by Thomas Henry
I had no rational response to that. It was impossible. She was married to another man…and obviously on birth control. But in that moment, I wanted it as much as she did.
Our lovemaking was gently passionate. Our kisses were deep and long. And when I filled her, she trembled and clung to me like she’d never, ever let me go.
* * * *
When I awoke again, it was morning, and Karen was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing one of my t-shirts and holding a steaming cup of coffee. She leaned over and kissed me. “Here, I made coffee for you.” I sat up and took the cup from her.
“I’m starving,” she said. “Let’s go to Zippy’s for breakfast!”
I took a sip of the coffee and nodded. “Zippy’s sounds good to me.” I looked her up and down. “Going like that?”
“Don’t you think this is cute?” she said, her eyes twinkling.
“Not the first word that comes to mind.”
“Oh, okay…if you’re gonna be like that...” She got up and went to the dresser. Within a few minutes, she had swapped my t-shirt for one of her own plus a pair of shorts, complete with panties and a bra.
I put on a pair of jeans and the t-shirt Karen had taken off. It had absorbed her fresh, clean fragrance. I savored it with a deep breath, wishing I had a way to preserve it.
We cruised down to the Waiau Zippy’s. I had “Zippy’s Omelette,” and Karen had the French toast made with Portuguese sweet bread. We made small talk about the food and the weather and such, but we both had heavier things on our minds. I was dying to know what she was planning to tell me. But she didn’t offer anything, and I figured that a public restaurant wasn’t the right place to ask.
We finished breakfast and got back into my car. “Where to?” I asked. “Nice day for a drive.”
Karen looked around and nodded. Then she turned to me and took my hand. “Let’s just go back home.”
I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Works for me.”
We both were quiet as we drove back to Halawa. I could tell that Karen was mulling things over, and I did my best to be patient.
Finally, as my building came into sight, Karen spoke. “I don’t really know where to start. I mean, it’s not like I had a plan, you know? Stuff’s been bothering me for a long time…kinda under the surface. But then it came to a head when I caught Ted snooping through my purse, and we got into a big fight.”
“Yeah, he told me about that. Said he was trying to figure out why you had the remote control.”
Karen nodded. “Yeah, he found it under the seat in my car. Funny, isn’t it? If I had told him it was yours, everything would have been ok. I mean, he knows I spend time with you when he’s away. But I didn’t want him to know about our place…and I know Mai doesn’t know about it, either…so I wouldn’t tell him who it belonged to, and he got really pissed.”
“I recognized it right away,” I said, “but I didn’t tell him, either…pretty much for the same reasons. I thought about it, but Mai was right there, and I just didn’t want to open that can of worms.”
“Anyway,” Karen said, “I grabbed my purse and ran out of the house. Dropped my phone and broke it. Didn’t know until later that my wallet wasn’t in my purse, so I had no money or credit cards or anything. And like I said, I didn’t have a plan. I just had to get away for a while.”
I pushed the remote button in my car, and the door rolled up. I pulled inside, and as the door started down again, Karen continued.
“My first impulse was to come out here. Of course, I didn’t have the remote to get in, but I was so upset that I didn’t think about that until I was halfway here. So I came on out, hoping that you’d be here. I banged on the door a couple of times in case you were inside, but when I didn’t get a response, I just sat in my car and waited for a couple of hours, hoping you’d show up.
“But after a while, it got dark and I was kinda scared of being out here all alone. I wasn’t ready to go back home and I didn’t have any way to pay for a hotel room, so I didn’t know what to do. I really wanted to come up to your house, but I knew Mai was there, so that didn’t seem like a good idea.
“I thought about calling Bill, but I didn’t know his number. You know, I had it stored in my phone, but that was broken. And I didn’t want to just show up at his apartment in case…you know…maybe he had a date or something.
