Bohemian Dreaming & Strictly Off The Record

Chapter Five-1

Chapter Five

I was wearing my smart red suit. The one with the deep neckline and the short skirt. I wore nothing under the jacket on purpose, and Sheila practically shrieked when she saw me.

“Don’t you think you’d be better off in something more subtle?” she said, very kindly, once she’d calmed herself down.

“No,” I replied.

I’d thought this out very carefully. I hadn’t planned to worry about what I was going to wear; I thought that kind of musing was obsessive and childish. And yet, two days before the hearing, what I’d wear to my divorce suddenly seemed important. I hadn’t planned to flaunt my apparent crimes by the clothes I chose; but I’d be damned if I’d let the bastards cow me into looking like the happy homemaker in a shapeless plaid jumper. The judge might look more favorably on me if I remained demure, but I didn’t really care.

In any event, as I walked up the long flight of stairs to the court building, my knees were trembling like a five year old’s on the first day of school, my numb limbs ready to collapse beneath me. Despite how I was dressed, and the angry resolve inside me, I was ready to cry. I wasn’t made for this kind of thing. I had to sit at the top of the stone steps and gather some strength before I entered the horrible gray edifice. How could anyone I ever loved, that swore he loved me, do this to me? I kept thinking that I could finagle my way out of it, that somehow, if I could only find the right thing to say to him, I’d be able to put all this to rest, and my life back in order.

That was as stupid as anything I’d ever thought. The marriage was broken. There were pieces that could never be found again; and there was no way to repair what had shattered with them. What made it worse, I knew my husband was engineering this travesty of the truth, because he had his own motive for ending our marriage. It likely included another woman, but it could be as easy as economics. Drop the wife, the one you don’t have a pre-nuptial agreement with, before your net worth jumps sky high. My God, the things I was thinking of him were despicable. I told myself I’d never be this mean, and here I was as nasty in my heart as he was.

“Paige, you’re going to have to get a grip on things; your whole future is at stake here, and you don’t seem to appreciate it.” I was hearing Sheila speak, but only out of one small corner of my ear, since I was also hearing his voice cut though her admonishment, and the chatter around us. Turning around, I saw my soon to be ex-husband walking briskly toward the hearing room.

He nodded to me pleasantly, as if he were going to be very civil. That would be his tactic. I smiled, a sincere one, and for an instant he froze. So filled up with unspeakable emotion, I could tell that some of my distress and hurt got through to him. He was startled; but that response lasted only a second before he closed himself away again, and retreated into the safety of his impenetrable cool.

“You’ve got to be careful, Paige,” Sheila said, seeing how I’d responded to him.

She was a priceless comfort to me in the middle of this horror. I only hoped she’d be as effective as the three grim faced attorneys flanking my husband, whispering him secrets at every turn.

“So, how does it look for me?” I asked.

“You know it looks bleak,” she said. “There’s that matter in the barn, the riding master.”

“He can’t use that?”

“But he will, in his own way. He’d like to put the adultery on the table in some form. After all, you were only married a short time. He could try annulling the marriage altogether.”

“Is that what he’s going to do?”

“I don’t know. I imagine they’ll offer a settlement. We’re here to see what he’s proposing. But, Paige, you can be sure that a man that wields his kind of power . . . .” she was hesitating to say it. “He could damage your life with what he knows, and you don’t want that.”

“All my past will rise to haunt me; is that what you’re saying?”

“If you’re not careful it could be a factor.”

“Maybe I should write a book on what it’s like to be a woman from the wrong side of the tracks married to a rich, maniacal tyrant.”

“Only after all this is over. Don’t even mention something that inflammatory,” she warned.

It was just a joke, I mused to myself. Good thing I had Sheila to keep be from blowing everything. I stood up, straightened my skirt and tugged at the suit coat, trying to look a little more “presentable”.

“You know I’m not sure I want any money from him,” I whispered to her as we strolled side by side toward the hearing room.

