It began a few years before... the
beginning of the end of it... when I was seated on my bar-stool at Pal’s, the second from the door. It was an insignificant Saturday morning at the bar. I
had just finished a Bloody Mary and was halfway through the crossword puzzle.
My Pal’s pal, Jane, entered the door with her usual aplomb and slapped me on
the back, taking the next stool.
She shouted, “Claire, how ‘bout a
Greyhound for me and git Max another Bloody Mary.”
I cringed, knowing how much Jane’s
boisterousness irritated Claire, “No thanks, Jane. I’m ready for a beer
though.”
“The Greyhound’s three blocks that
way,” Claire pointed to her left but had already started the drink for Jane.
She pulled two bottles of Budweiser out of the cooler saying, “The other ones on
Lucky down there.”
I felt uneasy about Lucky. Lucky
was an oddly familiar smelly old guy that had been around the place lately.
“Thanks, Lucky,” I waved to where
Lucky wasn’t at the other end of the bar. “Hey, where’d he go, Claire?”
Lucky was gone. That’s what made me
feel uneasy… coming and going… staying for a drink and then vanishing. There
was only one way out but I’d been doing the crossword and hadn’t seen him
leave.
Claire was busy stocking beer and
doing her usual Saturday morning tasks preparing for the weekend customers, “I
don’t know. Maybe the men’s room.”
Jane dashed down to the other end
of the bar and pounded on the door to the men’s room, shouting, “Hey, anyone in
there?”
Before anyone could have answered
had there been anyone there, Jane barged through the door and reported back
loudly, “Nope... no one’s here!”
“A little less noise, dammit!”
Claire gave Jane the evil eye, “Sit down and shut up Calamity Jane, It’s too
early for your shit.”
“Sorry... sorry, Claire. I didn’t
mean ta...” Jane humbly took her seat knowing she had stepped close to Claire’s
invisible line of tolerance.
Nick entered the bar and hovered
behind Jane and me. I can tell when freaks are coked-up by their cocky attitude
and the way they talk through their teeth.
“Hey, do you guys wanna party?”
Nick jawed.
“It’s early Nick. What’s going on?”
Jane hesitantly bit. She had a crush on the Fu and, though the affair was over,
she was still trying. In the meantime, I would do as her Beard, a stand-in
until... well, you know.
“Jacuzzi, pool, drinks, and one hot
mamma,” Nick jabbered…. “You gotta see this Naomi chick. She’s sizzling hot…
whew!”
“Hot Mamma?” Claire sneered and looked over at
the three of us, “Sounds like trouble to me, Max,” and adding, “I’ve seen too many of
your small brain’s disasters since you got back from Nicaragua.”
I appreciated Claire’s motherly
protection and didn’t like having my Saturday morning routine interrupted.
Before I could object the phone rang, breaking up what I thought was just some
more of Nick’s bar banter.
Claire answered, “I don’t know.”
and to the bar she yelled, “Nick... is there a Nick here?”
“No. I’m not here!” Nick yelled
back.
“Yes, he’s here.” She held up the
phone, “It’s your wife, Nick.”
Claire said loud enough for the
bar, “Yes, she’s here too. Someone take this goddamned call. I’m not your
answering service!” she slammed the receiver on the bar and went back to
stocking beer.
Jane took the phone and she too
talked loud enough for the bar to hear, “Sure, we’ll come… Yes, Max is here
too… He can drive… sounds like fun… You can count on us.”
While Jane was talking, Nick stood
behind her and ground his hips against her back side. Jane hung up the phone. “Damn
you Nick.”
Nick only pressed harder at her
protest, “I know you want some dick, Jane.”
She shirked him off and headed back
to her seat loudly saying, “We’re going, Max. Get your ass off the stool.”
“I can’t drive. I’ve had a few and
the Caddy won’t…” My rusted green 1972 Cadillac Sedan de Ville was parked at
home awaiting its last tune-up before the junk yard. The condition of the Caddy
wasn’t the cause of my reticence however. Saturdays were the one day I gave
myself leeway to let out all the stops, get good and drunk, and I didn’t dare
drive it, or any other car, on that one day of the week. This, I thought, would
be a good enough excuse to bow out of Nick’s invitation to disaster.
Nick had returned from the Men’s
Room with white powder under his nose, “I’ll drive, Max. No excuses. We have a
couple of guest rooms so you love birds can stay the night.”
“How will we be get back?” I was
still trying to wiggle out of going.
Nick offered, “I have to be in
Buellton tomorrow but Adrienne can get y’all home.”
Jane piped in, “Let’s go. It’s
party time!”
I resigned to fate. Not an
overblown sense of my own fate but fate nonetheless. One of the three Greek
fates is the Weaver, Clotho, the spinner of life’s color and fabric. I resigned
to the warp and the weft of it... the here and now in Buddhist terms. At the
blink of an eye we were headed to the Fu’s place up the coast from Santa
Barbara. Nick was driving ninety-five and, stoked up on coke, had been running
his mouth double that. Adrienne, the Fu, was up there waiting for us. Adrienne
had planned it to be one of those civilized affairs; dinner, drinks, a joint, a
line or two, skinny-dipping in the pool. It was her attempt at normalcy, a
regular Southern California social evening. Since the Fu’s home was up the coast
twenty-six miles and we would all be drinking, Jane and I would be staying
overnight in one of the guest rooms.
