Seven Days of Solitude

One morning, at 6:15am, as the sun rose, all the clocks in 11-year old Aimi's house stopped. That night, just before midnight, her mother died.

During the interval, from the time the clocks stopped until her mother's death, Aimi and her four sisters said the house was filled with deceased relatives, who made themselves known by cooking a family recipe that had been handed down from generation-to-generation called "Garbage," which consisted of crushed tomatoes, chopped onions and peppers, cilantro, whiskey, shell pasta and ground beef. The relatives also played the family piano, tinkled the patio chimes, ran a bath, watched the Honeymooners, and set the dining room table with her mother's fine China, carefully filling each water glass with half a dozen ice cubes.

From that day on, Aimi maintained her deceased relatives, including her mother, communicated with her through wind chimes, pianos, clocks, electric fans and refrigerator ice makers and that she always knew the precise time of day or night, causing her to never need to wear a watch or buy a clock.

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When Jeremy met Aimi at a cultural diversity class she was teaching at the University she told him over coffee and chocolate chip scones that she had a lover named Joseph that she'd been seeing since early in her second marriage. "But I'd like to have a steady boyfriend to take me out for Thai curry every Friday night."

Jeremy carefully explained that he admired her openness and added that he'd always been aware that the best way to love a woman was without limits. "Women shackle themselves to rules that limit their ability to love. A good man helps her free herself."

Jeremy had come to this conclusion because every woman he'd ever loved either had a lover or sought one. Of his three ex-wives, all had left him for other men they'd met while married to Jeremy. His execs praised his generous spirit and often called him to fix a leak or repair a fence. Over his long life he'd come to realize that the only woman he was capable of loving had infidelity in her blood.

When he said this Aimi's eyes sparkled. "I don't want a man who wants me to have a lover, but I need a man who enjoys my infidelity."

When Jeremy nodded as if he understood, Aimi told him she needed a second cup of coffee. Without thinking about it, he stood and brought her a fresh cup. They were married within a year.

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Aimi continued her affair with Joseph. She met him every Friday at his small apartment where they made love on a canvas cot at noon. One afternoon after they'd finished making love, just a few months after her marriage to Jeremy, Joseph proposed that she move in with him.

Aimi felt disoriented when he asked, as if under an anesthetic. The electricity had been out all morning because of the storm the night before. As a result she had not blown her hair dry which left it without its natural wave. She'd also missed her nail appointment. Despite that, or maybe because of it, she was more defenseless and her love making with Joseph had been particularly intense and prolonged. While still relishing the warm wetness of his penetration she said, "Yes."

They were both surprised that she'd said yes. To celebrate, they made love again both crying out, as they reached a peak together for the first time.

When she arrived home she told Jeremy, who was shocked. "We just bought new living room furniture and painted the bathrooms. If you hate the color, I can change it," he said.

At that moment a breeze caused the patio chimes to clang wildly, the refrigerator grumbled brusquely, and the piano emitted the first sixteen notes of Claude Debussy extraordinary piano piece, Claire de Lune.

Aimi paled. With her eyes closed, her dark hair now curled wildly by the humidity and covering half her face, she lowered her chin with a somber sense of dislocation and spoke slowly.

It was her mother. She spoke with a great voice. "It's every woman's right to take a lover, but you must always have at least one foot in the home of your husband."

The next day Aimi drove to Joseph's small run down apartment and found two police cars parked out front. His daughter had found him dead that morning. The cause of death was said to be a toxic odor that came from the stale Wheaties he'd used to fill his pillows, lizard dung, and insomnia. He had not slept in two months.

Aimi, disconsolate, but relieved she wouldn't have to tell him she wasn't moving in, found over a thousand pages of handwritten notes all related to the previous day's request.

He'd been scripting his proposition for her to move in, trying to identify the precise combination of words to win her over so that she would abandon her husband and other life and move into his small unfurnished apartment. Each page was dated and it appeared he had spent the better part of the last two-and-a-half years preparing and practicing how he'd ask her to move in.

In the end, the day before his death, he had finally summoned the courage to ask the woman he'd been making love to every Friday at noon for the last ten years to move in with him by saying:

"Will you move in with me?"

