BSS-641-T A MOTHER-DAUGHTER TWOSOME by Peter Jensen
CHAPTER ONE
Ann Walker trudged wearily from the front office of the Bay Construction Company, and turned down Market Street to begin the four block walk to her car. San Francisco screamed around her in the throes of its rush-hour convulsions, spewing people and cars and dirt and noise out of its belly in frenzied, hysterical haste. The sky was low with the smog that had settled in from the bay, and a half-ridden sun broiled the sweating city mercilessly. It was hot, noisy, cramped and stinking. It was progress.
"Hey, get the hell out of the way!"
Ann Walker jerked her head up, and stepped quickly back up onto the curb. An irate cab driver squealed around her, blasting his horn at the same time, and staring at her as though she'd insulted him personally by having delayed him the two-and-a-half seconds she'd been standing in the gutter. Ann glared back at him, angered by his anger, feeling the tension of the day suddenly wash over her. Then she was pushed off the curb by the mass of humanity pressed up behind her, as the traffic light turned green and the mindless herd began to swarm across the intersection. She stumbled, caught herself, and hurried ahead to keep up with the flow. She finally reached the parking lot that held her car, and waited while the attendant tried courageously to find her small Ford Falcon in the endless sea of parked automobiles. She slumped down onto a bench, and tried to close her mind to the maddening frenzy that possesses a city between 4:30 and 6:00.
Ann was 36 years old, and had lived in San Francisco for the last two years. But she could never adjust herself to the city's rush, the tension, the nerve-wracking tempo that others seemed to take for granted. She was a beautiful woman, with dark brown hair which lay in soft curls on her shoulders, and an almost naive face, which was betrayed only by a pair of intense, almost smoldering eyes. She affected a somewhat cool manner, and often gave others the impression of aloofness, and perhaps even conceit; but this was only a defense, a rein that held her frustrations in check. It was only in her eyes that one could perceive the fire that burned inside her, could even guess at the wild a****l that lay imperfectly concealed behind that cool exterior. It was this combination of aloofness and yet the hint of some insatiable desire that served to make her irresistibly magnetic to men, who flocked to her like flies to honey. And the more they flocked, the more aloof she became, her defenses barely able to hold in check the intensity of her inner passions.
Ann's car finally came sputtering out of the parking lot, adding more than its share to the poison in the air around her. She quickly paid the attendant, and slid her slender body behind the wheel. She eased out of the parking lot's driveway, and began to make her slow, agonizing way out of the city. This was the part of the day she hated most. Even the morning rush hour was not this bad, because then she was fresh, still untouched by the day's trials and tribulations. But now, after a day's frustrating monotony...
Ann blasted her horn at a Lincoln Continental which was trying to force its way into her line of traffic. She eased the accelerator toward the floor, cutting him off and forcing him to brake with a jerk. He glared at her, she glared at him, and the traffic slowed around them like a river flowing around song unseen obstruction. Then Ann scooted ahead of the Lincoln, victor in this round of her fight to escape the city, and made her way toward the Bayshore Freeway, southbound.
She lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in South San Francisco, which had no advantages except that it was relatively inexpensive. But that was enough. Her job as secretary for the Bay Construction Company certainly didn't pay very well, and to think of moving into something closer to her work and therefore more expensive, was out of the question. Ann tolerated her work, but didn't enjoy it. Still, it was something, and the best she could find with her work record. She had moved all around the country in the last 18 years, seldom staying in one place more than a few years, usually staying far less. The cities she had lived in were so numerous that she often lost track of them, and her past was filled with certain periods of time she couldn't even account for. But she didn't think about that often: to her, one city was like another, one job was like another, and except for periodic changes in setting, her life followed the same pattern with frustrating sameness.
It hadn't always been that way. In high school Ann had been quite a participant in the school's social scene. She had been a cheerleader, class vice-president, homecoming queen, all of the things that typify a young girl's high school success story. Boys had swarmed around her, inviting her out, walking her to classes, begging for some of the attention she gave to those she liked. But, that had all changed, abruptly, her senior year... had changed with a finality that still drove her from place to place in an unending attempt to escape its irrevocable consequences.
The lovely secretary tried to force her mind onto some other subject, but it returned every time to the pain of that last year in school. She hadn't really even known Tom well. She had only accepted his offer of a date in order to attend a last minute beach party with some friends, and had not even found him that attractive. Tom had been very attentive, and Ann had had much too much wine to drink, and before sloe knew it she was wrestling with him on the beach, separated from the others, at first resisting and then, aroused beyond endurance by his sexual foreplay, finally accepting his body with an abandon that took Tom completely by surprise.
Ann passed a trembling hand across her soft brown eyes, and tried to focus on the traffic. But the cars ahead of her slowed until they came to a complete stop, and while she waited for the metal river to start flowing again, she tried to remember what it had been like, that first time.
She remembered a great deal of pain, her shame once it was all over, and her agonized waiting until her period came, but little more. And when her period hadn't come, she'd waited longer, praying that it was just delayed, her fears of pregnancy immobilizing her completely, until finally she was simply spending the entire day in bed at home. Finally, her mother had forced her to go to the doctor, thinking she might be seriously ill, but having no idea of the nature of her illness. The doctor easily drew the truth from her, and when his tests were completed, her terrible fears were proven true.
Ann felt a shiver run through her curvaceous body, still able to feel the effect that awful news had had upon her so many years ago. The doctor had told her mother immediately, and her mother, despite Ann's protestation, had insisted that the boy marry her. Ann hadn't wanted that, simply because she hadn't known Tom very well, but Mrs. Walker had insisted, and there followed a traumatic four months while Tom and his family were convinced, arrangements were made, and Ann herself grew steadily larger with the life inside her. They were married in her fourth month, and it seemed for a while that things would be all right. But then, even before the baby was born, they began to quarrel, she perhaps made more edgy by her pregnancy, and he unable to give her the patience and understanding she desired. They had even come to blows on one occasion, Tom knocking her down at the height of one of their arguments. But then he had apologized profusely, as he always did, and promised that it would never happen again. But, of course, it did, with increasing frequency.
And then the baby had been born, and it had seemed again that they might be able to function as a unity and live together, this time through the mediating influence of their daughter. But it was soon apparent that even little Lani could not act as a bridge to cross that chasm which lay between the two of them. For eight tempestuous months after her birth, they had made life miserable for one another, until finally Ann had discovered that Tom was having an affair with a woman in the same apartment building, and she'd decided to leave him. It hadn't surprised her that he was having an affair, because she hadn't slept with him for months, and yet that affair gave her the excuse she needed to rationalize in her own conscience the step she was taking.
