Points of View

To paraphrase Chekhov: If you mention a gun in the first act, it sure as shit better go off in the third...

I had a headache. I couldn't get back to sleep. The bedside clock read 2:43 a.m.

I got up. Went downstairs, me and the dog. Put on a pot of coffee. Opened the lid of my iPad and pulled up Word, a new document.

I wrote:

David awoke with a headache. He couldn't get back to sleep. The bedside clock blinked 2:43 a.m. Had the power gone off?

He turned on the lamp. Aside from him and the dog the bed was empty. David got up and with a feeling not quite approaching panic went over to the bedroom window and cracked the blinds. He was relieved. His wife Deirdre's Camry was parked in the driveway.

But then he remembered they hadn't taken Deirdre's Camry last night; she and Chris had gone out on their twosome date in Chris's two-tone SUV. After dinner David had wanted to watch the playoff game while Deirdre insisted she wanted to go see some chick flick, some rom-com, that opened that weekend. Chris had leapt into the breach:

"I'll go with you, darling."

David and Deirdre and Chris had often gone out on movie dates together. As a threesome. But this was something radically new, Deirdre and Chris going out on a Saturday-night date and leaving David behind.

The thought, as it materialized yesterday evening, had given David a tingle. Had he not masturbated into a pair of his wife's panties that morning while Deirdre was at the mall, it might've been more than a tingle.

The two of them left on their date at about 7:30. Dallas had just kicked a field goal.

David had to pee. Afterwards he walked down the hall to the guest bedroom expecting to find the door closed and Deirdre sound asleep inside. But the door was open, the room empty.

More and more it seemed that either David or Deirdre resorted to sleeping alone in the guest bedroom rather than with their spouse of nearly 20 years. You sleep better when you're alone, let's face it. Unless you wake with a headache. And that's without even taking into consideration whether your partner snores or not. Deirdre snored.

With a slightly more elevated sense of panic, but also qualified elation, David descended the stairs, his dog Randy beating him to the first-floor tiles. By a mile.

It pissed David off. It pissed him off when he drank too much beer and left his wallet and keys and watch and phone on the counter downstairs. Once, in the middle of the night, some crazy guy had tried to break in and a quivering David had stood on the other side of the front door shouting at the guy while pointing a rifle at him.

But what if the drug-crazed maniac had broken in before David could nervously load the magazine into his rifle? It would have all been there for the taking: his wallet, his keys (and be extension his car), his watch, his...

David brought his iPhone to life. There was a single text, from Deirdre: "Bad storm tonight. Staying over at Chris's."

David quivered again. Standing almost in the exact spot when he was pointing the rifle at the madman that night. Had it finally happened? Had his fantasies at last come true?

Sometimes when David and Deirdre did sleep in the same bed together David would lie awake attempting to transfer his thoughts to his wife, as if he were one of those, albeit silent, nighttime subliminal message recordings: I want to sleep with Chris, I want to sleep with Chris, I want to... Or, the imperative: Sleep with Chris, sleep with Chris, Fuck Chris, Fuck my friend, Fuck...

Storm? What storm?

David turned on the backyard floods and looked out. The grass was wet, the trees were swaying, somewhat. But nothing radical. No limbs were down.

David went back to his phone, contemplated the text. It had been sent at 11:14.

Should he reply to it? At this point? It was nearly 3 a.m.

If he didn't reply to it he might come off as...callous. Or appear angry about the whole thing.

If he did reply to it, at this hour, what should he say? He hated texting. His fingers were too large. You could speak your text but then you had to go back and correct all the misunderstandings. Between you and the fucking "smart" phone. What's the point? Might as well type it. David sat down on a barstool, dog beneath his feet, blank phone in front of him.

He wrote:

"Just now?" Chris asked.

"I saw it just now. He replied in the middle of the night sometime."

"What did he say?"

