Adultery When We Were Married by DanielQSteele1

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Finally, and it was only a little less difficult than cutting my arm off with a rusty spoon, I pushed her away and held her at arm's length.

"Why?" There were tears in her eyes.
"I was just glad to see you alive, Debbie."
"I...I just got off the phone with the Wilsons. I told them to keep BJ there with their son until the security officer get there. Now you tell me, Bill, what is going on here?"
I told her. She stumbled a little and I held her elbows to keep her upright.
"Oh my God. You're sure, they were watching BJ?"
"JSO identified you and BJ and the college has to be Mandarin High. They were stalking him, and maybe both of you."
She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.
"No, No....not BJ. Is this-"
"I can't think of any other reason, Debbie. Someone who knows told me the head of the Mexican Cartel Menendez worked for is, concerned, about the possibility that it might come here. This might just be a warning to me, to scare me, or maybe they were planning to make me worry that they could come after you and Kelly after BJ. I don't know."
"The Mexican Cartel? Bill, what are you talking about?"
I realized that not everybody in the courthouse would be hooked into the gossip hotline and so I told her.
"I don't believe this, Bill. Why didn't you tell me? Let me at least get prepared for-"
"For what, Debbie? There's no indication the trial is coming here. I got word, strictly unofficial word, that there are people in Mexico who don't want it to come here, but there's been nothing solid until today. Do I tell you there's a possible threat against you and the kids so you spend every day worrying everytime you can't reach the kids on their cells, or when they go off with friends and forget to tell you? Do you want to live like that? Could you live like that?
"Suppose you decide to move away, get away from me and Jacksonville? Where are you going to move that they couldn't find you? How am I supposed to provide protection, or even know you're in danger, if you're in another city or state?"
She stared at me and whispered, "Why the hell did you join the State Attorney's Office Bill? You could have been making big money in private practice and we'd still be together and not looking over our shoulders for someone coming to kill us?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time. For what it's worth, there have been plenty of times over the last six months that I wished the same thing."
This time she hugged me. Even after Aline and Heather and Meagan and Jane, she felt good. Finally she pushed me away.
"BJ and Kelly should be here before too long. What do we do now?"
"You stay put, Debbie. It's easier to protect you in one place. I'd suggest your parents come here for the weekend too. If you don't mind, and it wouldn't be too weird, I'll stay here too. The cops will be trying to find out what the two thugs were up to and we'll contact the feds to see if they can come up with anything. We need to know exactly what these assholes were doing, and if there's a real threat or they were just trying to throw a scare into me."
"But – if they were here to scare us, who cut that guy's head off. And why?"
I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone, but I had an idea. Unfortunately, the only cell phone I had that I could use to contact the Old Man was in a drawer in my office and I was going to make damned sure that Debbie, Kelly and BJ were safe and surrounded by as many uniforms and weapons as I could bring to bear before I drove back to the office. I'd also need protection myself, just in case.
"You got coffee?"
"Some."
"Any made up?"
"No."
"You were the coffee drinker. The only coffee I drink is at Starbucks."
We just looked at each other for a moment and she said, "I still have some. I could brew up a pot."
"Was Doug a coffee drinker?"
"No, you bastard. Can't we call a truce, even now? If you have to know, Clint was a coffee guy just like you, any time of the day or night. You going to be pissed off about him, too."
"No, Debbie, and I'm sorry for the crack about Doug. Old habits die hard. Old feelings too, but a pot of coffee would be good."
The cell rang then and when I punched it I heard Myra's voice. Debbie could hear it too.
"Bill, please tell me the traffic is terrible and that's why you're not standing outside my door."
"I wish I could, Myra but...something's come up."
In the long silence I could hear her breathing. I could feel Debbie's glare and then felt it soften. When I looked up at her I didn't see the anger I'd been used to. There was something else there, something I couldn't put a name to.
"I'll get that pot of coffee going, Bill," she said, and turned and walked toward the kitchen.
"Was that her?"
"Yes."
Frost carried through the telephone lines.
"You're at her house, when we were supposed to be going out tonight?"
"Yes."
There was a click.
I punched her number in. It rang until the message clicked in.
"Myra, please answer my phone or call me back, or I'll call for the rest of the night and when I get a chance I'll be over at your door to explain. Please let me. There's an emergency, a REAL emergency. I never would have bailed on you otherwise. Call me back."
I stood there for two minutes, two minutes that seemed a lot longer. The call finally came.
"I'm sorry, Bill. I'm acting like a crazy jealous girlfriend before we've had our first date, but when you said you were over there - it's just that she's like the monster in one of those movies that will never die or go away."
"It's okay, it's okay, but things have been crazy and I didn't have a second to call you. Here's what happened..." and I told her.
"Oh, God, Bill, I had no.....no idea. You say BJ and Kelly are safe and on their way, back to your old place?"
"Yeah, but we still have no idea exactly what's going on, so I'm going to stay here with Debbie and the kids for the foreseeable future. I think they're safer here than trying to run them to some safe house and I can't....leave them alone. I'm going to sleep on a couch, but-"
"No, you don't need to explain. They're your kids. She was your wife. You're going to stay there to protect them. I understand that. We'll....get together later. It's okay. We'll have another chance, and someday we'll laugh about this."
"I don't see it Myra but I hope. I shot your Friday all to hell and I'm sorry."
"Not as sorry as I am. I'll grab a bite or see a movie. You pay attention to taking care of business. I'll talk to you later, Bill. Bye."
I walked into the kitchen where Debbie had the coffee maker perking and was taking some milk out of the fridge. I liked flavored creamers, but apparently Clint had been a black coffee guy. I'd have to tough it out.
She got a coffee cup out of the cupboard and without looking at me, said, "I...I hate to keep saying I'm sorry. I...don't know why I react that way. We're divorced and you know I've been with two other guys and there's no reason in the world why I should be upset that you're with other women, except that that cow Myra is an insult to the laws of nature. No. No. I'm just jealous of her and you together. I know how you are about boobs, or at least the way you were until Aline, and I figure if you get with Myra you'[ll never be able to wean yourself."
She looked up from the coffee maker and stared at me.
"Why are we so crazy, Bill? Other divorced couples are able to be civilized, able to walk away. Why are we this way?"
"I don't know Debbie, except that I still have feelings for you and it doesn't matter how much I try to pretend I don't, I do. I don't think you'd have been such a bitch toward me if you didn't still have some kind of feelings for me.
She held her hands out open palmed in a questioning gesture.
"So what do we do?"
One step would have taken me to her. A second step would have her in my arms, those fat, heavy, soft tits rubbing up against me, my hard cock rubbing against that pussy that had been my playground for so many years. We had cops all around and our kids and her parents would be bursting in the doors at any minute. So I couldn't possibly bend her over the kitchen table where Doug probably had taken her and fuck her the way I wanted to this instant, but I wanted to, yet couldn't. There was too much swirling around in my head. Doug and that night at UNF, Aline on the Bonne Chance, Heather bent over the desk in the empty office and Paula staring at me with those knowing eyes.
"Nothing."
I answered her question and then walked away from her into the safety of the den. Ten minutes later she brought me a cup and I drank it standing up and moving around, taking calls from Martin, Sheriff Knight, the Big Man and a half dozen others. A few minutes later Kelly came in with Roy and Cathy.
When they came in I sat them down in the den with Debbie and two uniformed cops just outside and told them what had happened. Cathy just put her hands to her mouth as if she wanted to scream and Roy put his arm around her. Debbie sat down and put her arm around Kelly.
"We don't really know what's going on at this point, don't know that there's a threat to BJ or any of us, but we can't afford to take chances either. These people have butchered whole families when they THOUGHT a trial of one of their guys was going to a particular prosecutor's office."
"Do you have any idea when we'll know what's going on, if there is a real threat?" Roy asked.
"The Sheriff's Office investigators are working the case right now. They've called in the feds, and our people in Mexico with the DEA are trying to find out anything. Hopefully, if it's a real threat, we'll know shortly and can take precautions. If this is just a feint, just to get us nervous, we'll know that too."
Of course I couldn't tell them that I had a pipeline to better information than the feds or our intelligence services probably had, if I could get to the cell in my office and the Old Man was answering.
Just then BJ came in flanked by two cops, his friend and the Wilsons. Debbie grabbed him and enveloped him, kissing him until he went "MOMMMMMMM!" and she finally let him go. A moment later Kelly had him and he put up with her a little bit longer and then he pushed her away.
"You guys are acting like I went and died. What's going on?"
I told him. He gave me a stunned look and said, "They were watching me? Taking pictures? You're sure? Is this for real?"
"Real enough to get one man killed and probably two if we ever find his body."
"What do you think they were going to do?"
I told him and the others what they had done to the Texas prosecutors' families. He went a little pale. I didn't blame him, or any of them. This kind of thing didn't happen in our world.
Mr. Wilson asked, "What about us?"
"You're going to go home with a security officer escort and I'll talk to Knight about having a cop stationed at your house. This manpower thing is going to get expensive, but I'll see it we can hit up the feds to pay part or all of the associated manpower costs. This is really more of a federal than a state responsibility even though they're going to try him in a state court because it's easier to put them to death in a state with an active death penalty like Florida – or Texas.
"However, I don't think the cops will need to stay with you guys or that you'll need to change your lives because I don't think you'll be in any real danger."
"You can say that after what you just said they did to those families?"
"My family might be in danger, but I don't think they would bother you. Even the Cartels can't kill EVERYBODY with the slightest connection to one of their targets. I don't think they'd have any reason to go after you, which is one of the reasons I think you need to get back to your home and not spend a lot of time around here."
When they had left, we talked and decided that the Bascombs would stay in the house with us at least for the weekend. While we were standing there I called Knight and Edwards, asking them to get the authorities down there to put a couple of men into my mother's home and watch them over the weekend as well. I called Mom and told her and Charles what was going on and that I didn't really expect the Cartel to strike that far away even if they had plans, but better safe than sorry.
"Bill, you take care of Kelly and BJ....and....Debbie. But you be careful too. I've already lost..."
"I know, Mom, I'll be careful."
It had been over 30 years, yet I knew that day was still fresh in her mind, and nothing would take it out of her head until the day she closed her eyes for the final time. I wondered in passing if it ever bothered Charles to know his wife loved another man that much after all these years but he must have been able to live with it or they wouldn't still be together.
With all the arrangements made, I told Debbie and the kids that I had to go back to the office. I didn't explain, just said it was important.
"Be careful, Dad," Kelly said, coming to me, hugging me and kissing me on the side of the face.
Debbie stunned everyone by grabbing me and kissing me full on the lips.
"Remember you're not bulletproof," she said, backing away.
"I'll try not to forget. I'll be back in a couple of hours."
It was nearly 10 p.m. when I headed out in a security officer cruiser with another riding shotgun behind us. Knight and Edwards had both insisted on double coverage, just in case.
"This isn't just for your benefit, Bill," Austin told me before I walked out the door. "You're a symbol of this office, of the judicial system. We're not going to let those bastards kick us in the balls again."
The courthouse was spooky, as it always is late at night, an island of light in the darkness, harsh white light casting deep shadows. Both Miller and Costa, the patrol officers riding with me, got out of their cruisers first, checked out the area in front of the courthouse, then called down the cleanup crews to unlock the front doors and let us in. A couple of them surreptitiously crossed themselves when I walked past them - my legend was growing.
We rode the elevators to the top floor and both officers preceded me. I made them wait outside my office while I unlocked the drawer in my desk that held the Old Man's dedicated cell. I punched in his number and waited while it rang, and rang, and rang.
Oh well, I know he didn't sit around waiting for my calls. I hadn't called him that often and I'd had to wait before. I didn't say anything. He'd know where the call came from.
It was 10:45 before I got back to the house. Everybody was still up, as I'd expected, watching television, surfing on the Internet, listening to music or, in the case of Cathy, Roy and Debbie, just talking. I walked in and it was only awkward for a few minutes. In ten minutes we had moved into the den with coffee, tea and the baked chocolate chip cookies for which Cathy was famous.
There were glances shot back and forth that told me things unsaid were being thought, but as we talked about the things that I'd been working on, carefully leaving out the Donnally saga, Debbie started talking about the travails of riding herd on a crew of young, ambitious, horny male and female lawyers. There was laughter and it almost felt like the old days.
Then Cathy gave me a look that needed no words and I silently shook my head. I had thought Debbie and her father didn't catch it, but the looks they exchanged told me they had. That was the trouble of coming out of a 20-year relationship - it was hard to hide your feelings and thoughts.
"I always thought you'd missed your calling, baby," Roy told Debbie. "You should have gone to law college like Bill."
She glanced over at me and her words had no venom or regret in them, although I expected that.
"Maybe, but it was more important to work so that Bill could get through law college. We always knew he was going to be the primary breadwinner. I have never regretted staying out and working at the bank. It actually helped me when I decided to go into business education."
I looked at her and wondered if she felt the same way now. She'd given up five years of her life when I was advancing myself to work at a bank executive job, raise a little girl, and keep me happy. It had worked out pretty good, but I wondered if she now regretted putting my life first.
At 11:30 p.m. Roy yawned and held his hand out to Cathy, saying, "Come on old girl, I need my beauty sleep."
She grinned at him and said, "I don't?"
"Never," and the look he gave her told me that Debbie had put them together in Kelly's bedroom, moving Kelly in to sleep with her while BJ kept his own bed. There were two beds, which we'd put in a few years ago for the times when he'd want male friends to sleep over, in his room, but I doubted she'd put Kelly and BJ in the same room
As Roy pulled Cathy to her feet and they looked at each other, it hit me harder than I thought it would. They were who I had always thought Debbie and I would be in another 20 years. Now we never would be.
As they left the den Debbie gave them a look that made me think she might be having the same thoughts I'd had. There was a definite sadness there.
"Did you find out anything?"
"No. Everybody is still checking things out. If and when I find out anything, I will tell you first. I promise."
She stood and, as always, it was a symphony.
"Well, I'm going upstairs to try and get some sleep. Will you be alright down here?"
"Always have been."
She turned to leave, then swiveled to face me again.
"They told me you almost killed yourself a dozen times trying to get here tonight. I – I'm touched that you were that....concerned."
"Being divorced doesn't change some things, Debbie, not at all."
We stared at each other for a minute. There were a hundred things I wanted to say, yet I couldn't think of one of them.
I slouched on the couch after she left and clicked on the Television From Hell. The local news was over so I found CNN, checked the headlines, then switched over to Fox. I listened to the world's woes and felt the house all around me, like a living thing. It felt like it was in my blood, every square foot had been a part of my life. As long as I stayed away, I had kept the memories at bay. It was as if all this had happened in another life.
Nevertheless, it was my life.
I had begun to convince myself that this old life was behind me and I'd begun to feel like I was settling into the single life. I'd begun to think that the day would come when I would look at Debbie and not see her through the eyes of the 20-year-old who had fallen in love with a gorgeous woman on first sight.
However, like Michael Corleone in one of the 'Godfather' flicks, "they had pulled me back in!"
I had started out the evening as an increasingly well adjusted single man lusting after a very big breasted woman whom I'd never seen naked, but was looking forward to, and I'd ended it as a divorced father living a lonely life forcibly separated from everything I'd ever cared about.
I was sleeping on the couch the way I had hundreds of times before over the years when the Old Man's cell phone rang. It must have been ringing for a minute or two but I shook the sleep out of my eyes and keyed the talk button.
"Mr. Maitland, I apologize for being away on business. Did I wake you?"
"Yes, but thank you for returning my call."
"I think I know the reason for your call."
"Why am I not surprised? I assume that the man with no head lost it to your people, and you probably know what river we should drag to find his partner?"
"He sleeps not with, fresh water, fishes, to use a line from that great old classic Godfather film, but salt water fish - whatever is left of him. Sharks tend to leave very little uneaten."

[Ramesh_Rocky]

"What is going on? I think I know, but please confirm my suspicions and tell me how great a threat my family is facing."

