A mottled carpet of leaves flew off the blacktop, and then fluttered back to earth like butterflies descending on a field of sage. Just another hour, thought Brady, returning his attention to the road in front of him. He turned his baseball cap around and depressed his right foot, the force of acceleration driving him deeper into his seat. With a push of a button, fresh air rushed into the cabin to the hum of a sliding glass panel. Brady didn't know that the corners of his mouth had curled upward. He was hundreds of miles away, watching her scurry around the bedroom, late as always.
Just another hour. He recalled the way she flopped backward onto the bed, kicking her legs, yanking the leg openings of her yoga pants past her ankles. She lifted her bottom to let the black tights hug her hips. So cute, he thought, just like a little girl. She shrieked and tried to roll away when he made his move for her, but she wasn't quick enough. His hands pinned her between them, that just-showered fragrance driving him crazy. Damp, wavy hair fell away to bare that special place below her ear. He lowered his head for a nibble but she held tight to an immovable forearm rising from the mattress and turned her naked back to him.
We're late already, baby. I promise I'll make it up to you.
She looked over her shoulder and winked.
You know how I get. It'll be worth the wait.
The satellite radio cut out beneath overhanging branches, and suddenly he was back again. Fragments of light flashed through the canopy of deep greens, crimson, and gold, his eyes struggling to adjust to the strobe-like effect.
"These sunglasses," he said, yanking down the visor. "Useless. Polarized lenses, my ass."
"They're Oakleys. I gave them to you for your birthday?" The voice was directly behind his head. "
Remember?
"
"Aaannnd I love them." Brady sat up ramrod straight in the driver's seat, his eyeballs big as apples. "Uh... I guess it's just the angle of the sun this time of year, babe."
Tiya cackled. She was riding shotgun, half facing Brady with her shoulders straddling the space between the upholstered door and the leather seat back. Her bare feet were perched together on the polished wood console.
Brady glanced sideways at burnt orange nails and the athletic turn of her calves. She wiggled one big toe at him and continued to laugh.
"Nice recovery, Mr. Smooth." She turned to her friend. "Jane, are you gonna let your husband slide with a weak-ass response like that?"
Brady peered over his shades at the darkly radiant face. "You know, I can unlock your door from here, Tiya. Do me a favor... lean back a little harder and pull that handle, 'kay?" He snatched her elbow. "NO! DON'T! Hand me your wallet first."
"
Patriiiick!
" She looked at her husband in the back seat, or rather his tight, thick rings of black hair. His head was bent toward the glowing display in his hands. "You gonna let him talk to your wife like that?"
They were winding their way north through rural New England, having left the interstate highway many miles back. The couples were taking a long weekend to do some hiking and to see the brilliant fall foliage. Jane and Tiya had cooked up plans for the excursion a month earlier. It was another one of those deals that sounded harmless enough to Brady in the abstract, especially when the reality of it wouldn't be staring him in the face for weeks. Hiking was cool, but now, embarked on what was really a glorified leaf viewing expedition, he was kicking himself for agreeing to it. He would miss his softball team's playoff game. And as badly as that sucked... hello? Football? He shook his head sadly. It wasn't just football; it was Giants – Cowboys on Sunday. And his brand new, fifty inch flat screen would be cold, dark, and all alone.
Their destination was a one horse town in northern Maine. Jane had a distant cousin, someone Brady had never heard mentioned in six years of marriage, who owned a bed and breakfast in that remote, green corner of America. Having left home at dawn, they had already been on the road for hours. Brady pondered the eminently viewable trees back home, all leafy and, um... barky?
There was one redeeming element to the trip that Brady couldn't overlook. For as long as he had known her, Jane became surpassingly amorous whenever the couple spent the night in an unfamiliar bed. The farther from home, it seemed, the greater her passion. Now even a dreary business layover at a faceless franchise hotel would produce a Pavlov-like response in him. He pictured the impish grin that greeted him whenever Jane bounded onto a strange mattress and bounced on her knees.
Wanna fuck, big boy?
He tucked his hips and squirmed deeper into his seat, attempting a hands-free adjustment of the dick that had begun to stir.
"Hey guys, this is pretty cool. Check this out." Patrick was in the back seat next to Jane, scrolling feverishly on his tablet. "Shit, where did it go? Oh... yeah. Okay, here it is."
