The problem had been going on for a while. I always thought that it was us men that had the midlife crises and that, like good wine, the ladies simply got better with age. I still do believe this but trying to convince my wife, Mary was becoming an uphill task. She was spending far more time in front of the mirror than she ever had before; searching her face for wrinkles and lines that would announce the onset of further maturity.
“I’m getting to be an old woman.” She would proclaim in desperate tones on most nights as we were preparing for bed. “I look old and unattractive!”
I explained to her over and over that at forty-two she still looked as good as she did the day we were married. I hugged her and told her that she was still a most attractive woman and that she still turned heads. But the more I did, the more I tried to cheer her, the more she seemed to retreat into her own little shell of privacy.
And then there was our sex life. Once wonderfully varied and frequent, it now seemed to have become a once-a-month type of thing and, recently, embarked upon by both of us with little enthusiasm. I needed a way to revive the old spark that our marriage now so sadly lacked. I needed to find a way of getting Mary – and therefore myself as well – back into her life.
The idea of introducing a third person into our bedroom did not come that easily to us. Like most people, we enjoyed reading a little pornography from time to time and still owned several explicit videos that we had purchased on a trip to abroad a few years ago. We had watched films and read stories of husbands who allowed other men to “share” their wives and had discussed the idea at some length. But, frankly, the idea of any of the guys that we knew pawing and groping Mary wasn’t the type of thing that either my wife or I were really interested in. The problem was that all the men that we knew were about the same age as us (or a little older) and were probably no more likely to make Mary feel attractive and wanted than I was. It wasn’t until a week or so later that we remembered that there was a possible answer to our problems.
Tony lived next door to us and with his parents. At twenty years old he was a good-looking lad; short dark hair with well muscled arms and nicely tanned due to his work on construction sites. I had never seen him with a girlfriend but, from the way that I had seen him looking at Mary on several occasions, I knew that he wasn’t gay. I guessed – or rather hoped – that he had a thing for older women.
We knew that Tony’s parents; Janet and Frank, were away on vacation and had left their son to his own devices for a couple of weeks. Mary and I both looked at him from our window as he toiled in the garden next door and we exchanged a knowing smile. Perhaps this was the moment that we had been waiting for.
Wordlessly I moved into the spare bedroom as my wife opened the window and called out to Tony.
“Hello, Tony. Are you busy?”
From the other room I could see our young neighbour stop what he was doing and look up. His large hand wiped away beads of perspiration from his forehead and he smiled as he saw my wife at the window.
“Oh, hello Mrs. Rider, how are you?”
“I’m fine Tony, thanks, but I have a problem with a loose shelf and David is out. Are you very busy?”
Again Tony threw her a charming and disarming smile and shook his head.
“Not really. This can wait, I guess. What’s the problem, Mrs. Rider?”
“The first problem, Tony, is that you should call me Mary, okay?”
Tony laughed. “Okay! Mary, then. What’s the problem?”
“It’s just a screw come out of this damn shelf up here. You think you could take a look?”
I watched Tony give a thumbs-up and another broad grin as he trotted back through his house and around to ours. I could tell that he was keen to help because it was only a few seconds later that I heard his athletic footfalls on our stairs as he took the treads two at a time. He was a little out of breath when he reached the bedroom that Mary was in and I half wondered if his heavy breathing was just the exertion of running up the stairs or if it might have something to do with the fact that he was about to be alone in a bedroom with my wife. I sincerely hoped for the latter.
I watched through a crack in the adjoining door as Tony briskly fixed the shelf. It was a simple job and one that had been pending on my “to do” list for a week or more.
Mary sat demurely on the edge of the bed and watched the young man work. She was wearing a light silk over-shirt and a short skirt. Her legs looked great; nicely tanned and, as usual, very smooth. I licked my lips and prayed that our plan would work. It was all up to Mary now.
“There.” Tony exclaimed as he patted the repaired woodwork. “All done!”
He turned around and looked at my Wife as she sat. Their eyes met for a brief moment and the electricity that passed between them was undeniable. I swear that I could hear Mary gulp nervously before she spoke.
“You know I didn’t just ask you up here to fix the shelf, don’t you, Tony?”
“Sorry Mrs…er…Mary…I don’t…”
