De Minimis Non Curat Lex - a romantic story by WTSman The law does not concern itself with trifles. Tormenting a young woman just because she’s no Anna Nicole Smith was nothing the law would deal with. George’s childhood friend Bex studied law to find some other way to get even. Revenge was brutal and not as sweet as Bex had hoped. The best revenge is to live well. George saw to that. ______________________ There was a young lawyer called Bex, Whose chest was quite flat for her sex; When charged with exposure She replied with composure, "De minimis non curat lex." The limerick sits neatly printed on the wall in our bedroom. The trifles aren’t all that small any longer – two pregnancies have taken care of that. Still, they are fairly moderate in size. They were at their absolute peak just when the babies were born. Also on the wall, on either side of the framed limerick, are two papier-mâché casts of Bex’ torso that we made just days before she gave birth. They were fun to make. Most people notice the huge belly first (particularly the second cast when Bex carried the twins) and then the breasts. Not Bex. She will always have a thing about breast size which no amount of loving can make go away even though I assure her I never cared. I mean, my first wife could give the late Anna Nicole a run for her money – and Leona was all natural, but I wouldn’t want to go back ever. Leona was a scheming cheating bitch with a room temperature IQ who caused me nothing but grief. Bex loves me unconditionally (and has done so all her life – I was just to dim to notice). She is bright and sweet. She is a fantastic mother, and she is my best friend and confidant in addition to being my wife and lover. Life is good. Bex thinks so too. At least most of the time. And when she has one of her rare black moods and disses her breasts, I will usually demonstrate how wonderful they are. Bex is one of those fortunate women whose nipples are so sensitive that she can orgasm from breast stimulation alone. After a dozen or so breast-only induced orgasms we usually have a long period of time where Bex doesn’t complain. But getting to where we are today has been a long, and at times painful, journey. This is the story of that journey. ______________________ The story of Bex begins around the same time as the story of me – we were born only four days apart in the same hospital, but you can definitely say that our backgrounds were different. Actually, for the story of Bex to make sense we have to go back a bit further and start the tale a little over a year before she was even born Bex’ father was a lawyer with the impressive name Archibald Theodore Anderson. All his friends – and he had many, including the entire legal fraternity, the judges and court staff, most businessmen in the district, the doctors, the school principals, the pastors, you name them – called him Archie. Archie was a large jovial man who had a large jovial house, a large jovial wife and two large jovial sons who were both also lawyers and in partnership with their father. And they ran the biggest, most influential law firm in our part of the state. When Archie was 64, Margaret, known as Dot – his wife of nearly 40 years and the mother of Albert and Eugene, better known as Bert and Gene, lay down for nap after lunch one very hot summer’s day and never woke up. According to the doctor, Dot had a massive coronary and never felt a thing. It was sad and unexpected, but life’s like that sometimes. Being alone didn’t suit Archie. Bert and Gene had long left home, of course – they were 35 and 37 respectively. Both were bachelors, although especially Gene was known to be something of a ladies’ man. No way were they going to move back home to look after their father. But Archie had never made a bed, never sorted the laundry or as much as boiled an egg in his life so he knew he would have to get a least a housekeeper and soon. Salvation was near – for twenty years Archie’d had the same personal secretary. Miss Constance Hastings joined the firm when she was a shy slight spinster of 22. Now she was a shy slight spinster of 42, unbelievably efficient and competent and utterly devoted to her boss. She didn’t quite faint when Archie proposed, but it was damned close. Her secret dream had come true and less than a month later she was the new Mrs. Archibald Anderson. Where Dot had been large and, well, curvy, and even in her sixties still showed clear remnants of a remarkable beauty, Constance was very slight of build, noticeably flat both at the rear and especially at the front and, for lack of a better word, desiccated. Given the age of both partners, no-one expected their union to be, well, fruitful. But Archie was a lawyer and made sure the marriage was legal. Before the honeymoon to the US Virgin Islands was over, the new Mrs. Anderson was neither so virginal in manners nor quite so desiccated to look at – she had put on ten pounds in flattering places and she kept putting on pounds for the simple but highly surprising reason that she was pregnant. Surprise or not, Archie and Constance were delighted and a few days after Archie’s 65th birthday, his now 43 year old new wife gave birth to a tiny little girl who they named Rebecca Constance Anderson. At least that’s what her birth-certificate says. No-one ever called her anything but Bex. ______________________ I know all this from Mom. As I mentioned, I was born four days before Bex to Millie and Todd Henderson, both 23 and both natives of our city. They had been sweethearts since grade school and to this day remain as much in love as then. Dad was an independent motor mechanic in partnership with one of his and Mom’s old school friends, Leroy, who I always knew as “Uncle Leroy”. Mom had been a shop-assistant until shortly before I was born and never rejoined the workforce even though I remained an only child. At that time they had bought their first home (which they are still in) in an ordinary middleclass neighborhood but bordering on the more affluent part of town. When I say “bordering” it is in a literal sense: At the end of our garden was a tall, forbidding wall that surrounded the grounds of the huge neo-gothic mansion where the Andersons lived. The summer I was two I “broke through the door in the wall” (according to Mom – it must have been in dire need of repairs if a toddler could do that!) and went exploring in the garden next door, finding Bex playing in a huge sandbox. This is where my bemused but slightly embarrassed mother found me ten anxious minutes later. She had only gone inside to go to the bathroom; having left me in what she was convinced was a “toddler-proof” enclosed area. She almost collided with the very bemused Mrs. Anderson who had gone inside to fetch drinks, leaving Bex in what she was similarly sure was a contained area; a fence having been put up to protect Bex from their large pool. They left us to play, sat down to talk and struck up a close friendship of the kind that mothers all over the world forge from no other common ground than simply being mothers. According to Mom, Bex and I both howled miserably when they finally separated us and a repeat play-date for the next day was hastily agreed. From then on we were inseparable. Naturally I cannot remember any of this. In my consciousness Bex has always been there. Over the coming years we kept on playing and playing and playing. We went to kindergarten and then school together and we were also always together outside school. Our parents laughingly referred to us as “the twins”. Bex was a waifish tom-boy who ran wild with me and the other little boys in the neighborhood, climbing trees – her garden had some fabulous climbing trees and Bex got to the top of them before anyone else, building cubby houses and so on. She may have been ostracized by the girly girls at school already then; I didn’t notice. Bex was one of the gang – end of story. Unknown to me, of course, Dad and Uncle Leroy were very industrious and successful. They gained college qualifications at evening school and expanded their business, taking over a moribund dealership and turning it into a roaring success. Uncle Leroy ran the showrooms and Dad the workshop. From a very early age, I was fascinated with cars and motors and I was a frequent guest at the workshop – as was Bex. Dad and Uncle Leroy’s business model was as simple as it was successful: They sold cars in all price ranges, maximizing the potential customer base. In addition, having both the dealership and an all-make workshop, they could hedge their business against economic fluctuations. When times were good they sold a lot of new or premium second hand cars. During lean times, the workshop was doing well because people wanted to run their older cars longer. Uncle Leroy never married. He was gay. That cost him all contact with his unforgiving bible-bashing family. We were his family. When he died much too young there were rumors it was AIDS, but that was false. He died from testicular cancer. Over the loud protests of his “loving family” he left everything he owned, including his half-interest in the business, to Mom and Dad. That left Dad in charge of it all and he had to spend much more time in the showrooms than he really wanted to. Dad was a guy who wanted to get his hands dirty at heart, but now he spent more time in a suit than in overalls. I was unaware of all that too. All I knew was that Uncle Leroy was gone and I felt terribly sad about that. But that is just about the only negative memory I have of my childhood. It was otherwise safe and happy. We may not have been wealthy in a classical sense but I was never in want of anything important. I was immersed in love from my parents. And instead of siblings, which never came, I had Bex. ______________________ The innocence of childhood ends of course. Puberty hit me around the age of 13. I grew tall and strong in no time, taking after my father in build. I developed quickly in other areas too. Like boys through the ages I started waking up with wet pajamas pants on occasions, worrying that I might have peed my pants. Having always felt confident that my parents where there for me for anything, I mentioned it to Mom one Saturday morning. She smiled, reassured me that all was well and got hold of Dad to explain things to me. The “talk” – apart from the usual warnings and admonitions to be responsible – contained a lot of practical and useful information about the joys that my “new equipment” could bring me. When Dad had left for work – the showrooms were open on Saturdays – Mom added her bit, essentially telling me that since it was bound to come out anyway, I might as well have the enjoyment from triggering it myself, rather than have it happen in my sleep! I quickly found out that she was spot on there. Speaking of spots, my practical and anything-but prudish mother discreetly placed a dish-towel together with my clean pajamas the next week. After only a few moments of puzzlement I got it. I might have blushed – who knows – but it was neater than the socks or tee-shirts or whatever else teenaged boys use to catch their almost limitless semen emissions. And boy was it neat to have parents so utterly devoid of hang-ups regarding sex. Growing tall and strong quickly was an advantage socially too, especially when it came to sports. I dare say I have the build to be a football player, but I lack the psyche. I just don’t care for the game. I did play a little baseball and was good at it, but it just wasn’t my thing either. It’s not that I am a loner or otherwise anti-social, but team-sports were just not me. I did much better in athletics and being ahead by a year or more in physical development compared to my peers made me a bit of a star through grade school. Only when the true jocks caught up in high school did that end, but at that stage my interests were elsewhere. I was an all-round kid; middle-ground in everything. Good, but not shining grades. OK, but not exceptional looks. And pretty content with life. If puberty was easy for me, it was hell for Bex. She too was hit by hormones around the age of 13. That is in one sense normal, but kind of late in another. Unlike her peers there had been no signs of budding breast on her completely flat chest and practically nothing happened there now despite the onset of regular screaming-agony periods. Poor Bex got all the pain and none of the fun. She didn’t add much in height either leaving her out of most sports except gymnastics, at which she excelled. Her hips never flared and her bottom stayed little-girlish. At 13, she didn’t stand out too much. Some girls needed bras. Other had them for no reason. Bex was still enough of a tom-boy not to care. At 14 those with tits looked down on those without. Although we’re talking a long time before the obesity epidemic that has now hit the US, very few of Bex’ 14 year old peers were as flat as she was and none were as short. At 15 it was unbearable. Bex was mercilessly teased about being a baby. She was teased about having elderly parents. Her social life had dried up completely; none of the other girls wanted to be seen anywhere near her and her former friends amongst the boys were now well and truly into girls who looked like girls. She still had me, of course, but not in the same way. We were friends, and close friends at that, but I had my sports, an afternoon job at my dad’s workshop and more than my fair share of girlfriends. Adhering to Dad’s lecture about responsibility and Mom’s about fidelity didn’t stop me from having a rich sex-life. It just meant that all my sex was safe and always only with one girl at the time. (OK, I have on one occasion broken up with a girl over the phone just moments before I drove out for a date with the next one, but that’s still technically monogamy, isn’t it?) Bex on the other hand had no sex-life whatever. No-one invited her out. The closest she got to dates was hearing about mine. In retrospect that was cruel, but she asked and I never withheld anything from her. She developed a strong dislike for the golden girls. I couldn’t agree with that – I dated them and from shortly after my 16th birthday bedded a lot of them. I wasn’t boyfriend material for the true A-listers who preferred the top football players, but I was a reasonable athlete so it wasn’t a social disgrace for a girl to be seen with me. Besides, girls talk. I am well-equipped both when flaccid and especially when erect and I know how to use it. So I “sinned above my station” on many occasions. ______________________ It was not just the kids who were cruel to Bex. One particularly stupid biology teacher going through human genetics and various non-fatal but debilitating chromosome defects mentioned Turner’s syndrome where girls have just one X-chromosome. Those girls tend to be small and undeveloped sexually. The way the cow presented it she might as well have said straight out that Bex was a Turner girl and that rumor now ran around school in no time. During the next class I asked pointedly if a Turner girl would have periods. When the teacher replied “Of course not”, I just said “I thought so…,” looking pointedly at Bex. She was