Chapter 1

It took John ten minutes hard work with the plunger to get a decent flush out of the toilet. Five clogs in the last couple weeks. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He shouldn't have trusted that home inspector, no matter how much Elaine said she felt like the old lady who lived in a shoe after Peter had been born.

Plunging a toilet didn't work showy muscles, but it gave him time to think about work. Normally he escaped his office Friday and, no matter how hot the office brush fires, he let them through the weekend. On Monday he played catchup and each day tension built until by Wednesday, he would be spending breaks playing hearts with the janitorial staff in the sub-basement.

This past week had been a five-day migraine of personnel management. The worst part had been the escalation of the latest he said/she said crisis and the radiating network of grief it caused. Frequently John and his coworker Marty laid out the building plans and stared at the departments as patchworks of the different factions. The argument had been inconsequential, but John had witnessed how quickly battle lines could be drawn over the most inconsequential matters. This week they had "locked down" the staplers and highlighters in anticipation and still there had been incidents.

The past week's dustup was a hiccup. Beyond the horizon, summer vacation planning loomed. In weeks his hallway would be a holding pen for the mob of time share and wedding bell idiots who needed the first two weeks in June off. Marty kept a can of pepper spray in his drawer and made sure it was charged for the summer crazies. John wasn't frightened. No matter how they postured and presented, in his head he pictured them as small, furry ineffectual creatures. On those days, Human Resources Associate was a fancy way of saying lemming wrangler.

John's bright idea was for corporate to buy vacation properties and use them to dilute timeshare conflicts. It was a simple idea, but his wrinkle was to get HR to manage employees' vacation time. Get everyone locked in to the same year-in and year-out schedule instead of having the request scramble. Now he needed to get the particulars on paper before it left his head.

He hesitated at the stairs as Elaine's enunciated storytelling voice drifted down. If he went to his office, he would get caught up in a "please, dear" or "please, daddy" chore.

He couldn't forget this idea, and though he loved them, his family was a giant vortex of time sucking.

Damn it, concentrate on the plan. Time shares and resorts, memos and corporate, data-basing and planning, lemmings skiing black diamond trails in Aspen.

Searching the kitchen, he turned up a box of crayons and three dried-up markers. In passing he stuck a pair of black bananas in the freezer and smashed a fruit fly.

His every thought turned to lemmings: lemmings waddle-dancing at weddings, lemmings sitting in lawn chairs drinking warm beer, "oohing" at amusement parks' fireworks, vomiting in pay toilets, waiting in three hour lines for the roller coaster, and lemmings, lemmings, lemmings piling endlessly down slides at water parks.

The longer the search went on the more he panicked.

He flashed back to Wednesday when an Italian suit told him that he and his lemming wife needed to be in Biarritz on June 5th. John could picture it already. A paunch bellied lemming stuffed into a skimpy, red racing swimsuit rubbing SPF 100 sun block over his pale hairy belly. His lemming wife snoozed in her recliner while paunch belly goggled at two gorgeous twenty-somethings on the other side of the pool.

Under the couch cushions looked to be a loss. Chip crumbs, a blue sippy cup lid and ... shoved in the right corner ... aha! ... pens. Sucked up to them was a silver triangle of metallic wrapping that looked like the stuff they wrapped pop-tarts in. Along the edge he could see the letters "Tr" a rip bisecting an "o" and then an elevated dot that must have been topping off an "i."

The image of an endless line of lemmings cramming themselves into a cable car hit him. The line stretched to the horizon, and already lemming faces were smushed flat against the glass. The frame billowed out, the glass swelling like a balloon, lemming faces compressed inside so tightly the glass was a black and white polka dot pattern of panicky lemming eyes. Still the lemmings streamed in and the heavy muscled conductor became a compactor, jamming one more in, again and again.

God, why did he think of things like that? He chose a black ballpoint that miraculously had the cap on and pushed the rest of the pens back behind the cushion.

The wrap clung to his hand. "Troi" something. It struck him as familiar, but he pushed the thought aside and stuck the bit of crap in his wallet. Mister A.D.D. had to get his idea down before it drifted away.

