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From: taria29c@aol.com (Taria29c)
Subject: RP Ancient Taria: Art Appreciation Part Three (#1/3)
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Over 18 only please.

Art Appreciation Part Three: Denouement
by Taria
_______________________________________

     Beep-beep.  BEEP BEEP.  BEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEP!  I leaned on the
horn of my Toyota, my wussy Made-In-Taiwan little Road Runner "meep-meep"
ain't-I-cute horn.  I sighed and extended my lower lip, blowing upwards so
a stray tendril of hair wiggled a little but pretty much stayed put,
dangling down in front of my pointy sunglasses.  I wasn't going anywhere,
and what's more, I knew I wasn't going anywhere.  So did all the other
drivers spending their dinner time stranded on the Parkway (or as I liked
to call it, the "Parking-Way") along with me.

     I was tired, cranky, and tense.  I could tell I was tense by the way
I sat in my too-narrow bucket seat, hunched over the steering wheel I was
clutching with both hands.  That and the fact that I was barking insults
at the perky Afternoon Radio Nitwits and pounding away at my so-called
horn out of sheer cussedness.  MEEEEEEEEEP MEEEEEEEEEEP MIP**  I quit
pressing in a hurry as I noticed the guy in front of me gesticulating
wildly out his window. "Aaaaaah, screw you," I responded.  But I only
whispered it under my breath.  His hand quieted down, withdrew back into
his car.  I could see him looking angrily up at his rear-view mirror.
Suddenly the traffic began to move.  His brake lights flickered out. 
*Blink!*  On they went again. We all crawled forward two inches, and then
came to a dead stop.

Jeez...what a day...and it looked like the evening wasn't going to get any
better.  Actually, it hadn't been so bad.  Just weird, that's all.  My
so-called "office," my little cubicle with brown padded walls, occupies a
strategic location where I work.  It's right by the little water cooler
and coffee stand (they're too cheap to even get us a real kitchenette)
where everybody tends to congregate as often as possible.  Unfortunately
it's not right next to the refreshment stand, but right behind it.  That
is, the caffeine is on the other side of my brown padded wall.  To get
there I have to get up, turn around, make a quick left, a right, another
right, a short left and a quick right, making sure I don't bang my knee on
the printer stand with our three printers (nowhere nearly enough for the
fifty-five people working in the office).  I always feel like a lab rat
trapped in some horrible felt maze before I get my caffeine pellet.  It'd
be quicker to just hurdle the wall.

Of course, being three feet from the water hole severly impedes my working
habits.  That is to say, I can never get anything done, because I'm too
busy eavesdropping on everybody's gossip.  I always figured everyone knew
I was listening in, but then again, they might not.  I'm pretty
closemouthed at the office, and besides, if I ever let on that I knew
everyone's dirt it'd spoil the fun.  This way I get to listen in without
having to pretend I'm not listening when I really am. No sidewise glances
or elaborate pretense for me--I just stare down at my desk and listen with
all my might.

Most of the time it's just bitching about who's not pulling their weight,
who got promoted, who's a pain in the ass.  But I knew coming in this
morning that today was going to be good.  It was a Monday, the first day
back after a Pay Day weekend and the Friday paycheck.  That meant the good
stuff...drinking, fighting, romance, heartbreak, maybe a little sex, wild
and passionate or completely forgettable (maybe with someone they had
already forgotten).  After a couple years of marriage--and especially
after a couple months of my hubby's El Projecte Grande--excitement of any
sort was welcome.  A live soap opera, and all I had to do was be a voyeur.
 Frankly, it was a cheap thrill and I was looking forward to it.

The morning's entertainment was strictly lowbrow stuff.  A few of the
Marketing blowhards came by early to meet 'n greet 'n eat, spewing donut
crumbs all over each other while they rhapsodized about some playoff or
other.  "Arfle marfle JORDAN?!?"  "FrrrFrrrf Greffshky, Man..."  I zoned
out for Monday Morning Sports Talk and got cracking on some late reports. 
The next thing I knew it must've been midmorning--no windows, so of course
I couldn't tell--and I was dropping my report, craning my neck so I could
get closer to the wall. 

