A View to a Thrill

A View to a Thrill

Sean Gregory

This submission is, for me, very short and like nearly everything I've written so far, once I start laying down words the original idea I had for the story is out the window, looking for somebody else to harass. It started out being my second attempt at a 'Stroke' story but if you're brave enough to endure this 'tedious brief scene' looking for stroke inspiration, I'm afraid you'll only find 'very tragical mirth.' (My apologies to Pyramus and Thisbe, and of course, The Bard.) This is because, like my first attempt, my original inspiration which I intended to comprise the meat and potatoes of the story ended up as only a vague intermission that nudges the narrator out of his melancholy memories and back into his desolate reality. Anyway, as you will probably be able to discern, less than forty-eight hours expired between my first inclination to pen this tale to the last period that ends the last sentence.

Btw, if the Good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise I hope to have two more submissions posted very soon, one that has been requested for almost five years.

G.

It was late August, the year isn't important, what was important is the fact that we were on our first vacation since we were married eight years earlier that didn't include either my wife's sister's family or her parents in some way. Well, after her parents finally acted like they accepted our marriage and children, anyway. I never objected to those trips because Rachael rarely got to see her family and to me it seemed to be a small price to pay for her to have those visits. Her family lived three states away and she was somewhat estranged from her parents. It was her parents' choice, but still, my wife was the victim who suffered the detachment from her kin.

We were vacationing in a small town on the gulf coast of Florida, and this was the second of six nights we had reserved in the beachfront hotel. My wife and I had just had another disagreement when she once again deflected my attempts to initiate sex with her before springing out of the bed and locking herself in the hotel bathroom. I was all but certain that she had a boyfriend who she was fucking regularly. I was even pretty sure I knew who he was. I honestly didn't care about it (or her) enough to be angry, by this point in our relationship, everything I did was for the benefit of my sons. I pulled on a pair of shorts and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt then came out to sit on our third floor private balcony overlooking the Gulf just to let my mind wander and to consider where our lives had brought us and in what direction we were headed.

I wasn't finding much encouragement.

I sat in that flimsy plastic chair and thought back longingly over my life to the happier times early in our relationship.

My wife and I had been married for eight years at the time of the vacation. We had two sons, four and six years old, both of them intended and planned. Both of them loved deeply by their mother as well as their father. Ours was not a fighting marriage, not really, we never shouted at each other, at least not until recently, I realized. We never threw random projectiles in each other's vicinity, and we never struck one another physically. We never even really had an argument of any noteworthiness. Nevertheless, over the preceding couple of years our marriage had devolved into a battlefield that hosted a war of attrition. I don't know exactly when the animosity began to grow or from where, but I had my strong suspicions.

Like many, if not most young marriages, ours germinated from a strong, passionate seed. I saw that seed as an acorn, destined to mature into a magnificent red oak with a broad canopy, a massive trunk and robust roots that delved deep enough into life's fertile soil to withstand any storm or strong wind with no more injury than having a few leaves stripped away.

But even the most majestic oak, that has stood fast in the face of countless thunderstorms and raging winds can be quietly brought to the ground by the subtle efforts of something as innocuous as a fungus, like Oak Wilt.

So can a marriage once destined to be the definitive example of how a strong, healthy relationship should look, be brought low.

My wife and I met while she attended college in my hometown, and I was a patrol officer for a local police department. I was in the waning stages of a six month relationship at the time and although my then current girlfriend and I both knew the demise of that relationship was imminent, I refused to do anything that even resembled cheating. Respect, for me, was the preeminently desirable personality trait a person could demonstrate, and disrespecting my girlfriend, even though I knew she wouldn't be my girlfriend for much longer, was not an option I was willing to entertain.

When a mutual friend introduced us at a cookout he was hosting I had never dated anyone so much younger than me, and I had no intention of dating her. After the brief period of time that she and I sat at the patio table talking, surrounded by the throng of other guests, I had no contact with her until more than a month later.

My relationship lasted less than two weeks after that cookout, the coffin was finally interred when my girlfriend settled on her next candidate for the position I held for almost half a year. I saw a movie once, I don't remember which one it was but in a particular scene, one of the characters made the comment that "Women are like monkeys, they won't turn one branch loose until they have their hand on another branch." I always thought that was an arrogant, egotistical remark for someone to make, not to mention generally disrespectful, but looking back now, I suppose it describes Erin's philosophy, as it existed then, fairly accurately. We both knew that as a couple we were doomed, but she refused to admit that fact until she agreed to go on a date with her next acceptable suitor.

