What Did I Do That Was Wrong?

By the second day out of Antwerp, Morgan had assessed the other passengers on the small Swedish freighter and was able to assure himself that none of them held any interest for him. There were three or four married couples of assorted ages, two elderly sisters traveling together, a couple of men, all of them quite ordinary, and there was, he decided, no need for him to talk or listen to any of them beyond exchanging minimal amenities, and that perfectly suited his book.

He had just finished six or seven months of arduous, unbroken work for his newspaper agency, the World Syndicate, and had been summoned back to New York for a new assignment. He was very tired and he had some time coming to him and he had rooted up this little vessel that took at least ten days to make the Atlantic crossing.

Perhaps because he was a newspaperman, the Swedish captain had made available to him the good offices of the ship's chandler in Antwerp, and Morgan had laid in a small supply of Scotch, of a brand that usually was much too expensive for him but which, from the chandler, was ridiculously cheap.

He spent the voyage exactly as he had planned, eating the splendid food, drinking quietly and luxuriously, catching up on reading, sunning, dozing in deck chairs, swimming in the small canvas pool rigged up on the deck, avoiding the bridge games, shuffleboard, open-air movies and the nightly after-dinner gatherings in the public saloon. It was not until the last evening out of Antwerp, when the captain gave his farewell party, that Morgan felt it would be unnecessarily rude not to join his traveling companions.

After a specially elaborate Swedish dinner and much toasting with aquavit, the captain guided everybody into the public room. There was more drinking and talking and Morgan, very relaxed, found himself relating some of his newspaper experiences. He was a man in his early 30s, engaging enough, and he spoke well and held his listeners' interest.

As soon as he decently could, he collected his own bottle of Scotch from behind the bar, together with a glass, and went onto the deck. The whisky was extraordinary and demanded to be drunk neat, and Morgan, with profound respect, had from the beginning so treated it.

He made himself comfortable in a deck chair and looked over the rail to the sea. It was a lovely even-tempered night and there was part of a moon that splattered bits and pieces of itself on the gentle swells. He told himself again what he had realized all that week. There was a special quality in ship's life. Nothing could match its encapsulating effect. He had not, for instance, for days bothered to look at the brief news bulletin that was received by radio and tacked up each morning.

He was sipping his Scottish nectar and wondering where his next assignment would take him when he heard footsteps on the wooden deck. He looked up to see a woman he had noticed casually from time to time, whose name, he believed, was Madge something, and who was married to an excessively dour and forbidding man.

Madge was a woman in her late 20s. She was tall and she had a superb body Morgan had observed when she appeared at the pool. She was a handsome woman and would have been even more so except for the slightly worried expression that seemed to be a permanent part of her face, a look that had built a small indentation between her eyes. She drank a great deal, Morgan had noticed, more than her husband, and she carried her drink impeccably. She had never seemed drunk or loud and the hand that flicked her cigarette lighter under endless cigarettes never seemed to waver. But the frown never left her face.

Now, wearing a suit whose lines spoke perfect French, with a ruffled blouse whose accent was Italian, her shoulder-length blonde hair catching the slight breeze, she leaned against the rail for several minutes, drink in hand, and then she walked closer to Morgan and asked him if she might join him. He told her he would be delighted and he half meant it.

She sat down next to him and took out her cigarettes. She offered them to him and he refused, and she waved away his hand when he reached out for her lighter. She inhaled deeply and gazed at the water for a little while.

"You're a writer," she said, still looking at the sea.

Her voice, Morgan noted, was low and in control. "A newspaperman."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"Sometimes."

"I've often wanted to talk to a writer."

Morgan sighed inaudibly. He had been exposed to that universal phenomenon quite often. Many persons considered it almost the same as talking to a psychiatrist, cheaper and possibly just as useful. He looked toward the open door of the saloon. The light from the inside slanted on the deck. He could hear the sounds of the voices inside, decibels rising with the passing drinks. He hoped that her husband would miss her and that he would come out and take her back in.

She introduced herself. Her name indeed was Madge. She came from Chicago. She drank some of her whisky and smoked some of her cigarette and Morgan was beginning to think that perhaps her desire to confide in a writer was a general, casual thing and not pertinent to the moment. She disabused him.

