When We Were Married Ch. 05C

"That lady is on the phone again."

"Oh....I'll take it. Aline, I'm sorry. I just realized it's almost 6 p.m. I never meant -- but shit. I said I wasn't going to say those words again. Give me 15 minutes to clear up and I'll be out of here. I'll meet you back at condo."

"It's okay, Bill. I know how it goes. You think that's the first time I've ever heard those words. I'm back at the condo. I went out looking around today. That will give me time to shower and get naked for you."

I tried. I honestly tried. But it was 7 p.m. before I managed to get out the door. And it was nearly 7:30 before I walked in the door. I could have called her on the condo phone, but I wanted to be looking into her eyes when I apologized. No one could be that stupid on a continuing basis.

She really was naked, a symphony in pink and red and black as I walked in the door. Five minutes later I was inside her. Fifteen minutes later I was lying next to her while we talked about where we'd go and eat. Thirty minutes later I opened my eyes and realized I was lying in bed and her head was nestled in my groin and I felt very good down there.

"Oh, God Aline, I'm such a shit. I fell asleep on you. I really am a hundred years old. But you don't have-"

"Shut up," and she went back to sucking and licking. I wouldn't have thought I had it in me but in about five minutes I was bucking upward while she tried to stay with me. And she did. I lay back and debated sticking myself with an ink pen to keep my eyes open.

Then she was lying with her head nestled against my shoulder.

"You deserve so much better than me."

"You're no spring chicken," she said with a small giggle. "An old man needs his rest. And you were up very late last night and I kept you very busy."

I pulled her mouth up to mine and kissed her for a little while.

"Not that old, I hope. You want to go out now? We can still grab a bite. Maybe hit a club. And then come back for...."

Her face was buried against me as she whispered, "You're not an old man. But you're human. I kept you up almost all night fucking me very hard. And then you got up and went for a workout. And if I know you, you've been busy every minute of this day on things that are life and death to a lot of people.

"And you're trying to meet those obligations and still be be a true lover to a woman who shows up with no warning on your doorstep. You are a very strong man. And you just fucked me -- as you Americans say, I think -- crosseyed and then I got you to come in my mouth one more time."

She literally climbed up me until we were eye to eye again.

"I'd rather be lying here next to you, listening to you breath, than eating in any restaurant and dancing in any club. You don't have to entertain me. I came here to be with you, not to be entertained. Understand."

"Understand. Yes ma'am."

"Now go to sleep. You need your rest. And I believe we've got a birthday to celebrate Saturday. I need you rested for that, because I intend to celebrate you straight into the ground on your birthday."

I don't remember anything else. Not until four a.m. by the alarm clock. I found myself awake and rolling over onto her naked body. Somehow I was hard and when I slid between her legs she was already wet and welcoming. She came awake slowly as I slid into and out of her warm, liquid center. I felt and smelled and tasted the femaleness of her body and skin, then held the globes of her ass in my hands as I pushed deeper and deeper into her.

I think she came, shuddering against me and I came without much force inside her. Then I slid down beside her and we both drifted off into sleep again. And I remember thinking that this was what I wanted.

It was married sex. Easy, undramatic sex. No dining and dancing and getting a woman drunk until you get got into that pussy and rammed it hard while the woman under you screamed. There was no conquest.

Just two bodies together naked and comfortable together, drifting into and out of sleep. How much more boring and middle aged could that be. But I realized it was what I needed. What I wanted. Before it had gotten bad, it was what I had had with Debbie. And I hadn't realized until this moment how badly I missed it.

And then I was asleep again.

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 4 p.m

She came out of the dream gasping. Teller held her tight against him until the shivering stopped. He'd prepared her, but as he'd expected, he hadn't needed to empty her stomach this time. Although she heaved and gasped, she didn't spew any vomit.

"oh...oh.....oh...."

He laid her back against the couch and watched her as the tears streamed down her face. She gasped for air, caught her breath and closed her eyes tight, then opened them and wiped then tears off.

"Doctor."

"How are you feeling, Debbie?"

"I feel....terrible...disgusted....I can smell that bathroom...."

