Boy Next Door

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Claire

“Someone sounds chipper today.”

“Hmm?”

Jim has come into the kitchen to rustle up some breakfast before heading in to work.

“I said what’s that you’re humming?”

“Oh…I don’t know. Something I used to listen to in high school, I guess.”

I’m not about to reveal that it’s Al Green, my favorite m**********g music. In truth I was hardly even aware that I was happily humming at all as I puttered around the kitchen. Strange, really, since this isn’t a normal habit of mine. A show of good spirits was something else that was discouraged in me from an early age. No wonder Jim was moved to comment. He raises his eyebrows now, inviting an explanation. Rather than give him one I merely fall back into “Tired of Being Alone”. Whether I’m feeling sexy or not is really none of his business.

This may seem an odd state of affairs between husband and wife, but we are really more like housemates. As I’ve indicated, our marriage is merely a convenient fiction, a way to pair up and get along without arousing suspicion in a community that would ostracize us both were our true natures known to anyone but each other.

Jim is secretly gay and I’m a secret atheist, facts that would devastate our respective families and destroy our limited social circle.

Potential outcasts both, we cover for each other: acting loving only in public, while at home we merely get along, respecting each other’s boundaries in a way that allows us to carry on our charade with a minimum of discomfort. We rarely even share meals or watch TV together, and haven’t attempted to get intimate since the night he took me to the Senior Prom and we so uncomfortably discovered the truth about each other. With his silent inquiry rebuffed, Jim becomes all business as he opens the refrigerator for some eggs.

“They’re sending me to Tallahassee again next weekend. So I’ll be gone from Friday, that’s a week from today, through Sunday night. Is there anything we need done before then?”

Supposedly the company sends Jim on these trips every month or so, and for a week or more a few times a year. I rather suspect this is a fabrication, a convenient cover for a highly circumspect s*x life that I’m quite frankly perfectly content not knowing about. If he thinks he’s needling me with this hint in return for not confiding in him, he couldn’t be more mistaken. Both the information and his question fit in perfectly with the plans I’ve been developing to establish a secret s*x life of my own.

“Not really. I was thinking about cleaning some of the clutter out of the attic that weekend, things too bulky to move myself. But I suppose we could ask Brian next door if he wants to earn a few extra bucks.”

“He usually does.”

Jim emerges with the butter and eggs, a block of cheese and an onion and green pepper for making an omelet. “We’ll see the Garveys at church on Sunday and ask him then.”

“Good enough,” I reply, and pick up my humming again as I head for the laundry room, leaving Jim to his late breakfast. With my back to him I grin with satisfaction, running a hand down the front of my slacks. Under these I’m now clean shaven and even scandalously bare of underwear – a precaution to keep my scraped skin from itching too much.

I caught those telltale light flashes twice as I bathed and shaved this morning. I bet Brian loved watching that. After the way I kept him up late last night he’s lucky he didn’t fall out of the tree. Too bad for him he can’t jerk off perched among the branches. Again I feel a grin of cruel satisfaction surface. I’ll teach him to spy! Do they still make chastity belts in this day and age? How I’d love to lock that naughty boy up and only let him out when I want to take advantage of him! That’s certainly something to research on-line. For now though I have more pressing items to purchase. Once Jim has left for work I take our other car out to a sprawling mall at a much larger community two towns over. There I first visit an electronics store.

With the help of a knowledgeable clerk I pick out a compact digital video camera. He assures me that once it’s fully charged the battery will let it record for over twenty-four hours straight. He explains how to upload the video to a computer and burn it onto a blank DVD, which I already have a supply of. Once in a while I rent a movie from Netflix that’s so good I want to keep a copy for myself, and so I ignore all the FBI warnings at the beginning and duplicate it. It’s not like I’m running a counterfeiting ring after all. Anyway from the electronics store I pluck up my courage and defy my blushes and go into Victoria’s Secret.

The array of lingerie on display is scandalizing and appalling and downright bewildering. I find it hard to believe people actually wear this stuff. Fingering silks and satins and marveling over all the lace and ruffles and ribbons, scalloped edges and peek-a-boo cutouts, I feel an utterly uncharacteristic yearning to try on everything.

I have no idea what colors and styles would look good on me (if any) and am too embarrassed to ask the opinion of one of the salesgirls. Fearing to look ridiculous rather than sexy, imagining myself as a pigeon trying to pass itself off as a bird of paradise, I at last settle for just picking out some new panties and bras that are far skimpier than the matronly kind I’ve always favored. At least I choose silk instead of cotton, imagining how sexy it will feel on my new hairless groin. Almost expecting to be laughed out of the store, I’m reassured when the clerk rings up my purchases with perfect nonchalance and even engages in friendly chatter with me.

“These are nice,” she remarks, “a little vanilla for me. We’re actually going to stop carrying them soon – not much demand for them here. I mean you can basically get the same thing at J.C. Penney’s and for quite a bit cheaper.”