"Both of them were employes of the Cartel. They had been shadowing your son for three days."
"What – why were they watching him/"
"It was psychological warfare on the Cartel's part. They had no intention of doing anything. They were merely going to see that photographs of your son and wife made their way to the security officer along with some vague threats. Their goal was to make you so focused on the threat to your family that you would have no desire to become involved in their affairs."
"How can you be so sure?"
"My people spotted them and after – eliminating – one, they discussed matters with the other. After a – lengthy – discussion, they were convinced the remaining employee was completely honest and forthcoming in his answers. He was convinced this was strictly a psychological ploy."
"But..."
"Obviously, often low level employees are not kept informed of policy, but, following our termination of the two men some of my people contacted some Cartel representatives. Up until that point they were not aware of our interest in this matter. When our position was made clear, they indicated that this was merely a feint, a precautionary effort. Following our recent contact, the Cartel representatives have given their word that no one from their organization will in any way threaten or come anywhere near to anyone close to you."
"Do you believe them?"
There was a long silence and I wondered if he was taking the question as some affront to his own code of honor.
"My business – and that of the Cartel – is surrounded by many myths and stereotypes, but they are at bottom businesses. We employ violence because that is the nature of the world in which we live and work. If we did not employ violence we would be murdered, our women taken and our riches plundered. Regardless, when you strip away everything else, a business is a business. It exists to provide products and services, to make a profit - to make money.
"A war disrupts business, the supply of products to customers, frightens off customers, results in the destruction of product, brings down the disruptive force of government upon our organizations, results in the death of valued employees and, the bottom line, it costs everyone money – great amounts of money. The Cartel - any organization such as our own – tends to be cautious when it comes to attacking powerful government officials. The Mexican Cartel has become – arrogant – about such actions because of the situation in that country. This attitude has shaped their actions in your country because they – and we – operate outside the legal world. They tend not to fear retribution from official sources but, we are not a government.
"Our people were very clear, that any attack or hostile action against you or anyone close to you would bring forth an - unlimited - response. In other words, war, without regard for any damage that might result to either or both of our organizations. In other words, in language they would understand, no quarter. At this point, they know only that this is a personal matter to me, but they will investigate and will learn of the connection between us. It makes no difference, except that before this I stood in the shadows watching your back. Now it will be a secret no longer. This doesn't mean they will take no action against you, only that they will consider their next steps very carefully and weigh them against the threat of what they stand to lose. This means that, if the Mendoza trial comes to you, I have no idea what they will do. Until that time, I can guarantee you there will be no further threats to you or yours."
I considered what he had said, then asked, "Does this place me in your debt?"
"You did not ask me to take this action. Consider it what you would call - a freebie, I think the word is. However, if you were in my debt, would that be such a terrible position in which to be? There is very little that I would ask you directly to do, and you could become immeasurably wealthy and powerful with my backing. There are a number of politicians around the world who have made good lives being in my service."
"As I've said before, I have to decline your gracious offer."
"Ah well, that does not surprise me. You can sleep securely tonight. There is no immediate threat to your family."
Before he could hang up, I said, "Unfortunately, the local law enforcement will have no way of determining that the threat has passed, and I obviously can't tell them how I know. Could you...?"
"Within the next several days, we will ensure that information is received from sources within the Cartel about the nature of their attempts to spy on your son. Your intelligence agencies will receive confirmation of these reports."
"Thank you."
"Good night, Mr. Maitland."
I looked to see Debbie's eyes gleaming in the darkness, reflecting the light from the hallway. In the dim light I could see that she wore a robe, and apparently nothing else.
"Is that the man who called you in the hospital?"
'It's better that you don't know, Debbie."
"You know that I kept secrets from you, Bill, but I've always known you had secrets of your own. This involves us – me and Kelly and BJ. Don't you think I deserve to know your secret?"
I told her everything.
"You would have betrayed all you've ever believed in to keep us safe?"
"I would have sold my soul to the devil to keep you and Kelly and BJ safe. There was a time you would have known that."
She just stared at me for awhile, then turned without a word and left the den. I lay back on the couch which seemed to have the imprint of my body in it, and fell almost instantly asleep.
#######################
October 19, 2005 – Wednesday - 2 p.m.
I stopped at the desk outside Debbie's office. I didn't know her secretary. She was an older woman, probably a holdover from an earlier regime. Johnny August was famous for never firing anyone. Because he was as close to blind as you could get without being technically stone cold blind, he was one of those rare bosses who actually judged people by the quality of work they did, rather than being affected by cup size or a pretty face.
"Mr. Maitland. I'm sorry. We didn't receive word that you were coming down. Is Ms. Bascomb expecting you?"
"No. I just had something I wanted to talk to her about. Could you buzz her and see if she could give me a few minutes?'
"Yes sir."
A moment later I heard Debbie's voice, then she was opening the door to her office and giving me a curious look.
"Mr. Maitland? Connie said you had something you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Could I come in?"
She pretended to look amazed but gave me a little smile.
"Of course, Please come in."
I walked in past her and stopped at one of the two comfortable plush chairs set in front of the wide, natural mahogany desk that held a name plate giving her name and title. I looked around and saw pictures of BJ and Kelly apparently recently taken in large frames on her desk, and a picture of the two of us from our Hawaiian cruise of ten years ago on the wall at head height behind her swivel chair.
I also noticed that the desk and her chair were raised so she'd look down on anyone sitting in front of her. I knew that was one of the tricks she had picked up working at the Hunt Bank. She might have sacrificed five years of her life, but she had learned a lot more than the mechanics of running a business.
She just nodded toward the picture and said, "Everybody knows our story, Bill. There's no point in trying to hide it so I just put it out for everybody to see when they walk in."
Then she looked at me and the manilla envelope I held in my right hand and said, "You realize this is the first time since I've arrived here that you've been in my office. Are you here on official business or, does it have anything to do with....you know?"
"No and no."
I placed the manilla envelope on her desk, swung around and caught her by the wrist. I pulled her toward me. Her eyes widened but she did not resist as I pulled her to me. I caught her face in my hands and placed my lips over hers. I had to stretch slightly to my tip toes, but I'd always done that. She had her arms on my shoulders and she was leaning into me. Her lips opened and I tasted the sweetness of her mouth and tongue.
It seemed to last forever, but it was probably only twenty to thirty seconds. I let her go and stepped back. It seemed hard to breathe and I felt moisture at the corners of my eyes, but I made myself breathe regularly. She looked at me with her lips open and she seemed to be struggling for words.
"Of all the things in this world I expected to happen today, that was absolutely the very last thing. Why....how...what? You took the words away from me, Bill."
"I had to find something out."
"What?"
"I had to find out if I could hold you in my arms and let you go."
We stood there staring at each other and she reached out with one hand toward me but she didn't touch me. I couldn't blame her because for most of the last six months I would have bitten it off. I reached out to her, took her hand and directed her to sit in one of the chairs next to me.
"You're not going to give me the high ground?" she said with a hint of a smile.
"You forget, Debbie, you told me in bed all about the tricks you were picking up with the Hunts. You may not have thought I was paying any attention, but I was."
"What are we negotiating?"
"Not negotiating, Deb. I just - I felt like I should come in here and talk to you. I have a lot of things on my mind and we haven't really talked - since all this started. I know you wanted to but I just wasn't...wasn't in a place where I could be in the same room with you."
"You must have gotten better, Bill."
She rubbed her lips with her thumb.
"You got a lot better."
"A little. But I have to tell you, it is still tearing me apart to be sitting here."
"Then why are you here, Bill? You said it doesn't have anything to do with the Cartel."
"No, I didn't really say that, although I can see where you might think that. I'm not here because anything has changed in regard to the Cartel but...what happened over the weekend...it was one of the things I've been thinking about."
"I don't understand."
I couldn't force myself to sit still so I stood up and walked away from her, then turned back to her.
"I can't tell you that there isn't a part of me that doesn't still hate you, Debbie. You hurt me, you hit me way below the belt and it took me a long time to pull myself together. I'll never forget some of the things you said to me back then. I'll never forget you turning your back on me to go to Doug that night. I'll never get those images of him and you together in our bed – in our bed – out of my head. If I'd seen it, it would have been bad but, in a way, not seeing it makes it worse because my imagination - I can't shut it off and even now there are times I'll be sleeping and I'll.....dream about you and him together."
I could tell from the narrowing of her eyes that the old anger was building and I expected her to flare up, but she didn't say anything.
"I know that we both crashed our marriage. I know that I left you alone. But, damn it, Debbie, even though I feel some guilt, I can't help believing that you could have changed things. You could always twist me around your little finger. You didn't, and that makes me think, it makes me know, that you didn't try to change things because you wanted out. If it hadn't been Doug, it would have been somebody else."
She sat back in her chair and ran her hand over her long mane of blonde hair. She was dry eyed, but...
"Well, I've been trying to get you to talk for six months, so I guess I should be happy, even if you're using the opportunity to unload on me. You're entitled, I guess, you got hurt the most. Even though you hurt me plenty for years leading up to...Doug, but if it makes you feel better..."
I walked back to stand in front of her.
"I'm not trying to hurt you, Debbie. Even if it may sound that way. I just wanted to clear the air. There's no point pretending that I'm not still hurting. I've got bruises that haven't healed and may not for a long time. I want you to know just how bad you hurt me, but it's in the past and it will get better."
"Then what..."
I knelt in front of her and took both her hands in mine.
"I wanted to know that I could be around you and not be crazy, that we could be....maybe not friends but co-parents. We can share the kids and share raising them and go to their graduations, their marriages and welcome our grandchildren into the world. I hope we'll be in each others' lives for a long time to come."
I didn't want to but I felt myself tearing up.
"We were married for a long time. We had a good marriage and we made good memories. Remember I told you once that you'd pissed all over the memories we made. Actually that was the way I felt... then, but with time I'll be able to remember the good times again, because we did have some good times."
She stared at me as if she was seeing me for the first time.
"What happened to you, Bill? Jesus Christ, what happened? I never thought I'd hear words like that come out of your mouth again. I figured I'd have to wait years and years before we could even be civil to each other."
"I saw us from another angle, Deb. You remember that old Jimmy Stewart movie that we loved - 'It's A Wonderful Life'? He saw what life would have been like if he hadn't been around, and I saw what our lives might have been like....if we had been very, very unlucky. I saw just how lucky we were that we're the people we are. It could have ended up so much worse for both of us."
"What are you talking about, Bill?"
I told her about Paul and Paula Donnally. When I told her what had happened with Dave Brandon I said, "This can't ever go out of this room, Deb. I'd probably be in trouble for what I did, but I don't care about that. I can take care of myself, but it would destroy Dave, and his wife, and their marriage."
She just gave me an innocent look and said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I never heard anything."
I told her everything, except the end of my meeting with Paula Donnally. It made me feel dirty. It didn't help that I'd jerked off twice since then remembering her touch. I had never checked the number she had left for me. I knew I wasn't going to call her, ever, but it felt like a viper had sunk its fangs in me and the poison lingered.
"I can't help believing they loved each other once upon a time. Maybe as much as we did. Now, I heard the expression somewhere about two scorpions trapped in a bottle, and that's what I think about when I remember them. I'm afraid she'll kill him or he'll kill her or they'll kill each other. They've lost each other and everything they ever had, and they'll never have anything together again.
"I decided I couldn't let that happen to us. You hurt me, I hurt you, but we'll get past that. Their story is over and it will never get a second chapter. Our story is over, but we can have a Second Act."
She gave me a troubled look.
"Bill - I don't know. God, I am so glad that you are finally talking to me. I miss what we had, but the problems we had, I don't know if we can..."
I shook my head.
"Not a Second Act for us – together. A Second Act and a second chance to find people we can build new lives with. I want you to find someone you can love and make a life with, someone who'll be a good and caring stepfather to BJ and Kelly. I don't know what will happen to me. I don't know if this thing - with Myra that doesn't seem like it will ever get a fair chance - has a chance to develop. Maybe it won't be her, but I hope that there will be somebody out there that I can build a life with. It won't be like what we had. Maybe it will never be as good as what we had, but it will give us both a chance to find happiness again. I don't want to think of you being alone, and I know I don't want to stay alone.
Now the tears came.
"Why are you doing this, Bill? Could I feel any shittier about the way I treated you? I didn't think so."
"Debbie, I know it was never going to work with Doug. Your mother said he was a fling and I know now he was. Apparently, Clint Abbott left you, but there are other decent guys out there. On the Bonne Chance, I met a guy, an insurance guy, and we got to talking. He told me something I haven't forgotten. He said you'll never know when you'll walk into an office or around a corner and you'll meet someone and you have to be willing to take the chance. As long as we're alive, there's a chance of walking around that corner and changing your life. You're too hot to stay alone."
This time she got up and walked away from me. She walked behind her desk, head down and then she looked up and stared ten years into the past. She moved her gaze from our younger selves on the Hawaiian cruise and turned back to me. She did something I couldn't put my finger on that drew my eyes to her fantastic chest. Myra might be bigger, but Debbie was a wonder in her own right.
"That night in the den, if you had made a move, if you had touched me, you would have gotten lucky. Did you know that? I looked at you and realized that no other man I've ever known loved me the way you did. You risked your life for me 20 years ago, and you'd give up your soul for me after the way I treated you – with Doug. Why the hell did I ever give up on you?"
I had to take a deep breath.
"That's the other reason I'm here, Deb. I want to keep you in my life. Being back in the – in our – house for the first time in six months - it all came back to me, my life came back to me. Even after our marriage turned to shit and I wouldn't recognize it, it was still a good life, because I had you and the kids in it. When I was lying on the couch that night after you walked out - it was as if the last six months never happened. It felt like I'd had a bad dream - a terrible dream - but it was all ending and I was going to wake up back with you.
"But...."
I looked at the woman I'd always known was going to tear my heart out and I felt a sadness so deep, so bone-aching cold that I didn't know if I could make myself say the words.
"But.....it wasn't a dream. The last six months were real. They happened. You took that bastard's side against me at UNF - you walked away from me. You lay with him....and you fucked him...while I was dying in that shitty little condo. I met Aline, and I fell – at least a little – in love with her. I found out that I wasn't really as terrible a lover and as miserable a man in bed as you'd made me think I was for years."
There was a time when I would have loved, eaten up, the expression on her face, but I didn't enjoy it now.
"What I felt when I went back to the house that used to be ours, what I felt laying on the couch and remembering our lives - that was the dream. The reality is that I'm learning to live without you. I'm better now than I was three months ago, and in a year, it won't hurt at all.....or much. A part of me will always love you - but I'm moving on like you told me to."
She smiled at me through tears running down her face.
"I guess....we always get what we deserve. Don't we....?"
I walked over to her desk and picked up the manilla envelope I'd placed on it, opened the clasp and handed it to her.
"What....?"
"Just give it a quick glance, before I go."
She pulled the paperwork out and wiped her face, then sat behind the desk. She started reading, looking up again and again as she read further.
"Oh, God, don't tell me that there's something really wrong? What aren't you telling me?"

[Ramesh_Rocky]

"I'm not dying and I don't know anything about the Cartel's plans but, what's happened, what could happen, convinced me to do this. I made a fair amount of money by selling a few stories to television when I was up in New York and for some articles. I used the money to buy an annuity that should run for the next 10 to 20 years. More than long enough."

"A million dollar life insurance policy?"
"You can buy a million dollar term life insurance policy with no riders if you're willing to pay enough, and I had enough to pay the premiums for 15 or 20 years and after that you and the kids wouldn't need it. They'll be grown and I'm sure you'll be remarried and have a wealthy husband. However, in the meantime, you and they won't have any money worries."
She shook her head.
"Bill...."
'I'm not a big spender, Deb. What do I need the extra money for? I sold the rights and the interviews to provide for you and the kids. I'll be fine and I won't be worrying about you, or them."
"But...how can you-?"
"The kids will receive $250,000 apiece with you as the executor until they reach 25. You get the balance of $500,000 because I don't think they could handle that kind of money until they're older. Despite losing your mind for a few months over Doug's cock, I know you love them and you will watch over them if I'm gone. I trust you to take care of them."
She put her hands over her mouth as if she wanted to scream.
"Don't do this, Bill. God damn, please don't do this. Leave me a little pride. Be an asshole toward me, like you have been - don't be so damned nice."
"Can't help it, Deb. I have loved you for half my life, and a part of me will love you for the rest of my life. Just hold onto the papers. I hope you can throw them away in 20 years or so."
I turned and walked to the door of her office. When I glanced back at her she was still staring at the insurance papers on her desk.
"You remember that day you told me you were divorcing me? I told you to have a good life, but what I really meant was that I hoped you died in agony. However, now I mean this. Have a good life, Debbie. When I walk out this door, we can start working on the next part of our lives."
I walked out on the woman who had been my life without looking back again.
###################
She looked at the door for a long time. She reached out and ran her hand over the insurance papers but they didn't disappear. They were as real, as solid, as they had been when she touched them for the first time.
Twenty years ago she had stared at a stranger with tubes all over him and wondered why he had risked his life for a woman he didn't know. A few nights before she had learned that he was willing to give up his soul to protect her and their children, and a few minutes ago she had learned that he had never stopped loving her, and probably never could.
"Why didn't I love you enough to see past the fat and the middle-aged bald guy and see the man you always were?"
Even now, she didn't know the answer. She still had swirling emotions about him. She could have fucked him that night in their bed, but the anger and the resentment he stirred would still have been there. She would have wound up hurting him again. She knew it. It was better this way. Let him find someone else who could make him happy.
She saw him with Myra, and she could stand that, or that security officer detective, or women from his office. Someone younger than she and Bill were. Maybe somebody who could even give him another child. He had been a good father at the beginning, and maybe he'd learned enough that he wouldn't mess it up a second time.
Anybody but Aline. Even as she saw the Frenchwoman in her mind's eye her gut clenched and she knew she couldn't stand that, but it wasn't going to happen. Aline was half a world away and she wouldn't come back. She had a son to hold her in Paris. As long as Aline stayed on the other side of the world, Debbie knew she could stand it.
She stood and looked back at the photo of them on the Hawaiian cruise - a moment frozen in time. When she had found another man, one who satisfied her in bed and was a good guy and one who loved her – not as much as Bill but nobody would ever love her like that again – she would still have that photo to look at and remember what they had had.
"Ms. Bascomb? Mr. August called and reminded you about that staff meeting. It's due to start in five minutes."
"Tell him I'll be there in just a minute, Helen."
She placed the insurance papers in her top drawer. She'd think about them later. Now it was time to turn her attention to business, to being the best administrator she could be. Johnny August had given her a second chance and she intended to prove to him that she deserved it.
She was walking past Helen when the older woman coughed and said, "Ms. Bascomb...."
"Yes?"
The older woman gave her a sympathetic look and pointed toward her. At first Debbie thought she might have left a button undone or her slip was showing. But she followed Helen's gaze and reached up with her forefinger to find her cheeks wet.
"Thanks," she said, stepping back into her office. She wiped her face with tissues, checked herself out in a compact mirror and made sure the tears were gone. A tough administrator couldn't walk around crying.
She gave the photo of them one last look. Their story had ended. Now it was time to move on. Although....
"I could get him back....if I wanted him. I could."
Then she stepped through the door into her new life.
############################
NOTE TO READERS:
First the important stuff. This is the last installment of "When We Were Married" that will run in Literotica, or at least, the last one in a while. This is not the end of Bill and Debbie's story, but I think it's a good stopping point. "Torch the Bitch" readers can believe that Bill is done with Debbie and maybe she'll come down with cancer or some other terrible punishment. Reconciliation fans, romantics, can hold out hope that there are still smoldering fires in both of these characters and separation doesn't mean forever, necessarily. There's a part of me that almost feels it would be appropriate to end things here. But...
This isn't the end. I'm going to be finishing the story, and there are still some important developments left to explore.
I'll writing the rest of the novel off site for personal reasons, not least of which is that it has released me from the psychological pressure of meeting a deadline which has increasingly gotten away from me because of changes in my life over the last six months or so. Now the only pressure I'll face is internal.
When I finish the story, which will be in a triology format, I will definitely inform anyone who's interested via LITEROTICA on where the full trilogy can be found.
Some people have wondered about my penchant for weaving other stories into the main story line of WWWM. Again, this is all contingent on my having the time to do these, but Paul and Paula Donnally will be the main characters in their own novel, "Paul and Paula." I actually started their story before WWWM and I knew they would wind up in the legal system, but at the time I had them involved with a no-name prosecutor. As WWWM grew, I knew they would fit into Maitland's story very well.
I know a lot of readers thought that Paul Donnally was a rather unbelievable character and I'm sure a lot will feel that way about Paula, but I like both characters and their story starts before they run into Maitland and goes a long way after their encounter with him. Their account in WWWM is a small slice of their lives.
Clint Abbott's trip to Africa will be detailed in a novel titled "The Saint of the Flowers,"although he will be only a minor character in this story. Clint is actually the only link between Northeast Florida and this tale of love lost and regained in Europe and Africa over a ten year period. But I thought his part in the story helped keep it in my fictional continuity.
And Bobby Kelso, the New York Money Man, will be the star of his own story. Like the Donnally's, his story begins before his encounter with Maitland and goes a long way afterwards. I like Kelso and the supporting characters in this one, the title of which will be "I Am Not A Monster."
Finally, regardless of whether readers liked or came to be bored by WWWM, I cannot give thanks enough to readers who responded both on site and in emails over the past year. I had pretty much given up a lot of old dreams over the past ten to fifteen years. Now at a time when I thought I'd be through writing new materials, recycling and trying to sell short stories and novels written over the past 30 years, I find myself writing more (fiction) than I've ever done in my life. I find myself excited about writing, and most days eager to get to the word processor. That is a priceless gift, and I thank everyone who has contacted me for helping me to regain my passion for writing.
DQS

[Ramesh_Rocky]

AUTHOR’S NOTE

There is a State Attorney’s Office headquartered in Jacksonville,
Florida, as well as a
Public Defender’s Office. There is a
Jacksonville, and a St. Augustine and Matanzas.
There are
hardworking, honest and dedicated prosecutors and similar public
defenders
facing them. There is a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office
known to most as The Cop Shop.
Everything, and everyone, else in
this long novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities
between any
characters, on either side of the law, and real people are strictly
coincidental
and unintended.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

A WHO’S WHO OF WWWM


William Maitland
Maitland is a 42-year-old Assistant State Attorney in Jacksonville, Florida, dubbed “The Angel of Death,” Maitland in reality runs the office for his boss. He is the kind of prosecutor who can’t forget victims, never gives up, tempers justice with mercy, and wins the big cases. He was married to Debbie Bascomb, the second hottest woman at the Jacksonville Courthouse. He’s been doing the right thing all his life, until he met Aline des-Jardins. And now he’s not sure anymore what the right thing is. Doing the right thing cost him his marriage to Debbie, the only woman he’s ever loved, until Aline.

Debbie Maitland/Bascomb

Debbie Maitland is a tall, 39-year-old blonde with a Jennifer Aniston hair style, and a body of a younger woman. She’s always attracted men, but not until Doug Baker entered her life, did she do anything about it. She’s a professor at the University of North Florida and a mother, and smarter than most men, but most men never see beyond her boobs. In her mind, Bill is the bad guy who destroyed their marriage by loving his job more than her.

Doug Baker

Baker is a black-haired, youngish looking 28-year-old Assistant Professor in the Business Department at UNF. He’s six foot three and about 180 pounds and catnip to women. He could have any woman he wanted, until he made the mistake of setting his sights on Debbie Maitland. He seduced and stole her from her husband, and then had his career shattered by Bill Maitland. And found out too late he had fallen in love with a married woman who was still in love with her husband.

Aline des-Jardins

Aline des-Jardins is a 37-year-old Cruise Director on the French cruise ship Bonne Chance. She is Audrey Hepburn cool. In an open marriage with her husband French Federal Prosecutor Philippe Archambault, because their lives are lived in two different worlds, she accepted the job of baby-sitting a suicidal Bill Maitland. She never expected that the job would turn into a full-blown blazing affair that threatens her marriage for the first time.

Philippe Archambault

Archambault is a tall, good looking French prosecutor and husband of Aline for 10 years who came up from middle class parents and is working to move into the upper reaches of the French legal establishment. He has a son he loves and a wife who accepts the fact that he is going to have women –a lot of them – while she’s at sea half the year. He met Bill Maitland in Paris years ago working on a

sex slave smuggling case that made the two men good friends. Maitland respects him as a dedicated, hard-nosed prosecutor.

Lew Walters
Walters is a 34-year-old attorney nicknamed “The Shark.” Very intelligent and conceited – “I graduated first in my class” at the UF law college is something he always reminds his friends. A complete mercenary, he’s a defense attorney who will go where the money is and is a complete predator in the courtroom. He’ll do literally anything to win. He’s Maitland’s best friend, and there is nobody better to have at your back, or worse to be facing in court.

The Big Man – State Attorney Dallas Edwards

Dallas Edwards is the elected State Attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. A former basketball star at the University of Florida, he has been described as looking a little like a blonde Gregory Peck. He made Bill Maitland his number two and lets him run the office while he runs for Governor of Florida. He is married to a jealous lady who is very handy with firearms. And at the same time, the hottest woman in the courthouse, Myra Martinez, is widely believed to be his mistress.

Myra Martinez – Dallas Edwards’ Secretary and Allegedly His Main Squeeze

Myra Martinez is a 34-year-old platinum blonde with an unearthly body. She possesses a 42EE/24/36 body on a five-foot four frame, emerald green eyes and a face that’s a match for Debbie Maitland as far as beauty is concerned. She’s intelligent, has a wicked sense of humor and has been subtly flirting with Maitland for years. But who is Myra Martinez really, and what is her relationship with Dallas Edwards, and what does she want in a man, and what are her real feelings about Maitland? And is she willing to wait to see what will happen between Maitland and Aline?

Dr. Ernst Teller

Teller is the primary psychiatrist working with the court system in Jacksonville. Although he comes from money and has a private practice, he has worked with the courts for more than a decade to determine defendants’ ability to stand trial. He is a tall, six-foot-one, angular, brown haired man who smokes a pipe. He is a compassionate, intelligent man who enjoys solving psychological puzzles, and the one that occupies him most now is what has caused Debbie Maitland’s rage against her ex-husband that is literally making her sick.

Patrick Leary – A Top Assistant Public Defender

Pat Leary is an 34-year-old ash-blonde, florid faced and red-nosed stereotype of the drunken Irishman. He’s six feet tall, slender and although not classically handsome has a crooked grin that has charmed many of the married and single female members of the Public Defender’s Office. He’s an impassioned advocate
for his clients and seems to take a personal glee in beating prosecutors. He genuinely likes Maitland and respects him, and Maitland returns the feeling.

Clint Abbott

Clint Abbott is a professional writer on a temporary tour of duty as a visiting professor at UNF. He’s written a number of novels and also does non-fiction to pay the bills. He literally runs into Debbie on the worst day of her life, takes her out for cappuccinos after, gets her life story, and becomes a friend – a friend with benefits later. Maitland can’t help liking him, even knowing that he’s sleeping with his ex-wife.

Charlie Case

Case is a mountain of a man, a court bailiff, and ex-con, to Judge Herman Herring, a buzz-cut, beak-nosed former Marine who fears nothing, loves tough cases and headlines mentioning his name in the Times-Union, and loves even more being God in his courtroom. Herring is white and Case is black and each is the other’s best friend. Case gives Herring credit for the fact that he’s not dead or on death row. Although he’s gone straight, he still has contacts in and through the criminal underworld.

Johnny August – The Elected Public Defender

August is a 6-foot-six nearly blind attorney who is a very good lawyer and a very poor administrator of the Public Defender’s Office. A graduate of Harvard who reads Plato and other classics in Greek and Latin, he looks like an overgrown country boy and uses his charm to win sympathy for the blind lawyer among jurors. He hires Debbie Maitland/Bascomb to overhaul and run his menagerie of young, hungry, defense attorneys.

Tyrone Biggs

Biggs is a 6-foot-4 charming black teddy bear, who happens to be a major Drug Dealer in South Florida and a cold blooded killer who has murdered at least a hundred men with knives, guns and assorted hardware. Maitland sent him away for two years, kept him away from his mother’s funeral, but gave his brother a chance with a minimum prison sentence when he could have come down hard. Biggs is conflicted, to say the least.

William Maitland Jr. (BJ)

Bill Maitland’s son BJ is a rebellious 14-year-old when the novel opens. He’s a typical teenager who’s grown estranged from a father he seldom sees and who acts as a damper on ANY fun a 14-year-old might want to have. But he’s not crazy about his mother’s new boyfriend spending nights at his house.

Kelly Maitland

Kelly, 17 at the start of the novel, is almost a carbon copy of her mother. She’s 5 foot 8, a little more slender than her mother, not as big boned, but just as
beautiful. She has an army of would-be boyfriends until she decides she wants to steal her mother’s boyfriend away from her.

Carl Cameron

Cameron is the Times-Union’s number one security officer reporter. A six-footer with a permanent Richard Nixon stubble and the build of a college blocker, he is honest, fair and worse than a bloodhound when he catches the scent of a good story. His stories have and will change the lives of Maitland and others and in Maitland’s case, will have an international impact. He is in love with Assistant State Attorney Jessica Stephens, who will have sex with him, but won’t marry him.