menstruating – clearly in pain and with fairly bad temporary acne. The teacher got flustered and I got a bad grade for the rest of the year. And if I’d hoped that at least this particular rumor about Bex would now stop, I was sadly mistaken. The busty head cheerleader Stacey Stevens and her close friend Leona Ingleby whose tits were even bigger kept up their endless banter about “the titless wonder” and how she was a “genetic freak” which according to them was no wonder since “Bex’ parents were ancient when they had her.” The cruelty of that came in to perspective shortly after. Early in our junior year both Bex’ parents died within a few weeks of each other. Archie had been ailing for a while – he was 82 and well and truly old. The very hot summers didn’t agree with him either and he suffered a series of strokes. He survived the first two, but the third one killed him – which was possibly a mercy; the second one had left him partly paralyzed and unable to speak. Unknown to everyone Constance had terminal cancer and she only outlived her elderly husband by three weeks, dying a few days before her 60th birthday. To say that Bex was distraught would have been an understatement. How she got through it I don’t know. She knew she wouldn’t have her father forever and with the first two strokes there had been a kind of warning, but losing her mother was a jolt that came out of the blue. I tried to the best friend I could – to the annoyance of my girlfriend at the time who found my affection for Bex “weird” even though she knew it wasn’t sexual and that she had no cause for jealousy. Mom and Dad were fantastic too and offered to take Bex in, as in actually adopting her. It was obvious that the Anderson house would have to be sold; it was outrageously big for a family of three. Having a 17 year old girl living there alone was not an option. I think Dad was most keen on the adoption solution, but Gene and Bert were adamant that they could and would look after their half-sister. They were both still single and shared a huge apartment above their offices. Bex moved in with them. With no women in the Anderson brothers’ life it could have been difficult to get an OK for the arrangement, but they had a housekeeper coming in on a regular basis and their secretaries were also listed as appropriate female role models. I’m sure it helped that Gene and Bert are both top lawyers… I would have liked to be able to tell you that the merciless teasing and outright persecution of Bex stopped after the sudden death of her parents, or that it at least was toned down. Not so. Small-town American kids can be angels, or they can be vermin. Our peers largely fell in the latter category. Within days Bex was no longer “the titless wonder” but “the titless orphan” when Stacey and Leona had introduced the new term. Some half-baked intervention from the school curbed that heartless abuse a bit. But only a bit. Over the next year and a half both terms were used gleefully to Bex’ face, but rarely when a teacher would hear it. ______________________ The ultimate humiliation of Bex occurred at our Senior Prom. Mike Dupres, one of the minor stars on the football team, had started chatting Bex up. That surprised everyone – he was otherwise thought to be going steady with Stacey, but now he was all attentive to Bex and the absolute shocker came when it got known that he had asked her to be his date at the Prom. Bex’ status went from ridiculed non-entity to someone girls talked to and wanted to be seen with merely on the strength of that invitation. I didn’t see her all that much – being busy with sports and girlfriends and my job at Dad’s workshop (not to mention occasional school work), but the few times we talked she seemed very happy and talked endlessly about her Prom dress, the planned corsage, the limo that Mike would come in to get her even though she lived only half a mile from the school, the after-Prom parties and so on. I would like to claim that I knew something was fishy, but I didn’t. I had been as surprised as everybody else, especially because nothing was known about an alternative date for Stacey, but high-school couples do split up and I knew better than anyone that apart from the lack of breasts, Bex was very pretty and also very sweet and exceedingly bright. So I was happy for my friend and said so. And then it all came crashing down. Bex, all dressed up at her brothers’ apartment, awaiting her date with the limo and corsage, did just that. Waited, I mean. And waited and waited and waited. It was all an elaborate hoax as the entire senior year, minus poor Bex, discovered when Mike strutted in fashionably late with Stacey on his arm. “What happened to Bex Anderson?” I asked loudly. My question was met with general laughter – no one picked up the edge to my voice apart from Ingrid, my date, who kicked me on the shin and muttered “Shut up! You’re here with me!” under her breath, “Why would I go with a flat and skinny little girl when I can have this?” Mike laughed as he groped both Stacey’s huge mammaries from behind to much laughter. “Because you invited her, you prick!” I hissed. Few people heard me, but Ingrid did and we argued about it for so long that she eventually very pointedly went to sit somewhere else. Forget it, I thought and left. I walked over the Gene and Bert’s apartment. I had expected to find Bex in tears and there were certainly streaks on her face after a lot of crying, her makeup smeared and her eyes puffy, but she was remarkably calm when I arrived. “What happened to your Prom?” she asked. “Didn’t feel like staying,” I replied, sitting down next to her in the couch. “The company was unpleasant.” “Including Ingrid’s?” Bex asked in a forced light tone. She’d never liked Ingrid much – in fact she didn’t like any of the golden girls – but she had never criticized any of my girlfriends to my face. “Especially Ingrid’s,” I replied. “She doesn’t rate loyalty to friends very highly. I do.” “Thanks George,” Bex said and there were tears in her eyes again. “Your loyalty means the world to me.” Then she wiped the tears away once more, steeled herself and yelled “Gene, can we sue the prick?” He looked startled and came over, followed by Bert. “I don’t think so Bex,” Gene said. “It’s not like we could use breach of promise or anything like that – you were not engaged to the bastard, only invited to a Prom.” “But he didn’t show – he broke that promise,” Bex argued. “True,” Gene agreed. “But your participation in the Prom was not dependent on him being there. You could have been admitted on your own. The only material thing he failed to deliver, apart from a rose, was the transport – and the school is just up the road.” “De Minimis Non Curat Lex,” Bert added. “The law does not concern itself with trifles. We don’t have a case. There are no legal avenues to pursue.” He put his hand on Bex’ shoulder. She looked up almost startled – physical affection was rare in the Anderson family. “If Gene and I were thirty years younger we would have beaten the crap out of the bastard. But it is not really an option at our age.” It brought a reluctant giggle from Bex and a hearty laugh from us three men. Gene and Bert may have been football players in their high school days, but now they were pretty much the archetypical soft and sedentary middle-aged lawyers. In all likelihood Mike could wipe the floor with both of them if they tried anything. “I could take him on,” I started to say, and I meant it although I didn’t fancy my chances, but Bex held up her hand to stop me. Her face hardened. “I don’t want either of you to do anything. I’ll take care of that. Even if it takes all my life, I’ll find a way of getting even. It will be legal – if only just so. But it will be merciless. Now I want to sleep. Good night.” She stood up, turned on her heals and strode down to her bedroom. Bex’ brothers and I just stared. There had been something dangerous in Bex’ voice. Something hard. Something totally unforgiving. We finally pulled ourselves together. “I’d better get going,” I said and got up. “OK,” Bert said and Gene just nodded. As I was heading for the door, Gene spoke up. “Thanks for being such a friend to Bex,” he said. “In many ways you’ve been a better brother to our sister than we ever have.” “That’s OK,” I replied, slightly embarrassed. “We’re more of an age and I do love her like the sister I never had.” “We know,” Bert said. “Don’t do anything that you’d regret or that would jeopardize your future. In short: Don’t do anything illegal.” “And if you do,” Gene added, “don’t go to any other law firm than ours for your defense.” The brothers were still chuckling when I left. ______________________ I went home. Mom and Dad were surprised to see me so early. And aghast, mixed with some pride, when I told them why. Mom was crying for Bex – not the first time she’d shed tears for my friend – and Dad was livid. “Mr. Dupres came in yesterday fishing for a traineeship for Mike. It’ll be a cold, cold day in hell before that swine joins my pay-roll and I’ll tell them why to their slimy faces.” “Todd!” Mom exclaimed. Dad very rarely swears. “Don’t you Todd me Millie,” Dad shot back. “We’re talking about a girl we tried to adopt only last year. I love her just as much and you and George do!” “I know,” Mom sniffled. “Just don’t do or say anything that could land us in trouble.” “I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said slowly and mentioned the Anderson brothers’ offer. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Dad said. We all agreed and went to bed. On the Monday Bex showed up for school at the normal time. There was some unpleasant derisive snickering, but the new hard-edged Bex from Saturday night was now very much in presence and she stared everyone down. For the next few months she was an avenging angel. Rather than school work which went on auto-pilot, she used her superior intellect to snoop out as much damaging information about the jocks and the golden girls as she could and used it to devastating effect. She undermined the fragile confidence of the hangers-on, broke up several relationships and friendships through massive and deliberately undiplomatic use of gossip, rumors, and half-truths, and caused fear, uncertainty, and doubt all around. The whole juggernaut took a life of its own when most of the misfits gleefully started feeding her with the information they had gleaned. They had never before been empowered – now they saw a leader in Bex who could help them avenge the indignities they had been subjected to. Personal happiness may be the best there is but if that is unobtainable then the tormentors’ misfortunes are not to be despised seemed to have been the motto. I stayed largely out of it all, except telling Mark in a very public setting that my dad had told me to ask him and his dad to come to the showrooms on Saturday morning to discuss something. That startled and pleased Mark, who had been expecting a confrontation with me, I’m sure. He bragged to his peers all week about getting a job as a trainee, but Dad was as good as his word and the two Dupres men received a very loud and public humiliation when told why Mike would never be accepted as a trainee. Bex’ brothers also chipped in. Their law firm managed virtually all the local scholarships for college. Usually the awards are handled quickly, going more or less automatically to the progeny of the old established families. Not this year. Gene and Bert managed to disqualify almost all the golden girls and jocks who otherwise felt entitled to these funds. They did it on personal character grounds and made sure that the decisions were leaked which in turn poisoned the ground for other scholarships. Many a middle class kid saw their future evaporate like a mirage that spring. Their past derision of “the titless wonder” became costly. Bex had avoided going after the ringleaders – Mike, Stacey and Leona – except indirectly. When Loretta, one of the second ranking cheerleaders, who had lost a scholarship she would otherwise have been almost certain to get, yelled at Bex that it was her fault and that Bex was only jealous about not landing Mike after all, Bex shot back “Sure, but at least I was spared getting chlamydia. Mike caught it off Stacey who caught it off Pete C at Easter. God only knows which slut he got it from. Could be anyone from what I hear.” Loretta blanched. Pete Cummings was her boyfriend and her world collapsed. A lot of relationships went down the drain when one of Bex’ new friends – a distinctly weird girl called Alison – put a “Chlamydia Alert” poster up several places in the school urging anyone who’d had sex with six named seniors, or whose partners were cheats, to be tested. I learned that the campaign was successful when Mom’s friend and neighbor Liz, who works at one of the main doctor’s surgeries in town, told Mum in hushed tones that the number of high school kids seeking chlamydia testing had suddenly exploded. In those days the tests were not nearly as easy as they are today and the sampling procedure much more unpleasant for both sexes. That most of the tests came back negative was irrelevant – the social damage had been done. Amongst the casualties were Stacey and Mike’s relationship. The mayhem died down around the time of the final exams. Bex was floating around aloof – despised and feared by the jocks and the golden girls, a hero to the outcasts and someone you didn’t quite know what to make of to the rest of us. She didn’t care. When I argued to her “You can’t go around hating everyone forever – it will eat you up,” she simply replied. “I won’t. I don’t care about the hangers-on. It was fun to see them squirm; now it’s time to move on. But the gang of three? I’ll hate them forever. Even if it takes me all my life, I’ll get them.” The gang of three was her code name for Mike, Stacey and Leona of course. This was the second time she had declared she would pursue revenge indefinitely. Somehow I never doubted she was serious: She was very good at what she set out to do. She got a perfect entrance score for college. And she had loads of money. ______________________ We finished high school and started making decisions about what to do with ourselves. A lot of our peers had no idea but for Bex and me it was easy. Traditional college was never on the cards for me. I’m not stupid and my grades were fine, but I’ve always preferred to do things with my hands. So instead I did a year-long course at an Auto Tech Mechanic school and at 20 I joined Dad’s firm as the youngest certified mechanic. I was, and am, even if I say so myself, good at it and before long I was one the leading mechanics. Like Dad and Uncle Leroy before me, I also did some evening classes locally to start to learn the business side of things since I was destined to inherit the company. Bex went away to University to do pre-law (no surprise there). She had top-grades, top-ambitions, and virtually unlimited funds after her parents passed, so naturally she went to a top-school. She lived in dorms (at first because it was compulsory, later because it provided a social setting she liked), and got her nose down in the books. She had