“So, I decided to see if I could find the bar where we met Thuy that time. I was pretty sure she would lend me some money for a hotel. I knew roughly where her bar was, but it took me a couple of tries to find the right one.” She chuckled. “Got a couple of job offers while I was looking.”
We got out of the car and headed up the stairs. When we got to the kitchen, I mixed up a couple of Bloody Marys. It was a bit early in the day to start drinking, but I figured we both might fare better if we did. We went into my office and sat on the sofa.
Karen continued, “When I found Thuy, she was really sweet. She gave me some money and invited me to spend the night at her house. That sounded better than being alone in a hotel, so I followed her home.
“She was doing a bachelor party the next night, and she asked me to work it with her. Remember, I told you she had called me about doing that? Anyway, I didn’t want to go to the party with her, and I would have felt really weird about staying at her house with her husband while she was working, so I left the next morning.
“I was just driving around, trying to decide what to do. I came back out here, but you weren’t here. I didn’t want to go home, but I didn’t know what else to do. Then I thought about Max and wondered if I could find her house. Took me a while, but I finally did.
“Of course, she was happy to see me. I guess you know she’s been calling and sweet-talking me ever since that day she took me home.”
“Hmmm…actually, I didn’t know that,” I said. “I knew she was lusting after you, but I wasn’t aware that she actually had been pursuing you.”
“Yep. So anyway, she said she and Amy had an extra room and I was welcome to stay with them. But parking was a problem, so they followed me back here so I could leave my car. I parked the car and left the keys and note for you and went back with them. They showed me to their guest room, and the next thing I knew, they had me in bed with them.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “She told me you had come to their house, but she glossed over that little detail.”
Karen smiled and shrugged. “Well, I guess that sort of started the ball rolling. I mean, it was like something inside me snapped when the two of them were working me over. It was like I suddenly realized that I had only a few weeks to live, and I needed to cram them full of as much as I could. So when they told me they were going back to Sally’s to have Amy inseminated again, I decided to go with them. Sally had been wanting to talk to me about something, anyway, so I thought maybe I’d listen to what she had to say.”
Something Karen said had put my stomach into a knot. “Um…what did you mean about having only a few weeks to live?”
Karen scowled and bit her lip, slowly nodding her head. “There’s something I haven’t told you,” she whispered.
My stomach churned and my heart leapt into my throat. Was she terminally ill? I could barely speak. “So tell me.”
Tears started rolling down her face. “Um…Ted got his orders. We’re moving to San Diego.”
I was tremendously relieved…and stunned. After what Sally had said, Karen’s confirmation of the transfer shouldn’t have been a shock to me, but hearing it directly from her suddenly made it very real.
Karen sat there staring at her lap, shoulders shaking and tears streaming down her face and neck. I reached out to touch her, and she instantly was in my arms, clinging to me and kissing me. And now there were four streams of tears.
Eventually, Karen got up and retrieved the box of tissue from my credenza. She blew her nose and wiped her tears. I dabbed at mine. “So, where was I?” she asked.
“Wait…before you continue…when
are you moving?”
Karen shook her head. “Don’t know yet. Few weeks, maybe.” She drained her Bloody Mary. “Why don’t you make us a couple more of these?”
While I was mixing the drinks, I ruminated about how certain tastes or smells can become so strongly associated with an event that they forever remind you of it. For me, whenever I smell pikake, I’m transported back to my Senior Prom…when Rachel went with someone else. Now I wondered if I ever again would be able to taste a Bloody Mary without finding myself in this moment with Karen.
I handed Karen her drink. “So, you were talking about going to Sally’s club with Max and Amy.”
“Yeah… So, Sally got really excited when she saw me. She was pretty busy getting things organized, so she asked me to wait for a while so we could talk. I had a couple of drinks, and some of the bulls came over to say hello and ask me to dance. But I felt grungy, just wearing my t-shirt and shorts from the day before, so I didn’t feel like socializing.”
“Body?”
“No, he wasn’t there that night.”
