Chapter 5: What If

Al thought that it was really Craig’s fault. She doubted that she could have persuaded a jury of that, though. He’d brought up marriage, and that made her think of what marriages had been like for her family, especially Deb and Mom.

“Would you fight me for custody?” she asked on a trip back from yet another museum. “If we were in divorce court, I mean.”

“Let me get clear. Do I have your permission to answer your question?”

“Of course.”

“There’s nothing ‘of course’ about it,” he said. “You said I couldn’t mention marriage to you. Last time I looked, that was a prerequisite for divorce.”

“Never mind.”

“No. You asked, and I’ll answer. I don’t have much experience with divorce. No personal experience and my close observations of marriages have been my family. I’ve had a few friends, though, and the parents of more friends and for a longer time. I knew a kid who went through divorce in grade school, and none of my friends even married until they were out of high school. Two couples little more than right after graduation, though. Okay.

“From what I’ve seen,” he continued, “the custody battles are people who’ve been fighting and cut off all the rational reasons for fighting. They use their last connection, their kids, to keep the fight going. Wasn’t there a movie, once, The War Between the Tates? Well, I claim to love kids; I’d certainly love my own. I couldn’t hate anyone enough to harm a kid to harm the parent. You’d be a wonderful mother. If we shared a daughter and no longer shared a life, I’d probably say that you’d do a better job of raising a girl. You wouldn’t try to cut me off from visitation, would you? We both said that Anne needed a caring adult man in her life.”

She did. And a caring man who was her blood father would be even better. Would she cut Craig off from his child? A child he loved? What would that do to her if she needed to be as far from him as she could? “And a boy?” she asked. “Would you expect the same from me?”

“Well, every kid needs a dad, but even boys, young boys, need a mother more. Maybe we could try for joint custody.”

“That’s putting the parents in a close relationship, still,” she said.

“So it is, this is going outside the bounds of the question, but maybe it would be better for the kid if we stuck together.”

“Well, I left myself wide open for that.” She’d been stupid to raise the question, but Craig had been honest with her. He wouldn’t let a kid of his out of his life. Even what Dad had done with her, only visited her a few times and without Mom present, would be beyond what he would do. It would really be beyond justice, too.

“They talk about the ‘Best interests of the child,’” Craig said. “Really, the court can’t determine that, unless it’s blatantly obvious -- the dad’s a sexual predator or the mom’s on drugs. Most often, what’s in the best interests of the child is what the court procedure is specifically designed to end. Have I ever told you why I wouldn’t let myself see that you are pretty until Anne called you ‘Aunt’?”

“Nothing like that.” He had not only not told her why, he hadn’t told her that.

“Well, I, quite innocently, picture myself having sex with girls walking past. If I let them know, it would be horrible to them, but I don’t. I realized once, though, that when I saw a kid and imagined having sex with his mommy, then I was imagining tearing apart what the kid needed most in his life. That would be like imagining strangling the kid, or something. So, I try not to notice the prettiness of mommies. If I can’t tell that they’re mommies, then I’m not imagining torturing the kids, even if they are mommies.”

“Let’s get this straight. You walk down the street raping in your imagination every pretty girl you pass,” she said.

“It’s consensual. It’s my imagination, so they are always eager.”

“Well, the real women you imagine don’t consent for you to imagine their consent.” The guy was seriously fucked up.

“Well, it’s all imaginary. They not only don’t consent, they don’t know that it’s happening.” Craig was sounding very defensive, now.

“But if a kid is involved -- involved in real life, if not in the imagination -- that makes it sick and predatory.”

“The way you say it makes it sound sick.”

“So does the way you say it,” she said. “That’s because it is sick. You go around treating women walking innocently by as your fantasy harem.”

“Well, that may be sick, but it’s not rare. You have a father and a brother. Ask them if they used to.”

“You’ve stopped?”

“Most of my sexual fantasies now involve you,” he said.

She thought of several snippy answers, but she didn’t use them. The truth was that she had had sexual fantasies involving him, too.

That was different. For one thing, they weren’t really fantasies; they were mostly memories. For another, they didn’t occur every day.