gone as far away from our town as possible and was rarely home. As I mentioned, neither of her brothers ever married and their shared bachelors’ apartment, while nice and exceptionally spacious, was not really geared for a young female, nor did they have much to say to their half-sister. They were always more than nice to her – don’t think otherwise – and they were genuinely thrilled that she also wanted to do law, but there was a full generation or more between them and very little common ground outside law. Bex and I promised each other we would stay in touch. We did keep each other up-to-date with fairly frequent letters for the first two years, but then in the course of just a few months my life changed radically. Leona – the big boobed cheerleader, who had been if not the tormenter-in-chief of Bex, then at least one of the ring-leaders, came into the workshop one Friday afternoon with a car that was coughing and spluttering and sending out blue smoke over the entire neighborhood. It turned out that Leona had broken up with her live-in boyfriend Rick – a promising football player who hadn’t quite delivered on the promise. She was a little vague about why they’d split. Could be she didn’t see him as the provider she’d hoped for when he had star ambitions. Could be she’d cheated on him. I have no idea and I am not being charitable, so don’t read too much in to this. I honestly don’t know. Anyway, I digress. Rick was gone. And with him any sense of little details like keeping a car in oil and so on. I was told about that while attending in person to the poor vehicle and with us having a shared past, if being class mates for 12 years can be called that, the conversation turned personal. Leona told me about her time with Rick and I told Leona about my future plans, quite possibly laying my prospects of being a successful business owner in the near future on a bit too thick. That bragging was to cost me dearly, but hey! – we’ve all been young and stupid, and I was mesmerized by those fabulous tits that kept threatening to spill out when Leona leaned over to look at whatever I was doing to her car with pretend-interest. Lamb to the slaughter! The car needed major servicing, it was close to close-of-business and somehow or other I ended up offering to drive Leona home. Less than three minutes after being invited in for a drink, my pants were off and my rampant dick in Leona’s mouth for one of her famous Major League blowjobs. For the next many hours we screwed like bunnies. I had her in every orifice and even tried titty-fucking – something for which Leona’s anatomy was immensely well suited. When I finally couldn’t get it up anymore and we fell into a stupor, I was totally in lust. When I woke up the next morning it was to Leona sucking my morning wood like a popsicle and the lust got another notch upwards. Over the weekend I must have emptied my balls in Leona’s agile pussy at least a dozen times – in addition to the many times when my ejaculate entered her mouth, bowels or ended up as a pearl necklace. Ah, to be 21 again. I still had a small apartment at work (over the original showroom), but I practically moved in with Leona. It made me late for work several mornings – Leona was working in a bank and didn’t s start until 10. Dad was not pleased and told me so, so I cleaned up my act a little. He was also less than enthusiastic about Leona, but I ignored that and needless to say the guys at work loved her – she was better looking than most of our calendar girls and flirted openly and unashamedly, but no-one was stupid enough to make a pass at the boss’ son’s girlfriend. ______________________ Did I say “girlfriend”? So it would seem. I don’t know quite how that happened. But I do know how she was upgraded to “fiancée” and then “wife” in very quick succession. A positive pregnancy test brought that about. She said she “forgot all about taking her pills” after the previous boyfriend left. Was it to trap me? You decide on that. But that was irrelevant: There was no doubt in my mind – and no room in my upbringing for any doubt – that I had to do the right thing, so we got engaged and married in record time. Luckily Dad intervened in one crucial area. He had broadly hinted to Leona and especially her parents that the company wasn’t on quite so sound a footing as I had claimed. It could go either way when he retired; it was up to me to ensure the viability of it then, so Leona perhaps ought to secure her assets with some iron-clad pre-nuptial arrangements and separate ownership clauses. He also deviously hinted that I had been known to be less than faithful to girlfriends in the past (an absolute lie!) and one way of keeping me on the straight-and-narrow would be to put in a crushingly penalizing infidelity clause in the pre-nuptial agreement. Leona’s parents were wealthy and Leona had inherited a share portfolio from an aunt, so a pre-nuptial agreement was written. It essentially said that the business was exclusively mine, and the share holdings from Leona’s aunt similarly Leona’s, no matter what. In case of divorce, all communal property would be divided equally – except in case of infidelity where the wronged party would get everything and alimony was ruled out. I didn’t know anything about it before hand; Dad only told me it was because of the company, so I signed it willingly without ever reading it too closely and forgot about it. Leona’s father – a respected and influential businessman – was so impressed with Dad that he spread the good word around town about what a straight shooter Mr. Henderson senior was. I had initially avoided telling Bex about Leona and me. Call me a chicken, but I expected a negative reaction to put it mildly and I was callous enough to expect that the lust would have run its course in short order so I wouldn’t have to tell her at all. But when the pregnancy and impending marriage scuttled that idea, there was nothing for it – I had to tell her. When I had wasted an entire writing pad with false starts, I gave up and decided to bite the bullet and call Bex instead. Catching her at home on the shared dorm phone (this was before cell phones became common) was difficult but finally I got through to her one weekday evening. “I’m getting married,” I said almost as the opening line. “You’re what?” Bex gasped. “To whom?” When I replied “Leona Ingleby” the line went very quiet for a long time. Uncomfortably long. I had expected an explosion and was more or less prepared for that. The drawn-out silence was worse. Finally I heard her swallow hard and she said just one word. “Why?” My reply was nearly as brief: “She’s pregnant. It’s mine.” Another agonizing pause followed and then, barely over a whisper and with a timbre that cut me to the bone, Bex simply said “OK. Goodbye.” and hung up. “Goodbye Bex,” I said to the disconnect tone. In around 20 words a friendship of 20 years’ standing had ended. ______________________ Unlike Dad, Mom seemed to like Leona. I think she always wanted a daughter (I never knew why I was an only child), and a daughter in law would do just fine – especially a pregnant one. Not that Leona ever warmed to my parents. Dad knew and the feeling was mutual. But Mom really tried. She probably excused Leona with being pregnant, and accidentally so (ha!) and did everything she could for her. In fact, Mom had more input to the wedding plans than Leona’s mother did, but got precious little by way of gratitude in return except from me. Dad wisely stayed out of it and Leona’s father just signed the checks. The wedding went fine. It wasn’t huge but it was festive and most of the time I was feeling positive about it all. OK, Leona certainly wasn’t the kind of girl I had expected to marry (when trying to envisage who that may be I always ended up with an image of Bex which I promptly discarded), but she was carrying my child and I was sure that the lust would turn to love. The wedding night was spent at a hotel in a neighboring town. A little bizarre perhaps, given that we had been living together for months and the bride was already pregnant, but tradition is tradition. A few days later we went to the Florida Keys for our honeymoon. It was a beautiful place. It could have been very romantic. We might have connected for real and fallen in love. It didn’t happen. Leona was sick three times in the plane on the way. We put it down to “morning” sickness (which can come at any time of the day), or possibly just Leona having eaten something that disagreed with her. Not so; on the first morning at the resort she woke up in a pool of blood and with intense abdominal pain. It was of course incredibly distressing. The people at the resort were very kind and helpful to us, assisting with getting Leona to the Lower Keys Medical Center whose competent staff at the gynecological ward quickly confirmed that Leona had miscarried and that the fetus had already been expelled. They did whatever is done after such incidents to help ensure that Leona would be able to conceive again in the future. I spent as much time with Leona as I could, holding her hand while they did some of the less pleasant examinations and tests, and generally just trying to be there for her. We looked and acted every bit the newly wed young couple faced with a sad, but not uncommon misfortune. The medical center staff was great and the next morning a huge bunch of flowers arrived from the resort management with a sweet sympathy card – and a voucher for a complete replacement stay “when you feel up to it”. I don’t know if Leona and I ever loved each other, but what we had together those few days must have been close to the real thing. ______________________ It didn’t last. When we got back the honeymoon was over – literally and figuratively. From the moment we were met by the fussing parents in the airport (with Leona’s mother as good as suggesting it was somehow my fault) it all went downhill – and in fact it kept going largely downhill for the next five years – interrupted only by one brief period of improvement, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Although barely twelve weeks along, we, that is to say Leona and her mother, had decided that Leona would quit her job and become a full-time mother. The bank had been unhelpful, not wanting to give her the time off for the honeymoon. I’m sure they could have been persuaded to relent thanks to Leona’s dad’s clout in town, but Leona told them to go fuck themselves and quit. She believed it would be great to have time to decorate our house and get it ready for the baby. Which house? you may ask. (What baby? you already know the answer to.) The house: Yes well, my small place at work was ruled out at once, which is fair enough; it was tiny and noisy during the day. Leona’s very nice apartment would have been fine in my opinion – a little small with a baby, but a lot of young folks get by in smaller dwellings and as it turned out, there wouldn’t be any baby just now after all. But no, it wasn’t grand enough and for the few days we’d been away Mrs. Ingleby had been house-hunting for us and found a large rambling place on the outskirts of town, not far from the Ingleby residence. It needed a lot of work, or it would have been way outside our means, even though both sets of parents helped with both actual funds and surety for loans. No prize for guessing who did the work. Dad helped me, as did several of my friends and colleagues from work. Mr. Ingleby did nothing. Mrs. Ingleby helped Leona complaining that things were going too slowly, or that we couldn’t second-guess their incessant change of mind regarding style, materials and color schemes. Of sex there was none. Fair enough right at the start; we’d been told to give Leona’s body a little time to recover, but that usually means “wait until after your next period”. Besides, there are a lot of intimate things you can do even if actual intercourse is ruled out. That didn’t happen either. In fact, we were not very intimate at all. It didn’t help that I worked a full day at the mechanical workshop, and then came home to work on the house until I almost dropped with fatigue. Leona was spending most days with her mother, and even though I got an interim bedroom and bathroom functional very quickly, more often than not Leona would stay over at her parents’ place too. With no baby coming (and the pregnancy was the overwhelming root cause for us getting married in the first place), with no intimacy – and with hardly any common interests, you may ask why we didn’t divorce then and there. Simply admitting it had all been a mistake would have been more honest. But during those intense days at the hospital in Florida, Leona had pleaded with me that the tragedy must not tear us apart and that we should get a new baby started as soon as possible. I had agreed – starting to feel I might actually really love my wife, and I couldn’t get myself to go back on a promise willingly made when the day-to-day incompatibility started to wear us down. I’ve always sought solace in music. My father has been an avid Bob Dylan fan always and I like a lot of his stuff too. During the long and often lonely evenings doing up the house, I regularly played “Blood on the Tracks” and of all the tormented lyrics on that masterpiece, one line especially resonated with me: “I've never known the spring to turn so quickly into autumn.” It summed the situation up perfectly; “Idiot Wind” was really Leona’s and my song. Scary, isn’t it? ______________________ It wasn’t all gloom and doom. When the house was finished, we had a grand house-warming party and for a while we got along OK. We resumed having sex (I can’t make myself calling it “making love” now that I know what that is). It wasn’t frequent, but it was there. Leona had gone on the pill again. She hadn’t mentioned it, but she didn’t hide the fact either. It would seem that babies were off the agenda. I asked her point blank about it one day, and she said that she wanted to “wait a while” – and that she was thinking of getting a job again. That was actually welcome news; we could certainly do with the money as I was constantly working overtime to make ends meet. Sure, my Dad was the boss, but my hourly pay was no different from the other senior mechanics. I may have reached the senior level quicker than most, but as I said, I was good. I had earned it. Leona found a job –her old job in fact. Her previous boss had been promoted to a management position at the head office and Leona’s parting outburst was not recorded anywhere. Her dad’s influence also helped. And although the income didn’t help us directly – she kept it and spent it all on herself, it did help both by making my income go further now that it didn’t have to pay for Leona’s luxuries, and also by curbing the frequent arguments over money. I hadn’t seen or heard from Bex since that fateful telephone call. She didn’t send a wedding present, and frankly I didn’t expect her to. It had been over a year when I ran into her by chance a few days after Leona’s and my first wedding anniversary. (I had tried to make that a romantic event with flowers and dinner at a nice restaurant, by the way, and it was