Now You Do Mine

Now You Do Mine

She told me she was going to kill me. The barrel of the automatic pointing at the center of my body mass was big, maybe a.45 or a.357 Magnum. I don't know guns, but it was a serious piece of iron, big for her hands, but steady, implacable. The look on her face told me she was absolutely serious, and she wasn't threatening me.

She was promising me.

Saturday morning, and my wife Amanda would be out of town until Sunday evening. I only knew in very broad strokes what her plans were, and she knew I loved her. Twenty years of marriage taught us both to be worthy of each other's trust, accepting and forgiving even the most minor of trespasses. Our daughter Elise had left for college over a year ago, which left me alone in our house both days.

A minute earlier, I'd heard a knock, soft, almost timid, three quick raps on the door. After a moment, the three quick raps came again, harder and faster, authoritative, but uneven, not at the same tempo between the first and second, and the second and third knocks. I considered waiting to see what the third round of knocks would be, whether they were harder, suggesting desperation, or the law, at my door, or more quiet and measured, polite but enthusiastic.

I decided it would be rude to keep my caller waiting, and strode to the door, unlocking it and swinging it open as her right hand was poised to knock again. She was middle-aged, wearing a mid-length dress, the hem just below her knees, very ladylike. The fabric was a paisley pattern of cerulean blues and sea greens on a cream colored background. Her hair was long, straight and blonde, hanging past her shoulders to her sides, and probably to the middle of her back. The lenses on her face were set in a wire frame the color of rose gold, squared in the style of granny glasses, matching a rose gold chain whose pendant was hidden below her neckline.

She had been crying, not weeping or bawling, but the genteel grief of a woman who has been hurt deeply, the latest in a sequence of offenses against her dignity, this last one putting inestimable strain on the back of the camel, not quite breaking it. That would happen shortly, it seemed.

She wore little makeup, and her pale skin and hazel eyes were regal without being imperious. A small spray of freckles spattered her nose and high cheekbones, and her face had few wrinkles, either from frowns or laugh lines. It seemed to me she usually kept her emotions tightly reined in, letting only a hint of her feelings leak out, regardless of what she felt. What little I could make out of her figure was slender, toned if her arms were any indication. The brown leather purse on her shoulder was huge, doubtless filled with the items she needed daily, for work and leisure, roomy and at the same time dense, heavy. I noticed her sandals, the same color as her purse, and her toes were unpainted, like her fingers.

"Yes?"

"Mr. Langan?" Her voice was calm, scarily calm. I had imagined a sorrowful contralto, but what I heard was strained, husky.

"Yes. How can I help you."

"Let me in. Please..."

She looked upset, and I wondered who had done this to her, whatever it was, filled her with so much bitter rage (there is no such thing as sweet rage, in my experience) and I felt a sudden urge to help her, or at least to listen. I help friends sometimes, but strictly as an amateur. I have no shingle on my door, but I can read people. It's a skill developed over a long career in contract negotiations, being able to understand others, their motives, relative honesty, basic intentions.

I backed up and let the door swing open, waving my right hand to show her it was okay to enter our home, which she did without looking at me. I closed and latched the door, then turned to face my guest.

"Are you home alone?"

I told her I was.

Her eyes closed for a moment, and a single jewel-like tear squeezed out of her eye, trailing down the side of her face. "Of course you are."

"How can I help you?" I emphasized the word help to reduce any threat she might imagine, and signal I was truly interested in navigating through whatever personal tempests had brought her to me. It wasn't a business matter, clearly. My work is with companies large and small, manufacturing or heavy industry, fields with little direct connection to the man or woman on the street. There were no lawsuits or legal threats looming over my personal or professional horizon, so she was here for herself.

She reached into her bag with her right hand and withdrew something big and heavy, the shape of death and the color of gunmetal, a faint sweet whiff of oil on the frame of the automatic. Grasping it in both hands, barely a tremor, she pointed it at the center of my chest, and another tear broke loose, following its fellow down her alabaster cheek.

"I...I think I'm going to kill you."

It occurred to me that two minutes ago would have been a good time to be rude.