The divorce proceedings had been short, and unprotected. Tom had been just as willing Ann to break off their obvious mismatch. She had been awarded a small alimony, but most important of all for her, she had been awarded custody of her c***d, Lani.
The insistent blaring of a horn gradually broke through the curtain of Ann's memories, and she looked up to see that traffic had again begun to move on the Bayshore. She quickly moved ahead, and gradually picked up speed until she was going a relatively brisk 45 miles per hour. Her mind was somewhat at ease now, pacified by the turn her thoughts had taken in the direction of her daughter.
Ann smiled again. Lani had been such a beautiful baby, had hardly ever cried, had walked before she was 18 months, and was talking by the time she was 2 old. She was Ann's one joy in life, and had become gradually over the years her only real reason for living. After the trauma of her marriage, Lani had formed the cornerstone of her sanity, and for a year after her divorce, the two of them had constituted a self-sufficient entity, with little or no contact with the outside world. Without that time with her c***d, alone, to recuperate from the wounds which her marriage had left upon her, Ann might very well have broken down completely.
But while Lani had been able to salve those wounds with the simple fact of her presence, she had not been able to heal the scars they left on Ann's personality, and on her sexual being in particular. Anything that remotely reminded the young mother of the traumatic experience she had been through with her immature husband was avoided, shoved into the far recesses of her mind to lie hidden behind an almost neurotic wall of repression. She had been hurt irreparably, and she had subconsciously placed the blame for all her troubles on the sexual side of her nature. She feared any kind of intimate involvement, and rejected coolly all advances made by the scores of men drawn irresistibly to her, with the result that, as the years passed, her sexual frustration increased. And as it increased, her fear of her own sexuality increased as well, and she expended more and more energy to keep that sexuality hidden, disarmed, incapable of leading her into relationships that might prove painful or destructive.
And so she moved from place to place, thinking she was avoiding entanglements that would divert her attention from her young daughter, but in reality simply trying to escape the undeniable pressures exerted on her by her own seething sensuality. She had begun by moving around the east coast, from Delaware to South Carolina, and then her fears had driven her west. Each time she would move into a city, find a dull and usually poorly paying job, and try to settle with Lani into some kind of routine that resembled stability. She knew, instinctively, that her daughter needed that stability, and that she herself needed it as well. She would slowly make a few friends, and begin to come out of her shell slightly, and then she would find herself being drawn to one of the many men who pursued her with stubborn persistence.
At first those men would seem content with a purely platonic relationship, and Ann would perceptibly bloom on the release of having someone to talk to, someone with whom she could break through the icy walls of her self-imposed aloofness. But then, inevitably she would find that those men began to make demands on her, sexual demands, demands that showed either an unwillingness or an inability to understand her reluctance to become intimately involved. And then would come the inevitable conversations that stretched painfully into the middle of the night, and then the arguments, and then the final break. Sometimes the break was clean, and Ann would be able to stay where she was, though more confused and frustrated than before. But at other times, the men in her life would not give up. They would be able to sense the restrained desire, the hidden but burning sexuality that twisted the young woman with its force, and would try to help her bring it out into the open, to deal with it, to come to terms with herself. And it was then that Ann fled, terrified, not only from their offers of help, but from herself as well.
The tired young woman left the freeway, and began to make her way up the small streets to her apartment. The houses all passed by her with a hypnotic sameness, colored in nauseous shades of dirty pastels, squeezed together as though trying to impress the curious observer of their solidarity with one another. But there were no curious observers in South San Francisco, and their solidarity had long since atrophied into mere congestion.
Turning into her parking space, the beautiful secretary cut the motor and wearily eased her voluptuous body from behind the steering wheel. She didn't bother to lock the car, but made her way toward the common entrance she shared with the 8 other apartments in her building, fill cramped cubicles exactly like her own. She stopped by her mail box hopefully, but it offered her nothing more than an old circular she'd never bothered to remove. She sighed, and turned to the stairs leading to her apartment.
"Well, Mrs. Walker, nothing again today?"
Ann stopped but didn't turn around. If there was one thing she didn't want to do now it was talk to Mrs. Pinchley, perhaps the most unpleasant neighbor she had ever been unfortunate enough to have.
"No, Mrs. Pinchley, nothing again today."
Without turning to confront the prunish old lady, Ann again started for the stairs. She didn't reach them, however, nor did she really expect to.
"Well that's a shame," came the irritating voice from behind her, "but you know it's just what I was saying to you the other day, Mrs. Walker, about young people today. They just don't seem to have any consideration, any common courtesy even. Why, I remember when I was young, I used to write my family at least twice a week! Sometimes three times! If I were you, Mrs. Walker, I'd give that c***d of yours a talking to. Now I don't want to butt in, of course..."
Then don't, you decrepit old bitch, Ann thought to herself impatiently, wanting only to get upstairs and pour a relaxing drink for herself.
"... but it seems to me that that daughter of yours has no respect for her elders. That's what it is. And those friends of hers, those hippie people, why I don't believe they've taken a bath in months, Mrs. Walker, and that's a fact! And now she's gone to live up there on that hippie commune! Well, deary, I know you must be sick with worry, and without any letters from her at all..."
Ann turned to the babbling old woman abruptly, and glared down on her.
"Mrs. Pinchly, I am not sick with worry, I do get letters from my daughter, and I'll thank you to keep your..."
"Yes, Mrs. Walker, but how many letters?" the old hen cackled, "two in the last three months! Why when I was young, I used to write my family at least twice a week! Sometimes three times!"
"Mrs. Pinchley," Ann said harshly, her patience at an end, "I'm sure you did. In fact, I'm constantly amazed that you can find anything more to talk about."
Ann turned on her heel and walked quickly up the stairs, leaving the old woman open-mouthed in the hallway below. She unlocked the door to her apartment, and went inside, closing it behind her. Goddamned old gossip, she thought to herself, and moved to her small, meagerly supplied bar. She poured herself a drink, and took a long swallow, letting it wash the tension out of her with its soothing warmth.
She turned to the small air conditioner that made life just bearable during the summer, switched it on, and moved across the room to the hallway leading to the kitchen. She walked slowly along the hall, stopped in front of the second door, opened it quietly, and stood leaning against the door jamb, looking into the room sadly.
But Mrs. Pinchley is right, Ann admitted to herself, I am sick with worry. If Lani would only write, and tell me what's happening...