"Ah'm tellin' ya, honey,"--that was Rhonda; the way she spoke always
reminded me of Isabel Sanford, with that husky Louise Jefferson "Movin' On
Up" attitude.  "He was really SOMEthin'.  Mmm, mmm, MMM!" 

"Aw, c'MAWN, Rawn-daaaa!"  Carla.  Had to be Carla.  She was a Melanie
Griffith (like in "Working Girl") secretary straight out of central
casting.  "I just gotta get maw than thaaaat.  Dee-tails!  Dee-tails!"

"Well, you know, honey," Rhonda chuckled, a dry throaty sound.  "I ain't
one to kiss and tell, but that man sure knows his way around a body.  He
can just...mmm-MMM!"

"Sooooooooooooo..." said Carla, trailing off nasally.  "Whaaaat???" 
Silently I echoed. Whaaaaat?!?!?

"I tell you, girl-FRIEND.  A little of THIS...a little of THAAAT...and
then..."

And THEN?  And THEN?!?!?

"Mmmmm-HMMM!  Best damn souffle I EVER saw.  It had that nice crust, you
know? And it was browned, and tasty??  I tell you..."  Their voices
trailed off, and I heard Carla say "Oh, yew are just SOOOO lucky that he
can COOK, I'm telling you, MOYYYY JER-reee he is just com-PLETE-ly LAWST
any time he has to make his own dinnah..."

FOOD?!  If I wanted to hear about hot food I could get a job at
McDonald's.  I wanted something juicier and spicier than a souffle today,
but it didn't look as if I was agoing to get it. The Sports Guys returned
shortly later--"Frrrrckn A!  Whrrrt ur frrckn PLAY!!!" <SLRRP>--followed
by the Whiny Accounting Guys, the Boss-Hates-Me Girls, and the Flirty
Interns.  Actually the Interns weren't too bad, but after a while they
started to grate on my nerves and I started dropping phone books on my
desk.  The sudden revelation that they were not alone sent them scurrying
back to wherever it is that Interns go to stay out of the line of fire,
and again I was alone.  I was getting desperate for something, anything,
that might add some life to the dullest Monday I could recall.

My salvation appeared late in the afternoon, when most of the office was
sunk deep into a haze of work-performing concentration.  I was stretching,
my arms extended over my head, my face turned unpleasantly into one of my
pits, a little grunt of work-related displeasure on my lips. I felt gritty
and grumpy, I smelled bad, I was out of sorts, and to top it off the week
was just beginning, and tomorrow I'd be waking up to start this all over
again.  As I rubbed my eyes and returned to the blurry report in my hands,
I noticed the brown "wall" before me bending in a little. Then I heard a
whisper, so low that I could not recognize the voice of the whisperer. 
"He did WHAT?" the voice hissed, conveying amazement and fascination at
the same time.  I leaned forward and listened closer, the report
forgotten.

"I mean, up until then it was just so great," the other speaker, a woman,
responded.  "I mean"--I heard her voice drop down an octave, turning
sultry, intimate--"he was just so hot, with his big arms and his tight
buns and his tight little jeans.  We were just all over each other
practically right away, at the bar.  I mean, we slow danced, and he was
rubbing against me, and I was rubbing against him, and he could even
dance, you know?  And when we left and we got a cab back to his place, I
just thought "oooo, yes...let's just go on up, Stud..." 

I was thinking "oooo, yes," myself.  I was listening so hard I was almost
forgetting to breathe.  She paused a minute, probably sipping coffee or
something.  The other person--now I could tell it was another
woman--prompted her, as eager for details as I was.  "...And?" 

