My Wife. His Whore.

My Wife. His Whore.

by Victor Mann

Leena and he had been married for 25 years and their life had been good, he thought. No doubt they had gotten married young and had kids rather too quickly, but theirs had been a close-knit family, it had seemed, and both the children, now attending college on the other coast, were happy and well adjusted. Money had not been a problem. His accounting firm had been modestly successful and Leena had developed a good career in academia as a professor of Women’s Studies at a small private college. Perhaps it was the change in the household after the children had gone that had affected Leena so much. Over the last months she had ended up locked in her office in the house, on-line on her computer, night after night, until sometimes early in the morning. Maybe the distance that she showed him now was really no more than she had showed him for several years. Perhaps he just hadn’t noticed. Children are hard work and that had been the task at hand. He hadn’t thought too much about their own relationship, the relationship between her and him. Now he could see that that relationship was in real danger.

Lon had, in his usual way, studiously ignored the clues. Leena had been the champion of Birkenstocks and understated dress since he met her when she was 20. When she had begun to shop for expensive, fashionable, showy clothing, spending an incredible amount of money, he had just thought that at the age of 46, she’d decided to let loose a little. It did seem incredibly contradictory but…

Lon had become accustomed over the years to her going to weekday, and occasionally weekend departmental meetings in the evening. She was, now, president of their small faculty senate and had always been active departmentally, too. Of course, in retrospect it had been really odd that she had progressively begun to dress so provocatively to go to these “meetings.” Last week Saturday when he saw her slipping out the door dressed in high heels and evening dress he wanted to believe the note she had left for him, not bothering to talk to him directly, that there was a faculty party. If she had just not been so sneaky, he might not even have given it a thought. But through his strong denial he just had to acknowledge that something was very wrong. As a feminist theoretician, Leena had been incredibly consistent over the years in regard to the issue of women’s fashion. She had for a long time championed the feminist position that the fashion industry was one of the most dangerous arms of patriarchy. He remembered well the article that brought her to the attention of feminist academia that argued that Vogue magazine denigrated women more than even Playboy.

When Leena left at 6 on that Saturday night, Lon had decided to do some thinking, some assessment and some sneaking of his own. He went to Leena’s office, which because of its separate bath and closet, she used as her dressing room. He had never in their relationship checked up on her but he had a feeling her computer might hold the clue to what was happening. It had been more of a companion to her than he had been over the last several months. They had always shared their computer passwords with each other, in case one of them had a computer breakdown and needed it. It was easy for him to access her files. As he did so, he felt guilt, but he felt his trepidation much more strongly. Systematically, Lon opened each of the data folders on her desktop and when he reached the one entitled, “Slavery,” and began to read the letters there, his jaw dropped. There before him were carefully numbered letters that she had sent to a certain man and, along with them, the replies that he had sent her. In a third row he found a dozen or more journal entries for the last months.

Sampling one of his wife’s letters to the man, Lon was stunned and appalled. This was the contents:

Sir,

This cock-sucking whore begs your indulgence with her cunt thoughts, herein. she humbly thanks you for her initial cock-suck training. As you know I was shocked, at first, chatting on-line with you, when you said you that you wanted a woman to be a Prick-serving bitch and nothing more. I’ve learned so much since then from You.

I do understand better now why non-smear lipstick is forbidden to me.

I felt proud that you were pleased by the neat red lipstick prints you made with my bitch mouth along the shaft of your stiff cock. I knew the expression, “giving head.” You call it, “taking head,” and this whore knows now what you mean.

As you know, I had only sucked cock for two Men before, having been married for over 20 years. I do not have a lot of experience. My husband’s prick is only 5” long, when hard, and not so thick. Your thick, 8 1/2 inches does give me, “a mouth full of meat,” as you have put it, in a way I have never experienced. However, I do fully understand why I had to be punished for gagging, when you thrust it deep into my mouth. (I know I will learn to control this.) I felt worse for the fact that I had displeased you, than for the nipple clamps, which did hurt quite a bit. You forced me to swallow every fucking last drop of Your cum. Thank you.

