Innocent Milf

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Aaron grudgingly left for an early dinner while I sat in front of his TV.

I couldn't watch it. I knew what it was, and I didn't want to see it. I hit PLAY and then fast-forwarded. The counter on the VCR told me that I had reached the forty-five minute mark when I suddenly recognized a scene that had only lived in my imagination up until now. Younger Cary--she would have been nearly twenty-four--lay on the bed in a disheveled pink satin dress.

The lighting was lousy, and the quality of the image was so bad, it made it mercifully had to tell what was going on. I guessed that by Volume 6, the editors ofSleeping Slutshadn't been too picky about just getting something out the door. Cary had described it to me as lasting for nearly an hour, but thankfully somebody at the production company had edited it down to about twenty minutes to make it fit with the rest of the anthology.

At high speed and with poor video quality, it was harder to tell that it was Cary. But I still knew what was happening, and it made my blood boil. If I had been in the same room as Eric while watching this, I would have broken his nose. Maybe his neck.

It was the last section of the copied tape, and I gratefully let the credits roll into static. Cary had been credited as "Clara Cootchie" in the section titledDirk's Dare. I blew out a shaky breath. It had been bad, but not as bad as if I had gone into it unsuspecting. Why had he sent this? To make me jealous? To make me feel like I was inadequate? It didn't make sense.

If he had expected me to watch it all the way through at normal speed, I would have heard her wondering in her drugged state who was fucking her. Maybe that was it--he was trying to prove to me that even years ago, she had been "willing" to sleep with anybody. He must be desperate if he was trying to sabotage my trust in Cary with a video of something that had happened twelve years ago.

It never would have occurred to him that Cary would already have told me about it, and told me the true story. I gritted my teeth, hating Eric all over again. Despite my better judgment, I picked up the sheaf of papers from my desk and flipped through it. The enclosed letter--again, presumably from a private investigator--detailed some of Cary's movements over the past several months. Pictures accompanied the report. I hadn't wanted this, but it was like food for a starving man; I pored over the pictures of Cary.

In sequence, it looked like she had cut her hair short--shorter than it had been when I met her. It wasn't hard to piece the progression of time together by the length of her auburn locks. I briefly wondered if she had cut her hair as a way of separating this year from the one before. Or, if it had been a sign of grief like a defeated samurai's widow. Either way, it made me sad to think of it as a signal of hurt.

Remembering the way Eric had twisted pictures of me to try to paint me as unfaithful, I ignored whatever context he had invented for them, and just looked at Cary. Here, she ate lunch at a nice restaurant, wearing the tan "lady lawyer" jacket and skirt combo that I had seen her in on the day of her divorce. Her lunch companion was a deeply-tanned Mediterranean-looking man, lounging back in his chair.

In another, she was walking side-by-side with a guy not much older than me in a sharp gray suit. Both of them were laughing. As I flipped through pictures, I noticed happily that she was still wearing the gold bracelet I had given her. The sequence of pictures featured a cavalcade of different men; I was jealous of the time they had gotten to spend with Cary, but not of them.

My breathing was even until I reached a picture of Cary and Paul. Even though he had told me about the date, and how it had come to nothing, my chest tightened. This was the first of the sequence of pictures that actuallylookedlike a date. Everything else had looked like a business lunch or a meeting with an old friend. One of the later pictures showed Cary leaning in for a kiss; if Paul hadn't told me that it was on the cheek, I could easily have believed it ended in a real kiss.

Soon I got to some even less-comfortable pictures, and I had to remind myself that Eric had curated these specifically to create the illusion that Cary was cheating. I also had to remind myself that I had specifically told her to live by her own advice to me--go out and have the experiences she might have had if she had never met me. Even if she ended up sleeping with some of these guys, it wasn't really cheating. At least, I kept trying to make myself believe that.

One sequence of pictures was clearly a double-date with Sami and two guys. Each picture had been chosen to spotlight that the guy who had clearly been paired up with Cary was sort of a grabby close-sitter. My teeth automatically ground as I saw him with a hand on her shoulder, or at her waist, or on top of her hand. I might have been imagining it--I might have beenwantingto see it--but Cary's smile in each of these pictures looked a little forced.

