The Making of a Gigolo (14) - Erica Bradford

by Lubrican

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Chapter Twenty-four

Erica turned to Christy and smiled.

"You know what seems ironic about today?"

"What's that?" asked Christy, looking up from a magazine.

They were in the waiting room of the orthopedics clinic at the VA hospital in Wichita. Will had been wheeled down the hall about an hour ago by a busy nurse that sent little zings of jealousy through Erica. She knew what was probably going through Will's mind as the pretty nurse pushed him.

"It's tax day," said Erica. "That's usually a day everybody hates. But for us, it's going to be one of the greatest days of our lives."

Christy smiled and looked at her new friend. Erica had been abrasive and surly, when Christy first met her. She'd been very worried about how Erica might react, when Christy had followed her heart and begun to get to know Will Bradford. Since then she had fallen hard for the crippled man. While his body was wrecked on the outside, she had been given a glimpse of the healthy beauty that lay on the inside, and she had been unable ... unwilling, really ... to let his scars get in the way of a chance to find what she thought of as "true love" again.

Then Bobby Dalton, who had worked an almost miracle in Christy's life, had stepped in and worked another one on Erica. Since Erica had been spending time with Bobby, her personality had blossomed. She smiled more, was easier to talk to, and just generally more pleasant to be around. It didn't hurt that Christy ran her own business and had done so without a man's help for years. Erica approved of that and respected Christy.

"I love him any way I can get him," said Christy, referring to Will, whose final, permanent prosthetic leg was being fitted as they waited. "In a chair or walking ... I don't care."

"You've been so good for him," sighed Erica. "He was so angry when he first got here."

"Oh, he still has his moods," said Christy. "But I can usually pull him out of one." She resisted the urge to ask Erica how things were with Bobby. She was aware that Erica was trying to pretend there was no Bobby. She understood that. Christy had spent probably hours, waiting at the window for Bobby to come and make her feel so good. At the same time, she had always worried that a neighbor would see him too often and that she would be exposed as the unmarried woman who let him between her legs. Having his baby had cured her of that. She didn't care what people thought about her any more. She had her friends and her business was doing well. And now ... she had a man she could cleave to forever.

She glanced at Erica, only to see the woman looking past her in shock. She turned to see Will ... alone ... walking toward them.

His gait was clearly the gait of a man with troubled legs, but it was also smooth and confident. Will had told her of the hours he spent practicing, under the careful tutelage of the doctors and nurses and physical therapists. He was so used to hopping, that it was almost instinctive now and he had to overcome that. Now, though, other than his too-short left arm and the visible scars from the burning, he looked almost like any other man walking down the hall.

He even was able to compensate for two women almost crashing into him and didn't lose his balance.

"You two are making a scene," he said, grinning as much as the tight skin on the left side of his lips would let him.

Everything was new, at least for the women. They had only known the hopping man ... the man in the chair. Even Erica, who had grown up with him, had not been able to equate the wreck who had gotten off the airplane six months ago with the healthy young man she had known when they were younger.

Will insisted on pushing each of the women in his chair, as if they were the invalids. Both felt foolish sitting in a chair being pushed by a man with an artificial leg, but they both did it ... for Will. He couldn't put the chair in the car by himself, but he could get into the car, himself, like any other person.

They had taken Christy's car that day and she was driving as they returned to Granger.

"You know," said Will, looking over at her. "This car has an automatic transmission. I bet I could drive it now."

"You don't use your left leg to drive an automatic anyway," pointed out Christy.

"Yeah, but I always felt like it just wouldn't work," said Will. "I don't feel like that anymore."

It would be only one of many changes in his outlook over the next few months.

"You don't have the flu," said the doctor.

Erica looked at him. She'd gotten a substitute so she could go to the doctor to find out how to get rid of whatever it was that had been making her sick for the last two weeks.

"What do I have?" she moaned. She had hoped it would be something simple that she could just take a pill for. It had been two weeks since she'd been able to spend a night with Bobby, because she didn't want to infect him with whatever bug was making her throw up so much.

"I'd like to examine you more thoroughly," he said.

Ten minutes later, Erica Bradford was trying to control her urge to go off on her doctor, who was obviously using this visit as an opportunity to expose his sexist pig ways. He'd already felt her breasts and now her feet were in stirrups as he peered at her naked vagina. She was quite sure that this had nothing whatsoever to do with her cold or virus, or whatever it was.

"There's going to be some discomfort," came the warning voice.

