"Unclear it and print out a listing of all this crap they've been looking at, okay?"
"I'm really not supposed to..."
I peeled to the center of my roll and freed an extra crisp c-note, deft as I slid it beneath the kid's mouse pad, my other resting palm on his bony shoulder. "Go on kid, take it. Treat yourself to a couple new I-tunes...or a Chinese hooker, whatever floats your boat." —I gave that shoulder an encouraging squeeze— "I'll be in later for my computer and our ancillary information."
___________________
"Hi, Dad," came Martha's voice.
"Hey," I answered, stepping out into the early evening, my darkly pretty daughter-in-law leaning back in a chase lounge with my grandson perched on her lap.
"How was your day?"
"Good," I replied, pulling up a chair besides them, wagging a finger in front of Anthony's fat little face, his tiny hand clamping onto it. Four months old and already strong as all hell. "...Got the computer fixed."
"What was wrong with it?"
"Some bug," I shrugged, not meeting her eyes, concentrating on her tone. "How was your day?"
"Same old, same old," she said flatly.
Martha and my kid, Jack, had been staying with me for just shy of three months, just weeks after she'd had Anthony. Jack was a chemical engineer with a pharmaceutical house, a terrific job, but had been faced with a downsize or transfer—a transfer put him out here in LA, same pay, no loss of seniority, but with a home they couldn't move back in Virginia. My solution was simple; move in with me until you get rid of the Virginia house at a decent price. No rent, no nothing. My place was more than big enough, and it was only me out here in five rooms with a pool and an often smoggy view of Bunker Hill.
I have to admit that I liked the activity, the noise of a baby, a lot of times having dinner with him and Martha on nights when Jackie would be pulling late hours.
But this baloney with the computer had thrown me. I instantly knew Mar-solo was our Martha, my boy's wife, Anthony's mom. The timing was right—last Thursday I was doing one of the accounts I still audited, out until after eight that night, and Jack had pulled in a half hour after me.
Only one person home that afternoon...well, to be exact, there were two persons, but only one who could access the internet, pop onto "Abby pays up on poker night", and clear off the history log. I'd looked over the sheet the kid had printed out for me before I got home; two websites, erotic stories, a few hits on one day, then the same a couple days later, just like that. I looked at my calendar; she'd be logged on when I was out, two days a week usually, just in the past month. Their laptop had been going to work with Jack for a couple weeks now, a project he was working on off the company books, something that he hoped could pull in some serious money for them.
I finally glanced over at Martha...a tall girl, long auburn hair that she habitually wore tied up. The baby had filled out her normally thin frame just a bit; a serious expression, my ex dubbing her "Marion the Librarian" after their first encounter. How old was she now, twenty-nine, maybe thirty. She'd always been rather shy around us, though in these last month's we'd developed an easy rapport, joking and teasing each other, a lively girlish sense of humor that she simply didn't let many people see. I sensed she was bored out here, lonely in a new town, the kid taking almost all of her time. She had to miss her friends back in Virginia, her sister, the girls she'd worked with.
"You eat yet?"
"No, I'll have something with Jack. ...You want me to fix you something?
"I have some work to finish up," I said...
...work.
I went to the small bedroom that sufficed for my office and spent over three hours with the listing the computer kid had worked up. By the end of it I was literally shaking my head, absolutely waylaid with the stories Martha had been reading. For the most part they were all of a like theme; innocent wives entertaining their husband's friends in one manner or another, poker games, football parties, fishing trips, the action always starting off mildly enough, maybe the wife wearing something racy on a dare, some guy touching her, then always some serious gang-fuck action, nasty stuff; it wasn't exactly Hemingway, I'll tell you that...hell, it wasn't even a sweet-n-low version of Henry Miller.