The simple gold bracelet was present in each picture.

The last set of pictures made my heart race with anxiety. They were clear enough and unambiguous enough that these weren't just clever staging or getting an incriminating shot at the most damning moment. It was obviously a sort of girls' night out that began with many faces I recognized; Cary, Sami, Samantha, Sascha's mother Lana, and a couple of unfamiliar women. All of them were in variously revealing breezy spring outfits.

Cary was jaw-droppingly hot. If the others were dressed to have fun, Cary was dressed to havefun. There was no doubt that her side-zip leather miniskirt, stay-up stockings, high heels, and green tie-front halter-top were intended to attract attention. A glittering necklace that looked like emeralds sat on her neck and chest. My heart slowed only slightly as I saw she was still wearing our gold bracelet.

Like a flip book, the photos depicted the attrition during the evening of the other women. One by one, they disappeared from the pictures, until only Sami, Cary, and a lady I didn't recognize wearing a blue bikini top, low-cut jeans, heels, and a necklace in multiple loops remained. The next few showed Cary and Sami standing at the bar with slightly glazed expressions while the third woman danced in the background.

The last five pictures were the worst. The first showed Cary dancing with a pair of men: one was wearing a loud tropical shirt, and the other was wearing a slightly disheveled suit and tie, as if he had been carousing for a few hours already. Neither of them was giving Cary much in the way of personal space, and she didn't seem to be making any attempt to shoo them away. I was reminded uncomfortably of her drunken dancing at her birthday party.

The next picture showed what was unmistakably Cary in between the two men, leading them down a hallway by their hands. Her back was to the camera, showing a sweep of her beautiful auburn hair down her mostly-bare back. The black leather of the miniskirt clung to her bottom. Sami in her thin yellow sundress was barely visible in the background, looking worried.

The third picture showed the guy in the suit opening the door to the men's restroom and glancing over his shoulder as he beckoned Cary and the other man in. The tropical shirt guy was tugging at the knot in the front of Cary's tied-together halter top. It was already falling open a little, revealing the hint of a nipple. The fourth picture was blurry and clearly taken by pushing the camera lens against the gap in a restroom stall. A pair of legs blocked part of the picture, but some of Cary was visible squatting on the restroom stall floor in her spiky black heels.

The last picture showed Cary walking out of the men's restroom, her makeup and hair in disarray. Her thumbs were hooked under the straps of her re-tied but still rumpled top as she hiked it up a little. The men were nowhere to be seen. However, I could see a flip-calendar on the wall at the end of the bar on the edge of the picture. It was Friday, March 15. Five weeks ago.

I was hyperventilating. From the photos, it seemed clear that Cary had gotten drunk and taken two men to the restroom where she did something--something that messed up her makeup and required her to adjust her clothing. It wasn't too hard to guess what that 'something' was. And judging by the date of the calendar, maybe she had recently read my letter in which I admitted to having sex with Sally.

It was my worst nightmare. And if it was true, it was no worse than what I had done.

Moments trickled by as I practiced meditative aikido breathing exercises to calm myself and try to look at the situation objectively. In the meantime, I scanned the private investigator's letter, which also referred to some video clip 'acquired' from the security cameras of the bar at which the incident took place. I glanced over at the TV, its screen glowing with the frantic crawl of dead-colored static since I had turned off the VCR. It beckoned like a cursed crystal ball.

Fear is the mind-killer. If I refused to watch it now, it wouldn't be any sort of moral victory--it would be cowardice. One way or another, I had to know. I scooted my chair back over to the TV on Aaron's desk, double-checked that the door was locked, and stabbed the slightly-worn green triangle of the PLAY button.

Static continued for a few more moments following the end credits ofSleeping Sluts, vol. 6. Then the screen flickered, skipped, and wavered before resolving into a grainy image made blurry by darkness and a zoom lens. Black and white security-camera footage wasn't good for much detail, but I could at least tell that I was watching Cary and Sami in the same clothing that had been shown in the last series of pictures. It was silent--which simultaneously made it seem more surreal and also drew my attention to the few visual details I could glean.