He sat watching her without speaking. He wanted to see what she brought back from the experience.

"I saw their faces. Clearly this time. The last time it was....foggy...or something. But I could pick them out of a lineup this time. I remembered them. Her hands curled into fists.

"The motherfucking bastards. If I could find them, I'd-"

"What else?"

I saw the bathroom more clearly. It had to be in a big restaurant or hotel. There were a half dozen stalls and four or five urinals. The floor had been clean, but then it there was....urine...piss... all over the floor....all over me."

He continued his silence.

"I tasted....piss....and....semen....cum......not the first time...cum I mean...."

She gave him an embarrassed little smile.

"I mean...doctor, most women know what cum...semen tastes like....guys love it when you swallow....so I knew that...but piss....God, I can't understand women that like that....my God..."

He leaned toward her and caught her gaze.

"Do you realize how this experience was different from the last time?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember how you were last time?"

"I -- what are you saying?"

"Think back to the last time. When you came back. What did you do?"

"I-"

She looked at him in surprise.

"I was vomiting...not as bad as the first time since you'd gotten me cleaned out, but I still have thrown up my lungs if I could."

"So you had a violent physical reaction to the memory of what happened/"

"Yeah, yes I did."

"And what else?"

She rubbed her face.

"I....I....guess,,,I'm not as upset as I was the last time...."

"Remember, you were panicked...this time you were upset when you first awoke, but....now you're calm again. Very quickly this time. Did you notice?"

'Yes...but.....why? The memory is even clearer now. It should be worse, shouldn't it?"

"Not necessarily. It was a nightmarish experience the first time and to a certain extent the second time. Nightmares act on a subconscious level. What you're afraid of isn't necessarily what you remember. Now you're remembering what happened more clearly, and it isn't affecting you as strongly."

She sat up on the couch, putting her feet under her and brushing her skirt which had risen up almost to her panties down with her hands.

"Why wouldn't it hit me as hard? It was so damned disgusting....so.....I told you that I like dominant men. I did....do....like men that take control of me...but not rape...not like that...."

"It was pretty bad even from an objective, male point of view...but..."

"But what?"

"There's a reason why it's losing its impact on you, Debbie. A reason you realize even as you can't get it clear in your mind.

"I don't....I'm not sure.....I.....I don't know why but I....do feel it...why doesn't it bother me as much?"

"Think about it."

She looked down at the Rorschach design on the coffee table and tried to get the memory clearer in her head. But while parts of it were crystal clear, it...didn't....feel right....

"I don't know, Doctor...it's just that....something....something doesn't feel right."

He took one of her hands in his and looked into her eyes.

"I know. Tell me what your assailants looked like."

"One of them was....dark haired....tall, maybe six foot one or two....slender....another was a few inches shorter, still taller than me...he was thinning on top....light brown hair...they were all wearing suits...not real fancy...dress, but business suits....the third one was blonde, heavy...a little chubby..."

"And how old did they appear?"

"I...uh....maybe in their late 20s...early 30s...not old..."

"They weren't teenagers?"

"No."

"Okay, tell me what you were doing before you went into the restroom with them?"

She tried to remember how they'd gotten her to go in there. She couldn't be a big enough slut to walk into a restroom on the spur of the moment with three strangers for a gangbang. It had to have been arranged. But the memory didn't come.

"Nothing? What happened after they left you covered in their urine and semen on that bathroom floor?"

Again, nothing would come to her. The memory started with her in the restroom and ended with her on the floor.

"I can't remember."

"I'm not surprised."

"What do you mean?"

"Think about this. Do you remember how they talked to you as they assaulted you, as you fellated them?"

She thought about it. She remembered the insults, the jeers.

"And there's nothing about that that struck you as odd?"

"Just that..."

He saw the realization strike her. She looked at him with surprise in her eyes.

"They weren't teenagers, were they? And yet they were calling you an old slut and expressing their disgust for you, to the point of refusing to rape you for fear of disease. Unless it occurred last week, you must have been in your mid to late 30s because it wasn't until that time that you said your marriage started to fall apart."

