Polly

[Author's note: this story is in four parts. Yes, there's something unusual in the way Polly is able to process the world around her (check the tags). Does it excuse her behaviour?]

---

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

Harrison comes around at nine. It's a weekday so my husband Mark is at work already. I let him in and take him through to the kitchen. He looks so good in those jeans.

"Thanks for popping round. Erica says you're on your way up the coast," I say.

"Yeah, got an hour's drive after this, but at least it's out of the rush-hour traffic."

"Sounds like it's a big job."

"Yeah. They want the bloody world."

"We all want the world. Comes down to what we can get, though. Coffee?"

Harrison scans the kitchen with a practised eye, then looks at me.

"No thanks. I just wanna get this sorted and then get in the truck, if that's okay."

"Perfectly fine. So, what do you think?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Erica showed me your island counter. I think I'd like that, just here."

I step into the middle of the space and smile at him. He smiles back and I feel the buzz. I'd like the smooth stone surface here. I'd like to be laid out on it in just a pair of stockings, like a banquet dish, ready for Harrison to feast. I allow myself to imagine his big hands parting my knees, his lips pressing against my crotch, and it's almost like I can feel his touch. It's making me wet in a way that Mark just hasn't, for years. Harrison is coarse; there is an animal presence to him that is missing from my refined, polished life.

"Let me see," Harrison says, pulling his measuring tape out of his back pocket.

"I'm thinking stone countertop, same on the other surfaces. Can you do that?"

"I can do anything, Pol," he replies, flashing me a grin.

"I bet you can," I venture.

He's measuring the kitchen up. I'm measuring him up. There's just something about him, the rough edges, that I like. He isn't taller than Mark, he's certainly not earning as much, and he's definitely not as smart, but maybe that's the attraction. Harrison left school at sixteen and took a job working with those big, strong hands for a living. Mark is complex and witty, subtle in a number of ways, considered. Harrison is good at heavy lifting. He doesn't think much, he's there to get the job done.

I'm trailing around after him, answering little questions on where the appliances are going to go, what kind of tapware I'd like.

"You need to run any of this past Mark?" he asks.

"No. I'm in full control," I reply.

"Yeah, that'd be right," he laughs, "What Pol wants, Pol gets, hey?"

"Exactly right."

He turns away at that moment and bends down to measure a cupboard. My eyes settle on the curve of his backside in his tight jeans, and I wonder ever so briefly whether he put on the tight jeans especially. Maybe he usually wore those jeans, maybe he liked the way that Erica would be looking at him in them. But, just maybe, he put them on because he was coming around to see me. That delicious thought makes me tingle.

"How's Erica with you shifting up the coast for a fortnight?" I ask.

"Uh, she's not great with it."

"I can imagine."

Harrison straightens up and frowns at me.

"I mean," I reply, hastily, "You do a lot for her, you can do school pick up some days. She's going to miss all that."

"Yeah."

"She's going to have to fend for herself for two weeks. The Erica show is going solo."

I grin, to show I'm teasing, that this is light-hearted banter between old friends. It's not. My heartrate picks up slightly and I feel a blush that I need to get control of.

"She's got you though, Pol."

"Yeah."

I smile at him again, but it's strained now. I can see a shift in his eyes. He takes the bait. "Just yeah?"

I nod. Harrison furls his tape measure and slides his phone back into his pocket. He's done with recording measurements. His attention focuses on me. He frowns.

"What, Pol?"

My smile fades and I break eye contact.

"Pol?"

"Uh, look. I'm happy to help out, you know that. It's just... ah, shit."

I glance up at him, checking progress. His demeanour has changed, he's concerned.

"What's up?" he probes.

"Look, I guess, I do cover for her a bit."

"Cover?"

"Yeah, like some days. I'm happy to do it, do school pick up for all the kids. She's usually there in the hour, and you know how they all like to play in the park anyway. It's no problem."

"How often is she asking?"

I shrug, looking down at my hands again, then say, "Maybe once a week."

"Does she say?"

"No. Well, I asked once, and she said it was traffic. Though, I don't know where she was driving from."

Harrison is silent. I can almost hear the cogs spinning in his head. I've laid it on pretty thickly, but then, Harrison struggles with subtlety and innuendo.

"Are you trying to tell me something?" he asks.

