Chapter 7

"My Beloved Harry, My Precious Carol,

It's 3 AM and I have to go.

Please believe me when I say this is the hardest goodbye I've ever skipped out on. If I stayed to say it face-to-face, I'm not sure I could go.

Know in your hearts I will see you again. Know in your hearts I will come home to you.

My love is with you always, entwined with your souls,

Margo"

Carol awoke to the smell of coffee. Straightening her collar she walked into the kitchen to find Harry at the table. He stared out the window like a lost soul, one hand limp on the table next to the cup of coffee and bottle of Jack Daniels. The note was held in his other seemingly lifeless hand.

She took the note and read it.

She stepped in front of him and knelt, putting her head at eye level.

"I kept hoping she'd change her mind, that all our talking of her leaving would change her mind," he muttered, still staring at a thousand bleak miles of nothing.

"Harry, baby, you knew it wouldn't. If that would've changed her mind, she wouldn't be the woman we love. I tell you what, let's get buzzed and spend all day fucking and cuddling. I know we'll feel better after that."

His eyes focused and he looked at her, a smile starting to spread across his face.

"Oh babe, that does sound like a hell of a plan and making love with you is the best cure for whatever ails me but we have things to do today. I'll be fine. How're you doing? Are you doing okay?"

"No Harry, I'm just waiting my turn to miss her."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you got up first, you found the note, you looked like a shattered pane of glass when I came in. I need to be together to see you through that. When I no longer need to be together, then I can miss her."

"Could you stand a little 'missing her' time now?"

"Yeah Harry," she said, the tears flowing down her cheeks, "if you're okay, I really could."

He got down on the floor and held her as she cried, rocking her back and forth.

And then they were crying together, rocking each other. To have found someone so dear and precious to them both only for her to be gone again left a massive aching emptiness and knowing that she was coming back didn't help at the moment.

The step from there to Harry carrying his precious pet to the bedroom wasn't that far at all.

He laid Carol on the bed and got in beside her as she turned on her side to face him. For a time they just lay there, gently touching each other, staring into each other's eyes.

Then Harry eased down her body, pushing her to her back and opening her legs. He began to kiss her, her cunt lips, her clit, her inner thighs, licking and worshipping, slowly and lovingly.

"Are you thinking of her?" she asked.

"No Baby Girl," he replied, "I'm thanking God that you're here, you're mine and that you love me."

"Oh sir, you know just how to melt my heart."

And he continued to make love to her with his tongue, dreamily and gently, and she came for him, quietly and languorously and often. He took his time as he was in no hurry; away from that bed was a home without one of its family but between the legs of his precious he could for a time forget, at the same time showing the first most important woman in his life his love for her. He was safe with her and the part of him that needed comfort found it in her through a touch or being held in her arms or by lying between her thighs or making love to her. The essence of her, whatever it was, soothed him and healed him. When his mind would flicker to their world without their beloved Margo it would skitter back to the comfort of her and his making love to her continued.

After quite some time had passed, she reached down and grabbed his hair and pulled on it.

"Come up here sir, that's been most lovely, but now I want to do something for you."

He moved up the bed to lie with his head beside hers. She faced him and kissed the end of his nose.

"So Harry, how may I please you? What would you have me do? Who would you have me be?"

"I want a slightly more romantic version of the first orgasm you ever gave me," he said, smiling.

She thought back. "Oh, so you want it to be romantic and a hand job, hmm? Well, trust me, that's well within my abilities. You lay here and I'll be right back."

She scurried about, lighting candles, off to the kitchen and back again with a bottle of oil in a pot of hot water and then there she was, getting into position between his legs, sitting tailor fashion, his legs over her hips.

"Harry, we're going to have to get you some romantic ballads on CD," she said, and then she began to sing "Unforgettable", her beautiful voice sending chills of pleasure up Harry's spine.

As she sang she poured the warm rose-fragranced oil, his first scent-memory of her, spiraling it out, leaving thin trails up and down his thighs and across his belly. She put the bottle back in the pot on the bedside table to keep it warm.