Afterward, I had no immediate desire to find another girlfriend, I was emotionally exhausted and the concept of jumping directly into another relationship did not appeal to me. I decided to enjoy being happy with myself and rest for a while.

That lasted for another three weeks.

I was sitting at a corner table in a rundown barbeque joint that had been serving the same delicious recipe for brisket thirty five years earlier, struggling to get as much of the food on my plate consumed as possible before I was interrupted by my next call for service when she walked in the front door.

I recognized her from Tim's cookout and remembered our brief conversation on his patio, but I didn't acknowledge her presence. After placing her order at the counter she brought her drink and a small white plastic 'tent' bearing a black number 3 into the miniscule dining area, looking for one of the rarely vacant tables. Seeing the vacant chair at my table and obviously recognizing me, she changed her course and headed my direction.

"Hey, Jason, right?"

"Yeah, hey Rachael. Would you like to sit?" I glanced around the intimate room, then back at her face, "there doesn't seem to be much else to choose from."

She placed her drink and order number marker on the table and sat in the empty chair, smiling broadly. "Thank you!" I was beginning to think I'd have to get my order to go and eat it back at my apartment. I'm sure it'll taste much better hot, though."

I examined her, "This place is almost a secret, nobody but locals ever eat here and it's clear across town from the college, how did you find it?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.

"My History professor recommended it. He said it was one of the few truly authentic barbeque restaurants still open in northwest Georgia, so I decided to verify his claims." Still grinning cunningly.

"Fair warning, I'm subject to having to leave quickly if I get a call so if that happens don't be offended, I'm not being rude if I have to take off suddenly."

"I understand, my uncle is a police officer. He complains all the time about having to leave so many meals on the table after taking only a couple bites and sometimes not even getting to stay long enough to get a plate." She confided.

"Well, it sounds like your uncle really is a police officer, what agency does he work for?" I asked, actually interested in her answer.

"He's a Deputy for the Sheriff's department back home."

I nodded in response since my mouth was busy processing another bite of smoky ambrosia.

Fate must've had a hand in those forty minutes because not only did I not get pulled away on a call, but my portable radio never squawked once during our meal. When I did stand to dump my trash and return to duty she handed me a paper napkin bearing her name and phone number hand written in blue ink.

I looked at her, "I'm not dating much right now," I explained.

"That doesn't mean you can't share an occasional lunch or maybe even dinner with a girl who's eight hundred miles from home, does it?" She reasoned.

Hesitatingly I accepted her proffered note.

"Maybe if you gave me your number I could call and talk sometimes when I need to hear an adult voice?" She added with a beguiling smile.

I looked her in the eyes momentarily, internally debating the sanity of what she seemed to be offering.

Having made my decision, I pressed my thumb to the screen of my S21 Ultra and opened the phone app. After I entered her name and number into my contact list, I opened the SMS app and typed my name into the text field of a new message addressed to her contact and pressed the 'Send' icon.

Almost instantly her phone chimed and her smile glowed. "I'll talk to you later, Jason, I enjoyed our 'date.'" She grinned triumphantly at my expression.

I shook my head in resignation, "I'll see you later, Rachael." Then turned for the door. Not for the last time I wondered what I had got myself into as I called ten thirty eight on my car radio. As soon as dispatch acknowledged my 'Back in Service' transmission, I received three calls in rapid succession before I even arrived at the address for the first one.

By the end of the month, the two of us were nearly inseparable and she wanted me to meet her parents when they came to visit less than two weeks in the future.

To say Rachael's parents didn't approve of my occupation or our eight year age gap would be the Everest of understatements. Her father, to my shock, was rather laid back about the subject of our dating to begin with, her mother, however... Well, 'laid back' doesn't describe anything whatsoever about her reaction.

Her mother declared on the spot that their financial support ended the minute Rachael introduced me as her boyfriend, including all tuition payments for any future semester. She repossessed the car as well as the personal computer they bought Rachael before she left home for college.

She did a lot more as well including declaring that neither I nor any child ever produced by our union would ever be welcome in their home. With the benefit of spent years I can say that although it took much longer than it should have, but they eventually relaxed that edict somewhat. Both of our sons have spent time with them during summer break at one point or another. But I never was truly welcomed.

