The MILF Files: Volume 2

Prom Night Cougar-2

“A good point,” she nodded. She fixed him with a penetrating gaze, and he could almost hear her demand to keep his mind on the subject, before she turned away. “Now, Toni. Put yourself in the shoes of King Menelaus. You wake up one morning and find that your wife, the most beautiful woman in the world, has been spirited away, kidnapped, and given to some scruffy goatherder from Asia Minor as a reward for being a brown-nosing little weasel.” Rare venom entered her voice. “What do you do?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Murphy,” Toni laughed. She was a tall, skinny girl. “I’m straight. I don’t want to imagine being married to a woman.”

“Try.”

*****

After the bell rang, Helen sat down at her desk. Thankfully, her folklore and mythology class was the last one of the day. She had felt she had been walking a knife’s edge, one bad moment away from completely losing her s**t and either screaming at one of her students who wasn’t putting in enough effort or breaking down in tears in the middle of a lecture.

“Don’t forget,” she called, as the herd began to jostle its way out the door. “Quiz on Friday!” A few groans were her only reply.

“Mrs. Murphy?”

“Danny.” She leaned back, looking up at one of her favorite students. “I hope I wasn’t boring you too much.”

“Sorry.” He shook his head. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

“Disrespectful, too.” She lifted the sketchbook off the desk, noting with amusement the way his arm reached out, wanting to take it back, and then fell back at his side. She flipped through it. “What was so important that….oh.”

“Sorry,” Danny muttered. His face was red as a tomato.

“You should be apologizing to the young lady here. Not me.” She looked at him. “Kay Griffith, right?”

“Yeah.”

She closed the sketchbook, setting it on the desk, though a tapping finger on the cover signaled Danny was not free to take it and go. “How many of my classes have you taken, Danny?”

“Three.” The young man smiled. “US History sophomore year. Then World History last year. Then this class.”

“You would think you would know the rules by now.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I won’t do it again.”

“Good. Don’t. You’re a talented artist, Danny. Well. More talented than me, at least. I’d hate to confiscate this permanently.” She handed it back to him. “Go on, get out of here.”

He turned to go, then stopped, staring at her desk. “What?”

“What language is that?” he asked.

“This?” She held up the paperback. “It’s The Iliad. In the original Greek.”

“You read Greek?” He looked flabbergasted.

“And speak it. And Latin,” she shrugged. “What of it?”

“I don’t know anyone who speaks Greek. Or Latin. Or anything but English and whatever foreign language class they took here. And most of them forget most of that as soon as they graduate. I don’t think I’m going to be talking in Spanish much once I get out of high school.”

“It’s useful. Especially if you plan on ever travelling out of the country. The world doesn’t end at the Rio Grande River, though some people in this country like to pretend that it does.”

“Yeah. But Latin? Why?”

“Because I love what I do, Danny.” She gestured behind her, at the small bookcase. It was jammed with books on all subjects. “I love history. And sometimes you can get a better sense of the story by reading it in the language it was originally written in, rather than being filtered through the mind of an interpreter, who might have his own agenda to promote.

“And if you decide to try to learn, well, learning Latin will make your Spanish easier. And the other way around, too. They’re both Romance languages.”

“Romance languages?” His brow wrinkled, then he gave a lopsided smile. “Well, some of the actresses on the telenovelas Mrs. Santiago shows us are pretty cute, that’s for sure.”

“Romance, not romantic,” she laughed. “It’s a linguistic term. All languages descended from Latin are called Romance languages. Spanish, Italian, French. Just like English is a Germanic language, the same as German and Swedish and Icelandic.”

“Icelandic? Really?”

“Really,” she nodded.

“Cool.” He shook his head. “Learn something new every day, I guess.”

“You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.” She handed his sketchbook back to him. “Don’t let me see you drawing in class again. See you tomorrow.”

“Later, Mrs. Murphy.”

For a wonder, Gordon arrived home on time. He had been working so much “overtime” lately that she had begun to expect him to arrive at seven or eight rather than six.

“Hi, honey,” he said. “What’s for dinner?”

She casually avoided his kiss. In the mood she was in, she was just as likely to bite one of his lips off if he tried to touch her. “Leftovers,” she said. “We still have some of that rice and bean dish I made on Saturday. And I don’t want to take leftovers in to work every day this week.”

“Rabbit food,” he grumbled, taking a beer out of the fridge. “I was hoping for pork chops. Or steak.”

She let her voice take on an unaccustomedly acidic bite. “If you’re not happy with what I’m making, you’re more than welcome to cook yourself, Gordon.”

“No, no!” He held up his hands quickly. “It’s okay. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head as she fished the leftovers out of the fridge and put them in the microwave to heat up. At the beginning of their marriage, they had agreed to share the cooking and cleaning duties, since both of them had careers. It wasn’t fair, she had successfully argued, for her to work for eight hours and then cook for both of them, keep the house clean, do the shopping and laundry, and every one of the hundred and one tasks that made modern life so exhausting.

