Snowbound by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online

head. Then she stood for a moment, arms folded across her breasts, hugging herself. What now? she thought. Back downstairs to sit smoking by the window? Television? Soft music? Loud music? Another book? How about a hot bath—or, more appropriately, a cold shower?
    She wished she knew how to sublimate. That was what modern women did, wasn’t it? They sublimated their frustrations, they developed hobbies or joined committees or became Fern Libbers or played bridge or painted pictures or wrote stories or took jobs or studied astrology or Far East religions —things like that. Well, that was fine for modern women, but what about old-fashioned members of the “weaker sex” like Rebecca Hughes? She wasn’t a collector, and she hated card games, and she had no artistic talent of any kind, and the only jobs you could get in an area such as this were prosaic and totally unrewarding, offering no mental commitment whatsoever. There were no committees or clubs in Hidden Valley, you had to go to Soda Grove, and besides, she was neither a joiner nor a mixer, and if that wasn’t enough, she was afraid to drive any distance in snow and ice. She had no interest in astrology or Far East religions or any of the other passions of the Aware Woman. It was not that she was apathetic or incapable of individualism; she had always possessed a genuine fondness for literature and read extensively and considered herself well informed and had opinions and believed in certain causes. She belonged to several book clubs and regularly utilized the services of the mobile county lending library when it came through twice a month; she read until her eyes ached and her mind refused to grasp the meaning of words and sentences. And how much reading could you do? Too much—and not enough.
    The simple truth was that she did not know how to sublimate; she was not modern, and she was not by any means “liberated.” She recalled clearly enough the time she had decided she was , two years previously, and her resolution to strike back at Matt in the most fitting manner: by doing exactly what he was doing, sauce for the goose as well as the gander. Why not? she’d thought then. Why couldn’t she, too, find solace and fulfill her needs in someone else’s bed?
    And so she had called Rae Johnson, a girl in Reno whom she had gone to school with, a blackjack dealer in one of the casinos and a self-proclaimed free spirit, and Rae had said, Sure, come on over. Rebecca had told Matt she was going away on a visit for a short while, and he said he thought that was a fine idea, it would do her good—very eager to get rid of her because he was in the middle of one of his affairs then. She took the bus to Reno from Soda Grove, and Rae conducted her on a tour of all the clubs and introduced her to several male friends, sensing that Rebecca had come for a fling without anything having been said about it.
    She had liked the man named Doug, she could no longer remember his last name, the moment she’d been introduced to him. Witty, charming, intelligent, easy to talk to, and when he had asked her up to his apartment for a drink, she consented readily enough; she had done a lot of drinking that night—something she seldom did because she was prone to violent and prolonged hangovers—and the liquor and the flashing neon and the bright sophisticated conversation had apparently dissolved all inhibitions, and she had needed desperately to be loved, it had been a long time then as it was a long time now. They sat together on his sofa and drank vodka gimlets, and he kissed her, put his tongue in her mouth, stroked her breasts almost casually—and all at once the euphoria and the anticipation and the passion faded away, and she was completely sober; she was like slick silver ice inside. She broke the kiss, and he looked at her smiling and suggested they go into the bedroom, and she could see the outline of his penis, half-erect, her eyes on him there and nowhere else, and fright