"Yeah, I understand what a virus is. What I don't get is how I got it."

"You know that little red "M" that comes up on the bottom of your screen, the one that means McAfee, as in McAfee anti-virus protection. The one that..."

"The one that's supposed to stop this crap from screwing up my computer so I don't have to be standing here having this conversation with you, that one?"

The kid grinned up at me with nicotine-yellowed teeth, twenty years old tops, fucking spider-web tattoo crawling up from beneath his buttoned white polo.

"Yes, that's the one," he replied smugly, pleased with my ignorance. " ... The one which you failed to properly renew seven months ago."

"Christ," I muttered under my breath.

"All the anti-virus systems constantly update themselves for fresh threats. A year or two of the updates are included when you buy them, but then they shake you down for some more coin ... You remember a little box coming up reminding you that you needed to..."

"Yeah," I cut in brusquely, shaking my head, recalling the annoying message coming up on my screen day after day, that and the endless stream of e-mails that would generate every other day in my box.

... you are not fully protected ... you are not fully protected...

This pencil-neck clown was waiting for me to go on, to confess my stupidity in greater detail. He's lucky I didn't crack him right in the mouth.

"Can you fix it?"

"Already done."

"Seriously?" I replied, smiling despite myself as I glanced down at the tower I'd disconnected and hauled over here yesterday, crashed and frozen with half my account data not currently backed up.

"Got it cleaned it up real nice for you. All the files recovered, the McAfee updated and current."

"Thank you."

"No problemo," he answered, tapping over the keyboard in a blur.

"What was the virus?" I asked, fishing a tight roll of bills from my trouser pocket.

"Something new."

"And how'd I catch it?"

The kid eyed the cash with distaste and nodded across to the overweight blond at the reception desk. "You can settle up with her."

"Okay," I nodded absently, curious now as to what set my computer into its own Ice Age. "So can you put a finger on it or not. Was it an e-mail somebody sent me, or..."

"Abby pays up on poker night," he answered slyly, cocking an eyebrow as he met my gaze.

"Huh?"

"Hey, it's cool, man."

I leaned forward an inch or so, a palm flattened on his cluttered work station, my voice drawn down a couple octaves: " ... What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The story," he whispered warily, pointing at the screen, shifting away as I came behind him to look at what he was talking about. I read down for a few lines—a damned stroke story.

"I didn't download that."

"Hey, we're..."

"Don't say we're discreet kid, fucking please. If I was down-loading jack-off stuff, I think I'd know it."

"Well somebody did," he shrugged, again his fingers fanning across the keys. "Who's Mar-solo101?"

I shook my head in disbelief, half-knowing, not dead-on-sure.

"Here's the ... last Thursday, just after noon ... Your system crashed out when?"

" ... Thursday night."

"Res ipsa loquitur, man. The thing..."

"The thing speaks for itself, yeah, I know."

"You wanna find out who this Mar-solo101 is?"

"Yes, I think I do."

"They clear their history. It's a free account."

I read a few more lines of the story, pissed off with this whole deal, the inconvenience, the childishness of it all.

"Unclear it and print out a listing of all this crap they've been looking at, okay?"

"I'm really not supposed to..."

I peeled to the center of my roll and freed an extra crisp c-note, deft as I slid it beneath the kid's mouse pad, my other resting palm on his bony shoulder. "Go on kid, take it. Treat yourself to a couple new I-tunes ... or a Chinese hooker, whatever floats your boat." —I gave that shoulder an encouraging squeeze— "I'll be in later for my computer and our ancillary information."

"Hi, Dad," came Martha's voice.

"Hey," I answered, stepping out into the early evening, my darkly pretty daughter-in-law leaning back in a chase lounge with my grandson perched on her lap.

"How was your day?"

"Good," I replied, pulling up a chair besides them, wagging a finger in front of Anthony's fat little face, his tiny hand clamping onto it. Four months old and already strong as all hell. " ... Got the computer fixed."

