Best Man

She sat on the stool for a long time after completing her business, just staring, and occasionally whispering, "My God, what have I done?"

Eventually, she got up and walked into her bedroom, lay down and dozed off for a little while. She woke up to the sound of Julie's voice next to her.

"Mommy?" Julie said softly. "Are you all right?"

That seemed to penetrate her conscious, because she held her arms out to her little girl, Julie climbed up into the bed and held her mother while Nancy cried hard, bitter tears.

Julie was way too young to understand fully what was going on, but she sensed that something was wrong with her mommy. She seemed so sad, so quiet, and Julie knew she needed comforting.

Eventually, Nancy cried herself to sleep, so Julie tiptoed out of the room and went back to her own room to play quietly.

It was still daylight, but getting late, when Nancy woke up. She lay on the bed, just staring, trying to get her mind to work. It was almost like she was drowning, and she was fighting to reach the water's surface, but she couldn't seem to quite get there.

Finally, in the crevasses of her brain, something seemed to give, and she could sense that she was falling into a mental void. And as she did, she seemed to come to some kind of decision.

With the last remaining shreds of her sanity, she picked up the telephone and dialed a familiar number.

Nancy's younger sister Rose Matthews was sitting on her front porch swing enjoying a tall glass of lemonade as dusk was falling, when her husband walked out the front door with the phone in his hand.

"It's Nancy," he said softly.

"Hey, girl, what's happening?" Rose said breezily into the phone.

"Rosie, could you come tonight and keep Julie for a little while," Nancy said in a robotic tone. "I have to go out."

"Well, uh, sure," Rose said. "But, I mean, where have you got to go on a Sunday night that's so important. Why do you need me? I mean, it's two hours to your place."

"I have to go out," Nancy said again. "Please?"

"Uh, sure, I'll be there as soon as I can," Rose said, as a five-alarm sense of dread roared through her brain.

"I'll wait for you," Nancy said dully, then hung up the phone without further comment.

Rose just held the phone, her mouth agape.

"What was that all about?" said her husband.

"I don't know," Rose said. "Something's wrong, something's bad wrong."

Suddenly, Rose was in a panic. She flew into the house, went up to her bedroom, grabbed a small overnight bag, threw some things in it, and headed downstairs to grab her keys.

Along the way, she explained to her husband about the strange nature of the call she'd just gotten, and that she had a bad feeling about her sister.

"OK, call me as soon as you get there," he said. "Rose, look, it's two hours to their place. I know you want to get there as quickly as you can, but you won't do her or Julie any good if you get in a wreck because you're speeding. Take a deep breath, try to stay calm and drive extra carefully. OK?"

"I will," Rose said. She kissed her husband goodbye, then gave her kids a hug. Then she was out the door and gone.

Nancy peeked in on Julie, who had managed to fix herself a bowl of cereal for supper and was back in her room working on a coloring book. Julie was so intent on her work that she didn't notice Nancy staring at her, a single tear rolling down her cheek.

Then Nancy walked heavily down the stairs and sat down at the kitchen table again. Her stomach grumbled, so she idly picked up a loaf of bread, opened it and methodically ate three slices, then carefully tied the bag up and set it in front of her.

An hour passed. Julie came down to show her mom what she'd been working on, and Nancy looked at it casually, nodded her head and resumed staring at the far wall.

"Mommy?" Julie said hesitantly.

Nancy looked over at her daughter with tear-filled eyes. She was trying so very hard to hang onto the one small shred of sanity that was left in her tortured mind, because her baby still needed her. With a supreme effort, she looked at Julie again and spoke.

"Sweetheart, go up and get ready for your bath," she said slowly and deliberately.

"Yes ma'am," Julie answered, relieved that her mother had finally spoken to her for the first time all day. She went upstairs, got her clothes off, and heard Nancy plodding up the stairs and into the bathroom.

Nancy managed to get Julie's bathwater fixed, laid her towel out on the commode and her night clothes out on her bed, then sat down on Julie's bed. She was still there when Julie came out, and she watched silently as the girl dressed herself for bed.

When Julie was dressed and had climbed in bed, Nancy stood up woodenly, then knelt down and gave her daughter a hug.

