Friendship and Worse

There is very little sex in this tale and as with several of my stories I tend to dwell on the 'recovering husband' theme without having to paint the grunts and groans by numbers. The recent political season provided a bit of the flavor and maybe a bit of wistful remembrance of the way life should be, as they say Downeast.

None of the people or circumstances in this story are real although I once found myself face to face with a critter who won the staring contest.

There are a handful of authors here on Lit that I can't even begin comparing to and it's a privilege to hone a craft among them; my many thanks for the web hosts giving us this opportunity.

If you think you paid too much for this small entertainment let me know and I'll send a refund your way post haste. I promise. As for the disgruntlement, by all means flail away. Just keep it clean. If you are one of two people that I just won't have littering my combox, well, you know the drill.

*

Traffic was light cruising up Rt. 1 and with the radio tuned to one of the morning talk shows I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the scenery. Some old cuss was letting off steam and going on about the worthlessness of government and those that make their careers being elected to it. Before he could finish the next hilarious thought, I locked the anti-locks tight. A big bull moose stood silently in the middle of the road staring at me contently chewing his cud, oblivious to the hulk of metal that brought him inches from a certain rendezvous with a freezer. The old boy was a good bit south of his fellow denizens and had wandered into civilized Downeast without a care.

Downeast, it's a colloquialism among the natives of Maine in that it defines a rather loose boundary of sorts distinguishing the region from the rest of Maine or New England. Generally it is that area of the state from west of Penobscot Bay to Lubec and upwards to Rt. 9 and Rt. 2 above Calais where the accents strengthen and clapboards become more frequently weatherworn.

As a child my sister and I would visit the area staying with relatives during the summer where we would chase each other over muddy tidal flats until one of us fell face first into the muck. It was a place where the smells of steaming clams and mussels mingled with layers of seaweed in the pot over a hot fire. When we were fortunate, father would drop a few lobsters into the pot and we'd litter the ground with bright red shells at our feet.

I drove for most of the late morning pointed toward the tiny hamlet of Cushing before pulling into the parking lot of a seafood diner making its presence known with an enormous billboard picture of an overfilled lobster roll visible a hundred yards before the turn. It was in the middle of the metropolis of Friendship, Maine with its abundant population of 1,152 souls.

She watched me eating while pretending to be inconspicuous. The roll was stuffed to overfilling just as the sign indicated and it was one of those long top split rolls toasted on each side before being filled with so much scrumptiousness that an exceptionally wide open mouth was necessary to traverse the challenge. I managed to get hold of it and massage the taste buds well enough to elicit a broad smile from her.

"Hi, I'm Claire and I gotta tell you that you're the first one I've seen get the whole bite in on the first try."

She nodded toward the seat and I gestured with my free hand for her to take it as I finished chewing the meal in my mouth.

"I'm John Mason and pleased to make your acquaintance." I shook her hand and took her in. She was probably around my age, fortyish or so with a pleasing smile framed with long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail with deep chocolate eyes. I try my best not to be a letch but couldn't help being drawn to her bosom. They were full and the nipples rigid, visible through the thin fabric of the white cotton tee shirt she wore.

"Terry's my sister and she owns this place except I had to teach her how to make the lobster rolls. Ain't that right, Sis?" She yelled across the counter to the woman who made my order and who just grunted an inarticulate reply while laughing.

As we talked I learned Claire owned a small bed and breakfast place down on Harbor Road that offered six rooms with all the fixings in the morning and tremendous views of the cove and the flats beyond.

"If you are planning on sticking around in our fair town I've got a few rooms open so you wouldn't have to drive up to Waldoboro and get one of those nothing motel rooms on Rt. 1. This time of year I've got some long termers in a couple rooms till they decide to move on; give 'em a weekly rate"

"Claire, I'll keep that in mind. Actually, if you'll give me a card I'll let you know later this afternoon."

She gave me a boutique card for her B&B before returning back to help her sister. I managed to finish the best lobster roll I had enjoyed in years, settled up with a good tip and after the goodbyes, I had someplace I needed to be early that afternoon over in Cushing, a small township a couple miles from where I was.