What stoked me the most was the image of our demure Martha reading this stuff, furtive, embarrassed, trying to cover her tracks. The "Abby" tale in particular held me rapt, a young wife urged on by her husband to serve as hostess to his weekly poker party, his daring her to take it further, a shorter skirt one night, a bit more cleavage, a climax of him betting her wedding ring on a "sure hand" and of course, losing. You can imagine the end-run to that particular scenario. I shut my eyes and fantasized about her masturbating as she read along...had she been nude as she sat here at my desk, topless?
The anger I'd felt initially was gone by then. I sat there trying to fix my mind right, telling myself that I shouldn't be thinking like this, that I shouldn't be thinking of my kid's wife in terms like this. That was sick shit, the weird stuff that perverts thought of, dirty old fucking men. I should be pissed at her for doing it behind my son's back, for doing it on my computer, for sending my Dell over a cyber cliff.
I just had that image of her sitting here though, right in this chair. Maybe jumpy and nervous, listening for the sound of one of our car's in the driveway. My heart was galloping. I did something I'd never done in front of a computer. I undid my zipper and took it out, took it out and just started whacking off, just like some horned-out fifteen year old. It wasn't long...a minute, maybe two tops and I felt myself coming, thick globs of semen splattering across the keyboard, spotting the screen, my gut wrenched with the force of it. I sank back into the big leather chair, bright spots swirling on my periphery, my cock already softening. I took a gulp of air, then another. It was sweet...forty years of jerking off and fucking and I could only recall a couple times that had put me over like this. And I don't think any of them were past my twenty-ninth birthday.
"What in the fuck's the matter with you," I wheezed in bewildered disgust. I closed out the story and shut down the system, following the instructions the kid had given me on how to clear out the history I'd just created.
I heard Jack and Martha talking in the kitchen, but quietly went right to my room. I sprawled out on the bed without undressing. My eyes looked in the darkness. My mind was coming back to it again, finding new ingresses to my psyche. My cock stiffened of its own volition, confined and uncomfortably twisted within pants.
I don't know how long it was before I reached down and set it free.
___________________________
Two weeks had passed by the time I actually did anything. Everything went on just like before, the conversations about work, playing with Anthony, the occasional dinner or breakfast I'd cook up for my daughter-in-law and me.
I dropped the tattooed kid at the computer store two more hundreds; some spyware program that routed a concise history of our Martha's internet wanderings. I can't say I felt guilty about this invasion of her privacy, never justifying it by saying that it was, after all, my computer she was playing on. I didn't need an excuse, I just wanted to know, simple as that.
And she went right back to it, same genre of erotica, just a story or two at a time. I can't say when it came to me exactly, but by the end of those two weeks I had a healthy—or unhealthy—obsession with Martha and these dirty tales.
"I'm having a couple of the guys over for pinochle tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah, sure," Martha answered, her back to me as she fixed a fresh diaper on Anthony's rump. "You don't have to ask me, Dad. It's your house."
"Well, it's your house too, least for now," I answered. "Anyway, it's just Tommy DiChenza and Mike Garnett."
Martha knew I had a standing game at the club house at least once a week, penny ante stakes, a few regulars, guys my age or a little older. Pinochle or bridge—card games for the thinking guy, I'd joke. Sometimes when we couldn't draw a third, Tommy D and I would square off for chess. Even though it was all nickel-and-dime stuff, we took it fucking seriously, if you didn't, you weren't invited back.
"You want me to take Anthony out for the afternoon so he doesn't bother you?"
"No, no. I want to show him off," I said quickly, a dark flicker of thought whispering that I wanted to show her off too.
"Okay," she smiled, barely glancing back to me from the task at hand.
"They could meet you too."
"Sure."
I watched her from behind for several seconds, my voice catching as I tried to speak. I actually turned away for a second, as if to escape the room.
"I'd like to meet 'em," she went on distractedly.
I wanted to just bust her then and there—"I've been reading your x-rated stories, baby..."—but knew I had to just set the table. If she was going to sit down, then it had to be her move.