Sami bopped back and forth in what couldn't quite be called a dance beside Cary, and pointed here and there at various figures in the crowd. Cary held an untouched martini glass in one hand, and gazed across the crowd with a tense jawline. Even at this low resolution, I recognized the expression--it was her stubborn "I've made up my mind" face. From time to time, she would jerk her head in disagreement as Sami clearly made a suggestion.

Finally, Sami leaned towards Cary and said something--something fairly heated to judge by her gestures and facial expression. I saw her point at our gold bracelet as she spoke, and Cary's eyes iced over. She lifted her drink deliberately, drank the remainder in one draught, placed the empty glass on the table, and squared her shoulders. My heart rate resumed pounding in anxiety as I watched.

The camera view switched to an overhead security camera with a birds-eye view of the whole dance floor. Cary wended her way between dancing couples until she reached a pair of men in the center of the floor. Since the footage was grainy and monochrome, I couldn't tell much about them except that they both appeared to be maybe just a little younger than Cary. One was wearing a loud tropical shirt, and the other was wearing a slightly disheveled suit and tie, as if he had been carousing for a few hours already.

The woman with the blue bikini top and low-cut jeans was already dirty-dancing with the pair, and waved Cary over with a gesture made expansive by drink. She reached down towards the tropical-shirt guy's crotch and raised her eyebrows suggestively. If Cary made any response, it was hidden by the angle and the silence. Several minutes of dancing dragged by, with the pair getting closer and closer to Cary. Their hands reached out, explored, and grew bolder.

Cary's expression hadn't changed much; to somebody less familiar with her, they might interpret it as drunken concentration, but I knew it was her stubborn face. As they moved and ground against her, I could see by the set of her shoulders that she had come to a decision. She turned and took first one by the hand, and then the other. She said something to the woman in the bikini top, who laughed uproariously. She minced off the dance floor, with Cary following deliberately, leading the two men.

The camera switched angles again, showing the four walking down the hallway. The guy in the rumpled suit waggled his eyebrows, opened the men's room door, and appeared to call inside. After a long moment, he gave a thumbs-up and waved Cary, the other guy, and the woman I didn't recognize inside. As in the photos, the tropical shirt guy was hurrying to try to get Cary out of her clothes. I noticed that the still photos hadn't showed the other woman; I wondered what her role in all of this was.

The footage wobbled and skipped ten minutes--you could see the time stamp in the corner jump forward. I frowned--in my heart, I wanted to believe that there was some exonerating detail cut out of those ten minutes. As the tape ran, the two men exited, smirking. The one in the suit now had his shirt untucked, and the tropical shirt guy had the whole front of his shirt unbuttoned. After another tense few moments, Cary walked out, adjusting her clothing. She looked a little wobbly on her feet and her expression was distant.

I sighed. Occam's Razor was not my friend, here.

It was better than if Eric had sent actual footage of Cary getting her brains fucked out by two drunks from a seedy bar in a dirty bathroom. But only just--as it was, my imagination was making things quite graphic enough. If I had thought Eric smart enough, I would have guessed that it was his intent to make me do just that.

As the room darkened, it occurred to me that in a sick and twisted way, this was payback for what Cary and I had done to Eric. Cary had left around falsely incriminating photos, audio, and letters that had been created with the help of her friends (including me). And now Eric was sending similarly damning evidence to me. It actually gave me a sliver of hope to think that perhaps these photos and footage were equally as contrived, even if it was without Cary's knowledge.

There was nothing else on the tape. I glanced once more at the paper and a strange indentation at the bottom caught my eye. It looked like erased writing. I narrowed my eyes. Or writing on a sheet of paper that had been sitting on top of this one, leaving a faint imprint. I quickly sorted through my desk drawer until I found a pencil. Lightly sweeping the point sideways across the paper a few times, I could soon make out a few words:

Mailbox $400.

Four hundred dollars for a private mailbox at the post-office? No way, that was way too expensive. What was this?

It stuck like a thorn in my mind, giving me something else to think about besides the possibility--even the probability--that Cary had spent this Spring Break getting plowed by a pair of drunken opportunists. When Aaron returned, I had taken the papers down to the dumpster and thrown them away, and I had piled several magnets on top of the video cassette.

