3 is not a Crowd

After that I felt I had to get out of Chicago. Nothing was going right and I no longer felt good about the city. I was too completely alone and at too many loose ends. I wanted to go back to New York. There didn’t seem to be any reason to stay away. I was in touch with Peter and Grace — I would call them or they would call me several times a month. I never planned on living here with them but I felt it would be good for me to be in the same city. If nothing else, it would save on the phone bills.

They insisted I stay here at least until I could find a suitable apartment. I didn’t put up much of an argument. I always hated hotels.

This time we were all more immediately relaxed with each other. My trip earlier had gotten us past the reunion bit and the introduction bit both at once, and now Grace and I were almost old friends. Neither of us saw the other as a threat. I settled in and started apartment hunting and began to realize how impossible the housing shortage has become around here. I was quite honestly anxious to get a place of my own, but it was impossible to find anything decent.

PETER: I was conscious of a real yen for Wanda from the minute I picked her up at the airport. When I kissed her hello it was all I could do to keep my tongue in my own mouth.

WANDA: I felt the same way.

PETER: This would have disturbed me a year earlier. Now it amused me. I think that’s the best way to put it. I had come to take my own reactions to virtually all situations a good deal more casually. I enjoyed observing myself, my reactions to one thing or another.

WANDA: You grew up a lot. Marriage to Grace had quite an effect on you.

PETER: There’s no question about it. The detached view didn’t make the yen go away, however. I couldn’t put it out of my mind. Every time I saw Wanda I wanted her. I wondered whether part of this might not be habit — I had been in the habit of wanting her, and we hadn’t been with each other sexually in so long.

GRACE: I had this feeling that something was building up with the two of them. But I wasn’t sure if maybe it wasn’t all in my mind. Anyway, I liked having Wanda around. I felt almost like a sister to her. When I was a kid I used to imagine what it would be like to have a big sister.

WANDA: I wonder if I would have eventually made a move of my own. I had decided definitely not to, but a few more days of frustration might have made me change my mind. Because I definitely wanted Peter and there was no way to avoid realizing as much. The bill of goods I had half-managed to sell myself — that somewhere out there was a man for me — I didn’t believe this any more. I had tried enough men to convince me it just wouldn’t work that way. There was a man for me, but he happened to be my brother.

I slept late one morning, and when I woke up Grace had left. Peter told me over breakfast that she had gone to pose for some pictures. I knew vaguely that she was a model but had no idea just what sort of work she did, fashion or what, and I said something to this effect. Peter got up from the table and came back with a small stack of photographs. He flipped them onto the table and told me to have a look.

I was genuinely shocked. They were all deliciously pornographic. Grace with a man, Grace with a man and another girl, Grace with two men, Grace with a girl, with, as they say, nothing left to the imagination.

I looked up at Peter and he was grinning. “You let her do this?”

“Why not?” he said. “She enjoys it. Easy work, good pay, no withholding taxes.” But didn’t he mind?

He said he didn’t, and then he began to explain that he and Grace were in the habit of swinging with other couples. I was shocked all over again. Swinging was not a wholly new idea to me, I had been to fairly freewheeling parties myself, but I wasn’t prepared for such a revelation concerning my little brother and his wife. It stunned me and I didn’t know how to react.

PETER: You were remarkably cool about it.

WANDA: I didn’t feel remarkably cool. I felt very strange. And confused. I didn’t know whether or not this meant that Peter and I could be lovers again.

I excused myself and went into the bathroom to take a shower. I was standing under the hot water spray still a little shaky from what I had learned when the shower door opened and Peter stepped in beside me.

He said, “Do you remember when we used to take baths together, Sis? I always enjoyed that.”

I said, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Sure,” he said. He took a bar of soap and rubbed it over my breasts. “I’m washing my sister,” he said. “I’m soaping you up.”

I stood there and he worked the soap over my breasts and down across my belly. He lathered my pubic hair. I was trembling from head to foot. I wanted him so intensely I couldn’t bear it. He kept soaping me all over.

We got out of the shower. We didn’t even dry ourselves off. We went straight into my bedroom, all wet and slippery, not giving a damn about anything but our need for each other.