He looked her body up and down again and said, "I'm not flattering you to say that you are an attractive woman who doesn't look your age. And your description of the three men makes them look roughly your age. There's no reason they would be talking about you in those terms as an older woman, unless....."

"Unless I were an older woman."

He smiled.

"And since you are not an older woman, that means that...."

She shook her head, unable to grasp what she'd just said.

"How could the memory not be real? It felt so real. It was just a....dream...a nightmare?"

"It was a memory....but not one...."

"I don't understand."

"Everyone, I think, has heard of people who can remember where they were when the Twin Towers were struck. Or when Pearl Harbor was hit. Or during the big football game that was the biggest event of their childhood. People that were nowhere near a television screen will remember seeing it in vivid detail years from now. And they'll swear under oath they actually did see it. And they'll believe they saw it.

"It's a false memory. A fake memory. It's built on other knowledge and...wanting...to have seen it."

"How could that be the case in this?"

"I'm not sure right now. But, everything fits. A true memory has broader scope and it...has more detail. Your detail is crysal clear, but sharply limited. You can't remember anything before or after...how it happened...the aftermath...Eventually or by this time

some of those details would have been working their way into your conscious mind.

"But, at the same time, you have a clearer view of what happened, of the people involved, than anyone could have...if they weren't there when it happened. You couldn't have those events so clearly established if it was something you only heard about."

She shook her head again.

"I still don't see. I was there, but I wasn't?"

"If I'm guessing right, you were there. You saw the assault, or its aftermath, but you weren't the victim. It had to be someone very close to you to have had the emotional impact that this incident had on you personally. And it had to be an older woman. Does anyone fit that profile?"

"Clarice...my Aunt Clarice."

"That was my thought. I think something happened to her and you were close by or involved in some way. I think that over time, especially after she died, the incident festered in your subconscious and eventually worked its way into your mind as a dreamlike memory."

They stared at each other. Debbie listened to the muted rhythm of the Grandfather clock and thought about her aunt.

"But there's something else, Debbie. Something that doesn't make sense right now."

"A lot of this doesn't' make sense, Doctor, but at least I'm not hurling and I don't feel sick to my stomach. What?"

"The repressed, transformed, memory, has been in your mind since before your aunt died -- committed suicide. What triggered it?"

It didn't take a moment.

"The divorce."

"That's what it seems like. It rumbled around inside your mind until your divorce was finalized, and then it came roaring back. So not only does your ex arouse feelings of rage and anger, but your final breakup brought a false memory of yourself being raped and abused to the forefront on your memory."

She put her head in her hands.

"That doesn't make sense, Doctor. Every bad thing I could ever think of to say about Bill, would never include involvement in something like that. Why would I associate the attack with him? With our divorce?"

He sat back and stretched.

'I don't know, Debbie. Like I said, that's what makes psychiatry fascinating. There has to be a link. We just haven't discovered it yet."

She looked up at him and he was surprised to find her smiling.

"What?"

"I just realized, doctor. I didn't.....I didn't cheat on him....the way I thought I had. I might have been a bad wife, but I wasn't a complete slut. I didn't think I'd ever be able to look him in the eye again. Now maybe I can."

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 4 p.m

I was waiting at the door to the Duval County Jail booking office as the cruiser pulled up into the parking lot behind the jail entrance. It was a Marion County Sheriff's Office cruiser.

Colman stepped out of the passenger side and while the driver went to open the back door of the cruiser he walked over to me with a big smile.

Colman wasn't that much bigger than me, but his damned cowboy hat had to give him another eight inches in height. I'd never seen a man wearing a hat that big, but other than that, Colman was a pretty nice guy. I figured he must have a Napoleonic complex. He grinned as he took my hand in his and tried to shake it off.

"I'm glad you rolled the dice, Bill. I was starting to get a damned ulcer worrying that son of a bitch would get away with it."

The taller driver was helping a handcuffed, dark haired man dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt out of the back of the cruiser.

"We nabbed him mowing the grass," Colman said laughing. "He wanted to get changed but I said he needed to get used to a prison jump suit because that's what he'll be in for the rest of his life.

