It was about six that evening when I finally got home from work. I was tired and aggravated by the rush hour traffic coming home from the museum and I couldn't wait to get inside the house, kick off my high heels and maybe unwind with a bottle of beer. The first thing I noticed when I came through the front door was the smell of fish cooking. As I dropped my purse to the floor and removed my jacket, my husband Kamal emerged from the kitchen grinning and wiping his hands with the dishrag.
"Hey, babe!" He came up to me and took my jacket out of my hands and hung it up in the closet for me. He then picked my purse up from the floor and hung it up also.
"What's going on?" I asked, nervously. Kamal tended to chivalrous but hanging up my coat and purse was a bit beyond his usual peck on the cheek.
"Special occasion, Kia. Don't tell me you forgot."
My mind drew a blank. What kind of special occasion was he talking about? Something to do with his music? Was company coming?
He read the confusion in my eyes and said, "Anniversary."
It took me a second then I realized. Kamal and I didn't celebrate our actual anniversary for another four and a half months. He was talking about the new addition to our household. Angela.
"But," I began. "It's only been six months. . . ."
"Six month anniversary. I thought it would be nice. Kind of a surprise. For both of you."
"Where's Angela?" I asked, looking around.
"Out on a photo shoot. She'll be back soon. You should go change. Put on something nice. I'm cooking trout with stuffing and stir fried vegetables. There's wine too. We'll have a nice time."
I nodded. Kamal smiled, kissed me on the corner of my mouth and went back into the kitchen. I climbed the stairs and went into the master bedroom. I paused when I saw that the bed had been made and the sheets changed. I took my shoes off and placed them in the closet with the rest of my assortment then went into the bathroom to start the shower. As I removed my blouse and then my skirt I thought about the unusual turns my marriage had been through the past year. Kamal and I had been married for almost six years now. Angela had moved in six months ago. Technically, she and Kamal weren't married so he wasn't a bigamist, but he still referred to her as his "wife". My parents and most of my friends thought that I'd completely lost my mind, allowing Kamal to move another woman into the house that we shared. What they didn't understand was that, when all was said and done, this arrangement had pretty much been my idea.
When I'd met Kamal several years ago, I'd fallen in love with him easily and fully. Our courtship had been a dizzying ride of romantic outings, unbelievably intense conversation and mind-blowing sex. After spending my early twenties messing around with an unending parade of losers, mama's boys, wannabe ballers, and artsy-fartsy layabouts, I'd finally found a man who was sweet, intelligent, had money, and was a damned good lay. I was hooked. After a year of wooing, Kamal proposed to me and I accepted. It was perfect. I loved him and he loved me. The only problem, I soon found out, was that Kamal had a lot more love to go around. The first time he cheated on me he cried and begged and I forgave him. The same for the second time. And the third. My girlfriends urged me to leave him but I couldn't. I've never been a jealous type and I figured that all men would cheat if given the chance and at least Kamal was always honest with me.
Kamal was a musician and spent the majority of his time in the studio he'd built in our basement. Occasionally, he was hired to go on the road as a freelance bassist, leaving me alone at the house for several weeks. It was during one of these tours that he'd called me from the hotel room and said that he missed me so much he'd had to sleep with a waitress he'd met at a club just to keep his mind off the anguish of being away from me. In his own bizarre way, this was Kamal showing his sweet and tender side. I'd screamed at him over the phone and threatened to divorce him if he screwed up one more time. He'd promised to never stray again. Then he met Angela.
I stepped into the shower, standing under the hot water and wetting my hair. I squeezed some eucalyptus soap onto my sponge and began to lather up my arms and breasts. I enjoyed the strong, natural smell of the soap and breathed in deeply as I worked the sponge down my stomach and around my pubic hairs. I scrubbed my legs and back and rinsed off before squirting more soap into my hair. I lathered up, rinsed, lathered up, rinsed again and conditioned. By the time I was done, the bathroom was thick with steam and smelling strongly of eucalyptus. I toweled off, blow dried my hair and went back into the bedroom to choose something to wear. Maybe something that would outdo one of Angela's snazzy outfits. This was a strange feeling because, typically there was no competition between the two of us. The fact of the matter was, I liked Angela.