"I ... love you, pumpkin," she whispered.

"I love you too, Mommy," Julie said.

Nancy turned out the light, and trudged back down the stairs. Satisfied that her daughter was comfortable and would be taken care of, Nancy DiMarco let go of that last shred of her sanity.

She walked back into the kitchen, pulled another bottle of water out of the fridge, sat back down at the table, stared at the front window and waited for her sister.

As soon as she saw the lights from Rose's car and heard the sound of the car pulling up the drive, Nancy stood up, picked up the loaf of bread and the bottle of water, walked out the back door and vanished into the night.

------

It was Thursday, and a tropical depression had moved through the area, bringing heavy rain and moderately high winds.

Billy Smith, known on the street as Billy the Kid, had taken refuge in the public restroom that sat at the far end of the city park that snaked along a portion of the river which ran through the heart of the city.

He had managed to panhandle enough change to buy a bottle of Thunderbird, and the liquor store owner, who knew him well, had given him a second bottle for free in light of the weather conditions.

What little change he had left he'd used at the Korean's corner market across from the park on a couple of cans of Vienna sausages and some crackers.

He'd taken his meager provisions to the park to hunker down in a reasonably dry spot as nightfall had descended and the weather had worsened.

Billy wasn't a young man, and his leathery brown skin and rheumy eyes had seen much better days. He was sitting Indian-style in the doorway of his shelter, watching the weather and the flickering lights of the buildings across the river, while carrying on a conversation with the wind.

Suddenly, a figure trudged into his line of sight. It was a person, a smallish person who looked to be utterly unprepared for the weather. This person, who appeared to be a woman, was wearing a T-shirt and shorts; no raingear or any other protection from the elements.

As he watched, the person walked heavily against the wind until reaching the bench that overlooked the river. Then she sat down hard and her head slumped forward.

Billy felt a cold trickle of fear run up his spine as he watched the person on the bench. The only movement was from the head, which seemed to bob slowly up and down, like she was fighting for consciousness.

Something wasn't right here at all. It wasn't normal for a person, a woman no less, to be out in this weather in shorts and a T-shirt.

He hated the thought of getting out in the rain, but he couldn't just leave that person out there in this kind of weather.

Pulling the hood of his old Army fatigue coat over his sparse kinky gray hair, Billy walked into the rain to check on the person on the bench.

When he reached it, he saw that it was indeed a woman, perhaps in her mid-30s, and quite pretty, with dark hair plastered in wet strings over her face and down to her shoulders.

"Lady?" he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "You OK?"

It was only then that the woman seemed to become aware of his presence, and he realized that she was shivering badly. And when she turned her head slowly and looked up at him, Billy recoiled as if he'd been shot.

The look in the woman's eyes was one he'd seen before, a long time ago, in the swamps and jungles of Vietnam. It was a look he'd even seen staring back at him from a mirror at points in his life, back when he had some place to live that came with mirrors.

The thousand-yard stare, they'd called it, and Billy could see that this woman didn't have just a thousand-yard stare, but a thousand-mile stare. She seemed to be mumbling something, but her teeth were chattering so badly, he couldn't make it out, and it didn't matter anyway.

Billy shook himself and did the only thing he could do. He unzipped his jacket, pulled it off, wrapped it around the woman's shoulders and led her up off the bench and over to his shelter. The woman seemed to just let him take her wherever he wanted, as if she had no free will of her own.

Once in the dry shelter, Billy had the woman sit down on the concrete floor against a wall. He gave her a couple of sips of his wine, which made her cough, then he insisted on giving her some sausages and crackers, which she ate ravenously.

She washed it down with a couple of gulps of the wine, and that seemed to bring a little color back to her skin. Again, the woman mumbled something, and Billy put his ear up close to her mouth to make out what it was she was saying.

But all he heard was, "my God, my God."

On closer inspection, he saw that the woman's skin was covered with scratches, scrapes, little cuts and insect bites, and that her clothes were torn and dirty.

"OK, lady, you gonna be all right now, ain't you?" Billy said. "You stay here, and I'm gonna go get some help. You just sit tight now, and I'll get somebody to come take care of you."