"What was wrong with it?"

"Some bug," I shrugged, not meeting her eyes, concentrating on her tone. "How was your day?"

"Same old, same old," she said flatly.

Martha and my kid, Jack, had been staying with me for just shy of three months, just weeks after she'd had Anthony. Jack was a chemical engineer with a pharmaceutical house, a terrific job, but had been faced with a downsize or transfer—a transfer put him out here in LA, same pay, no loss of seniority, but with a home they couldn't move back in Virginia. My solution was simple; move in with me until you get rid of the Virginia house at a decent price. No rent, no nothing. My place was more than big enough, and it was only me out here in five rooms with a pool and an often smoggy view of Bunker Hill.

I have to admit that I liked the activity, the noise of a baby, a lot of times having dinner with him and Martha on nights when Jackie would be pulling late hours.

But this baloney with the computer had thrown me. I instantly knew Mar-solo was our Martha, my boy's wife, Anthony's mom. The timing was right—last Thursday I was doing one of the accounts I still audited, out until after eight that night, and Jack had pulled in a half hour after me.

Only one person home that afternoon ... well, to be exact, there were two persons, but only one who could access the internet, pop onto "Abby pays up on poker night", and clear off the history log. I'd looked over the sheet the kid had printed out for me before I got home; two websites, erotic stories, a few hits on one day, then the same a couple days later, just like that. I looked at my calendar; she'd be logged on when I was out, two days a week usually, just in the past month. Their laptop had been going to work with Jack for a couple weeks now, a project he was working on off the company books, something that he hoped could pull in some serious money for them.

I finally glanced over at Martha ... a tall girl, long auburn hair that she habitually wore tied up. The baby had filled out her normally thin frame just a bit; a serious expression, my ex dubbing her "Marion the Librarian" after their first encounter. How old was she now, twenty-nine, maybe thirty. She'd always been rather shy around us, though in these last month's we'd developed an easy rapport, joking and teasing each other, a lively girlish sense of humor that she simply didn't let many people see. I sensed she was bored out here, lonely in a new town, the kid taking almost all of her time. She had to miss her friends back in Virginia, her sister, the girls she'd worked with.

"You eat yet?"

"No, I'll have something with Jack ... You want me to fix you something?

"I have some work to finish up," I said...

... work.

I went to the small bedroom that sufficed for my office and spent over three hours with the listing the computer kid had worked up. By the end of it I was literally shaking my head, absolutely waylaid with the stories Martha had been reading. For the most part they were all of a like theme; innocent wives entertaining their husband's friends in one manner or another, poker games, football parties, fishing trips, the action always starting off mildly enough, maybe the wife wearing something racy on a dare, some guy touching her, then always some serious gang-fuck action, nasty stuff; it wasn't exactly Hemingway, I'll tell you that ... hell, it wasn't even a sweet-n-low version of Henry Miller.

What stoked me the most was the image of our demure Martha reading this stuff, furtive, embarrassed, trying to cover her tracks. The "Abby" tale in particular held me rapt, a young wife urged on by her husband to serve as hostess to his weekly poker party, his daring her to take it further, a shorter skirt one night, a bit more cleavage, a climax of him betting her wedding ring on a "sure hand" and of course, losing. You can imagine the end-run to that particular scenario. I shut my eyes and fantasized about her masturbating as she read along ... had she been nude as she sat here at my desk, topless?

The anger I'd felt initially was gone by then. I sat there trying to fix my mind right, telling myself that I shouldn't be thinking like this, that I shouldn't be thinking of my kid's wife in terms like this. That was sick shit, the weird stuff that perverts thought of, dirty old fucking men. I should be pissed at her for doing it behind my son's back, for doing it on my computer, for sending my Dell over a cyber cliff.