She worked the oil into his skin, starting on his legs, easing the tension out of him, her every move an act of love.

As she finished the song, Harry was looking at her with adoration and amazement.

"Beloved, why would you know old romantic songs?"

She smiled. "A previous owner of mine was an older gentleman. He had a taste for them and a very good record collection."

"You mean real vinyl records?"

"Yes sir, real vinyl records, over five thousand of them, with the sound system to play them as they were meant to be played. I like to sing and they were beautiful so I learned them."

"Then I'll shut up and let you sing to your heart's content. They bring back memories of the music my parents used to play all the time."

She brushed his cock with her hands. "Why sir, I hope I don't remind you of your parents!"

"Not particularly, you silly girl, but the songs remind me of happy times in this house and that's always a good thing."

As she returned to her work, "Chances Are" began to spill from her lips.

She moved from his thighs to his abdomen and he closed his eyes, enjoying the conflicting currents in his body. As always, her touch excited him and now was no exception, his erection was a constant thing, faintly bobbing as she kneaded his flesh beneath her hands but yet that very effort of hers drained the tension from the area. He wanted to come but he was in no particular hurry and felt quite content to let things happen when they happened. He could spend the rest of his life just being held by her and consider it a life well-lived.

Through "Night and Day" she smoothed away his concerns. As she finished "Stardust", she brought out the warm oil and poured it on and around his cock. As she started "Begin the Beguine" her hands were swirling through his pubic hair and up onto his shaft.

Harry lay back and closed his eyes. When she'd done this before he'd watched enough to know the physical mechanics of how she performed her magic, but dwelling on that was to rob the act of some of its wonder and to ignore the great mysteries that enshrouded it. How could she know exactly where to lightly touch him for just a fraction of a second to heighten his arousal before he himself realized that was the spot? How could she know the moods and tempers of his cock better than him? Was she really anticipating his reactions or leading them?

In the end, Harry just stopped thinking and let her play him like a harp. As her fingers and palms danced on his dick he rushed towards orgasm only to have her change the tempo and the torrent would recede then she would bring it on again and he knew this time there was no stopping it but there was as she danced away from the brink and he felt his hips relax and lower to the bed. Her hands felt so soft and so good and before he knew it there it was, the point of no return and he was almost there and this was it she'd let him come and no, no she wouldn't, there was no climax this time.

He lay there in sweetest agony, wondering what it would feel like if he were truly restrained, if she were free to play his entire body and him helpless to prevent it? He stored in his mental 'playtime' folder and gave himself back to her manipulations as she slowly sang the Cranberries' "Dreams" and he prayed to God he never hurt this beautiful soul and when the song was finished she said "I love you Harry" and his hips came up off the bed, and she hadn't even had to really touch him to set it off and oh God he loved her and he wanted her and he needed her and she was his.

Harry sank back into the bed, lying there with his eyes closed, feeling his heartbeat bounce his cock as it slowly went limp.

"Ick, it's cold already. Harry, semen doesn't hold heat worth a damn."

Harry giggled, then chuckled. Opening his eyes he saw her, dribbles of cum in her hair and on her face, which wore a disgusted look. With that the chuckles became gales of laughter and she crawled up from between his legs and rubbed her hair all over him and it was cold and it was icky and so when they were both finished laughing and rolling over the bed with each other they headed for the shower.

They got dressed, Carol putting her leash chain on and running it down her front and then around her waist through her belt loops, looping it through again in the front.

"So sir, where all are we going today?"

"Breakfast, and then by the office so I can introduce you to Karen and get the address of an architect and a home contractor we did some work for, then we need to go see them. By the time we're through with all that it'll be supper time, after that we need to find someone about the work that's going to be done in the back yard."

"Excuse me Harry, architect, home contractor?"

"Oh, didn't I tell you? We're adding on to and remodeling the master bath. Tub for... several... giant shower, bidet, two toilets, two sinks and vanities, another full closet. Perhaps more."

"A-a-and the back yard?"

"Well, of course the hot tub, but we also need a much higher and much more impenetrable fence and you need to decide the size and shape of the pool, although I hope you can leave all the trees I have back there. The shade's really nice."

