John Lutz - The Ex

As she forked a bite of omelet into her mouth and chewed, Michael glanced up at her, possibly wondering about his fate for the day.

“I’m going to the gym to work out later this morning,” David said. “When I get back, I can keep an eye on him while you work. Maybe we’ll go out, find something fun to do.”

Michael had resumed eating and didn’t look up from his scrambled eggs, but he grinned.

“I thought you worked out yesterday,” Molly said.

“Upper body.” He bit into his toasted corn muffin. “Lower body’s scheduled for today.”

That didn’t seem right to Molly, but she said nothing. David, as far as she knew, had never been on an alternating workout schedule. But then she wasn’t privy to what went on at Silver’s Gym. She’d been there only once, to meet him before leaving to join friends for dinner. She remembered it as a functional, depressing place, with old equipment and a darkened and smoothly worn wood floor. But men seemed to like that kind of atmosphere where they worked out. Possibly it made them think they were sacrificing more and so should see greater benefits.

“…about the fire?” David was saying.

“What?”

“Did Julia say anything more about the fire at her mother’s apartment?”

“She told me it was deliberately set. The arson investigators said an accelerant had been used, and they found an empty wine bottle in the basement that had contained gasoline. It was lucky nobody was killed. Well, not only luck was involved. Unlike our building, when the fire alarm sounded, everyone knew there was probably a fire.”

“Maybe they’ll lift some fingerprints from the bottle,” David said. He took a sip of coffee.

“No. According to Julia, fire took care of that. The bottle was blackened and in pieces from the heat. Gangs, is what the police think. There’s a lot of gang activity in that neighborhood, and a sixteen-year-old kid who’s been in that kind of trouble before lives in the building.”

Michael demanded more jelly for the second half of his toast.

“It’s a shame kids get screwed up in those gangs,” Molly said.

“It must be a tough neighborhood.”

She used her knife to scoop grape jelly from its plastic container. “You do what you must to survive, I guess.”

Don’t we all? he thought. Or was he only telling himself the survival of his marriage and reputation depended on his cooperation with Deirdre? She was a potent exterior force, but maybe his compulsion was his own. Their relationship was one he knew was drowning him as surely and fatally as Bernice had been drowned. He realized it yet seemed unable to find the strength to swim toward the surface.

He could only struggle and sink deeper.

As he was going to do later that morning.

The basement was almost completely dark except for yellow pools of light spread by bare overhead bulbs. Visible in the dimness were jumbles of ductwork above, and junk below. There were ripped screens, an old sawhorse, an upside-down tricycle without wheels. A row of wooden storage lockers faded into the blackness, its walls constructed of slats with two-inch spaces between them, solid wood doors with hasps for padlocks.

In the dim light of a paint-splotched lightbulb back near the boilers, David had Deirdre pressed against a wooden wall of one of the storage lockers. He was standing. Her wrists were bound above her head to the slats with one of David’s old silk ties. Her skirt was hiked up and her legs were locked around his waist.

Beside them was the duffle bag containing David’s workout clothes for Silver’s Gym, where he’d told Molly he was going. Later, he would slip out through a side door of the apartment building and actually go to Silver’s and work out. Though right now he doubted if another workout was necessary.

He was thrusting into Deirdre, causing the loosely nailed slats of the storage locker to slam together. Something fell inside the locker with a sound like glass breaking on the concrete floor.

“Too much…noise, David!” Deirdre moaned desperately between thrusts. “God, too much…noise!”

He didn’t let up. “You’re the one who…insisted on doing this down here…”

Getting winded, he paused and took a deep breath, then leaned forward and bit her earlobe, hard. Punishing her for making him need her. Her arms strained against their silken bondage.

“Shit, David! Don’t draw blood!”

He drew his head back to look closely at her in the musty dimness. Her eyes were puffy and dreamy with lust but still held their glint of calculation. She was losing herself only ninety percent.

“You never minded before,” he told her. “Besides, turn-about’s fair play.” He bit her ear again, but not nearly as hard. She tried to move her head away but couldn’t, her movements restricted by her upraised arms.

“I’m a working girl now. I have to wear earrings.” She giggled. “For those I need ears.”

He’d stopped biting her and resumed driving himself into her, watching her eyes lose focus and become slits and her lips tighten and withdraw over her perfect teeth. She was his a hundred percent now.

And he was hers.

He felt her body tense and her legs clasped him more powerfully. After a few more strokes he pressed hard into her, holding himself tight against the bulge of her pubic mound and grinding her against the raw wood slats as he spilled into her. He heard himself moan. He held her pinned against the slats afterward, hard enough to make the old wood boards creak with the strain, as he valued every second.

Finally he withdrew from her and she lowered her legs and was standing on her own. He quickly untied her wrists and slipped the silk tie into a pocket.

They kissed long and feverishly, then smiled at each other, eyes serious, and began reorienting themselves to the postcoital world as they rearranged their clothing.

“I love dark and dusty old basements,” Deirdre said, rubbing her wrists. “I’ve had more fun in them than anyplace else.”

David checked to make sure he’d zipped his fly. “I don’t like Molly being right upstairs.”

Deirdre gave him a lascivious grin. “I kind of do.” She spread her legs slightly and held her wadded panties to her crotch beneath her skirt. “Wow! You must have come a gallon, the way you’re running out of me. It’s lucky I only have to make it to my apartment in this building, or I’d leave a trail.”

He winced, not only at her indelicacy but at her casual attitude about them all living beneath the same roof, the wife, the lover, the cheating husband. It was one of those moments when David gained some perspective and was terrified.

There was a soft scratching sound from another part of the basement, and he and Deirdre stood still for a few seconds.

Then she kissed him and said, “Only a rat.”

“So there’s another one down here.”

“You’re far too hard on yourself, David. We’re not the only two people having an affair, and Molly’s not the only wife who’s in the way. You should learn to embrace your destiny the way you hold me.”

“It isn’t just Molly. What about Michael?”

“I don’t want to see him hurt any more than you do. But his world isn’t going to come to a close. Did you know the children of divorced parents are a majority in public schools now?”

“The statistics don’t bear that out, Deirdre.”

“Well, there are liars, darned liars, and statisticians. Anyway, sometimes people have to recognize reality and give in to its power. It’s like this big roulette wheel that spins and decides whose lives get mingled and changed. This time it’s you, me, and Molly. She might not like it, but it’s fate.”

“Another thing she didn’t like was you being our baby-sitter the other night.”