a very pleasant evening, but it was painfully obvious that there was just no chemistry between us.) But back to the chance encounter: I was down town on an errand at my bank (not the one Leona worked in) when I spotted Bex in the street. On an impulse I ran up to her, but my hand on her arm to stop her and said “Bex! Great to see you again.” Bex spun around and her body language more than suggested that the delight was one-sided. Before she could say anything I blurted out “I really want to talk to you.” Perhaps it was the pleading in my voice, or perhaps 20 years of close friendship did count for something for her after all because Bex relented and reluctantly agreed. We were right outside a café and I led her in. “How are you?” I asked as soon as the waitress had taken our orders. “And what brings you here?” It turned out she was in town for her half-brother Gene’s 60th birthday. We small-talked a little about her studies, my work, our respective families – at first avoiding the elephant in the room. Wanting to do better than during that catastrophic phone call, I decided to face up to it and said “Listen, I am really, really sorry about hurting you over this thing with Leona. I’ve had reasons to regret it many times, believe me I have, but things happened and I wasn’t going to run away from my responsibility.” Bex’ face turned in to an unpleasant snarl. “It sounds like you were sucked in,” she said spitefully. “As far as I’ve heard no baby came. Girls have been known to pull that trick you know. Let’s face it; she just wanted you as a meal-ticket.” The conversation nearly ended there. Never before had either of us poured such bile on the other. I was stunned and hurt and just a fraction of a second from getting up and walking out. But 20 years of close friendship did count for something for me too and instead I just looked her in the eyes, held her gaze and quietly said “Leona’s better off than me – she can buy her own meals if need be. As to the baby, it came. It came in a pool of blood in our bed on our honeymoon.” The snarl vanished instantly. Bex stared at me in abject horror and her face crumbled completely. She started crying in a mixture of shock, shame and pity, sobbing incoherent apologies. I moved over to the bench she was sitting on, put my arm around her and held her while she cried. “It was horrible,” I said. “Getting Leona pregnant was a mistake, but I never wanted something as horrid as that happening.” “You are still together?” Bex asked. I made a despairing gesture. “Let’s not talk about that. I would like us to resume the contact just like it was when you first went away to Uni. Can we do that?” “I’d like that,” Bex replied with a sniffle. “I’ve missed my best friend.” “Me too,” I said – and I felt the world had been lifted from my shoulders. “Me too!” We finished our coffee and Bex left for her half-brother’s reception. She was dressed in a very nice dress. It looked great on her slender body. Still no breasts, but right at that moment I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. ______________________ I didn’t mention that observation to Leona, but I did tell her I’d run into Bex. Not only because honesty figured prominently in my upbringing, but also because ours is a small town, and the café is owned by friends of the Inglebys. Telling Leona about the meeting myself seemed like the best idea. Leona’s reaction when I mentioned Bex was characteristically unpleasant. “Oh, Bex Anderson the titless wonder?” she exclaimed. I had always resented that putdown and only shrugged to confirm Leona’s identification. “What was she doing in town? Has she come back to stay?” Leona asked “She was here for her brother’s birthday,” I explained. “She is studying out east and still has several years to go.” “She was always pining for you,” Leona observed. “We’ve been friends since before we could barely walk and talk,” I replied. “My parents nearly adopted her when both her parents died.” “Strange creature to be friends with,” Leona said, grabbed the remote control and switched on one of her TV shows, effectively ending the conversation. I decided to keep my renewed contact with Bex private. As in I wasn’t going to tell Leona about it voluntarily, but not lie about it either. Over the next months we resumed our long-distance friendship. I called Bex approximately once a week. She was still at the same dorm. The renewed relationship was at the same time very close and not close at all. We talked about almost everything in our lives, except my marriage. Bex’ social life was bordering on the non-existent at first, but after a while she mentioned this somewhat older guy, a mature-age fellow law student, who had taken an interest in her. I encouraged her to date – although I felt strangely jealous about it – and she did agree to let him take her out. At first he treated her nicely – almost too nicely, always being a gentleman and never making any overtures or innuendos, but after a while it looked like he finally wanted to take the relationship to the next level. I rang her on the Saturday afternoon after what we had both expected would be the date. The outcome was not what either of us had expected at all however. “So how was the date?” I asked. “What date?” Bex was fuming. “With Leonard,” I replied. “Wasn’t yesterday going to be the big day?” “It was called off,” Bex replied tersely. “You can’t go on a date with someone who’s in jail.” “In jail?” I echoed. “Leonard?” “Yes, Leonard – the creep!” Bex almost yelled. I didn’t know what to say and remained silent, but Bex didn’t notice and started explaining without prompting. “He wanted me to wear a pleated skirt and plain cotton panties, no bra, no makeup at all and to have my hair in pig-tails. Pig-tails, for crying out loud.” Bex was on a roll now. “When he requested that my pussy be completely shaved, I called it off.” “He sounds creepy,” I agreed. “He was,” Bex replied. “So much so that I turned him in to the Campus Police. I claimed I’d seen pictures of under-age girls on his computer.” “Had you?” I asked. “No,” Bex admitted, “but it turned out to be true. He had thousands of them – and he wanted to live out his pedophile dreams with me. He was planning on photographing us with hidden cameras in his room.” My heart was breaking for Bex. Leonard had not wanted her as a woman, but as a pretend-prepubescent girl. “Sounds like you had a narrow escape,” I said quietly. “I did,” Bex agreed. “But I’m still single and I’m still a virgin.” Leona came into the den and I hastily ended the call. She wanted to tell me that she was going out with some girls from work and that I would have to fend for myself. I had hoped we could have done something together and offered to come along, but that was obviously not appreciated. She was vague about who “the girls” were, but as far as I knew Leona was the only one who was married – the others were either single party-girls or long divorced. My suggestion that Leona was perhaps a little out of place in that company went down like a turd in a punchbowl. I don’t know what time Leona came home that night. I was long in bed. What I did notice was that Leona did the laundry Sunday morning. Laundry has otherwise always been my domain and it did make me wonder why Leona suddenly wanted to do it – and after a night out, of all times. Only later did it dawn on me that perhaps there were stains on her underwear that she didn’t want me to discover. She wasn’t forthcoming about what her evening had been like. My inquiries were more or less stone-walled. I almost had to drag out of her that she and the girls (still not specified who) had gone to some place (not specified where) to have a few drinks (not specified what) and dance (not specified with whom). When I pointed out that I liked dancing too and wasn’t bad at it, I was shut down. “It would cramp my girlfriends’ style if I brought a chaperone,” Leona claimed. I was speechless. My obvious follow-up questions about Leona’s style were left unasked. ______________________ The following year – Bex’ fourth and last as an undergraduate, she thought she’d struck gold. Some “absolutely gorgeous” guy – an International Relations major who apparently could give a Greek God a run for his money in the looks department, an Olympian in physical development, a Nobel Prize winner in brains, a Diplomat in social graces and disgustingly rich to boot – was chatting Bex up all the time, almost stalking her and pressing a full-on courtship that swept Bex off of her feet with flowers, chocolates, dinners and shows and sweet little notes (we’re talking pre text message romance here). While pleased for her – and telling her so frequently and at length, I must confess I got a little tired hearing about Howard. He sounded too good to be true and, truth be told, made me feel more than a little inadequate. Was I also jealous that he’d won Bex’ heart? I’m not sure. My relationship with Leona was going from bad to worse and I realized that my rare chats with Bex on the phone were the happiest moments in my private life. That should have told me something. Anyway, one night when Leona was engrossed in some particularly obnoxious and brainless TV show, I snuck down to the den and called Bex “just to hear how she was”. In the immortal words of Eeyore, Bex was not very how. I got a long litany of problems with her courses, her thesis, her professors, her fellow students, her dorm, her brothers, and so on and so forth. “Well, how is fair Howard?” I asked when I could finally get a word in, hoping to cheer her up by getting her to talk about her favorite subject. Epic failure! “You mean fairy Howard,” Bex replied gloomily. “You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “No, Howard prefers boys,” Bex said in a very measured tone of voice. “Howard’s rich Christian Right parents do not like homosexuals, so Howard picked me as a compromise. I am a girl, so his parents would be happy. And I look like a boy, so Howard would be happy.” The phone went quiet. “Oh Bex,” I said – not knowing what else to say. “At least I’m not a virgin anymore,” Bex said, and I could hear in the strain of her voice that she was fighting for control. “You’re not?” I asked – feeling, and no doubt sounding, surprised. After all, Bex had just told me that the guy was gay. The jealousy returned with full force and I regretted asking the question. I’m sure I really didn’t want to know. The answer put me partly at ease. “At least not anally,” Bex said – and then broke down sobbing. “He wouldn’t touch my pussy or my pathetic excuses for tits.” She was crying now. “To Howard, going all the way meant graduating from blow-jobs – which I disliked – to anal sex, which I detested. It hurt like hell and it left me feeling used.” Bex was hurting – and I was hurting with her too. I suddenly realized I wanted to tell her that I wished I was right there with her so I could take her in my arms and comfort her, but I heard Leona coming down the corridor and I hastily ended the call without offering any comfort. I felt like shit. Leona was there to argue, which was all we seemed to do these days. She wanted a newer, bigger car. It was a favorite subject of hers. While Dad gave us nice discounts, tax-laws precluded him from giving his daughter in law a new car every quarter, had he wanted to. He didn’t, so it was up to me to finance our cars in the normal way. Last time Leona had been trolling Dad for a new vehicle, he maliciously mentioned that perhaps we would soon need something with room for a baby buggy. Mom seized on that remark and her one-sided conversation rambled on for a long time about how she hoped there would be grandchildren soon and asked if we had considered seeking medical assistance if nothing happened. Leona was not impressed with the subject, so now she took the car-nagging to me. “Why do you need a bigger car?” I asked. “We live within walking distance of your work, we have no children and I usually do the shopping?” It turned out Leona wanted the bigger car so she could take her girlfriends out in style. The discussion deteriorated to a full blown argument and I moved my bedding to a spare room. From then on the conversations with Bex constituted the only private life I had besides talking to my parents. Bex went back to her usual focused studying – the last year of that degree is apparently very busy. We talked occasionally and I felt – and hoped – that those conversations meant as much to her as they meant to me, but the sparkle had gone out of her voice. And whatever sparkle there had been in my marriage was definitely gone too. Leona and I were barely talking to each other. Deep and meaningful conversations had never been at the core of our relationship, to make the understatement of the century, but now we hardly acknowledged each other’s presence. The longer this went on, the less likely it was that I would ever return to the master bedroom. ______________________ But I did get back in our bedroom, in Leona’s good books – and in her pussy. It happened about six weeks after the row and was all very sudden. Leona had been unwell for a couple of days – a common flu, nothing more dramatic than that, but unpleasant enough. She had gone to work all week, but Friday morning she was too miserable to get out of bed. I heard her bone-rattling cough and brought her a cup of tea and some toast. I told her to stay in bed, keep in fluids and I would call the bank for her and report her illness. Her gratitude was graceful and natural and my peck on her cheek was accepted and appreciated. She was still my wife after all. I duly rang the bank when it opened and during my lunch break I zoomed home and made Leona some soup. OK, it was ready-made instant stuff, but she appreciated it. I sat with her and had a bowl full myself, realizing that this was the first meal we’d had together for weeks. Just before leaving I helped her to get to the bathroom and while she was there I freshened up the bed, cleared away sundry debris and replenished the water carafe. “Thanks George,” Leona croaked when she returned to bed. “You can be so sweet.” It looked like she wanted to say more, but a bout of coughing stopped that. I was late getting back to work, so I simply smiled, stroked her cheek and placed a gentle kiss – this time on her lips – and told her to take care until I got home. Although we close the workshop early on Fridays, I usually stay on to do admin work and quite often end up having a beer or two with Dad and a couple of the showroom people, but that day I begged off, saying that Leona was sick and I had to get back to her. Dad looked a little puzzled, but didn’t comment. He would have been drowned out by the clucking of the secretaries anyway. Leona wasn’t worse but she sure wasn’t better either. She had more soup and then fell asleep. She was coughing frequently though – I could hear her in the living room where I for once watched TV, and later from the spare room where I was still sleeping. Come to think of it, it wasn’t unusual for me to watch TV on Fridays – since Leona was almost always out with “the girls” on Fridays. That was of course out of the question that night, and as it turned out, it saved her from a major catastrophe: The sleazy club they were frequenting got raided and four of her girlfriends from the bank were amongst those arrested for drug-possession and/or use. They were dabbling with cocaine like so many were – it was around the time that this particular drug had started flowing freely even to small places like ours – and the local DA had decided to get tough on drugs and conducted a number of raids where everyone was arrested, searched and tested. Two of Leona’s colleagues who merely had cocaine in their blood streams ended up getting off with a caution and a fine, but the other two who had sizeable quantities on them were charged and did time. I’m sure they were just unlucky that they didn’t have a chance to drop the stuff (a lot was found on the floors we later heard on the news), but they were sitting close to the door where the task force burst in and that was that. All this happened during the night while we were sleeping. Saturday morning Leona was so much better that she got up, had a shower and got dressed. She didn’t have energy for much, but we generally just hung out and talked. Nothing deep, but it was still a dramatic change compared to our recent complete non-communication and I enjoyed it. We had a light lunch and were resting on the couch – not exactly touching, but sitting close – when the phone rang. It was Catherine, one of Leona’s other girlfriends from the bank, and she was completely hysterical. When Leona finally started making sense of what Catherine was saying she blanched and grabbed the TV remote control. When the picture came on we could see the tail end of a press conference called by the ambitious DA outlining the previous night’s raids. The station kept showing footage of patrons being led out in handcuffs. Clear for all to see, and easily identifiable in a community as small as ours, was pictures of Leona’s four friends who were marched out first. Those four all had done drugs, but several of the others shown were innocent and there was a big controversy about the footage afterwards. But that’s an aside. Leona was shocked to the core. “That could have been me,” she kept muttering. “If I hadn’t been sick, that could have been me.