"And so we got up into his place, and we were, you know, making out on the
couch, and one thing led to another, and let me tell you, he looked better
out of his clothes than he did in 'em. I mean, just rubbing that chest
with my hands was incredible, it was so broad, and so hard and smooth. 
And he was kissing me, and undressing me, and it was so hot!"  I wondered
if she was smiling.  She sounded like she might be.  "So what *happened*?"
the other woman asked, a little urgently.  I wanted to know, myself. 

"I mean, it was just so FREAKY.  I mean, one minute we're hot and heavy,
and we're in the bedroom, and I'm about to ask him if he has a condom or
something, and the next thing I know he turns over, and he's sort of...I
dunno, hunching his ass or something."  I heard a sharp intake of breath
from her audience.  "I'm telling you, he's, like, thrusting his ass up in
the air, and when my hands touch it a little he's moaning, and he's
spreading his knees apart and I'm like, just hold ON a minute what the
hell is going on here, and he says "yes, yes" and I am NOT with this
program, whatever it is."  "Holy shit!" interjected the other woman.  "I
am *telling* you, it was really odd," she continued.  "I mean, I don't
know if he wanted me to play with his ass, or get into some kind of weird
anal thing or something, but I just could not deal.  I mean, he was just
so strong and buff-looking, and such a great kisser, I just never figured
him for some weird kind of anal pervert!"

"So what'd you do??" asked the listener, and I watched as the woman
bounced a little off the other side of my padded cubicle wall.  "I got the
hell out, is what I did.  I mean, my one hard-and-fast rule is NO FREAKS,
and I wasn't about to get into anything with some guy I just met at a
bar!"  I heard both women drop something in the little trash receptacle by
the coffee stand, their half-full coffee cups, by the sloshy sound of it. 
As they walked away I could hear the listener murmur "you never can tell,
can you?", and then they were gone. 

I blinked my eyes a little in a sudden flash of sun as I came around a
curve, and I pulled down the visor to cut off the blinding flash.  This
traffic mess should clear up soon, I thought, figuring that the Expressway
exit should come up any minute.  Thinking back, I wasn't exactly sure
about why the woman had been so upset about the whole encounter.  Sure, it
might have been a little weird for the guy to have been moaning and
wiggling his ass like that, but why should that be so awful?  She was
willing to sleep with the guy, after all, to let a total stranger stick
his penis right into her.  So what, then--her orifices are OK, but his are
off-limits?  I chuckled, wriggling around a little in the hot interior of
my car.  Well, girls who play with strange dicks have to expect some
assholes, I thought, and in her case that was literally true; I felt a
giggling fit wash over me.  But then we were moving, and Mister Angry Guy
in front of me was angling right to get off onto the Expressway, and as my
lane sped up I hit the horn twice--MEEP MEEP--in a Road Runner salute, and
then I *was* the Road Runner as my car sped up and
rocketed down the Parkway until my exit, and I hit all the green lights
and didn't slow down until I
was home.

I clomped in through the front door and dropped my stuff in the living
room--screw it, let him yell at me when he gets home, if he gets home at
all--and was halfway down the hallway when I noticed a light on in the
kitchen.  "Sweetie?" I called, a little shocked at the possibility that
Mark would be home before I was, especially lately.  I popped into the
kitchen, ready to squeeze the life out of him with an anaconda hug of pure
love, when I was brought up short.  On the table was a single white rose,
and a note.

You bastard.  You damned son-of-a-bitch.  I was cursing before I even
opened the envelope.  It had been months now that he had been working on
this project, putting in late hours every night, working weekends, jetting
off to other cities on business trips, breaking dinner dates and standing
me up.  What was next?  "Sorry, Baby, but Larry says I gotta go to
Uzbekistan for more specs?"  Extended project deadlines that would last
through July 1998?  Prepared for the worst I mangled the envelope open.

"Hi Sweetie," read the note, in his neat, tiny little handwriting. 
"Before you blow up, read this:

Sleeping in our Big Old Bed
Is a Husband who is Dead
I know that I have been no fun,
But my Project, she is DONE
Two days are allotted me
For my quick recovery
For most of that time I sleep
Far away in dreamland deep;
I'll arise upon Day Three
And devote myself to Thee
What you want is what you'll get
And I LOVE YOU--don't forget!!!!

