Sunny Park Ch 01

I, Margaret Desdemona Callan, presently residing at 320 Reage Avenue in Sunny Park, California, declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, and hereby...

Toby skimmed the rest of the document, printed on high quality paper, that had been mailed to him by his Aunt's lawyer. Aunt Meg was a character, and he'd always enjoyed her visits and the scandalous stories she told, although he doubted very many of them were true. She didn't have any children - got fixed, she used to say, so she could do whatever she wanted, wink, wink - and so he would not be particularly surprised to find out that she'd left him something. It wouldn't be much, and it wouldn't be as good as having her show up on his doorstep and ask him what sort of mischief he'd been up to, but he couldn't pretend to be

uninterested

. He had student debts to pay. Moreover, the legalese wasn't interesting at all.

She appointed her lawyer, Bill Goldstein, as her Personal Representative. That seemed to mean executor. Blah, blah, blah.

I do hereby bequeath my estate to my nephew, Toby Edmund Brown, and to my niece, Faith Constant Cromwell, save for my real property, share and share alike, with certain conditions.

Should Toby Edmund Brown fail to reside at 322 Reage Avenue, in Sunny Park, California, for at least ten months out of each calendar year, he shall forfeit all interest in the estate.

Should Faith Constance Cromwell fail to reside at 320 Reage Avenue, in Sunny Park, California, for at least ten months out of each calendar year, she shall forfeit all interest in the estate.

Should either make an effort to contest this will, he or she shall forfeit all interest in the estate.

Should either or both forfeit, their allotment of the state shall be distributed equally to the following charities...

The money was held in trust, so no lump sum to pay off his student debts with. Instead, they'd get the interest, which couldn't amount to much.

Two houses? Aunt Meg owned two houses? He kept reading. Apparently, the two houses were to be held in trust for the cousins, for their exclusive use as long as they lived there. Should they fail to live there, the houses would be sold by the executor and the proceeds given to charity. If they lived there until their death, they could will them on to someone else.

And if half the stories Meg told were true, or even a quarter, Sunny Park was a very odd place. A town, perhaps, but also an intentional community, where people had very open minds. Meg hinted at wild sexual escapades, but of course Toby's parents always shushed her and sometimes told her if she talked that way in front of the children she wouldn't be invited back.

As an adolescent, Toby had hung on every word. Sunny Park sounded like a hedonistic paradise. Now, as an adult, he wondered if he could afford to live there. His job meant going into an office in Manhattan every day, so there was no way he could keep his job and move to Sunny Park. He'd have to get a new job, and he was just starting to work his way up in the financial world. Deserting that all for California would not be a good way to pay off those debts.

And then, there would be living next door to Faith Constance. He wondered what Meg was thinking. Faith's parents had disapproved of Aunt Meg even more than Toby's had, and Faith fell right in line. She talked loudly about saving herself for marriage. She dressed in long skirts, and shirts with Peter Pan collars, not baring so much as an ankle or a collar bone, even in summer. Well, Faith would just say no, simple as that, rather than live in someplace like Sunny Park.

His phone rang. Unknown number, but he decided on a whim to answer it. He wasn't sure if he had Faith's number, for instance. They only saw each other every five years or so, even as kids.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Toby? This is Bill Goldstein. I don't know if you've had a chance to read your aunt's will or not."

"Uh, hello Mr. Goldstein. I can't say I read every word..."

"But you read the part that concerns you? And please, call me Bill. I want to assure you that the will is entirely legal, and the property is in good shape and furnished sufficiently for immediate occupancy. Did you have any questions about anything that I can help with?"

"Well, I don't know if I can, Mr., um, Bill. Live there, I mean."

"Ah, you object to your aunt's lifestyle. She anticipated that one of you might -"

"No, it's not that. I just don't know that I can afford it." He paused. "How much would the interest on that trust amount to, anyway?"

"At current rates, and I checked today, it should provide you with an income of approximately two hundred forty-seven thousand dollars

per annum

."

He blinked. Aunt Meg must have been loaded. Two trusts like that. Half a million a year. And more than he earned going into Manhattan, not to mention the rent he was currently paying. It looked like a no-brainer. It was a no-brainer. "Well, then, I guess I'm moving to Sunny Park."