The doctor slid his gloved finger to find the patient's cervix and rimmed it, feeling for the mucus plug that would tell him what the tests had already suggested. It was there and it was firm. He remembered seeing this woman at the musical he'd attended with his wife several months back. She was the teacher. He'd noticed her, like any man would notice her. He'd also noticed that Bobby Dalton had been sitting next to her. Another of his patients, Christy Brown, was there near him too. He had a theory about Bobby Dalton, but he couldn't really prove it. And he couldn't ask this patient. That would be going too far. Still, it would be most interesting to see what the baby she was going to have looked like, when he delivered it.

He stood up, stripping off his gloves, to find the woman glaring at him. That wasn't unusual. Lots of women glared at him. It was the ones who smiled at him that he had to be careful with.

He didn't say "Congratulations, you're pregnant." He was aware this woman wasn't married.

Instead, he just said: "You're pregnant, Erica. I think it's just morning sickness, and maybe a vitamin deficiency."

In the 13th century, it was not uncommon for Christians to flog themselves in association with the flogging their savior suffered before his crucifixion. There are still sects of Christianity today who practice self flagellation, such as the Carmelites. Though it isn't related to Jesus, in Islam, for hundreds of years, the Shiites have also practiced whipping or beating themselves and many still do in the Middle East and Asia. Various mystics use whips on themselves to attempt to enter an altered state of consciousness.

But flagellation, by and large, is thought of by most people as punishment. There was no one to whip Erica Bradford, though, so she had to whip herself. She didn't use straps, a belt, cane or a switch. She used her own passions. By the time she returned home - she couldn't go back to school - she was, again in her mind, beaten almost bloody and senseless by her own mental cat o' nine tails.

Her litany of self confession was endless. She had been stupid. She had been rash. She had been weak. She had been stubborn. She had succumbed to the lure of the flesh. The list went on and on. But uppermost in her mind was the fact that she had subverted her own principles and now she was being made to pay for it.

Part of her anger and confusion was because, as a feminist, she had always supported a woman's right to choose. Only three years earlier she had been elated when Roe v. Wade had been decided in the interests of women just like her. Of course, at that time, her reaction had been ideological. Now, however, it was personal. And that was the primary problem Erica was torn by.

As often as she had trumpeted the right of a woman to choose to abort the life within her, she could not make that choice herself.

The doctor had mentioned it. He'd seen many women react to the news that they were pregnant, and had developed the ability to tell pretty consistently which women were happy about it and which weren't. Of course there were many reasons a woman might not be happy. It could have to do with finances or career paths or, perhaps, the particular man who had gotten her that way. But he could tell that Erica was not happy. And so, he had mentioned that there was a way to make her not-pregnant.

He also could tell when that option was not acceptable and had not taken it any farther. It was, after all ... by law ... her decision.

Imagine that you're driving along and something comes on the radio that you don't care for. As you reach to change the station, somebody slams into the rear of your car. Now imagine that, as you're trying to deal with that, somebody slams into the side of your car too. You're bleeding. The engine is making a horrible knocking sound. There are fumes in the car. Maybe there are other passengers in the car. Maybe it's freezing outside and you don't know where your coat is any more. It's possible that the hot coffee you had is now all over you. You have to do something. But what do you do first?

That was how Erica felt. The irritating music on the radio was her illness. The rear end accident (no pun intended) was the fact she was pregnant. Then the concept of abortion was the side impact. She was dazed and her emotions were bleeding freely. The yammering of her various thoughts was so loud that she had a hard time concentrating on anything. There was, in fact, another passenger on board ... a tiny life she had just become aware of. And the cold outside was all the people who would find out what she'd done ... what kind of woman she was ... and freeze her out of their lives.

Have I forgotten anything? Ah ... yes ... the hot coffee.

That was Bobby Dalton, who was so warm and satisfying when sipped of ... but who had spilled inside her body to create something that she felt would burn her to cinders.

They say there are five stages to grieving: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Usually those are associated with the loss of a loved one. For Erica, it was the loss of her ideals, her lifestyle, her very future, which can be the same thing. Sometimes it can take years to work through all the stages. Sometimes it happens much more quickly.

She flashed through denial, because her brain was quite sure it was possible for her to be pregnant. Anger set in, starting at anger with herself, then transferring to Bobby. As she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, the bargaining that went on concerned what the doctor had said. She could abort this baby. It would be gone and no one, except the doctor and a few nurses, would ever know it had existed. Bobby wouldn't even know it had existed. Her life could go back to normal.