Jessica Stephens

Stephens is a tall, nearly six-foot blonde ASA who’s been with the State Attorney’s Office as long as Maitland. She’s the kind of woman who’s “plain if you look at her one way, and beautiful if you look at her in another.” She loves Cameron, but won’t marry him and feels that her whole life is passing her by. She offers to spend the night with Maitland at his lowest point, but he takes a pass, for which he’s very grateful later on.

O’Brien
O’Brien is an early 60-ish former professional boxer who retired with a good ring record and one dead man on his conscience and now runs, “O’Brien’s” a “honky-tonk” which is what a Pub is called in this country, catering to a mix from Bikers to attorneys, hookers to teachers. There’s booze and hot wings and pool and a dance floor. And O’Brien watching over it all. Like another famous bar, “everybody comes to O’Brien’s.”

Father Eagen Dunleavy

Dunleavy is a famous Irish priest, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in the 90s for his work in, and bravery, in saving innocents from slaughter in the Hutu/Tutsi genocide. He meets Maitland on board the Bonne Chance before anything has happened between Aline and Maitland . He offers gentle advice, but no guidance, because as he tells Maitland, he’s made enough mistakes in his own personal life to know he’s not an expert. He makes a very big impression on a not-very religious Maitland.

Officer Shawn Smith

Smith is a veteran black cop with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. He’s saved lives and walked into terrible situations risking his life over the past 14 years. He’s earned commendations and the respect of his fellow officers and his Sheriff. Then one night, his white girlfriend’s current white husband and two brothers broke into his home with the intent of taking back the girlfriend and beating Smith up. Smith shot two of the men in his home and then followed the third out to their truck and shot him in the back. The black community, the
Sheriff’s Office and the Big Man want Maitland to clear Smith and put him back on the street. Maitland knows he should take the hero cop before a grand jury, no matter what it costs him. And it could cost him a lot.

William Sutton

Sutton is a 37-year-old stockbroker and all around asshole whose divorce stood to lose him a share of the $5 million his nurse wife was poised to receive in an inheritance. Until someone lured her out to the dunes of North Jacksonville and beat her and her unborn son to death with a tire iron. Sutton had a motive, several of them, opportunity and witnesses saying his wife talked to him on the night of her murder. But there’s no hard proof, no evidence against Sutton. Until a sort of proof turns up, and Maitland has to take the biggest legal gamble of his career.

Paul Donnally

Donnally is the 44-year-old mild-manned director of Publicity for Duval University, a small private university in Jacksonville. He’s married to Paula Donnally, whom he has loved since his University of Florida days. Until the day everything changes. Maitland already knows that Donnally possesses almost unbelievable physical strength and a very unfaithful wife. When you put a very dangerous man with very dark secrets in the vicinity of a woman he hates as much as he loves, you have a recipe for disaster. Maitland finds himself squarely in the middle of a domestic tragedy that threatens to destroy innocent lives unless he takes an action that may haunt him for the rest of his life.

Paula Donnally

Paula Donnally is a 42-year-old Realtor, wife of Paul Donnally and mother of two college-age children. Like her husband, she has Secrets. Those secrets lead her to challenge the criminal justice system and Maitland to get what she wants. She’s used to getting her way, but in Maitland’s case, she wants more than her way. She wants Maitland. She forces him to face dark truths about his own life and his own sexual desires. And like a venomous serpent, she leaves her poison in his system.

Carlos Herrerra

Carlos is a former boxer himself and has been training fighters for decades. He met Maitland when Maitland prosecuted the son of a millionaire Texas oilman for the death of Carlos’ son Juan in a bar fight. When Maitland comes to him for help after being humiliated in a fight by Doug Baker, Carlos sets him on the path that will eventually led to the prosecutor’s physical and mental transformation.

Mendoza

Mendoza is the highly placed leader in a feared Mexican drug cartel who has been captured and is scheduled to be tried somewhere in the U.S. – preferably in

a state where they have a death penalty and execute it. The Cartel leaders have sworn not to allow that trial to proceed, have already killed two U.S. prosecutors in the U.S. Northwest and wiped out two families of prosecutors. They don’t relish the prospect of the case going to the increasingly famous “Angel of Death” in Jacksonville. Not out of any superstitious fear, but out of concern for their countrymen’s beliefs and very real fear of one of the most dangerous criminals in the world.

The Old Man
The Old Man is the long-time head of one of the most feared criminal organizations in the world with operations around the globe. He has killed hundreds of men and women and controls politicians through money and fear in a number of countries. In his eyes, he owes a debt to Bill Maitland and nothing will stop him from paying that debt. Not even Bill Maitland. Not even a war with the Mexican cartel.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

FROM VOLUME ONE: THE LONG FALL--BIRD OF PREY


Sometimes you see death and destruction headed straight for you. Sometime it catches you from your blind side. And sometimes, sometimes, like a hawk on a cloudless day gliding on thermals far above you, it’s always been there, waiting….
Maybe I knew it from the time I was a little boy. From the time my father walked out the door. From the moment we heard the rumbling like a small earthquake. Far away. As far away as the mine shaft that had already collapsed once that day.
Maybe I knew it from the moment my mother stood in our small kitchen washing the last of the dishes from what would be our Last Supper….the last supper she and my father and I ever sat down to.
She stared up at the ceiling as she let the plate she was drying fall to the tiled floor. Its shattering sounded louder than the far away rumble that ended our world. I knew what it was, although I wouldn’t let myself know. I was only eight….but I knew.
I was sitting at the living room table watching some program on television too old for me to really understand. Probably a cop show…maybe Adam-12.
When I heard the rumble and then the shattering of the plate, I looked into the kitchen and saw my mother drop to her knees as though her legs had given out on her. Then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, she fell forward hitting her face on the tiles.
I don’t remember getting up but I was kneeling beside her and trying to lift her face from the floor. She put one hand down and pushed herself up and was looking at me, but I don’t think she saw me.
Neither one of us said anything. She pulled her to me and began to weep, clutching my face to her chest. She cried ceaselessly and never let me go until some neighboring women came in and pulled me away from her. They took me to a neighboring house and the last I saw of her was their laying her down on a bed in my parent’s bedroom. As she saw one of the women leading me to our front door she screamed and tried to get up, but they held her down, stroking her soft blonde hair.
Maybe that was when it started. Because I knew then although I couldn’t put the thought into words, that what had happened was WRONG.
I don’t think I ever really, truly, believed in God from that day forward. And if I were to look back, that was probably the moment that made me decide that I wanted to make things RIGHT.
I forgot a lot of that over the years, but when I wanted to, I could put myself back in that kitchen, watch my mother collapse to the floor and hear her scream


as I was led out of our house.
That was probably what led me to the University of Florida college of law, although by that time I had much more rational reasons for becoming a lawyer.
And that dark bird of prey watching from above…It probably observed my future wife grunting in pain as three Frat fucks, including her boyfriend, bangd her one night at a party and I cleared the room out with a fireplace poker.
It watched as I lay tangled in tubes and dreamless in a coma while the young and inhumanly beautiful Debbie Bascomb was drawn to the bedside of a short, poor, average slob she would never in any other reality have looked at twice.
It hovered high in the Gainesville skies as Debbie Bascomb bulldozed her way into my ordered life and shredded it. It watched as I fought not to fall in love with her, but I never had a chance. Not from the first moment I saw her in that storeroom being bangd, to the first moment she walked into my off campus apartment.
It was undoubtedly there the first time she broke my heart after a summer that changed my life forever. And it watched the first time we made love, when I knew that no matter what, I had to try to win her.
It was hovering over the campus many months later when the reality that I would never be good enough for her sank in, when I knew in my heart that she had been screwing around behind my back, that she just hadn’t been able to resist slipping back into her old wild and wanton ways.
And it watched and probably smiled as I learned I was the one who hadn’t trusted enough, that the stories I’d heard were stories and that I’d thrown away the love of the best thing I was ever going to have in my life, no matter how long I lived.
It was probably there when I begged her in the bedroom of her Jacksonville home for a second chance. Even if I’d known what lay down the road nearly 20 years later, I would still have rejoiced when we somehow made it back.
And that was how I wound up in April of 2005 a long married, relatively happy husband – as long as I didn’t look closely at my life - and father of two teenagers, the functioning head of the State Attorney’s Office of the Third Circuit in Northeast Florida.
That was how I wound up married to a woman I wasn’t satisfying in bed, wasn’t satisfying in our marriage; an unhappy woman who WAS made happy by the attentions of a tall, handsome, young Assistant Professor to her Associate Professor at the University of North Florida.
Debbie’s mother called it a fling, but whatever name you called it, it was the end of our marriage.
We fought for five months while I worked myself to exhaustion every day getting into the best shape of my life running away from the truth of my life, that


she was with a younger, better man in the bedroom that we had made love in for nearly ten years.
I threw myself into my work because it seemed my marriage had evaporated and my kids had no place in their lives anymore for me…but then again, they hadn’t had that much of a place in mine before.
So I ran the State Attorney’s Office for my boss and mentor, who was running for Governor of Florida, prosecuting murderers and drug lords and men who killed their dying wives. And wound up going a little crazy. Only a little crazy. But it was enough.
My boss forced me to take a sea cruise to try to get my head back on straight. I met Aline des-Jardins on the Bonne Chance sailing temporarily out of Jacksonville, and for the second time in 20 years fell in love.
Of course, with that damned black bird of prey hovering over my life, Aline turned out to be married to Philippe Archambault, a French federal prosecutor I’d worked with four years before on a trip to Paris.
Aline and I had a week of glorious sex and when I walked off the Bonne Chance I knew that I was still a man and that I was still the unluckiest damned man on the face of the earth. But I walked away from her and told her I wouldn’t be coming back. And now Debbie and I are divorced and she’s thrown out the stud she left me for, even though she swears that’s not the way it happened. But I’m not worried about her. Men have always swarmed around her and they always will.
As for myself, I’ve had Aline, which counted, and casual sex with two hot women, which didn’t count, and fulfilled fantasies I didn’t even know I had. So I’ll be alright. Miserable, but alright.
Which almost brings us up to date.
 

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 1: A DANCE AT THE END OF THE WORLD


My name is William Maitland. Six months ago I was a boringly happily married husband and father of two teenagers. I had one of - if not the hottest - women in Jacksonville in my bed, I basically ran the State Attorney’s Office for my boss while he ran for Governor of Florida.
I knew who and what I was and I was happy with it. I had my nightmares. I knew that I didn’t deserve the woman I was married to, that my kids had lost respect for me and that my hot wife Debbie for too long had seemed to look at me more as a roommate and good provider than a stud. I had gotten balding and fat and women no longer looked at me with an appraising eye, if they ever had.
But I told myself that nobody has it all. I had the woman I’d loved for 20 years in my bed and my life, the kids would grow up, I was doing a job that was actually more my life than an occupation, and I had a chance to make the world make sense sometimes. And then it all went away.
In the space of a few weeks, I learned that my wife didn’t love me anymore, she soon fell into bed with a tall, good looking young stud I couldn’t begin to compete with on any physical level, my kids didn’t know or respect me. I lost my wife, my kids in a way, my manhood and my balls when I couldn’t even get an erection while jerking off.
I made a detour into the bottle and could have lost everything, but some good friends including people I didn’t even know, helped me claw my way out. I fought my way back to a better body and better health and the realization that it’s possible to live even after the person you love most in the world has torn your heart out of your chest, chewed it up and spit it out.
It had taken awhile, but with the help of a better friend than I deserved, some kind ladies and one beautiful French woman, I had rediscovered my dick and my manhood. I hadn’t stopped loving that bitch Debbie. I was beginning to think when they dumped my body into the ground I’d still love her. But I knew now I could live without her.
And so, only days away from hitting my 42nd birthday and becoming officially Middle Aged, winning a major court case and sending an evil woman to Death Row at Raiford, burnishing my growing legend as the Angel of Death, and not so incidentally having hot sex with only the third and fourth women I’d known carnally in the last 20 years, I thought my world had finally begun to make sense again.
Until SHE walked back into my life....

TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2005

About 4 p.m. I got a call from the Big Man.


“Bill, could you trot on down to Courtroom 4. Peters is in court with that hit and run driver, the one that killed those two kids. His attorney is balking at the plea deal we’ve offered, 15 years with no parole.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just walk in the courtroom and talk to Peters for a few minutes.”
“Why? I’ve just killed almost three hours giving you about a million dollars in free publicity.”
“And I appreciate it. Humor me.”
So I walked into Courtroom 4 and talked to Peters, a youngish blonde guy who was actually only a few years younger than me but looked like he was still in his 20s. I noted the hit and runner looking at me strangely and then his attorney and he conferred and in a few minutes a woman I thought must be the defendant’s wife came over to them and whispered.

“Your honor,” the defense attorney said, drawing the attention of Circuit Judge Dominic Dellaro. Dellaro looked up from some papers he’d been studying. “Uh, your honor, my client has changed his mind. We’ll take the State’s

plea.”

Dellaro looked at him with just the hint of a smile and asked, “Are you sure, Mr. Richards. I thought you said your client would never agree to 15 years imprisonment. You were going to fight to prove his innocence.”
The defense guy looked at Peters, and then at me, and suddenly I realized the world was a different place.

“We changed our mind, your honor.” Dellaro just looked at me and smiled.

When I got back to my office the phone was ringing.

The Big Man sounded like a cat that had just swallowed a covey of canaries. “I think I’m going to have you stand around in every courtroom where we

have a trial going. At this rate, we won’t actually have to try many more cases. Not with the Angel of Death breathing fire and brimstone.”

I would have joked about it except I was still stunned. I really had frightened that guy into accepting a plea. This was almost not funny anymore.
It got to be about 5 p.m. I was wrapping up loose ends, accepting congratulatory calls, and trying to decide if I wanted to make it to Hurly’s or try to get by Carlos’ place. It had been a while since I’d done any sparring. The way I felt right now, it seemed I could do almost anything.
I had put away an evil woman, made myself a legal superstar of sorts, had the kind of raw sex I hadn’t even thought about in more than 20 years, and did it right in the middle of the State Attorney’s Office without anyone being the wiser. Hell, I could probably fly if I put my mind to it.


The phone rang and I answered it wearily. I really wanted to get out of here. Susie, a secretary who was taking Cheryl’s place, said, “I hate to bother you, Mr. Maitland, but there’s a woman out here asking to see you.”
“I really don’t want to see anybody, Susie. If she’s a reporter, get her name and tell her I’ll definitely call her tomorrow.”
“She...said it’s important and that you might want to talk to her.” “She wouldn’t give you her name?”
“No sir.”
“Aw hell,” I said more to myself than her, then said, “Okay Susie. I’ll give her five minutes. Tell her.”
I was leaning over to get papers out of a bottom drawer when I heard, “I’d rather have more than five minutes, but I’ll accept whatever I can get.”
I froze. I smelled her perfume first and then when she leaned over to kiss the side of my face, a kiss that slid onto my lips, I tasted mint. She pulled back from me and was looking down on me and I knew I was dreaming.
“You wouldn’t come to me, Mr. Maitland, so I had to come to you.”
I was standing holding her around the waist and she was looking into my eyes with those sea-green eyes of hers. I couldn’t talk.
“I have two weeks, Bill. If you don’t want me to stay, I’ll go. I can fly down south if you don’t want me around.”
I pulled her to me and after a long moment I let her lips go and told her, “I don’t want you to go, Aline. I don’t want you to go.”
I left her and went to the door to my office and locked it. I didn’t want anyone wandering in. I wanted Aline to myself for right now. When I walked back to her we didn’t touch again, just stood looking at each other.

“Why?”

“I missed you, Bill. I tried not to. I know you didn’t want to see me again.

But I missed you. I thought it would get better with time. But it doesn’t.”

“How could you get away from the Bonne Chance? And if you had that much free time, I thought. you’d be going home to Philippe and André?”
“It was time for me to leave the ship but Philippe called and told me that he has arranged membership for André in one of the most exclusive boy’s fraternities in France. It will be a feather in the cap of André for the rest of his life. Most of the leaders of French government, industry, business, were members as boys. It’s the equivalent of a club at...Oxford or Cambridge. You make friendships that will serve you the rest of your life.”
She looked at her hand and I noted that she had not put her wedding ring back on, but she was looking at her ring finger and I knew who she was thinking about.


“Philippe came from nothing. Middle class pencil pushers, he puts it. He rose because of his own drive and intelligence. But he could have gone so much further with the connections that André will make. He wants that for André . And for two weeks, André will be engaged in male-only activities on a safari in Kenya, with Philippe and some of the other fathers along. An outing. It’s one of the rituals they engage in.”
“And a Mom wouldn’t fit in?” She shook her head.
“Non. It deprives me of my time with him, but I love André as much as Philippe. I will see him in two weeks. I could have stayed on the ship. I should have stayed on the ship. I could have flown back to Paris and waited at our home there. I could have visited family and friends.
“Instead,” and she crossed the distance between us to put her hand on my chest, over my heart, “I chose to surprise a man I’ve only known for a week, a man trying to put his life back together, a man I threw myself at on our first cruise together. A man I was not even sure would welcome me. I must be a fool.”
I pulled her to me and held her warmth against me.
“I’m glad you’re here, Aline. God, I’m glad you’re here. You have two weeks? Do you have any plans?”
“Just one. To spend them with you. If you want me to stay the whole time.” “Of course.”
My mind started working again.
“I don’t know that I’ll be able to get away much. We have a pretty full calendar and...”
I stopped myself and looked at the dark haired vision that stood in front of me, delicious breasts rising and falling, remembering that great ass that was concealed beneath layers of clothing. She had chosen to come to me. And I was going to spend time on depositions and witnesses and recalcitrant defendants?
NO! I had lost one woman I couldn’t afford to lose because I’d put this office first. The woman in front of me wasn’t mine, never would be, never could be, but she had made me happy. She’d made me wake up with a smile on my face and a hard-on. She deserved more of me than I’d normally be willing to give.
“I have some things that need doing, but I’ll make time for us to go places. I’d like to show off Northeast Florida to you. It’s been my home for most of my life. It’s not exactly Paris, but there are a lot of things to like.”
“That sounds like fun. Do you want to go out and celebrate tonight?” I gave her a curious look.
“Everybody in the courthouse is talking about your great triumph and I saw a telecast on one of the televisions in the airport. ‘The Angel of Death’ takes a bite


out of the ‘Shark’ was one report I saw and ‘Killer Granny latest victim of the Angel of Death.’ You have become a celebrity.”
“I’m a 15 minute sensation, Aline. In a week they’ll be asking me for ID when I go to cash a check at the bank.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, slipping her arms around me. “My friend is a famous man and becoming more famous by the day. I think I’m going to become your first ‘groupie’. But we should go out tonight.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“I know a place we can go for drinks after we grab a bite. But I really don’t want to celebrate anyplace we’re liable to run into press or anybody I know.”
She gave me a hurt look.
“You are ashamed of me, Bill?”
I pulled her to me and kissed her hard and while she fought it at first she gave in and gave herself to it. When I had to breathe again I held her out at arm's length and said, “Anywhere I go with you, every man in the place is going to be hating me and wishing you were on his arm. You’re going to be the most beautiful woman wherever we go. How could I be ashamed of you?”
“Then why?”
“I want you for myself, Aline. I don’t want to share you. I don’t want to have to answer questions and I don’t want Debbie sticking her nose into my business and she will be a pain in the ass if she ever sees you. We’re almost able to stay in the same room without my wanting to kill her and I don’t want to stir up any more shit than I have to.
“And....” I told her, “the world is a small place. A camera crew catches me celebrating with a beautiful, dark haired mystery woman, and what would you care to bet that it won’t somehow wind up on the Internet. And they get the Internet in France. Does Philippe know you’re spending your two weeks with his old friend, Bill?”
She shook her head and dropped her gaze.
“Do you want to try explaining to him why I gave you the Fleur de Lis AND you wound up coming to my home town and going out partying with me? I don’t think anyone, and especially Philippe, is a big enough idiot not to know what’s going on.
“He might be able to turn a blind eye to...us, especially since he’s doing the same thing, but if it goes on the Internet your friends will see us together. Is he going to be able to accept that? You’ll be hurting his pride, and from what I remember of him, I don’t think he’s the kind of man who can accept that and live with it. If you made him angry enough, you don’t think he’d try to use André against you.”
The color drained from her face.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“My God, Bill....I never thought... ”

She was about to cry.

I grabbed her shoulders.

“Don’t. I’m glad you’re here. You’re here now. We can spend time together as long as we’re careful. You and I both know he sees other women. But you’ve never been embarrassed by him, have you? He’s been discreet.”
She nodded.
“We have to be careful, that’s all. As long as we don’t embarrass him, he won’t do anything. He can’t. Even in France, a mother has rights in regard to her children. And if he loves you the way you say you love him, he won’t throw away your marriage as long as you don’t humiliate him publicly. So we just have to make sure we don’t go worldwide.
“Fortunately,” I said stroking that thick black mane that I could never keep my hands off of, “I’m not that famous yet. If I was Bill Clinton, or Johnny Depp, we wouldn’t stand a chance. But get away from the courthouse and I’m just another short, bald guy.”
She gave me a quick peck on the lips.
“You will never be just another short, bald guy, Bill Maitland. AND.  it’s
mean and low of me, but I would love to see the expression on your Debbie’s face the first time she sees us together.”
I couldn’t help answering the grin she was flashing. “You are mean, girl. A real bitch.”
“But I’m YOUR bitch, and I’d like to let your old bitch know somebody else is playing with her old toys. ”
She reached down and ran her hand over my cock and felt the hard bulge there. I was hard again only hours after cumming in buckets inside Heather. Aline was magic. Better than Viagra.
“Make that. her old toy. Which still works fine, by the way. Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said, reaching down and moving her hand off me. “But I need to walk out of here in a little bit and if I’m sticking straight out I’m afraid that might launch some rumors about the pretty dark haired woman who came into my office.”
She shrugged. Even that motion made my dick twitch.
“Alright, Bill. What kind of cloak and dagger intrigue will we indulge in?” “No intrigue. Just walk out and go on down to the Starbucks on the first floor.
Order a coffee and give me a couple of minutes. When I get down there you’ll see me and just follow me out to my car.”
She kissed me on the side of my face and said, “This is exciting. I’ll be the lady getting all hot and bothered at the Starbucks when you get down there.”


