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Two's a Crowd Ch. 01

By: angiquesophie



I wasn't supposed to be there. I should have been at the annual reunion of my old college frat house, two states over. It was a tradition we started seven years back. It usually consists of an evening of boozing followed by a day of golf and a dinner. Not the best golf after the night before, as you may imagine. But the getting together is great. We are expected to be there Friday afternoon and return on Sunday. Myriam never accompanies me. It is a male thing; spouses and girlfriends are not invited.

My name is Bruce Pierson. Myriam is my wife of nine years. We met at that same college. Funny thing is we only got together at the last possible moment -- during a party after graduation. It wasn't because I hadn't lusted after her in the years before. She just happened to be out of bounds, being with one or the other of the more popular football jocks. No reason for her to look past the bulging muscles, I guessed. I understood she had broken off the most recent relationship just a few days before. She never told me why. I never asked.

Myriam has a great body. It was why I wanted her. Well, don't call me shallow -- it was why half the male population wanted her. Isn't it always the body at first? She was tall and lean. She had the kind of hair they call auburn and legs that don't seem to stop. 

Funny thing was that she always tried to hide all that. She never flashed her legs or wore anything to accentuate her tits. Her wardrobe was expensive. Extremely tasteful too -- she looked the essence of a thoroughbred New England girl. Mohair sweaters, streaming slacks and knee-length skirts, custom made jackets and modest heels. A string of pearls was her most outrageous attempt at jewelry. But of course they were real pearls.

Myriam dressed like a stylish prude. She essentially wore what my auntie would have worn had she been rich. The amazing thing was that it still made her look sensual and provocative. And not just to me. For a prude, there was always quite a lot of lewd gossip going around about her. I suppose it was out of spite and frustration,.

We didn't have sex that first booze-soaked night, although sex was the thing to do -- it happened all around us. But there were two reasons why we didn't: her eyes. They are maybe the only eyes able to pull a man's gaze away from a woman's tits and keep them up there -- mine at least. Her eyes are gray as a calm sea. But it always feels as if there is a storm brewing behind them. We talked and drank and danced and talked. We walked and talked. We hugged and even pecked a kiss. Then we danced some more. And yes, my cock grew hard against her thigh.

It didn't take us long to have sex, though. The first time was after I fell in love with her. Which happened to be on our first date. Which happened to be the very next day. I fell head over heels and so did she, she said. 

Her body was all it promised to be -- and more. But I guess that was because she lived inside it. There was always this patient, sweet, soft and incredibly tender force, just under her skin. It never exploded or got out of control, but it was there -- shimmering, glowing. She could become quite passionate once we started, though she hardly ever initiated sex. She also was pretty limited in her sexual expressions. She loved foreplay, as in kissing, caressing and having her pussy licked. She loved to kiss me everywhere, including the tip of my cock. But that was exactly how far she went.

Making love mostly meant missionary for her. Sometimes she allowed me to enter her pussy from behind, but she had to be very horny for that. Her other entrances were no-go areas. When I tried 69 once, it really seemed to confuse her. When I attacked her in an elevator she was shocked. My hand got slapped when it crept up her thigh during a Thanksgiving dinner at her family's. But as limited as her variations may have been through the years, when we made love, we made passionate love. I never felt anything lacking. We always stilled each other's hunger. Then again, I guess our hungers were compatible. I always liked to think of us as a well-balanced, mature couple -- we shared a love that grew way beyond mere sex.

The first year we made love almost daily. During our first months we did it on our kitchen table, on the couch, in the bathroom, even in our bed. Everywhere, as long as it was in the privacy of our house.

Anyone who met Myriam with her cool, stylish manner and modest outfits would have had no idea of the passionate Myriam within. It felt great to know I was the only one to enjoy that passion.

We married a year after graduation, when I got this job here. She found a good job too and I guess we were quite the yuppie couple. Nice apartment, exotic holidays, dinners with friends, some clubbing, some partying. And the money to pay for it. But good jobs and lots of socializing breed schedules, calendar planners and PDAs. Soon they started to rule our life.

The PDAs won, of course. Don't they always, even when they change their name to palm tops or Blackberries? By our second anniversary "bed" and "sex" had become synonymous. So had "weekend" and "sex." We knew what was happening and why. We fought it. But we more and more had to plan our fun and that killed half of it. Vacations were our last resort. We spent careless weeks on Jamaica and in Europe. But they just emphasized the barrenness of the times in between.

Myriam works as a legal advisor for a big import and export firm. She negotiates and writes up contracts. She is damn good and gets to hear it often. I am the managing director at the local branch of an international software company. I don't know much about computers, my talent is money. And I was talented enough to be kicked up the ladder quickly.

As a matter of fact, that was the reason why I was not at the frat reunion, that day.

*** 

Early Friday morning I had packed a simple bag and kissed a rather drowsy Myriam goodbye. The plan had been to take the afternoon flight and be in time for the first drinks at cocktail hour. I would fly back in the afternoon after the day of golf and dining. I already knew how my head would feel by then, so I took Monday morning off too.

Then my phone rang.

Jeremy Onslow is the second man at Headquarters. When he calls, it has been known that people drop to their knees. Mine are too stiff for that. But I must admit that my heart beat quickly. I expected the call. Not necessarily right now and not exactly from him, but there had been rumors around that made it plausible. You see, I've gone as high as I could go where I'm currently located. The only step up now would be to headquarters in New York. And that would be more than a step -- it would be a leap.

Myriam knew it could happen; she had mixed feelings about it. The money would be great, so would living in Manhattan and all that. We'd often dreamt of it. But the move would also mean she would have had to leave her job behind. She loved me. She loved her job too.

Onslow had asked me if I could see him that night. It was rather important and as he was in town, this would be an excellent opportunity. I wondered why he wasn't here at the offices when he was in town, but one doesn't ask the Onslows of Corporaria why they are where they are. You also don't tell them "no, sorry, I have a reunion." So I phoned my buddies two states over that, alas, I could only arrive tomorrow and hope to be in time for the golfing. Start the boozing without me, guys.

I also phoned Myriam, but she did not pick up. Not on her cell and not at home. At her office her secretary said she was out. I tried once more later on, but without success. I shrugged and returned to my intricate dance with the quarterly figures.

*** 

The bar at the local five star hotel began to slowly empty. I pocketed my cell phone after another fruitless call to Myriam. At her work I only got security. She wasn't at home either.

The Excelsior Hotel ranks as about the poshest place we have in our pedestrian city. I had never been here on my own before, but I had often been here with clients -- it was that kind of place. Drinks were twice the usual price and so were the hookers. One smiled at me as I nursed my soft drink. After two beers coke had seemed a smart change of pace. There'd be stronger stuff later on, no doubt. Where the hell was Onslow? It was getting close to 7:30, almost an hour later than agreed. Why the hell do these guys always have to rub your nose in their ego-shit?

Then I saw him. Thick set, gray where he wasn't bald, expensive suit, impressive eyebrows. We had met before. I didn't particularly like his aggressive management style, but it seemed to get things done. He was very successful.

Tonight I was to see quite a different Onslow. He went on and on, apologizing until he had reached the humblest bottom of his excuse-bucket. He'd had a meeting in town, you know. He had already arrived late. Couldn't get out of it. Tried to reach me. Didn't I get his calls? Damn secretary. And so on. Seeing Onslow grovel isn't good for your ego. You might start to think he finds you important.

I just smiled and asked him what he wanted to drink. Then we talked shop, football, news and sex. He even dished up a dirty joke -- not a bad one either. Into the second drink he asked me if I had eaten. Of course I hadn't -- I had been waiting. He hadn't dined either, so we decided to have a bite in the hotel restaurant. Being after eight, some of the tables were already deserted. At others people were having their dessert or coffee. Some were just stretching out their dinner and finishing their wines. People don't eat late in my city.

We found a small table in a far corner and ordered our meal. I had left most of my appetite at the bar. Onslow decided to choose a crazily expensive wine. He made quite a show of tasting it. Then we toasted and I must say the wine was good -- even after two beers, a coke and a scotch on ice. Any vintage that survives a torture test like that must have its merits.

I felt tired. It was the kind of tiredness that turns the bustle of a dining room into a muffling blanket of atmosphere. I stretched my legs and looked around. Jazzy music seeped in from an adjoining lounge. I did hear Onslow, but his voice was veiled by the music and the bustle. He indeed probed me for the job. There were a few problems at headquarters. They were of the kind I had successfully solved at our branch, last year. The scale was much larger, of course. But I knew I could handle it. There also were big plans, Onslow said -- amazing new developments. He told me my income would almost double, with bonuses and perks. They even knew a wonderful apartment for us. It had a terrace with park view and all. And very friendly mortgage terms.

I watched his face. I saw what he thought. He must be feeling like Father Christmas. Surely he would not often have the pleasure of dumping such a glorious treat on such a lucky bastard. In fact, he probably thought this should be an absolute no-brainer for me. I bet he wondered why I didn't grab the chance at once; why I looked away, clearing my throat. I knew the Onslows of this world. They would never understand men who loved their women enough to consider their wishes, too.

In the distance the lounge was filling up with festively clad people. They wore lovely gowns and sharp tuxedos. The music sounded mellow in a nice and snobby way. Then my breath stuck in my throat. Right at the entrance stood Myriam.

I knew it was she and yet it wasn't. I shook my head and looked again. She was dressed incredibly sexy. I had never seen her in the shimmering, sea-green evening dress she wore -- or should I say, hardly wore. It just about hung on to her bare frame and it plunged at all the risky places. Her chest displayed more cleavage than she had ever shown in public. Nevertheless it seemed she was quite at ease. Her hair was done up, leaving her gracious neck free. She arched it elegantly to make her scarlet lips almost touch the ear of the man she clung to. She whispered with a smile. Both her hands were on his arm.

I didn't know the man. He was tall and dark, Mediterranean maybe, and about forty-five. He smiled at her whispers. Then he laid a hand on hers and answered. Myriam giggled.

Of course, my first thoughts were that this was a professional function -- it wouldn't be unusual for her. But somehow that first impression didn't stick. You see, there is content and there is wrapping. There is the "what" and the "how," the brain and the gut. Even if this were business, all details screamed the opposite. To begin with, Myriam had never told me about her having a business appointment, let alone at a posh place like this. It was the most glamorous location our town had to offer. It would have been impossible for her not to tell me about it.

Then there was the evening dress. It must be new and very expensive. I had never seen her wearing it or even heard her talk about buying it. Well, to be sure, I had never seen her dress even remotely like this. It was the antithesis of everything she stood for. Its top freely showed the entire insides of her tits. It must be impossible to wear a bra with that.

But most of all, it was how she hung on to the man. Sure, Myriam can thaw. She can be warm and generous with people -- even despite the cool of her reserved self. It is a big part of why I love her. But this was different. I saw the whispering. The blatant intimacy. The giggling. And the man's hand on her hand. 

*** 

Seeing all this took only a few seconds. By then they had passed the narrow vista I had of them. Myriam walked very sexily on tall heels -- taller than I ever saw her wear. I supposed the two of them would join the function in the big lounge, whatever it was. The few seconds I saw them, however, had been quite enough to absorb me. They had taken me effectively away from my table partner. His face and voice had receded into a misty distance.

Onslow must have been taken aback. Right as he proposed a promotion one can only dream of, I had shut him out. I just sat there and stared in the distance. He touched my arm. "Ehm," he said. "Are you OK, Bruce? You look as if you've seen a ghost." I pulled his face into focus. He tried a joke. "Well, if this is how you react to my good news, just wait till you hear my lay-off speech."

He laughed, I didn't. I rose and apologized. I walked the length of the dining room. Half hidden by a wall, I glanced into the lounge. It seemed as if a high-class party was going on -- a fundraiser or something. About a hundred people milled around. In the back was a small band playing. Clusters of people talked. A few danced. Most of the guests gathered at the huge bar. Some sat at tables spread throughout the lounge. That is where I saw Myriam. The table was kind of in the back. She and the man were the only ones sitting at it. And they were kissing deeply.

Seeing her kiss this way made my stomach heave. Because I knew exactly what the man felt. You see, up to that moment I thought I was the only guy in the world who knew that. It hurts to know you are wrong about a thing like that. It hurt more than I had ever felt. The kiss didn't stop. Her slender fingers were in his hair. His hand was on her cheek. The way their faces moved betrayed an urge bordering on greed. Needless to say Myriam never kissed like that in such a public place. Not with me, anyway.

At last they disconnected. His dark head moved away from the brightness of her face. She gave him a flashing smile. Then she nodded and as they rose, I ducked behind the wall. When I looked again, they appeared to be gone. But soon I saw her shimmering dress on the dance floor. They moved slowly and very close to each other. Her face nudged the curve of his neck.

I'd had enough. Nausea made me reel. Was there anger? Certainly. I trembled with it. But it seemed covered by a blanket of sickening numbness. I felt totally beaten, I guess. Empty. Lost. I felt abandoned, betrayed. Discarded with the trash.

*** 

The white tiles in the bathroom were cool against my brow. I must have sat there quite a while. Too many questions wanted to invade my poor brain through an entrance that was way too narrow.

Most of the questions were about ridicule and humiliation. A multitude of precious, shared moments paraded past the screen of my mind. In all of them I saw Myriam laughing hysterically. She pointed at me, waved at me and bent over with shrieking glee. I was a clown and knew that I had always been one. 

A major headache blossomed. I rose from the toilet and splashed hands full of cold water into my face. It hardly helped.

My table companion stood when I returned to our table. Our food had been brought. The mere sight of it turned my stomach. I apologized once more and I excused myself. I assured him that I was incredibly pleased with his proposition and would give him my answer as soon as I could, but right now a severe migraine seemed to be on its way. I really had to leave and find the safety of my darkened bedroom.

Onslow understood. He was all concern. He offered to take me home, but I assured him I could take a taxi. Then he insisted on getting one for me. The last I saw was his frowning face as the cab drove away. 

I avoided throwing up in the taxi.

*** 

Early daylight crept around the curtains. My head was a bale of cotton, my eyes burned. But I sat and waited. I'd been sitting there ever since my stomach refused to turn inside out again. I had savored the bile that clung to the roof of my mouth. It seemed the appropriate taste of the moment.

I guessed Myriam might not even return for hours. I wasn't supposed to be here, remember? I was a thousand miles away. And she had pressing business to see to. She also had business to feel to. Business to moan and scream to. To swallow. To come to. Images roiled and rolled in my head. Never a dull moment, as they say. My mind was a one-man cinema. Time flew and I wasn't even having fun.

The rattle of her key in the lock tore me from semi-consciousness. I was wide-awake. She looked pale. Her hair was down, her make up almost gone. She wore a fur wrap around her shoulders. The stiletto heels were in her hand. "Welcome home, Myr." My voice croaked. "Did you have a good time?"

She froze, startled by my voice. "Bruce," she said.

I just looked at her. "Glad you remember my name." I admired my cool sarcasm from a distance.

She rushed over to me. Then she stopped when she saw my face. "Why...ehm," she said. "Why are you here?"

I rose and walked past her. I pulled the curtains open. The harsh light wasn't kind to her face. I felt my mouth struggle into a smile. It must have been a rather ugly one. "I have a better question for you, honey," I said. "Why weren't you here?"

Her hand ran over her face. Maybe to ward off the cruel morning. "Ehm," she said. "I was at a function. Town's fundraiser at the Excelsior, remember? Didn't I tell you?"

I went over to the open kitchen and rested my elbow on the counter top. I remembered how thrilled we had been when we at last found the rare and precious granite. "No, I don't remember," I said. "Maybe you just imagined telling me. Anyway, it must have been a huge success, seeing how late it ended."

Her eyes shifted. She pinched the top of her nose, between her tired eyes. "Please, Bruce. I am dead tired. Let me get a shower and hit the sack." She already turned to leave for the bathroom. I stepped forward and grabbed her arm. I forced her to turn to me. She winced.

"No," I said.

"Please, Bruce," she gasped. "What are you doing?"

"Sit down," I growled. "Sit your sore ass down and listen." Her eyes went wide. I pushed her on the couch. "I saw you," I said.

Now her hand was over her mouth. "But how...," she whispered. "You were..."

"I wasn't. Who is he?" 


Two's a Crowd Ch. 01



"A client." 

"Stop fucking with me, Myriam."

"He is."

"How long, Myr?"

Her eyes shifted and I knew. She looked like this when she was annoyed. At first she had looked puzzled, then scared. Now she was annoyed. Some decision must have been made in her mind. "How long?" I repeated.

"Don't make a fool of yourself, Bruce. Please." Her voice grew steadier. "It was a business function."

I almost lost it. I grabbed her wrist. "A fool? Am I a fool?"

Panic returned to her eyes. I had pulled her face almost to mine. 

"Yes, Myriam! That is what I am, isn't it? A clown? A silly non-entity to trample on. To wave away. To have a good laugh over when you let your lovers pamper you."

She said nothing. Her eyes never met mine.

"Tell me, Myr. At least take me seriously enough to tell me."

She shook her hand free and started to rise. I pushed her down.

"There is nothing. So there is nothing to tell," she said with a whine. She rubbed her wrist. "And you hurt me."

I sat on the low table in front of her. I once more took her hands. She tried to pull away, but I held tightly to her hands.

"I hurt you?" I said. My voice was soft. "Come on, Myr. I know you fucked the guy. I saw you with him and I know you well enough to be very certain. I could force you to show me your fucked-out cunt. Maybe your ass, too. Maybe the love bites on your tits; his spunk on your breath."

I let go of her hands. I had her attention. I had never used words like fuck or tit around her. Let alone talk about anal sex. "I could, easily. But I won't. I won't check on you, Myriam," I went on. "You know why?"

She just stared.

"Because I love you." Her eyes widened. The white was tainted with red.

"Yes, you fucking whore," I went on. "I shall always love you as long as you are the Myriam I know. You may accidentally be weak and fall for the glamour of the moment. That would hurt me immensely. I think you know how that would hurt me. But you would still be my Myr. I'd find the strength to still love you. And hope that we would be able to get past this." Her eyes filled with tears. One spilled over and ran down her pale cheek.

I went on. "But maybe, honey, maybe you are someone I don't know at all. One who can live with betraying me, with lying to me and humiliating me. Maybe you have lied about our love for years. Secretly laughed at all I held precious. Tell me, Myriam. I need to know if I can go on loving you."

Tears were running freely now. My eyes burned too. Her lips trembled. A tear dangled from a corner. But she kept her silence.

I stood and looked down on her. "Good," I said. "You go shower your fucked-out body. Then go sleep off your exhaustion."

I made room for her to leave. She grabbed her purse and walked to the stairs. As she reached the first steps, I said: "You better get your act together, Myr. There is no clown in this circus." She stopped for two seconds. Her hand lingered above the rail. Then she gripped it and walked up the stairs, her bare feet sinking into the carpet.

I collapsed on the couch.

*** 

She slept till early afternoon. I wandered in and out of a shallow sleep myself. Around noon I went up to look in on her. I saw she hadn't showered. She hadn't even undressed. The fur lay like a dead animal on the floor. She was on her belly and seemed sound asleep. Her dress had crept up. I could not resist raising the hem. There were no panties.

Down in the kitchen I drank coffee and ate some toast. The turmoil in my head had died down. From a calm and featureless landscape loomed just one question, like a rock. Could we stay together?

I knew I could not answer that question. She could. If she wanted to. I poured a new cup and forgot how hot it still was. I burned my tongue. At that same moment I heard the shower start. It went on for a very long time. She finally came down in her robe. She looked fresh. Her wet hair was in a towel. Her smile was wan, but it was there.

"Coffee?" I asked. "It's nice and hot."

She stared at me. Then she nodded. "Honey," she said after sitting down. "I am sorry about last night, ehm, this morning."

I pushed the cup her way. "Why sorry?"

She looked into the steaming cup. "I left you with all these questions. I should not have done that, as there is nothing to worry about, really. You must have had an awful night."

She was all Myriam again -- cool, nice and in control. I said nothing. I shoved a muffin her way. She looked but didn't touch it.

"His name is Carlos Kirchner," she then said. "He is from Argentina. We buy his meat." She winced when she pondered that line. She knew I would see the unintended pun. My God, how we knew each other.

"There was this fundraiser at the Excelsior, as I told you," she went on. She did not look at me. Her finger drew figures on the counter. "Carlos asked me to accompany him there, since he was all alone in the city."

"When did he ask you?" I interrupted. She looked up.

"Is that important?" 

I nodded.

"Ehm," she said and wriggled on her stool. "It was on short notice. His wife would have been here, but she became ill and stayed in Buenos Aires."

"You must have found that dress rather quickly then."

"I borrowed it," she said.

"Wow," I said. "Would love to know the friend who dresses that sexy."

She blushed.

"Myriam," I said. "Why don't you just stop this game? I don't buy it. And it hurts me to see you degrade yourself like this."

"I don't know what you mean," she said. Her voice got softer with every word.

I rose from my stool. "A few hours of sleep and a long shower obviously aren't enough to get rid of the lies, honey," I said. "I'll give you more time. I have packed a suitcase and will live at the hotel for a while. Not the Excelsior, mind you." 

I walked past her. She tried to stop me. I shook her hand off. At the door I turned around. "If you happen to stumble on the truth, Myr, please don't hesitate to share it with me."

I left the house. Did I hear her sob? I don't remember.



Two's a Crowd Ch. 02



There isn't much to tell about the next few days. I felt as though I were living under water. All senses were subdued. Even sounds seemed muffled. With the aid of sleeping pills I slept a lot, but the quality of my sleep was more that of unconsciousness. I couldn't complain, though -- the sleeping hours took a huge bite out of my painful existence.

While awake I worked, mostly. For once I was glad that my job was about numbers -- solid, predictable and dependable pillars of security. Numbers don't lie, I told myself -- at least not as blatantly as some people.

I phoned Onslow to apologize for abandoning him so rudely at the hotel. I told him I felt better. I also assured him that I was honored with his offer, very much so, and that I was certainly considering it seriously. I just had to clear a few personal issues first. He waved away my apologies. And he never asked about those issues. He just told me to take my time. Being careful about the decision was as important to them as it was to me.

After the phone call I mused on how things had changed so rapidly. What had been a big dilemma only last week, now seemed to have turned into an opportunity, an escape. Almost like a rope of sheets tied together to get me out of this jail my life had suddenly become -- a new start, as they say.

I stared at the pen dangling between my fingers. A new start. Did I want one? Maybe my brain did. Between my brain and my heart, my brain always has the better judgment. And usually it doesn't find much opposition amongst my instincts.

Not this time, however. This time all my senses, feelings and emotions reared their heads in protest. For a numbers man like me that is a unique sensation. It left me in a swirl of roiling, conflicting feelings, pushing and pulling against my very balance.

The fingers around the pen trembled. I don't know how long I just sat there. My phone shook me out of my stupor; it was our company's legal counsel, calling me about some of the "personal issues" I had wanted to tackle.

*** 

Myriam never called me those first days. Maybe she thought that it was what I wanted. Oddly enough, it disappointed me. She is a social person. It should have been in her nature to want to explain herself, to look for the contact, even now. But she didn't. Was it one more answer to the question whether I knew her at all? Or worse, was it an answer to the question of whether she loved me at all? And why did I have questions like these to begin with? 

She cheated on me. Maybe she had done it for a while. She exposed herself in public with another man, dressed as she never had done with me. She acted very intimately with him. And she fucked him, no doubt about that. But against all odds she kept lying to cover it up. No, I realized now...she hadn't lied. She had just refused to answer. Why? What was the use? 

My evenings and nights were hell. The hotel had a nice enough bar. I am afraid I spent too much time there, alone. I do have friends. I have colleagues I see privately. But most of them are shared acquaintances -- they are as much Myr's friends as they are mine. I couldn't face them. Not before I found a way out of my quagmire.

After a week it became clear that Myriam didn't plan on telling me whatever truth she had decided upon. So I took out the business card I had received from my legal colleague.

The attorney was a woman. Her voice on the phone was deep and smooth. I guess it comes with the territory. We made an appointment and when I met her, she looked the voice. Forty--ish bordering on the ageless. Slick and professional. Handsome in the coolest of ways. I also knew that she had the reputation of certain predatory fishes with prominent back--fins -- and the accompanying set of teeth. 

She listened to my story. Then she said I ought to have more proof. It would be my word against Myr's. I smiled. I told her there might not be an "against"; I did not plan on accusing her of adultery. Not of anything, to be sure. I just wanted her to be presented with divorce papers. She had to know I intended to leave her life.

It took a while for her to understand. I told her that beside the house there was hardly any property to divide. And the house might as well be hers, I didn't care -- I might not even be here anymore, in the near future. The point was to let her know she had lost me. We'd have another, quite different talk as soon as there proved to be an "against."

She reluctantly agreed.

*** 

Myriam phoned almost at once. She was highly agitated. A bit angry, too, I'd say. Or was it panicked? We should have talked first, she said. I was cold and cruel, she yelled. We should have talked. She had a right to explain.

I let her rage on for a few minutes. She ended it herself by starting to cry. Through the sobs she said she was sorry not to have phoned me. She was afraid, she said. She had not dared to call.

"Do you love me, Myriam?" I asked at last.

There was a shocked silence. "Oh God, honey, I love you so much," she whispered. "I am so sorry. I have been so selfish, so awful, I..."

"I don't think you love me, Myr."

"But I do! I DO!!"

Her vehemence caused me to move the phone away from my ear. I succeeded in keeping my calm.

"Honey, what kind of love is this if it prevents you from telling me the truth? How could my love scare you? I am in love with you, Myr. Unconditionally. If you are in love with me too, you are mine, just as I am yours. And if you are mine, your truth is mine too. Can't you see that? You can't keep it away from me. It is a cruel and demeaning thing to do."

There was silence. It was punctured by a sob.

I went on. "Myriam. You tortured me by withholding all contact for over a week. Not a word, not a sign. Is that love?"

The silence stretched to a point beyond hope. I was going to break off the connection when she said: "I love you, Bruce."

And there was a click, followed by a string of beeps. They seemed to mock me.