All she could think about was the time her father had taken her to the dog pound to try to find a family pet. There had been so many cute, little puppies to choose from and she'd gotten to pick, because she was the older child and would be charged with taking care of it. As she'd held her new, wiggly, happy puppy in her arms at the front desk, she'd asked, "What will happen to the rest?" Her father, distracted by filling out the paperwork, had told her the truth. If they weren't adopted, they'd be killed. She'd hated the Humane Society ever since.

She knew she couldn't kill the life inside her. The only bargaining option left to her was to have the baby and put it up for adoption.

That's when the depression set in and she cried, weeping bitterly about the unfairness of it all and how her life was ruined.

There was a week during which Will knew something was wrong. Erica was listless. She didn't care what happened and sat for long hours paying no attention to the TV. They still slept together, but now it was more out of habit than because their passions needed a route for release. He'd passed his driving test with the addition to a knob that fastened to the steering wheel and rotated freely to let him turn the wheel with one hand. Now he dropped Erica off at school, so he could go to work.

He asked her repeatedly what was wrong, but only got "nothing" in return.

Erica's grief now was for herself. Soon people would know. Her belly would swell, and the gossips would stare, point, and then talk. She knew she wouldn't lose her job ... but her authority in the classroom would suffer. She'd have to go through the entire first semester of next year's classes grotesquely swollen, the laughing stock of everyone. The only bright spot she could think of was that at least no one would know for the remaining portion of this year's classes.

Two weeks into May, Will was still trying to figure out what was wrong. They were lying in bed. She hadn't cuddled with him for weeks, always lying inches away from him, staring at the ceiling until she finally closed her eyes in sleep. That was where she was now.

He unhooked "Josh," which he had named his leg in honor of the dead man who had saved his life, and set it aside. He hopped to the bed and settled into it, rolling to face his sister.

"I got a letter today," he said.

"Oh?" Her voice was distant.

"I got approved for an artificial hand."

"That's good." It was as if he'd said he'd found a new book to read.

His hand went to her stomach. She'd started wearing a nightgown to bed recently and he wished she hadn't. Her reaction to his hand on her was both astonishing and violent. She slapped at it, pushing it off her like it was a bug or something.

"Don't touch me there!" she barked. All the distant quality of her voice was gone. The intensity in her almost scared him.

He sat up, hurt and angry.

"I'll just go sleep in my room," he said, lashing out. "I'm obviously not wanted here!"

His balance on one foot had actually improved since he'd gotten used to standing on two again. He was already up, with Josh in his hand, when Erica's broken voice cried, "Noooooooooo."

What had finally broken through the walls of self pity that had surrounded Erica was the perception that, after losing almost everything else in her life, she was losing her brother too. The shock of that had awakened her.

"What do you want?" Will yelled at her, helplessly.

"Don't gooooo," she moaned.

"Will you please tell me what's wrong?" he begged.

"I'll tell you!" she blurted. "Just don't leave me. Pleeease, Will."

His reaction gave her psyche another slap or shake, or something equivalent to those concepts. He didn't revile her. He didn't get mad at her. In fact, there was no trace of any negative emotion of any kind.

"I'm gonna be an uncle?" His voice was unnaturally high. "I'm gonna have a nephew to play catch with?"

Erica was in no way, shape or form prepared to deal with someone who was ... happy ... that she was pregnant. She lay there, staring at Will, whose face tried to grin. He was undeniably happy.

"But I'm pregnant," she moaned, trying again to get the disgust she had expected.

"That is so ... great!" As he shouted the last word, he rolled off the bed, landing on his good foot and started jumping around in circles, chanting, "I'm gonna have a neph-ewww," over and over.

True elation is an emotion that is communicative in the same way anger is instantly understood. The reaction in others, however, is very different. Perceived anger causes a defensive reaction. Perceived joy is ... communicative. When someone is exposed to that kind of joy, it's very hard not to empathize with it. Erica smiled for the first time since leaving the doctor's office. On top of that, as he hopped, Will's penis flopped up and down in such a way that it was almost impossible to keep her eyes away from it. That was comical too, and her smile widened a bit.

Still, while the course of the ship that was her self-pity had been altered slightly, it wasn't a full turn. When he finally sat back down on the bed, panting from his exertion, her gloom reasserted itself.

"Great for you, maybe," she sighed. "Not so much for me."