I think, for me, the cherry on top of this shit-cake was her proclamation that they were ending their support immediately and irrevocably whether Rachael decided to stay in Georgia or broke up with me on the spot and returned home with them.

The Reader's Digest version is that Rachael's mother disowned her own daughter and withdrew any and all support she might have otherwise offered. As I've already mentioned, Rachael's father didn't seem to have much of a problem with our relationship.

Well, he didn't have much problem with us until Rachael's mother turned her rage on him for not reacting the same way she was and threatened to leave him in Georgia while she went back home. After she chewed him out a couple of times, he began to support her in her verbal attacks on us. Then her parents went back to their hotel room to stay the night only to cut their visit short and return to their home the following day without seeing Rachael again before leaving.

Rachael was distraught and nearly inconsolable for days. I assured her that I would cover her tuition so she could finish her degree, and my family unofficially adopted her.

The irony of the whole situation is that if Rachael's parents hadn't had the severe reaction they had, chances were that we may or may not have ever married. In fact, we both had already discussed the state of our blossoming relationship and decided that we wouldn't consider marriage until after Rachael graduated with her degree and after she obtained her master's or even doctorate if that was the route she decided to take.

Would we have still been dating after those six to eight years? Who knows, my 'Magic 8 Ball' says "Cannot Predict Now".

The bottom line is that as a result of her parents turning their backs on her and shunning her, Rachael moved in with me and we were married seven months later. I took a loan to cover her next two semesters' tuition, and we officially began our life together. I spent my days working and she spent hers in class, then I'd take care of supper and oftentimes the laundry while she spent her afternoons and most evenings studying and doing homework assignments. We made a point to set aside at least two days and evenings to focus our attention on each other.

We were happy together.

Rachael's mother continued her campaign of verbal abuse for months by telephone. She would find a reason to call two or three times every week, if not more often, each time would leave Rachael sobbing. One evening I came in from working in the yard and found Rachael curled into a ball, lying against a wall on the living room floor, her body racked with sobs and her cell phone against the side of her head. I heard her mother's shrill voice screaming profanities at Rachael out of the phone from where I stood across the room. That was my limit. I had held my new wife too many times trying to console her after one of her mother's phone calls and my heart ached when I saw her in the state she was in. It was bad enough if I ever saw a random woman being subjected to that level of abuse and even then I wasn't likely to sit silent and ignore the act and this was MY WIFE!

I strode across the carpet, reached down and eased the phone out of Rachael's fingers and released verbal hell on her mother. By the time I finished and ended the call while she stammered, trying to form a response, I was fuming. When the phone rang again five minutes later I answered and was greeted with her father's (actually, her stepfather, Rachael had confided) voice describing what various forms of violence he had planned to carry out if we met again and that in fact, he was getting dressed as we spoke to make the long drive in order to fulfil his promise that night. I simply gave him a formal invitation to do whatever he felt needed to be done and ended the call. I helped her move from the floor to the sofa and sat holding her while she cried, curled in my lap.

That's the way we woke the following morning.

Her mother's vehemence slowly dimmed over the first two years of our marriage, her vociferous demeaning threats, I later learned, turned into pleas, enticements and bribes offering everything from a new truck, a furnished apartment in their home town, agreeing to pay her full tuition, housing and give her an allowance for whatever else she needed for day to day survival and even offering to pay for all the ensuing legal fees if she'd divorce me and move back home. They even had a suitor picked out for her to date, fall in love with, marry and give them a stable of grandchildren with.

Rachael saw through her mother's lies and attempts to split us apart and during that time of turmoil, she and I were at our happiest together. We could be with a group of other people, and I could randomly glance in her direction across the room to find her staring at me with the happiest smile you could imagine. We relied on each other. If I came home after a particularly bad call or incident, she'd be by my side comforting me just as I comforted her after one of her mother's calls.

The birth of our boys only drew us closer together and we worked well together as a team, that's the way we structured our family; we didn't have a CEO, we had a Board of Directors comprised of two equally empowered seats.

Somewhere after the first five or six years, things slowly began to change. Her looks of adoration for me at random times changed to indifference. Then there were moments that I could see hints of disgust and occasionally her reactions to something I said or did were seasoned with flashes of undisguised hatred. Then, one day I noticed that the 'pin' that she had displayed prominently on her MySpace page (the days before Facebook) that proclaimed "My Hero Wears Kevlar" was gone.

