Chapter 11

As the yellow cab moved uptown, its passengers were lost in their private thoughts. Barbara snuggled up against her husband and curled her long legs on the seat under her. She was more numb than anything. She was also very tired because it had been nearly twenty-four hours since she had last slept. Shame, the warm afterglow of unimaginable sex, regrets, tingling and lingering excitement and a fear of the future were the melange of contradictory feelings that she was experiencing.

Gordon held his wife and gently rubbed her shoulder. In some ways, this was a more intimate connection than her connections of the previous hours. She cradled her head against his broad chest.

What had actually happened was difficult for him to grasp, even though he had been an integral part of it. Well, at least he was an observer, for an hour or so, of the activities that took place in the private club that catered to swinging couples. Did what happened there qualify them as swingers? he asked himself. God how he hated labels, though it hadn't been so long ago that he didn't hesitate to label nearly everyone with whom he came in contact. Whore, slut and tramp, were words he had used to describe Barbara's best friend, Susan. Did those same words now apply to the woman whose tousled blonde hair touched his cheek, his own wife?

The only words that had been spoken during the short ride was Gordon asking, "what do you want to do tomorrow?" And Barbara's answer, "I promised Len that I would have a late lunch with him, he has a proposition he wants to make to me." Then she shared with him her preference for a new name, "Gordon, I love it when you call me Barbara, or Babs but from now on please call me Barbie." They both knew that the new name had a significance beyond how it sounded, it represented a transformation.

As the taxi stopped in front of the Carlyle hotel, the early morning light was creeping over the eastern horizon. A new day was about to begin in the teeming metropolis and a new life had already begun for Barbara and Gordon.

The thick drapes that covered the window in their room completely blocked out the light of the new dawn. Their exhausted bodies told them it was bedtime even though if they had been home, they would soon be waking up. They simultaneously dropped their clothes in piles on each side of the king-size bed and tumbled under the covers. Within seconds they were sleeping deeply.

When Barbara awoke, for a few seconds she didn't know where she was.

She padded to the bathroom to pee and was abruptly reminded what had happened during their time at Le Trapeze. The flesh between her legs was tender but also incredibly sensitive. When she swiped the tissue it came in contact with her still engorged clitoris. She was trembling, as if she had too much to drink, but it wasn't alcohol that caused the tremors, it was a sensory overload. The clock on the night stand indicated that it was after noon and, therefore, they had been sleeping for more than seven hours. Barbara couldn't remember the last time they had slept in that late.

Gordon was still sleeping and she didn't want to wake him but she needed to talk with someone so she walked to the wall phone in the bathroom and dialed the familiar number of the only other person she could talk with about what was troubling her. After just one ring she heard Susan's feisty voice. "Hello. You better not be selling anything, I'm not in the mood." "Hi, it's me. Sounds like this isn't a good time for you to talk." She placed a towel on the marble floor and slid down until her bare buttocks came in contact with the makeshift cushion.

"Oh hi Barb. No this is a good time. I've been bombarded by asshole salesmen all morning and I was ready to give the next one a piece of my mind. What's up?" Barbara didn't know where to begin. They hadn't had a deep conversation since that night at La Costa more than three weeks ago.

That was the night that she had so vociferously defended fidelity.

During the brief, superficial telephone conversations since then they had talked about her surgery, getting back into her exercise routine and holding to her weight target. She felt very foolish now because nearly everything that Susan had told her at the spa in California had been confirmed.

"I just got up," Barbara confessed.

"You just got up? You've got to be kidding! I can't remember a morning when you didn't get up with the chickens." "We're in New York and didn't get to bed until five this morning." "Okay girl, you've got my undivided attention. I want to know everything and remember... I'll know if you're lying to me." How do you tell your best friend that you spent an evening in a swing club? How do you tell her that you pushed your husband into the arms and between the legs of a pretty Asian while you and her husband watched them fuck? How do you tell her that you were fucked by a monstrous cock attached to a Pakistani doctor. Was it even possible to explain that the good doctor and a black man, who owned more than one escort agency, fucked your pussy and your ass at the same time?