Robert Vickers

Her lover son

CHAPTER ONE

"Phil, I have something to tell you."

"What is it, Tam?"

"I'm pregnant. And I think it's your baby."

"You think! You think! What do you mean, you think it's my baby? Don't you know?"

"Oh, fuck you!" Joleen Jensen said as she turned off the television. The soap operas used to keep her satisfied, but they had long since become boring. She could sit back and mouth the words of all the characters before they even said them. Nothing new ever happened. Nothing exciting occurred. The same old stuff all the time. Women getting knocked up by one of the other characters.

Joleen didn't like to read the confession magazines any more, either. The reason was the same. She knew how the damned things would end before she had finished the first paragraph.

Books from the library grew dreary after a while, too. What she needed was something to liven thin up.

Joleen sat back, a bourbon on the rocks in her hand, and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Goddamn! I hate everything!" She took a stiff jolt of the fiery amber liquor. It seared her throat as it went down, then formed a warm spot inside her belly. She realized she'd be drunk in another twenty minutes or so if she kept drinking as fast as she had been for the past half-hour.

But what else was there to do? Her husband was gone most of the time. Dear Harold, she bitterly thought, the flying ace out there fucking all those young stewardesses then coming home and telling me he's too tired to do a Goddamn thing. He never was any good in bed, anyway.

Her husband was a good provider, if it was only money and a nice house you wanted. Joleen couldn't complain about that. But a golden cage held her prisoner as surely as a cast iron one could have. If only Harold wasn't flying so much. But the airlines needed experienced pilots, and Joleen had to reluctantly admit that her husband seemed to be one of the best.