Thanks to Bad Hobbit for his very useful suggestions and corrections. I didn't follow all of them, so responsibility for the story is mine, as is copyright.
This story can't be appreciated without reading the first two parts of this series.
*****
Living with my wife is an adventure, a wild ride. A scary ride at times.
She's a cannonball, literally. The carnival had claimed their human cannonball was sick and asked the audience if there were any volunteers. Penny's arm shot up immediately. They had her sign a bunch of waivers, which she didn't even read. I was freaking out. She put on the special protective outfit and then got shot out of a cannon. Not a real gunpowder cannon; it was powered by compressed air, with some gunpowder for effect. She travelled about thirty feet and came up laughing.
There was amateur contest at a local strip club she insisted on going to. I was relieved that she only went to watch, not participate, though she could have easily won first prize.
She's impulsive and stubborn. She came home one day and announced she wanted to take our next winter vacation in Michigan. We had been talking about Hawaii, but no, Michigan it was. I still don't understand why.
More recently there were the job offers. Princeton, Cambridge, Berkeley, Stanford, Vancouver... Haifa, Oxford, Melbourne, Saint Petersburg... So many offers; so many factors to weigh. Many of them were offering her tenure right from the get-go. Others were offering a very light teaching load. A few were offering oodles of money. Some had a good history department; for others it was an afterthought. Penny promised that she would not consider any university unless I was hired by their history or political science department.
I wouldn't be an afterthought though, something they did just to lure my wife. I was coming off two successful years as History Chairman, restoring a reputation lost under the previous head. All my publications were well respected with many citations. In the age of terrorism, my focus on the role of violence in the development of society was considered especially significant. I was invited to many seminars and was even interviewed on Fox News. My book "Promises of Peace" was a best-seller, as academic history books go. I didn't lack for publicity and my doctoral students didn't lack for funding.
Still, my wife was the star. I had met Penny when she was finishing her master's degree. We married a year later, and I supported her through her doctorate. By the time she finished that, people were competing to get her to accept money from them. I always encouraged her to follow her off-the-wall flashes of inspiration, to explore her wild ideas. I knew she would be at the top of her field, and her field would soon be recognized for its importance. I was proud of my wife. She was brilliant, beautiful and always full of surprises.
When the unsolicited job offers started rolling in, she expressed a preference for staying in North America, preferably on the west coast. I was initially in agreement with that; my latest project was contrasting the development of Papua-New Guinea (an independent nation) and occupied West Papua, where the original black, Catholic population was being forcibly displaced by Muslim ethnic Indonesians. The whole island had literally been in the stone age until the latter part of the twentieth century. The population was traditionally violent and murderous, with widespread cannibalism. They were trying to move past that, but it wasn't easy. The border split the island in half, thus making it into an ideal test case.
Anyways, Melanesia (the region of the Pacific southwest with native black populations) was closer to the west coast of the Americas, so Penny's preference had made sense to me. Unfortunately, her latest off-the-wall flash changed that.
She was intrigued by photos of primitive-looking Papuans, dressed in, well, not much. "These guys must be killers in bed."
"They're traditionally killers, cannibals; very dangerous people. Many Papuans are Roman Catholic now and look with horror at their past practices. Still, old habits die hard. You don't want to fuck with Papuans. "
"Can I fuck with their cousins?"
"What cousins?"
"I'll find a darkie here to fuck."
"Very funny." I thought that was the end of that discussion until a week later, when Penny announced:
"I found someone."
"What are you talking about?"
"I found a Papuan look-alike to fuck."
"I asked, what are you talking about?"
"I told you last week that I'd love to screw one of those Papuan hunters, but you think they're too dangerous. So there's this guy, he's a science writer talking to me for an article about quantum biology. He's a little too beefy to pass off as a Papuan, but I figure he's safe."
"You're kidding me." I paused. "Are you?"
"Ken Sabini. I'll send you a link to his website. Check him out, tell me if you approve. I'm going for a walk with him in Forest Park on Thursday morning. There are some issues he didn't quite get during our first meeting at my office."
"Like having sex with a married woman?"
"He doesn't know I'm married. I'll tell him after I have your approval."
I was floored. She was either serious or pulling some terrible stunt. Much more serious than the cannonball. "There's no way in hell I will agree to you having sex with anyone but me."
"It's just a one-time thing. I want to try a black savage. Come on, honey."
"Why don't you just have sex with your brother in law? Or have you already?"
Penny was horrified by the suggestion. "Of course not; I haven't fucked him. I would never cheat on you. I can barely understand a word Clive says anyways, with that island accent. What would my sister say if I had sex with her husband? Her precious kids would never want to see me again if they found out. I love them too much for that. I love you too much for that."
Penny seemed genuinely offended at the idea. She ignored how seriously her proposal offended me. By this point, it probably didn't matter if it was a joke or not. She was dangerously close to a line that should never be crossed.
"Listen, my precious Larry. It's just a one-time thing. Okay, maybe twice if he's really good. It doesn't have to affect us. I love you; you know that."
I stared at her.
"How about some incentive?"
"What possible incentive could get me to agree to you having sex with someone else?"
She got a dangerous gleam on her face. "The university knows that I'm getting a lot of job offers. They desperately want to keep me here. They'll do anything I say, which includes following my recommendations for the funding committees. You have three students hoping for big grants. Understand what I'm saying?"
"No. What do you have to do with funding? What does funding have to do with your fucking that black guy?"
"I'm part of the outside review team. Grant me your approval to seduce Sabini, and I promise your students will get their grants. Deny me, the university might very well deny them."
I staggered backwards and fell into my chair. "Do you realize what you just promised? Penny, this has gone far enough. It's not funny anymore. Please, stop."
"Come on, honey. Indulge me."
