Orchard Grove Page 8

  We both nearly broke our necks turning to see the door open and a woman step inside.

  The woman, who was my wife, smiled.

  “I didn’t know we had company,” she said.

  The memories come to her in snippets and flashes, like a vaguely remembered dream. Rather, the remembrance of only part or parts of the dream. The most important part. The part that woke you up from out of a sound sleep, your body covered in a sheen of sweat, your breathing labored, your heart pounding.

  Sex was always the catalyst for these vivid interior snapshots, as she liked to call them.

  Snapshots that, to her, were a lot like speeding through the old pictures pasted to the pages of a photo album, back in the days before everything became digital, and you looked at your life on a computer screen.

  Brian (or was it David?), was so shocked when she cut off his hand at the wrist, the stub spurting crimson blood, he never uttered so much as a peep when she took the other hand and then, of course, his head.

  She met the truck driver who delivered heating oil to the farmhouse at the hotel-no-tell of his choosing at a time when she could not have been more than thirteen to his forty or forty-five. He cried real tears when she Maced him, and when she struck him with the cleaver smack dab in the forehead, he made the gentlest of exhales, like a little baby having just fallen into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  She added a little variety to the mix as she grew older and the apple trees were all cut down to make way for the houses. For instance, there was the grade school principal who hid from the student body and the PTA his affection for young women or, more accurately, girls. She consented to sex with the principal in the back seat of a Subaru wagon in the after-hours school parking lot with all the triviality and coldness of performing an everyday chore like carrying out the trash. The next morning, when the maintenance man found the body in the car in two separate parts, no one would ever suspect that the cute, innocent, athletic, peppy blue-eyed, blonde-haired step-daughter of the still missing man who once owned North Albany’s last apple orchard could possibly be to blame.

  For the longest time, it seemed as if she were free to seduce and murder anyone she wanted. In a word, she was God.

  She was all smiles.

  My wife of a decade was bright-eyed, friendly, and eager to greet Lana… the woman she sometimes shared a ride with to her P90X class. A neighbor whose sunbathing habits she was well aware of since she too had witnessed Lana in action out on the back deck during the occasional day off from her work at the pre-K. The neighbor who might be communicating with her on WhatsApp. The neighbor who could be sending her presents. Or was that just my imagination getting the best of me? My writer’s mind scripting out a nefarious plot. What did Hemingway once say? You wanna beat fear, you’ve got to learn how to turn off your imagination.

  As Susan stepped from the vestibule into the living room, I could almost feel the anxiety pouring out of Lana’s pores. Correction: the nervousness was coming from me and me alone. Because even if Lana was sweating bullets, she was doing so with the utmost grace and casualness, which told me, she really wasn’t sweating anything out at all. The casualness of a professional maybe. She held out her right hand while approaching Susan.

  “Hey there, Susan,” she said with a friendly face befitting that of a true, God-fearing Orchard Grove neighbor. “I was just trying to get your famous husband to sign his novel for me. How exciting it must be to be married to such a gifted artist.”

  Susan brushed back her brunette hair, crossed over the living room floor into the dining room, and politely took Lana’s hand in hers.

  Her big brown eyes focused on me, she said, “Well, like I might have already mentioned, Lana, it’s not always that exciting.” She laughed. “Ethan writes scripts for a living, and his hobby is writing scripts, and in his free time, he likes to write scripts.”

  “Wish I could say I’ve got a big movie premiering soon,” I said with an exhale.

  “Oh no,” Lana said, making a pouty face that made me want to pick her up and toss her back down on the dining room table even with Susan standing in the room. “Dry spells can be dreadful. I recall some of my screenwriter friends in Venice, Hollywood, Malibu, Santa Monica, you name it… How desperate they would become when they couldn’t sell their work. Half of them waited tables at the restaurant just to make ends meet.”

  I nodded, sadly.

  Susan took her hand back so slowly, it was almost like she wanted to continue holding Lana’s hand. While I couldn’t blame her one bit, it made me uncomfortable.