*** 

There is no clown in this circus, I had said. Now I wasn't so sure. At the Excelsior I saw Myriam look and behave as I haven't seen her ever do before. Certainly not in public. She loves to dress tastefully, never provocatively. She sometimes goes without a bra, as she doesn't really need one. But she never shows her chest off in a low--cut and flimsy dress, let alone in one as outrageous as she was wearing in that lounge.

The man seemed secure of her. He knew that all her attention was for him and to him. He owned her affection. Sex with Myriam had always been important to me, but even more special was the intimacy. By sharing that, she betrayed me the deepest and hurt me the most. When I witnessed their calm closeness I knew Myriam wasn't mine anymore. She was all his and she probably had been for a long time. All those moments, hours, eternities that I had considered ours, she had been someone else's. At best, I'd had her on time--share.

I started pondering possible affairs over the years, of course. She must have had ample opportunities. She traveled a lot. Her job took her to glamorous places. It gave her enough work-related excuses. And I was never there.

Myriam is reserved. But she isn't a nun or a shy girl. I see how she loves to get attention at times -- in a fun and flirty way. I also know that with our interfering workloads and schedules I couldn't always have been there. But I thought she loved me. And I thought that love was this magical spell that guaranteed fidelity.

No clown in this circus, eh? I could kick myself with an oversized shoe.

*** 

When I called it a day, Myriam was waiting in the lobby.

I had been prepared for another lonely dinner and an even lonelier night. My eyes were barely functioning -- they only registered the absolute necessities for survival, like where to put my feet while walking. I hardly looked up, so it was her voice that stopped me. I turned my head. She was running to me, her heels skating over the slick marble. Part of me wanted to run off -- it must have been my childish part. The rest just succumbed to inertia.

She closed in. Silly details seemed more prominent than the whole picture -- the hem of her skirt dragged at her busy legs, a floating strand of hair escaping the prison of her businesslike bun.

When she reached me, she panted. Her flushed face made me want to kiss her. I guess it was the contrast of her soft blushing skin and the severe, dark pinstripe jacket. It made her look vulnerable yet forbidding. She gave off conflicting signals. She was a child in armor.

Jealousy gripped me. I could not explain why. She had gone almost naked for the Argentinean and for all the world to see. Now here she was with me, dressed like a fortress. Maybe that was what caused my anger? Send in the clown...

Her hand touched my arm. "Bruce," she panted. "Please...we must talk. We've got to."

I surfaced from my fish tank. The hue of deep sea green lifted. Even sounds seemed to clear up. The touch of her hand was the centre of my world. I took a step back to break the contact. She didn't let go.

"Please?" she begged.

We ended up in a crowded bar. The sound was overwhelming. There were sweaty men in shirtsleeves. Baseball claimed three overhead monitors. It took me a while to score two drinks and find a table in the corner. 

I didn't want to go to a quieter place. I had decided that she wasn't ready. Maybe she'd never be. For the time being I needed the cocoon of noise. It would prevent Myriam from playing me with subtle lies and feigned intimacies -- you just don't yell your intimate secrets in a crowded bar.

I handed her a gin and tonic and toasted vaguely with my beer. We drank. She looked unsure of what to do. "Can't we go someplace quieter?" she asked rather loud.

I understood her well, but said: "What?" I wanted her insecure and exhausted before we talked. I wanted her to nurse a nice anger. Childish, yes. But why should I be the only one hurting? I guess I was pretty fucked up, but that is what I wanted.

It took a while before it worked. She built half-sentences until she came to sensitive material. Then she'd stop, deciding on how to phrase it loudly yet safely in this public place. That would be where I'd punctuate whatever she said with another "what?" -- a silly game, I know. One day it would shame me. But right now I could not resist. By the time I finished my beer, tears ran down her face.

"Let's go out, Bruce, please. Somewhere where we can talk."

"Pardon?" I bellowed.

She desperately stared at me.

"Another drink?" I offered.

She rose, grabbed her pocketbook and pushed herself through the throng. I sagged back, suffering from a big wave of remorse. But I slept well, that night.

***

Two days later I phoned Myriam. She took the call. But as soon as she saw it was I, she started yelling. I hung up on her. This went on for a few days. It wasn't getting us anywhere. So I decided another move in my "confuse & bewilder" campaign. I sent her red roses. On the accompanying card was just my cell number.

She phoned at once. And her voice was soft, even sweet. "Thank you, Bruce. If you only knew how happy those flowers make me."

"Did you count them?"

The short silence told me she was counting. "Nine..."

"Any idea why nine?"

Another pause. Then: "Of course, silly. The years we have been married. So sweet, so hopeful."

That was where I left a silence.

"Maybe," I said. "But I'm not sure. Shouldn't there have been six? Or even three? Maybe none at all? What do you say?"

"Bruce..." She sounded more puzzled than offended. "Why all these riddles? Please come home, honey. I miss you."

"Home," I mused. I repeated the word. "Such a wonderful concept. Some people even know what it means."

Silence.

"It was business, Bruce." She sounded tired now. "It was nothing."

I stared at the phone in my hand. "Call me when the lies wear off," I said. It was all I could get out without exploding in anger. I pushed the little red button. The invisible thread between us snapped. How appropriate.

*** 

The days went on, nothing happened. Work recaptured my attention and time made my anger seep away.

At a deeper level, I started to admire her stamina. She didn't budge. I guess she supposed that refusing to tell even the beginning of a truth would start me doubting myself. She must be waging that I hadn't seen more than what I'd told her. 

That was when I decided to eat my pride. I invited her for dinner. Maybe she'd succeeded in wearing me down. But I told myself that stretching out this game of hide and seek was more harmful than a quick divorce. I had long since concluded that Myriam didn't love me at all. Not anymore. She just wanted me back for comfort and luxury. Or sheer stubbornness. I based that idea on more than simple suspicion. It is true: husbands may always be the very last to know. But husbands have friends. They also have colleagues.

After our battle of the roses, I called Bess. She once was in the pool of secretaries Myriam worked with before she got her own secretary. That was over two years ago. Bess had left the company a year later to have a child. She never returned.

She and her husband had been at our table often, and we at theirs, though not for at least a half a year. I'd always liked her healthy no-nonsense attitude. It had a nice touch of concreteness. On the phone I asked her how she was, her child, her husband. Then I told her I'd love her advice on a personal matter. It must have peaked her curiosity. We picked a time and place.

When she walked in I admired her. I saw the same honey blonde cloud floating around her pretty head. She still had the healthy blush, the sparkling eyes. She was like a sea breeze through an open window. Her smile lit up when she saw me. Her embrace was uncomplicated and busty.

I complimented her. She said that I didn't look half bad myself. She ordered tea, I had coffee.

I told her that Myriam and I had separated. It caused her eyes to widen. She started the expected sorry's when I interrupted her. "I saw her being intimate with a man at the Excelsior," I said. "I wonder if you would have been as surprised as I was."

She hesitated. Her fingertip ran a quick circle around the edge of her teacup.

"I, ehm," she murmured. "Bruce, I haven't worked with her for more than two years now. I have only seen her a few times since the baby was born, remember? How would I know what she is doing and why? I guess it was a professional function?"

I said I saw her point. I didn't want her opinion, I said. I had seen her hesitation at the start. Why was that?

She fumbled with the wrapper of her cookie. "Please, don't ask me, Bruce."

I nodded. I saw that she knew perfectly well what I meant and why I had asked. I guess she was just being loyal. I had to respect that, maybe. But it annoyed me. "I suppose you think you owe her your loyalty, Bess," I went on. "That in itself tells me things, you know? Things that make me worry."

Bess kept her silence. Her eyes wandered. It was quite unlike her.

"If you don't want to tell me, Bess, then simply tell me if I should worry? Please?"

Almost unnoticeable, she nodded. It sent a wave of nausea my way. I had to test my legs before rising.

"Thank you, Bess. I know this makes you feel uncomfortable, being in the middle and all. I appreciate that you took the trouble to see me." I threw money on the table and turned to leave. Her hand was on my sleeve. She had risen too.

"I am sorry, Bruce. So sorry." The blue of her eyes looked clouded. They were diffuse with imminent tears. She hugged me tightly.

*** 

I talked with two more friends. I knew they were Myr's as well as mine, but I had to know. Of course I did not expect straight answers -- they had not felt the need to tell me anything in all these years. Myr and I had met them at parties, dinners, and even on short vacations. So why would they tell me now? In stories and movies, conversations may be more explicit. In real life one has to fend with hunches and unspoken hints, it seems. Well, in my reality, anyway, I had to. I could only guess and prod in a labyrinth of possibilities. I had to feel my way forward.

I knew Myriam had cheated on me at least this one time I had seen her. I also knew that she betrayed our intimacy. And that she had lied about it. As for the rest, I had to trust friends who had never bothered to warn me.

Just as with Bess, there were all kinds of pauses, uneasy glances and cut off sentences. It left me wondering about their strange ethics. A marriage is private; so don't get involved, they must have thought. See the innocent sucker suffer, watch things go down the drain. But never ever say a word. So they didn't tell me what they obviously knew. They also never defused my suspicions. Lovely, but never mind. The more they refused to say, the more I understood.

The appointment with Myriam was at a Mexican restaurant. It had been one of our favorites ever since we had come to this town. I can see how some people would have avoided meeting at a place haunted with sweet and now painful memories. I have to agree that the pain was there. But I reckoned she would feel it too. It might eat away at her resolution.

She looked elegant in a pale and tired way. Her outfit was business like -- I even doubt if she changed after work. That disappointed me in part. It meant she hadn't bothered to seduce me. On the other hand it might save me from emotional outbursts.

We were polite and small--talked right through the main course. We skipped dessert as we usually do -- did. The coffee was excellent. So was the dark chocolate.

The first uncomfortable silence fell right after the first sip of our espressos. We knew we couldn't hold it off any longer.

"Myr," I said. "Did you find any useful truths for me, lately?" I was sorry as soon as the words left my mouth. I could not take them back. But Myriam did not seem to hear the venom. She put down her tiny cup and straightened a crease in the tablecloth.

"Did you ever consider, honey," she started in a very soft voice, "that I already told you the truth?"

I was baffled. My mouth must have hung open while I stared at her. She just said there, smiling tentatively.

"Darling," she went on, her voice gaining in strength. "You never even tried to believe me, did you? You condemned me right from the start of this silly farce. I was guilty whatever I had to say, wasn't I?"

There is this funny thing in nightmares, where you want to run away and can't. You are tied down with invisible ropes. You want to scream and are unable to.

Myriam knew I had seen the naked dress, the kissing, the touching, the close dancing. She had come home in early morning, exhausted and ravaged. There had been the silly, inconsistent story. And then there was the uncertainty of what more I might know. But still she refused any answer. Surreal was the word. The brazenness of it sapped me of my last energy. There just wasn't even the smallest point anymore, was there?

"Myr," I croaked. I desperately tried to find my voice. "Myr. You really must have very little respect for me. It took us almost a month to find a way to talk. I gave you weeks to summon up the courage to tell me what happened. And you ladle up this...this bullshit?"

My hand crashed down on the small table. It made the cups and spoons and candles jump. "You'll hear from my lawyer," I said and rose. When I returned from paying the cashier, Myriam had already left.

*** 

The divorce went smoothly and without dispute. 

I never saw Myriam again until we had to sign. And there she made certain I saw her. She looked spectacular. Her hair was coiffed and glowed with a new, deep red. Her eyes were made up abundantly, as was her mouth. The short skirt hugged her tightly as if painted on her frame. Her tits seemed bigger than I remembered. And when she bent forward to sign the papers, they almost fell out of her blouse. There wasn't much to restrain them. 




Two's a Crowd Ch. 02



When she rose again her breasts settled with a liquid bounce. Her smile was radiant -- it scorched the air between us. She winked. Then she turned and walked away with a sway in her tightly packed hips. I remembered where I saw those towering heels before. 

I never regretted the divorce, but that did not make me feel any happier. The end was all but satisfactory. Had I hoped that the act of divorce would hurt her? Why would it? Her extravagant attitude and outfit made it clear that she did not need me anymore. 

There just were no ways within the law to punish her for what she had done. Or even to hurt her. She was a free woman now. All I could do was forget her and move on. 

The Myriam I had known had always been a proud, independent woman. I admired her for it and it was a big part of her attraction to me. She insisted on having her own life, her own goals and successes. But she had loved me and was happy to share them with me, as I was to share mine with her.

Then she found things she did not share. It may have started small and insignificant. Like getting compliments from attractive--looking, powerful men. Or being pampered on trips, at functions. First class travel may have helped, luxury boat trips. She gladly let herself be raised onto a pedestal of flattery.

It became a delicious delusion. Soon she must have started comparing. She allowed a curtain of glittering glamour to fall between us. It swept her away to a world where I could not follow. A world of wealth -- of fast and shallow fun. She found herself on a stage, warmed by the limelight of admiration. And when the prize she had to pay started to accumulate, she paid gladly. She was hooked and never rattled her golden chains, it seems.

I could not compete. 

Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt. By now I wonder why she had stayed with me as long as she did. Why had she bothered to return again and again from the dream world she had found. And mostly, why had she taken all the trouble of keeping the truth away from me after I found out. Was it guilt, after all? Or even stubbornness -- not wanting to admit it was over? 

Maybe I was a necessary ingredient of her illicit adventures. The part that made it extra thrilling. She might get a power kick out of knowing she humiliated me: stupid, naive me. And maybe she needed to be married as assurance against affairs getting too involved? So many possible reasons: maybe the instinctive need for a fall-back plan; or an insurance against a time when all this yummy bliss might be over; or a pension for when she got older.

It must have been anything but love, I decided.

I could go and ask her. But seeing her that last time robbed me of all desire to ever meet her again. And, well, after a while it doesn't matter much anymore, does it? I became very good at convincing myself that I was over it. Why should I want to meet the woman who killed the woman I loved?



Two's a Crowd Ch. 03



They say that in the end time heals all wounds. I don't know, they may be right. But it really is too easy to be right that way. I mean, how could they go wrong when they never tell how much time it takes to heal? In my case, two years obviously wasn't enough -- as I found out in the lounge bar of the Belmont Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

Even before the divorce was final I had moved to New York. I got the job and all the benefits -- except the huge penthouse apartment, obviously. I didn't need that anymore. I was a freshly divorced single man. I just wanted to drown myself in my work in order to forget.

The job part went very well -- I just failed at the forgetting. I'll soon be a vice president and on my way to the board. But all the real motivation seems gone. The rewards just aren't enough to kill the pain, which at the start, hardly allowed me more than a few hours sleep at night.

Granted, it isn't healthy to mourn that long over a common slut. But she was Myriam, remember? I loved her. And you'd have to shoot with bigger cannon to kill the love I felt for her.

After a few weeks I even went to see a shrink. For half a year, true as clockwork, I walked into her wood-paneled office once a week, feeling like Tony Soprano -- and I didn't even get to kill anybody. 

The good doctor looked the part, so I did the best I could. But after half a month I already knew she wouldn't heal me of my lingering depression. She was nice company, though. I needed a patient ear those first months -- even if I had to pay for it. Which makes me wonder now why I didn't feel the urge to pay for other female services in this city that never sleeps. God knows I hardly slept. My bed was empty. So was my apartment, so were my weekends. I just felt too numb, I guess.

Erica changed all of that. 

I met Erica at the tennis club. It was by the Chelsea piers and open day and night. Playing there was an excellent opportunity to do something positive with my sleepless hours. A colleague invited me and after playing a few times, I became a member. There were always people around who were looking for a partner. One of them was Erica. We soon played regularly, often twice a week.

She was a big woman. Not as in fat -- there wasn't an ounce of that on her. She was a tall blonde athlete. It took me weeks to get my neglected body in good enough shape to avoid being royally thrashed each time we played. I even worked out twice a week to help with my conditioning. The time in the gym cleared my mind and punished my body enough to add a few hours of sleep to my barren nights. 

After showering, we often had a bite at the small club restaurant. Bagels and juice. Or a shake. A tall mint tea for Erica. It became quite a nice tradition after a while. I started looking forward to it. Erica was great company. It must have been hard work for her at the start, 'cause I didn't talk much. I had become a master at sucking the blood out of any conversation. If it threatened to become even remotely emotional, I just made it ricochet off my armor into the innocent realm of the weather -- or the latest movie.

Erica changed that one evening. Our tennis game had been remarkably vicious, ending in a 7 to 6 tie-break set for her and another one for me. The shower did me the usual world of good. The salmon bagel tasted great. And Erica was glowing. Her skin blushed and her moist hair shone in the designer lights.

"Why do you always bring these people with you, Bruce?" she said. Her pinky removed a few crumbs from the corner of her mouth.

I stared at her. "People?"

"Yes," she said, almost off hand. "The woman behind you. I can't see her face, but she must look great. And a man. A few men, I'd say. They are rather out of focus, though."

I tried my blankest face. I guess it needed laundering for she didn't fall for it.

She chuckled. "Dearest Bruce," she said, "ever since we met I knew you were only half here. It's the way you defuse every conversation. The unhappy pauses whenever I probe past the day you came to New York. And now this expression you're wearing -- what does it mean? Are you suggesting that I am wrong?"

She grinned. All she had said sounded light and casual. But her eyes were neither. Then she shrugged. It made her tightly-packed tits tremble. "Well, hon," she went on. "It is none of my business, of course, but I sure hope that woman behind you would stop controlling our conversation. I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep it going, this way."

Ever since the disaster with Myriam I felt panic when people scratched at the wall I had built around me. And no one had scratched as effectively as Erica did right then. The panic shoved me into defense mode. From there to indignation was only a small step. I threw my napkin on the table and rose.

"I have no need for this, Erica," I said through clenched teeth. "Take your charity elsewhere." And I left the restaurant.

*** 

It took me just an hour to see what an ass I had been. But I needed a week to get myself past my pride. I skipped two tennis evenings. I also neglected my workouts. In short, I had effectively sent myself back to the quagmire.

Monday morning of the second week I got a call on my cell. I saw it was Erica. Just noticing the name made me freeze. I could not move my finger. I let her go directly to voice-mail.

It took me a few minutes to listen to her message. She sounded cheerful. "Bruce? Just to let you know: failing to appear means you've lost two games by now. It's the rule. I am two points up, honey. Three and you're out! Should I bother to come at all this week? Let me know."

God, did I feel silly. Here was this wonderful woman who had single handedly pulled me out of my shit and I left her without a word. Just because she'd had the gall to care for me.

I was there, of course, that same evening. Don't ask me about the anguish and the sweat. I was there. So was she. And she beat me 6 love, 6 - 3. Those three games were only because she pitied me.

Afterwards, she sipped from her fruit shake. "Sorry, Bruce," she said. "I was nosey. But I couldn't bear seeing you like that, week after week after week. You must have gone through hell."

I watched her and something broke. For the next half hour I spilled the whole story. Once I started, I couldn't stop. It was as if there was a third person telling it all. I watched and could not stop him.

Erica just listened. A dark pink blush rose from her throat. When she at last spoke, she was angry. "The goddamn whore," she hissed. "And here you are, more than a year later, still broken into a million pieces. Only half the man you could be. It's a damn shame."

Her hand was on mine. Amazing how tender it could be after whipping my ass at the tennis court. "Bruce," she said. "Forget the bitch. Please do me a favor and forget her. Promise me. She's just not worth it." 

Now don't think there was sex involved, or ever would be. From the start, I knew Erica was a staunch lesbian. To keep me from forgetting that, she sometimes was picked up by her girlfriend, Marlene, after we played. At those occasions she clearly demonstrated the difference between our growing friendship and the love she had for the pretty petite girl who had the cutest habit of making her English sound more French than her French.

Since that conversation, our friendship spread from the tennis court to life's wider realm. We went to movies and exhibitions together, we dined and shopped together. Usually, there were only the two of us, sometimes Marlene joined us.

Erica had taken to heart the task of getting my sloppy single life back on track. She helped me to seriously change my barren apartment into an inhabitable place. She also made me fill my wardrobe with decent and even fashionable clothes. And finally, of course, she did what no woman is able to resist. She set me up with a woman.

The first one was called Caroline. She was a thirty-ish redhead who "accidentally" met us at a table in a new and trendy restaurant. Of course she had a few minutes to spare and of course she ended up dining with us, and sure enough we had a few drinks afterwards and found ourselves alone at a small table after Erica "suddenly had to leave." By then I did not mind. Caroline was fun. But when I at last took her home to her tiny apartment in the East Village, I disappointed her by refusing her offer of a "cup of coffee."

I met Caroline twice after that. The last time was embarrassing as she already had my zipper down before I could stop her. I must have seemed a stupid fool to her. I guess I was. But I just couldn't do it.

The next time I met Erica she was as sweet as ever. But I knew she really wanted to be furious with me. Thank God she limited her fury to beating me with a definitive 6 - 2 and 6 - 3. 

Everything in life is about timing, I guess. Caroline had the poor luck of being first -- and being too early. Or was it me who had the poor luck? Probably the latter. Anyway, three weeks later I ended up in bed with Rachel. She was tall and blonde and her mouth did miracles with my reluctant cock. At the start I must have been as shy as a teenager, but Rachel never hesitated. She took me in without giving me a chance to think twice. 

The weeks that followed were like a dream. After Erica, Rachel was the best thing happening to me since Myriam pickled my heart with sulphur and brimstone. Rachel was just staying in New York for a month, though. She lived in Los Angeles and went back there after three weeks. The last weekend we hardly left my apartment. Of course we kept in touch for a short while, but the moment I kissed her goodbye at the airport I knew the whole exciting thing was already in the past.

During the year that followed, I dated three more women. Life was fun again. And that fun nicely filled the empty potholes in my soul. To anyone myopic and short-sighted enough, I looked as good as new. My job took me all over the country and frequently overseas as well. My unattached existence made me the ideal equalizer of bumps and scratches in our corporate armor. 

***

I never counted Dallas among my favorite cities. 

That surely wasn't Dallas' fault. It always seemed to bask and sparkle in the southern sun whenever my plane landed. It was big, and shining -- overwhelming in the long honored Texan way. But it would never touch the strings of my heart. My loss, I'm sure. 

It seems, though, that everything the city lacked was made up for by the Belmont hotel. Whenever they sent me to Dallas, I would book a nice suite at the Belmont. It has the charm of the mid-twentieth century. But it also has all the luxury I needed to compensate for being away from New York. To be honest -- for hotels I always used the Onslow Rule. It comprised a simple question: where would Onslow book? That's where I would go.

It was a late afternoon in May, almost two years after I left my marriage and went to New York. I had been in a gruesome meeting at our offices in downtown Dallas. It was about a reorganization to meet the overly ambitious bottom-line Onslow had set for the next three years. The necessary measures would cut to the quick and I was there to watch them do it effectively and fairly.

I had just come down from taking a long and steaming shower. The fresh cotton shirt and linen slacks were a relief after the formal suit I had been wearing all day. I carried a book to read on the lovely terrace. The Road To Wellness, by T. Coraghessan Boyle. It was fun, I liked it. But the cocktail lounge looked inviting too.

So did the woman who sat at the bar. Her back was towards me. Her shock of chestnut hair caught my eyes first, closely followed by the shapely ass that hugged the stool's top. One endless leg bathed in a beam of afternoon sun. She turned her head and saw me. I suppose my eyes went as wide as hers.

"Myriam," I said. A pink blush darkened her face. My heart touched my throat.

"Bruce..."

She looked incredible. Gone were the boring business gear and modest make-up. Gone was the knee covering skirt. No decent lady's blouse, today. Her silk top was low-cut and looked expensive, as did her tight skirt and the elegantly stilettoed sandals. She looked breathtakingly sexy.

"You, ehm...you look gorgeous."

Her lip trembled. She stuttered. Then a smooth smile washed her insecurity away. "Eh, ah, yes. Thank you. You look great yourself."

I recognized the smile. And yet I didn't. The familiarity was disturbing. So was the difference.

I once more discovered that it doesn't take a lot to turn a grown man into a sweating teenager. Thank God reality rushed back in. The urge to run away disappeared. Sound and image returned to my senses. I offered my hand, she took it. The shaking was highly surreal. It made us both giggle nervously.

"Ms Collins, I presume?" I said, wincing at the corny joke.

She nodded and widened her smile to reward my lame remark -- the perfect hostess. Then she waved to the stool next to her. I walked over to it, but didn't sit down.

"Can I get you a drink?" I asked, only to see she still had a full glass. A gin and tonic, no doubt. Fate refused to make this an easy day for me.

After ordering a scotch and water, I at last sat down. My eyes had been on her the whole time. Somehow the way she looked seemed to carry a message -- something essential. I stared at the classy sexiness. The new abundance of her chest. The sensuality. The general ease of her face, her movements. I noticed the perfection of it all.

"What brings you to Dallas?" I asked. I felt relieved. At last I had found an innocent line in my disheveled basket of small talk.

"Business," she said. Her voice was like her smile. Home, it said. Welcome home. I had to shake my skull to chase the seduction away. It was too slick to be real. And yet it made my skin crawl. I took a sip of my scotch and tasted nothing. Say something light, I urged myself. Something funny!

"Still at the same firm?" I asked. "Importing meat?"

She didn't even wince. Her curls danced as she shook her smiling head in denial. "I am into public relations now." I heard a husky breath in her voice that had never been there before. It reached out for my crotch.

"Oh my," I said. "That is really something else."

She chuckled. The throaty quality was still there. "I found out that I am pretty good at it," she said. "But what about you? You went to New York. I am very jealous."

The last word was attached to the tiniest of laughs. I tried to find an emotion in her eyes to match it. There was none -- just the smooth, beautiful mask.

"Yes," I answered. "I'll be on the board next year."

I don't know why I had to say that. Did I want to impress her? Did she make me do it or did I do it to myself? What was it that turned me into the proud little boy bringing good marks home from school? I don't know -- I just did. And she smoothly praised me with her eyes and her voice. She massaged me with them. It made me feel warm inside. I wanted to be -- close. And yet it felt like velvet plastic.

Public relations? She indeed must be good at it.

