Dirty Tricks Read Online Free

stopped to hold the door open for her. As it swung shut behind her, she jumped me.
    I mean that quite literally. Karen taught physical education, so she was in good shape. As I turned, she sprang forward like a cat, leaping up to straddle my hips with her thighs. Instinctively, to prevent her falling, I grabbed her buttocks. By then her mouth was all over mine, her tongue darting in and out. I just stood there like a punch-drunk boxer, taking the punishment she was handing out. I had no idea who she was or who I was or where we were. What was happening clearly had no connection with what had been happening before or would, presumably, happen afterwards.
    It wasn’t until I heard Dennis say, ‘I’ll just fetch up another bottle of the Hunter Valley’ that it was borne in on me that the woman who was frenching me and bringing herself off on my belt buckle was none other than Karen Parsons, the wife of Dennis Parsons, who was currently six feet away on the other side of the dining-room door and closing rapidly.
    Karen reacted before I did. Obeying some primitive burrowing instinct, she pulled me into the loo and locked the door behind us. We held hands in the dark while someone tried the handle.
    ‘Won’t be a mo,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, are you still in there?’
    It was Dennis, stopping off for a pee on his way to replenish the supply of social oxygen, already anxious about what the others were saying about him behind his back. Meanwhile, on the other side of the door he was impatiently eyeing, Karen and I were locked in a windowless room about five feet by three, with no possibility of escape short of flushing ourselves down the lavatory.
    I’ve often speculated since on what would have happened if we’d just given ourselves up at this point. There would, I imagine, have been an ugly scene. I certainly wouldn’t have been invited back to the Parsons’, but I could have lived with that. At the very worst, their marriage might not have survived. They would have, on the other hand.
    Instead, I flushed the toilet and opened the door just wide enough to slip through the gap. Dennis gave me the vague smile of complicity that men exchange in lavatorial situations. I grasped his arm firmly and led him away.
    ‘Could I have a word with you?’
    He frowned.
    ‘In private,’ I added, leading him into the kitchen. I slammed the door behind us to let Karen know the coast was clear.
    ‘That bloke across the table from me, is he gay, do you happen to know?’
    Dennis’s brow puckered more intensely.
    ‘Roger? You must be joking.’
    ‘In that case I think he just made a pass at your wife.’
    You could tell right away he didn’t want to know. Things were going all right, the evening was a success. Dennis didn’t want anything to change that.
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Well, he started playing footsie-footsie with me,’ I explained. ‘But if he’s not that way inclined, he must have mistaken my foot for Karen’s.’
    I glanced down at the limb I was illustratively wiggling, only to find an involuntary erection making my trousers stick out like an accusing finger.
    ‘Not Roger,’ Dennis replied dismissively. ‘Too busy giving it to his secretary, by all accounts.’
    I shrugged.
    ‘I suppose he might have had cramp or something. Still, I thought I ought to let you know.’
    ‘Oh yes, right, fair enough. Seen Kay, by the way?’
    ‘She went upstairs, I think.’
    I’d heard the door spring open and the stairs groan as she made good her escape. She’d be sluicing her face down with cold water, I assumed, vowing never again to drink so much that she lost control of herself in such an embarrassing, such an appallingly dangerous and potentially disastrous way.
    Ah Karen, how I misjudged you! But I’d never met anyone quite like her before, you see. Even little Manuela, of whom more anon, wasn’t in the Karen Parsons league. Knowing what I know now, I imagined she was stretched out on the marital bed finishing the job.