  “You’ll get the big sale, Killer,” my wife said to me, her voice surprisingly friendly. “You always do.” Then, turning to Lana. “You just can’t kill off a bad guy like my husband. That’s why he was making the big bucks then and will no doubt make them yet again.”

  She leaned into me, kissed me gently on the cheek. The kiss took me by surprise and I had to wonder if she could smell Lana on my face. I wondered if she could feel and hear my heart pounding. When she pulled away, she didn’t give me the least indication that she noticed anything out of the ordinary about me. In fact, she appeared more chipper and happy than when she first walked in a few minutes before.

  Susan in the window… I had to have imagined it after all…

  Lana grinned, nodded, like she also believed a big Hollywood score awaited me around the corner.

  “Listen to Susan,” she said. “A wife can always tell if their man is on the right track.”

  “And hound the man when he’s riding the wrong set of rails,” Susan added.

  As always, Susan looked wonderful and sexy which, at the same time, saddened me, since we weren’t as close as we once were. It never ceased to amaze me how fresh and put together she looked even after a full day of caring for a room full of screaming kids. She was wearing a blue and white-striped Russian sailor shirt over a pair of faded Levis that she purchased right out of grad school and that still fit her perfectly. She was a great fan of cowboy boots. Cockroach killers to be precise, and especially black alligator skin boots, like the kind she was sporting right now. The boot heels gave her already above-average height a boost so that she stood just a hair under six feet. With my upper body hunched over my crutches like a common cripple, she towered over me. Somehow I think she enjoyed being taller than me. It made her feel dominant.

  Her hair was long, clean, and dark brown and it veiled a face that couldn’t have been more perfect had a sculptor chiseled it out of pure Italian marble from the Dolomite Mountains. Her deep-set eyes were always alive and inviting and her lips were not thin or cosmetically puffy but succulent all on their own. She wore no makeup because her smooth healthy skin required none. But what she did wear was cologne and when its aroma finally registered with me, it gave me a slight shock. The smell was lavender and it was identical to what I smelled on Lana’s skin. Identical to what I smelled in my dreams and now, for the first time, I knew precisely why.

  “It’s refreshing to see a married couple get along so well,” Lana said after a beat, her eyes locked not on me, but on Susan. “What’s your secret?”

  “There is no secret,” Susan said. “Only honesty, and of course, one tries to keep things interesting.”

  “In the bedroom,” Lana said. “Or am I being too forward?”

  Susan locked eyes with our new neighbor, and I saw a slight blushing in her cheeks.

  “Especially the bedroom,” she said. But it was a lie or, should I say, a gross exaggeration. I wanted to add, “We haven’t made love together in over a year.” But I decided to go along with the sudden pretend change in our lovemaking status. The welcome change, I should say.

  That’s when Lana did something I never would have expected. She raised up her hand, touched Susan’s forearm, and gently ran the tips of her fingers down the smooth exposed skin all the way to her hand. It was a subtle, but somehow sensual gesture shared between two women of the same sex.

  My head was spinning by now because I was st
anding only inches away from a woman I’d desperately fallen in lust with… a woman who was, only moments ago, pressing her naked body against mine on the very table we stood over so that the rich scents of our physical exchange had to be hanging in the air almost like a fog. This, I also must admit: The devil that had so very recently taken up residence inside of me was thinking how wonderful it would be if I were to have both Susan and Lana in my bed at the same time. It was a thought that came to me with all the ease and instinct of breathing.

  Susan smiled and giggled like a high schooler.

  “It’s not so easy being married to an artist,” she said. “But it does have its advantages. Free movie tickets, for instance. In the time Ethan and I have been married, he’s had a string of independent movies produced, and I never had to pay a single dime to see any of them at the movie theater.”

  “You make it sound so romantic,” I said, not without sarcasm in my tone. “Gee whiz, free movie tickets.”

  Lana shared in the moment by adding, “Hey, I’m a cop’s wife. I don’t get free anything.”