I opened the door and walked her out so that Susie could see me shake her hand and hear me say, “I promise you that I’ll be available for an in-depth interview with your correspondent before the end of the week. If you’d just send a formal request through Mr. Edwards’ office, my secretary will arrange it all. Is that okay?”
She gave me a cool, business-like smile and said, “That is very kind of you, Mr. Maitland. I look forward to working with you, very closely, in the future.” And she stuck her tongue out at me at an angle that I’m sure Susie didn’t catch. I had an almost irresistible urge to swat her ass, but I am not a disciplined attorney for nothing. I just nodded and walked back into my office.
I had walked back into the office and was trying to wrap up about 20 different loose ends with my head completely not into it when the phone buzzed. I punch the intercom button and Susie said, “Mr. Maitland, I’m sorry, but you have some other people out here that say they need to speak to you.”
“Susie, I really am trying to get out of here. Who is it?”
“Uh....one of them is your...Ms. Bascomb from the Public Defender’s office. And the other is...Ms. Martinez, from Mr. Edwards’ office. Who....who do you want me to send in first?”
I don’t know. Maybe I was shell shocked after the day I’d just had. Maybe I just wanted to see if they could both fit through the door at the same time. But I said, “Send them both in, Susie.”
A moment later the door came in and sure enough, what the hell, they both came through at the same time. It was one of the few times I’d ever seen them together in the same room. It was, I admit, kind of breathtaking.
Debbie was....Debbie was dressed in a fairly sedate business outfit but she still could have aroused pornographic fantasies in a 90-year-old. She was about four inches taller than Myra and looked bigger, except in a couple of very important places.
Myra, hair blonder and brassier than Debbie, was preceded in by her chest by a few seconds and when she stopped in front of my desk, parts of her kept moving for several seconds. I got ready to duck in case any of the buttons on her stressed blouse started heading my way.
Choosing which one to look at was an impossible dilemma so I focused my gaze at a spot about midway between their heaving bosoms. Debbie shot Myra a sideways glance and Myra glanced back without moving her head. Something was going on in the indecipherable language of females, but damned if I could tell what it was.
“I have had a long day, Debbie, and I need to get out of here. Is it personal or does the Public Defender want to send me congratulations? If it’s the latter, tell

Mr. August that I appreciate the compliment. If it’s the former....you didn’t need to come by.”

“It’s both. I talked to Johnny—Mr. August, and he did want me to send you his congratulations. And he wanted me to give you a special message.”

“Yes.”

She stared at me as if she was looking at a stranger and for some reason that made me start to get hard. It was as if she was some gorgeous wet dream of a stranger who had walked into my office for the first time and I could imagine the impact she would have had on me if I’d never seen her before.
“He said, ‘You did a great job today, Bill. You handed Lew his head. But don’t expect our guys to roll over for the Angel of Death in the future. You just painted a big bull’s-eye on your back, and expect all our guys to be gunning for you in the future. Good luck’.”
I couldn’t help smiling. It sounded like Johnny. He’d probably take on a case against me just to try to get his licks in. And he might not exactly be in Lew’s league as a trial lawyer, but that blind country-boy, aw shucks act he put on for juries always made it hard to gain the jury’s sympathy against him. Still, it would be fun.
“Tell Mr. August that I look forward to going up against him at his pleasure, Ms. Bascomb. And...”
“I just wanted to tell you that...you were impressive. Lew is flashy and I made the mistake of underestimating you, Bill. I wish...I’d done this before. Seen you work. I don’t know why I never did.”
I just stared at her. There was a time when those words would have warmed my heart. Now they just made me remember what I’d lost.

“Thanks.”

She glanced over at Myra who was just standing there breathing in and out and flashing a smile at me. Debbie looked like she wanted to say something else, then shook her head a little and turned around and walked out. As usual, she looked as good going as she did coming.
Myra gave her a little glance as she walked out the door, then sat down in a chair across from me and crossed her legs. I valiantly resisted the impulse to look up her dress and focused instead on her heaving chest.

“And what message do you bring from the Big Man, Ms. Martinez?” “None.”

“Then-“

“Would it surprise you, Mr. Maitland, to know that I have had erotic dreams about you?”

I stared into those emerald eyes and thought she was joking, but I wasn’t quite sure.

“Actually, quite a lot, yes. Like, learning that Sister Teresa had had erotic dreams about me.”

She tried to be stern, but that twinkle remained. “You’re comparing me to a very old nun?”

‘No, it’s just that the idea of you have erotic dreams about me is as—unthinkable—as Sister Teresa having the hots for me.”

“I’ll admit, Mr. Maitland, that I’ve always liked you. You are one of the good guys. But...let’s say you’re much more visually appealing than you used to be.”

“Hot?”

“You’ll get a swelled head, among other things, but...yes. And, I’ve thought, over the years, that you might...have a secret yen for me.”

“Like every other male between 15 and 90...well, yeah.”

She leaned back and took a deep breath that caused my blood pressure to spike.

“But you’ve always been married. And I knew you would never mess around, and I don’t mess with married men.”

She flashed a quick smile and added, “except....you know. But, now you’re single. And available. And I...uh...thought that perhaps you might be free sometime this week. To go out for drinks. Or supper?”

I couldn’t help being incredulous. “You are asking ME out?”

“It’s the 21st century, Mr. Maitland. Women do that now.”

I looked at the promised land she offered and it physically hurt me to say it, but I told her, “I’m sorry Myra. But...I will be tied up.  for a couple of weeks at
least. And maybe a lot longer.”
“Someone moved in that quickly?” she said with an incredulous look on HER face. “You’re not going back to-“
“No. And, there’s nothing definite about the next couple of weeks....but...there is someone. And I don’t think anything will happen, but. ”
“But even when you’re single, you’re a decent guy. You could have stepped out on her and played both of us, but you’re not that kind of person. God damn, why didn’t I move quicker?”
She was out of her chair and enveloping me in acres of warm breast and I couldn’t keep my hands off that ass as she pressed herself into me and then kissed the side of my face.
‘It’s okay, Bill. I didn’t think I could respect you any more than I do, but....Just remember that if things don’t work out with her  I would definitely be
interested in going out. Don’t forget.” “I won’t.”


And just to make sure I didn’t, she created a female symphony of moving parts and pneumatic flesh as she maneuvered her way out of my office. I didn’t realize how badly Aline had set her hooks into me until I realized that even now, I didn’t regret turning something like that down for a chance to be with Aline.
When she left I still had to wade through six phone calls that had to be returned, several court documents that needed signatures and two ASAs who wanted to talk. And then I could FINALLY call an end to the day and get out of there.
I glanced over at the Starbucks as I walked toward the street that would lead to the private parking lot where courthouse officials could park without having to hunt for a free parking meter. It had been recurrent chaos for years until the state had finally decided four years before to build us a covered garage next to the jail facing the St. Johns River.
As I walked past her, I sneaked a quick look at her and without her being too ostentatious about it she gave the round seat she sat on a hot, and slow, lap dance. I grinned at nothing in particular and walked out the courthouse doors.
Five minutes later she was sitting beside me and we were headed out toward Chez Alexandre, an Avondale restaurant that served the best and most authentic French cuisine in Jacksonville. The owner and Chef had been in this country twenty years chefing for a number of restaurants until he finally got up the courage and money to launch out on his own five years before. It wasn’t Paris, but it wasn’t bad.
He had managed to keep his doors open in a city where barbecue joints outnumbered every other kind of restaurant by almost two to one. Somebody once said that Jacksonville was really South Georgia, and judging by culinary tastes, I had to concede the point.
I didn’t eat there a lot, especially since just looking at most of the entrees added a half pound where I didn’t want it going, but I had always liked the food since coming back from Paris and I thought Aline would welcome a taste of home.
Alexandre Auvray was about 50, tall and lean with dark hair turning a distinguished silver. Despite being the brains, heart and soul of the kitchen, he greeted guests in a tux so that every time you came in you felt like you attending a special event.
I didn’t think he’d remember, but he gave me a strange look as he took in the dark haired woman at my side and said, “Mr. Maitland, a pleasure to see you again. I believe...you were here last with. ”
I nodded.
“My wife. The tall blonde. She’s not my wife anymore. Let me introduce you to my friend, Aline des-Jardins.”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

A genuine smile lit his face and he launched into a spiel of rapid French that left me far behind and brought a smile and blush to Aline’s face as well. While they talked I remembered the last time I had been here with Debbie. I’d had to nag her for six months before she’d join me and she had put down every dish in the place as a caloric nightmare.

I knew she was serious about keeping the weight off because she could very easily have been a big girl, but it hurt that she made it seem like I was engaged in a campaign to plump her up. I had just wanted to share some of the gastronomic discoveries I’d made in Paris with the woman I loved. It was another one of the those nights we’d gone home and I’d had to dress warmly to avoid frostbite in bed.
I shook my head to dislodge those memories. That was then. This was now, I told myself as I watched Alexandre eat up Aline with his eyes, discretely. He finally tore his eyes away from her and managed to look at me for a moment. He was obviously surprised by the closer inspection. I had changed a lot from the last time he’d seen me.
“Mr. Maitland. I apologize. I didn’t realize you had changed so much. You realize you are blessed by the Gods?”
I swapped glances with Aline and said, “I know.”
He just shook his head again, “You walk in here with two of the most beautiful women in this hemisphere. It’s a good thing I have a beautiful wife, or it would be easy to hate you.”
“I’ve seen Cybelle, Alexandre. You don’t have to be jealous of any man.”
“You are kind, but I assume you came in here to eat. Please have a seat and let me take your order. Oh, by the way, congratulations on your great victory in court.”
For the next two hours Alexandre and his staff, finally joined by the lovely Cybelle, kept putting French delicacies in our faces and both of us indulged more than we should have. I even had a few snails. Which were one of the house specialties.
Finally over coffee and a pastry with nuts and chocolate and thin wafers of some sweet crusty pastry, I told Alexander, “Okay, I surrender. Another bite and I will explode all over the interior of your restaurant. I cannot thank you enough for feeding us this way.”
He and Cybelle had sat themselves down at our table and the two women had been rattling on at a machine gun pace. Although I could not understand exactly what was said, I noticed both of them looking at me frequently and Aline blushing a lot.
When we were finally getting ready to leave at 8 p.m., Cybelle pulled me aside and whispered into my ear, “I know that there is more going on here than


your friend Aline is willing to say. But she can’t hide her feelings for you She told me about your giving her the Fleur-de-Lis. Such a romantic gesture.”
And then she reminded me that there is such a thing as a fraternity—or sorority—of wives, adding with a hard look, “I remember your beautiful blonde wife, Mr. Maitland. Did you ever do anything that crazy and romantic for her? Would you be single now if you had shown that kind of romantic love for her? Wives need to be reminded that their man loves them, too.”
I guess it was still a little too raw for me to be really polite.
“I guess not, Cybelle. Other than risking my life for her and winding up in a coma, I never did much to show her how much I cared.”
I didn’t add that that had been 20 years before our marriage crashed and burned. Maybe if I had...but I stopped myself. I wasn’t going to let someone looking in from outside make me feel guilty about what had happened. You didn’t do things like buy an expensive piece of jewelry for your wife 15 or 20 years into a marriage. It never would have occurred to me and I knew Debbie would have made me take it back and get a refund.
As I walked out the door with Aline, I made sure to hold her tightly around the waist and even patted her lightly on that luscious ass under Cybelle’s slightly disapproving glance. I knew Alexandre would enjoy it vicariously and I wanted to figuratively give Cybelle the finger. She was a good woman, but I wasn’t real fond of wives right now.
I knew Cybelle didn’t, couldn’t know the details of my marriage’s breakup. She was just a middle-aged wife watching a husband she thought had dumped a wife for a younger pretty woman.
I parked on Edgewood at the median and opened the door for Aline. She looked around and I know what was going through her mind. There are places like Edgewood and the Westside in Paris, but you usually don’t go into them without a bodyguard or an armed escort.
It’s run down, but not as bad an area as it would look to a French visitor. I pointed to the sprawling saloon that was O’Brien’s and said, “This is a community bar called O’Brien’s. It’s a pretty nice place.”
There were cars out front. Even on a weekday it had plenty of traffic, but nothing like the weekend. As we walked past the long plate glass window at the entrance Aline looked around curiously. When we stepped inside she realized the size of the place, looked from the horseshoe-shaped bar to a dance floor. There were pool tables at the rear and a couple of dart boards.
“This is like a—“
“Around here we’d call it a honky tonk,” I said, grinning. There were a few cowboy hats, truckers, bikers with the requisite colors and tattoos, but also yuppies, businessmen in clusters sipping what looked like martinis, girls who


looked barely old enough to order alcohol and some ladies who were undoubtedly waiting for last call to see if the dimmed lights and diminished capacities of drunk guys would give them a chance to get lucky. There were also older couples sitting at some tables nursing beers in mugs.
“This is like a country café, or what they’d call a Pub in England. It’s enchanting,” she said with a wide grin on her face.
“That’s one word,” I said as I couldn’t believe her characterization, but I was glad that she liked the place. I had always liked it too.
We found a table and the only waitress in the place found us after a few minutes and took our orders. Aline ordered white wine and I ordered a Bloody Mary with celery and four green olives.
“Have you wasted many evenings in a bar like this?” she said, smiling.
“No, not until after....my breakup. Before that I was a married man and the only time I ever came in here was on business or a few times with cops or witnesses I needed to talk to.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” a rough voice said from behind me. “Many’s the night I’ve had to pour him in a cab from here.”
I looked back at O’Brien and shook my head.
“Don’t believe a word he says, Aline. He loves telling stories.”
“M’sieur,” she said, putting out one slim hand which he took in between his rough paws.
“Mademoiselle”,” he said and then started speaking French. I wouldn’t have been more surprised if a hole had open up in the center of the bar and aliens poured out. O’Brien speaking French?
After a couple of minutes she looked at me and said, “Your Mr. O’Brien is an intriguing man. A pugilist and a businessman. And he speaks highly of you.”
I just stared at O’Brien.
“You never cease to amaze me. How in the hell and where did you learn to speak French?”

“It’s rough, but you never lose it. I picked it up when I was living in Paris.” “You lived in Paris?”

“Back when I was a young, up and coming boxer. Back in the early 70s.” “What were you doing in Paris?”

He looked at Aline for a moment and I thought I saw his eyes brighten. “Being married, Mr. Maitland. She was my first. I was 25 and she was 22. I

met her when I was on a tour. I boxed all over Europe. She came to one of my fights with a boyfriend. We left there that night together and were never apart again.”
I knew he’d told me he’d been married and divorced four times over the years.


“Is she still there, O’Brien? Is she one of the ones you had a good divorce from?”
“She’s still there. We never got divorced.”
I didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem like the same O’Brien I’d known for years.
“Lung cancer. She smoked like a chimney. They all did. I couldn’t, not and box. She developed a cough six months after we married. It took her two years to die. After awhile she just stopped fighting. She’s buried with her parents in a little suburb south of Paris.”
Aline placed one hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. There are times when weeks go by and I don’t think about her.”
“Have you...ever been back?”
He shook his head and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and smiled. “No. It just wouldn’t be the same...without her.”
He shook himself as if awaking from a dream and stepped back.
“I didn’t mean to talk about that. It was just hearing your accent, and talking with you, brought it back. Anyway, Mr. Maitland, if you can, hold onto this one. She’s a keeper.”
“I would if I could, O’Brien. I would if I could.”
When he left tears rolled down her cheeks. I wondered if she was crying for the poor doomed young wife, or for us.
So I took her out on the dance floor and while I’ve never been a dancer I was able to twirl her around for thirty minutes. They didn’t have live music but they had plenty of canned and the Cranberries provided a lot of the dance music. O’Brien must have really loved them, or got a cut for playing their music. He played their songs a lot.
That was okay. I loved their music too. Of course it didn’t really fit the country image, but O’Brien’s was more than a honky-tonk.
As we danced and she made love to me with her clothes on, I felt Aline sniff. “Women are mush.”

She leaned forward and bit me hard enough on the lip to make me wince and said, “Don’t give me that crap, Bill. You were about to cry too.”

“Was not.”

She gave me a little smile and kissed the bite mark she’d left on me and said, “Even the Angel of Death has a heart. He is a friend of yours, non?”

“Yeah. He’s a good guy. A little crusty, and he’s been unluckier in love than me, but he’s a good guy.”

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and looked up into Lew’s smiling face.
“Can I have this dance? That is, cut in and dance with your charming partner.
I don’t want to dance with you.”
I stopped moving with Aline and said, “I thought you’d be off somewhere licking your wounds.”
He looked at Aline and smiled that rakish little smile that had probably gotten Mona to go to bed with him the first time and said, “I was, for a little while, but Mona does that so much better than me that I let her take over. Now I feel fine. When I got a call from O’Brien that the world was coming to an end, I knew I had to head over here.”
I knew Aline wasn’t following a lot of this but she looked at him curiously when he mentioned the end of the world.
He caught the look and held out his hand to her, saying, “Lew  Lew Walters.
I’m the best friend, and probably the only friend, of the guy who’s treading all over your toes. Oh, the End of the World? Well, we’d all pretty much decided that Bill had given up women until the End of the World.
“So when O’Brien said he was in here drinking and dancing with the hottest mystery woman to ever walk through these doors, I had to check it out. If the world is going to end, I need to make arrangements.”
She looked over at O’Brien.
“He said I was the hottest mystery woman to ever walk through these doors?” “Nah, he just said you were hot as hell and entirely too good for Maitland.
So, can I have a dance and make your acquaintance, Mystery Lady?”
“You can have him,” a female voice said from behind me, “and I’ll take Bill off your hands before he does serious orthopedic damage to you.”
I looked back at Mona wearing something clingy and red and over my shoulder told Aline, “These are my best friends, Aline, Lew and Mona Walters. That right there tells you how desperately empty my life is.”
“They seem charming,” Aline said and released me to take Lew’s hand. He grabbed her and twirled her away, but not before saying, “I’ll give you a few minutes to adjust. Bill is a great guy, but he’s the whitest white guy you ever saw on a dance floor.”
She was dancing off with him when she said loud enough for me to hear, “Maybe, but he has other wonderful qualities—that aren’t immediately apparent.”
Lew just stared at me and then shook his head in disbelief.
Mona fit herself into my arms and we danced away in the other direction while I tried not to step on her toes.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“Okay, so give, Bill. I can tell she’s not from around here, not with that accent. And she is gorgeous. Is she a pro?”

From Debbie it would have stung like hell, but Mona didn’t mean anything. “No, she’s just a...friend of mine. I met her awhile back.”
“Just a friend?”
“A very good...and close...friend,” I couldn’t help adding with a little bit of bravado.
She looked me over, catching the bruise on my lip and mint-smelling lipstick on various parts of me, and said, “Well, I have to tell you, Bill, I’m feeling better about you. Lew told me about your little booty call with that former Assistant State Attorney, the one he always called Dimples. We were both glad you were finally getting some action, after Debbie. But this woman...”
“She’s special, Mona. I can’t say anything more than that, but she’s special.
She’s done me a world of good.”
“Then I like her, even though I’m jealous as hell. What is it with you, anyway? First you nail the biggest and hottest pair of tits in Jacksonville, until that Myra cow came along, and now you’re got Audrey Hepburn’s reincarnation on your arm.”
“You think she looks like Audrey Hepburn? How the hell do you even know who Audrey Hepburn was?”
“I watch old movies, Bill. No, besides being brunette and slender it’s not that obvious...but she’s got the COOL thing down pat. Anyway, you are so transparent. Does she know you’re about one date away from asking her to go steady?”
I shook my head.
‘Can’t, Mona. I can’t say anything more than that. But we really are just friends.”
She looked over at Aline dancing like a professional in a gliding dance with her husband, then at me and a look of what I could only call shock came over her face.
“She’s married? She’s not wearing rings, but....How did you, of all people, get hooked up with a married woman?”
I pulled her to me and whispered in her ear, so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eye, “It’s a long story, Mona. Be a friend and after you leave forget you and Lew ever saw me and her together. It’s not going anywhere. It can’t. But she’s going to be here for a few weeks. It may be the last time I ever see her. I don’t want anything screwing up our time together.”
She hugged me tight against her.
“Oh, God, Bill, I am sorry. You just aren’t having any luck with women at all, are you?”


“I was very lucky to have met Aline, Mona, no matter what...and what are you doing in town? I thought you spent about three weeks of every month running around the globe doing good things for the poor and powerless.”
She gave me another one of those looks that men can’t possibly fathom and said, “Lew and I both lead very busy lives. It just seems to get busier. We have to make a date to be in the same town the same night to get together. But...he wanted me here to celebrate his big victory when he cleaned your clock in that Killer Granny case. He was certain he was going to win.”
She smiled and leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Don’t ever tell him I told you this, but he is a lot more human, a lot more like the guy I fell in love with, when he gets knocked down a peg or two. Sometimes he just gets too full of himself.”
After awhile we wound up back at a table, the four of us, and we shared drinks and introductions.
“Talk about your Harlequin Romances,” Lew said downing probably one too many straight Scotch on the Rocks. “His boss kicks Bill out of his job and ORDERS him, that’s ORDERS him to get lucky, and who does he meet but the most beautiful French woman walking the earth.”
He gave Mona a sloppy kiss and said, “I can say that dear, because we both know you are Russian by heritage, and there is no lovelier Russian lady walking the earth than sitting right beside me.”
She tapped him lightly on the side of the face and said with a straight face, “That’s what I call a fast recovery, darling, but it’s wasted. You already got lucky tonight.”
Lew turned his attention back to Aline and laid his hand lightly on hers, adding, “I meant getting lucky in the sense of meeting a beautiful woman, not in the-“
“You were right the first time,” she said, staring at him until he almost blushed. “Bill got lucky, but I did too. Very lucky.”
“You both got lucky,” Mona said. “I don’t know you Aline, but I know Bill. Any woman that can entrance him the way you obviously have, has to be a special lady. I hope you know just how good a man he is.”
“Stop it,” I said, “Or I’ll start blushing. Jesus, I just got divorced. I didn’t’ die and come back. I’m just a middle aged, divorced guy who was lucky enough to meet a beautiful woman with not-quite-so-good eyesight.”
“You’re not just a middle-aged, divorced guy, Bill. You’re a man who was a good husband for 20 years, and a good father until your bitch ex-wife forgot all that....and I hope any woman you meet realizes how fortunate she is to be with you and doesn’t re-open the wounds.”


