Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (43 page)

She stood up immediately and announced, “I need that Mountain Dew,” while heading for the bathroom door.

“Drink it
all
,” Ray told her with a chuckle. He was so spent that he walked over and sat on the toilet seat himself to recuperate. He shook his head, grinning. “Damn!”

Suzanne hit the kitchen, grabbed the two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew from the table, and drank it without a glass.

“Mmmt, mmt,
mmph,
” she grunted to herself as she drank. Then she smiled.
She wasn’t upset or embarrassed by her actions at all. She couldn’t get pregnant by it. And Big Ray hadn’t given her any diseases before. So she felt safe. It was safe fun. And she found that she enjoyed it.

If only Antonio could figure out how to do something like this,
she pondered.
But his dick is so much smaller, and he could never bring himself to talk to me like that.

She was in a quagmire. How long could her sexual relationship with a twenty-five-year-old construction worker—who still lived in the projects— last before it would become an embarrassment to her marriage, and the peers of her professional circles? She knew in her right mind that it was only a matter of time before she would need to break away from the insanity.

But he’s so yummy,
she insisted. Her fix for Big Ray had become insatiable.

When he walked out to join her from his hallway bathroom, she looked at him and grinned. “Don’t get too used to that,” she teased.

He chuckled. “Yeah, I
can’t.
I’d fuck around and not wanna go back to work in the morning, if you keep giving me head like that.”

“I didn’t
give
you head. You
forced
me to do that.”

“Naw, I forced
Sasha
to do it, right?”

Suzanne took another gulp of the soda and grinned. “Whatever.”

After two o’clock in the morning, Suzanne Smith-Greene walked back inside of her Brookline home and was freshly loaded with rum and Coke from a quick visit to a late-night bar. There was no mistaking the distinctive aroma of rum and Coke. The strong drink would easily mask any other scents.

Once he heard the garage open and close, followed by a slam of the kitchen door, Professor Antonio Greene looked at his office clock for about the fortieth time that evening. Not able to rest his mind, while his attractive wife ran the streets, he remained up late, rereading all of the term papers and grades that he had given to his political science students.

Finally!
he told himself upon his wife’s return. Now he could go on to sleep. The term papers had been finished
hours
ago.

Antonio waited until his wife had made it well into the house before he
began to restack the papers in alphabetical order. And before he could finish them, Suzanne walked into his open office door.

She looked down at her dutiful husband behind his office desk. “You’re still up with those papers?” But at least he was dressed in his white bathrobe for bed.

He looked up at her and grinned. “I wanted to make sure that everyone gets their deserving grade, that’s all.”

“Awww, isn’t that nice of you,” she cooed. “I’m sure they’ll all love you for it.”

In a flash, she was out of the room and headed for bed.

Antonio finished stacking the term papers in order. He set them in their separate files for the morning, and he stood from his chair to click off the light and head for bed himself.

When he arrived in their luxurious master bedroom, Suzanne had locked the bathroom door behind her. Antonio could hear her brushing her teeth and gargling mouthwash.

“I can still smell the alcohol,” he mumbled to himself. “You must’ve gotten
toasted!
” he decided to yell through the door. “How’d you even drive home like that?”

“What?” Suzanne hollered back out. “I’ll be out in a minute, Tony. I’m trying to get myself together for bed.”

Antonio nodded, pulled off his bathrobe, and climbed into bed to wait for her. While he waited, he clicked on the flat-screen television set to the sports channel. ESPN highlights and commentary lasted all night long. The latest in sports gossip concerned baseball’s superstar, Alex Rodriguez, in an alleged affair with the pop icon, Madonna.

“Madonna strikes again,” he joked, right as his wife walked out from the bathroom. Suzanne looked at the news and paused.

I know exactly how she feels,
she pondered.
Guy Richie looks like a pussy next to A-Rod. But she married him for her sanity and family stability, until she found that shit won’t hold her over forever.

I know EXACTLY how she feels,
she insisted.

Her husband broke her from her daze. “What do you think about that?”

Suzanne turned to stare at him. She even dared to tell him the truth.
Then she thought better of it. “What do
you
think?” she asked him instead.

Tony thought about it and shrugged. “I don’t know. I was surprised that someone like Madonna would even marry a British guy. She seems to commit to men who are her total opposite, while having flings with guys who are more her type.”

“Yeah, because her
‘type’
is not
stable. She’s
not stable. So it makes sense for her to crave that,” Suzanne explained, sounding like the logical lawyer that she was.

Her husband nodded. “Well, that makes sense. But how long can you expect a woman like Madonna to really, you know, go for that?”

Suzanne stared at him with glassy eyes again from her late-night binge. The alcohol was all up in her system.

So, he totally doesn’t get what kind of woman I am,
she mused.
He doesn’t see me as the Madonna or Sasha type at all. I’m just a sensible, good girl to him.

“And how do you view
me
?” she finally asked. “What’s
my
type?”

Tony considered it. “Well, celebrity women are different in that way. They expect for their guys to be as high wired as they are most of the time.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t answer the question. I asked you, what’s
my
type?” Suzanne grilled him.