She motioned me to the couch, and I sat with all the dignity I could muster, my body barely quaking in the beginnings of fear. This is so...odd... In my forty-some years on this earth, I've been the target of anger and revenge, some deserved, most of it not, but had never had a gun pointed at me, or even near me.

I had to know. "Why?"

"It'll hurt them." The last syllable was filled with such vitriol that I knew whoever they were, they were deserving, in her mind at least, of grave, vicious revenge. And I would be her instrument, her message, but I had to understand the reason for it.

"Who?"

Her lower lip quivered for a moment, and the gun, the pistol, wavered, before it came up again, this time pointed at my nose. Her next words were a snarl, an almost feral expression of anguish and anger, as if it were enough to explain. "That cunt, and my husband."

"Okay." As if that explained everything, which it emphatically did not. "What's your name?"

"G-Gretchen." She swore at that admission, as if now she had to kill me to keep me from telling anyone who she was, had been, at the end of my life. "Yours?" It was oddly polite, even in the face of her stated intention.

"It's Douglas...Doug. Gretchen, I'm not at all sure what you're referring to."

"You have to know..." Her eyes blurred with brimming tears, but her hands were steady, and it came to me in one of those weird moments of clarity that she was standing in the Weaver position, the way that police officers steadied themselves and their aim if they ever needed to draw down on or shoot a criminal. She was either a cop, or had been trained how to shoot by one.

"Gretchen, I'm sorry, but I'm a little behind here. Can you please explain why you're here?" And why you want to shoot me... My voice was calm, friendly, easier by far than I felt. More of my background in negotiations, and I hoped it would do some good, by which I defined that to mean not dying today.

"You're home alone, which means she's not here."

"She?" I decided not to jump to conclusions, quietly urging Gretchen, my intended murderess, to talk it out for me.

"Your wife. Amanda."

"No, she's not here. We're alone, you and I."

"She isn't."

"How can I help, Gretchen?"

"You can't, but if you die she'll be hurt worse than if I killed them."

"Who are they, Gretchen?" I looked as puzzled as I could, not hard since I still sought pieces of the puzzle the woman with the gun aimed at my chest represented.

"Your wife. My husband."

"Who... Wait. Do you mean Walter?"

Gretchen screamed YES, started trembling all over her body. The gun moved not one millimeter, not the width of one speck of dust.

"Gr..."

Her next words were anguished, furious. "Don't use my name, motherfucker! Don't! I want this to be simple, just one shot, then she can find you when she comes home, find us both." She took a deep breath, and I saw her grief drain out of her, replaced by unholy purpose. "You, then me."

My blood ran cold when I realized what she intended.

Her eyes softened over the barrel of her gun. "I'm so s-sorry..." And she sounded sorry, but that was too late, I knew.

I waited for the first round to smash into the bridge of my nose, penetrating and spattering the inside of my head all over the wall behind me, certain I wouldn't hear her second shot, probably fired at the side of her head, or in her mouth. Maybe even, in a last melodramatic flourish, into her own heart, already broken and shattered by whatever this final betrayal was.

"What did I do, Gretchen?"

"You let her!"

As she cocked the hammer on her weapon, I understood.

She didn't move, her eyes betraying the gathering strength she would use to pull the trigger, to end my life, a second time to end hers. And she froze, her eyes locked with mine, waiting for her hands to do the terrible thing she looked like now, perhaps, she didn't want.

I heard a rough exhalation, and the pistol tilted down, towards the cushion I was seated on, at my crotch. I waited, then she pointed the pistol away from me, carefully lowered the hammer, and I let out a breath that I hadn't known I was holding. I heard the muted snick as she engaged the safety, abating the danger for the moment. Gretchen set the pistol almost delicately on my coffee table, still in reach, then collapsed to her knees, her shoulders shaking, either from relief or renewed sorrow.

"How can I help?" She was clearly conflicted, and my best chance at living was to unravel the knotted pain at the center of her being.

Facing down to the ground, she said two words I couldn't quite make out. "Gretchen..."

