Pam
Pam is a character from a couple chapters of 'Epiphanous'. Her circumstance fueled a storyboard in my mind that I think was worth exploring. This is not a story of great wrongs and retribution. There is no bitch burning and from my perspective there is no judgement of right or wrong. These are people who might do what others would not or not do what others might rush into.
There were no real people harmed in the writing of this story and it is not a collection of my experiences in any way except in understanding the emotions involved. I am going to leave anonymous commenting open for now but will probably delete those comments that are not constructive and adding to any fruitful discussion.
This could have gone into 'Loving Wives' but I think it fits much better into the 'Romance' category even though the character is pulled from a story in the former.
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David from The Epiphanous Spouses Pt. 6
When we entered the hotel I noticed Kiera sitting at the bar talking with a couple of men but she didn't see me come in. Rather than distract her, I went up the elevator with Pam still at my side. She had left her work case in my room rather than lug it to her home before we left. When we entered the room, she went to the suite bar and poured herself and me a glass of wine and stretched out on the chaise. I changed out of my work clothes and slipped on a pair of shorts and a polo for comfort. When I came out of the bedroom, she looked like she was about to fall fast asleep. I moved her drink out of her hand and to the table and scooped her up in my arms before taking her into the bedroom.
"Why David, are you inviting me to spend the night again?"
"Pam, dear, if I let you out the door, you'd fall asleep and be in the ditch before you hit the drive. You need a good night's sleep."
I laid her down and began undressing her and removing her clothes. It was definitely not an unpleasant chore. She sat up and helped me with her bra and when she laid back down I tucked my thumbs into the waistband of her lace panties and slipped them off her perfect ass. I then bent down, kissed her belly and then her lips and told her to sleep tight.
"Motherfucker" she whispered and then pulled the sheet up over her.
I think she was asleep before I ever got out the door.
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Pam
I think back to those disturbing thoughts on occasion. It isn't an often occurrence and now, with the passing of several years, it is mostly a sad remembrance. I had just finished what I thought was a mind blowing sexual tryst with my regular lover and had barely towel dried my hair when I received the call. It was from Bob's sister, Margo.
"Pam, sit down, OK?"
I glanced over at my rendition of Sven or at least what I pictured a Sven to look like and he had his monkey sex grin on his face.
"Margo, I'm OK. What's going on?"
There was a long pause on the other end of the line before I heard her weeping, almost uncontrollably, and I instinctively knew my worse fear had come home. There is something in a soulmate's heart that knows without speaking. Many of us understand it and some just go with it but when the strike to the heart comes, it is indescribable.
"Pami, it is Bob. We lost him. He was killed."
The long pause was on my end that time and I looked back at the empty shell of Sven and felt as if I had been suspended in some sort of trap. He just lay there naked looking back at me and the overwhelming urge to express my modesty with whatever cover I could lay hands on expressed itself with a grasp of the bedcovers.
"Margo ... I'll call you ..."
I set the phone down and without any emotion, at least any that I could reveal, I told the man next to me that I needed to go. An emergency had come up. A bomb had gone off. An asteroid had crashed to Earth. Any excuse to leave would do but the truth.
In the fog of building grief, I dressed and gathered my belongings before escaping to the long corridor and then to my car. The human psyche can take only so much. I sat in in the parking garage of that hotel and I burst into my own deluge of tears and weeping. My body heaved with grief and gut wrenching sobs deep from where the intimate soul abides. There is nothing like it really. The wail of grief is a heart stricken sound, one usually reserved for the loss of parents, close siblings and friends. This grief was worse. It was for my husband, Robert Daniels, Bob to me.
I called Margo back when I finally got home but only after I somehow pulled myself together in order to have the call. She is the greatest sister-in-law a woman could ever have, bar none. Bob and I had an agreement. If anything ever happened to him, the Marine Corp would notify Margo first and she would then tell me. He didn't think I could handle it directly and he was probably right. Margo and I had our own agreement. She would call me no matter where I was or what I was doing or when. She also knew that I would have to call her back if she ever had to tell me.
Margo was his older sister who had raised him after their parents were killed when he was fourteen. She was seven years older and despite her youth, persevered in keeping them together. I always looked to her as our rock when we needed one and this was no different. She handled all the funeral arrangements and literally held my hand through the worse. I would have been lost without her. She carried me through that first night and propped me up through the succession of days that followed.
She and I had a sit down some months later. I was quite depressed still and having a difficult time coming to terms with the loss. I got to the point where I would uncork a bottle every night and finish it. Being in the midst of Napa didn't help matters. Whatever the case, I was drinking too much and staying in all the time. Margo walked me through that as well. I think she identified what was eating at me.
"Pam, it's the arrangement that's killing you now, isn't it?"
The Arrangement. That is a good way to explain it. Bob was sent to Afghanistan twice. He was away from me for a total of two years by the time he was killed although he was back a month or so between assignments. His unit worked out of Böblingen, Germany and would rotate into the field for deployments. Before he left, we had a long sit down and most people can't understand this but Bob insisted I find a safe, satisfying fuck buddy while he was gone. There was no love involved. It would be nothing more than a good fuck.
The problem, if it can be called that, is that Bob and I were both fucking insatiable. Yeah, it sounds like an old cliché but it is true. When we were together it's what we did for recreation. We fucked each other silly. Everything was on the table between us and I like to think we had the most satisfying love life any couple could have. When two people are wired like that, everything is perfect until something throws a wrench in the works. That's what Afghanistan did. So, he sat me down on his lap and told me to find someone safe, satisfying and discreet. The only rules he gave me were that it had to be safe with someone I trusted and he didn't know and that I would never bring him into the house. Oh, and no falling in love. That would really fuck it up. I ended up telling him I would think about it but I didn't know if I was comfortable with my American Hero fucking some Fräulein on the other side of the world. That was the other side of the coin, of course.
"Margo, you remember when Bob came back that first time? We had some issues to hammer out. You know, I had been sleeping with Jared and it was getting to be a regular thing. There was no love thing there. It was just a good physical fit and it worked. But I still felt like I was cheating and I knew Bob was fucking somebody when he came out of the field. Well, we talked through that and he made me realize that he was not threatened by Jared. He didn't want to meet him or know him but he wasn't threatened at all. He knew I was his wife, his woman and no man would ever take me from him.
I don't know that I felt the same for his Hilda or Ingrid or whatever the fuck her name was. Whatever the case, he knew what we needed at the time and he was right. We both probably would have cheated on each other even though we never would have done that if we were together.
Does that make sense, Margo?"
She looked at me and just smiled.
"Fuck, yes, it makes sense but you know not many people could have done that and still had a marriage!"
"Oh I know that but Bob and I were special. I'll never have another man like him and Margo, at this point, I don't ever want another man in my life like that."
"Pam, you don't mean that. Someday, not now maybe, but someday, you will meet another man who won't be Bob but he'll be different and just as good for you."
I think I just laughed for a while but I also knew deep in my heart I was right and Margo was wrong on that count. As for the Arrangement, I look back on it and I don't feel guilty. I simply remember the good memories and cherish them. The one thing I wish hadn't done was take that fucking call from Margo right after I had just fucked my Sven substitute. I felt soiled and dirty in my grief and that took a long time to get over.
"Margo, when you called me that night, I had just finished fucking another man and it has been eating at me ever since. The guilt of what I did while my husband was dying or already dead, Jesus, I don't know. It's killing me."