The upset young mother stood looking into her daughter's room for a few moments, at the high school pennants and the stuffed a****ls spread across the brightly colored bedspread, and then closed the door softly. She made her way through the hall to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out some ice to cool her drink. Then she sat slowly at the kitchen table, lowered her face into her hands, and began, very quietly to cry.
It had all started with her latest move to California, two years before. Lani had been in her last year of high school, and had begun to show signs of restlessness, of dissatisfaction, not with her mother, but with things in general. She had begun running with a strange crowd, long-haired, strangely clothed, and rebellious. Ann had been careful not to criticize, knowing that her opposition would only serve to make her daughter more committed to the group of people she had chosen as friends. Throughout that year, Lani's relationship with her mother had remained the same understanding, warm bond that it had always been, and there had been no ruptures in their deep-seated love for one another.
And yet, not long after Lani had begun to run with this crowd, she started talking about leaving home, and making her own way in the world. Again, Ann had talked this over with her rationally, and unemotionally, even though the very thought of life without Lani caused her unbearable pain. And then, one day, it had happened. Lani had told her mother that some of her friends had decided to join a commune in Mendocino, and that she had decided to go with them. Ann tried desperately to dissuade her, arguing that she hadn't yet finished school, that she wasn't ready to take this great step yet, that she knew nothing about the commune or the people in it. But Lani would not be dissuaded, and Ann knew that it was useless to try to forbid her strong-willed young daughter. Again the mother decided to preserve at all costs the warm, loving relationship that existed between the two of them, and after warning Lani of the dangers, and making sure her daughter knew that her bedroom would always be waiting for her if she should want to come back, Ann gave her unwilling consent to Lani's plan.
The air conditioner was just beginning to make its presence felt in the small apartment. Ann raised her head from the cradle of her hands, stretching her long slim legs sensuously under the table, and spreading her finely rounded thighs slightly apart, letting the air circulate some of the heat and dampness from between them. She stared fixedly at the wall opposite her, completely absorbed in her thoughts of her daughter. A slight frown creased her beautiful face as she remembered the one time Lani had come home on a visit from the commune. She had brought a whole group of friends with her, both boys and girls, and they had all slept on the floor in the same room, in bleeping bags and blankets.
There had been almost 10 of them, all long-haired, freely looking types, with a vacant and yet somehow preoccupied look about them. Lani had been wonderful, but Ann felt her attention often preempted by her friends and so they had not really had much of a chance to talk. Ann sensed that her daughter was not completely happy with the choice she had made, that there was something in the back of her mind that allowed just a trace of doubt to gnaw quietly but persistently at her. But there had not been time during that short visit for the two of them to sit down and evaluate Lani's experiences, and before Ann could decide just what the source of Lani's doubt was, she had gone away again, back to Mendocino and the commune, in the company of her motley and disheveled crew of friends.
Ann raised her body wearily from the table and walked to the small living room, passing by her absent daughter's room this time without stopping. She walked over to the small sofa and lay down, closing her eyes with a sigh, trying to rid her mind of the anxiety that was beginning to close ins on it with undeniable persistency. Her voluptuously formed body lay tensed on the sofa, her head propped up on an old and faded cushion. It had been almost five months since Lani's visit, and since that time Ann's home life had been a torture. She was beginning to drink too much, and spent her evenings wandering from one place in the house to another, absently, as though she were searching for something without any idea of what it might be. Perhaps she had devoted herself too much to her beautiful c***d, perhaps her life had revolved around Lani's too completely, but she knew it was useless to speculate about that kind of thing. The fact was that she did feel lost without her daughter, was drifting rudderless through the maddening calm of her everyday, humdrum life.
The late afternoon sun forced its way through the dirty panes of her apartment windows, warming sofa where she lay with lazy, hot insistence. Ann must have dozed off, because when she opened her eyes the apartment had grown dim with evening's half-light, and the clock on her mantle said 7:30. Automatically, she got up to fix herself some dinner, and then stopped herself. She wasn't hungry. She sat again on the sofa, and let her drowsiness seep out of her slowly, leaving her somewhat rested and momentarily calmer.
I dreamed something, she asked herself, what was it? She let her mind ease back to a few moments before, and then a slight smile fitted briefly across her beautifully sculpted face. Of course... Lani. I dreamed I went to visit her, and I held her quietly in my arms on a grassy hillside and the sun was very hot on our faces, and there was nobody in the world but the two of us...
Ann leaned back against the sofa, a look of concern on her face. She tried to imagine what Lani's reaction would be, if she were to show up unannounced in Mendocino, at the commune. She thought Lani would be happy to see her, but she didn't know for sure. Abruptly, the young woman stood up once again, and wandered acres to the window nervously. It was Friday, and she had nothing but another empty weekend to look forward to, 48 hours to spend in idleness, with no housekeeping, no social life, and no family to keep busy with. She looked out on the rows and rows of dirty pastel houses, stretching down the hill toward the bay, and pictured happy families, mothers and daughters, looking forward to their two day vacation with anticipation and excitement. She stared out the window, her firm, high-set breasts beginning to heave with frustration, then quickly pulled the curtains and started anxiously toward the kitchen, trying to rid herself of the pain that was beginning to invade her tantalizing body. She stopped unwillingly in the hallway again, opposite Lani's bedroom door, and stood staring at it, through it, but not opening it. And then, suddenly her mind eased, and the pain flowed out of her chest, and her anxiety ridden body stopped its quivering. It was as though an enormous burden had been inexplicably lifted from her shoulders, as though an important decision had just been made for her.
Why not? What was she afraid of? She would go to Mendocino! She would talk to Lani, and try to discover if she was really happy. She did not admit it to herself, but she knew she would try to convince Lani to come back to South San Francisco with her, to take up their life again just as it had been before. And even if she didn't come, what better way was there to spend a weekend but with her lovely young daughter, just the two of them?
A great smile radiated across the voluptuous secretary's beautiful face, turning what had been anxiety into excitement. She would go first thing in the morning, it would only take a few hours to drive to Mendocino, and then she would see her precious c***d again. She fumed happily towards the kitchen, suddenly hungry now, and then stopped.
To hell with dinner, she thought to herself enthusiastically, I've got to figure out what to wear! She rushed into her bedroom, alive and happy for the first time in many, many months, and almost danced over to her closet. Her mind was already soaring far beyond South San Francisco, far beyond the small confines of her too small apartment. She was already in Mendocino, in the hot, hot sun, lying on a grassy hillside and holding her innocent young daughter in the gentle embrace of her loving arms. Her daughter? Her life!!!!