She repeated them now, still looking at the ground. "You can't." Her golden hair hung down, a curtain of shimmering metal, rippling as she brought her hands to her face and started to sob. "I'm so sorry, Doug." It was the first time since hearing it that she had spoken my first name, and I felt a faint surge of hope that our afternoon wouldn't be the lead on the local news.

"I forgive you. What happened? At least tell me that." My voice was as serene as I could make it, between the sudden release of the terror that had stifled my breath, and the hammer of my heart in my chest. Just talk to me, I willed her silently.

She took off her glasses, which I noticed were now smudged with her fingerprints, foggy with the tears that had dripped onto them. Setting them on the table without folding them, she regained her composure, and looked up at me. "God, I'm so fucking stupid. I know it's not your fault."

She was wrong. It was my fault, at least partly. I had knowingly acquiesced to it, if I was honest with myself, had been willing to accept Amanda's plea. "What happened?"

"I know Walter had lovers before me. We weren't virgins when we met, and sure as hell not after the first two weeks. It's just...I thought we would be forever..." She gathered herself, took a deep breath, and continued.

"Walter told me he was going to be catching up with an old friend while I was out of town, but when I walked in, I heard noises in our bedroom. I had thought about surprising him, maybe walking in naked if there wasn't a car in the driveway. That would have been fucking embarrassing...

"They were doing a lot more than just 'catching up', and I went down the hall, planning to fling the door open and catch them in the act. It was already open a few inches, and when I looked in I felt like my heart stopped.

"They were naked on our bed. She was on all fours, facing the wall, and he was behind her, his hands on her hips, his cock inside her, moving faster and faster. I heard her moans, and his hips slapping against her ass. I could tell she loved how it felt, my husband fucking her hard, pounding her until he came inside her..." Gretchen looked at the carpet again and her shoulders shook for a few moments.

When she looked up again, her voice was thick, longing. "Walter...used to fuck me like that. I wanted it to be me on the bed, face down in the pillow letting him fuck me like we used to...

"I wanted to run over and shove him off her, hit him with the lamp, scream at him to stop, anything, but I couldn't move, couldn't make any noise. When she told him she was going to cum again, he sped up. I could smell how hot and wet her cunt was, heard his dick practically sloshing inside her. She moaned so loud, told him to keep fucking her, cum inside her...

"I found myself in the spare room at the closet, grabbing my sidearm from its safe, and started back down towards them, almost on automatic, but when I got back to the room, I couldn't. Everyone would forgive them and they wouldn't know how much his betrayal hurt me. I went into the living room to think.

"That's when I saw her purse on the kitchen counter. I looked at her license, found your address. I put it back just as I heard him cum inside your wife's pussy, and I left quietly as I could while they were telling each other how much they loved each other. The worst part was hearing them kiss. I don't even think they knew I was there at all. I think they're still fucking." She sounded lost, adrift, and I could empathize readily.

If I'd been a cat, my ears would have swiveled forward at the word she used to describe her gun. Sidearm. Most people would say gun, or pistol if they were being more specific. Gretchen had used a professional term, reserved almost exclusively for police and the military. I knew with cold certainty the if she'd pulled the trigger, she wouldn't have missed. "Why come here?"

She looked up at me, her gaze imploring. "God, Doug, we don't even know each other! I don't know why I wanted to take it out on you. I'm sorry." After waiting for a moment, I dropped to my knees on the carpet and took her in my arms, let her cry against me for a long time, shedding her pain on my flannel shirt, clutching me tightly, letting it all wash out of her. Even so, I kept a wary eye on the pistol, lying on the table and pointed now toward the kitchen. It was still within her reach, and even though she didn't seem inclined to grab it again, I was still wary.

It held her for long enough that my legs and back had begun to cramp, before Gretchen's tears subsided. "Th-thank you," she whispered, and that set off a new, quieter round of weeping. "I'm so fucking sorry, Doug. I didn't..." Whatever words she had intended faded away unspoken.

It may have been the danger, my near-death experience, but my senses were utterly clear. Her hair smelled of shampoo or conditioner, rich and sharp with menthol or mint. Her skin was soft against mine, silky and warm, the nearly invisible hairs on her arms downy and delicate. Her breasts against me were soft, undeniably feminine and sexy. She felt familiar, even though I'd never laid eyes, or anything else, on her before this morning. I felt a quiet ache at the base of my penis, a slow rising that signaled a full-blown erection was on its way.

