"My business is pussy...I, excuse me, its not my business exactly, that is not it at all. I did Sid, Mr. Kingston a favor and I ended up with a shot at something that is business but gathered in Mrs. Honeywell in the process. She owes me a large favor, one she cannot really repay but I let her try."
"On her back?" Chilton asked, raising his eyebrows. They looked plucked but likely weren't, not having the gall to be the least bit unruly. I bet he never waxed because the hair only grew in the correct places, resembling a French garden rather than the blurry impressionism of an English one.
I nodded. "Yes, and her knees and bent over her desk. She's surprisingly flexible, in both respects, yoga and as a matter of culture." I smiled, sure I'd been clever. The man looked down his nose at me and I felt like the perfect booger.
Chilton nodded. "James gave me some account of that. An impressive display, using a woman while another person watches. That is indeed a skill that most people do not possess."
"Practice makes perfect." I muttered.
The man did not seem to hear me. Good, but I still felt like I had "bumpkin" tattooed on my forehead. Fuck, it itched.
"Mr. Kingston serves as an intermediary, brokering business and other arrangements between people who, for various reasons, have no reason to be in the same room and often have many reasons to avoid it. When they have a need to exchange something of value to mutual benefit, such people often have need of a third party, an arbiter that they both respect, or often, fear, who will broker their transaction and stand in a position to surely enforce the terms if one or the other of the parties welshes."
Interesting I thought. He waited so I figured I ought to say something and groped for something that was not stupid to say.
"I have little or no involvement in Mr. Kingston's business. I know less." True but it still felt stupid on my lips. But then, everything did, in this man's august presence and he had it, that presence that unconscious privilege breeds into the very motions of his hands buttering a bit of French bread. My hands felt like flippers by comparison.
Chilton nodded.
"Most of us are like you but some of us know some part but none of us know all that Sid Kingston is involved with."
I had more cheese and crackers. I selected a bunch of grapes. The first one puckered me up so much my eyes watered. I damped it with a bit of the bread I didn't recognize with a wine chaser. It did match the wine perfectly. I had a moment of amazement. Perfection in any guise is always remarkable to a cad like me, even if it's just the right wine, crackers and cheese. He waited until I got the tears out of my eyes with the corner of my napkin.
"So what did you want to discuss with me?" I was blunt to hide my increasing unease.
"Ah, American directness." Chilton said.
I couldn't divine if it was approval or not.
"No. You make me fucking nervous. I just want to know if I am in Dutch for handing a black woman off to your son."
Chilton did laugh then. That made me feel a little better and of course, the wine helped.
"No, I do, however, have something of a delicate nature to discuss with you. I understand that James revealed my little secret, or I should say the nature of my wife's family? Her sister-aunt is an amalgam of confusion. I thought it would be difficult to sort it out but had the conviction that I would, that I could in time. I considered it a new challenge I'd avoided in my youth under the guise of good sense. My marriage is generally regarded as reckless, a crisis of old age and her sister makes that seem a just judgment, though Mercy always balances that out. Mercy is a brunette wonder, intelligent, capable but when it comes to her domineering Aunt, er half-sister, she is confused to say the least both in a practical sense and sexually. There is little about them I don't know, lad, including their penchant for sexually tantalizing my son." He cleared his throat.
"That is a poor choice of words. Lest you think I am a clueless old man let me forgo my English skill with euphemism and say it clearly. I know they shag him or he them. I am as yet confused about who would morn the loss of the other the more. They seem equally willing to engage in copulation under my nose and I have played the poor old doddard to their flaunting it in my face. They think I am daft but I know it all. I am confused about the instigators by choice as much as ineptness and it may yet turn out that they are all three part of the lurid pattern. I thought I would find a way to sort this mess out at one time, for Mercy's sake and truly, my own for I do love her dearly. Alas, I haven't. She is a sexual deviant beyond where I am willing to take her, even with my English education. I am not given to buggery and she seems to have a penchant for it. Oh, you'll find out soon enough. But that is not the issue for me."
I waited. The man chewed over his thought and finally spat it out.