• • •

My husband, she said before too long, his name was Ed, and he worked in Chicago and we had a pretty nice home in one of the suburbs. The marriage was pretty damned good, except for one thing. I found out I couldn't have any children. We talked about adoption, but somehow we never got round to it. We lived a pretty selfish life, I guess, and we had lots of friends, and after a while we forgot about children.

We'd been married about three years, I guess, and one night Ed made love to me, marvelous love--he was something in that department--and afterward I was just lying back with that gorgeous afterward feeling, and Ed asked me a question I didn't pay too much attention to, and then he asked me the question again, and what the question was was this: Had I ever thought about this business of group sex? Wife swapping, or, from my point of view, husband swapping?

• • •

She drank some of her drink. Morgan's interest now was quickening and he hoped that if the husband did miss her and come out looking for her, it would not be at least for a little while.

"What did you say?" he asked.

• • •

Well, I was kind of sleepy and I guess I just sort of shook my head and fell asleep. The next day, after he went off to the office, I did think about it and I finally figured it was just a question, you know, and that he had not meant it for us. I'd heard about that stuff, sure, but I wanted no part of it. Part of the reason was that Ed gave me everything I needed along those lines, and maybe more.

He didn't bring up the subject again, not for a while, anyway; but as it turned out, he had been doing a lot of thinking about it and he had worked it out, I guess, that he had picked the wrong time to ask me about it that first time, me being about as sexless as a dead clam at that moment. Then one night, we did a little drinking and talking and we started making love right there in the living room and it was while we were at it, right while we were actually doing it, while Ed was doing the things that drove me out of my head, that he began talking about it again. What he said, not missing a trick with me, was that maybe we ought to think about it, maybe it was something we ought to try, that lots of our friends were doing it, I'd be surprised to know who, and that it seemed to make them happier and make their marriages work better, and that if husbands and wives really loved each other, they would naturally want to do everything to make each other happier, wouldn't they?

I must say that I didn't listen to every word, my mind along with the rest of me being occupied, but I guess there was some part of me registering something, and while it didn't grab me in any way, still, with all the sex that was boiling up in me, with what he was doing to me, anything in that area, including talk, didn't just go by.

"Try to think about it," he said. "You know, others doing it in front of us."

• • •

She paused again to light a fresh cigarette. The freighter chugged along almost silently.

Morgan asked, "How did you react to that?"

"It didn't revolt me," she said.

• • •

Ed kept bringing it up, not naggingly, you understand, but from time to time, usually when I was a little high, when we were fooling around, and one day, I was sitting on top of him, I remember, he asked me if I loved him and I told him that was a pretty silly question, and he said if I really loved him, then I would want to please him in every way, and I said, OK, if that's what he really wanted, OK.

Well, I guess it was about a week later, and I'd almost forgotten about it, when he told me there was going to be one of those group affairs at the home of a couple of our best friends on the coming Saturday night.

I was absolutely floored. "Lucy and Wilbur!"

Ed grinned and nodded.

"Ed, you've got to be kidding."

"You see what we've been missing?"

I still couldn't believe it. "Wilbur Snelling a swinger? Good God, he blushes if a woman tells a dirty joke. And Lucy keeps going around emptying ashtrays, even in somebody else's house."

Ed laughed and told me of some of our other friends who would be there, and there were at least three couples we knew intimately--not intimately enough, it seemed--and I was shocked more with each name. I still almost didn't believe it.

Well, the great night arrived and we went to Wilbur and Lucy's place and we were greeted by the others as though we had just returned from six years in Zanzibar. I couldn't exactly understand that reception. I do now, of course. We were new blood for the little group. You see, I learned that after a while, group sex with the same people all the time--despite all the permutations and combinations possible--gets to be a kind of group marriage. No new faces. No new bodies. We were new both.

• • •

One of the sailors came up from the deck below carrying a wrench. He opened a (continued on page 110)What did I do that was wrong?(continued from page 103) panel not far from them and started tightening something.

Madge looked at her glass. It was empty. Morgan quickly poured some of his whisky into the glass.

"I need soda," she said.

"Not with this. Try it straight." He turned his head to look at the working crewman. How the hell long would he be? And the husband had to come out any minute now.