It took twenty minutes and thirty-two pink post-its to flesh out the idea, but by the end he was satisfied that he'd gotten the essentials. Afterwards he whipped dinner together.

Upstairs, he peeked in the master bedroom and saw his kids huddled beside Elaine on the bed. His daughter shushed him by putting a finger to her lips while Peter stared at the ceiling with dreamy unfocus.

Elaine's cheeks screwed on her best silly-serious face as she acted out the Dr. Seuss book. John lingered on the play of her lips and let his thoughts stray.

It was a Norman Rockwell scene, but to his eyes there was nothing folksy or homespun about his wife. His gaze settled on her mouth opening and closing, her tongue tip just visible as she hissed out a word.

"Daddy?" Sasha looked at him and all lascivious thoughts faded. Elaine had stopped and smiled at him curiously. 'Okay, idiot, ' his brain told him, 'say something.'

"Sorry." God, he was hard. Not so hard that it was noticeable, but still.

"Your face looks funny. What're you thinking about?" Sasha said, staring up at him with big hazel eyes. She canted her head sideways and her light brown hair curled up like a question mark.

Okay that killed his fantasy.

"Nothing. Just thinking about daddy's work. Didn't mean to interrupt."

Sasha giggled and turned to her little brother waving her hand like a conductor's baton.

"Silly Daddy," Peter said, just as his sister had trained him to do. Peter turned his attention back to Elaine. "More story, Mommy."

Elaine continued reading and John let the overly familiar words flow past him. His gaze lingered on his wife, taking in the whole of her now, chastely appreciating her charm.

The moment was ruined as he flashed back on remarks made by half-tanked partygoers at a function they'd attended two weeks ago.

It was a dinner party at the house of his boss' boss. Maybe he would have been better going casual, but Elaine loved outfitting him like an oversized Ken doll. The dress up game brought forth the buried little girl side of her personality. She put him in cummerbunds and kilts, western ties and twill vests bouncing on her toes and clapping her hands in delight.

As dull as playing manikin was, if it made his wife happy, he could stand it. In the end Elaine always chose either a classic tuxedo or a charcoal suit depending on which matched her wardrobe best. He wore the gold cuff links Elaine bought him for an anniversary gift and she finished their outfits with cotton candy colored ribbons supporting the latest cause. But it didn't matter if they glided in like Spanish ballroom dancers or if they sopped and puddled into the hall like Titanic survivors, they got the same look. Hidden behind professional humdrum and strangled Botox smiles, it was clear they didn't measure up.

The comments made it worse. The most common was "Uh ... and how did you two get together?" That night, it seemed like they had at least escaped the worst until a woman who had been quietly admiring John remarked to him, "I imagine you must have been amazingly fat at some point."

No one would call Elaine ugly. John loved her body and was it wrong to adore such a cute nose? Long legs and small breasts on a slim frame pleased him as much as big tits and lush asses worked on regularly framed women. Elaine's long legs and lithe body had grace and she carried herself with a ballerina's joy of movement.

Most of her bosom came from padding and the first time he got her bra off had been a panicky time for Elaine. Her breasts swelled to a low B cup while nursing, but even breastfeeding two sharp toothed infants had done nothing to reduce the sensitivity of her big soft nipples. Still, it was her dark-brown eyes that caught him, sparkling with starry thoughts spinning through her mind.

John was light to her dark. His mother thought God had been kind to him, where kindness meant smoothness and symmetry. His blue eyes were calm and called cerulean by people who read too many romance novels. Women saw his limpid eyes, reluctant smile, and soft, jet black hair and it reduced even the crustiest of crusty pantied matrons into tittering girls.

At work his black framed glasses and dour suits made him a dorky Clark Kent, but his mild-mannered appearance kept looks to a minimum. It was only when Elaine dressed him up that he remembered what it was like to be handsome.

Life had laid itself at his feet when he was younger, especially when it came to people. Through his high school years his ego had only taken a rest when his mother came around. Heading to college, he left behind all inhibitions and decided to take a 24 hour a day, seven day a week pussy bath.

That part of him had been dead and buried. For all his looks and charm, that John might never have existed. The only remembrance of his old self was that he fussed with his hair too much, and spent as much time with shampoo and conditioning products as his wife did.

