Pool Party

by K T Morrison

  Skyler rubbed his neck while the judge admired Lynn’s prone body, reached down and stroked her knee. He chuckled. “You know, for a year,” he said, now walking to the walk-in closet, “for a year I would only let your wife suck my cock. I would spank her, too. Tell her she needed to lose weight. She didn’t of course, but I needed to see her compliance. And look how far she took it. She was so eager to get on her knees, Darren, but so desperate to be worthy of my cock inside her.”

  Skyler whispered, “I bet you’re getting hard again.”

  He shrugged away her voice in his ear. She laughed, drew her knee up, climbed out from behind him, standing naked next to the chair. She ran a hand on his back said, “I can’t jerk you off again, I’ve got to get going.” She followed Lovelace into the closet.

  Madison licked her lips, smiling at him knowingly. She said, “Thanks for dinner,” a mean little smile on her face, knowing how absurd that was. Then she bounced off the bed as well, vampire cape fluttering behind her.

  All three of them were in the closet now, the girls laughing; he saw the shadows on the floor outside the door moving around, heard the sounds of them getting dressed. When they emerged, they wore his and Lynn’s clothing.

  Lovelace cinched up Darren’s belt, ran the prong through a hole and tugged it across the roller. He said, “It was a wonderful evening, Darren. I think we all had quite the time. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  Darren nodded again, looking away now and watching his wife.

  All three of them walked into the suite’s passageway, making a wide berth around the broken glass. They went to the doors and into the hall. At the door, Skyler stopped, turned and said, “Tell Tabitha I said Hey,” and she was gone with the other two.

  Darren sat there in the chair for a long time. He listened to the front door close, giggling voices out his window, car doors chunking, opening and closing, motors starting, Mercedes V12 and an old Korean four-cylinder, parking brakes groaning, then the sound of them driving away. Someone double-honked.

  When it was completely quiet, Lynn drew her knees up, rolled to her side and lay in a fetal position, naked on the bed. He hefted himself from the chair, hunched over, feet dragging a few steps until he collapsed on the bed behind her.

  Epilogue

  He watched her breathe for a long moment. His shadow, the Sunday morning light coming from the window behind him, rose and fell on the gentle movement of her back. That back was so familiar to him; had seen it in the shower, in bikinis on vacation, naked in bed. Familiar round freckle, the size of a dime, that he convinced her to get a dermatologist to look at (proving it benign) five years ago.

  His wife’s body had changed. This was the first time he had really seen it in broad daylight after all the work she had done at the gym. The muscles of her shoulder were shapely, rounded, her whole body toned and smooth. He slowly eased a finger out and let the pad rest on that familiar identifying freckle. She didn’t flinch; she didn’t recoil, and she let it press on her. She began to sob and his heart broke for her. She made soft whimpering sounds, her hands coming up to cover her face, and then the sound of her own cry brought it worse. Soon she was shaking. She whimpered, “I ... I hate myself.”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “I’m disgusting,” she cried. “I’ll leave. Just give me a few minutes ... and I’ll leave.”

  “Where you going to go?”

  She said, “I don’t know, Darren. I’m so sorry ... I’m such a horrible piece of shit. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know ... I’ll go away. We’ll figure it out ...”

  He said, “I don’t want you to go,” and he let all his fingertips touch her now, tenting on her skin then flattening, slowly his palm lay near the center of her back, somewhere underneath that her strong heart beating.

  “How can you even look at me, Darren? I’ve ruined everything.”

  “Don’t say that,” he said.

  “Oh, God,” she cried, flinched away from his hand, curled into a tighter ball. “I’m awful. So awful.”

  “Let me touch you,” he said.

  “How could you want to?” she said shakily.

  “I love you,” he said. And it was true. What he witnessed, and how he’d practically been victimized, was a nightmare. A horror movie. His heart stabbed, his past degraded, his sexual life with the woman he loved completely devalued. Yet he didn’t hate Lovelace. There was truth to what he said. He’d given something to Lynn. And what Darren had watched this morning and what he partook in last night was a gift to him as well. Though it made no sense, he caressed her back again.

  “How can you love me?” she whispered. Her sobbing had stopped.

  “How can I love you? Are you crazy? I’ve always loved you. We have two children together. Did you know that? Did you forget?” he said softly joking and rocking her with his hand.

  “No.” She sniffed.

  “Lynn, I want you more than ever.”

  Her back began to shake again, and he heard her crying. He pressed his chest to her back now, circling an arm over her shoulder and holding her tight. She gripped his wrist in both her hands and squeezed him hard. She cried. He felt the warm tears on the knuckle of his hand. Inexplicably, he turned to steel again. His cock poking behind her. Pressing its point into the back of her thigh. She squirmed on him and his heart began to race. Her tight muscular leg pushed down, recognizing his arousal. He couldn’t believe this was happening.

  He brought his knees up, angled his hips, wiggled around the tip of his penis until he felt her very slippery opening. He pressed it into her, heard the wet crackle of another man’s semen inside her as it gushed around his slim hardness. He slid himself inside her, feeling barely any resistance at all. He whispered, “He left you so loose.”

