It was eleven-thirty when I woke up again and I heard the sound of Julie in the kitchen. She was pouring herself a glass of orange juice and speaking to someone on her cell phone. At first, it was difficult to make out any of the conversation when I sat up from my laying position on the couch trying to regain consciousness.
At the time, Julie was unaware that I had called off from work, and that I was still in the apartment. She didn't know that I had fallen back to sleep on the couch as I looked over to see her holding the cell phone with one shoulder as she tried managing the juice bottle and glass. She looked like she had just woke up herself.
"Yes, Sir. I can be ready in 15 minutes." her voice rang out.
"Yes, Sir. I showered last night. I don't need to ..." she continued, listening and apparently being interupted by the caller.
"Yes, Sir. Okay. I'll be right down, Sir." Julie replied as she hung up the phone.
I watched as my beautiful blonde wife finished off her glass of juice frantically. She rushed towards the bedroom and began sifting through her drawers as I stood up and followed her in behind.
"Honey? What's going on?" I asked.
My wife was startled by my sudden presence.
"Oh my god, Richard! You scared the hell out of me!" she shouted.
"What are you doing here? Why aren't you at work?" she asked, inquisitively.
"Well, I called off. I was a little tired." I answered.
"Don't ever sneak up behind me like that." she scowled.
"I-I'm sorry. I won't." I apologized.
Julie continued getting ready as she spoke to me, not once breaking her momentum as she readied herself. She slipped on a pair of pink spandex pants and a loose tee white tee shirt as she rushed into the bathroom to apply some makeup.
"Where are you going?" I asked, meekly.
"My boss called. We have to run by the center and then pick up some things." she replied.
Julie put her long blonde hair in a neat ponytail and slipped into a pair of flat sandals.
"Wh-what things?" I asked, curiously.
"I don't have time, Richard. I don't know. I didn't ask. My boss told me to get ready and meet him downstairs." she answered.
Again, I was humiliated by her reference to the young black stud as her "boss." I wasn't feeling the greatest, myself, and it appeared that my beautiful wife was in somewhat of a daze from her fatigue too.
She applied a thick coat of deep red lipstick and began digging in her purse, pulling things out and putting things in, making sure she had her makeup, lipstick and wallet packed away. A typical woman's activity, yet she was noticeably rushed, hurried and frantic about it.
I stood there watching as Julie got ready faster than I had ever seen her before. Actually, it was in less than half the time as I have ever witnessed. A feeling of stress came over me as she seemed uncaring that I was home from a regular work day for the first time in my life.
"I gotta go, honey. I'll call you. We'll have a late lunch, okay?" she said, kissing me on the cheek and scurrying off to meet the young black man.
"Well, okay." I whispered, passively.
I walked over to the side window to see my young blonde wife running out to Tra'mon's black Bentley car. For some unknown reason my gaze lingered.
Tra'mon was standing there on his cell phone in his casual shorts and shades, a light blue muscle shirt over his torso exposed his dark chiseled arms. The black python tattoos were revealed on his sculpted arms for all to see. He wore black sandals and a thin, black shiny thug-looking type of satin "doo-rag" upon his head. He merely stood there on his cell as he leaned against his own black Bentley car.
I was astounded to see him arrogantly hold out his car keys with just two fingers as Julie ran up to him. She took them from his powerful hands and scurried over to open the driver's side door.
My first thought that she was going to drive this man's Bentley, but that was not the case.
Astonishingly, she opened the driver's side door and just stood there as she held it open for him. The black stud slowly and methodically sauntered his way towards her. His cocky stroll couldn't have been obvious as he remained on his cell phone, stood there for another moment and then stepped inside. That is when Julie handed the keys back to him and stood there waiting for him to pull his strong legs inside. As he did, I watched as Julie closed the door for him and scurried around to the other side of his car to get inside herself.
"Wh-what the ...?" I gasped.
