“Okay counsel, your witness” The judge said as he motioned to the prosecuting attorney.
The prosecutor stood, straightened his suit jacket and approached me as I continued to sit on the witness stand. “Mrs. DeFrancisco, how long did you know the victim, Miss Simmons?”
“Since we, I mean my husband and I moved to Arlington,” I answered.
“And how long was that?”
“Well we moved here in May of 2001 and I met Debbie about a week after we moved in,” I answered. That was how my cross examination began. It continued like that, without anything earth shattering for the next hour before the Judge took pity on us all and announced that we would break for the weekend and reconvene on Monday morning. That of course meant that I would be locked in an eight by twelve cell for 44 of the next 48 hours.
The cell was a concrete block room with bars on one wall. On the right wall was a small steel bunk bed covered with grey blankets and white sheets. A simple vinyl covered wood chair sat in front of a steel desk on the back wall with a small desk lamp my only decorating touch. The left wall held a stainless steel toilet shielded from prying eyes by a short painted steel partition about 4 feet high. Next to the partition was a stainless steel sink with my toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. It had all the comforts of home.
At lights out I laid in bed a thought back to happier times.
Jim, my husband, had just been transferred to Chicago. The transfer came with a big promotion and a healthy raise and Matt, our two kids, Chelsea and Matthew, were all excited about the move.
We had been in our new house, a big beautiful brick faced colonial, for a week when I first saw Debbie. The moment I saw her I knew she was gay, not that I had a problem with that but it was very apparent. She was not unattractive; in fact she was just the opposite of unattractive. She was not what I would call pretty, instead she was handsome or stunning, but in a somewhat masculine way. Her platinum blonde hair was cut strikingly short yet stylish. Her features were sharp and crisp with high cheek bones and prominent nose and a strong jaw. Her eyes were a shade of blue green that looked like the Caribbean Sea and were surrounded by the longest thickest eye lashes I have ever seen. She had broad square shoulders, full round breasts, a narrow waist and trim hips that I would have died for. Her legs were strong, tan and muscular and her smile was fantastic. Debbie introduced herself to me and I felt my heart skip a beat. I had never been attracted to a woman before that moment, and the feeling scared me. She had an aura about her, and air of confidence that was supremely attractive and in the few moments I stood there I was spellbound. If she had asked me to drop to my knees and pleasure her I am sure I would have done it, with my husband watching, but she never asked, not then, not ever. In fact Debbie never asked for anything. That wasn’t her way. She told, demanded and commanded but never asked: but I am getting ahead of myself.
I avoided Debbie after that first meeting. Not because I didn’t like her or I was afraid of her, but rather because I was afraid of myself and what I might do or say if I was around her. When I wasn’t working at the library I spent a lot of time inside the house or in the back yard around the pool with the kids for the first few weeks that we lived in Arlington. Eventually I met Sara Young, a woman my age who also had two children, who lived across the street from us. Sara was an attractive woman with a pretty but somewhat plain face, shoulder length blonde hair, blue eyes and small round glasses. She was about 25 pounds overweight, but carried it pretty well. Overall she looked like a mom, which is exactly what she was. Sara dressed conservatively and attended church regularly and she introduced me to her friends and I began attending her church with the kids most Sundays.
Sara, unlike me, was a stay at home mom and she spend most of her days observing the goings on in the neighborhood. She was the resident nosey neighbor, but she kept her findings to herself, well until we got close and then she shared her gossip with me. She told me about Susan Dresser, the woman on the corner who was having an affair and about the Johnson’s pending divorce. She also told me that Debbie my next door neighbor was a lesbian who had a different woman over nearly ever night. She of course whispered the word lesbian as though it was a dirty word and told me of Debbie’s deeds with the sound of disgust in her voice.
A few months had gone by and I had only run into Debbie a few times in the yard and in the grocery store and I had regained my composure around her. Sara and I had become close friends and every day when I got home from working at the library at 3:00PM I would head over to her house to have a cup of coffee and hear about the gossip of the day. Sara’s stories about Debbie became the focus of most of our afternoon conversations, because she had a different woman over every night. They would arrive home late, after I had fallen asleep, but Sara was still up, and they left around ten in the morning.
“Your sure it is a different woman every night,” I asked Sara.
“Absolutely,” she replied with her Chicago accent. “The woman has a voracious appetite,” she laughed uncomfortably.
“What do they look like.”
“Karen, they are every type, age, shape and size, but she uses them up and spits them out. She has no soul.”
“Oh really, and how do you know,” I asked jokingly and Sara turned bright red. “Oh my god, Sara. You slept with her?”
“It was a few years ago,” Sara said meekly. “Todd had been, well like he always is, distant and consumed with work. She stopped over to borrow some milk one night when Todd was away on business and the kids were over their grandmothers. I don’t know how she knew to stop over that night, but she did. At first I though it was just a coincidence, but she planned it, I know she did. Anyway, I invited her in and we started talking. I really don’t know how it evolved into something so wrong, so nasty and degrading. It was really weird because it seemed like one moment we were sitting on the couch talking and the next moment we were in bed.” As she finished I could see a tear form in her eye and she sniffled.
“I’m sorry Sara, I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“No, it’s alright. I’ve never told anyone about it, not even my shrink, which is kind of funny because I started seeing him right after that happened. I needed to talk about things but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about that. It was so wrong, so dirty, so disgusting and you know what the worst part about it was.”
“What,” I asked cautiously.
“I enjoyed it,” she said as the tears began to flow. “ actually liked being used and being treated like a play thing. That’s all I was to her. That’s all anyone is to her just some damn fuck toy.”
Hearing Sara use the word fuck shocked me nearly as much as her story had. The whole thing was so out of character. I put my arm around her and let her cry. Eventually her tears subsided and we chatted some more about more light hearted topics.
