Jack Steele 2462 words
240 Regency Drive
Marstons Mills, MA 02648
508-280-8645
Bed and Breakfast
By
Jack Steele
The instructions were so simple that no matter how drunk he was, and he was pretty drunk, he had no doubt that he could follow them to the letter. Which made him wonder how many times the couple had done this before, a source of titillation that led him quickly, if unwillingly, to the issue of morality. It would be adultery, one of the Ten Commandments, cut and dried. Adultery for her at least (is the single person also committing adultery?) and, come to think of it, almost but not quite cut and dried: what if the husband consents? Not only that, what if he’s a willing participant or instigator? When a man wants his wife to have sex with another man, it might not even be adultery. Fornication for sure, but he didn’t care about that, and besides, that was covered somewhere else, wasn’t it? Or was it one of the Ten Commandments? Regrettably, he’d never studied or thought about the Bible all that much.
He was well-read, however, in other areas, fiction for one, and he knew that the consensus about such matters in the literary world, in those novels of manners that people use to gauge how we live now, had changed considerably during the last fifty or sixty years. Morality had become less about immutable rules, commandments from on high, and more personal, open to individual interpretation. A more protestant, less catholic, morality had prevailed. Trust, for example. Trust and love and the dynamic between the two, and he couldn’t help but wonder in this situation what Henry James and Edith Wharton would make of that. It was hard not to think of those particular writers, and not only because of their preoccupations with morality, or more to the point, its often necessary cruelty when applied to specific human affairs. The setting had already brought those two writers to mind even before the drama, if it could be called that. The melodrama? The farce? The comedy? The tragedy? He asked himself that, what he found himself in the middle of, as he sipped his fourth drink. It’s not locked, he was told. Knock once and walk in. Say nothing. The bed will be on your left. No lights, please. Wait for your eyes to adjust. You’ll soon be able to see enough to satisfy you. Don’t speak to her. That’s an important rule. If you break it, she will interrupt whatever you are doing and tell you to leave. Do you understand? He understood. But that’s the only rule. You can even hurt her if you want. Not seriously, of course. Within reason. Use your own judgment about that. I can trust you, can’t I? Of course. Okay, then. When you’re done, she will give you something to give to me. Come back down, hand it to me, but say nothing. Just hand it to me and leave. Understood? Any questions?
He had no questions, not about the instructions. Nor did he have any serious doubts about the authenticity of the proposal. He knew he could be wrong. He knew he was drunk enough to be idiotically reckless. He knew the whole thing seemed unlikely, or would to someone sober who hadn’t spent an hour or more with the husband. Or was it two hours? They smoked cigars and drank scotch together. He was not a connoseiur of either tobacco or whiskey, but he knew enough to know that what the man offered was expensive. He was a bookish, introverted man and also knew very little about clothing and fashion, but he knew a well-dressed, well-groomed man when he saw one, a man who belonged in the setting, a sophisticated man, unlike himself. What would Henry James and Edith Wharton have made of my presence here, he wondered. It was a mansion on a hill. Gray brick with white stone columns, currently an eight room bed and breakfast with wide hallways and high ceilings, double screen doors. At the end of one of the halls, a verandah with a patio table and chairs ran alongside a small garden that was enclosed on the remaining three sides by a high hedge. A narrrow stone path encircled an oval flower bed full of small, densely clustered red and white flowers, mostly petunias and geraniums. A little bird bath sat in the center. It was the kind of place that made him think “old money,” a thought he knew to be naïve, certainly not sophisticated. And perhaps even wrong, for all he knew. About the ways of New England he had no confidence. Sailing. Tennis on clay courts. He’d read about all that, of course, but it was all foreign to him. Not his neck of the woods at all. He was a stranger here. A tourist.
The man spoke with easy authority, but that’s not what put him at ease and kept him listening. It was his quiet urgency, a kind of casually elegant hard sell, carefully measured to sound effortlessly sincere, along with the fact that the wife’s appearance, how she looked, even what type she was, was at most implied. She’s ten years younger than me, the man said. In her late thirties. We have two small children. She went to Mt. Holyoke. When the children are a little older, she’ll probably start a restaurant. I’m an attorney. All we want to know about you is where you are from. Texas, he said, and that quickly led to Kennedy, Dallas, Lyndon Johnson, and the Vietnam war, a conversation he knew by heart, giving him even more time to debate the wisdom of this with himself. This guy is crazy, he thought, and the wife too, if she exists. Never mind our different backgrounds, they are people who have nothing to do with me. We could have grown up in the same neighborhood and they’d still have nothing to do with me. I’m here with my mother, who needed the company because my dad passed away recently. She came here to visit her sister, who, as my mother puts it, “got hauled off in a moment of weakness by a Yankee.” I talked my way out of dinner tonight. My plan was to have a quiet evening, a couple of drinks of respectable but not expensive bourbon, and then go find a cheeseburger somewhere and eat it while I watched television. I’m in jeans and sneakers and a polo shirt. I’m not even wearing socks. Haven’t brushed my teeth or showered since this morning. I’m recently divorced and still feeling it. I have a teenage daughter. What business do I have, what do I know about, screwing somebody else’s wife in a hotel room?
