Rebecca's phone call came several days after she returned from California. We arranged to meet downtown the following afternoon. I emerged from the subway into a rainstorm and sheltered in the doorway of an office building. As I huddled against the wetness and cold I reflected on the many reasons I had to be anxious. Firstly Rebecca was my best friend's wife. Secondly I hadn't felt this way about a woman since the early days with Annie, my ex-wife. It's one thing to fuck somebody's wife, it's quite another to fall in love with her. When Rebecca said that people would get hurt I never really considered that I might be one of the casualties. I scanned the street looking for her among the scuttling pedestrians. Instead her Lexus dived out of the traffic and splashed to a halt against the curb. I dashed through rain and launched myself into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut behind me. Without a word Rebecca accelerated out into the stream of cars. She wore a green tailored jacket, her long black hair sprayed across her shoulders. She wore black fitted pants and a white collared blouse. A thin gold chain was tight around her neck.
"I thought you weren't going to phone," I said. I heard the wine disappointment in my voice and silently chastised myself.
"I nearly didn't, Paul. I had a lot of time to think in California." She said nothing more.
"What did you think?" I asked.
"Let's find somewhere where we can talk," she replied.
We drove on in silence. I wanted to reach for her hand, touch her cheek. Her sharp profile was beautiful. She noticed my scrutiny and offered me a sad smile. She drove to a large cemetery, parked the car and hauled out an umbrella from the trunk. We were alone in a vast landscape of tombstones as we trudged up a path that took us away from the empty parking lot.
I was trying to decide what I would say when Rebecca gave me the bad news. She was right of course. It would be best if we pretended nothing happened back in that motel room. It would be the wise thing to do. It would be safe. Rebecca took my hand and I followed her to a large grey stone monument that offered shelter from the rain. We sat on the cold surface of a family grave. We were high enough to have a view of the city; it seemed to hover in the swirling clouds of rain. After a few minutes of silence Rebecca spoke.
"I used to come here with my granny before she died. We would sit here on fall afternoons and she would tell me about her life. I think I was happiest when I was with her. I miss her so much. I haven't been up here since the day of her funeral."
I took her hand. "We don't have to do this you know if you don't want."
"I hoped that by coming here I would know what to do."
"And do you?"
"No," she said looking at me.
"Look," I said, "if we're rational about it and think the thing through clearly ...."
"Don't be fucking pompous Paul," She said quietly. "I don't want to know what reason says. I know that. Any idiot knows that."
"What do you want then?"
"I don't know. I want to cheat on my husband. And I want to sleep with you again. I want a life. I want to feel something." She paused, staring out, looking for an answer. "Christ, I was dead and didn't know it until you touched me. You woke me up from a dead sleep, Paul and I don't know whether I want to throw myself down on my knees and thank you or take a kitchen knife and murder you."
"I think I know which I prefer," I said.
"Maybe when this is over you'll change your mind."
"We'll see."
"If what happened that night was just a fuck then it was stupid and I regret it. If it was something more I'm frightened. Tell me what it meant to you," Rebecca asked.
I sat silently for a while trying to find the right words.
"Rebecca, all I can say is that I want to see you again and touch you again. I've thought of nothing else since you left."
"And you don't care that I'm Steve's wife?"
"Of course I care," I protested. "Let's not get too heavy about this. Let's just take things as they come."
"He loves you, you know. You're his best friend; he would do anything for you."
"Look, Rebecca we have to forget about Steve. We have to put this thing in a box; a tight, sealed box that no one can see inside. Then we will be safe, all of us, Steve included."
She offered me a real smile for the first time. "You're so fucking rational. God, it used to annoy me about you. Now it makes me feel protected, like you have everything under control." The rain was now reduced to a drizzle. I stood up and pulled Rebecca to her feet. She folded herself into my arms and raised her mouth to mine, surrendering herself to me. I felt her breasts press against me. Her hand reached for my neck to pull me deeper into her kiss. We stood out in the misty rain, abandoned in a maze of gravestones kissing the breath from each other. My hand reached beneath her jacket. I tugged her blouse from her pants so that I could press my palms against her tight flesh. She moaned and pulled herself from my lips.
"I thought about us so much," she said quietly. "What we would do. You know, dirty things, fuck things. I want us to do everything, live out every fantasy. This need I have is the only truth for me. Touch me, Paul."
I popped the button on the front of her pants and pushed my hand down beneath the silky fabric of her panties to her ass. She pushed herself against my straining cock. I pulled her pants and panties down past her knees, swung her around so she could lean against the tomb. Rebecca bent over offering herself to me. Urgently I released my cock and, my hands tightly gripping her hips, I thrust myself into her. Her hand reached for her clit and she masturbated herself while I pumped her pussy. It was then that I noticed we were being watched. A cemetery worker stood not twenty yards away, dressed in shabby overalls and sturdy leather work boots. He didn't take his eyes from Rebecca's open ass and my cock sliding back and forth. I whispered to Rebecca that a man was watching. She groaned with her need, her masturbating finger now quickly rubbing her to a giant climax. When I felt her pussy pulse I fucked hard and fast and shot deeply inside her. I collapsed over her, panting. When I looked again the worker was gone.