As for your astute question about my “feminist scruples” and check-in in regard to limits, I know more surely than ever, as you have taken control of me over the last several weeks, that you have touched a place deep within me, the place where my secrets are. I admire not only your unflinching boldness in this, but also your

skillful wisdom. Let me put it within your four stage development plan. I am still a bitch , striving to learn how to be a good whore . I fully expect to be taught by You how to be a whoreslave and finally a full-fledged slave . You, in Your Mastery, have opened up the door for me to walk proudly through. No amount of feminist bullshit is going to prevent me from learning what I truly am. (And a skilled woman-trainer like yourself knows full well that sometimes a cunt needs be be told the limits and not asked . I beg your indulgence with the bitch way I put it, but you know that I am not shocked, nor fearful of the strict, rough and harsh methods you use.)

I know that you have already decided not to break up my relationship with my husband. Just know that this cuntwhore will do as told, and will serve you, as and how You decide. You will not hear a cunt opinion from me in regard to breaking up or not breaking up my marriage.

Your cock-sucking whore,

Leena

The terror that the last paragraph of Leena’s letter brought him, overwhelmed the

revulsion and anger he felt at the entire rest of it. Leena was ready and willing to leave him for another man whom she’d met only weeks ago! Lon staggered from the desk chair and, not thinking of anything else to do, began to investigate what Leena’s recent shopping binge had really been all about. He opened Leena’s closet door to find the expensive skirts, blouses and dresses that she had recently bought hanging at one end.

They were satins, velvets and silks for the most part. Leena had always sworn by cottons. They were all solid colors. Leena had a passion for prints. On Leena’s shoe tree were seven new pairs of shoes, all with very high heels and all in the same style. All were pointy-toed, closed-toed pumps with high arches; just exactly the kind of shoes that Leena, the feminist, had publicly sneered at as “slave shoes” for years.

Heart beating fast and tears welling in his eyes Lon opened the drawers in Leena’s dresser. In the first drawer were the cotton, white and pastel colored panties and bras that belonged to the sensible Leena he had always known. In the second drawer he found her new lingerie in the colors black and red—frilly panties, frilly bras, crotchless panties, nippleless bras, frilly garter belts and many stockings, even seamed hose. This was a Leena he had never known and furthermore didn’t want to know. The Leena he knew felt that stockings and even pantyhose were only meant to make women into, “sex objects.” He had read all her early feminist screeds. More than even the dykes in her department, Leena argued that clothing that expressed, “traditional femininity,” was merely a sign of patriarchal oppression. Grasping weakly at her third dresser drawer he came upon Leena’s new collection of bustiers and corsets. “Clothing for women in bondage,” Lon mouthed with a weak laugh.

Lon stumbled to the bedroom and laid down on the bed. He put his face into the pillow and wept until tears wouldn’t come anymore. He lay and thought. How could he save his marriage? He loved Leena so deeply and he thought that that love was shared. What had happened? He thought of confronting her and demanding that she stop this nonsense. He thought he would start to be assertive with her and satisfy some of the crazy urges she had. Incapable of imagining a way out, Lon decided, in deep pain and anguish, that he could only hope that somehow this perverse new passion of hers would eventually burn itself out. He could only sit on the sidelines now, as painful and revolting as it was, and let Leena do what she would. He knew that he could be hard-nosed in a business context, but he was pathologically averse to conflict in interpersonal relationships. He wondered whether it might not just be true what the “new” Leena thought: he was just a weak man.

When Leena came home after midnight, Lon pretended to be asleep. He became aware, as she came to bed that she smelled of heavy perfume. Fuck! She’d smelled that way a half dozen times in the last weeks! “Whore stink,” is what she had always called it. He could practically cite the passage in her Radical Feminist Digest article of 1982 that said that and worse. Only the FBI looks so close and sees so little as a married man in love.

“Lonny, aren’t you going to get up this morning?” Leena said in a disgusting, guiltless tone the next morning.

“Honey, I’m totally exhausted from the audit season. I’m going to stay in bed. Maybe later I’ll get up and do some work around the house.”

