Chapter 3

Things went on like that for a couple of months. I could tell when she’d met Brad by the boost in her mood at the end of the day. I threw myself into the gym, mostly because I wanted to be too exhausted to have sex with her if she brought it up, but she never did. I was also training for a fight. I fought about once every month or two, depending on the schedule and my condition at the time. I had one that was going to be held in town and I was pumped for it.

“Are you coming to the fight tomorrow night?” I asked her at dinner, that Friday. I knew she wouldn’t, but I always asked.

“Honey, you KNOW I can’t stand those events. I hate to see you get hurt and I don’t want to sit around bored all night. Call me after your fight and let me know how it went,” she said, trying to sound supportive.

I nodded. She’d never seen me fight before. She wouldn’t look at the matches that I had recordings of and she’d never go to an event. I suspected that she’d take the opportunity to sneak in a quickie with Brad since I’d be away all day. I still wasn’t supposed to know who he was, even though I’d withdrawn my objections.

“That’s okay,” I told her. “I know how you feel about it. I’ll stop bringing it up.” I turned my attention back to dinner and figured that would be the end of the conversation.

“I was talking to Cecilia today,” she said casually. She managed to bring Cecilia up at least three times a week. I’d looked her up on their company website while I was getting a good long look at the man that had ended my marriage and I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes.

“Oh?” I asked, since that was clearly what she was hoping for. “What did she have to say?”

“She’s showing a lovely house in the area that I think you might like. It’s not too close,” she assured me, “but it’s close to everything so there wouldn’t be a big change in commute, if you were going there after work some days. When would you like me to book an appointment to look at it?”

“Me?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if you looked at it? You know more about what to look for.”

“I’ve seen it. She showed it to me this afternoon,” she said. “I think it’s ideal. It’s almost identical to the house here except there’s no fourth bedroom downstairs. The basement is mostly a blank slate. I thought you might like that as a home gym. It’s on a bigger lot, so there’s plenty of room for a pool and there’s a double driveway with a detached garage.”

I nodded. “What’s the asking price on it?” I asked.

“It’s $350,000,” she admitted with a wince. “It’s a great investment though. I think the property would be worth another $100,000 if the market wasn’t so soft right now. We install the pool and hot tub, landscape it and add a deck and we could flip it for $600,000 easily if you find you’re not using it.”

I shrugged. “I’ll take a look. I have Monday off. I can do it then.” She was dedicated to this plan of getting me a love shack. I guess it was a case of guilt since I knew she was doing it with Brad three times a week, sometimes more.

She smiled and got up to get her cellphone. She called Cecilia on the spot and talked to her briefly before handing the phone over to me.

“Hi, Mr. Hooker?” she said from the other end of the phone. She had a nice voice. She sounded a lot younger than the thirty-five that Barb had told me.

“Hello,” I said. “Barb tells me that you showed her a property today that’s just what we’ve been looking for.”

“Yes!” she said excitedly. “I was initially surprised that she’d come to me looking for something since she sells so much, but she said that she had very demanding specifications and none of her leads were quite right. She said you’ll be the final decision maker and asked me when I could show it to you. Is tomorrow a good day for you?”

“Sorry, Cecilia,” I said slowly. “I’ll be busy all day and into the night tomorrow and possibly Sunday too. How about Monday morning?”

“Sounds terrific!” she said brightly and gave me the address. “I’ll meet you there about 9?”

“See you there,” I said lightly and said goodbye. I handed Barb’s phone back to her and gave her a look. “You’re pushing Cecilia again,” I pointed out.

“Only a little,” she admitted. “She wants to meet you. She knows that you’re available and she’s aching for a firm ... commitment.” She smirked a little.

I grunted. The night before a fight was the last time I needed this or maybe not. I took another couple of bites and then told her I was going to the gym. Final weigh-in was tomorrow when I got to the event venue and I wanted to be as ready as possible.

I pushed cardio at a steady pace. I wasn’t trying to get myself into shape, just maintaining what I already had. I had to admit that having a place with a gym in the basement would be pretty sweet for nights like this. I had a routine I used to prepare for my fights. I avoided long talks or heavy topics. Barb bringing up Cecilia had broken that routine. I was irritated about that and about the topic it brought bubbling to the surface.