I just had that image of her sitting here though, right in this chair. Maybe jumpy and nervous, listening for the sound of one of our car's in the driveway. My heart was galloping. I did something I'd never done in front of a computer. I undid my zipper and took it out, took it out and just started whacking off, just like some horned-out fifteen year old. It wasn't long ... a minute, maybe two tops and I felt myself coming, thick globs of semen splattering across the keyboard, spotting the screen, my gut wrenched with the force of it. I sank back into the big leather chair, bright spots swirling on my periphery, my cock already softening. I took a gulp of air, then another. It was sweet ... forty years of jerking off and fucking and I could only recall a couple times that had put me over like this. And I don't think any of them were past my twenty-ninth birthday.

"What in the fuck's the matter with you," I wheezed in bewildered disgust. I closed out the story and shut down the system, following the instructions the kid had given me on how to clear out the history I'd just created.

I heard Jack and Martha talking in the kitchen, but quietly went right to my room. I sprawled out on the bed without undressing. My eyes looked in the darkness. My mind was coming back to it again, finding new ingresses to my psyche. My cock stiffened of its own volition, confined and uncomfortably twisted within pants.

I don't know how long it was before I reached down and set it free.

Two weeks had passed by the time I actually did anything. Everything went on just like before, the conversations about work, playing with Anthony, the occasional dinner or breakfast I'd cook up for my daughter-in-law and me.

I dropped the tattooed kid at the computer store two more hundreds; some spyware program that routed a concise history of our Martha's internet wanderings. I can't say I felt guilty about this invasion of her privacy, never justifying it by saying that it was, after all, my computer she was playing on. I didn't need an excuse, I just wanted to know, simple as that.

And she went right back to it, same genre of erotica, just a story or two at a time. I can't say when it came to me exactly, but by the end of those two weeks I had a healthy—or unhealthy—obsession with Martha and these dirty tales.

"I'm having a couple of the guys over for pinochle tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Martha answered, her back to me as she fixed a fresh diaper on Anthony's rump. "You don't have to ask me, Dad. It's your house."

"Well, it's your house too, least for now," I answered. "Anyway, it's just Tommy DiChenza and Mike Garnett."

Martha knew I had a standing game at the club house at least once a week, penny ante stakes, a few regulars, guys my age or a little older. Pinochle or bridge—card games for the thinking guy, I'd joke. Sometimes when we couldn't draw a third, Tommy D and I would square off for chess. Even though it was all nickel-and-dime stuff, we took it fucking seriously, if you didn't, you weren't invited back.

"You want me to take Anthony out for the afternoon so he doesn't bother you?"

"No, no. I want to show him off," I said quickly, a dark flicker of thought whispering that I wanted to show her off too.

"Okay," she smiled, barely glancing back to me from the task at hand.

"They could meet you too."

"Sure."

I watched her from behind for several seconds, my voice catching as I tried to speak. I actually turned away for a second, as if to escape the room.

"I'd like to meet 'em," she went on distractedly.

I wanted to just bust her then and there—"I've been reading your x-rated stories, baby..."—but knew I had to just set the table. If she was going to sit down, then it had to be her move.

Tommy DiChenza was a handsome guy by anyone's standards. Tanned almost black, his hair thick and just graying at the temples, a retired millionaire yachtsman to look at him fast, expensively dressed even in the most casual attire. Fifty-eight and like a rock, the fucker still hit the boxing gym three mornings a week, though he only worked the bags now; a golf game that made me want to throw away my clubs.

He was shuffling the deck of cards, fanning them from palm to palm. It wasn't that unusual to have our games at my place now that the summer was here; a way to dodge the racket of spoiled-rotten rich kids using the club's pool and tennis courts.

"So..."

"So?" Mike Garnett chimed back with a smile, jiggling the ice in his Manhattan. I glanced at him, a very big man, sixty years old or so I thought, good looking though rough, bull-like in the neck; those forearms of his still hard as an oak banister. None of us knew for sure what he'd done in his working life, though he seemed to have that air of gratitude you'd see in certain men, namely the gratitude that he wasn't living out his golden years inside a Federal penitentiary.