"Talk about chewing nails. I was hoping he'd take a swing at me and I think he almost did. But at the last minute he remembered I was carrying a .345 magnum and he thought better of it."

Sutton was 6-foot-2, slender but broad in the chest and well muscled. He was probably 220 or 230. A bigger man than he looked at first glance; a big, strong man capable of doing a lot of damage with his bare hands or a metal bar.

It would have been nice if he'd lost control of that volcanic temper, but bastards like that never lost control when you wanted them to.

Colman's deputy walked him over to us. He looked down on me with that instinctive air of contempt big men have for men who are shorter.

"Maitland. I see you finally developed some balls. It was the old fart's story that pushed you into filing charges, wasn't it?"

"Why do you assume it was Bell who dropped the dime on you? And what could he have possibly told us that would have convinced us to charge you?"

I thought he was too smart to fall for it, but if he indicated he knew anything about Bell watching him drive off and come back he'd be digging his grave with his own mouth.

But he was too smart.

"I don't have to be a genius. You screw me around for months, but you don't file charges so I can clear my name. You just leave me twisting in the wind.

"And then the crazy old bastard that's hated my mother and me for 20 years comes back into town and a couple of days later this redneck prick puts cuffs on me. I guessed he's probably behind it."

"You'll get the whole story pretty soon, Mr. Sutton, but you sure you wouldn't like to confess? I think you'd sleep better if you got it off your conscience. It must be hard at night seeing the face of your wife after you finished working her over with that tire iron.

"And they said you smashed her stomach in so badly that you probably saw part of your son's ripped apart body. He was your son, you miserable son of a bitch. Even if you hated your wife, how could you do that to your own blood?"

He just looked at me like you'd look at a bug on a windshield.

"It might bother me a little if I'd done it. But I'm an innocent man. I didn't touch that miserable whore that was screwing around on me behind my back for years. And I didn't touch her bastard. God knows who his father was, but it wasn't me. I hadn't dipped my dick into that diseased cunt for months before she got pregnant."

"That's strange," I said, staring into those dark, bottomless eyes. "I never made it public because I wanted to save it for the jury, but we were able to run a DNA analysis on the embryo's remains and we got your DNA with a court order. The baby boy you dismembered was William Sutton Jr."

He just kept staring at me with no change of expression.

"He was your son, Sutton. He probably would have had your eyes, your features. No matter how terrible a slut your ex might have been, he would have been yours.

"Did you really think she might have gotten pregnant by another man? All we've been able to discover indicates she never cheated on you. There's nothing to indicate it. Does your mother know you murdered her grandson?"

"I didn't murder anyone," he said, and smiled at me. "You think you've got supernatural powers or something, Maitland? You taking your press clippings seriously? All that Angel of Death bullshit? You're just a cheap little lawyer...a cheap little lawyer whose wife I'm going to fuck someday after I beat this charge."

He looked down at me and grinned.

"Yeah, everybody knows your story, Maitland. Pitiful little punk. Couldn't keep your pussy happy at home so she went and found someone younger. I should have some sympathy because I was married to the same kind of bitch. But I don't. I will walk. There's no way in hell you're ever going to convict me with no evidence.

"You don't have prints. You don't have blood evidence. You don't have a weapon. You don't have anyone who even saw me with the bitch the night someone did the world a favor and beat her brains in. You don't have anyone who ever heard me talking to her that night, despite her lying bitch friends.

"I'm glad you let the old bastard convince you to go for it. I don't want this hanging over my head for months or years. Now I can beat this shit and start my life over - $5 million richer. There's no way her fucking brother and sister can keep me from getting it. We were still legally married when some good samaritan did me the big favor of sending her to hell."

He stepped closer to me and I sensed Colman putting his hand on his Magnum but I waved him off.

"In a few months or a year I'm going to be rich, and free. And you better fucking believe I'm going to spend a chunk of that meeting and wining and dining your bitch ex-wife. And after I spread her legs and fuck her pussy and ass until you could run a two-by-four up here, I'll send you a video and polaroids to pass the time late at night."