Deirdre did not care for Chris's apprehensive tone. He was all Mr. Man's Man in the build up; but now that it had happened between them—twice—last night after the movie and just now—Chris sounded—looked—like some naughty kid who'd just been reported to the principal. Deirdre already had one pussy in her life; she didn't need another.

"He said... 'Have fun.'"

"What?"

"'Have fun.' He said something along the lines of... 'Got your belated message. Be safe. Have fun.'"

Chris's look of concern, as Deirdre joined him in the shower, had just passed into smile, a quizzical one. "'Have fun'?"

"He said 'Have fun,' yes," Deirdre repeated for the second time. "Wash my back for me will you?"

"So he's OK with it? With us?"

Deirdre's rounded shoulders rose in shrug. "Beats me what goes on in that man's mind. I guess," she hedged.

"That's great!" Chris was scrubbing his new lover's back with a floofa. Or whatever they're called. Last night after they walked out of the stupid movie midway and hurried to Chris's place, she'd made him wear a condom. He hated those things! But just now, this morning, second go-ground, she'd let him fuck her with his bare cock. They were making progress. Maybe from now on... "I was afraid he'd be waiting for me with his rifle when I dropped you off this morning!"

Pussy.

"How do you know he has a rifle?"

"We've gone shooting together remember? At the range? You guys had a big fight afterwards? We were supposed to be back by noon but..."

"Like I'm supposed to remember every fight we've ever had in 20 years? Scrub my lower back too."

"Here?"

"That's my ass. But you can scrub that too."

"I'll do more than scrub it, baby."

"Yeah, in your dreams."

"You don't like it up the ass?"

Chris had dropped the sadistic sponge thing and had reached around and was feeling Deirdre's shower-wet breasts. They practically squeaked. Chris pressed against her from behind, his revived erection just north of her crack, he was that much taller. Deirdre liked 'em tall and slim. Chris was tall and slim.

"You're incorrigible," Deirdre said, about her lover's erection. Chris was nearly ten years younger than her. That had something to do with it.

"I could go again. We could do it right here in the shower. You could bend over."

"Oh yeah? Which hole?"

"Whichever, darling. But I'd love to fuck you up the ass." Deirdre had sucked his cock last night. He'd fucked her—twice—vaginally. He was going for the trifecta. All after one first date!

"OK but you gotta lube it up really good and...go slow."

"I will."

"And pull out."

"Pull out?"

"Pull out."

"Why? I wanna shoot my load in you, baby."

"Not back there. Pull out. I'll go get the lube..."

"I could use soap...Where you going? You're all wet!"

"To get the lube!" Adding, "And I'm gonna send dickhead a quick text."

"Why?"

"Why? Because he's my husband and I owe him one."

David, head shaking, read, yet again:

"Be home around 9, darling. Why don't you make us some of you [sic] famous shot takes [sic]."

Fucking texts, David thought. Not to mention tweets. Someday somebody important is gonna text or tweet a typo and the world's gonna blow up as a result.

David's mood had soured dramatically over the past few minutes. From the erotic elation of realizing he was finally, officially and for all time a cuckold, a willing one, to...feelings he would only be able to describe later as "somewhat" homicidal.

"Somewhat?"

"Somewhat."

"What were you doing at the time?"

"Making hotcakes. I always make them on Sunday mornings."

This radical mood swing following just on the heels of him having ejaculated into the bowl of blueberry pancake batter. His sperm lay on top of the thick mush, whiter, in globules, fresh, wasted. He folded it in.

Then he covered the devious bowl with plastic wrap and traded it, fridgewise, for another cold beer.

David, too, had engaged in niceties when, more erect than he'd been in ages, and about to burst, he texted back: "See you guys at 9, darling."

Deirdre and Chris. Deirdre and her lover. (It was about time!) Deirdre and the man she was humiliating him with. Coming over for pancakes. At nine.

It was five minutes after.

David lowered his erection. His beer can, that is. Picked up something else.

Stood waiting, naked, safety off, just inside the front door.