Not long after this new development is when I learned about Rachael's mother offering her enticements for her to file for divorce. She even went so far as to suggest that Rachael accuse me of inappropriate contact with our boys. She had tried this tactic at the beginning of her campaign, before Rachael and I were married. She called my chief of police and filed a complaint accusing me of holding her daughter against her will and not allowing her to contact any of her family or friends. She also accused me of sexual assault against Rachael.

Fortunately, my chief knew me and Rachael, and we were also well known to most people in the community. Our interactions were witnessed by many and the fact that Rachael was always free to go and do whatever she wanted to do without any hinderance from me, including trips alone to visit her siblings and even her parents contradicted those claims, so nothing came of them.

Still, trying to coerce Rachael into making such accusations pissed me off. Rachael never followed through on her mother's wishes, and I think it was because she knew our boys would never support any such claims and my character was unassailable, especially on the subject of any version of child abuse

Regardless, our marriage of just over eight years appeared to be crumbling despite any attempt I made to prevent it. Most intimate contact had been curtailed over the past two years, we went from having sex at least four or five times a week, often two or three times in a single day, to currently one abbreviated 'mercy fuck' in three weeks or a month.

The most recent denial was about three hours earlier.

My reverie was interrupted by quiet, furtive voices and occasional quiet laughter approaching from out of the dark. I looked over the railing and saw two barefoot young teens sneaking quietly (they thought they were quiet, anyway) from the sand, through the hedges and onto the concrete deck surrounding the hotel's pool and hot tub below where I sat. Both teens, one a lanky boy wearing a baggy swim suit and a novelty t-shirt advertising the beach town we were visiting, the other a slightly Rubenesque girl wearing nothing more than a modest two piece bikini. They dropped into a wooden reclining deck chair beside the pool and began making out vigorously. The girl climbed atop the boy, straddling his lap and they continued to kiss while their hands roamed from border to border of each other's body. The boy impatiently pulled all four strings to the bikini above him and tossed the scraps of material onto the concrete beside their chair. Soon he was pushing his shorts down around his knees and then his fingers appeared on top of the girls shoulders from the front. He began unceremoniously pushing her down toward his feet to bring her face even with his crotch. His intentions were blatantly obvious as he reached for his rigid cock with one hand and began rubbing the head on the girl's face. She finally gave in drew his cock into her mouth and began bobbing her head up and down. After a couple of minutes, the boy reached back down under her arms and pulled her back up to his lap

The girl sat astride the boy's pelvis for a few seconds while they discussed something, their voices too low for me to decipher. Then, she raised up on her knees, reached down between them and guided the boy's prick into her pussy then sank down until she rested fully on his lap again. She began to rock back and forth then rise a couple of inches off his groin before sinking back down and begin rocking again. She only repeated this cycle three or four times before the boy visibly tensed and groaned loud enough for me to hear from my perch on the balcony above.

"Seriously?!" I heard the girl exclaim clearly.

The boy shrugged his shoulders without saying anything in response as the girl stood up from the lounge chair, reached her hand between her legs then brought her fingers up and held them accusatorily toward him. He shrugged his shoulders again, stood and fixed his bathing suit while the girl stepped down into the hot tub and began washing away the evidence of their tryst. The boy wordlessly turned, walked back through the hedges where they had entered less than twenty minutes earlier and disappeared into the night down the beach.

When the girl looked up from the hot tub and saw the boy walking away, she exclaimed again, "Really?! You SON OF A BITCH!" She slumped dejectedly down onto the spa seat, dropped her head forward and sat with her face buried in the palms of her hands while her shoulders hitched quietly. If she was crying, as it appeared she was, she caught herself after several beats and raised her head. She sat gazing off into the night for a few seconds, then stood, her head high and climbed out of the hot tub, replacing her bikini boldly.

I felt a measure of sympathy for her over the treatment she received so I leaned over the edge of the balcony railing and spoke to her, startling her briefly, "If somebody doesn't appreciate you, they don't deserve your attention, so don't waste any more time on them. You're worth more than that. The gift you gave him should have cost that arrogant prick more than two shoulder shrugs and a walk in the sand. The right guy will always make sure you are satisfied before he ever reaches for his own pleasure."

She gazed up at me, two floors above for several seconds before speaking.

"You sound like my dad."

"I'm sure your dad loves you, it sounds like he cares about the way you're treated."

"What about you? Do you appreciate that kind of gift?"

I only hesitated the briefest of moments, "I appreciate that gift more than some people ever realize, every single time I receive it."