Another look passed between the two women and this time I knew there was something being conveyed from Mona to Aline, but I’m not that perceptive. Aline just nodded slightly.
Lew looked over at me and said, “Before I get too drunk, Mona and I wanted to know if you have any plans for Saturday.”
It took me a second but I shook my head.
“No. The kids asked me and I told them I’d like to put things off for a couple of weeks. There’s just too much going on. We can do it in a couple of weeks if you guys want to get together.”
“Saturday?” Aline asked.
“Didn’t Bill tell you,” Lew said. “He’ll become an old man officially Saturday. It’s his 42nd birthday. That’s the birthday when everything really does start falling apart.”
She gave me a look and I already felt like a henpecked husband as I told her,
“I was going to tell you. I’ve just been trying to avoid thinking about it, honestly.”
“Why? 42 is not old?”
“If you’re a tree....Turning 40 didn’t bother me, but for some reason, turning 42 bothers the hell out of me.”
We talked for a little longer and then Aline and Mona decided they had to hold hands to go to the bathroom and went together as women will do. When they were out of earshot, Lew leaned over and said, “My God, Bill, she is gorgeous. If I was ever going to cheat on Mona, I think it would be with her. Be straight with me. You banged her on the big boat?”
“You’re such a pig. But yes. Repeatedly and in every orifice!”
“And I was feeling sorry for you because you’d been cut off from Deb’s tits. But noooooo...you go and bang the French cutie, and Dimples, and if you haven’t banged that lady cop you’re going to sometime soon. I thought she was going to unzip you and give you a blowjob in court this afternoon. When you decide to end your celibacy, you don’t mess around.”
“I’m proud to have impressed you, Lew, but remember, you have Mona to come home to, whenever you two get together.”
He looked down at the empty Scotch glass and pushed it around on the table. “Lawyers lie, Bill. You know that. I don’t know what it is...but…”

For just a second the mask he presented to the world slipped a bit and I saw something I didn’t want to recognize.

“I guess it’s just the seven year itch, or doldrums, or whatever, but Hell, nobody’s marriage can stay hot forever. We’ll be fine.”

“Is there anything-“

“Naw. I love her. She loves me. That’s what counts.”
And who the hell was I to give anyone romantic advice, so I kept my mouth shut.
Then Aline and Mona were back and we made our goodbyes. As Lew and Mona stood, I said, “Look, please, keep...this to yourselves. I don’t want anyone in the office buzzing about this, and God knows I don’t want Debbie hearing anything. Okay?”
“My lips are sealed,” Lew said as he leaned over to kiss Aline on the cheek, as Mona gave me a hug and they walked out. As they walked out together, I noticed they weren’t holding hands and I tried to remember the last time I’d ever seen them when they weren’t holding hands. It was a young lover thing, and they’d always had it. I tried for just an instant to envision either of them with someone else. Couldn’t.
When I tried to pay O’Brien, as usual he refused to take my money, kissed Aline on the hands in a Gallic gesture and said, “Au revoire.”
When we got back to my condo, we stripped off, took showers and lay our naked bodies down in my small bed. As her nipples rubbed my chest and I nestled one knee in the cleft between her legs, I should have been getting hard, but I didn’t. It just felt good. I held her to me and breathed in the smell of her newly dried hair.
“Your friends are nice,” she said in a sleepy whisper in my ear. “Do they....are they getting along?”
“As far as I know. Why?”
“Nothing....just....a feeling I got....from Mona. There’s a sadness...there. ”
“I know they’ve been trying to have a kid...without any luck...that might be

it.”

 

“Probably.” In a minute...

“Bill, do you mind if we don’t... it just feels so good holding you like this and

I guess the trip took it out of me...”

I kissed her on the tip of her nose and said, “My huge cudgel of masculine destruction will be disappointed, but...”

“I promise to make your cudgel very happy tomorrow............................................................................... okay?”

As I drifted into sleep smelling her sweet breath against the side of my face, I tried to imagine what it would be like to do this every night...

 

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 2: FIGHTS YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO WIN


Time can rush by you and creep at a glacial pace at the same time. I am sleeping with the only woman other than my wife I’ve ever seriously considered making a life with. And it’s like there’s a ticking clock in the back of my head that keeps reminding me she is only mine for awhile. She has a husband and a child on another continent. I want to throw the clock away, so I can enjoy every moment with her, but I can’t escape that tick-tock.
And while I measure the minutes, my life remains frozen in the limbo between the one I had and threw away, and the one that yawns in front of me. The life of a cramped condo and dinners eaten alone and drives by myself when there should be two of us. Television programs I can’t remember when they end. Frozen dinners microwaved in front of the television.
It’s only been five months, but it could as easily be five years, and I can’t make myself imagine what five years alone will feel like. I keep waiting to wake up and discover all of this has been a bad dream, to roll over and feel Debbie’s soft warmth and abundant curves nestled against me in our familiar bed.
But I never do.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 -- 5 P.M.

Teller held the blonde goddess tight against his chest. Although she was hiccupping and gasping as tears flowed down her face, he’d been able to get her to evacuate the contents of her stomach with an emetic administered in his office bathroom before he’d begun the session.
He didn’t want to leave another mess in his office for the cleaning crew to deal with like they had after his first session of hypnosis with the former Mrs. Maitland. And it had worked. With the exception of a few explosions of spittle from her stomach, it had been mostly dry heaves.
As she rubbed those heavy breasts against him, he found himself beginning to experience an erection, but forced the sensation down and thought about other things that made him go very limp. He could never afford to begin to even think about her in a sexual way, or he’d never be able to help her as a patient. And he would never betray his medical oath. Never again.
He stroked her blonde hair and whispered as calmingly as he could, “It’s alright now, Debbie. It happened a long time ago and you’re in my office and you’re safe.”
She shuddered and pressed her face into his chest. “Oh, my GOD! Oh my God.”
To get her mind off the experience she had just re-lived, and to begin the analysis of whatever it had been, he said, “Tell me what you’re feeling, Debbie.


What’s going through your mind right now.”
She just gasped and moaned for several moments and then:
“Sick...sick to my stomach....I can taste them.....taste them pissing in my mouth....and....I’m scared...”
“We don’t know when this happened, but it’s likely been some time ago. There’s nothing to be afraid anymore. It’s only a memory. They can’t hurt you anymore.”
“No, I’m not scared of them....I’m....there’s something...I can’t remember...but it....it terrifies me...it’s like one of those dreams when....something is behind you and you know it...but you can’t turn around and look at it...like that...”
He made a mental note to follow up on that. It might be further repressed memories of other attacks, or fear of what they represented? Still and all, anger and depression would be expected if this was a true memory, but fear...?
“And...Jesus this makes no sense.  I hate Bill. I could cut his throat if I could
get my hands on him. Now I know I am crazy. Why am I furious at him? He wasn’t one of them. How can I blame him?”
“I don’t know, Debbie. It’s hard for me to visualize his connection, based on what you’ve just remembered, but it’s also hard to imagine how your anger toward him could involve this incident, if there wasn’t a connection. Keep going.”
She pushed herself back and away from Teller, sitting back on the couch where she had lain during the hypnotic regression session. She wiped the tears and snot off her cheeks with the back of her hand, then accepted a white linen handkerchief Teller offered her to finish cleaning herself up.
“You want to know what I feel mostly, Dr. Teller?”
“Yes, I’m very curious if there’s something you feel more strongly than what you’ve already described.”

“Disgust.”

“That’s a normal reaction to the kind of event you’re described. It’s nauseating, even to listen to, much less to experience.”

She looked up from the coffee table which was always a magnet for patient’s eyes, which was why he’d had it put in, besides the fact that he loved it. There was a smile of such sadness on her beautiful features that he had to remind himself to keep a psychiatrist’s neutral stance.
“No, disgust at myself.” “At yourself?”
“Don’t you get it, doctor? I know you do. You’re just trying to be supportive. I was in a bathroom. I think it was in a men’s bathroom. I wasn’t being bangd. It was obvious I had gone in there to suck those guys off or let them screw me. I


wasn’t expecting what they did to me, but I didn’t go in there to talk politics. I went in there to suck their dicks and let them screw my pussy. Just like the slut that most think I am.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Doctor. It was a bathroom, a public bathroom and a big one, obviously. In a restaurant or big hotel. They weren’t dragging me. They didn’t have me gagged. I could have screamed for help, but I didn’t. I remember them putting their dicks in my hands and I was jerking them. I could have hurt them, but I didn’t want to. And until they got too rough, I obviously didn’t mind sucking them.
“I know what it was, doctor. It was a gang bang, one that I apparently walked into willingly. And I wasn’t a kid. I was a grown woman. So I was a married woman. While my husband that I vowed to love and be faithful to was somewhere else, I was sucking strange dicks.
“I’m a wonderful wife and mother, alright. No wonder I could never let myself remember.”
Tears flowed down her cheeks that she didn’t attempt to wipe away.
“The funny thing is, doctor, I really thought I was a better person than that. I love sex and I’ve had multiple men before, doubles and even triples when I was in college. But I thought...I was an honest person. That when I made a promise, an oath, I could keep it. And I made a promise to Bill.
“He accused me of cheating on him, and I told him he was wrong. Now it turns out he was right all along, he was just wrong about who I was cheating with.”
Teller kept quiet. There were times when patients needed to speak at their own pace.
She wiped a tear from her face and looked at the drop of her liquid on her fingertip as if she’d never seen a tear before.
“I like sex, doctor. I like having sex with men. I like being lusted after. I like that look in a man’s eyes when he sees me for the first time and I KNOW that I could have him if I wanted him. When I met Bill...when I got to know him....when I fell in love with him...I didn’t stop being what I am.
“He knew other men excited me....still do...always will....I’ll probably be a flirt when I’m 80, if I make it that far.....I knew, or I learned, that he had doubts about me....I knew that...but what could I do? I can’t change what I am.
“So I did everything I could to reassure him. No matter how hot other men got me, I always brought it home to him. And I think he liked it most of the time. It’s a man thing. Most men like knowing they have something other men want—as long as they don’t have worry about losing it.
“And for the first ten years, before he joined that miserable State Attorney’s office and our marriage started dying, we were okay. I never cheated on him,


although God knows there were lots of times I wished a little bit that I was still single. But I didn’t. Honest to God.”
Teller stopped her.
“There’s no need to take a pledge to tell the truth, Debbie. You could lie all day to me and the only person it would hurt would be you. I believe you’ve told me the truth in our sessions. I trust you.”
“I trusted myself until today, Doctor. Now I’m not so sure. But anyway, after he joined the State Attorney’s Office, and after he left our marriage for his job, and my Aunt Clarice got dumped by her husband and kept telling me that Bill had to be cheating, that all men cheated, all men were pigs, I probably did things I shouldn’t have done.
“I let men rub their dicks on me when they were dancing, once in a while I let a kiss go too far, and I did...I...uh.....there were two times when I jerk-masturbated a guy at a party when he got me alone.
“But I never gave anybody a blow job, I never put my hands on their naked dick, I never let anybody have...my pussy...because that was Bill’s. Even if the son of a bitch didn’t want it anymore and couldn’t make good use of it anymore. By MY standards, and I’m the only one who counts, I kept my promise to Bill. I wore out two vibrators, but I never cheated.
“Or, I didn’t think I did. Now, who knows. But as I can remember, I just drifted along fantasizing about other men, rubbing them sometimes. About two years ago, after Clarice...died....I started thinking seriously about leaving him. I tried to talk to him. God knows we had fights.
“But I couldn’t tell him what I was really thinking. I couldn’t tell him I teasing other men, because I knew how insecure he was. He always had doubts about his ability to...satisfy...me and if you tell a man he’s no good in bed anymore, all it will do is push you toward a divorce quicker.
“I tried to get him to shape up, because I knew if he was in better shape, and looked better, he’d be better in bed and I’d be hotter around him. But that damned office always came first. I know that his job is his life. And it was probably innocent.
“But I could never quite get Clarice’s words out of my head. She had loved her husband more than life. And then one day he walked in and told her he was leaving her for a 25-year-old secretary in his office. It killed her. Although it took two years for her to die. So I wondered about Bill and that damned office. And maybe that’s part of why I got so damned angry.”
“So I was lonely and getting more and more unhappy and horny every day. But I couldn’t tell him I was thinking about divorce. Because I was a coward, I guess. We had a good home, we were secure financially. We had two young children. It was...comfortable....That’s a chickenshit word, but that’s the way I


felt. I kept praying that one day he’d wake up and realize what he was going to lose.
“But he never did, and one day I met Doug Baker. And looking back, if he’d wanted to, he could have had me in a couple days. But he played it cool. And somewhere along the way, even though I told myself he was just a friend, I knew I was going to wind up in bed with him. And I couldn’t do that married to Bill. So I started seriously planning for a divorce, how I’d break it to Bill, to the kids. How’d we’d be financially.
“And I could have lived with that. I had been faithful to my marriage. I’d stayed with him as long as I could. I knew my mom and family and our friends would all think I was a terrible person. They’d all be sorry for poor Bill, because he was such a miserable sad sack and I knew he’d be a basket case after I left him. But I’d know that I’d been a decent wife.”
She looked up at Teller, her eyes dry now.
“And I find out that it was all bullshit. I was cheating on him. I did break my vows. I did revert to being a slut like I was in college. I don’t know now if I can ever look him in the eye again. Dammit.”
Teller just stared her for a few minutes.
“I’ve never felt guilty, doctor, about my life and the way I’ve lived it. And now I do.”
“Okay,” Teller said finally. “You’re a cheating slut. Now what?” “What?”
“I’m not sure that your interpretation of what we’ve learned through this session is accurate. I have some questions in the back of my mind about it. But for the sake of argument, let’s grant that you broke your marriage vows, once or maybe many times. You had sex, with multiple partners, probably indulging in a number of what might be called risky or deviant sex practices.
“You’re a cheating wife, an adulteress. By most men—and women’s—standards, you’re what society would call it a slut. So, what?”
She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe what he’d said.
“So what? That makes me a terrible person, a liar, a cheat, a person who would hurt a man who loved her just to have bigger and better orgasms with strange men. What kind of mother does that make me? How could I ever talk about what’s right and wrong with Kelly or BJ and keep a straight face. And if they ever find out. ”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Teller leaned back and picked up his pipe, made a display of lighting it and took in a deep draught of aromatic smoke before releasing it.

“I concede your point, Ms. Bascomb,” he said in a formal tone. “You are a terrible person. In other countries, you’d have the option of Hara-kiri or Seppuku, ritual suicide, to atone for your mistakes. We don’t do that here. But


pills and guns are always available. I believe you told me your husband left a handgun in your home.”
She looked at him, her eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Doctor Teller, are you insane? You’re suggesting I commit suicide because I cheated on my husband?”
He gave her a slight smile.
“No. You were starting to wallow in guilt about what you think you’ve learned and I was just trying to get you to look at the bigger picture. Assume that you have done a terrible thing, or things. There are only a certain number of ways to deal with that problem.
‘You could commit suicide, which would permanently remove your guilt. Of course it would leave your children minus one parent, devastate your family, and even saddle your ex-husband with a mountain of grief on top of the pain you’ve already dealt him.
“Or, you could go to your husband, confess what you’ve done and either beg him to take you back or to forgive you. From what you’ve told me, you don’t want to go back to him and confirming his suspicions of your unfaithfulness would help him to build a new life—exactly how?”
“Or, third option. You could keep your mouth shut, let this secret go with you to your grave. There would be no unpleasant memories for your children or family to live with, and your husband would not have to remember you as a woman who cheated throughout his marriage, instead of at the very end.
“You can do whatever you want, but if you take the third option, you have to live with the guilt of what you’ve done, without trying to unload it on others, be as good a mother and daughter and ex-wife and possibly a future wife, as you can be. You have to live your life and maybe, just maybe, learn from your mistakes. It won’t be as simple or easy as suicide, but it can be done.”
He looked at her and didn’t utter the thought running through his head. “You can live with almost any amount of guilt, if you have to. I know.”

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 -- 9 P.M.

I stood in the dunes in the humid darkness, holding a soft, very sexy bundle of femininity against me, feeling her push the globes of her fantastic ass back against my dick and massage it gently. I nuzzled the back of her neck and drank in the odor of her hair and skin.
I pointed out into the darkness.
It was dark enough that the horizon was only a faintly darker smudge against the night sky.
“Go about forty five hundred miles in that direction, heading northeast, and you’d be in sight of the French shoreline.”


She didn’t say anything but I knew we were both thinking. Beyond that horizon were her husband and son, her family and her life.
Far away near the horizon there were several moving lights, pinpoints in the darkness so close to the horizon it was difficult to distinguish them from stars hanging low in the night sky.
“Shrimpers,” I said as she followed my finger to gaze at the spot where the Atlantic merged with the sky.
“Maybe cruise ships, but more likely shrimpers coming back into St.
Augustine or maybe heading up to Mayport.”
She leaned back into me and tilted her head back to kiss me. I loved the taste of mint on her lips.
“You think they could be cruise ships?”
“Sometimes they sail this close to the coast, but usually this far north you don’t see them unless they’re heading just north of us back to Blount Island. And there are only a handful. Most of the ships cruise from ports south of us to the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico so you don’t see them often. Although there are some cruise ships that sail from northern ports.”
She turned in my arms and kissed me hard. I felt her nipples as hard little buttons pressing into my tee-shirt.
When she buried her head in the side of my neck, I said, “Do you miss it that much, Aline? Would you rather be out there in the darkness looking back at the shore lights?”
“Maybe,” she breathed heavily, “if you were out there with me.”
I held her in the night and it felt for a moment that the whole world was spinning around us. Nothing had seemed quite real since that moment yesterday when she had appeared as if by magic in my office and was kissing me.
I had known she was gone and never coming back. Her life was on the French cruise ship Bonne Chance which was a maritime gypsy circumnavigating the world. It had stopped in Jacksonville for a while, and then moved on to ports south. It would probably never be back and neither would she.
Which I had told myself over and over in the weeks before the Bonne Chance had finally sailed out for the last time, was a Good Thing. Because Aline des Jardins was a married woman, with a son, and her husband was a good man who had been a friend. Of course, he was also a cheating son of bitch who was screwing half the women in Paris while his wife worked at sea, but with the exception of that one little character flaw, he wasn’t a bad guy.
“Do you think Philippe might object to me becoming a permanent cruise sex buddy?”
She breathed into the side of my neck again. “He will never know. He can never know.”


“I thought you were going to tell him that I had given you the Fleur-de-Lis pendant. Tell him that I was a passenger and you saved my life, sort of. And you would wear the Fleur—de-Lis proudly for the rest of your life. How can you wear it if he can’t know who gave it to you?”
She separated herself from me and stepped a pace back. There was a cooling night wind whipping through the dunes and it caressed her heavy black bangs. The Fleur-de-Lis sat on her chest between her small, but delicious breasts bulging softly out from a light blouse. The moonlight glimmered off the diamond in its center.
“I thought I could tell him and he would never know the truth of what happened, even if he might guess. I thought that he wouldn’t mind, because he’s doing the same thing. But...”
“But what?”
“He’s not a stupid man. The opposite actually. He reminds me of you. He is very, very sharp and perceptive.”
“How can he-“
“You remember I told you that you were different?” “Yes.”
“I told you—the others were—just diversions. They never threatened....Philippe. And I think he knew that. I don’t think he’s ever had me watched. He could tell if...there was someone else...who mattered. But you. ”
“What about me?”
I said the words carefully, the way you’d move around a coiled rattlesnake that you’d discovered sitting on your dresser drawers one morning. This was the thing that had lurked behind every word we’d said to each other since the moment I’d looked up into her eyes yesterday afternoon. It was the elephant in the corner of the room that you couldn’t ignore, but couldn’t acknowledge.
“You want me to say it? To put it into words?”
“One of us has to. Every day after I walked away from you, every single day that I woke up, I had to fight the urge to call you, to go back to the Bonne Chance. Every fiber of my body wanted you. But I couldn’t, because I’d be breaking every rule that I’ve ever lived by, betraying everything I’ve ever believed in.
“But I’m weak willed. I couldn’t go to you, but I couldn’t push you away when you came to me. It doesn’t make it right, what we’re doing.”
She held my face in her hands and kissed me. I felt that same weird sensation of fear that caused the little hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. It wasn’t the night breeze. It was her kiss. It was fear. And now I knew what I was afraid of.


“I told you I felt something when I looked at you the first time, Bill. It was the same feeling, the same emotion, I had years ago when I first looked at Philippe across the room at that party. The night we wound up in his bed. The night he made me his. I am his. And so I can’t be feeling those same emotions now for you.”
She stared at me across a gulf of a few inches with those sea-green eyes that held the ocean in them.
“I can’t be head over heels in love with you. I’m a married woman. I love my husband. I love my son. I have a life and a family. And I shouldn’t be here tonight. So why am I here?”
“Because as I should have told Father Dunleavy, and he would have appreciated the joke, God has a cruel sense of humor. You love Philippe and you have a life you can’t let yourself lose. I don’t have a life anymore but I do have a woman that I shouldn’t love anymore, but I do.”
“You love her even though you don’t want to? What about me, Bill? What do you feel about me? You realize you’ve never put your feelings into words. I don’t really know what you think about me. Except that you like to have sex with me and ... you were grateful to me for helping you get over your cheating slut of a wife.”
There was an odd expression on her face and I tried to analyze it: fear and female pride and worry and something else inexpressible.
“We only known each other for a week. We really don’t know each other at all, Aline. We met in a dream and that’s all we have. But...
“I think...I....might be in love with you. I have feelings for you I haven’t had for anyone other than...Debbie... in 20 years. In the last week I’ve had sex with two women that I liked and it was great sex. But it didn’t mean anything. You meant something.”

“What does something mean?” “Now who’s playing attorney?”

She wasn’t smiling. She had a dead serious look on her face. “What am I to you, Bill?”