Then she thought about other men, strangers passing in the street, having sexual fantasies about her. For the first time, she was glad it was winter and she was fully covered.

When they got home, though, what struck her about him was his thoughtfulness in providing the space heater, and his bodily warmth.

April came, and with it warmth greater than December’s. During the cold snap, they’d taken to having Craig drive Anne to the library in his car. She and Anne would get out, and he’d go park. They followed that pattern in reverse. Anne was a little disappointed when Craig showed up on foot. She’d developed cabin fever, though. They adopted the pattern of Craig walking, actually trotting to the next corner while they waited. Then, Anne would tear along the sidewalk to him and catch his hand. Then she’d walk after her until they would all cross together holding hands.

Sasha was definitely going to move in with Zac. They were torn between two apartments which would be free May first.

She told Craig.

“Well,” he said, “I see five options for you, six really.” She could only see two. “Some of them may look unattractive. The first is that you take the apartment on your own. I don’t know whether you could swing it by yourself. The second is that you take another apartment and seek another roommate. That’s a lot of looking. A third is the other way. You go in as a roommate again for somebody who has the apartment already or, at least, the deal already. The fourth is that you take over the lease and find another roommate.” Those were the ones she’d seen. “The fifth is that you seek a smaller place for yourself.” From what Sasha reported, those rents were a lot more than half what their apartment had cost. “The sixth is that you move in with me. Come on, you’re spending two nights out of seven here, anyway, sometimes more. You’d save on rent. You’d save moving all that stuff back and forth. You would have only one place to cook, and you’d be close to Anne and Deb.”

“I’m a free woman. I would have to pay half the rent.”

“Or you could pay all the utilities. It’s a bother, and it’s two checks. The rent’s only one. I’m not sure I’m allowed to bring in a roommate; I know I can bring you in. They already know about you.”

“You’d really have me?” she asked. He’d be more demanding than Sasha in a lot of ways, but he already was. She didn’t think he’d be more trouble as a roommate, and there wouldn’t be the Zac problem.

“In a heart beat.”

“I’ll think about it.” But thinking didn’t suggest any problems.

“I’d have to get a double bed,” he said when she agreed. “What else?”

“Shouldn’t we go halves on any new furniture?” The place she shared with Sasha had come furnished, mostly with stuff former tenants hadn’t thought worth moving out.

“We’ll either stay together, or we split. If we stay together, what difference does it make? If we split, one of us has to take each piece of furniture. That one should pay for them in the first place. You’ll help choose. I wouldn’t want you to sleep in a bed you didn’t like. Bring all your kitchen utensils. I’ll sign a paper saying that anything which can prepare food is yours.”

Actually, Craig had, under her direction, bought several pieces of cookware. She couldn’t imagine taking them from him, though she couldn’t imagine him using them, either.

They took Anne to Lincoln Park zoo on one of her Saturdays. Craig had shown her how to renew the books on-line. Anne really enjoyed the trip, and the elephants were her favorite. Though the big apes and the big cats both impressed her.

They were walking along when a boy of maybe six or seven came tearing along. Craig dropped Anne’s hand and stepped in front of the kid.

“Hold up,” he said. The kid stopped, not before running into Craig. “Where’s Mommy?” The kid looked confused.

“Ricky!” said a man from behind them. The kid -- evidently Ricky -- ran to him.

“Sorry,” said Craig. He didn’t sound sorry.

The man made a no-problem gesture. “He was confused ‘cause Mommy’s at home. This is my weekend. You guys don’t know how lucky you are. Keep it.”

They went their separate ways.

“He thought we were married,” she said. She’d sorted out a fairly confusing encounter.

“And that Anne is our kid. Natural assumption. We look like a couple, and we look parental. I assumed that a kid at a zoo would have a mommy around. Natural assumptions don’t always work.”

It had been so like Craig to take responsibility for a kid who looked like he didn’t have anyone else to take responsibility for him. He would never let one of his own go.

She was tempted to point out the example of the guy regretting getting married. That wouldn’t be fair, though; if he couldn’t bring up marriage, she shouldn’t.