CHAPTER TWO
"Bob, you just don't understand," Lani Walker was saying, "your home life was so screwed up, you just can't see what I'm talking about. I love my mother... we've got a really beautiful thing between us, you know?"
Lani lay on her back, her eyes searching the cloudless California sky, her bare toes playing little games with the golden brown grass that covered the hills of Mendocino.
"I mean, my mother doesn't have all the hangups about her k** that your parents have. She treats me like an adult, so there isn't any need for me to rebel against her. I mean I didn't run away from her like you did from your parents. There wasn't any need to."
"Look, k**do, I didn't run away from my parents. I just left, see? And anyway, I think you're just k**ding yourself, because your mother just isn't as understanding as she pretends."
"Bob, that's not true..."
"Yes it is true, baby, I know it's true... When we were all down at your mother's place, she was hanging all over you, man, like you were some kind of teddy bear or something..."
"Come on, Bob, that's not fair! Just because you can't visualize any kind of love between parents or c***dren doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? I mean..."
"All right! Let's just forget about it, O.K.? It's Saturday afternoon, and the sun is shining... let's talk about something else for Christ's sake! The whole thing is so fucking sentimental I think I'm going to cry."
Lani looked over at him as he turned away on his side, and then she sat up abruptly, and looked away. Her long blonde hair was tangled with strands of grass, and her eyes were moist with a few tentative tears caused by the lack of understanding on her boyfriend's part. Her face was almost an exact replica of her mother's, with the same soft brown eyes and delicately formed features, but lacking the coolness, the distance her mother had cultivated after so many years of frustration. Lani was young, but already had a figure that surpassed even her mother's, with large rounded breasts and gently flaring hips, and soft smooth thighs that were tanned a delicious golden brown by the hot California sun. Her slender arms reached out around her shapely legs, and clasped together tightly around her knees, which were trembling slightly now with emotion. She glanced over at Bob, and tried to decide why he was sometimes so harsh with her. She knew he had had a rough life, but still... sometimes it was as though he didn't have any feeling for her at all.
She quickly turned her thoughts away from this unpleasant thought, deciding that it was absurd to even suspect that Bob didn't love her. After all, wasn't he one of the main reasons she had come to the commune in the first place? She looked away, across the lush green hills covered sparsely by single standing oaks in irregular patterns, and her mind wandered aimlessly through visions of her past, her school, old friends, her mother...
"Look, k**do, I'm sorry."
Lani's memories were invaded by Bob's deep masculine voice. She didn't turn to him immediately.
"Oh, that's all right Bob. I guess I get carried away sometimes when I think about Mom. It's my fault really."
"No, I shouldn't have yelled at you. It's my fault. But, like I don't understand one thing, k**do."
She turned to him questioningly.
"... I mean, if everything was so fine back in San Francisco, why did you come up here? Christ, you could have stayed there in your Momma's lovin' arms!"
Lani looked at him in surprise, but saw he was serious. She'd come for him, of course!
"Oh, I don't know. I guess I just had to settle down in a place of my own, you know? I mean, ever since I remember, Mom and I have been either moving in or moving out of crummy little two bedroom apartments. I can't even remember how many. And, I never went to the same school more than a year and a half... Oh, I don't mean it was all that bed! All I'm saying is... well... I just had to find something a little more stable, you know?"
Bob leaned over to her, and drew her supple young body over to him roughly, pressing her up against him.
"Yeah, I know k**do... something stable like me, huh?"
Lani winced a little from the unexpected roughness, and then eased herself into the curve of his huge, muscular frame. She snuggled up like an infant against his massive chest, and worked her face up against the rough stubble of his week-old bear, sighing with pleasure. She felt the crotch of his jeans begin to bulge as his hidden cock quickly grew excited by her tantalizing closeness, and laughingly reached down to touch its fabric-covered hugeness with her small tanned hand.
"Mmmm... well, I guess you're pretty stable, all right..."
With a throaty growl, Bob threw her over onto her back, and pressed her breasts back against her small frame with his powerful body. He reached under her skimpy body shirt and ran one hand teasingly up over one soft unencumbered nipple, raising it to an instant hardness.
"Want to see just how stable, k**do?" he asked laughingly.
Lani moaned with the pleasure elicited by his expert manipulations of her breasts, and answered only by reaching down seductively to slowly unbutton the top button of his straining blue jeans.
***
Ann Walker eased her Ford Falcon to the side of the small one lane road, and pulled out the map the man at the local postoffice had given her. Farm Road 1789. This must be it, she thought, looking up for confirmation at the billboard on her right. Past the Quaker State sign and turn right. She set the map down on the seat beside her, and eased the car into gear.
She hadn't started as early that morning as she'd wanted. As soon as she'd woke up, she'd thought of a million things she could spend that Saturday doing, errands she'd put off for months, letters she'd never planned to write... but then her mind had stopped rushing around desperately trying to think up excuses for not coming, and she'd realized she was just being silly.
She was still nervous, though, even after her long drive -- nervous about how Lani would receive her surprise visit, uncertain whether she might be intruding. She was almost convinced that Lani would be overjoyed to see her, but not quite. She hoped that the single fact of her presence would not put any kind of pressure on her daughter, making her feel as though she had to choose between her mother and the commune. The reason Ann felt this way, of course, was that u*********sly she hoped Lani would make that choice, and would return to South San Francisco with her.
She drove back onto the road, and turned right onto Farm Road 1789. She drove up a long hill with the sun at her back, and continued on until the paved road turned into gravel, and the gravel finally gave way to a rutted, sun-baked dirt that threatened to wrench her old car's shock absorbers from the chassis. Bravely, she went on, and finally came to an old broken down fence stretched haphazardly across the road with a carefully painted sign hung beside it, the words "The Zodiac" emblazoned on the sign in red letters.
Well, this is it, she thought to herself nervously, and looked with apprehension at the dry hillsides around her, broke only by the line of rusted barbed wire that stretched out from the gate until it disappeared behind the curve of the hill. The isolation and apparent desolation of the place disturbed her, and she wondered how Lani could enjoy being so cut off from civilization. She got out of the car, and opened the old gate, which creaked in the hot stillness of the afternoon, eerily, like an invitation to enter another world. Getting back in her car, she drove through, stopped, got out once again, and closed the gate behind her. You're here, the gate creaked at her once again, and she hurriedly got back into her car and drove on.