But somehow, over the past nine years, all of those things had landed in her lap. She did most of the cooking, unless it was a weekend and Gordon felt like fixing something on the oh-so-expensive grill he insisted he couldn’t live without. On the rare occasions when she asked him to take care of the evening meal, he almost always opted for takeout or frozen pizza. She did all of her laundry, and most of his. She cleaned their bedroom and the bathroom and most of the rest of the house. The only place which was verboten was his “man-cave” in the basement, where he retired on Saturday afternoons to watch his beloved Missouri Tigers get hammered by the rest of the SEC.

Was I ever in love with him, she wondered, looking at his back as he turned on the television. Or was it just the idea of being in love?

She had met Gordon a year after she graduated from college. Twenty-three, with the ink still wet on her diploma from Illinois State, she had landed a job teaching in the Chicago suburbs. Unsure of herself and scared at the move from her small hometown to the big city, she had latched onto him as a lifeline. Gordon was a few years older than herself and worked at a marketing firm downtown. She had been impressed (too easily impressed, she thought with hindsight) with his stories about the famous people he had worked with. When those same stories turned out to be BS, she had forgiven him, telling herself he had been trying to make himself look good.

Still, she should have seen the signs years ago. Gordon had changed job four times in the eleven years she had known him. Every boss was a cheapskate, every subordinate was lazy. The last time, there had been ugly rumors about s****l harassment, which she had stupidly refused to believe. Every move had been as a result of his need to seek greener pastures, which had done her career no good at all. Chicago to Decatur to Springfield to St. Louis, at times she felt like a wandering gypsy. The last time, she had helped him write his resume and application letter.

He was still good-looking, she had to admit, crossing her arms across her chest and staring at his profile. His roguish charm, his ready smile, and his store of slightly dirty jokes put men at their ease. And a certain segment of women, as well.

A pity that there’s nothing underneath the surface. Stupid shallow, and vain. How he graduated form Northwestern, I’ll never know. But how he got in is a bigger mystery.

The microwave dinged, and she served up two plates. “Here you go,” she said, setting his down on the coffee table in front of him with slightly more force than necessary. On the TV, a baseball game was on.

“That f*****g monkey,” he muttered. “Who told him he could play baseball?”

Her lips thinned. Before Gordon could stop her, she picked up the remote and muted the television. “Hey!”

“Gordon. We need to talk.”

“Talk?” She enjoyed the look of panic as it entered his eyes. “About what?”

“I won’t be around Saturday night. I’ve been asked to chaperone prom out at the high school.”

If she had any doubts about Gordon’s infidelity, they were crushed by the quickly-hidden relief, then the shrewd calculation which passed over his face. “Oh? Well, I wasn’t going to be around either. Jake and Bruce and I are going out golfing, and then heading out to Jake’s place at the lake to do some fishing and hang out. I’m sure I told you,” he said, radiating sincerity.

I bet you put that same face on for your clients. You lie. I know you lie. But you don’t know that I know you lie. You swine.

“Well,” she said, hiding her rage under a mask of false cheer. “I guess this works out for everyone.” She mimicked hiding a yawn. “I’m beat. I’m going to eat in my office and grade some papers.”

“Later.” As she walked out of the room, she could already see his hand reaching out for his phone. Going to tell your tramp you’re down to f**k on Saturday, you jackass?

*****

“Gah!” Danny batted Faith’s hand away. “Stop it! You’re strangling me!”

“Hold still!” his sister snapped. “Or else I’ll let Dad do it.”

Danny subsided with ill grace. Faith looked at her smartphone, where a obnoxiously perky British man was demonstrating how to properly knot a bow tie. “Why the hell didn’t you just get a clip-on?” she asked, loosening the poorly-done knot and starting over.

“I know how to do up a normal tie. I thought this couldn’t be much harder.” He eased a finger under the restrictive vise of his collar, then stopped, halted by his sister’s stern look.

Faith took after their mother. They both had the same slim build, the same piercing gray eyes, the same dark brown hair. But what was almost dangerously intense in Katherine Gray was merely energetic in her daughter. She sailed through life with blithe good cheer, unperturbed by the way she was able to achieve good grades while barely appearing to try niggled at her mother’s mind. For Katherine Gray, if a goal wasn’t accomplished with an excruciating amount of pain, it probably wasn’t worth it.

“There,” Faith said, stepping away at last. She gave an approving nod. “Watch out, bro. You’re almost looking…presentable. In a few more years I won’t be ashamed of being seen in public with you.”

“Thanks,” he replied sarcastically, shrugging into the suit jacket. “You don’t know how much your confidence means to me, Faith.”

“So who’s the lucky girl?” She followed him into the bathroom, where he inspected his reflection critically, even opening his mouth to make sure that he didn’t have a stray piece of broccoli stuck between his teeth. “Kay Griffith, right?”

“Yes. And don’t pretend you’ve forgotten.” He put on a careful amount of cologne. “You’re the one who gave me advice on how to ask her out, remember?”