They had lunch at McDonald’s. Craig finally bought her a meal at Mickey D, and it was because Anne would much prefer that to the Pump Room.

Sasha told the landlord that the lease wasn’t going to be renewed. Sasha was the sort of woman who, since she was moving in with a guy, thought every other girl should too.

They took the next non-Anne Saturday for department stores instead of a museum.

Joint shopping with Craig turned out to be his saying, “What looks good to you?” He did insist that what they bought, a queen-size bed and matching sheets and blankets, a vanity for her, look solid. They delivered the new furniture and took away the twin bed.

What they couldn’t get, Craig pointed out, was a new closet. They made do, however, with all their outerwear in the living-room closet. The next Saturday, she decreed, was for grocery shopping and arranging the kitchen.

She moved most of her kitchen stuff Friday night instead of seeing a movie. She rearranged the kitchen, and saw what was missing -- not too much after she moved in her stuff.

After returning Anne to Deb, they went to a grocery store. Craig pushed the cart while she filled it. Craig had his wallet out when they got to the check-out line.

“We pay half and half,” she said. She had decided that. She wasn’t a kept woman.

“I pay for raw materials, you cook. It ends up costing me one hell of a lot less than buying meals in a restaurant. Pancake mix, cooking oil, and syrup might cost as much as an order of pancakes, but we’re still eating that purchase.”

“You’re not buying me.”

“If I were, I’d get ownership. I have a mere corner of your attention. Be sure to include the sales slip.” That was to the girl at the check out.

“Sir, we always do.”

Craig’s idea was that they always record the amount of the purchase on two columns on the same piece of paper. They’d add them up every once in a while, and the one who had paid the lesser amount would reimburse the other for half the difference. She had to run an example to see that he was being honest.

He bought her a parking spot for a house-warming gift. It was in a private lot, and the owner rented out individual spots. Craig had paid a year’s rent.

“We already agreed,” Craig said, “that rent is my responsibility.”

She sort of moved in over the next week. Beginning Wednesday, she slept in the bed.

Craig suggested that he set the tempo for sex before a work day. Then, she could change what she wanted. Knowing that he was aware of her hesitation about articulating sexual rules, she was suspicious. He took her up and over rapidly, though. Then he entered her, and they finished mutually.

“Mine,” he said when he gathered her into his arms at the end. “For the moment,” he added much later.

They had been a bit crowded in his twin bed. They weren’t really using all of the Queen. After a little experimentation, though, they learned to leave the wet spot on one side and sleep on the other.

The last Saturday in April, Craig’s phone rang while he was taking his morning shower. She was due at the school early, so she always prepared first.

“Your cell,” she called Craig.

“Get it, will you? If it’s the office, tell them I’ll give them some time, but I’ve made commitments.” They were going to move the last of her clothes and her bed stuff today.

She said “Craig Warren’s phone” at the same time the girl on the other end was saying, “Uncle Craig, it’s awful.”

“Craig isn’t available right now,” she continued. She’d be damned it she’d tell some young niece that he was taking a shower while a woman was in his apartment.

“Are you the woman who called at Christmas? I’m Sharon.”

“Yeah.”

“The one with a face of an angel and the body of a wet dream? Mom explained to me about wet dreams ... She said he calls me sweetheart, but you are really his sweetheart, and he probably doesn’t call you that. Does he?”

He called her “darling” sometimes, but he called Anne “sweetheart” more than he did her. “Not really.”

“But you really are, aren’t you? And do you really have the body of a wet dream? It didn’t sound like it would have a body, but mom said he’d probably seen your body in a wet dream.”

“No comment. Indeed, I have no comment on any of this conversation.” Except that Craig shouldn’t have told his niece that.

“Are you a politician? Seems that most politicians are from Chicago. Wasn’t President Obama?”

“President Obama lived here before he was elected,” she told the niece. “I think he was born in Hawaii. I’m not a politician. I don’t think we have more in Chicago -- as a fraction of the population -- than you do in Denver. I said ‘no comment’ because I didn’t want to answer that question.”