Nevertheless, rube though he might be and not cut out for the job, he thought he knew what was happening. After two scotches, and as many bourbons before that, he thought he understood. It was more or less a con, whether or not the goods would be delivered. The sophisticated man was like a psychic, and the woman in that room might or might not be his wife. The man had read his mind. Or rather, he’d used what he could see at a glance to figure out what would work, what sort of woman the rube would like to find in the room, and what seduction technique would work best. No physical details, so he doesn’t think I’m a totally vulgar. Never underestimate the mark. Background only in this case, a background that made it possible, maybe even likely, for him to imagine a woman with ordinary brown hair, straight and short, something like a page boy, and delicate little features, all thin and straight. A small woman. Tiny. Petite. And a smart woman. Not necessarily intellectual, but smart enough, and plain enough, to have an acute need for being desired. He would have preferred classically trained in violin to the restaurant, and almost told the man that, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to break the spell or reveal himself too much. The man might find it troubling.
Of course she might be nothing like he imagined. Chances are she wouldn’t be, unless that was part of the trick. Like all good hustlers, maybe they waited for just the right opportunity, the right sucker, the one they knew, somehow, would imagine and desire the right woman. In that case they would assume that given certain sketchy information he would fill in the correct details. Or close enough, if the lighting was right. All they had to do was give him a nudge, and he would know who was waiting for him in that room. But if they were that polished, surely they would know too that he would need to know why.
It was dark by the time they reached that point. There were mosquitoes, but not many. The only light came from a dim overhead bulb in the hall behind them. The time for a cheeseburger was long past, and he wasn’t sure when his mother would be back. She’d be worried, though, if he wasn’t in his room, if she checked on him, but she might not. He looked at his watch. It was only a little after nine. Too early. If she came in before ten and she could see under the door that his light was out, she might worry. Too early to be asleep; too late to be out. And then he might have to explain, which meant lie. She wasn’t nosy. She wouldn’t raise a hue and cry, but she’d worry, and in the morning she’d ask him, oh so casually, where he’d been. And then he’d have to say something. Not a bar. A bar was so unlike him that she either wouldn’t believe it or worry even more. A movie would be better. He’d say he went to a mall, checked out a book store and a record store, then decided to go to a movie. Even after a couple of drinks? Still unlike him, but it would have to do.
The sophisticated man was staring at him. Both of their faces were in shadow, but there was plenty of light. He’d made his case, and now he was waiting for a decision. No, actually, he was waiting patiently, the guy was good, no doubt about it, while his mark, his victim, his sucker, whatever I am, examined himself. That’s where the mark would find the answer to his only remaining but all important question. Why? Isn’t this one of those too good to be true situations? Or was the real question, the one most urgent to himself, not why, but why me? That was easier in any case. I’m younger, about the wife’s age. I’m a Texan, which may sound exotic to them. Does he think I’m the salt of the earth? Is that it? I didn’t call him pardner, or say howdy, and I’m not wearing boots or a cowboy hat, but I do have an accent. Or the vestiges of one, a Texas cadence, and I’ve probably eased back into it the more I drank. Did that add to the rube appeal? Make him think I might be dumb enough to jump at this? Or was “dumb” sexually appealing? Maybe I should hoke it up a bit more. Throw in a a few plain horseshits and okey dokeys. Turn the tables and get him salivating for my folksiness. What else? We’ve already talked about barbecue and guns. That might have rubbed his pecker the right way. And not just guns but hunting, so maybe it’s not dumb, or not mainly dumb. Maybe rough is what they want. He did mention hurting her. Maybe he wants his wife to fuck a hunter. Maybe she wants to fuck a hunter. A Texas hunter. Maybe they’d guessed that about me earlier, or had hoped for it, and the man promised to confirm it before the act. Want me to tell her the details? I’ve killed deer and birds and rabbits, ma’am. Innocent little critters all, and I’ve cleaned, cooked and eaten every one my own personal self. Mighty good too. No. He doesn’t want me to. That’s the most important rule: no talking. Did he hear me say I wouldn’t kill anything I couldn’t eat? That I don’t believe in trophies? Did he smile when I said that? Was he laughing at me? For making distinctions that didn’t matter? Of course that might add to the rube appeal, a lame attempt at justifying a barbaric act, but it tempted me to call him a smug asshole.
The whiskey, twice as much as he usually allowed himself, and the indignation it fueled, wanted to be heard. What’s stopping me from giving your wife more than she really wants? I’d feel like a dancing bear if all I did was give her a thrill, fuck her good, maybe rough her up a little. Maybe I won’t be satisfied until I really screw your little Mt. Holyoke housewife to the wall. Til she begs me to stop and means it. What do you think of that? He said nothing of the kind of course, but just thinking it was enough to make him stand up and say, as if they’d never had the conversation, “Well, it was nice meeting you. I’d better go see if my mother’s back yet. Thanks for the scotch and the cigars.” He didn’t wait for a reaction, but he knew the husband didn’t follow him. Their rooms were on the same floor, and when he walked by their door, it occured to him, of course it did, that he could still do it. He wasn’t a saint. It was room number 4, but he didn’t slow down. In his own room, even though it was a major chore, given his condition, he wrote his mother a note. “Drank more than I meant to. See you in the morning.” He slipped it under her door and returned quickly to his room and turned out the light. He wanted to think more about what he wasn’t doing with the woman, theoretical or real, in the next room.
He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t fucking her. He was too drunk to be cautious for his own safety, so that wasn’t it, and not liking the husband would have just made it better. Also, he didn’t really give a shit about adultery or fornication, and his mother was a minor consideration. So why not? As he dozed off, he thought again about Henry James and Edith Wharton, and one word came to mind just before he lost consciousness. Rules.
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