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Do your snort cocaine too?” “No!” Leona replied instantly and so vehemently that I believed her. “But I’ve seen them do it and I could have been with them. Besides, don’t you think I would have been arrested too, like everyone else, for just being there?” I nearly said something about the company she was keeping and the risks involved and reaping what you sow, but refrained. Instead I asked “Where do they get the stuff from?” “I’m not sure,” Leona said evasively. “I think they get it from Mike.” “Mike Dupres?” I asked. “Is Mike Dupres a drug dealer?” It didn’t surprise me that the punk hadn’t made an honest life for himself. I always knew he was into shady affairs, but drug-dealing was something else. “I’m not sure,” Leona repeated. “But I think so.” Then she broke down. “Oh God George, I’ve been such an idiot running with that crowd.” I couldn’t agree more, but once again I refrained from commenting. Moments later I had a sobbing Leona in my arms. She stayed close to me all day, barely out of physical contact except when either of us had to use the bathroom, and that night she begged me to return to the master bedroom. I agreed and Leona attempted to fuck me to death. She was still recovering from the flu, so she fell asleep first, but not until we’d had more sex in this one session than the previous entire year combined. I was laying in the dark wondering if we had turned a corner for good, or if the change in Leona was only temporary – the combination of being sick and the shock of the narrow escape. I hoped it was permanent. I will still hoping we could make it. And at first the prospects looked good. Leona returned to work Monday which was appreciated by the bank. The four colleagues who had been arrested were all released again – two of them on a caution, pending the results of their blood tests and two of them on bail raised either by themselves or their families. They showed up for work too, putting on brave faces and pretending all was well, but soon after the bank had opened it became clear their position was untenable. When the third customer had loudly declared that he or she would not do their business transactions with a drug addict, the bank manager had no option but sending them home and starting dismissal proceedings on “gross misconduct” grounds. It was a tired and shaken Leona who came home from work that day. A quick dinner and a long passionate night in bed helped restore her. Tuesday and Wednesday were much the same. On Thursday it was Mom’s birthday and we were invited for dinner. I say “we”, but no-one had expected Leona to come when the invitation was issued. She was however adamant she wanted to go, had bought some really beautiful flowers for Mom and was the model sweet daughter in law. Mom hastily set another place at the table and Leona herself made a point of that, saying she had some atonement to do. While she helped Mom clear up the kitchen after dinner (in itself a first), Dad took me aside and asked me with a grin who this woman was and what I’d done to the real Leona. My whispered explanation about the shock over the drug-bust had him nodding. “Perhaps that’s what the girl needed to grow up,” he said quietly. Just then Mom and Leona brought the coffee and we dropped the issue. ______________________ The extreme passion only lasted a couple of weeks, which is OK I suppose. I was kind of worn out after that and could easily settle for less. I mean, I was happy just to have any regular sex with Leona again. What was even better was that we were also talking constantly – talking about everything, including personal hopes and dreams. When a month had passed and there was no sign of a reversal, apart from the aforementioned welcome normalization in the bedroom fervor, I broached the subject of kids once more. Leona’s reaction was completely different from previously. She said she thought it was a nice idea and would not restart the pill after her next period. She didn’t get pregnant during that first month of unprotected sex. I’m told that’s not unusual or anything to worry about, and by the time the next cycle rolled up, things were changing again. With four fairly senior colleagues summarily dismissed, the bank was leaning heavily on Leona and Catherine (the only other female colleague not busted) to take on responsibility for supervising the new hastily recruited staff. It was a significant promotion and an excellent opportunity and we, reluctantly, decided that those babies could wait a little longer. I told Leona I was proud of her and I once more started to feel close to her. Did I love her? I’m not sure. But we remained close – we even occasionally went out dancing together on Fridays, often with Catherine and her fiancé Lars, and our sex-life remained active and good. I continued to stay in touch with Bex. She went to Yale for Law School. Only the best for the best; she cruised in. She got even more focused on studying and no mention was made of her love life – or lack of same – for the first year or so. And I had never mentioned mine – neither when it was bad, nor when it, like now, seemed quite good. I did however tell her about the drug-raids, including the suspicions about Mike Dupres. She asked how much proof there was and I had to admit there was none, apart from what Leona had said. Bex seemed very interested. The fact that Bex didn’t have a love-life to talk about didn’t mean she wasn’t trying. She just wasn’t successful. “Guess what?” she said one day several months later. It was her calling which was unusual. “I can’t – enlighten me,” I replied. That was a routine exchange of ours that we’d used since one of us learned the word “enlighten” and taught the other – probably around the time we started grade school! “Lesbians are also mainly interested in big tits” was the astonishing statement. “How would you know?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “You are not a lesbian!” “I know,” Bex said. “Or at least I think I’m not, but I thought I might at least try if I was and perhaps get a little loving that way. So I went to one of the lesbian bars in town a few times.” “Oh,” I said. I didn’t realize Bex was so desperately lonely that she would try that. I couldn’t imagine seeking out another man myself just because I had problems with finding the right woman. I have no issues with homosexuals – my beloved Uncle Leroy was gay and a very good friend had once wistfully remarked to me that “it was a pity” that I was “so keen on girls”, but I wasn’t at all offended – just flattered. I suppose if you’re bisexual then you have in a sense more options, but Bex had never indicated that either. “It didn’t work,” Bex said. “The only time I got picked up, the woman lost interest when she started feeling me up and found nothing.” I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. “I went au naturel,” Bex continued. “Lesbians do, I was told. Rubbish. Everyone wore bras. But anyway, at least I was honestly displaying what I had – and especially didn’t have. It would have been too humiliating if I’d gone home with her on the strength of the padding in my trainer bras only to be rejected when I stripped.” It was Bex’ turn to end a call abruptly. “Sorry, gotta go – I am seeing my supervisor this evening. He is a very busy man and shouldn’t be kept waiting when he is offering to see me outside office hours.” I mumbled some farewell greeting and went back to my lonely, now cold, evening meal. Leona was “on a course”. Again. I guess I shouldn’t have been down about it, but over the last year Leona was away on so many courses and seminars for work we barely saw each other. We tried to make up for it on the weekends, but even that was now getting strained. One of Leona’s new colleagues – a mousey grey woman called Heidi who was a year or two younger than us – had been called in from a neighboring town. She was commuting and had no intention of moving since she and her husband had just bought a house. That husband was Rick; Leona’s old boyfriend who was now working as an insurance agent. We found out (or rather, I found out – I’m now sure Leona had known for a while) when they joined us and Catherine and Lars for a Friday night out. That everyone danced with everyone was natural and not a problem at all, but I found Rick’s very close dancing with Leona objectionable. I could see in Heidi’s eyes that she wasn’t pleased either, but for the sake of the peace, I kept quiet. ______________________ Perhaps I shouldn’t have kept quiet. Perhaps an immediate protest – or even just mentioning that Heidi had looked hurt – would have stopped everything going to shit but I was afraid of overreacting. Also, since that one episode with the laundry, I had never suspected Leona of infidelity at all – and while saddened that we had so little time together because Leona was busy qualifying herself for her new extended responsibilities at work, I was proud of her and actually pretty pleased with my marriage at this point. Being sad that Leona wasn’t there was a good thing. But going out the next few weekends proved to be much the same – Leona and Rick danced much too closely. I also started noticing little looks between them that I didn’t care for much. I had very little to go on, though and possibly wouldn’t have found out what was going on at all if it wasn’t for running into Leona’s boss one Saturday when I was out shopping. Hank is a nice guy. I’m sure he really appreciated Leona and we had gotten on well the few times we’d met so when he asked how things were, like you do, I answered in a jocular tone, but only half joking, that I thought he monopolized my darling wife a bit too much with all those courses and seminars. He seemed surprised by that. “But it hasn’t been all that much recently – it was mainly in the beginning when she was new to the increased responsibility,” he protested. “What about that course every Tuesday that keeps her out until midnight,” I complained. “You mean every second Tuesday,” Hank defended. “It starts at midday and since I can’t manage with Leona and Heidi away at the same time, they take turns. But yeah, I know it goes on until late and being held so far away it does bring her home late. Sorry about that. But she does have Wednesday morning off.” I mumbled some conciliatory remark and left shaken. According to Leona that course was every Tuesday. I didn’t care to think what she was doing the other Tuesdays after work. I particularly didn’t care to think that Heidi was doing the course on those nights, leaving Rick free to do whatever he wanted to. And Leona had never told me about the Wednesday mornings off either. All up I thought it called for closer investigation, but before I could do that, Leona announced that her course was now only every second Tuesday and due to finish soon. I don’t know if Hank had mentioned our conversation and Leona wised up to me knowing about the schedule, or if the change had actually only happened now and Hank had just been defensive or had his chronology wrong. The chance to find out on the quiet was gone. Short of causing a stir and actually accusing Leona of dishonesty, I had to let it go. But the seeds of worry had been sowed. And it didn’t help my suspicions that our three-couple nights out suddenly stopped. We did occasionally still go out with Catherine and Lars, but not with Heidi and Rick. Not that I in any way missed the prick, but Leona never offered any explanation why people whose company she professed to enjoy were no longer invited. We carried on, but the brief sparkle that had given me so much hope after the shock of the drug raids soon faded. We were still civil to one another, but getting over the barrier and actually falling in love for real? Not a chance. Around this time Bex graduated – with exceptional grades – and she returned to our town to work at the family law firm. At first she had to pass the bar examination (having done her MPRE while still at law school), so she essentially just helped out clearing up a backlog of stuff for Gene without client contact while preparing for the bar examination. She got ready for the biannual examination in only a few months, passing that without any problems. She was now ready to have her own clients. I turned out to be one of the first. ______________________ Things had spiraled downwards at home. The civility ceased; gradually Leona returned to her bitchy worst. It was mainly targeted at me, but my parents were also on the receiving end of her ire. Nothing I, or they, could do was right. Sex dried up completely too – she even belittled my abilities in bed which was interesting to say the least given that great sex had always been about the only thing we truly shared. At first I tried to talk to her which failed. Then I tried to romance her which got ridiculed. In the end I gave up trying. We were still sleeping in the same bed, but we never touched – any