Innocent Milf

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Cary was in the same club as me! How had I missed her? The darkness of the comedy club and the bright lights on the stage had anonymized the audience. Maybe she had come in earlier and I just hadn't seen her. But even in a crowd, how had I missed the sound of her voice? Of her laugh? How had I not seen her silhouette immediately? And how had she not seen me?

Mesmerized by the stage-hypnotist's words, she had fallen asleep in the audience, and now walked in an unseeing stupor towards Max the Mighty's beckoning voice.

I was holding my breath, and started as Sascha grabbed my arm. "Holy shit," she whispered.

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Cary was here. My Cary. A rush of emotions threatened to overwhelm me. Maybe it was just the bright stage lights making my vision blurry. My fingertips were tingling.

She would have looked gorgeous no matter what, but she was dressed up tonight. Purple satin blouse, gray pencil skirt, black heels, and the glittering emerald necklace I had seen her wearing in the incriminating video and pictures that Eric had sent. She looked like a sophisticated lady out for a night on the town. It was close to the same outfit she had been wearing in pictures of her dinner date with Paul.

Our gold bracelet glittered still on her wrist. I instinctively touched my ring. I started to stand, and Sascha pulled me back to my seat. "Hey, I heard it can be sort of a bad deal to wake somebody up from hypnosis suddenly. I don't know how true that is, but you should probably just hold your horses until she's back down off the stage, okay?"

I nodded mutely, mind racing. Why was she here? A night out with the girls? I scanned the crowd, tracing the closing gap of people who had made way for her to walk up to the stage in her hypnotized trance. A small table near the far side of the room almost hidden behind a large potted plant looked like her point of origin. At least that explained why we hadn't seen one another.

A tall glass with a long red straw and a yellow lemon floating on top indicated an abandoned seat. Long island iced tea: Cary liked those. Sitting at the table smiling and clapping was a dark-haired man watching the stage as intently as I wanted to be. A date? Had Cary come here on adate? My heart thundered. I'd kill him.

Sascha squeezed my arm. "Hey, are you here?" she asked quietly.

I forced a ragged breath. "Yeah. I'm here." I jerked my head towards Cary's empty seat. "I think she was here on a date." I pointed towards her abandoned table.

Sascha shot to her feet. "Oh,fuckno. Hold on a moment. I'm going to 'use the restroom.'"

She wended her way through the crowd towards the man. I turned my eyes back to Cary, full of worry. Now that the initial shock of seeing her had passed, I scrutinized my long-absent paramour on stage. She sat slumped in a seat at the end of the row, looking almost unchanged. Her hair had returned to nearly the length it had been on what I thought of as our "Clan of the Cave Bear" camping trip. Barely visible lines at the corners of her eyes looked familiar--I had developed similar.

She looked tired. Not old, not exhausted, not worn. But tired as if with constant effort.

She looked like Cary.

Max the Mighty had finished settling the tall basketball player into his seat at the other end of the line, and now raised his hands to address the crowd. "I remind you all that I'm not a wizard--just a magician!" Laughter. "I can'tforcepeople up here to do anything that they don't want to. I plant suggestions, but everybody up here has already followed my suggestions; at least a part of their brain wants to be up here having fun. And everybody filled out a waiver before the show, right?" Chortles rippled through the crowd at his implication.

I wondered where this was going. It was an 18+ show, after all.

"Of course," Max continued in reminder, "folks have probably been partaking--" he bent his wrist in pantomime, "--so things might get a little crazier up here than normal. Be warned!" He spun back towards his line of hypnotized volunteers. "I am going to count to ten, and when I do, everybody sitting on this stage will believe that they are on an airplane," he pronounced.

And so it went for a few minutes of fairly harmless silliness; the participants ducked, grabbed the bottom of their chairs, and uttered gasps of astonishment as they believed that their plane encountered turbulence or flight attendants accidentally splashed whiskey on them. After their "airplane ride," Max snapped his fingers, commanding them to sleep.

Next, he made them believe they were all farm animals (and one farmer). Cary was a chicken. My eyes were glued to her. I had completely forgotten that Sascha had left to investigate. As the rest of the participants floundered around making ridiculous mooing or baaing noises, Cary hunkered down on her chair. Noticing that something was different, Max wandered over to her. Holding the microphone up, he asked, "What's up, chicky-poo? Why aren't you going around the barnyard with the rest of the animals?"