I raise my chin and make eye contact. I can see it there, in his expression, and my heart is thumping in my chest with the audacity of what I'm about to say. This is just so reckless.

"If it helps, I've never seen any evidence of her going behind your back," I tell him.

His eyes flare.

"It's probably innocent," I continue.

The muscles in his jaw bunch, and he rumbles, "That's good."

"Yeah. I know sometimes these things come out and then you find out that everyone knew it was going on, and that you never got told, but that's not the case here. We're not all talking behind your back."

"I'd hope you weren't."

I lay my hand on his arm. I can feel the coarseness of his skin.

"I mean it. If I knew anything, I'd tell you. You're a good man, Harrison, you deserve the truth."

"Thanks, Polly. That, uh, yeah. That means a lot to me."

I give his arm a little reassuring squeeze and smile.

"You're worried though, aren't you?" I ask.

Harrison pulls away, running his hand over the benchtop, examining it, suddenly intent.

"No," he rumbles, "Look, yeah, maybe."

"I get it. She's gorgeous. It'd be awful to be looking over your shoulder all the time."

Harrison doesn't reply, his attention fixed on the smooth surface.

"I know how that feels," I murmur.

Harrison looks up at me, surprised.

"Really? How do you know, Pol? What's going on?"

I shrug, looking down at my hands, not meeting his gaze. I shake my head slowly but don't answer. He straightens up and comes over to me, hesitating, then I feel his big hands on my shoulders.

"What is it?" he rumbles.

I count to five and then look up into his honest face, blinking as if to reign in tears.

"I don't know," I mumble. "I just know that sometimes he's hard to reach. I call and he doesn't answer. There's something else, but it's just really stupid."

"Tell me."

"It's like I'm adding two and two and getting sixteen."

I stare up at him and bite my lip. I can see the concern in his face.

"Wednesdays, he's started coming home late," I confess.

Harrison frowns, and I can almost hear his thoughts.

"Wednesday's netball night for Erica, isn't it?" I whisper.

Harrison just nods. I can feel his grip on my shoulders. I hold my breath, staring up at him, wide-eyed. My lip starts to tremble. There's a dizziness and a rush and I decide to do it, stepping into his reach, pressing my face to his chest. I wait for the space of half a dozen heartbeats, wrapping my arms tightly around him. When his arms close around me, I feel myself go weak with the thrill of it and suddenly I'm crying for real. I stand there, being held by my best friend's husband in the kitchen of my nice house, my tears soaking into his t-shirt, cradled in his strong, ready arms.

"What should I do?" I sob.

I hear him draw in a great, ragged breath.

"I don't know Pol. I don't know."

I can smell him, I can feel the beat of his heart against my cheek. He's bought the story, I can tell, and deep down inside I feel a spark and I smile to myself. His big arms are wrapped around me, my face buried in his thick chest. It takes an effort to finally break his hold, but I need to plant the seed and lay out the next steps. Harrison has to accept the plan.

"It's all stupid," I gasp, "But I just have a feeling. I don't know if it's real or it's just my imagination. Can you do something for me?"

His eyes are hard and dark, his face set like stone. "Sure, okay, what?"

"Not say anything to her. I'm not going to say anything to Mark either. If I come out with what I'm thinking, he's... he's...."

I blink away tears. Harrison cups my cheek, concerned. This is going better than my wildest dreams.

"It's just, uh, there's no proof," I stammer, "If I say anything now, he's going to tell me I'm stupid."

I stare up at Harrison.

"I'm not stupid. Am I?"

"No, Pol, you're not."

"Will you do that then?"

"Yeah."

"We need to know for sure."

"Yeah."

I feel dizzy, it's such a rush. I go in for another hug and he wraps me up in his arms again, automatically. This time, I don't break away. I don't need to: the hard part's done.

---

Annalise is fretting. She's like that, though. Honestly, it's gotten worse since the divorce, but she was always a little sensitive. Maybe that's why he left her. Val is a weapon, and as I watch her flitting around the place with Annalise in tow, it's obvious which one of them is the alpha female. We're setting up for the annual school quiz night in the large function area in the upstairs of a local bar. It's the premier fundraising event for the Parents Association and therefore, by extension, Val's reason for existing.