“I love her, Aline. I hate her, but I can’t tell you that I don’t still love her. There’s 20 years of memories and loving. Every day I see something or hear something and a memory of her flashes into my mind. Sometimes I still wake up, after all these months, and I think I’m in our bed at home and I expect to roll over and feel her lying next to me. And then I remember...”
I looked across the gulf at her invisible home an ocean away.
“What you are is the person that made me think that life just might be worth living again, that I might not be the total and complete loser that I felt like before I met you. She wrecked my life. You’ve caused me to question everything I’ve


ever believed in, caused me to question whether I’m the good guy I always thought I was.”
I looked back out at the ocean and saw the dark, sharp fangs jutting out from the white-capped tides as the ocean receded. To change the subject, I pointed to them and as she followed my finger, I told her, “They call this the Matanzas Inlet. Matanzas means slaughter. This was a bloody place once.
“ There’s a monument in a park not too far from here. I’ve always known this since I grew up around here and my friends and I used to come here or to St. Augustine in the summers.
“In 1565, the Spanish and French were not being real friendly and they both wanted this piece of real estate. The Spanish killed—slaughtered -- 250 French Huguenots to stake out their claim to the place. They even built a fort like the one at St. Augustine back in the 1700s. It’s gone, not like the Old Fort in St. Augustine, but your people were here a long time ago.”
I watched the rocks slide in and out of the moonlight and told her, “When I was a kid, we used to like to swim out to those rocks at high tide. They’re dangerous. You could get your hands and feet carved up on some of them and kids have banged their heads in a rough surf and gone under, but usually their friends are able to drag them out.”
I took her hand and run her fingers along the underside of the point of my jaw. She felt the scar and gave me a look.
“I was 15 when we came down here one day in July. As usual they had no swimming signs posted although the county would never cough up the money for lifeguards. Rough surf. I went out there and we were horsing around and a wave caught me and smashed me into the big rock the furthest to the right over there. It smashed my chin open. I was seeing stars and it’s a good thing no sharks were around because they tell me I was bleeding like a stuck pig.
“It wasn’t really that big. It only took five stitches to close it up, but it bled like hell. Kids are stupid though. I was out there again the next weekend.”
She leaned into me and kissed the underside of my jaw.
“Do you realize, that is the first time we’ve ever talked about your life—before. Your childhood?”

“We didn’t do a lot of talking on the Bonne Chance, Aline, if you remember.” “No. I know about you and her, a condensed version. But you have a whole life, a childhood, a marriage, I don’t know anything about. She has a lot of those memories. She made them with you. I’m just some woman you had sex with for

a week on a cruise.”
She had turned away from me and her body shook. I grabbed her from behind and held her to me tightly.

“And you have a life I don’t know anything about. And you are so much more than a shipboard romance.”


“Do you love me even a little bit, Bill? Do you love me even a little bit as much as you love her?”
When I didn’t answer she gave me a sad smile.
“That’s so mean, Bill. And I know it. But I feel mean. And frightened. On the Bonne Chance, I had you in my world. Now I’m in her world. I want to win. I want you to choose me over her.”
I pulled her forward, kissed her one more time, and then:
“You wouldn’t know what to do with me if you won, Aline. Would you leave Philippe for me? Don’t answer that. I already know the answer. What’s the point of waging a fight you can’t afford to win?”
 

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 3: TWO WEEKS IS FOREVER


My name is William Maitland. Six months ago I was married. Today I am single.
Six months ago I was in love with a woman I thought loved me. Today I know she doesn’t love me. Today I have feelings for a French woman that loves another man. Even though she may love me a little bit.
I don’t know if that counts as progress in my personal life.
Six months ago I was the lead prosecutor or managing prosecutor of the State Attorney’s Office in Jacksonville. People in the Courthouse knew me and I think thought well of me professionally.
Today, after a near breakdown for a number of reasons I don’t need to go into here, I have been dubbed “The Angel of Death” and, through the virtue of the Internet and Internet web sites, apparently I’ve become a famous figure.
After I convicted the Killer Granny in a high stakes murder prosecution I have become even more famous and apparently cause callow defense attorneys to piss in their pants when I glare at them.
Of course it’s all bullshit. If there’s anyone less inclined to use publicity to advance themselves anywhere in the civilized world than myself, I don’t know who it would be.
I don’t want to endorse cereals, or run for higher office, and start a second career in Hollywood. I just want to do what I do, what I’m good at, why I’m here, which is to put bad people behind bars and keep them from hurting any more innocents.
And since I don’t want anything more than what I had professionally, I’m not sure if that counts as progress in my professional life.
Six months ago I had a 17-year-old beautiful daughter that looked at me with a combination of bemused daughterly affection and contempt, while my 14-year-old son tried not to think about me much but basically looked at me as the nothing that put a damper on his personal life.
Today the bonds aren’t completely restored, but they know that I loved them and I still do after years of neglecting them for my job.
Six months ago I got an occasional lay from my gorgeous blonde wife Debbie. But I couldn’t really blame her for not pulling me down into her bed all that often.
I was flabby, fat, balding, and I’d let her treat me like that for years. I know from my professional life that people treat you the way you let them, and I never let anybody in my professional life treat me the way Debbie treated me in our personal life, or the bedroom.


But I loved her and I knew I was a disappointment and that I could never really be good enough for her in bed and I made myself grateful for the crumbs she threw my way because even crumbs are better than nothing.
Today I have fucked a cute little dimpled darling that used to work for me in the State Attorney’s office, fucked the shit out of a hot grandmother of a vice cop
—in an empty State Attorney’s office of all places—and made mad, passionate hot sex/love to a beautiful French woman who is married to a man who’d been a friend.
Sexually I’ve come a long way in six months, but until my Frenchwoman Aline came back to me two days ago, I wouldn’t have said my sex life has improved by leaps and bounds.
Because I realized with a sharp pain to the cavity where my heart used to be at, even crumbs from Debbie meant more than hot sex with Dimples or my hot Granny Cop.
But Aline was different. I thought I’d lost a woman I’d never really had, and tried to live with two defeats in the realm of romance until SHE appeared out of nowhere in my office.
Now…I’ve never felt so off balance. She came to me. But she is still married to a Good Man….and I don’t know any way I could share her with him…even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 -- 9:30 P.M.

We walked along the shore line with our shoes and socks in our hands. A light blanket I’d taken from my car was dbangd over my shoulder.
Even in late August, the ghostly foam carried by the incoming waves was cold as hell on my flesh. I shivered. Aline just laughed at me. I knew that French beachgoers were tough, dashing into water that would have sent Americans into cardiac arrest. We held hands like teenagers.
“I haven’t done this since I was a teen,” she told me.
“You’re kidding me? All the islands and tropical paradises you visit and you’ve never strolled through the surf?”
“I’ve gone swimming, but walking like this....holding hands...it’s something you do with a boyfriend...or a husband. ”
“There’s something very sad about that, Aline. You travel the world to the most romantic islands and cities, and you don’t have anyone to share it with. Philippe has never traveled with you?”
“In the early years, he’d come in for a few days, sometimes a week. But as he progressed in his career, the demands just grew too great And then there wasn’t any more free time. Even when I’m home, we have to work for time together, and that usually centers around Andre.”


“Something about that sounds familiar, very familiar. But...I can see why you’d have fallen in love with him. He was... is a very dynamic guy. Besides all the tallness, good looking, superficial stuff. I imagine for a woman, he’d be a very appealing guy.”
She leaned into me and I caught my balance as a bigger wave splashed us up to the knees. I could hear sea birds in the distance, and other bird calls on the shore side.. On the other side of the inlet, on the far side of the A1A bridge that bisected the inlet, was a federally protected bird preserve where a number of migrating species had protected nests.
“He was...is...you worked with him. You saw how—women react to him. He doesn’t have to work at it. They just...respond to him. And I guess I did too. But that isn’t why I fell in love with him, at first sight.
“You know how clichéd that sounds, and we French don’t really put much stock in that. We are much harder-headed about relationships than you Americans, despite the stereotypes. But, there’s no other way to describe it. And. it happened again when I saw you.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen, either time.”
She turned into me and I stopped and held her to keep the waves around our knees from throwing us into the surf. She took my hand and placed it over her right breast and I felt the nipple harden.
“There wouldn’t be a problem, Mon Cheri, if we were just—as you Americans say—bed buddies...friends with benefits....I could stay here for two weeks and play with that lovely hard cock of yours and suck it and give you myself and pull myself together in two weeks and go home to Philippe. I told you I have had lovers before on the Bonne Chance, and it didn’t bother me that much to go home to Philippe afterwards.”
“But we are fuck buddies,” I said squeezing the nipple hard between my fingers and making her moan softly.

She grabbed me by the chin with her right hand and stared into my eyes. “Don’t ever say that, Bill. Don’t ever! I don’t know what we are...and it

scares me...but I know what we aren’t....fuck buddies. friends with benefits.”

She melted into me and I remembered old time movies about lovers on beaches. This felt like something from a tragic romance. All it needed was a musical score, but there was only the sounds of birds in the night nesting and a few far off cars against the wind blowing in off the ocean.
“We are lovers,” she said finally.
“I know. And that’s why you’re going to rip my heart out again when you leave. And you will leave. No matter what you say, no matter how much we try not to think about it, you’ll go home. And I’ll stay here.”
She buried her face against the side of my neck.


“Don’t say that.”
“I won’t say it again, Aline. Not another time. But I want you to know I did this willingly. I could have sent you off yesterday. I know I should have. But I didn’t. The fault is mine. And all the hurt that’s going to be left when you’re gone, that’s on me too.
I held her so tightly I could feel her heart beating in her chest.
“When you leave and fly home to Philippe, I don’t want you to look back or regret a moment of our time together. I’m doing this because I realized that you are special. I’m feeling old and jaded and that my life is pretty much over, but I know there will be other women. I don’t know that I’ll ever marry again, and if I did it would be for convenience.
“But you are something else entirely. I’m not a fatalist and I’m damned sure I don’t really want to believe in the God that tears the wings off flies and crashes airplanes and sends tidal waves to destroy cities, but it couldn’t be coincidence that brought us together. Somehow I think we were meant to be together.
“It’s silly, but somehow I think that if I hadn’t met Debbie that year at UF, and if we hadn’t gotten together, I wouldn’t have found anyone I could have loved as much. And if I had wound up going to France and meeting you BEFORE Philippe, I think it would have been us together.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t even dream about it.  ”
I put my hand over her mouth to shush her.
“Instead of a life with you, I’ll have to settle for two weeks. But, if you do it right, sometimes two weeks can be forever.”
She was nibbling on my ear as she pumped and jerked on my cock and whispered, “I want you inside of me, Bill. God, I want you inside of me so bad. Take me somewhere and pound me until I can’t think straight anymore.”
I had to put my hand over hers and stop her.
“Keep that up and in a minute I’m going to squirt all over inside my underwear and I kind of think you’d rather have it squirting someplace else. And at my age, I’m not sure how quick I could get it up again.”
She grinned at me.
“Want to bet I couldn’t get your mighty cudgel rock hard in 60 seconds, Mr.

Maitland?”

“I would never bet against you, but let’s not put it to the test. Come on.”
I led her up from the beach into the dunes. Cars were passing by us occasionally 30 feet away, but in the rolling dunes topped with high growing sea oats, we were invisible.
I threw the light blanket down on the sand and pushed her down onto it. I unsnapped my belt and my slacks slid down around my ankles. Before I could


drop down beside her she had reached out, pulled my Hanes down and had planted those luscious lips around my already semi-rock hard cock. A few seconds later I could easily have hammered nails with it.
“Oh shit! Aline...”
Normally I would have enjoyed emptying myself into that pretty mouth but I wanted the real thing tonight so I pushed her head away and she fell back onto the blanket.

“Spoilsport!”

“Tell me that in 30 seconds,” I said, as I pushed her dress up around her hips and in the same motion pulled the sheer black panties away from her pussy. Then I dived in. She was dripping but in 30 seconds my face was soaked.
“Oh, God, God, God... that feels so good. Lick it, lick it darling... stick your tongue  way  in...like  that...that...Oh...I  missed  this....every  day  every

day.... ohhhh”

Then she grabbed my head and with superhuman will, she pushed my tongue away from where it wanted to be, made me look into her eyes and asked, “Did you miss me like that, Bill? Was I on your mind all the time. ”
“I missed you every day, Aline. And...almost...every minute..”
I couldn’t help giving her a little smile thinking of Dimples and sexy granny Heather and she picked up on it. She swatted me on the head, and then let her grip go.
“You bastard....I know men well enough to know when you weren’t missing me...I guess you got over Debbie. I’m very angry at you.”
As I dived back into her soaking pussy she gasped, pushed herself up at me and said, “But I’ll forgive you if you keep doing that. just like THAT!”
She brought her knees up around my head and squeezed as she spasmed and I remembered she had very strong legs As the force of her first orgasm shook her I pulled my mouth away and said, “I’m sorry. No more tongue for you tonight, young lady.”
Her mouth opened in surprise as I lifted her ass with both hands, placed both those luscious legs over my shoulders, and with her pussy wide open, rammed my cock into it as deep and hard and fast as I could.
“Umm..uh.uh..ohhhh....god damn...bill....it’s going to....going to.....shit can’t think...going to come out.....uh...my throat. ”
And then she lost the breath and the will to talk as I tongue wrestled her, letting her taste herself on my tongue, while I took her missionary style. There are a lot of things to be said for other positions, but I guess I’m conservative there too.
Missionary is still the easiest way to get off, the way that lets you look into the eyes of woman you’re inside. The old poets are right. The eyes can speak.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

All too soon, it couldn’t have been more than two or three minutes, I felt myself getting ready to pour out into her and gave her the chance to stop me.

“Aline....getting close....can pull....do this longer...” She bit my tongue gently.

“You better give me what I’ve been waiting weeks for...now....................................................................................... ”

And being the gentleman I was, naturally I did. Once, twice, three, four and five hard shots and she moaned with each one and tried to swallow my dick whole inside that hot pussy of hers.
Finally I stopped and let her legs slip to the ground while I held myself up over her, leaning on my elbows.

“Wow.”

“How about magnifique!”

“You were definitely magnifique!” “For an old man you weren’t too bad.”

“You’re only saying that because you know you’ve disarmed me and I can’t punish you anymore tonight.”
She leaned over and grabbed my wilting manhood with a firm grip and said, “You remember our bet”
“Yes, baby, but I really feel like I need an IV right now. I gave you everything I had and then some. ”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that.”
She turned out to be wrong. She couldn’t get my magnificent cudgel hard again in 60 seconds. It took her a full five minutes, including sticking a slim finger up my ass while she sucked on my weary dick. But get it up, she did. And kept it up for 25 minutes this time as we did it doggy, some version of the Kama Sutra she introduced me to, cowboy style and finally up her ass.
As she lay in my arms after that workout we listened to the increasingly more rare cars passing by us on the road about five feet higher than the valley between dunes we rested in. Frogs or crickets or whatever the hell they were made the dunes alive with the sound of their music.
“You really thought of me every day?”
I placed my hand on the side of her face and stared into those dark eyes that had held me captive since the first moment I saw her on the Bonne Chance before I even knew who she was. And I knew that my intuition had been correct. She was dangerous as only someone who can destroy you is dangerous.
“Every day.”
“Would you have forgotten me? You’re a man, and I know you’ve had sex since we saw each other, you dog. Would I eventually have become just another one of your old conquests?”

“Is that what I would become to you, when you return to Andre and Philippe and the Bonne Chance and your life in Paris?’

She looked at me with a sad look on her face.

“You are always going to be the dark secret in my heart, standing between me and Philippe. The one I pray to God Philippe never learns about.”

‘And you will always be the One that Got Away.” THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2005 11 a.m.

I was probably dragging a little bit when I finally walked into my office, but staying until 2 a.m. and having sex until my poor abused male organ had been whipped into a state of total exhaustion by a Frenchwoman’s pussy, ass, mouth and hands will do that to you. I think she would have used her toes if we could have figured out a way to do it and if I’d had any bent in that direction.
I had gotten up at 6 a.m., literally dragged myself into the gym and went through the motions of a workout. My legs felt like I was walking on rubber bands. They were just tired and I felt every one of my almost 42 years.
But I forced myself. If I let every temptation keep me out of the gym, I knew in a few months I’d be the same old flabby loser I’d been for years. That wasn’t going to happen.
I waved at Susie as I walked in and found out that Cheryl was still out with the bug that had knocked her down two days before.
I wasn’t happy that Cheryl had gotten sick, but in hindsight I was damned glad she hadn’t been around when Aline showed up. Somehow I knew she’d have discovered who Aline was and somehow the word would have gotten back to Debbie.
I had no reason to be afraid of a confrontation. We were through and there was nothing that Debbie could do to screw things up and in a very real way, I’d love to rub Debbie’s nose in the fact that I could still attract a woman like Aline to my bed.
But it would complicate things. For now it was just Aline and myself in our little bubble, me trying as hard as I could to shrink our world down to just two of us over the next two weeks. I knew it was impossible, but I wanted to keep Aline away from as much of my regular life as I could.
When I opened my office and switched on my laptop, I took a moment to yawn and rub the tiredness out of my eyes and then my phone rang.

“You have a caller,” Susie said. “She wouldn’t identify herself.” “I’ll take it. And who would this be?”

“Is anyone listening?” “No.”

“Good. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing, Mr. Maitland. Can you guess?”

“Probably reading a good book or maybe getting ready to take a taxi out to look around Jacksonville?”
“Would you believe I have my fingers in a certain place and I’m doing something that is making me feel very, very good.”
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”
“And I’m imagining that it’s a part of you that’s rammed up real far inside that is making me feel wonderful. I miss you. I know you have a job. But I miss you and wish you were here.”
“I’m going to have to hang up in just a moment, Miss. I’m afraid this conversation is going in a direction that will lead to me being very unproductive today, and I do have business to take care of.”
“Very well, Mr. Maitland. I’ll let you get back to business, but I want you to know what I’m doing and what I’m thinking about and to remember that you have very, very important business to take care of tonight.”
“Trust me, I won’t forget.”
After I’d hung up I felt a little twinge in a part of my anatomy that I was sure was going to be out of action at least until tonight. Jesus, the woman was like walking Viagra. But I forced my attention back to business.
The first order of business was to make plans to be in court next week to ask the court to give Judy Johansen, The Killer Granny, some serious prison time. I’d managed to convict her of first degree murder a few days before, but there was still a long way to go to get the judge to hand down anything that would amount to more than a tap on the wrist when you considered parole and time off for good behavior.
Killing your husband ought to carry some sort of serious penalty. Beside losing 30 or 40 million dollars she would otherwise have inherited from his estate. Which was a pretty stiff penalty in itself. But not enough.
The penalty phase was where Lew Walters would pull out all the stops, using family, friends, the sobbing defendant, to convince the judge that the 67-year-old grandmother should not be strapped down a prison gurney while poison was pumped into her veins to stop her heart. It was up to the judge, and I, honestly, despite my nickname of Angel of Death, didn’t have any great urge to see her put to death.
Living out the balance of her life in a prison jump suit, having to see her family in a prison visiting room with guards around, having to use her personal funds or family funds to buy cigarettes or other items from a prison canteen instead of vacationing on a beach in Bali would be enough of a punishment.
I made my plans to be in the courtroom next Wednesday to make sure things went the way I wanted them to. After that I started working on other cases.


One of the ones that bothered me the most was a guy named William Sutton. I was virtually certain he had beaten his pregnant soon-to-be ex-wife, and his unborn son, to death with a tire iron. But there was a too-great chance that he was going to walk away a rich and free man as the result of his brutal crime.
Sutton was a 37-year-old stock advisor for a Ponte Vedra-based financial consulting firm with clients up and down the East Coast. The firm was fairly successful and so was Sutton, but he hadn’t come from money and all he had to his name was a fairly middle-class income.
But he’d lucked into finding a marrying a pretty registered nurse named Sheila Conroy and they both thought she was as middle/middle class as he. She was a pretty blonde with an infectious smile and a nice shape including, from pictures, a world-class ass.
They apparently had loved each other. At least from the smiles on the pictures taken in the first few years of their marriage it appeared so.
And Sutton wasn’t hard on the eyes. 6-2, brown hair, fairly well built. But I’d seen the pictures when I was reviewing the case and there was something about his eyes that caught my attention from the first moment I saw him. And what we’d learned about him in our investigations bore out that impression.
William Sutton was, to put it succinctly, an asshole. He was the kind of guy that blamed all his losses on someone else, all his triumphs on his overwhelming abilities. He was the kind of guy who made it his mission to make his co-workers look bad, and reveled in screwing a competitor.
He was the kind of guy that never forget a slight or a hurt anyone did him. He was smart enough to play nice until he was in a position to stab you in the back, and he never missed an opportunity. But he did it in such a way that it couldn’t be traced back to him. Sneaky, vindictive, determined...that was William Sutton.
He was also the kind of guy, we deduced from numerous interrogations, that loved woman....a lot of them...before and after marriage. He was good looking and smooth and didn’t have any conscience at all so he bedded a lot of them.
And naturally enough, while doing so, he became insanely jealous of his pretty—as far as we could tell, faithful—wife and made her life a living hell following her and checking her phone messages and questioning her every move for two years.
Until she finally snapped, they had a violent fight, she wound up in the hospital and he wound up accused of assault. Sutton’s widowed mother had put up the money for a decent attorney and the attorney muddied up the water enough that it was dropped to a misdemeanor.
They split and it was then that they both made the discovery that Sheila’s estranged father, who had walked out on her and her family when she was a year old, had become a very wealthy man. He had no family of his own when a stroke


got him at age 55 and left Sheila and her two siblings a $15 million estate which would be divided equally.
So Sutton was facing a divorce and the loss of at least half of $5 million. Which did not make Sutton happy. He was a man with a hot temper and a lot of character flaws and I think he really believed his pretty wife had been running around on him.
He and Sheila split and he went lived in an apartment on the Southside for several months before moving back in with his mother in her home in a subdivision of Ocala, a famous racehorse raising community about a hundred miles south of Jacksonville off I-75.
And then one night in early February Sheila had gotten off a shift at St. Vincent’s in downtown Jacksonville after telling friends that she’d gotten a call from William Sutton asking for one last chance to meet and talk. And Sutton had been, as everyone who knew him told us, one charming son of a bitch.

She said she wasn’t sure she would meet with him, but after five years of marriage, and carrying his son, she felt he deserved a last chance to talk with her.

She wasn’t due back until two days later on her next shift and although some of her friends tried to call her the next day, they weren’t too alarmed when they couldn’t reach her. Anything could have happened and ex-wives having a last fling with ex-husbands wasn’t the most unusual thing in the world.
They became alarmed when she didn’t show up for her shift and checked her apartment. They couldn’t find her and security officer in Jacksonville contacted Ocala security officer.
They found Sutton playing golf on a local range and were told he hadn’t been out of Ocala in a week. His mother backed his alibi. A few neighbors reported seeing his car when they went to sleep that night and still in front of his house when they woke up a 6 a.m. the next morning.
Two weeks after the night she disappeared, a body was found in the dunes off Regency in Jacksonville heading toward the Beaches. It had been beaten so badly and the animals had already done enough damage that it was only by dental records and then one finger remaining on the body that gave a good print that Sheila and her unborn child had been identified.
It was hard to tell exactly what had been used, but forensics told us that somebody had used a hard object, like a tire iron for example, to beat her head in, to smash her ribs and arms and legs and it looked like all of her teeth out, probably before she died. There wasn’t much of the fetus left, but it looked as if her attacker had taken the tire iron to it too.
We had brought Sutton in for questioning a dozen times. We’d interviewed his neighbors, Sheila’s friends and co-workers, Sutton’s mother and assorted girlfriends.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

And what we were left with was the certainty that he had driven from his home in Ocala at night after his mostly elderly neighbors turned in, met with his soon-to-be ex, overpowered her, taken her into the deserted dunes, and beaten her and his unborn son to death.