and all overtures were scornfully rejected by Leona. Her many courses and seminars had finished so as far as I could tell she had little opportunity to cheat on me, and yet I was certain that she did. I can’t explain how I knew, I just did. Of course that kind of “knowledge” is no good to anyone. I decided to try to get rock solid proof and requested the assistance of a detective agency. They were very professional and totally above board, explaining to me what was legal evidence in a court of law and what was not. Asking me carefully about what I knew of Leona’s schedule it was obvious that her best and possibly only chance for sneaking around was Wednesday mornings when she didn’t work. Again I am possibly open to reproach. Should I have told her what I knew or suspected? Could I live with any more scorn and uncertainty? Shouldn’t I just have instigated divorce proceedings over “irreconcilable differences?” Possibly. But I think I was tired of being played the fool and I wanted my ducks in line. Two weeks later I had a message from the manager of the detective agency, asking me to call. We set up a meeting at the dealership during the lunch break on the Friday. His news was disturbing: His people had followed Leona and already on the first Wednesday she had gone to a motel just outside town to meet with someone – that someone being Rick, staying in a motel room for several hours before leaving. The detective stressed that they had no direct evidence of infidelity: They had no recording equipment inside the room, nor would it have been legal if they did. “So all you have is sworn evidence that my wife entered a motel room at a specific time and left it some hours later?” I asked. “That doesn’t help much, does it?” “Possibly not – although we have photographs of her entering and leaving and you might use that in a negotiation,” the detective conceded, “but we may be able to get legal hard evidence.” “How so?” I asked puzzled. It is only in bad cheating stories that couples get the same room week after week and clandestine cameras can be installed. And besides, that footage would be inadmissible in court although admittedly excellent for that negotiated settlement he mentioned. “Well, you see, they went to the same place the day before yesterday, but had to cancel their tryst”, the detective said almost chuckling. “Your wife ran into an acquaintance and had so scramble for an excuse for being there. My colleague, dressed as a cleaner, overheard that. She also overheard your wife cancelling the morning’s entertainment and suggesting they should come to your house instead.” I felt sick. Leona was not only cheating on me, she was willing to do it in our marriage bed. “I can install cameras in your house if you like Mr. Henderson,” the detective said. “That would be completely legal.” He had to repeat that – my head was spinning. “How soon?” I asked when I finally returned to the present. “Now,” he replied. “I have the equipment in my car. My colleague is keeping an eye on your wife in case she leaves the bank for any reason. Sign this document and lend me your keys – and the equipment will be installed in less than an hour.” I signed the form and handed him my house keys silently. My mind was made up. Let the bitch fry! An hour later the detective returned to the workshop. “It’s done,” he said. “I made a duplicate of the key so we can retrieve the media from the cameras. We’ll let it run for three weeks.” I had second thoughts that weekend and tried to engage Leona in conversation. I even brought up the unused voucher for the “repeat honeymoon”. I got nowhere. I considered moving back into the spare room, but decided that would just warn Leona I was on to something going on. Could I have stopped her cheating on me? Possibly not – only make her change tactics. Besides it might already have been too late; I doubt she spent over two hours in that motel room with golden bollocks playing scrabble. The next few days were endless. On Tuesday evening I tried one final time to save my marriage. Making up some completely fictitious appointment with my bank, I asked Leona if we could meet for morning coffee in town Wednesday morning. “Of course we can’t,” she said unpleasantly. “I have to work.” That final blatant lie sealed her fate. Thursday afternoon I had a call from the agency. “We have excellent footage,” he said, “but for your sake I suggest we carry on for another couple of weeks.” “Why so?” I asked. “Isn’t once enough?” “Oh, you would get a divorce in the divorce court on the strength of what we’ve got now with no difficulty Mr. Henderson,” he replied, “but there is such a thing as the court of public opinion. You’d be surprised how many cheating wives manage to salvage their reputations by claiming it was only a single moment of weakness, them falling prey to a womanizer when they were vulnerable due to their husband’s neglect.” “Yeah, Leona would do that,” I thought – with her bitch of a mother and circle of bitchy friends backing her up. “Go for it!” I said. “I’ll talk to my lawyer in the morning.” And so it was that on Friday morning I rang Anderson, Anderson and Anderson and asked to speak to Ms. Rebecca Anderson – the first time I had ever used her given name. “To what do I owe the honor?” Bex asked when I had been transferred through. “I need a divorce,” I replied. “Leona is cheating on me.” “Hmm,” was all Bex said. “Don’t say anything to anyone about it – especially not Leona. Come into my office on Monday and bring all the relevant papers.” ______________________ If the beginning of the week had felt long, the weekend was even longer. I couldn’t stand being in the house with Leona, but knew full well that my chances were better if I could keep up the charade for a couple of weeks. I invented some job I needed to help my parents with – resulting in an unpleasant comment from Leona – and managed to stay out of the house most of the time. Monday morning I went to the Anderson law firm as soon as they opened and was ushered in to Bex’ office. I explained what I had and showed her the preliminary report on the motel visit, mentioning that the bedroom in our house was now being monitored. Bex consulted briefly with Bert who reassured us that the footage from the house – which I didn’t have yet – would be admissible. He also knew the agency and could tell me that they had an excellent reputation with the courts. Bex was very cool and professional about it all, but when I gave her the pile of papers I had brought – marriage certificate, title to the house and what not, she zeroed in on the pre-nuptial agreement and her demeanor changed. She was positively ecstatic. “We’ll skin her,” she muttered. “Shame her and skin her.” She looked at me. “Listen carefully George,” she said with an intensity that was almost scary. “Let me handle this. Don’t tell anyone what we’ve got. Let’s wait until your detectives have more and then set the train moving.” Ten days later I had confirmation that the third set of footage was even more damning than the previous two. I called Bex who immediately had Leona served at the bank with divorce papers stating adultery as the fault – and Rick was served with an alienation of affection suit, our state being one of the few that still has this archaic notion on the books. I didn’t expect to gain anything from that suit, except punishing Rick and giving poor Heidi a heads-up. It wasn’t like I was breaking up a family for vengeance. There were no children involved and I honestly believed Heidi would be better off without the bastard. I had told my parents what was happening and Dad had instructed the secretaries that any and all calls from Leona should be directed to Bex. Two hours later Bex informed me that Leona had gotten herself a lawyer and that a preliminary meeting had been set up for that very afternoon. “That was quick work,” I commented. “The sooner she is out of your house, the better,” Bex said. “Oh, and by the way: She has retained Marion Somersby to represent her.” Bex sounded almost giddy. I was momentarily confused, and then the penny dropped. Marion Somersby was the mother of Ingrid – my date at that ghastly Senior Prom and one of Bex’ tormentors. “Listen George,” Bex said. “Don’t mention the photos from the house. We’ll just use the report from the motel for now. OK?” I mumbled OK and went home to scrub up a little – hoping Leona wouldn’t do the same. The meeting was held at the Anderson law firm’s very impressive main conference room. After a brief and very stiff round of formal introductions, Bex wasted no time tearing into Leona, berating her gross breach of her wedding vows, declaring her conduct a disgrace for a married woman. I was a little confused about Bex’ strategy which seemed to have no other purpose than enraging Leona – something in which she succeeded to the full. “I’m not having some flat-chested desiccated spinster lecture me on what a married woman can or can’t do,” Leona bristled. I was surprised that Leona knew to use the word ‘desiccated’, but not the least bit surprised that she would launch a personal attack on my legal representative. Especially when that representative was Bex. But Bex was unruffled. “I am not lecturing you, Mrs. Henderson. I am simply stating the fact that you are in breach of your marriage vows.” Then with a calm demeanor Bex delivered a stinger to end all stingers. “And as to my chest, consider this Mrs. Henderson: If I so desired I could have it augmented with implants. You try to get a brain implant.” Marion Somersby intervened. “I must protest against this gratuitous disparaging comment,” she blustered. It was my turn to chip in. “I agree entirely. I see you have no more luck at keeping Leona in check than I ever did.” The counsel’s attempts at regaining the lost ground were at first drowned out by Bex’ laughter. “You may find this amusing Ms. Anderson, but we don’t”; Marion Somersby finally intoned. “Infidelity is no laughing matter. Completely unsubstantiated claims of infidelity even less so.” “They are not unsubstantiated,” Bex shot back. “We have here a report from a respected detective agency that states that your client entered the motel room of a married man, not her husband, at ten in the morning and only left it two and a half hours later.” She drew out the report and two grainy pictures showing Leona entering and leaving the motel room. Leona and Marion Somersby exchanged confused glances. They looked like unspoken “is that all they’ve got?” questions. There was an uneasy pause. “My client was meeting with a friend,” Marion Somersby improvised. Seeing Leona’s energetic nodding, she continued. “My client categorically denies that anything of an adulterous nature took place during that meeting.” “Absolutely not,” Leona agreed. Marion Somersby was on a roll. “My client will not contest the divorce, only the reason. She was humiliated at her workplace today being served with divorce papers in front of colleagues and customers. She will be counter-filing – possibly citing extreme mental cruelty, or at least unreasonable behavior.” I was starting to counter that this would be unwise, reaching for the manila folder with first the two sets of incriminating photographs from home which had not yet been mentioned, when Bex grabbed my hand and pulled it away. She shot me a significant glance and I shut up. Leona and her counsel walked stiffly out of the conference room and left the premises at once. When the two harridans had left, Bex started laughing again – this time so loud that her brothers came to ask what it was all about. When she had finally stopped laughing, she waved them off and the two of us had a strategy meeting. “Let me handle this George,” Bex said. “Don’t worry about a thing. It seems Leona’s parents distrusted you, so the pre-nup is iron-clad. It’s ironic that it’s now coming back to bite them. In this state you would otherwise have to split 50-50 – and you could also end up having to pay alimony, but now you’ll get it all in court.” “Actually, it was Dad who insisted on the pre-nup,” I said – and Bex’ eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “But why do we have to go to court?” I continued. “Don’t you think she would back down if we showed her the pictures from home?” “If they ask, we have to give them the pictures under discovery rules,” Bex said. “But asking for such material would be tantamount to admitting that Leona has cheated on you; something they are desperate to avoid because of the pre-nup. Besides, I don’t want her to back down. I want her to hang herself.” There was that dangerous glint in her eyes again. I was about to protest, but stopped. I really wanted to hurt Leona and her sanctimonious parents over the humiliation – and I wasn’t going to deprive Bex a chance to revenge herself. If at any time Leona had apologized and admitted that the marriage had been a mistake and that we should just split up, I would have accepted the apology and moved on. I had willingly taken up with her and been perilously close to loving her. I meant her no harm. Instead she was hell-bent on cheating on me and humiliating me. If she was going to bring herself down, on her head be it! ______________________ Boy, did it work that way. Leona walked neatly into the trap and perjured herself. Bex opened by briefly presenting my case – that I was seeking an express divorce due to Leona’s infidelity and in consequence all communal assets in accordance with the provisions of the pre-nup. Leona’s counsel countered that the infidelity was all in my imagination; that nothing of an adulterous nature had ever taken place, at least involving her client, and that the frivolous suit should not only be rejected but it’s very filing used to grant Leona’s petition for divorce on the grounds of my manifestly unreasonable behavior. Further, the cow argued, rather than being penalized under the adultery provisions, due to this unreasonable behavior, her client ought to get not only the lion’s share of the communal assets – the separate ownership clause regarding my present and future share in Dad’s company ought to be set aside so Leona would get her fair share. Leona’s separate ownership was not to be touched as that pertained entirely to her inheritance before we married and I had done nothing to maintain that whereas Leona should be rewarded for the substantial and vital PR work she had done for the company over the years. