The next morning, I woke up next to Darla and her hand was inches from my face, but only resting on my chest.
They say fingernails, not eyes, are the windows to the soul. If that was true, then Darla's soul was pink, shaped like rose petals but without variation to the curve, accented here and there with tiny red hearts painted in an arrangement that created the faint image of a larger heart on each nail.
Think cutesy, soulless prettiness. Emptiness.
A girl playing woman's games for a girl's reasons, with hearts on her nails that no real woman would suffer wearing.
I yawned. Maybe I stretched a little.
My first thoughts were that my night with Abby had been only a dream, which would have meant that I hadn't cheated on my wife Gabrielle after-all.
For my still awakening brain, this was an easy thought to accept, but then I realized that Darla getting pounded by Ricky and following him to his bed would have had to have been a dream, too, because she wasn't in his bed now.
Unless she was in his bed, and I was too, having somehow joined them in my sleep.
God-knows-what-might-have-happened-between-that-stout-Latino-man-and-me.
I sat panicky-upright, looked around for him, didn't see him, checking under the covers around Darla's sleeping frame.
No Ricky anywhere. It was my bed, after-all. And Darla was in it too, her teenaged frame sprawled face-down next to me, flimsy baby-blue thong straps tied low around her fair hips, but still tied to her hips.
Effortlessly, her lithe arm stretched high, and then settled back down on my chest. She pulled herself an inch or two closer to me before giving up and drifting off.
So then, I started to think, maybe all I did last night was sleep in the same bed with Darla, without breaking my commitment to Gabrielle, or letting Abby take advantage of my needful erection.
But then Abby stepped through the curtain, wearing the same black negligee she had worn last night. In the morning light, I realized that she was of Indian descent, though lighter-skinned than most Indians I had seen. She was also tall, long-legged.
Instant, needful arousal. Longing regret.
It seemed as if Abby noticed Darla first, and for a moment I thought I saw something like anger flash across her beautiful Indian face.
I thought she would do something much worse, but Abby only leaned over me, picked up Darla's white arm by the wrist - holding it as if it were a snake - and dropped it on the pillow.
"I went to go use the phone," she said, "and I guess she came back while I was gone."
Still face-down, Darla made a small mewling noise and stretched her arm out once more, searching for my chest, but I sat upright, heaved my legs over the side of the bed and found that I was slightly wobbly.
"I need to make a call," I said as Abby traced down my torso with a warm finger, finding a thin trail of pubic hairs to follow right to the waistband of my thong. She knew I was going to call Gabrielle. I pulled on a robe and stepped through the curtains.
Everything was fine until as I was walking away Abby said, "Roberto says hi."
Too weird for me. I kept walking and waved behind me.
But before I was out of earshot, she said, "He and Gabrielle were in the same bed last night. He said she couldn't stop talking about you."
I felt sick.
I needed to find the phone.
A woman answered on the third ring, went to go get Gabrielle. Apparently the other house was already having breakfast and we hadn't even woken up yet.
I wondered if she had showered alone or with someone else.
Interrupting my rumination, Gabrielle picked up the phone. She sounded happy, aloof, unconcerned as if she had just heard a funny story at the dining room table.
I couldn't match her enthusiasm, but she didn't seem to notice.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Eating." In the background, someone said something and she laughed into the phone.