Bill laughed. "Welcome, neighbor! I'll have some other documents for you to sign sent to arrive tomorrow, agreeing to the by-laws of the community, and all that. Any question about those?"

"No, I'm sure it'll be fine." For a quarter of a million dollars a year, and no rent, he could stand to have a community dictate what color his trim could be painted.

"Right. Well, read them carefully, even though they are wordy, and then let me know when you're coming, so we'll have someone meet you at the airport. It'll be great to have a nephew and niece of Maggie's around the place."

"Great. I'll do that. Wait, have you already called Faith Constance?"

"No, she's next."

"Okay. Well, I'll let you get on with it. I look forward to meeting you in person."

For a quarter of a million, even Faith might decide that it was worth living in Sunny Park. Hmm.

The next day, the documents arrived. At first, he barely read them, skimming through and initialing. He'd figure out what the restrictions were once he got there, how strange could they be?

Then a line caught his eye.

STI testing is mandatory every two weeks.

It wasn't long until he found another interesting passage.

Members agree that they consent to witness nudity, and sexual acts, without objection and without legal recourse, and acknowledge that they fully expect to witness same.

He blinked and started reading more closely.

There are four dining rooms in the community, and your closest is at 42 Blaze Starr Way, although you may eat at any of them. Members are expected to dress for dinner. Men are expected to wear a tie and a jacket.

It didn't specify what women were expected to wear, but maybe they got a different document. He shrugged. Okay, he wore a suit and tie to work now, he could definitely not work and wear one to dinner.

Would he really be witnessing "nudity" and "sexual acts?" He was all in, but he suspected those things didn't actually happen much. Maybe on the beach, people got naked. But if they got frisky, so much the better. He'd watch. And hopefully, participate.

Yeah, this was going to be great.

He wondered what Faith Constance was thinking right now.

Faith, curiously, was wondering the same thing about him, although she had a pretty good idea.

"Toby probably loves this," she said aloud.

On one end of the scale, there was this horrible document she was expected to sign. And then, she was supposed to live in Sodom and Gomorrah, basically. It was crystal clear what she should do. If she refused, the money would go to charity, after all.

A quarter of a million dollars a year. She could give a bunch of that to charity, herself. Ten percent for the church would be twenty-five thousand dollars, for starters. Still, she knew she was fooling herself. She'd keep some of the money. At least half. Maybe sixty percent. Seventy-five percent wouldn't be unreasonable.

She picked up the will again, wanting to see where the money would go if she turned it down.

National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. She made a face. What was the Red Umbrella Fund? She looked it up.

"Supporting the rights of sex workers." Faith may have led a sheltered life, but she knew that was just code for prostitutes, and prostitutes did, well,

things

for money. It wasn't the money that was bad, it was the things, but the things were worse if one did them for money, Faith was sure of that.

Not every charity was like that. But enough. Enough to firm her resolve that none of those organizations were getting their hands on that money, when some of it could go to the church, and when some of it, admittedly, could be used to make Faith herself quite comfortable. She might not be as worthy as the church, but better her than the red umbrella people.

She'd be living next to Toby. Toby would not resist temptation, she thought. He will embrace it, and I will be watching his slow corruption. But perhaps I can save him.

Perhaps I can convince others to turn back, as well. We can form a little community within the community, hold each other accountable and help each other be strong.

Two hundred and fifty thousand smackeroos.

She signed the Sunny Park documents, and before she could change her mind, she sent them in. It's not, she told herself, that I want the money. It's that I don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking of what might have been if I had it.

And the men have to dress for dinner. That won't be bad, at all.

Two days later, she was congratulating herself on making the right decision. The California air was dry and warm, and she didn't even need a jacket. The very nice Mr. Goldstein had picked her up from the airport in a red Rolls Royce! Graying, respectable, he had asked her to call him Bill, which was very kind of him.

"I'm afraid your mother's place will need a little work. Nothing major, just a lot of straightening. Her passing was unexpected, and all her things are still there. She told me to leave everything as it was, and I've only deviated from her wishes where necessary, changing the sheets and so forth."