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so mean. Our stunned silence gave Leona and her counsel the idea that their victory was a slam dunk. We had called the detective who made the original surveillance as our only witness and had instructed him that we only wanted to talk about the motel. He testified that he had seen Leona enter the room at 10 AM and leaving again at 12.30 PM. He did that professionally and I don’t think that any reasonable person would doubt that he was telling the truth. Marion Somersby didn’t. She didn’t want to question him but merely waved him off as completely insignificant and called Leona to the stand to ask her about her account of what the detective had seen that day. “It is correct that I was at the motel room that morning,” Leona said in what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech. “My old friend Rick Larsson was back in town on business and we agreed to meet and talk over a cup of coffee. I have Wednesday mornings off, so that worked fine.” “But you stayed in Mr. Larsson’s room, or so your husband’s detective informs us,” Marion Somersby prompted. “Rick’s morning appointments had been cancelled,” Leona said, “so he suggested that rather than heading out for coffee we could have it in his room – they are really nice and spacious – and then go out for lunch instead. If George’s stupid snitch had stayed around long enough then he would have seen Rick coming out the door a few minutes after me – he wanted to change into a nice shirt since he was having his business meeting immediately after our lunch.” “And you didn’t want to stay in a motel room with a man who wasn’t your husband while he changed his shirt?” Marion Somersby intoned. “Off course not,” Leona said, looking and sounding very prim. “That wouldn’t be proper.” “And you categorically deny that you have ever broken your wedding vows with Mr. Larsson or any other man?” Marion Somersby asked. “Never,” Leona said firmly. “Not with Rick or anyone else. Not at that motel or anywhere else.” She sat down, looking very smug. At that stage it was Leona’s game. We had no evidence of what had taken place inside the motel room – and even if we had, it would have been inadmissible. Leona and her counsel knew that. But there was something they didn’t know. Moments later they did! “We present to the court photographic evidence recorded at the Henderson residence at the instigation of the householder Mr. Henderson,” Bex said and handed the manila folder to the judge. He withdrew one of the prints, his eyebrows shot up and wordlessly he turned the image around to the courtroom. It showed Leona riding cow-girl on Rick. It was an excellent photograph from a technical point of view; the wedding photo of Leona and me was clearly visible on the dresser in the background. Mayhem erupted. Marion Somersby was screaming objections. Leona was simply screaming. Her parents, who were present, went ashen. The judge was merciless. Leona was called back to the witness stand. “Mrs. Henderson,” he said. “Not five minutes ago you assured this court under oath that you had never committed adultery with Mr. Larsson or anyone else anywhere. Your husband’s counsel has now presented evidence that you on at least three different occasions, according to the imprinted dates and times on these photographs,” – he waved the highly pornographic stack of prints around – “have had adulterous sexual relations with Mr. Larsson in your marriage bed. Would you care to explain that?” “I didn’t know the bastard had put a camera in the bedroom,” Leona said sullenly. “I bet she didn’t,” Bex said under her breath but with great mirth. “Wait for it – Judgment Day!” “I grant Mr. Henderson a divorce on the grounds of adultery,” the judge started. “The pre-nuptial agreement clearly stipulates that in case of infidelity, there will be no alimony and the wronged party will get all communal assets. Mr. Henderson will get the house, the cars and all monies in your savings accounts and…” “You mean I walk away with nothing except my shares from auntie?” Leona unwisely interrupted before her counsel could stop her. “No Ms. Henderson,” the judge said icily. “You do not walk away at all. For your blatant contempt of this court, I hereby sentence you to 60 days in a county jail. While you serve that the DA will prepare your trial for perjury. Officer – take the prisoner away.” His gavel sounded doubly loud over the stunned silence. The only sound to break the silence was the thud of Mrs. Ingleby fainting and dropping to the floor. Before mayhem again erupted I distinctly heard Bex mumble “one down, two to go.” When I looked at her there was a strange calm to her face. ______________________ I left the court essentially a free man. By the time Leona was out of jail, the divorce would be final. Bex was bubbly. ”I told you not to worry George,” she repeated. “You are rid of the slut, your business interest is intact and you have a clear title to the house.” “And the mortgage,” I added gloomily. “And I doubt I can sell the house, not in this economic climate. It was much too big for two people in the first place. It will be absurdly so for one.” “You don’t have to stay single George,” Bex said. “Once you’re over Leona, I’m sure some nice – nice – woman will catch your eye.” She was looking at me with a different glint in her eyes. “You know George; this is my first real case. Perhaps I should use the fee to get a boob-job. So some eligible recently divorced bachelor might notice me…” “No Bex, NO!” I exclaimed in horror. “Please don’t do that. You will ruin your breasts that way. A lot of women end up with no sensitivity at all and they can’t feed their babies – and it will always be obvious at closer inspection that the breasts are fakes anyway.” “Have you considered that I would rather have a dodgy closer-inspection than never having any inspection at all?” Bex said sadly. “Real men don’t care about breast size,” I countered. “Only boys do that. Real men do not distinguish between small and large breasts.” “Yeah right,” Bex scoffed. “What do these fictitious real men then distinguish between?” “Accessibility,” I replied without hesitation. “Breasts they can have access to versus those they can’t. It is much more interesting to play with a pair of real live breasts no matter what size, than looking at a pair of melons that are out of reach.” Bex looked at me for the longest time with an inscrutable expression, and then left without further comment. I forgot about the conversation for the time being; I had a lot on my plate. Getting home, I immediately called a moving firm and had them pack up all Leona’s clothes and personal items, including some furniture that she had brought into the marriage. I kept everything else. I went along to the Ingleby residence and helped unload the lot on Leona’s parents’ veranda. Mr. and Mrs. Ingleby were both home and came out – Mrs. Ingleby looking like a ghost, Mr. Ingleby still with some fight in him. “Don’t you think you ought to give her another chance after all that time you’ve been together?” he asked. I told him I had given Leona a chance after the drug-raid episode and that things had been going quite well until she decided to cheat on our marriage. “Did you really have to send her to jail?” he pleaded and now he just looked like a hurt and bewildered parent. I almost felt sorry for him, but only a little – I could remember how I had been treated over the years. “I had nothing to do with that,” I said. “She brought that down on herself.” “That’s not how Marion looks at it,” Mr. Ingleby countered. Marion Somersby was an old friend of theirs and they would have been in close contact. “She said it is unheard of to spring additional evidence like that on your opponent in court. The decent thing would have been to show your hand in the pre-court meetings. Then there probably wouldn’t have been the need for court at all. It could have been handled quietly.” I knew he had a point. I had wanted to show those pictures, but Bex hadn’t let me. I had in essence let Bex set a trap and it had worked beautifully: Leona got 60 days in jail and Marion Somersby’s reputation was in the toilet: One thing is to lose a case when your client is clearly guilty. Another is to have your client going to jail in a divorce case because you haven’t instructed her adequately. Of course there was also the humiliation of the Inglebys. Their daughter was now indelibly stamped as a cheating lying adulterous whore with a criminal record. Their standing in the community must have taken a nose-dive. “Take that you pompous assholes,” I thought. Instead I merely shrugged. “I wasn’t feeling very charitable,” I said neutrally. “Neither was my counsel.” ______________________ It was the last time I ever saw Leona’s parents. The humiliation was too much for them and they moved away. I never saw Leona again either. I presume that she went to live with her parents when she got out of jail. I know she didn’t serve the full 60 days. There wasn't even a trial for perjury - that practically never happens in divorce cases - but it made no difference: The bank summarily dismissed her – you can’t hold an office of trust in a bank if you have been convicted of contempt of court. The complete humiliation of Leona and her counsel was of course general knowledge in town – in fact little else was talked about and the local paper had reported extensively from the court. Marion Somersby’s business took a hammering, and while the alienation of affection suit against Rick, as expected, came to nothing, Rick didn’t get off scot free by any means. Heidi filed for divorce and skinned him. To make matters worse for him, two major customers of Rick’s protested to his employers at the insurance company that on that fateful Wednesday morning it was Rick who had cancelled the appointments so he could screw Leona at the motel, not the other way around. He got dismissed at once. I didn’t date anyone for a while – at first because technically I was still married , then when the 60 days were up simply because I felt I’d had enough of women. Dad and the guys at work were great; they helped me remove all signs of Leona from the house – changing the décor and color schemes to something of my liking. We practically nuked the master bedroom, giving away the bed and Leona’s dresser to Goodwill. It still didn’t feel like home so without expecting much, I put the house on the market. To my surprise it sold quickly at close to the asking-price. Sure, I had set the price low and so I didn’t have all that much equity, but I didn't lose my shirt either. I moved back to the little bachelor pad at work – five years older, and – hopefully – wiser. Over those next couple of months I didn’t see Bex all that often, but when I did she looked, well, restless, for lack of a better word. After her stunning and devastating success representing me, she was naturally suddenly very sought after for divorce cases, but her heart wasn’t in it and before she had been a practicing lawyer for a year, she changed career completely and became an assistant DA. Fred Buchanan, the ambitious DA who had busted a lot of Leona’s friends a while back, was now up for reelection and boosted his tough-on-drugs credentials by presenting Bex as his new star recruit – a top Yale graduate, a local girl, a scion of a respected legal firm, and someone known for her ruthlessness. It looked good, and Bex, dressed sharply in a severe business suit, said all the right things at the press conference. She was ecstatic about getting the chance to work with a DA who really cared about eradicating the curse of recreational drugs. She had personally seen promising scholars and athletes throwing it all away. There should be zero tolerance. There should be no misguided permissiveness. There should be no cozy plea bargains. The DA looked delighted and his poll numbers shot up. And Bex set to work with devastating efficiency. Before a month had passed, several raids had busted not only another couple of dozen users whose lives turned to hell; the raids had also landed a few dealers. Not exactly big fish, but they were promenaded in front of rolling TV cameras and set up for a big fall. During interrogation they squealed like pigs, as such low-lives are known to do, ratting on all and sundry to try to get off cheaply. No-one more so than Mike Dupres who would have sold his late mother if it could have helped him. It didn’t – Bex and her colleagues patiently listened to all he had to say, and then used it against him in court. His inexperienced public defender didn’t manage to suppress the evidence or have the doors closed and thus it became public knowledge that Mike Dupres had ratted on his suppliers from a notorious biker gang. He was sentenced to a couple of years, but he hadn’t even served two weeks before he was found dead in the workshop at the prison. The autopsy report, also made public, indicated that his death had been slow and very painful bordering on the sadistic. There were no actual biker gang inmates at the time but plenty of criminals willing to buy themselves favors. The murder was never solved. The DA deftly deflected the criticism away from his office in general and away from Bex in particular so the incompetent public defender ended up taking most of the heat. The DA and Bex both expressed conventional regret over the death but managed to make it very clear that they considered the likes of Mike Dupres utterly expendable, an excellent example of what they were fighting and his death a good riddance. The election came and the DA was reelected in a landslide. Bex soldiered on and had another round of raids on clubs, catching small fry – recreational users who still believed they could get away with using coke. I don’t think many people knew that our year at high school was overrepresented in the group who weren’t offered a plea bargain and a warning, but I certainly noticed that Bex showed no mercy to anyone who’d been at school with us. Her next target was the illicit drug market in connection with sports. Once more the media was tipped off about the raids and footage of embarrassed gym users having their bags searched and dubious “supplements” confiscated for closer scrutiny filled the news bulletins for days. The DA was on vacation when a major raid on the high school gym facilities took place. They didn’t find all that much, but there were some steroids in addition to hypodermic needles and other “drug taking paraphernalia” as Bex called them during the press conference. “DA Buchanan has fought a lonely war against the curse of drugs in our community for years,” Bex intoned. “At long last our enlightened politicians have increased his budget to help him with his struggles. While he and Maureen take a well-deserved second honeymoon we continue Fred’s good work. Nothing is closer to Fred’s heart than the safety of our youth. Keeping drugs out of our community is his life’s calling. This one’s for you Fred!” The media loved her. The politicians loved her. The public loved her. She could do no wrong. Whatever she asked for she was given. So she went for the kill. The football player who’d had the steroids and his coach were both arrested. Next Bex decided to “follow the money”. She singled out a local building supplies company – O’Leary’s Building Supplies who had been in the town for over a century and who was but one of the sponsors. Not a lot of money – they couldn’t afford it, but they wanted to be seen supporting local sports. Because the owner was too busy trying to keep his business afloat against the cut-throat competition from large national chains and after an expensive generational change involving his ailing dad and a grasping step-mother, he realized too late what a rotten egg that sponsorship had turned into. All other sponsors had publically cancelled their sponsorships, devastating the sports programs at our old school, but