"So I guess you are here for business too?" she asked. She turned away to pick up her glass. Her glossed lips kissed the rim. 

It was all so very awkward. Here I sat with the woman I had shared my soul with for over ten years. The woman who had become as much a part of me as I had been of her. And look at us -- two polite talking machines in a slick, perfectly designed lounge in a city as far away from our roots as could be.

I felt a tear burn behind my eyelids. I guess it was for all that had been and now had evaporated. I felt like I was standing at our grave, and there was no one but myself to mourn the two of us down there. 

A shudder ran down my spine. "Goddammit, Myriam!" I cried. It startled her. "Why? Why this? Who are you? Where are you? What happened?"

Her lush eyelashes fluttered. A twitch touched her impeccable mouth. She slid off her stool. "Ehm, yes," she muttered. "Ah well, I guess my client has arrived. Please excuse me."

I grabbed her wrist. My face was almost against hers.

"Myriam! For god's sake!"

She tugged at my grip. I let her go. She looked over my shoulder and smiled. A perfect smile -- a warm smile. I turned and saw a man walking towards us. Early fifties. Forty pounds overweight. Expensive suit -- Stetson hat. JR's nephew, maybe. He extended both hands to Myriam. I took a step back to make room.

"Estelle!" he exclaimed. "Ravishing as ever!" He hugged Myriam and they kissed. I put down my glass and walked away.

"Let's get this out of the way first," I heard the man say. I turned around. Myriam took something from him and put it in her purse. Then she saw me looking. She turned away. 

I walked on to the elevators. 

*** 

The desire to sit and read on the sunny terrace had gone. So had the desire to have the planned dinner with two of the people I had been negotiating with all day. But short of lying, there was no way I could get out of the appointment. 

The restaurant was first class, but I had no appetite. I was distant and I drank too much. Thank god I don't get loud when drunk. And I have a strong stomach. But lying on my bed, back at the hotel, I realized that it had been a long time since I last saw the ceiling revolve like the planets around the sun. Anyway. As I said: two years were not nearly enough to get over her.

She was a whore now, it seemed. No doubt she'd use another job description. Public relations -- I chuckled without mirth. Escort service, no doubt. Classy arm candy. Well-educated fuck flesh. Oh, damn, Myriam. Did I ever know you? My mind waded back through a swamp of alcohol-tainted memories. Had she been the company whore for all those years? And if so -- why had I never noticed? And why did I still care? How could she have hidden it? The business trips, no doubt. My business trips too. The long hours, maybe. 

How could she have been so sweet with me and still betray me like that? I remembered her comments on the morality of others. Her disdain for trashy dresses and sluttish behavior. They were old thoughts, recycled musings. And once more they returned. Did I care at all? I guess I still did. I groaned in the dark. 

I felt ashamed. Isn't it curious how you can be ashamed for being the victim -- even while knowing she ought to be ashamed for betraying you? I almost felt guilty because I had been so naïve. I even now felt the shame for trusting her with my life while she must have been laughing behind my back -- making fun with others about me. It makes you feel so small, so diminished.

That was when the phone rang. I turned and peered at the clock's green numbers. It was past three. A sense of alarm invaded me.

There was sobbing at the other end -- a woman's voice. My name was somewhere among the gasps and snivels. It sent a wave of adrenalin up my throat. And it cleared my brain.

"Bruce?"

I could not push the off button. I could not move the phone from my ear to the cradle. I should have, but I had to listen.

"B-Bruce?"

"That you, Myriam?"

Silly question. I guess there are moments when silly questions can't be avoided.

"I want to die, Bruce. I don't want to live anymore."

*** 

You know...there are good people and bad people. Some of the good can be virtual saints. Some of the bad can be evil. But most people are neither -- they are just in between. Then there are the people you love. Like other people they can be either good or bad, but that is immaterial. Their love claims you, blinds you. They can be your children, your parents, brothers, sisters, and friends. They can be spouses...even ex-spouses. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Five minutes after the call Myriam huddled in my bed, hugging herself -- arms around her knees. The fluffy white bathrobe was wrapped tightly about her. So was the extra blanket I gave her. She still shook, her teeth chattering. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face blotched. The lovely chestnut curls I remembered from the lounge now stuck wet and stringy to her face.




Two's a Crowd Ch. 03



I sat down on the edge of the bed. I waited, feeding her Kleenex tissues.

"I am a bad person, Bruce." Her voice was a whisper.

"I know," I said. Her eyes widened.

"I know you are bad, Myriam," I went on. "I just didn't know you knew it too."

This sent another flood of tears to her eyes. I saw I had reached the bottom of the tissue container. The white flimsy paper lay around her like colorless autumn leaves and early paper snowballs.

"I don't want to be bad," she said in between hiccups.

"I guess no one wants to, Myriam." I wondered about my calmness. I also wondered where this surreal talk would take us. It was mostly surreal because it felt so strangely comforting.

"I couldn't help it, you know, Bruce?"

"You couldn't help what, Myriam? Lying to me?"

She just gaped. Her head slowly shook left and right. I shrugged and went on. "Did someone force you to humiliate me, Myr? Did they blackmail you so you had to turn me into a cuckold clown? Were you forced to laugh with your lovers about the fool I was? What part couldn't you help, Myriam? There are so many possibilities."

It reduced her to a fountain of blubbering again. I wondered why it did not irritate me. I rose from the bed. "Maybe you should calm down. Take a shower, Myriam. I don't think this is getting us anywhere."

She shook her head vigorously. "No!" she said. "First I must tell you everything. I have been such a fool not to warn you about who I am and what I did. I never told you."

I sat down again. I studied her face. What did she mean by "warning me about who she was" and "never telling me"?

"Myriam," I said. "Maybe you need to talk, but maybe I don't want to hear it. It has been two years now. Time has done its thing. I worked very hard to let it succeed. I don't think I want to know anymore."

Her eyes froze. The sobbing stopped. "I..." she began. Then she started crawling to the side of the bed. The squeezed balls of moist tissue rolled away from her.

"I," she said again. " I guess I should not bother you, Bruce. I'm sorry for raking it all up again." Her bare feet were on the carpet. She started tidying up the bed, collecting the tissues. Then she stood there. Her eyes shone with tears. It was hard to hold the heap of paper in her shaking hands.

As I said, there are good and bad people. But then there are also people you love -- good, bad or whatever. I rose and took her in my arms. She drenched my bathrobe in a new flood of tears.

The spongy paper balls flew all over the place.

*** 

When the morning sun peeked through the slits of the blinds, she was still in my arms. We lay on the bed. Myriam had sunk into an exhausted sleep. I had shushed her repeated attempts to "tell me all" until I heard her breathing slip into a slow and regular pattern. I am not sure I slept at all.

Careful not to wake her I reached for the phone and ordered breakfast to be delivered in an hour. Then I slipped out of her embrace and went to take a shower. I left the room fully dressed, suitcase dangling from my hand. The last I saw was her face. It looked relaxed with the innocence of sleep. A yellow piece of paper lay on her chest. It rose and sank with her breathing.

I closed the door behind me.



Two's a Crowd Ch. 04



Where I discover that I can't kill the woman I married.

*

I had been back in New York for two days when the package arrived. It lay at the centre of my desk and was the size of a shoebox. The address was handwritten. I knew the familiar curls, the generous lettering. Maybe I shouldn't open it, I thought, while my fingers were already opening it.

The box was crammed with balled-up white tissues. On top lay the yellow piece of paper I had left on her chest while she was sleeping. It had obviously been crumpled before being smoothed out again; the ink of the writing seemed blotted by moisture. A few words had been added at the bottom, but they were crossed out again. I tried to read them. I thought I saw "love." 

I remembered what I had written on the yellow paper. I knew I would regret the opening my words had left her. Why couldn't I have just been satisfied with a simple good-bye -- maybe an added good luck? It must have been that damn four-letter word again. The word that starts with an l, but isn't "lust." Lust hadn't been in my thoughts for all the time she had been in my arms. My cock had stayed as dead as a cold, naked snail.

But alas, yes, another organ had been highly involved -- my heart. Damn foolish heart, stupid blood-pumping muscle. The same one that was rattling at my rib-cage right now.

I cleaned the box from the puffy balls of tissue paper. (It's true, you know -- a woman's tears are her weapons. And Myriam had found a perfect way to cry long-distance.) At the bottom lay a picture. It was a postcard-sized glamour shot of "Estelle." Her heavy-lashed eyes blazed from the paper, as did her smile. The chestnut hair curled down in perfection until it caressed her stunning new cleavage. Her alias was printed in a corner, in a girlish, faux-handwritten way -- a little heart added. The kitschiness of it all made me shudder. All over the shining picture, huge, fat letters had been hurled down with a magic marker: "THIS IS NOT ME!!!" they screamed.

On the back of the photo was the address of the agency. It was the Dallas-based branch of a nationwide network. New York, I saw, and Vegas, Detroit, San Francisco. Even London. There were also some tiny italic lines describing her classy qualities as an escort for visiting businessmen. There was her degree and her business experience. She was "intelligent, witty and well-read." Physical attractiveness or sexual prowess weren't mentioned; I guess the photograph was supposed to speak for itself. The same black magic marker of the front had been used to jot down a cell-phone number on the back -- and the word "please."

I dropped the card on the desk and stared at it.

*** 

The agency's business number was amongst the small print. It had been partly obscured by her jotted-down cell number. The Houston Hilton would be close to where I had to be anyway, next week.

It took me half an hour to consider making the call. All the while I had stared at the picture -- the eyes, the computer-polished skin, the smile that made my heart weep. The alien tits. "THIS IS NOT ME!!!" she wrote. I had to agree.

The female voice sounded all-businesslike in a smooth and sympathetic way. Yes, Estelle was available. And yes, my wishes could be easily met as long as I knew there would be extra charges. If I'd please leave my address and all other instructions, they'd take care of everything.

I made one more call later that afternoon and then I threw away the box and its contents. I went to the fitness centre where I allowed the machines to torture me in their cruelest ways.

Later that evening I beat Erica 6 - 2 and 6 - 3. She asked if I was all right. I smiled and told her not to worry.

*** 

The room was spacious. It was a suite, really. The afternoon sun tried to pierce the drawn shades. It resulted in a warm, intimate atmosphere. Golden specks danced in the narrow beams of sunlight that spilt around the edges of the shades.

The hands on my watch crawled closer to the appointed hour. I guess there is nothing as efficient in making a man doubt his motives as having time to kill. Why was I here in the first place? Hiding behind a screen to watch my ex-wife destroy the last spark of affection left inside my sorry excuse for a heart. Why -- after two years, for Christ's sake -- did I still have this seething need to get back at her? I should have thrown away the pathetic box and the gruesome picture. Better yet -- I should never have let her into my room in that Dallas hotel.

Through the slits of the tasteful Japanese screen I had a view of the king size bed. I could also see two of the men lounging in the adjacent room. Tall, handsome men -- long legs, tight shirts over muscled chests. Well endowed too, as they had assured me. The third man was in the bathroom, I guessed. I sat up and once more wondered why I was here, doing what I was doing.

It had all been quite easy to organize. Expensive, true -- but I didn't care. Looking back I would have to agree that this impulsiveness wasn't at all like me. Wasn't I supposed to be the deliberate numbers man? Then again -- have I ever been myself since Myriam betrayed me?

Betrayal -- such a big word to use after all this time. 

My thoughts went to that utterly strange night in Dallas, again. I had let her in, but I had refused to let her explain. She had tried so hard to do so during the dry spells between her teary outbursts, but I smugly denied her the opportunity to tell me -- to explain herself, as she said. I knew she would lie anyway. Just look what she had done since our divorce. She had turned prostitute -- need I say more? 

After a while she had fallen asleep. Exhausted, no doubt, I thought maliciously. No wonder, given the hard work she had done before. Yes, I felt very righteous back then, in Dallas. And hurt. And pissed off all over again. But I held her in my arms 'til morning.

Now, back in the Houston Hilton, I stared through the screen. I knew I didn't just feel depressed. There was anticipation, too. The anticipation of a little boy with big clever plans. Would it work? Would she follow the instructions? Or would she suspect something? In matters of intuition, Myriam had always been the cleverer one of us. She might smell a rat. But why would she? Wasn't this just a job for her? Pubic Relations? I shuddered at the awful word play. Disgusting. I chased the grin off my face.

No doubt revenge was part of my motives. The need for closure, too. But I loved to tell myself that there was a third, nobler, less selfish motive. I had to show her who she really was. I had to kill this silly delusion of love she had -- I had to free her. Maybe just as much as I had to free myself.

Was I being cruel? Maybe. "I'm only human," I had told myself over and over. On the way here and right now -- waiting. But I was ashamed for what I was going to do. Ashamed enough to not even tell Erica about my plans. Anyway, it was too late now. The scene was set, the actors in place. An audience of one was waiting for the star to make her appearance.

*** 

The knock on the door sounded shy. It made my heart race. I breathed deeply to make it slow down.

The blonde gigolo went to open the door. I could not see the entrance itself, but I heard a woman's voice -- Myriam's, but higher, excited. And yes, she was naked when she walked into the room. Naked except for whorish black stockings, red garters and plastic platform heels -- just as agreed upon. There was no hair on her mound, I saw. Her exposed, heavy tits bounced from the strutting -- so did her reddish curls.

"Hi guys," she said, one finger between her pouting lips, like a naughty girl. She held her head at a coquettish angle -- her lashes fluttering with exaggerated flirting. She looked from the blonde to the darker haired stud. "Oooooh!" she gasped. "Is this all for lil ol' me?" The tackiness made me shudder. Her voice was like a child's, but it had the throaty undertone I remembered from the Dallas hotel lounge. There was also a giggle at the end. It excited me, while at the same time filling me with the shame she so obviously lacked herself.

The other man rose and joined his buddy. He pulled Myriam towards him and kissed her right away. I heard a guttural moan as she pressed her tits into his chest. She wrapped her body around him, lifting one leg. Her bare cunt rubbed into his Italian slacks. Their kisses were wet and loud.

The blonde guy hugged her from behind and soon she was sandwiched between the two of them. A little squeal sounded when her shoulder got bitten. I saw a hand on her left tit, fingers pinching the nipple. Another hand slapped the naked flesh of her ass cheek.

Then the dark haired man pushed her down until she knelt in front of him. No words were said; none were needed. Myriam's red-nailed fingers rapidly freed the guy's cock from his fly. It was large and hung in a semi erect arc, right in front of her smiling face. "Yummy!" I heard her say. A curled tongue ran up from the shaven balls to the flaring tip, where it vibrated against the sensitive ridge. Then she let her glossed lips sink over the head. Myriam never took me like she took this man's cock into her mouth. Never this hungrily. The pain it caused inside me woke me up from the hypnotic state I had slipped into. 

Then I saw the blonde guy take his cock out too. It seemed even longer. He poked Myriam's cheek with it, drawing her attention. She shrieked and grabbed it. "Oooh goodie! One more cock for lil Estelle!" Experienced fingers rubbed the second cock while her lips went down the first. It would have been a highly erotic sight for any man, but I only felt disgust and a burning sensation behind my eyes. A hot haze enveloped me -- it isolated me from the outside world. I felt abandoned and betrayed, but ashamed.

The third guy came in from the bathroom. Myriam had by then sucked both cocks to hardness. He whistled his admiration, drawing Myriam's attention to his already displayed erection. She squealed even shriller at the sight, clapping her hands. She rose and ran over to him. The crazy heels made her ass wobble obscenely. She knelt again and started rubbing the pole with both hands. Maybe the sheer number of cocks excited her. Or maybe it was because this third one was even bigger. And black.

The naked woman I saw kneeling in front of the men was a total stranger to me. She was as anonymous as the first random piece of fuck meat in a pornographic movie. Even the slightest hint that she could be someone I had known, respected and loved, was light years away from my thoughts. Everything she did was alien. Her voice, her words. The cheap way she dressed. The shameless, wanton sluttiness of her actions -- and the obvious way she enjoyed it. Nothing reminded me of the woman I had loved and married, shared my life with, my dreams and my bed with.

Myriam wasn't here. It seemed hard to even remember her now. The cool, witty, totally lovable woman I had shared my life with was gone. Her wonderful sense of humor had vanished. Her intelligence. Her taste and style. The sweet, warm love we made. The unconditional intimacy. All was gone. It had been replaced by this plastic creature. This screaming, rutting bitch with her pumped up tits and appalling language. She had become a wide open mouth -- two splaying legs on cheap, shining platform heels. She had reduced herself to a screeching fuck-toy, inanely giggling her dignity away.

Myriam wasn't here anymore. The thought struck me and sobered me. I saw the woman being carried to the bed. By now her cunt had been penetrated from behind, while her mouth was filled with the black guy's cock. They impaled her while carrying her -- she was a squealing pink piggy on a spit. The fake tits dangled from her rib cage. Wet sounds of sucking and fucking filled the room.

I had feared how I might react. There were these disgusting stories of men getting aroused while watching their loved one being fucked -- jacking off as they looked on or even joining in. I needn't have worried. Ever since I got past my hormone-invested teen years, cheap, explicit porn movies didn't do much for me. I always saw the hard, inhuman cheapness of it -- the emptiness, silliness even. Oh, there were erotic scenes that gave me hard-ons. But they hardly ever included the mechanical flesh pounding I was witnessing now.

Myriam -- or better, Estelle -- was on her hands and knees. Her face was fucked by the blonde guy, while the black cock pumped into her cunt. The dark haired stud lay under her, sucking on her tits and jilling her clit. The woman was a constant source of muffled shrieks and moans. Her ass slapped backwards in response to the relentless fucking. She already seemed to be climaxing in a constant stream of orgasms.

It was hard to believe she was just acting. Could a professional hooker be as convincing as this? It looked and sounded real enough to me. But who was I to judge? She had never been like this with me. She was never this primal or vocal. I never saw this unfettered beast in my bed.

In a distracted way I admired her professionalism -- or whatever it was. Both cocks were thicker and longer than mine -- by inches. But she took them with ease. She never gagged, even when the cock head made her throat bulge. Her cunt seemed to take the fat pole easily. She slammed back into the guy and each moment her mouth was free, she cried out to be fucked harder and deeper. Her breathless voice sounded alien to me. It was the voice of a stranger.

*** 

During the next hour Myriam got fucked in her cunt by each of the men. They also came in her mouth. I saw her swallow the semen and heard her obscene comments on the amount, the quality and the taste of it. By that time my feelings had gone -- there was just an all-encompassing sadness. I guess part of my plan had worked. Even the final remnants of my love for this creature had surely died. I guess there would always be memories of Myriam left to haunt my dreams. But I knew now that she was dead -- that maybe she had never even existed. What I had not planned, though, or even realized, was that this brutal surgical operation might take away more from me than just Myriam. As I looked straight into the extreme convulsions that racked her face, a sudden chill crept up my spine.

Would I ever feel again? 

A wave of fatalism ran through me. I just stared. All power left my body. I shivered -- I had no tears left, no love, no feelings. The screaming madwoman took them away with each spasm, each uncontrolled explosion of orgasmic bliss. Her red mouth sucked them straight from my soul.

*** 

After resting for a while at the center of a heap of naked flesh, the hooker started playing with the black cock again. She ran her red nails over its length and rubbed it slowly. She took the meat in her mouth to suck new life into it. She teased and cheered the stud with that sick baby-voice she seemed to have reserved for this awful afternoon. 

Then she rose to her knees and offered him her ass hole. Her offer might have shocked me a while earlier. By now I only registered it as a technicality -- one more off-hand service to punish me. I didn't try to remember how she had always refused me to even touch her there.

I saw now that those prudish times were in a distant past. The guy lubricated her entrance with globs of collected sperm and juices. His fingers made her moan like a bitch in heat -- which by now I knew she was. Then he ran his cock into her open cunt. He pulled it out, gleaming and dripping -- and plunged it into her ass hole. She cried out, but I don't think there was much pain in that scream. 

The blonde guy slid under her. He lowered her onto his rejuvenated cock until her stretched cunt lips kissed his pubic bone. Right then the third hard cock hit the deep entrance to her throat. The same woman who only a few days ago insisted she loved me and wasn't like this, let herself be filled in all her orifices. And she screamed with relish.

*** 

Her final orgasm echoed through the darkening room. Ragged panting smoothed into soft and regular breathing. At long last silence returned. 

I rose. I walked around the screen and on to the bed. It looked like a battlefield. It smelled like a sty. The damp sheets were knurled into fat, twisted sausages. The pillows and mattress were soaked -- there were numerous spots of saliva, sweat and semen. Even specks of blood. The whore lay in the middle -- she seemed exhausted. Her arms and legs were spread out, resting on her naked lovers. Her cunt and ass hole gaped open from use. All kinds of moisture seeped from them. Her pale skin gleamed with sweat and spunk. Her eyes were closed, her mouth hung open in a silly grin.

The men saw me coming and slid off the bed. They collected their clothes and went into the adjoining room to shower and dress. Not a word was said. Maybe the woman had passed out. She never reacted to the movements of her leaving lovers. The bed shook a bit, making her tits wobble slightly. I just stood over her, watching; I'd never seen them wobble like that. 

Then I said her name -- "Myriam." The dark lashes flew open in their circles of smeared mascara. I remembered those eyes, but I did not want to. I also knew the sperm-smeared mouth that produced my name with a shrill, scared edge. The woman hunched her body and wrapped herself in a soiled sheet -- it was just a silly reflex of long forgotten modesty. The sudden movement caused obscene sounds to leave her lower body. She perched like a bird. Her eyes were big, her mouth a dark ellipse of shock. "Nooo..." she moaned.

"No, indeed," I said. "I shouldn't call you Myriam, should I? "THIS IS NOT ME!!!" as you wrote me -- remember? You even gave it three exclamation marks."

She just stared and swallowed. Then she repeated my name. "Bruce." 

I sat down on the bed's edge. "Today I decided once and for all to kill Myriam," I said. My voice was as empty as I felt. "Tell me, please...did I succeed?"

At the word "kill" she flinched. Then I guess she understood. Tears ran down her ravaged face. She started shaking her head in denial. "P-please don't," she croaked. Her voice seemed thick with liquid. Was it sperm? Tears?

"I shouldn't do what, whore?" I asked, once more making her flinch. The word shook her, as it did me, even after all I saw.

"Listen to me, Bruce. Please listen." A hand crawled out to grab me. I recoiled.

"Listen to you?" My voice grew harder. "I watched you, slut. I watched it all. Who needs listening after that? Who needs explaining?"

She opened and closed her smeared lips like a fish. Then she said: "Please, Bruce, tell me why. Why did you have to set this up and humiliate me like this?"

I thought I was beyond shock. She proved I wasn't. "Humiliate YOU?!" I screamed. The laugh that followed must have sounded quite hysterical.

"I love you, Bruce," she said. Her voice was calm, clear. It was Myriam's voice, clipped and in control. "I love you as much as you love me. You should not have compromised me like this."

My head buzzed. I had trouble breathing. "Myriam," I panted. "You are stark raving mad."

Her eyes never wavered. "Yes, Bruce," she whispered. "Yes, I guess I am."



Two's a Crowd Ch. 05



Why can't I sleep -- again? Hadn't my plan promised me it would all be over by now? After more than two years it should be, shouldn't it? My idea had been fool proof. She would show me what a dirty, cheap whore she really was and that would cure me forever -- and her too. Like an insecticide it would kill all the damn germs that still infested my soul. I'd be clean and happy. At long last I would be ready to move on.

And now look at me. Ever since I left that reeking hotel suite I have been walking in a daze. I don't remember the cab that took me back to the airport. I don't remember the plane -- it is amazing that I got on the right one home. All I remember is her thick voice calling after me. "Bruce...don't abandon me again." It had sounded like the most forlorn thing I had ever heard. It made me stop for a heartbeat.

And although I had walked out on her, the words have haunted me ever since. Soft, pathetic me.

*** 

My first game of tennis with Erica, since I returned from Houston, lasted only half an hour. Then she told me she hated playing against zombies. I apologized and we quit. When I slumped down in a corner seat of the restaurant, I did not even remember one game we played.

She stared at me over her juice. "Peekaboo time again?" she asked. "Hiding from the world the gross injuries that have been done to you? How long will it take this time, honey?"

My eyes burned. I cursed under my breath the pathetic silliness of it all. "I should see a shrink," I said.

She chuckled. "From where this sudden insight?" she asked. The wounded flash of my eyes made her apologize. Her hand was on mine. "Oh God, honey. You are serious. I am so sorry. Please tell me what is going on, Bruce. Please, this is Erica, you know? You can tell me. It's the damn whore again, isn't it?"

I shrugged. I had told her about meeting Myriam in Dallas. About her being an escort girl. But I had never told her about my plan and the action I took. I did now.

To my surprise she didn't call it a stupid action. No, that's not true. She said that the whole sick adventure just proved that I would never get over the whore. So it didn't matter if what I did was right or wrong. I thanked her for nothing and she laughed, patting my hand.

"Sorry, Bruce," she said. "You are the sweetest man I know. Even in your stupidity you are utterly lovable. Good God, I am just trying to imagine that afternoon. Why on earth did you have to fall for a slut like her?"

Good question, no answer.

"So she says she is mentally ill?"

"Maybe schizophrenia," I agreed. "Or multi personalities disorder. I talked to a shrink -- a friend of a colleague. May have been triggered in her youth. Sexual abuse, usually."

"She never told you?"

"No."

"Can't it be a trick?"

I looked at her. Of course I had considered that. "I don't know, really. Only a psychiatrist can tell. Do you know a good one? The colleague's friend is leaving the country. Said she'd look for a good one."

Erica raised her hand. "Hold it, Bruce. Are you telling me that you plan to help her?"

"Shouldn't I?"

She shook her head, smiling. "You're an utterly lovable idiot, as I said before," she said. "You are a fool, but sometimes I wish I were straight enough to grab you."

*** 

Her voice was a mere whisper. "Bruce."

I had called her on her personal number. I had deduced early afternoon would be the best time to reach her. "Myriam." I allowed a pause. Then I said: "I want you to tell me everything."

