BF4Ever
Page 31
There was a long delay while David digested the news of being at last dumped from the organization chart that had been the Sargent family. He had long before concluded that inevitably a divorce would have been forthcoming. Given what he had just heard he remained very calm. It was simply another good reason not to like the Sargents.
“Well, Robert, I’m not surprised. More importantly, I don’t care. I’ll gladly shake your generous hand and say ‘good by’ to you too.”
“There’s more to come, David. I expect you to also divorce Robin for whom I’ve arranged to be my sole heir and so the largest stockholder in the company. It would have been weird to dump you from your position in the Bank while you’d still be humping the CEO of Pioneer Bank, don’t you think,” smiled Robert most restrained.
“Believe me, Robert, I totally understand. I would do exactly what you’re doing if I were in your position,” said David.
They looked at each other and each wondered on his own whether, as men, they ever had anything in common. It had always been a mystery to David what Robin had seen in him in the first place and why she had decided to marry him. Looking at Robin’s father damned the mystery only more. Robert Sargent was displaying a stiff, sub-zero stare that also made his old hands tremble with hostility. The man was quivering in an icy film of old age arterial plaque. At that moment, nothing could’ve warmed up Robert to a little sense of decency.
“I will be kind to you, David. In the face of no nuptial agreement, I will still give you a handsome ten million dollars for you to divorce Robin with no questions asked.”
There was silence as David loudly sucked through his straw the last ounce of diet coke. He looked hard at the old man and he felt sorry for him. Sorry because Sargent was a wimp before his eyes, hardly the adversary that he was positioning himself against.
“I think that I’m being very generous, don’t you agree?”
More calculating silence from David.
“You could do a lot of things with ten million dollars …”
“Geeewhheezy, Robert,” said David with a mean and ugly chuckle. “It’s times like these that I wish I were a red bull kind of a guy, all strung out on caffeine, so that I could pound the shit out of you, you ungrateful old geezer. But lucky for you I’m not going to pound the shit out of you today. So listen carefully to what I am going say to you, father of my whorish wife. I don’t understand how it happened, but first your daughter and then you somehow screwed me into a marriage for many years which was full of guilt on my part, and now you think you can dump me over a diet coke. It’ll cost you one hundred million, not ten, you old blood sucking pioneer of circle the wagons ruthlessness. One hundred million buckaroos to dump me.”
Poor Robert, mega CEO of Pioneer Bank, went black for a few seconds, probably a mild stroke; he recovered, and then he tried to comprehend if he could suffer a one hundred million dollar loss; not for the money, but to see whether his brain still functioned. For the very first time in his life he was very uncomfortable and very afraid.
“You must be worth at least six, seven billion, Robert, so what’s a measly one hundred million for you and a brand new life for me. Imagine you and your pretty little daughter alone, together again, as it used to be, and me out of your way for a shitty one hundred million dollars. You’ll both be so happy after I’m gone.”
The thought of once again being alone with his little girl brought gushes of warmth into Robert Sargent’s arteries and blood flowed back into his brains. He saw Robin as the little girl he knew as his happy bop, bop, bopping Robin days and he was happy. A one hundred million dollar deal was simply one of many that he had concluded and this one was worth it; he got a good deal in order to get rid of that minimal son-in-law of his.
“You drive a hard bargain, David, but I agree; it’s a deal,” he said to his ex-son-in-law and he extended his cold wrinkled hand to him.
David stood up, pushed Robert’s martini spilling it all over the table.
“Peace Corps volunteers can be ruthless too, Robert,” he said.
He then walked out of the Sargents’ life. Within a year he moved to Sardinia where he bought a huge villa with a small vineyard to keep him occupied. A year later Justine and Meredith visited him as they were touring through Europe. Justine had an unlikely sexual escapade with David and decided to stay on with him in Sardinia. Nineteen years old Meredith also fucked David but decided to continue on with her European trip. Two years later Meredith, for good, also joined forty seven year old David and her sister in a cloister of three. For years they lived happy, long lives together, and the girls easily adapted to the ways of French culture. Rarely if ever did any of them think of Robin, or Myrna, even though Myrna had visited the girls one summer. Throughout the visit she felt very alone.