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For the first time in her adult life Aimi was without a lover. She felt rudderless and empty. She missed the illicit euphoria she experienced when she slipped off to the rickety private space of Joseph's apartment, but she didn't miss Joseph. And while the emptiness ate at her, she was unprepared for the anxiety she now felt when she blamed her husband for just about everything that disturbed her.

Six weeks after his death, one morning, while Jeremy was eating a Belgian waffle, she sat down at their green oval kitchen table, looked him in the eyes and said. "I need a lover. It's the only way I can tolerate marriage." As she spoke Jeremy could see how pale, sunken and empty her face had grown. She looked malnourished.

"You're grieving," Jeremy said.

"No, no. I have no thoughts about Joseph, he's gone."

"Do you want me to repaint the bathrooms?" Jeremy offered.

"No. I need a lover."

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That weekend, they accepted an invitation to attend a small party across town.

The proposition of a party seemed to help Aimi recover her natural sense of lighthearted amusement. Her face was bright and absent the tension of previous weeks. Her brown eyes were filled with her old appetite, avid with curiosity, and the possibility of a new pleasure. For the first time in weeks, she painted her lips a bright red and while gazing at herself in the mirror, found her old smirk, coy, vulnerable and inviting all at the same time.

Jeremy had given her a new garnet ring in hopes that celibacy might find a place in her heart. "May this red stone contain your passion," he wrote in a small watercolor card he'd given her with the ring.

"It won't," she said smugly and then kissed his shoulder playfully.

Before they left for the party, imagining an opportunity might arise, she removed all of her rings, including her wedding ring, not so that men might mistake her for being unmarried, but so men could enjoy her long, slender fingers and beautifully shaped and painted nails.

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When they pulled up in front of the house, they found the exterior lit, with two large oaks on either side of the walkway and two fires burning in matching iron covered fire pits that hissed with steam as the pouring rain filtered down through the tree limbs and struck the iron tops.

Just inside the cut glass front door, in a deep, mellow voice, a gray-haired gentleman introduced himself and his wife. His name was Edward, his wife was Darlene. Edward appeared to be Jeremy's age. He was tall and lean, with gray eyes, and rough, ruddy pocked skin on his face.

He leaned toward Aimi as she spoke, turning an ear toward her, waiting for her to finish a lengthy nervous, yet enthused description of the home she'd just entered. Edward leaned back when she'd finished speaking as if he was the captain of this doorway quartet, and would conduct the segue to a new song.

He narrowed his sights upon Aimi. Jeremy did not exist.

"You're a lovely women, perhaps we could speak privately later." Edward said in a voice that briefly consumed the group with its hypnotic audacity.

Darlene, his wife, stood with her hands behind her back and nodded blankly at her husband's response as if she hadn't heard his words. She wasn't nearly as fit or attractive as her husband, despite his damaged face. Her face appeared to have been ravaged by too much sun, though unlike her husband it had aged her beyond her years and left her with the appearance of a crumpled paper bag.

They sat down together. Darlene and Edward were a gentle couple, conversant, humorous, and light-hearted. Both had easy laughs that would lead one to believe they shared a kind rapport, never nurtured resentment and shrugged off conflict.

After an hour visit, Darlene had to leave. She was traveling and had driven herself.

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When Jeremy returned with a glass of red wine, Aimi and Edward had disappeared.

He found her sitting with Edward on a cushioned loveseat under the pergola on the deck in the back yard. The rain had stopped. A fire burned in the center of the deck causing an orange glow to light their faces which had a symbiotic effect on the couple.

When Aimi saw her husband, she looked away as if his presence would break the spell Edward was in the process of casting.

She took the drink Jeremy offered and when he lingered for a moment, as if he might join their conversation, she let out a low growl and mumbled, "No."

Jeremy turned and walked back to the house.

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Aimi ran her hand through her hair, smiled and leaned toward Edward in a way that she hoped enticed him to touch her.

He'd pulled back. He spoke with a slow ease, and told the story of the man who didn't believe in love, annunciating each word carefully as if he were spoon feeding Aimi's malnourished heart.

After a while he went silent, closed his eyes and sat upright. Aimi touched his leg. He rested his hand on hers.

