance on your salary. It has to be 
an emergency, though. Is it?" 

Bunyard bowed his head and scraped a cleated foot on the artificial turf. 
"No, I don't think so. At least not yet." 

"Don't let it affect your play. If I catch you staring at the stands again, 
Casey will start ahead of you Sunday. That's all." 

* * * 

The caliber of his play worried Bunyard almost as much as Gwynn as he 
throttled his car out of the stadium's lot at six. Maybe bennies weren't 
enough. He'd caught only three passes in the Cleveland win, hadn't he? And 
dropped two more? Okay, so they'd been poorly thrown. He was supposed to 
have the hands to catch anything thrown near him. Sunday he hadn't. Sunday 
he'd been just your average, run-of-the-mill wide receiver. 

Maybe he'd try the Teacher. Mesc. One or two of the guys, the bolder ones, 
were said to use cautious amounts of the stuff. Their performances, on the 
other hand, were the roller-coaster variety-sensational one week, inept the 
next. But that could be laid down to the class of their competition on any 
given week. Tampa was no Los Angeles, Seattle no Red Bay. 

Where to buy mesc, that was the problem. Or was it? This wasn't 
Fayetteville, Arkansas, Bunyard reminded himself. This was big, bad New 
Orleans, and he had the scars to prove it. Down in the Quarter, so talk 
went, there were hawkers for whatever a man could think of. And a few things 
he couldn't. And there wouldn't be any Frank Broyles to call the squad 
together and make high-octane speeches about what would happen to the 
player, starter or sub, who allowed himself to be caught with anything more 
potent than- 

Surreptitious sounds from the Grand Prix's back seat made Bunyard's hair 
start to curl and sent him careening to the curb. He'd seen no dark-blue 
Buick Electra in the lot, but the gambling debt was still outstanding. He 
was, damned if he'd carry a hit man to a quiet street and help him do his 
work. He'd make him do it here on an eight-lane expressway. Bunyard reached 
into the back and yanked a blanket from someone crouched on the floor. Then 
he worked the car's light switch, activating the pillar lights. A girl of 
about seventeen blinked up at him, trying to smile. 

"Hi. You are Clay Bunyard, aren't you?" 

Bunyard scowled at her, trying to put more on the scowl than he felt. A 
smile, after all, beat a .357 Magnum with a silencer on the end. "No, I'm 
the ghost of Christmas past. Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in 
my car? Make it twenty words or less, and I'll buy the ice cream." 

"Brenda. You can call me Brenda. I thought you wouldn't notice me until 
after we reached your place. And then..." 

"And then?" Bunyard prompted. Brenda, who had long, dark hair and quite a 
bit more to go with it, whitened under his cold stare. 

"I-I think you're terrific, Clay! Really I do. I thought that you and I..." 
. 

He counted to ten, then began to laugh, although anything with statutory in 
its name was generally no laughing matter. "And my wife? What would we do 
about her? Think about that angle?" Brenda gulped, so he knew she hadn't. 

"Your wife ... I didn't know. I'm sorry, Mr. 

Bunyard. In your pictures, you look so young." 

Bunyard winced. "Do you mind?" He watched the girl struggle to a sitting 
position on the rear seat, and told her something he probably shouldn't 
have. "Actually, I don't have a wife. Not right now, anyway. She's seven 
hundred miles away, and she may not be coming back." His unscheduled 
passenger hugged the blanket more closely about her. She wasn't wearing a 
coat, just a light jacket. And now her eyes were sparkling again. 

"Then you will take me home with you?" 

He turned around and cranked the car, remembering to turn off the pillar 
lights. Putting the car in motion once more, he said over his shoulder, "No. 
I'm dropping you off at the next pay phone. You can call your girl friends, 
your parents, or whoever put you up to this." 

"But you just told me-" 

"I just made a fool of myself. Forget what I said." Bunyard drove, 
determined to say no more to her. But when he spotted a pay phone, he drove 
past it, and the next. His mood had turned reckless. Rita had a bowling date 
with an ex-roommate, she'd said, and wasn't available tonight. Gwynn had 
turned betrayer. He had every reason to throw off all restraints. 

As soon as traffic permitted, he pulled to the curb and patted the seat 
beside him. "Come up here." 

* * * 

She was taller than he expected and better built. Her manner, when you got 
past the brashness, was self-assured. Confident, but not brazen. He led her 
inside the apartment, switching on lights and turning up the heat. Frost 
warnings were out as far south as St. Tammany Parish. "Do you do this sort 
of thing very often?" he asked. Brenda raised her chin to him in a kind of 
defiant innocence. "What sort of thing?" 

"Throw yourself at strangers who might hurt or kill you." 

She laughed. "I'm not a 'groupie,' if that's what you mean. Is that what you 
took me for? I said I liked you. Can't you stand the truth? You're so-so 
uptight! So conceited!" 

He grinned. No one, not even Gwynn, called him conceited. Not to his face, 
anyway. "Experienced is the word." After seating her in the living room, he 
turned on the television set. This might prove to be a sorry evening's work, 
but he wouldn't throw her out. At the very worst, he'd only smash up a 
promising career. At the very best...."Sit here. I'll bring us some coffee." 

He made coffee and took it out, along with cups, saucers, sugar and cream. 
Setting the tray down in front of them, he sat down beside her and wondered, 
between covert glances at bare skin, how Brenda's boy friends made known 
their wishes. Right away, of course, and with no attempt to be subtle. At 
the risk of losing her, he had to be different. 

"Shall I pour for both of us?" 

"Please." 

He sipped his coffee and admired the way her legs blended into lithe, 
athletic thighs. Brenda's skirt was short but not conspicuously so. Along 
with the coffee's steaming vapors came another smell-an intoxicating, 
young-female scent. Bunyard, who'd thought he'd gotten all this out of his 
system years before, in high school and college, realized that he hadn't. He 
wanted Brenda, and he wanted her very badly. "Are you using anything?" Her 
hand froze with the-coffee cup. She looked at him. "Drugs?" 

Bunyard silently implored heaven for patience. This seduction, if seduction 
it was, might not go according to the script. "Christ, no. Pills. Birth 
control pills. Or a diaphragm. A pessary. Even a prayer. You must use 
something. Tell me if you do. I don't have a thing." 

Brenda lifted the coffee to her lips, shrugging. "I'm fitted with a di. Most 
of the girls are. The girls I run with." 

Bunyard relaxed, draining his cup and placing it on the table. Moving across 
the sofa, he slipped an arm around her shoulders. "Whatever happened to the 
Pill? The way I heard it, peace of mind came in a little plastic vial and 
lasted about a month. Aren't the girls you 'run with' with it anymore?" She 
gave him a pitying look, but whether for the observation or the out-of-date 
expression, he wasn't sure. 

"They're too hard to get, silly. How do you think I'd look walking into a 
drug store with a prescription that wasn't mine? I might be arrested, and 
then who'd sneak into your car to surprise you?" 

She finished her own coffee and set the cup beside his. "I see your point," 
he conceded. When she leaned back, he turned her face around to his, kissing 
her at first without passion, not sure how fast she'd respond, or even if 
she'd respond at all. But if she was just another half-witted kid who didn't 
know fire when she found it, who promised the sky and couldn't deliver, he'd 
toss Brenda Whatever-her-name-was out so fast she'd catch cold on the way 
down. And without even a "Thank you, ma'am." Brenda amazed him, however. She 
returned the kiss with both skill and fervor, twisting so that she was 
practically sitting in his lap. 

When he parted his lips as a first step in getting past hers, she surprised 
him further by inserting her tongue into his mouth. Rather than he exciting 
her, she seemed determined to excite him, to make his readiness equal or 
surpass hers. 

Someone had taught her a few things about technique, too. Her tongue drove 
past his teeth like some untamed bolt of lightning, crisscrossing the roof 
of his mouth so many times he lost count. Bunyard stopped worrying about her 
"Lack of experience" and started worrying about what she expected of him. 
Maybe too much. Maybe more than he could deliver. 

The frenching turned his prick into an iron-hard rod. Before she made him 
come in his shorts, he succeeded in forcing his way past her tongue into her 
oral cavity. While she squirmed and twitched in his arms, inflaming him all 
the more, he explored every corner within reach, establishing a rhythm which 
seemed to pleased her as much as it pleased him. 

She'd offered all of herself to him, so he partook, fondling her firm young 
tits through the fabric of her blouse. She wore no bra. Nipples which had 
been soft before now hardened to thrust straight out at him. He had no 
trouble finding them, even less trouble in knowing which areas to pinch and 
which to leave alone. Brenda, as soon as he touched the tender buds, began 
to breathe noisily into his mouth. Her eyes had closed, but Bunyard knew she 
was still seeing the things he was doing to her. In her mind's eye, each new 
move, each fresh stimulation was emblazoning itself on her id, ready for 
instant, dreamy recall at some later date. Women, young or old, had more 
mental imagery in sexual matters, marriage had taught him that. 

Moving carefully, almost stealthily, he worked a hand up under her skirt to 
the edge of her panties. Brenda quivered when his cool hand encountered her 
hot flesh, shifting slightly so that he could reach her better. Upon 
arriving at her cunny, he found the lips slippery with excitement. Better 
and better. But he could blow it here, for both of them. Bunyard paused, 
then addressed the shaft of Brenda's clitoris with a few, gentle swipes. A 
sob, or perhaps a whimper, caught in her throat. 

He needed to breathe again, and so did she. He tore his mouth away from hers 
and began on the buttons of her blouse. Bunyard longed to just throw the 
girl on her back and sink his prick into her without further delay, but he 
felt that he should go through with the rest of the foreplay, for his sake 
as well as hers. The Louisiana law on statutory rape was quite clear. He'd 
already assumed the risks, a fact which made him feel he was entitled to all 
the pleasures. All the pleasures. 

While she watched, wide-eyed, he kissed and sucked her tits to hard knots of 
desire, fingering her clitoris all the while. Finally, Brenda hurled a 
command at him he'd been waiting to hear: 

"Do it! Do me now!" 

He almost tore her skirt and panties getting them off, but she didn't seem 
to mind. He let his clothes fall where they would, exposing himself to her 
without considering the effect a full-grown prick might have on a girl who 
wasn't. "You're-you're huge!" 

Bunyard chuckled, until he saw the apprehension in her eyes. Then he stopped 
laughing and held his aching dong so that it wouldn't appear quite as large. 
"We'll take it easy," he promised. "There's a way. I won't hurt you. I swear 
it." The apprehension gave way to anticipation when he waggled his thing for 
her. "See? He can hardly wait to be inside you. Neither can I." 

"Then let's let him!" Brenda exclaimed, and climbed back on the sofa to 
stretch out for him, spreading her thighs as far as they would go. 

Bunyard realized, when he touched the head of his prick to her cunt's 
velvety lips, that he'd made a pledge he couldn't keep. He crept in an inch 
at a time, fighting an urge to stab and lunge, but still he hurt her. The 
pain, he hoped, was bearable, although she bit her lip and whimpered with 
every move he made. At last he was in, and lay quietly for a moment to 
gather himself. "Like?" le asked, because she seemed calmer now. 

"I love it!" she assured him. "I want you to stay inside me! I want you to 
give me a good fucking." 

It was the one command he hadn't hated today. 