"Eggs," Cary said shortly. It was the first word I had heard from her in person for nearly a year, and even though the situation was ridiculous, the sound was music to me.

"Hey, farmer Brown!" Max called, "We've got some eggs over here!"

The audience laughed as the basketball player ambled across the stage, genially brushing other hypnotized performers out of the way with calming grunts and coos. As he reached Cary, he motioned for her to stand up to collect her imaginary eggs. "Come on, now. Let's get those eggs."

Cary exploded into motion. Before the guy knew what was happening, Cary had grabbed his outstretched hand and yanked him forward in an armbar. "My babies!" She shriek-squawked. "Get away!" The big guy stumbled forward and down almost to one knee. To the rest of the audience, it looked like Wednesday Addams doing judo on Lurch. To me, it made perfect sense.

Her kids. Even in her hypnotized state, she wanted to protect her kids--her most valuable treasure. I smiled through blurry eyes.Especiallyin her hypnotized state, I corrected to myself. Without the filters of inhibition or consciousness, she was as pureCaryas she could be. And Big Farmer Brown had just fucked with the wrong Mama Hen.

"Sleep!" Max the Mighty blurted in a mild panic, and everybody in the audience roared with laughter as all the people on stage immediately went limp, standing where they were. Cary's stranglehold on the tall man's wrist slowly loosened, as if even in sleep she intended to break something.

The tall guy had jerked out of his trance, head swiveling back and forth in confusion and alarm. "How did I get up here?" he asked, to the audience's amusement. He rubbed at his wrist gingerly.

"Don't worry about it, Super Size," Max said smoothly as he herded the guy towards the other end of the stage. "You just got attacked by the world's most aggressive chicken!" The audience laughed again and applauded wildly. The tall guy resumed his original seat in the crowd, perplexed but none the worse for his encounter.

"There's always one," Max chuckled--a bit shakily I thought. "I think we'll have to send our angry chicken back, too." He started to walk towards Cary, but the audience howled in protest, drawing him up short. Her protectiveness had made her an instant crowd favorite.

"All right," he said, holding up his hands to mollify the crowd. "I know which side my bread is buttered on. Let me just take some precautions." He pulled a notepad out of his blue suit jacket with a flourish and theatrically made a point of pretending to cross something out. "NoKarate Kidre-enactment this time," he stage-murmured. The audience exploded in approving laughter.

Sascha plopped down next to me, startling me out of lock on Cary where she sat. "It's a blind date," she whispered. "His name is Dave. Talked into it by friends of friends. They've been here for about an hour. Nothing past a couple of drinks and some fried zucchini wedges. He knows her name and that she's on sabbatical from her job as an artist."

"How did you find all that out?" I asked.

Sascha grinned and flicked the tip of my nose. "I have my ways, Baker. I'm a practitioner of the magickal arts, remember?"

I snorted. "You're a brilliant menace," I retorted with a smile. But I clung to the new tidbits of information.On sabbatical. Eric had said that Cary's business was failing, but 'on sabbatical' didn't sound like it squared up with that perfectly. Of course, I didn't believe a word of Eric's letter, but evenhewas smart enough to base his lies on a kernel of truth.

"Waiver?" I asked Sascha pointedly, suddenly remembering.

"I filled one out on your behalf," Sascha answered breezily. "Won't hold up in court, but it got you through the door. You needed to get out. And it's a good thing you did, or you wouldn't have gotten a chance to see Cary tonight."

I rolled my eyes. She was right, but I would have preferred to know what I was walking into.

"I think we better take a break for a minute and get to know our guests," Max said on stage, before adding, "Before they break each other." He walked up and down the line, asking innocuous biographical questions. What's your name, what do you do for work, etc... When he got to Cary, he asked, "Where did you learn that chop-sockey kung fu?"

Cary frowned in her somnolent haze. "It's not kung fu. It's from knife-fighting."

"Knife-fighting?" Max lurched back in mock-alarm. "Does your husband fight, too?"

"I'm divorced," Cary said, holding up her ring-less hand. She sounded so happy that a lady in the audience shouted "Yeah, sister!" and the audience broke out into chortles.

"Imagine that," Max said with a smarmy roll of his eyes. It was mostly the men laughing this time. A frown creased my brow.