“When Mom doesn’t want to answer one of my questions, she tells me that I shouldn’t ask it. Dad, too, and sometimes Uncle Craig.”

“Well, they’re right. At least you asked me a lot of questions that you shouldn’t have. It’s just that I don’t have authority over you. Don’t you hate it when people who have no relation to you try to raise you? So, I only said that I wouldn’t answer. Of course, you’re a smart girl -- at least you have a smart uncle. You just might figure out that the questions I wouldn’t answer just might not be appropriate to ask.”

“You’re nice,” the niece said. “Mom tells me that guys like girls who are nice, but the ones I know just seem to think about your looks.”

“And, at fourteen, you don’t have the looks that fourteen-year-old boys care about? Don’t worry. Fourteen-year-old boys don’t have what women with breasts care about. And, if they grow up, they care about your being nice, too. Here’s your uncle.”

Craig took the phone. “Yeah, she is,” he said. Then he looked at her embarrassed. “You should never have said that ... I can’t explain with her standing here, but you should know better.” He took the phone into the bedroom; the apartment gave little privacy, and she was damned if she would leave him more.

“She’s fourteen,” she told Craig when he came into the living room looking abashed. “What’s your excuse?”

“Well, I’d said that you’d graduated from college, and Theo asked what were your other qualifications. So, I mentioned that you were pretty.” That hadn’t been the exact words he’d used.

“‘Face like an angel,’ if inaccurate, is complimentary. I told your niece?...”

“Sharon,” he said.

“ ... Sharon that guys would think of other things besides girls’ bodies if they grew up. Obviously, you hadn’t. What’s so special about graduating from college?”

“I’d been talking to you and Anne. Something in my tone told him that she was young. He asked if either of you were legal.”

“Meaning?” she asked.

“Age of consent. I sometimes get teased about my flirting with young kids. I’ve dated, but when my sister hears about a girl, she wants to know the wedding date. So, she doesn’t hear about many.”

“She apparently heard about me.”

“You called me when she was there. She hadn’t heard about you up to then.” So, he wasn’t thinking about a wedding with her. She shouldn’t be disappointed. She was frightened when she thought about being married to him. Still, she felt a little disappointed.

“Look,” he continued. “I speak before I think. ‘Put the mind into gear before engaging the mouth.’ I know it; I don’t always do it. Sharon was there, and I shouldn’t have answered Theo that way. Hell! Teddy was there, and I don’t think he’s even had a wet dream yet.”

“Wrong. You shouldn’t have said that to your brother in law, or any other person whatsoever. It may have been stupider when his kids were there, but it was rude and demeaning in itself. I’ve said that you could think what you want about me as long as you keep those ideas to yourself.”

“I think you only said that I shouldn’t express them to you, though I’ll admit that expressing them where they’ll get back to you is a blunder.”

“So what do you tell your workmates?” she asked. “That I’m a good fuck?”

“I haven’t even told them that we’ve moved in together. I do say that you teach kids all they need to know.”

“Well, be glad that you haven’t reported that I’ve moved in with you. I’m reconsidering that.”

“Come on, Alicia,” he said. “I talked out of turn, and you’re pissed. You have a right to be pissed, but don’t overdo it. Slap my face, and get over it.”

He shouldn’t have mentioned that then. She slapped him, hard. He was jolted, and felt his face.

“Are you over it now?” he asked.

“Oh, God, Craig. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry you slapped me, but you actually talked of walking out? Don’t you have any sense of proportion?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I can walk out any time I like. If one of the kids I teach had acted like I did, I’d have given him a time out.”

“Seems to me that punishment is measured by what it means to the person you’re punishing. That slap hurt, but I won’t feel it in another minute. If you walked out on me, it would devastate me, probably for years, certainly for months.”

“Don’t lay a guilt trip on me. I stay with you for as long as it is good forme!”

“Okay,” he said. “But you owe it to me to tell me how to make it good for you again. You’ll have to admit that some of this has been.”

And she had to admit that almost all of it had been -- almost. “Try to stop being a prick.”

“I already am trying.”

