The Long Fall

by Daniel Quentin Steele

  “How can you be so frigging cold, Deb? I know you said you didn’t love me, but you don’t have any feeling for me at all?”

  “Because I let myself forget I’m a mother. I was selfish and I was only thinking about that wonderful dick of yours. I put my kids second to you. But, you were never going to be around forever. My kids will be here when you’re gone. They’ll be here when Bill is out of my life permanently. No matter who I meet in the future, they’re what counts.”

  He looked like he wanted to say something, then just stopped and walked toward the bedroom.

  “Have a good life, Deb. If you change your mind, call me.”

  When she heard him walk out she went to Kelly’s room. She had put on short shorts and a low cut blouse. She was pretending to look at something on her laptop.

  “I’m not going to give you a lecture because I was 17 once. But, he’s almost twice your age. Even if he had sex with you, you’re just a kid. You think he’s going to be interested in you for anything but sex?”

  “That seemed to be more than enough for you, Mother. Or were you going to marry him and let him make an honest woman out of you?”

  “I’m not you. I’m a grown woman.”

  She flung the laptop down on her bed.

  “You’re an old woman. Old. Your beasts are sagging. You’re getting wrinkles. You know that? And you walk around in those damn tight blouses pushing your tits into every man’s face that will look at you? You flirt with my boyfriends. Do you know that, you damned bitch? They all call you their favorite MILF. You know what that is? All my girlfriends laugh at you behind your back.”

  “I can’t help the way I look, Kelly. Guys look at my tits. They have since I was younger than you. What am I supposed to do, wear a Burqa or a potato sack? You’re going to be the same way. Guys will never look you in the eye. And they’re going to try to grab a feel anytime you turn around. Your teachers and professors in college will be offering you all kind of opportunities for easy grades. They’ll make it crystal clear without words: you just have to be a little friendly, that’s all. I’ve been there. I don’t have to flirt with guys, they do enough of that.”

  “You make me sick. You do it deliberately. You’ve been flirting with guys behind Dad’s back since I was old enough to realize what you were doing. I’m glad he’s left you. You don’t deserve him. Yeah, he’s stuffy and a wet blanket about a lot of things, but he’s never messed around on you. And I don’t know how many fathers of my girlfriends that I could say that about.”

  Debbie stepped back. No matter what, she was going to be late to her meeting. Doug was gone. It was going to be a bad day all around. But this shit still stuck in her craw.

  “Stick up for Saint Bill. Why don’t you go live with him if you’re that crazy about him? Oh, I forgot, he didn’t want you, did he? Plenty of time for other people’s kids, but never for you and your brother. How many school events has he been to? How many has he missed? I know you love him, Kelly, even if he doesn’t. But that’s blinded you to the truth about him. If you were in my shoes you would have left him a long time ago.”

  “He’s got a busy life, Mom. But maybe I’ll go move in with Doug?”

  She smiled.

  “I’m going to be 18 in three weeks, Mom. I’ll be legal. You can’t keep me here. And when I show up at Doug’s apartment with something real low cut, showing off my tits—that don’t sag—you think he’s going to throw me out? I don’t think so. I’m going to suck that big fat dick that I’ve heard you moaning about at night. You know you guys have sex so much at times the whole house stinks of it?

  “I’m closer to his age than you are. I’d be a much better match for him. I might even go to UNF for a four-year program. I could cut expenses by living with him. I think he’d like that. I think I’ve got a shot mom. He’s young, hot, he’s got a great job and he makes decent money. I think he’d be a good dad.”

  She stepped off the bed, those proud young breasts pointing out ahead of her, the way Debbie remembered hers doing once upon a time. She was almost Debbie’s height and so she was staring eye to eye as she said, “I think I can grab him. And if I do give him a baby, I’ll be Mrs. Doug Baker and you’ll be his mother-in-law. Wouldn’t that be sweet?”

  She was lashing out before she could stop herself, drawing her stinging right hand back as Kelly almost fell back to the bed. There was a bright red outline of a palm against her cheek.