“Oh, hon,” she said with what sounded like sympathy. “I hope you aren’t coming down with something.”

“No, no,” he said. “It’s just overwork.”

Leena had a conference to go to on feminist ethics that day.

“Are you home late tonight, hon,” he asked.

“I’ll see,” she said vaguely. Had she been so vague over the last years?

After Lon had showered and had breakfast, he decided the only thing he could do would be to learn as much as he could about his wife’s affair from her computer files.

His guilt was gone. He was trying to protect his family.

Lon went in to Leena’s office, realizing that he had been incredibly circumspect about intruding on her private space for a long time. She never locked the door of her office, but Lon had never even opened her office door when she was not there. Opening the door, he saw the clothes she had worn the night before carelessly thrown about. She must have disrobed very quickly. Over a chair back lay her black satin cocktail dress.

On the chair seat for her computer was a sleek, black front-cinch corset. A frilly black nippleless bra lay on the floor. A pair of frilly black, crotchless panties lay beside it. Next to these were a frilly black garter belt and expensive black seamed hose. On the floor were her high heels-- burnished black leather. The long thin heels must have been 4” high. Lon picked up her panties almost without thinking. Wanting to feel close to her he put them to his nose and smelled. There was musk there, a smell of her. He didn’t know if she had been fucked by this man the night before. The smell caught in his throat and he was disgusted when he actually became sexually aroused. He strained to reject this state of mind. It had to be just an aberration caused by his emotional state.

Lon went into Leena’s computer and returned to the, “Slavery,” file. There he opened one of the earlier messages from the man:

cunt,

you are right that I think of you as a “bitch feminist,” and right also that I will be

harsher with you precisely because of that. In your question, I sense the answer

that you want Me to give. I am not into Dominance and Submission as play, like

many. I am a woman-trainer and I take this very seriously. I am ultra-sexist and

I am unapologetic about it. I use harsh language and I can have a harsh hand.

But I don’t think you would have answered My ad, if I wasn’t what you are looking for. Make no mistake about it I train with the goal of abject servitude. Naturally, I have the experience to pace things as necessary for each cunt. There’ll be no sudden suprises. That’s for the neophyte Masters.

Of course, I am very highly educated and have read nearly every important

work of feminist theory. But, now, that is My weapon against you, because

I believe the only true woman is one who is rightless.

Yes. you are quite right that you won’t be showing up before Me in your bitch

dress-down outfits and insulting flat shoes or sneakers. you’ll come before Me dressed precisely as I dictate, even if you find it ridiculous, uncomfortable or even painful. I do of course understand that the very high heels a woman must wear before Me can be rather painful and that is partly the point. When she is before Me her body is not hers but Mine. I do see high heels as a form of bondage which I inflict for My pleasure.

your musing about the “essence of a woman” I do find interesting. Sweet, gentle, pretty, and pleasing are some of the adjectives I do think that describe it. I would also add a natural tendency toward submission. I train toward sweet, lisping, obedient, very pleasing attitude and behavior. Philosophically, I feel that most modern bitches have forgotten how to be real women. As Master, I take it to be My task to remind them and not so gently either.

I Myself have never given a shit whether a woman was married or not. Over the last 10 years I have given training to six cunts, one of whom now lives with Me and two of whom I still see from time to time. Of the six, two were married and remained so. Personally, I think I could use another bitch in the house to amuse Me, but I’m not about to accommodate emotional baggage. I’ll decide as We/we progress what I shall do with you.

you will meet Me at Largo’s restaurant at 7 p.m. on Saturday. you’ll be wearing the black underthings I directed you to buy and your new black high heels. your jewelry and make-up will be as directed earlier. For this first meeting you will speak only when spoken to and then in the most pleasing way or I will lose interest in you quickly..