His cock inched slowly into her, but he controlled his movements with an 
iron will to prevent himself from jamming his cock into her with a single 
thrust. He didn't want to hurt Brenda, but the sensation of his prick 
slipping into her tight pussy was overwhelming. Although Brenda was no 
virgin, she was obviously not as experienced as she pretended to be, and 
Clay was mildly amused by her false sophistication. Now that she was begging 
for pleasure, she had changed subtly. 

She spread her legs wider and lifted her little ass off the bed so that her 
pussy would be at a better angle to receive his cock. She slid one hand down 
between their bodies to guide his huge throbbing prick into her hot moist 
cunt. When it was halfway into her she released his cock and put her hands 
on her knees to hold her legs wide apart for him. 

Clay put his hands on her waist and held her tightly, looking down at her as 
he fucked her. He began slowly withdrawing his cock until it was almost 
completely out of her cunt, with only the head remaining within, and then 
sliding it back into her, a little bit farther each time. She gasped with 
pleasure at his every thrust and reached up to encircle his waist with her 
slender young arms. 

Clay leaned forward and moved his hands up from her waist to caress her firm 
young breasts with his fingers. He squeezed her nipples between his thumbs 
and forefingers until they stood straight up like small pink pencil erasers. 
All the time his thick cock was pumping in and out of her hot, wet pussy. 
Her cunt was incredibly tight, and his prick felt as if it were being 
squeezed by a moist, warm hand. Brenda was moaning deep in her throat and 
tossing her head from side to side on the pillows. Clay eased his cock 
almost all the way out of her and she thrust her pelvis up toward him in 
quick movements, begging him to continue with body language rather than with 
words. 

He bent his head and kissed her deeply. She opened her mouth wide to receive 
his tongue. His hands moved over her breasts and down her flat stomach, 
stroking her body firmly and arousing sensations in her which she had never 
before experienced. Clay's stiff tongue fucked her mouth with the same 
rhythm his cock was fucking her pussy. Brenda placed her heels firmly 
against Clay's buttocks and braced her legs wide apart. Her lips closed 
fiercely around his tongue as it slid in and out of her mouth. Their saliva 
mingled and gathered in the corners of her mouth as his cock probed deeply 
into her cunt. Clay pulled his mouth away from hers and they both gasped for 
breath. 

"Puck me, Clay," she murmured softly. "Puck me, you football star!" 

Clay winced at the remark, but realized he didn't care if she was only 
interested in him because he was a football player. All he wanted to do at 
this moment was just what she was asking. 

He thrust his hips forward and his cock speared her tight pussy once more. 
She gave a small, choked cry, and Clay shuddered from the sensation of his 
cock sliding deep into her warm, damp cunt Brenda lay still, her eyes 
closed, her lips slightly parted, and Clay remained motionless, his cock 
buried deep within her. Then she let out her breath with a ragged sigh and 
began pressing her hips upward against his cock. Clay began moving his hips 
with slow, tentative movements, working his cock back and forth in her 
fractionally. Brenda drew her feet up until they were flat against her 
buttocks as she spread her knees apart, opening her legs as far as she 
could. Clay's fingers stroked her inner thighs as he began moving his hips 
with longer, harder thrusts, inching his cock into her. 

Clay reveled in the sheer pleasure of driving his throbbing cock deep into 
her quivering slit. The pressure building up in him was almost unbearable, 
and he knew that he would soon lose control. He stopped for a moment, 
gasping for air and getting a firmer grip on his control. 

"Ohhhh," she breathed. "Don't stop!" 

"I had to, baby. I was about to come, and I want to make it last." 

Brenda nodded, lifted her legs high in the air and clamped them around his 
waist. Clay bent his head to her breasts once again and sucked at her 
nipples. He flicked his tongue back and forth across first one nipple and 
then the other. Brenda gave a deep sigh as she began stroking his head. The 
pressure of her legs wrapped around his hips increased and she thrust her 
pussy up toward him. Her hands caressed his head and she ran her fingers 
through his thick, wavy hair. There seemed to be a growing urgency in her 
movements as she undulated her hips and drove her pussy up at him, fucking 
herself on his cock with quick thrusts. 

Suddenly she gave a wild, harsh cry, then burst into a frenzy of motion, 
dragging her fingernails across his back as she lunged up against him, 
driving her pussy up on his cock until his balls slammed against her ass. He 
gripped her as hard as he could and fucked her with long, hard strokes. She 
moaned and writhed under him convulsively. Then she gave a final lurch and 
fell back on the bed, exhausted, gasping for air and moaning with pleasure. 

"Oh, Clay," she breathed. "That was wonderful. So wonderful. I never felt 
that way before." 

He grinned at her. "Just wait, baby. You'll feel even better." 

He withdrew his cock from her pussy and turned her over on her stomach so he 
could fuck her from behind. Brenda lifted herself onto her hands and knees 
and Clay crouched behind her, positioning himself to dog-fuck her. He moved 
forward, sliding his prick between her buttocks and searching for the 
opening of her pussy with his fingers and the head of his cock. His cockhead 
touched her pussy lips, and he slid it in firmly with a quick, smooth thrust 
of his hips. She shuddered convulsively from the sensation of his thick 
prick spearing her hot, steaming cunt. Clay reached forward with his hands 
and cupped her firm young breasts, playing with her nipples until she moaned 
with desire. His cock was buried in her hot, tight pussy. He panted and 
murmured incoherently as he slid his cock in and out of her in a rapidly 
accelerating motion, and he watched his swollen shaft disappear and reappear 
between her smooth, firm ass cheeks. The blood was pounding in his head with 
dizzying force as delirious sensations of ecstasy roared through him. He was 
overcome with sensual delight. Brenda thrust up at him convulsively, and her 
pussy was clamped around his cock so tightly that it felt as if he were 
being squeezed and wrung by some powerful woman instead of this young, 
inexperienced girl. 

Her body rocked back and forth with his violent thrusts. Slowly she spread 
out her arms and gripped the mattress to brace herself against the slamming 
rhythm of his cock. She arched her back and he drove more deeply into her, 
moving faster and faster until his balls were slapping against her buttocks 
with each thrust. The pressure of his semen rising within him was almost 
unbearable. He was on the verge of exploding into orgasm. It felt as though 
he were being torn apart by the massive force within him. He held on for as 
long as he could. 

Brenda was thrusting up against him so hard that he could tell she was on 
the brink of another orgasm. She moaned and tossed her head from side to 
side in sensual ecstasy. Clay savored the exhilarating pleasure of driving 
his long, thick prick into her firm young body. Then he gave way to a 
shattering orgasm. 

Brenda gave a shriek of delight as she felt the come begin to pour into her 
in hot, thick spurts. She held her body tightly up against him so that he 
could empty his semen into her and drive it deeply inside her with his cock. 
All the muscles in Clay's body tensed and trembled as the come erupted from 
him in long, wet spurts. He speared his cock between her lovely white ass 
cheeks and gushed into her, with a ragged hoarse cry. Finally he crumbled, 
exhausted by ecstasy, all his strength gone. 

 ll 

Gwynn awoke Wednesday morning puzzled over her surroundings. The bed swayed 
to and fro in a delicious rocking motion. But unless she'd been shanghaied 
to sea ... Champaign's Folly! Of course. Roy had taken her to the north end 
of State Street at nightfall. Together, they'd drank and danced their way to 
the south end, to the point of insensibility. Then, after a hectic taxi 
ride, he'd bribed them aboard a Lake Michigan excursion boat. They'd been 
assigned a vacant stateroom which, she noticed now, offered an excellent 
view of lakefront Chicago. 

At least, she hoped Roy had come aboard with her. The bed was empty beside 
her, but someone was running the shower behind the headboard. This, rather 
than the boat's gentle tossing, was what had summoned her from a sound 
sleep. "Roy!" she called and gasped. The effect on her already throbbing 
head of this slight exertion made Gwynn believe in divine punishment. "Roy, 
can you hear me? 

Is it you?" 

"It's me," Tannen called back. "Give me a minute, huh?" 

Gwynn considered joining him in the shower, and decided against it. Two 
miserable people couldn't possibly be good for one another. She was grateful 
for the decision when he stepped out a minute later, towel draped about his 
middle, and stood smiling down at her. 

"How do you feel?" 

She made a face. "Miserable." 

Tannen laughed. "You may have had one or two more drinks than I did, which 
is saying a lot. I think there's a galley somewhere forward. Shall I go and 
ask them to make you something?" 

"Please. And tell them to make it strong. I don't want to die feeling this 
way. And I don't want to live feeling this way." She watched him dress, and 
noticed that he was just as fastidious when his things were wrinkled as when 
they were fresh. Fastidious, but not foppish. When his tie wouldn't knot 
perfectly, he shrugged it off. "Roy." He turned to look at her. 

"Yes?" 

"Last night ... Did we--? " 

He chuckled. "To tell you the truth, my dear, I'm not sure myself. From the 
way I feel when I look at you, I suspect not. We were deeply intoxicated, 
you know, and alcohol, they say, is a depressant. Yes, I'm inclined to 
believe we behaved ourselves for a change. I hope, it doesn't set a 
pattern." 

Gwynn rubbed her aching head. "I'll make it up to you, I promise. Just get 
me well again." She closed her eyes and accepted the kiss he pressed to her 
lips. Then she heard him leave the room. Because the silence oppressed her, 
too, she made herself think of Clay, far away in another windy city on an 
equally bleak lake shore. Did he miss her, and was he even the least bit 
suspicious? She hoped not. If she returned to him, there was a chance he and 
she might save their marriage. A dwindling chance, perhaps, but still a 
chance. 

* * * 

Business, Roy said, was behind them. He knew all he needed to know about the 
brewery's current operation. Conditions for an improved profit curve 
appeared good, was how he put it, although the industry as a whole couldn't 
say as much. "So we have the rest of the day to ourselves," he said as they 
inched up Michigan Avenue in a taxi. "I'm open to suggestions as to how we 
should spend it." 

"Fly home?" Gwynn offered, without thinking. Roy looked pained. 

"Every one except that one. I'm beginning to think, if I may say it, that 
you have a fianc' down there. Or a husband." 

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed, heart thudding. But she gazed out at the 
Chicago Art Institute so he wouldn't the alarm on her face. 

Tannen patted her arm. "A man can get false impressions at times, provided 
he's human. I am." 

"Take me to a theater," Gwynn coaxed, before he could pursue his impressions 
further. She had a positive dread of people with extrasensory perception, up 
to and including Roy Tannen. Live or filmed?" 

"Live." 

Roy winked. "I hear 'Oh, Calcutta!' is still in town. And 'Hair!' must be 
showing at one of the college playhouses. Maybe we can catch it tonight. 
Before we begin our own performance, I mean." She knew what he meant. 

* * * 

The two had lunch in the Sherman's grill room, then went to sec a first-run 
movie at the United Artists Theatre. After dark, he took her to an X-rated 
feature in a smaller house on Franklin Street. The feature was neither live 
nor well-done, but it did hold them their seats until the end, during which 
the cast performed more sexual acts and non-acts than The Sensuous Woman 
ever dreamed about. 

Gwynn walked tingling from the theater, holding tightly to Roy's hand. She's 
thought she no longer had the capacity to blush. She'd been wrong. Her face 
burned now from the power of the sex scenes portrayed in the picture. People 
were still so hung up, she realized, that they'd pay money, lots of it, to 
view acts they didn't dare perform with someone they dug, hot even in 
private. 

