I blame Emily Blunt.
I thought I'd been a good man. I went to school, got a degree. Got a good job. Had a good marriage to a smart, attractive, funny wife. Yet, here I was, with my life upside down. That attractive wife? She just came out as "asexual" and wants me to hook up with our widowed older neighbor. That neighbor? She wants me exclusively until she can hook me up with some stranger to breed. And breeding? Yeah, it seems I've probably knocked up the neighborhood swinger couple's wife. All so I can be blackmailed by my gross, unattractive other other neighbor, who happens to host movie nights.
A diagram might be necessary.
So, there I am, walking back from the Widow McGill's place, my dick still moist with the product of our, erm, negotiations, all while trying to figure out what to say to Susan about her, erm, coming out. And Mary intercepts me.
Last time she wanted to show me something, it was the photo she took of me (probably) impregnating Belinda, our neighbor. What could she want to show me beyond that?
Tonight she's in a shapeless gray sweatshirt, to ward off the evening chill. The movie had taken us to half past nine and whatever Cindy McGill and Susan and I were up to brought the time close to midnight. She's wearing bright blue scrub pants underneath that accentuate the acres of thigh meat hanging from her torso.
"C'mon up here. I don't bite... at least until we're horizontal." I groan inwardly. Could she proclaim my infidelity any louder? She's waving the phone at me insistently, though, so I go to look.
It's like a calendar app. Today is highlighted in pinkish red. Oh. Oh, I get it. Twenty-nine day cycle, CD1, starts today. It's fertility tracking.
"I don't know what movie we're watching next week," she says, "but the week after we're going to have to choose carefully. Because you know what day it is?"
"Uh, no?"
"Maximum fertility day. The day before ovulation. And I don't know. What do you think of Last Tango in Paris?"
"Hmm, isn't that kind of pornographic? I was thinking more Apocalypse Now?"
"It'll be an apocalypse for your marriage, lover, but not for nine months, eh? I usually feel gross when I'm on my period, but it's still pretty light so far. Maybe you should earn your red wings tonight?"
"Red wings?"
"When you do it with a gal on the rag, dude." She's tugging my arm to get me to go inside with her.
"Susan's waiting at home for me. Can I get a rain check?"
"I'm on the late shift next week. Come back in the morning. Don't make me come to you!"
"Wouldn't dream of it." And I escaped, if you can call it that, home.
Susan is somewhere between tears and euphoric when I get there. I spend a long time explaining that Cindy is very nice for offering her "services" to us with "our problem". I don't let on that I boned her six ways from Tuesday or that, apparently, I'm now hers exclusively. Nor her designs on getting me married to someone who isn't Susan. Talking to Susan is just as easy and comforting as it has ever been--maybe more so--now that sexual tension has left the building. But I'm not sharing with her the dark secrets lurking all around us. I comfort her and we go off to bed, to sleep near each other.
Susan snores lightly. I stare at the ceiling.
When I wake, it's after nine on Friday morning. I've missed a call at work and I'm scrambling to douse fires as a result. At a quarter to eleven, not able to stand it anymore, I grab as fast shower to wash the stale sex smell off, and, stepping from the shower, hear a furious knocking at the front door.
Crap. It's Mary and she's come to me. Her scrubs today are pink with little storks carrying babies--apparently she's working the birthing center now? She looks angry through the peephole, but when I pull the door open she takes one look and smiles. I'm fresh from the shower and wearing only a bathrobe--she must think it's for her.
"There you are. I was beginning to think you were going to stand me up. And we all know how awful that would have turned out."
"No, just overslept and had a wicked morning. What brings you here?" I ask, as she barges into the foyer.
"As if you don't know," she says, trying for something the realm of 'playful' but sticking the landing on Bela Lugosi. "I'm wearing pink, but you're going to be wearing your red wings."
She doesn't even slow down, just heads back towards the stairs. Our bed is unmade and Susan's Pillow Fortress of Solitude is still down the middle. Mary doesn't even seem to notice, or maybe she doesn't care. She sweeps the bedclothes off and turns to face me. "I'm ready, lover, come worship me."
Her top has a v-neck shape, but no buttons or fasteners that I can see, so I just pull the top up and she works it off her body and over her head. Underneath a sports bra has tamed her sagging tits into a single amorphous blob that I don't care to disturb. Her hair is up in its usual tight bun, but I'm inspired to let it down. She has some kind of stick and leather thing holding it together, so I pull out the stick.
"You like my hair?" I admit that I do--it is her best feature, although, one might say that it's her only feature. It's slightly curly and a kind of dishwater blonde color. "It's shoulder length now, but maybe you like it longer?"