"Oh, I can deal with a little cleaning," Faith assured him. "It will probably help me feel really settled. This is my first time not living with my parents, actually, but I did a lot of the housework at home. I've always felt that knowing how to keep a house is a good asset for a wife, don't you think?"

"Um, yes, I'm sure that's true, Miss Cromwell."

"So it's not surprising that Aunt Margaret didn't leave things very straight. She never married, you know, and I don't think she even was trying. My maiden aunt."

Mr. Goldstein coughed. Faith hoped he wasn't coming down with anything. Once he managed to stop coughing, he said, "It isn't that Maggie was a bad housekeeper, but more that she didn't expect to die suddenly. No one does, you know."

"Yes. That's what suddenly means. How did she die, anyway?"

Again with the cough. "Well, she was fortunate. She died in bed."

"Ah, in her sleep. That's really the best way, I think. Did she make peace with the Lord first, do you know? I suppose that's too much to hope for."

"She was crying out God's name shortly before she expired," Mr. Goldstein assured her.

He might be just saying that. People did, of course, bear false witness to spare other people's feelings. But still, it was comforting. Truthfully, Faith had never spent a lot of time thinking about Aunt Margaret's immortal soul, because she had figured it was something of a lost cause, but one is inclined to think more kindly of relatives who remember you in their wills. Not so much the money, but the fact that they thought of you. Faith had noticed that those who liked her had excellent taste in people.

"Is Toby there?" she asked.

"Yes, my secretary, Amber, picked him up this morning. I'm sure you're looking forward to seeing your cousin."

"I'm sure," Faith agreed, without saying what she was sure of. That wasn't a lie, surely, as it didn't mean anything. She didn't

not

want to see Toby.

They turned off toward Sunny Park, and were checked in at the gate by a guard who scrutinized her ID. Then they were allowed inside, where, supposedly, someone might be naked or doing things at any moment. Faith steeled herself. She envied the Catholic gesture of making the sign of the cross, because it would have been comforting, but she wasn't Catholic so she didn't do that. She kept her hands folded in her lap.

But she didn't see any naked people. True, she would not be caught wearing some of those outfits the women wore. There was more cleavage and leg on display than in any town she'd been in, and yes, a bit of butt cheek too. But the men were nice. She actually saw more dress shirts than usual, and everyone was in very good shape. A few guys were shirtless, but that was okay for guys, especially ones with six-pack abs. Tight jeans, taut buttocks - well, the men were very nicely dressed and worked out, that's all, and she appreciated men making an effort. Most men were such slobs.

At last the Rolls parked in front of 320 Reage Place. Mr. Goldstein handed her three identical keys. "All yours," he said. "As entertaining as it would be to see you discover what's inside, I'm afraid I have some errands to run."

Entertaining. Now that was an odd word. She walked up the driveway, took a moment to sniff the roses that were in bloom and admire the rows of pink, yellow, and white carnations, and then opened the door.

She wasn't sure what Mr. Goldstein was talking about. Everything was tidy in the little living room, with a few books on the coffee table, but that wasn't a mess and she barely glanced at it. There was a whiff of Aunt Meg's perfume, that would take time to dissipate, but it was only faintly cloying. The kitchen was fine. It was rather odd, really, that the curtains were missing. Hadn't the lawyer said he'd left everything as it was?

She wandered back into the bedroom. No curtains there, either. Perhaps they'd been taken out for washing and not returned. But all still neat and tidy, with black satin sheets. A nightstand, with everything neatly arranged, including some odd plastic thingies in a row. She looked closer. There was a big bottle of something called Astroglide, probably some kind of moisturizer for old ladies. A pink piece of plastic shaped and sized like a cucumber. A piece of shiny metal, that curved and looked a little like a rounded arrowhead, but more three dimensional, and with a flat part on the other end. A translucent purple rubber thing, that looked kind of ugly. She picked it up and looked at it more closely. Who would make such a thing, with all those ridges and what not? It didn't seem to fit the sleek aesthetic of the other objects at all. It looked almost organic. In fact, the bulbous top made it look like the pictures she'd seen of a man's -

She dropped it and screamed.

It's just a piece of rubber, she told herself. It's not like I touched a man's actual thing. I'm still a virgin, it's okay. And I don't have to think about what Aunt Margaret would do with such a thing. Oh no, I thought of it. She died, right here, with that - right there. Oh, she's gone to hell.