Chapter Nineteen
It had been a shocker.
It had all started out as a promised one month luxury cruise in the Mediterranean and now Robert and Helen Sargent were dead. Suicides, the cruise company had said. And they weren’t lying because there had been witnesses to the event of first Helen, with the help of her husband, jumping overboard, and then Robert himself doing the same, both without lifejackets. The whole ghastly affair had been extensively videoed by some Chinese tourists to background laughter. Unfortunately for the Sargents, the whole thing took place at night, and although there was a full moon, they went into the choppy waters yellow, somewhere off the island of Cyprus, and they never surfaced above the frothy white caps of the famed sea. The warm Mediterranean waters even on calm summer nights can be invitingly deadly. A dinghy was lowered and they searched for a while until all hope along with the Sargents disappeared into the ancient waters of Aphrodite in the Eastern Mediterranean as the cruise ship was heading for the Holy Lands of Israel.
After their bloom, the next thing the Sargents knew was that they were holding hands while traversing through an aura of subtle non-sensory stimulating, yet enchanting music. Aside from the spiritual harmony enveloping them, everywhere there was peace; and definitely there was no salty water anywhere to drown their sorrows, because they no longer felt unhappy. It was as if they were effortlessly floating through a space filled with fluffy pristine creamy white puffs of clouds not unlike what Robert had witnessed some weeks earlier one dawn from his bedroom window.
“What a surprise,” said Robert to his wife.
“Not for me,” came a glowing response. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“I know you,” said Helen. “You’re Robin’s best friend Sharon, aren’t you? Robert, you remember Sharon; she’s the one who committed suicide … oops …”
“That’s ok Helen. We’re all in the same boat now,” said Sharon and they all laughed.
“Is this Heaven or Hell,” asked a curious Robert.
“It’s whatever you want it to be Robert,” said Sharon who continued to straighten out a tablecloth over a round table similar to the one that had been in the Seven Seas Restaurant. The cloth seemed to be one of those intensely blazing red and blue hues depictions of Paradise from Adam and Eve’s time. “In Heaven, each of us has his or her own Paradise.”
“You’re so real,” said Helen.
“I’m anything but real,” said Sharon. “I exist only in your spiritual minds. But I am as real as you wish to make me. For example, if Robert wanted to fuck me right now, he could by simply wishing it, which I can now sense that he wants to, even though I exist only as a spirit in his mind. Mind you, he’d be fucking his own fantasy and thus he could do whatever he would want with me. This after all is true Paradise, as everyone would wish it, don’t you think?”
It was a little embarrassing for Robert to have angelic Sharon read his mind so obviously. True, when alive, lustful thoughts did invade his heart when in young Sharon’s presence, but he wasn’t an animal and he was able to contain himself though it wasn’t easy; maybe if she wasn’t Robin’s friend …
“Go ahead, Robert, fuck her; you have my permission, for what’s Heaven for,” laughed Helen somewhere in Robert’s spiritual Heavenly mind.
“Yes, but I want the real Sharon, as I knew her when alive …”
“You’re an idiot, Robert. Here we are in Heaven and all you can think about is fucking Sharon. There must be something more pleasant to think about than fucking Sharon?” said a noticeably aggravated Helen, this being her first time in Heaven also.
“Like what,” said an unabashed Robert?
More Heavenly music suggesting that Robert was right.
“To the point Sharon: is there a real corporal Sharon, not just spiritual, floating around on her own, and out of my mind in this here Heaven?” said Robert who was having a hard time adjusting to spiritual Heavenly existence.
