David Crane: The newlywed neighbors

"Look," he said softly. "There is nothing I would like better than to start the day out right. I really want to fuck you, but the hard cold fact of the matter is, we aren't in college any more, and we aren't on vacation. I have to get to work. Unless you want to live in a tent somewhere."

"Don't be ridiculous," Kate snapped.

"Don't you be ridiculous," he retorted. "Living in this world costs money. The rent on this place is going to be due in another month. Where are we going to get the money to pay that? And the electric bill… and the gas and the heat…"

"All right," she snapped, spinning around and walking away from him.

"I'll have your damn breakfast ready."

Mark started to say something after her, but he thought the better of it. He wondered if they were about to have their first fight. He had heard that things like that were inevitable, but he would like to postpone it for as long as possible.

Then he shrugged his shoulders. Surely she could see that he loved her.

After all, he was willing to put off a little pleasure so he could make ends meet. Maybe when she got a job of her own, she would understand.

Hell… by then they might have enough money so that he could afford to take a morning off… or at least be a little late.

As she casually listened to the sound of running water in the bathroom, Kate went about her task with a seething expression on her face. Her lips were pursed, and she wanted to break the dishes she was setting out for him. Not even the pleasing aroma of frying bacon and eggs and perking coffee made her feel better. All she knew was the frustrated tingling in her vagina. She poured a cup of coffee for Mark just as he entered the kitchen, fully dressed and looking as though he was ready to take on the world in his new job.

"Honey… I'm sorry I snapped at you a while ago," he said, determined that he would swallow his pride for the sake of his marriage. "You just have to remember that I feel a little… well… I'm responsible for the two of us. At least for a while, and I'm sort of feeling my way."

"You don't have to explain anything," Kate said in a voice that was so cold and detached that Mark actually shivered. "The fucking all mighty dollar is more important to you than I am."

"The fucking… Honey, are you serious? Because if you really think I believe that…"

But Kate wasn't looking at him. She picked up her own coffee cup and was staring into it. Then she turned her body to one side, wondering if Mark was noticing the way her full, rounded breasts jutted from the sheerness of the nearly transparent cloth of her robe. She knew her nipples were hard, and if Mark was looking at her, there was no way he could not notice that fact. He had hurt her, and she wasn't going to let him get away with that.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you," Mark snapped, feeling himself losing control. When she failed to turn and face him, he decided that he would just go on with what he had to say. "I think you're being childish about this whole thing. There's more to life than fucking, you know. I have to make a living. Jesus! When I first met you, you didn't even know what a cock looked like."

"Oooooohhhhh… are we going to bring that up?" she asked, spinning around, causing her generous breasts to jiggle slightly, sensuously under the thinness of her robe. "Well, buster, you were a pretty good teacher. I was always ready for you when you wanted to vent yourself. Damn! You would think that you hadn't had a woman your whole life. You sure had fun the last two weeks, and now that I want to have a little, you're too busy."

"We were on a vacation for Christ's sake," Mark said, setting his coffee cup down so hard that some of the dark fluid spilled over the edge. He pushed himself away from the table and glowered at his wife.

"I never thought I wouldn't want to at least eat breakfast with you, but you've totally ruined my appetite."

"So you're just going to run away like a frightened little boy. Go on, go to your precious job. Maybe you can have a good laugh about how you married a virgin… probably the only one left in St. Paul."

"Honey…"

"Go on… just get out of here. And don't worry about all this food going to waste," she snapped as she stood up and looked directly into his eyes over the table. "I'll just store it in the freezer. That way, we can have something to eat when you aren't out digging and scratching to make money."

Mark's jaw worked, as though he were trying to think of something to say. He thought the better of it, though, and with a flourish, he grabbed his jacket and walked out the door. Kate stood at the table glowering at him. When the door slammed loudly behind him, she reached for the closest thing she could find… a salt shaker, and threw it at the door after him.

She missed the door, and the glass object fell silently onto the carpeted floor.

"Wheeeewwwww… will you listen to them!" Martin Delany laughed as he pressed his ear to the wall of his apartment that was next to the Hutch's kitchen. "Sounds like the newly-weds are having a little spat."

"Uuuuuuuuuuuu…" Niven Mandel moaned from their bedroom. If there was anything she hated, it was being awakened by the screaming of other people. God knows she had had enough of that when she had been living at the half-way house. Fucking little kids! They were always crying about something! At sixteen, the lovely blonde girl felt that she was well above all the simple things that the people at the run-away shelter had been trying to teach her. Arithmetic, reading, history… all those things were all right for the children, but Niven knew that there was more to life than those fucking books. Shit… that was why she had run away from home to begin with.

"Come on, lovey-cunt," Martin said in a cheery voice. "Let's get that luscious body out of bed. Something tells me that there's an adventure ahead of us."

Again Niven moaned, but as Martin lit another cigarette, his third of the morning, he could hear her stirring, and he knew that she would shortly appear at the kitchen doorway, looking as though she had just gotten out of bed, but no less lovely for that.

Martin sat back in his chair and smiled as he heard the door of the next apartment slam. Yes… there was an adventure in the making, and if there was anything Martin liked, it was adventure. God knows life was fucking boring enough.

Martin was a member of that rare breed of man. Blessed with a powerful body and a father who had made an incredible killing in the stock market, Martin had attended four years at Columbia University, graduated fourth from the top in his class, and then realized that he had been wasting his time. As soon as he graduated, his father presented him with some fifty thousand dollars and told him to spend it as he wanted.

Martin went right out, bought a car and headed cross-country, stopping here and there as he chose, living like a king where ever he was and when he got tired, moving on.

He had been doing that for almost a year now, and he enjoyed the thrill of coming into a new place, meeting new people and interweaving his life with theirs. He had gotten the idea from a television show, and he knew he was lucky in being able to afford living like that. He hadn't had a job since he was a freshman in college, and he wasn't bothered a bit by that fact. He loved the freedom of being able to just come as he pleased, live like he wanted and leave when he felt like it.

When he had come to St. Paul a little less than a month ago, he had been wandering around one of the poorer sections of the city… the type of place he had come to know would have women like Niven… eager to get out of what ever trap they were in. He'd met her at her job, provided to her by the halfway house, and they hit it off. Niven's eyes sparkled when he told her what he had been doing, and she decided that she would do as he asked her, which was to take an apartment in one of the nicer sections of the city and see what happened. God knew she was pretty unhappy at her agency, and with nothing to lose, the two signed a one year lease at a rather nice, if small, apartment.