She runs a tight ship. She's going for a record haul this year because next year the reins transfer over to the new parents and she wants to be able to lord her fundraising total over them. It's petty, but it's her world. Most of us have come from high-paying jobs, positions of responsibility, easily keeping pace with our husbands' careers until the lottery of X and Y chromosomes put a speedbump in the way. Now, we are super-mothers, running households, raising kids, funding the new school gym equipment, keeping in trim. It's all so deeply moronic, the way we have our little tussles, working out the hierarchy like we're back in the playground again.

Val thinks she's the alpha but she has no idea, not really, because I'm the alpha. There are two types of people in the world, so I've found. Type A people always have a plan, type B people are pulled along with the flow. I'm type A.

I have my shit sorted, and with regards to getting what I want, I usually succeed. I planned on getting a good, loving husband with a reliable income stream and I got it in Mark, sifting through the male colleagues at work until I had him in my sights. It was fun, hunting him down, making him mine, but to tell the truth it wasn't hard. I joined the company in February and by the mid-year offsite, I had him sprawled naked on the bed in the hotel, practically begging me to make it a permanent arrangement.

The secret to my success, the secret to any of it, is finding the thing the other side wants. There's always a button to push, and with Mark it was the tease. He loved having it dangled in his face and then snatched away, or rather, he came to love it. It also gave me quite a lot of control, deciding whether he got what he needed or he didn't. More precisely, I got to decide when and if I was going to reciprocate his attentions.

That's the thing with Mark. He's reliable, very reliable. He's good with figures, is how I describe him to other people. If he's in the conversation, I follow it up with a sly grin, alluding without being blatant, and Mark puffs his chest out, and I finish up by clarify that he's also good with mathematics. It gives him a little boost.

The reality is different. He's good with mathematics, but what he does with my figure is very much to a formula. Earlier on in our marriage, I tried to spice it up, inject a little raunchiness, but it just never seemed to stick; the next time we made love it would be back to missionary position, a few minutes between my legs and then humping to completion.

One time, I just rolled over, withdrawing my crotch from his mouth, telling him I was too tired after all, and could we just cuddle? I felt him, still rigid, pressed against my back as we spooned, but not complaining. I remember cuddling into him, pressing my bottom against his shaft, and feeling an illicit thrill. He softened, and then his breathing eventually became slow and regular as he drifted into sleep, but I couldn't join him. I slid my fingers between my legs, rubbing ever so gently to relieve the ache inside me. Feeling him flaccid against my rear, oblivious, neutered by a few words, stoked my need. I came in less than a minute, a violent orgasm through gritted teeth, constraining myself to complete silence.

Afterwards, lying there, I realised two things: Mark was never going to change, and I needed something more. I needed a plan. Actually, and this was the revelation to me, that's not quite true. The next time we had sex, Mark was more eager; that's when I discovered the teasing thing. It made him more ardent, and it also gave me an off-switch. If I couldn't be bothered satisfying him, then I just rolled over. It wasn't planned like that, but in the end it became part of the plan.

Annalise is another type B person: she never has a plan. Her man split up with her a couple of years ago, leaving her with a daughter the same age as my youngest, and a son who is really leaning into the terrible twos. She'd had him to try and save her marriage. The awful thing is that one night, after most of a bottle of wine all by herself, she broke down and actually confessed that to me, bawling her eyes out on my couch while I was the dutiful friend and supplied her with tissues.

She's an object lesson in what happens if you don't get your shit together. Annalise is a couple of years younger than the rest of us. Her daughter's lovely, like her mother. Annalise is slim, pleasant, pretty, but the smile that used to light up her face is rare these days, struggling to raise two kids on her own.

She's the embodiment of the difference between tactics and strategy: her tactic was to bring the love back into her relationship by having a second child whereas the strategy should have been to stick with one kid and keep an eye out for something better. Instead of snaring a single father at school and trading up, she's now undatable, encumbered with a toddler and zero time to herself. Have you ever heard the old saying that you don't quit your job until you've got a better one to go to? Annalise is the cardinal example of what happens if you don't follow that advice.

After spending an hour in the function room, we're at morning coffee, but it's just Erica, Annalise and myself. Val had to go and collect the tables from the hire place. Annalise is picking up her bag, making apologies. She's booked herself a gym class, slotting it into a tiny gap in her day, dropping her son off with her mother to try and keep herself in trim in case she ever finds enough time to talk to a man, let alone actually date him. Erica watches her go.

"She's gonna run herself into a ditch," she observes.