We’d rolled about ten miles north
of Santa Barbara when Nick blurted out, in the midst of his non-stop jabber,
“Max, do you want to fuck my wife?”
“Wha…?” My God, I hadn’t been
paying attention. Regardless, I wasn’t used to being called out so bluntly.
What made Nick think? What was I giving away?
Of course I wanted her! I wanted anyone at this point. However, I hadn’t
even imagined this to be an option at the time.
“No, Nick, I don’t do married
women, even if it’s okay with the spoooss.”
“But I know, you and everybody
else… including Jane, wants her.” Nick continued matter-of-factly, “Ain’t that
right Jane?”
“Sure,” Jane laughed, “as long as
you aren’t involved. No threesomes!”
“I don’t care anymore.” Nick added,
“She’s a slut. She’ll take any swinging dick.”
Jane and I laughed out loud as Jane
shouted over the music from the CD, “and Nick, you’re the dick... and we sure
as hell ain’t Dick and Jane!”
I had set this rule in stone after
that very messy cuckolding several years ago: Never, never ever, under any
circumstances, never mess around with a married woman. There wasn’t enough
cocaine or booze to loosen me from the grip of this one standard before. It
wasn’t so much an intellectual moral position I’d taken as much as it was a
matter of knowing how betrayal felt. It was visceral. I’d felt the anger. I
knew the despair… the dagger in the heart… the scar that never heals. I knew
that even consensual trysts had this effect on men like me. Out of loyalty to
my gender, this was not something I could do to another man. Out of respect for
how extreme those feelings are, and knowing that murder isn’t too far a stretch
as a remedy for those feelings in some men, I wouldn’t cross that line with any
woman: at least, not until I met the Fu. The head cedes all to the heart and
the heart to libido and I would, reluctantly but eventually, cross that line
into the chaos of desire.
“No, Dicky, I don’t want to do your
wife.” I assured him.
Annoyed Nick protested, “It’s Nick,
not Nicky.
Jane quipped, “Oh yeah, Tom, Nick,
and hairy-Dick.”
We laughed the way drunks laugh at
the damnedest things but Nick wasn’t laughing with us. He punched the gas and
smoked the tires upon turning off before Refugio Beach.
The house was up a driveway a half
mile overlooking a panorama of the Refugio area. Naomi and her mate, Alex, were nude in the
pool. Nick was right about Naomi: she could have been a porn star if she
wanted. Alex, was a typical, So-Cal-sun-bleached blond-mopped, surfer dude of
about thirty. Another very young-looking girl, Liza, was in the Jacuzzi wearing
a one-piece bathing suit, looking completely out of place and obviously nervous
about being there by the way her eyes darted from one guest to another... an
animal poised to escape a trap.
Adrienne came out from the house
wearing only white cotton briefs. The two lab mixes that had been laying in the
shade barked at Nick and then came up to me panting and demanding a pat, “Hey,
hey,” I panted back at them, “we haven’t been properly introduced.”
Adrienne called out, “That one on
the right is Sushi and the other one is Tofu!”
Nick stripped down and dove into
the pool.
He came up from under Naomi,
throwing her in the air and spitting water from his mouth as he surfaced,
shouting, “Anyone want to do a line!”
Alex gleefully replied, “Sure! Get
this party goin’!”
Naomi swam over to Alex and
disapprovingly said quietly, “Maybe later, Alex.”
I read the scene and felt the vibe
but, ignoring that, I was attracted by the simplicity and beauty of Adrienne’s
sleek body; her Olympic swimmer’s shoulders; her small breasts over toned abs
that completed the image with cotton briefs wrapped around a perfectly formed
butt. It was hard for me to believe she was approaching forty with a body like
that and I looked forward to... well, let’s just say, Nick’s previous offer
began to appeal to me in that moment.
“The bar’s in here, Max… Jane!”
Adrienne entreated.
I followed her and she mixed a
Screwdriver and Greyhound at the bar. I was tongue tied and started the
conversation with a dumber than dumb question, “You have a great body. Do you
work out?”
I was relieved when she smiled…
rather warmly I thought… and answered, “No, but I swim laps.”
Nick skirted the bar and entered
the kitchen. As he passed Adrienne, he sneered, “You’re fucked up.”
“How black is your kettle?” she
sniped back.
Nick left the house in a hurry
after getting a call on his cell phone. The car started up outside and Nick
peeled rubber tearing out of the driveway.
“Asshole, I hope he stays away,”
she said as she gestured towards a table spread with hors d’ oeuvres. “You want
something to eat?”
I couldn’t help but to look over
her body and get hungrier than thirsty.
