When he leaves a while later, whistles and catcalls follow him out the door into the rainy night.
He pulls into the driveway of 613 Cedar Lane and surveys the dark house. He takes his shoes off on the front porch and carries them inside, careful in his socked feet to make no noise on the wood floor. She’s a light sleeper, and the smallest creak that jars her from REM will disrupt her circadian rhythm for weeks.
He hears a small voice calling to him, and he cracks open the bedroom door. His wife sits propped up in the bed, in a dim circle of light from her bed lamp, sudoku book and pencil in hand. A teacup and saucer perch on the comforter beside her.
“Glad you’re home.” She yawns. “You saved me from myself. I was about to cheat. How pathetic.”
“What’re you doing still up? Thought you had to get back to work at the crack of dawn.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Missed you.” She pats the bed beside her.
“Hold on a sec.” He holds up the buttermilk. “Lemme put this away first.”
“Nuke this for me while you’re up?” She holds out the teacup.
He punches in twenty-two seconds on the microwave. There’s not a lot he feels he can do for her, other than the occasional oil change or too-tight jar lid. But if she’s comfy on the couch and in the middle of a book, she can, without a word, hold out her half-finished tea to him on his way past. He’s got it down to a science and punches in numbers on the timer depending on how empty the cup is. She likes her tea hot, but not too hot.
He hands her the warmed cup and stretches out beside her. She wrinkles her nose while she sips.
“Too hot?” Impossible.
“No. It’s just that it’s chamomile.”
“I thought you hated chamomile.”
“I do. It’s so horsy-smelling. I feel like I’m chewing cud. In a barn. In Kentucky. But it’s supposed to be good for you. Helps with dewy skin or better eyesight or memory or something. I’m old and fat. I need all the help I can get. Can’t hurt. Think I should cover my grey?”
Uh-oh, bad writing day, he can tell. “What grey?”
“I don’t believe you, but thanks, hon. What’d you and the boys talk about tonight?”
“That crabbing show. They filmed the last episode at the same bar we were at.”
“That Deadliest Crabs one?”
“No, I had those once, and it’s nothing you’d care to film.”
She laughs. “What else?”
“Just the game and stuff.”
She rolls her eyes. “You boys have no imagination.”
He bangs the front door open and stomps inside. Naked, his wife sits backwards on his favourite armchair, her breasts pressed to the chair back. Her legs are spread side, and the crack of her ass holds communion with the seat. Tattoos of naked women cover her back. “Oh, honey,” she looks at him over her shoulder. “Look what I got done today. I was out shopping for pumps, you know with the arch support like I need? Which reminds me, I need to take my glucosamine later. Anyway, I just felt like something a little more fun, y’know? Some good ole retail therapy. The grind’s really getting to me lately. I started with stilettos, and wound up with ink, and a nipple and a guiche piercing, too. I just figured, why not go the whole nine yards? Come see.” She swivels around and slouches low in the chair, hooking her legs up over the arms to give him a full display. “Slather some ointment on me, and then fuck me up the ass, hard as you can, OK? And tomorrow we’ll get you something fun, too. Maybe a cock ring. Although,” she muses, “it might be tough to find one big enough for you. Maybe special order?”
“You don’t think so, huh?”
She snaps the book shut. “Try me.”
“What’ve you got on under that nightie?” Tonight it’s the daisy-print flannel. The nursing one she bought by mistake, with lots of convenient buttons that she starts to undo.
“Guess, Mr. Cocky Brainstorm.”
“Nothing.”
“Bingo.”
“My favourite.”
“What’d you boys really talk about? Were they at it again? All with anal sex on their mind but too afraid to ask about it? Like it makes them pansies or something?”
She still wants to talk. He’s in no hurry. It’s one of those things all those sex movies fail to mention: the small talk. He shifts closer towards her. He knows what this is, these superficial questions of hers. To someone else it might seem like idle chit-chat, meaningless dithering going nowhere. But he recognizes it for what it is: foreplay. Getting reacquainted again after the daily separations of a humdrum life. A casual reconnection before the more intimate one that he knows is around the next bend. Step on the gas and try to cut a corner and it’s all over before it started. She’ll cut the engine.
“They think I’m having a threesome.”
She looks around the room. “There’s always the cat.”
“That’s not the pussy I had in mind.”
“No?”
His hand creeps up under her nightie, finds her inner thigh, and he lets it rest there, just shy of his ultimate target. Her hand simultaneously finds his fly, and she starts undoing the buttons with one hand. All that typing has at least helped keep her fingers strong.
“I was thinking,” he says, his hands just brushing the tips of her pubic hair. “Maybe I’ll write a story.”
“Oh, sure, everyone thinks it’s easy. But try coming up with new ideas all the time.”
“Yeah,” he says, his finger finding the bull’s-eye, “that must be tough.”
Author Biography
Maxim Jakubowski is a London-based novelist and editor. He was born in the UK and educated in France. Following a career in book publishing, he opened the world-famous Murder One bookshop in London. He now writes full-time. He has edited over twenty-five bestselling erotic anthologies and books on erotic photography, as well as many acclaimed crime collections. His novels include It’s You That I Want to Kiss, Because She Thought She Loved Me and On Tenderness Express, all three collected and reprinted in the USA as Skin in Darkness. Other books include Life in the World of Women, The State of Montana, Kiss Me Sadly, Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer, Fools For Lust, I Was Waiting For You and Ekaterina and the Night. In 2006 he published American Casanova, a major erotic novel which he edited and on which fifteen of the top erotic writers in the world have collaborated. He compiles two annual acclaimed series for the Mammoth list: Best New Erotica and Best British Crime. He is a winner of the Anthony and the Karel Awards, a frequent TV and radio broadcaster, a past crime columnist for the Guardian newspaper and Literary Director of London’s Crime Scene Festival.
Recent Mammoth titles
The Mammoth Book of Irish Romance
The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories
The Mammoth Book of Bizarre Crimes
The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8
The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock ’n’ Roll
The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places
The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF
The Mammoth Book of Casino Games
The Mammoth Book of Sudoku
The Mammoth Book of Zombie Comics
The Mammoth Book of Men O’War
The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF
The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures
The Mammoth Book of The Beatles