  “His cock is huge,” she sighed.

  It drove him, pushing him into her even harder, feeling his own cock swell and flare. She hugged his arm tighter, held on as he pounded, his much smaller penis stabbing and poking into her, making all sorts of bubbly noises, his wife’s stretched out insides feeling loose around him. And there it was again, even grander than before, just like when he’d watched that other man fuck his wife into oblivion he was ejaculating. Blasting off inside the woman he got down on one knee and proposed to twenty-six years ago, the week after they had both finished university and before she went to law school. He pounded and held, pounded and held, over and over until he was empty. Still Lynn hugged his arm.

  Standing in the kitchen waiting for the milk to steam for their espressos, he watched his wife sitting on the deck of the pool with her back to him. She wore a robe and nothing else. Back hunched, face in her hands; even though he told her he loved her she was still crying.

  The milk frothed, and he added it to their cups, saw her dabbing at her eyes with a balled up Kleenex. The backyard hadn’t been cleaned, clothing scattered around the cedar deck that lined the hot tub, empty pitcher on the table, one by the tub next to the half empty bottle of Port Ellen, lid to the grill left open, dirty dishes on the patio table. But the sun shone on a new day, and the events of last night and this morning would be put behind them. He bumped the French door with a hip, stepped down to the concrete deck, the two cups of cappuccino clattering on their saucers. He sat down next to her, making sure his hip touched hers, and handed her a coffee. She sniffed, turned, averted her eyes, and took the saucer, said, “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  Then they sat, neither of them drinking, neither of them saying anything, both looking across the pool, the pump still running, the surface rippling with the power of the jets. A tree frog buzzed and a seagull’s shadow swooped across the yard. A turquoise bikini top hung over the edge of the diving board. A black one streamed across the hedge.

  Lynn sighed, took a sip of the cappuccino and put the cup back on the saucer, laying it on her knees. Without looking at him, she said, “You had sex with those girls?”

  “I’m sorry.”

 
“It’s okay,” she said. “What could I say?”

  “Doesn’t change that I’m sorry.”

  She said, “Did you have sex with both of them?”

  “No. Just Skyler. I couldn’t say no. I probably didn’t want to say no. But she—”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Madison?”

  “She told you,” he said quietly.

  She leaned forward as if she were in pain and he wanted to put his hand on her back, but kept it on his saucer. He said, “She’s ...”

  “What?”

  “She’s a little bitch,” he said.

  Lynn’s shoulders slumped, and she said, “I know. Not all the time.”

  “She was so mean to you.”

  She set the cup and saucer in front of her feet on the deck and hugged her knees. She turned her head to face him, her cheek still pressing her thighs. She said, “I like it.”

  “Okay,” he said, feeling again like he was standing very close to the edge of something too high. Knowing that when he tumbled forward he wouldn’t survive the fall.

  She said, “Did you want to ask me why?”

  He said, “No.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

  “Where does this leave us?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you.”

  Now he looked in her eyes, the first time since the aftermath of her vicious fucking on their marital bed by a man who controlled his wife. They were wet, blinking, big and brown and somehow innocent despite the travesty that she had made their marriage.

  He said, “I was looking forward to the kids being out of the house. I thought we would spend time together.”

  “I know,” she said, that innocence dissipating, becoming sadness.

  “But what were we going to do?”

  “Travel?”

  He said, “Maybe. That’s not what I wanted necessarily. I wanted to spend the time with you. Like we had twenty-five years together and there were still parts of you that I wanted to get to know.”

  She chewed her lower lip and listened.

  “So I guess that’s what we’re going to do. If you’re willing. I’m going to get to know you.” Now he looked to her again and cocked his head to show her affection. “He was right, Lovelace; he did give me something. He gave me you. Seeing him take you ...? He gave you what you needed, and he showed me. Ugly or not I liked it because it was you.”

  She said, “He’s an incredible man.”

  He grimaced and held his stomach.

  “Sorry,” she said, sitting up now and putting a hand on his knee, “I didn’t mean that.”

  He set his cup down on the deck, still holding his stomach, his face twisted up. He said, “No, you did. I have to come to grips with it. I want to know. I want to know everything about you.”

  She watched him for a moment, eyes quivering, her mouth open but still chewing the inside of her cheek. She said brightly, “Really?”

  “We’re empty-nesters, got the house to ourselves. I don’t love you any less. Lovelace showed me in the right way. Maybe ... he’s good for you ...”

  “Oh, he is, Darren,” she pleaded now, gripping his thigh with both hands. “You mean it?”

  “Yes, I do. I think I really do.”

  “You think?”

  He chuckled, bizarre strangeness settling over both of them. “Yes,” he said, and he parted the front of his robe to show her the tip of his penis sticking straight up in the air.

  She laughed, said, “That’s unbelievable.”

  “It is. Why did I like what I watched?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought I would be spending the afternoon on the phone with a good divorce attorney.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” he said, picturing his wife in a motel, on the bed talking to her lawyer. “You wouldn’t fight to keep me?”

