At the request of a reader who was kind enough to offer both feedback and a plot suggestion, I have this to say:
"Dave's coming on Sunday," Brent announced from behind the Saturday edition of the Tribune.
"Oh? Any why's that?" Christine questioned, placing her coffee mug on the kitchen table. Her long, slender fingers picked at a cinnamon scone.
"Well, I just think he needs to get out of my parents' hair for a while. You know how upset Mom is that he's taking the year off."
"Not a wise move on his part."
"Mom and Dad don't think so. They aren't real thrilled that he's bartending, either. Apparently, he works three or four nights a week at one of the bars in Highwood. When he's not working, he gets drunk. Either way, he sleeps all day."
Christine chuckled. Brent's little brother was the black sheep of the family. The youngest of four boys, he had been arrested a number of times during his high school years for possession of alcohol and other minor offenses. Though his older siblings had all attended college – two obtained post-graduate degrees – and were doing quite well for themselves, Dave had opted not to go to college immediately, deciding instead to take a year off to "find himself."
"So how long's he going to be staying with us?" she asked, rising from the table and depositing her mug and plate in the kitchen sink of their Gold Coast condominium. Her tight little bottom was hidden by a pair of gray cotton shorts with her husband's fraternity letters emblazoned the cheeks. Brent watched as she shuffled away from him, amazed that the shorts weren't in tatters after seven or eight years of use.
"Just through the end of the Thanksgiving weekend."
"I thought you were leaving town Sunday."
"It's been changed to Monday now. I'll be back Tuesday night, though, Wednesday morning at the latest."
"You want me to look after him for a few days?"
"Yeah." He dropped the paper from in front of his face. "Come on. It's just two days. I leave early Monday, and I'll be back Tuesday."
"No, it's no problem. No problem at all. The office is closed next week anyway. He can run errands and go grocery shopping with me. All that fun stuff."
Brent laughed. "Yeah. I bet he'll really like that."
* * *
It was just after noon and a ray of light streamed in through a gap in the bedroom's blinds. Christine stretched her arms over her head, her knuckles knocking against the bed's headboard. She rolled to her side and glanced at the bedside clock, her heavy breasts rolling along her rib cage. Seeing the time, she slowly sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress.
Her clean, white tennis shoes rested on the floor in front of the nightstand, a bobby sock stuffed into each. The tan pedal-pusher pants were folded neatly on a chair in the corner of the room, her white oxford, bra and thong stacked atop them.
"Whatcha doin'?"
"I gotta go." She grabbed her cell phone from atop the nightstand and checked the recent-calls list.
"So soon?"
"Yeah. I have some errands to run, some calls to make."
"And calls to return?"
She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder, her piercing blue eyes showing amusement. "Yeah, and return."
"Was that Brent?"
"Mm-hm," she responded, rising from the bed and padding across the carpeted floor to the chair, her tan-lined breasts bobbing on her chest. She grabbed the cotton panties from atop the stack of clothing and pulled them over her lithe legs, adjusting them to conceal the blonde wisps of hair at the apex of her vagina.
"Call him from here."
Christine rolled her eyes as she fastened the 34C bra behind her back, swollen nipples tenting the fabric.
"Think he knows?"
"Knows what?"
"About us."
She sighed heavily. "There is no 'us,' Andre. There's me and there's that," she said, pointing her chin at the sticky, lifeless cock that rested along his thigh. She pulled the khaki pants up her shapely thighs and over her tight bottom. "That's all."
A few minutes later, she slipped from the condominium and called the elevator. The wait and the following ascent seemed interminable, but it afforded her the opportunity to reflect.
She had been sleeping with Andre for several weeks. Actually, "sleeping" is too mild a word. She had been fucking him. That's all it was, pure and simple. While he may have wanted more – a relationship – he wasn't going to get it. Christine was in it for the sex and nothing else. From past experience, she knew she would soon tire of him.
That's how it had gone with the previous adventures outside her marriage. Every few months, she would meet a handsome man in this place or that – a club; on the El; Treasure Island; wherever – and strike up a scorching month or so of raunchy sex. And then she would get bored.
Fidelity had never been her strong suit. In five years of marriage, she couldn't recall a period of six months where the only cock to be buried in her snug vagina was her husband's. Two or three months maybe, but no more than that. She had yet to get caught, at least since she had recited her wedding vows.
When she and Brent were still in college but still in the early stages of their relationship, she had attended a fraternity party; as the night wound down, she found herself in a senior's bunk. He had not been overly discrete about the tryst and, the rumor mill being what it was, word had made its way back to Brent. Bitter fights followed, but they had managed to patch up their broken relationship and, for the most part, moved on.
But from then on, Christine walked on egg shells around Brent when it came to other men. If they were at a party and someone was hitting on her, she made it very clear that she was spoken for. And though she had made some great male friends in college, she didn't keep in contact with any of them for fear that Brent would suspect of her having an affair. She took such great pains to ease his fears that her own – of Brent actually suspecting her – bordered on paranoia.
Hence her preference for random assignations with otherwise strangers.
The pinging of the elevator announcing her arrival on the eighteenth floor pulled her from her contemplation and she exited the car.
* * *
The weekend passed. Sunday afternoon, Christine was reclining on the couch, comfortable in sweats and a baggy tee shirt, her flaxen hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Brent was at the health club working out and she passed the afternoon reading the New York Times, a Lifetime Channel movie playing in the background.