“Does it matter?” said Sharon. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon adjust to being in Paradise. You must, you know, for you’ll be here for an eternity, and that’s a very long time.”
“Yes it matters,” said the bean-counting banker, “for what’s the thrill in fucking a spirit. We’ve all done that millions of times and it’s just not like the real thing.”
“You’re an idiot, Robert,” repeated Helen. “You could wish for Cleopatra or Liz Taylor, for example, but no, you wish for your daughter’s best friend,” said Helen.
“Happens all the time,” said Sharon.
“OK, smarty-pants, whom do you wish to make out in Heaven?” asked Robert.
“Hercules,” said Helen.
Robert and Helen then settled down in each other’s minds. You had to be there, but settling in each other’s minds for an eternity was difficult to comprehend, as was difficult to know how long they could stand to be in each other’s minds, or whether the dead-beat drowsy music settlement now luxuriously sedating their souls, was in any way going to be as pleasant as corporeal earthly life. The thought did occur to them that perhaps they had gone overboard with their suicides. At best it was irksome to have someone continuously in your mind and you be in someone else’s mind without a corporeal existence of your own. Did she really know what he was thinking or doing? And did he really know what she was thinking or doing? All the time?
Unfair! Unjust! Un-Heavenly, thought Robert. And yet even in Heaven companionship was necessary for no one could exist alone even in one’s own Paradise, and he thought of Adam. Jesus, it was almost like being married again. ‘Till death do us apart,’ he thought. Well, here they were dead: where the hell was the ‘apart’ part? Then he thought that a little wickedness was especially necessary in Heaven or else he would go out of his mind.
Robert Sargent, though in fear of being condemned forever in hell for his wickedness, which really did not exist anywhere in God’s creation, while now in spirit, decided to erase his beloved wife, once and for all time, to get her out of his mind for all eternity. Instantaneously, Helen was gone and in so far as Robert was concerned, that was the way the kitty bounced. He thought of Adam and hoped to meet him sometime. Free at last, free at last, he thought in the spirit of at last being relieved from the one corporeal bind most suffocating: marriage. He was surprised that the Good Lord was not offended with the ease in which he had done away Helen. Whoever came up with the saying ‘a marriage made in Heaven’ didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He caught himself swearing again, but once in Paradise, he thought, you can probably do anything without offending the Lord. After all, you’re there at his invitation, so, what the hell, anything goes. God does not go back on His Word; not really.
He was feeling good, alone in his Paradise that was his Heaven; he found himself ghostly swooshing through a religious fervor of ecstatic delight. Here now was true Paradise where anything went. No more Helen, just pure pleasure; pure pleasure that for a change was not sinful. There must be pleasures in Paradise: for if there are no pleasures, there must only be pain in Paradise, or even worse, nothing, and that would be absurd. It would amount to an abrogation of God’s promise, surely an absurdity. He wanted to find Sharon again, and this time, not just in his own mind, but on her own naked corporal self. But until then he did fantasy fuck her several times; it was ok, but it left a lot of room for bargaining.
While searching for more Heavenly pleasure, and corporeal Sharon, as he remembered her in the Paradise of his mind, he thought about food and drink! Again, the thought was absurd, for what spirit needs food or drink?
He felt remorseful when he remembered the lines, so true,
‘Come let us drink while we have breath
For there’s no drinking after death’
Well, so much for spirits in Heaven, the ultimate paradox, he laughed to himself.
But there must be some form of pleasure that even a spirit in Heaven could appreciate, and Robert was never a sports fan. And what could be duller than the absence of pleasure …
And, there it was: sex, the supreme pleasure for the greatest happiness! Here was the perfect fantasy in Heaven as it is on earth. Pure and dirty sex equally available to all with no moral strings attached; no hang-ups; no hard feelings; just pure pleasure. For isn’t it true that sex is the most Heavenly reigning chock full of sensual pleasures? It made perfect sense, and suddenly Robert began to sing in Heavenly ecstasy looking for Sharon.
