The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [185]
When the Ingledews got home that night and went to bed, John Henry wasn’t in the mood, and Sonora accused him of drinking too much. As they were dressing for the third party the following Saturday, she made him promise not to drink so much. At the party, he told the secretary, “Look, let’s do it early so I’ll have time to recuperate before bedtime.” Sonora lost interest in the man she was talking to, and noticed John Henry was missing. When he reappeared, she asked, “Where did you go?” He replied, “I was out in the kitchen, talking to some guys.”
Later in the evening, Sonora found herself in conversation with the secretary’s husband, who kept refilling her drink until she was too tipsy too early. She had made John Henry promise not to drink so much and now here she herself was drinking too much. She liked the secretary’s husband, and thought he was witty. Every time he finished a joke he would lean down and kiss her underneath her ear. One time when he did that, he whispered in her ear, “Let’s get some fresh air.” The room was stuffy with cigarette smoke, and also hot, and she thought they could continue their conversation out on the porch, so she stepped outside with him. There weren’t any chairs on the porch. “Let’s sit in my car,” the man suggested. They sat in the car. The man put his arm around her, but she brushed it off. He put it around her again, and she was too tipsy to bother brushing it off again. She didn’t care. After a while he took one of her hands and placed it on his groin and she felt him swell; she tried to take her hand away but he held it there. “Let me go,” she protested. He whispered in her ear, “I’ll let you go if you’ll kiss it a while.” She slapped him, hard, and got out of the car and returned to the party, where she found Hank and apologized to him for having drunk so much and asked to go home.
At the next party, she avoided the secretary’s husband. But late in the evening everybody started taking their clothes off, declaring they were going to have an orgy. John Henry and Sonora argued; she wanted to go, he wanted to stay. She left, saying he could get somebody else to drive him home. After the orgy, which John Henry didn’t particularly enjoy, the secretary and her husband drove him home. “You ought to have a talk with that girl,” the secretary’s husband told him. Sonora was in bed, but she turned on the light when he came in, and they had a talk. It was quite a talk. Sonora began by demanding to know if he had had sex at the orgy, and when he told her that was the point of the whole thing, she was furious. “Do you think I would ever do a thing like that?” she demanded. “You’d have to get used to it, gradually,” he said. “You think I would?” she said. “Would you want me to?” “I don’t know,” he admitted, but allowed, “I guess if I was doing it I couldn’t object if you were.” “Oh ho!” she said. “Did you know that that man, that…what’s his name…the husband of one of the secretaries at your plant…when we were at the last party he somehow talked me into sitting in his car with him, and then he tried to get me to give him a blow job! Would you have let me give him a blow job?” John Henry did not answer, because he had still not settled the