"What did you think?" Tannen inquired, steering her toward the curb and a 
taxi. "Is this the decadence that brought down Rome? If so, will it bring 
down Chicago's upper North Side as well? An opinion, please." 

Gwynn slipped an arm around his waist. "I won't know where to start," she 
confided in Roy's ear, hoping to pique his interest. 

"I'll show you!" her escort exclaimed. "Our plane doesn't lift off until ten 
a.m., you know. We have hours and hours." 

* * * 

He made no mention of dinner, and neither did she. He took them straight to 
their room, locking the door as soon as they'd entered. But when she started 
on her clothing, he stopped her, smiling. "Before you let me see the menu, 
let me tell you a story. A true story. A fantasy of mine with a real-life 
beginning. Actually it goes all the way back to my high school days." 

"In the early fifties?" she guessed, to flatter him. 

Roy shook his head. "Class of Forty-one. I'm not ashamed of it. Hell, I'm 
the only member of the class to make three fortunes before I was fifty. 
Anyway, there was a history teacher at my school, name of Miss Winslowe. 
Karen Winslowe, I think it was, although of course I never dared call her 
that. She was even prettier than you are, I might add. I have to be honest. 
Me, I was the usual gangly kid, awkward in body and mind. One afternoon 
Winslowe kept me late, on the theory that I needed help in separating 
Presidents with the same or similar surname. Seems I was forever scrambling 
them at quiz time. Maybe that was her fault, too." 

"I think I can finish the story for you," Gwynn remarked, because she'd 
heard or read similar ones before. 

"Shut up, please," Tannen advised. "So there we were: a red-haired teacher 
of about twenty-two who would have made a blind man start drooling, and a 
seventeen-year-old who hadn't even laid his first girl but was thinking 
about it. Let me tell you he was thinking about it. Imagine my surprise when 
she dropped a hand on my you-know-what, talking all the while about John 
Adams and John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison and William Henry Harrison, 
John Tyler and Zachary Taylor. I thought it was unintentional, and didn't 
say a word. But then she lowered my fly and took me out, stroking my 
half-sized rod until I nearly exploded. This time I couldn't say anything. I 
was speechless with delight. Winslowe was excited, too. She squirmed around 
in her chair like there was a bucket of fire ants in her pants. 
Unfortunately..." Roy Tannen smiled a wan, sad smile. 

"Unfortunately?" Gwynn prompted, interested in spite of herself over the 
story's conclusion. 

Roy sighed. "Someone made a noise out in the hall. Quick as a flash, she 
stuffed me-my leg of lamb-back inside my pants and zipped me up again. Told 
me to scram, the old tease. Even threatened to tell my parents if I didn't 
keep my trap shut. You can bet your booties I did, because I hoped to have 
another go at her." 

"Did you?" 

"Never. It was near the end of the term. I saw her twice more before final 
exams, but she looked straight through me. And then she left. Her contract 
wasn't renewed, I guess. She may have thought I was responsible. I wasn't. I 
never breathed a word to anyone." 

Gwynn folded her arms across her chest and gave him the coldest stare she 
could muster. "So now when you look for a girl Friday, she should be around 
twenty-two or three, have red hair, and her typing doesn't have to set the 
woodwork afire. How do you want my resignation? Orally or in writing?" 

"I don't want your resignation," Tannen chuckled. "I accept you on your 
merits, not someone else's. Maybe I should explain the rest of the fantasy. 
I dreamed that Karen Winslowe, bless her, sucked me off while the whole 
school watched. Isn't that wild? That's how young boys are, you 
know-obsessed with strange fixations. The people who make the profoundest 
impression on them are the ones they'd like to explore these fixations with. 
Since you've made me forget much of the fantasy, I wonder if you wouldn't 
also..." 

Gwynn's pleasure-weary brain was a few seconds in realizing what he meant. 
"Wouldn't also what?" The gleam in Roy's eyes made her clap a hand to her 
mouth. "Oh. Uh-uh. No, thanks. You'll have to find yourself another girl. Or 
whatever they call them." 

"But the girl in the picture-" 

"An actress. Or, I should say, 'actress,' quotation marks." 

"No matter. She gave her man whatever he wanted. Even that. Have you 
forgotten so soon?" 

"Her 'man' was an actor," Gwynn reminded, coloring. "They were both in it 
for the money. I can be fooled about the little things, but not the major 
ones." 

Tannen swore. "I should have known. You let me show you a good time, now 
you've turned coy on me. Maybe I'll fire you after all." 

She made her eyes flash. "And force me to fly home alone, I suppose, Dutch 
treat." Roy rubbed his hands together and crackled like a fiend, disgusting 
her further. 

"What a perfectly lovely idea. Yes, that's what HI do. Unless you start 
acting like a woman instead of a spoiled child." He saw the fury on her 
face, and threw up his hands, grinning. "Hell, I'm only kidding. You know I 
wouldn't go through with it. I may be a lot of things, but s.o.b. isn't one 
of them." 

"Well, I'm not kidding!" Gwynn heard herself declare. 

"I beg your pardon?" 

Slowly, deliberately, she wept to her knees in front of him, letting the act 
speak for itself. Roy's expulsion of breath was an instant's warm breeze 
through her hair. 

"I knew it. You have class after all. Real class." 

She heard the words, but her concern was no longer for what he might think 
of her. Without hesitating or closing her eyes, she lowered the fly on Roy's 
trousers and reached in for his manhood, swollen already with eager life. He 
sucked in his breath when she brought him out. 

"Danielle never would. She never would." 

Danielle, Gwynn remembered, was Roy's wife. Roy's late wife. She'd perished 
in a sailing accident on Lake Pontchartrain nine summers before, or so Roy 
had said. And she'd never done for him what she, Gwynn Bunyard, was doing 
for him now, which was grasping his congested organ around the head and 
aiming it toward her mouth. 

"Give me a good, hot suck!" he begged, when she paused, or rather, 
hesitated. 

Conquering the last of her qualms-and that's what they were-Gwynn opened her 
mouth wide to accept him. The warm, smooth shaft of Roy's phallus slid 
between her parted lips. Right away she noticed something different-Roy had 
been circumcised. When she lapped twice around the head with her tongue, 
Tannen groaned, the sensations were so acute. 

"Christ Jesus!" he gasped. "If you only knew how that felt! If I only had 
the words to tell you! If I ... only had ... the words!" 

Gwynn, remembering the one occasion when he'd eaten her, had a fair idea of 
how he must feel. Working her lips and her tongue, coordinating them as best 
she could, she began to bob up and down as Roy made strangling sounds. 

"That's it! By heaven, I knew you were junior-executive material!" 

She tightened her lips and bobbed faster, making him pant with rising lust 
and lock his hands in her hair. Now he controlled both the depth of 
penetration and the speed at which she brought him to climax. Tannen began 
to breathe in staccato bursts which seemed to come, judging by their 
difficulty of expression, from the innermost recesses of his lungs. 

"Now!" he panted. "I'm going to come now!" 

If she'd had any notion of tearing her mouth away, he prevented it, holding 
her in this captured position until she'd accepted and swallowed every drop. 
Then and only then did he allow her to raise her head. Gwynn gazed up at him 
in exhaustion, awaiting his praise or his censure. 

"That was beautiful. Simply beautiful. But I wonder if we couldn't do it 
together. In bed, I mean. With you on top." 

She saw no reason why they couldn't. If Clay's accusing presence was beside 
her, she couldn't detect it. 

 12 

After Wednesday's practice, Clay Bunyard drove home and called West Memphis 
again. A complete fool? No, he just wanted to be sure. Gwynn's mother told 
him the same thing as before-Gwynn herself hadn't flown in from anywhere and 
wasn't expected. 

"Clay, I wish you'd tell me what this is all about!" Mary O'Bannion 
implored. "Has she left you? Are you suing her for divorce?" 

"I don't know myself, but I intend to find out," Bunyard replied, trying 
very hard to sound calm. "When I do, I'll let you know. I have to go now. 
Thanks for talking to me." 

Upon hanging up, he heard a plastic vial rattle in his shirt pocket and 
remembered what it contained: mescaline. He and a certain character in a 
coffee shop on Toulouse, after thirty minutes of jousting behind dark 
glasses, had struck a bargain. The twelve caps now reposed in his pocket, 
for whatever use he chose to make of them. 

But he realized, from high school and college lectares on the subject, the 
pitfalls of experimenting with a drug he'd never used before. And the wisdom 
of testing one. Safely, of course, and under some kind of monitoring. Rita 
could monitor him. She could observe his reactions, direct his activities, 
and when he came down, help him crash without ruining himself. Then he'd 
know. 

Bunyard changed into casual wear, and headed toward Rita's apartment. 

* * * 

A mile from his destination, he noticed a car in his rear-view mirror which 
hadn't been there before. The strange car appeared to be an Electra. A 
dark-blue Buick Electra, which meant he was now expected to ante up $5,000. 
Bunyard, who had never panicked in his life, reached under the car seat and 
patted a .45 automatic wrapped in a pillow case. The gun was loaded. Slowing 
down, he took the gun out and placed it between his legs, where the weapon 
couldn't be readily seen. 

But then he passed under a street light and saw that the car behind wasn't a 
dark-blue Buick Electra but a Dodge of undetermined color. Bunyard chuckled 
and prepared to put the .45 away. Then he wondered if New Orleans' detective 
force, some of it, anyway, didn't cruise around in unmarked Dodges. The clue 
might be a wire-thin, two-way antenna in the middle of the roof deck. 
Bunyard strained to see such an antenna, and did, or thought he did. Despite 
the chill inside the car, he began to perspire. 

Should he try to throw the mesc out the window? No. If the pursuers were 
merely suspicious, they'd have him for sure. And wherever he concealed the 
stuff inside the car, they'd find it. The gun, too. But they had to stop him 
first, and they might not. 

Bunyard drove, counting out the longest five minutes of his life. When he 
speeded up, the Dodge did, too. When he slowed, the Dodge slowed. He went 
past Rita's street and tripped his turn signal three blocks farther on, 
hoping to make "them"-whoever they were-tip their hand. But the detectives, 
if detectives they were, swept on by, ignoring him altogether. Bunyard 
pulled to the curb and bowed his head in gratitude, the closest he could 
bring himself to religious expression. 

Then, when his head cleared, he experienced a fierce anger at himself for 
the debt, for having waited so long to clear it up. And for the man-the 
vulture-who'd sucked him in. He circled the block to a pay phone, parked his 
car and went inside, dialing a number he'd written backwards on the reverse 
side of his gasoline credit card. The number, naturally, would belong to an 
answering service. But he dialed, anyway, and waited. 

"Crescent City Answering Service. Your call will be recorded. Please speak 
clearly and distinctly, prefacing your message with the correct subscriber's 
number." 

Bunyard licked his lips, glancing out through the phone booth's glass for 
signs of the mysterious Dodge. He saw only normal, early evening traffic. 
"The subscriber's number is thirty-three, but I don't want to make a 
recording. I want to speak to him personally." 

"I'm sorry, sir. That isn't possible. The subscribers pay for this service 
in order that they may not be disturbed." 