"Would you like a kiss, little bird?" he whispered.

His question opened the gate of her desire. Aimi took his hand and pecked it with little kisses. Then, as if it were a rope to his heart, she grasped his arm and pulled herself onto him, causing her skirt to bunch at the top of her thighs. She straddled his right leg, ready to ride his knee which he pushed up against her sex. She lifted her feet, gripping his thigh, like a rider, grinding her pelvis against his knee bone. They kissed, absorbing each other's urgency with an aggressive receptivity, neither aware of their exposed passion. Anyone at the party could have stepped out the backdoor and witnessed their frenzy, but to them the world had disappeared in their skin and the kisses that sealed them together like papers stamped by a King.

Aimi stood and slipped off her panties. He undid his pants. He was long and thick, more endowed than either Jeremy or Joseph. She sucked in her breath, readying herself for pain but rising by putting her hands on his shoulders so that her hips were high enough to clear the tip of his organ before she absorbed its girth in one slow steady motion. She adjusted to his size by rising and lowering herself carefully. Rising on her toes then falling to her heels, taking him in her. Steadily, she quickened the pace, up and down, up and down, like a gymnast exhausting herself for the win.

They paused for a breath, to laugh, to claim their joy out loud. Her thighs burned, but she savored his presence in her and she began to crave his orgasm, wanting to feel him explode inside her. But he wasn't ready.

She had to stop and rest for she was perspiring like an athlete, her face dripping with sweat. Edward pulled her top down, exposing her pale breasts, where beads of sweat rolled down between them. He licked her neck, sucking the saltiness, while his hands caressed her back and shoulders. He lowered his mouth to her nipple and sucked, then bit with his front teeth.

His ardor rose but he slowed himself with a few deep breaths. He wanted to last, to ride the edge. He shortened his thrusts. But they were still too much, causing his orgasm to rise again, so he slowed even more, slowed to a grind of imperceptible jabs which quickly felt like a tease to Aimi who eked out a plea, "Come on!"

When he gave in, he threw his head back so that his pelvis could more readily attack her. He lifted her high and let the full weight of her body fall on his cock. Thrust after thrust, the depths of his strokes grew. She could feel him swell. And then together, like beasts and immortals, they sang out simultaneously and came, together.

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Jeremy watched his wife and Edward from the master bathroom at the back of the house. He crouched and peeked out the corner of the window, his wife and Edward only 20 feet away.

It was the first time he'd ever seen Aimi with another man. He was shocked, yet engrossed, as if he'd come across a terrible accident. The humiliation caused his penis to spring into a youthful hardness, causing him to hardly noticed the door to the bathroom open and close.

"I came in to watch too. You've got the best seat in the house."

Jeremy turned. He could barely make out the figure in the darkness but thought she might be the party hostess. She had a medium build and dark hair that she'd pinned up. She moved to the window and watched with Jeremy.

"Do you know them?" she asked.

"Yes, she's my wife," he said.

"Oh." She chuckled. "Well isn't she the free spirit."

Jeremy felt the woman's hand at the waist of his pants.

She reached down, felt his state of excitement and unzipped him. Tugging him out, she whispered in his ear. "You enjoy seeing your wife with another man. Many men do."

Jeremy flushed. The woman pulled him out and began stroking firmly while looking out the window with him.

"I can see why she's interested in another man. You don't have that much to offer her, do you?"

"She's never said anything." He huffed.

"Most wives never do."

She continued stroking, but Jeremy grew distressed. She brought him to the edge. He feared he'd soon cum on the bathroom tile.

"I shouldn't. I've never been unfaithful to my wife."

"Look at her." The woman laughed.

At that moment Aimi and Edward were both groaning wildly, about to cum in unison.

The woman increased her pressure and the speed of her strokes. But Jeremy softened. He pulled his hips back slightly, but her stroking persisted.

"Hold still. Let me finish you off, little boy."

She managed to cause him to have a weak orgasm. His semen drooled out after two minor spasms onto the bathroom floor.

