Peter, Prue Ch. 03

So Jules had taken pictures.

Had she done it herself somehow, and sent them to Prue? Why? Out of spite; or just out of plain meanness? Who understands women?

Or had there been someone else? An intruder; someone she'd invited or paid for. He didn't remember seeing anyone. He hardly recalled the fucking itself.

It looked quite intense, though.

Damn. So Prue knew what they did last night. Well, didn't she do exactly the same thing too? Worse - she'd fucked three men. Then again, he'd been fucking her best friend.

He guessed she'd call it a revenge fuck.

But not one moment of the night had it felt like that. Mostly, Peter had been confused, overwhelmed, numb. Okay, his cock had been an enthusiastic participant, but any orgiastic sensations he'd felt had been purely located in his groin.

It had been like masturbating.

If there were emotions involved, they'd not been at all sexual and rather gloomy. There had been a confusing mixture of sadness, inadequacy, insecurity - and sickness of course. With every bout of fucking Julia initiated, he'd done his utmost to finish fast and return to the misty, roiling landscape of his drunken, frustrated existence.

The photo must be telling Prue quite a different story, though.

'Did it have to be with her?' she asked. No, he admitted, it shouldn't. Nothing should have been anything else than the two of them together, Prue and he - cuddling, kissing, making love.

He sighed and rose, when another ping announced a new message.

There was no name attached to it. The title just said: Pictures. They were more of the same - ten in all. Jules sucking, Jules riding, Peter eating bare pussy, the two of them in 69, he fucking Jules's ass. The bodies were sweaty, skin gleaming, faces contorted. There was one picture where he held Julia's tits, licking their swollen tips.

Somehow it seemed the most provocative of the bunch.

The mail had no comments and an unknown sender. It must be the same Prue had received. Who sent it? Jules?

His phone rang.

"It wasn't me," Julia said.

"You got them too?"

"Yes. But I didn't send them. And I didn't take them, either. You must believe me."

She'd lied before, he thought.

"They were taken in your bedroom, Jules!" he said, speaking louder. "Who could take pictures there without you knowing?"

"I don't know," she said, stretching the last word in despair. "Prue has a key."

Prue. Why would Prue want pictures of them fucking - and then act upset because she got sent some?

"Why would she do that, Jules?" he asked. "She was the one wanting a divorce and serving me. She doesn't need proof; she'll get her divorce anyway. So why take pictures and spread them around?"

Again Julia said she didn't know, more resigned now.

"I'm sorry, Pete," she said. "I hate seeing your privacy violated like this, and in my house. I'm sorry. But it wasn't me."

***

Prue stared at the pictures. They were awful, and they hurt.

So she'd been right: Peter fucked Julia. Maybe he did it as long as they'd been married - or even longer. The ever-present nausea in her stomach reared its head, making her belch.

He'd been with Jules at the tearoom place before he'd phoned to come over and talk. Maybe the bitch was still there when he called. Perhaps they made fun over her despair - damn Julia.

What had she ever done to deserve so much meanness from her husband and her best friend?

Lying on her pink-flowered teenage bed in her pinkish teenage room, looking at the old pop-posters still hanging on the walls, she felt misery taking over, yet again.

Or had this just been a one-off? Had it just been his way to get even for what he supposed she did that night at the Zoozoom and later? But why with Jules? He should hate Julia for setting Prue up that night.

It had been Julia who made those pictures, after all.

Once again Prue tried to reconstruct what exactly happened that night. But everything was as vague as ever. She must have been given something - a drug, maybe, and a lot of booze. A lot.

It wasn't fair.

She picked up her cell phone and hesitated before pressing a button.

"Hello?" she heard.

"Why do you hate me so much, Jules?" she asked.

"Hate you?" The voice sounded baffled. "Why would I hate you?"

Why indeed?

"You fuck my man and send me the pictures."

Her man.

"Sorry," Julia said. "But last I looked you divorced him. And I did not send any pictures. - just as I told Pete."

"You talked to Pete?"

"Well, he called me," Julia replied. "He called me about those same damn pictures. I received them myself right before he called and no: like I told him, I didn't make those photo's or send them."

"They've been taken at your house, Jules, your bedroom."

There was a sigh.

