An Accidental Affair (5 page)

I heard Alan Smithee yell, “
Action
.”

There, in a room with lights and a crew, heat enveloped Johnny Handsome. The camera moved across his beloved face. He tongue kissed my wife and my wife tongue kissed him in return, gave him tongue followed by a puckish smile, an impish grin that made her look like a seductress, an expression that was worthy of a movie poster, and the camera panned across their passion, as his legs tensed, as her buttocks tensed, as waves of insanity roared through their camera perfect bodies, as his pace quickened, as skin slapped against skin. Their collaboration was as intense as honeymoon lovemaking. Her plangent moans said that she was in a state of connubial felicity. It sounded like he was punishing her, beating her the way that I had beaten him. She pulled him closer, took him of her own volition, and as her rhythm responded in kind, the jitters attacked him and he held my wife so tight it looked like he was about to break her in half. Johnny Handsome’s own plangent moans rose as he grimaced and slavered.

Then Johnny Handsome trembled and removed himself from being inside of my wife, as if that were his right. His face was ugly and orgasmic, his breath coming in short spurts and his moans loud. In a loving tone he whispered
Sasha
, the name of Regina’s character from the film. The camera pulled back, gave a view of the penis that droves of women would form groups to rush and see. Johnny Handsome pulled out and there was that five-second shot that showed how real the moment was. Even then it didn’t look like porn. Porn wasn’t personal. Porn was pain and action, not tender. This looked personal and
emotional, like an amateur couple with the camera accidentally left on them. Then, as Johnny Handsome grunted, as Regina Baptiste sang an orgasmic song and begged him to not take his big dick away from her, she reached up and masturbated him. The camera stayed with them, showed his orgasm. Then after he had come, the camera panned across their sweaty faces, across eyes that looked deep into each other’s faces, captured the intensity of reddened faces still in the heat of the moment.

Regina Baptiste looked at her hand, at the come sliding between her fingers, and the lustful smile, the expression of satisfaction left her face in small increments. She was no longer in character. Sasha was gone, sent back to the script, and Regina Baptiste had returned.

Her head turned and she looked directly into the camera. Her eyes widened.

Then, in the background, I heard applause. That applause filled my ears.

The approbation and praise publicly expressed by the clapping hands echoed.

Applause was the clamor and bellow of acceptance.

To me that applause had sounded like publicly approved ridicule.

My wife. Fucked right in front of my face. Fucked in front of the world.

In high dudgeon, as I watched that travesty, tears ran down my face and burned like fire.

Around six the next evening, there was a rapid, urgent knock at my door. Sirens pierced the night air and raced up and down Imperial Highway, and that already had me on edge. The knock made my heart race. There was no reason for anyone to knock on my door.

I looked through the peephole and saw Mrs. Patrice Evans. I pushed my lips up into a thin smile to hide my anger and opened the door. She had a small brown paper bag in one hand and a colorful Domino’s Pizza door hanger in the other. She rocked from foot to foot and grinned.

I took a breath and said, “Hello, neighbor.”

She stood before me wearing a gentle smile. “Hello.”

I rubbed my eyes. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Evans?”

She hesitated. “Wanted to look at your portfolio. Might want to hire you in the future.”

“Sorry. Everything is packed up. And I might have left my portfolio behind.”

She smiled. “I was about to go for my daily jog and decided to stop by and bring you some cookies. Homemade. Oatmeal raisin and chocolate. I hope you like one or the other.”

“Actually, I like both. Thanks.”

“Where is the wife or girlfriend? I want to say hello.”

“No wife. No girlfriend. No cat. No dog. No parrot.”

“I assumed that you were moving in with your wife or girlfriend.
The stuff you have, it’s so classy and I know a man couldn’t pick out this kind of stuff. Well, not a man’s man like you.”

“My wife had an affair with this guy at her job.”

“Aw. Lot of that going around.”

“Ever since women have had jobs.”

“That’s so sad. That it happened to you, not that women have jobs. How long ago?”

“Recently.”

Patrice took to the sofa and I sat on a red leather chair. She looked at the Domino’s Pizza door hanger decidedly, then set it down on the coffee table and nodded.

I asked, “Was that on my door?”

“I brought it for you. Hopefully you can use it.”

I offered her tea and she accepted. I had hoped for the opposite. While I heated water she told me the
Reader’s Digest
version of her life’s story. I nodded a lot and three minutes later I handed her tea and honey. She was twenty-five with a degree in something useless and said that she was stressed out about her irrelevant job, a job that she both hated and was afraid to lose, a job that burdened her with the drudgery of repetition, doing the same menial task eight hours a day. Mrs. Patrice Evans was married to a thirty-two-year-old guy who worked his fingers to the bone doing something that was as profitable as selling ice during a deep freeze in Alaska.

We sipped teas and I chewed on cookies and she smiled at me a lot. She would smile at me, look away, look down at her feet, check her watch, and suck on her bottom lip, thinking.

I smiled and said, “These cookies are very good.”

She smiled. “I used my mother’s recipe.”

Before she could question me, I decided to question her. “Where are you from?”

“Pensacola. I was working at the Seville Diner when I met Ted and moved here.”

Patrice walked to one of my vitrines and stared through its glass at my novels. I had unpacked hundreds of books and DVDs before I had unpacked any of my clothing. I still had some clothing in the living room, across dining room chairs. Patrice looked at those and nodded.

