The Neighbor's Wife

Always, we talked. We talked about school and life and kids, and about politics and society and philosophy. We asked questions, and there was no lying. The questions might be funny but the situation was too serious to lie.

Like the time I asked, "What are your measurements?"

"I wondered when you'd ask," she said with a laugh. "You noticed I said when. Not if."

"So answer."

"36D-24-35. How big is your dick?"

"I don't know. You'll have to measure it." She surprised me by jumping up and going to the kitchen drawers. In a second, she returned with a soft measuring tape. "A sewing tape? I didn't know you could sew."

"There's a lot you don't know about me yet. Stand up." She unzipped my shorts, and pulled them and my tidy-whities down. I wasn't erect, but I was looking forward to her making me that way before she measured me. But she measured what she saw. "About five inches, average from what I hear," she said as she walked to the cabinet and put the tape away.

"Hey! No fair. You're supposed to measure when I'm hard."

"Don't be ashamed, Jimmy," she said cloyingly. "I won't tell many people."

She started laughing. She was laughing so hard it was easy to drag her to the floor and tickle her until she begged for mercy. And it was easy to fuck her there, getting us all hot and sweaty and delirious with happiness.

One time she asked, "How many children do you want?"

"Two or three. How about you?"

"Three or four. It's something that can be worked out."

And there was the time I said, "There won't be a third."

"What do you mean?"

"You said I'm your second man. There won't be a third."

She smiled in a way that made me weak in the knees, "If you were my man and I was your woman, that would be your decision, and I would abide by the decision you made."

When she returned to her schoolwork, writing on a yellow legal pad with a ballpoint pen, she had a happy and self-satisfied grin. I don't know how long I watched her, taken in by her radiance even when she was doing something mundane. I went back to my work learning torts, always a dynamic subject.

"How about women?" Her head rested on her folded hands, and her eyes sparkled.

"Women?"

"You said if you were my man and I was your woman, there wouldn't be any more men. How about women?"

"Would you like that?"

"Maybe."

"How many women have there been?"

"Two."

"You told Aunt Dorothy one."

"I lied to her. I'm not going to lie to you. Not ever."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to do it again?"

"If you want me to."

"I do."

"All right. I will." She picked up her pen, started to write, stopped, and looked up at me. "Any more questions?"

"Have you done a dog?"

She dropped the pen and gasped, obviously shocked. I tried not to smirk. "No way!"

"But if I tell you to do a dog, you will."

"You're not my man, so I wouldn't."

"If I was your man."

"Are you serious?"

"As a boil."

"Have you seen that?"

"Seen and participated several times. They all loved it." My sweet Amanda was horrified, but I detected a glimmer of interest. I went back to my work and she watched me. I could almost see her mind whirring.

"Jimmy," she said softly. I stopped working. "If I was your woman, I'd do whatever you told me to do."

I nodded.

"But if you loved me, you wouldn't tell me to do something I didn't want to do."

"Not true. I might very well tell you to do it, particularly if I thought you secretly wanted to."

"I do not want to be with a dog," she said, but I wasn't convinced.

"How about a break? I need some coffee."

And the first time I told her I loved her: it was a Friday in July, actually the sixth Friday since we'd met at her party. We were at lunch, having sandwiches at my house. We already knew we weren't going to have sex that day. Arthur was taking some of his buddies and their wives to a baseball game and Amanda was scheduled to go. We had just enough time in the afternoon before he would be home and they would leave.

She knew what I was going to say before I said it.

"I love you," I said.

"I know, but I can't tell you how happy I am you finally said it. I love you, too, but I've told you a thousand times."

"Tell me again."

"I love you, Jimmy."

Everything was different after that. I absolutely hated that she slept in his bed at night. Irrational? Probably. She was his wife. But, damnit, she was mine in every other way.

After she left for the baseball game, I went to the jewelry store. I bought her a lovely engagement ring. It was only one carat, not nearly as big as the boulder Parker had given her, but it was a flawless blue-white-the most perfect kind. And I bought a bracelet for her ankle. I had it inscribed "Jimmy Johnson's loving woman."

My aunts had known all along what was happening. Even if Aunt Dorothy hadn't caught us red-handed, I couldn't keep anything from them. They had been counseling me through the affair. Aunt Linda had been totally supportive, without a hint of negative input, but Aunt Dorothy gave me both sides of the issue.

Over dinner that night I told my aunts I was going to ask Amanda to get a divorce and marry me, and that I was going to do it tomorrow.