By vocation I'm a journalist/writer for the Portland Times and I had an interview with one of the local sages living on a little place near Baily's Point. It wasn't so much his poetry that interested me as his independent run for Governor; he was in a virtual tie several months out from the election when none of the polls mattered yet.

William Wadsworth Wiggins III is his actual name although his close friends and family members all call him Bill and thinks him to be a bit strange and unseasoned around the edges. His own actions didn't assuage those sentiments much; one of his campaign slogans early on was a web address with a big picture of his bushy bearded face. It stayed up until his meager campaign staff realized that somebody had hacked the site and pointed it to a smorgasbord of teen porn.

The sandy driveway meandered through a tall stand of spruce and fir before opening up to a grassy clearing with a small white frame bungalow nestled between several overgrown hydrangeas and an abundant lilac tree. An old black lab lay out in the sun hardly paying any mind to the vehicle parking off to the side.

'Bill' Wiggins came out onto the small porch to welcome me to his abode.

"I see you didn't get lost like that other fellah" He shouted as I stepped out of the cab. I just shook my head and approached him with my hand extended.

After shaking he welcomed me into his home and we sat at his sturdy kitchen table with a fresh pot of coffee on the stove. He had a small fire going in the porcelain end heater and grabbed a couple mugs out of the drying rack in the expansive slate sink. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an enormous calico Maine coon cat shrewdly reach for a piece of bacon his owner tossed at him.

Mr. Wiggins was an oddly imposing man, late fiftyish with piercing blue eyes, stocky and large without being obese. He lived alone here in this craftsman's cottage with a dog and a cat and whatever assortment of jays and sparrows he could entice with a piece of suet and a bag of seed.

We talked a variety of issues and circumstances, mostly focused on why he wanted to be Governor of Maine. He was a libertarian, small 'l' variety and wanted the people of the state to be able to buy whatever they wanted for guns, smoke as much pot as they wanted or smoke none at all but most importantly he wanted government 'to hell out of our lives' as he succinctly put it. Taxes were a bane, too much college and not enough trade school and he felt when a citizen discovered a pot hole he ought to stop and try to fix it with a spade and a few shovels of gravel instead of passing the chore onto some highway bureaucrat in Augusta.

Wiggins went on like that for two hours before pushing back from the table and said "It's time for a drink". He reached down into the cupboard behind him and pulled out a fifth of cognac and a couple of small tumblers and poured two fingers each.

"OK, enough of the 'on the record' crap. So, what's your story, John Mason?"

I just smiled and toyed with the tumbler for a bit.

"It's a pretty nondescript story I'm sure, not at all as colorful as your adventures, Mr. Wiggins. One man, one truck, a job I like and nobody standing behind me telling me what to do. "

"No wife and kids?" He asked.

I don't know if he saw the grimace or the tightening of the jaw or how my fingers began turning white clutching the tumbler before me. It didn't matter. I took a deep breath and relaxed like I had done a hundred times before.

"Nope, none of those." It was a simple, easy answer but the anguish behind the tongue was searing.

He sipped his drink scrutinizing me through those piercing eyes.

"I don't have any of those either." He said. "She ran off with a milkman or a mailman or some fucking carpenter for all I know. Took two kids along with her and I haven't seen them but a handful of times since. That was over seven years ago."

"I'm sorry." I think I muttered almost incomprehensibly.

"Oh there's no need for that, really, there ain't. I'd have killed her if she stayed." He said it as if he was just spouting off the weather. "Seriously, I'd have shot her dead if she hadn't poured her cheating ass into that fucker's pickup and tore down the road. She already took the kids to her mother's."

He poured another two fingers in each tumbler and with one of them in my belly I told him my tale.

********************************

I had a cheating wife story as well although there was no wench scrambling to shove her ass into a pickup truck peeling rubber down a back road with a Maineac version of Moses standing on the step breathing threats of murder at the miscreants. It was a bit more subtle than that.