Bunyard gave the booth a kick that dislodged a lower panel. "Operator, this 
is an emergency. I have to speak to subscriber thirty-three without another 
second's delay. If you don't try to locate him for me, he may cancel your 
blasted service." He waited for the girl to balance this threat against her 
orders to maintain, at all costs, her subscribers' anonymity. 

"Just a moment, sir." 

A minute passed. Various clicks, dial tones and other feedback came over the 
line. Two minutes. Bunyard fidgeted, beginning to wish he hadn't bothered. 
Thirty-three, whoever the hell he was, had probably given up on collecting 
from him. Large operators didn't bother with the rough stuff anymore. Bad 
for business. 

"Hello?" 

Bunyard jumped. The gravelly voice seemed-to come from inside the booth with 
him, evoking its owner, who was large, two-fisted and possessed of a 
sneering amount of confidence. "This is B. Remember? The Atlanta and San 
Francisco games? The, uh, tab comes to forty-seven hundred. I'm ready to pay 
up. Where can I meet you?" There was an instant of amazed silence, then 
loud, booming laughter. 

"You. know, you're a card. A swell of a fellow. I've seen 'em all, but I've 
never seen your like. You must have been in the whale's belly when Jonah 
arrived. I mean, you're not real." 

"What's so goddamned funny?" Bunyard shouted into the phone. 

"Your debt's been paid, B. Canceled. You don't owe me a dime. But if you're 
trying to work up more credit, forget it. I don't get walked on twice. I'd 
rather read about you, not take your money." 

Bunyard was relieved, then incredulous, finally suspicious. "How could it be 
paid? No one else knows I owe it. Tell me what's going on before I-" 

"Your wife paid it, funny boy. All of it. If you want the details, ask her." 

"Hello? Hello?" Bunyard, more puzzled than ever realized he was talking into 
a dead phone. The connection had been broken from the other end. He hung up 
on the second try and stumbled back to his car. Having the debt canceled 
made no sense. None of this made any sense. Why in God's name was Gwynn in 
Chicago? To punish him for having deceived her? 

As he drove away, he felt something hard under his left haunch. The 
automatic. Bunyard wrapped it in the pillowcase and stuffed it back under 
the seat. 

* * * 

Rita's greeting made him feel better. She welcomed him to a warm apartment 
by pressing her lips to his, then pressing a drink into his hand. "I've been 
waiting half an hour. What kept you?" 

Bunyard accepted the drink and closed the door with the heel of his foot. "I 
had to run an errand. Only it turns out someone else ran it for me." He went 
to sit down on the couch. 

"Oh? It's too early in the evening for riddles, darling. But I suppose if 
you wanted to tell me, you would." 

After fetching a drink for herself, Rita came to snuggle up beside him, 
resting her head on his shoulder. He gave her a smile, and most of his 
tension went away. "You're a smart girl. Smarter than most, that is. And 
you're right-I don't want to talk about it." Because they were there, within 
reach of his itching hands, he reached out to fondle one of her breasts, 
idly, without intent to arouse her just yet. They drank together in silence 
for a few minutes. Then he remembered the caps in his shirt pocket. "Like to 
try something with me?" She turned to gaze up at him. "What?" 

Bunyard took out the vial and told her what it contained. "We can go up 
together," he coaxed. "You're not expecting anyone else, are you? No one 
knows I'm here. Who's to know?" 

Rita shook her head. "I tried those in high school; Clay, honey. They're not 
for real people. The school psychologist used them, too, and he flipped out 
in the parking lot one afternoon. I'm surprised at you." She plucked the 
vial from his hand. "I'm going to flush them down the toilet. Then we'll 
have a nice evening together, you and me." 

Banyard snatched them back in time. "Like crap you will! These little 
beauties set me back fifty hard ones. Christ, I was only asking. You don't 
have to throw a shit scene for me, baby. And can the sermon. If you won't 
trip out with old Clay, he'll go alone." Before she could stop him, he shook 
out one of the mescaline caps and popped it into his mouth, swallowing the 
little bit of packaged fantasy at once. Rita looked at him with an 
expression he wasn't sure he liked. Disgust was there. Also, fear. Or was it 
simply apprehension? 

"I wish you hadn't done that. Clay. Really I do. 

But since you have..." She put down her drink and got up to cross the room, 
locking the door and covering the peephole. "Now you'll have to stay the 
night. No one can drive with mesc in their blood. They think they can drive 
through other people. Don't you have any respect for your career?" 

He nodded, finishing his drink in a single gulp. "A ton of respect. It buys 
the bacon. And the airline tickets for that tramp of a wife of mine. I 
expect her home tomorrow, and then..." 

Bunyard shrugged. He hadn't gotten that far himself. Lately, he'd been 
living from day to day. Maybe that was the only way to live. Head lolling, 
he looked at the girl who still seemed to care for him. "What would you say 
if I told you I loved you? Would you laugh in my face? Quick, while I'm 
still lucid. No, don't tell me. Save it for later." He found her mouth with 
his own, and crushed her lips against her teeth. As a means of testing his 
concentration, he tried to hold the kiss longer than he'd ever held a kiss 
before. Cooperating, Rita locked her fingers behind his head and kissed him 
back. 

For five minutes, they kissed. Ten. Fifteen. She parted her lips, and 
naturally he inserted his tongue. Bunyard, who had expected the room to 
start spinning, his inner self to start parading across his field of vision, 
possibly even the imaginations of childhood to spring to instant life, was 
disappointed. Nothing of the kind happened. 

He removed Rita's blouse and bra, kneaded and sucked her breasts to 
hard-pointed cones, and still nothing unexpected happened. She began to make 
the usual manifestations of pleasure: groans and whispered entreaties to 
repeat some especially pleasing caress, sharp nails driven into his back-the 
whole predictable bit. 

He tugged off her skirt and peeled down her panties. Whether he did either 
any differently than before was debatable. Certainly Rita helped him as much 
as possible, wriggling back on the couch and wrapping her legs around his 
middle so that he could reach her better. Puzzled and a little angry-if he'd 
been sold sleeping capsules, a full refund would be made or blood would be 
spilled on Toulouse Street-Bunyard explored the girl in a way which had 
never interested him before. But then he'd never been so interested in her 
before. Making an effort to be original, he used two fingers to separate the 
outer lips, then thrust in one of them. By juxtapositioning thumb and 
forefinger, he was able to make the lips swell and fill with blood until 
they closed snugly around his finger. By way of thanks, Rita went wild, 
thrashing out a climax which made the couch shake. 

"Jesus, Clay, darling, you've never done this for me!" she bleated down at 
him. 

Bunyard stared at her distorted features, and for once in his life knew 
exactly what she must be experiencing, exactly how the spasms must be going 
through her brain. Almost in chagrin, he realized the mesc was working. In 
creeping fashion, the Teacher was causing him to perceive things more 
clearly than he ever had before. Her flesh was his flesh. He could be inside 
the fabulous body if he chose, could wrap her around him like a cloak. But 
intromission really wasn't necessary. 

He continued to press and squeeze her glistening cunt lips, taking 
intermittent swipes at the clitoral hood but staying away from the shaft. 
The little organ was too sensitive for very much direct contact. But he 
couldn't recall having ever been told this before. 

Twice more she convulsed and climaxed, and still he worked, relishing his 
"task" in a way she probably found puzzling. Finally, she raised her head 
and gazed in some concern at him. 

"Aren't you going to put it in me, Clay, honey?" 

He laughed like a child. The idea of putting himself inside her both amused 
and troubled him, whereas an hour before he would simply have availed 
himself of the invitation. The suggestion transcended the rational, and yet 
it was the rational thing to do. He belonged inside her, and she inside him. 
The two were one and the same. He was himself, but he was also a cheerleader 
named Rita Hazlitt. He was everyone. Everyone in the whole screwing 
universe. Reality was fantasy, and fantasy, reality. The two were 
intertwined. 

"Clay! Clay, I'm afraid for you! Do you want me to call you a doctor? An 
ambulance? Clay, are you listening? Clay?" 

Bunyard blinked at her because she had his face between her hands and was 
shaking. He heard the words but had no idea what they meant. His eyes 
focused now with difficulty. Bright, multi-colored lights seemed to be 
everywhere about the room, even inside the head which was no longer his own. 
Objects and ideas floated in and out of their own volition, without his 
having any control over them. The room began to reel, to revolve. "No," he 
muttered. "Wanna be ... inside you. Wanna be..." He got on hands and knees 
to take her, but wasn't able to. 

He was still wearing all his clothes. "I'll have to help you." 

Somehow the two of them got pants, shirt and shorts off him. He must have 
succeeded in penetrating her, because Rita began to utter wild, choking 
sounds underneath him while he moved jerkily above her. But he was to have 
no later recollection of climaxing. There was no culmination, no peak of 
feeling which could be called an orgasm. Orgasm was an on-going thing. 

Finally, there was nothing. His brain, having been taxed beyond its 
capacity, refused to register any more happenings. That must have been when 
she broke the connection and put him to bed. 

 13 

Gwynn Bunyard, the taste of Roy Tannen's lips still on hers, arrived home to 
a deserted apartment Thursday morning, stepping out of the taxi at 
ten-thirty. New Orleans was warmer than she remembered, although there was 
rain in the air. Clay, she knew, had left for practice at eight. His car was 
gone. Her hands shook, anyway, at being so close to retribution, so close to 
hands that could wrap halfway around a football and squeeze the life out of 
it. 

Guiltily, she stole inside, discovering everything a mess, as she'd 
expected. Magazines and candy wrappers, cigarette butts and fruit peels were 
everywhere, in and out of ash trays. Cigarette butts? Gwynn frowned. Neither 
she nor Clay smoked. He must have had company. She picked up one of the 
butts to examine it, and spied lipstick traces on the filter. Then she hated 
him all over again. Female company. 

Somehow, the discovery made her ordeal in the evening-and it was certain to 
be that-easier to prepare for. Roy, who was going to th office as usual, had 
given her the rest of the day off, which also helped to clear the deck. If 
Clay even suspected how she'd spent the preceding three and a half days... 

She went into the kitchen and was appalled at the clutter. Every dish they 
owned-and one or two strange ones-seemed to be piled crazily in the sink. 
The range was covered with pots and pans, none of them clean. Gwynn washed 
and scoured for an hour, and still wasn't satisfied. Now she was not only 
angry but exhausted as well. But she supposed she had it coming to 
her-penance for three days of mirth and madness. 

Their bedroom, on the other hand, was scrupulously neat, the bed having been 
made up just that morning. Unless ... unless he'd spent the night somewhere 
else. Gwynn checked the ash trays beside the bed. Clean. Someone had policed 
the room. To assuage a troubled conscience? Perhaps. Clay had never been an 
ash tray emptier before. She had always had this particular chore. 

From the bathroom came a horrible smell. She slammed the door until her 
stomach could cope, then opened it again. Gingerly. Clay or someone had 
gotten very sick in here, that much she divined from a leftover stain in the 
toilet bowl. What she didn't understand was why he'd gone to practice. Not 
even Fred Shanks on a losing streak demanded that sick men work out. 

Gwynn went after rubber gloves, put them on and cleaned in here, too, 
applying an air freshener before leaving. Her head was beginning to whirl 
from the implications, the unanswered questions. Whether Clay accused her, 
or she accused him, someone had some talking to do. Not that talking would 
solve anything. The problems she and Clay had were considerably past the 
talking-out stage. 

