“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. At the clerk’s order, Marilyn slowly turned around. It was also obvious that Marilyn had been tanning without a swimsuit. “Wow!”
“Carl, I can’t wear this!” she protested.
“Oh, baby, that’s the one! Why your husband would let you go is a mystery to me!” For that I got another dirty look and she flipped me the bird. I just laughed. “We’ll take it!” Marilyn simply stared at me in disbelief, and was led away by the girl. She came back out about ten minutes later in her original clothing, a tee shirt and denim skirt and low sandals (no undies) with the girl carrying the red dress and stilettos in boxes.
“What about the other dresses? I thought you liked the green mini-skirt and bustier combo.”
I agreed and took both of them, even as my wife just shook her head. I just gave her a hug as the girl packed everything up and took my American Express card. “I can’t believe your husband would ever let a fox like you go,” I told her.
Marilyn kicked me in the shins. “Very funny! I think I really will divorce the bastard now!” I just laughed and moved out of range of another kick. “I will never be able to wear a dress like that!”
“You’ll wear it tonight! We’ll go to that club at the Princess Casino. I’ll even put on my suit. We’ll look like trendy jetsetters out for the night.”
She laughed at that, because otherwise we were just incredibly boring back home. The she whispered, “Maybe tonight, but in a few weeks more, I won’t be able to fit into either dress!” She pantomimed what her belly was going to grow to.
“So we’ll go out two nights, and you wear each dress once.”
“If we get caught, my husband is going to kill you!”
I just laughed at that.
That night I begged, cajoled, and pleaded, and finally got my wife to wear the red dress to the night club at the Princess. I wore the suit I had packed, and Marilyn wore the dress and red heels. She refused to go to dinner in the outfit. I got her to wear all of the jewelry she had brought and that would at all look good on her, a pair of large gold loop earrings, several gold necklaces, and a pair of heavy gold bracelets. She looked amazing! She had to move carefully, and I think the valet saw more than she wanted him to see when she climbed from the Cadillac. The walk to the night club took us through the main lobby and the casino, and heads turned as we went though, and I heard several whistles, which made her both blush and smile at me. “I can’t believe the things you get me to do!” she told me several times.
Marilyn had several drinks that night, and pretty much raped me once we got back to Hougomont. I let her have her way with me. Afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms, I whispered to her that her husband must be crazy to let a woman like her divorce him. She let out a muffled squawk and tried to elbow me in the ribs, so we wrestled around on the bed and ended up making love again.
Lucky guy, Marilyn’s husband. She decided not to divorce him after all!
Chapter 84: Progressions
John sat me down in January and did the Dutch uncle routine. As much as I wanted to pretend I was an average suburban dad, I wasn’t, not anymore. I was a multimillionaire, and at the pace we were growing, I stood to become the richest man in Baltimore County and maybe the entire state in the next ten or fifteen years. I needed to start acting like it, and start taking security seriously. What if the next crazy we ran up against wanted to kidnap Charlie or Marilyn? I tried to protest, but I couldn’t. Too much shit had happened. I had a sit-down with the head of the security company we had used.
Some of the problems were simple. While I wasn’t planning on living under lock and key, I could at least put in a fence around the place. The driveway was rearranged so that somebody would have to go a gate further away from the house, and then loop up to the house. The good news — since Maryland is relatively warm most of the year, the fencing contractor could put in a fence even in the winter. The bad news — Do you have any idea how much over 4,500 linear feet of fence cost?! Even the cheap galvanized steel chain link fence wasn’t cheap; something more decorative and strong would (and did) cost me an absolute fortune! I offered up my first born male child but the contractor laughed and turned the offer down. It wasn’t enough!
I also rebuilt the house. The house had a brick façade all the way around, but I had the windows ripped out and bullet proof glass installed, and the doors were replaced with all steel frames and steel cores. I also had a professional quality alarm system installed. Yes, somebody could still break in, but they were going to have to work at it.
I balked at having armed guards living with us. I did, however, buy a piece of property across the road from the driveway. If it came down to it, I could put in a discreet little guard shack over there. Likewise, we arranged to have Marilyn continue with a traveling escort. I wasn’t sure what we would do when Charlie and his sibling(s) went to school. I wasn’t worried about anybody coming after me.
We weren’t completely safe, because that is simply impossible. We were certainly safe against an average burglar or kidnapper. To get into the place would require a pro, and would take longer. Of course, if a pro got in, it made for a completely different set of circumstances. It was the best we could come up with — you buys your ticket and you takes your chances. Even the Secret Service can’t keep somebody perfectly safe. The best you can do is raise the cost to a level the bad guys aren’t willing to pay.
Within just a few weeks of our return home, Marilyn was showing a noticeable baby bump and any hope of wearing either club outfit again would have to be delayed for a year or so. Marilyn told me that her obstetrician wanted her to come back in a few weeks, at the end of February, for an ultrasound examination. I didn’t think too much about it. Marilyn hadn’t had one for our second child before, in what was then 1982, but that was at a small clinic in upstate New York. Now it was 1984 and we lived, relatively speaking, in the big city. It was more common.
Marilyn was quite excited by it all, and wanted me to come with her. “We can find out if it’s a boy or a girl! Which would you prefer? A boy or a girl?”
“Ten fingers and ten toes, honey. After that it doesn’t matter.” I just wanted another healthy child.
“You’re no fun! Which would you prefer?”
I smiled at her. “A boy, of course! Girls are yucky! I might get cooties from them!”
She blew me a raspberry. “I am going to tell your daughter that her father is an awful person!”
I snorted out a laugh. “Truth in advertising!”
Charlie didn’t care about this at all. He was not quite two-and-a-half, and even though Marilyn told him he was getting a baby brother or sister, it just didn’t register. To be fair, I am sure my mother told me at the same age that I was getting a sibling, and I didn’t remember it either. If I had known, I could have drowned him at birth and saved myself infinite aggravation!
And so it came about that the last Friday in February, the 24th, 1984, I found myself driving Marilyn to her doctor’s office in Cockeysville. I sat there in the waiting room with Marilyn surrounded by some very pregnant women, quite uncomfortable with it all. I remember at one point leaning over to my wife and asking if I should announce her husband wasn’t able to make it, so she had brought her boyfriend instead. Marilyn shook her finger at me and warned me in no uncertain terms to “Behave!”