But we couldn’t prove it. There was no physical evidence. No one had seen the two of them together. No one could swear that he had even left his mother’s home.
He could have reached Jacksonville in a couple of hours on the Interstate, killed her, and gotten back in five or six hours tops. But we had no proof he’d done so.
And his mother was a rock, swearing very believably that she had been up and down with an upset stomach all night the night that Sheila was murdered. And she had spoken to and seen her son sleeping in his bed four or five times during the night. She said it was impossible that he had left her home.
For nearly seven months we had investigated, we had questioned, we had probed, we had interrogated Sutton a half dozen times here and there and couldn’t develop a crack in his story. It was driving me crazy.
I was picking up the phone to call Ned Colman, the homicide detective with the Marion County Sheriff’s Office to check in with him when Cheryl buzzed me.

“Mr. Maitland, Detective Colman from Marion County is on the line.” “Colman, talk about great minds. I was picking up the phone to call you and

see if anything new was shaking down there.” “Are you sitting down?”

“Oh, shit, don’t tell me...”

“Billy Boy might be up shit creek without a paddle.” “Give.”

“There’s an old guy named Wilbur Bell who lives about 200 yards down that dirt road from Sutton’s mom. There are only five houses on that cul de sac and you know the other three residents are half dead with age and nobody was up that night. We couldn’t reach Wilbur because he has a habit of taking off from weeks or months at a time to visit relatives or just to RV around the country.
“He came back into town two days ago and called us this morning. I went out to talk to him and I think we have the son-of-a-bitch. Wilbur left town the week after Sheila was murdered and didn’t hear anything about it until he got back into town. He hates Sutton’s mom because of some boundary dispute they’ve been squabbling about for years. And he hates Sutton.
“But he’s clear as a bell. He was up at midnight the night Sheila was killed. He remembers very distinctly Sutton’s MOTHER’s car pulling down the road,


slowly, with its LIGHTS OFF. He thought that was very weird. The old lady never goes anywhere at night.
“At 6 a.m. the next morning the sun was just rising, but it still wasn’t full light. He had gotten up to catch the early morning news when he looked out his window and saw the old lady’s car pulling back down the road and into her driveway. The lights were off and it was going slowly and quietly.
“He says he was looking at the car when he saw Sutton get out, walk over to a burn barrel in their back yard and dump something that might have been clothes into it. Then he went inside his mother’s home. Wilbur thought that was weird but didn’t think much of it.
“He left on a tour of the Canadian Rockies the next week and didn’t know anything until he got back and heard all the news. He called my office five minutes later and I’ve got his entire statement.”
“Damn. You believe him? He’s not just some disgruntled angry neighbor trying to get back at the old lady?”
“He could be lying, but I doubt it. The story rings true. And he says he’ll take a lie detector test. He could have been where he said he was and seen what he said he’d seen. I made it very clear to him that if we go ahead on his story, and prosecute Sutton on his testimony, and we find out he’s lying, we’ll nail his ass for perjury and he won’t ever be going on any jaunts ever again.”
I just sat there silently for a few minutes.
“Alright, you’ve got to get his testimony. Video tape it. I want a clear chain of evidence if he drops dead tomorrow. Something we can still introduce. Have him take a lie detector test.
“Then I want you to convince him to move out of his house and contact us so we can put him someplace up in Jacksonville at our expense where he can vacation. I’ll assign security for him up here. If he balks, tell him I’ll arrest him, hold him as a material witness and he can spend the next few months sitting in a comfortable jail cell instead of a condo somewhere.
“Then I want you to get your Sheriff to assign someone on a regular basis to keep an eye on Sutton. I don’t want him leaving town without us knowing about it. And where he winds up. Tell him we’ll help with funding if you need overtime.”
“You think he’d go after Bell?”
“You think a guy who’d beat his own wife and son to death would hesitate to kill or arrange an accident for an old man trying to send him to the death chamber? Anyway, get him up here so I can interrogate him. If this works out, we have to decide whether to go ahead now while the old man is alive and healthy. Is he?


“He’s alive. He’s 79. Got a bad heart, diabetes, a pacemaker. I wouldn’t place a large bet that he’ll be around if Sutton doesn’t go to trial for another year or so.”
“Alright, we need to move on it.”
After I’d thanked Colman again I tried to decide if it was worth rolling the dice. We still had no hard evidence. There had been no bloody clothes recovered after Sutton’s house was searched, no other evidence of murder, no murder weapon. He or his mother’s car hadn’t been spotted in Jacksonville.
We now had what would probably be a strong eye-witness to testify against him, but he had a mother to testify for him. Who would the jury believe? This was a much bigger crapshoot than the Killer Granny.
And I could never forget, we’d get only one bite of the apple. If I brought him to trial and he walked and we later got the goods on him, he’d be free forever. We could never try him again for the murder. And trying him for violating her civil rights only worked for the Feds.
But we had to at least get ready. I was on the phone for the next three hours and it was 2 p.m. before I came up for air and realized I was hungry. I was going to ask Susie to call in something when I changed my mind and decided I wanted to get out and stretch my legs.
I walked across the street to a little sandwich shop that strangely enough served pretty good salads and I ordered one with broiled chicken. There was a day my stomach would have rebelled at the very idea of broiled chicken, but I had changed. I had changed.
I was sitting at a counter running along the plate glass window at the front when I realized someone was standing behind me.
I turned and looked into the eyes of a black cop standing there with his hand on his holster.
“Officer Smith. What can I do for you?”
He was about 5-foot-10, slender but muscular. He was one of those black guys so black his skin was almost blue. Good looking. Hair cropped short and tight to the skull. He had that typical cop stare. He was looking straight at me, but his eyes shifted almost constantly so that he was aware of everything going on around us.
“Could I talk to you for a minute, Maitland?”
“I think your sheriff would say that’s Mr. Maitland.”
“No one died and appointed you God. It’s Mr. Edwards, but you’re just an Assistant.”
“No one ever gave you the lecture on how to make friends and influence people? How to deal with prosecutors”
“I deal with them fine, except when they’re screwing me over.”


“I see you’re back in uniform. What’s your beef?”
“I’m back in uniform, but that possible homicide charge is still hanging over my head. You’ve never come back with a finding on my case, just told the Sheriff the resolution was still waiting on a final decision. You gave me back my street job, but the cloud’s still over my head. Those rednecks’ family has filed a lawsuit for $ 1 million against me and I can’t shut it down while you’re holding the criminal case open.”
He stepped closer and lower his voice so only I could hear him.
“Melanie left me. She couldn’t deal with the pressure of never knowing if I was going to be charged. And her family said she was a nigger lover for hanging with the man that had killed her husband and two brothers.
“She couldn’t defend me, couldn’t say I was defending myself because your office won’t clear the case. And one day she just told me she couldn’t take the pressure and the looks and walked out of me.”
He leaned in closer and gave me a contemptuous look.
“Is that what it was, Maitland? You couldn’t hold that whore of yours with your tiny dick so you get a kick out of costing me my woman?”
I leaned back and looked at his quiet, tense face.
“I would never accuse one of Jacksonville’s finest of being stupid, but did you really think you were going to come in here, insult me, get me to swing on you or so something equally stupid that would get me tossed off your case? You figured another SA would yield to the pressure and just give you a clearance on a fatal triple shooting?”
“My woman didn’t have to go off and suck another man’s cock to get her jollies. She liked what I had, a lot more than that pencil-dicked husband of hers.”
I just shrugged.
“I’m sorry your woman left you. I’m sorry three men are dead that didn’t have to be dead. I’m sorry your career has been in limbo for more than a half year. I’m sorry you might wind up before a grand jury. I’m sorry you might close out a pretty good career in law enforcement behind bars yourself.
“But, that’s out of my hands. If I send this to a grand jury, it’s up to a bunch of strangers how your life works out.
“But,” I said, straightening up and staring into his eyes, “It’s all on you, Shawn. You pulled out a department Glock and killed two men. One of them was your girlfriend’s husband. Granted, they broke into your house, but they were pinheads from everything I’ve heard.
“You’re a veteran cop. You’ve been in shooting incidents. You’ve won a couple of awards for heroism and public service. You weren’t panicked. Most men would have been but I don’t think you were. You could have shot one or two of them and let the other one go and likely you would have skated.


“I don’t think you were panicked, but with the Sheriff’s Office and the NAACP backing you, I don’t think I could have gotten any traction. There would have been a hearing in a couple of weeks or a month, you’d have been exonerated. You’d have had your career and your woman.
“But you couldn’t let the last one go, could you? They had the nerve to enter your home, they tried to beat you up, they grabbed your woman, and knowing them to be the rednecks they were, I’m sure they called you a nigger.
“They pissed you off and you made the mistake of thinking because you were a cop you could get away with breaking the law.
“You killed the husband and brother and the other brother broke and ran. And you couldn’t let him get away with it. You shot him in the back and when you looked around and couldn’t find any weapons on them, you used a drop gun, one that couldn’t be placed, and put it on the third brother.
“You were too smart, Shawn. We checked and they didn’t have guns. They didn’t use guns. If they’d come after you with clubs, that would be believable. But not guns. And a weapon that can’t be traced! We can’t find prior ownership. No numbers.
“Somehow they just wound up with the perfect untraceable weapon.
“It stinks. It stinks to high heaven. All your bother officers know it. The Sheriff knows it. My boss knows it. Even the NAACP knows it. And the only reason we haven’t rolled on you is that you’re a decorated cop—and you’re black.
“But that’s not enough Shawn. I’m tied up now, but in the next couple of weeks I’m going to let the Sheriff and my boss know I’m taking this to the grand jury. I’ll leave it in their hands what to do with you. But you will go to the grand jury and nothing’s going to keep you out of there.”
His hand dropped to the butt of his Glock and I wondered for just a moment if he could possibly be stupid enough to do something in front of a whole room full of witnesses, including a few plainclothes cop detectives.
“You do that and it would be the worst mistake you ever made, Maitland. You’re not so big that you can’t be crushed by the people on my side, and the Sheriff. Edwards is a politician. When they put enough pressure on him, he’ll step on you.
“And no matter what happens, you son of a bitch, I won’t forget this. I’m going to be watching you, and someday I’ll get my turn. Wait and see.”
He walked away; I finished my salad and turned to look at the detectives sitting toward the back of the sandwich shop. They found something irresistibly interesting to stare at where I wasn’t. Didn’t surprise me. Cops stick up for each other. Even the murdering assholes.
I had just walked back into my office when the phone rang.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, BJ. What’s happening?”
“Look Dad, I know you said you didn’t want to do anything for your birthday, but Kelly and Mom and I were talking. We would really like to take you out Saturday night for your birthday. Just a quiet dinner at a restaurant. A couple of hours. How about it?”
“BJ, I do thank you and your sister....and your mother...but I’m in the middle of two really big cases right now. You know how it is when I get a hot one. I don’t have the time to see or talk to anyone. I promise you that in two weeks—say Mid-September—I’ll make the arrangements and we’ll do something nice.”
“But you’re going to be working until all hours Saturday night?”
“Probably, and if not, I’ll be at my condo sleeping. Running like this is really taking it out of me. I’ll probably just go to bed very early. I’d be rotten company. Come on, the birthday will be appreciated more in a couple of weeks when I come up for air. Please, do it that way for me, okay?”
“Okay, I’ll pass it on to Kelly and Mom. But it’s a promise that in two weeks
—no later—we’ll go out for your birthday. Right?” “I promise.”
It was past five thirty and I was in the middle of three phone calls when Susie buzzed me and I put everybody on hold.
“That lady is on the phone again.”
“Oh....I’ll take it. Aline, I’m sorry. I just realized it’s almost 6 p.m. I never meant—but shit. I said I wasn’t going to say those words again. Give me 15 minutes to clear up and I’ll be out of here. I’ll meet you back at condo.”
“It’s okay, Bill. I know how it goes. You think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard those words. I’m back at the condo. I went out looking around today. That will give me time to shower and get naked for you.”
I tried. I honestly tried. But it was 7 p.m. before I managed to get out the door. And it was nearly 7:30 before I walked in the door. I could have called her on the condo phone, but I wanted to be looking into her eyes when I apologized. No one could be that stupid on a continuing basis.
She really was naked, a symphony in pink and red and black as I walked in the door. Five minutes later I was inside her. Fifteen minutes later I was lying next to her while we talked about where we’d go and eat. Thirty minutes later I opened my eyes and realized I was lying in bed and her head was nestled in my groin and I felt very good down there.
“Oh, God Aline, I’m such a shit. I fell asleep on you. I really am a hundred years old. But you don’t have-“
“Shut up,” and she went back to sucking and licking. I wouldn’t have thought I had it in me but in about five minutes I was bucking upward while she tried to


stay with me. And she did. I lay back and debated sticking myself with an ink pen to keep my eyes open.
Then she was lying with her head nestled against my shoulder. “You deserve so much better than me.”
“You’re no spring chicken,” she said with a small giggle. “An old man needs his rest. And you were up very late last night and I kept you very busy.”
I pulled her mouth up to mine and kissed her for a little while.
“Not that old, I hope. You want to go out now? We can still grab a bite.
Maybe hit a club. And then come back for  ”
Her face was buried against me as she whispered, “You’re not an old man. But you’re human. I kept you up almost all night working very hard at making me cum, over and over. And then you got up and went for a workout. And if I know you, you’ve been busy every minute of this day on things that are life and death to a lot of people.
“And you’re trying to meet those obligations and still be a true lover to a woman who shows up with no warning on your doorstep. You are a very strong man. And you just screwed me—as you Americans say, I think—cross-eyed and then I got you to come in my mouth one more time.”
She literally climbed up me until we were eye to eye again.
“I’d rather be lying here next to you, listening to you breath, than eating in any restaurant and dancing in any club. You don’t have to entertain me. I came here to be with you, not to be entertained. Understand.”
“Understand. Yes ma’am.”
“Now go to sleep. You need your rest. And I believe we’ve got a birthday to celebrate Saturday. I need you rested for that, because I intend to celebrate you straight into the ground on your birthday.”
I don’t remember anything else. Not until four a.m. by the alarm clock. I found myself awake and rolling over onto her naked body. Somehow I was hard and when I slid between her legs she was already wet and welcoming. She came awake slowly as I slid into and out of her warm, liquid center. I felt and smelled and tasted the femaleness of her body and skin, then held the globes of her ass in my hands as I pushed deeper and deeper into her.
I think she came, shuddering against me and I came without much force inside her. Then I slid down beside her and we both drifted off into sleep again. And I remember thinking that this was what I wanted.
It was married sex. Easy, undramatic sex. No dining and dancing and getting a woman drunk until you got into that pussy and rammed it hard while the woman under you screamed. There was no conquest.
Just two bodies naked and comfortable together, drifting into and out of sleep. How much more boring and middle aged could that be. But I realized it

was what I needed. What I wanted. Before it had gotten bad, it was what I had had with Debbie. And I hadn’t realized until this moment how badly I missed it.

And then I was asleep again.

 

[SilverArrow]

Awesome story... really loved your pacing and screenplay..
You have a natural flair which you should express more...
But I must say your interlogue are really strong
Keep up the great work

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 4: YOU KNOW I’M SUCH A FOOL FOR YOU


I like television shows about cops and prosecutors, like “Law and Order.” When I have the time, I try to read novels about attorneys, from classics like “To Kill A Mockingbird” to the modern works like Grisham’s “A Time To Kill” and “Anatomy of a Murder” both the book and the movie.
Too much of a good thing? Obsessive? Not really. The great thing about fiction is that you can make things work out the way they should. In real life… too many times to remember I had seen cases I knew would result in a conviction wind up with guilty bastards walking out of the courtroom.
And a few times I or other SAs had prosecuted cases we thought would never fly but needed to be brought before juries, and somehow we won. I’d learned the hard way never to predict which way juries would jump, and as far as I’m concerned, any attorney who said he or should could predict juries was lying – or deluded.
So I had no illusions about bringing William Sutton to justice and even a seemingly open and shut case like Shawn Smith could go sour.
But I needed a win. On something. Because I’d lost Debbie and I was going to lose Aline. Putting Sutton away wouldn’t make my life better, but it would help me believe for a little while that sometimes things worked out the way they should.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 4 P.M.
She came out of the dream gasping. Teller held her tight against him until the shivering stopped. He’d prepared her, but as he’d expected, he hadn’t needed to empty her stomach this time. Although she heaved and gasped, she didn’t spew any vomit.

“oh...oh.....oh... ”

He laid her back against the couch and watched her as the tears streamed down her face. She gasped for air, caught her breath and closed her eyes tight, then opened them and wiped then tears off.

“Doctor.”

“How are you feeling, Debbie?”

“I feel....terrible...disgusted....I can smell that bathroom........................................................................................ ”

He sat watching her without speaking. He wanted to see what she brought back from the experience.

“I saw their faces. Clearly this time. The last time it was....foggy...................................................................................... or

something. But I could pick them out of a lineup this time. I remembered them. Her hands curled into fists.

“The miserable bastards. If I could find them, I’d-“

“What else?”
“I saw the bathroom more clearly. It had to be in a big restaurant or hotel. There were a half dozen stalls and four or five urinals. The floor had been clean, but then it there was....urine...piss... all over the floor  all over me.”
He continued his silence.
“I tasted....piss....and....semen....cum......not the first time...cum I mean.  ”
She gave him an embarrassed little smile.
“I mean...doctor, most women know what cum...semen tastes like.  guys love
it when you swallow....so I knew that...but piss.  God, I can’t understand women
that like that....my God. ”

He leaned toward her and caught her gaze.

“Do you realize how this experience was different from the last time?” “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember how you were last time?” “I—what are you saying?”

“Think back to the last time. When you came back. What did you do?” “I-“

She looked at him in surprise.

“I was vomiting...not as bad as the first time since you’d gotten me cleaned out, but I still have thrown up my lungs if I could.”

“So you had a violent physical reaction to the memory of what happened/” “Yeah, yes I did.”

“And what else?”

She rubbed her face.

“I....I....guess... I’m not as upset as I was the last time........................................................................................ ”

“Remember, you were panicked...this time you were upset when you first awoke, but. now you’re calm again. Very quickly this time. Did you notice?”
‘Yes...but.....why? The memory is even clearer now. It should be worse, shouldn’t it?”
“Not necessarily. It was a nightmarish experience the first time and to a certain extent the second time. Nightmares act on a subconscious level. What you’re afraid of isn’t necessarily what you remember. Now you’re remembering what happened more clearly, and it isn’t affecting you as strongly.”
She sat up on the couch, putting her feet under her and brushing her skirt which had risen up almost to her panties down with her hands.
“Why wouldn’t it hit me as hard? It was so damned disgusting....so.....I told you that I like dominant men. I did....do....like men that take control of me. but
not bang...not like that.  ”
“It was pretty bad even from an objective, male point of view...but. ”
“But what?”


“There’s a reason why it’s losing its impact on you, Debbie. A reason you realize even as you can’t get it clear in your mind.
“I don’t....I’m not sure.....I.....I don’t know why but I....do feel it...why doesn’t it bother me as much?”
“Think about it.”
She looked down at the Rorschach design on the coffee table and tried to get the memory clearer in her head. But while parts of it were crystal clear, it...didn’t....feel right....
“I don’t know, Doctor...it’s just that....something....something doesn’t feel right.”
He took one of her hands in his and looked into her eyes. “I know. Tell me what your assailants looked like.”
“One of them was....dark haired....tall, maybe six foot one or two....slender....another was a few inches shorter, still taller than me...he was thinning on top....light brown hair...they were all wearing suits...not real fancy...dress, but business suits....the third one was blonde, heavy...a little chubby...”
“And how old did they appear?”

“I...uh....maybe in their late 20s...early 30s...not old...” “They weren’t teenagers?”

“No.”

“Okay, tell me what you were doing before you went into the restroom with them?”
She tried to remember how they’d gotten her to go in there. She couldn’t be a big enough slut to walk into a restroom on the spur of the moment with three strangers for a gangbang. It had to have been arranged. But the memory didn’t come.
“Nothing? What happened after they left you covered in their urine and semen on that bathroom floor?”
Again, nothing would come to her. The memory started with her in the restroom and ended with her on the floor.

“I can’t remember.” “I’m not surprised.” “What do you mean?”

“Think about this. Do you remember how they talked to you as they assaulted you, as you fellated them?”

She thought about it. She remembered the insults, the jeers. “And there’s nothing about that that struck you as odd?” “Just that...”

He saw the realization strike her. She looked at him with surprise in her eyes.

“They weren’t teenagers, were they? And yet they were calling you an old slut and expressing their disgust for you, to the point of refusing to bang you for fear of disease. Unless it occurred last week, you must have been in your mid to late 30s because it wasn’t until that time that you said your marriage started to fall apart.”
He looked her body up and down again and said, “I’m not flattering you to say that you are an attractive woman who doesn’t look your age. And your description of the three men makes them look roughly your age. There’s no reason they would be talking about you in those terms as an older woman, unless. ”

“Unless I were an older woman.” He smiled.

“And since you are not an older woman that means that........................................................................................ ”

She shook her head, unable to grasp what she’d just said.

“How could the memory not be real? It felt so real. It was just a....dream. a

nightmare?”

“It was a memory....but not one... ”

“I don’t understand.”