“Very trying,” she said. From his face, he hadn’t heard it before.

For all her threat to walk out, Al was committed to living in the same apartment with Craig and sleeping in the same bed. She’d enjoyed sharing a bed with him, but she would have to share a bed during her period. That hadn’t seemed that big a deal when the issue of sharing an apartment first arose. Sasha and Zac would be in the same situation, and Sasha hadn’t expressed worries. Now, however, she had just moved in and her period was starting Monday. She’d never actually mentioned menstruation with Craig, but now was the time.

“My period starts Monday,” she told him at Sunday lunch.

“I understand that the cliche answer is towels on the bed, but I have all these twin sheets left over which have absolutely no other use. We could put them down on the others.”

“Craig!”

“They don’t absorb enough?” he asked. “We have enough to make a really thick pad.”

“Craig, we are not going to have sex then. It would be a huge mess.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” she asked. He switched back and forth so fast.

“You make the rules. Still, you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“You wouldn’t like the mess.”

“I make a mess 365 days a year. We deal with that. Do you have any more experience with sex during menstruation than I do? People do it, and they find that towels are a sufficient precaution.”

That night, although they both had work the next morning, he made elaborate love to her. She came twice under his mouth and once around his cock.

Monday night, he gave her a passionate, wet kiss after they went to bed.

“No further,” she said, and he went no further. She went to sleep in his arms, though, and she felt his erection hard and hot against her seat.

Tuesday night, he kissed her again. It was deep and exciting, he more pillaged her mouth than explored it.

At the height of her arousal, she felt his hand lift the hem of her nightie. She clamped her legs together, but his finger slipped down between her lips.

He stroked the top of those lips and her clit. She tried to lift his arm, but she could have pulled up on the building to as much effect.

‘Blood!’ she thought, but she had brought herself off during previous periods, and she had never got blood on her finger.

The heat built. He didn’t tease, and her arousal grew rapidly and directly.

The fire shook her, and he finally raised his face from hers.

“You are delightful,” he said.

“Why does your pleasing me make me delightful?”

“Because you please so delightfully.” Which wasn’t really an answer.

Still, a bridge had been crossed. He pleasured her with his finger the next two nights.

He had promised, she mused on her drive home Friday night, to try to keep her happy. He’d never promised to act how she wanted.

He had even made the bed neatly that morning, and that had been one friction. Getting the chores assigned had been an unanticipated problem.

Al and Sasha had bought and prepared their own food, with lots of exceptions. Each had cleaned her own room and done her own laundry. Cleaning the other rooms had rotated.

Now, Al cooked meals except when they went out or ordered in. She thought that having Craig cook was something like sending her down to program computers.

(While the school would never hire Craig, if he’d tried to take her place, he wouldn’t ask what a four-year-old was. If she tried to take his place, her first question would be, “What is a program, and what does it do?”)

Craig said from the start that he’d do laundry and wash (i.e. put in the dishwasher) the dishes. The other chores were harder to assign.

They finally agreed that she would clean the kitchen -- it went with cooking -- and he would handle the other three rooms.

“Look,” he’d said, “the standard is your standard, but that means that it’s not clear to me. When something isn’t done to your standard, tell me. Don’t blow up or punish me because it isn’t.”

That was fair, and she tried to keep to that agreement. An unmade bed, though, stretched her patience.

How could anyone leave the house with the bed unmade? Mom had not been the neatest housekeeper in the world, but she’d always made her bed -- and insisted that her kids from a young age make theirs -- every day.

After the first time, every time she had seen Craig’s bed, it had been made. Often, it had had one corner tucked invitingly open. How was she to know that the bed she saw Friday night had been made -- not on Friday morning when normal people made their beds -- but as one of the final preparations of the evening before he went to pick her up?

Craig tried, he really did. It was just that you either thought that an unoccupied bed was naturally made, or you thought that making a bed was one of the tasks you did to satisfy Al’s quirky whims.

When it was the second, you tended to forget.

She made it a habit to check the bed as the last thing before heading off to work. If it needed it, she made it.