"Yes," Julia said, sounding tired. "Did you make them, Prue? You still have a key, you know. Did you hide and spy on us?"

Prue didn't know what to say. Her thoughts ran in circles, galloping their sickening stampede.

"Are you trying to make me crazy?" she asked, hearing the forlornness of her voice. "You and Pete?"

"I don't know," Julia said. "You should know best, don't you think? You started it all with your silly divorce. You never talked, never asked, just: slam bam threw a bunch of lawyers at him. And now you cry crocodile tears when a healthy man decides to take you seriously?"

Prue heard a moaning sound; it rose from her own throat.

***

Monday came around.

To Peter Hawkins it felt like relief, like taking deep breaths of fresh air after leaving a closed, airless space. Work had this exhilarating quality of normalness. Everything was clear-cut, with the encouraging perspective of a shared goal.

There were no unreadable glances, no hints of hidden agenda's.

Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is a cigar. And after a weekend filled with duplicity it was paradise to know, at least for another week, that there would be no false bottoms or secret meanings. The project they worked on was too complex for distractions.

So his week had already reached Tuesday when disaster struck.

It was in the mail, the slow, old-fashioned paper kind. It had the posh heading of Prue's lawyers' firm, embossed with fading gold. It said he would be summoned to appear in court - no fast track for him, no short cuts; to hell with the prenup's promise of simplicity.

The cause for divorce had changed from neutral to horrible formulations like 'mental cruelty' and 'adultery.' Not that they would have any serious bearing on the end result, but they would certainly make the road longer, bumpier, and dirtier.

So the bitch decided to torture him.

After fighting his anger, disgust and nausea, Peter knew he needed a real divorce lawyer.

Three hours later he sat opposite a tall, sharp-faced woman in her fifties. She wore a severe pearl-gray suit and the ageless type of silk blouse that had these flaps at the collar, tied into a bow. She had a voice that never rose; it was emotionless and precise in its formulation.

A friend had assured him she was good.

After reading the letter, she asked him to tell the story, and he did. He explained what happened from the first anonymous cell phone message to the fucking pictures and the running asshole.

She cleared her throat and demanded more detail. So he extended his story, giving background on people and happenings. Hearing himself summing up the ever-escalating incidents, a feeling of alienation crept in.

"So you had intercourse with another woman too."

It wasn't a question. Neither were the comments that followed.

"You both went off the handle after only two anonymous rumors. You ran off to a motel. And you accepted the divorce papers you were serviced with. Could I see those papers?"

He gave them to her, together with the e-mails and pictures.

She studied them in silence. Then she looked up.

"This... Julia," she said, pointing at the smiling face of Jules riding his cock. "She seems to have been at all the right places at all the right times. And she's best friends with your wife?"

He nodded.

"And she has this apartment she rents from your wife for, let's say, a song?"

He nodded again.

"Is she poor?"

Peter wondered about the question. He remembered the renovation and the new furniture.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't think so."

The woman nodded.

"Where is your wife now?"

"At her parents' house, since last week," he said.

The lawyer went into a barrage of questions about Prue's parents, her youth, Pete's relationship with her parents, and a lot more in the same vein.

In the end, she nodded again.

"I see," she said, sitting straight. "I'm afraid you've been had, young man."

***

Prue knew nothing about her lawyers' actions.

She just tried to cope with the unrelenting chain of happenings that had thrown her from carefree heaven into featureless limbo. She cried with Alice and was dressed-down for her stupidity by her mother.

Florence Vanderbilt Gascoyne returned the day after Prue came back home to her parents' house. She'd been at a rally in Chicago, attending as a board member of one of the zillion do-good foundations she was linked to. Having her youngest child out of the house when Prue went to college had been a moment she'd been waiting for with impatience. Not that she'd ever spent much time with the girl, but finally she didn't have to feel guilty about that anymore.

So Florence Gascoyne wasn't too thrilled seeing Prue was back.

Nor did she relish the reason. She'd liked Peter; he loved her daughter. She had no clue what it was, love, but it gave her the certainty he would always care for the spoilt little brat. He worked hard for her, kept her happy and out of the way.

And now this.

"So you cheated on him?" she asked, sipping the neat whisky she'd ached for all day.

Prue just stared, the old awe for her mother engulfing her again. Then she shook her head no.