A new pause.

"Now?" she asked. "On the phone?"

"Of course not. Can you come to New York?"

Another silence.

"When?"

"Soon."

"I have to be in Washington next Tuesday. We might..." She stopped in mid-sentence. Sudden irritation blocked my voice -- it made the silence stretch until it was unbearable.

"Sorry," she then said. "I am such a stupid bitch."

"I'll pay for the flight," I offered.

"It is not the money," she said.

"I know."

"I'll be there Monday," she decided. "Your place?"

"No," I answered -- too quickly. "Ehm...pick a hotel."

"Okay."

A last silence fell. My finger hovered over the red button.

"Thank you for this, Bruce...I love you."

I pushed the button. Little beeps filled my ear.

*** 

She had picked The Roosevelt on Madison Avenue. A calm and stylish hotel -- so very much like her. Like Myriam, I mean. The Myriam I tried to remember. Her style, her class. Every sweet thing from long ago. I walked under the clock into the spacious lobby. It was getting close to five in the afternoon. The cocktail bar was filling up. I looked around and saw a hand waving.

Myriam was all Myriam. The suit was pearl gray on a white silk blouse. It had one extra open button, but that might have been a necessity caused by her newly acquired cup size. She rose and leaned in -- for a kiss, I suppose. Then she pulled back with a blush. I took her cool slim hand. "Hi, Myr," I said. "Good to see you here -- how was your flight?"

Things stayed awkward for a while. We spent ten minutes on inane small talk and the careful sipping of our drinks. She never once referred to our last meeting -- neither did I, as this woman seemed light years away from the fucked-out slut I had left lying on the soaked hotel bed. 

We went over to a low table that had just been vacated. The back of my mind registered a slightly higher hemline as she walked before me -- and modestly elevated heels. They looked expensive. She was right -- money wasn't the issue.

There was silence as we sat looking around. She hadn't flown across half the country to just sit here taking in the stylish scenery, I guessed.

"You came to explain," I reminded her. 

Her eyes returned to mine. There was a puzzled expression in them as if what I asked came as a surprise. "I am so glad to be with you, Bruce," she said. Her voice was almost a whisper. "I've missed you so much."

An uncomfortable heat rose from my collar. "Stop this, Myriam," I said. "I haven't come here to hear bull shit. It was you who forced me to leave, remember?"

Her gaze didn't move an inch. "Did I?" she asked. "I never would have done that."

I rose. "This is getting us nowhere, Myr. You have been fucking around on me for years. Then you turned into a full-time whore the moment I left you -- and still you want me to love you? Now, either you explain this crazy nightmare to me or I'm out of here."

Her hand was up. She touched me. I recoiled. "You're right, Bruce," she said. "I'm sorry -- please sit down."

I suddenly felt stupid, standing. So I sat down. The leather of the chair sighed under my weight. Did I see a smile on her face? Must have been the light.

"Bruce," she began. "This is very difficult for me, so please be patient. And yes, I understand -- who am I to make demands or to complain? It must be much worse for you."

She inhaled deeply. "Bruce, I married you under false pretenses." Her lashes fluttered -- she seemed to be surprised by her own candor. "Ehm...not false, just... Myriam really never lied to you, Bruce. But she did not tell you all about herself either -- not everything about her youth, her...ehm ...problem." Her fingers demolished the paper napkin in her hands. Her talking in the third person felt eerie.

"You need to know -- Myriam has always been honest with you, Bruce. Her love for you was true -- profoundly true. It still is. She may be a weak person, but she never cheated on you -- not even in her thoughts. Her heart broke when you accused her of cheating and left her. She never stopped loving you, Bruce. These last years have been hell for her -- only her hope against all odds kept her going. If you kill that, she'll die. I'll die, Bruce."

I just sat there. I guess the word flabbergasted was invented for occasions like this. The woman in front of me had lost her cool, stylish control. Slow tears ran down her face now.

"I," I began.

"Bruce," she went on. "Telling you this has always been impossible. You see -- Estelle never allowed me to tell you. She forbade it -- forbids it. She threatens to leave me, if I do. She protects me, I need her. She has always been there for me."

Myriam looked away. "Only when it was too late," she went on in a whisper, "did I discover what she had become -- she is like a sick rubber wall around me. No -- a cage made of sticky gum. It opens less and less. It gets so tiring to struggle free -- even for minutes. Even right now, I don't know how long I'll be able to fend her off."

I stared into the face of the woman who had been my life for almost ten years. The woman I had thought I knew better than myself. And here I was -- once more realizing I had never known her at all. I peered into an ever-shifting, surreal haze.

"Myr," I said -- which was a huge improvement on my former one-syllabled "I." "What on earth are you talking about? Estelle, you say? Estelle is your hooker name, Myriam. All the escorts use one. It is just a professional alias. You can't blame a name!"

A hidden spark suddenly surfaced in her eyes. Subtle shifts molded her facial expressions -- a horribly sweet smile painted her lips. It lasted only a few seconds before it was washed away, but an after-image seemed to hover. Myriam panted. Her body trembled -- so did her lips. "Please, Bruce." She struggled to regain control. "Please, just hear me out. Don't interrupt -- we may lose precious time. This could be my only chance."

Her fingers had finally shredded the napkin, causing a layer of snow on the table. It fascinated me. It also gave me something else to watch other than her weird, upsetting eyes. "When Myriam was eleven, almost twelve, her stepfather raped her," she went on in her freakish third person way. "Yes, I know -- you never knew he wasn't her father. He married her mother after she had gotten pregnant with her. She loved the boy that had made her pregnant, but he was young. Under pressure from his parents he fled from his responsibilities."

She finished her gin and tonic. "My mother is from old money -- lots of it. She also had a very strict upbringing, as you know. The pregnancy and the loss of her sweetheart killed all her independency and resistance. She married my stepfather only two months later. His name was Brian Collins. He was 15 years her senior and from good but impoverished stock -- the only memory of wealth left in his genes was how to spend it quickly.

"My mother didn't love him. But then again, love wasn't very important in the world she came from. He loved her madly -- that is to say, her money. The first years they both kept up the semblance of a good, if rather stiff marriage. I was four when my brother John was born. Half-brother, to be precise. You know him. We were never close.

"Then my grand parents were killed in that damn sports plane my grandfather insisted on flying himself on his 65th birthday. They were on their way to Florida, for a third honeymoon, as they called it. But you know the story. I was eleven, by then."

I nodded. I thought about her stepfather. We had never met. He had died before I was with Myriam. At the rare family gatherings nobody talked about him. As I took him to be her father, I had always wondered about that.

I asked Myriam if she wanted a new drink. "Water," she said. I got up and retrieved it, refreshing my scotch and ice. When I returned, Myriam had risen from her chair.

"Will you hold me, Bruce?" she asked. "I know I disgust you, but please? Just a hug."

I took her in my arms. She let out a long sigh. I felt her tremble in my embrace. Her breasts were very much there. "Shhhhh," I said.

"She fights me, you know -- tooth and claw," Myriam said. Her voice was muffled by my shirt and jacket. It took me a second to realize whom she meant. "She had been so good to me," she went on. "I needed her so much. But she threatened to tell everybody what I did."

"Shhhh," I repeated, not knowing what else to say. Then she struggled herself free.

"We must hurry, Bruce! She is close!"

Looking down into her panicked eyes I felt buckets of ice-cubes hurl down my spine. "Myriam," I said. "We really must find you a doctor."

"No, no!" she cried. "No doctor. You are my doctor. She can't get through our love, honey. She never could, as long as you loved me and held me. It pissed her off! It still does!" She giggled insanely. "She can't get out as long as you hold me and love me. Bruce. Bruce, do you love me?" Her face was flushed. As long as I held and loved her, she'd said. Not quite, I mused, thinking back.

We must have been a sight, holding each other tightly in the neatly stuck-up surroundings of the hotel. I felt Myriam fumble against my belly and looked down. She had produced a key-card from her purse. "Please, Bruce. Let's go up to my room -- I don't want to be a spectacle. I promise I'll be good, but I need privacy and my bathroom."

She seemed better. Her face was in ruins, but she smiled. I agreed with her plan. I took her hand and we went for the elevator.

My head was in chaos.

*** 

So was her room. On and around the bed lay bags of almost every trendy shop in the city. Strewn across them were stacks of clothing -- dresses, lingerie and all kinds of shoes, boots, purses and sandals. I saw Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci and any other expensive brand Europe had to offer. The shoes were all staggeringly high-heeled. The lingerie and dresses were made of silk, satin and precious lace. I saw a few leather items too. Money wasn't her problem indeed.

Myriam looked at the floor as I watched the consumer frenzy trail from the bed, across the floor to the bathroom. "She sure had a good time," I heard her mutter.

"Estelle bought this?" I asked.

"She loves to shop."

I couldn't suppress a snicker of disbelief. I picked up a sheer, short negligee. It ran like liquid through my hands. The price tag was still on it. Three hundred thirty-nine dollars, I read.

"There is a small fortune here, Myr."

"Estelle makes a lot of money," she almost whispered. "And she doesn't want me to have it. She spends it as soon as it gets in. Or even before."

I ran my hands through the silks and satins of embroidered bustiers, bra's and skimpy evening gowns.

"All I am allowed to have is this suit, some jeans, underwear and a few blouses and sweaters," she went on. "Now please excuse me. I need to go to the bathroom."

She left the room. I went over to the window, looking down into the canyon formed by the tall buildings. My thoughts were all over the place. Was she telling the truth? Or was it just an elaborate hoax? Was she mentally ill? How could I know? Had I been married to two women? Or only to half of one?

She was raped when she wasn't even twelve, she'd said. The shrink had told me how such profound shocks in early youth could create all kinds of personality disorders. Should I believe her? I remembered the half naked woman I saw with the Argentinean playboy at that fundraiser, years ago. I compared her to the Myriam I married. I remembered the outrageous slut who signed the divorce papers -- the boob job. The plastic escort in Dallas and the insatiable whore at the Houston Hilton. Were they and Myriam ever even close to being the same person? Would Myriam have lost herself in an insane shopping spree like this -- for blatantly erotic outfits like these? 

I walked back to the bed, staring at the colorful mess. Just look at that vinyl tube top. Could I imagine Myriam buying those golden laced up sandals? I remembered how she had ridiculed women wearing stuff like that. "Porn sluts," she had called them. 

"Bruce."

I looked up -- the black see-through teddy I had just picked up slithered through my fingers. Myriam had returned. She looked fresh and relaxed. The jacket had gone. I guess I'd never get used to those tits. "Feeling better?" I asked. She nodded. Her smile was timid, but it was an original Myriam.

"You really must see a doctor, Myr," I tried again. 

Her smile disappeared. "She won't let me," she said, looking away.

"Don't give me that Estelle rubbish again, Myriam," I pleaded.

She looked hurt. "You still don't believe me."

"Would you believe me if I had been the one cheating on you?" I sounded rather bitter.

A semblance of resolution made her stand taller. "Sit down, Bruce," she said with an urgent voice. "Sit down and hear me out before it is too late." I sat down. She didn't.

She went over to the bed and picked up the three hundred-plus dollars see-through nothing. With a flick of her fingers she tore the flimsy fabric in two. Then she started talking while calmly picking up items and destroying them. The beads on a sheer top flew through the room; silvery thong panties were shredded like paper.

"I have come to hate Estelle, Bruce. She took over and she is bad for me. But I can never get rid of her. She is part of me and I owe her. She was there for me after my stepfather raped me. She took the brunt when he abused me over and over in a weekend my mom was away. Afterwards I lay in my bed wishing I'd die. I bled, my body hurt. I felt betrayed and forsaken."

Myriam talked without emotion, but her hands shook as yet another expensive article was reduced to shreds. "From that moment on, whenever the asshole cornered me, Estelle came out and told me to hide. She saved me, Bruce, but when I returned, my entire body was ravaged. My poor pussy and...and other opening hurt and felt stretched. There were bruises around my nipples and all over my skin."

A torn-up leopard print bikini-top joined the pile at her feet. 

"Mom asked me about it when she happened to see a few bruises. Estelle interfered with a plausible explanation -- then forbade me to tell anybody "our secret." I asked her why, but she just told me to trust her. I trusted her. Estelle had saved me -- I didn't dare lose her. I would be all alone again."

A pair of sexy nylon stockings fell victim to her vicious fingernails.

"Things went on like that for a while. I hardly know what happened, as Estelle kept me away from everything. Until the time I suddenly woke to loud screaming and yelling. I lay in the middle of naked bodies. They were of sweaty, smelly men on soaked and stinking bed sheets. At the foot of the bed was my mom, yelling at my naked stepfather. I felt sticky and sore -- even my jaws hurt."

Myriam paused. She swallowed, and went on. "The men around me struggled to get off the bed, but my stepfather told them to stay. He grabbed mom and tore at her dress. She resisted, but he threw her with me on the bed. Then the other men held her down while Brian stuck his hard cock into her. I had never seen that -- it was awful, degrading. The bed shook with his violence. Mom's fingernails clawed at his skin, leaving bloody traces. Then she stopped fighting and screaming. I heard her sob -- then nothing."

The tearing up of delicate clothing articles was now as violent as her memories. She threw down an expensive Prada sandal and started trampling on it until the stiletto heel broke off. I rose and tried to hold her, but she struggled free.

"No! No, Bruce, please let me. I have to do this." Tears streamed down her face again. But she pushed me away and grabbed another lacy item to lacerate.

"The men on the bed were too busy with mom to mind me. I lay frozen with horror. Then Estelle whispered in my ear. "Get the trophy. Go, get the trophy, Myriam. Wrap the sheet around your hand and get it!" There was a heavy brass trophy on the bed stand. Asshole had been quite a jock at high school. He never got rid of his awards -- they were all over the house. One of them was this ugly brass quarterback throwing a ball. "Get it! Grab it at the top and use the heavy pedestal," Estelle urged on. So I wrapped the soaked sheet around my hand, reached for the statuette and looked back at the panting, groaning bunch of naked men. Brian's red, sweaty head bobbed up and down with his exertions. 




Two's a Crowd Ch. 05



"Do it!" Estelle urged. "Now!" I backed off, the bronze weapon dangling from my hand. "You do it," I told her. And I slipped away to my safe place."

For a moment Myriam seemed lost. Her eyes turned inward. Then she sat down on the bed. An obscene, high-heeled white platform shoe dropped from her hands. "When I returned, the room was empty," she went on. Her voice sounded dreamy. "All the men had gone. Mom lay next to me, her eyes closed. Then I saw the blood."

In the silence a far away New York siren pierced the soft humming of the air conditioning. Myriam just stared.

"Blood?" I said -- just to shake her out of her trance. Or out of mine, for that matter.

"Mom's body was splattered with blood," she whispered, eyes wide. "The bed too. And my hands -- my body. I said "Mom?" but she didn't respond. I crawled to the edge of the bed and saw a naked man sprawled head down in a pool of blood. The top of his skull and his shoulders were red. He didn't move. Next to him lay the statuette, broken in two. I guess I fainted."

I came forward and embraced Myriam. This time she let me. We just sat together on the edge of the bed. I rocked her in silence. "How could you never have told me this, Myriam?" I said at last. "It is so awful -- it must have haunted you all your life. Why didn't you allow me to help?"

She didn't hear me. She resumed her story with the voice of an automaton. "There were police, of course. An ambulance, I guess. I was in the hospital for a while. A lot of people asked me all kinds of questions. I could not tell much, as I had not seen much. I didn't even know the two other men. They must have fled the house and could not be traced. 

"Besides, what little I knew I could not say. Estelle threatened she would expose me -- tell them that it was I who had killed my stepfather. I just had to trust her."

Myriam looked up with uncertain eyes. "I had no choice, right?" 

I didn't know what to say. She went on. "Mom and I were finally released. We moved to our aunt's town house in Boston. For over two years I was in therapy, sometimes with mom. Estelle helped me answer the doctor's questions whenever I didn't know what to say. She was always there when I needed her.

"In high school Estelle left me alone most of the time -- as far as I know. There have been strange lapses in my memory, though -- and unexplainable places I found myself in. But those moments were few and far between. 

"At school I had some girl friends, but I avoided the boys -- at least as Myriam I did. They intimidated, even scared me. I had this urge to dress down as much as I could to be invisible. But I wasn't exactly ugly, so they kept trying. I guess a few were really nice guys, but I always stopped their advances. Mom didn't date either. We were together quite a lot."

She looked up and smiled weakly. "Everybody told me to go to one of the snobby colleges in New England, but I wanted out. I needed a place where nobody knew me. Well -- maybe it was not so much what I wanted. I guess it was Estelle who wanted me out and into a new world. I soon discovered why."



Two's a Crowd Ch. 06



While Myriam went on destroying every item she could get her hands on (including the bags), she took me straight through college. 

It was a story like a Swiss cheese. There were holes in it, which she could not explain. She only had second hand memories for them -- things "Estelle" told her afterwards. Or things her body told her. 

She also heard stories from people who had obviously been involved -- mostly the good-looking jocks who started to approach her in a disturbingly intimate way. 

She found clothes and accessories in her closet that she never bought -- to be precise, things: that she wouldn't want to be caught dead in. But she didn't dare throw them away. They always returned from the depths of her closet to the front. And they seemed to grow in numbers.

After one of those "lost weekends" that had left its clear imprint on her body, she found four guys at her doorstep. Two of them she vaguely knew from the training field, the others were complete strangers. They knew her name, though, and they seemed to have no intention of leaving. She threatened to call the police when one of them grabbed her and started kissing her. When she pushed him away and grabbed her cell phone, they backed off. They cursed her and called her a fucking cock-tease.

After she had been able to close the door on them, she stood in her hall, shaking. A tiny, silver laughter resounded at the back of her head. "Goddammit, Estelle!" she had cried into the empty little hall. "What have you done this time?"

"Shhhh, lil sis. Have some fun, honey. Don't be a bore."

"Leave me alone!!"

Another laugh. "Look in your purse, sweetheart." 

There had been photographs. They were poorly-lit Polaroids of a naked woman sucking two cocks while being fucked by a third. She recognized the guys who had been at her door. She also saw that the woman did not object very much to the disgusting things she did in the photographs.

It was very hard to believe that she was that woman -- but she was.

As she looked at a close-up of her sucking a huge, fat cock, she heard Estelle whisper inside her skull: "Mmmmm... delicious, honeyyyy...you are soooo good."

She missed classes that day. And the next.

*** 

Myriam had completed the destruction of every piece of sexy garment on the bed. A small mountain of tattered silk and lace had piled up against her legs. She started trying to tear up an elegant suede leather purse. I guess she did it mostly to give her trembling hands something to do. The innocent purse stubbornly resisted her best efforts; her hands got frantic and I saw dark blotches of spilled tears spread on the surface. Her body shook. Her voice was thick with emotion.

"Things got worse and worse after that, Bruce. Whole weekends disappeared from my memory. It was usually late on Sunday afternoons that I returned to my thoroughly-fucked body.

"I started hating myself. More and more guys gave me looks and winks. I got felt up in crowded elevators. Totally unknown men bought me drinks. So one night after having almost been raped by two teenagers, I summoned Estelle."

I shook my head. The way she talked about Estelle as a separate person had almost begun to sound natural.

Myriam swallowed. She threw away the abused purse. "I told her that I would kill myself if she did not back off. I showed her the razor blades I had bought. And the bottle of sleeping pills. It was the only weapon I had and she knew it. At first she tried to convince me I wouldn't dare. But we both know each other too well to take a risk."

Myriam smiled weakly. The schizophrenia of her story made me reel -- it felt like vertigo. My voice was almost a whisper. "You seriously considered suicide?"

Her eyes focused. "Yes. I felt that my life was being taken away from me. My only weapon was self-destruction. It would rob her of her life too. And I knew she clung to life more than I did, by then. It was a wager, I guess. And she backed off.

"We worked out a compromise -- a deal."

I watched her. I really had to check myself. It all sounded so normal -- talking with yourself, fighting with yourself, making deals with yourself. Calling part of yourself by a different name.

"A deal," I said.

"Yes, Bruce. It was a few months before we met. I told her she could have her fun once in a while. But I had to have control. She'd have to give me notice and show me who it was she wanted to fuck. I had the veto on time and place and subject, so to say." 

She again smiled. It was a wider smile now. A bit of color had returned to her cheeks. Her hands had lost the trembling.

"I rationed her from then on. I gave her Jason Wilson a few times, and Eric Bronski, the basketball player, you know him. I gave her Victor and Ed, the week before graduation. Victor LeBeau, I guess you know him. Ed Mazure was in your fraternity, if I remember correctly."

I knew Ed -- had known him since my first year in college. He was at the last reunion. To be sure, there were Charlie, Felix and Gus. Arnie and Ben. Their names made hot jealousy rise up in my chest, grabbing my throat. A thought flashed through my head. She talked about a week before we met, and she had this...deal. 

"Have you...ehm," I croaked. I did not want to ask, but I had to. "Has Estelle slept with them after we met, Myr? And after we got married?"

Myriam looked away. I went on, feeling nauseated. "The deal never ended, did it, Myr? Ed Mazure? Charlie Fox, Felix Mankievic? Others I know? Friends? Colleagues? Neighbors?"

"I stopped it after we got married," she whispered. Her eyes were wide. "Don't ask, Bruce, please. Don't ask."

I banged my fist on the table where I stood. "Goddammit, Myriam. How can I not ask?"

There was silence again -- just the a/c humming, and the street below.

"Honey," she said, her voice broken. "After we married, I have vetoed Estelle time and time again. After a while she harassed me day and night, but I was strong. You made me strong, Bruce. Your love did. Your sweet, sweet wonderful love."

She reached out in my direction. I just could not look at her. I walked over to the window, my back to her. She started sobbing.

"Bruce? Please?" Her voice was distant. I turned around.

"Myr, can't you understand what this does to me? Can you just sit there and expect me to listen to how you took our love and sold it in a deal?"

She raised both hands. "It wasn't at all like that! It was before we met. And it wasn't me. Don't you see I had no choice? I fought for us, Bruce. For you and me, but I had no choice. I had to give in, but only a few times. I had to or I would have lost control. And I would have lost you forever!"

Her voice had gained force. A whine crept into it. Her hands strangled a piece of black garment. I could hardly see her through a haze of emotions. My voice was a mere groan.

"That isn't all, is it, Myriam? How long did you stay faithful after we married?"

She just looked, her eyes spilling tears. She shook her head in denial.

"It wasn't me, Bruce. It wasn't me!"

I cursed in frustration.

"So you did, didn't you? You let her fuck my friends, your colleagues, your clients and God knows how many greedy bastards while you played the prude, prissy wife to your clown of a cuckold husband. You let her dress up like a tart, a half naked whore, to meet with her fuck buddies while you accused me of lewdness when I only suggested a skirt that didn't cover your entire knee. You allowed her to get herself royally fucked in all of her holes while you could barely touch my cock with the outer skin of your sanctimonious tongue! And where? Where did you let her do it? In our bed, Myriam? In the house we built together? On the sheets we bought? Was that your love, Myriam? Was it?"

By the end of my tirade the walls rang with my voice. She covered her ears with her hands and started crying out loud. Most of her words were garbled "no's" and "stops" and "please don'ts."

Then she fell silent. Her hands left her face, her back straightened. She turned her head and looked at me. Through the ruin of her tear-stained make up she hurled the flash of two proud, untamed eyes at me. Her lips stretched in a sneer.

"Who on earth do you think you are, you silly, boring little man? To treat my Myriam like this?"

It was a voice I had never heard before. The woman on the bed rose and walked over to me. She was Myriam but she wasn't. There was a feline quality to her movements. Her eyes blazed. The sharp tip of her fingernail pushed through my shirt into my chest. She was very close. 

"Go away, you bore," she hissed. "Go away and leave my sister alone. She doesn't need you, she never has. She has me, boy, and I'll protect her. Do you understand? Go!"

Her finger rammed the words into me. I grabbed her hand and pulled her against me -- her face almost into mine. Then a sudden flash of pain tore through my crotch. I bent over gasping, overwhelmed with nausea. She had kneed me mercilessly in the groin and the pain was excruciating.

I fell to the floor. For a second all went black.

*** 

After I had stumbled back to my feet, fighting the haze in front of me, I saw that Myriam had already left the room. She had also left the hotel. 

For days after our disastrous meeting, I tried to find her, Myriam -- or Estelle, to be more precise. The bitch had obviously gone to some length to escape me. The Dallas-based escort lady with the southern drawl who had helped me so smoothly before was very sorry this time -- Estelle had terminated her contract and moved to another agency. No, she could not tell me where. And no, she wasn't very optimistic for my finding out, as she no doubt would have changed her alias.

"And just for the record, sir, did she perform satisfactorily the time you booked her?"

By that time my balls were still aching, so it certainly tempered the glow of my feedback concerning her performance.

The doctor told me not to worry. There were bruises, but they would be gone in a week or so. I should maybe postpone any sexual initiatives, though. Well -- that one was easy. I couldn't imagine having plans in that direction at all, for a while.

There was however one thing I could do.

*** 

Kathleen Collins had never really liked me. I don't think it was a personal thing. I think Kathleen had lost her trust in men in general. And I could well understand why, after what Myriam had told me -- if that had been the truth.

Kathleen Collins was Myriam's mother, of course. We met in a restaurant in Boston.

It hadn't been easy to get her to meet me. But when I dropped the name Estelle, her reluctance seemed to evaporate. I tried to imagine why.

The restaurant was rather empty as lunchtime had been over for an hour. There were three elderly ladies sipping tea. And a couple of obvious tourists, very much in love.

Kathleen Collins, née Rutherford was not alone. With her was her older unmarried sister, Agatha. She was the one with the townhouse in Boston where mother and daughter found refuge after the ordeal of the rape.

I had met Agatha on a few family occasions. She was a rather striking impersonation of the older Kathryn Hepburn, sandpaper voice and all. Right now she sat silently, just following our conversation.

Kathleen Collins was about fifty. She looked cute in a petite and brunette way. Myriam must have gotten her Nordic looks from her absent father -- or from her aunt, if that was at all a feasible, genetic possibility.