* * * 

She went out to shop for food and came back to start a beef stew, Clay's 
favorite dish in the not-so-distant past. At five-thirty, as she moved the 
stew to another burner to cool, he came home, walking in stealthily to 
stand, arms folded, behind her. Gwynn turned around and almost screamed. She 
caught herself in time and smiled her warmest greeting, hoping her voice 
didn't quaver when she spoke. "Dearest, I'm home. Are you glad to see me?" 
He neither shook his head nor inclined it. The scowl he wore like a mask 
hadn't left his face. 

"Maybe. It depends on the answers you give me. And how soon you give them to 
me." 

She dropped a pot holder and knew her face had turned a stark pale. Clay's 
voice was low and hoarse, yet curiously aloof. When he talked this way, the 
anger was about to explode, like a grenade with the pin pulled. "Answers? 
Darling, what are you talking about? I went to see Mother just as I planned. 
I came back when we expected. Please tell me what's bothering you. If you're 
ill, I'll-" 

"Bullshit!" 

Clay's features had gone livid. His voice had picked up volume and 
resonance. He took a step toward her, and Gwynn, for the first time, 
realized he might kill her for what he knew. And he probably knew 
everything. He was certainly acting like it. 

"You flew to Chicago with a jerk you hardly knew! 

Don't deny it! I have someone who saw you together, someone who saw you buy 
the tickets! I called your mother, too!" 

She felt a constriction about her throat, and actually imagined that he was 
choking her already. But he was still two yards away and advancing. Gwynn 
edged away from him until she encountered the sink edge. There was nowhere 
else to go. "I can explain, Clay, if you'll just let me! He's my boss! I 
have a new position now, with Tannen Enterprises! It pays so much better 
than Great Southern Life Insurance Company! He-" 

"I can imagine!" 

She flinched. Clay's eyes were flashing a dangerous, murderous white. His 
hands had balled into fists, each one big enough to batter her senseless. 
"He-He took me with him to Chicago to ... to..." Gwynn gulped, having 
forgotten, now that her story reached this crucial point, just what Roy had 
taken her to Chicago for. 

"To break you in?" Clay sneered, jaw muscles twitching. 

Even with the fear-no, terror-she could notice that he looked less handsome 
than menacing, with his jacket collar up about his ears and his nostrils 
flared the way they did when he'd been pushed too far and was about to push 
back. Or maybe smash back. "No. To inspect his brewery. We stayed in 
separate rooms. I don't expect you to believe me, but it's true. I swear to 
God." 

"You swear to-" Clay threw back his head and laughed, conveying far more 
malice than humor. Then he stopped laughing. "I ought to break your goddamn 
neck, you little slut! No, I ought to break every bone in your body! hi 
fact, I think I will!" He started toward her. 

Because her instinct to survive was much stronger than her longing to reason 
with him, she snatched up a long-bladed carving knife, made the point hold 
still long enough to give herself courage, then held him at bay with it. "I 
won't let you kill me, Clay. I won't." To her heartfelt relief, he stared at 
the knife in little-boy wonder, as though he'd had no idea she was capable 
of using it, or even of picking it up. 

"Put that thing down," he muttered. "We can be civilized about this." 

"Can we?" Gwynn, without letting go of it, dropped the knife to her side. 

"I think you went to Chicago with a guy. Did you?" 

Slowly, reluctantly, she inclined her head. "Yes." 

"Why? Care to tell me that?" 

She collapsed into a chair before her legs gave way under her. "Maybe we'd 
better start at the beginning. With you." 

"With me? Me?" 

Gwynn swallowed, knowing she was about to send his blood pressure soaring 
once more. "I know you've been wagering on your own games, Clay. Don't try 
to deny it. And I know you've been losing. There's no need to deny that." He 
reddened, clenching his fists again. 

"Who's denying it? I stopped two games ago. Cleared up my obligation, too. 
I've quit it and I don't intend to go back. For that you stick me in the 
spine?" 

She quivered. The lie hurt worse than his willingness to do physical harm to 
her. "Did you clear it up? Did you?" Clay's hard brown eyes searched hers 
for a moment. 

"I took my time about it, but I had the money. Last night when I tried to 
reach my boo-my contact, he told me you'd canceled the debt yourself. So I'm 
clean. I'm clear. I thank you for paying, but not for snooping." 

Gwynn stared at her feet. She saw instead a motel beds soiled sheets, along 
with a lifetime of shame and ignominy. "Yes, I canceled it. I'll never tell 
you how I canceled it, but I did. And I didn't have to snoop. Your 
'contact,' as you call him, came to me." Clay, she noticed, seemed relieved 
rather than curious. 

"When?" 

"A week ago Tuesday," she said, watching him. He smacked a fist into an open 
palm. 

"Then why didn't you tell me? Did you think it would get to the 
commissioner's office if we even discussed it between ourselves? Hell, don't 
you trust your own husband?" 

The accusation was so unfair, the lack of consideration so open, that she 
had no retort of any kind. She could only sit there, lips trembling, and 
wish she'd never heard of Clayton Kingston Bunyard. He'd brought her a 
false, premature kind of happiness which was fleeing almost as fast as her 
sanity. 

"Well, can't you say something? Christ, I know I'm no saint, but you're 
certainly not one, either. You caught me blowing a wad on a couple of games, 
you figure I'm playing fast and loose elsewhere down the line, and you shoot 
me through the grease. I don't like it one bit. Do you hear? I don't like 
it!" 

"You don't have to shout," she countered with a weary shrug. "I heard you. 
Do you want your stew in a bowl or on a plate?" Clay sniffed the aroma 
drifting from the range. A man's stomach, his expression said, came before 
pride. "In a bowl. And lots of it." 

They ate in stony silence, broken only by curt requests on Clay's part for 
second helpings of stew, salad or pie. Because he would have come after her 
and demanded an explanation if she hadn't, Gwynn even went into the living 
room to sit down and watch television with him. But they sat far apart. 

At ten she excused herself and went to change into sleeping gown and 
slippers. When he came to bed half an hour later, she wasn't asleep, just 
pretending to be. And she was neither astonished nor intimidated when he 
grasped her rudely by the shoulder and tuned her to face him. 

"His name. Tell me his name." 

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. We said-" Being slapped hard across 
the face prevented her from saying the rest. 

"We said nothing! Tell me before I heat it out of you!" 

"You can go to hell," she told him, and was surprised at her own calmness. 
"I hate you and I'll never tell." 

"Then I'll fuck it out of you! Let's see how much cheating you can do when 
your pussy's raw and aching!" 

He pushed the covers back and ripped the gown from her body, grinding the 
garment under his heel one tattered piece at a time. Gwynn saw the savage, 
hating expression on his face, and resigned herself to being raped. She 
conceded, too, that he had probable cause. He was still entitled to his 
physical enjoyment of her, if only because she was still-legally-his wife. 
Lately, she hadn't been much of a wife to Clay. Even if he'd had occasional 
release with someone else, the frustration must have been too much. "Tell 
me!" 

"Go to hell," she whispered. 

Raped she was. Clay didn't concern himself with foreplay, except in a rough, 
punishing kind of way. He had a tremendous erection which he flaunted before 
her eyes until she closed them. 

"Open them, damn you, open them!" he yelled, and pinched her cruelly on the 
thigh. 

She opened her eyes before his right fist descended on her jaw. He yanked 
her to the bed edge, turned her buttocks so that the light struck them 
better, then thrust inside her in one, violent lunge. Without a pause, he 
began to move, and his movements, for perhaps the only time in their 
fourteen months of marriage, found the key, the elusive button, to her 
response. Though she loathed and feared Clay, Gwynn nonetheless moved with 
him until they were one, heaving creature of lust, a creature whose lower 
part despised its upper, and vice versa. But he ejaculated too soon and 
withdrew, leaving her, as he so often had in the past, high, dry and 
stranded. 

"There," he panted, shoving her away from him. "Take this news back to your 
lover. He can have you! I'm going to wash him off me. You, too." ' 

Rather than give him the satisfaction of seeing her tears, she turned her 
face away from him. 

While he was in the shower, she realized what she had to do. Throwing on the 
clothes she'd flown home in, she packed everything she could into a pullman 
and two weekenders. These she carried out to her car, somehow fitting them 
into the trunk with a spare tire and an ovemighter stuffed with cosmetics. 
Hastily, before he could come out and scream her perfidiousness to the 
neighborhood, she climbed under the wheel, fought a balky ignition, then 
drove away without once looking back. 

Her marriage, if she'd had even the slightest doubt, was over. Finished and 
done with. If he didn't sue for divorce, she would. "And it never really 
began," she mumbled out loud, braking around the first corner. Tears formed 
rivulets through her makeup, and she had trouble seeing. Rather than cause 
an accident, Gwynn pulled over for a few minutes. As soon as her vision 
cleared, she drove on, no happier than before but a great deal more in 
command of herself. 

In spite of herself, she watched the Dasher's rear-view mirror, 
half-expecting that Clay would follow, half-hoping he would. When no Grand 
Prix surfaced behind her, she set a course for Roy Tannen's penthouse 
apartment. Roy might choose not to welcome her, of course. He might profess 
ignorance of any relationship of theirs which entitled her to room and 
board, plus a shoulder to cry on. She'd go there, anyway. She had nowhere 
else to go. 

* * * 

Tannen looked her up and down as though he were seeing her for the first 
time. He poked a finger in his ear and withdrew it. Then he smiled, removed 
his pipe and stood aside. "You can come in. But you'll have to start all 
over from the beginning. That's quite a story you've told. I'm not sure I 
believe a word of it. If it were anyone else..." 

Gwynn, who couldn't take offense tonight, no matter what he said, staggered 
through the penthouse door with the first of her luggage. She was close to 
hysteria, to a screaming, kicking fit which might end in hospital sedation. 
But she had no right to take it out on Roy. Not after he'd opened his door 
to her. 

Tannen took the weekender from her hand and pushed her down in a chair. 
"Drink?" 

She nodded. "Make it strong." 

He went to pour two double bourbons at a bar in the corner, and brought them 
back, keeping one for himself. Pulling another chair nearer, he leaned close 
to her and eyed the tear stains on her cheek. "You say you're married, your 
husband has been wagering on his own games, and his book raped you one week 
ago tonight because he thought he'd been skinned. The part about your 
marriage I knew already. Don't ask me how. A man always knows. The rest is 
news. Kindly fill me in." 

She had to finish the drink and ask for another before she could start. 

 14 

The Seals' underground dressing room was lined with concrete to make it 
soundproof. But someone, in violation of the New Orleans Electricians' Union 
contract, had devised a hook-up to the stadium's PA system. While he 
struggled into his shoulder pads and looked about for his shoes, Bunyard 
listened. 

"...for today's game, Number Seventeen, Otis Palmer. On defense, the Seals 
will start..." 

"So they found a cure for pulled groin muscles," someone growled, referring 
to newspaper reports all week long that the Panthers' starting quarterback 
had pulled a groin muscle in Monday practice and wouldn't be available for 
duty in today's contest. "It's called 'Nationally Televised Game.' " 

Something rattled inside one of Bunyard's shoes when he picked it up: the 
plastic vial of mescaline. He'd dropped it inside when he came down, on the 
one-in-a-million chance that Fred Shanks or Larry Curtis, on prodding from 
the commissioner's office, shook down the room for narcotics. But the 
kick-off was just fifteen minutes away. There wasn't time left for a 
shakedown. 