“Take my hand, I’m a stranger in Paradise,
All lost in a wonderland, a stranger in Paradise.
The lyrics were pure delight and Robert was certain that he had connected with Sharon’s spirit which must’ve been floating somewhere nearby.
“I must say, Bobby, you’re definitely the husband I never had.”
It was Sharon! A ghost of her former self but still as ravishing as ever. She was real, naked breasts and ass as real as he had always fantasized on Earth.
And lo and behold Paradise was exactly as the song exclaimed. Such a wonderland full of ass and tits. How could it be otherwise? As a former CEO Robert understood that the good Lord would have wanted it that way. Also birds and other animals among plush vegetation.
*
“Go ahead, Robert, you could be twenty five again, and just tell me how old you want me to be, and it’ll be so.” It was Sharon, now gloriously in the buff. “And everything goes in Paradise, which is of course why it’s called Paradise.”
“Can you read my mind?”
“I don’t have to read it, I see it,” said Sharon. “I can see all you are thinking, and just like in down-to-earth imagination, I can make you coarse corporeal and so can you make me coarse corporeal. I make you, you make me, there are no secrets in Heaven, but no need to go into this stuff now, or ever, because it is common nonsense as you will understand soon enough,” said Sharon. “By the way, where’s Helen?”
“I got rid of her. Ever since we got married I wanted to get rid of her. She was such a pain, and there mustn’t be any pain in Paradise,” said Robert laughing. “Anyway, I never did like that name, Helen, as in Helen Sargent. Suzy, Suzy Sargent! Now there’s a name I can dance to. I suppose I could call her back and call her Suzy …”
“You have a lot to learn, Bobby (I say Bobby, you hear Robert, that’s part of Heaven too). Listen, Bobby, as long as there’s a mortal somewhere that recalls the memory of Helen, you cannot get rid of her. That’s why we have gravestones and memorials, and other forms of rituals on earth: so that we may remember those gone before us and thus we too may become immortal in the memory of our descendants after we die,” explained Sharon to the newly arrival, who should have intuitively known all this anyway, but instead found huge lustful pleasure sucking Sharon’s fabulous lips. They were Heavenly luscious as he shamelessly gulped away and he wanted more o
f her everything, all naked in the plush gardens of a Paradise full of corporeal sensuality?
“I have no idea where Helen is roaming around, Sharon, and I don’t care,” said Robert with a silly little boy’s grin on his angelic face. He wasn’t breathless because there’s no need to breath in Heaven; what, you’re going to die if you don’t breath in Heaven?
“You would think that I’d be surprised at your thoughts and desires,” said Sharon, “but ever since I was a young girl all men have been looking for me. I love it, because it keeps me immortal. It’s such a pleasure being with you, Bobby.”
“But you are in Heaven, so you’re already immortal,” said Robert somewhat unnerved at the ease with which Sharon was accepting his lecherous mix.
“Hello, Robert, I see you’ve found Sharon again,” it was Helen. “Have you fucked her already? Go ahead, Robert, she’s your daughter’s friend, not your daughter.”
Every time the topic of pleasure came up for people new in Heaven some interruption intervened away from the insatiable desire.
“What have you been up to, Helen?” said Robert.
“You know what, Robert? I’ve discovered that there’s no libido in Heaven,” said Helen.
“How would you have known what it was,” said Robert, recalling his days on earth.
Ever since Eve blew it with Adam, the Lord had decreed that men should not be able to read women’s minds. It made for peace in Heaven.
“As we were saying Helen and Robert, we spirits exist as immortals as long as mortals remember us.”
“Make’s sense,” said Helen.
“The moment that not a single memory of any of us registers in any mortal mind, we as spirits in Heaven cease to exist; hence the existence of rituals on the part of those we leave behind,” said Robert who was beginning to understand the continuity between God’s Heaven and His Earth.