She and Kamal had met on the set of a PBS music special. Kamal was the backup bass player for an acid jazz band. Angela was one of the station's freelance make-up artists. Of course they'd hit it off and went out on a date. Kamal told Angela he was married. This unnerved her at first but she was drawn to Kamal and went against her better judgment and continued to see him. Kamal told me he had a girlfriend and apologized. I decided to act aloof and pretend I just didn't care anymore, losing myself in my curator's job at the downtown art museum. Months went by. Finally Kamal told me he loved Angela and wanted to be with her. I asked him if he wanted a divorce. He said no, he still loved me as much as he did on our wedding day. I told him to choose. He couldn't. Then he went on a two month tour in Japan. Angela called me. She wanted to talk and I accepted. We met at a coffee shop downtown. There was no Rikki Lake-esque whooping and hollering about "he's
my
man!" or "you trifling bitch!"; just a quiet conversation in which Angela confessed that she was deeply in love with Kamal but mortified by the idea of doing anything to hurt me. She offered to walk away but I knew Kamal and she'd never be able to detach herself from him. We agreed to wait until he returned and iron everything out once and for all. In the meantime, Angela and I continued to talk and eventually became friends. By the time Kamal returned from his tour I'd come up with the ultimate solution. Angela moved in with us that May and became Kamal's second "wife". I kept my husband, she gained a husband and we all lived together rather peacefully. Kamal continued with his music, I worked long hours at the museum and Angela, who had more free time, took care of all the housework. And Kamal hadn't so much as looked at another woman since.
I stood naked in the master bedroom and glanced again at the freshly made bed. I had a pretty good idea what Kamal had in mind for tonight's celebration and the thought of it made me slightly nervous. Contrary to popular belief, there were no hot menage-a-trois happening under our roof. After the newlywed stage of our marriage, the sex between Kamal and I slacked off considerably largely due to our work obligations. When Angela moved in she took the guest bedroom and only made love to Kamal occasionally. In fact, unless someone was having sex, I slept alone in the master bedroom, Angela slept in the guest bed and Kamal slept on the futon in his recording studio. We were more like roommates who crossed paths in the kitchen and watched TV together.
Sometimes the three of us would do things like go bowling or to the movies or out to dinner. Kamal tried his hardest to be attentive to both of us but never had all three of us gone to bed together. Whenever Kamal and Angela retired to the guest bedroom, I would go downstairs and turn the TV up real loud so I wouldn't have to hear it. The idea of a threesome had of course come up but Kamal had joked that pleasuring one woman was enough work. There had been times, however, when I'd noticed Angela giving me some odd looks out of the corner of her eye and a there had been a couple of times when I'd caught her stealing glances at my breasts. One evening a couple of months ago I'd been sitting on a stool in the kitchen, letting Angela use me as a guinea pig to practice some new make-up techniques she'd been studying.
"You have really beautiful skin," she was saying, brushing my face with foundation. "Pretty red-bone sister."
"I wish I had skin like yours," I confessed. "And hair." Angela was dark, ebony; and wore a huge, gorgeous afro. Both my parents were very brown-skinned but I'd popped out looking so bright my father admitted to initially suspecting my mother of cheating on him. My hair was perpetually frizzy and I usually wore it pulled back in a corporate-looking bun.
Angela leaned in closer as she continued to apply the foundation, resting her hand on my thigh. I could smell her breath. Peppermint. She paused her brush strokes and just stared at me, her face six inches from mine. Slowly, she slid out her tongue and wet her full, attractive lips. I froze, eyes wide, like a deer in headlights as Angela bent forward and pressed her lips to mine. Her tongue pushed past my teeth, flicking across my own, as her hand tightened on my thigh. She very gently touched the fingers of her other hand against the swell of my left breast, the brush still clutched in the web between her thumb and index finger. I still couldn't move. She sighed faintly and tried to push her tongue deeper into my mouth. I drew back suddenly, breaking the connection and pushing her hands away.
"I'm sorry, I. . . ." Angela shushed me and grabbed me lightly by the chin, resuming the make-up application.
"Don't be sorry," she said. "I just wanted to kiss you. I know I probably shouldn't have but . . ." She trailed off and continued her work acting as if nothing had happened but the look in her eyes showed nothing resembling regret. Actually, they looked mischievous. Since that day she hadn't done anything as severe but I still got the looks. She seemed to be testing me. Angela had yet to come out and admit to being a bisexual and I considered myself to be far from it. Yeah, I had "experimented" in college but still held fast to the notion that since I'd only let a couple of girls go down on me and had never mustered the nerve actually place my tongue anywhere near another woman's vagina, I was, in fact, still a card carrying heterosexual.
After going through my closet three times, I decided on an emerald green mini dress and my favorite pair of clogs. I caught a faint whiff of the fish cooking downstairs and realized just how hungry I was. I checked myself out in the full length mirror, was satisfied with what I saw and hurried downstairs to the dining room. Kamal had also taken time to change and was wearing olive Dockers and a gray polo shirt. He typically wore jeans and sweatshirts all the time and this was actually his idea of dressing up.
"Mmmmm," he said, hugging me to him and kissing my neck. "You look nice."
"And you look
presentable