He winced. She pressed on his shoulder pushing him down to his knees. She undid her jeans and pulled them down with her panties.She pulled Jeremy's head between her legs and told him to lick. With her hands on either side of his head, she held his mouth in place until she cried out, and gushed a stream of salty watery fluid that he partially inhaled causing him to break into a fit of coughing while she pulled up her pants, wiped her hands on a towel and kissed him on the top of his head.

"There, now you're even," she said, patting Jeremy's cheek when he quieted between coughs. "Your wife's a slut and so are you."

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Jeremy wandered back to the living room, his head hung so low he walked into the end of an open closet door and bruised his forehead. The hostess, who'd given him the hand job in the bathroom and cum in his mouth, brought him an ice pack and he sat on the sofa with it pressed to the bruise.

He felt drained, emptied, not only his spunk, but of an idealization he hadn't realized. His wife's infidelity had always been an abstract idea, one that was true, but one that never contained such a vivid image of the reality of her sexual ardor. He'd never imaged Aimi would cum simultaneously like he witnessed her doing with Edward, never imagined how completely she dove into her lover's world, surrendered herself to his body, and lost herself in the experience. His mind never took him there. What he'd witnessed had awoken him and he couldn't shake the sense the ties he'd believed existed between he and Aimi didn't really exist. She could separate herself completely and give herself over to another man with a resolute abandon, disregarding him, or anything for that matter.

Jeremy wondered if he had any idea who his wife really was.

While this idea stung, he didn't feel rejected. He knew he'd adjust.

He felt sure he'd love his wife by adjusting, by listening and watching and trying to know her a little bit better every day. He trusted that would happen. And her passion, as fitfully directed away from him as it was at times, was still hers, just hers and he knew at some level it was fleeting, that her comfort, her security, the larger part of her world, where she rested peacefully, was in bed next to him, where she often would roll over in a sleepy state, wrap her arm around his chest and pull herself against him and fall back asleep, even if her vagina was soaked with another man's semen.

Still, as Jeremy sat on the sofa, lost in his worries, another concern reached up from his feet and struck him in the heart like a tree limb broke by a lightening bolt. His cock, his balls, his semen and orgasms were all his wife's. In their time together, he'd never masturbated, never had an orgasm without his wife's presence and by extension, without her permission. He was chaste, or in chastity, to his wife.

And though Aimi loved to fuck other men she had absolutely no tolerance for Jeremy even conversing alone with another woman. She'd once gone a whole weekend giving him the silent treatment after she found him talking with a woman at a bookstore where she'd done a book launch.

"I saw how you were looking at her ass. I can't be married to a man who's eye wanders like that," she'd growled.

Her jealousy reinforced his need to stay in chastity. And now, he'd broken that. He'd had an orgasm without his wife's permission. Yes, in fairness, he'd resisted, as least right at the end, as he was cumming, but he'd let another woman caress him, undo his pants, and take out his cock. He allowed her to take him right to the edge but unlike his wife, the hostess didn't stop and she'd made him cum, and then he'd licked her to orgasm. He'd betrayed his wife. He winced and shook his head as if he could shake off the guilt.

The patio door opened. He looked up and saw his disheveled wife smile at him from across the room. Magically, his emotional turmoil disappeared. The thing between them that was beyond touch rose up quickly, and presto, all was well. In a phosphorus glow, Aimi made her way toward him, a snarky bemused grin on her face, twisting her hips through the dining room chairs and scattered groups of people nodding and laughing together. He rose and she hugged him tightly. Grinning broadly, she whispered in his ear, "I've found a new lover, darling."

"I know. I saw you," Jeremy said, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief, as if her words sucked all the guilt out of him.

On the way home Edward texted Aimi:

I couldn't have had a more perfect evening. Your kiss caused a flower in my heart to bloom. Thank you. May I call you next week?

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That night in bed, as Jeremy lie on his back, Aimi knelt next to him wearing only a white flannel pajama top. "I need to let my vagina breath," she said parting her legs, while stroking Jeremy.

"I'm sure you'd like to cum," she teased leaning in closely to examine his cock's opening for signs of wetness that signified a coming eruption.

"You have sixty seconds. Then I'm going to stop."

But her strokes didn't raise him up. She slapped his balls a few times which, she'd learned, evoked the masochist in Jeremy and usually stiffened him. But nothing happened.