After a mile or so, she came suddenly into a clearing, surrounded by homemade wooden cabins peaking out into it from under the protection of a grove of huge oak trees. The houses were all fairly small, except for one building that stood out from the others and had a long front porch built out from it, covered by a shingled roof. There didn't seem to be many people about, though Ann did see a couple of naked c***dren playing around one of the houses in a carefree game of kick-the-can, and two woman dressed in calico sitting in the shade of a large tree, mending what looked like handmade shirts. She drove up to the main building, which she took to be some kind of meeting hall, and stopped her car in front.
As she slid her slender body from behind the wheel, she saw a man walk out on the porch in front of her, and gaze down at her with curiosity. His eyes peered out from behind a massive, tangled growth of beard and hair, that practically hid his face from view. His hands rested lazily in the pockets of his faded, patched coveralls.
"Good afternoon," Ann ventured timorously. "My name is Ann Walker."
Ann could feel the bearded man's eyes taking her in, and suddenly she felt very out of place in this almost 19th century community, dressed as she was in her modern, brightly colored, light summer dress. She waited for the man to give some response to her introduction, but he simply continued staring at her, impassively.
"My daughter lives here in this... place," Ann continued bravely. "Her name is Lani Walker."
The silent man descended the stairs slowly, and walked over to where Ann was standing. Her nervousness grew as he approached her, but then he stuck out his hand and smiled.
"Of course... Lani. I'm afraid we don't know very many last names around here. How do you do?"
Ann shook his hand gratefully, suddenly put completely at ease by the graciousness and ease of his manner.
"I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr...?"
The man smiled again, quietly, and put his hands back into his pockets.
"... Moses," he said simply.
"Well, I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Moses."
Ann was surprised to hear him laugh out loud, and then questioned him with a smile.
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh," the man beamed at her, "but I'm afraid I'm not a mister. My name is just Moses. And while you're here in the Village, I hope you don't mind if we call you Ann."
Ann returned his laugh, comfortable somehow with this seemingly gentle man.
"Oh, I'm sorry... Moses then. And I'd love you to call me Ann."
"Well that's fine. Good. Now I suppose you're looking for Lani?"
"Yes, I am," Ann answered, "can you tell me where I might find her?"
"The last I saw her she was walking up toward the Chapel."
"The Chapel?" Ann echoed.
"Oh, sorry, that's what we call the hillside where we sometimes meditate and have group... gatherings," Moses said with a sly smile. "For us, it's a kind of church, so..."
"I think that's lovely," Ann laughed, "that Chapel! That's wonderful! Could you tell me how to get there? You see, I'm very anxious to see my daughter."
"Well, she's with Bob right now..."
"Oh, is that a friend of hers?" Ann asked hesitantly.
The man looked at her with a strange expression playing about his eyes.
"We're all friends here, Ann. You'll soon find that out."
"Of course, I forgot," she laughed. "After all, isn't that what a commune's for?"
"You're very right, Ann, that is exactly what a commune is for." The same strange smile formed on his lips, making Ann vaguely uneasy somehow, but she quickly dismissed it.
They chatted for a few moments more, and then Ann asked again how she could get to the Chapel. Moses indicated a path rising steeply from the Village, as he had told her the area where they were now standing was called, and said that it came out right above the Chapel. Ann thanked him and turned to make her way across the clearing.
"Oh Ann?" he called after her.
"Yes?" she answered, turning back toward him.
"You're welcome to stay and share our dinner with us."
"That would be lovely," she called to him. "In fact, I was hoping to stay the whole weekend. Would that be all right?"
"That would be fine! We'd love to have you. And you'll enjoy it."
"You know," she said smiling, "I think I will, Moses."
He watched as she waved happily to him, and turned to climb the steep path. His eyes devoured her perfectly formed hips as they swung sensuously, enticingly from side to side.
"I know you will, Ann," he whispered under his breath, an almost leering grin twisting his face under his huge beard, "I know you will!"
***
It was a hard climb up the narrow, rock-filled path, and Ann had to stop two or three times to catch her breath. Whew, I'm really out of shape! she panted to herself silently, standing about fifty feet below the crest of the hill. Well, one last pull... and she started again, slowly, forcing one foot ahead of the other.
She had been pleasantly surprised at the reception Moses had given her back at the meeting house. She could admit to herself now just how frightened she had been to come to the commune, frightened of people who seemed so very much different from herself. But Moses, despite his long hair and strange ways, had seemed genuinely friendly, and Ann had been pleased. She had also been impressed with the cleanliness and order of the commune. There was nothing in it that was new, of course, and all the buildings seemed to be hanging together only with chewing gum and rubber bands, but despite its very makedo character, it was clean. Most of the houses sported a fairly new coat of dark green or brown paint, the yards around them were raked clean, and Ann could see absolutely no litter or trash cluttering the place up at all. She didn't really know what she'd expected, perhaps a rural slum of tarpaper shacks with garbage and junked cars providing occasional touches of impoverished color, but the rustic beauty of "The Zodiac" as the commune was called, quickly dissolved all her preconceptions.
And now, walking breathlessly toward the crest of the hill, the pretty secretary breathed in the smokeless air, smelled the healthy scent of dusty oak trees and sun-toasted grass, and decided that Lani might just be right. If one could choose between the exhilaration of a summertime hillside under a cloudless sky, and the stench and filth of a modern city, who in his right mind would be anywhere but where she was right at this very moment, panting uncontrollably as she forced her lungs to accept more oxygen than they'd had in years.
At last, Ann reached the top, and paused again to catch her breath. She looked back over the climb she'd just made, and could just make out through the trees the tops of a few of the buildings down in the Village. Then she turned, and began to make her way through the small line of trees that separated her from the meadow on the other side of the hill. Her eyes sparkled with the exertions of her climb, and her unaccustomed ears happily caught the sound of birds talking to her from their hidden perches in the oaks around her, the wind rustling softly through the branches, the healthy sound of her own heavy breathing.
She suddenly stopped, hearing another sound she couldn't identify. It was off to her left, and sounded like small a****ls digging hastily into the ground. Silently, like some kind of novice big-game hunter, she moved to her left, crouched over, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was. She was soon surprised to hear what sounded like muffled voices as well, coming from somewhere at the edge of the line of trees, just at the top of the meadow. She crept closer, and the sounds became more distinct. They were voices, she decided, and involved in a fairly intense discussion it seemed. If she just got a little closer she could perhaps just... Ann's hand suddenly flew to her mouth, and she stifled a horrified shriek which threatened to burst from her constricting throat. Her eyes grew wide with disbelieving shock and revulsion, and she groped frantically for the tree beside her to keep from falling.