No one was paying him any attention, so he took out the vial and removed one 
of the capsules. Squinting down at it, he hesitated, studying his watch, 
considering the odds. He'd been violently sick this morning after taking the 
first one, but then he was violently sick the morning after almost every 
game, especially if the Seals lost. And they needed to win this one if the 
league and the country were to take them seriously. The Panthers were 
leading the Western Conference's Central Division-the "Black-and-Blue 
Division." They were given an excellent chance at the Super Bowl. 

Bunyard thought of Gwynn and the way he'd lost her, and he popped the cap 
into his mouth, using his helmet as a shield. He wanted to play a superior 
game today as a means of vindicating himself in Gwynn's eyes. Rita's, too. 
The one might be lost to him, but he still had the other. No sooner had he 
swallowed the capsule and pressed the helmet down on his head than Fred 
Shanks himself burst into the room. Shanks wasn't much on pep talks. He came 
to make announcements and give orders, nothing more. 

"Okay, every man on the field. And remember the Red Ones suit up the same 
way we do. That's all." 

* * * 

The Panthers won the toss and elected to receive. The Seals' Danny Sloan, no 
wind at his back in the still dome, kicked off while every fan in the 
country watched. The Panthers' Phil Latour took the ball on his own 18 and. 
moved it diagonally across the field back to the 26, cutting to avoid a 
vicious rush. 

Otis Palmer, his relative youth indiscernible inside the Red Bay helmet, 
raised his arm to the crowd, as though asking for quiet. Rather than 
abating, the crowd noise intensified. Palmer shrugged and huddled his men, 
anyway. The play had probably been diagrammed days before, .so the lack of 
quiet wasn't as yet a problem. 

Vaughn Russell went in motion to the left, while Don Jackson stayed put at 
his fullback's slot. But Palmer surprising everyone in the country who 
followed the Panthers dropped back to pass. He zinged a strike to tight end 
Woody Campbell, who gathered it in on the 35 and rambled to the 41 before 
the Seals' secondary collected their wits and shut him off. 

Bunyard, who felt absolutely nothing yet from the mescaline trickling into 
his system, admired the sheer zaniness of the call. Other teams might pass 
on first down, but not Red Bay. Not with Don Jackson and Vaughn Russell in 
the same backfield. But professional football was a game of the unexpected. 
. On a home field, in front of network cameras, anything could happen. 

After a commercial pause, Palmer sent Don Jackson on a slant over left 
guard, and the Ohio State product picked up six yards to the 47. On 
second-and-four, Vaughn Russell went outside on a pitch-out, after a fake 
move to the inside which duped no one. Seal linebackers Frank Zimmerman and 
Tom Gillespie, with help from defensive end Neal Sanderford, reacted very 
well, cutting off Russell at the sidelines before he could pick up the first 
down. 

The crowd whooped for nearly a minute, but Bunyard, watching Number 
Thirty-Six pick himself up and limp back to the huddle, knew that Russell's 
thirty-year-old legs weren't what they once were. But then his 
thirty-year-old legs wouldn't be what they were now. 

The third-down play was a marvel of blocking, timing and just pure power. 
Behind left guard Jud-son Jarvis and left tackle Terry Fitzsimmons, Jackson 
smashed into the Seal secondary, completely demolishing middle linebacker 
Tom Gillespie, which, if you believed New Orleans sports writers, happened 
only once or twice in an entire season. Not until Isaac Hayes applied a 
shoulder and two hundred well-conditioned pounds at the Seal 45 was Jackson 
brought down. 

Bunyard saw what they were up against-the Panthers' offensive line was one 
of the best in the business, making the running game all the more dangerous. 
Otis Palmer could pass, too, when he had to, having once completed 17 out of 
23 in a narrow loss to New England two years before. But his forte was 
strength-strength on the ground, strength in directing an infantry attack 
almost legendary in the game. 

The next play proved it. Vaughn Russell took a hand-off from the Panthers' 
signal-caller, made a feint to the left sidelines, his usual route, then 
reversed himself behind Don Jackson's blocking and ran right. New Orleans' 
linebackers bought it. Woody Campbell, six-four and two hundred-thirty 
pounds, was able to tie up Randy Coulter, six-five and two hundred-sixty, 
long enough for Russell to sweep right end-and without being called for 
holding. The gain was sixteen yards to the 29. Another first down. 

"Defense! Defense!" the New Orleans cheering section chanted. 

Bunyard wondered if Rita were leading this particular cheer. Rather than 
turn around on the bench and have the crowd intimidate him by its size-a 
rookie always imagined everyone in the stadium was staring at him-he kept 
his eyes straight ahead, or rather on the New Orleans end of the playing 
field, where officials were unstacking players like cord-wood. 

The Seals called a time-out, and re-grouped. Whatever defensive adjustments 
were made proved effective, at least for the time being. Don-Jackson's next 
carry netted seven yards to the 22. Palmer was sacked on the next play, 
however, attempting to set up some sort of a screen pass to Harry Kenoe. On 
third-and-seven, rather than the expected fullback draw or trap, the Red Bay 
general tried to find Harley Winters on a fly pattern down the left 
sideline. The pass went incomplete and Gale Gordon kicked a 36-yard field 
goal, giving the visitors from Wisconsin a 3-and-oh lead. 

* * * 

Midway through the first quarter, the Saints were discovering what the rest 
of the league already knew-the Pack played defense, too. Brad Davis' two 
passes had gone awry, and Red Bay's front four were yielding turf in 
grudging amounts, three or four yards at a time. The "drive" bogged down on 
the New Orleans 43. The Seals punted. 

Moving into action again, Palmer directed his team to another score in 
twelve plays, starting from the Red Bay 14. Two spectacular runs of 
seventeen and twenty-two yards on the part of Don Jackson keyed the thrust. 
Vaughn Russell took the ball into the end zone from the 5. Gordon converted, 
and the Panthers led 10 to 0. The crowd, which had come to see a spectacle, 
not a slaughter, began to grow restive, although not yet to the point of 
tossing debris onto the playing field. 

After instructions from Fred Shanks and the offensive coordinator, the Seals 
took the field. In very deliberate fashion, a drive commenced. Casey's catch 
for nine yards, and Bunyard's own reception for thirteen, supplemented the 
hard running of Ed Hancock and Charlie Walters. When Walters earned a first 
down on the Red Bay 37, a score seemed imminent. But Davis, fading to pass, 
was wrestled to the ground by Sonny Wagner and Tim Secrest, who had 
overpowered tight end Gene Connally. The loss was back to the New Orleans 
49. Not even Charlie Walters' valiant legs could get the yardage back. When 
two consecutive passes went into the artificial turf, the Seals punted. 

* * * 

Clay Bunyard, sitting on the bench again, began to experience a glow, a 
warmth which spread throughout his body. He checked his vision right and 
left, and discovered that he could see as clearly as ever. This time, he 
felt, there'd be no interfering lights from the drug's chemical interaction 
with alcohol already in his system. He hadn't had a drink in twenty-four 
hours. 

With an eye on the clock-the first half had 12:04 remaining-he waited for 
the Seals' next possession. The Panthers, meanwhile, drove for another 
score, Harley Winters over-the-shoulder catch of a Tagge pass from the New 
Orleans 18 capping the usual effective ground game. Gordon converted. Red 
Bay now owned a 17 to 0 lead, and the crowd made known its displeasure. 

Reed Kimbrell's return of the ensuing kick-off put the Seals in operation at 
their own 31, their best start of the day. In four plays, Davis moved them 
to the visitors' 43." Bunyard, who understood, or fancied he understood, 
everything happening on the field, joined the huddle in time to hear his 
play, the sideline pattern in which the flanker turned right, caught the 
ball and went out of bounds with it, or turned left, made the reception and 
penetrated the secondary for additional yardage. The right turn meant an 
almost certain gain, but no more; the left, danger of an interception by a 
linebacker alert enough to come over. 

"It's yours, Bunny," Davis warned, and slapped him on the flank. 

Bunyard, whose senses, all five of them, were rapidly being honed to razor 
sharpness, lined up a step ahead of his usual backfield position. He 
couldn't have explained why. In his state of expanding awareness, he 
couldn't have explained anything. He just knew, or felt he knew, what he was 
doing. Not even Fred Shanks himself could have moved him. At least, not 
without a fight. 

Stanford Mitchell snapped the ball, Davis fell back into a pocket and looked 
left. Just as Sonny Wagner was about to plant two hundred and fifty-five 
pounds of defensive end on him, Davis swiveled and rifled the ball to 
Bunyard, who by now was four or five yards deep into the Panthers' 
secondary. The latter had turned left, and the ball arrived right on target, 
hitting him high on the chest. He gathered it in and ran, while the crowd 
noise climbed several decibels and the officials accomplished feats of 
athletic prowess themselves, to avoid being run down. Bunyard used every 
move he had in him and a few he hadn't dreamed were in him. He ran until the 
last Panther-he thought it was George Gressetdived for him and missed by a 
couple of inches. Then he ran some more, until even he was satisfied that 
six points had been tallied and no penalty would take it away. He felt dizzy 
when he stopped, but the dizziness vanished when he jogged back to the bench 
and congratulatory hands began drumming on his pads and helmet. Now his ears 
hurt. But Bunyard didn't mind the crowd noise, even when he realized his 
ex-wife-he could think of her as such already-probably wasn't making any of 
it. 

Sloan converted and made it 17 to 7, Red Bay. The Panthers threatened twice 
more, but a gutty Seal defense held until half-time. 

* * * 

During the half, Bunyard began seeing the lights he feared-brilliant, 
many-faceted lights which came at him from every direction. He bathed his 
forehead with a water-soaked towel, but still the lights dazzled him. At the 
risk of attracting Larry Curtis, he even lay down on an empty bench and did 
rapid sit-ups. The sit-ups seemed to clear his vision, but now his pulse 
started to race. If anyone asked him anything, he didn't recall it later. 
Nor did he have any recollection of replying. 

When the second half commenced, he had trouble following the action. The 
Panthers were moving the football once more, that much he realized from the 
crowd noise and the fact that he himself wasn't on the field. But if the 
score changed, and by whatever margin, he had no awareness of it. He sat and 
watched the activity inside his own head. There was an astonishing variety 
of it. The scenes were wild, bizarre. They changed with kaleidoscopic 
swiftness, awing him with their vividness. 

"Okay, offense, on the field!" someone said, and gave him a shove in that 
direction. 

Bunyard realized, with some lingering remnant of rational thought, that he 
shouldn't go on the field. Just why he shouldn't escaped him, only that he 
shouldn't. He should stay there on the sidelines and contemplate the oneness 
of it all, the commonality, the harmony. He should- 

"Bunyard! Get your butt moving if you want to start for this team!" 

He trotted off toward a hazy knot of players out in the middle of the field. 
Luckily for him, it was the right huddle. Someone dropped sn arm around his 
shoulder. He had trouble making out the someone's face but not the words 
that came out: 

"It's yours again, old buddy. Let's work it like last time." 