Now her attitude about things made perfect sense. Now he understood.

Now there was something he could do to try to make her feel better.

There is something about being loved, when you expect only derision and disgust, that can change your world radically. Will knew that intimately. He had been pulled from the darkness, initially, by his sister. Then, beyond all hope, a beautiful woman had taken him far above the earth, where dreams soar. It was logical, in a strange and mystical way, that he pull his sister from her depression.

How that happened, or more correctly, what happened as she surfaced from the dark depths and took a breath of clean, fresh air wasn't expected.

"I love you so much," she cried, reaching for Will.

"I love you too, baby," he sighed.

They didn't expect to end up kissing. They didn't expect for his hands to bring back the sensations she had grown so addicted to. They didn't expect for her nightgown to come off or for Will to roll on top of her. And, with her legs closed, Erica certainly didn't expect to suddenly be filled with hard prick.

Her mind split apart at that point, one part noticing, almost clinically, how different Will felt inside her compared to Bobby. That part analyzed what he did with his body. The other part, crying out to be loved, didn't care that it was her brother's taboo penis that was producing streaks of joy throughout her body.

The first part chuckled as she felt the evidence of his completion and heard his gasps as he jetted into her. She was already pregnant. It no longer mattered whether her brother tried to fertilize her.

The second part made her reach for her own nipples, squeezing them, so she could cum with him.

By morning Erica Bradford was, more or less, her old self. Will's "therapy" had brought back the capacity to plan and hope. Her problems weren't gone. But now they were only problems, not the weight of the world pressing her into the abyss.

Mirriam picked up the phone and Bobby saw her face light up with a smile.

"Suzie!" she squealed. "It's been so long!"

Then Bobby saw the joy on her face freeze, then moderate, and finally turn into sadness.

"I understand, darling," she said. "Do you want to talk to the others? Bobby's right here."

She listened.

"All right. I'll tell them."

She hung up the phone.

"Suzie got a job at a research lab at K-State. She's going to move in with two other girls and stay there all summer. She's also taking extra classes during summer school. She's not coming home this year."

Bobby could hear the tears, before they arrived in her eyes. He went to his mother and hugged her while she was sad.

Eventually she pushed him away.

"Enough self pity," she said, her voice stronger. "We have plenty to keep us busy this summer, getting this place into shape to receive customers. It would have been nice to have Suzie here to help, but we'll manage."

"Yes, we will," said Bobby.

"And anyway, she says if she does this she can graduate a year early. Can you imagine that? Next year my baby might start medical school!"

"Well that's a good thing," said Bobby, smiling. "Maybe she'll specialize in geriatrics. Then she could come back here and take care of her old, feeble, ailing mother."

Mirriam stuck her tongue out at him. Then her eyes got a crafty look in them. She walked to him with an exaggerated sway to her hips. She reached out and plucked at the front of his shirt, pulling on it.

"Come to my bedroom, Bobby. I'll show you how feeble I am."

It was June before Erica called Bobby again. He hadn't thought it was that odd. There had been women before who had "overdosed" on him at first, and then calmed down later. He looked at it as a natural progression of things. It was all new and exciting at first and they couldn't get enough. Then, later, quality seemed to be the important part, rather than quantity.

"I need to talk to you," she said.

"Okay," he replied. "You want me to come over tonight?"

"No." She sounded doubtful. "Not tonight. It won't take that long. Could you drop by after school this afternoon?"

Agatha Roberts was having tea with her friends, Ethyl and Gladys. It had been a regular thing with them for some years. That it had continued after Harry died, while their husbands went on living, hadn't surprised her. They were her friends, after all.

The format for Tuesday afternoon tea hadn't changed in years either. Agatha sat quietly and waited for one of the other women to bring up a juicy bit of gossip. They always did, and it gave them something to talk about while they sipped tea and nibbled at sugar cookies. Agatha didn't get out as much as she used to, before her husband had succumbed to a diet of fats and a lifestyle that seemed to be centered around smoking and sitting in front of the television with a frozen dinner.

"Guess what I heard!" said Ethyl, right on cue.

"What?" asked both other women dutifully.

"That new teacher ... you know the one they hired to replace Bernice?" She looked around, as if there might be people hiding in the corners of Agatha's sitting room. "She might be pregnant!"

