The Houseguest Read Free

years to come Audrey was to read an almost dementedly indecent note written to him by Didi Montrose, once her best friend, in which reference was made to what Doug had been doing to her as the back end of the comic horse they formed together at the mock circus for the children’s hospital fund—and not just as they waited in the wings: he had persisted in his dirty work, keeping Didi in a state of ecstasy, even as they cavorted under the spotlights.
    Whereas Doug might sit in silence throughout the most comic of plays, and even scowl if the humor verged remotely on the sexually suggestive.
    Audrey now entered her husband’s quarters, which were beyond her own and at the very end of the hallway. Corresponding to her own little dressing room was a small study for him, with a leather-topped desk over which hung an antique map, with its quaint distortions, of the then known world. To the left of the pristine blue blotter in its black leather holder was a flat box of polished oak containing a working telephone as well as an answering machine. This instrument was used exclusively for communications from Doug’s girls, who assumed, no doubt on his assurances, that all such would be confidential and were unaware of Audrey’s regular monitoring.
    She now opened the lid of the box to see that the machine’s little red light was signaling that it had recorded at least one message. Having rewound the tape and played it back, she determined that not one but three women had telephoned Doug since he had last collected his messages, which must have been only an hour or so earlier, unless he was now so disaffected as not to be moved to action by a winking red light and had allowed the calls to collect: not out of the question, for Doug could be ruthless with the overimportunate, and one of the callers, all but shrieking in resentment and self-pity, claimed to have been seeking him unsuccessfully since late Friday. Whether or not hers was a serious emergency was impossible to tell at this point, this being a new voice to Audrey, but there could be little doubt that if her style remained hysterical, whatever the legitimacy of her pains, the woman would be dumped, perhaps already had been. Doug would not tolerate emotional excess. What he provided in return was an extraordinary sexual endurance, which according to the unsolicited testimony of so many partners he retained even at the age of fifty-four. Indeed, on the very tape at hand one of the women alluded to his powers in starkly obscene language—and she too might well be a candidate for dismissal: even in private Doug was bluenosed with regard to language.
    The case of one Barbara Rentzel was remembered: a travel agent whose wont apparently was to scream filth in Doug’s face as he took her through multiple climaxes. The story had been recorded in the desperate letters she wrote him after being discarded, each of which he carried for a time deep within the legal papers in the attaché case, because he either enjoyed rereading accounts of anguish or wished to give his wife sufficient time to find them.
    For it had lately occurred to Audrey that Doug must by now not only be aware of the surveillance she had maintained on him for many years, but be at some pains to abet it. In any event, that suspicion served her amour propre.
    The remaining voice on the tape would seem to be that of a winner, at least amongst the trio at hand. For one, she had the thin soprano tones and the tentative phrasing of the grown-woman-as-schoolgirl that Doug preferred; for another, she had the sense to ask nothing, not even a return call, and to express only her longing for him and in romantic not carnal language. She sounded about fourteen, but as Doug was no longer attracted to jailbait, she was certain to be mature and could be even as old as forty-odd.
    Audrey carefully left the tape at the point at which the last message ended. Had she been at all malicious, nothing could have