I looked at my watch. This couldn't go on for too much longer. I needed to go talk to Cary and... and what? She was here with a date. Should I go talk to him? What would I say? I knew that there was no way I was leaving this building tonight without Cary, but I didn't have a good sense of how that was going to happen. Every scenario I rapidly ran through my head ended up with me embarrassing myself or making Cary angry that I had intruded on something private.

A backwards, traditionalist part of my brain argued for me to "be a man" and just go tell the guy to take a hike, and be sitting there sipping a drink when Cary came back to her table. Or just meet her at the bottom of the stage, grab her hand, and take out the back door for back-alley sex. I grinned--even if it wasn't very realistic, that wasn't such a bad idea.

"Time for some adult fun!" Max the Mighty announced, snapping my attention back to the stage. "Each of you will be at the naughtiest party you've ever attended, trying to get the attention of your crush. You won't be worried about embarrassing whoever you came here with."

I sat up straight, curious.

"In your deepest imagination--don't tell anybody--you are in a room with your lover, and their hands are all over you." Max raised his eyebrows suggestively. "And these chairs that you are sitting on--when I count down from ten, they will suddenly become the man or woman of your dreams."

On cue, Barry White started playing over the speakers, loud enough to be amusing, but not so loud that we couldn't hear anything else. The audience tittered, and Max counted down. I found that I was sitting tensely, hands half-clenched. Cary had demonstrated a hidden exhibitionist streak in the past--would she act out embarrassingly on the stage, and say something private? Or would she pull into herself? As the last of Max's syllables echoed into silence, followed by a snap of his fingers, the participants on stage came back to life. A hundred voices roared and shrieked with laughter, and eight bodies bumped, writhed, and bounced against their chairs.

Of course, my gaze was riveted to Cary.

She started conservatively, arms down by her sides and simply swirling her hips in a sort of figure-8. I recognized the motion with a stirring in my trousers. As the moments passed, she lifted her hands and ran them through her hair, and then dragged them down her front, popping open the buttons of her blouse one by one. Captivated, I would swear that her breasts looked even more perfect than when last I had seen her. Supported by a plunging ivory-white pushup bra, they bumped slowly up and down as Cary started to rock back and forth with her hips, arms gripping the sides of the chair.

I couldn't help but wonder--was the bra meant to be seen tonight? Or had she just worn it to feel pretty? I knew that both were possible. I considered asking Sascha, but bit my tongue. Now that I had reminded myself that she was on a date, I turned a quick glance towards the guy at the edge of the room. Sascha had said his name was Dave.

He was as entranced as I was. His mouth was half-open, probably in expectation that he was getting a preview of coming attractions. I wondered if it would be better to just walk over and tell him everything, or to let Cary explain it herself. Either way, he was leaving tonight disappointed. His eyebrows shot up, and I whipped my head back around to see what Cary had done whileCan't Get Enough of Your Loveplayed.

She had stood up and was swinging her leg over the seat so that she ended by sitting back down in the chair facing away from audience. Her ankles snaked around the legs of the chair and she grabbed the seat back as if it were shoulders--my shoulders. Even though the collected sounds of the participants on stage combined in an orgiastic cacophony and Barry White's smooth bass lyrics, I could still clearly pick out the familiar tones of Cary's moans as her brain told her that she was grinding back and forth on a dick.

The intensity of Cary's movement continued to rise, as did the pitch of her moans. It was a sequence of events I knew all too well. I suddenly blushed as I realized that Sascha--and everybody else--were essentially watching half of what it looked like when Cary and I made love. Nobody else had context for it, but I wondered if Sascha was self-conscious about what she was seeing.

While the audience laughed in embarrassment at a middle-aged guy in the middle trying to doggy-style his chair, Max the Mighty got a twinkle in his eye. "All right, time for the big finish! All the ladies on stage, you are about to have the biggest orgasm of your lives!" He winked. "Fellas, you'll just have to save it for later; I'm not paying all of your dry-cleaning bills. You only make that mistake at one show before you learn your lesson."

Max snapped his fingers, and the women on stage began to twist, quake, and shudder. A chorus of throaty or high-pitched moans filled the air. One of the women was on her hands and knees, frantically bouncing her bottom against the standing chair. She began to drool and flopped forward onto her chest. Cary went stiff and wrapped her arms around the back of the chair, pulling herself into it.