He leaned forward and read from the device, his head looming between his wife and Brady.
"Listen to this. 'The occurrence of the Autumnal Equinox, for many Pagan and Wiccan traditions, is a time of giving thanks for a successful harvest and other blessings. Festivals and ceremonies traced to ancient times often feature offerings to the forces of nature. The Equinox falls on the first day of autumn and is a time of balance of between dark and light. It marks the passing of summer and portends the coming winter, a time of darkness and death.' "
Silence.
"Oh-kaaay, hon, good to know." Tiya measured him with a sideways look.
"No... listen," he said. "This shit goes all the way back to the time of the Druids."
"Who are the Druids?" Jane threw her arm over Patrick's shoulder and stuck her head in the huddle.
"I think it's an Australian football team." Brady steered the Rover around a sweeping river bank.
"Funny. Ignore him, Jane. They were a Celtic priestly class dating all the way back to about 200 BC, maybe earlier. Very mysterious." Patrick was scrolling again. "The goddamn Romans outlawed their asses at one point. Dudes were into some heavy shit... human sacrifices, crazy sex ceremonies, you name it."
"You're absolutely certain we're not talking about Aussie football players. Because that sounds..."
"Ooooh, I wanna hear about the sex ceremonies!" said Jane.
"Honey, this is fascinating. It is." Tiya ran a hand over Patrick's closely cropped beard. "But why are you telling us this?"
"Because today is September twenty-second!"
His three companions looked at him blankly.
"The Autumnal Equinox? Jesus, how thick can you be? We should do something special... a big feast or something."
"As long as there's wine, I'm in." Jane slumped back in her seat.
"Exciting stuff, Pat. Really." Brady reached for the volume control, nodding his head. "Balance... dark, light... got it."
"Okay, screw it." Patrick balled up his sweatshirt and stuffed it like a pillow between his head and the glass. "I'm gonna get some sleep."
A stand of paperbark birch flew by, looking like pickets on a whitewashed fence. Beyond the skeletal trunks, Brady watched a regiment of deer pick through broken stalks in a brown corn field. He thought about the bed that was waiting for him somewhere up ahead and contemplated the ways Jane might make good on her promise. He just needed to find a way to make the next hour bearable.
Jane and Tiya weren't helping. Since relieving Patrick behind the wheel he was treated to non-stop adolescent banter peppered with double entendre and fits of laughter. The ex-roommates typically got this way after killing a bottle of Pinot Grigio together, but something strange had been in the air all day.
Tiya grinned wickedly as the conversation became more openly sexual and the women shared opinions on everything from vibrators to porn genres. The girls' suggestive talk held Brady in a sort of suspended pre-arousal state.
"Hmmm... I think I like interracial scenes best, Janie." Tiya playfully nudged Brady's ribs with a big toe. She was clearly enjoying his discomfort. "Black girls taking on really hung white guys."
"You guys know I'm here, right?" Brady asked. He looked down and patted his chest and arms. "I am, aren't I?"
They ignored him.
Listening to Jane's critique of personal lubricants, Tiya yawned and stretched one long leg, her toes brushing Brady's semi-erect penis. Without thinking, he closed a hand around the warm foot and pressed his thumb into her arch. They both froze. This was an accident, right?
"Tiya?"
"Hmmm? Oh. No, um... " She looked at Brady, who quickly returned his eyes to the road ahead. "We, uh... I never tried that stuff."
Brady slowly released his breath, thanking God his wife was seated directly behind him. That would not have been easy to explain, he thought.
Then it happened. Tiya pushed a little harder - no doubt about intent this time - and Brady felt a warm release in the pit of his stomach. He need only move her foot a few inches away from his groin to preserve propriety and to maintain the all-important pretense of innocence. He couldn't. He held her sole against the growing flesh in his faded jeans.
A discreet turn of his head allowed him to take in her lightly muscled, caramel colored thighs. White panties inside the leg opening of her khaki shorts greeted him when she dropped open her knee. The surge between his legs, he knew, she couldn't miss.
What am I doing? He asked himself. What is
she
doing? Tiya was practically family. Family with a husband in the back seat, that is. He checked Patrick's dozing reflection.