As Rebecca pulled up her panties and wriggled back into her tight black pants I asked her if she liked being watched. She nodded, giving me her naughty-girl grin.
She pushed herself onto her toes and kissed me softly. "It excites you doesn't it?" she said dancing away through the puddles on the path laughing. I chased after her and caught her in tight hug.
"You excite me, everything about you excites me," I said.
A week later I was sitting in a Somerville restaurant with Andy and his wife Pamela. If there was a wife of a friend who I might have imagined screwing, Pamela would have been the obvious choice. She was from Scandinavian stock, strong, blond and blue-eyed. She looked like a soccer mom but I doubted her daughter Nikki was much into soccer. Pamela was involved in all sorts of charities and enthused about all the right causes. She sometimes took my side in my public arguments with Rebecca.
Andy was uncomplicated. He pushed paper around for an insurance company and watched baseball in the summer and football in the winter. He never watched basketball or hockey. He never ate vegetables except potatoes, preferably fried. I'd known him since college and although we had drifted into different lives we still needed each other. For him I think it was the need to talk about the past, before his marriage when his life had an edge to it. Then he played football and partied through nights and weekends. After college he had a spell as a firefighter before he met Pamela. Her practical, cautious view of the world persuaded him to take an insurance job and sign up for a mortgage. For me the friendship was habit, but a good one. Andy would throw his big arm around my shoulders when we met and yell out a greeting. There was something comfortable about this. Of course, now that I had fucked his daughter this could change at any moment. I had seldom seen Andy lose his temper but the prospect of it frightened me. I think he and Steve are better suited as friends but Steve's loyalty to me made Andy the third member of our little group.
Pamela interrupted our sports talk. Her voice was deeper than you would expect. It had the sound of truth and goodness in it.
"Nikki's applied to art schools Paul."
"Yeah," said Andy, "and we were thinking you could help."
"What can I do?" I asked nervously. Don't throw your daughter at me I was thinking.
"Her teacher said that she was good at art ...," Pamela said before Andy interrupted.
"Looks like crap to me," he said shrugging his big shoulders.
"That's because you know nothing about art, dear," Pamela said patiently. "That's why we need you Paul. She's never been to the art galleries. We never made the time I suppose. I don't want her to trip up when she goes for her interviews. We thought you could take her around and give her some pointers; something to say when they ask her what art she likes."
Pamela wasn't really asking. In her mind this was a simple duty of friendship.
"What does Nikki say?" I asked.
"She can't wait," Andy said, "it was her idea in the first place."
I waited for Nikki outside the Gardner museum. It was one of those bitterly cold days with a deep blue sky stretched from horizon to horizon. She was late and I amused myself by watching my breath condense. When she finally scooted around the corner she caught me trying to blow smoke rings.
"Do you want a cigarette?" She asked laughing and reaching into her bag.
"No," I said firmly, "And you shouldn't smoke, it's bad for you." She grimaced and stuck the tip of her tongue out at me. She had her mother's blond hair and blue eyes but she had inherited a fragility of personality that was more her fathers. Her boisterous approach to world was not the confidence and assurance of her mother, but rather a thin skin behind which she sheltered.
"Where should we go?" She asked, stamping her feet against the cold.
"Inside," I said.
"I mean are we going to your place?"
"You're going to the gallery and we are going to look at art," I said in my most severe parental tone, taking her arm and turning her towards the building.
"Hey, I thought my dragon was enough art for you," she said referring to her tattoo I had been invited to kiss in her bedroom several months before while her parents entertained guests in the room below.
She slouched her way from the coatroom up the stairs into the first gallery. Nikki was dressed in a black t-shirt covered by a black buttoned up jacket with some kind of insignia on the shoulders. She wore a short black skirt and ripped stockings that disappeared into a pair of calf-length Doc Martins. She still had her punk hairstyle, her short blond hair spiked. The silver nose ring was new. I expected a tough afternoon trying to make her look and see the beauty and excitement in the art. But after a few minutes she fell into an absorbed concentration. The Gardner is not an ordinary art gallery. Here you find yourself in rooms cluttered with paintings, sculptures, furniture, photographs, carpets, all mixed up.
There is a randomness that allows you to discover pieces for yourself. I watched Nikki roam the floor allowing herself to be struck by something and then walking up close to see the detail. Finally she spoke, breathlessly asking questions, smart questions. Unlike so many people Nikki could see art; her naïve gaze went directly to the piece and she saw what the artist was trying to achieve. When she didn't understand a work she asked why the artist had chosen to represent it in this or that way. She didn't care about the history and she wasn't intimidated by what the experts might think. When I gently suggested we move to the next room, she laughed, exhilarated by the discovery of a new world. She took my hand and I let her, sharing her happiness.
When we finally left the gallery it was already dark. We walked to my car. She sat in the passenger seat and let out a long sigh of pleasure.
"That was brilliant, fucking ace," she said. "That was like, the best."
"I should get you home," I said starting the car.
"No, I want to go to your place and play."
"Nikki ...," I said, "We shouldn't. We really shouldn't."
"I just want a beer and talk about the stuff we saw and I can't have a drink in an actual, like, bar in this fucking country for another three years."
"Just a beer then," I said and steered the car towards my apartment.