Kathleen smiled and offered me a narrow, white hand. Her sister only nodded.

"No need for small talk," Kathleen said. She never lost her smile. "I don't like you, Bruce, and never have. I had my doubts before you married Myr and dumping her like you did hasn't improved things. So, why this meeting?"

I sat down. Her dislike didn't surprise me, but laying the blame for the divorce with me did. The woman must know why I left her daughter. Then again, she might be the same surrealism-artist Myriam was. From that point of view it couldn't be hard to make me the villain, I guess.

"I need to know where I can find her," I said.

The woman just stared at me.

"Why?" she said. "So you can hurt her even more?"

My chuckle didn't sound very convincing.

"Me hurting her?" I said. "Kathleen, please go on believing whatever you need to believe. Maybe after what the two of you suffered you are allowed an escape or two. But you know very well that the divorce wasn't my fault."

She kept staring. The venom in her dark eyes made the hair on my lower arms rise. 

"Who is talking about the divorce here?" she asked. Her voice was husky. There was a touch of Estelle in it.

"I was," I said. "You weren't?"

"No," she answered. "I was referring to the way you pushed her into Estelle's claws -- first back in that Dallas hotel, then at the New York Roosevelt. You might as well have killed her."

The silence was interrupted by the waitress. I don't remember what I ordered.

"Tell me about Estelle," I said when the girl left.

"Why?" Kathleen asked. "Does it matter? You don't believe she exists anyway, do you?"

Did I? Maybe not, but I had to know if Kathleen did.

"I don't know," I said. "But I very much want to believe it."

The words took me by surprise. I meant them. And they sounded as if I did, too. Even Agatha lifted her eyebrows. Kathleen's eyes were clouded with suspicion. She turned them towards her sister, who nodded.

"I think the fella does," she boomed in her raw Hepburn voice.

Kathleen pressed her lips together. Her fingers refolded her napkin.

Then she told about the endless chain of visits she and Myriam had paid to shrinks, hospitals and quacks. How she herself had been able to park the whole horrible event into a well-guarded niche of her soul. But how Myriam had become more distant with every visit, every treatment.

"We all wanted her to fight, Bruce. We loved Myriam. We didn't want her to change into this awful whore -- this bitch Brian released with his cruel nightmares."

The tiny lady shook with emotion. Her hands strangled the napkin now . "But maybe," she went on. "Maybe we were wrong in trying that. After two years I guess we had reached a status quo where Myr was more or less the controlling person. But she wasn't happy, Bruce. She was stressed out and scared and always on guard. She was never happy again."

"She was happy with me," I interrupted. "We were happy! We were in love. They were the best years of our lives!"

An ironic smile lifted the corner of the woman's mouth. "Yes, Bruce. And that is exactly why I didn't like you."

I felt indignant. "What is this? Shouldn't she be happy?"

"Don't be angry with me, Bruce, please," she said. "It wasn't your fault. But I knew it could never last. So did Myriam. Oh, she wanted it. She grabbed at the brass ring and fought to make it happen. But it could not last, Bruce. And it didn't. And when it failed, all the pain and shame and cruelty flooded back in. You did not make my daughter happy."

I sat back. I stared from the one woman to the other -- angry and speechless.

"Yes, Bruce," Kathleen went on with a very soft voice. "I do feel sorry for you. You were as much an innocent victim of Estelle as Myriam was. You had no idea. Estelle wasn't just a figment of Myr's personality. Estelle is the creative powerhouse at the very core of my daughter's identity. She eats us all for breakfast. And she is an amazing copy-artist. She can be Myriam if she needs to be -- stepping in for her 'protection,' as she claims."

Kathleen smiled ruefully. "And for her own craving sexual needs too, I'd say. She has taken over on many occasions -- even while you were married; even in your very arms. You can't distinguish her from the real thing, Bruce. You can't know.

"The girl we call Myriam may have disappeared altogether. She may have long turned into the Myr that Estelle plays. Why would you believe Myriam was the most important of the two, anyway? Just because she was the girl you fell in love with? Did you ever consider that maybe she wasn't more than just a name?"

Kathleen leaned forward, her eyes intense. "No, Bruce," she said. "By now we must assume that the original Myriam has gone altogether. Estelle has no need of her anymore, she is in the way. By now Estelle can be both the prude and the slut if need be. She has taken over."

I had stopped understanding what she implied. No -- I guess I had stopped wanting to understand. I think that about halfway through this idiotic conversation we had arrived at the ultimate edge of sanity. And I had no intentions of crossing it.

"Bruce," the black-eyed woman said, sounding distant. "That afternoon in the Roosevelt you killed what remained of my Myriam. Now go away. Stop looking for her. You won't find her -- never again. You killed her, you stupid man. She is gone."

Tears ran down the white face in front of me.



Two's a Crowd Ch. 07



The next tennis evening I told Erica what had happened: first, the evening with Myriam (and Estelle?!) and then the afternoon meeting with her mother and aunt. Erica was silent for a moment. Then she said she had a hard time believing the personality split. I told her there was a lot of literature on that subject. And how the shrink had assured me it might be true.

"But doesn't that make it just too easy, Bruce?" she asked. "Fucking around on a free ticket? No guilt, no blame?"

"Easy?" I pondered. "Well, tearing up a few thousand bucks of lingerie couldn't have been easy on her budget. Quite an investment just to mislead me, don't you think?"

"True," she said -- and we went out to play a rather distracted set of tennis. I don't think I convinced her about Myriam.

A month went by. At times I contacted a few escort services around the country. Silly, of course, but I had to do something. The whole thing might be a hoax. Yet deep down I was still convinced that Myriam was not a hoax person. The change in her had been too sudden and too radical to be faked. Sure, my hurting balls said to torch the bitch. But my brain knew I could not take the risk of abandoning the desperate girl she had also been. I had this nagging doubt and it prevented me from just walking away.

Of course there also was my incurable heart.

***

That's when I went to see the dentist. Erica recommended him. Her flashing teeth convinced me.

Dentists are money machines. They also are the inventors of the Great White American Smile. But there is one other thing they never get enough credit for -- they are the reason why many people get in touch with magazines they would otherwise never read. Glossy magazines for interior decorating. National Geographics. And of course -- society gossip.

This particular dentist seemed to have stacks of the latter, and not even ancient ones. I took the one on top, opened it and saw Myriam. Not Estelle, no -- Myriam. She wore her reserved smile, her tightest bun. And a very conservative Chanel suit.

Her delicate hand was entwined with the rather stubby fingers of a John Enthwistle III, would-be junior Senator for the tiny state of Rhode Island. He smiled proudly at her. He should be proud, if only for selling his bald and pudgy self to this stunning woman.

Myriam stood at least three inches taller.

There were a lot of pictures. The captions told me they had been taken at a garden party near Boston, thrown by a wealthy local tycoon. I didn't know John Enthwistle the Turd, but I understood he was running for Senator. I also understood that the lovely Myriam Collins of Boston was his soon-to-be fiancée.

I groaned. I saw the couple in two other shots. They were not as prominent as in the first picture, but it was clear that John thought the world of her.

I gathered that my pretty wasp had buzzed back to her nest. It was enough information for me to let go of a few romantic notions. Estelle, it seemed, wasn't the only gold digger living inside that body.

By then I was pretty certain that Erica was right. It did not make me a happy man. It made me a numb man who hardly needed anesthesia when his turn with the dentist came up. As the whining drill did its good work, I stared in the bright lights and thought my saddest thoughts.

Had it all been a lie, the whole intricate story? And if so -- why? Had Estelle won? Had she taken over control? I hated to even think of Estelle, let alone consider her a person. And if she had won, why wasn't she in the picture? Why Myriam The Prude?

There were other thoughts behind the obvious -- they were guilty thoughts. Had my treatment of Myriam driven her into the arms of the ball-breaking bitch? Had I pushed her over the edge? Had I caused the slut to win? If so, again, why was she holding the Turd's hand and not Estelle?

And why was I thinking these crazy things anyway?

Having a tooth filled is not the ideal moment for clear thoughts. So after my last rinse, I walked to Bryant's Park, just to sit and wait 'til the numbness of jaw and brain receded. The jaw won. But my brain cleared up too, after a while -- at least a bit.

It cleared enough to let me think a very dark thought: was poor John the next clown? Had I been Myriam's "starter husband"? A poor sucker to discard when something better came along?

It hurt me to even think like that of the woman I still loved. Besides, why would she conjure up such a Machiavellian plot? I mean, she herself came from rich stock. So my thoughts shifted at once to another explanation. Had Estelle used Myriam to catch the Turd? Just to find another stable platform to launch her illicit fuck-fests, as she had once with me? Had Myriam been an innocent pawn after all?

My thoughts were so feverish that I did not even mind that I had just accepted the split personality theory. Or had I? Even if Estelle had used Myriam and did it with poor John the Turd again, Estelle could just as well be the real Myriam, couldn't she? Myriam with a mask. Or Estelle with a mask, rather.

I felt a bout of sickness. After vomiting into a discarded bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, I left the sweet patch of green grass and went home to heave some more into my toilet bowl.

I called in sick and went to bed. 

***

I have friends who have friends of friends.

One of them gave me an invitation card to an official reception at the Enthwistle estate near Providence, Rhode Island. It was held to announce John Enthwistle III's engagement to the lovely Ms. Myriam Collins of well-known Boston stock.

I went there. Don't ask me why. Call me every pathetic name in the Book of Wimps, or just call me stupid -- but I went there. And Erica went with me.

It took her two bagel-sessions to discover that she could not talk me out of it. She caved in and bought the most expensive cocktail dress my credit card had ever paid for. Between her daring outfit and my tuxedo we could have ran off a James Bond movie set.

I felt both shaken and stirred when we handed our car keys to the valet and walked into the opulent lair of the infamous Turd. He -- or rather his father -- had spared no costs. Nor had he overlooked any opportunity to make us feel like crushed ants. From the shining Italian marble right down to the simplest prawn snack, everything smelled of money -- and Estelle.

The happy couple was nowhere to be seen. 

Mingling with the snobby crowd wasn't easy. Erica's hospitable cleavage and toned legs had quite an inviting effect on a few dozen males, but their spouses felt differently. Zero tolerance today, as far as they were concerned.

We ended up sipping champagne and chatting with two rather nerdy types. Their silk Armani suits must have cost a fortune, but they looked as if they had slept in them. I wondered what drew the Coen brothers to a party like this. But of course they were just two run-of-the-mill IT-billionaires from far away Silicon Valley. And they basked like tickled puppies in Erica's glow.

As the afternoon wore on, the rapidly refreshed champagne loosened up tongues. It even tore down a few walls here and there. Erica had a ball. An evil strain in her gay mind made her flirt with the horny as well as the innocent. She just teased their quickly rising testosterone-levels -- then let them down with cruel elegance. 

At times I punished her. I refused to bail her out in time when her victims turned predators. There was a certain satisfaction in not rescuing her before she had been groped at least a few times. 

But what I really did was scan the area for Myriam.

She arrived around six, shining like the genuine Boston Myriam Collins. Her dress was a symphony of subdued elegance. It flowed and flowed all over her tall body to hide almost every sexy feature. Even her acquired bust was far less prominent than the last time I saw it.

Nevertheless, she looked dazzling.

After having been announced, she and her toad glided off the curved stairway to meet the stunned commoners they had invited. That is to say -- Myriam glided. The beaming troll at her side was just a stumbling shadow. 

Well -- at least in my eyes he was.

I succeeded in hiding myself from the golden couple by using a marble column and a wide shouldered gorilla. My eyes however, followed their every move.

Applause sounded in polite welcome. A gray-haired man showered them with a festive speech. I realized he was the famous John the Second. His shifting gaze went up and down his son's latest acquisition. He almost gobbled her up.

John the elder was a slick speechmaker. In the best of traditions his jolly good fun glossed over his underlying emotions -- which were mostly lecherous greed. I saw at one glance that the old goat was more than just a naughty, flirting father. I realized with shock that he had already seen everything the flowing dress hid from us. To be more achingly precise: John the Elder had already fucked his future daughter in law. He had done so maybe more often than his son and intended to do so for quite a time to come.

It was all in his eyes -- and in the language of his body.

It made me wonder about the rest of the audience. I saw smugness, nudging elbows and secretive smiles. And I knew she had entertained some of them as well. The rest -- with the eager glow and boyish anticipation -- just had to wait, I supposed. For tonight, maybe? Or later -- don't be impatient, guys.

I touched Erica's bare shoulder. She turned to me, her face at once concerned.

"Let's go," I whispered. "You were right -- this was not a good idea after all."

"What's wrong?" she answered.

"Can't you see? She fucks them all already. She's the fucking house whore."

"Oh, come on, Bruce, surely..."

I cut her off and took her elbow. Then I steered her around the column and down the crowded hall. Cheers and applause sprang up behind us. The old goat had ended his speech with a toast. I looked around and saw the crowd spreading out. The couple had left the stairs to mingle, I guess. We had almost reached the exit, when a clear voice rang over the murmurs.

"Bruce?" it said. "Is that you, Bruce?"

*** 

Looking over your shoulder has been a doomed concept for ages. 

Ask Orpheus when he came to collect his love from the underworld. Ask the wife of Lot, fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah. The first would never see his wife again, the second changed into a pillar of salt.

So of course I turned and looked back.

What I saw was the Myriam I met at the graduation party -- thirteen years ago. Her face was pink with excitement. Her eyes had the wide-open innocence of a new beginning. They easily bridged the stinking quagmire of our recent years and connected with the open wound in my soul.

"Bruce," she said.

I stood and stared -- waiting for the dizziness to clear. I didn't even know which name to use. Not long ago I believed that at least Myriam was untainted -- or could be. Right now, I remembered her mother's words. This woman I married might not just be an innocent at all, anymore -- she might be the deceiving puppet of her other self.

I could see what an asset she must be to the Enthwistle Empire. By day she'd play the clean, high-class beauty to dazzle the world of corporaria. And by night she would become the dirty whoring tigress to close deals after the cameras went home.

Putrid Relations indeed.

"Myriam," I said.

"Such a surprise to see you here," she chimed. "And such a pity to see you leave already."

"Well," I wavered -- then I found some safe footing again. "I guess all in all it was a mistake for me to come here and taint the excitement of your new start. Poor taste, really. But, by the way, congratulations and meet my friend Erica. Erica, Myriam -- I presume?"

At that last remark a tiny cloud spread in the gray expanse of her eyes. Then she graciously took Erica's fingers and gave them a butterfly handshake.

"Pleased to meet you, Erica."

"Is that you, Myriam?" I asked. She turned back to me with a hurt frown.

"Of course, this is me," she said. "How could you think it's not?"

I grinned. It felt forced.

"How, indeed. I suppose your urge to be someone else has, ehm...evaporated since our last encounter. Let me wish you all the best, sweetheart. With a little effort, I might even learn to mean it."

At that moment I should have dutifully turned into a pillar of salt. I should have watched her recede into the underworld and be content with it. But I loved her and love didn't make me blind or soft in the head -- it made me angry. 

She had ripped something out of my heart and I wanted it back. Something had been stolen and tucked away deep behind those incredible, lying eyes. 

It was mine -- it was me. 

I had to have it back.

Which of course was not a plan -- or even the primitive bones of a plan. It was just the stubborn, childish reflex of a man not prepared to cut his losses -- even after two years. At last I knew why I had never given up on Myriam. She had something that was so very utterly mine that it was effectively me -- she had my heart. W ho can live on without a heart?

She had taken it away -- maybe as Estelle, maybe as Myriam; maybe as a removed personality or as a cheating whore. I didn't care who did it. It was mine. I could not let go of it.

All this happened in the single second needed for her lashes to make one slow sweep over her soul-searching eyes.

"You still love me, Bruce," she whispered. And she smiled. "I have dreamt that you would be here today. I was that friend of the friend who happened to have the invitation. And see -- here you are. There can only be one reason for that, Bruce. You love me. I don't care one bit for this man, this Enthwistle -- he is Estelle's moneybag. So, just grab my hand and run off with me. Now!"

I felt the breathless presence of Erica behind me. I also felt the numb pain in my chest caused by my holding my breath. Then reality returned -- and with it the gushing of fresh air into my lungs. It sobered me up.

"Yes," I said. "I still love you, Myriam -- or whoever you choose to be today. But I know that this love hasn't been mine for a long time. You stole it from me. You grabbed it and hid it behind your lying eyes. Myriam -- this is no longer about me loving you. It is about you stealing my love and refusing to give it back."

I rambled and I knew it. I also knew that I was right at the core of things. This was about my love, and she had it. She wielded it over me, turning it into a curse. I knew things between us could only be over if she returned it. And set me free.

"Give it back, Myriam," I said. "Set me free."

The eyes before me turned into a battlefield of colors, lights and shadows. It was a disturbing sight. She gasped. Her hand went to her throat. "I," she croaked. "I can't...I..." Within seconds, the conflicting emotions spread out over her face, playing havoc on her mouth and eyebrows. A slow trickle of sweat crept down her brow. At last she stood shaking and trembling in front of me. 

Her hands reached out. Words struggled to get past her lips. There was the word "save" and the word "please." Then her knees buckled and gave.

My hands were a fraction late to catch her as she fainted. She dropped to the front porch, bouncing and shaking in a frenetic seizure. Erica cried out. I fell to my knees, holding her, but not knowing what to do. A man in a tux rushed beside me.

"I am a doctor -- please let me..."

In a daze, I retreated, allowing the doctor to do what needed to be done.

Just minutes later, an ambulance arrived. In moments they had put her on a stretcher and into the car. The sirens still rang in my ears when I at last noticed the group of yelling men in front of me. 

Their faces were angry, anonymous masks -- until I recognized John the Second and his Turd. They seemed to want things from me.

"...done to her, asshole?" That was the Turd.

"Who the fuck are you anyway, bastard? Who invited you?" That was the father, flecks of foam on his lips.

I rose and wanted to walk away. But the old fucker signaled and one of the guards grabbed me by the shoulder. When I tried to shake him off, a second one came to help. They trudged me into the house and into an office, where they dumped me into a chair.

The Enthwistles sure hated it when someone fooled with their properties, I guess.

The old guy sat on the edge of a desk. "What did you do to her?" he asked.

I just stared until a big fist hit my upper arm. There was a giant at each side of my chair. "Nothing," I said. It got me another push. "We just talked."

"What about?"

There was no need to tell the assholes anything. But the comparison of my slender frame to the rampant growth of muscle all around me made me decide otherwise.

"I am her ex-husband. I came to congratulate her. I was just leaving when she had her seizure."

I saw the wheels turn in the Enthwistle skulls -- the father's considerably faster than the son's.

"You crashed this party to gloat?" the father said.

"I was invited," I said. I produced the card, knowing my name wasn't on it. I counted they wouldn't look.

"Why would she invite you -- her ex?"

"I don't know," I said -- at that instant it was the most brilliant answer I could find. It brought a nice flush of annoyance to dad's face. "Sir," I went on. "My ex-wife never showed any inclination to these kinds of seizures. They looked serious to me and I would be quite concerned if I were you. I really don't understand how you could care about her and still be here."

This seemed at last to force some introspection into the minds of the insensitive assholes. Both father and son rose from their seats and called for their car. Just minutes later I was alone in the office. The gorillas had been left without instructions, I presume. They did not interfere when I rose to leave.

I found Erica at the entrance. She had already retrieved our car. I kissed her and gave her my apologies for dragging her into a farce like this. She was quite serious.

"You have to go see her, Bruce. I never knew how much you really cared for her. She was so intense -- it stunned me, the two of you. You really need to know how she is."

The innocent pebbles of the driveway screeched under the onslaught of my tires.

"Yes," I mumbled when the entrance to the posh mansion dropped from my mirror. "I'm stupid, I know, but I must."

*** 

The hospital wasn't very impressed by my claim of being Myriam's ex-husband. I guess my chances of seeing her were also diminished by the fact that she lay in a wing donated by the Enthwistle Foundation. So how Erica did it, I shall never know, but she talked us past the nurses' station.

There was no Enthwistle to be seen in the first class ward. 

Securing Myriam and isolating her from possible trespassers seemed to be all they were concerned about. I guess they had talked to the doctors. They must have heard she'd be all right. Then they posted a guard at her door and left. 

The bodyguard was a smoker. As soon as his masters were gone, he slipped out to have a drag. That was when we slipped in and discovered that all our scheming was for nothing. They had obviously drugged Myriam. She seemed in a deep sleep at the center of a huge and very white bed. I whispered her name and gently shook her -- to no avail.

But when we finally turned to leave, there was a moan from the bed. Her eyes were open. "Bruce," she croaked.

I turned and went to my knees beside her -- my face close to hers. "I am here," I said -- touched by the simplicity of our words.

"I am Myriam, Bruce -- your Myriam. Please believe me. I'll die if you stop believing me. I am Myriam and I guard your love. It is hard, very hard to keep it from her. But it is safe...with me."

Her voice was weak -- it was hardly more than breathing.

I softly stroked her hair. It laid spread on the white pillow. I reached forward and kissed her cheek.




Two's a Crowd Ch. 07



"I don't know if I can ever believe you again, Myriam. But please get better," I said. "Get better soon and let me know. I may learn to trust you again. And get you out of your cage."

Her eyes closed. I looked up at Erica. She nodded nervously at the door. I rose. My hand left Myriam's face.

At the door I thought I heard her whisper "I love you" -- but maybe it was just a trick of my ears.

As we slipped out, we made it to the corner of the hallway before the nicotine slave returned. Maybe he saw us. Maybe he'd think that reporting us would be too much of a hassle. I guess he probably couldn't care less.

*** 

Myriam never called. Nor did she write or let me know through "friends of friends." I once more started feeling like a clown. 

Erica told me to be patient.



Two's a Crowd Ch. 08



In the weeks after the surreal adventure in Rhode Island, I had a hard time focusing on my work. But as fate would have it (and won't it always?) there was a huge merger opportunity hitting us right then. The company concerned was not into software at all. They were large-scale brokers -- they invested for big clients. Enthwistle was amongst them, I saw. 

Onslow had long since tired of getting his money via the indirect way of first producing stuff. He wanted to expand into this first-hand money. He wanted to set up a second leg of the company and this merger was a great way to start. 

I didn't object to this strategy. Numbers had always been my game. I was supposed to be the octopus, stretching my tentacles in every conceivable direction to collect data and do my magic with them. I had to ponder their validity -- separating the wheat from the chaff.

At first I was too distracted. Since I had to travel a lot to meet the people behind the data, I was often alone. And alone meant brooding -- mulling over my frustrations in empty hotel beds or at lonely breakfast tables; or worse -- at bars, over slowly melting ice cubes in empty whiskey-glasses.

That is where I met Shireen.

The girl should be called a woman, I guess, but she looked too young for that. She and I seemed to be the last people at the bar when all the others had gone to have dinner.

She was blonde, in a modest, honey-colored way -- the hair was cut in a bob style. It left her neck and the lobes of her ears free, while covering her cheeks with sweeping tresses. She had a long and very kissable throat. Her dress made me think of old movies -- Audrey Hepburn, maybe. 

She had the fragile frame and the huge eyes to go with it.

Her smile was hesitant, almost wounded. It must have been caused by my rather rude attention. I was so deep in thought that I didn't realize I was staring at her. It made her blush. 

When I got out of my daze, I saw her embarrassment. I apologized with the rasping sound of an unused voice. Then I asked if she was waiting for someone.

She was, she said. But she feared she had been stood up by her dinner date. I started giving her the obvious compliment about the guy being stupid to miss out on a date with her. Then her cell phone rang. She fished it from her purse and mumbled into it -- her face turned away for privacy.

She had a lovely neck.

"That was him," she said, turning back to me with her insecure smile. "He can't make it -- business." She started collecting her purse and waving to the bartender.

I cleared my throat. Then I asked her if I could suggest substituting for her absent date -- just to add some delightful company to my otherwise barren dinner table. It was a gamble and a silly one, but she never said no.

She extended a narrow, white hand and told me her name was Shireen and, yes, the waiting had made her quite hungry. So I told her my name and minutes later we shared an intimate little booth in the back of the hotel restaurant.

"I never do this," she said, after we had ordered.

"Neither do I," I assured her and we laughed. Her laugh was wonderful. It was held in check by her guarded lips, but her big eyes lit a sparkle that suited the silvery sound of it.

She was married, she said. Only now did I see the modest ring she wore on her left hand. She thoughtfully turned it around on her finger. "My date was not with my husband."

I considered the range of implications. Then I told myself it was none of my business. I smiled. "I assume the date was meant to be as innocent as ours will be?"

She laughed again. The waiter poured our wine. We toasted. "To absent loved ones," I said.

She sipped. "Loved ones?" she asked, emphasizing the s.

"Long story," I said.

"Aren't they always?" 

The waiter brought an amuse gueule -- it was that kind of restaurant. It was a simple spoon holding a mousse of truffled venison. She lifted hers from the table and brought it to my lips. The intimacy shook me, but I opened my mouth and let her feed me. Then I lifted mine and returned the compliment. She smiled. "Love birds," she said.

I studied her giggle. There was a forced quality to it. "What about your husband?" I asked. She pointedly looked away. When her eyes returned they were darker. "What about your wife, Bruce?" 

"Ex-wife," I said.

"Ex...." she mused. "You feel married, though." And again she laughed her silver laugh. This time it was real. I joined her. "Look at us," I said. "Jetsam and flotsam."

I raised my glass in a toast.

*** 

Shireen was an efficient seducer. She never missed a shortcut during our meal to make the route to her end-goal the quickest possible. That goal was my bed. And her stepping-stones were flirtatious looks, little touches and rather shockingly direct remarks. On top of that there was her incredible laugh.

When we concluded the dinner with espressos and brandies, her body ended up being very close to mine. Her hand had long since disappeared under the exquisite damask tablecloth. The slow caressing of my thigh made my cock swell. She touched it and smiled.

I guess she knew how powerful the contrast was between her naïve, almost childlike appearance and the sluttiness of her conduct. I'm sure I didn't always hide my embarrassed arousal successfully. It amused her. Her laugh got throatier with every sip of wine she took.

