117

Safely covered up again, though Sherry’s heart was still thumping in her chest, Vanessa crossed the room to greet her father.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said.
“Hi, sugar. Are you decent now?”
“Yep. Just showing Mom my titties.”
Sherry watched them peck each other’s cheeks with a sinking feeling, a smoldering in her heart so akin to jealousy it surprised her. She couldn’t help it — in Neal’s eyes Vanessa could do no wrong. Oh, he might rant and rave at her occasionally, or criticize her actions and attitude out of her hearing. But ultimately that girl had kept her father wrapped around her finger since the day she was born. Even this, getting pregnant by some local eyesore — even this breach of trust, this shattering of innocence was not enough to disrupt the easy affection of their relationship. The kiss, the friendly embrace, the loving look bestowed upon Vanessa before she disappeared down the hall (getting out of harm’s way, Sherry thought) lay in stark contrast to the greeting she got herself: a disembodied and hollow “hi” from across the room. Even Jasper, who had always been “that dog” to Neal, got more of a greeting than she did.
With Vanessa out of the room he quit acting. His features hardened, and he lay down his coat and flopped into an easy chair without paying her the slightest attention. Sherry turned back to the nativity set. Joseph was now bending indecently over one of the sheep. She snatched him up and lay him on his side, away from temptation.
If only she could do the same with Neal.
***
” . . . and this high pressure area is going to get things crankin’ for us over the weekend. Crankin’ down low, that is. As you can see here, the front is going to extend down well below the central part of the state, certainly reaching Ocala and probably into Northern Orange county. That’s gonna push those temperatures down into the ‘teens , and with strong chances of precipitation for the weekend, that means we could be looking at some genuine snowfall for the holidays. Sandy?”
“So we might be getting a white Christmas after all, huh? Thanks, George. Coming up next –”
“Did he say snow?” asked Vanessa incredulously, buried in gloom on the couch.
“Oh, that’s horseshit. It’ll be flurries, nothing more.”
“Would be kind of neat, though.”
“It would.”
“Does it ever snow in Florida, Daddy?”
“It did once, when you were little — don’t you remember?”
“Kinda.”
“Just an inch or so. But it shut down the whole town.”
They fell silent again, remaining so for the rest of the news. On the floor before the television, the dog snored softly.
Neal wasn’t really paying attention — the news was the same every day anyhow. As the talking heads droned on, he stayed perfectly still in the armchair, occasionally wondering where Sherry was in the house, but more often than not, feeling miserable and lost.
It was very simple — he was missing Melanie.
They met at work, as so many men meet their mistresses. Not that Melanie could be described as such, really. Mistress had such an air of mystery and sophistication about it, even glamour. Married men who were insanely wealthy and frighteningly powerful — they had mistresses. A man like Neal, of an average intelligence and income, a cog within the wheel of commerce and office politics — he had nothing so urbane as a “mistress.” A squeeze, a bimbo, a symptom, a sideline, a piece of ass: these were terms that might be applied to Melanie, depending on who you asked.
He worked in a Sales Solution team for a software company; she was a programming assistant. It was as simple as that. They both worked in the unreal world of computers. There their professional similarities ended.
Their relationship had been the result of two months solid flirting that suddenly turned serious. Every man flirts on the job; it’s expected of him, almost a prerequisite of his being accepted as a man. Most women make nothing of it. They may enjoy it if he’s reasonably handsome, powerful, or especially good at it. They may object to it if he’s too forward, too sleazy, too clumsy or too damned unattractive. Very few women take it seriously, as a promise of things to come, a precursor of actual intimacy. Melanie had.
Their first time together was on a long lunch break — cliched but true. They arranged to meet without seeming to, retired to a cheap motel, and got back to work late. He wondered the entire time what the hell he was doing, but found himself unable to stop. Afterward he felt wretchedly guilty.