For the words she had just heard distinctly were the unmistakable passionate tones of her own daughter, Lani, crying out madly: "Yes, Bob! Oohhhhh, yes! Yes, you've got such a beautiful hard cock! I love it inside, love it filling my cunt! Ohhhh! Fuck me, Bob fuck me like this forever! Ohhhhhhhh!"
Ann steadied herself desperately against the massive trunk of the towering oak tree, and slowly lowered her trembling hand from her mouth. This can't be true, she thought to herself wildly, I must have made a mistake! That's not... it can't be! Unwillingly, she was drawn toward the lewd sounds, unable to break away. She came up over a little rise of ground, and hid herself behind a tree. She could hear the scuffling again, the sounds she had thought were small a****ls, but the voices had stopped. She looked with trepidation down toward the meadow and...
Ann gasped almost audibly as her eyes located the source of the voices. She stared with horrible fascination to where, not fifty feet from where she stood, two people lay wrapped in an obscenely intimate embrace, completely unaware of her presence. Her body tensed completely as she saw that they were both naked, and that the girl, who lay partially hidden by the man's huge body, had long flowing blonde hair, just like her daughter's. No, she tried uselessly to convince herself, tears of shame and disgust beginning to flow unhindered into her eyes, it can't be Lani!
But it was Lani, her face contorted in the twisted throes of a building passion, her long, slender legs wrapped around the powerful body above her, undulating slowly under his teasing thrusts. Ann sank to her knees, unable to even bear her own weight, much less run away from the obscene, heart-breaking scene. Her daughter, her one love in life! Not just submitting, but enjoying the lewd manipulations of the man above her! The tears coursed silently down the distraught mother's cheeks as her eyes remained glued to the salacious display before her... her own daughter.
... Lani Walker lay flat on her back in the grass and felt Bob's hugely expanding cock tease in and out of her in a quickening rhythm, as her cuntal-walls slowly expanded in her vagina's desire to accept all of it, until finally she could actually feel the tickling hairs of his balls slapping into the smooth crevice of her asscheeks when he lowered himself into her. Tingling sensations of aroused desire coursed through her veins, instigating new, salacious little chills that began to run along the base of her spine as she felt the measured tempo of Bob's strong thick cock skewering moistly into her upturned loins.
Lani's naked body began to twitch and writhe under him, and she heard mewling sounds tumbling from her lips, incessant little noises of passion that bubbled uncontrollably from her sensually parted mouth. Bob's unshaven face came down to kiss her and she thrust her tongue up into his mouth, drawing back her legs slightly, her buttocks moving provocatively against the softness of the grass, her seething pussy contracting as the bliss-building sensations increased unbelievably with his every stroke.
Bob felt her urgently answering throbs around the full, pulsing length of his deeply buried cock. Her moistly clasping cunt-flesh had begun a vibrant opening and closing action as it clutched at his throbbing rod of male flesh. Her pleasurable whining and purring sounds were suddenly filling the air and her head rolled from side to side on the grass, while her hips started a slow, obscene rotation around his cock sunk deep in her sun-browned belly. He clenched ho teeth tightly, sensing her nibbling vagina screwing itself up closer against his hair-covered loins.
Ann couldn't believe her eyes as she watched her innocent young daughter thrusting her beautiful, hungry young pussy lewdly up against the intruding cock of the muscular man above her. She wanted to scream out, to rush in and tear them apart, to protect her young daughter from the pain and shame she knew always accompanied sex. But she couldn't. All the strength in her had instantly evaporated in the burning realization that Lani was feeling no shame, was experiencing no pain, was in fact aggressively accepting the man's massive penis into her clasping vagina with an abandon and ecstasy that made her self-repressed mother gasp. She stared at the lewdly undulating couple, her eyes riveted on the glistening area of their loins, her own body beginning to tingle with the unwanted vicarious thrill of his blood-swollen penis sliding easily in and out, in and out, of her daughter's wetly lubricated young vagina.
Lani Walker's eyes widened, as she felt an abrupt new wave of sensual entrancement saturating her whole tingling body. A maddening electric-like prickle began in the sanctuary of her womb, spreading relentlessly over the raw nerve ends of her satin smooth flesh. She knew that a mass of exquisite moisture was enticingly covering the entire area of her nakedly exposed vaginal area. She rotated her hips excitedly from side to side around Bob's fleshy, plunging cock, sensing the complete dilation of her cunt as it sucked in time to his swollen cock's rhythmic throbs. Then he made himself immobile, resting above her with his strong arms placed on either side of her shoulders, letting her trembling, impassioned body pump up and down at will on the rigid shaft of solidly throbbing flesh that was fusing them into the oneness of soul and body.
Ann made one last desperate attempt to escape, to get up and leave this heartbreaking scene, but she couldn't. She remained immobilized by her revulsion and could only stare in horrible fascination as her daughter's moist, grasping cunt slid up and down the thick cock, the thin pink ridges of inner flesh pulling out and clinging to it as she screwed her luscious buttocks down on the grass, the salacious mouth up between her thighs absorbing the soft folds back into her when it swallowed the viscid, glistening length of his lust-engorged penis on the slow, tantalizing upstroke.
The unmoving young man watched the young girl's voluptuously naked body increase its eager gyrations and up-and-down motions with the passing of each second, the urgency of her thrusts against him growing more pronounced, her desire-gritted teeth in plain view as she strained toward that illusive orgasm. He felt the flow of her cuntal moisture coating her hungrily sucking pussy and heard the lewd wet sluicing sounds of the in-and-out fucking movements as Lani thrust greedily up his cock, taking it deep inside her, her back raising high to arch her cock-starved cunt tight up against him... Christ, it was too much... too much! He was ready to explode with the brain-warping lust she had peaked inside him!
He reached back, grasping her ankles and raising them slowly up and over her shoulders, eliciting a tiny wail of passion from her as he rolled her into a helpless ball of obscenely positioned loveliness beneath him.
Blinded with his own maddening desire, Bob drew his deeply buried penis from her cunt until only its huge bulbous tip was penetrating, then he plunged forward with every ounce of strength in him, fucking the full, aching length of it fiercely into her defenselessly exposed vagina.
"Auuugghhh... ooohhhhh... ooohhhh," Lani grunted as it raced up into her, hearing and feeling the damp smack of his pelvis battering against her nakedly upraised cunt. His strong, heavy body dropped down onto her with jarring force, crushing her full, aching breasts beneath her knees and into her chest. His thickly swollen cock smashed into her receptive cunt like a battering ram, pushing the no-longer-resisting folds of desire-moistened flesh again and again in wild, rippling waves before its smooth, rubbery head.
