Speaking of Lust - the novella Read Free Page A

had endured. Then, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she announced that a boy had asked her on a date and she had agreed to go with him.
    “ People get suspicious. ‘What’s wrong with her that she never goes out with anybody?’ They think I’m pretty, I ought to be interested in boys.”
    “ Let them think you’re a lesbian.”
    “ Believe me, some of them already think that. I’ve had some long looks from a couple members of the sisterhood, and one of them asked me if I’d like to come over and watch the last round of the LPGA at her house. Why would anyone want to watch golf, whether it was men or women playing? And why would I want to go over to her house anyway?”
    “ I wish you didn’t have to go out with some guy,” he said.
    “ You’re jealous?”
    “ I guess so.”
    “ I’m not going to let him do anything, Billy. But I think it makes sense to go out with him. And you’re going to have to start going out with girls.”
    “ Or they’ll think I’m a fag?”
    “ Or a retard.”
    “ I don’t care what they think,” he said, but of course he did. Later he told her he wished they could be where nobody knew anything about them.
    “ I’ve been thinking about that,” she said.
    They put the house on the market and sold it, rented an apartment in a college town a few hundred miles away. She’d been given her mother’s maiden name as a middle name, and now she dropped her surname, and they lived together as William Thompson and Carolyn Peyton. She built up a collection of identification in that name, and enrolled at the college, and a year later so did he. The money from the house, supplemented by their earnings from part-time jobs, covered their tuition and expenses, and they had both always been good students. He took an accelerated program and they graduated together, four years after they’d sold the house.
    Neither had made a single close friend during those four years. Neither had gone out on a date, or shown any interest in a member of the opposite sex. All they wanted was to be together, and they were confident their feelings were not going to change.
    They got married. “We could just say we were married,” she told him. “When does anyone ask to see a marriage license? And I already feel married to you. More than married to you. But I want to do it all the same.”
    “ And have kids?”
    “ A baby with two heads,” she said. “That’s what you get if you sleep with your brother. Remember how kids used to think that? I’ve done some research, and it doesn’t necessarily work out that way. There’s a chance, though, that there might be something abnormal about the child.”
    “ I don’t really want kids, anyway.”
    “ Neither do I,” she said, “but that might change, for one or both of us. If it does---“
    “ We could take our chances,” he said. “Or adopt.”
    “ But for now,” she said, “all I want is you.”
    And so they got married, and Carolyn Peyton legally changed her name again, back to Carolyn Peyton Thompson. And, as man and wife, they moved to the city where I came to know them. They went into business together, made a success of it, bought a house, and, well, lived happily ever after. They postponed the decision about children until they realized it had resolved itself; they were a complete unit now, they had been a complete unit from that first kissing lesson, and a child would be an unwelcome extra presence in their home.
    Legally married, they came to feel less as though they had something to hide. So they were more inclined to make friends, more prepared to play an active role in the life of the community. They were, in everybody’s eyes, a decent and charming couple, attractive and personable and very much in love. And you could see at a glance that they belonged together. Why, they even looked alike. If you didn’t know better, you’d take them for brother and sister.
    #
“And that’s it?” said the soldier.
    The priest nodded.