"Hey, this is great," she said after tasting the whisky.

"What happened that night? That night at Wilbur and Lucy's?" he asked.

The sailor banged the wrench on something metal. She turned her head, startled.

"He doesn't speak English," Morgan said. He could have strangled the man.

• • •

What happened that night? Nothing happened. Not to me, anyway. Oh, I went there. I suppose I was sort of ready. I had a couple of blasts and pretty soon everybody stripped and I stripped. Down to my bra and panties. Everybody else was coupling off and there was nobody who seemed particularly interested in me and certainly nobody I wanted, and it seemed sort of silly, you know, to get all the way to the buff.

I saw Ed go after a friend of ours, a woman who was involved in charity affairs, and she certainly was quite charitable that night. She was a woman I never thought would have interested Ed, good-looking but not Ed's type, you know, as I knew Ed's type, but she was Ed's type at the moment, anyway, and she was full of this largess, and pretty soon there was my husband banging this woman in front of me.

The room was filled with people making it with each other, but all I could see was my husband balling with another woman.

• • •

She swallowed more of the whisky. "This is marvelous."

"Did it bother you?" Morgan asked.

"What?"

"Your husband and this woman."

"It bothered the hell out of me."

They were singing now in the saloon. The captain was a great believer in community singing. Morgan could hear his baritone voice booming out. Surely Madge's husband would miss her now and come out looking for her.

• • •

On the way home in the car, before I could say anything about his performance with the woman of charity, Ed started bawling the hell out of me for not making the scene with anyone. I told him nobody had asked me, which was true.

"You didn't send out any vibes," he said.

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

"You didn't look like you wanted to. You looked as though you disapproved."

"All right. I didn't want to. I watched and I thought it was disgusting and I didn't want to. Where do we go from there?"

"I don't know. Everybody was damned disappointed in you. You were like the skeleton at the feast."

"Can I live with that?"

It turned out in the next couple of days, that our friends were more than just disappointed. They were sore.

"They know you disapproved," Ed said one night.

"I did."

"You didn't have to show it."

"I did."

"You made them feel guilty. They don't want to be made to feel that way. Because you have these sexual hang-ups, you don't have to go around making people feel guilty. You're just too damned uptight and you put people off."

I had never considered myself to have sexual hang-ups nor to be uptight. I thought back to the times Ed and I made love and what we did with each other. No holds barred.

But what he was telling me was that the boys who rode in with him on the commuter train were sore as boils. He had had one of the wives and nobody had had me. We hadn't played the game. It wasn't cricket. It was like Ed had been caught cheating at cards.

That was the way it was and after a little time, Ed started asking me to give it another go. It was like his honor had been impugned and he had to erase the stain, and so, to reinstate my husband in the esteem of his friends, I agreed to try it again, and we did.

• • •

Morgan poured more whisky into her glass. "What happened?"

"I got laid. That's what happened."

• • •

It was pretty damned awful. No man had touched me since Ed and I got married. He hadn't been the first, you know, not by a long shot, but there had been nobody since and I'd forgotten what another man's touch was, and when I was reminded, by one of Ed's closest friends that night, I didn't like it, I didn't like it at all. But I went through with it. I closed my eyes and tried not to think who the man was on top of me nor about the other wallowing couples. My God, those people made it everywhere! On the floor, on the couches, on chairs, standing up. Me, I kept trying to pretend it was Ed who was doing it to me.

On the way home, Ed asked me how it had been.

"Lousy," I said.

"He wasn't good?"

"I don't know. He might have been the world's greatest stud. I wouldn't know. I didn't feel anything."

He laughed. "I told you, it's those old-fashioned hang-ups."

"Whatever he was, he wasn't as good as you." I reached over and touched his hand. He'd had himself a fine time that evening and for some reason I was feeling guilty and I didn't want him to be angry with me.

"You've got to get rid of them, those hang-ups."

"Do I?"

"Look, what we have, our love, that isn't touched by this at all. You have to understand that. It has nothing to do with that. That's private. It belongs to us, our hearts, our souls. The other thing is pure physical pleasure. It's pleasure we can give to each other. It's like going skiing or sailing or something. It's outside what's in us. It has nothing at all to do with our love for each other except to make that love deeper because we're extending our enjoyments. Think about that."