Someone else bumped pads with him-a guard or a tackle, because he bounced 
like a tennis ball-and his head briefly cleared. He saw the Panthers' front 
four drop into their three-point stances, and knew, vaguely, what he was 
supposed to do. Without having to think about it, Bunyard lined up in his 
flanker's position. Seconds later, he went in motion, not because he knew 
the ball had been snapped but because an instinctive sense of timing told 
him to go in motion. 

At the proper moment, he turned around, and the ball was there. Whether or 
not he hung on to it, he didn't recall later, only that he pointed himself 
downfield and ran. He ran until he lost his sense of direction. Even when 
the rest of him wanted to stop, he continued to run. About then, the lights 
came crashing down on him. His whole world went black. 

 15 

Far away in a Baton Rouge hotel room, Gwynn Bunyard was watching the game 
from the shelter of Roy Tannen's strong arms. Roy had invited her to 
accompany him to the secretary of state's office on a business matter two 
days before. Even if the feeling were illusory, she'd never felt so safe 
before, so secure from harm or the threat of harm. The game was just five 
minutes old; she and Roy had more than two. hours together before catching 
an afternoon flight back into New Orleans. 

"That's him, isn't it?" Tannen said in her ear. "Number Ninety-nine? Your 
alleged husband?" 

She looked, then nodded, recognizing Clay's number, if not his features. 

"A nice reception," Tannen conceded, gazing over her shoulder. "Nice. But 
then I'm not a fan of the sport. I was a baseball man in college. Still am, 
for that matter." He tightened the arm he had around her waist. "I don't 
know if I can hold out until half-time. Know what I mean?" 

Gwynn did. She tingled at the fire he kindled in her loins, the points of 
her breasts. Roy could make her feel this way just by looking at her, and 
right now he was doing more than just look at her. His free hand had crept 
along her leg to a point where it could easily reach the warmth between her 
thighs. 

"Palmer now, he's the complete athlete," Tannen remarked. "Davis, too. Those 
two fellows could probably play any or all of the professional sports, 
including hockey. Don't you agree?" He squeezed her leg and nibbled lightly 
at her left earlobe. 

"I do," Gwynn returned, quivering. "What was the question?" 

"Cheeky baggage. Watch this." 

They watched as the Panthers completed another relentless drive which upped 
their advantage to 10-and-oh before the first quarter had ended. The instant 
replay showed Vaughn Russell, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him, 
sliding over left to score from five yards out. Before the extra-point 
attempt, the Seals were penalized five yards for being off-sides. 

When the home team received the ensuing kick-off, Roy's right hand wandered 
between Gwynn's legs. His left cupped first one breast, then the other. He 
tongued the inside of her ear until she would have done anything he asked 
except go back to Clay. At last she had to ignore the images on the 
television screen. Twisting so that he could reach her mouth, she lay back 
in his arms and closed her eyes. Roy bent over her and kissed those eyes, 
also her nose, lips, even her hair. But while their visual senses had turned 
off, their ears continued to hear the game announcer's excited description 
of the action on the field: 

"...the forty, the thirty, the twenty-he's going into the end zone! Clay 
Bunyard, the Seals' fine young receiver, scores from forty-three yards out! 
We have a seventeen to six ball game, ladies and gentlemen! And here comes 
Danny Sloan for the EPA." 

Roy Tannen's head jerked up. "Did you hear that? Is he trying to make 
All-Pro or something?" 

Gwynn looked, too. The extra point try was successful, and New Orleans 
trailed by only 17 to 7. The instant replay showed her husband, the man 
she'd once loved, twisting and leaping his way to a touchdown. Watching the 
peculiar, almost desperate manner in which he ran, she had to wonder if it 
was Clay. He'd taught himself to be a pass catcher, not a runner. But he 
eluded the Panthers' grasp as though it were a matter of life and death. 

"Aren't you proud of him?" Tannen asked, studying her face. 

She hesitated, then nodded. "In a way. It's what he always wanted. Clay 
thought he could build an easy life from pro football. And do it in a hurry. 
He just didn't know." 

"Don't be too hard on him," Roy advised. "We still have to cope, remember. 
Or, I should say, you have to cope. He's your husband." 

Gwynn needed no reminding. She lay back down, and Roy began to nuzzle her 
neck and throat. He returned to her mouth and kissed her hard a few times. 
When she parted her lips, he thrust in his tongue, .searing her mouth and 
palate with the urgency of his need. After a few minutes, she was moaning 
with need herself, on fire from his kisses, his handling of her. 

"There's the two-minute warning, ladies and gentlemen. We have exactly two 
minutes until half-time. The Panthers have the ball on their own 
twenty-seven. Can they score from seventy-three yards out on a ground game 
alone? In their previous possession, Alex Northrop's bunch were stymied at 
the New Orleans thirty-four. Into the game for Green Bay 

Gwynn tuned out the announcer's voice, and concentrated on the sensations 
coursing through her fevered body. Roy had lowered the zipper on her stretch 
pants and wormed in his hand until he found he clitoris, or rather, the 
shaft of her clitoris, which he began to massage adroitly. Between his hand 
on her breasts, his finger on her clitoris and his tongue ' in her mouth, 
she was about to explode. Seconds later, she did explode, climaxing 
thunderously while he helped her along. 

Tannen, as soon as she stopped her thrashing, took his mouth away to breathe 
again. "Ho boy!" he panted. "You're really spaced out. I didn't know 
football did this to you. Suppose we can get a tape of the game?" 

She wasn't interested in a tape of the game, only in having his penis in her 
vagina as soon as he could get out of his clothes. She grasped Roy by the 
arm and let her glance plead for itself. He raised a brow. 

"That bad, eh? Well, seeing as how I'm responsible..."He pushed her off his 
lap long enough to undress himself and her, too, with a dexterity that no 
longer surprised her. Then he carried her to the bed, laid her on top of the 
covers and climbed up to join her. "Shall I turn it off?" He indicated, 
while preparing to kneel between her thighs, the still-blaring television 
set. 

Gwynn half-rose to touch the head of his tool. "No! Just put it in me! If 
you don't do it soon, I'll--I'll scream!" 

"And we wouldn't want that, would we?" Roy smiled and leaned forward to 
claim her, sliding his swollen appendage in to the hilt. He paused a few 
seconds, probably for control's sake, then began to fuck her in slow, even 
strokes, varying his thrusts with sidewise, corkscrewing movements. 

Gwynn, after a minute in which she lay passive, found the rhythm and began 
helping him. While a dozen high school bands urged them on, they helped one 
another to a tumultuous orgasm, climaxing at very nearly the same instant. 
She discovered that the emotional excitement of sharing sex with another man 
during the half-time of her husband's football game accentuated the whole 
affair. She didn't even mind that Roy, who probably wanted to watch the 
second half, hadn't dangled her through another climax or two. Didn't she 
have the evening to look forward to? 

He withdrew and stepped down to put his clothes back on. "Forgive me if I'm 
brusque. Strange hotels don't bring out my best. I'll make it up to us." 
Tannen checked his watch. "What do you say I run down for a fifth and the 
makings? The house's stock isn't large, but there might be a better brand or 
two." 

She nodded, having grown thirsty herself. "But hurry back." 

"Just try to lock me out," he chuckled. When the door closed behind him, she 
got up to dress and repair her ravaged makeup. The hair she'd spent the 
morning on was hopeless, so she gave up trying to restore its hang. While 
she replaced the comb and compact in her handbag, something the half-time 
announcer said broke through her reverie. 

"...a fifty-seven-yard pass play. When Brad Davis throws long, it's usually 
to Gene Connally, the veteran acquired two years ago from Minnesota. This 
time it was to Clay Bunyard, who scored easily" 

* * * 

As the second half got underway, Roy returned with a fifth of bourbon, a bag 
of crushed ice and some plastic tumblers. He set about opening and pouring a 
couple of stiff ones, handing the smaller one to her. While she sipped it 
and watched the Panthers' kick-off return team earn good field position, 
Tannen's restless glance flickered from the screen to her. "Doesn't it 
bother you?" he asked finally. "Or is it just me?" 

Gwynn looked at him, pretending ignorance. "What?" 

He shrugged. "Sitting here like this with me, watching him play. After we've 
screwed one another silly. I mean, he's still your husband. Me, I'm still 
old-fashioned enough to feel, well, a twinge or two of guilt." 

"No. No, it doesn't bother me. He never saw us. He was in the dressing room 
the whole time." Even if her own was forced, Gwynn joined in Roy's hearty 
laughter. 

On the Seals' first second-half possession, something strange began to 
unfold. Brad Davis, on se-cond-and-eight, threw to Clay Bunyard in what 
appeared to be a perfect repeat of the first-half scoring play. The latter 
staggered a step, straightened, then ran toward the goal line sixty yards 
away, bouncing off a linebacker and the Panthers' strong safety en route. 
Just as it appeared he might score again, bringing the Seals to within 
three, Clay veered off the playing field and charged headlong toward a 
concrete retraining wall. The run was broken, as though Clay still saw enemy 
tacklers in front of him where there were none. 

Gwynn, puzzled, felt the blood drain from her face, leaving her with a 
sensation of having just died. When Clay failed to stop, or even to slow his 
mad rush toward the wall, her bewilderment turned to horror. "No! He can't! 
He won't!" 

"He's going to hit!" Tannen predicted, his voice rising an octave with each 
syllable. "Even if he tried to stop..." 

She closed her eyes so she wouldn't see. Sixty thousand people, all 
screaming at once, would assure her against hearing it. The crowd noise 
pouring from the set became a thunderous roar which set the room and its 
furniture to quivering. The announcer's voice was drowned out twice over. 

Tannen seized her by the shoulder and turned her toward the set. "Don't you 
want to see? He's your husband! Look at him!" 

She opened her eyes and saw Clay lying motionless on the artificial turf 
beside the restraining wall. 

Clay, the center of a growing swarm of people, most of whom were jumping 
about and waving their arms. "Oh, my God!" Gwynn groaned. "Don't let him be 
dead! Please don't let him be dead!" She jumped up and looked about for her 
coat. "I'll have to go. If he's dead or dying, I have to be there." Roy got 
up and blocked her leaving. 

"No. We'll fly back the way we planned. Sit down and let's watch. Maybe he's 
only stunned. Knocked out. It happens all the time in athletic events. With 
pads and helmet, he had plenty of protection." 

Coming from Roy, the words seemed callous. Gwynn, blinking back the tears, 
continued to struggle toward the door, her thoughts more jumbled than her 
hair-do. Clay had done this to punish her, that was the first one. He'd 
maimed or killed himself to make her feel guilty, to spoil forever her one 
last chance at happiness. "L Let me go! Please let me go! What will they 
think if I'm not there? What will I say? What excuse can I give?" 

Tannen carried her back to a chair and literally stuffed her into it. "It 
doesn't matter what they think. Not any more. Didn't you say you don't love 
him? That you'd get a divorce?" 

"Yes!" Gwynn sobbed. "Yes, I said it. And I meant it. I still want to be 
free of him. But not this way. If he's dying, if he needs me ... Don't you 
understand?" Roy squeezed into the chair with her and took her in his arms, 
comforting her as much by being there as what he might say. 

"Of course I understand. But you're estranged from Clay. In peoples' minds, 
that the same as a separation. You have no legal or moral duty to run to him 
when he gets himself in trouble. Not after the way he's treated you. Let's 
sit it out. I know someone in the police department I can call in a few 
minutes. He'll give me the lowdown. Then we'll start back. So calm 
yourself." 