He hated to go back out in the rain, especially without his jacket, but he reasoned that the woman needed it more than he did. He walked as briskly as he could through the park, and had just reached the street that ran alongside the park when he saw a police car cruising slowly.

Billy waved his arms to flag the patrol car down, and the car stopped at the deserted curb. The driver's window came down, and Billy recognized the middle-aged officer as Burt Riley.

Most of the cops on the beat in this area knew Billy the Kid. He was relatively harmless, just another homeless wino that they occasionally had to run in for public drunk and-or loitering.

"Billy, are you drunk?" Burt said genially. "You oughta know better'n to be out in this kind of weather, especially with no coat. What's wrong with you?"

"Y'all gotta come," Billy said. "There's a lady, over where I done took shelter. She looks bad, fellas. She just wandered over to the bench by the river. She ain't right; I'm tellin' ya. Y'all come on."

"A woman?" Burt said, and he looked over at his partner, Yolanda Mitchell, who fished in the report book for the picture they'd been given two days earlier. "What's she look like?"

"White lady, kinda young, but not too young, dark hair," Billy answered.

Burt and Yolanda looked at the picture, nodded, then motioned for Billy to get in the back.

"Look, Billy, we're not gonna cuff you, so you'd better behave back there," said Yolanda, a 30-year-old black woman with stern eyes and a formidable build.

"How long y'all been knowin' me?" Billy said. "I ain't no criminal."

"Never mind that," Yolanda said, holding up a picture to show Billy as Burt put the unit in gear, flipped the lights on and headed quickly into the park. "Is this the woman?"

Billy looked at the picture of Nancy DiMarco, who had gone missing four days earlier from her suburban home.

"Yep, that's her," Billy said. "Only she don't look like that right now."

"I wouldn't imagine that she would," Burt said.

Nancy was still sitting on the floor where Billy had left her, her head bobbing and her eyes closed. The trio got out of the patrol car and walked up to her. As they approached, Nancy lifted her head, looked up at them, and the two officers had the same reaction Billy had had earlier at the look in her eyes.

"Mrs. DiMarco?" Burt said softly, as he knelt down and approached her gently.

Nancy just nodded her head slowly, and didn't resist in any way when Burt picked her up gingerly. Yolanda had produced a blanket from the back of the patrol car, and wrapped it around Nancy's shoulders. She escorted Nancy to the car while Burt asked Billy a few questions.

Satisfied by his response, Burt thanked Billy for his help, got in the car and they drove off to the hospital.

Nancy was treated for hypothermia, exhaustion, dehydration and malnourishment, and the worst of her skin injuries were treated. She was dressed in some scrubs, rather than a hospital gown, and placed under a blanket. She was sedated and given IV fluids, then taken to ICU for observation.

Tom had been in England, and was just waking up to begin what he'd hoped would be one of the last few days of his business there, when Rose had called in a panic.

She told him that Nancy had called her the night before, sounding very strange, and when she'd gotten to the house, Julie was in bed, still not quite asleep, and Nancy was gone. Julie had told her Aunt Rose how Nancy had been acting that day, and alarm bells had gone off in her mind.

Tom had immediately cut his business trip short, flown home and had been searching for his wife ever since. After the mandatory two days, the police had gotten involved, and cops from every precinct in the city and every sheriff's department within a 50-mile radius had been looking for her.

The doctors told Tom and Rose when they arrived at the emergency room that if she'd been out much longer, she may well have died of exposure.

It was three days later when the doctor treating her case called Tom aside and gave him a blunt assessment of his wife's condition. By then, Tom had figured out that something was very wrong with Nancy. She was all but unresponsive, and totally uncommunicative.

"Physically, she's fine," the doctor said. "As far as that goes, she can go home right now. But there is something profoundly wrong in her mind. She's in the grips of a very severe psychosis that is way beyond my expertise. I think something has happened to trigger this episode, but we won't know until she comes around."

He gave Tom a referral to one of the city's leading psychiatrists, shook Tom's hand, wished him the best and moved on to his next case.

Tom looked in on his wife, lying peacefully on the bed asleep, an IV still attached to her arm. He felt the room spinning and he had to sit down, and when he did, the strain of the past few days hit him then and he burst into tears.