In Strict Mastery,

Alton Drave

What a revolting, disgusting pig! This man seemed to be the very personification

of the type of man that traditional feminists angrily inveighed against.. Lon tried to think of anything in Leena’s background or views that might have tipped him off about her attraction to such a person and this type of sexuality. Leena had not even joked like some do about S&M and B&D. These things were only disgusting to her, or so she always said. Though Leena was a little young to adopt the strict, nearly fundamentalist attitudes of early feminists, she had been schooled in them by her university mentor and had ended up in a Women’s Studies Department with many “old-line” types, either older or like her. Leena’s apparent abrupt change of viewpoint, at least in regard to this sexual affair, was a mystery that perhaps could only be answered by her carefully complied computer journal.

Lon himself had been passively accepting of Leena’s strident, overt feminism from the beginning. She sometimes verged on pure man-hating it seemed, but her arguments were very clear and intellectually compelling. Lon, being a gentle soul generally, came to agree nearly completely with her about these things and was actually personally offended by the obscene, extremely sexist language that both his wife and Alton Drave used in these letters. However, underneath his disgust he already had experienced an unexpected reaction. Reading Alton Drave’s letter to his dear wife had made his cock very hard. The idea that a man like that could just control and dictate to a woman was part of it. But the idea of his wife being made into a complete whore by another man—that was the crux of it. He feared gravely for his marriage, but his prick was hard the entire afternoon.

Leena got in again very late. Once again Lon made the pretence of being asleep.

He realized that this pattern of her being gone and out of touch with him had been rather persistent for a while. As Leena lay down beside him to go to sleep, Lon wondered whether she had gone to Alton Drave again. He did smell the thick perfume stink on her body. Had she sucked his prick that night and let him fuck her like a whore?

The next day Leena was scheduled to go off to the university for the day and Lon was scheduled to stay home and work in his office.

“How you feeling, honey?” Leena said as though things were normal.

“Fine. Fine. I just was so tired.”

“Remember our party tonight?”

“Again? Oh yes. It’s at that big house in the hills. Friends of Lillian’s?” Lillian was an old friend going back to childhood who had ended up living very near.

“I think I’ll dress up,” Leena said almost without thinking.

“Yes, Leena. What’s with the dressing up lately?” Lon asked trying to sound casual.

“I don’t know,” she said, thinking of a good lie, “It just makes me feel good.”

“Christ you’ve raved so long about women becoming ‘slaves to fashion!’” Lon said, being even bolder.

“Well, maybe sometimes a little slave can’t help herself!” Leena said in

the most unusual tone that seemed to add a new twist to her usual sarcasm.

The statement itself was just so, “not Leena” and the sarcasm almost felt like it was directed at him .

Lon tried to control his reactions. He really didn’t know what to say. After all, it was she who was the feminist firebrand, not he. Leena didn’t seem to expect a response.

After Leena left for the college, Lon once again entered the office that had once been so off-limits to him. The clothes she had worn out the day before to the conference, her sensible wool skirt, white blouse and white bra were lying on the floor along with her usual woven flats. Leena in her own precincts was somewhat slovenly. Among the other clothes was a pair of the unfamiliar red, frilly panties he had noticed in her dresser the day before. Lon deliberately picked them up to examine them. In their crotch was a white mass of semen stain; there was little doubt. He smelled to make sure and caught the stink of the mixed sexual fluids of his wife and the man who had somehow gotten hold of her. He felt the dizzy hold of fear and frightening sexual arousal take over him. He was almost in a trance when he opened his wife’s “journal” that would give him a clue, perhaps, to what was driving her to throw aside so much that made her what she was.

Leena’s journal notes contained her thoughts about all that had transpired with her in the last six months. She had chatted on-line with a number of “Masters” until she had met Alton Drave in a chat room. Her notes also gave a record of hidden desires that Lon had never even heard a hint of:

Lillian is the only one who knows. Over the years, I’ve shared my secrets with

only her. I know what I’ve done academically is basically a good thing. Women

should have pride and they should fight against sexism in all its forms. I will always believe that. It is no one else’s fault that I have lived with a deep hypocrisy at my core for so long. It is not to my credit, I know, but I was paid

over these last 18 years to be a feminist , and then a feminist of a certain type. I might have had the courage to fight the orthodoxy over these years, but I wasn’t as strong as I pretended. In any case, I am ready to do what is right for me now.

