Paul Kohler - The Borrowed Souls, A Novel

“Hey, missy. Not so fast,” he said latching on to her arm and pulling her into his lap. “I’ve missed you, baby.”

“But the conference was only three days long—”

The man interrupted her pleas with another kiss on her mouth. “You taste salty, with a hint of basil?” he said

Meghan smiled nervously. “Oh, it must have been from the seasoning on the trail mix they had on the flight,” she lied.

“Whatever it is, I like it,” he said.

“You do, huh? Well, there’s plenty more where that came from for you later.”

“What’s this about later?” he said. “You really have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he said, inching his hand beneath Meghan’s skirt.

“Hey now, mister. Just because you’re my husband doesn’t mean you can have your way with me any time you like,” Meghan teased. “Besides, isn’t the Chinese food going to get here at any moment?”

“Husband? You two-timing cow!” I blurted.

Dana smiled coyly. “Your assumption would be correct if I’d actually ordered when we talked. I only got off the phone with them moments before you walked in.”

“You sly dog. Were you planning this all along?” she asked.

Suddenly and without warning, Dana hoisted Meghan onto his desk and stood in front of her. “Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. You’ll never get the truth from me,” Dana said dramatically, his hands continuing to caress the exposed skin of Meghan’s legs.

“But if we do it right here, won’t your paperwork get all messy?” she asked.

“Not to worry. I can print fresh ones,” he said. Dana lowered himself back into his chair, with Meghan’s legs straddling him. Slowly yet methodically, Dana slid his hands beneath Meghan’s skirt before he tugged the pink lacy boy shorts from beneath. He dropped the panties to the floor and began kissing Meghan’s knees, slowly inching forward.

Overcome with passion, Meghan moaned softly and lay back across the desk. A moment later, Dana’s head disappeared beneath her skirt.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I blurted. “Hauser! Where the hell are you? Did you know this about my new souls?”

Meghan’s moaning stopped suddenly, and she pulled herself upright. A look of confusion spread across her face.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Dana asked.

“I don’t know. Did you hear something?”

Dana retracted his smiling face from between Meghan’s legs and looked about the room. “I don’t know, like what?”

“Voices maybe? I could’ve sworn that I heard… someone call out a name.”

“The only name I would be calling out is yours, baby,” Dana said with a cheesy wink. “But my tongue has been… preoccupied.”

“No, I’m serious. I think the name was… oh, never mind. Now, where were we?”

Dana stood and quickly dropped his trousers. “Let me introduce you to my little friend,” he said as he leaned into Meghan.

I stood next to them, blown away by the deception. My first thought about the sudden, not to mention completely revolting, revelation was that Hauser may have been incorrect. Maybe my training wasn’t over, and this current collection, so closely linked to my own past, was yet another lesson to be learned.

Thoroughly disgusted by the duplicity of the situation, I vanished from the study.

When I’d felt enough time had passed so that I didn’t have to witness Meghan’s deceit in its full, carnal extent, I returned to them just as Dana had finished the last few morsels of his moo shu pork and began to eye Meghan’s untouched egg roll.

“Are you going to finish that?” he asked.

“No, go ahead. I can’t eat another bite. I’m stuffed.”

Dana scooped up the eggroll and promptly dipped it into his sweet-and-sour sauce before taking a bite. As he chewed, he continued to stare at Meghan from across the table. He swallowed and washed it down with a long pull from his Heineken.

“So, tell me about your conference. How’d it go?” he asked.

Meghan pushed her half-eaten lunch away and leaned back in her chair. “You know, as good as a conference over a weekend can go, I guess. It was really kind of a nonevent to tell the truth.”

Dana bobbed his head as he listened, maintaining eye contact with her.

“And the flight? Did you get an aisle seat or did you get stuck with the window?”

“Aisle,” replied Meghan promptly.

A few moments later, Dana continued his barrage of questioning. “I forget, didn’t you tell me that you stayed at the same hotel that we did last spring, before we were married?”

Meghan leaned forward, crossing her arms on the table in front of her. “No. I stayed at the Gerard this time.”

“But wasn’t the conference at that other hotel? The Radisson, was it? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to stay there instead of spending half your time driving back and forth?”

“You’d think, but the Gerard’s rates were almost half of what they were at the Radisson,” Meghan said as her eyes flickered around the room.

“Huh. You don’t say. You’d think that—”

“What’s with the third degree?” Meghan asked. “You’ve never been this interested in my weekend conferences before.”

“I don’t know, Meg, you tell me. It’s just that things don’t quite add up lately.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to start that again,” Meghan snapped.

“Well, can you blame me? You leave here every other weekend for some new conference or seminar, and when you return you clam up about everything that happened while you were there. I just don’t know what to believe.”

“For heaven’s sake. For the hundredth time, I’m not having an affair. I am fully committed to you and this marriage.”

“I really want that to be true, Meg, but didn’t it take you four long months to even put in it for a name change at the DMV? It was like you were waiting as long as possible before you were willing to accept Sharp as your surname.”

“That’s not true. You know the hoops I had to jump through to get all that paperwork just right. I can’t help it if they lost the same form several times.”

“Tell me, Meg: Do you think we’ll even make it to our one-year anniversary?”

“Where the hell is that coming from? Have I ever given you any sign of leaving you? Dana, you’re not even thinking straight,” Meghan said.

Dana leaned forward, crossing his arms on the table, mirroring Meghan’s posture. “But you have, Meg. You leave me every couple weeks. That’s how it feels to me, at least.”

“That’s not fair. You know how much I love you. You are my rock. If you’d rather me not work, I’d be all for that. But until the pet store can support our household expenses, I don’t see any other choice but to continue on like we are now. And for me to work, I can’t control when the company sends me out of town.”

A moment later, she stood and circled around to Dana’s side of the table. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the side of his cheek. “I love you, baby. You can trust me.”

Dana sat motionless for a few moments. Finally he reached up and caressed her arm and leaned into her cheek.

“All right, my pet. I’m sorry. I just get so jealous when I’m alone for too long. Between that and being at the pet store nearly full time, my mind really does wander.”

“What? You’re gonna believe this tramp?” I said from my seat on the countertop. “Don’t trust a thing she says. She’s just a cheating whore.”

“Speaking of, how is the hunt going for your first employee? Have you found anyone worthy to hire?” Meghan asked as she returned to her seat.

“As a matter of fact, I did. It’s been a hellish several weeks, interviewing practically nonstop. Finally, I hired a girl and she started on Friday. We went through the basics of the store Friday and Saturday, and she seems pretty quick at picking things up.”