“Everyone, I think, has heard of people who can remember where they were when the Twin Towers were struck. Or when Pearl Harbor was hit. Or during the big football game that was the biggest event of their childhood. People that were nowhere near a television screen will remember seeing it in vivid detail years from now. And they’ll swear under oath they actually did see it. And they’ll believe they saw it.
“It’s a false memory. A fake memory. It’s built on other knowledge and...wanting. to have seen it.”
“How could that be the case in this?”
“I’m not sure right now. But, everything fits. A true memory has broader scope and it...has more detail. Your detail is crystal clear, but sharply limited. You  can’t  remember  anything  before  or  after...how  it  happened. the
aftermath...Eventually or by this time some of those details would have been working their way into your conscious mind.
“But, at the same time, you have a clearer view of what happened, of the people involved, than anyone could have...if they weren’t there when it happened. You couldn’t have those events so clearly established if it was something you only heard about.”
She shook her head again.
“I still don’t see. I was there, but I wasn’t?”
“If I’m guessing right, you were there. You saw the assault, or its aftermath, but you weren’t the victim. It had to be someone very close to you to have had


the emotional impact that this incident had on you personally. And it had to be an older woman. Does anyone fit that profile?”
“Clarice...my Aunt Clarice.”
“That was my thought. I think something happened to her and you were close by or involved in some way. I think that over time, especially after she died, the incident festered in your subconscious and eventually worked its way into your mind as a dreamlike memory.”
They stared at each other. Debbie listened to the muted rhythm of the Grandfather clock and thought about her aunt.
“But there’s something else, Debbie. Something that doesn’t make sense right now.”
“A lot of this doesn’t’ make sense, Doctor, but at least I’m not hurling and I don’t feel sick to my stomach. What?”
“The repressed, transformed, memory has been in your mind since before your aunt died—committed suicide. What triggered it?”
It didn’t take a moment. “The divorce.”
“That’s what it seems like. It rumbled around inside your mind until your divorce was finalized, and then it came roaring back. So not only does your ex arouse feelings of rage and anger, but your final breakup brought a false memory of yourself being bangd and abused to the forefront on your memory.”
She put her head in her hands.
“That doesn’t make sense, Doctor. Every bad thing I could ever think of to say about Bill would never include involvement in something like that. Why would I associate the attack with him? With our divorce?”
He sat back and stretched.
‘I don’t know, Debbie. Like I said, that’s what makes psychiatry fascinating.
There has to be a link. We just haven’t discovered it yet.”
She looked up at him and he was surprised to find her smiling. “What?”
“I just realized, doctor. I didn’t.....I didn’t cheat on him....the way I thought I had. I might have been a bad wife, but I wasn’t a complete slut. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look him in the eye again. Now maybe I can.”

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 4 P.M.

I was waiting at the door to the Duval County Jail booking office as the cruiser pulled up into the parking lot behind the jail entrance. It was a Marion County Sheriff’s Office cruiser.
Colman stepped out of the passenger side and while the driver went to open the back door of the cruiser he walked over to me with a big smile.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Colman wasn’t that much bigger than me, but his damned cowboy hat had to give him another eight inches in height. I’d never seen a man wearing a hat that big, but other than that, Colman was a pretty nice guy. I figured he must have a Napoleonic complex. He grinned as he took my hand in his and tried to shake it off.

“I’m glad you rolled the dice, Bill. I was starting to get a damned ulcer worrying that son of a bitch would get away with it.”
The taller driver was helping a handcuffed, dark haired man dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt out of the back of the cruiser.
“We nabbed him mowing the grass,” Colman said laughing. “He wanted to get changed but I said he needed to get used to a prison jump suit because that’s what he’ll be in for the rest of his life.
“Talk about chewing nails. I was hoping he’d take a swing at me and I think he almost did. But at the last minute he remembered I was carrying a .357 magnum and he thought better of it.”
Sutton was 6-foot-2, slender but broad in the chest and well-muscled. He was probably 220 or 230. A bigger man than he looked at first glance; a big, strong man capable of doing a lot of damage with his bare hands or a metal bar.
It would have been nice if he’d lost control of that volcanic temper, but bastards like that never lost control when you wanted them to.
Colman’s deputy walked him over to us. He looked down on me with that instinctive air of contempt big men have for men who are shorter.
“Maitland. I see you finally developed some balls. It was the old fart’s story that pushed you into filing charges, wasn’t it?”
“Why do you assume it was Bell who dropped the dime on you? And what could he have possibly told us that would have convinced us to charge you?”
I thought he was too smart to fall for it, but if he indicated he knew anything about Bell watching him drive off and come back he’d be digging his grave with his own mouth.
But he was too smart.
“I don’t have to be a genius. You screw me around for months, but you don’t file charges so I can clear my name. You just leave me twisting in the wind.
“And then the crazy old bastard that’s hated my mother and me for 20 years comes back into town and a couple of days later this redneck prick puts cuffs on me. I guessed he’s probably behind it.”
“You’ll get the whole story pretty soon, Mr. Sutton, but you sure you wouldn’t like to confess? I think you’d sleep better if you got it off your conscience. It must be hard at night seeing the face of your wife after you finished working her over with that tire iron.


“And they said you smashed her stomach in so badly that you probably saw part of your son’s ripped apart body. He was your son, you miserable son of a bitch. Even if you hated your wife, how could you do that to your own blood?”
He just looked at me like you’d look at a bug on a windshield.
“It might bother me a little if I’d done it. But I’m an innocent man. I didn’t touch that miserable whore that was screwing around on me behind my back for years. And I didn’t touch her bastard. God knows who his father was, but it wasn’t me. I hadn’t dipped my dick into that diseased cunt for months before she got pregnant.”
“That’s strange,” I said, staring into those dark, bottomless eyes. “I never made it public because I wanted to save it for the jury, but we were able to run a DNA analysis on the embryo’s remains and we got your DNA with a court order. The baby boy you dismembered was William Sutton Jr.”
He just kept staring at me with no change of expression.
“He was your son, Sutton. He probably would have had your eyes, your features. No matter how terrible a slut your ex might have been, he would have been yours.
“Did you really think she might have gotten pregnant by another man? All we’ve been able to discover indicates she never cheated on you. There’s nothing to indicate it. Does your mother know you murdered her grandson?”
“I didn’t murder anyone,” he said, and smiled at me. “You think you’ve got supernatural powers or something, Maitland? You taking your press clippings seriously? All that Angel of Death bullshit? You’re just a cheap little lawyer...a cheap little lawyer whose wife I’m going to bang like a drum someday after I beat this charge.”
He looked down at me and grinned.
“Yeah, everybody knows your story, Maitland. Pitiful little punk. Couldn’t keep your pussy happy at home so she went and found someone younger. I should have some sympathy because I was married to the same kind of bitch. But I don’t. I will walk. There’s no way in hell you’re ever going to convict me with no evidence.
“You don’t have prints. You don’t have blood evidence. You don’t have a weapon. You don’t have anyone who even saw me with the bitch the night someone did the world a favor and beat her brains in. You don’t have anyone who ever heard me talking to her that night, despite her lying bitch friends.
“I’m glad you let the old bastard convince you to go for it. I don’t want this hanging over my head for months or years. Now I can beat this shit and start my life over - $5 million richer. There’s no way her damned brother and sister can keep me from getting it. We were still legally married when some good Samaritan did me the big favor of sending her to hell.”


He stepped closer to me and I sensed Colman putting his hand on his Magnum but I waved him off.
“In a few months or a year I’m going to be rich, and free. And you better believe I’m going to spend a chunk of that meeting and wining and dining your bitch ex-wife. And after I spread her legs and nail her pussy and ass until you could run a two-by-four up here, I’ll send you a video and polaroids to pass the time late at night.”
He turned his gaze down at Colman and sneered.
“That pig wife of yours is going to be harder to swallow, no pun intended, but I’ll do her just for the pleasure of getting pictures and sending them to you.
“And when you come after me with the big-ass gun, I’ll have security blow you to hell. You’re going to be easy, because at least you’ve got balls and you won’t be able to stand me turning your wife into a whore. Maitland is such a pussy he’ll just lay there and take it.”
I put my hand on Colman’s gun hand and squeezed.
“”You are welcome to fantasize as much as you like, Mr. Sutton. But you’re never leaving the confines of the state penal system again while you’re upright.
“And the only hot sex you’re going to enjoy is some inmate’s big cock stuck up your ass or down your throat. Probably two of three of them at the same time. And probably coal black because I hear they love good looking white boys like you.”
He just shook his head and kept smiling.
“It’s a date. See you in court, Angel of Death.”
As Colman and the deputy led Sutton in the jail, a late model Caddy swung into the parking lot. A white haired old man got out from behind the driver’s side and helped a little old white haired lady out of the passenger side. Leaning heavily on a cane and the old man, she limped toward me. Her gaze chilled me.
“Mr. Maitland, you are going to be sorry you did this.”
“Hello, Mrs. Sutton. I expected you to be along pretty soon. Come to lend moral support to your son? I can’t blame you.”
“You are filth, Mr. Maitland. Just like that bitch wife of his. She deserved everything that was done to her. I just wish I could have seen it.”
“You know her baby was your grandson?”
“That piece of trash was no relation to me. And I’m glad it was tossed into the woods for animals to eat.”
I looked at her and for once words failed me.
“I was 49, Mr. Maitland, when I became pregnant with William. All the doctors told me to abort him. My husband—my fortunately dead husband—tried to make me abort him. But I refused. It was hell, but I bore him and he lived.


“He has always been mine and I have always been his. Someday we will be buried in the same grave, together for eternity. Nothing can ever separate us. Certainly not a miserable ambulance chaser like you.”
I just stared through the ice at her, feeling sorry for the miserable old man who must have been a boyfriend. Although God knows I couldn’t imagine have the nerve to try to shove a penis up inside that frozen vagina.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sutton. I was feeling a slight degree of pity for you. No matter what, no matter how twisted and just plain mean you have been, no matter that you’re lying to help your son get away with beating a woman and embryo to death, I told myself that you’re a mother and mothers have blind spots for their sons.
“But, I don’t have any pity for you anymore. You’re the reason he’s the monster he is today. You molded him into the man he is. If there was any way, I’d have you on the gurney with poison being pumped into your veins alongside him.”
If she had had a weapon in her hands, I would have been apprehensive.
“But it’s better this way, Mrs. Sutton. You’re old, but tough. I think you’ll hang on long enough to see him taken to the Death Chamber at Raiford. I think they’ll probably let you be a witness. If I can, I’ll be there. I want to see your eyes when his eyes close for the last time.
“I’m going to be thinking of Sheila and her baby. I’m going to be thinking of what went through her mind as he beat her and her baby to death. And I hope to God, he hurts like hell as he’s dying and you feel every bit of his agony.
“And then I hope you burn in hell with him.”
I turned and walked away from her although I could feel her gaze burning into my back all the way into the Jail.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2005 1 P.M.

The beach curved out and bent to the right as the coast curved away to the south down beyond St. Augustine. We were on a stretch of isolated white sand beach tucked in away behind an undeveloped spit of land between St. Augustine and Marineland. There was a newish-paved two-lane highway a few hundred feet away but we could have been on a deserted island.
There were three or four long palm trees that storms had toppled in past years and the action of wind and water and sun over the years had basically fossilized them.
As the beach eroded, they were left behind, stark black monuments set against the blinding white sand and the clear blue ocean beyond.
I loved Matanzas for its wildness and those boulders set in the sea, but this didn’t even seem to be on the same earth that existed a few miles away. I’d taken


Debbie and the kids here when they were little and those visits were among the greatest memories of my life.
Aline looked up and down the beach. She was wearing a fairly skimpy red bikini but wore shorts and a shirt over it. We leaned against one of the tree trunks. We could have been the only people on earth. I wished we were.
“It’s like another world,” she said, reaching out to dbang her arms around me. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
“It’s not on any maps, but I’ve always thought it’s one of the most special spots on this coast. The only people who know about it are people who grew up here like me or tourists who stumble on it by accident. This is something I could give a French visitor that you couldn’t get from any tour.”
We lay in each other’s arms and smelled the salt breeze coming in off the ocean. There were a lot of things we could have been doing, but nothing that I wanted to do more than hold this woman and stare out at the whitecaps rolling in toward the shore.
Finally, I kissed her on the forehead, pulled her to her feet and we walked through the sand, back through a strip of wooded land and found ourselves back at my Escalade parked on the shoulder of the road, which was deserted.
“Where to now, my personal guide?” she said smiling.
“A little history lesson, Ms. des-Jardins that someone from Europe might appreciate.”
It was only noon and even in early September, the cramped, crowded, tiny little European brick-paved streets of St. Augustine were crowded with cars and strolling tourists from all over the world.
I parked a few streets over from the Castillo de San Marcos and we made our way past the restaurants and the little shops selling fudge and souvenirs of the Old City. In places the little streets were barely wide enough for two small cars to get past each other.
She stopped at one corner and looked one way and then down the other street. Something flashed in her face that she didn’t want me to see and she looked away as if a store awning advertising Authentic 19th Century Salt Water Taffy was the most fascinating thing in all the world.
I let her stand there alone for a few minutes and I could tell from the way she breathed that she was holding in sobs. I came to stand behind her and put my arms around her shoulders and pulled her back to me. I let her hide her face and her eyes because I knew what I’d see if I forced her to look at me.
This was too much like her real life. Although this was anachronistic today even in Paris, it had the feel of France and Italy and Belgium. I knew it brought


back memories of other days and I knew who she remembered standing next to, who she remembered holding her in his arms.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

After a few moments she wiped her face and without looking back at me, said, “I am sorry, Mon Chéri. I was just...just remembering....how André looked when we took him to a small village on the Portuguese coast last Fall. It looked like this, without the tourist shops. He ran along the beach making a mess of his new clothes and harassing the fishermen working on their nets in the sun.”

She turned and buried her face against me. “I’m sorry. So sorry. But I miss him.”
I didn’t say anything. Just held her. And it didn’t matter that she was lying. She missed her son. And her husband. And her life. Which was far from here. But it had been my choice. This was part of it all. And no matter how bad it hurt to know who she should have been with, I had made the deal with the Devil to take the bad with the good of having her here.
We walked hand in hand to the Castillo de San Marcos, or as everyone in North Florida has called it since well before I was a twinkle in my daddy’s eye, The Old Fort. Its rolling green approach was covered with kids and picnickers. We walked up to the entrance and I paid the $14 for two tickets and I led the way.
I wasn’t a professional guide, but I had been in here so many times as a kid I felt like I could have done a professional job. I took her through the powder magazine, a dark prison cell, the chapel and guard rooms. The walls seemed to close in, the coquina walls felt colder than the underground location could account for.
When I’d been a kid I sometimes fantasized that there were real ghosts here. I imagined that the short—even shorter than me—dark haired men in the funny armor and their eyes in paintings both disturbingly cold and at the same time fiery, had left behind their spirits when they had died of disease or enemy attacks.
I knew it was all bullshit, but there had been a lot of pain and dying inside and outside these rugged walls and if there was any place in Northeast Florida that deserved a few ghosts rattling chains, the Old Fort would have been the place.
Or sometimes, I thought when I became a teenager and old enough to have my heart broken by the some luscious young lady who didn’t see the stud I was underneath the nerd costume I wore, I imagined a dark-haired Spanish soldier with a cool goatee coming down with a fever and dying of a broken heart when the woman he loved returned to Spain with a rival.
When I got a little older, I realized that lovesick soldier would probably just purchase a whore, camp follower or possibly one of the Creek, Choctaw or


Seminole women who’d been captured by slavers. I got to be very cynical after the tenth time I saw the love of my life walk away with some idiot who just happened to be tall enough to pat me on the head condescendingly as he took my girl away.
We walked to an upper level where we could look out over the Bridge of Lions and the Matanzas Harbor. The sun was blinding on the choppy waters as an early Fall nor’easter blew the wind ahead of it. In a few hours the sky would be overcast and then the sky would fall in, but right now it was Florida at its best.
I grabbed Aline’s hand and said, “Let’s go down.”
We walked out onto the rolling hillside that led from the Fort’s entrance to the street.
“I’ve got to do this,” I said, and I started trotting. Holding my hand, she stumbled and then as long legged as she was she started to catch up with me. Then we were racing and laughing like crazy, laughing like kids while tourists and mothers and fathers and small children just stared at us. Finally, just before we ran out of grass and tumbled onto the bricks, I fell to my knees and dragged her along with me.
She was laughing so hard she could barely speak, but she managed to say, “What....what...what was that all about?”
“I loved to do that from the time I was nine or ten. My friends and I would go up to the Fort and run down as fast as we could and try not to sail out into traffic. Of course, nobody ever drove more than 15 miles an hour by here, but even so it’s a wonder any of us survived.”
“You are crazy, a crazy man,” she said, kissing my check. “That’s me, a wild and crazy guy.”
For just those few seconds I hadn’t felt every second of my 42 years. It had felt good.

THREE HOURS LATER

I tried to untangle my tongue so I could catch my breath. I thought that Philippe’s ghost had gone back into whatever limbo he’d come out of because I couldn’t feel him between us. She lay back on the couch naked to the waist, her breasts dripping with my spit from the sucking I’d been giving them for the last 10 minutes. We could have had the real thing, but we both were putting it off.
“Oh,” she said finally. “What time did you say we had that reservation at The Top Floor?”
“7:30. We have 45 minutes. Plenty of time.”
“Well, I need to get in and get a long bath and.  get some things done.”
I just gave her a look and she gave me a shrug. “Wait and see.”


I leaned back on the couch and let go of her. The Top Floor is a restaurant located on the 15th floor of the Barnett Bank Building. It takes up the entire floor and through its windows you can see all of Jacksonville spread out below and around you.
Jacksonville, and all of Florida, for that matter, is about six inches above sea level so there’s nothing to block your view for miles around.
It’s one of the most impressive sights in the city and I wanted to share that with Aline on my birthday. And the food isn’t bad, if you like steak and potatoes. I’m not a huge steak guy, but it felt appropriate for such landmark birthday.
As Aline stepped into the bathroom my cell rang. I almost didn’t check it, but there was always the chance that it was important.
I saw the number and realized it had to be Kelly or Cathy Bascomb. I knew Kelly was still living with Debbie’s parents. I had a hard time figuring why Kelly would be calling me on a prime date night.
“Dad, hi.”
“Hey Kelly. What are you up to?”
“BJ and I wanted to check one more time. Neither one of us is out tonight and we wanted to give you one last chance to change your mind and go out tonight for your birthday.”
I waited a decent interval to reply and then lied my ass off.
“I’m sorry baby. I know this sounds like an old recording, but I have been hot and heavy on some important cases the last week. I’m in my underwear at the condo watching a movie on television and I’ll probably be snoring before 9. I’d fall asleep on you.
“The date’s just a number. Give me a couple of weeks and we’ll go out and do something special, something you guys will enjoy. Can you give me a rain check?”
“Okay. I’ll find something to do tonight. You get some rest. You’ve an old man, now you know.”
“Don’t rub it in. I promise, I’ll contact you when the smoke settles and arrange a nice night out.”
Something entered my head then and it popped out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop myself. I found myself lowering my voice, even though there was no way Aline could have heard me in the bathroom, over the running water.
“We can all get together. You, your brother, your grandmother and grandfather. Even...tell your mother she’s welcome if she wants to come out for dinner with us. Tell her...I promise...truce. We’re going to have to learn...to be around each other...someday.”


The other words in my head wouldn’t come out. It would be the first time in nearly 20 years I had a birthday party where she wasn’t. I knew that was the reality of it now, but it suddenly hit me all over again. I was in my apartment with a beautiful naked woman and I was missing my ex-wife.
“I’ll tell her, dad. I...think she might like that. Okay, I’ll let you go. Get some rest.”
I clicked the phone off. And sat on the couch wondering if I was doing the right thing. But we’d have the rest of our lives together. I had less than two weeks with Aline, and it would probably have to last me for the rest of my life.
And how could I leave Aline alone, a secret from my family while I went out for a birthday celebration. On the other hand, how could I introduce Aline to my kids and say, “By the way, kids, this is the married lady that is cheating on her husband with me. She’s a really nice lady.”
Maybe they could do that in Europe. But not in Jacksonville, Florida. I shook my head just thinking about it.
I yelled at Aline, but she had a small cassette player she’d brought with her going in the bathroom with some French pop tune and I was sure she couldn’t hear me. I went to the closet, pulled out a nice pair of slacks and a V-necked blue pullover. The Top Floor was expensive, but not formal.
I was slipping some black loafers on when the doorbell rang.
Who the hell would be at my door on a Saturday evening? I wondered if something had happened at the jail with Sutton, or...it could be anything. But the phone hadn’t beeped while I was on the phone with Kelly to indicate another call was holding.
The universe did a 180 and I felt like Alice falling through the Looking Glass. I had reached the door and looked through the peep hole.
Even though this wasn’t a bad neighborhood, it was still downtown Jacksonville and I wasn’t opening the door without knowing what was waiting on the other side. I recognized what I was looking at, but my eyes weren’t transmitting the signals to my brain.
Before I could move, a key turned in the lock and I moved backward without thinking as the door opened outward.

“Surprise...”

“Hi, Dad...we... ”

“Dad....I thought. ”

“Bill, Happy Birthday son. ”

They all stared at me in my slacks and pullover and shoes and I stared back. “Hi....Kelly..BJ....Mom...Charles.... Roy?

...Cathy?.....Clarice....Ricky..... Amy”

I couldn’t believe it but I said, “Debbie??”

I stared at my son and daughter at the front of the parade, followed closely by my mother and my stepfather, my ex-mother and father-in-law, my ex-sister-in-law, her six-year-old daughter Amy and 8-year-old son Ricky, and MY EX WIFE? What Circle of Hell had I been dumped into?
“Dad...what...I thought...”
“Yeah, Dad,” Kelly said, “You said you were going to bed. We came by to surprise you and take you out for a cool birthday dinner.”
“Yes, son,” my mother said, advancing on me like a stalking lioness. “We thought we were going to have to get you dressed and take you out. But it looks like you beat us to it. Where were you going, and why didn’t you want us to know about it?”
I didn’t realize that she was backing me into my lair until I realized I’d passed beyond the couch and the whole expedition was inside my condo.
“Boy, this place is really small,” Ricky said, looking around. “Sh....baby, no. ” Clarice said.
I heard a sound behind me and I realized that my entire life had been building to this moment. The door to the bathroom was turning and as it opened outward I heard a Cranberry’s tune we had heard at O’Brien’s. When Aline realized how much I loved it, she’d downloaded it.

As the door opened and I spun around in dreamlike slow motion, I heard: “You know I’m such a fool for you

You got me wrapped around your finger Do you have to let it linger..................................... ”

She stepped out like Botticelli’s painting of Aphrodite rising from the sea, all pink and white and jet black wet hair hanging around her shoulders. With the Cranberries spilling out behind her, she advanced toward me on catlike feet, her attention focused on the pink slit of her shaved pussy which she was holding open with her thumb and index finger.
“Do you like? I thought we might...test it out. before we-“
Only a few times in my life have I seen a person’s jaw literally drop. She stared at me and what stood behind me and her voice died away.
“Mommy, that lady doesn’t have any clothes on.”
It was one of those moments when you can hear the blood pumping through your carotid artery, you can hear the elements inside your apartment’s AC system humming, you can hear the individual breaths of a half dozen human beings against a canvas of silence.
And then Aline was scrambling backwards, shifting her hands from her groin to her breasts and back again, gaze flashing from one set of astonished eyes to another as she disappeared into the bathroom whose door slammed shut.
“...do you have to let it linger  ”