  “I didn’t think there was any way you could accept what an ugly monster I am inside.”

  “I don’t think you’re ugly inside at all, Lynn. I think that’s the scary part. I think what I watched today was actually pretty beautiful.”

  She puffed out her cheeks, slowly exhaled. As her cheeks deflated, she began to smile. “Well, that’s certainly something,” she said, and she pressed herself closer to him, put her arms around him.

  “It’s certainly something,” he agreed.

  “We are empty-nesters,” she said.

  “We got the house ... all to ourselves,” he slowly said as his mouth opened and he kissed the woman he loved.

  Her hand circled his cock, began to stroke him lightly, and she broke her kiss and whispered in his ear: “Can I text Lovelace? I want to know if I can fuck you.”

  “We already did ...”

  “I know ... You … you call him, but ... if you mention that … he might punish us.”

  Afterword

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  A Preview of The Obsessed Series

  Blocks.

  That was his thing since last winter. Blocks of thick wet oil in shades of steel, post-industrial landscape, and the colours of dead soldiers in Posen-West Prussia. The colour would drip and run, and if it worked it stayed, if it didn’t—linseed oil and heavy, titanium white paste would stamp it out. Then more blocks pressed over top would erase its memory. Maybe the blocks made up a larger picture or maybe they didn’t. Fuck, was it the ocean? It sometimes felt like the ocean. Right now he was waiting for it all to come into focus. Maybe make some sense. Blocks.

  He was using a metal stamp, some sort of industrial form he’d found here when he rented the building. It was a sheet metal square with a sheet metal form that became a frame to cradle a handle; a spindle, made of wood, worn powdery smooth from use. He’d fashioned a leather pad that fit in the sheet metal square, and then different textures could be attached to the stamp, applied to the surface of the canvas. That was just the start, then that square need to be finessed, it’s big important message coaxed from it using more texture, more paint, just more...

  Blocks within blocks, making up patterns, trying desperately to communicate a complex, ill-formed idea with crude texture and colour. It was like a message was being transmitted to him and it was impossible for it to be conveyed in words. It was a sobbing, grief-stricken, disjointed Civil War quilt. Block edges like torn propaganda posters on the artillery-peppered walls of a dying, black and white Europe. Frayed like old denim; greyed, time-worn fabric. Yet somehow wet, forever wet. It meant something. It felt tangible. Like an emotion you could hold in your hand. You could peel up the corner of one of those blocks and discover a secret about yourself.

  Atticus Hawke, twenty-eight years of age on the last sixth of June, had a gallery name now. Powerful representation. Bronk-Kaufmann Gallery on East 3rd sold eight of his works in the last seven months. One million and one hundred and twelve thousand dollars before the gallery’s take. He was on to something with this series. Sometimes it could feel like he was gaining on it—whatever it was—getting closer, ready to pounce, clamp on its neck and drag it down for the kill. When he did, it would be over. He’d wash himself of the blood, stand sated and look for new prey.

  The name Atticus Hawke came with cache now. Each painting sold slightly higher than the last. This was the pattern over the last eighteen months. People were getting hot for him. Janet Kirshenbaum from the L.A. Weekly started her article for the weekend Culture section with: Drop-dead gorgeous son of a quiet and reclusive music legend. Six-one, tanned and fit, long silky blonde hair cut one length, hanging to touch his broad shoulders. He has soulful blue eyes, a rugged jaw and a dimpled chin. Ever since the article he’d become more important than the work. His enigma sold the art as well as, or more than, his talent. Such was fucking art.

  The canvas had been prepared by his own hand. Raw linen from Italy stretche
d and nailed over a spruce frame. Fourteen feet by seventeen. Painted blocks about ten inches by ten. Each block a separate idea, but contextual of the whole. One work made up of two-hundred and eighty-five ideas. Two-hundred and eighty-five blocks, each laid with careful decision.

  There was a rolling platform that he worked from, adjustable by hydraulics, that allowed him to work on any one part of the canvas he felt like. He could spend an entire day on one four foot square idea, working and reworking each block until it made his heart content. He didn’t need to step away and examine. His work was always about the smaller pictures. He knew if the small pictures were true the big picture would be as well. He didn’t have to keep checking.

  He was losing his afternoon light. The bright sky was getting dim and orange as the sun wound its way down towards the horizon. He had lots of electric fill light that would brighten up his workspace but he preferred natural daylight. When the sun began to set it was time for other pursuits. Creativity he could pursue in the dark.

  He stepped down off the scaffolding and unzipped his coveralls. He had worked up a sweat. His long blonde hair clung to him wetly, his hands and his coveralls were stained with grey tinted oils. He stretched, avoided turning to take a look at the day’s progress. He’d be too inclined to get back to work if he heard it call him back. He had other things to do tonight.

  He walked across the big empty factory space and headed for his things arranged neatly on a long bench that came from an abandoned railway station they were taking apart on the other side of the District. He checked his phone.

  There was a cold text there, forty-five minutes old.

  MissProust: Is everything still on for Sat night?

  He brushed the hair out of his eyes, blinked the sweat away. He typed.