Elaine closed the book.

"Again momma. Again. Again, again, again." Seeing his mother shaking her head, Peter's face scrunched up.

John cleared his throat heading off the tantrum. "Spaghetti and meatballs are getting cold."

The little boy's breath puffed out. He looked at the book a moment longer and then up at John.

"The garlic bread's gonna burn if we don't get to it soon. Unless you like the bread extra black and crucnchy?"

Peter jumped to his feet and looked ready to run off, before John caught his eye. He nodded in the direction of the bathroom. His son made a face, but followed in his sister's wake.

The rest of the evening followed to a pleasant but nearly forgotten routine. Dinner over and the dishes done, they would watch a video and then Peter and Sasha would go to bed. If the kids stayed quiet and the grownups weren't too tired, John would make love to Elaine. Unfortunately, Elaine's job was soaking up more and more hours. He usually left her working in the living room during the week, often finding her snoring on the couch with the laptop beneath her head in the morning.

Halfway through the meal, it became clear the only sex in his future was a few soapy tugs in the shower. Peter was buzzing like a bumblebee and Sasha was only slightly better. Worse still, it was raining outside and the networks reported thunder and lightning likely. He suspected that since the kids had seen so little of their mother in the last few weeks that they would have engineered a slumber party either way. There was no fighting it. It was a "Mom, I can't get to sleep" night. Being a good dad, John convinced himself that this wasn't so terrible.

He spent an hour transferring the post-its with his plan to his laptop and refining his ideas. When he came downstairs, Elaine and the kids were watching a DVD. He settled into his leather recliner and barely paid attention to the video he had seen at least forty times before.

When the movie finished, Elaine and the kids headed upstairs while he caught the late news. Ten minutes into it he was nodding off and he switched to a program that involved reality television celebrities climbing into an acid dunk tank. He was hefting a softball and staring at the dumb piggy eyes of a want-to-be wannabe preening for the TV camera. He looked at the softball sadly, realizing he must be dreaming. Then even that thought faded as he drifted into a deeper sleep.

"FUCK!"

Lightning woke him from a terrible dream. In between rapid eye movement dream blinks, the flash blinded him and thunder shuddered though the house.

'And I'll huff and I'll puff and blow your house down, ' he had read the three little pigs to the kids yesterday.

He trembled like he hadn't since he was Sasha's age. As he blinked away the flash blindness, he expected a monstrous wolf to be bearing its fangs in the window. Lightning streaked in the distance.

'Okay, calm down, just calm down for a second.'

His heart thumped in his chest, but slowly he relaxed his grip on the recliner. Lightning sparked farther away. Out the window, all he saw were shadowy tree branches swaying in the rain.

Even as his heartbeat slowed, his body felt stretched tight. His hands curled into fists and with it he felt a shadow of anger. He was angry about something in his dream, but the more he focused on the anger, the faster the feeling fled.

'I'm just being silly.'

On the television Rod Serling seemed to be doing the Jerry Springer's thought moment on an old black and white episode of the Twilight Zone.

The only thing he remembered was a wooden ship moving slowly creating a ripple in clear, amazingly blue water.

Was he really that upset about this stupid vacation and timeshare business? It was just a dream and a vague one at that.

He turned off the television and rubbed at a twinge in his back. Upstairs, he found Sasha and Peter were cuddled up on either side of Elaine. He delicately moved Peter's legs toward his mother to clear enough space to lie down.

On the drive home from work Monday a thought was gnawing at the back of his brain. It bothered him. Call him a simpleton, but he didn't like to do "deep thinking" unless he had to. Bars seemed to be full of deep thinkers at happy hour.

Little John was lonely. Hell, in the last couple months, he and Elaine had been so busy that Little John hadn't gotten much more than a few friendly pats. It was a wonder he wasn't waking up with sticky sheets.

Of course Elaine's job took up most of her free sex hours, but there was no fighting that. No, the main reason for little John's loneliness boiled down to Peter and Sasha. They had been so caught up in being perfect parents that sex got pushed to the bottom of the to-do pile. The solution was ridiculously simple. Well, not simple, but between grandparents and sitters and friends with small kids it could be worked out.