  “You stupid little bitch....”

  Kelly rubbed her cheek, and fought back tears.

  “Good shot mom. You really are a jealous bitch, aren’t you. Did that feel good? Too bad Dad didn’t bat you around years ago. You might have stayed married.”

  She sat back on the bed.

  “Why don’t you go on to your meeting, Mom. I won’t be here when you get back.”

  “Kelly, don’t be stupid. I don’t want to have to call the cops..”

  “Oh yeah, right, you want the cops coming in to this. I’ll just take a picture of this hand mark on my face so Children and Family Services will come in and remove me and BJ. I know that will do your job situation a world of good: UNF Professor investigated for child abuse. I can see the story now. Of course, dad will have to recuse himself if they file charges. Couldn’t have him prosecuting his ex-wife.

  “Don’t talk shit. I’ll let you know where I’ll be. I’ll probably go stay with Grandma and Granddad Bascomb until after I turn 18 and then I’ll look for a roommate. I think Dad will probably pay for me to get an apartment. Especially when I tell him that I can’t stand living with your slutty ass another minute.”

  Debbie just stared at her daughter for a long moment. It was amazing how much she sounded like Debbie at 17. Of course, the old saying like mother like daughter had a lot of truth to it. Unfortunately, she did remember what it was like to be 17, stacked and horny. Shit.

  As she walked past BJ’s bedroom she didn’t notice the door open a fraction of an inch and then close.

  She drove to UNF, knowing she was late and would be reamed out by her department head, knowing that she’d have to face Doug almost every day, knowing that Kelly would probably be gone when she got home and that Bill would probably know about it as soon as he got back and if he deemed to talk to her at all, would rub it in her face that Kelly couldn’t stand living with the Mother of the Year.

  She was too old to cry and it would wipe out her makeup, but she felt like it. It didn’t help that Bill, that self-righteous prick, was probably enjoying the sea air and screwing some desperate divorcee’s brains out. Doug was right. Sometimes life just wasn’t fair.

  Monday, July 18, 2005 -- 11:30 A.M.

  I didn’t wake up until 10:30 a.m. when the day was well underway for most passengers. But I hadn’t gotten to bed till well after 3:30 a.m. which was way out of my normal routine. I woke up alone in that huge round bed and for a second I couldn’t remember where I was. Then I tried to figure out where Debbie had gone to. Had she already left for work? But, we were on a cruise, so she wouldn’t be leaving for work.

  She’s probably gone down to get an early breakfast and let me sleep in. I stretched and felt the muscles in my back and shoulders tense and relax. Damn, that felt good. I tried to remember why I felt so good. It had been years, a lot of years, since I’d felt my body so intensely, felt the muscles flex and stiffen, then relax.

  I closed my eyes and I saw Debbie coming back in in shorts and a tee shirt, which was her usual garb on our cruises. Those immense tits bulged out and bounced despite the bras and I knew a lot of male passengers and staff had gotten whiplash swinging their heads around to watch them as she bounced along on the decks and the restaurant.

  Even with a bra, her nipples poked out insistently and she grinned at me as she slipped into the room.

  “Teasing the hungry animals?” I asked as she came in and deliberately jiggled when she knew I was looking at her.

  “Always, baby, but I brought the goodies home to you,” she said as she slippe
d the tee shirt and bra off and bounced into bed with me. I sucked her right breast and then left, milking her as I did and felt the vibrations run through her and I knew if I slipped a finger down into that pussy that was already creaming I’d feel her wetness running out. More than any other woman I’d ever been with, Debbie’s tits were the gateway to her pussy. Suck them and in a minute she’d be ready for action.

  “Why are you so wet? Have you been a good girl?” I teased her and she rubbed those soft tits all over my face, pulling them out of my mouth and dropping to encircle my already stiff cock and begin to rub them up and down.

  “Yes. It was exciting, watching all those hot hunky men staring at my titties and my ass. And it got me wet, real real wet, but it just made me want THIS more,” she said, dropping down to swallow my cock in one motion and take it down to my balls.

