Unfaithful Wives

By Orrie Hitt

One slut deserves another
While her husband was away, Rita Sharpe would play. Sometimes with her stupid but strong gardener. More often with slick Norman Williams. Yet she was no worse than bosomy Sandra Thomas! Sandra slyly cheated with practically every man who came along . . . not excepting Rita’s own rugged spouse . . .

His name was Fred, and he was perfectly willing to make the most of a wife - anybody’s wife. He could not foresee that thanks to smooth Norman, the cozy situation would explode into a frenzy of hate and wild brutality. In the end Fred was forced to deny both Rita and Sandra - and gamble his life on the sinful need of still another unfaithful woman!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Jan 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781440539817

Book preview

1

FRED SHARPE woke up in an August heat that hung like a dense fog in the tiny bedroom. Slowly, he rolled over, trying to kick the sheet loose from the sweat on his legs. He kept his eyes closed and shuddered.

Hell! he groaned.

The noise of water running in the bathroom stopped for a moment.

That you, Fred?

Sandra Hale had a nice way of talking, low and sultry, with a bedroom scene between sentences. He remembered, rather vaguely, how it had been with her the night before. They had done a lot of drinking and she had put on a dance for him, driving him wild. He had found her to be a somewhat over-ripe but extremely willing partner.

I’ve got an idea I’m dead, he said. He opened his eyes for a second and his head began to pound. I almost wish I was.

He had his eyes closed again but he was conscious of Sandra coming into the room, of the whisper of her bare feet on the rug. The woman smell of her crawled toward him out of the heat.

That makes two of us, she said.

Morning, he told her and smiled.

Morning, hell. It’s after four already. I missed a day’s pay.

He opened his eyes, looking up at her, and suddenly he wanted to be very sick. She wasn’t pretty at all. Her blonde hair was all messed up in knots and without the make-up her face seemed old and tired.

You ought to put some clothes on.

She laughed and he noticed that her teeth were discolored.

I just thought I’d save you some time, she said.

Her body was naked and close and he hated the sight of it. Her breasts were flabby and flat and he could see the birth lines around her bulging middle. There were a couple of big veins in one of her thighs and these seemed to get bigger, pulsing, as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

You really tied a load on, she reminded him.

He closed his eyes, cursing himself, feeling the sweat roll out cold on his forehead. He must have been crocked to have wound up like this with Sandra.

Where’s my clothes?

I sent them out to get pressed.

Oh. Thanks.

They looked like hell.

Sure. He had other clothes in the car but he liked that gray suit. He hoped he hadn’t burned any holes in it. He’d bought it back in Newton, just before Easter, and he’d paid a hundred and twenty-five for it.

Say, Fred, what are you smiling that way for? You laughing at me, or something?

No. I was just thinking—about suits, what I pay for them now and what I used to pay for them. Things change.

She bent down and kissed him on the mouth, full and wet.

You want me to fix you some eggs, Fred?

That would be one way of getting her out of the room.

I guess so, Sandra. Hard-boiled.

It would take her longer that way and by the time she was finished with the eggs he might have his suit back and he could get out of there.

She went out to the kitchen, laughing. He wondered, vaguely, if she would put on a robe, or something else, or if she ran around the place naked all the time.

You want coffee, Fred?

All right.

How about some of the hair off the dog?

I’ll take just coffee, thanks.

It was funny, he thought, the way it had happened. He had been seeing Sandra Hale every month for the past year or so, ever since Wilson Foods had moved her up to the buying spot. There had been nothing between them before, nothing at all, but yesterday it had caught up with them all of a sudden. Or, at least, it had caught up with him.

You can use the bathroom now, Fred.

Okay.

There’s a razor in there. I keep it for my legs but you’ll find new blades and I guess you can shave with it.

He got out of bed and pulled on his shorts. There was a dull throb at the base of his neck and his throat was dry.

I won’t need it, he said. No more work for me until after vacation.

How much time do you get?

Two weeks.

You going anywhere in particular?