Craig, who did make an effort to please her, took to making the bed -- when he remembered, and he remembered more often than not -- while she was taking her shower. Since she left for work first, she showered first.

Craig was a really satisfying lover, and that he was the only man to have real sex with her didn’t disqualify her for making that judgment. She’d made out with enough boys to know that making out with Craig was superior. Full sex with him was even better, but she couldn’t imagine Ken jumping the gulf between his making out and Craig’s real sex just because he got to use his cock.

The change, though, was not from Sasha to Craig. It was from Sasha as a roommate and Craig as a part-time lover to Craig as a roommate and full-time lover. You could look at that as two changes.

Sasha as a roommate hadn’t really tried to please Al. The rules had been part of the agreement to be a roommate, and they had kept the rules. Craig really tried to please her, and the roommate rules had been negotiated. On the other side, Sasha was a woman, and she understood. Sometimes, she felt that she had to lead Craig slowly to the most obvious points. Some men were from Mars; Craig was from an entirely different galaxy.

Aside from her periods, Craig as a permanent lover was better than he’d been weekends only, but not one hell of a lot better. What limited them on weeknights wasn’t his willingness, skill, or imagination. It was the looming alarms and the work they foretold.

Her pleasure with him rose and fell in her consciousness but her opinion didn’t change until she went to bed that night. Craig was having his bathroom time and would soon join her. She pulled back the covers and saw the bed with a thin pad of sheets covering the middle third of the length of the bed. She would have been puzzled if he hadn’t laid out his plans for having sex during her period. This was his protection for the bottom sheet.

Friday was the fifth day of her period, and her flow was a lot less that night. Still, he didn’t know that, and she wasn’t going to have him make these decisions. And he’d been so patient earlier in their relationship.

Then she thought again. He’d been patient in comparison with other boys, most noticeably Ken. When boys had become too insistent -- and she had a relationship with them that she otherwise wanted to keep, loads of boys had been too insistent that she had been glad to drop -- she had satisfied them with her mouth.

She had twice required reciprocity, and neither boy had made that worthwhile. Craig had, without her demanding it, used his mouth on her. It had been wonderful. And she had never used hers on him.

She certainly wanted to continue her relationship with Craig, and he’d certainly not moved too fast, if he wanted something messy this time...

Craig came in, pulled back the covers, and grinned. She smiled at him, and he got in bed beside her. The kiss was exciting, if a little predatory. Well, she was the predator in this bed this night.

“Lie flat on your back,” she told him. It was her ‘Stop hitting her now!’ voice from school.

Craig complied, much better than most preschoolers did. But, then, Craig heard that voice less often.

She pulled the covers to her side of the bed, baring him completely. As she looked at his cock, it stood up straight and inclined towards his larger head.

When she pulled his knees apart, he cooperated. She knelt between his legs and looked at her target. It sort of quivered under her gaze. She thought that it was larger than the other two cocks she’d had in her mouth. What the hell? It fit in her vagina, and that was smaller.

She took the shaft in her right hand, and it seemed to pulse. She pursed her lips as she bent slowly over. She covered the tip with her lips and let them open as she pressed downward. Craig thrust into her, but he couldn’t get much distance from that position.

She followed him down. Then she relaxed her hand and took him deeper. He didn’t taste too good, but she imagined she hadn’t either. He’d showered this morning and had pissed several times since -- including minutes ago.

She swirled her tongue around his head, swirled it again. Now, the only taste was the bitter, but not unpleasant, taste of precum.

“Oh, God, Alicia!” Craig said. He sounded like he was enjoying himself. She would have asked, but she had her mouth full.

She pulled back until his head was just inside her lips. Then she took him deep again and swallowed. Swallowing pulled her tongue up the bottom of his shaft.

She brought her left hand up the bed until his balls were in her fingers. As she moved up and down on him, she twiddled those fingers.

“God!” Craig’s voice exploded as he came in a gush. She swallowed and swallowed. The taste was salty, but the consistency was like new-made Jell-O, and the temperature wasn’t that different.

When he was done and the cock was getting limp, she raised back up. She let his cock slip out of between her lips, getting most of the stuff.