Dear Reader: The basic plot of this story was suggested to me by a guy with the nom de plume of BT Tap. I created the characters and put them into the situations that he suggested. Neither of us had any idea of how to get the characters out of these situations. Obviously I have put some of my own ideas into the story. Thank you BT for your suggested plot.
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My name is Lois Barker and I owe a debt to my best friend, Trish Johnson − a debt that I can never repay. You see my husband Don developed lymphoma several years after we were married and the doctors said half the patients at his stage of disease could be cured. Don was in the wrong half! My best friend Trish spent many hours at my house helping Don in the last three tragic months of his life.
I still remember her saying, "Lois you go into the living room till I'm finished. You don't want to see him this way."
Then she went into his bedroom with towels and a basin of water and a clean set of pajamas. Every time I saw him he looked and smelled clean and well cared for.
The result of her loving care was that my husband died with dignity and my memories of his dying days were equally dignified. This is the kind of debt that you can never repay.
Don has been dead for over a year and I have not dated anyone. My younger brother Phil takes me out to dinner and to parties. Phil is twenty-three and conspicuously handsome. There are lovely gals standing in line for his attention and he tells me that it will be two years before he gets his travel agency in shape so he can afford to support a wife. Meanwhile, although he never says it, I think he's fucking his brains out.
I'm three years older than Phil and one gal who was dating him approached me aggressively in the ladies room of a restaurant where he was taking me to dinner.
Scowling at me she said, "You're too old for him!"
I laughed and replied, "I sure am honey. I'm his older sister and if he hears you talk to me that way you're history."
You never saw a bitch as apologetic as she was. But I get lots of frowns from gals who don't know me when they see me out with him.
Phil is handsome but he is also a sensitive person. I asked him what he thought I should do about dating. He gave me the most sensitive, caring answer I could have received.
"Do what you would want him to do if your situations were reversed," he said.
I thought about what I would want the man I loved to do if I had been the one who died and decided it was time to start dating again. But it was nowhere as easy as that. Scads of cute gals might pursue Phil but suitable men were hard to find. There were nerds, and guys who couldn't support a wife; there were old men who could but were not gonna last much longer; and, there were lecherous young men. Bottom line? Hard men are easy to find but good men are rare.
Trish was a very lucky girl. Art was the model husband. What I needed to find was a man just like him.
Phil had taken me to a Saturday night pool party at Trish and Art's place. It was a wild party and Trish was taking on more booze and grass than was good for her but everyone was having a good time when the phone rang and I saw Art talking very seriously to someone.
Then he apologized to everyone and quickly got dressed. It seemed that there had been a fire at his small manufacturing plant. Art had an expert staff that built specialized electronic devices for the Air Force − some of them highly secret.
No sooner had he left than one of the gals got sick and started throwing up and two of the wives bundled her in a blanket and drove her home. All of this put a damper on the party and people started wandering off. Phil took me home and drove off saying he was gonna go back and see if Art or Trish needed any help.
It was not until the next day that I heard what finally happened. Phil came by my house around noon with a solemn look on his face and I heard those words no one ever wants to hear.
"We've got to talk," he said.
Then he laid it on the line. It seems that after Art left and two wives took the sick gal home, Trish continued to drink and smoke grass. She may have sniffed a little of the white powder too. Anyway after all the other couples had gone home there were just three guys without wives and Trish. Her bikini came off and she swam in the nude. Then they wanted to go upstairs and she invited them up.
One guy declined the invitation and decided to go home. Phil met him in the driveway and found out what was going on. He went in the house quietly and when he got to the upstairs hall he heard Trish giggling. Looking in the door of the guest bedroom he saw two guys taking turns between her legs. It seemed to be a happy, laughing threesome.
Phil went back to his car and parked across the street. The two guys left a couple of hours later. Then Phil drove out to Art's factory and discovered that the fire had been put out and the damage was manageable. Then he went home.
"What do you think Art found when he got home," I asked.
"I have no idea," Phil said.
"That's not like Trish at all," I said, thinking of the caring way she'd helped me with Don.
"I'll go over there and see how she is."
When I got there an hour later Art answered the doorbell.
"Was there much damage from the fire?" I asked.
"Moderate but it's covered by insurance," he replied. "We'll be up and running in a few weeks."
"How's Trish? She looked pretty bad when I left."
He laughed and shook his head.
"This will teach her to watch how much she drinks. She's still in bed with a splitting headache."
Thank God I thought. He wouldn't be laughing if he knew what she did last night.
"Mind if I go up?" I asked.
"Go right ahead."
I found Trish in bed propped up on pillows, hair a mess, last night's make-up still on her face. And she had been crying. I sat down in a chair by the bed.
"You want to talk to me about it?" I asked.
"I need to talk and you are the only person I CAN talk to," she said, on the verge of tears. "You have no idea what I did last night."
"I know exactly what you did last night. What I don't know is WHY. Art is the most perfect husband I know. As good a man as MY husband was," I said, partly in anger and partly with concern.
She looked shocked and sat bolt upright in bed. "How the hell do you know?"
"Phil came back here last night after he took me home to see if everything was all right. He talked to the one guy who didn't want to fuck you and then went upstairs and watched you fuck the two guys that did."
"Oh my God!" Trish exclaimed and her tears flowed freely.
"I was out of it. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't realize until this morning that ... "
"That won't do Trish," I interrupted her. "In the first place you used the guest room not your bedroom. You didn't want hubby to notice wet spots in the bed. In the second place Phil heard you laughing and calling them by name. They weren't banging a helpless unconscious wife. In the third place I can see your douche bag hanging there in the bathroom. You cleaned yourself up afterward just in case. You knew exactly what you were doing."