Yeah, he said, entering the bathroom. Me and the wife.

What’s your wife’s name?

Rita.

I’ll bet she’s pretty.

He slammed the bathroom door without answering and turned on the hot water. The steam rose up and clung to the mirror, distorting his image. He got a towel and wiped the glass clean.

Bastard, he said, looking at himself in the mirror.

He felt like one and he had known yesterday, driving up from Winsted, that he shouldn’t do it, that he shouldn’t be thinking about Sandra or any other woman except his wife.

Or should he? The gray eyes that stared back at him from the mirror became bitter and disgusted. He had been thinking exclusively of Rita for the past seven years. What more did she want? Money? No, money didn’t seem to interest Rita very much. He had been making forty dollars a week when they first married and now he earned fifteen thousand a year as a top-flight grocery salesman. They had two cars—the Buick that he used on the road and the two-year-old Plymouth Rita knocked around in—and a beautiful knotty pine bungalow out on Terrace Drive, five miles from the city limits of Newton. Beautiful? He laughed and shut off the hot water. He had thought it was beautiful once but now he hated the damned place.

The soapy water was hot against his face, feeling good. Yes, he hated that place, hated every foot of the five acres which at one time had seemed all a man could want. It had only been an open spot between trees on the map of New Jersey then but they’d gone out there almost every night, looking at it and planning. At first, Rita hadn’t been too thrilled about the prospect of living in the country. But they had been in love and she had kissed him and had said that it would be all right.

Anyway, the taxes will be less, she had told him.

We’ll have to be careful until you’re making more money.

He had dug the foundation himself, night and week-ends, and they’d gotten a G.I. loan from one of the banks so a contractor could do the rest of it. They had only been living in the house a couple of months, worrying how they would meet the mortgage and the time payments on the furniture, when Fred had applied for the grocery-salesman’s job. That first year he had made five thousand and his income had been going up steadily ever since.

It’s funny, Rita had told him once. We started living out here because it would be cheaper. I honestly thought I’d hate it, Fred. Honestly! But now I love it and I wouldn’t want to live elsewhere.

Once or twice after that he had tactfully suggested that they move into town. He had pointed out that he was usually away for two-week periods and that she might be less lonely that way.

Oh, no, you don’t! she’d said, laughingly. I don’t get lonely. I have my garden and maybe later on I can have my own car and then everything will be fine.

The next spring he had bought her the Plymouth. That was the same year that she had planned their vacation at the Landing, a backwoods resort in the Catskills where a guy had nothing to do but catch daylight in a bag.

You’re a country boy, she had explained. I just know you’ll love it, Fred!

They’d been going there every year since; five vacations consisting of mosquitos and scenery. And they were going there again this year. God Almighty!

Your breakfast is ready, Fred.

My clothes get here?

Not yet.

Well, I guess I’ll take a shower. Anything to stay away from her.

Bitch, he thought, getting under the shower. Just a bitch in heat.

The water didn’t have far to fall to hit him on the head and it drummed across his skull, the cold darts punching into his scalp.

Thursday, he thought, this was Thursday and he wasn’t going home until Sunday. If he got home before then Rita would want to start for the Landing that much earlier.

He moved around under the shower, letting the sharp needles of the water play over his body.

It’s odd, he thought, how a guy—and a gal—can change. He had been brought up in the hills of Sussex county and had ridden a bus to the central school. Two days out of high school he had gone into the army and he had missed those rolling blue hills every day of his military service. He had met Rita in Atlantic City, and he had danced with her and told her about the hills and how he wanted to get back to them.

Hey, Fred!

He turned the water low.

Yeah.

Your clothes are here.

Okay.

