Chapter 8

When I finally crawled out of bed on the Friday after Thanksgiving, I stumbled downstairs to the kitchen for coffee. Emily was there, and so was Mabel, back from her brief vacation trip to Delaware. Judith was, evidently, either still asleep or long gone.

I looked at Emily, and she didn’t look like a woman who’d recently been told her live-in lover had boinked her daughter.

“Judith still asleep?” I asked. “We got in pretty late.”

“She’s already gone,” Emily told me. “She said you two had a good time last night.”

“Yeah. Her friends were nice.”

“Judith said you two teased them unmercifully!” Emily was laughing heartily at this. She must have heard chapter and verse from Judith about our adventurous evening – at least the first half of it.

I was full of dread. Maybe Judith hadn’t told her mother – yet -- that we’d been out bumping nasties for half the night, but they’d been close enough for Judith to share the story of our mutually risqué behavior at the party. Clearly, the two Chambers women were emotionally close. And I sensed that Judith had every reason to believe that her mother would be supportive – maybe even delighted – to hear that her daughter had jumped the academic fence and had rewarded herself with a steamy one-nighter with an eligible young man.

It seemed to me that my chances that Judith wouldn’t eventually decide to share this little adventure with Mama were slim and none.

I was toast. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Thinking that reminded me of that old movie – Casablanca. I could see Humphrey Bogart, both hands clutching Ingrid Bergman’s arms through that trenchcoat. Bergman’s beautiful eyes full of tears, her agonized expression ... what was it he said to her then? Something about a hill of beans? Their troubles weren’t worth a hill of beans, compared to all the trouble going on in the world around them.

I briefly considered telephoning Judith. She wasn’t even back in Durham yet. I could call her, caution her not to tell Emily about our little indiscretion.

But what could I tell her? “Listen, don’t tell your mother what happened!”

And then she’s say something like, “Hey, Mom won’t be upset. She’ll be glad! She’ll say, ‘It’s good you got laid. You probably needed it.’ Me ‘n Mom understand each other.”

And what do I say to her then? “Yes, but, you see, I’ve been boffing your mama for the past six months on a more-or-less daily basis. She probably wouldn’t be entirely sympathetic to the fact that I was plowing her daughter, too.”

Nope. No way could I concoct a decent reason that Judith shouldn’t share her most recent bedroom highlights with Dear Old Mom.

So what do I do? Wait for the ax to fall? When would that be? Later today? Next week? Next month?

What would Humphrey Bogart do? First of all, Humphrey Bogart would have probably just limited himself to Lauren Bacall, and would have left the poor girl’s mother alone! Maybe send her a Mother’s Day card, but that’s it. And he was probably a lot closer to Lauren Bacall’s mother’s age than I was to Emily’s!

Yep. Good judgment. I figured ol’ Humphrey had good judgment. Smoked too much. Drank a lot, or so I’d heard. But the man was more reliable, a lot more cool and collected, with reference to displaying some basic respect for the generational divide.

There was no easy way out of this, short of packing up my gear and heading for spring training ten or eleven weeks early. Make myself scarce. Hope that the Orioles didn’t have me pegged for a second year with the Frederick Keys. I wondered if Bowie was far enough away to afford me adequate protection? Maryland is a smallish state. Baltimore ain’t that far from Frederick and Bowie is just a little bit past Baltimore – still in little old Maryland!

Norfolk! Norfolk was quite a ways farther south. But what were the chances I’d be assigned to Triple-A next season? Not likely. And, anyway, Norfolk was pretty close to Durham. Hell, Norfolk was in the same league as Durham! Once these two women had an earnest conversation and my name came up, I’d be wanted in at least three states!

I slowly began to accept the inevitable. If I was to have any hope of surviving this gigantic FUBAR personal crisis, I was going to have to come clean. It was Randy Sinclair, the young man with the errant penis, who had to try to make all of this make sense.

Distance and circumstances combined to make it entirely impossible to discuss any of this with Judith.

But Emily. Emily might – just might – somehow hear me out. She would be disappointed in me, of course. Disappointed at my gross behavior – my moral weakness. I’d cheated on her with her one and only child! Her beloved daughter!

But Emily was older, and wiser. Already – back during the ocean cruise – she’d been willing to allow me to sample the considerable delights of Ms. Scarlet Twat from the Fifth French Republic. Surely she wouldn’t have been pleased with me, had I taken her up on that generous offer, but she would have allowed it! And without protest. All she had asked was that I wear a condom – something I would have been well-advised to do in any event! And I had worn a condom with Judith, too! Well. The first time, anyway.

