Read Online Contrary Pleasure by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page A

are too tired. You are not in the mood. This is most easy.
Above all, do not think about it too much. You have been doing that. Because
your own marriage relationship is divergent from the popular ideas of married
love, it does not mean that it is either unhealthy or abnormal. I will stop
being professional for one moment and express a certain personal envy. You are
a fortunate man, sir. When you go home, I want you to sit quietly with her and
tell her that you came to me and tell her what I said. It will make it better
for both of you, because she may be as uninformed as you were.” The doctor
walked him to the office door and smiled broadly and said, “Above all, do not
be impressed by those men who wink and brag. They are the very ones least
likely to possess the sexual prowess they talk about.”
    When he got home, he could not make himself tell Bess about the visit.
But it had helped him a great deal. Because of the advice given him, they were
able to find a new rhythm of adjustment. But always there would come the dark
nights when she would be at him, a relentless rubbery vastness about her, a
giant eagerness that wrenched at him with a smothering strength until she
sighed off into a placid mound of sleeping warmth, leaving him aged and bitter
and dry, lean and devoured in the night.
    But now it was all changing. Now there was escape, delicately and
carefully contrived, and the awareness of it made the booth seem less cramped,
made the avidity of her casual conversation easier to bear. He looked at his
watch and frowned.
    “Oh, darn it, dear! Do you have to go out tonight?”
    “It’s Wednesday,” he said, faintly accusing.
    “That meeting again. I forgot about it. I wish you could give that one
up, dear. You never seem to be home anymore. What darn good does it do for you
to keep going to that meeting?”
    “Political fences. Part of the job. We have to stay on the right side of
the city and county fathers, Bess. One little hike in assessment could hurt a
lot.”
    “Well, Ben seems to be able to spend his evenings with his family.”
    “He puts in more hours at the office than I do.”
    “Sometimes I think he takes advantage of you, Quinn. I really do. You’re so decent about it.”
    He slid out of the booth, picking up his plate, cup, and saucer and
carrying them over to the drainboard of the sink,
feeling within him the curious division of emotion that her words gave him. A
guilt-shame balanced pleasurably on the slick edge of intrigue. Wanting her to
say more to bring on the self-punishment, and at the same time dreading it.
    “I shouldn’t be too late, honey,” he said.
    “I think I’ll start on the new curtains for David’s studio. That monk’s
cloth is drab, sort of. And yellow will be cheerful. I forgot to tell you,
dear, when I used your car yesterday and put the gas in it, the man in the
station said all that clicking is valve springs or something like that. Maybe
you ought to take it into town tomorrow and leave it at the garage. Don’t you
think he’ll like yellow?”
    “What?”
    “You weren’t listening again. The curtains for David’s studio. They say
yellow is a cheerful color.”
    “That sounds fine.”
    He went to the bedroom and retied his tie, took the new shaggy sports
jacket from his closet, and slipped it on. There was a coiling and shifting of excitement
in his middle, cyclical-like hunger pangs, and when the spasms were most taut,
they shallowed his breathing. He looked at himself in
the mirror and was gratified to see that nothing of what he felt showed in his
face. He looked mildly back at himself, lean and brown and bored and casual.
When he went back to the kitchen, she was rinsing the dishes and placing them
in the dishwasher. He put his hand on her shoulder and she turned around and he
kissed the corner of her mouth. She gave his tie a quick adjustment and tilted
her head a little and looked at him and said, “You look very nice, dear. Don’t
be too late, please.