On the sectional couch in front of
the fireplace, the little group had settled after a three-course dinner of
lobster bisque, Lobster Thermidor and a dessert I didn’t touch.
Adrienne was almost apologetic as
she explained, “You have Lisa to thank for the Lobster. Lisa’s friend is a
marine biologist who brought home all this lobster. There was so much of it I
had to do something.”
Lisa blushed at the recognition and
I noticed she’d hardly touched her wine glass at all. However, a simple thing
like a dinner was an awakening to me. The magic that was presented on the table
was reminiscent of another time and another place when it was routine to dine
like this. That evening I was stirred by more than libido. The muse kissed my
spirit that had been dormant like Sleeping Beauty for over a decade.
Of course, they were all dressed by
then and having an after dinner casual drink. But that night was to turn into
an insane contest of coked-up wills. Nick came back stoked and plopped down
between Naomi and Jane.
Adrienne paid little attention to
his belligerence but said, “You missed dinner, Nick,”
He put an arm over Naomi… she
squirmed out from under and sat next to Adrienne. He put an arm over Jane and
pulled her to his chest, “You know, Jane and I were an item before I met
Adrienne.”
Adrienne said with volcanic
intensity, “Aren’t I the lucky one.”
“And Adrienne and I were an Item
before she married you,” Jane added, “Nicky ole boy.”
Nick took his arm off Naomi and
dumped a pile of cocaine on the glass top in the middle of the coffee table,
“Anyone want to do a line?”
Alex almost took a nose dive onto
the table, “About time, Nick. I was ready to call this party a bust.”
The boorish snorting and sniffing
of Nick and Alex hunched down over the table like hogs made for a sorry sight.
I was still savoring the meal that was almost as ecstatic as any drug. My
admiration for the effort Adrienne put into dinner placed her in a different
light and I understood her struggle with Nick’s callousness. I thought the ugly
disregard these boars displayed for the beauty of it all to be pathetic. Liza’s
feelings must have been similar to mine as she got off the couch and headed
down the hallway to her room. Nick quickly followed her.
Adrienne rushed down the hall to
catch Nick, “Damn you Nick, what are you trying to do, chase off the only
friends I have left!”
Nick picked up a left-over stuffed
lobster from the serving dish, spilling most its contents on the floor, on his
way out of the house again. Adrienne sat down next to me. I could see the tears
on her cheeks and I saw something else in Adrienne that night. It was against
my will but I was stirred and felt that she was worth enduring anything on her
behalf.
Alex scooped up some of the powder
from the table into a bindle he’d folded while Naomi bid goodnight as the party
broke up and they left.
Adrienne mixed a couple more
cocktails and the three of us sat and drank a while longer before Jane and I
retired to our assigned room.
“You and Jane better lock your door
tonight,” Adrienne advised as she bid us good night.
Jane’s snoring woke me but I
realized I’d forgotten to lock the door as suggested. Perhaps, in my boozed-up
state of mind, though the thought was ridiculous, I halfway hoped Adrienne
would slip in through the door. While I listened to Jane snore I debated
whether I should get up and lock it. Just then, the room lit up through a
widening crack in the dark of the room from the hallway. A shadowy silhouette
in the doorway followed. I watched a minute to decipher whether it was a male
or female form. Damn, it was Nick… it sure as hell wasn’t Adrienne. I sprang
out of bed and body slammed the form, pushing it into the hallway. Before I
could lock the door, Nick put his body weight behind a shove and opened the
door a crack.
“Hey Max, it’s me, Nick. Let me in.”
“Get the fuck out of here, Nick.
What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“C’mon Max. Let’s party.”
Jane woke to the commotion, “What’s
goin’ on?”
Nick barged the rest of the way
into the room, “Max, C’mon Max.”
“The party’s over Nick!”
Nick stood a second or two and
unzipped his trouser, “I’m not gay, Max, but I’ll let you suck me off.”
That insult was about all I could
handle. I kneed Nick in the groin and with all the force I could muster,
slammed him out the door and locked it.
There was more noise in the hallway.
Awake, Jane was still confused,
“What’s goin’ on?”
“Listen,” I hushed her and opened
the door a crack. I heard Liza’s voice, “Get away from me… leave me alone!”
Then I saw Adrienne rush down the
hall from the other end. In a flash she whacked Nick open handed on the back of
his head, Nick staggered from the blow and, once he regained his composure, he
tried to slip past her.
“Nick, you get the fuck outa here!”
“I’m jus’ tryin’ t’ have some fun,”
he whined.
“You have your fun downtown with
your gay boys. Leave us alone!”
It was clear to me that it was Nick
who was the slut in this relationship. The Fu was in an impossible marriage and
she was doing the best she could to manage it. Fascinated, I’d watched her that
evening dash about the house separating Nick from his intentions while
attending to the guests as though nothing unsavory was going on.
I wondered whether I was falling in
love with her that night. I thought, Oh, shit, I think I am. Am I a White
Knight sent by GAWD to rescue her? Perhaps.
When this romance was over I
pounded out on the Remington:
Excellent!
ReplyDelete~M