Psychologically, I am very strong. Anyone’s psyche though has more than one facet. I am , in fact, a strong, independent, forthright woman. But I also have a deeply submissive and deeply masochistic aspect of myself that I’ve worked hard to ignore or suppress over the years.

Only Lillian knows about Bobby who lived across the street when I was 15. He was a farm boy, 16 years old, who had moved to our small town in Iowa. He was attractive enough. But I’ve never been overly concerned with a man’s looks. I always have looked at a man’s eyes. Bobby was more muscular than the town boys, and at the time I liked that, but he had that dismissive look that was like a magnet to me. I was a relatively pretty girl so this was particularly galling. It was incredible what I was ready to give up just to feel his deep animality . I made myself obvious to him for over a year and he just looked the other way! Then, one summer evening, he invited me into his house, when his parents were gone, and grabbed me and started kissing me in the roughest way. He called me a tease and a little bitch and gave me a hicky to show me what it was like to play with fire. I was in just this involuntary ecstasy and I surrendered to him totally. I fell totally in love with him right there. Even when he shoved me out the door, afterwards, and told me to stay out of his sight, I didn’t care. I was so hot ! I cherished that hicky, that sign of his power over me. And I knew that he would be back for more.

It took a month before I was able to get his attention again. He got me in his garage—his parents were in the house—and he felt me up so crudely ! He even pinched my titties until I had tears in my eyes, but I craved his attention so and those rough, passionate, consuming kisses. I had my first orgasm that wasn’t self-induced in that nasty encounter in Bobby’s garage.

I know that Bobby was very, very intelligent. I found out many years later that they had discovered his learning disabilities that led him to reject school and society and eventually become a hood. But the point is that Bobby wasn’t just crude, rough and stupid, like so many boys, who have no sensitivity or understanding. Those bitter eyes of his could read me. He understood me totally. Later, he forced me to suck his prick and swallow it, long before he pierced my hymen and rammed me for his pleasure. I was his little slave for that summer month, masturbating secretly and almost obsessively.

I nearly committed suicide, I nearly did, when I saw him go up his driveway to the same garage a several weeks later with the little ugly bitch down the street. Didn’t he understand that I belonged to him and him alone? Hadn’t I given him everything? That was the last of Bobby and I. He tried to get me to go with him to a movie, but I distained him. I hated him.

I did what I did, as I grew up and tried to run away from some of my deep feelings. I won’t say my academic life has just been to expiate the pain and bitterness I felt because of Bobby. Life is too complex and involved for a single

thing like this to make all the difference. I do know that I turned my back on

a part of femaleness that I can no longer deny. It will be the next generation of feminist scholars, perhaps, who will have the courage to get into it. I think many of us in my generation were afraid we’d lose all our rights, if we were too honest. I know that I’m going to be honest now and I do hope that it does not cause too much pain to Lon. I do love him, but this need is too strong for me now to deny myself further. It’s just too damn strong. It’s really not his fault that he can’t be

the man I need now. I chose as my husband because I knew, instinctively, that

I would be safe with him from the power of my forbidden passions.

So here it was. Leena’s hidden part. So their marriage was just a lie? Was her

love for him also just a lie? Lon shut down the computer. He had taken her red panties and put them right beside the keyboard. He plunged his face into the fuck-soiled crotch of them and felt the rush of his turn-on and the stiffness of his traitorous prick. He had never in his life felt this kind of strange passion. Had he even been aware before of his own perverse, hidden desires?

Leena got home somewhat late and it was clear she’d make them late to their

7 o’clock party. Lon was resigned now to her transgressing every rule of their married life. Leena was never late.

Leena got home and immediately went into the bathroom to shower. She took forever. She only took this much time there when she was shaving her legs, something she did as a duty for very formal occasions. But this seemed even longer. Why the fuck did she have to shave her legs tonight? What was she doing? She emerged cheerfully and went into her office. Lon have wished he had a camera in there to watch her dress.