Then her lips were on mine, followed by her tongue.

The ride on the elevator didn't interrupt our foreplay. Her tits were small and delicious. I had imagined them exactly like that, before taking them out of the top of her dress. Her mouth sunk over my cock before I even closed the door to my room. I lifted her face off of it to prevent my coming -- which would have been much too soon.

Carrying her glowing body to my bed was another step up to heaven. Her mouth sucked mine as one hand slowly stroked my poor defenseless cock. The other kneaded my ass, her fingers running the length of its crack.

After dropping her on the bed, I looked down on her. My hands were on both sides of her face. She stretched her body like a kitten, smiling wickedly. "You have a fine cock, Bruce," she moaned. "Can I have it?"

She could and she did. Not two minutes later my boiling sperm tore its way through my cock to splash against the entrance of her throat. She just swallowed, making tiny, satisfied sounds from deep inside. Her eyes had never left mine during the entire time she blew me. They were dark pools of quicksand sucking me in.

*** 

Shireen proved pretty much insatiable. We did it three times that night. She had numerous orgasms. If she faked any one of them, she must have been a great actress. I ate her between erections. She loved it and didn't exactly whisper her appreciation.

When we lay on the bed together -- exhausted and at the furry edge of sleep -- I turned to her, imitating her voice: "I never do this."

She laughed.

The next morning I heard the shower running. Minutes later she came into the room, wrapped in a towel. She looked as fresh as a croissant, but when I asked her to have breakfast with me, she simply apologized and started dressing.

Ten minutes later she was gone.

*** 

The pictures arrived three days later.

I was back at my office when I found them in my e-mail inbox. The sender had used a no-reply address. The message was very simple: "Bruce," it said. "You hurt the sweet thing badly." 

There was no name of a sender.

I remember wondering how they made the shots. For some of them the camera must have almost been peeping over my shoulder. There were remarkably clear pictures of my cock entering Shireen's inviting ass. And there was one close up of a man with an embarrassingly smug grin on his red, sweaty face -- me.

I assumed Estelle had sent the message. I wondered why she thought this could in any way be used to blackmail me. I was a single man. I'd had several one-night flings since I got divorced -- even short affairs. I checked, but there wasn't a wedding ring in any of the pictures. The woman could very well have been an escort or a call girl. My mother might be mildly shocked, certainly, but that would hardly...

Then it struck me -- how slow I am. The pictures weren't taken to blackmail me. The one-line message explained their goal. The snapshots were meant for Myriam. It had been a "yah boo, sucks to you" action to hurt her -- and I imagine it would be very effective in that regard.

The message also told me it must have been true what Myriam had said -- she was, indeed, Estelle's prisoner. She loved me. She was innocent. And I let her down -- again.

The pictures would wound her. Maybe they would destroy the last straw she had held onto. I had offered myself up on a plate to the cunning and totally despicable Estelle. I had played the perfect clown. I should have seen the irony after how I set her up at the Houston Hilton. She repaid me in kind, but I could not smile.

My heart sank into depression. 

*** 

When I told Erica, she didn't nag about me stupidly fucking the woman. She did "tsk, tsk", but then immediately went into a conspirator's mode. I guess she just loves challenges too much. She had to counter the bitch. I suspected she had started loving the cloak and dagger aspects of the whole affair -- maybe a bit too much.

"Is she still in the marble castle?" she asked, sipping her juice.

We were at a deli on Seventh Avenue. The lunch hour's rush was all around us. A bunch of outrageously-dressed, Japanese goth-girl tourists filled the frame of my view.

I told Erica that the Enthwistle thing had made me an avid reader of the gossip magazines. There had been pictures of Myr fainting at her engagement party. I was in them too -- or rather half of me. After that the magazines hadn't offered information for weeks -- until the day before yesterday, when People Magazine ran a short interview with Myriam about such breathtaking subjects as wedding preparations and honeymoon destinations.

There was hardly a quote in the article that reminded me of Myriam. The civilized wording and style rang like her, but the content was vintage Estelle. I could almost hear the giggles and taste the greed.

Towards the end of the interview there was a hint. Close reading suggested that she and the Turd still stayed at the mansion, at least for the time being. It was a convenient base for his campaign. There were hints about going to Washington later on. I didn't know how late "later on" might be, since we had no idea how long the interview had taken to appear in print.

Erica pointed at my briefcase. It contained my laptop. After opening it she went on line and found the site of a local Rhode Island newspaper. I was surprised by her speed and expertise. After only a few minutes her face relaxed. With a wide smile she turned the monitor my way. On the screen was a list of locations and data for Enthwistle Junior's campaign speeches and fundraisers. During the next two weeks they would all be in and around Providence.

"So she'll be at the house -- probably," I said. "Neatly tucked away and guarded."

Erica frowned and nodded. "And no doubt meeker than ever, after the well-documented show you treated her on."

I flinched. She laid her hand on mine. "Sorry, honey, that wasn't nice of me," she said. Then her eyebrows rose. "I can see a way to get to her," she said. "You are still working on this merger, right? It's why you were at that damn hotel in Baltimore anyway, weren't you? Where you met the whore?"

The word "whore" startled me. It still felt uneasy thinking of Shireen as a hooker. God, she had been sweet.

"Yes," I said. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Erica said, stretching out the ll's. "Couldn't there be..."

"Of course!" I interrupted her. "I could use my work as an excuse to contact the Turd - or preferably his father. Their business is amongst the clients of the company we are probing for the merger. I guess it was why Estelle knew I was at the hotel to begin with. It would give me a plausible reason to meet him and maybe get to Myr."

"No," Erica said.

"No?"

"No." She squeezed her paper napkin and pitched it effortlessly into a bin about five yards away. "He knows you. He knows you're the ex. He saw you and disliked you. He won't even talk to you."

She was right, of course she was. Damn.

"I'll go," she said. "There is a chance he doesn't remember me."

Now I grinned. "Oh yes," I chuckled. "He is blind, isn't he?"

Erica looked puzzled. 

"No man on this side of death will forget you and the dress you wore that day, Erica," I said. "Trust me."

Erica gave her shoulders an irritated shrug. I knew it well and always loved what it did to her tits.

"I can seduce him," she said calmly.

I looked at her -- stunned. "You are a lesbian, Erica."

She shrugged once more. "He doesn't know," she said.

"Honey," I sighed, touching her hand. "The old guy is a predator. He won't let you escape when he catches you. He'll fuck you. And if you resist, he'll rape you."

"He won't," she said. I saw a groove between her eyebrows that I had never seen before. Her soft lips disappeared into a thin line.

"Erica," I said. "Why do you want to do this? It is dangerous."

"Am I your friend, Bruce?" she answered. "You love her. She loves you. You should have her back."

I tried to talk her out of it. I tried it that afternoon, that evening and all the next day.

I used every argument I could find. I even told her it was crazy. And it would probably not even work. Maybe Myr wasn't even staying there. She might be out shopping. She might be with the Turd catching votes or raising money.

That was when I discovered a side of Erica I had never seen before. She can be as stubborn as a mule. A most attractive mule, but still a stubborn one. The more arguments I found, the deeper she dug in.

I asked her what Marlene thought.

"She doesn't know."

"I guess I'll have to tell her then, " I said.

"You won't," she answered, tight lipped. "And besides, she is in France and will be there for the next month."

I was at the end of my arguments. I just plainly told her to forget it. Her reaction was not what I expected. She got mad. "Dammit, Bruce! I thought you were a man. The girl fought for you to the point of ending up in the hospital. And what do you do? You fuck a whore. You let them get pictures of it that go straight to Myriam. And now you dump her. You forsake her. Go on like this and you'll kill her!"

She screamed the word "kill" at the top of her voice. I was glad the coffee-shop was almost empty. I had never seen her like this -- my always wise and understanding friend yelled at me. More than that -- she screamed the most hurtful truths at me.

I just stared at her as she sat across me, trembling. When I reached for her she pushed me away. Her eyes smoldered behind a haze of possible tears.

"So you love her, huh?" she hoarsely whispered. "Such big words. If you love her, why are you here? Why aren't you at her place, breaking down her door and taking her with you? Huh?"

I raised my helpless hands. "You know why," I said. "They'll shoot me."

She just glared at me.

"They'll kill me, Erica. You know that. And what good would I be dead? They won't let me near her. It's no use for me to go there."

"I rest my case," she said. I sighed.

*** 

In hindsight the plan of course was stupid and dangerous. If it backfired I would certainly lose my job. But I didn't care. Or, to be more precise, I didn't even consider the possibility of failure.

Was it love that made me blind? I'd like to think so. I especially liked to think I did it for Myriam. But I am quite sure now that it was jealousy. It was Enthwistle. The way he had looked at her that damn day. The way he'd had his dirty fingerprints all over her. 

In the end it was just about me. My sense of loss. The blatant injustice of it all. And the way the high and mighty scum thought they could waltz right over my feelings. I bet Freud could tell you what it was. I only know I went through with the plan. My eyes were wide-open shut.

Setting up the plan up worked like a song.

Erica absorbed all she needed to know with amazing ease. She mastered the jargon and seemed very much at home with the numbers and technicalities. We had never talked much about our jobs, but I knew she had graduated from Harvard. I once assumed she probably was a lawyer and she had said "kind of."

She phoned Enthwistle's holding company, saying she was part of an independent taskforce that researched the possible merger of Enthwistle's main investor with a large New York corporation. It might help her mission a lot if she could have a word with their most important clients. Especially the Enthwistles.

Enthwistle's company of course checked up on her to verify her credengtials. I backed her up with all they needed to know -- not forgetting to add a very flattering picture of Erica.

I wasn't surprised then when the elder Enthwistle phoned her personally. I also wasn't surprised that she got him to invite her to the mansion for a nice informal lunch. I would have been disappointed with anything less. We took a plane and I drove her down to the house after an hour of dressing and making up at an airport hotel. She looked great. I was sure the old fox would see right through her tight business gear to find the sexy woman within.

Of course it was exactly that which made me worry. But I seemed to be the only one. Erica was all bubbly and talkative during the journey.

She got quieter, though, as we drove up to the mansion.

We stopped before turning into the driveway. I once more briefed her on the official subject of the meeting. Then we went through the rest of our plan. She touched my hand and looked me in the eyes. "Don't worry, Bruce, it will be all right. Trust me, I am a big girl. Now drive."

I donned a red baseball cap and Ray Ban sunglasses. Then I started the car and took her past the security-post at the gate, up the driveway and to the posh entrance of the mansion. A man in uniform came down the steps.

I took her hands in mine. "Just this one last time, Erica," I said. "Don't do it." 

She slid her hands out of mine just as the doorman opened her door. I saw a flash of glorious thigh as she got out of the car. It was obvious that the guy noticed it too.

The last I saw of Erica were her long legs climbing the steps. Her tightly packed ass swayed on top of them.

I stepped on the gas and returned to the street.

*** 

I parked on a tiny side-road, a path, really. It was a few hundred yards past the entrance to the house. Trees and shrubbery hid me from the main road. And I waited. 

Waiting has this way of turning seconds into pizza cheese. In the end they stretch until each one becomes a minute. My eyes started traveling between the digital numbers of the car clock and the very quiet cell phone in my lap. I tried to find some music on the radio. After half an hour of country songs, ads and weather forecasts, I went out of the car to exercise my legs and to pee in the bushes.

I guess there is never a proper moment for feeling a gun poking into your neck. But getting it done while peeing into a bush of dark green holly has a wrongness all of its own. I must admit that I sprayed the tips of my shoes and even the cuffs of my trousers.

"Wrap it up and get in." The coarse voice was close to my ear.

As we walked over to my car, I saw the doorman of the mansion at the wheel. The coarse whisperer pushed me next to the driver, before getting into the back seat himself, the gun reconnecting with my neck as we drove off. We turned back into the driveway of the mansion. I was scared shitless.

Without a word the man with the gun helped me understand where I was supposed to go. The hall was empty. We passed the office where I had been questioned the last time I visited. Then we stopped at a tastefully furnished and rather intimate luncheon room. I saw a dressed table with half empty glasses and burning candles. The old fox had made quite a production out of it.




Two's a Crowd Ch. 08



I also saw Erica. Her jacket had gone: the first two buttons of her silk blouse were undone. The seduction was in progress, I guess. She looked up and the smile left her face.

A hand pushed me, a voice growled. The man across from Erica turned in his chair. His smile lit up, just as Erica's faded. "Please be seated...It's Bruce, I recall?" the man said. He waved to a third chair beside the small round table. Once more the rough hand encouraged me to oblige.

Erica's eyes begged to know what had happened. I could only shrug.

Enthwistle the Elder dabbed at his lips with an immaculate napkin. He seemed to be enjoying this. He certainly didn't look hurried. "Bruce," he went on. "Or should I say Mr. Pierson? I guess not. My name is John Enthwistle, but I am sure you know that. Ehm...should I get you a glass of wine too? We are having an excellent Sancerre, aren't we, Ms. Gustavsson -- Erica, dear?"

I admired Erica. The worry had left her face as quickly as it had appeared. Her smile was as winning as ever. "It is delicious, John," she said. There was a sexy hoarseness to her voice that I had never heard her use. "I am glad Bruce could make it after all."

Enthwistle's laugh had the distinct resemblance of a billy goat's. Or a hyena? "Nice try, sweetheart," he chuckled. "But we all know better. Let's seduce the old fool, you thought, so we can get in touch with the damsel in distress and maybe abduct her."

His grinning face went from Erica back to me. "And Brucie here was ready to appear with the getaway car. How romantic!"

I had to admit that I disliked his voice more with every new word he uttered. But I could not deny that he had us by the balls. At least me. "Listen, Enthwistle," I said with what I hoped to be a firm voice. "The girl is ill. She has a personality disorder. She needs to see a doctor and get treatment."

"Bull shit!" Enthwistle said. "Myriam is fine. Just because she got tired of playing the nun for you doesn't mean she is sick. What is she to you anyway, man? You dumped her, remember? She is engaged to be married to my son in a month's time. She is family, Pierson, my family. She is my concern, so get the hell out of here. Now!"

I stared at the man. There was white foam in the corner of his mouth. "Myriam comes with me," I said.

Enthwistle gave off another whinnying laugh. There was no humor in it. Then his head got very close to mine. "You listen, Pierson," he growled. "You get the hell out of here now or I'll convince Onslow that he will be better off without you. You may be his precious crown prince, but my money owns his ass. And believe me, boy, Onslow loves his own ass quite a bit more than yours. Now leave!"

My eyes dashed from him to Erica. She just sat, wide eyed. I rose to my feet. I saw her grab her purse to follow me.

"Erica stays," Enthwistle said. 

Some people consider authority their birthright. John Enthwistle's notion must have been handed down to him by generations of owners - owners of land, money and people. You could hear it all in his calm, soft voice. He didn't raise it -- he didn't even look at her.

"Erica stays." He made it sound matter of fact. He even made it sound quite reasonable. I saw that Erica had sat down again. Her eyes were on the table. Her meekness triggered a wave of indignation in me. I stepped towards the old man. "Like hell she stays!" I yelled. "She comes with me. We leave and we take Myriam with us." My hands were on his jacket.

If I thought this would impress him, I was very mistaken. The only thing I saw in his face, before he turned it away, was a calm annoyance of the disgusted kind. He snapped his fingers. The two men who had brought me there, entered the room. I considered resisting -- then I considered running. I was still considering when they had my arm already twisted behind my back.

Enthwistle rose and walked over to me. His face loomed very close. It was a calm face. Mine wasn't. But then again, his arm wasn't painfully twisted behind his back.

"Pierson, you are a stupid idiot," he said. I could not disagree.

"I told you to leave and you didn't. That was a mistake. Now I won't let you leave. You need a lesson. It is a lesson about men and mice in this world, you know? There are mice by the billions, but only very few men. Now let me break some news to you, Pierson -- you belong to the billions." He looked at the neanderthal holding me and nodded.

The lights went out.



Two's a Crowd Ch. 09



My skull resounded with the painful throb of my pulse. I must have returned to consciousness, but it was a reluctant and scattered affair. I needed a while to understand the situation I found myself in. 

My body seemed numb; I could hardly move a muscle. The room around me was dark. It took me minutes to see the contours of furniture, the only source of light being a grayish square. It might have been a curtained window.

I guess what I saw was a bed. There were no blankets or sheets on it -- just a shapeless mound of pillows. The pale outline of a body lay stretched on it, forming an X. Two arms reached for the upper corners. Two legs were spread in the opposite way. She must be a tall person -- a woman, I thought.

I tried to move. It just made me groan.

"Bruce?"

The voice was Erica's. She was the woman on the bed. "Erica?" I said. "Is that you? What have they done?"

She moaned softly. "They tied me to the bed. I am naked."

"Why?" I asked, rather stupidly. "I mean, why would they...?" I interrupted myself. "Oh damn. Erica, I am so sorry. I should never...Dammit, I am such a stupid idiot."

At that moment a door opened. A shard of white light sprang into the room. It painted hard contrasts all over the naked body on the bed. Even in my dizzy distress I had to admire the sight. Then the silhouettes of two people blocked the light. One was of a man, the other a woman's.

The man's voice was Enthwistle's. "Lovely," he said and walked over to the bed. His hand ran over the black-and-white landscape of the tied body. Erica wriggled to escape it. 

"You won't get away with this, Enthwistle," she groaned. He just chuckled. "Oh, but I shall, honey, don't worry." His fingers touched her mouth. He chuckled when she tried to bite him. "Ah, she has a temperament, I like it." Humming to himself he caressed her chest.

"You see, darling Erica," he went on. "You came here to get things done for Onslow. He needs my influence to get what he craves, so he wants to be on my good side. He'd never approve of you being difficult, would he?"

Erica wriggled and groaned as he pulled a nipple cruelly. "Bastard!" I think I understood. Enthwistle chuckled again.

"I like Onslow," he said, stroking her belly. "Now there's a guy who has his priorities straight." Grinning, he scratched the narrow strip of cropped hair that led to the top of her vagina.

"Now, Erica, honey," he went on. "Consider this a, well, ehm...less traditional way of continuing our business lunch."

Erica flinched. He must have reached her clit.

"Good girl," Enswistle said. "But I don't think I need to hear your side of the conversation anymore." He produced an object and started working on the woman's mouth. His back blocked the scene. I heard Erica's protests; she even yelled loudly. Enthwistle jumped back -- she must have bitten him. He cursed and shook his hand. Then he slapped her face hard, calling her a bitch. 

I jerked at my ties. It was utterly useless, of course -- and quite pathetic. "Stop that!" I yelled. He just cackled his god-awful snicker.

When he moved away, I saw the dark blotch of a gag at the center of Erica's face. Straps ran to each side, keeping it tightly in place. Only her muffled moans could be heard. She arched her body in frustration.

"Asshole," I muttered. "I'll get you for this." I sounded as ridiculous as I felt. I was mad at myself for having allowed this to happen.

"Welcome back, boy," Enthwistle said, turning my way. "I hope you appreciate our efforts -- we go to great lengths to entertain our guests. Come in, Myriam. Meet your sweet ex and his latest conquest. Don't be shy, she is all yours. And he too, if you like."

The woman on the threshold entered. Her features were vague as she was mostly lit from the back. But her halo of reddish curls and the way she moved left no doubt who she was. Her short robe seemed sheer against the piercing light. It was all she wore.

"Erica," the old man said as his hand caressed an unwilling face. "Here's your lover's ex-wife. I understand you very much wanted to meet her. Believe me, darling, I do understand why."

Enthwistle chuckled and looked at Myriam. "Myr, honey," he said. "Please take your time to get to know Erica better. She must want you very much, as she has traveled all the way here just for you. She came for lunch, now it seems she is on the menu. Give her your best -- she's really earned your undivided attention."

Myriam shed her short robe and climbed naked on the bed, right between Erica's spread legs. She never looked my way. "Hello Erica," she said. She used the guileless, sweet-tempered voice of the girl I married -- eons ago. 

Being tied to the chair had a strange effect on me -- and on how I felt about what happened in front of me. I had jerked and pulled at my ropes, only to see my frustrations shatter against a wall of amused indifference. No one seemed to care about me. Nothing I did had the slightest impact on what went on. In the end it made me a passive, almost distracted audience-of-one. 

The floodlight from the open door drained most of the color. It created the black and white contrasts of a Japanese graphic novel. The bed hung isolated in the darkness around it -- like the center stage of a theatre. Or even a cinema screen.

The naked women looked like slow moving actors or dancers. They seemed engaged in a liturgical activity. It took their sexuality to another level -- a serene level, almost void of lust. It was as if I was watching a perverted sacrament. 

I saw Myriam kneel between the spread thighs, bending forward. Her hand caressed Erica's face, clearing it of stray hair. Then she leant even further. Her dangling tits touched Erica's. A slow tongue licked the gag. I now saw that it wasn't a ball gag at all. A black dildo rose from the stretched mouth. Myriam sank her lips over it. When she rose again, the black cock shone in the bright light. A silver thread of saliva connected its tip with Myriam's open mouth. 

"Ericahh," she breathed. "You are so beautiful."

The voice shook me out of the dream. A rush of shame entered my mind. Here I was looking at the woman I loved degrading herself with the woman who was my best friend. Two victims caught in a web of humiliation, partly of my doing -- forced to do things against their will. 

And I just watched.

"Myriam," I croaked. "Don't do this. I love you, honey. You don't have to do..." A hand cut off my words. It smelled of soap and tobacco.

Myriam looked up. Her face turned my way. I saw the plastic travesty of her smile. I remembered it from a Dallas hotel bar. "It is all right, Bruce," she said. "I love you too, honey." And she returned her attention to the woman on the bed -- closing her soft sweet lips around a peaking nipple.

*** 

Weird is a word.

I don't know if it was the right word for my state of mind. I felt removed from what I had considered reality up 'til then. Reality is built from tangible, well known things -- things we are familiar with. We have an easy, intimate access to them. We live in them. Not that day, however. That hour I was a stranger to my own life.

There was the hand over my mouth, getting sweaty. There was the pornographic show on the bed in front of me -- conducted by my two most intimate friends. And there was this hard thing poking into the back of my head. No -- it wasn't a gun. When it moved I knew it was a man's erection.

It belonged to the hand that belonged to Enthwistle the Elder. It was accompanied by his chuckles and grunts. And it brought me close to throwing up.

"Aren't they something?" the man hissed. "Look at the slut's ass. I never saw a more perfect whore." He snickered. Then he rubbed his cock deeper into my neck. "And your chick. Wow man, you are one lucky bastard. Look at those legs."

His hand prevented me from answering, but I would not have answered anyway. I'd sooner have bitten the hand until blood poured out. Silly dreams, though -- he never gave me the chance.

On the bed Myriam had started eating out Erica's pussy. Her red nailed fingers were on the stretched thighs. There were groans and very wet sounds. Myriam's ass was high up, displaying her shaven cunt and the tiny pinpoint of her asshole.

I didn't even wonder about the rude terms I used for her in my mind -- cunt, ass hole. The way I saw Myriam had obviously changed dramatically. She had been Estelle, back at the Houston Hilton. But had she? She certainly wasn't now. She was Myriam and she had a cunt, and an asshole. She had pumped up tits and yes, she acted as much the slut as she had done back then.

But the most hurtful thing now was that she was Myriam -- gracious, sweet, but outrageously sluttish Myriam.

After a while Erica started to respond. She arched up from the pillows and began a slow gyrating movement. The natural urges of her body must be taking over. I could only imagine what happened inside her head. She was a warm-blooded lesbian. How could she withstand being eaten by an expert tongue? She was tied up; she had no chance.

Then Myr stopped. She lifted her head and looked over her shoulder at me, smiling -- winking. Her tongue slipped out and circled her lips. She rose to her knees, turning towards me. She lifted her leg and straddled the bound woman. Then she started sliding her belly and her cunt back over Erica's chest.

Her tongue licked the exposed vagina two, three times -- very slowly. The long, curly red hair covered her actions. She looked up and grinned at me. Her lips shone with Erica's juices. Then she raised her ass. One hand crawled between her and her victim -- searching. She rose higher and sank carefully over the black dildo that stuck up from Erica's mouth. She shuddered. Then she sighed. "Oh God...so goooood."

Myriam started to slowly fuck the penis-gag in Erica's mouth. After a while she lowered her head to the bound woman's pussy and resumed eating her out. Her moans never stopped. The cock pressing against the back of my head throbbed. So did my own.

At times it is hard to be honest. This was definitely such a time. My mind felt disgusted, almost to a point of physical nausea. But my body had quite a different opinion. I guess I felt as torn as Erica did. Her body squirmed and arched under Myriam's tongue and sucking lips. It started shining with sweat. I am sure I would have heard her moan if her voice hadn't been so effectively muffled by the absurd dildo and Myriam's humping ass. 

Body and mind -- nature has her tricks to separate them.

The ugly voice in my neck giggled as an embarrassing tent grew in my lap. "Healthy after all, aren't we?" he breathed. "Such a healthy boy." He cackled.

I closed my eyes only to open them when ecstatic screams originated from the bed. Myriam sat straight up, her head in her neck. The light dripped off her sweating body as it shook and shivered. She wailed her orgasm, almost choking on the intensity of it. Then she collapsed, falling forward. The silence was punctured by ragged panting. I had never seen Myriam as ecstatic as this. Not the Myriam I knew.

The man's hand left my face. I heard a slow applause. "Well done, slut," Enthwistle said. I had too much work breathing again to comment.

"Now crawl over here, honey," he said. "Your onetime beau needs your expert mouth. Look how hard you made him. Be quick, lil slut. He might come all by himself and you won't get a drop."

He snickered. The pressure of his lower body left me. He walked around me, taking off his jacket. He threw it on a chair. Then he unbuckled his belt and walked to the bed. He patted Myriam on the head the moment they passed each other. She crawled on all fours. I distinctly heard her sigh.