I couldn't hear her, but the soft mewling hiccup sound she was surely making right now was as familiar to me as my own name, and as precious to me as the white gold ring on my index finger. I was furiously jealous of the entire crowd right now, even if they were distracted by the other, more melodramatic performances.

"Okay," Max said, wiping his brow theatrically. "Let's take another break. When I count down from ten, you'll return to your seats and forget all of this--but you'll all be exceptionally relaxed when I eventually wake you up."

Sascha leaned towards me. "Look familiar?" she whispered with a nudge.

I was crimson. "Uh... I mean, of course."

"I'm kind of jealous," Sascha said quietly. "She looked like she was really having fun up there. But not like bumping and grinding like in aHustler. More like--making passionate love to the chair."

I sighed. "Lucky goddamn chair."

Sascha gave my shoulder a squeeze. "It's you, though, right? Youknowthat she was seeing you up there."

I shot a glance towards her date, abruptly making a decision. "I think it's time somebody explained that to 'Dave.'"

Sascha made no move to stop me as I stood. "Be careful," Sashca said. "He seemed nice enough, but if you come across as a jealous jerk, it could really mess things up."

I smiled in understanding. "Sorry to interrupt our hangout," I said.

Sascha grinned back. "Are you kidding? If the Earth Goddess didn't put us here for this exact purpose tonight, then I'm a Catholic schoolgirl."

Bit by bit, I made my way over to Cary's half-occupied table. My mind raced, but my steps were slow and sure.Take it easy, Baker. This guy has no idea. Be cool. He's not your enemy:Ericis.

My picture of 'Dave' drew into sharper focus as I got closer. He looked to be somewhere around forty: divorced, I guessed. If somebody had Xeroxed George Clooney a couple of times until he was a little more ordinary and less handsome, it wouldn't be too far off. Dark hair without any gray yet, dark eyes, dark jeans and a sport coat. His watch looked like real gold. He looked up at me with friendly puzzlement as I approached. Some lady tonight would be lucky to go home with him.

But not my Cary.

"Hi," I said. "My name is Matt Baker."

Dark eyebrows rose. "Uh. Hello. I'm Dave Malloy. I guess I'm a popular guy tonight."

"My friend Sascha already came over here," I said. He nodded. Deciding not to beat around the bush, I just said, "It's because you're here with my girlfriend Cary."

To his credit, he didn't go through any macho posturing. He looked me over, did some quick figuring in his head, and started to respond. He decided otherwise and thought some more. Then he frowned a little, and then gestured to Cary's empty chair politely. "Sounds like there's a story. Won't you have a seat?"

I did. We looked at each other for a long moment while Max the Mighty interviewed each of the guests, asking them to describe their dream guy or girl--the one that they just believed they had just been screwing. Finally, Dave shook his head. "I'm not sure what's going on, but Miss Bernham and I are just here on a blind date. I guess your pretty friend already told you."

I nodded, ignoring the phrasepretty friend. "I've been deployed for the past couple of months. My letters didn't get through, so she wasn't expecting me."And she had no idea that I wanted her back because of her asshole ex's interference. I took a deep breath. "We were on a break, and planning to get back together next month."

"Deployed?" Dave looked nervous. "To where? Kuwait? Bosnia? Youlooklike a soldier, except for the goatee."

Caught off guard, I snorted a disbelieving laugh. "No, sorry. I meant to a wildfire. I was on the line fighting fires in Nevada."

"A firefighter? Just my luck." Dave shook his head gloomily. "I knew this was too good to be true. What chance does an accounts manager have against a buff ex-boyfriend?"

I felt absurdly guilty. "I had no idea Cary was going to be here," I began, just as Max the Mighty reached her on stage. Dave and I stopped talking and both turned our heads towards her. I was glad for the reprieve--my voice was steady, but my heart was beating so hard I was sure everybody could hear it.

"Alright, Knives," Max said, proffering the microphone towards my glassy-eyed Cary. "No names, but describe the man of your dreams you were just with."

Cary smiled sadly. "Tall. Strong enough to pick me up and carry me through a river valley, but not Conan the Barbarian big. Tough, but gentle. Eyes the color of a stormy sky and ash-brown hair that always looks like I just ran my fingers through it." She absently touched her bracelet. "Generous. Kind. Better than me with a knife, but he never says so. Smart. The best lover I could imagine. Articulate. L-loyal." She choked a little as she said the last word. My heart skipped a beat in pain for her.