Chapter 5: Clair and I talk

As it was getting late, Pete went home, and I went back to the family cottage on the island. There I found Clair waiting for me.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well,” I replied, “We are getting things fixed as much as we can. But I think that we are out the $25,000, or more correctly, the $24,950 from the operations account, because he had legal access to that. But there will be enough other charges against him that if, or when, he is caught, he will be in prison for a long, long time.

“I also stopped and saw Consuela. She says that she hasn’t seen or heard from Bruce for a week. That he told her about some ‘project’ that was going to make them rich, with ranches down in Central America, someplace. She claims that she never knew the details, and she seemed petrified that he was going to get involved with drugs, and they would end up slaves to the cartels.

“I guess that over the past six months or so, Bruce was whoring her out to his potential business partners and prospective investors. Having her give blowjobs to his ‘bankers’ and threesomes with some of his other clients. She seemed pretty disgusted with herself for giving in and doing it, but you know how Bruce is. He promised her the moon and laid on a guilt trip that if she didn’t go along, the failure of his ‘project’ would be on her. He used drugs to make her go along, as well.”

At that point Clair interrupted me.

“Dave,” she said, “I never told you this, but before our wedding. Bruce suggested that you and I and him could have a threesome together. That it would be the best sex that I’d ever have and that after the first time, we could repeat it the future. In fact, he implied that once he was married, we could do swaps when we were here in Vero. I was horrified and disgusted that a man who was one of your best friends growing up would even think of propositioning your wife-to-be just days before our wedding. I never told you, because I’m sure that he was drunk at the time and because he had been a close friend. And the next day, he didn’t seem to remember what he had said, and he was back acting normal again. So, I shrugged it off. But I never forgot. I don’t know if you noticed that I’ve always kept my distance from Bruce, and I’ve always stayed close to you if we had to be together.”

I actually had noticed that, but I had attributed it to some instinct that told my wife he wasn’t completely honest and maybe he was a little too flirty and inclined to be touchier than most women were comfortable with. I stuck with him because he was, like his father before him, a good grove manager.

This new revelation just added to my anger and feelings of betrayal. He may have been drunk, but I’m sure that he knew and remembered every word he had said. Perhaps he thought that he was putting a seed of a thought in her head that she might act on in the future. He certainly didn’t know my wife.

Like Connie Lopez had told me all those years before, Bruce wasn’t and had never been my friend.

I changed the subject and let Clair know that we were going to have dinner with Pete and his wife Brenda. Brenda was one of the women in Vero who Clair was very fond of; a chance to have dinner and socialize with her was a pleasant opportunity.

“But keep in mind, you and Pete keep off business tonight!”

I agreed.

We kept that promise, Pete told me Brenda had extracted the same promise from him, and we had a pleasant dinner together at one of the great seafood restaurants. So close to the ocean, the seafood was right off the docks, as fresh as it could be, and the cooks spent years perfecting their skills. I had to admire what they did; when I tried to make seafood at home, it just never came out that good.

As most of the year, the temperatures are warm in Florida, so we took a walk along the beach. The bugs were not too bad at that time of the year, the weather having cooled off from the summer heat, so it was a pleasant time strolling along the beach, listening to the waves break. For me, it recalled memories of my teenage years in Vero with my friends. But like Jesus and George Washington, I had my own Judas, my own Benedict Arnold to deal with.

Back in the beach house, Clair and I got ready for bed, and when I pulled back the sheets to find Clair naked, waiting for me, I knew I was going to have a good evening ahead of me.

We made love and afterwards I wanted to talk to Clair about Consuela.

“Clair? Have you ever wanted a threesome or any other of the sorts of things that Consuela was pressured to do?”

She smiled.

“Dave, let me take care of a couple of those things. I think that we all have fantasies at times, but that’s all they are — fantasies.

“First, I’ll say this about women: I’ve had several women hit on me for sex during my life, although not since we’ve been married. I think that I seem, well, too happy and too satisfied with my life with you for them to even feel like trying.

“I did try kissing another girl when I was about, hmmm, maybe 14? As a young girl I had always kissed my father (get your mind out of the gutter, it was on the cheeks), and as I got older, I would sometimes steal a quick kiss on the lips when he wasn’t expecting it. The truth was, I liked my father’s manly smell, I liked his strength, I liked that his lips were firm and warm, not soft. I even liked feeling his whiskers on my skin.