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Maybe “Love” and “XOX” was a little over the top considering I barely knew her. But what the fuck. Closing the novel, I handed it to her.
Turns out, she was one of those people who had to gaze lovingly upon the inscription only a split second after you’ve written it. Being a scriptwriter who’d only penned one novel, and not a very popular one at that, I hadn’t had the good fortune of signing a lot of books, but I’d signed a few. And truth be told, I preferred fans who chose to read the author inscription later on when they got home.
In my mind, Lana seemed the type to enjoy her instant gratification however, and she did nothing to prove me wrong. Her face lit up when she read it. You could almost identify the very moment she eyed that XOX as if it were an open invitation for her to jump me inside my own home. Inside a home-sweet-about-to-be-gone-baby-gone-home I shared with a woman I loved. Even if we had drifted apart over the past year. A woman whom I’d never cheated on, as God as my judge. And I might not have been a church going man, but I believed in God, or something like Him. I also believed in good and evil and that we had a choice when it came to embracing either one.
Setting the book gently down on top of my typewriter, Lana smiled. She held out her hand, grabbed an apple, brought it to her mouth, took a bite. Without uttering a single word, she held the apple to my mouth, as if I had no choice but to take a bite. As I bit into the apple, I realized that she didn’t need to speak. That her actions spoke far louder than words ever could. They were the actions of a woman who wasn’t the least bit in love, not with me necessarily, but any man. A woman who, more than likely, had never experienced a single day of love in her entire life. They were instead the actions of a lust-filled woman who also lusted power. Power over a weaker man like me, and a man like her husband. A man who only pretended to be strong.
But that’s not right either.
Lust was one thing, but hatred was another. If hatred was her motivation, then lust was simply a tool or a weapon that she used for seizing power over a pathetic man like me. I’ve lived long enough to recognize pure hatred when I saw it, and Lana Cattivo possessed more than her fair share of it. I could see it in her blue eyes, smell it in her lavender scent, see it in the way she chewed and swallowed that apple. And the hell of it is, it made her all the more attractive and alluring. For her, hatred wasn’t just a base emotion, it was a physical substance that, if need be, could be manipulated, like clay or, in this case, blood. You could feel it and taste it. Like the apple she made me bite, you could ingest it and digest it. It was the force behind her, her motivator, and in some ways, it was the primal source of her charm and ultimately, my unstoppable attraction to her.
It didn’t come as a surprise when she set the half eaten apple back down onto the table, dropped slowly down to her knees, helped maneuver my legs out from under the table so that she faced me directly. I spread my legs apart a little to give her the room she required, and she began to undo my belt and unbutton my jeans.
Pulling her up, I began to unbutton her shirt and pull down her bra, exposing her suntanned breasts. Lifting up her skirt, I felt for her panties but she wasn’t wearing any as if she’d scripted it that way.
I pushed her back onto the dining room table, but I didn’t enter her right away. Instead I became filled with an insane desire to taste her first. Kissing her breasts, I shifted my way slowly down past the area where her jean skirt had gathered. I never moved an inch as her hips gyrated, the warm wetness pouring out of her body and into my mouth. My world was Lana and nothing mattered at that very moment in time on Orchard Grove.
Or did it?
Out the corner of my right eye, I sensed movement immediately outside the big living room picture window. I managed to steal a quick look. There was a person standing in the window watching us.
I couldn’t be entirely certain. But for a brief and frightening instant, I swore that person was my wife, Susan.
13.
Sometimes you can’t help but believe your own lies.
Especially the ones that you tell yourself over and over again. Like when you purposely distrust your eyes, accuse yourself of seeing things, all because you’re getting your rocks off and holy Christ almighty, you just can’t seem to stop yourself. Maybe you think I stopped myself as soon as I saw Susan in the picture window, looking in. That I immediately jumped away from Lana. Maybe you think I grabbed hold of my crutches, told Lana to get dressed, get the hell out, and never come back. Maybe you think I put my tail between my legs, hobbled to the front door, and opened it to face not an angry Susan, but a seething Susan. Maybe you think I’d beg for her forgiveness. Do it from down on my knees, if only it were physically possible.
But I did no such thing.
I just kept going. Kept making love to Lana like my life somehow depended upon it. Such was the power Lana had over me. Such was the serpent’s spell.
But something else kept me going. When I took a quick second look at the window, the person was gone. Vanished. It led me to believe... rather, it made me want to believe... that a person wasn’t there in the first place. That the face I had taken for Susan’s wasn’t hers at all. That I’d only imagined my wife standing there outside the picture window, seeing everything we were doing only a few feet away on the dining room table. Imaged her perhaps, out of fear.
Yes, the lies can be sweet sometimes. But they are still lies.
But I’m not so sure I would have stopped even if I hadn’t been lying to myself. I wasn’t going to stop until Lana had enough of me and I’d had enough of her. That moment came just a few seconds later when she let loose with a scream that would have woken up the entirety of Orchard Grove if this were the middle of the night. Raising herself up onto her elbows on the wooden table, she demanded that I enter her, her voice deep, throaty, and insistent, like I had tapped into the beast that lived in her soul, and only now was being swallowed up by it, becoming one with it.
Regardless of who or what witnessed me selling myself body and soul to this beautiful Satan, I proceeded to do exactly what she insisted.
14.
It didn’t take long to finish.
Didn’t take me long anyway. When it was over, we paid no mind to hugging, kissing, cuddling, or engaging in pillow talk of any kind. The sexual act or should I say, process, at that point, was an academic fact. Nothing more. What we were left with was shared bodily fluids that needed to be wiped away and the feeling of having sunk so low, that not even hell would take me. But I knew the feeling wouldn’t last. That soon, I would want Lana all over again. And when I did, the want would be as obsessive and overwhelming as it ever was.
I stood up, more or less balancing myself on one leg, and she slid off the table, pulling her jean skirt back down with all the clinical indifference of a patient immediately following a physical. It was all very business-like and ordinary for her, which I suppose should have scared me to death.
But then, what the hell was I saying?
Lana was too good to be true, and too bad to be believed. It’s not like I was in danger of falling in love with her. It’s not like I was about to leave Susan, regardless of our problems, and declare my undying devotion to the new girl next door. I was in lust with her, and in lust I would remain, until whatever it was I was going through, ran its horrid course.
More lies?
Maybe.
As she continued gathering herself together, buttoning up her shirt, straightening out her hair, applying a fresh coating of lipstick, she suggested that perhaps it would be prudent if she took her leave through the back sliding doors. I knew that if she stayed even a minute longer, the demon would return and I would want more of her. I was just about to tell her what a good idea it would be to go now, when the mechanical sound of a key being inserted into the front door lock snared our collective attention, as if a bolt of heavenly lightning had just burst inside the front vestibule.
We both nearly broke our necks turning to see the door open and a woman step inside.
The woman, who was my wife, smiled.
“I didn’t know we had company,” she said.