I guess the condom thing was irrelevant. Emily probably wasn’t concerned with me bringing her some awful disease from her darling daughter. She more or less knew where Judith had been.

Well. Up until last night, anyway.

Damn it! There was absolutely no way around it. I was going to have to confess to Emily.

Damn!

I knew that there was no time for hemming and hawing around with this. Who knew when Judith might decide to call dear old Mom and confide that she had, while home for the holiday, decided to give MACRObiology a little try. My only chance to survive this, if I had any chance at all, was to get there first. If Emily was going to hear this from Judith – ever – it had to be old news when her daughter decided to confide in her. Maybe that way, Emily could prepare herself for the impact of her daughter’s shared confidence.

Hearing it from Judith first could be such a shock that Emily would, perhaps, react in some highly destructive manner.

After all, her daughter might not be innocent of involvement with one of Mom’s boarders, but – with time for advance preparation on Emily’s part, her daughter could at least remain innocent of the existence of our little triangle.

Triangle. Jesus, I have got to learn to keep my head on straight! Enough, already, with these random distractions. I couldn’t think of the word “triangle” without visions of Frenchie’s red snatch dancing in my head. I wondered if that vivid red color was natural? I mean, she was obviously a redhead, but did she somehow augment the natural redness with some kind of dye?

And would it come off on your mouth? If you got right down there in the curlies?

Enough! Anyway, this wasn’t a triangle. Not really. There wasn’t going to be any three-way sex going on, here. Either I would confess to Emily and – eventually – get back in her good graces, or I would confess and she would replace the yellow and green ties in my closet with two more red ones, and she’d add a couple of padlocks on her side of the sliding panel, and my secret passage into her apartment would be gone forever – or until I was permanently banished from Frederick, Maryland, whichever event came first.

I hadn’t had much sleep on Thursday night, so I took a long afternoon nap just after lunch on Friday. When I woke up, I figured Judith would be back in Durham by now. Maybe she’d already called her mother.

I checked the closet. The green tie was hanging on the left nail. All systems were “go”. Emily had been celibate since last Tuesday morning. So had I – so far as Emily knew. This was going to be Reunion Night. She would surely want to start off with oral ministrations – sixty-nine, which we both enjoyed for starters, but which we both found too distracting to serve as anything but foreplay.

Then she’d take over, depriving me of her soaked center but continuing to use her skillful mouth on my eager, rock-hard cock, straining to bury itself ever-deeper in Emily’s wet, welcoming mouth. All of this to assure that, a short time later, her underaged lover could come back for seconds and be able to provide a crashing orgasm for his hairy, but somewhat less hair-triggered, lover.

Ordinarily, a lovely plan designed to afford maximum pleasure to both parties. But tonight? Wouldn’t it be all wrong to allow anything – anything at all – to take place before we had The Talk? Wouldn’t it just add to my existing list of deadly sins if I were to penetrate any Chambers Family Orifices before confessing all?

Clearly, it would be out of the question to fuck her first. I could not tell Emily about my gross indiscretions while my semen was leaking out of her lovely labia.

I might be a two-timing, inconsiderate scoundrel of the first magnitude, but I had enough honor left to take my medicine up front!

But wasn’t it going to be awful, I thought, if, right this minute, I’ve already made love to Emily for the last time? I might be out on my ear tomorrow – Saturday morning. Hell, maybe she’ll throw me out tonight!

I took a quick shower in my semi-private bathroom on the third-floor landing, went back into my room and put on shorts and a t-shirt, and disappeared into the closet, through the sliding panel, and into Emily’s bedroom.

She was naked as a jaybird, lying atop a blanket on her bed – asleep.

Clearly, this was my invitation to do what I had so often done in the past – awaken her with my head buried between her thighs, arousing her libido in a way we both loved.

This question had already been settled in my mind, but the setting – the clear invitation – made me reconsider the issue all over again. I mean, what harm could it do? We both would enjoy it! If, after tonight, I was going to be banished forever, why not one more for the road? I would make certain she enjoyed it as much as I did.

But ... it would be wrong.

So I went into the kitchen, mixed us each a stiff Harvey Wallbanger in an oversized glass, and returned to Emily’s bedroom. My hands were cold from the icy glasses so I dried them and warmed them against my ribs before reaching out to touch Emily’s bare shoulder.