"Metaphorically?" I wonder.

"At this rate, maybe even physically."

"Poor woman."

"Yeah."

I turn my attention back to Erica, feeling a little twinge of excitement. She's hovering over her half-finished coffee, her long, blonde hair gathered up in a butterfly clip, but she's pensive now that we're alone.

"So, what's news with you, now we've spent half an hour in Annalise World?"

"Nothing much."

I study her face for a moment, then reply, "Something though. What's up?"

All at once, Erica lets out a long sigh, reclining back in her chair, her finger teasing the rim of her coffee cup. I don't speak, letting her gather her thoughts.

"I dunno," she mutters at last.

"Work? Home?"

Erica works shifts in one of the boutiques in the high street, elegant in fashionable dresses selling elegant fashionable dresses. I can't imagine that it's a high-pressure environment.

"Home?" I probe, cautiously, but Erica doesn't reply.

I feel that little, tense thrill again.

"Bedroom?" I ask.

Slowly, Erica nods and I force my expression to remain sober, compassionate. I want to hear her troubles.

"Yeah," she confesses, "Like I dunno, just... I can't really explain it."

"You feeling a little off?"

"Nah, not me. That's the thing, I'm all good, but it's him. There's something off-balance and I just don't know what it is."

"Have you two talked about it?"

Erica shakes her head, then continues, "I kinda tried, but it was like talking to a wall. He just sort of shrugged it off."

"Maybe he's got stuff going on."

"Like what? I know he's going through shit with the latest client. She's crawling over the build on her hands and knees looking for defects, but that's not new, and it's never affected the bedroom before."

I lean over, taking her hand in mine. She looks up at me, her perfect blue eyes locking onto mine. For a split second, I imagine how Harrison would feel, staring into those blue eyes, how they'd just melt anyone they focused themselves onto. It's the one factor I can't control.

"Been there," I confess, lowering my voice, "Had to work it out the hard way."

That comment piques Erica's interest.

"How?" she asks.

"The thing is, you have to get them to focus on other things, pull their heads out of it. I'm in the same boat with Mark, right now, if you can believe it."

Erica wrinkles her nose, but I can tell she's taken the bait.

"Oh, babe, I'm sorry."

"No, it's fine. It's actually good. Listen, you want to know?"

"Yeah."

"I found that if it's cooling down in the bedroom, sometimes to heat it up again you need to chill it down completely."

Erica frowns, puzzled at me. She hasn't withdrawn her hand from mine though. I plough on with my explanation.

"It's simple, babe. You don't keep pushing it, you take it off the table. Male psychology. All of a sudden, he's got something more useful to focus on than work, or at least, more useful to you."

Erica stares at me, then, abruptly, she laughs.

"So, you're saying the cure for not getting enough sex is to go on a sex diet?"

"Yup. If he's not giving you what you want, starve him until he does."

Erica slips her hand out of mine. She picks up her coffee and drains the last of it, her pretty blue eyes sparkling at me over the rim of her cup. When she sets it down, she's smiling.

"I got you, babe," I say to her, "Stick with me and I'll see you through."

"It's either madness or genius," Erica replies.

"It's genius. Trust me, stick to the plan, it'll work like magic."

"How long?"

"It depends."

"How long with Mark?"

I shrug, like it's an inconsequential thing, then murmur, "You need to do a few weeks, at least."

"But how long are you going this time, have you decided?"

I can see the seed sprouting right in front of me and there's a warm glow in my tummy. I grin at her.

"He's gonna need the full month," I tell her.

I finish my coffee and we leave, Erica going one way and I go the other. She's smiling, like she's got a plan. I walk away from her and I'm smiling too. Erica's got a plan, alright, but it isn't hers: it's mine.

---

Mark comes home with flowers. I have no idea why.

"You know when my birthday is, right?" I ask, meeting him at the front door.

"Yep," he replies coming in for the quick kiss as I accept the bouquet, like I've just sung the aria.

"Lovely," I murmur, taking a moment to smell the blooms as he smiles.

Mark's nailed it, so he thinks. Flowers now, kids to bed, then us to bed. I know the plan, I've been here before.

We go through the routine of dinner, wrangling children, clearing up, him still in his shirt and trousers, me in my jeans because there's just no point dressing up. It's not like I have anywhere special to go. The flowers are in a vase, perfuming the air subtly. I open a bottle of red.