"You are doing me no small service by agreeing to take wife and sister-in-law, uh, in hand, shall we say? Or is it best to be equally direct and say you are taking them into your bed? No matter. I pay my debts. My son, bless his heart, has been trying to find a way to relieve me of the burden of my wife's sister for several years. I am bound by simple chemistry to my wife and when her sister insists, I cannot refuse her either, since they apparently share that chemistry. It has made for poor weather in my household as they are not given to equanimity when it comes to sharing me. Jamie has borne up admirably but I cannot say he is sanguine about it. I have not been, of a certain. I know he has had them both, wife and sister, or aunt if that makes it attractively perverse or less so. That does not seem to be a good solution because despite it, once mounted, he seems to have lost his attraction for Patrica, though not, it seems for my wife, his step-mother."
The man wiped his brow.
"I am in debt to you, if you succeed in having them both together. They are a handful, I'll warrant. Unfortunately, my son James has offered to pay you in coin that is not his, using what is not his to offer. He is trading you my wife and my sister-in-law, neither of which are his to trade despite his conviction to the contrary, a nicety that he seems to have overlooked. This fact seems to have escaped him but not me but it offers me an opportunity I am loath to ignore and let fly by. I want you to be paid in like coin but in doing so, you would do me and James a boon, even though he may not understand it like that.
"You see, since I married, James has been unwilling to live with my ex-wife and seems unhappy living with me because of my wife and her consort, though I account that to him as virtue, reluctant to shag them without restraint as he could, perhaps does. He is unable to live alone, as he has an addiction problem that lifts its ugly head if he is left alone, to his own devices.
"My wife, ex-wife I mean, she resents him and makes his life a misery, mostly because he gets green jealous if she goes near to another man, so they both contribute to their mutual misery. She will not move on and he won't let her. His behavior has been reprehensible. His has been no better but I am in no position to rebuke her or even to criticize her, saddled as I am with my dual perversity that stains my son, so I can hardly complain to my ex-wife about her effect on him, now can I? She and Jamie struggle with each other. They both suffer because he sees her as a paragon of virtue who cannot be despoiled by the common animalism that sex usually requires, the double-backed beast and all. He deplores her when she seeks male companionship. It is either some misguided attempt to defend my honor or a prudish contempt reserved only for his mother. Unfortunately, this regard, warped as it may be, has spilled over into the life of his sister, newly turned nineteen. The last year has been a humiliating misery for her because her brother is now feared in her social circles since he has transferred protectiveness from his mother to include his sister but with far more ferocity than he gifted my ex-wife with.
"So here is the point of it. This trade that James has made mistakingly thinking to offer you Mercy and Patricia, I will make good on, in my own right. Take them my wife and her sister, if you can, I offer you them both, in exchange for the lawyer and her sister, and I'll allow James to collect them in my stead. However, and this will come as a surprise to my son, Jamie must trade you my ex-wife and my daughter for your two black sisters. Jamie will only have the right to your two females if you take his mother and sister, the two he may actually lay claim to owning. I suspect he will seek to distract me with my weakness for the Asian female and he surely will and if you let him, then we'll all have a bit of stuff to satisfy us. You will end up with both my wife and her sister-aunt and also my ex-wife and daughter in exchange for the black sisters and whatever Asian confection you can bestow on me at James' behest. James thinks he is ridding me of Patricia and disenchanting me with Mercy but they are not his to offer, so I will validate his offer but in doing so, give you his mother and sister, but only if he witnesses your spoliation of them. That is essential. He must see them racked with ecstasy on the end of your able prick, as I understand your reputation.
"Lest you think I am a rounder, this is partly their plan, my ex-wife and daughter, indeed it is their idea in a way, desiring that he witness their copulation, their bodies plundered, mounted by another man. Bind him if you must or not, but have them, plunder their nether riches while he watches because then he cannot see them as pure and blameless any longer in such matters. Make them sluts and whores and if that doesn't serve to open his eyes to their sexual natures, sell them to your friends and use them to the nth degree. I tell you, you will do them a service if you make them serve your basest desires. Do every dire deed with them, that you can ever imagine, they will serve you willingly and if you live up to the reputation I and my people have gleaned in this short time, they will delight in it and show James what it means to be rogered with purpose. So shag them, I beg of you in the hope that Jamie will see them forever spoiled and no longer deserving his protection." He cocked his head, steepled his hands before his face and regarded me with his watery blue eyes with all the calm of a hurricane's eye.