My eyes went from the man to the crawling girl and back to the man. I saw him climb on the bed. The pants slid off his ass. His hand pulled his boxer shorts down. He was right between Erica's thighs now. "God," I heard him mutter, "but you have a great cunt, honey."

I guess Erica protested, but her words came out as moans. Enthwistle collected a few pillows. He placed them under Erica's lower body to prop her up to a convenient height. Then he pushed his hips forward. He started a slow, humping movement. His grunts were that of an animal.

That was when I felt a hand undoing my belt and zipper.

"No, Myriam!" I blurted out. "Please, no..." She smiled and put a finger to her lips. "Shhhh..."

My cock sprang into her face. She looked at it with intense concentration. Then her eyes searched for mine. Time stopped. So did my breath. "Ah, Bruce," she sighed. "It has been so long."

But as her mouth opened and her head lowered itself over the swollen head, there was something else I felt. Her right hand was over my left wrist. Her fingers closed around the knot in the rope that held me to the chair. I had to tear my attention away from her incredible mouth. As I wriggled my wrist, chaffing the skin on the rope, I felt it slowly getting looser. And soon I could slide my hand out of the noose.

Myriam never missed a beat in the rhythm of her sucking. I was almost into her throat. I nervously looked up to see what Enthwistle was doing, but there was no need to worry that he might see us. I saw his ass tighten while he banged away into Erica. I guess even a cannon shot would not have disturbed him.

Myriam didn't stop. I groaned when I felt my cock head slip into her tight throat. With great effort I cleared my mind. I started at the rope that held my other wrist. Soon both of my hands were free. She grabbed them and held them to her face. Her sucking increased. The familiar dash of shearing heat tore through my cock, from my balls to the head and straight down her throat.

It felt as if I shot gallons of sperm. It also felt as if it lasted minutes. I may even have passed out. But soon I felt Myriam tug at my hands, pulling me up to my wobbly legs. My spent cock dangled free, dripping cum. I hastily put it away.

Myriam urged me to follow her. She went over to the jacket and fished a gun from a pocket. She gave it to me. Apart from harmless air guns, I had never really used a fire arm in my life. It lay heavy in my hand. The dull metal looked lethal. I didn't know about safety locks. I just stepped over to the fucking bastard and pushed the nuzzle into his back. I guess the sudden panic made him come, for when I pulled him off Erica he sprayed his whitish sperm all over her and the bed.

It didn't harm my efforts that his pants were around his ankles. He stumbled and fell as he tried to run. I grabbed an arm and turned it behind his back. Then I hissed I would shoot him if he tried to run or scream. I could never have done that, I don't think, but he didn't know that.

Myriam had found a key in Enthwistle's jacket. She used it to free Erica. She also freed her from the gag. As soon as the silly thing came away, Erica yelled. It was a scream that came straight from the bottom of her rage. It must have been building for a while, for it made the walls ring. She jumped off the bed and started kicking the man on the floor. At that moment the old pervert must have regretted that he let her keep her heels on. Especially after she found a way to his crotch.

I didn't see a need to stop her. But Myriam pulled her away. "We must run now," she said. "The gorillas may wonder. Your car is ready. Come, take this!"

She threw a robe to Erica and pulled one over her own nakedness. "Get his pants off his ankles," I hissed. Both girls freed Enthwistle of them. Then I pushed him forward -- the gun in his neck.

The hallway was empty. Myriam led us to a side entrance. We found our car. Erica slid behind the wheel. I pushed Enthwistle into the back seat and went in behind him. Within seconds we drove down the driveway. The bar was down, but Myriam yelled: "Drive on, drive through it!" The aluminum bar broke and bounced off our windshield. Then it scratched our top.

The guard came running from his booth, yelling. We tore onto the road.

*** 

We drove fifty miles before stopping. Enthwistle had wrestled and screamed as the guard ran to the car, so I slapped my fist into his skull. It was heavy with the gun. I might have easily killed him, but I didn't know or care at the moment. The silence was welcome.

"The guard may have our number," Erica said.

"I know," I answered. "Can't be helped now. Let's get away as fast as we can." The adrenaline made me breathe hard. "Stupid plan," I muttered. "Goddamn stupid plan."

Myriam turned around and touched my hand. "It worked, " she whispered. "Thank you."

I just stared at her. Then I looked at the slumped man. "Did I kill him?"

Myriam felt his throat. "I don't think so."

At one of those places so aptly called the middle of nowhere we turned right onto a dirt road. We hadn't seen houses for miles -- there were only trees and more trees.

After another mile I asked Erica to stop. I pushed Enthwistle out of the car. He had been conscious for about the last ten minutes, but he was still rather groggy. He only wore his shirt and his shoes.

"Please take his shoes, Myriam," I said. She kneeled before him and undid them. By then Erica had turned the car around.

"What are you going to do with me?" Enthwistle asked. "Don't shoot me." His voice whined. I saw a trickle of urine run down his thigh. It made my anger melt away. 

I pushed him. He fell on his back into the dead leaves. "I should," I said, standing over him. "You goddamn pervert, you earned it. But I won't."

I jumped into the car and we drove off, leaving the half naked man in a cloud of dust and leaves.

"Goddamn pervert," I repeated.



Two's a Crowd Ch. 10



The conference table shone in designer spotlights. So did the regiment of spotless designer glasses and all the pretty bottles of designer water. There were designer coffee containers and designer cups. There was also hot water for the pretty teabags in the precious wooden box. Earl Grey, I read. Ceylon and Oolong and China Blossom, names that took me away to exotic places. 

I was early. I knew I would be. I always liked to just sit alone for a while before an important meeting, just to savor the moment and take in the feel of the place, the smell and the sound. I hardly ever used that time to read papers or prepare myself with pertinent information. I just sat and stared -- taking in even the tiniest fleck that danced in the lamplight.

I had no idea how it worked, but when the meeting started, I was always the most relaxed person in the room. Maybe I just "owned" the place more than the others. It felt as if it were my turf, I guess.

But this time my brain refused to empty itself. Too much had happened. And too much depended on the next few hours.

That evening on our way down from Rhode Island to New York we never stopped -- other than to fill the tank with gas and to buy some junk food.

The girls had huddled up in the back seat. They talked, their voices were too low for me to understand. At times I thought I heard sobbing. Later it seemed like giggling. When I looked back to check on them, they had both fallen asleep.

I knew we were in big trouble. I also knew that everything might have been for nothing, anyway. There was a good chance Myriam would run off again the moment we arrived. And even if she didn't at once, it might be a matter of time.

She had held me tight, almost desperate, the first twenty miles after we dumped Enthwistle. She'd kissed and thanked me -- pushing her half naked body into mine. She had cried. 

Erica had driven a while, then I had taken over the wheel -- telling the girls to get some sleep.

I glanced back again. Streetlights washed over Myriam's face -- she looked relaxed. There was a little smile around her lips. She was intelligent. She must know how deep the shit was that she had sank us into. Or I, for that matter. But for the moment she seemed beyond that. 

I wondered who she was now and that thought brought a dark cloud with it. In the magazine pictures and at the engagement party there hadn't been a sign of Estelle around. Nor had I seen any of the vulgar behavior that came with Myriam's sex-crazed alter ego. Oh yes, she had gone wild today, fucking Erica. She had come more extravagantly than she had ever with me. And she had readily done things Myriam would not ever have dreamed of. She certainly had acted as Enthwistle's submissive sexpot. 

But she had been Myriam all the time. She had been soft, gentle, even subtle in her outrageous actions. The way she had dressed (when she was dressed) had been tasteful, even modest -- as far as her obscene new breasts allowed. Nevertheless she had been Enthwistle's creature. In how she acted she might have been Myriam, but in what she did the control of Estelle was evident.

Her mother's words came back to me. "By now Estelle can be both the prude and the slut if need be. She has taken over." I glanced back. Was she right?

As we passed New Haven the thought hit me that somewhere inside her mind a barrier must have been removed; a wall between her two personalities was gone now -- if something like that had ever existed. Maybe right now there wasn't someone like Myriam still there. Or even Estelle, for that matter. She might have just merged into a completely new person -- a complete person.

It would explain a lot, but would it be a good thing? I looked back once more to see her face. Her mouth made sucking noises. It didn't look obscene -- just childish.

I returned to my thoughts. Had the two of them melded together? Or had Estelle just taken over, usurping all the fine social graces she needed in her new role of society princess? It was obvious that Myriam was not in charge. She would never have fallen for the Turd or his sick father. She would never have allowed them to make her their personal toy and company whore.

The words toy and whore made me wince -- even just thinking them.

But -- on the other hand -- she had untied my ropes, so we could escape. That must have been pure Myriam. It proved she still could withstand Estelle, did it not? I clung to that thought until I saw the first lights of Manhattan. It was about 3 a.m. when we at last drove into the parking garage under my apartment building. Erica had long since awakened. I had shared some of my musings with her. She agreed with the change, but she couldn't explain it any better than I could.

The concierge hid his surprise when we walked past him in our robes and ruined clothes. Erica and Myriam went into the shower together. I just stayed in the bathroom for a second longer, watching their vague silhouettes through the sanded glass. It looked as if they had become one. There were giggles and little sighs.

I looked at my face in the shaving mirror and watched my eyebrows knit. There was more sighing than giggling in the shower cabin by then. I turned and walked to the balcony. Yes, I thought. Erica had been adamant that she should go and get Myriam. I remembered our discussions. Definitely - she had been adamant.

I inhaled the night air of the city.

*** 

Next day it took the shit only a few hours to hit the fan. By evening I was gloriously covered by it. 

The Enthwistles charged me for quite a list of things with the Providence police. Among the more serious accusations were the use of violence, assault and battery, and the threat with a lethal weapon. I also was accused of forcefully abducting Enthwistle senior, leaving him behind in a life-threatening situation. My abduction of the Turd's fiancée, the unwilling Ms. Myriam F. Collins, came only about eighth on the list, even after a charge of doing damage to the house. Almost hilarious was the item of me raping Myriam before I took her with me. More serious was the charge that I used the false pretense of business to gain entrance to the Enthwistle property. I had committed misrepresentation if not fraud by making Erica into someone she wasn't.

I knew I had it coming -- except for the rape, of course. It was typical for the old pervert to put his own misery first. It just confirmed how little he cared for his would be daughter. In the end it was just greediness on his part -- but the sort of greed that would no doubt herald my professional death.

Then Onslow surprised me. He called me into his office. I was very nervous about what he might say -- or rather what he would do. I had without a doubt blown every chance of us getting the merger. That alone would cost us dearly. It would also cost me my job and any prospect of getting anything else that was half-way decent. And on top of losing the new business for Onslow, Enthwistle would certainly try to rob our company of every penny he could lay his hands on. So when I walked in, I was prepared to get fired. 

Onslow stood behind his desk. He smiled. That by itself was a surprise. But when he walked around his impressive desk to hug me, I was stunned. 

"Fuck them!" he said. "Pierson, you got yourself into an amazing heap of shit and I don't know if we'll ever get you out of it -- but sure as hell we're going to try!"

He slammed into my shoulder and led me to one of his overstuffed leather club chairs. My ribs hurt. As did my shoulder.

"Whiskey?" he said, already pouring. I accepted the glass. He had poured himself a double vodka on ice. He cheered; I raised my glass, wondering.

"Tell me what happened, Bruce," he said, sipping.

I told him briefly what we had done. He never asked for details, which surprised me. He also never grunted at my more stupid actions. He didn't even deride my romantic notions, which wasn't like Onslow at all. Most of all he wanted to know what I was being charged with. And instead of looking worried, he laughed out loud at quite a few of them. Onslow isn't an easy laugher. And when he does, he has a rather repulsive likeness to Enthwistle the Elder.

He rose and once more laid a hand on my shoulder. "Don't lose sleep over it, Pierson," he said, chuckling. "Our lawyers will give them hell."

That didn't really cheer me up. "What about the new business?" I asked softly.

He just grinned some more. "Go to bed, Pierson," he said genially. "Go to bed with that amazing woman of yours and we'll do the worrying tomorrow!"

A few minutes later I was on my way home. I hadn't lost my worries. I had just added an uneasy feeling about Onslow to them. A nasty bastard had changed into "best pal" mode overnight -- it just gave me more questions to mull over. Quite a few of them, actually.

*** 

Erica wasn't there when I got home. Myriam said she'd just left. She was in her bathrobe -- her skin glowed. Her hair was damp. She had come to the door and hugged me. Her body was soft and inviting. But the day had left me wound up like a clock's spring - in fact so tight that nothing could slip past it, let alone feelings. 

I kissed her on the cheek. Then I went for a beer and asked her to sit with me. I felt her gaze on me all the time. "Is something wrong, Bruce?" she asked after sitting down on the couch beside me. She leant into me. Her bare thigh showed where the robe fell open.

"Of course there is, Myr," I said, moving away from her. "Enthwistle is charging us with a million serious accusations. One of them is raping you, by the way -- before I abducted you."

She giggled at that. Then she stopped as she saw I didn't even smile. "Sorry," she mumbled. "Will the charges stick?"

I marveled at her naiveté. She couldn't be this stupid. I knew she wasn't. "Myriam," I said. "I grabbed the guy in his own house and threatened him with a gun. I abducted him. I knocked him unconscious. Then I kicked him out of a car, half naked and in the middle of nowhere. To top it off I robbed him of his favorite fuck toy and future trophy daughter. Now you ask me if they'll stick?"

I saw how she flinched at me calling her a fuck toy. "But he raped Erica," she said. 

I laughed. "Yes, he did. So did you."

She blushed.

"Anyway," I went on. "Even if you and Erica help me deny it, it will be his powerful word against our highly compromised opinions, won't it? Plus the fact that he indeed was found half naked in the middle of the woods." 

She spluttered. "Of course we will stand by you!" she exclaimed.

I silently watched her. "Thank you for that," I said, wondering where the sarcastic twinge in my voice came from. "But anyway," I went on. "It will cost me my job, whatever the judge says." 

Her eyes went wide. "Why is that?" she asked.

I studied her gaze for a bit. She seemed really perplexed. Then it hit me that she probably didn't know the first thing about my involvement with Enthwistle's companies. Why would she? So I told her about the merger and how Enthwistle was involved. She laid a soft hand on mine. She looked concerned now.

"Honey," she whispered. "You should not have taken that risk for me. It cost you too much." She leant in to kiss me. The skin on my lips felt taut. I held her slightly away from me.

"If you hadn't thrown yourself at this asshole Enthwistle, I wouldn't have had to do it, would I? Why did you anyway?" My voice was harsher than I intended.

"I..." she said. Her hand went to her mouth. It trembled. I saw a tear at the corner of her eye. I pulled her to me, hugging her. She started sobbing.

"Sorry," I said. "I know -- it wasn't you. And I surely must have hurt you with what I did in Baltimore. Please forgive me. Don't cry." It must have been the pathetic last remnants of love in my heart that clung to the belief. It certainly wasn't my brain. 

After a while the sobbing stopped. Her wet face touched mine. Her lips opened wide and weak. We kissed.

*** 

Over the next few days I tried to get some work done. There was obviously no need to bother about the merger anymore. I just busied myself with my department. Right now it was a pity how well it managed itself. It left me staring out of my windows a lot -- thinking.

I tried to keep in contact with Onslow, but he was gone most of the time. Erica seemed gone too. I called her on her cell phone and at her apartment -- to no avail.

Myriam surprised me that first evening with a wonderful dinner and stories about how she had spent a lovely day in the city, shopping, lunching and relaxing in the Park. Ever since we'd been home she never once mentioned a word about her time at the Enthwistle mansion.

We made love that night in the slow and easy way I had almost forgotten. Estelle seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

But I did use a condom.

The next day I tried getting Charlotte to tell me what Onslow was up to. Charlotte is an elegant fifty-something lady who has been Onslow's secretary for ages. We liked each other -- but obviously not enough for her to tell me anything important.

I assumed he was off conferring with the lawyers to find ways to clean up the mess I had made. Somehow it seemed quite out of character for Onslow to go this far for someone else. But then again -- he had to try and salvage his chances for the merger too, didn't he? I mused on that one. Something didn't fit. If he was busy with that, why didn't he involve me? Wouldn't he need all the information he could get out of me?

Charlotte said she was sorry for not being able to help me. I went back to stare out of my office window a bit more.

*** 

My fingers drummed me back to the present. They left tiny moist spots on the shiny surface of the conference table. Obviously I wasn't as relaxed as I thought I was. I looked at the clock. They were late.

Then the door opened and Charlotte came in. She looked immaculate. Her hair was up and her business suit was as trendy as the designer stuff on the table. So were her glasses.

"Oh?" she said, surprised at seeing me. "Didn't they tell you? I am so sorry!"

"Tell me what?" I asked, rising.

"Enthwistle withdrew all accusations," she said. Her smile lit up her face.

I just stared -- totally dumbfounded. Of course I felt an immediate relief. But at the same time there was the irritation of being so off-handedly informed.

"Oh yes," she went on. "And the merger will be signed next week."

I sagged back into my chair. I tried to recognize the emotions that flooded over me. It was humiliation -- a dull, depressing blanket that slowly sank down. 

"Aren't you happy, Bruce?" she asked.

I needed two tries to get out a word. "No," I said. "Not at all."

*** 

About an hour later I was seething. I had tried to get Onslow, but he seemed to be swallowed by the earth. So were the lawyers that should have been at the meeting. Charlotte was as closed as a clam. And I don't know why I tried to get Erica, but it was just as fruitless.

Humiliation was the word. I felt degraded to the lowest level. A child, I was treated like a child. A nonentity. Of course I should be happy that the lawsuit was off and my ass saved. But what had caused that to happen? What had been the deal, what had been promised? Why hadn't I been there? Not involved? Not even informed?

Why shouldn't I know?

When Onslow at last arrived that afternoon, he was all smiles -- he was drunk too. I saw him when he came in. He stopped at Charlotte's station and I saw her talking intensely to him. Her perfectly groomed head nodded in my direction.

When I stormed out of my office, he was already on his way to see me. A huge but unfocussed smile gave him a face I didn't know. It seemed he wanted to hug me, but I stepped back. "What the fuck is going on, Onslow?" I asked, rather loudly.

He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me towards my office. "Great news, Pierson!" he slurred. "Damn fucking wonderful news."

We were in my office. He closed the door -- it took him two tries to grab the knob. I guess he was not sober enough to have a real conversation. He slumped into a chair.

"It'sss all over, Pierson." He chuckled, almost to himself. "We have sshem by the balls. All ssharsshes dropped. And the merssher done!"

I stood, looking down on him. I said nothing.

"Pierson," Onslow went on. "They sshold out for a sshong!"

"Why would they do that, Onslow?" I asked. His drunken ranting made me lose the focus of my rage. I knew it would be useless to grill him in the state he was in. On the other hand...

The door opened. Charlotte's face peeped around it. "Is all well, Bruce? He is drunk. Let's get him home."

"All is fine, Charlotte," I said. I shoved her back into the corridor and closed the door. I had the feeling she was protecting him. Could she be afraid he might tell me things I wasn't supposed to hear?

"Onslow?" I said. He looked up, grinning. It seemed the alcohol was just now really hitting him. He murmured. I went down on my haunches to be closer. "What happened, Onslow? Why wasn't I there?"

He grinned again. "No need, Piersshon! No need for you there. Girlzzz did it all. Damn fucking great girlzzz."

"Girls, Onslow? What girls? What are you talking about?"

He snickered. "By the goddamn balls," he went on. "Enssshwizzle, Daniels and the whole fucking lot!"

"How?" I almost yelled. I grabbed his lapels, trying to get his drifting attention. "How, Onslow? What did you do? What about the girls?"

The door flew open and Onslow's giant black chauffeur entered. His deep voice rumbled. "It is all right, Mr. Pierson. Let me get him. I'll take him home. Come, Mr. Onslow. Been a long day."

The giant picked up Onslow and led him out onto the floor. Charlotte stood waiting. Her eyes were on him -- then on me. There was concern in them.

"What is going on, Charlotte?" She smiled and turned away.

*** 

We sat at the kitchen counter, Myriam and I. I had just come home. The beer can in my hand was already half empty. She had poured herself a white wine.

"Where is Erica, Myriam?"

"I don't know. She said she had a business meeting this morning."

"You see her a lot, don't you?" I asked.

"I like her," she said with a smile. "She is a wonderful person, Bruce. A real friend. I am glad you met her so I could get to know her. You like her a lot too, don't you?"

I held her eyes until they shifted.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "You tell me."

Her eyes widened. I thought I saw extra color flush into her face. "Ehm...," she then said. "I, eh, don't know what you mean? Wrong?" She tried to get up. I held up my hand. "Don't leave. We have to talk."

"But dinner..." Her voice trailed away.

"Talk to me, Myriam," I said. "If you love me, tell me what is going on with you and Erica and Onslow. You know him, don't you?"

Her head shook in denial. Then her lips trembled. She brought her hands to her face, sobbing.

I wasn't moved. "Stop this, Myriam. And don't give me that Estelle shit either. It was you I saw at the mansion, not her."

The sobbing stopped at once. Her fingers opened to allow her eyes to peep through.

I rose, the beer was forgotten. "Myriam. Maybe you really were sick when we met and married and even through our marriage. Maybe it was all true, with the rape and the personality split. You should have told me up front, though, and you didn't. You left me in the dark. Ah well...in the end I guess that was what our divorce really was about."

Myriam flinched as I mentioned the divorce. She wanted to protest, but I went on. "Anyhow...let's say maybe there was a Myriam who was unable to stop her second personality from running around on her. But something changed after our divorce, didn't it? Or maybe even before?"

Myriam followed me with her eyes. Her fingers were strangling each other. She looked very nervous. Her head slowly shook left and right. But she said nothing. 




Two's a Crowd Ch. 10



I went on. "The woman at the engagement party was Myriam, wasn't she? So was the woman fucking Erica at the request of Enthwistle. And so is the woman I am talking to now. There may be a lot of Estelle inside you, Myr...but you can't give me that shit about not knowing what goes on anymore. Do you hear me?"

I had stepped closer and grabbed her arm. She looked very scared.

"I...I don't know what..."

I cut her off. "You DO know, Myriam. You know everything. And you know a hell of a lot more than I do! What the fuck is going on? What are you and Erica after? How well do you know Onslow? How long have you known him? What is he to you? What is Erica to you? What's still there for me?"

My barrage of questions left her flustered. Her eyes were down now, so was her head. I was stumbling around in the dark, but her reactions told me I was on to something. "Do you love Erica, Myriam? Is that it? Do you have sex with her?"

Her eyes shot up again. She was a little bunny caught by a snake.

The floor seemed to shift under my feet. "You are, aren't you?" I almost whispered. "I saw it when you were together. In the car, in the bathroom. Why shower together? Why shower right before she left and before I came home?"

I once more grabbed her arm. "Do you love her?"

Her head ever so slowly nodded. "We, eh..." she said. "We have to talk."

"Go ahead," I said. I slumped down on a kitchen stool.

"Arnold...I mean, Enthwistle senior forced me to have sex with Erica." Her voice was almost a whisper. "You saw that." Her eyes seemed to plead with me to believe her.

"I saw you having a great time with her, yes," I answered. "As no doubt you had with him, too. And with the Turd, his son. And god knows how many friends and customers. Now don't tell me that wasn't you."

She looked very sad. "That wasn't me, Bruce. You must believe me. It wasn't me."

I shrugged. Somehow my sudden rage had flushed out the depression. It cleared my eyes. In the new light I just saw a whore at my table.

"What you saw was what Enthwistle made me do," she insisted. "Don't ask me why, but he made me do things I don't understand at all."

"I DO ask you why, Myriam," I said. I tried to keep the rage out of my voice.

"I can't tell you."

We just stared at each other for a minute. 

"Anyway," I said at last. "Erica."

"Arnold...Enthwistle had ways to blackmail me and my mother."

I groaned. "For god's sake, Myr! Blackmail? Who do you think I am?"

She shrugged. "It is true. He made me. But I must admit that I was very much taken in by Erica. Even at the engagement party. And seeing her helpless on the bed -- and watching her respond to my love making...She's very sexy, Bruce."

"I never knew you loved women, Myr. But then again, I never knew you at all, did I?"

She didn't respond to that. She paused for a second. "Yes, Bruce," she then went on. "I fell in love with her. I couldn't help it. Every time I see her, I get all weak. And she says she loves me too."

I played with the beer can. I didn't know what to feel or what to think.

"Bruce?" Her voice was distant. "Do you want me to go? Should I leave?"

I rose abrubtly. "No, Myr," I said. "You stay. I leave. And when I come back tomorrow, you're gone."

"I love you, Bruce."

"No, you don't."

*** 

The apartment was empty. So were the closets and the drawers Myriam had been using the few days she'd stayed. The new clothes I had bought for her were gone. So were her lingerie and toiletries. Even her scent seemed to have evaporated.

The loneliness of the house matched the emptiness inside me. I walked around the Park till sundown. Then I went to a bar. I have no memories after that until I woke up the next morning with a severe hangover.



Two's a Crowd Ch. 11



I went to the office around eleven. My head still throbbed. I damned my stupidity -- the drinking too. Charlotte was her own sparkling self. She smiled and her voice sang. There was a plastic quality to her that I had never noticed before. 

But it was a well-known kind of plastic.

"Is Onslow in?" I asked. There must have been sandpaper down my throat.

Her face lit up even more.

"Yes, Bruce! He is even expecting you," she exclaimed.

Onslow looked worse than I did. His skin was pudgy, like half-baked dough. He hid his eyes behind sunglasses.

"Hello Pierson," he said, half-rising from behind his desk.

"What the fuck is going on, Onslow?" I had no intention of wasting any of my hard-won energy in small talk.

"Aah, well, Bruce," he sighed, his hands up in the air. "Sit down. Sit down, please."

I did. It was hard to study his face with the damn glasses in the way. I guess he was too vain to take them off. Or he just didn't want me to see his eyes.

Charlotte came in with coffee. When she left, her hand was on my shoulder for a second. It sent a jolt of repulsion down my body.

"Sugar?" Onslow asked.

"Fuck the sugar!" I growled.

He grinned an uncertain grin.