"I was drugged," she insisted. "I was drunk too. They made me drunk and then took advantage of me."

Florence sighed.

"Of course," she said. "And Pete was drunk too?"

"I don't know. He fucked Jules, my best friend."

Florence pulled up an eyebrow.

"Ah yes," she said. "That's what best friends do, isn't it?"

Prue didn't know what to say; sarcasm had never been a thing she understood.

"And now you want to divorce poor Pete," Florence said, rising to get the bottle for a new drink.

"No, I don't," Prue said vehemently.

Her mother turned around with an astonished look on her face.

"You don't?" she asked. "Wow, honey, you have a very original way of going about that. You had him served, I hear."

Prue felt lost, yet again.

"Yes," she said almost in a whisper. "But now I don't want a divorce anymore."

"Good," said Florence. "So you'll be together again."

"Ehm...," Prue said.

Florence raised both eyebrows now.

"Daddy says I can't," Prue said. "Not anymore."

"Bullshit!" Florence yelled, almost shaking the precious whisky from her glass. "My God, girl, try at least to pretend you have your own brain."

Then she plunged into a sermon laced with words like 'independence' and 'goddammit,''be a woman' and 'it fucking is your life!'

Then, abrupt as ever, Florence Vanderbilt Gascoyne took her glass, her bottle, her reading glasses and her Foundation folders, and left the room.

Condemning Prue to the lonely sinkhole of her despair.

***

The lawyer woman - her name was Kathryn Forbes - asked Peter what his opinions were on using a private detective. The question surprised him.

"Why should I want one?" he asked. "They are expensive, and we already have proof of her adultery, don't we?"

"Well, yes," Kathryn agreed. "And she of yours, but I wasn't thinking of having your wife watched."

Peter was puzzled.

"Who then?" he asked.

"Julia Connors, of course."

Peter's mouth already opened to ask 'why' when he closed it again at a sudden thought.

"Jules," he muttered.

"Yes," she said. "She never had money, you told me, but now she has. She was always around when things happened. And those pictures of you were taken at her place, although she denies having anything to do with it - apart from being in them."

The lawyer sat straight again; her narrow face showed a blush.

"I'd say Julia Connors has secrets," she said. "And I wouldn't at all be surprised that they might also concern you."

Peter and his lawyer separated that afternoon agreeing on the employment of a P.I. she recommended. She also assured him she would stall Prue's gold-embossed lawyer firm until they knew more.

Nothing was resolved, but he felt better.

***

Prue didn't feel better; she felt worse.

Was it Thursday? Friday? She had no clue. She felt like standing on a station's platform: trains thundered by from every direction - and they never stopped. She couldn't even read what was on the many signs.

And the clocks didn't have hands.

Her father kept her imprisoned with his bullying and his unstoppable lawyers. Her mother ignored her, with the exception of disgusted glances. She felt too confused to go to work. All she had was Alice's shoulder, but there were no tears left.

Then she got a phone call. It was Julia.

"Darling, did you join a nunnery?" she asked with an upbeat voice.

"I'm so alone," Prue whispered.

"No need!" the loud voice went on. "Lemme get you out, girl!"

Was she drunk already, Prue wondered.

"Like last time?" she asked.

There was a loud laughter.

"But you did have fun, didn't you?"

How could it have been fun? She didn't remember a thing.

"I'll pick you up in an hour," Julia went on. "Get into something nice. Or rather not too nice!"

The laughter rang until the connection ended.

Prue stared at the phone. Then she looked around the awful pink room of her youth. The bland smiles of James Blunt, Beyoncé - faces from days forgotten.

"She's right," she murmured. "She's damn right!"

***

The P.I. didn't need a lot of time.

On Friday afternoon Pete and his lawyer listened to him at the shining conference table in Kathryn Forbes' office. The man was every inch the cliché of a private eye: bad suit, crumpled shirt and a tired face full of stubbles.

Peter wondered if he wore a hat outside.

"Julia Connors has a lover," he opened. "He visited her apartment Wednesday night and left Thursday morning. Yesterday evening they met on his yacht. They had dinner in town, returning to the marina around twelve P.M. She left this morning for work."

Peter wondered why he should know this. His second thought was to get himself tested against disease.

"They are quite open about it," the man went on. "No special efforts to hide the affair. I guess his wife knows and doesn't care much. I wonder though if the daughter knows."