I stayed at the gym until just before they closed for the night. The staff knew I was fighting tomorrow. They had several fighters work out here. They all wished me good luck and promised to come support me.

The next day, I was a nervous wreck. It was like it was my first fight all over again. I puked before breakfast and then just managed to choke down a little bit. I packed lunch and dinner with me to eat there since I didn’t trust the venue to supply what I should eat before a fight.

Barb wished me luck and kissed me on the cheek before getting in her treasured Lexus, confirming that she was going to meet Brad somewhere for an impromptu romp while I was standing around waiting to get my head kicked in.

Once I got to the venue, I was surprised that the conditions were so nice. I was used to folding chairs on concrete floors with a coffee pot and a couple of boxes of donuts for refreshments. These guys spent a little money. There was bottled water and actual food that was on my diet list. We were in a hospitality room and there were tables with actual chairs and tablecloths. By indie circuit standards, we were being treated like royalty.

I saw my opponent across the room and swore to myself. I’d never laid eyes on him before, just seen his fights on tape. He was huge! I was gonna get carried out of here. I looked at him critically and shook my head. What a way to win a fight, I thought. There’s no way he wasn’t juicing. He’d fail the piss test and I’d be awarded the contest, posthumously, of course.

I weighed in, stowed my gear, ate, did some exercises to stay limber and generally wasted time until it was time to get taped up. I was on my way there when he approached me. “Doug Hastings,” he said, holding out his hand.

I shook it and smiled. “John Hooker,” I replied.

“Hooker, huh?” he repeated my name. “I guess that’s fitting. I’m gonna ride you like I paid for the full hour.”

I thought he was probably right, so I shrugged. “Cash up front,” I told him flatly. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a hooker joke. “I’m not cheap and I’m not easy.”

He laughed at that. “We’ll see.” Then we were called in to get our hands taped and signed. They sign across the tape when they’re done so that they can tell if it’s been tampered with between then and fight time. In years past, fighters had been known to do shady things to give their hits more power. Packets of powdered lead, steel plates and brass knuckles had all seen use in boxing matches in the past.

I got mine done and they were talking about the fights. “Odds are fifty to one against you,” one of the guys said. “Shame you’re not allowed to place bets.”

“He just promised me that he’s gonna make a show out of it,” I said dryly. “See if you can push it to 100 to 1.”

“Shit, for THOSE odds, I’d drop $20 on you,” one of them said and they signed the tape, letting me go.

Our fight was the feature bout for some reason. I guess he was an upcoming talent and there were scouts in the crowd. I watched the rest of the fights with a bad case of nerves and saw Hastings grinning at me like I was his Prom date.

They sent me out first and announced my fight record. They had some pretty dramatic music playing while I ‘walked the mile’, as the old Stephen King book said. I got in the cage and realized I was about to be locked in with that animal. This was stupid. I was gonna get creamed. I had a life, a family, a home. That stopped me and my head went back to Barb looking for a house for me. Did I have a family? Barb was emotionally invested in Brad. I came somewhere on the list below him, her job, the Lexus and probably a few other concerns, but almost certainly still somewhere in the top ten ... twenty.

Hastings came to the ring with a frigging parade. I had a three person team and they were from the gym. They weren’t world class, but I trusted them. Hastings had a dozen people and they all looked like they were already planning the after-party.

Rusty, my trainer came up to me and shook his head. “Wet your pants during the instructions and run for your life,” was his sage advice. I almost hit him in the balls. I’d need him to look for my teeth later though.

I started getting angry. This was another fight I couldn’t win. Barb and Brad was a no-win scenario for me and now this. The guy was huge. He probably hit like a car crash and there’s no way I could take him down. “How the fuck am I even in this fight?” I asked Rusty. “There’s no fucking WAY he’s in the same weight category.”

“It’s an exhibition,” he said. “They mixed weight categories and picked you.”