Kathy Mason was a middle tier administrator working behind the scenes in her world, the legislative underbelly found in the Maine State Senate. She was a fixer, the person you went to when a problem needed to be smoothed and blended into the scenery without causing a ripple. Even still she remained low key, working for a director of a Senate leadership committee who for all practical purposes lacked real political clout. That changed with the last mid-terms.

Looking at us anybody could see we weren't the beautiful, publicity enamored people always in the news. Kathy and I were average John and Jane Doe making an above average living with a camp on Messalongskee Lake and a townhouse in Augusta. That's not to say Kathy wasn't beautiful, she is, at least to me. She's buff, always great in bed and knows how to hang a dress just right on what I guess most of us would consider a fine ass.

I suppose what is meant by not being beautiful people is that we were everyday folk you find in neighborhoods in every town; nondescript is a good term. We had been married for sixteen years and Kathy didn't seem to be a wife some smarmy politician thinks is fair game in the sport of belt notch pussy...

The Majority Leader had to step down at the end of the last session because he had been there four consecutive terms. The quirky rules here in Maine force a member to leave office for two years before running again. When Jim Hodges stepped up as Majority Leader, my world as I would come to know it changed...

"John, I'm going to be late again tonight, don't wait up." Kathy yelled out to me as she headed to the garage. She was gone before I could even reply.

Hodges had promoted her to be his legislative aide a few weeks after he ascended to the role and Kathy was as giddy as a schoolgirl for a month. It was her dream job and Hodges laid it out for her like a blossoming rose. What I didn't consider was that Hodges had designs to ensure something else got laid as well.

It didn't take him long before Kathy was effectively his, at his beck and call, day and night. Of course this was all official business, important stuff. That said I could sense the end well before it arrived and it didn't seem there was anything I could do to stop the juggernaut. I called her on her cell that evening.

"When are you going to be home, Kathy?" I asked when she answered. She sounded just a tad bit annoyed.

"John, I told you I was going to be late. We have budget reviews all this week; the whole office is burning it on both ends."

I thought I heard laughter and merrymaking in the background but said nothing. We ended the call in a stalemate and I reflected over the past several months. Kathy had taken to working late most weeknights and started logging time at work on the weekends as well. I knew the routine. The aide in the prior position under the old Majority Leader nearly worked himself to death trying to stay on top of everything. It's part of the political fiefdom; you play and pay dearly for the privilege.

Yet, something had grown amiss because all that play and pay was affecting our personal lives immensely. We rarely ate together during the week now and if I saw her more than a couple hours a day I was lucky. Saturdays were shot to hell as well. The bedroom? Hell, that suffered the most and what made it worse was Kathy now dressed to the nines going to work every day. Her attire, while still business, was what I call 'Office Hot'; the blouse just sheer enough to give a lacy hint with a button loosened; her skirt tight on her ass. She had made herself weasel bait in the game of fuckery.

The biggest weasel of them all is Jim Hodges. Twice divorced and married to his third wife he was well known to the gossips about town as a lothario. Working in the middle of a bastion of such gossip, a local newspaper in the state capital, that subtlety wasn't lost on me. He was an imposing figure in his own right; 6'2", trim, salt and pepper athleticism and a swagger that could disarm most swooning women. I just never took my wife for the swooning type...

It wasn't even a cliché discovery. There was no buildup of smudges, fancy underwear hidden away or a strange car in the driveway at 3PM. The culmination was merely a collection of inches off center that concluded that evening.

She came home around midnight looking tired and a bit haggard with her hair let down from the way it had been in the morning and messed, tussled; a trail of fancy booze leaving its scent behind her. I don't think she saw me in the chair watching her as she peeled off her clothing and walked back into the bedroom with the hall light on. Her backside caught my eye; one of her ass cheeks was noticeably reddened like it had been slapped. I knew that look; I've reddened it myself.

She disappeared into the one of the rooms and returned naked into the lighted hallway. It was her breasts and a spot just above her mons that seized my attention. Somebody had marked her.

"You're home earlier than I expected." I said cautiously. The nastiness was buried deep and the words came out even but forced.