  I lay back and let her make love to my dick with her mouth and those incredible breasts. It didn’t make any difference if a lot of the heat and the wetness of her pussy came from the excitement of bouncing around in front of strange men.

  She’d always been this way. She loved exciting men, and as far as I knew it was the excitement of exhibiting herself that made her wet, not the thought of fucking other men. But she always brought it back home to me and I knew I’d need at least one viagra, if not two, before the day was over because once her motor started running, it was a challenge to keep up with her.

  But it was a hell of a fun challenge.

  I stretched again and then like a photo coming into focus, the memories fell away and I remembered that had been 1995 -- our last cruise to Hawaii. I rubbed my eyes to get the sleep and the tears out.

  What the hell had happened to the sexy, loving woman who couldn’t get enough of my cock?

  Ten years and the State Attorney’s Office and life had happened. As I put away those memories, the memories of what had happened last night rushed in to take their place.

  Aline des-Jardins. I still couldn’t figure her out. We’d only known each other for little more than a weekend. And our association had started only because it was part of her job. Still, there were those kisses, and the flirting. If there was not a kernel of real feeling there, she was the best damned actress I’d ever seen or heard of.

  And she was Philippe Archambault’s wife, for God’s sake. What were the odds of running into Philippe’s wife and getting involved with her. As I lay there I remembered the big Frenchman. It was like the way it had been with Lew Walters, only not as strong. I just liked the guy. He was easy to like. Despite having movie-star good looks and holding a powerful position that probably far outranked me because he was really a cross between a federal and a state prosecutor, he was just a good guy.

  He got along with other attorneys, French cops, crooks, barmaids and heiresses. He didn’t put on airs. If I hadn’t known just how powerful he was, I’d have thought he was just another prosecutor.

  And like me, it was the job that counted, the people we fought for that mattered. He had been as doggedly determined to track down the scum that were snatching Muslim girls out of the slums of Paris to force them into prostitution as he was prosecuting kidnappers that had stolen and murdered the nine-month old male heir to one of the world’s largest shipping empires headquartered in Marseilles.

  I suddenly remembered one of the organized crime thugs that we’d talked to in a Parisian dive trying to get a lead on the Muslim slave trafficking ring. As Philippe had walked to the bar to buy a round for three criminals and three prosecutors and cops, the old man with an impossibly bizarre wig and two gold front teeth and two fingers missing on his left hand leaned over and in broken English said, something about pitying the poor fools who had “le Diable” on their tail.

  The Parisian cop who was with us leaned over and laughing, said, “He means, ‘The Devil’ as you Americans would put it. Most of the low lives around here do their best to stay in good with Philippe because he didn’t get that nickname lightly. The few who disrespected him are serving life sentences or feeding the fish somewhere. He is a hard man, but one who I like having on our side.”

  There was no doubt that he was a good man professionally. Personally I was sure he was screwing around on this dream of a wife. How could you be a good man and a scumbag at one and the same time?

  Probably the same way I could be a good prosecutor and a scumbag that would consider, seriously consider, bedding a friend’s wife at the same time.

  And yet, and yet, and yet, she’d told me that I knew nothing about her marriage. She wanted to be with me, regardless of whether it was for the job or any other reason. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe nothing should happen.

  But, I looked inside myself and tried to remember the man who had set foot on the Bonne Chance on Friday afternoon. I didn’t feel like the same man. When I thought about Debbie, it still hurt. It hurt like hell. But I didn’t feel like a walking pile of shit anymore. I felt like a live, breathing, 41, almost 42-year-old man, and I knew now that 42 wasn’t over the hill. I had felt over the hill, and my marriage was over the hill, but I wasn’t.

  Amazing what a couple of days of sea air, a flirting, gorgeous woman, and a few stolen kisses could do to a man’s head. I made up my mind that when I got back the first thing I was going to do was walk into the Big Man’s office and plant a wet one on his lips. Just to see the look on his face. And because I owed him big time for forcing me on this cruise, however it ended up.