A pretty looking black girl, the clerk flashes a quick look around to make sure her manager didn’t overhear this. Then she surprises me with a salacious wink.

“Sure you don’t want something a little fancier? You’ve got the goods, girl. Why not flaunt them?”

“I…I don’t know,” I stammer. “I’m not really the showy type. I’m too plain for that. I’d feel silly trying to present myself as some kind of glamour girl.”

“That is what’s silly!” the girl snorts. “You’ve got a great body and you’re prettier than half the girls that come in here. You just need to style your hair and use a little makeup. You’d knock ‘em dead, kid.”

She leans toward me confidentially.

“I don’t know who told you that you were plain, but they’re way off base. If it was your husband who said that, you ought to dump him. He’s just trying to keep you ignorant. A girl like you can do a lot better than that piddling little rock on your finger. You think about it, honey, and then come back here. Between this place and the beauty salon across from the food court, we’ll turn you into a glamour girl fit for Hollywood!”

This kind of encouragement is so unlike anything I’ve ever heard before that I’m simply stunned. I’m almost tempted to go back and choose something outrageous after all. I want to ask more about this beauty salon – I’ve never been in one in my life, my parents would die at the very thought. Hell, they’d die just seeing me in here or listening to this conversation. But then I realize this girl is probably just doing her job, trying to coax me into more purchases to make up for her slip about J.C. Penney’s. I mutter an embarrassed thanks for her compliments and advice, untrustworthy as I consider these, take my purchases and leave. Though I know I’m unlikely to run into anyone I know (that’s why I came all the way out here after all) I transfer my new underwear to the bag from the electronic store and ditch the Victoria’s Secret one. Then I return to the car, resisting the mad temptation to walk by the food court and check out the beauty salon the girl mentioned on the way.

Driving home, I’m assailed by such a confusing mix of emotions I feel a little sick.

I want to take that clerk seriously but somehow I just don’t dare. I can’t wait to try on my new underwear, but I’m afraid I’ll feel and look foolish. At last the thought of my other purchase – that camera – settles me a bit. My evil little grin even resurfaces.

I’ll find out soon enough if I’m actually attractive. And even if I’m not, I’ll have a handsome young stud in what amounts to s****l slavery anyway. Who needs a husband when you’ve got one of those?

Brian

Thank God for summer, and the fact that school is out! I have all day every day (except for Sundays) to do whatever I want. I can stay up all night and sleep in as late as I like. Both my parents are gone when I get up and don’t return until dinnertime, and I have the maid’s routine memorized – as well as that of my lovely neighbor. So I can’t sleep too late. Of course, daytime peeping is far riskier than the midnight show, less comfortable and with no way to record what I’m seeing. But I still can’t resist it, and so by now I have it down to a science.

Since Mrs. Andrews always gets up at around ten-thirty and heads directly into the bathroom, I make sure I’m safely in the tree house by ten-ten. I hang the binoculars around my neck, boost myself through the trap door onto the roof and climb swiftly up to my viewing platform. This is what we used to call ‘the lookout’ when I played here with my friends as a kid. Boards nailed to one of the many spreading limbs form a ladder high up into the tree, where a sturdy little deck has been built into a triple fork in the branches. In the old days we kept the foliage trimmed away from this to allow a wide view around the entire neighborhood in front and the tree belt behind. Now for obvious reasons I’ve let it grow thickly back in, keeping clear just a small space between me and that extremely fortuitous skylight-window combination over the Andrews’ bathtub. Sometimes – like most of the past week – Mrs. Andrews will shower in the enclosed stall, only letting me see her as she steps in and out. But usually she takes a nice long bath, providing me with a show almost as exciting as when she plays with herself at night.

This morning I couldn’t believe my luck. Just as how last night she followed a week of hardly touching herself at all (and then only under the covers) with her most incredible m**********n session ever, today she returned to the tub at last. And holy s**t, I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately, but she proceeded to blow my mind again.

I always like to watch Mrs. Andrews shave. The way she lifts one arm high and reaches across with the other one pulls her breasts into delightful shapes. When she leans forward to do her legs, they dangle in cones ending in those enormous bulbs. Today, however, she skipped doing her legs and under her arms. I imagine she did them yesterday in the shower, with that m**********n marathon planned. Instead she took a little pair of scissors and trimmed away her bush! Then she lathered up and shaved her crotch completely slick and clean!

God, I almost fell out of the tree. Then she rinsed off and stood up all sleek and gleaming wet to examine herself. After smearing some kind of lotion into her groin she spent at least five minutes experimenting with various poses. Oh, the wonderful way her whole p***y protrudes was emphasized incredibly! My hands were actually shaking with excitement. At last Mrs. Andrews stepped out of the tub, dried off and passed out of my view.

Ho-lee s**t! What was up with this lady lately? Whatever it was, it was awesome. From a painfully demure good Christian housewife she suddenly seems to be planning a career as a porn star, or at least a Playboy model.