After nightfall during the week, in the bedroom, the door always bolted, Melanie would often make love to me while I lay upon the bed too tired to take the lead. She was passionate and tender and incredibly thoughtful and I just laid back and effortlessly enjoyed the dreamlike ecstasy that she so generously gifted to me through the haze of endorphins that leaked into my tired head and carried me off to sleep with a feeling of joy and contentment. I often woke up with her soft lithe body resting on my chest and me still buried inside of her and she would sense my arousal and entreat me again to engage her passively in the midst of my delirious state; and that lovemaking was the most pleasurable of all as it mixed with the fantasy of my dreams and gently returned me to my sleepy state upon conclusion.
On Saturday and Sunday mornings I would sometimes try to repay Melanie’s benevolence by gently waking her up in a mutually delightful way as she quivered to wakefulness (although, in truth, she would often clump me on the head and complain that she had to pee!) Once I even tested Amber’s sentiment that Melanie could endure endless hours of oral provocation and Melanie came for me six times before my jaw grew so tired that it tingled from the loss of sensation. Her seemingly boundless bliss gave me greater pleasure than the intimate passion that she gave me in reciprocation. As lovers in love we were as made for one another as Catherine and I had been.
On the weekends we wouldn’t roll out of bed until Sarah came knocking and then I would quickly slip into my pajamas and Sarah would squeeze between us and we were as the planets to the sun; in harmony with our universe. On the weekends, too, as the weather broke and summer approached, we took long drives into the country for picnics or we would drive to county fairs or to carnivals. Once we even purchased some fishing rods and reels from a flee market and we went fishing on a small rowboat on a private lake just over the Texas boarder. None of us had ever fished before and the result was as entertaining as it was disastrous. When Sarah caught the first fish I helped her to reel it in and when I pulled the large white fish into the boat it flopped around while Sarah and Melanie screamed and rocked the boat so much that I fell into the lake.
Sometimes we would take little road- trips to video stores and the book stores and we would hunt for old movies or entertaining fiction novels. We would eat in homey little family style diners that catered to the miniscule budget that we were bound to. We shopped at the goodwill store for clothing to replenish
Sarah’s abandoned wardrobe and to alter and enhance Melanie’s attire and as they shopped and tried on dresses and shoes they acted as though they were in Macy’s instead of second hand stores. Sarah and Melanie were like a mother to a daughter and why not; Melanie was about as blood related to Sarah as I was. But we were both as much in love with our little sociopath as we were with each other.
I cannot recall a more contented time in my life. All of the misery that had come crashing into our lives over the previous year, like a flaming meteor shower to the supple body of the earth, seemed a distant memory as the dust settled around us instead of on top of us. I had all but pushed out of my mind the fact that I was a fugitive. We were, all of us, happy.
* * *
It was nearing the end of a wonderful summer and Sarah and I had lived in Kansas for almost two years. Tony and I had finished installing a new breaker panel and electrical service in a small vacant sand-stone colonial home in the small down-town area of Derby that consisted of no more than six city blocks. Tony was beginning to trust me with the more complicated tasks and I had rewired the entire electrical panel, carefully bending the red, black and white wires into neat curves and cutting and skinning the tips of the wires before sliding the bare copper into the ground bus or the compression fittings on the breakers, without his supervision while he paced around on the floor above me, his work-boots clumping like a Holstein on a barn-deck, making calls to his clients from his cell phone.
The job that Tony had scheduled for that particular Friday fell short of the eight hours it was intended to consume so I whistled happily as I drove home with the top down on the mustang from our job in the little town of Derby with the anticipation of spending some extra time at home with Sarah and Melanie. The afternoon was hot and sunny and I could see the shimmy of heat vapor rise from the blacktop in front of me as I drove down the two lane highway and inhaled the scent of freshly cut grass mixed with wildflower pollen while the crickets sang like a monotone chorus. I passed an endless stream of small frame and brick veneer ranch and bungalow houses to my right and a flowing river of colorful purple Coneflower, Blue Flax and Black-eyed-Susan on my left.
As I walked through the door of our house I could tell by Melanie’s worried expression that something was wrong and I could feel the muscles in my face melt like ice into a lax puddle of disquietude. I could discern by her inflamed pink cheeks and the splayed red tributaries coursing across the whites of her eyes that she had been crying. I could see by her wide stare that I had startled her. I wondered immediately if the police had paid a visit while I was away; if they had come for me. I put down my lunchbox and I wasn’t particularly soiled so I took a step toward Melanie to comfort her, but she backed away and almost toppled over a kitchen chair before regaining her balance.
“What’s the matter? What happened?” Her eyes grew wider still.
“What is this?” Melanie held out a trembling hand…with Amber’s cell phone in her palm, the little heart stickers pasted around the face.
“Where…?” I felt like a little boy who had been caught with his pants down. I could feel my face flush red with embarrassment.
“Sarah and I… decided to do some cleaning.” Her eyebrows pinched in above her nose as she sobbed the word cleaning. “You said you didn’t kill her!” She yelled through a torrent of tears.
“I didn’t…I didn’t kill her. You have to believe me.” I opened my palms and spread my arms.
“Then what are you doing with her cell phone? Tell me.” She wailed, “How did you get her cell phone? She wouldn’t have left without it! And if she had lost it she would have called for it. But of course she couldn’t call because you killed her!” Melanie was hysterical, like a distraught child. Her facial expressions wavered as the muscles in her face contorted violently from anger to confusion to terror.
I took another step toward her. I wanted to assuage her fear. I wanted to convince her of my innocence; but she backed away again. “Melanie…it’s me…we love each other. Do you actually think that I would hurt you? You’re looking at me as if I were some kind of monster. I love you. I could never hurt you. I couldn’t hurt anyone!”
“Oh you couldn’t could you? I’ve seen you in action. I saw what you did to those boys at that party. You’ve hurt people before.” Melanie pointed at me accusingly as she stepped around and behind a chair. Snot was dripping from her nose. Her eyes were puffy and baggy and she was shaking like a dog shedding water.
“I don’t even know what happened there. I got hit on the head. To this day I don’t even remember what I did that night.”
“How convenient! I suppose you don’t know how you ended up with Amber’s cell phone either?”