Leena came out of her office dressed in an outrageous, totally uncharacteristic outfit. She wore a black leather skirt, a black satin blouse, black seamed hose and red high heels. She had developed a somewhat matronly figure over the years that clearly was influenced now by some sort of strict undergarment. She had beautiful brown eyes and a roundish face that still retained a measure of the true beauty he had seen in her when she was 20. Her tits had never been large, but the cut of this new blouse defined them in a very pleasing way. He liked her short, manageable brunette bob, but he wondered whether that too might not change because it was not very dramatic. She answered his stunned, open-mouthed stare with another totally unprecedented sarcastic comment, “Lonny, women have the right to change their minds. Don’t you know that yet?”

Lon couldn’t figure out what was taking Leena so long in the bathroom again.

When she came out, he saw what had taken so long. Leena had, for perhaps the second time since he’d known her, made her face up fully. Her eyes were skillfully done up with mascara, shadow and eyebrow pencil. She had put on foundation and a hint of rouge on her cheeks. Her lips were heavily made-up with lipslicker, a forbidden substance in their house! He was sure that this was not the “non-smearing” brand.

She had painted, too, her fingernails for the first time in 20 years. She trailed a “stink” of very expensive perfume behind her.

Leena didn’t respond to his stunned silence this time. She let her earlier comment, “Women have the right change their minds…” pound in his ears. Lon was terrified by what he saw. Was she going to flirt with every bastard at the party? Was she going to look for someone else right in front of his nose? The stir of fear and perverse fantasy made his prick rock hard, but somehow he never thought of even approaching his

meticulously done up wife to kiss her. He was sure that she would tell him not to mess up her make-up!

In the car Lon tried to find normalcy. He wanted to talk about everything without getting in too deep.

“You look great, hon,” he said lamely.

Leena seemed to be in another world. “Hmm,” she said.

The smell of her perfume seemed like such an aphrodisiac. He so much wanted to reach out and rub her leg with its expensive nylon stocking. He wanted to touch her sensuous blouse. He wanted to kiss her painted lips. But she seemed cold and distant to him now. He sensed she’d make some excuse and push him away. The tension of her distance, her very concentration on being something that Lon had never known, something that he would never possess, energized him sexually in a way he’d never experienced. His wife was a whore now; but she was another man’s whore. They drove the full half hour drive in silence. They had never been silent.

They pulled into the party that Lillian had arranged at about 8:30 P. M. There was a mix of people there, many much more well-dressed than at the usual parties only for faculty. It appeared that Leena was not grossly overdressed here. Several women were very well-dressed and many of the men were in fine clothing.

Lon saw Lillian coming across room.

“Hi, Lily,” he said with a self-conscious sideward glance at Leena.

Lillian looked as though she expected this, “Leena in drag.”

“How’s it been going, Leena,” she asked, not commenting at all on the fact that her best friend of a life time was attired in a way that no one had ever seen before.

“I’m really feeling good,” Leena said and she looked over Lillian’s shoulder as though she had spotted someone.

She nodded to Lillian and turned her back on Lon, striding across the floor rather gracefully in her difficult high heels.

Lon searched Lillian’s face for an answer.

“Lily, what is up with Leena? She’s really getting into a space I can’t understand.”

Lillian, who had been friends with Lon now for more than 25 years, touched

Lon on his shoulder and tried to soothe him. The way she went about this made him

sure that she knew completely what was going on.

“Look, Lon. Leena is facing the empty nest. She’s adjusting to a new life without the kids. You don’t know Leena like I do. She has so much inside her that she never expresses. It’s not a crime for a woman to be sexy is it? Really? I mean her department has put her in a strait jacket for years.”

This was all a carefully contrived smokescreen, Lon could see. Lillian knew damn well what was going on and was trying to make pleasant conversation.

Leena had disappeared by now into the rather dense crowd of people at the party.

Just as he was searching for something to say to Lillian, Leena came out of the crowd with a stranger in tow. He was a man who looked to be a few years younger than she.