All three women knew of Erica Bradford, though they didn't know her name. Bernice had been the maternal priestess of a loosely organized group of women, until she retired and moved to Florida to live with her daughter. Those women were the self-appointed guardians of the moral standards of Granger, Kansas. They were the ones who sat on the other side of the invisible line that separated them from strumpets, who were loose and threatened to bring down everything decent women worked hard to protect. It was only natural that they'd take an interest in Bernice's replacement.

"I knew it!" crowed Gladys. "I knew all that women's liberation claptrap was a bunch of hooey."

This was Agatha's chance to make a comment.

"Can you imagine that?" she cooed. "I knew when that woman showed up there would be trouble. She should have been decently married before taking a job teaching children."

Gladys wanted more dirt. "How did you find out?" she asked excitedly.

"Penelope's daughter works for the doctor. She has something to do with records. Apparently the doctor tested for pregnancy. He wouldn't do that unless he suspected something, you know." Ethyl nodded sagely.

Agatha felt a stab of irritation. Sometimes Ethyl was so dense. Of course a doctor wouldn't test for something he didn't expect. Her mind shut down for a minute as the other two nattered on. Agatha sometimes wished she had some friends her own age. At thirty, she felt like an old woman sometimes. She blamed that on the women who had taken her under their wings, after she'd married Harry, who was ten years older than she was. She felt irritation at her own thoughts. These women had been good friends to her for years. The fact that they were in their fifties - not that that was ever talked about - was just the way it was. She wrestled for control of her restive mind and tried to pay attention.

Gladys asked the obvious question. "So who do you think the father is?"

Ethyl looked around again. It almost made Agatha want to look around too. "You know that Bobby Dalton was hanging around the school while they got ready for that musical."

That was enough to keep them busy for the rest of the afternoon. There had been much speculation about Bobby Dalton over the last few years. He was almost always good for an hour's worth of gossip. He went everywhere ... into people's homes ... where no one could see what was going on. Oh, surely he carried tools with him and sometimes this or that thing he bought at the lumber yard or the hardware store. It was certain that he fixed things. But what else he did, while he was in those houses ... and perhaps not fixing things ... that was the topic of endless speculation.

There were children who bore a resemblance to him. In the beginning, they had been quite sure he had fathered some of those children. But as the number of them grew and grew, it eventually exceeded their ability to believe he could be responsible for all of them. And many of the mothers of those children were married too. That was always something that tended to throw a wrench into their theories about Bobby Dalton.

Then again, most of the suspect women sat at the wrong tables when there was a town celebration. There had been the scandalous rumor that some of those women had actually paid Bobby Dalton to do more ... much more ... than simply fix a faucet. There was no proof of that, of course, but these women wanted to believe it.

Yes, Bobby and those troublesome women were always good for an hour or two of rampant speculation.

"Something should be done!" said Ethyl.

"But what could we do?" asked Gladys.

"I don't know," admitted Ethyl. "But something should be done. This has gone on far too long, if you ask me. There are entrirely too many single women in this town who have babies!"

Eventually, they left and Agatha's mind wandered again, as she cleaned up, washed the cups, and put them neatly back in the china hutch where they belonged.

She was puttering around, trying to find something to do that she hadn't already done twice and that actually needed doing, when it came to her.

If Bobby Dalton accepted money ... for sex ... then all it would take to expose him would be to get him to accept money ... for sex.

She shuddered. Sex was something she didn't like to think about. She'd had dreams, before she got married, about how delightful sex would be. Harry wasn't handsome, but he'd had a good job and was stable. Her mother had pointed that out. When, on her wedding night, she'd given up her carefully guarded and cherished virginity, though, it had been nothing like her dreams.

He'd been rough. It had hurt. Thankfully it had lasted only three or four minutes. After that it hadn't hurt so much, but she had grown to appreciate the fact that it continued to last only five minutes, at the longest, before he sighed and rolled off of her so she could go and get respectably clean again.

There had been no children. She'd agonized about that for the first two years. When her mother had suggested it was her fault, for not being a good wife, Agatha had been both crushed and angry. She did everything a wife was supposed to do. She cleaned and washed. She prepared Harry's favorite frozen dinners each night. She went shopping for food. She didn't buy frivolous things. She even learned how to drive, so Harry wouldn't have to take her everywhere.

She sat down. For the first time, she thought about the suspect women, looking for similarities ... clues ... something that would tell her how to catch the attention of a despicable man who would offer to have sex with them for money. It wasn't easy. The suspect women were of all ages and in different situations. The only thing that seemed to stand out was that some of them had no husband.

She blinked. She had no husband.

She thought some more.

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