I thought about it.

A few minutes later, he said, "Old Morris wasn't as good as me, is that what you said?"

"Yes, that's what I said."

"He's supposed to be pretty fair in the kip."

"He doesn't rate with you, not to me."

He turned. "You see. It's making our marriage better already."

"What's making our marriage better?"

"Just this one time and you know how much better I am with you. You appreciate our own sex even more. Now, isn't that benefiting our marriage?"

"I didn't need anything like this to appreciate our sex."

"But it has underlined it, right? Think about it."

I thought about it. I thought a lot about it. It didn't make sense to me and yet it was logical, I supposed. Maybe it did make sense. It seemed to make sense to a lot of people, this expanding their experiences, as somebody said, people I liked and respected, people who were good people, good parents, churchgoers. Maybe I was out of step. Maybe I did have what Ed called a hang-up. Maybe I was too uptight.

So the next time, I decided I would try to enjoy it, really enjoy it. I had a couple of stiff martinis before we left our house--privately, you understand; I didn't want Ed to think I was having to brace myself--and when we got there, I (continued on page 186)What did I do that was wrong?(continued from page 110) had a couple more. And there was this man, a stranger, I had never seen him before, anyway, and for some reason he turned me on, he really turned me on, and we made it together and it was fantastic. And afterward, I caught Ed's eye, he was involved with one of my dearest friends, and I made a circle out of my thumb and forefinger and waved to him and he nodded and grinned and did the same thing back.

This was really a scene, the host and hostess had a big living room, you know, and there it was all around you, and I began to feel pretty good. I looked at the women's bodies and I reckoned I was as good as any of them, maybe better than some, and I began to watch what was going on with this new point of view and for the first time it seemed kind of exciting to me. There were all kinds of arrangements, some of them involving several people at the same time. I wasn't ready for that, but I didn't find it too difficult to watch.

A funny thing happened that night. Out of nowhere, a little girl about three, you know, in those Dr. Denton's, was standing in the doorway, the daughter of our hosts. Nobody knew how long she was standing there, rubbing her eyes, not making a sound, until somebody finally noticed her and called out to the mother. The mother at that moment was part of a sort of fascinating configuration with three or four others and she looked around for the father, but he was subsurfaced somewhere, and so she had to disengage herself and take the child back to bed. The mother returned a little later and rejoined her own particular little assemblage, although, during her brief absence, certain adjustments had had to be made, and she now had to take a different position.

It all worked out, though, everything worked out that night, and I began to get turned on again, not only by this strange man but by everything that was going on around me, and there he was, my stranger, and obviously the scene or me or both had the same happy effect on him and we made it again and my God, it was great. There were a couple of explosions there, I can tell you.

• • •

She lit another cigarette and in the momentary illumination, Morgan saw that her face had subtly changed. There was light in her eyes, too, that had nothing to do with the flame and her lips seemed fuller and there was no frown, no frown at all. She looked full of juices and very inviting and then the click of the lighter as she snapped shut the top closed it off, suddenly, sharply, irrevocably, and the glimpse into that new world was gone.

He sighed again, again to himself, and tended his glass and hers as well. They were singing again in the saloon and he turned his head to the sound and thought what a bloody fool the husband was, a woman who could look like that and who didn't look like that most of the time.

"And on the way home?" he asked, indulging himself in self-commiseration that this was his life, a passer-by, a listener to.

"Yes, on the way home."

The sailor had finished whatever he was doing by then and he shut the panel and walked to the rail and looked upon the water. It seemed to Morgan that he took his own sweet time.

• • •

On the way home, Ed was a little annoyed, but I didn't notice it at first, because I was feeling so marvelous, so absolutely marvelous, and finally he said, "Why did you have to make it twice with that guy?"

I stretched in the car. Every part of me felt marvelous. "You made it twice. I happened to notice that."

"But with two different women."

"I saw that, too. What's the difference?"

"A whole hell of a lot of difference. The thing is with what you did, it gets personal."

"It's a pretty damned personal thing. You have to admit that."

"That's the whole point. It's not supposed to be personal."

"I can't see how letting a man get between your legs can be anything else."

"But it can't be personal. It's just the thing itself. When you stick with one person that way, it's, well, it's personal. It's like you care for him or something."