"Would you appreciate it if I gave it to you?" She asked tentatively.

"Sweetheart, there's no way I could earn something that valuable here and now. There's only one person I can accept that gift from and if I accepted yours I wouldn't deserve either one. Goodnight, please be careful going back to wherever you're staying tonight." I then turned and stepped back through the partially open door into our room, and slid it closed once I was inside.

"You should've fucked her," Rachael spat from the dark, "then we both could've had some relief."

I didn't care enough about how she felt anymore to waste my breath on a response. And in that instant I realized I had lost everything good that I once felt for Rachael, and I considered the choices I would be facing in the coming days and months. I loved my boys more than I could ever express with words either written or spoken and I knew I could endure any hardship for their benefit. But for the first time, I had to ask myself if I could endure my festering marriage long enough to ensure that I wouldn't end up being a part-time dad or worse, an absent long-distance memory of a dad.

No. I was stronger than that. All their efforts combined and coordinated wouldn't be enough to control me or manipulate me into surrendering the privilege of raising my sons!

DAMN that spiteful woman for her blind hatred and caustic attitude!

And DAMN Rachael for letting herself be influenced that effectively!

There were four more nights left on our trip and the chair in the corner made for a very uncomfortable bed.

Postscript:

I ended up not having to decide to leave Rachael, she took that decision upon herself almost two years after this trip. I wish I could say I won out in court, was granted custody of the boys and Rachael was forced to run crying back to her mother. I wish I could say that, but I can't. As bad as my marriage had grown, as lonely as I got, the divorce gutted me. I insisted that my attorney not accept anything less than mutual custody with me having the boys one week then Rachael having them the next in an alternating schedule and no support from either of us. I would keep them on my insurance and be responsible for any expense at my house and Rachael would be responsible for any expense at her house. Rachael's attorney insisted that she get primary custody, and I get visitation rights, only and a modest amount of child support. The judge just wanted us to make a deal so she wouldn't have to worry about anything. She looked directly at me and spoke directly at me in open court, saying that if we couldn't mutually agree on a compromise deal and she was forced to hold a hearing that she would make a 'fair and impartial' judgement and whoever lost would be given standard visitation of two days on alternate weekends and one day on the Wednesday of the opposite week, along with being forced to pay the maximum allowable child support.

My attorney told me what I already knew, the judge had already made her decision and because I had the gall to stand up against her recommendations, I had already lost my case and that what the opposing attorney was offering was in comparison very generous.

I simply couldn't get past the thought of my sons looking back one day and thinking I gave up and quit fighting for them.

I lost the case and received her promised judgement. The amount she awarded for support was more than three times the amount that Rachael and her attorney originally offered.

During the next six years, I never missed a payment, not one payment was ever late a single day. I nearly lost my house and the property that had belonged to my family for five generations, but my child support stayed current.

I never missed an opportunity to have the boys. Anytime Rachael called and asked if they could stay with me because she had other plans I took them. If I already had plans I changed or cancelled them.

The boys were eight and six years old when our divorce was made final. Rachael tried to transfer them to a different school on the other side of town but neither of them wanted to change and were very upset with the possibility.

I ended up meeting her in the mornings to bring them back to my house to ride the bus to school then meet her again when she got off work so they could sleep at her house. She got mad when neither boy would refer to her house as 'home', it was always 'momma's house'. My house was the only 'home' they had ever known.

My eight year old son asked me after the divorce why he and his brother couldn't live with whichever parent they wanted to live with. Answering his question was the one and only time I ever mentioned anything to either of them about choosing who to live with. In Georgia, children can choose which divorced parent they want to live with at the age of fourteen and take their choice into consideration at the age of twelve. I patiently waited the six years after our divorce without complaining and on my youngest son's twelfth birthday, he and his brother told their mother that they wanted to come live with me.

They lived at home with me until they reached the age that they moved out on their own and are both happily married and working in secure, well-paying careers.

I finally remarried nine years later to a girl I graduated from high school with and gained a stepson and a stepdaughter in the bargain.

Rachael and I are cordial these days just as I am cordial with my new wife's ex-husband.

Although she did, indeed pay Rachael's attorney fees, the new car, furnished apartment and anything else her mother promised her as enticement to divorce me never materialized.

Sometimes I think Karma might not actually be a bitch, maybe sometimes Karma was a spitefully divorced man.

Thanks for reading. G.