It took until Sunday afternoon for me to accomplish the beginning of the end of my marriage. The rest of the process that would turn me into an ex-husband took another four months, with many unpleasant moments along the way. It's not something I really want to dwell on, so suffice it to say that Gloria divorced me, though at least for the usual "irreconcilable differences" and not my sordid sex life. Since I was able to get very liberal visitation privileges with Little John, I was not too busted up about that. Yeah, my son is now the product of a broken home, but that was going to happen sooner or later, and maybe sooner will work out better for him.
So, there I was, almost 30 and single. Not quite as well off as before (she got the house and there was child support, which I didn't mind at all, and alimony for 2 years, which I did), but otherwise free to pursue whatever lifestyle I preferred.
That new lifestyle began with me packing a week's worth of clothes and some other stuff into the trunk of my car and making a call to Martha's answering service. They had a message for me, to park my car at space 212 in a certain garage in Evanston, where I would be met and brought the rest of the way to the condo on Sheridan.
When I pulled into the garage spot there was an SUV backed into 214, with the limo driver, Joyce, at the wheel and a guy I didn't know in the passenger seat. When I got out he got out and asked, "You John?" When I said I was he said, "My name's Sam. I work for Mary. Martha said you needed a lift to her place." I said I appreciated the help, and dragged my suitcase from my trunk to the back of the SUV. After we got that put away Sam put me in the back seat and resumed his shotgun position. On the short ride to the condo he explained that parking spots were at a premium in the building, and their cars used all they had been able to buy. That was about all we had time for before we got to the garage, where Joyce dropped us off. Sam did the bypass thing with the elevator so that it took us straight to the 6th floor. I pointed to the center door, he nodded yes and headed for the apartment on the right.
Martha answered my knock. It looked as though she'd just had a shower. She looked good in a fluffy robe, her hair still wet and straight. She smelled good. I realized I was happy that it was her who had opened the door and not Mary. It felt like my dick was happy to see her, too. Naturally, there had been no sex at home, so he had healed up nicely and seemed to be ready to return to action. Martha more than turned me on.
Once again I found myself hoping for a kiss. Once again I didn't get it. Martha said, "Come on in, but try to be quiet. They're all asleep." I carried my bag into the living room and she locked the front door, then motioned me to follow her across the living room and through the master bedroom. Mary, Thomas, Matthew and Luke were snuggled together like a bunch of newborn puppies. The sheets were tangled, the air smelled of sweat and sex and the bowl of used condoms on the bedside table was half full.
When we got to the screen, Martha moved it aside, revealing a door. She turned the lock and opened it, then opened the door on the other side and motioned me through into what turned out to be an apartment that was the mirror image of the one I had just left - at least as far as the floor plan was concerned. Aside from the kitchen, which was pretty much the same, the furnishings in the rest of the condo were more traditional, given to heavier wood with a lot of leather upholstery. Notably missing were all the mirrors in the master bedroom. And in he living room I felt the absence of the picture in the other apartment that had caught my attention. That disappointed me. I wanted to spend some time with it, and I had a feeling that my time in Mary's apartment would be occupied by other things.
I could tell that someone read a lot, or wanted you to think they read a lot, because the living room had a four-section book-case along one wall, the top two shelves full and the third filling up. Eclectic, even if I could not read the titles, with the books ranging from leather-covered hardbacks to trade paperbacks with what looked like a half shelf of textbooks thrown in. My guess was that this wasn't for show, otherwise it would have been more consistently high-tone.
After we crossed the living room, Martha took me into the second bedroom. Another big bed, but again without all the mirrors on the ceiling and walls. Pretty basic, really. A good place to rest. Actually, the whole apartment seemed more restful for some reason. Of course, one good orgy might change all that, but for now it felt peaceful, which I suddenly realized is what I needed after all the excitement of Friday night, and the drama that followed when I got home.
Martha must have sensed my fragility, because she turned, took my suitcase which she dropped on the floor, and leaned in and hugged me tight. After awhile she turned her head up and looked into my eyes, I finally got that kiss I had been hoping for. A nice, slow, deep kiss that went on for what seemed like minutes. I could feel her breasts pressed against me, and she could no doubt feel my cock stiffening between us.
Eventually we broke the kiss, though not the hug. I was coming to like this woman more and more. What a contrast she offered to the Gloria I had just left. Way too heavy a thought, so I just said, "Something I can do for you ma'am?"
"Most definitely, but later. You know, you guys aren't the only ones who can get worn out from sex. Right now my cunt's a bit sore. And we need to talk."
"Sure, where would you like to do that?" I asked.
"Can you lie on a bed with a woman and still think with your big head?"