Was that what the dream had been about?

He remembered the lightning startling him awake. It wasn't just one ship, it had been a fleet of old wooden boats and he'd been angry. That mad, crazy kind of angry that had happened to his uncle and that had always terrified him. The worst he'd ever done was get into a couple screaming matches with his dad and smash phones when he got mad.

It didn't make sense. Was he angry at Elaine and the kids because he wasn't getting enough sex?

John stopped for the interminable light on Fletcher Street.

It was sad. He'd already had to change the way he typed at the keyboard to minimize the strain on his hands. For some reason, he used his right hand more while typing and really abused it squeezing the stress ball. At the end of the day, his good right hand wasn't in the mood. His left hand was the ugly dateless sister who, despite all the enthusiasm in the world, didn't have the looks or skill to get him off.

Maybe Elaine's mom could babysit the kids this weekend or they could barter with the parents of Sasha's best friend?

Then there would be sex. He felt himself getting excited imagining the weekend as a sexual smorgasbord at which they would gorge. Oh and there would be costumes, Catholic school girl and cheerleader and sexy divorcee getups. Elaine would look amazing in the black merry widow and stockings he had given to her on his birthday.

The light turned green while in his mind Elaine moved toward him from across the room, rubbing her hand over the exclamation marks tenting the merry widow's top.

He saw himself take his paperboy cap and praying that his voice wouldn't break again as he goggled at sexy Mrs. Pemberton. "Maam, have you considered getting the weekly subscription?"

A car swerved around him and honked.

His wife kneaded his shoulders.

"Elaine?"

"Uh huh. Something the matter?"

He looked into her eyes and glanced down at the growing bulge in his pants.

"You're not stressed out about work anymore, are you?"

"Not about work." He reached down and shifted his cock. "It's not that I mind, but don't let your hands make promises that you're not willing to keep. And considering..."

"You're looking for a happy ending?" Elaine went down on her knees and let her hand smooth down his sides until they ended on his pant bulge. Deftly she rubbed her hand back and forth, pushing the lump around.

"What are you doing?" He pushed her hands away. She smiled and brought them right back. "The kids are outside. Not that I'm not ... not..." He ran out of words as he savored the feel of her hands.

"The sooner we get started the sooner we get finished," Elaine said continuing to rub his bulge.

"What got you all stirred up?" He was weakening and he knew it. He held one of her hands, but let the other continue rubbing.

"Have something against being happy?"

"No..."

Elaine put her finger on his lips. "No buts just sit back and enjoy this."

John reached out and gave her a gentle kiss.

"When was the last time I told you how wonderful you are?"

"Monday, I think. Now shut-up there's been too much talking and not enough sucking going on. Just enjoy and no more resisting." She kissed his nose and pushed him back in the chair.

"Good," he grunted as her hands found his bulge again.

Her lips touched his neck. "You like me. You really like me!" She giggled a little. "Wow, you must really like Sally Field. You're about to bust out of these pants."

She unzipped him and slipped her hand through the opening of his boxers to firmly pump his cock.

He stifled a groan. "How can you ask that when you're doing that to me? I love this ... but it isn't fair ... I don't want this all one sided."

He started to turn, but she gripped harder halting his progress. "We don't have time for that."

"Not even..." he squirmed, but the jacking of her hand felt so good.

"I'd have to take a shower and Sasha needs a ride to her swim class. Besides I like making you happy." She nuzzled into his neck and then moved up for a lip mashing kiss. Her hand jacked him harder. Even as he burned hotter and hotter from the one handed jacking, he felt her other hand on his pants clasp and suddenly his cock was exposed.

She pulled back from the kiss and stared down. "I'm a lucky woman."

"I've got to fuck you soon," he husked.

Elaine stepped around the chair and suddenly she was straddling his lap. "Now just be careful and be sure not to get any on me." She reached into her purse and pulled out a bottle of hand cream and squeezed out a generous dollop.

Two slick warm hands found his cock and began jacking hard. He hunched forward.

Elaine kissed his cheek and used her head to bush him backward. "None of that. I don't have time to change my clothes either."

John leaned back and marveled at what was happening. "I feel like a teenager."