Through her tears, she watched an ambulance drive around the field and back 
up to her husband's supine form. He was strapped onto a stretcher, the 
stretcher loaded and the ambulance dispatched to a hospital, all this while 
the network color man was saying the usual bland and uncontroversial things: 

"Clay Bunyard, the Seals' fine young wide receiver, has just met with an 
accident, we're sorry to report. It's a tragic thing. .We'll let you know 
more as soon as we know more. Action an the field will resume shortly. In 
the meantime, let's listen to this message." 

The game picked up where it left off, and the Panthers eventually won, 27 to 
7. Gwynn sat in a kind of stupor while the highlights were recapitulated and 
the statistics reviewed, hardly noticing when Roy picked up the phone and 
dialed the hotel's switchboard. He placed a call to New Orleans, asked a few 
questions of someone at the other end, then hung up, looking grim. 

He had to tap her on the arm twice before she'd look at him. 

"Clay's in Oscliner Foundation Hospital. A massive concussion. But he'll 
live, they think. He was on a, um, trip. That's what the doctors discovered 
from a routine blood typing. So you can stop feeling sorry for him. I doubt 
if he feels sorry for you." 

Gwynn felt as though she'd been given a reprieve from death herself. 
"T-Trip?" 

Tannen's smile was tolerant and bleak. "Mescaline." 

16 

Braced by an antiseptic smell, Clay Bunyard s nostrils crept back from 
nothingness before the rest of him did. He wanted to open his eyes, and 
after a strenuous effort, did so. Someone in white was bending over him. He 
blinked and the someone's features cleared into those of an attractive young 
nurse. The latter smiled, but the smile wasn't a Rita Hazlitt promise of 
better things to come. This smile was altogether professional. 

"Good morning. We were beginning to worry about you. How do you feel?" 

Bunyard tried to move his jaws, to ask her what she was talking about. His 
jaws refused to move. He could only stare silently, stupidly, at her. The 
brain which had once worked so well for him was right now an absolute, total 
blank. 

The nurse placed a cool hand on his forehead. "That's all right. You've had 
a terrific shock. Don't try to talk if you can't." She wheeled to confer 
with another person he couldn't see. When she turned back, a needle flashed 
between her fingers. She bared one of his arms and jabbed. Bunyard, who 
could neither move nor speak, had no way of protesting. 

A few minutes later, the darkness came for him again. 

* * * 

When next he shook off the black, he could both wiggle his fingers and move 
his lips. But now there was no one to move them for. He was alone in the 
room, Bunyard raised his head and turned it, searching for a button beside 
his head. He found one and pressed, falling back with the last of his 
strength. "Weaker ... than ... baby," he muttered, aware, after this slight 
exertion, of a head that throbbed like a tugboat's engines. 

The door opened and a nurse came through. A smiling nurse. Whether she was 
the same one who'd jabbed him, he had no way of remembering. But the 
antiseptic smell was the same, which probably meant nothing. 

"Hello. I'm Judy. Can I get you anything?" 

"Get me my clothes," Bunyard whispered, and knew he no more meant it than he 
would mean to beg for another needle. He wasn't even capable of dressing 
himself, much less of walking out of the room. 

"Sorry. You're in no condition." 

"Then tell me why I'm here." 

"That I can do. You're here because you ran into a restraining wall at the 
dome. At full speed, no less. But the dome's still standing. I think there 
may be a lesson in there somewhere." 

He looked hard at her to see if she were joking. "Me? Why did I do that?" 
Now the girl laughed, but he could tell she wasn't joking. 

"You tell me, Mr. Bunyard. Now are you going to he back and rest, or do I 
have to get my needle?" 

Bunyard let his head fall back to the pillow. The head would have dropped 
back anyway, within a few seconds. That's how weak he was. "No needle. Just 
one other thing. What day is it?"- 

"Tuesday. You've been here two days. Don't let that bother you. Some of our 
patients have been here two years. Please try to rest, Mr. Bunyard. You need 
it. If you have to ring again, I'll be next door." 

Judy Whatever-her-name-was turned her back on him and left the room. Bunyard 
wished, while he was still conscious, that Rita would come. Not Gwynn. Rita. 
Strange that he should think of her, long for her, rather than his own wife. 
Maybe Rita could tell him what had happened. Maybe... 

He slept. 

* * * 

Hours, or perhaps a day later, he emerged once more to find himself the 
center of a knot of people gathered around his bed. Their faces were bleary 
until he closed his eyes and opened them again. Then he saw that two of his 
viewers wore white jackets. One was male, the other female. Hospital staff. 
The identity of the third person puzzled him for a moment, until the 
caller's voice unlocked the mystery: Grant Hicks, the attorney who'd 
negotiated his contract with the Saints and now represented him in all his 
legal dealings, both on and off the field. 

"Can you leave us for a minute?" Hicks was asking the M.D. 

"We'll leave you for five," the latter replied. "Five, and no more." He went 
out, taking the nurse with him. 

Bunyard smiled a wan greeting for the tall, silver-haired Hicks, who did not 
smile back. "Is it still Tuesday?" he asked. 

Hicks shook his head. "Wednesday. You've slept a long time. Clay, I'm afraid 
I bring two items of bad news for you. One is of an especially painful 
nature. Shall I break it to you first? If you want me to come back tomorrow, 
please say so." 

Bunyard struggled to a half-sitting position, wincing over each movement. 
His body ached from one end to the other; the discomfort wasn't localized. 
"No. I'm strong enough to take it now. Tell me." 

"Your wife, Gwynn, has filed for a divorce. The papers from her attorney 
came this morning. They charge mental cruelty and adultery. The young woman 
named is--" 

"I know who she is. I expected it. The suit, I mean. If she doesn't try to 
steal the shirts from my closet, I won't contest it." Smarting inside 
nonetheless at this proof that Gwynn wanted out, Bunyard scanned Hicks' 
time-and-booze etched face. "What's the other?" From the way Grant 
hesitated, he figured the rest of it hit below the belt, also. "Well?" 

"It's rough, too. Try to understand why it has to be this way." 

"What, man, what?" 

"The commissioner's office has suspended you from the game until next 
September. I don't think I need to tell you why." 

Bunyard felt as though he'd been slapped in the face, kicked in the groin 
and crack back-blocked, all at the same time. All the discipline and grit 
he'd ever acquired were necessary to keep the tears out of his eyes. Oh, he 
knew why, all right. The mesc. Somehow he'd managed to knock himself out 
while still under its influence. An astute emergency room resident had done 
the rest. "I'll fight it. I'll deny everything. I'll say someone slipped me 
the stuff in my breakfast coffee. I'll-" 

"Believe me, I've considered our alternatives, and there are none. Your best 
course is to take the suspension with good grace-" 

"Good grace!" 

"-admit that you made an error and report to camp next year with a clean 
blood stream. There's no fine, by the way, just a suspension." 

"What if there isn't a next year!" Bunyard stormed. "What if they won't let 
me through the training camp gates? Do I have any recourse? No!" 

"You have, if you'll stop thinking with your emotions. Remember the no-cut 
contract we held out for? The contract still has two years to run. If they 
strike you from the roster, you're due forty-four thousand dollars within 
thirty days. I have a copy of the contract in my office if you've lost your 
copy." 

Bunyard expelled the first good breath he'd had in days. "Now I remember. 
Okay, I will come by. How about criminal charges. Will they--? " 

"I called the DA's office before coming over. They tell me they won't bring 
charges. I'd say you're a very lucky man, Clay." Hicks looked at his watch. 

"And I see my five minutes are up. We'll meet in my office in a day or so 
and talk out the rest of this. See you then." 

Bunyard, watching him go, didn't feel lucky. He felt wretched. To have a 
headache like his, to lose a wife and be shorn of six weeks' work, all in 
the same day, shouldn't happen to any man, much less a man named . . What 
the hell was his name? 

* * * 

On Thursday morning, a specialist with an eastern accent came and told him 
he could leave. Not in so many words, of course. First he had to undergo an 
hour of sitting up, flexing various extremities and staring' into fights 
attached to strange-looking instruments. "How about it, doc?" Bunyard 
demanded. "Will I be able to play football again? Can I take the licks?" 

"I don't see why not. As long as you confine your playing to the field. But 
I suggest you stay off your feet for a day or two. Any dizziness, lie down 
until it passes. If it doesn't pass, have the good sense to bring yourself 
back here." 

Remembering that he wouldn't even have to dress out with the taxi squadders, 
Bunyard promised to do everything that was asked of him. The specialist 
departed, replaced a few minutes later by a red-haired nurse who brought him 
something he hadn't seen in going on a week: street clothes. But he hadn't 
been brought in wearing civvies. Someone must have fetched fresh clothes 
from his apartment. Gwynn? Not a chance. 

"Oh, and there's someone here to drive you away. 

Mr. Bunyard," the nurse said from the door. "A young lady. I'll tell her to 
give you a minute." 

Rita. Who else would take time off from her job to see him home? She 
probably felt responsible for him, it being her place where he'd first 
tripped out. She'd even tried to warn him, and like a prick, he'd told her 
what she could do with her warning. 

"Hi." 

With one leg in a pair of double-knits and the other still inside a hospital 
gown, he looked up to find Rita watching him from the door. "You might 
knock," he grumbled. "I might have been buck naked." 

"But you aren't," she said, and crossed the room to kiss him on the cheek. 
"Are you all right? I've been worried sick. When you ran toward the stadium 
wall, I screamed. I knew what made you do it, and there was nothing I could 
do to stop you. Why didn't I take those damned capsules and flush them down 
the toilet when I could?" 

He patted her shoulders. The imprint of Rita's firm breasts on his sore 
chest reminded him of how good life could still be, even without Gwynn. And 
how long he'd gone without female thighs underneath his. "Because I wouldn't 
let you. Remember? We nearly fought. Let's get out of here." 

* * * 

After clearing the hospital's business office, he allowed her to lead him 
out to her little roadster. In the light of day, he saw something he'd never 
noticed before-one taillight lens was shattered. Bunyard stopped and ran his 
fingers over the jagged plastic. Even this simple contact with the outside 
world was reassuring. "I've been suspended for a year, if you haven't 
heard," he remarked. Rita's brow wrinkled. 

"And my wife's suing me for divorce. Guess who she named as co-respondent." 

"Can I have three guesses?" 

He watched her squirm under the wheel, tanned arms and legs mastering 
everything within reach, and knew he'd be getting bed rest on top of bed 
rest. As much as he could stand. "You can have as many guesses as you need. 
That's a promise." 


Epilogue 

LEAGUE OFFICE CRACKS DOWN 

NEW YORK-The Inter-State Football League commissioner's office today issued 
stern guidelines for member clubs in relation to drug use by players. 
Commissioner Reggie Smisher warned that unless management acts on the 
guidelines, each franchise faces certain state regulation. 

Sources say the guidelines are to prevent a recurrence of an incident which 
occurred last weekend in New Orleans. Wide receiver Clay Bunyard, a rookie 
out of the University of Arkansas, was knocked unconscious after running 
headlong into a restraining wall at the new Louisiana Dome. Hospital 
examination disclosed that Bunyard was under the influence of an 
hallucinogenic drug for most of the game. 

The player has since been suspended from the league for a year.