>From Thursday and on I am yours until after the weekend, and I promise to
make up for everything.  I love you,  MARK."

I put the note back down and tried to scowl at it, but the frown turned
upside down and I was smiling by the time I walked over to my bedroom
door.  Inside I could just make out the big lumpy shape of my exhausted
husband prostrate on our bed, snoring softly.  Quietly I disrobed and got
into some more comfortable clothes, and then returned once again to an
empty kitchen to prepare a lonely dinner for one.  But tonight I was
humming as I stuck the frozen Vegetable Entree in the microwave, and I
munched happily as I thought about three days from now. Thursday!  I could
hardly wait.

Mark had barely moved a muscle by the time I awoke on Tuesday to go to
work.  I dressed in silence and had my morning coffee near the open
doorway to the bedroom, watching him as he slept.  The poor man.  I had
been so angry so often, but now all I could think was how much I had
missed him and how tired he must be.  With a sigh I got myself together
and tiptoed out the front door, closing it softly behind me.

By the time I got home that night the apartment had undergone a massive
transformation. The living room was a mess.  There was junk food
everywhere--potato chips, popcorn, mallomars, empty bottles--it looked
like a horde of ravenous teenagers had trashed the place while I was at
work.  Bunched up on the couch were blankets and pillows scattered
haphazardly. Well, that explained the mess--Mark had spent most of the day
vegging out in front of the TV.  No doubt if I turned it on I'd tune in to
some all-sports network, the volume turned up to the maximum.  Unwilling
to find out for myself, I ignored the set, kicked a few stray candy
wrappers out of the way, and began stalking toward the bedroom in high
dudgeon. 

When I got there and swung the door open, I found a darkened room and a
familiar lump on the bed.  Bastard, I thought, destroy the house and then
go to sleep to escape my wrath!  But then the VCR clock at the foot of the
bed caught my eye, the bluish readout flashing 10:31 at me.  Was it really
that late?  After a brief flashback I realized that I *had* been pretty
caught up in work today, so busy that I had paid no attention to water
hole conversations, so busy that I had never even called Mark at home to
see how he was.  The guilt washed over me--here I had been a whining
"business widow" for so long, and when I finally get the chance to talk to
my husband I blow it!

That also explained the mess in the living room.  For my anal-retentive
husband to create such a pigsty he must have been really mad, or else just
really zoned-out.  Then again, maybe he was both.  He *had* said that it
would take till Thursday before he was fully recovered from all of the
stress and sleeplessness.  Mollified by my own logic I turned to exit the
room again, when I heard a *crunch* under my heel and felt some kind of
wrapper or something beneath my shoe. Vowing to begin my wifely clean-up
efforts here and now I reached down to pluck the offending litter off the
floor.  As I returned to the kitchen to throw it out, I noticed
abstractedly that I did not hold a food wrapper in my hand.  It was a
paper bag.  Lavender.  With flowery writing on the outside.

I stopped dead in the kitchen, my hand poised over the open garbage pail. 
What was that particular bag doing on the floor, instead of on the shelf
of my closet?  More importantly, why was it empty?  I blinked twice, still
holding the bag, and suddenly a welter of images came over me in a rush:
me making my purchase at The Garden; the way I looked in my bedroom mirror
as I held it in my hand; the blur of heated passion I shared with Kathy;
the feeling at my center as I repeatedly ravished myself from behind, my
head pushed down among the bed pillows; the photograph of Rose and
Christiaan.  Without even dropping the empty bag I turned and almost ran
back to my room, slowing down as I entered it so I would not wake Mark.  I
practically climbed into my bedroom closet, my hands roaming frantically
around my upper shelf in search of my hidden secret.  It wasn't there. 
And my art catalogue, the pictorial how-to guide that had attracted me in
the first place, was gone too.

(Continued in #2/3)

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