One minute he was talking. The next he was on the floor on his back with a woman fucking his mouth with her tongue. What happened in-between he was never quite sure.

Karen Pinard took a moment to savor the change she'd heard in Harry's voice as she ate her lunch at her desk.

He'd never know how sure she was that he was going to kill himself, either actively or just by losing focus on the road one night and piling into a convenient bridge embankment. She'd started emotionally distancing herself from him so it wouldn't hurt so much when he did.

It wasn't that she didn't care or hadn't tried to bring him out of the despair he'd sunk into when that bitch gutted him. She'd tried to reach him, tried to find a spark of the man who'd been her friend since college and her business partner since the two of them had started their agency on a shoestring and a Visa card out of a tiny office in a strip mall nine years before.

She couldn't find that spark. It didn't seem that he was dying so much as it seemed he'd already died and just hadn't lain down yet.

It had ripped her apart to watch him diminish, day by day, as if he were receding in the distance while still right there with her. She was the one friend Angie hadn't pulled him away from and she raged at her helplessness. And the only reason Angie hadn't tried was that she was a greedy little whore and Karen was half of 'G & P's magic. Well, that and Angie knew that Karen would rip her in half, tie her hands together and use her for a jump-rope.

At 5'5", 239 lbs someone might expect Karen Pinard to be overweight. And if it wasn't all muscle, she might've been. Built on a stocky German frame she had realized early on that the Good Fairy was never going to wave a magic wand and make her slim and willowy. If she was going to be a brick, she was going to be a brick with power. She exercised regularly, practiced Tae-Kwon-Do, performed strength training and always ate her Wheaties. With a clever job of tailoring, her suits could hide most of the evidence that she could break pretty much whomever she met. It helped in business if the clients weren't terrified.

She really only had one vice. She liked to drink and it was something she had to keep tight reins on. Harry would never know that her concern for him and the drinking she'd done in her own despair had been the tiny straw that finally overloaded her latest romantic road-wreck of a relationship. Not that it would have lasted much longer anyway, but the last six months with Harry had punched the ticket early. No great loss in the long run. It was an affair doomed to failure before it began. Almost all of her relationships were. Patricia was just the latest in the long line of women who'd wanted more of Karen's life than she had to give. Still, Karen would miss her... until the next road-wreck.

When Carol had called Thursday morning, Karen's first thought had been that Harry had had an accident, that maybe the final act of the opera was beginning and her character was finally to sing her aria. She was the last companion of the hero whose part it was to mourn his passing while stalking into the forest, seeking the witch that had taken his life, there to end hers with much Wagnerian Sturm und Drang. She was ready to play that role. She owed him that. The dream of 'G & P' had been hers, but the drive to make it real, belief in the dream enough for both of them, hell even the Visa card, those had been Harry's. She wasn't sure how the opera would have ended. She had hoped that she'd emerge out of the woods victorious and lay the witch's head upon Harry's tomb... but there was also the ending, most un-operatic, where she underwent a costume change into an orange jumpsuit and spent the rest of her life in a dungeon. That would've sucked and she was just as glad she'd not had to find out which ending she would have gotten.

But since last night, instead of worrying about such things an instant longer, she was worrying about this new woman, this Carol, breaking his heart.

As they drove to his office, Harry told her the story.

"So there we were, I was a stoner with a modern lit degree, completely un-hirable, and she had a marketing degree. She had a dream of a small advertising agency, just a little one to handle little clients, enough to make a living off of, but not much more. Nobody in the field would hire her, she had no money and she had given up."

"We're sitting there, drunk off our ass on cheap tequila one night and I told her I had a little money, about $4500 courtesy of my grandfather's will and a Visa card with almost nothing on it and a decent credit line. We could start our own agency on that. I had to talk her into it like five times because she was so drunk she kept forgetting she'd agreed. So here's this messy drunk lesbian body builder hugging all over me, telling me she'd fuck me if I were a girl, I'm telling her I'd fuck her if I were a girl, we both cry a little because I'm not a girl."