"I cared for what he did."

"You liked it." He turned to me for a moment. "You really liked it this time?"

"I really liked it."

"He was that good?"

"He was good."

"Better than me?"

"I didn't say that."

"Was he?"

"I have to admit, Ed, that while it was happening, while it was happening each time, I wasn't exactly in a state to make comparisons. I was just enjoying it, the way you told me I should."

Ed drove silently for a few minutes. Then he asked, "Was he big?"

"He's a big man, you saw that, six feet, I guess."

"I don't mean that. Was he big down there?"

"I didn't notice. I told you, I was not comparison shopping."

"You just enjoyed it."

"I just plain enjoyed it. I sure as hell enjoyed it. I enjoyed every blessed minute of it. Now are you happy?"

"I sure am. I sure am happy you're getting rid of those hang-ups."

And that was that. We got home and I almost didn't have the strength to undress. I'm usually pretty neat, but that night I just threw everything onto the floor and flopped. I slept the sleep of the dead that night. Was it something about a new man? Even though when you come down to it, it's the same thing, was there something down deep, really deep, inside me that had responded that way to somebody new? Did it prove anything about me or about him or about my being able to attract somebody besides Ed?

I thought a lot about all of that. I supposed there was some little truth about everything right down the line, but mostly, I decided, it was the whole atmosphere of those scenes. It was like the air was filled with sex, like it might have been alcohol, and I had got drunk just breathing it.

And the marvelous thing was that it didn't encroach on what Ed and I had, the important thing. Our private sex was as good as ever, maybe even better. Maybe I had had these hang-ups without knowing it and I was getting freed. It all added up to something wonderful.

Then a couple of weeks went by and Ed didn't say anything about any party anywhere and one night I asked him and he said things were kind of slow in that field and I told him we'd have to start thinking about having the gang come over to our place. He said he'd think about that and then I found out by chance that there had been a party a week or so before and that we had been invited and that Ed had turned it down.

"I felt lousy that night," he told me when I asked him. "I felt a cold coming on."

I couldn't remember anything like that. "But you never even mentioned it to me."

"I guess it slipped my mind. No point, anyway. Not the way I was feeling."

"When's the next shindig?"

"Haven't heard yet."

"Maybe this is the one we should have here."

"Would you like that?"

"Well, we have to show hospitality."

"I'll think about it."

A couple of days later, one of my friends called me about something and she said they had all missed us at the last do, the one Ed had turned down, and she hoped we'd both be at the party the following Saturday night at Henry and Edith's place. I said sure, we'd be there.

When Ed came home that night, I waited for him to tell me about Henry and Edith and when he didn't, I told him. He wanted to know who told me and I told him.

"Why?" I asked. "Didn't they tell you?"

"Yeah, sure, Henry told me on the train."

"You didn't say anything to me."

"I was going to."

"But we're going?"

"Sure, sure, we're going. You sure you want to go?"

"Yes."

"Your boyfriend won't be there."

"My boyfriend?"

"You know, the guy you balled twice with last time."

"I hadn't thought about him."

"He was a friend of somebody's. He doesn't live here. He belongs to a group in Detroit." He laughed. "He was given guest privileges that night."

I looked forward to that next Saturday night. It's funny how I looked forward to it.

• • •

Somebody came out of the saloon. Morgan looked up. It was a man. In the dark, he couldn't tell who it was. The man walked over to them. Morgan saw it was not her husband. That was something, anyway.

The man, who was dressed shapelessly and who wore a string tie, rested on his elbows on the rail. "What a night," he said.

Morgan agreed.

"Sure enjoyed this trip. Sure hate to see it end."

Morgan agreed again. He watched Madge light a cigarette. The glow was still in her face and in her eyes and her forehead was as smooth as a child's, and how long would all that last?

"First time the little woman and me rode on a boat," the man said. "Had this little time before we had to get back and I said why not? Plane flying ain't that great."

Morgan agreed. The man talked on. He had a strong Midwestern twang. It seemed he was in the business of raising pigs just outside Dubuque, Iowa. He might have gone on and in the end Morgan might have tossed him overboard, but the man was saved when his wife came out and bellowed for him to come on back in before he caught his death.