I remembered seeing him come out of the Oasis the next night. I wondered if Karen would mention that. Of course, I was only assuming that he had been there to see her.
“So then when the show started, Sally took me into the Voyeur Room, and I sat next to her while she operated the lights and glass and stuff. I told her what had happened with Ted and that I had been invited to stay with Max and Amy. She said she had something she really wanted to talk to me about, but that we should do it in private, so she asked me to come over and spend the night at the Oasis with her instead. She said she’d let Max know when Amy’s scene was done.
“I was intrigued, and a little buzzed. And like I said, I felt like something inside me had snapped, and I needed to…I don’t know…take a walk on the wild side? So I figured what the heck…
“I was kinda tired. Hadn’t really slept all that well the night before. So I went back to one of the private rooms and took a nap until Sally was ready to close up and go home.”
So that explained why Max and Amy hadn’t seen her after their scene. And all this time, I had assumed Karen had gone off with some mystery man.
“When we got back to the Oasis, there were a couple of older local guys in the spa with a couple of the sorority girls. Of course, I didn’t know about Sally’s sorority at that time, but she explained it to me later that night. She told me how she fixed up carefully screened men with young women for a price, and she said she wanted me to come to work for her. She said she thought I would have some fun and make lots of money.
“She had a pretty nice way of putting it, and she made it sound almost glamorous, but she was talking about making me a prostitute, you know? And I thought about those documentaries I’d seen about pimps and drugs and sex slavery and all that. So I told her I just wasn’t interested in doing that…having sex with strange men for money.
“She kinda laughed and gave me an odd look. Then she asked how I felt about what happened the last time I was at the Oasis…being gangbanged by a bunch of strangers and then virtually raped by Body. I told her, in the first place, I hadn’t planned on doing that. I thought I was just going there to have sex with PD while you watched and got all jealous. The only reason I went along with the gangbang and all that was I was drunk and drugged.
“Sally said it sure looked to her like I had enjoyed it. And…I had to admit she was right. It’s like I told you afterward, I felt like I was in some kind of primitive fertility rite or something. Having all those guys practically crawling over each other to shoot their sperm into me really did it for me somehow…like I was some kind of goddess or something.
“So Sally asked how I felt about it now. Not then, when I was drunk and drugged and in the middle of it all, but now…after the fact. Did I have regrets? Did I feel guilty or down on myself for having done it?
“I told her I honestly didn’t. I told her I wasn’t sure I’d be willing to do it again, but I had no regrets. I just kinda thought of it as a notch in my belt or another page in the scrapbook of my life…something I could kinda look back on in my old age and laugh.”
Karen paused in thought, and then looked me in the eyes. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I just did do it again…last night. Not as many guys, but otherwise pretty much the same thing. I mean, at one point, I had all three of those football players in me at the same time!”
I struggled not to visualize that. I failed. I wondered if I guessed correctly about which guy was in which orifice.
Karen shrugged. “So, anyway…Sally gave me this funny look. And then she confessed that all of those guys had paid to gangbang me that night. Well, all but PD. I guess she gave him a cut of the money for seducing and drugging me. In fact, she said Body wanted me so much he paid her a thousand dollars! Can you believe that? All those guys paid big money just so they could squirt their sperm into me. That’s just crazy!”
I nodded. “People always say prostitution is men exploiting women, but the truth is that the men are being exploited, too. Sometimes by pimps or madams. Sometimes by the women themselves. Even the most righteous of men find it almost impossible to resist paying an irrational amount of money for sex with a woman who tempts them. Ridiculous as it may seem in the cold light of day, it’s just the way we’re wired. Nature’s way of assuring that the species will procreate, I guess. People who think they can fight prostitution by curbing demand just don’t understand human nature.”
Karen gazed into my eyes. “So you don’t have a problem with prostitution?”