“Well, I mean, you’re a professional woman. It’s not all about the high-wire acts for you; it’s all about the proficiency,” he responded.

But I have a pussy, too!
Suzanne blasted to herself.
It’s not just about success and career moves all the time. It’s also about loving every minute of the one you’re with!

“So, that’s all I am is a careerwoman?”

“No, not hardly. You’re
much
more than that, of course. But that
is
your
‘type,’
since we’re talking about types here.”

Well, your ‘type’ is a boring-ass old man who can’t keep up with me!
she snapped to herself. She climbed into bed and remained on her left side, closer to the bathroom.

“And what is
your
type?” she couldn’t help but ask.

Her husband smiled. “I guess I’m the gentle-hearted gentleman.”

Suzanne thought about it with a pregnant pause.
And why did I ever think that I could be satisfied with that?
she mused.
He sounds like a pussy! And I already have one.

So she continued to ponder her dilemma. After a few minutes, Tony clicked off the television and rolled over in his wife’s direction, placing his left hand on her hip.

“Don’t do that right now, I have a headache,” she told him. She didn’t even want to feel his touch that evening. For what? He couldn’t do anything with it. Her pussy was already sore and dry from Big Ray.

Antonio nodded his head and removed his hand from his wife’s hip. He mumbled, “Okay.” Then he asked, “Have you taken any Tylenol yet?”

“Yeah,” she lied.

Her husband exhaled softly to himself and accepted his fate.

I’ve lost her,
he admitted. He had known that for nearly a year now. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

“So, what do you think I should I do?”

Antonio had a private conversation with Professor Scarsdale at his Harvard University office, with his heavy wooden door closed behind them. Scarsdale, a Boston-raised and bred instructor of forty-nine, shook his head and chuckled at the dilemma.

“Well, that’s kind of like the boat you put yourself into when you marry a younger woman. And sure, it’s fun in the beginning to have a young woman, just like it is with any other new relationship. But you have no idea how she’s gonna change as
she
grows older as
you
grow older. And there’s no way for you to know that.”

“You don’t know that with any wife,” Antonio countered.

“Yeah, but what you
do
know with a woman who’s closer to your age is that she’ll be going through a lot of the same middle-aged crises and panics that you’ll be going through at the same time. So the both of you can have a little more understanding and empathy.”

Antonio nodded in his chair and took the information in. Scarsdale sat on the other side of his desk in one of the three visitor chairs. His opinions on relationships and age were not new to Tony; the troubled professor only needed to be reminded of the obvious.

“But what about, you know, the sex part?” he asked his peer.

Scarsdale laughed. “The great sex part will always be a fallacy, my friend. And sure, some of these young college students would be hot in the sex department as newbies, but a lot of them don’t know what they’re doing yet.”

Antonio heard that and smiled. His wife, Suzanne, sure knew what she was doing, whenever they were intimate, that is. However, lately, she hadn’t been feeling up to it.

“My thing lately has been getting my wife to
want
to perform. She keeps running out and around the city with girlfriends and coming back home drunk and tired—so she would have me to believe.”

Scarsdale raised a brow. “It’s really gotten that bad? For how long?”

“For nearly a year now.”

Scarsdale shook his head again. “Wow. That doesn’t sound good. And again, since she’s nowhere near your age, you really have no way of knowing what she’s saying with that. She might be saying, in her own little way, that she wants to enjoy her youth again, while she still has it. Which, in itself, is not all a bad thing if she grows out of it. But if a young woman is too tired or adverse for intimacy
now,
then what does that say about your
future
sex life?

“And what about
you
?” he added. “Will you even be able to satisfy her in the years to come, if she gets a second wind? Those are things that older guys marrying younger women need to think more about. How do you
sustain,
over
time,
all of the intangibles of her
needs?
”

Antonio nodded in his chair again. “Those are all valid points, James. But when you first marry a person…I don’t know, you figure that you’ll work everything out as situations occur. I mean, despite our age difference, we’re both logical people here.”

“Logic has nothing to do with each person’s life cycle, my friend. Either you’re both in sync with where you’re going in a relationship, or you’re not. And you could actually agree with most of the same things of importance as far as a destination is concerned, but then disagree on
how
or
when
you wanna
get there.
”

Antonio thought about his young wife’s desire to have children and went silent. He hadn’t exactly been forthcoming in his attempts to oblige her. He
felt he was too old, too busy, and too comfortable in his lifestyle to raise children, which was a major blow to Suzanne becoming a mother.

That’s a destination we definitely don’t agree on,
he leveled himself. So how could he blame her for going astray? It was an unfulfilled relationship for her.

So he agreed with his friend. “You’re absolutely right. And if one of you doesn’t have the same destination as the other, it’s only a matter of time before you start going your separate ways.”

Professor Scarsdale grinned. “Welcome to America and the free world, my friend. But let me ask you question, Tony. Is marriage mostly about companionship for you? Because I know that you don’t have any children from either of your marriages. And if that’s the case, then maybe it’s better for you to have committed girlfriends, you know. That way, you don’t have to go through the extra legalities and the fall-outs of divorce.”