“So I’m supposed to be the sacrificial lamb?!!?” I blurted angrily.

He went to say something, but saw the look on my face and shrugged apologetically. They started the introductions, but all I really heard was the blood pounding in my ears. They’d led me to the slaughter with this booking. I was gonna kill someone. I looked across at Hastings and he already looked smug. I imagined him with Brad Davis’s face. That’s my bitch. I moved forward and kept my eyes down. It probably looked like I was intimidated, but I didn’t want him to see the murder in my eyes.

“Let’s do this,” Hastings said when he touched gloves. “I’ve got other bitches to fuck tonight.”

I returned to my corner, my mind flashing through all the times Barb had come home glowing with love and all the times she’d hummed in the morning, making herself beautiful for him.

When the bell sounded, I charged him and landed a Superman punch that broke his nose for sure. I was screaming like a savage and as he staggered back, I threw a head kick that reeled him further. I plowed into him for the take-down and then mounted him with speed driven by rage.

I’ll give him credit. He did his level best to defend himself, but it was like I had 10 fists. For every one he blocked, I was landing four or five. I spent two minutes straight pounding him tirelessly before he went limp and the ref tackled me to pull me off him and stop the fight.

The fight made ESPN highlight of the night and it made my ring crew a little richer. With the odds on me being that high, they pooled themselves $100 and bet on me, so they made out like bandits. Me? I got the winner’s share of the fight purse, so I took home a check for $6000 and I didn’t have a scratch on me.

I went through the post fight circus of interviews where I thanked Doug Hastings for a clean fight and credited my win to getting fired-up just before the match and to fear that Hastings was gonna kill me.

I got the tape cut off for examination, had my urine test and got checked out by the doctor before I could leave. That part had to wait a while. I guess I’d broken Doug’s nose, jaw and cheekbone. He didn’t lose any teeth, but other than that, his injuries were mostly what I expected to have by now.

I found out later that Doug moved back to Wisconsin and sold insurance after that. It was his last professional fight.

After I was cleared by the fight doc, the boys wanted to celebrate, so we went out for beers. I limited myself to one and left around midnight. On a whim, I drove past the house that I was seeing on Monday. It was a nice place less than a mile from our house and did have a bigger looking yard.

I drove home and wasn’t sure if I was surprised or not to see Barb’s Lexus parked in the garage. That was probably unfair. Brad didn’t have the freedom she did to schedule things. He had to sneak around.

I got my gear out of the car and went into the house. Barb was already asleep, so I left the bed to her and went down to crash on the sofa instead.

Sunday wasn’t as strained as the day after a fight usually is. Barb doesn’t like my fighting. She thinks of it as barbaric and she’s right, but it fulfills a need for that connection to something primal and I’m good at it. I had to admit that she was probably worried about me getting hurt. That made some sense since she seemed far more calm today, having seen that I was unharmed except for some slight swelling in my hands from repeated impacts with a face. Then again, she might just be still floating on a cloud from her romp with Brad.

She asked if I wanted to reschedule my appointment to see Cecilia at the house for today since I was feeling fine.

“Is the sale time sensitive or do you have plans this afternoon?” I asked.

“I was thinking about going out after lunch,” she admitted.

I shrugged. “Give me her number and I’ll call her if I feel like going anywhere,” I said lightly.

She wrote down the number and then we started on a few chores. She didn’t ask about the fight. She generally didn’t want to know. We did laundry and yard work and cleaned up the kitchen from the week of being on the go.

That was how it was for us. There was no romance. We were roommates, partners more than lovers. It was a little sad, but I was fine with it. I’d managed to avoid having to have sex with her since she’d announced she had a lover and I’d resisted her attempts to fix me up with Cecilia. Today was the acid test, I guess.

Once we had the house in order, we had a light lunch and then she gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll probably be back for dinner,” she said with a grin. “If you’re not, I’ll save you a bite. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she tossed over her shoulder with a chuckle.

I didn’t give voice to the sarcastic retort on the tip of my tongue. Once she was gone, I wondered what I’d do for the rest of the day. I didn’t want Cecilia, but I didn’t want to rattle around the house feeling sorry for myself either. I sighed and called her reluctantly.