I pulled away from her gently, not without some regret. "My knees are... Can we sit on the couch?" She looked at me and nodded, grateful for the change of venue. We rose together, then sat on the couch, much further away from the gun, her sidearm, and I began to relax, and thought maybe she wouldn't kill either of us. She sat next to me, turned towards me, but didn't reach for me.

"Why...why is she with him?" She was genuinely mystified that Walter had chosen to bed my wife instead of her, or at all.

I took a breath, thinking. I could tell her the truth, perhaps driving her back to murderous rage, to both our detriment. On the other hand, a series of plausible lies could have the same effect, only postponing matters, and probably making it worse once the truth unburied itself in the light of day, as I suspected would inevitably happen.

What I have always liked about telling the truth is there is less to remember. A lie needs buttressing with half-truths, easy explanations, little fibs, and any one of these can trip a negotiator up. Lawyers are better at navigating these issues, cataloguing and disclosing them, and people instinctively distrust, even despise them for it. I'm not a lawyer, and it was suddenly important to me to tell Gretchen the truth, but I would ease into it.

"Gretchen..." I paused, consulting a mental map of possible paths to the truth. "Amanda and I will have been married twenty-one years in September." Assuming you don't actually shoot me, I didn't say out loud. "We've always been faithful to each other, she hasn't slept with anyone but me until now. I know I haven't cheated on her. Been tempted, but didn't do anything about it.

"You have to understand. I love Amanda, trust her completely. She knew Walter back in college, and she told me she had always felt something for him, but they never consummated their relationship." It had been in graduate school, and he had been her best friend and confidant. They were, my wife had explained, soulmates, the same way she and I were, are.

I don't usually like that word, soulmate. Too many man-weasels at my college, eager to get into whatever warm, wet hole they could slip their dick into, used it too easily, insincerely. It was deceptive and manipulative, almost always, and I'd resisted its use for years, until Amanda and I became engaged. Then it seemed a perfect description for why we were so happy, so compatible, and I had reluctantly accepted its use, not just in our bed, but in our lives.

Continuing softly, I told her, "It was only after he left to go abroad that she realized what she missed, how much she wanted just one night with him. She admitted to me that if she had ever had the chance she would go to bed with him. She told me that, and then said there was no way she would have stayed with him, or left me, and she loved me so much, loved our marriage, would never give that up for a one-nighter."

What Amanda had really said was far more descriptive, along the lines of a whole weekend of animalistic passion, loud fucking, taking every drop of his cum and begging for more, in any hole he desired, letting him have her in the shower, backyard, car, wherever their passion and inclinations took them. Walter could have her, take her, but she swore she wouldn't let him have her heart. It would be just sex, just fucking, Dougie, and you know I'll always come home to you.

Amanda had always lost herself in our lovemaking, leaving us both exhausted and sated, just not recently. It seemed an unwise amount of detail to relate to Gretchen, though it was the truth. I was comfortable telling the truth to her, but I knew unnecessary details would hurt her, and I found myself caring enough not to do that.

I paused again, gathering my thoughts. "Our marriage is very, very strong. Neither one of us has ever strayed. If she had any urges toward anyone else, she never even hinted about them, devoted herself totally to me."

I paused, then forged on. "Then she told me Walter had moved back into town. Didn't mention he was married, and he might not have either. A couple of weeks back, she turned to me in bed, and told me very seriously that she and Walter had been talking.

"She's had regrets about not inviting him into her bed when she had the chance, and finally asked me if it was okay to get him out of her system. I asked what she meant, and she told me she'd like a weekend with Walter. Sleeping with him." Spoken out loud, it sounded alien to my ears.

Gretchen reached for me, stroked my cheek. "I'm so sorry, Doug."

"Not your fault. We talked about it for a couple of nights. I trust her, and ultimately, I couldn't say no to her."

"You could have, Doug." She was quiet, still as a secluded pond, her fingertips still on my cheek, her eyes searching mine for something.