"Next morning I've got to come on like a Marine Corp D.I., all while I've got one of the five worst hangovers of my life, to get her out to find office space. I knew if we didn't move immediately, she'd never move at all. The first nine months we were so far under, it was she and I and my puppy all living in an efficiency, eating Mac & Cheese and Ramen Noodles and I still can't look at either. Thank God we were too busy and too broke for a love life because that would have gotten real embarrassing. After nine months, we had a party with a whole bottle of cheap champagne because we could afford a two bedroom and I could stop waking up about four times a week in the very tight grip of a body-builder having an amorous dream. I imagine she got a little tired of my morning wood getting lodged in her ass crack. We were both really fucking tired of Chipper's gas. Evidently, pasta of any kind didn't agree with him."

"By the end of the first year, we maybe could have afforded separate apartments... maybe, but we were used to each other and so kept living with each other for another four years. I'd have to watch her spend way too much time with her free weights all over the house while she had to watch me sit on the porch, smoking dope and eating Captain Crunch. Then my parents died, Nicki didn't want the house, I kept it. G & P landed it's first major account, the company was finally, solidly, in the black, we and the staff, all five of them, went out to Persian Gulf Surf Club to celebrate. That's the night I met Angie. I moved into Mom and Dad's place, Karen got a condo. Angie and I starting dating, six months later we were married. G & P's done well ever since, although as I said earlier, she's been carrying Harry the Amazing Zombie for the last six months."

"I owe her more than I could ever repay her, Beloved. For so long she was the only friend I had left. I know she'll like you."

When they got to the office, half a floor, 6,400 square feet, Harry breezed in to the receptionist.

"Afternoon Rhonda, you look lovely today, any clients around?"

"Uh, uh, uh-"

"Rhonda, if you don't remember how to speak we're going to have to send you to special classes... again. You remember last time, electro-shock, ice baths, strait-jackets... ze injeckzions?"

"No Mr. Grimes, no clients."

"Thank you Rhonda. Rhonda, meet Carol, the light of my life and song of my heart. She'll be around from now on. Is the radiant Sappho in her office?"

"Yes Mr. Grimes."

"Thank you, Rhonda."

Harry headed down a hallway and began singing loudly as he went forward into a handstand then over onto his feet and forward into another handstand on so on down the hall.

"Sunshine... on my shoulders... makes my skiiiin peel.

Sunshine... in my eyes... will make me bliiiiiind.

Sunshine... on the water... causes boooooat wrecks.

Sunshine... almost all the time... fries my miiiiiiind."

Out of her office Karen came like a bull rushing a matador.

"Harry! If you keep slaughtering that beautiful song I'm going to tie you into a tiny knot and use you for a soccer ball!"

"Ah," Harry said, finishing his last rotation and leaping up into the air sideways, "the radiant Sappho descendeth from her bower in fair Lesbos' hills to take unto her muscular bosom her one and only..."

Karen reached out and caught him in her arms.

"ASSHOLE!" came the yell from many voices, all around them.

Carol realized that she was in the middle of a ritual, a joyous celebration of... something... that had not occurred in such a long time. All the employees within hearing were out of their offices or up in their cubicles, watching and smiling and laughing.

"All right galley slaves," Harry said, "back to the oars. Don't forget, the company picnic is loosely scheduled for the first weekend we can reasonably expect a high of only about 80 degrees. Once again for your entertainment I will be risking my life to wrestle Karen and this year, I just know I'm going to... lose again."

He turned to look at the short woman supporting him effortlessly.

"Hi, snookums. Love me? Miss me? Wanna throw me out a window?"

Karen looked at him, her eyes filling with moisture. She kissed him on the cheek tenderly.

"Yes, yes, not today."

"Oh good, it would've spoiled my dinner plans. Karen Pinard, Carol Riley. Carol, go let Karen threaten you while I dig through my Rolodex."

Karen let him down to the floor. He threw his arms around her neck and whispered, "It's ok, Sappho, I'm going to be alright. I'm sorry you had to carry me."