“Hello?” she answered, not seeing a number she knew.

“Hi Cecilia,” I said. “It’s John Hooker. My Sunday’s sort of opened up more than I expected. Did you want to show me around that property today instead of tomorrow?” I asked. I kind of hoped that she’d tell me she was tied up.

“I’d LOVE to!” she chirped, making me cringe at how eager she was. It sounded like she was ready to go if I suggested inter-gender nude mud wrestling. “I was just tidying up around the house, so give me an hour to get presentable and I’ll meet you there.”

I was about to tell her that she didn’t need to spend any effort for the sake of showing me a house, but who knows what Barb had told her in her efforts to coach her. “That’s fine,” I said with a casually friendly tone. “Take your time. If something comes up, just call me back and let me know we’ll have to do it tomorrow.”

I decided that I’d get my own shower and change into something less grubby than the clothes I’d been cleaning up the house in. I picked out a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that fit me like a glove. Yeah, I was dressing up a little. Even if I planned on keeping things professional, it’d be nice to feel wanted again. Barb had been pleasant to me and considerate in her own way, but it was Brad that she wanted and that was where her focus was.

I took my old Nissan Sentra and found myself parked in front of the house about ten minutes before we’d agreed to meet. I got out and took a look around the front yard and the front of the house. I didn’t see any real problems and Barb had taught me how to look for them and for signs that they’d been covered up. I also looked around the street at the other houses. They all looked about the same, none of them standing out. There were no flashy cars or tacky decorations, no yards filled with discarded toys, no garbage.

All in all, it looked like a lazy Sunday afternoon in a quiet neighborhood. That was the same impression I’d gotten from my drive down the street last night. A few minutes later, a car pulled into the driveway and what could only be Cecilia got out of the car. She did have black hair and very nice blue eyes. In fact, her whole face was pretty. Her body was not what I’d expected. When Barb said she weighed a few extra pounds, I’d expected someone that weighed over 300 pounds. If I had to guess Cecilia’s weight, she was somewhere around 150. She was about 5’8” and she was curvy in ways that were much more enticing than I’d anticipated.

“John!” she waved to me with a grin. “Hi! I recognize you from the picture Barb keeps on her desk.” She came and shook my hand, glancing at my arms. “WOW!” she gushed with a nervous giggle. “Your picture doesn’t do you justice. I have to admit that I was surprised that you wanted the tour today after our conversation on Friday.”

“Sorry about that,” I said sincerely. “I had a fight scheduled for last night and wasn’t sure whether I’d be up and about afterwards.”

“A fight?” she asked, surprised. “Boxing?”

“MMA,” I told her.

“I guess you won,” she said with a hint of a question.

I nodded. “I kind of expected to be in a morgue drawer today when I saw the guy though. He’s a beast.”

“Well, I’m glad you got out alive,” she said with a chuckle. “Let’s look around the place and we’ll talk. You’ve seen the landscaping. Did you take a look at the back?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “I was out here looking for trouble spots and I really didn’t want the neighbors seeing me wandering around the backyard alone. I don’t want to look like I’m doing recon for a break-in.”

She nodded and led me around the back of the house to show me the yard there. Barb was right. There was plenty of room for a pool and a deck and a hot tub. I told Cecilia about the plans for the yard and she nodded approvingly. We took a look around the garage, but it was brief. It was essentially a big empty garage with three bays at the end of a double driveway. Not many talking points, but I did look over the building for damage or trouble spots. So far, it looked like we were in luck. The property had been well-kept and there were no signs of damage. We went inside and the upstairs was virtually identical to our place. The bedrooms were the same size, the bathrooms were the same layout, the kitchen was the same layout and the living room was the same.

The basement was where the difference was. Where our place was furnished, this was a concrete floor. There was a furnace room that held a brand new oil tank, furnace and water heater.

“The furnace is mostly for show,” she told me. “It works, but we so very rarely need heat except for a few weeks a year that it’s almost a waste of space. The water heater is where most of the oil burns.”