But Mr. Goldstein did say she was calling God's name as she died. Surely that counted for something. Even the greatest sinner could come to repentance at the last.

She opened the bathroom, which had a very large bathtub. Big enough for two? But Aunt Margaret wasn't married, that was silly. Just a big bathtub. The toilet had a bidet, which was awfully European, but not

sinful

. Anyway, all nice and neat, with another bottle of moisturizer, this time in a brand she recognized.

She opened the medicine cabinet, where there were the usual sorts of over-the-counter things, and a couple prescriptions. A heart medication. She didn't need that, so she dropped it in the trash can. And - Viagra? Why did Aunt Margaret have Viagra on hand? That went in the trash, too.

There was one other room, down the hall. Perhaps Aunt Margaret was into knitting and kept her yarn there. Or a little indoor garden, with plant lights - they would all be dead now, but Faith didn't think she was cut out to keep plants, anyway. Finding a lot of yarn would be lovely.

She opened the door, looked around, and screamed again.

Toby had assumed, on the first scream, that it was merely the neighbors having fun. Sunny Park. Hell of a place. On the second scream, he realized that the neighbor in that direction was Faith, and he ran.

It was impossible to imagine that Faith screaming meant she was having fun. Okay, not impossible. In fact, he'd imagined Faith having that kind of fun a few times. Faith had a body built for sin - blonde hair, big breasts she couldn't completely disguise, wide hips. Perhaps it was wrong to think of a close relation that way, but thinking wasn't doing.

The door to 320 was unlocked, so he let himself in. He noticed the scent, which reminded him of his favorite aunt. "Faith? Faith?" he called.

Nada.

He glanced in the kitchen, and then went into the hall. He had seen Faith go into one of the rooms, which he assumed was the bedroom, through the window, but she was lying in the entrance to the other, which was on the other side from his place. She was slowly coming to, and he bent over her.

"You okay, cuz?" he asked.

She pointed into the room, without looking at it.

"Wow," Toby said. "Meg must have been really into SM."

"I don't know what SM is," Faith told him. "But that's a torture room. I've read about such places in books. It's where they make you talk. There are whips in there, Toby. Don't look. It's horrible."

Toby looked. Whips, floggers, canes. A giant X-shaped cross, and an odd looking bench with leather padding. Rings in the ceiling far too sturdy for merely hanging plants. A bookshelf filled with ropes and chains. Some odd pieces of leather, and of all things, the world's largest roll of plastic wrap.

He'd read books, too. Different books. "It's a dungeon," he said.

"It would be, if it was underground," Faith said. "On the ground floor I think it's just a torture room. Toby, Aunt Meg did horrible things. But she repented in the end."

"She did?"

"Mr. Goldstein said so."

He didn't think she'd gotten quite the same story he had. He helped Faith out of the doorway and closed the door behind her. "You don't need to look in there if you don't want to," he said.

"I suppose I'll make do with just the one room," Faith said philosophically. "It's more space to myself than I had at home. I'll just keep that one locked up."

"Right. Or you could ask someone to come in and clean it out for you? Sell the stuff in it, maybe?" There were people who would be interested, he was sure.

"No. What they would say about poor Aunt Margaret then? No, Toby, you mustn't breathe a word of it. It will be our secret. We won't have to lie. No one will know."

Toby thought that no one had a room like that without letting quite a few people know about it. Otherwise, what would be the point? In fact, he thought the room might provide a clue as to why Meg had so much money, although it couldn't be the entire explanation. He didn't think being a dominatrix was quite

that

lucrative.

"When's the last time you've eaten, Faith?"

"On the plane."

"Well, dinner starts in an hour. Why don't you lie down, and I'll get you when it's time, and we'll walk over together."

"That would be nice, Toby. Don't forget, suit and tie."

"Yes. We're all required to dress for dinner. You too."

"I

am

dressed."

He let that go. He wasn't sure what to expect himself, but he'd hoped Faith would dress up a little. He shrugged. "Okay. Well, you just rest." He glanced at the nightstand, and smirked. Then he noticed the very realistic rubber dildo on the floor.