"Believe it or not, I'm pretty disciplined. If that's what's on the menu, big head it is. Though I'm also very flexible if she were to decide it was the little head she really wanted to talk to".
"Good, I could use some rest," she said as she led me into the master bedroom, like Mary's without most of the mirrors. "Let's lie down here and talk." She reached into the drawer of a bedside table and came up a pair of the padded handcuffs like she had used on me in the other apartment. "If it would help keep your hands out of the game, I can l offer you these."
"Actually, those might not help me keep my mind on whatever it is you want to talk about. Let's go with willpower for now."
Martha put the cuffs back in the drawer and lay down - on "my side" of the bed as it happened. Ah well, not my house, and being on the wrong side of the bed was a decent price to pay for crawling into it with her.
Once we were settled, with a good six inches between us, Martha said, "Right now I know a lot about you. Those reports that Mike got on you guys didn't stop with the local cops and D&B. As best I can tell, except for being a sex addict, you're a plain whitebread sort of guy. Respectable academic record, very nice job with a very nice salary to start and three good raises in your first three years. Healthy bank balance, even healthier 401(k). You pay off your credit cards every month. Not a whiff of drugs. No kiddie porn, much less the real thing. Fairly frequent visitor to local swinger clubs this last year. I guess that's when you marriage hit the skids. Sometimes alone, usually with a lady and usually a different lady from the ones before. You don't seem to have any racial or ageism prejudices, or at least your dick doesn't. If you're bi, that hasn't shown up yet.
"So far, so good. What I don't know is how genuine the surprise on your face was when you saw Mary's driver's license on Friday night. Are you really some guy who just stumbled on to her, or have you been targeting her all along?"
"Look," I said, "I'll swear on the Bible, the Kinsey Report or whatever you want me to; I was surprised when I made the connection. But that's what I'd say if I were lying, too. You came on strong about trust the other night. Right now you either give it or you don't."
"John, listen to me. I'm not just trying to protect Mary here. I'm trying to protect you. If I give you that trust, and it turns out you're running some sort of scam, you're almost certainly going to get hurt."
I turned on my side and started to say something but she said, "No, listen, hear me out. I'm not threatening you. That's not what I do, it's not even what I want hanging over you. You've got a nice cock, a nice mouth, nice eyes. So far, I feel good being around you and not just between my legs. But I'm not the one you need to worry about. Mary comes with strings, and some of those strings lead to other people who you do need to worry about. You remember that guy with the limp that I told you about. Well, I didn't ask for that. Mary must have talked to someone, and I didn't even know about it until later.
"And the asshole in St, Louis who was pimping Mary out? You remember that scene in The Godfather, 'Oh Paulie, won't see him no more.' Well, 'you won't see him no more' either. Mary doesn't know that, but she's not the only one who keeps in touch with Sally and Bruce. Bruce told me that the asshole did not make a pretty corpse.
"You may have noticed Thomas when you walked through the other bedroom. He says he has a couple of sons who'd be happy to help out with Mary's 'problem' but he says he's not willing to risk their health until he has a better feel for whether fucking Jack Doe's daughter on the Q.T. is going to get anyone messed up. I do think that we're all okay there. But if you were to go from just fucking her to fucking her over, I'm pretty sure that your life would become what they call complicated. Mess her over badly enough and it could go to very unpleasant or worse.
"If you are running a scam and it gets you seriously messed up or dead, I guess maybe you might deserve it. But I'm selfish. I wouldn't want that on my conscience. So, if you are, for all our sakes, please just back the fuck off now."
I let it go for a few seconds to make sure she was finished, then I said, "Okay, Martha, here's the deal. I have an idea, the start of a plan. That plan is going to need money. How much, I don't know for sure, possibly as much as a million bucks to get it going. I don't have that. My plan for solving that part of the deal was to get a bunch of well-to-do sex addicts together and have them all chip in. I figured that the people who looked and dressed like the people I saw at the SAA meetings I'd been attending in an up-scale Chicago suburb just might be able to scrape up $100K each. I picked you and Mary for the same reasons that I picked Matthew, Thomas, Luke and the other four who haven't joined up, yet anyway. You looked bored and like you didn't want to be in the program and, okay, I was hoping you might have no trouble getting a hundred grand together if you liked what you heard.
"I really did not know who Mary was or the money that she had - hell, she didn't dress that much better than the rest of us and never said anything much in the meetings, especially anything that might indicate she was richer than sin - until I saw her license and the light went on. I hadn't even known her last name until then. At the meetings it's always 'Hi, I'm so and so first name, and I'm a sex addict.' In 4 months she never said anything that would indicate she was in the upper 1/10th of one percent. I don't have the resources that you have for checking up on people, so there was no way I could be targeting her.