Oh, God, he had done it, Lani reasoned in her mounting bliss... if only he didn't fail her now! Ooohhh... she loved him, adored him... and his wonderful, handsome cock...! He'd begun longer, even harder strokes into her seething channel, while its moistly quivering walls clasped desperately around the thick, fleshy shaft slithering up frantically to devour its length to the hilt. His heavy, sperm-bloated balls were slapping deliciously into the dampness between her buttocks. She moaned loudly in relief to the complete filling of her cock-split pussy-hole, while he started a deep-thrusting grind into her thirstily palpitating cunt. She sensed her head tossing wildly, her mouth gasping and chanting unintelligibly in her maddening entrancement.
Lani's beautiful mother leaned unmoving against the protective oak tree, her eyes wide with horror as she watched her thrashing young daughter increase the maddening tempo of her grinding thrusts. Ann's belly was knotted with mixed feelings of shame, fear, and anger. She felt betrayed by Lani's obscene undulations, and yet she couldn't control a growing tingle in her own loins, an increasing excitement caused by the very lewdness of their passionate embrace. She tried to still the fire growing in her, but her attention was drawn irresistibly to the terrible scene only fifty feet away. Her ears heard the incomprehensible sounds of lust coming from her sweet young daughter's mouth, and she remained frozen by the complete unreality of what she was witnessing. No, she thought to herself wildly, not Lani... not my sweet little baby girl...
"Oh, God, Bob... I'm... I-I'm going to... I'm going to cum...! Oooohhh... yes... yessss, darling... I'm cumming...! Ohhhhh... fuck... fuck me hard... harder!" Lani pleaded in a voice shrill with desire, her hands clawing at his hard-driving buttocks, pulling him with impassioned frenzy deeper and deeper into her widespread crotch.
His thickly burgeoning cock fucking into her without mercy, made the cords in her throat and neck tighten in an unmistakable signal. She could think of nothing but the enormous, cataclysmic buildup rising like wildfire inside her! Her legs on either side of his plunging loins were jerking and twitching in lewd depravity, their warm, soft, white strength clamping him tight, then, releasing him as she pulled her knees back against the tips of her swollen breasts, waggling and thrusting her wet crotch and buttocks up at him, moaning and gasping continuously. She wailed to herself in her delicious enchantment, realizing that she was hopelessly impaled on his marvelous, rock-hard cock fucking into her seething vagina.
Bob had reached that point where he knew he'd blow his mind if he didn't cum soon! He gasped downward at where his lust-swollen rod was slipping smoothly in and out of her crazily working cunt, and concentrated on the feel of the soft hair-lined folds clasping and clinging to his furiously rampaging penis thrusting with jack-hammer force up into her.
He increased the pace and deepened his fucking as she writhed like a woman possessed beneath him, grinding up and down his cock with unbelievable fury, her legs ever jerking her toes curling as she lurched her trembling thighs wide and upward. He watched her breasts heave and quiver beneath his brutal pummeling... even saw their tiny nipples expand before his eyes as she tossed her head madly from side to side.
Then suddenly, she convulsed under him with the explosion of her passion!
"Oh... Ohooohhh... yes! Yessss! Here it cums! Oh my God! Now... Nowwwww! I-I-I'm cuummmiiinnnggg!"
Her cunt-walls opened as might a myriad of tiny springs, emitting a flood of warm, gushing fluid to bathe his thrusting, rampaging cock. He rammed harder, faster, burrowing it deep, deep into the hot liquid depths of her desperately spewing cunt while the warm, wet secretion seeped moistly out around the lewd battering-ram of his cock flowing down the crevice of her ass onto the grass beneath them, flooding his lust-tightened balls that were slapping rhythmically against her nakedly spasming anus.
"Oh, God... Darling... Darling!" Lani chanted, twisting and writhing in under him, spurring him on to force her legs farther and farther back over her head while he fucked into her like a madman. Bright flashes filled the sky above her again and again as she continued to groan out her climax, her cuntal emissions still flowing in spurts down the stretched and quivering cheeks of her roundly straining buttocks.
Then... then, she felt Bob tense, jerk and curse, followed by the hot jets of his sperm shooting deep up into the deep, hungry sanctuary of her waiting womb. Her head swam with licentious bliss as the hot, powerful squirts splattered wildly into her, filling her to the bursting point with their warm sticky whiteness. The hot viscid walls of her spasming vagina clasped and unclasped feverishly, milking the jerking organ like a sucking, starving mouth...
Her soft, lovely body seemed suddenly drained of everything and her limbs collapsed loosely on the matted grass as Bob released his grip on her legs. She lay spread-eagled and spent, feeling his heavy weight lifting from between her open thighs and the rush of air brush over her sweat-soaked body.
As they rolled away from each other, completely satiated by the intensity of their spent passion, Ann Walker suddenly became aware of where she was, and what she had witnessed. Her shock and revulsion at having seen her own daughter thrashing about naked on the exposed hillside quickly turned into a feeling of disgust with herself at having watched them like some 14 year old peeping tom, unable to tear her eyes front their lewd performance. She felt a strange sense of guilt invade her being, as though she had been caught sneaking a look at some obscene photograph and knew she couldn't let herself be discovered, couldn't ever let her daughter know she had spied on them like some perverted voyeur.
She raised her head once more to them, and saw that her daughter had reached over and grasped Bob's now flaccid cock gently, as though it were a cherished doll she loved to play with. Quickly, the anguished young mother turned away, not able to bear the sight any longer, and eased her way silently from the top of the hill back down the way she had come, crouched over and fleeing like an a****l. As soon as she had gone beyond their sight and hearing, she stood up quickly, stumbled, caught herself, and began to make her way blindly down the hill toward the Village as fast as she could. Gradually, she slowed down, came to her senses, began to think about what had occurred rationally, and tried to force her mind into a decision.
As she came out of the trees, and back into the clearing below, she looked as though she'd just returned from an invigorating, but somewhat dull, hike. The superficial calm of her exterior features, however, was belied by the tumult inside her mind. She had already decided that her daughter must leave this awful place, must come home with her to South San Francisco at once! There was no other way. Ann could see her sweet young c***d drifting inexorably away from her, caught in the current of her innocent and naive passions, swept away unaware of the evil influence of this terrible place, this "commune". She had to come home. For her own sake and, though Ann wouldn't have admitted it, for her mother's sanity as well. She had to come home!
