Pat raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
“At any rate,” Adele went on, sensing a conversational shift away from her topic of interest. “Apparently these teenaged kids get together for what amount to blow job parties. The girls all wear different lipsticks, and the boys aim to get their penises painted in every shade.”
“There’s a thing or two we can learn from kids today,” Elliot said with a smirk. Adele smiled back at him. He had a very kind air about him when he thought about sex.
“Not that kids should be doing it…” Hue said, at first seeming like she might write off the whole conversation as perverse. After a sip of her lemon fizz, she changed gears. “But the idea…the idea is…intriguing…”
Roger chuckled, setting a firm hand on Sissy’s knee. “And I thought we were inventive in our day!”
“I don’t think that’s very funny,” Sissy said, smacking his hand away. “Those poor girls! Subjected to such humiliations!”
Elliot tapped Adele lightly on her finger, and then gave her a look that seemed to say, Poor Roger!
“What do you have against cocksucking?” Hue asked the willowy blonde on the couch. “Don’t tell me you refuse to give head.”
Sissy crossed and uncrossed her ankles. Roger answered for her. “She gives it,” he said. His voice wavered. “Under duress…”
Hue, Adele and Elliot chuckled while Pat took a sip of scotch. Lowering her gaze, Sissy reached for the cosmopolitan she’d placed on the table. She mimed drinking even though it was very apparent there was nothing left in her glass. “Can I get you another?” Adele asked. She liked Sissy better drunk, but for such a slight girl it took a considerable amount of alcohol to get her there.
“Oh…” Sissy said. Her voice was high and strained, like she was going to cry. “Okay…”
“Why don’t you like sucking cock?” Hue prodded. She didn’t appear to be teasing Sissy, only curious about the younger woman’s hang-ups. “Men love it, you know. Ask your husband. Roger, you love a good blow job, don’t you?”
Roger glanced with shifty eyes at his wife before agreeing. “More than anything.”
“Really?” Sissy asked, looking at Roger and then quickly looking away. “It’s only that his thing is so big. It makes me gag,” she explained to Hue as Adele handed her another drink. “Thank you.”
Leaning back in the sofa with a self-satisfied grin, Roger placed an arm around Sissy and pulled her in close. He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something but then seemed lost for words.
“How big is big?” Hue asked. Her voice sounded strange and deep. With slow and deliberate motions, she zipped open her purse and pulled out a tube of lipstick and a mirror. “Hold this,” she instructed her husband, placing the lid in his hand before pressing deep burgundy gloss against her lips. Her eyes didn’t waver from the mirror. Everybody else’s eyes were on her, too. When she’d coated her full lips with a surge of color, she smacked them together and smiled at Pat. From the chair beside the sofa, he gave her the lid. Before taking it, she asked, “What do you think?”
“Looks very nice,” Pat replied. “Dark.”
Hue turned to the man sitting beside her on the couch. She smiled, looking past him to Sissy at the other end of the sofa. “Maybe a smaller cock would suit you better. Maybe you’d enjoy giving head if you could simply savor the texture without getting your throat torn open.”
Adele stared across the room with a combination of apprehension, disbelief and exhilaration. “Would anybody like another drink?” she asked before Sissy could respond.
Nobody but Sissy could be distracted from the tension building on the couch, and she simply shook her head. And then, as Elliot squirmed in his chair, Sissy reached for her bag and brought out a tube of cotton candy-pink lipstick. Her first coat had been all but lost to her cosmopolitan glass. She embellished her soft pink lips with a generous coat of light, waxy lipstick and then smacked them together.
The whole room seemed to be smiling with unspoken knowledge. “My lipstick,” Adele said. “It’s in my bedroom.” Without another word, she bolted up the stairs and grasped a tube of bright red lipstick. She watched herself in the mirror as she put it on. Why had she taken it to heart when Sissy called her old? She wasn’t that at all. Adele looked as vibrant as she had in college. Though she’d never been what one might call “pretty,” she was certainly a striking woman. And Elliot still found her attractive, if his anniversary gift was any indication.