The man grinned. "Best hog caller in Ioway," he said, as he went off.

Morgan turned swiftly to Madge. "And so?"

"What a funny man. He raises pigs in Iowa."

"So he said."

"His wife's a hog caller."

"So he said."

"Oh, did he, just now? I wasn't listening. I was thinking of something else."

"What happened?"

"What was I saying?"

"The party the next Saturday night, at Henry and Edith's."

She laughed. It was a short laugh, cut short. "Oh, yes, the party at Henry and Edith's. I'll never forget the party at Henry and Edith's."

She took a long time to go on, so long that for a short, fearful time, Morgan thought he wasn't going to hear about the party at Henry and Edith's.

• • •

You understand that Ed and I were just, as great as ever. It was getting so I could make pictures. When we were doing it, I could close my eyes and think of one of those big scenes, and they turned me on, there was no doubt of that now, they turned me on and they added to what Ed did, and what he did, as I have mentioned before, was pretty great. But the thoughts about the group scenes excited me and it was just marvelous to have that and everything else and my love for Ed was not lessened in the slightest, and while waiting for Saturday night, I got to thinking about one of our friends, a man named Don, and I discovered I had a letch for him, and right then and there I made up my mind that that wasn't right, that it had to be impersonal, as Ed had said, like ice skating or dancing or playing bridge. Yes, that was it, just like playing tournament bridge, changing partners from time to time and having no private feelings at all beyond their competence in their performance.

We went to Henry and Edith's that Saturday night. They were one of the wealthiest couples in our set and they had champagne for everybody, which made things even more festive, and I was ready. I was ready for this wonderful thing that was totally impersonal and had nothing to do with the genuine love Ed and I had for each other. Actually, I loved him more, I guess, for having the love and patience and kindness to work on me until my eyes were open and I had lost this old-fashioned sexual hang-up I surely had had and now was free and uncluttered and with it and able to take my pleasure without any feelings of guilt or remorse.

It was a real brawl that night, one of the best, certainly the best for me, I guess, because I had three men that night. I was very careful not to have the same one twice, because I didn't want to get Ed angry with me again and maybe keep me away from these parties. I had three men. As a matter of fact, I had two of them at the same time, and let me tell you there was never anything like that before. It just blew my head off.

• • •

"And on the way home?" Morgan asked, quietly pouring some more whisky into her glass. It was extraordinary how she could hold it. Her voice remained clear and low and her words came out in order.

• • •

Nothing on the way home. I just collapsed in the car. I tell you, I was wiped out. My head was blown off and I thought as I sprawled out on that seat how absolutely fantastic it was to be able to enjoy all this tremendous sensation and not have it intrude in any way on what Ed and I had between us. My God, I loved that man.

Ed was saying something to me as we drove home, but I was gone, I didn't hear it, and when we got home, it was all I could manage to stagger to bed. I didn't even undress. I just passed out. I was deader than dead.

• • •

"But the next morning," Morgan said.

"The next morning?" She raised the glass to her lips and then lowered it without tasting. "The next morning, my friend, the roof fell in."

• • •

It started peaceably enough. I wakened feeling like ten thousand million dollars and the best thing of all was that I wasn't thinking about those three men, not one bit, only about what had happened, as Ed said I should, and I was already thinking about the next party, it really had to be at our place, and then I noticed Ed was not in bed and it looked from the sheets and blanket on his side that he had not been in bed.

I managed to gather myself. My body still had such a delicious ache I couldn't believe it. I put on a dressing gown and went into the living room. Ed was sleeping in a chair. There was an empty bottle of booze on the floor next to the chair. An ashtray was filled with butts. He opened his eyes when I shook him a little.

"What's this?" I asked.

"And how do you feel?" He sat up straighter. He looked awful. His eyes were bloodshot and his mouth hung slack in a way I'd never seen before.

"I feel marvelous." I said. "What are you doing here? Why didn't you go to bed?"

He fumbled around for a cigarette and said, "I never saw anything so disgusting in my life."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"You. I'm talking about you." He lit the cigarette. His hands shook. "I'm talking about the demonstration you made of yourself last night. I'm talking about the scene you made."

"I thought we were all making the scene."