"Who is he?" Peter asked.

"Well, Andy Gascoyne, of course," the P.I. said. "And the way they behave tells me they've been a couple for quite a while."

Not knowing what to say Peter looked from the man's doughy face to his lawyer's bird beak. Her eyes sparkled like a bird's too.

"Did Prue know, Peter?" she asked.

He shook his head in half denial.

"I don't know what she knows nowadays, or doesn't know," he said, shrugging. "But I can assure you I had no clue. Old Gascoyne fucking Jules... my God."

He turned from his lawyer to the P.I. and back.

"So you have dirt on him," he went on. "But he seems not to give a shit if people know. How does that keep me out of the courtroom?"

Kathryn Forbes cleared her throat and turned to the detective.

"Is there more, Alec?" she asked.

He shrugged.

"She's pregnant," he said.

***

It took Julia exactly an hour to pick up Prue.

Both women looked gorgeous, walking into the lounge of the Carlton Hotel, a 19^th century cream cake on the seaside boulevard. Julia ordered a Tequila Sunrise for Prue and waved away her objections.

"After a week of living in a monastery you need it," she said, and ordered an orange juice for herself.

"You order alcohol for me and not for yourself?" Prue asked.

Julia shrugged.

"It's part of what we should talk about, honey," she said, looking serious for the first time.

The drinks came. Prue took an almost non-existent sip.

"I'm pregnant, you know?" Julia said.

The news hit Prue like a ball of wet cotton. Her emotions ping ponged from shock to scare, from joy to dark envy, and from there back to shock and astonishment.

"But...," she said, groping for words. "But you don't even... I... we never... who?"

Julia chuckled. She veritably glowed now, turning her smile into a thousand watt lamp.

"You are getting a little brother or sister, you know?" she said.

Prue didn't hear it; she was still wrestling with her shock. They'd never talked about children, Jules and she. They'd talked endlessly about boys and men, but even after Prue married the very idea of getting children never came up.

"When?" she asked.

"Oh well," Jules said, sipping her juice. "In eight months."

Prue stared at her, softly shaking her head.

"No, I mean: when did you meet him? Who is he? Why don't I know him?"

And then she paled.

"Is it... is it Peter?"

Julia laughed, petting Prue's bare knee.

"No," she said. "Don't worry, no, not Peter. But you know him well. You've known him even longer than I do."

Then the ignored remark returned to Prue's consciousness. 'A little brother or sister."

She jumped to her feet and screamed, making all heads in the bar turn her way.

"No!" she cried. "No, no, nooooo!"

Julia grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back into the seat.

"Yes," she said. "And he's going to marry me. I'll be your stepmother soon, honey."

***

"Pregnant? From Gascoyne?"

When Peter's mind started to work again, he closed his mouth and swallowed hard. The woman he'd fucked only days ago had been pregnant with the child of his father-in-law.

He started to giggle.

"We don't know if Gascoyne really is the father, of course," the P.I. went on. "But rumor has it that he'll divorce his wife and marry Connors."

Now Kathryn Forbes chuckled too.

"Wow," she said, "he'll surely need his precious law firm."

"Then again," Peter said, regaining his senses, "what does all this have to do with Prue and me?"

The detective looked at him, saying nothing, so Peter turned to the woman. She shrugged her padded shoulders.

"Well," she said. "First there is the fact that old Andy G. will be 70 next month. He might live to be a hundred; he may have a stroke tomorrow. You can imagine what happens when he dies after first divorcing his wife of almost forty years, replacing her with a new Mrs., and adding a child to his little family."

Peter agreed it was a mess.

"But still," he said. "How does that affect my troubles?"

"It explains," Forbes said, "who's behind that silly cheating game of you and your wife. The old man hates you, always did. He hates anyone who succeeds in taking away his princess, you know? And you did. Julia, moreover, hates Prue."

Peter raised a hand in protest, but the lawyer waved him down.

"Believe me, she does," she said. "So Julia decided to satisfy her own cravings for revenge and oblige the old geezer by getting the two of you separated and your wife back into the folds of the family. I bet a new son-in-law is being lined up as we speak."

"Julia denies all this," Peter said.

Kathryn Forbes smiled, but there was no humor.