When the world didn’t cave in around him, and the anchor man failed to mention his little adventure on the six o’clock news, and Sherry welcomed him into her bed as though nothing had happened, then it began to get easy for him. Perhaps too easy. They met whenever they could, most often at her apartment, near the office. Soon he had invented various clients and problems to keep him at work late, or to explain overnight trips, thus allowing he and Melanie better and more leisurely play time together. He was shocked at just how well he could lie to Sherry, how much bullshit she would swallow so that he could get what he wanted. It was astounding the sacrifices he would make just to satisfy his dick, and even more amazing that she would let him get away with it.
Hon, it’s me.
Hi baby!
Look, I can’t make it home for dinner tonight.
Uh oh.
Yeah — the VoxPop thing again. Bob wants me to take them to dinner, wine and dine them — you know the routine.
All right, well . . . I’ll see you when?
Oh, eightish maybe. I’m not sure, depends on how much the old farts can eat.
“Kay, well, be careful on the roads.
I will — bye, sweetie.
Hon, baby, sweetie — then right into Melanie’s bed, devouring her naked body. It got to be childishly simple, so simple he couldn’t not do it. And in exchange for a missed meal and a few readily swallowed lies, he got everything that Melanie had to offer him. Which was considerable.
Put together a large book of women he might go for and Melanie would not have been in it. She wasn’t especially his type physically: a slight figure, not terribly pretty, possessing little conventional sex appeal. Neither was she particularly adept at being sexy, either in manner or deed. She was bookish, smart, rather shy, even a little awkward. The kind of girl men befriend, not pursue. In high school she would have been the go-between for various romantic partners, never involved herself. It would have been her job to listen to her prettier girlfriend unravel the lovely details, to console her when the guy broke her heart, or to seek out and counsel with the offending male. In due time she might become a Lesbian, so little did she understand of men.
What Melanie did have was youth. She was barely twenty-one, to Neal’s forty-five. Everything about her was fresh and unspoiled, new, vulnerable. Her body, for all its lack of womanly curves and crevices, was tight and gleaming and smooth. Compared to his wife’s, her breasts were ridiculously small — just little hillocks, no wider than his palms. There was no burying his face between her tits, one of his favorite things to do with Sherry. Not when he could suck almost all of a tit into his mouth. On their first time in bed he had almost felt embarrassed for her, she was so tiny.
But she was also clean, and white, magically serene and unvarying. All over her body she glistened with youth; there were no blemishes, no stretch marks, no history. Even her pussy hair was soft and downy, almost transparently blonde. He had wondered at its silky translucence, like it was baby hair. And when he decided he wanted her to shave it, she did. Right there, while he watched.
That performance was a good example of another invaluable feeling Melanie brought him: complete and total control. He was not, she told him, her first lover, but he was the first who “knew what he was doing.” The remark, highly flattering in itself, set the tone for much of their sexual relationship. If Neal wanted slow, steamy, passionate sex that lasted for hours, she gave it to him. If he wanted things hard and fast and dirty, she also obliged, just as happily. If they didn’t really have time, and he just wanted a blow job in her car, she sucked him hard, took all his cum, swallowed it and wiped her lips, smiling.
Many, many times he spent hours licking and kissing and touching every inch of her — in a trance of disbelief at how young and beautiful her body really was. On more than one occasion, however, he had been short and rough with her. He threw her on her bed one night and ripped her panties apart, trying to get to her pussy. When he got them off he lashed her cunt with his tongue, savagely and selfishly, like a brute. He used her body to channel his angers and frustrations, treating her far less sensitively than she either needed or deserved. She just took it.
So far as he could tell, she didn’t want his money, his job, or his baby. She just wanted him: his time, his attention, his cock. To a man his age, there could be no more addictive arrangement. He couldn’t believe his luck — had no idea why she was so enthusiastic to love him — had trouble believing that younger guys were surrounded with so much easy pussy that they could afford to pass her up. It was all so improbable that it was impossible to stop.