Aaron didn't bring it up again, and I went through the next few weeks feeling ambivalent. It took a lot of concentration to keep my mind on my left few assignments and my finals, and even when I focused, I would occasionally find myself staring into the distance, unwillingly imagining Cary's implied assignation. Had she taken both of them at once? One at a time? Or perhaps the other woman had joined in. Eric couldn't have planned a better revenge.

By the time I said my goodbyes to folks on campus and packed up, I was so turned around that I didn't know what to think. I wouldn't be able to take any classes this summer that would move my degree forward, so I had another plan. In the meantime, I was headed back home. But to what?

* * * * *

* * * * *

My parents were somewhere in between furious and panic-stricken when I told them my plan for the summer.

"Wildland firefighting!?" my mother nearly squawked. "Do you have anyideahow dangerous that is?"

"I talked with Uncle Liam," I answered. "He says there's risk, but it's a lot safer than it was thirty years ago. And that therealdanger is for the smoke-jumpers. I wouldn't be doing that. Just working behind the line. Probably digging ditches and carrying water and stuff--not even close to where things are on fire. Handcrew, the guy at the organization called it."

"Scholarships for literature and history, and you want to digditchesfor a summer job?" Dad sounded almost as offended as if I had told him I wanted to join the Hell's Angels. "Why?"

I took a deep breath and sighed. "This thing with Cary... it's really messed me up. I'm better now, but I just need some time to be on my own. No friends, no family. Just me and some strangers trying to do some good. It pays better than the CD store, and it will probably cover the last semester or two of tuition that scholarships won't at this point."

My parents looked like I had gut-punched each of them. Finally, Mom spoke. "You really loved her, didn't you?"

I nodded unhappily. "I still do. And I want to be better for her. Helping to put out wildfires seems like a good thing to do. We both like nature and the wilderness, after all. I think she'd appreciate it. But more importantly, I think it's whatIneed right now."

"We get it," Dad said quietly. "We're sorry for snooping into your relationship. You don't need to disappear into the wilderness to do a dangerous job to drive the point home."

"That's not it," I replied. "I haven't been angry with either of you about this for a long time. I realized that whatever pushed Cary to this decision, it was inside her. Everything else was just fuel for a fire that was already burning." I sighed. "I want to help her with whatever is hurting her. But I can't do that, and this will make me feel less useless."

We had dinner, I told them about my classes, and before I knew it, it was time for my last firefighting tests before "deployment." The pack test was basically a lot of exercise, but wearing a weighted vest. Luckily, I was already in pretty good shape and I liked hiking. I still found the physical test a bit of a challenge. I had already taken some advice from Uncle Liam and gotten my baseline firefighting cert, even though I planned to mostly be on the mitigation and preparation side of things.

Within a few days, I was headed west towards Nevada and wildfire country. On the way there, I listened to the radio, popped some old cassettes into my dilapidated Escort's tape deck, and thought. I had spent a lot of time tryingnotto think of what Cary might be up to. I had read enoughPenthouse Lettersas a horny high schooler to know that there were guys who got off on seeing their girl with other men.

Not me. It was like a papercut in my psyche: a razor-thin laceration that I barely noticed until my thoughts turned a certain way. At that point, it became briefly so intolerable that I wondered if this was the sort of semi-divine transport of agony in which classical poets wrote their best work. As the pavement of US Highway 93 rolled away beneath me, I decided to face it.

Whathadhappened in that bathroom stall? What was the worst-case scenario?

Cary had joked as "Candy" at last Spring Break's wet T-shirt contest that two guys at once was her turn-on. Her fake affair story and pictures to make Eric jealous had featured her getting double-teamed by a pair of muscular guys. Maybe that was a secret fantasy on her list that she had never quite gotten around to showing me. Would that really be so bad?

I allowed my mind to wrap around the idea. Instead of shying away from it, I delved deeper into it. Cary, her black leather skirt hiked up and her breasts bouncing free from the green tie-front halter-top. Emeralds glittering as she was pressed against the maroon walls of the bar restroom, and a stranger in a loud tropical shirt jamming his dick into her from behind.