  I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, took a shower and headed for one of the nine distinct restaurants the ship boasted. I found myself at Le Abbec, the cleverly titled sushi bar on Deck Quatre. It was open 20 hours a day and I treated myself to a dozen mini sushi combinations.

  I liked every kind of sushi except the ones that were basically slabs on raw fish on rice. That was a little much even for me, but for the rest, anything that had the name sushi I generally liked. I’d order it sometimes in a restaurant just to see Debbie, Kelly and BJ wrinkle their noses in disgust. I’d tried to educate them for years but finally gave it up as a lost cause.

  When I finished I walked around for a bit trying to decide what I wanted to do. What I WANTED to do was find Aline and pick up unfinished business. But that was probably coming on too strong. I got to thinking about her and myself and decided to take one of the cruise excursion boats into Marsh Harbour.

  Abaco is a beautiful small island, the closest in the Bahamian archipelago to the U.S., and relatively unspoiled. There are a few hotels and some nice beaches, but it was nothing like the tourist trap that was Nassau. Still it had specialty shops and that was what I was looking for. I got in there about noon, looked around until I found the right shop and went in.

  I told the owner what I was looking for and they started presenting their wares. I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but I knew what it was and in three hours they had created it for me. I took the excursion ship back with me to the Bonne Chance, placed my purchase in my room, and went out to look around.

  The casinos were closed because we were still in Bahamian territorial waters, as were the shops on the ship. They wouldn’t open until we sailed out in about three hours. So there wasn’t a whole lot to do. I could have gone looking for Aline, but I just felt uneasy about that. Despite the fact that she wasn’t making any big secret of her time with me, I felt like there had to be something vaguely unprofessional about making it too obvious.

  I wandered the ship, looked at the smaller ships and sailing vessels approaching the Marsh Harbour docks. We were anchored about a half mile off. I was standing there watching a yacht that looked to be about 35 or forty feet pass below us with a bevy of sunbathing beauties waving the tops of their bikinis at us when I heard her say, “Obviously, there is some part of you that isn’t serious all the time. Or are you admiring the lines of that sailing vessel?”

  I couldn’t help grinning back at her. As usual, her face was serious and if it weren’t for the tone of her voice I wouldn’t be sure she was teasing.


  “I was admiring the lines all right, just not the lines of the vessel.”

  She half-heartedly slapped me on the shoulder.

  “Merde. As my mother once told me, all men are pigs. Even the good ones.”

  “You count me as one of the good ones?”

  “What do you think.”

  I almost reached out to pull her to me to kiss her, but I stopped myself. She was dressed in her ship’s garb again, passengers were walking around us, and she wasn’t obviously flirting.

  “I hope so.”

  She gave a slight smile which as always transformed her face.

  “Would you like to be the Captain’s guest at his table tonight? It’s a signal honor to be invited to eat with him and selected guests, and he asked me to pass on the invitation.”

  “You had nothing to do with it?”

  “No. He is ...aware...of your background, who you are. He likes to have an eclectic mix of guests for dinner.”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “7 p.m. Wear a suit.”

  And then she was gone. The woman who had rubbed me the right way the night before was missing in action. But it was still nice to talk to her.

  I managed to kill time until close to 7, then shaved and dressed in the only good suit I’d brought. I took the elevator to Deck Quatre and entered the main dining room at about 7:10 p.m. I hoped they believed in the precept of being fashionably late. I told the waiter I had an invitation to the Captain’s table and he led me to the back of the huge dining room. There was a space separated from the other tables and the hustle and bustle of waiters coming and going from the kitchen. The waiter led me a large round table with seats for twelve.

  There were three officers in formal blue and gold uniforms and Aline. They were seated together and there was an empty seat beside Aline. She looked up at me and gave me a small smile, gesturing to me to sit beside her. I did so and looked around the table. Ms. Stein was sitting almost directly across from me. The dress she wore tonight was black and cut to the nether regions in all directions, revealing more flesh than you’d see in the typical Jacksonville strip joint.