They drove off within seconds. I almost could not believe what I had just observed. It was such an obvious display of his authority over her that it made me feel weak in the knees.
As I turned back to the bedroom I realized that it was left a mess, which was never Julie's style. She had always straightened things up before she left to go anywhere.
Defeatedly, I decided to straighten things up myself. I picked up the things from the floor of the bedroom and the bathroom before heading for the messy bed to fix it. That is when I noticed the matchbook laying on the carpeted floor of our bedroom. It must have come from Julie's purse and had fallen from the comforter when I was making the bed.
I picked it up the black matchbook and noticed that it had the same black spade symbol on the front cover. The name of the club was on there too.
"Black Jacques Club" was the name of the club, the word "Black" being on the left side of the spade symbol and the word "Jacques" being on the right side of it with the word "club" at the bottom. I turned the matchbook over and saw the printed name of the club, along with the address and website in white letters.
"This must be where Julie went last night?" I thought.
"Geez! This has to be 50 miles away." I gasped, noticing the town it was located in.
Nervously, I went to the computer and looked it up. It was 47 miles away, just as I had suspected and seemed to be almost in the middle of nowhere set off to the end of a larger town. I wondered if it was some sort of casino since the ace of spades type symbol on the cover of this black matchbook resembled what they represented. I wanted to look up their website, but I thought better of it for the tiime being and didn't want to know. Not then. I simply put the matchbook down and continued cleaning our apartment.
About two hours later Julie texted me.
"We're picking up chinese and gonna eat by the pool. Want to join us?" she texted.
"I guess so." I texted back.
"Ok. Meet ya' down there in 20." her returned text message read.
I was just sitting around feeling sorry for myself on my rare day off. My pretty blonde wife had spent all night with the young black man, and now she had the spent the better part of the early day with him too. Her invitation was to join them rather than her and I having lunch together, alone, which I had joped for. Defeatedly, I put my swim trunks on and headed down to the pool area.
I slid one of the lower wooden and padded chaise lounge beach styled chairs over to a table. It had been there already and I simply moved it to that table in the shade and positioned the high backing straight upright. The small, circular white table had three chairs surrounding it, and I moved 2 onto the other side and as far away from the one I reserved for my wife.
I now sat in the lower chaise lounge to the right side of what would be her sitting position and as close to her as possible. My conscious thought was to make the black stud sit further away from Julie while I sat next to her.
There was little time to make any other adjustments with these chairs.
My back was to the glass entry doors leading to the pool area while Julie's chair was only a few inches to my right facing out towards the same door. I felt a small sense of accomplishment in forcing the young black stud to sit on the other side of the table away from us. I even scooteed my lower chair to within six or eight inches of hers.
As I sat and waited for them to arrive, my nerves were causing my hands to tremble. I tried to stop their noticeable shaking. It didn't feel comfortable thinking about having lunch, or any other meal for that matter, with my wife and this black man. I reasoned that at least I would be with Julie, and I knew this would be better than them having lunch all by themselves.
Julie arrived 10 minutes later and she was wearing a solid black bikini that had a small, half dollar sized symbol of a marijuana leaf on the front. It was set at the top of her bikini line and off to the left. Apparently, she had run upstairs to our condo apartment to change first before heading down to the pool.
Julie had never owned a solid black bikini before and, although she looked amazing in it, I just had to ask her about it.
"Oh, yeah. I just got it today. When we were out grabbing some things for the workout center. Trey said it would look cute on me." she said.
"It's a Bob Marley bikini." she laughed.
"Isn't it cute?" she asked, naively.
It was probably the sexist and skimpiest full cut bikini I had ever seen in my life, yet the thought of the black man picking out a swimsuit for my own blonde wife felt demeaning and somewhat rude of him.
"I-I guess, honey. S-sure." I nervously answered.
Julie had the small cartons of chinese food in bags and she began taking them out. She set them down and reapplied a fresh, thicker coat of the deep red lipstick. She then looked at the brown paper bags with the takeout food inside.