  Then Susan said, “Lana, how would you and your husband like to come for dinner tomorrow night?”

  Something cold and painful surged through my veins. It was the same sensation you get when you step off the curb unaware of the truck that’s speeding past and narrowly missed creaming you by a few inches. Only in this case, you really do wish you’d been hit by a truck and put out of your misery.

  “Susan,” I broke in, “the Cattivo’s are only just getting settled. Give them some time.”

  “Nonsense,” Susan said, reaching out, setting her hand onto Lana’s shoulder. “I’m insisting.”

  She did something peculiar then. Like Lana just a moment prior, Susan allowed her hand to slide down almost the entire length of our new neighbor’s arm. If I didn’t know Susan any better, I would have said she provocatively ran her fingers down Lana’s arm.

  “Might be nice if someone else did the cooking for you for a change,” my wife added.

  Lana’s eyes lit up.

  “We’d love to come,” she said.

  Then Susan suggested a time and Lana said she’d bring wine.

  “Red and bloody,” Susan said, locking her eyes on Lana’s.

  “Bloody is my favorite,” Lana said with a wink of her left eye.

  Cradling her novel against her breasts, Lana began heading for the front door.

  “I’ll see you out,” I said, following close behind with my crutches.

  “Oh, and Lana,” Susan called out.

  The source of my obsession stopped in the middle of the living room, turned. I too, turned to face my wife.

  “I look forward to meeting Mr. Cattivo,” she said, a crafty grin forming on her face. The gravity of her statement did not go unnoticed. In fact, it felt a little like a punch to my stomach.

  “You’re going to love him,” Lana said while turning back for the vestibule. “Maybe see you in class tomorrow morning. Or let me know if you want a ride.”

  “I’ll be there with Spandex on,” Susan said.

  When we came to the door, I reached around her waist while holding myself up with my crutches and opened the door for her.

  “Thanks for coming by, Lana,” I said, polite and loud enough for Susan to hear. Maybe too loud, too polite.

  “Thanks for signing my book,” she said, stepping out onto the concrete landing. Then, just before descending the three steps to the asphalt walk, she turned to face me once more.

  “She knows,” she said, with all the indifference of a snake that’s just swallowed its lunch whole. And then she disappeared across the front lawn to her new house on Orchard Grove.

  Back in the house, heart pounding, I crossed over the living room to look for Susan.

  But she wasn’t there.

  “Susan,” I called out.

  She didn’t answer. Glancing at the table, I saw that the apple core I’d set there only minutes ago was now gone. Susan must have tossed it into the trash in the kitchen. I called out for her again. Louder this time.

  “I’m in here,” she answered.

  Her voice was coming from the master bedroom, which seemed odd seeing as it was only a little past three on a bright and sunny summer afternoon. It’s possible she was changing into a pair of running shorts and T-shirt for a quick jog… an exercise regimen she clung to lately when she missed out on her morning exercise class. But my gut told me something else was happening instead.

  My crutches under my arms, I limped my way across the kitchen floor, over the narrow hallway and into the master bedroom where I found my wife. She was lying on her back in bed. In the short time it took to say goodbye to Lana at the front door, she had stripped down entirely. All she wore, if you want to call it that, were the pale skin outlines of her swimsuit bikini bottom and top, which not only highlighted nipples that were pointing toward heaven, but also a very dark, yet neatly groomed sex.

  “It’s been a year,” I said, knowing that she must have been undressing as I was saying goodbye to Lana at the front door. “Why now?”

  “Don’t ask questions,” she said, as she brushed back her hair with her open hand. Then, “Well, aren’t you coming for me, Killer?”

  “I can’t write dialogue that good,” I said, suddenly realizing that as difficult as things had been for us over the past year, I still very much loved my wife.

  In my head, the image of Lana and I on top of the dining room table, a face in the living room window staring at us…

  Unbuckling my belt for the third time that day, I hopped over to the bed, climbed on top of it, and proceeded to ravage Susan for the first time in far too long.