“Yes, I’ve heard you say that,” Sheila whispered. I think she was a little tired of my vacillating. “As long as you pay me, hon, I really don’t care.”

“That’s nice of you,” I returned.

“I’m practical. I’m not going to try to search your mind or your motives any more. You’re as complex a client as I’ve ever had. I never know exactly what you’re thinking from one moment to the next.”

“Have I been difficult?” I asked.

“Oh, God,” she groaned.

“I’m trying to restore some principle in my life,” I said, as a quick explanation. “Though I don’t really know how. I am trying.”

“Maybe, for the sake of speed and your pocket book, you should try restoring principles after the divorce is final, and you have something in your purse to show for this misery.”

I could see her point, but if I gave up the money now, my husband could be out of my life in a matter of days, only as long as it would take to pack my things and leave his precious house.

“Isn’t it time to go in?” I asked, seeing the clock on the wall.

During the entire proceeding I was in a daze, I couldn’t even focus on what the attorneys were saying. Sheila was magnificent, but she wasn’t getting anywhere with the four men in black, sitting like vultures at the little table, protecting the spoils that were sitting out there to be divided up by the “king vulture” who attentively listened to arguments on both sides. I was losing interest in the whole formality, instead, thinking back over how it began. If that incident had never happened, would I still be sitting side by side with Sheila with an enormous lump in my throat and my life in shambles?

. . . I was foolish to get caught talking to the stable master, caught standing so close to him that it looked compromising to a jealous husband. But I never dreamed that that provocative, but innocent meeting would lead to such an inglorious end.

There were sparks flying between Dane and me. My husband could probably see that. And why not? Dane looked like an advertisement for weight lifting equipment; you could tell that even when he had his clothes on. He’d plucked me off one of the horses with one hand, and kept me in his arms a second too long. That second spared, I might not have been standing so close to him, feeling his breath and staring into his coal black eyes when my husband approached the barn door.

He didn’t say anything, when he saw the looks on our faces. Turning on his heel, he brusquely left, going back to the house. But later, he assaulted me at the pool, and later still, he harangued me for a half hour until I wanted to kick him. He brought up every sordid thing about my past he knew. It was a good thing he knew so little. At least I was wise enough not to tell him everything, because everything he knew came flying in my face like ripe tomatoes hurled at a vaudeville act. He called me a slut, and it wasn’t a compliment. I always thought that word can be a badge of honor, if spoken by someone that appreciates a good raunchy attitude on a woman once and a while. But it wasn’t this time.

The “lying b***h” part had been the worst, because I’d lied about nothing. There was nothing to lie about. I think my accuser liked the way it sounded. It had a real judgmental ring to it he found to his liking. I almost thought he’d hit me that afternoon when we quarreled at the pool; the scene had all the components of a poorly written soap opera. For a moment I wanted to laugh, but he was so serious. Maybe if I had laughed it off, he’d have come to his senses then. But instead of laughing and preventing him from walking away from me, I went to the barn where the disaster amplified. There my wedding vows were torn apart in one swift indiscretion.

By itself the hours with Dane were a carnal wonder. I can’t think of it now without getting a little horny remembering how good Dane and I were together.

“You’re crying, Paige,” he said noticing my tears right away.

“I am,” I said looking up at a more pleasant face than mine.

He had a hand at my cheek, stroking it gently.

“I’ve been accused of adultery,” I blurted out the explanation.

“What?”

We were good enough friends for him to know that that was not my operating procedure. He’d seen me with my husband enough to know that I loved him, except perhaps for that one swift moment between us just hours before.

“With who?” he asked, when I wasn’t providing him with any more information.

“With you.”

“Good God, you don’t mean that?”

“Oh, I do. I’m not sure of his motives, but he really thinks there’s something going on between us.”

He looked as if he understood, certainly understood more than I. Of course, he would. He’d been working for my husband for almost ten years.

“I’ll go talk to him.”

“Not now.”

“Yes now,” he said. He was about to take off.

“He’s not here,” I called to him. “He left for the city house, talks like he doesn’t want to see me any more at all. Or, if nothing else, he’s pouting.”