"What will you do?" Aunt Dorothy asked.

"March over there and confront Arthur," I said. "I just hope he doesn't own a gun."

"He might, but he won't use it. He's too civilized for that," Aunt Dorothy said.

I didn't sleep well that night. Saturday morning, I was up even earlier than usual, and I ran farther than I normally did. I needed to work off my nervous energy. When I returned to the house, my aunts were having coffee. I grabbed a cup and went to shower. I had finished dressing in a pullover knit shirt and khakis when I heard the doorbell ring. I put on my loafers, put the ring and anklet I bought for Amanda in my pocket, and went down the hall. I heard Arthur Parker's booming voice before I saw him.

Their backs were to me as they marched into the living room. Amanda collapsed on the couch with Aunt Dorothy sitting by her to comfort her. Aunt Linda was perched on the couch arm beside them. The good doctor was standing by the fireplace, puffed up like a rooster and as red-faced as a lobster.

He saw me and turned redder. His eyes bugged out. "She is pregnant," he boomed, pointing at Amanda. I looked at her, and her expression confirmed his news.

"And," Parker said, taking a half step toward me, "I am not the father. I had a vasectomy years ago."

He locked his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth on the balls of his Rockports as he looked down his nose at me with a smirk. "You see, Jimmy boy, when a smart man like me has a whoring slut for a wife, he takes protective measures. Amanda never was on the pill. I have always switched her birth control for placebos because a baby is proof positive of her adultery. An adulteress and her bastard child don't get anything."

I don't know what they expected, but they all watched in silence as I took Amanda's left hand and gently removed her engagement and wedding rings. I put the engagement ring I had bought in their place. Her expression was unbelieving happiness as I knelt in front of her, removed Arthur's anklet, and fastened mine around her leg.

I handed Arthur his tokens and said, "Talk to a lawyer Monday. The law is on her side and you fucked up big time in substituting her pills without her knowledge. She has you by the balls. We will be real easy to deal with as long as you act like a gentleman, which includes treating and talking about Amanda with respect. Now go play golf. We'll have her personal effects out before you get home, and the rest of what she wants out by Monday evening."

He started to speak, and I put the flat of my hand gently on his chest. He jumped back and glared at me. "Remember, Arthur. She's mine and her child is mine. Don't say anything bad about them, or all hell will break loose."

He swelled up like a toad, standing on tiptoe to make himself seem bigger. "Are you threatening me?" he demanded.

"Yes, I am," I said.

He glared at Amanda once more before huffing toward the front door. "Arthur," Amanda called sweetly. He stopped and turned toward her. In a kind and gentle voice, she said, "I tried to love you. I really did. But you treated me so shabbily and... well, you are such a pig."

I thought Arthur Parker was going to explode. I had a vision of flying body parts and entrails like a bad Hollywood movie, but he stormed out, slamming the door so hard it shattered the window in it.

We four stood in the welcome silence as we absorbed all that had happened until Amanda held out her hand and I took it, pulling her into my arms. "How pregnant are you?" I asked.

"Six weeks. It must have happened that first time we were together." She looked determined with her jaw set when she said, "I'm glad your baby is growing in me, Jimmy. I won't give it up for anything, but I didn't do it to trap you."

"Give it up? I just wish I'd thought of taking your birth control pills away from you. It might have been even more fun if we'd known what we were creating."

"Well, we'll leave you two alone," Aunt Linda said.

But Aunt Dorothy replied, "No, we won't. We have a wedding to plan, and I want to see him on his knees proposing to her."

I dropped to my knees and begged like a love-sick loon for Amanda to be my wife, once her divorce was final, of course. Amanda laughed and cried as she accepted.

"All right, ladies. Amanda has never been out with me because she was married to him. Now, I want us all to go out for breakfast. Then we'll come back and start moving her from next door."

Just then the doorbell rang. I answered it with the three of them peering over my shoulder. It was the Millers from across the street.

"Is everything all right?" Mr. Miller asked.

"Couldn't be better," I replied happily.

Mrs. Miller smiled. "So Arthur finally confronted the two of you," she said.

"I'd guess you two are now together," Mr. Miller said.

"We're together," Amanda said, and I heard the uncontrollable love in her voice.

"Wait a minute. What do you mean finally?" I asked.

"He's known all along. We all have. Everyone in the neighborhood."

"But we were so discreet," Amanda said.

"Oh, honey, your faces said it all," Mrs. Miller replied. "Don't you know you can't hide love?"

The End