10
Be careful what you wish for goes the oft abused cliché. Where once I had the perfect arrangement, wild habitual sex with a Beautiful tabby who didn’t want to spend the night and did not want a long term commitment, and I was too foolish to realize how good I had had it; I now had a swooning child-lover with moonbeams in her eyes. Melanie was a sweetheart, don’t get me wrong, and I missed Catherine’s warm body in my bed in the mornings and the prospect of finding Melanie next to me every morning to fill that void would not have been the worst curse that could have been bestowed upon me, but I had, with the drunken poke of my prick, single-handedly created a love triangle with the only two people on the planet who could string me up by my testicles.
If Amber took offense at my having slept with her ‘best friend’ then I would be packing for destinations unknown before the next morning. If Melanie felt that I had misled her then she might twist my tits and I’d be in the same boat. I was trapped. Checkmate! The alcohol finally and mercifully dragged me from consciousness to the darkness of sleep. And I may have slept peacefully for a time but as is the case in the worst of times my dreams arrived on queue to rescue me from my tranquility.
I dreamt that I was running for my life in the dark of night down my old street, Erie road. The street looked the same as it had the night I ran home from the police station. The ground was coated with dead leaves. The trees were all but barren. At first I didn’t know what I was running from but I knew that I was scared. It may have been the usual demons that lurked in the dark, but then I looked behind me and I saw Catherine, her face worm eaten from being in the ground for so many months, chasing me with a bottle of antifreeze in her hand, “What the fuck is this, huh Mathew?” she screamed at me. Then I realized that Amber was chasing me too, only she scampered toward me like a leopard seeking to pounce, “You fucked my sister!” she said, “It wasn’t your sister…it was Melanie.” “I knew that! I just tricked you into telling me.” And then Melanie joined the hunt. She was wearing her leather S & M outfit from one of her stripping engagements and she was cracking her whip which made a thunderous pop just behind my ear, like that of a pistol being fired, “You just wanted to fuck me. You didn’t really love me.” And then Sarah joined the fray and she was carrying the knife from the kitchen, “I love you daddy. I won’t kill you if you’ll fuck me.” I kept running, but then, sensing that I was alone in my sprint, I looked back and I saw that they had all stopped chasing me and they had dropped their weapons and they were all naked on a bed together. I cautiously walked up to them and looked at them, but then they dropped their intimate engagements and simultaneously their eyes turned red and they all turned into demonic creatures, as though they had been lying in wait for me to take their bait, and they bolted towards me and started to chase me again down Erie road, and I ran until I reached the pier, which I had thought lay in the opposite direction, way at the north end of my old street, and the cold waves of lake Erie came crashing down on my head, but I climbed over the red metal railing anyway and I held on as I leaned over the raging water, “I’ll jump.” I threatened, but they kept coming for me, but walking now, in a slow and measured march, so I jumped into the white-capped waters of Lake Erie and I was under water and I was swimming and then I got caught in the current of a giant waterfall and I started to fall until I woke up, having crashed into the bottom of the falls—my bedroom floor—breathing heavily and covered in sweat.
It was at that moment that I realized how really fucked I was. I lay and stared at the ceiling above my bed, at the spidery crack, in the yellowed plaster, that branched out in six different directions before inexplicably terminating at no particular point, and I wondered how long it would be before I was sitting in a jail cell, permanently separated from Sarah, waiting for my life, which seemed to be branching out in as many directions without any meaningful purpose, to come to an end.
* * *
It was after eight o’clock in the evening that same Saturday, long after Melanie had left, when I heard Amber, and smelled her scent in advance of her approach; she smelling like a bouquet of fresh roses, walked through the back door as though she lived there with me. I didn’t turn around because I was afraid my face would give away my guilt. I was frying a dinner of eggs and bacon (the only meal I was competent at cooking), giving Sarah a break from the kitchen, when Amber walked up behind me and reached her arms around me, and up under my shirt, scraping her nails across my bare flesh, “Hello lover” she whispered into my ear. Her very presence choked what little appetite I had managed to muster as I thought about the task at hand, but I turned and pecked her on the cheek as a husband would a wife and returned to cooking dinner.
“How would you like your eggs?” I asked. you.”
“Over hard,” She said, “just like I want
I smiled uneasily and glanced toward her, “We need to talk.”
She sat down on one of the wooden chairs to the new dinette set I had purchased (and assembled during that week) to replace the ancient tan vinyl covered chairs (and the white with gold speckled Formica table) that had adorned the kitchen previously. The table and chairs stood out awkwardly in its newness against the backdrop of the pasty yellows and oranges of the sixties kitchen. I heard Amber open and close her compact, checking to see that her makeup had not been disturbed, before crossing her legs.
“Sounds serious.” She said matter-of- factly, hissing her S’s.
“It is, sort of, but I can’t talk in front of
Sarah.” I spoke softly.
“We’ll have to eat fast, tuck Sarah in and we can let our bodies do the talking in the bedroom.” Amber’s words sounded as out of place as the kitchen dinette set looked. She normally reserved her sultry discourse for the privacy of the bedroom, the only place where there seemed to be no holds barred.
I smiled nervously as I slid the eggs from the skillet onto a plate. “You may not want to sleep with me afterwards. Maybe we should talk first.” My voice sounded jittery to my own ears.
“Nothing you could say could keep me from wanting you lover.” She whispered. She was seated directly across from where I was standing and she uncrossed her legs and lifted her skirt and smiled seductively before re- crossing her legs.
After dinner we watched an old movie until Sarah fell asleep. Then we retired to the bedroom where Amber had her clothes off before I could close and latch the door.
“Now tell me what’s so important that it can’t wait until after I fuck your brains out Mathew.” She laid down across the end of the bed with her head hanging down over the side and her hair dangling down touching the floor, the weight of her breasts flattening them to the sides so that they looked swollen in comparison to her areolas, and her tanned slender torso reached out across to the center of the bed where her lithe legs were divided by the accented “V” of her crotch, that with her legs crossed, concealed her more sensitive parts, and she pulled me to her, “You talk and I’ll play.” She said.
“I slept with Melanie.”
She let me slip slowly from her grasp and then she sat up abruptly and spun herself around until she was sitting Indian style with her legs open and her feet pressed together.
“You what?”
“I knew you’d be pissed.” I took a step backwards.
“Pissed! Darling I’m ecstatic! That’s wonderful.” She seemed genuinely pleased.
“Why is that wonderful? She’s your best friend. I’ve been feeling like shit all day.” “How was she?”