young O’Leary hadn’t. He hadn’t had the time or the focus. Not “distancing himself from the illegal drugs” made him “suspicious” in Bex’ eyes. Or so she said. The media fought over who could agree the most and ran stories questioning the legitimacy of the entire business. The customers stayed away in droves and not surprisingly the banks baulked over the bad publicity, and pulled the plug on the credit. Within weeks the business went under. The young owner, after having had to lay off all his staff – some of whom had served his father longer than he himself had lived – blew out his brains. He was twenty eight years old. His two year younger widow was called Stacey O’Leary – neé Stevens. She had one child aged two and one on the way when she became a destitute widow. This time the tough-on-drugs strategy backfired. The public was not impressed and the image of the highly pregnant Stacey standing with a toddler next to the open grave in the pouring rain was hard to shake off. The DA called Bex in for a “strategy realignment discussion” and Bex cheerfully resigned, taking up an open offer to rejoin her brothers’ law firm where she quickly decided to specialize on company law, having lost all interest in criminal or family law. ______________________ Bex’ revenge mission was complete: The gang of three had been viciously punished with Mike dead, Stacey widowed and Leona crushed. In addition to them, a number of the lesser tormentors had been punished directly or indirectly. Again I doubt that very many people besides Bert, Gene and me could see the pattern. To most people the cases of Mike and Stacey just looked like an over-zealous assistant DA, and few would make a connection to Leona’s case – after all, my ex-wife had blatantly lied in court over adultery. And all those people busted for coke, well, they chose to snort the stuff, didn’t they? So, yeah, mission accomplished. But I personally wondered if Bex was any happier. I saw her rarely. I wasn’t deliberately staying away from her, but we hadn’t really been close at all since she came back and besides Dad was starting to slow down a bit, leaving more and more responsibility to me. Although just into his fifties, his knees were causing him trouble which is not unusual in our profession so he came in less, choosing instead to spend time with Mom doing the garden and starting to plan their retirement. Florida was mentioned and I agreed that the climate was pleasant there, even if my only trip to Florida had been a disaster. But as I said, I wondered about Bex and my concern proved well-founded when I finally did run into her one day at, of all places, my parents’ house. I was taking Dad home around lunch time. He had been in for some crucial negotiations with the importers of one of the foreign brands we also sold and since he had just undergone a, by the way completely successful, knee replacement operation, he wasn’t driving himself. We parked the car and I went in with Dad to get some papers when I heard voices from the kitchen. It was Mom and Bex. Bex was crying. “I can’t get those images out of my head Millie,” she sobbed. “Pregnant Stacey in the rain with her little fatherless boy and the despairing vista of Mr. Dupres who looks ancient now – wife gone and Mike tortured to death in prison. And even Leona’s fate haunts me. Sure she lied and cheated on George, but she is unemployable after having been to jail and her poor proud parents had to leave town.” Mom was trying to comfort her. “Hush sweetheart, don’t be so hard on yourself. Mike and Stacey and Leona tormented you for no reason. They went out of their way to be mean to you and never offered any apologies. Why, Leona continued using derogatory epithets about you after she married George.” “But Timothy O’Leary did me no harm, and neither did his little boy or the baby girl he never got so see,” Bex was sobbing, “and I know for a fact that Mr. Dupres gave Mike a serious scolding after Mike had lost any chance of an traineeship with Todd over the Prom incident.” “I think that was mostly because Mr. Dupres himself had been humiliated,” Mom said drily. “But yes, I can see your point. Revenge rarely satisfies in the long term. The best vengeance is to live well.” “But how?” Bex said – the despair clear in her voice. “I’ve wasted my life hating; plotting revenge on my enemies. School enemies. Isn’t that pathetic? Who would want me now? The only person I ever loved married one of those enemies and I turned his painful and deeply private divorce into a public spectacle to extract my revenge. He must hate me now.” “I’m sure he doesn’t,” Mom said, “he…” I heard no more – I signaled to Dad that I wanted to leave without Bex knowing I had been there. I didn’t want to embarrass her. Besides, I had some serious thinking to do. ______________________ “The only person I ever loved – the only person I ever loved – the only person I ever loved”: The words, in the anguished voice of Bex, kept going through my head on the way back to work. It had hit me like a sledgehammer. She loves me. She has always loved me. How could I have been so blind, so stupid, so insensitive? Going out with half her tormentors, fucking them and telling her about it, knocking up and marrying one of the ringleaders? Who was really the worst tormentor of Bex? A bunch of stupid school kids, or her friend from infancy whom she had loved totally and unconditionally and who in return let her down so completely? I could see that now, and I didn’t like myself. Not one bit. I wasn’t much good for anything at work, so I left the workshop and showrooms in the hands of our capable deputies and drove back to talk to Mom. I demonstratively slammed the door of my car, and even rang the doorbell just in case Bex was still there, but she had left and my bemused mother asked me what had gotten into me. “Mom, I heard most of what you and Bex were talking about this afternoon,” I blurted out. “So I gather from what your father told me,” Mom said neutrally. She wasn’t going to let me off the hook easily. That much was certain. “I must be the biggest dork in Christendom,” I exclaimed. “I will not argue that point, George,” Mom replied – still neutrally, but there was now a hint of a sparkle in her eyes. “I mean, regarding Bex,” I explained, completely unnecessarily. “Indeed,” Mom agreed, still yielding no ground. I suddenly had an inspiration. “If I recall rightly it was mainly Dad who wanted to adopt her when her parents died, right?” “And?” Mom prompted, not sounding so neutral anymore and with the beginning of a smile on her lips. “Could that be because you wanted her to be a different kind of daughter?” I asked. “Did it really take you almost ten years to work that out?” Mom asked back, now smiling for real. “Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees,” I sighed. “But it’s not too late, is it?” I added – sounding no doubt hopeful and feeling that I had taken twenty years off my age and submitted my doubts and fears and worries into the capable hands of my mother. “I should think not,” Mom replied. “But remember: Bex is ultra-fragile now. She has used all of her incredible resourcefulness to extract a terrible revenge, only to find out how bitter it tastes. She will need a lot of loving and understanding. Besides, she still has a very poor self-body-image.” “I told her real men don’t worry about that,” I said. Mom was nodding, so I assume Bex must have told her about that exchange. “I don’t know that I can help her with her breasts,” I mused. Mom smiled broadly. “Actually, you can.” “How so?” I asked puzzled. Mom’s answer was indirect and somewhat convoluted. “Do you remember Constance, Bex’ mother?” she asked. “Of course I do,” I replied. “I mean, really remember what she looked like?” Mom insisted. I thought for a moment, calling up the image of Mrs. Anderson. “Yeah, I think so.” “How would you describe her?” Mom asked. I sensed my answer was important and hesitated. “Well, she was slender,” I eventually said. “Very good looking, actually, for someone close to sixty.” I was threading carefully here, knowing that Mom and Mrs. Anderson had been very good friends. Mom smiled, pleased with my answer. “How would you describe her build? And don’t claim you didn’t notice. Teenaged boys check out every woman they see.” The last was said in a jocular voice and we both laughed a little. “Nice!” I replied without hesitation. “I mean, sure, she was very slender so of course she wasn’t massive up front, but yeah, nice. I remember her filling out a bikini nicely in the summers at the pool.” “I bet you remember,” Mom said with a grin. Suddenly her face was serious. “Would it surprise you to know that back when she married Archie, Constance looked exactly like what Bex does now?” “Gee,” I said – totally surprised. “Did she have a boob-job or something?” Mom laughed. “Try ‘or something’. She got pregnant and before anyone could tell from her belly, her breasts had grown from nothing to those large B-cups you lusted over.” “Wow!” I exclaimed, ignoring the barb. “I didn’t know that could happen.” “It does,” Mom said. “It’s not nearly as infrequent as you think. And it runs in families. Constance said her mother was the same.” I got the point. Completely. Also the unspoken message. Now to win the girl. ______________________ In the end it was not nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I raced into town, leaving my car strewn rather than parked outside the Anderson law firm. I made it up the stairs in a few long strides, surging past the astonished secretaries in the front office and entered Bex’ office unannounced. She looked up startled from the papers she was working on. “George, what are you doing…” she started, but I held up my hand to stop her. “I heard you talking to Mom today,” I said. “Almost all of it. The bits I didn’t hear I guessed.” Bex colored up beet red and started to speak again, but once more I stopped her. “I’ve been an idiot,” I declared. “An insensitive lout. I am so sorry. So desperately sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. I have always loved you; I only realized that now. I don’t want to live without you. I can’t live without you. Please, will you marry me?” Bex had been gaping at me. She looked bewildered, no doubt wondering if this was really happening. “Please,” I repeated in a pleading voice. “Please Bex. I love you. I want you. I need you. Marry me!” “Yes!” she squealed and flew in my arms which is how her brothers and their staff found us a few moments later. “At long last,” Gene said and shooed everyone out. As I had expected Bex’ self-doubt surfaced almost as soon as the initial shock and delight over my proposal had subsided. “How can you marry someone like me,” she said – indicating her flat chest. “Who says I have to?” I replied flippantly “But you said you didn’t want me to get implants,” Bex said sounding hurt. “You don’t need them. Use your mother’s and your grandmother’s solution,” I countered. “What do you mean?” Bex asked. I explained it to her. “You mean to say that your mother as good as told you to get me pregnant before we’re married?” Bex asked incredulously when I had told her what Mom had said. “Yup,” I replied. “If you don’t want to get married looking flat, that’s the solution.” “Is she for real?” Bex mused. “Totally. Don’t forget she’s the one who urged me to masturbate rather than just waking up with wet pajamas,” I said. Bex shook her head slowly. “Besides,” I added, “she wants grandchildren. The sooner the better.” “How soon can we start?” Bex asked – a beautiful flush having returned to her cheeks. “When do you get off work?” I asked back. By way of answer she took me by the hand and dragged me upstairs to the apartment. Only hours and hours later did I realize that Bert and Gene had gone out to dine that evening. ______________________ EPILOGUE: It took six weeks to get Bex pregnant during which we found out what we liked and didn’t like sexually. Our compatibility was very very high. A further eight weeks, and Bex had a nice bosom which filled the classical wedding gown well. Her breasts, already very sensitive when they were essentially nipples-only, got even more so while they grew and more and more of our love-making involved her breasts. Bex ended up being able to have multiple orgasms from oral nipple stimulation only. The cut of that wedding dress, by the way, discreetly hid the tiny bulge on her no longer completely flat belly. Everyone would be able to work it out from the timing when the baby came, but it mattered to Bex to hide it so it mattered to me. And on the wedding day it was invisible. Gene gave her away and the wedding was beautiful. Mom bawled her eyes out – I think her happiness was only the tiniest smidgen less than ours. I am sure there are plenty of brides who are truly loved by their mothers in law, but I refuse to believe any bride has ever been more loved than Bex is by Mom. Of course the ghosts from Bex’ past, especially from her revenge campaign, popped up from time to time. There was nothing we could do about Mike – he was dead and his father died before we were married. We also felt that Mike had brought it all on himself – the original unprovoked deceit, the drug dealing, the willingness to tell on his suppliers. Not much room for sympathy. I felt the same way about Leona. To this day I don’t know why she acted the way she did around me: why she cheated rather than simply divorce me and why she so blatantly lied in court. OK, she wasn’t the brightest light in the chandelier, but surely she must have known that lying in court was a poor idea. Not much sympathy for her either, and when we learnt that she had finally found a secretarial job that would support her, we stopped worrying about her completely. But when it came to the collateral damage it was the fate of Stacey that caused most heartache. Bex struggled for a long time with what to do. She tried to contact Stacey but was angrily rejected. In the end we found out that an education fund had been set up for the O’Leary children. It was managed by another law firm in town and while the original donations had been many, the sum raised was small. Bex had loads of money and she donated enough to the fund to ensure that both the little O’Learys would be able to go to a top college, should they want to. The donation was anonymous of course, but we got some measure of acknowledgement one day when Bex and I were walking down the main street. We passed Stacey coming in the other direction with her children. The smallest smile of gratitude flashed over Stacey’s face and then she had passed us and the moment was over. Shortly after that we heard that she had remarried and moved away – we never saw her again and we never talked about her either. Bex’ wealth also meant that we could buy back her childhood home when it came on the market and do it up for the now five of us. Having us next door meant that Mom and Dad changed their retirement plans. They only go to Florida during parts of winter, spending the rest of the year with us. We keep the door in the wall in very good repair. And Bex agrees with Mom: The best revenge is to live well. THE END.