CHAPTER THREE
Lani Walker was still flushed with the exertion of her passionate love-making, when she and Bob wandered down to the Village about 20 minutes later. It had been so wonderful, the feel of coarse grass on her naked body, the hot sun standing high overhead, the magnificent body of her boyfriend drawing from her every ounce of her sexual energies. They often made love in the middle of the day, and they never tired of the infinite ways they used their fresh young bodies together, ways which, before she had met Bob, Lani had never even suspected existed.
They ambled slowly into the clearing, rubbing their satiated bodies against each other with gentle playfulness, bumping and stumbling with laughing abandon. Then Lani stopped in surprise as she saw the familiar Ford Falcon parked in front of the main meeting hall.
"Hey Bob," she said, growing excited, "that looks like my mother's car."
Bob looked up and a slight frown twisted his face.
"Yeah, it sure does."
Lani ran up to the small car, peeked inside, saw the familiar upholstery and fittings, and then turned to Bob enthusiastically.
"It is her, Bob, she's come to visit me!"
"Great, k**do... great," he said darkly.
Lani didn't notice his tone of voice, but started quickly up the stairs onto the front porch of the meeting hall. She met Moses, the thickly bearded man in overalls who had made such a good impression on her mother, coming out the front door.
"Hey, Moses, guess what?"
Moses smiled at her excitement, and gave her a fatherly pat on the head.
"Your mother's come to visit. I know, I've already met her."
"Isn't she great?" Lani didn't wait for an answer. "Where is she? Is she inside?" She started for the screen door of the meeting hall.
"No, she's not in there," Moses advised her. "I showed her the way to your cabin. I think she wanted to sit down and rest. She was pretty tired from her climb."
"What climb?"
"She took a little walk up to the Chapel, looking for you," Moses answered. He caught the quick and apprehensive look Lani shot Bob, who was sitting now on the steps below them. "But she said she couldn't find you."
Lani's face eased in a sly wink at him, and she laughed a reassured laugh.
"Well, it's a good thing she didn't. She might not have liked what she found."
"Maybe she should have found us," Bob interjected harshly, "then maybe she'd realize you're a big girl now and she doesn't have to come change your Goddamn diapers anymore!"
"Oh Bob," the voluptuous young teenager retorted, "it's the first time she's visited me in all the time I've been up here. You're just being difficult." She turned again to Moses. "You said she was down at my cabin?"
"Yeah, she went down about fifteen minutes ago."
"Well, I better get on down there then!" she exclaimed excitedly, and skipped down the steps of the meeting hall. She poked her boyfriend as she went down. "Come on, grumpy, come and say hello."
Bob glared at her, and shook his head.
"I'll see her later. If I know her, she'll be here at least a month. I'm going to take a swim."
Lani frowned at him, but then her face brightened immediately.
"Well, you're an old stick in the mud, but I don't care. You just sit here and sulk, I'm going to go have a good time. Bye, sweet." She gave him a playful peck on the cheek, let her eyes linger warmly on his for a split second, and then turned to run gaily across the clearing and down into a grove of oaks on the far side, to where her mother was waiting for her.
Bob sat slumped on the steps, his eyes following her curvaceous body as it finally disappeared in the trees, and then glanced quickly at Moses.
"Shit," he said simply.
"Well, it might not be all that bad, Bobby my boy," Moses laughed. "Unless I miss my guess pretty badly, it seems that you got that little piece of yours pretty well sewed up. She's not going to go running back to Momma now, not after what you've taught her."
"Awww," Bob answered wearily, "I don't give a fuck if she does. You know that. It just bugs me, you know, when parents can't leave their Goddamn k**s alone."
"Now, now," came the teasing voice behind him. "You're projecting again, Bobby boy. Not everybody has the ogres you had for parents, you know."
"Listen, doc, would you do me a favor? Take your freshman psychoanalyzing and shove it up your ass for me, would you do that, doc?" Bob said, and then turned to his friend, smiling, to show him he'd only been k**ding. "Want to go have a swim?"
"No thank you, Bobby, never touch the stuff."
"Right. See you later then."
"And don't worry about Ann Walker. Who knows, we may not be losing a daughter at all, we may be gaining a mother."
Bob turned to him quizzically, and tried to define his meaning from his leering, hair-covered face.
"Just how, exactly, do you mean that, oh gracious leader?" Bob asked curiously.
"Oh, I don't know," the lewdly grinning man on the porch beamed down at him. "I just think that maybe Ann Walker likes our little utopia here, and we just might be able to... uhh... persuade her to stay."
"Well, if you can do that, baby, I'll have to hand it to you," Bob said skeptically, "because she's an iceberg, man, a real deep freeze."
"Icebergs melt, Bobby my boy, they finally melt."
"Well good luck, flame, you'll need it."
Bob laughed and turned away, and began walking slowly across the clearing. Hell, Moses is out of his fucking mind, he grinned to himself, but wouldn't that be a kick, though! Getting Lani's puritanical mother to join in on the community fun and games. Then he chuckled aloud. There was no way, not even Moses with all his talent would ever be able to crack this nut, he felt sure, though it was going to be out of sight watching him try!
***
Ann Walker watched with tears in her eyes as her young daughter stalked away from the tree they'd been sitting under, and disappeared into her cabin, slamming the door behind her. What did I do wrong, she asked herself, but she knew the answer very well.
Lani had come rushing down to the cabin excitedly, and had thrown her arms around her mother joyfully. They had kissed each other again and again, Lani overjoyed to see her mother, but Ann unable to shake the lingering visions of her daughter thrashing under that strange man's weight not even a half hour ago. They had gone to sit in the shade of the towering oak in front of Lani's cabin, and begun to exchange trivial bits of news with each other, how it was in the commune, and how it was in South San Francisco, and on, and on. Finally, Ann had been able to take no more of it, and had abruptly stated that she wanted Lani to come home with her, that the commune was an evil place, and that Lani must leave it at once.
Lani had been taken completely by surprise by the fierceness and irrationality of Ann's attack, and had immediately begun defending The Zodiac and the people who lived there, with fiery intensity. She couldn't understand how her mother could be so dictatorial and show such a lack of understanding after having so long seemed amenable to the idea of her living in the commune. And as Lani had become more and more defensive, Ann had become more and more insistent, until at last they were arguing with each other almost violently, the first time Ann could ever remember having done so.
And now her daughter had left her angrily, saying that there was no way she would go back to South San Francisco, that she loved it in the commune, and was staying there. Ann sat forlornly under the spreading oak, trying wildly to think of another plan of action, and rebuking herself for having lost control with her daughter. She should have known that to insist would only make Lani more insistent on staying. But now what? Her daughter was locked i