“So we could put in electric heat and a tankless water heater and free up this whole room?” I asked.

“I suppose so,” she admitted. “I think if it were me, I’d weigh the cost against the benefit of having the extra space though. That conversion isn’t going to be cheap. Those water heaters alone are pretty expensive.”

I nodded. “We’re buying a property to convert it into my personal training center,” I told her. “Working up a sweat in the basement will shorten the need for heating even more. Besides, tankless water heaters never run out of hot water.”

“Training center?” she repeated, confused. “But I thought ... Sorry. I must have misunderstood.”

I smirked. “Barb told you that there was another reason for this place?” I prompted her.

She nodded, blushing. “She didn’t say anything about gym equipment.”

“I’ll bet. She was probably more expressive about silk sheets and remodeling the bathroom with a shower built for two,” I said dryly.

Her blush deepened and she nodded again in confirmation, her voice temporarily failing her.

I took her hand and led her back to the stairs. “Let’s sit and compare notes,” I suggested. There was some minimal furniture in the house, some of the pieces were cardboard props to give a sense of the size of a room, but the sofa was functional. I steered her onto it and sat with her. I sighed and wondered how to start this conversation. “My wife ... Barb wants me to take a girlfriend or a mistress. That’s what she wants this house to be about. She’s creating a playhouse for me to take this girlfriend so that I never bring her back to our house. She’s pushing this because she’s had a lover for a long time. She won’t tell me who it is, but they sneak off to houses she has the keys for when they can arrange it. She hasn’t said if it’s someone at work or a former client.”

“Brad,” she said simply. “Brad Davis. It’s the worst kept secret in the office. Sorry.”

That surprised me. I hadn’t expected her to give me the name. I nodded. “She loves him. She says she loves me too, but it’s bullshit. I know if she had to pick one, she’d pick him. This house and the girlfriend are her guilty conscience for that.”

She nodded. “She told me that she was fine with you and I ... I mean ... I...” she trailed off in horror as she realized that she’d just announced that she was committed to being the girlfriend as much as she was to selling the house.

I chuckled and picked up her hand again. “It’s okay,” I told her. “Barb’s been pushing me toward you too. I’ve been digging in my heels because you work with her. I know she’s got a lot of influence in the office and I didn’t want to end up with a girlfriend that works with her. It’s probably against a whole lot of sexual harassment laws and I worried that she’d be able to pressure you for information or to manipulate events or retaliate against you at work if something happens that she doesn’t like.”

She shook her head. “I’d be top seller in the office if she wasn’t there,” she said with a shrug. “I was third in the state last year. She’s never been anything but friendly to me. She said that you’d be perfect for me.”

I nodded. “She told me a lot about you too. She said you’re divorced, but not ready for dating yet. She gave me the impression that you’re interested in no-strings attached sex.”

She nodded. “She made it clear what it would be,” she said. “I’m perfectly okay with sex.”

Now THAT got my attention. “What did she say it would be?” I asked, curious what Barb’s vision for the future was.

She looked at me curiously. “She said you and I would be a booty call. No romantic dinners or date nights or anything like that. We’d text each other, arrange times, fuck and go back to our lives.”

I chuckled mirthlessly. “I see,” I said. “She hasn’t really been following her own rules, has she?” I pointed out. “She’s deeply in love with Brad. She arranged to go out with him yesterday and they’re out right now. It’s gone way past the point of being casual sex for them. So we’ve talked about the background and what she wants. What do you want out of this?”

She shrugged. “I’m fine with getting laid on a semi-regular basis,” she admitted.

“That’s what you’ll settle for,” I corrected. “What do you want?”

“What if I want something you can’t give?” she asked. “What if it’s a deal-breaker?”

I shrugged. “Your bottom line is to hook up when we’re horny. That doesn’t seem so bad. My wife got away with keeping her lover on the side. I’m perfectly capable of being reasonable.”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess ... I think that this is fine for now. Maybe we’ll start to develop feelings down the road, but that’s for down the road. If that happens, I think I’d want more. Maybe all of you.”