“Depends,” I said. “I think pimps and sex traffickers should be hung, and I think that men should be aware of how prevalent sex slavery is and make sure they never take advantage of a woman who is offering herself under duress. But I have no problem at all with a man and woman voluntarily engaging in a value-for-value exchange. To be honest, I’ve never offered a woman money for sex, but I have been known to accept an offer of sex for money, but only when I was confident she wasn’t doing it under duress. I have no qualms about that. I mean, when you get right down to it, many socially acceptable relationships, including many marriages, are largely about sex for money.”
Karen continued to gaze into my eyes. “So…to ask my question another way, you don’t have a problem with me having sex with other men for money…so long as I’m okay with it?”
My stomach knotted. “I don’t have a problem with the money part of it. It’s the sex part that bothers me. You know by now how I feel about you having sex with other men.”
She nodded. “I do. And that’s one of the reasons I do it.”
“To torture me?”
“Uh-huh. And to keep you extra horny for me.”
“Any other reasons?”
“Well…yeah…” She took a deep breath and looked down at her drink. “To be honest, it turns out I like having sex with new men as much as you like having sex with new women.” She looked up at me. “I’m not supposed to feel that way, am I? Or at least, not admit it.” She shrugged. “Just being truthful with you.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Hank Jr’s ‘Women I’ve Never Had’ started running through my mind. “And I guess I shouldn’t be a hypocrite.”
“Okay…back to my story,” Karen said. “So, Sally told me all of those guys had paid for sex with me. The only difference between that and what she was asking me to do now was that I didn’t get any of the money last time. I saw her point, but…well, I told her I’d think about it.
“So the next day, she comes to me and says that Body wants me again, and since I didn’t get any of the money last time, I could have the whole thousand dollars this time.”
My stomach churned. I knew where this was going. I had seen Body coming out of the Oasis late that night.
“I told her I wasn’t ready for that. I mean, I’ll admit the idea of being with him again did titillate me, but I wasn’t sure I could handle him again…wasn’t sure I wanted to, anyway. And I wasn’t really tempted by the money. I
mean, it was flattering that he was willing to spend so much to have me, but…
“I thought that was the end of it, but later that night he showed up at the Oasis. When I saw him, I was afraid. I remembered how he had just grabbed me out of the water last time and carried me into the bedroom. I was afraid if I told him ‘no’ this time, he might just force himself on me.”
Now my stomach was really churning. I had seen Body leaving late that night. Had he raped Karen? Could Sally possibly have allowed…or even facilitate that?
Karen continued, “He was pretty persistent, and he even offered me two thousand. But I told him about how I had just had this fight with my husband and all that. I just wasn’t up to what he wanted, no matter how much he offered me. I could see he was really disappointed, but he said he’d come back another time.”
Another time? I got a knot in my gut. “So he just left?”
“Uh-huh. So the next morning, Sally said she had an idea. She wanted me to escort this gay guy who needed a date for some business dinners. No sex involved. He’d just pay for me to go to dinner and pretend to be his girlfriend. That sounded okay to me, so I agreed to do it. Sally took me shopping to buy some things to wear on our dates. She said not to worry about the cost because this guy was really, really rich.
“So, as you know, I went out with him three nights in a row. That’s how I knew you were spying on me. I saw you when we were at La Mer the first night. Of course, I didn’t say anything to Sally about it. I mean, it was kinda comforting to know you were watching over me, but she would have freaked out if she found out.”
Of course, Sally had found out, but Karen apparently didn’t know that. “How did you spot me?” I asked.
“Well, first I saw you having a drink while we ate dinner. Then I noticed your van parked across the street from the Oasis.”
“How’d you know it was my van?”
“Are you kidding? The damned thing is parked right downstairs. I’ve seen it a million times!”
“Don’t all white vans look pretty much alike?”
Karen shrugged. “That’s like saying all white women look pretty much alike. I mean, in a sense we do, but you still can tell us apart.” She gave me a kiss. “At least I hope you can, anyway.”