Fantasy
by H. Jekyll
Part One: New Year's Eve
*****
It's often the case that the big changes in life sneak up on you. It's possible, I guess, that you might anticipate some of them, but not all, and not all the time. My mother-in-law was wrong to think she could avoid all evil by worrying about it. It comes whether you worry or not, like a thief in the night, at a time of its own choosing, and you can't outguess it.
Our thief didn't come where this story begins, a Saturday night, the night for making love, one on which Alice and I had come home early enough to have the energy for excitement. I turned to Alice in bed and started kissing her, and then I ran my palm across one of her nipples. I especially liked to do that because Alice had β has β big, round nipples that remind me of red blackberries.
"Oh," she said. "Do you have something in mind?"
"Maybe I do and maybe I don't."
"Let's check. Oh, my! You're a bad boy. Well, light the candle. I'll be back in a sec."
I turned out the bedside lamps and lit the aromatic candle beside the bed. It's sandalwood and shaped like a star. I'm staring at it as I write this, letting it help me remember. I stripped. Water was running in the master bathroom. In the sink. In a minute she came out carrying a washcloth. She knelt over me and cleaned the head of my penis. It's always a struggle not to squirm. Men will know what I mean. Then she tossed the cloth to the floor and leaned down to lick me.
"Mmm. You taste good." She took me in her mouth and played me for a few minutes, just the head, while I reached around and caressed her ass, running my hand over the whole expanse of it, then up and down her crease, playing a lot right around her anus before I moved my hand to her vagina and began to diddle her. After a few minutes she sat up.
"Why don't you come inside me?" She said it in her husky voice.
She lay down and spread her legs and I crawled on top of her and put it in her. Five or ten minutes later we put on our underwear to keep from seeping, and then we went to sleep.
It was New Year's Eve eve. The night before it all began. That's what made it memorable. Tomorrow night we'd be up late. You can always stay up late in Las Vegas, but New Year's is special, and we planned to have a big night out with Bill and Jessica and some people from Bill's company, and we planned to party like it was ten years earlier. I didn't know the half of it, but then neither did Alice.
* * * * *
Fuck you, Richard! Fuck you! Fuck you, you God damned motherfucking son of a bitch! Fuck you, you shit! I'll kill you! I'll tear your goddamned shit-fucking dick off! I'll fucking kill you! I will! Fuck.
* * * * *
I think we were happy together before Richard came back into our lives. I know I was. Reasonably happy, I mean. I wasn't unhappy. Alice was my wife and I loved her. Some of us are cursed to always want something a little extra, something outside the norm, something different. That's all I mean. We enjoyed doing things together and we had a nice house, nice yard, both of which we'd worked hard on. People commented on them. The paper had even done a Sunday photo shoot of our yard a few years back.
The sex. Well, you can tell the sex wasn't explosive. I mean, we'd been married over a decade, you know? The sex was a lot, oh, more
mellow
than a decade ago. There were things we didn't even talk about that we'd enjoyed
doing
a few years back. But it wasn't
bad
, you know? Sometimes I surfed Internet porn. That's about it. I wasn't chasing other women. There was nothing to make me think Alice was unhappy with us, or that she would do anything with other men. Nothing at all.
* * * * *
Why couldn't we have skipped the New Years party? I like parties, getting out, seeing people, drinking more than I should, the whole thing. Alice doesn't. Not really. Or didn't. Anyway, I'd made up a lot of excuses for her over the years. She could have begged off and stayed home to watch the New Year's Eve shows on TV. She always enjoyed watching the ball drop in Times Square, and she always considered that the
true
New Year's moment. Why did she come tonight? I guess because she thought I'd be upset if she stayed home again. Maybe, too, because of the friends who would be there. Whatever. I don't know how events conspire.
Isn't that a nice phrase? "Events conspire?" I don't even know what I mean. Yes I do. Things have to happen just so. For want of a horse, the kingdom is lost. For want of a party...that sort of thing.
And if only we hadn't seen Richard. If, if, if. That didn't have to happen, and then the next thing wouldn't have happened, and the next. I think.
We certainly didn't go looking for him. He hadn't been much of a friend for years, not since he'd decided to move from law to sex. Yes, that. He went from representing pornographers to being one. Almost. Almost. I might be overstating it. He bumped into me a couple of years ago. "Henry, my French film won an award at Cannes!"
"Really?"