He didn't know it yet, but he was about walk into a six-year long battle with Nancy's mental illness. She would be in and out of mental institutions on a regular basis, while the psychiatrists tried to find the key to unlock the closed door to her mind.

Along the way, she would be diagnosed as severely manic-depressive, which had heightened her condition. She would seem to level out for awhile and appear sane, only to give up on her medication, fall right back into madness and land back in the hospital.

It took four years for the doctors to get to the cause of her initial psychosis and it wasn't until another two years passed before Nancy finally accepted the need for the medications that would keep her condition under control that she came home for good.

But Nancy DiMarco was an emotionally scarred woman, and she would be a virtual recluse for many years, only going out when in the company of Tom or Julie.

During this time, Tom divested himself of his overseas business and concentrated on his domestic clients, and he devoted as much time as he could to the care of his wife and the raising of his daughter.

Julie grew to be a good girl, quiet, studious and very smart, and his friends Gary and Tina Meadows were willing to let Julie stay with them whenever necessary. They felt like Julie was a good influence on Mandy, who was a little rambunctious, and the two girls remained best friends.

But even the best of friends can differ when it comes to love and lust.

------

Mandy Meadows stood in the front room of her plush townhouse in a quiet section of the city. She was looking intently out the window into the night, waiting for her lover.

She was dressed in a sheer one-piece negligee, blue to match her eyes. It covered, but didn't hide her plump breasts, with the fat areolas and the long hard nipples that jutted into the silky material.

Her fiancé, Brad Hayes, had bought it for her at Frederick's of Hollywood to wear on their honeymoon, but she couldn't resist showing it off for her lover, Todd Bellows.

Mandy felt her pussy creaming at the wickedly delicious thought of Todd's big fat cock, his rough hands and his hard body. But what turned her on even more so was the fact that Todd and Brad were supposedly best friends, and Todd was going to be the best man in their upcoming wedding.

Now 23, Mandy was supposed to marry Brad in a couple of weeks, but that wasn't enough to prevent her from having a late-night tryst with Todd.

For Mandy, fucking her fiancé's best friend was just business as usual. She'd been breaking hearts since she'd gotten her first boyfriend way back in sixth grade.

As she'd matured and become a sexual predator like her mother, she'd taken a special delight in stealing boyfriends – and later, husbands – away from other women. Her allure was hard to resist, and if she set her sights on a man, forget it, he was hers.

It had been that way with Brad. She'd met him at a social event her parents were hosting, and he'd taken a liking to her. She hadn't really been all that interested until she learned that he was head of his division at a computer software company, with a portfolio that was already in six figures.

She had come to like him, perhaps even love him – as much as it was in her capacity to love someone other than herself – so she'd said yes when he'd asked her to marry him.

Brad was a decent enough lover, with a nice thick cock, and the ability to use it, but when she'd met his best friend Todd a few months earlier, they both knew it was just a matter of time before she had him.

Mandy could never resist a man with Todd's bad-boy charm, not to mention his well-muscled physique. Just a few days after their first meeting, they had had a secret rendezvous at Todd's apartment, and had gotten together as often as they could.

Todd drove a delivery truck for a mailing company, and had opportunities to slip away during the day, as did Mandy, who worked in sales for the largest advertising agency in the city. When they couldn't get together during the day, they would meet at night, late, like they were on this night.

Earlier that night, Mandy had sent Brad home early, claiming she wasn't feeling well because it was her time of the month. Then she had showered, trimmed her pubic bush, slipped on the negligee and was waiting for Todd.

A few minutes later, she heard the roar of his motorcycle as he pulled into the parking lot. He strutted to her door, she let him in and they embraced.

"Hey, lover," she cooed when they broke. "Did you bring my favorite cock?"

"Absolutely, sweetcheeks," Todd answered.

He held her at arm's length while his eyes drank in the vision of loveliness that was Mandy Meadows in near-naked fashion. She walked seductively into her bedroom and Todd followed like a bloodhound in pursuit of his quarry.

Mandy stood at the foot of her bed and ran her hands softly over her swelling breasts, then rolled her nipples between her fingers through the gauzy material of her negligee. Her pussy was gushing from anticipation as she watched Todd pull off his leather jacket, revealing his tank-top shirt, under which his muscular chest rippled.