  When we were finished, we lie on our backs, a sheen of sweat covering our naked bodies. After a silent beat, Susan got out of bed, went into the kitchen. When she came back in, she was carrying two bottles of cold beer. Coming around my side of the bed, she set the tall-necked bottle down on the nightstand. Then, her beer bottle in hand, she knelt onto the bed and, careful to maneuver herself over my bad foot, crawled to her side of the bed. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. She looked like a beautiful jaguar.

  She drank some beer, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “You only came once,” she said. “Have you been pleasuring yourself all day, Killer?”

  I felt a spark in my pulse.

  “Very funny,” I said. “Sixteen was a hell of a long time ago.”

  I was doing my best to make light of the situation. But in my head, I couldn’t get the image of a woman standing right outside my living room window while I rolled around with Lana on the dining room table. That woman in the window being my wife. Had she truly caught me in the act of adultery? Was this her way of dealing with my infidelity? By pretending she didn’t see it at all and, in fact, inviting the woman I was with for dinner? She and her husband? Then following up the invite with our first sexual interlude in a year?

  None of it made sense.

  As I sat there, back pressed up against the headboard, my black-splinted foot doing its dull painful throb in time with the beating of my heart, I grabbed hold of my beer and took a deep drink. In terms of pure logic, I could only come up with one conclusion: that the woman in the window was a figment of an overstressed fictional mind. That I was literally seeing things in all my lust-filled passion for Lana and all my guilt over stabbing Susan, my wife of a decade, in the back.

  Susan drank some more beer, exhaled. “You usually aren’t satisfied until you’ve cum twice. Maybe age is catching up with you after all.”

  I laughed, even though nothing was funny. I’d just had sex with the woman I loved mere minutes after having sex with a woman I hardly even knew. By all that was right with the world, I should have been hating myself or, at the very least, coming clean with Susan. But in all honesty, I was too afraid… Okay, I’ll say it… too cowardly to do something like that.

  But then, what if something else was happening inside our bedroom? What if
Susan saw everything going on in the dining room and was now torturing me? Maybe this was one big test to see if I’d confess. A test I was sure to fail.

  “This is beginning to sound like a Cialis commercial,” I said, after a time. “Fifty is the new thirty. Or so I’m told.”

  She set the beer bottle onto the nightstand, then turned over onto her side, facing me directly.

  “How old do you suppose Lana is?” she asked.

  There it was again. The spark in my pulse, this time accompanied by an electric jolt in my stomach. “Why do you ask?”

  She reached out, set her finger onto my chest, caressing the light patch of black hair that shaded my sternum. “Do you find her attractive?”

  Turning to her, I worked up a slight smile. “What are you getting at, Susan?”

  “If you could, would you have sex with her?” Her hand was no longer caressing the patch of hair so much as it was slowly tickling the tight skin on my belly, then lower onto my trimmed patch of pubic hair. “Would you slowly undress her if you could? Put your hands on her?”

  Listen, Susan was my wife. She was gorgeous. A knockout. A head turner. But she was also a highly educated woman who came from a sturdy Jewish background with loving, well to-do parents and an older sister who doted on her like she was still in kindergarten. What all this equated to, of course, was a sense of strong family values, and a personal moral bar that Susan had set very high for herself.

  But that didn’t mean she wasn’t naughty from time to time.

  If it wasn’t for Susan, I wouldn’t have known what great sex, as opposed to passable sex, was. I wouldn’t have known anything could possibly exist beyond the standard foreplay, missionary position coitus, roll over and fall to sleep. As controlled as Susan was, she also had a fiery, out of control side to her that showed itself at the oddest of times. Rather, at times when I’d least expect it. She was the kind of woman who could gently take a crying child aside in the classroom, whisper something encouraging and sweet into his ear, and before you know it, the tears would be replaced with a smile and laughter. But she was also the kind of girl who would pick up a bottle of red for us on the way home to share in bed. At least, that’s the way it had been for us not so long ago, before my career took a nosedive.