I’m not sure how we got from that comment to a bed of fresh straw in one of the stalls. But I was down there, with my pants off, his pants off, and his d**k filling me full in less than five minutes.

We were colliding s****l machines. Something about the accusations triggered a fury inside Dane, and he was about to have me as certainly as I was to have him. I realized in the middle of the flurry that the earlier erotic moment had not been something I imagined; and it hadn’t been something that my husband completely manufactured. I think I’d been lusting for Dane since the moment I arrived as the wife in residence. And from the way Dane made love to me, he must have been lusting for me as well.

He didn’t just take me once. We were both too ravenous for something that simple. And once all the fast heat was expended in our first climax, there was a slower more languid making love that followed. The last time we climaxed, I was lying on top of him, his hands were grasping my rear cheeks and squeezing them, parting the two orbs and probing my backside with fingers. Meanwhile, my hips were dancing on his swollen prick, while I was admiring the kind of virility that could accomplish the act three times in a single afternoon.

As I was feeling a final climax in me about to surge, I backed off, letting Dane’s climb. If we were careful, we might reach that ecstasy state in the same instant, and wouldn’t that be a glorious ride of forgetfulness? The head of his p***s massaged the right places, moving in and out of me by my command; and when I couldn’t hold on any longer, I let him jolt in me hard, and there were two cries, one unison, and all the letting go I had been imagining. I fell on him when it was over, completely worn out.

When our passion fluttered away, the very last tiptoeing like a mouse under the door unnoticed, danger waited in the wings. Little did we know that we were watched. How long his eyes gazed on our grand faux pas, I’ll never know, though when he was ready to announce his presence, my husband’s voice rang out in tones I could not mistake.

“Just as I thought,” the sharp words were spoken from the doorway of the stall. I looked up to see my husband’s face peering coldly at us. “I would think you could be more discreet, my little tramp. Or maybe you like flaunting it in front of me.”

He walked away.

“Oh, my God,” I gasped.

“Dammit,” Dane moaned.

“What in the hell am I doing?” I wondered aloud, pulling my nakedness away from his.

“He wants to get rid of us,” Dane said, after he’d been silent a long time, listening to me sob.

“But . . .”

“It’s a set-up. I’ve seen him do it before. I should have seen it coming, but then it happened so fast.

“He wants to get rid of both of us?” I repeated the statement. “Me? Maybe I can understand, but you?”

“That’s not so crazy, Paige. His father hired me, and I’ve never gotten along with him. Perhaps I’m expendable, since I’m such a thorn in his side.”

I wanted to believe him. I certainly tried to, realizing that if I didn’t, then my afternoon had been a set-up by my husband and his riding master, as a deliberate plan to catch me in the act. Was I so foolish to fall for the scheme? Or was Dane being honest with me? The way we’d made love, it couldn’t have been an act, but then, what did I know of him?

I had no facts afterwards, and Dane disappeared. He disappeared as in, left the county and probably the state. Packed up one day, gone the next. I would never have the opportunity to get the truth with my witness gone.

Maybe all the passion with Dane that afternoon meant something at the moment; but it was meaning something quite different to me now, as I sat in the hearing room where my life was being rearranged, and my lawyer was shaking me back to reality.

“Did you hear anything at all, Paige?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. Things like this confuse me,” I said. “I suppose I heard a little.”

“It didn’t go well,” she informed me.

“It’s over?” I was surprised. Time flew quickly.

“Not completely. There’re some final decisions to be made. We’ll have to discuss your options in my office.”

“I don’t think I’m going to fight for anything,” I said wearily.

“Your thinking is fuzzy,” she replied. “We’ll let it rest for a few days.”

“Sheila, I’m certain of this, I am.” I was trying to convince both of us.

“Suit yourself,” she said, rising from her chair.

I walked out of the court building in the same blank stupor I was in when I arrived, while at the same time nodding pleasantly to the man that was attempting to take away every piece of dignity I had.