She jerked her body stiffly, startled by my presence and voice. Two hands went to her breasts in a modest attempt to shelter them from observation but it was a meaningless effort. The reddened bruise from lips sucking the flesh remained visible above what used to be my pussy.

It's a sophomoric thing for an adult to do, really. We all did it as teenagers and I suppose it's kind of a bragging rights thing. Back then it was a badge. As adults it becomes an embarrassment to offer 'hickies' for the world to see. It's especially embarrassing to allow your husband to see them when he's not the perpetrator.

She ducked into the bathroom before replying. "I'll be out in a moment. I need a quick shower."

Cold sweat was the likely cause but the stench of Jim Hodges had to lay heavily on the need.

I suppose some people might have one of those knock down fights that saps the juice right out of every living cell of your being but we had drifted so far into the third lane of life that I didn't have the fight in me. If she was going to be Hodges party favor I'd look for merriment elsewhere.

I knew she would have to be back at work early so while she was in the shower I grabbed a few toiletries and stuffed a few things into a gym bag before going out the door. I'd be back in the morning.

The first thing was to turn the ringer off the phone and put it on vibrate. I couldn't turn the phone off because I had to be reachable by the newspaper if needed but I wasn't going to talk to her about her infidelity that night. Instead I pointed the truck toward Messalongskee and an hour later I was sitting on the dock contemplating the next move.

How many times and for how long really didn't matter. What mattered was she lied and fucked him that night and came home marked as his damn property. I think it had been at least a couple months since the two of us last had sex. I couldn't remember. Even then the sex wasn't the desires of love, at least what I perceived on her part. We were becoming almost guests sharing an abode.

The moon had risen over the lake in the past couple hours and it's reflection bounced off the still waters into eyes tired of the evening's burdens. It was 2AM and I was in no shape to make decisions so I gathered my jacket and turned into the bed until morning.

I should have drawn the drapes before drifting off because the morning's dazzling light pierced the glass wall of the chalet flooding the chamber with the warmth of daybreak. In a moment of reaction I reached for the clock on my bedside table until I realized I was miles away from that once comfortable domicile.

The phone had several missed calls and a string of messages, none of which I wanted to answer. Instead I placed a call to my managing editor and let him know I would be working remotely on a story that had been on my plate for over a week. With that out of the way I cleaned up and headed back to Augusta.

It's nauseating knowing your wife whored herself to her boss or some other man and trashed everything we had between the two of us. What's worse is she knows without any doubt how I feel about infidelity; it's a deal breaker and she knows why...

When my sister Linda and I were young, I think I was 10 at the time, our parents split up over what my mother had done. She started up an affair with another man and supposedly fell in love with him. She ended up running off with him to Fort Fairfield and our father ended up raising us without her. As he explained it later 'she ran off with a field hand from the County and never looked back'.

We didn't go looking for her either. I was seventeen when I saw her next and as sad as it may be I didn't know her from Adam and Eve. She was some other man's wife fooled into thinking blood was thicker than memories. I've seen her a couple times since then, the last time she showed up in the back row of father's funeral and Linda invited her to the house afterwards. It was awkward...

The townhouse was empty when I arrived around 10AM that morning. I didn't expect her to be there. She was a shaker now and had to be a mover for the day or at least put up the appearance. The leftover coffee had cooled by then and there were no dishes in the sink. A folded piece of pink stationary sat on the table waiting for a man's hands to open it.

"Dear John,

"Please don't do anything rash without sitting down with me tonight and giving me a chance to speak to you. I don't know how I got here and I don't like it but I need your help to get back to just us again. Please, give me a chance.

"Love, Kathy"

I tried to toss it around and find the logic but I couldn't get past the idea that she could have written this same note yesterday morning and I'd probably have been sitting at the same table waiting for her to arrive. I gave her a chance and sent her a text message.

"Meet me at the house in thirty minutes."

It was another twenty minutes before she replied. "I can't. I'm getting ready to walk into a reception. See you tonight. Love you."