Author's note: My recent story "Rosette" was inspired by medieval tales about young women whose old and jealous husbands kept them locked up. After I'd finished that one I wondered if I could treat the same theme in a modern setting. Here's my attempt. I don't know if it's any good: you tell me.
Becky's lounging by the pool again, wearing her microkini. I'm crazy about that thing. It's almost not there at all—it's got just three tiny patches that barely cover her nipples and slit, nothing left over for her ass. I've got a lovely view of her shaved outer labia, the perfect curve of her breasts, the outer edges of her areolae. And there's that tattoo she's got, the one she surprised me with on our wedding night three months ago, slanting up along her pelvis on the left. In her own neat handwriting it says "Property of Dave."
Since I'm Dave, it's fine with me.
Still, I said to her, "What are you going to do with this tattoo after I'm gone? I'm forty years older than you. I'm not going to live forever, you know. I don't expect you to climb onto my funeral pyre or lead a life of chaste widowhood. The next guy along may not want to be reminded of me."
She said, "You're in great shape. You'll probably outlive me."
What could I say to that? I kissed the tattoo and then, since I was in the area anyway, I kissed her pussy, which tasted extra good that night.
Sometimes when we're out by the pool together, just the two of us, I'll sit by her on the chaise and kiss one of the thin strings that barely holds that microkini together, right there where it crosses her clavicle, and she'll undo all the strings and pull me to her, and we'll make love by the pool. She's never yet said no to me. She's always ready for love.
Trouble is, we're not alone right now. There are these three yard guys I've never seen before, the service sent over new people today, and they're trying not to stare, but they're young, male, and apparently heterosexual, and I understand it's really hard not to cop a glance at a beautiful woman now and then. I can't blame them: I just wish she wouldn't wear that microkini when the yard guys are around.
But she's not the kind of person who worries a lot about the effect she has on men. She understands she's beautiful and knows she turns heads, but she doesn't believe anything bad could happen because of that. It's easy to be uninhibited when you're fearless.
Don't get me wrong—I like it that she's uninhibited. We wouldn't have met if she'd been as reserved as I am. I'd never dream of coming on to a twenty-year-old college girl. But at the reception after a reading I'd done at NYU she joined the little group around me, and after everyone else had drifted away, she was still there. She was a delight: she'd read all my novels and a good many of my stories, and she was full of insights and interesting thoughts. She was a creative writing minor, and something about her made me want to read everything she'd written.
When the workers started to come in to gather up the trays and dishes, she said "I'm
so
not ready to stop talking to you."
I had to go to dinner with some faculty that night, but I was planning to be in New York for one more day, and I took her to dinner the next night. Or maybe I should say
she
took
me
to dinner, because even though I picked up the check it felt like she was in charge, somehow. She picked the restaurant. She recommended dishes from the menu and interrogated the waiter about things I was thinking of ordering. We talked literature—my stuff, hers, and stuff we both liked—for hours. And as we were leaving the restaurant, and I was steeling myself to shake her hand, say goodbye, and climb into the taxi, she said, "I'll bet you have a bottle of wine in your room."
I suppose I should have thought "She's not old enough to drink," and I should have thought "this is absurd, I'm almost sixty." What I actually thought was "I can't believe this is happening to me," and I felt my dick start to stiffen. Of course I took her to my room. And once I'd poured us some wine she sat close to me and made a lot more than the usual amount of eye contact as we talked, and touched me lightly with her fingertips to let me know she was ready for me to make an advance.
Her lovemaking was—I don't quite know how to put it—maybe "witty" is the word. If wit is the art of having fun by using words in inventive and unexpected ways, well, she used her body in ways that took me by surprise and delighted me. There's a sameness in the way most people make love, a standard progression from kissing to petting to oral sex to penetration, and standard moments for removing this or that article of clothing. She didn't conform to any of the standards, but made it all happen in an order and manner of her own devising that somehow seemed both right and oh so lascivious. When you're middle aged, things that happen during sex don't often take you by surprise, but I was dizzy, off balance and thrilled, and if I'd imagined the possibility of being in love with her, I think I would have been in love. Maybe I
was
already in love but didn't know it at the time.
In the morning she asked if we could stay in touch, and of course I said I'd be delighted. And we started an email correspondence that was literate and fun and so hot I'd get an erection just reading her notes to me.
As summer approached I hinted that I'd love a visit from her, and she responded enthusiastically. That July she spent a week with me at my country place in western Connecticut and introduced me to her collection of microkinis. Before half the week was over we were in love, and by the end of the week we'd set a date for the following June, after she'd graduated. Maybe you read about the wedding in the news: it made a little stir, because I'm fairly well known as writers go, and she'd already published some stories in prominent places, and there was some buzz about the novel she was finishing up.
I'd been married twice—widowed once and divorced once—and I thought I knew what I was getting into. But every marriage does something different to your head. For all the eleven months of our engagement, Becky split her time between my place in Connecticut and the apartment she shared with friends in New York, and I never suffered a moment's anxiety about what she was doing when she wasn't with me.
When we married she moved in with me, as you'd expect. But she still had lots of friends in New York, and she wanted to visit them. I bought her a car, both so she could get around locally and so she could drive to New York.
I didn't like being alone at my country place while Becky was visiting her friends in the city. It was lonely in a way single life had never been.
"Well," she said, "Why don't you come with me?" But I didn't think I'd fit in with her friends. Way too old, way too distinguished, I'd be a dead weight on her social life. I couldn't imagine myself in the kinds of clubs and bars they no doubt liked to visit, and I worried that they'd treat me as a sort of oracle and have no fun around me.
Becky and I did go to New York together once, to see a play adapted from one of my stories, "The Boxing Ring." It was about domestic abuse, not my usual subject. But the playwright and the director had done a good job getting across the abusive husband's creepy obsessiveness and the wife's complicity, the way she gloried in her martyrdom. There was lots of slapping, punching and waving of knives. It's not easy to do violence convincingly on stage, but they'd done it well.
I met several of Becky's friends that weekend too, over lunches, dinners, drinks, and (once) a little pot. Some of them were aspiring writers, like her, though none could match her early success. She introduced two of her male friends as "my ex." I wasn't sure how I felt about her hanging around with ex-boyfriends. Later I said to her, "those exes, they
are
all exes, right?"
She wrinkled her nose at me and said, "Property of Dave."
About a week later she told me she was going to go into town again the following Wednesday. We were expecting a visit that Tuesday from an old college pal of mine, a writer I knew Becky wanted to meet. I called him up and asked if he could come a day later instead, and, as I expected, she postponed her trip for a week so she could meet him.
The next Wednesday I woke up with one of those raging migraines I sometimes get, and though I urged her to go, she decided to stay home and take care of me.
Week after week all kinds of things came up. There was the visit from the agent, whom we now shared. While we were at a dinner party in Westport one night there was a burglary that left us both pretty rattled, even though not much was taken. All kinds of odd things just got in the way of her travel plans.
I got up early this morning and swapped two spark plug wires in her car. Our mechanic had to send a tow truck for it. I've arranged to pay him three hundred to keep it for a few days and make up some plausible story about what he had to fix. I'm proud of that one, because I'm not much of a mechanic.
I just wish I had Becky to myself. All I can do, I guess, is wait patiently for the yard guys to finish up and take off. Meanwhile I peel off my shirt and sit in a chair next to her chaise, and it's pleasant to relax here in the sunshine, reading and occasionally chatting.
She stretches and says, "What I want, I think, is to float in the pool. Would you be a love and get me a raft?"