He was dressed in a very fine, pin-striped suit with a vest and a tie and highly buffed black shoes. He was bald with high forehead, handsome, he would say, with sensuous lips. But his grey eyes had a power to them that Lon knew to avoid. He didn’t look him in the eye when they shook hands.

“Lon, I want you to meet Alton Drave.”

The words struck Lon’s ears like a thunderclap. Would Leena rub it in like this? Or was this… He realized that this meeting had been organized by Alton Drave himself to make whatever point he wanted to make.

“Pleasure to meet you Mr. Durtz,” Mr. Drave said pleasantly.

Leena began gushing, “Alton is a photographer. You know, sort of in the Mapplethorpe style. I met him at the conference on Sunday.”

Lon knew this was a bald-faced lie.

“Mr. Drave knows more about feminist theory than any man I’ve ever met,” Leena said with the hint of the same surreal sarcastic tone that Lon had heard that afternoon.

Leena leaned into Mr. Drave’s arm and pushed her tits against him in a move that might have looked like a completely unconscious act to anyone, but Lon knew better. Lon was reeling and trying to find his way.

As if it were choreographed, suddenly another woman, preceded by prodigious tits that most surely were the result of implants, dressed in a very short skirt and stockings, wearing heels even higher than Leena’s, came forward to lean against Mr. Drave’s other arm.

“This must be Mr. Drave’s live-in ‘cunt,’” Lon thought.

The woman stood there, not looking anywhere, her eyes averted.

“Say hello to Lon,” Mr. Drave said.

“Hello, Sir,” the woman said stupidly. She was about 5’10” in these towering heels and had beautiful blonde hair. She had blue eyes and beautiful lips that were

painted identically to Leena’s. She was younger and more attractive than Leena and Lon noticed the tension in Leena when the new woman approached.

“Won’t you tell him your name?” Mr. Drave said with a bit of annoyance.

“Trina,” she said quietly and lapsed into silence.

“So, Mr. Durtz, your wife is an amazing scholar,” Mr. Drave began. Lon felt that this was all a subtle way of rubbing all of this in his face. “She really understands the essence of patriarchy, I think,” he continued.

Lillian looked away toward the crowd trying not to get engaged. Lon understood now that Mr. Drave liked to rub it in and here was rubbing Leena’s face in it, too.

“What do you do for a living,” Mr. Drave asked.

“Oh, I run an accounting firm, Durtz and Lawton.”

“I admire a man who knows the numbers,” Mr. Drave said. It seemed like this was not some subtly denigratory comment. “I’m more of an eye man myself,” he said.

“I try to see through things.”

Lon was not one to make casual conversation and Mr. Drave seemed happy with stopping there. Having made his point Mr. Drave took his Barbie doll, Trina, by the arm and said goodbye. Leena was a bit too interested in watching them recede into the crowd.

As though she didn’t trust Mr. Drave alone with Trina, Leena said to Lon,

“Just go circulate, Lon. There are people I want to talk to.” Lon mourned for the Leena as he knew her. He had never her seen her so mendacious.

Lon had gotten involved in conversation for more than two hours with a bald man who happened also to be an accountant. He hadn’t seen anything of Leena, but then he hadn’t been looking. He left that man and went to get something to eat at the long table of food. Leena came up to him from the side with eyes that seemed on the verge of tears. Her lipstick was smeared terribly and she looked awful. It was a horror for him to be able to identify the small white globs of sperm on her smeared mouth. Mr. Drave must have found a way to take advantage of her in one of the bedrooms, not a minute before.

“Christ, honey, what happened to your face?” he said.

“Maybe I was sucking cock,” she said in what sounded like a drunken slur. Leena didn’t get drunk very often, but when she did she did like to curse. Lon decided to pretend that she was just talking out of her head, “Do you want to go home?”

Leena looked at him rather sadly and he could see that she was really emotionally torn.

“I’m going over to Alton’s house now,” she said without elaboration.

“Honey…” Lon could see that there was nothing to say. Leena kissed him on the

cheek like she always did and went across the room. Lon didn’t know, really, if he’d ever see Leena again.