She said, “Versace. Ferragamo. Carlo Milano. You have good taste.”

She strolled into my kitchen and looked at the GNC bottles I had on the counter. Arginine 5000. Force Factor Ramp Up. Nitro Muscle Mass and Mojo Blast. 8-Hour Sex.

She smiled, picked up the RockHard Weekend and read the package. “All natural. Works in thirty minutes. The seventy-two-hour sexual performance enhancer for men.”

She said that her husband couldn’t please her the way she needed to be pleased. I didn’t say anything. Then she corrected herself and shook her head, gritted her teeth, and said that her diabetic husband didn’t please her the way that she
deserved
to be pleased.

She looked at me, checked me for a reaction.

I offered her a small smile.

She grinned. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

“To work out.”

“No, I don’t have a lot of time to get my cardio in. But other than that, I’m very business-minded. I like to get to the point. Do you mind if I show you something?”

“Sure.”

With that, she stepped away and went inside the bathroom.

In that moment flashes of Johnny Handsome being inside my wife corrupted my smile.

Mrs. Patrice Evans came back out naked.

After I adjusted to the surprise I said, “Looks like your clothes fell off.”

“Lot of gravity in your bathroom. Pulled everything right off me.”

I evaluated her and nodded. “You’ve kept yourself in shape.”

“Basketball and track and tennis. So. Yes or no?”

Revenge, the need for revenge grabbed me, squeezed my heart until it wanted to burst.

I said, “Yes.”

Mrs. Patrice Evans came to me and we kissed. She sucked my tongue as if it were her vagina tightened around my penis, sucked and pulled at my clothing, took off my T-shirt.

She took my hand and hurried me into my bedroom, led me as if I were inside her home.

She said, “I’m not big on chitchatting. Actually chitchatting bores me to tears.”

I rubbed her breasts, her belly, and her shoulders. Her skin was beautiful, its texture smooth. She was not as stunning as Regina Baptiste, but her body, the skin and flesh that people judged as being more beautiful than the eternal soul that the aging tissue housed, was nice. I pulled the bedspread back and she hopped on the bed. I crawled in with her and she kissed me again, kissed me and pulled me to her as she opened her legs for me.

She whispered, “You’re bigger than I had expected.”

She held onto my erection and moved it back and forth across her vagina as we kissed, moved it back and forth then began to work me inside. She was tight. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt her good. But she hadn’t done me any wrong. She hadn’t betrayed me.

I whispered, “Relax.”

“My husband is bigger than you but you’re a lot bigger than my husband.”

“Slow your breathing down.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not going to put it all in.”

“I would hope not. That’s a helluva coochie stretcher you have.”

She moaned and held onto my back, her nails raking my skin.

I sank inside her a little more, just beyond the hat. She made a face like she was in severe pain. The same face Johnny Handsome had
made. I paused right there. Held it right there until she nodded for me to continue. I worked her slowly, worked her until she opened up, and worked her until most of me fit inside her. I put a hand around her neck and slid all of me inside of her. Her eyes and mouth widened. I took her the same way Johnny Handsome had taken my wife. I relived that scene in my angered mind. I made her crazy. I made her scream. I called Patrice a whore. I called her a slut. I called her all the things that I’d called my wife when I had left a message on her cellular. Again her eyes opened wide, then rolled back in her head. We fornicated in the shadows of Odysseus, had sex in the breath of Prometheus, fucked in the presence of all of the mighty adulterers and sinners. I didn’t care anymore. Outrage possessed me. I moved like I was trying to force this umbrage out of my body. She looked in my eyes and I went deeper, stroked her faster and harder. My toes curled and hands became fists, one fist pulling her hair as if I wanted to yank a fistful out by the roots. Agony left me with a force, a powerful force that made me feel like liquid fire, as if I were melting into the fabric of the universe, and that overwhelming sensation stole me from this level of existence and took me close to one thousand little deaths. I couldn’t see anything. I could barely hear anything. I couldn’t move.

Patrice wailed and cried and moaned, “That’s it that’s it come with me come with me.”

My orgasm was fugacious, brief, but it was a juggernaut, crippling. Just like that I was weak. My head was spinning. The room was humming and it felt like the ceiling was ready to fly away. The world remained out of focus. She moved against my body, her orgasm dragging out the moment, and when she let me go I rolled away from her. She struggled to breathe for a few moments, then turned on her stomach, pulled her tangled hair away from her dank face.

Another man’s wife smiled. She looked guilt-free. She rested her hand on my chest.

In my mind, I heard applause.

I turned toward her, looked at her body in the light, saw her body unclothed. Being in Hollywood made one look at things that were perfect as-is and see fault. In my mind I imagined the areas where a plastic surgeon would draw black marks showing what needed to be nipped and tucked and given a round of liposuction. Fifteen years from now, if she didn’t keep hitting the gym hard as hard as life was hitting her, if she didn’t actually walk and do squats and stay on a decent diet, all of that softness would become fat and would end up being in need of liposuction.

If any of that narcissism and bullshit sold by commercials and magazines mattered to her.

This was the real world. I’d been around shallow people. I’d been around people who sold the shallowness that they despised as if it were a religion. I worked where those deemed too fat were hung on a cross until Jenny Craig took them down and made them household names.