"Actually, Bruce," he went on. "You should be grateful. I got you off the hook. Lighten up, man. You were up to your neck in trouble. Law suit, jail, losing your job."

I just stared.

"I saved your ass, Bruce!"

"Why?" I said. "Why save me? Since when did you become a saint, Onslow? And since when did you suddenly decide that I am stupid?"

That made him take his glasses off. He shouldn't have. Compared to him I drank milk last night.

"Okay," he said. "Sorry, Pierson. I should have told you. But believe me, when I am through with this story, you'll agree with me that I should have left you in the dark."

This time I said nothing because I didn't know what to say. There was a gloomy cloud hovering over me. Someone had written "doom" all over it.

"Take that coffee and another one," he said. "You'll need it as hard as I do."

Then he picked up a blue, plastic-ringed report and threw it at me. There were just two numbers printed on its cover: 2002 - 2007.

"Look up page 23," Onslow said, trying not to burn his lips on the coffee.

I saw that the page contained a list of transactions. They were some serious amounts, none of them smaller than seven digits. It seemed that money had been sluiced to numbered accounts. I knew what they were and where they led to. Switzerland, maybe. Or the Caymans. Or both.

I looked up at Onslow, eyebrows raised.

"Enthwistle and Daniels," Onslow said. "It stinks to heaven." Daniels was the CEO of the company we coveted.

I leafed through the report. There were balances and more transactions. I saw the names of all kinds of companies. Some of them I knew from my explorations in the last few weeks; others were new to me.

"This secret report nails them both, Pierson," Onslow went on. There was a crowing quality to his voice. "I got them by the balls and yesterday I twisted those balls. It made them drop all charges. It also made them more than willing to sell. And at our price."

I threw the report back.

"How did you get it?" I asked. "And why didn't I know?"

He smiled a crooked smile. I had seen it often on his face when he pulled one over on a business partner. "I didn't get it," he said. "You did."

I was puzzled. Then it started to dawn on me.

"The girls," I said. I remembered his drunken remark.

His smile was wide now. He glowed.

"But..." I stuttered. A feeling of vertigo washed over me. I had to grip the armrests of my chair.

"Yes," he said.

He waved the report as if it were a fan.

"This is why you went to the mansion, Pierson. Or rather, it is why Erica convinced you to accompany her."

I could have said "but" again, but I didn't. I didn't want to look as stupid as I was, I guess. His grin never left his damn face. The stale air buzzed and swirled around me.

"Bruce," Onslow said. "Erica and I go way back. She is a shrewd lawyer, amongst many other qualities. Since quite a long time ago, I had gotten wind of the foul play inside Enthwistle's and Daniels' companies. I knew that I would get the business for a song if I could prove it. It was a godsend that you could smuggle Erica in. She got the report. And here we are!"

He clapped his hands and laughed his cackling laugh.

I was stunned. I was also enormously pissed off for having been played in this humiliating way. But most of all I felt hurt. Erica had been the closest friend I had had in these difficult years. And she had gone behind my back -- using me. She had left me totally in the dark. She had lied to me. She had deceived me and played me for a fool.

"Since a long time, you say," I said. "How long?"

"Ah, a year. I don't know, maybe longer," he said, throwing the thought away with his hand. "Does it matter? It paid off. We did it, Bruce. We goddamn did it!"

I have never been a victim of this ever-spreading disease called paranoia. I guess I was too naïve for that. On the other hand, never having been infected may have exposed me more readily. I guess I was wide open.

"Erica never had the time to search for it, Onslow," I said. "And certainly never the opportunity. Not on her own."

Onslow pooed. "Whatever!" he crowed. "She got it and now we have it. The boys are history."

A worm nagged at the base of my skull. And it wasn't the hangover. "Girlzzz," he had slurred, yesterday. Not girl, girls.

"Myriam," I said. "Myriam was in on it, too."

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"What do I know? What do I need to know, Pierson? Neither do you. They did it and we got it."

I rose from my chair. The floor felt as if it were covered with plastic air bubbles. It made me wobble, but I went on. I reached out over his desk and grabbed his jacket. I shook him.

My voice came from a distance.

"You godawful bag of shit," I said. My words were clipped and controlled. "You sent Myriam there to fuck her way up into the Enthwistle empire. You used her condition, so you could get your greedy hands on that company. You knew how vulnerable she was. And you knew how I still felt about her. You knew how it would kill me. And you just went on and did it -- even using me!"

By then a red haze blurred my vision. The claws that started to throttle Onslow's throat were not my hands anymore. I just watched what they did -- with deep and sincere interest.

Then two heavy hands pulled me away. A deep voice told me to let go. And I did. I turned my dizzy head and saw an immaculately clad woman and a big black man. The woman smiled. The man had me in a vice.

I fell back into the chair, panting.

Onslow's head looked quite red, I saw. I had no idea why he gagged all the time. My whole attention was focused on getting my heart under control.

*** 

Security led me out of the building. A cab took me home. 

There I sat down in my leather club chair, staring out over the Park. It looked like an anthill. Only these ants were on roller blades and bicycles. They were playing ball and pushing prams. They were just having a great time in the sun.

I wasn't. 

My head felt like the attic of a barn, filled with bales of moist hay. Something was brewing, smoldering inside. They say that hay can easily go up in flames that way. It sure was how I felt.

The tiny lead that Onslow had given me with his drunken slur of "girlzz" had by now grown into the most fantastic paranoid nightmare I had ever heard of.

Over the last hour my mind wandered backwards over tiny stepping-pebbles of suspicion, just to see them grow more plausible with every step into the past.

Onslow knew Erica. He had known her for years, he'd said. Was it purely business? Was it even true? I had never heard her talk about Onslow -- or him about her, for that matter. To be sure, she had never even hinted on knowing anyone at the company -- or shown the slightest interest in what we did. 

If she was a long time business adviser, I ought to have seen her at least once or twice at the offices, shouldn't I? Onslow and I had almost adjoining offices.

Even her name had never been mentioned, as far as I knew.

Erica must have known Myriam too -- not just through my stories. Maybe Onslow brought them together in his plan to get at the Enthwistles? But how. And when? How could he even have gotten in contact with her? She was in Texas or wherever, wasn't she?

My mind buzzed as I tried to look back at what exactly had happened -- and when. "A year, maybe longer," he said. A year ago I had told Erica all about Myriam and her problem. She had been very understanding and helpful. Loyal too.

"Bruce," she had said. "Forget the bitch. Please do me a favor and forget her. Promise me. She isn't worth it." 

She had been very convincing.

I went further back. Erica had very quickly detected the cause of my distant attitude, back at the tennis club. We had only met each other a few times, by then. I remembered being impressed by how accurately she described my problem. 

"I hope the woman behind you will stop controlling our conversation," she had said. At that moment in time she had never heard of Myriam or my divorce. Should I still be impressed with her feminine intuition? Or did she just know? Had she already met Myriam? Or Estelle, for that matter? 

I fast-forwarded in my mind, hearing them giggle and sigh in the shower stall after we returned to the city. And of course in hindsight it was remarkable how fast Erica fell for Myriam's tongue at the rape in Enthwistle's mansion. Was it rape at all?

I moaned loudly, frustrated by the ongoing paranoia. Was I going insane? Or was I at long last starting to see the painful truth? Was it dawning on me? Or was I just plodding on, deeper and deeper into the gathering dusk? I took a cold shower and went out for a pizza. I chased it with a bottle of cheap chianti and two grappa's.

That stopped the treadmill in my head -- for a few hours.

*** 

The next morning I called in sick.

It was partly true. I knew I would get sick the moment I saw the lying smile of Charlotte and heard Onslow's treacherous voice. I also knew that I would call in again, maybe the next day and give him my notice. Getting a new job wasn't the biggest of my problems. 

Right now my priorities were getting out and getting sane.

I was shaving when the phone rang. I thought I heard close-up breathing and distant sounds of beaches and seashores. Then I was disconnected.

It proved the first of several calls during the next hour. At the third one I asked whom it was -- just to be cut off once more. At the fifth I took a gamble. "Myriam?" I said. "Is that you, Myriam?" 

The beeps of disconnection were instant.

I started collecting things and packing them in cardboard cartons. I don't know why. The apartment was mine and would be after I left the firm. But I guess I just didn't want to stay. Living in a hotel room suddenly seemed attractive. Maybe it was the anonymity -- or the sheer shallowness of that kind of life. I don't know, but I started packing.

I threw away most of the things Erica and her French girlfriend had helped me buy. They seemed stained with betrayal. I wondered about Marlene. Was she ever really her lover? Was she really in Paris now? Had she even been French? 

I shrugged and smashed a vase.

The seventh call I had planned to let go to voice-mail. But I couldn't.

"Bruce?" 

It was she. The same background sounds were there. Sea surf, clear children's voices. Even some music.

"Yes," I said. "Myriam?"

"I love you, Bruce."

Either the connection was poor or her voice broke. Did I care? Yes, I did. I knew I shouldn't, but I did.

"Why call, Myr?" I asked.

Silence. Then:

"I am dying."

Icicles dripped down my spine. Was it the utter sadness of her voice? Or the theatrical content of her words?

"Are you ill?" I asked. "Where are you? Tell me what's wrong, Myr. Tell me."

"I am...on this island. I don't know. Some tropical island. St. Kitts. Blue sea, beaches. It's Erica and me...you know?"

"I know nothing, Myriam. Why should I? You left me. You went away, remember?"

There was silence. Children screamed and I heard the distant hiss of the surf. The horn of a boat, too, maybe.

"I woke up this morning, Bruce," she went on. "My body was sore and tired. It's very tanned too. I was in a bungalow at the seashore, all alone. Nobody here, Bruce. Don't know where she went. Lots of empty glasses and things."

Deep irritation started eating away at my patience.

"What about this dying, Myr? Are you serious?"

Was that a sob? I guess so.

"I am almost gone, Bruce. They got me. They used me, you know. All the time. I never knew before what she did to me. But this time she made me see it all. What they did to you. What I did with Enthwistle, with Erica. Please believe me, Bruce. I could not help it. And soon I shall never be myself again. I love you. I could not help it! You must believe me, Bruce."

I felt my lungs empty with a sigh. I must have held my breath. I guess it was relief at hearing she did not mean physical death. It made me angry -- why should I care for the bitch?

I must have been silent for a bit.

"You there, Bruce?" she asked. I grunted.

"I know," she said with a whine in her voice. "You don't want me anymore. And I guess I deserve that. I just...wanted you to know that I am still here. And that I love you."

The connection died.

I threw the cell phone across the room with a cry of frustration. 

*** 

There were a few bungalows in the shadows of a clump of trees. 

Their fronts were to the beach and the sea. It had taken a few hundred dollars to find out which one was theirs. I took off my shoes and waded through the hot white sands. The breeze was salty with a tang of flowers and pine. It brought back memories of numerous vacations I'd had with Myriam. They were sweet memories with a lining of cruel bitterness.

The house seemed empty. Its big glass doors stood wide open. 

The main room was a mess -- discarded clothes lay everywhere; glasses, bottles and empty boxes too. In contrast, the kitchen was immaculate -- it looked as if it were never used. But the bedroom I saw through an open door was one big pile of soiled and rumpled sheets -- pillows lying everywhere. The closets and drawers bulged with enough items to stock a Spring fashion.

"Bruce? Is that you?"

I turned on my heels. At the entrance of the bungalow stood Myriam. The afternoon sun gave her silhouette a golden lining. She was topless -- only wearing thong style bikini bottoms. They made her legs seem even longer. Her skin glowed with a fresh tan, splashed with a myriad of freckles. My eyes were drawn to her bloated tits -- then back up to the wide, white smile I knew so well.

"Myriam?" I said. 

She started forward; then hesitated. It looked a bit awkward. 

"I'm so glad you came," she said. "I missed you."

Her voice had no guile. Her eyes were moist. I saw how her lower lip trembled.

"Where is Erica?" I asked. The question made her head turn to the beach and back.

"She...we were tanning," she said. "She is still out there."

I picked a few dresses and underwear off the couch and threw them aside.

"Please, sit," I said, nodding to the cleaned space.

She sat. Her fingers lay restless in her lap. She looked up at me, never minding the display of her pornographic chest.

I threw her a silk blouse.

"Please put this on," I said. "You make me nervous."

There was a tiny smile as she put on the blouse. She tied it under her tits. The smile vanished when she again looked up at me.

"We must talk, Myriam. Or whoever you are now."

She nodded. "I am Myriam," she said. "With you I always am."

"My crotch remembers otherwise," I said. "How long have you known Erica?"

Her eyelashes batted. She seemed to struggle with what to answer. Then a decision was made.

"I met her in the second year of my job at Brinston Impex," she said. It was the firm where Myriam had worked in our old town. It was also in the second year of our marriage.

"We had a big party after winning some business. Erica was William Brinston's date. We got along great..." Her voice faded. She looked away before going on. "It was the first time I let Estelle out...as far as I know...since we got married, I mean."

There was a silence. "As far as I know," she repeated. The sheer curtains at the open doors billowed with the breeze.

Myriam cleared her throat.

"When I surfaced again, I was alone with Erica. We were naked and kissing. She said she loved me. I didn't know what to say. I grabbed my things and fled."

Myriam rose and started tidying up the room. As she did, she talked. She suddenly seemed in a hurry to get it all out.

"Erica was an escort girl, you know. A classy hooker -- very high scale and expensive. That evening Estelle filled me in on everything that had happened. She said she had fallen in love with Erica. She admired her and her lifestyle. She never stopped harassing me about it. Soon the black-outs returned. Whenever you were away for business, Estelle pushed me aside and grabbed what she wanted. But one thing was different from then on -- she kept telling me everything she did."

The surrealism of her inner dialogue made the skin on my back crawl.

By then she had collected a pile of blouses, dresses, skirts and underwear. She started picking up empty glasses and bottles as she talked. She asked if I wanted anything to drink. I shook my head no.

She stood for a second. Maybe she wondered how to go on.

"The man you saw me...eh, Estelle with at the Excelsior," she then said. "He wasn't a client. Ah well, he was a client, but not of Brinston's. He was a trick, as they say. A john. Erica had turned Estelle into an escort. The man was one of her regulars. She dated him as often as he was around and she was...available."

I remembered the smiles, the touching, the intimacy. It still flushed me with a helpless kind of anger.

"And you were fucking Erica too?" I asked -- careful to use the aggressive wording.

"I...Estelle...saw her as often as she could," Myriam went on. "I, eh...I think they were really in love."

I walked over to the open doors. I didn't want her to see my face.

The beach was emptying as the sun went down. I saw a pink umbrella and two lounge chairs. On one was a woman -- I couldn't see who she was. I turned back to Myriam.

"And then I kicked you out," I said.

She nodded.

"Yes, Bruce. And I could not understand why you did that. It hurt so much. I had tried and I had fought. I had done everything to save our love and our marriage. I loved you and you divorced me."

Tears ran down her face. I didn't say a thing.

"I fought the divorce, Bruce. But my hands were tied. Estelle sabotaged everything I tried. I wanted to beg your forgiveness. I tried to tell you about my...condition. I fought for us. But she blocked my voice. And Erica helped her. Erica wanted her for herself. I didn't stand a chance against the two of them."

The third-person insanity made me shiver.

"Estelle took over after you left, Bruce," she went on. "I quit my job and Erica set me up as a full time professional. She also encouraged Estelle to have these done..." 

Her hand fluttered over her chest. "Later on she had them made even bigger."

"After the divorce I went to Dallas. Well, you know what I did there."

"Public relations," I said. I could not let the stab pass. She winced.

"Erica helped me getting set up. But she often had to go back for her regulars. We saw each other as much as we could."

"You?" I said.

It took her three seconds to see what I meant.

"Eh..Estelle...Estelle of course." She blushed. I held her gaze until it wavered.

"Onslow was one of her regulars, wasn't he?" I asked.




Two's a Crowd Ch. 11



"Yes," she said, still flustered by her slip. "She became his mistress. He took her with him to New York and set her up in an apartment. Estelle begged her to let her join her, but Erica didn't want her in New York for obvious reasons."

"Those being me, I guess," I said. "Why did you come to me in Dallas, with your sob story?"

She sat down with a sigh -- there was an empty bottle of champagne in her hands.

"That wasn't a sob story, Bruce. Please, believe me. Meeting you was a shock. It made me rattle at my cage. It gave me enough energy to struggle my way out and be Myriam yet again for a short while. I had to see you and explain, Bruce. I loved you. I still love you. I had to see you!"

I watched her emotions. Maybe it was true. Maybe not. Too many damn maybe's.

Myriam rubbed her eyes with a discarded sundress. When she looked up, there was an angry glare on her face.

"Then you had to set me up at that damn Houston Hilton, " she said with a shrill voice. "That was low, Bruce. It was so cruel. I...that is Estelle I mean, she had no way to know it wasn't a regular number -- just another fuck for money. Why did you have to humiliate me like that?"

Her logic made my head spin. It also made me overlook how she yet again had mixed the "me's" and "hers."

"You should have taken me with you, then and there," she whispered. "You should have saved me."

I sat down close to her. I even took her hands in mine.

"Why, Myr? Why did I have to do that?" I asked. Her eyes were right in front of me, shifting like a bird in a cage. "I didn't have any reason to save you. I had to save myself. I set you up that afternoon because I still loved you. I had to kill that love, because it was killing me. Don't you see, Myriam? I had to kill the last remains of my love. They refused to die and didn't allow me to move on. I had to see you like the slut you were. I had to have my life back!"

She started crying again. Fat tears welled up and fell over the rims of her eyes.

"It wasn't me, Bruce," she sobbed. "It wasn't me."

I walked away from her. I needed the distance. 

I saw that the pink umbrella on the beach had been closed, the lounge chairs were empty. I turned back to the sobbing woman on the couch.

"Myr," I said. She looked up. "Houston did not kill my love for you."

Her face lit up. I raised my hand.

"But that was not because of you. I knew by then that you didn't love me. You haven't for a long time. The Estelle story is bullshit, Myriam. It may have been true once. But if you really loved me, you would never have lured me into the plot Erica set up. That was a cruel, very cruel thing to do."

She cried again.

"I don't even think the seizure was real, was it? At the reception?"

She gave no reaction.

"Was it to give Erica a chance to get the papers? I guess she didn't find them that time."

She stopped crying, looking up. Her face was a mess.

"I am so sorry, Bruce," she said. "I guess that was mean. I thought I could be yours. I wanted to. I really tried to. I know I should have tried harder." 

There were new tears. They had stopped touching me. Her voice was almost inaudible by then.

"Maybe I have always been more Estelle than Myriam," she whispered. "I guess I had no choice, honey. I had to satisfy Erica -- do what she wanted. I wanted that too. I love her. She is so strong. She is stronger than you, Bruce. Stronger than me. I am sorry, honey. I am very sorry."

I took a deep breath as I realized what she had just said. I saw how simple my thinking had been -- how foolish. I had considered Estelle as a separate thing, wholly apart from my "true" Myriam. It had never been like that. Estelle wasn't an intruder or a contamination. She was as much Myriam as Myr herself had been. Maybe even more so.

I had wondered if therapy could have freed her of Estelle. Now I saw that it would only have left her mutilated, incomplete -- and very unhappy, no doubt. Successful therapy would have melded the two -- closed the gap. And I knew how in that instant Estelle's personality would have taken over.

Would I have loved Estelle? Would she have even liked me? The thought made me think back to an extremely painful event.

I looked over at Myriam. I considered how she had acted these last few years. How submissive she had been to her more sensual, sexual, outgoing and daring part. I guess nature had done its own rather crude therapy. Painful, maybe -- but irreversible.

Myriam was a name now, a memory -- nothing more.

I walked over and sat next to her. I held her as she cried on my shoulder.

"Who the fuck is making my girl cry?"

The voice was low and not at all angry. It was Erica's. I turned around and saw her stand at the entrance. Her strong, tall body was tanned and naked, but for a tanga bottom and an almost see-through flowery sarong that was tied around her breasts. In her hands were a book and a pair of sunglasses.

She smiled and walked in. Her heeled sandals clicked on the stone floor.

"Hi Bruce," she said. "You found us."

I rose, but she walked right past me to the couch. She sat down and took Myriam in her arms.

"Don't cry, honey," she said. "I'm here. All is well."

Myriam melted into her embrace. They kissed. I just stood there, speechless. When the kiss ended, Myriam's eyes opened. They looked for me. There was a sparkle in them I had not seen before.

She giggled. So did Erica as she hugged her tightly.

"Well, Bruce," Erica said, looking up. "Now why on earth did you have to come and find us in this neck of the woods?"

Her casual words caused an old anger to rise inside me.

"You played me, Erica," I growled. "You betrayed my trust in you and my love for Myriam."

Erica's smile vanished from her face.

"Yes, Bruce," she said. "I did. And I am sorry. You are a good man and I used you. I am an evil person."

Then she suddenly chuckled.

"But what are we going to do about it, honey?" Her voice was mocking now. Myriam giggled with her.

"You see, Bruce, you are wrong and have been wrong for quite a while now. Or let's say deluded. Myriam stopped loving you ages ago, didn't you notice? Ever since I met her at that party -- wow, must have been only two years after she married you -- ever since that day she has been mine, Bruce. I am sorry that I played you, but there were good reasons for that. Selfish reasons, but good ones."

I felt the urge to strike her -- to destroy the both of them. To grab their heads and bash them together. Erica seemed to read it in my eyes. She shook her head with a smile.

"Don't, Bruce. Don't even think about it, honey."

She disentangled herself from Myriam and rose to her silver heeled sandals. She walked over to the fridge and poured rosé wine in two glasses, adding ice cubes.

"I have beer, Bruce. You must be thirsty."

I didn't even react, she shrugged. Walking back, she handed one glass to Myriam. They toasted with a smile. Then she turned back to me.

"You see, Bruce, Myriam and I are in love. We are not just lovers, we are a couple. She is my wife. She also is my sweetheart, my slut, my bitch and my eh...property."

"Myr!" Her voice suddenly felt like steel in a velvet glove.

Myriam looked up, eyes wide.

"Clean my feet, honey," Erica said. She lifted her left foot. The sandal dangled from her toes.

Myriam put away the wine. She slid to her knees and crawled to the woman's foot. She took off the dangling shoe and looked up to the woman. Her face beamed with utter devotion. Then her tongue appeared between her lips. She went down and started licking Erica's toes.

Erica smiled at the girl's bent head, then at me. There was no triumph. There was pity.

"You see, Bruce," she said, taking a sip of her wine. "Myriam is mine. She always was. And it makes her very happy. Aren't you happy, Myriam? Tell me."

The girl at her feet stopped licking. She looked up. Her face was radiant. 

"Oh yes," she whispered. "I am very happy."



Two's a Crowd Ch. 12



I sat in the inevitable chair, right across the dressing cubicles. It was a bit of a wobbly chair. Every cubicle was in use. 

I hate to go shopping with my girlfriend just as much as the next guy -- especially for clothes. But still I grinned. For I knew there was something in it for me, too. A lot, actually.

I was gathering credit points for a reward. And I collected them with a smile.

The reason for my smile was in the second cubicle from the left. She was the most beautiful woman I knew and she had done strange things to me. Right now, for example, she had reduced me to a teenage boy who imagined her standing half naked behind that flimsy curtain. And, as a teenage boy, I had had to rearrange the crotch of my pants, hoping that none of the women around me would notice what I had done.

Yes, I was in love all over again with the woman in cubicle two from the left. In fact, she was looking for a dress to wear tonight for when we would first go to the Met. Next we would have an intimate supper at our special Italian restaurant, after which we would walk over to our tiny piano bar and have our habitual nightcap-and-dance. 

But tonight at supper I would present my love with a small but very expensive trinket in a velvet covered little box. So -- if all goes well and why shouldn't it? -- we might skip the piano bar and...

The images that colored my daydream tightened my pants even more. I sighed and tugged to erase the evidence. My eyes wandered around with embarrassment.

As they did, they got hooked to the gaze of a spectacular platinum blonde. Her eyes bored straight into mine. She smiled a dazzlingly white and red lipstick smile. My first reaction was to blush, feeling caught with tenting pants. But what I saw next undid all my careful rearrangements.

The big haired sex bomb stepped from behind the rack of clothes where she had been standing. First thing -- or rather things -- I saw were her breasts. They were huge and hardly held in check by her tight V-necked angora jersey. It had been tucked into an equally tight mini-skirt. She seemed to wear the skirt only to hug her hips and leave her endless legs free to play all the way down to a pair of towering heels.

Monroe, I thought, but taller. Mansfield -- ah no, sexier... she was just every wet dream the golden era of sex goddesses ever produced. And she brought it all over to me -- sashaying and smiling as if she knew me.

I rose to my feet.

"Bruce?" she asked in a cloud of perfume and sexy breathing. I then knew who she was. But I discarded the notion at once. It was just not possible.

"Yes," she said. "It's me."

I once more took her in -- the hair, the tits, the legs. The glossy, fat lips. And the cool, cool gray eyes, of course.

At that moment something red invaded the corner of my eyes. A tall, blonde woman had left cubicle two from the left. She wore a red velvet, floor length evening gown. It hugged her slim body, leaving her elegant neck, her fragile shoulders and delicate clavicles free.

A blonde Audrey Hepburn, I thought. No, spicier...Lauren Bacall. Yes, I know my classics. I turned around to admire her. She shifted her weight to one hip.

"Well, honey?" she said. "What do you think?"

I walked towards her. My head felt dizzy from overload. My hands cupped her face. My eyes caught her wide blue eyes. And I kissed her.

She gasped when I let her go.

"Oh my, Bruce," she panted. "What was that about?"

"I just had to, Rachel," I said.

She smiled -- a bit nervous it seemed.

"Who was that woman?" she asked.

I looked around. The goddess had gone -- like a mirage. My eyes wandered through the shop. I did not see her.

"Ah," I said. "Someone I thought I knew once."

"She looked...amazing."

"Yes," I said. "Amazing."

Then I turned back to her.

"Rachel? Will you marry me?"

*** 

The End.