"Very funny." He pulled on the cigarette. "Three men. Three men."

"Three different men," I said. "The way you told me, not to have the same one twice."

"That creep Charley. You've had eyes for him for some time."

"You're crazy, Ed."

"And that other creep, Joe Longworth. How long you been having the hots for him?"

I took a cigarette and sat down. Something was very wrong. To have to listen to that and to have all those feelings seep away from me. "Ed, I'm doing just what you told me to do, what you begged me to do. You told me to stop being so uptight. You told me to get loose. You told me to enjoy myself. You told me not to have the same man more than once on any one night. What have I done that was wrong?"

His eyes seemed to half close. "Which one did you like the best?"

"I liked them all."

"You mean it doesn't matter to you?"

"What doesn't matter to me?"

"Who it is who's screwing you? You mean any guy can crawl into you? Even two at the same time?"

"Ed, for God's sake."

"Yes, for God's sake!" He glared at me. I've never seen hate quite like that. "You're nothing but a damned whore!"

"Ed, listen to me. All I did----"

"All you did was take on three men, two at once!" He got up and took a few steps and then whirled at me and for a moment, I thought he was going to come over and hit me. "Any man can lay you! Any two men!"

"Ed, please listen to me."

"Who the hell else have you been screwing?"

"Ed, don't say that."

"Now that I know what you are, I sure as hell will say that. Nobody who digs it like you could be satisfied with one man. Who else? Tell me who else?"

"Nobody, Ed. I swear to you, nobody."

"Bullshit." He came closer and leaned down. "It's like I'm seeing you for the first time. You're a goddamned nympho. You're a goddamned nympho whore."

I got up. "I'm not going to listen to any more of this."

"Of course not, you damned whore. You can't listen to the truth about yourself."

I started out the room. I stopped at the door and turned around. I wanted to say something, to try to say something, but when I looked at his face, I knew there was nothing to be said.

• • •

She emptied her glass. Morgan picked up the bottle. There was just a touch left for both of them. He divided the whisky carefully and then tossed the bottle overboard.

"And that's my little story," she said, raising her face to the incoming breeze. "I don't know why I told it to you. I suppose writers are supposed to know something about people."

She turned to him and lit a cigarette. Her face was drained. She looked almost as exhausted as she had been at the times she had just told him about. "Were you surprised by all that? Tell me the truth."

He didn't say anything. He wanted the full time before the light was closed out.

"Didn't surprise you?" she asked. "Writers hear everything, I guess. Nothing fazes you."

"The only thing that surprised me was the impression I had got of your husband. From what I've seen of him, he doesn't look like a man who'd go in for any of that. It just goes to prove how deceiving appearances can be."

She looked puzzled for a moment and then laughed. "My husband? You mean Lawrence?" She laughed again, bubbling like a child. "Lawrence is my new husband, my second husband. Ed and I got a divorce. He just couldn't go on. No way. No, not Lawrence, my God! No. we live in Connecticut now and I don't think Lawrence even knows about such things or, if he does, he doesn't actually believe them. He couldn't believe them. And they happen, all right. They happen all around us. There's a group I've heard about right among our own set in Connecticut."

"Have any of these friends approached you?"

"Good Lord, no!" She giggled. "Knowing Lawrence, nobody would ever dream of asking us to take part in anything like that."

"Do you think about it?"

"No. No, that's a lie. Of course I think about it. How could I keep from thinking about it? I keep seeing pictures. I look at these friends of mine, at dinner parties, at cocktail parties, at the club, and I keep seeing these pictures. Of course I think about it. But I'd never do anything. Lawrence is OK, not as good as Ed by a country mile, but I've settled for that and I'd never do anything. My God, look what it did to my first marriage! And I still don't know what I did that was wrong." She stood up abruptly. "What did I do that was wrong?"

Without waiting for an answer, she started back for the saloon, where the singing was still going on full blast. She walked straight and steady and when she entered the saloon, Morgan saw in the light from within the really splendid line of her body and her fine, clean profile.

She hadn't wanted an answer, he thought, because she had probably come long ago to the melancholy conclusion that the question of right and wrong had not entered into anything at all.

He finished the last of his glorious whisky and went down to his cabin. He lay awake for a long time. There were some pictures of his own that he saw.