He twisted the wheel for the cold water again, letting it thump against the back of his neck. He closed his eyes, trying to think, wanting to decide something. Rita was a good kid and he didn’t want to hurt her, but they had grown far apart. It wasn’t just that house where they lived that was constantly chewing at the guts of their marriage. That was the least of it. He guessed that the real trouble was a personality change, a conflict of desires, Rita’s love for things he no longer cared for … This job had changed him, opened up a whole new world of living. When he was younger, he had liked to fish or follow a rabbit hound through the woods, but now he would rather have a golf club in his hands or go to a Rotary meeting where he could sit around with the fellows afterward, talking about business and politics. Rita was different. She talked about her flowers, why the corn was late or why the moles kept working the rear lawn and not the sunburned spot out by the road. And there were other things, too: the way she’d read at night until after he had fallen asleep, not letting him touch her.

I’m tired, she would tell him, lifting his hand away from her. Besides, it seems rather—futile.

Futile, he thought viciously. A man spends two weeks on the road, working hard, minding his own business, and his wife tells him it’s futile. Of course, he knew that it was—from a childbearing standpoint. Those first two years of their marriage they had been careful, existing from month to month, hoping that it wouldn’t happen. Then the house had been paid for and there was just the forty-six dollars a month on the car and they had become careless. A year after that Fred made an appointment with a doctor in Newark and they went to him. He conducted some tests, talked to both of them, and suggested that they consider adopting a child.

Fred shut off the shower and stepped out to the bath mat. He found a rough towel and rubbed himself down, trying to make it hurt, trying to drive the doubts from his mind. But it was plain enough that Rita and he had drifted apart. Maybe it was that thing about not being able to have children, or her coldness, or the fact that her mind was tied up with the country, driving him crazy with that outdoor stuff. He didn’t know. It was something that worried him, bothered him, ached down inside of him every hour of the day. They ought to be happy and they weren’t. They ought to argue and fight the way couples do, but they didn’t. He just went out on the road, selling groceries, making a nice living, and when he got finished with a trip he went home and they sat around looking at each other.

Fred, your breakfast is getting cold, Sandra called.

He threw the towel over a rack and stepped into his shorts. He shouldn’t be sore at Sandra. This wasn’t her fault. If it hadn’t been her it would have been somebody else. Somebody else’s arms and somebody else to dislike the next morning. He had been trying to figure out what he was attempting to prove, and he still didn’t know. Perhaps he was simply seeking to find somewhere away from home some of the things Rita didn’t give him when he was home.

Outside in the bedroom he found his suit lying neatly across the bed. His shirt was badly wrinkled but he could change it in the car, later. As a matter of fact, it was so damned hot that he might put the top down on the Buick and just drive along in his undershirt and get a little tan.

You want some orange juice, Fred?

Thanks, no.

He heard her open and close the refrigerator door.

You going back to Newton from here, Fred? He buttoned his shirt. Sandra was like a lot of women, talking all the time and saying nothing.

No. I’m going to stop in and see a friend.

Sandra laughed.

Male or female?

He didn’t bother answering her. He looked under the bed and found his shoes. He wanted to get dressed and get out of her apartment. It was almost a four-hour ride to Mission Acres and he would like to get there in time for dinner. He hadn’t seen Red Dixon since April, just before Easter, when he had driven up there to see how Red was doing. He had found Red doing all right and they’d sat in front of the fireplace drinking and talking until five the next morning, kicking their years of World War Two around with the booze. Red’s wife had been in New York, hiring help for the coming season, substituting for Red because he was having more trouble with that plate they’d stuck in his head. He had complained of a blinding headache just before Fred left the next day. Fred hadn’t heard from Red since that time but it had occurred to him that Mission Acres might be as good a spot as any to knock around in for a couple of days.

Fred?

He hadn’t heard Sandra come into the room but he knew that she was close, almost touching him.

I’m getting dressed, he said.

He had used her and now he did not want her any more but he did not feel like hurting her too much, either.

If it’s a woman you’re going to see, Sandra whispered huskily, you can save your time. You’ve got a pretty good one right here.

He started to turn toward her, to tell her to get the hell out and leave him alone, but she had her arms around his neck, pulling his head down, kising him on the

Reviews for Unfaithful Wives

[Gregory Mullaney · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A man finds himself in the arms of the right woman.