Tommy laid out the deck in front of me and I made the cut. He took them back and started to deal, expertly peeling them from top of the deck.

"So how you enjoying the grandpa deal?" Mike asked.

"Great," I muttered, picking up my hand, not able to really focus. Martha had brought Anthony out when they'd arrived. They'd paid their homage, with Mike really getting a kick out of the kid in the way that lots of older guys do.

And that had been pretty much that. Martha took him down the hall to put him up for his nap and had not come back out. I wondered if she thought I'd be mad if she were to bother us.

We were playing three-handed pinochle, cut-throat with a kiddy at the center. I was not concentrating and Tommy had grunted in exasperation when I made a few stupid bids—he wanted to win, but he wanted a sharp fucking game.

"You need anything, Dad?" Martha asked. I hadn't heard her come back into the room, and was startled to see her standing just a few feet away in her swimsuit.

"Umm..."

"I can make you a sandwich or something ... Mr. DiChenza? Mr. Garnett?"

They were shaking their heads, Mike smiling up at her in frank appreciation. The suit was modest enough, a one piece in dark blue with a yellow stroke across the center. I swallowed hard.

"I keep trying to get her to learn pinochle or bridge," I said finally.

"You outta learn," Mike chimed in—Tommy just studied his cards restlessly; his opinion had ladies pretty much doing just one thing. Two, if they could cook spaghetti.

"One of these days," Martha answered, stepping closer, uneasy in her posture, almost shy. Her usually fair cheeks were flushed just a bit. I let me eyes quickly trail up along her body, the legs long and slim, athletic. Her belly was rounded just slightly, a tribute to her daily workouts in the pool and with her yoga tapes. Her breasts were still smallish, though having the baby had filled them out noticeably. She had a graceful swanlike neck, cheeks set high, very patrician in her bearing.

"Pull up a chair and watch," Mike offered.

"No, I don't want to bother you guys."

"Here, pull up a chair," I said, reaching out to drag another chair over to our table. "You can play through on one of my hands."

Hesitantly Martha sat down, grinning nervously. I couldn't tell if her nipples were peaked, but I knew that they were. I could feel Tommy cringing at having his game disrupted, but I made her take my cards, sliding my chair so I was slightly behind her.

"Now see..."

I walked her though the hand, Tommy laying a card out, bidding, watching as Mike followed it up. I slipped my fingers around her wrist to better see the cards, pointing to the one she should play with my free hand. Martha's pulse was racing wildly; I patted her shoulder after Mike took the hand. She was trembling.

She politely excused herself after that, a hoarseness in her voice. I watched her leave, going back towards her room, not the pool.

"Hey, I can buy her a book if she wants to learn," Tommy muttered under his breath, taking the cards through another shuffle. " ... They got the ladies league for bridge and all."

"Nice girl," Mike commented, sipping from his drink.

"I gotta hit the head," I said just as he started to deal. " ... Two minutes."

"Don't shake it too much, pal," Tommy said grouchily, standing up to stretch his own legs.

Down the hall I went, quietly, as if worried about waking the baby.

A soft muffled groan as I came up to her and Jackie's room. I eased up to the door, a hand on the jam.

That whispered moan, jagged and coarse, deepening. My daughter-in-law was diddling herself and doing it fucking good. The sound thickened, a quickening, shorter and gasping as it went.

I was rapt. I don't know how long I listened, though it couldn't have been for more than a minute or two.

Tommy DiChenza slapped me on the arm, making me jump. He shrugged, nodded at the door; Martha was nearly shrieking now, a choked-off sound as if she were chewing into a pillow. He made a puzzled face, smirking, my Martha beyond frenzied, the bed squeaking as she thrashed.

"What the fuck?" he mouthed silently, intent now, fucking interested.

The noise suddenly tapered—a rustling of sheets as if her legs were twitching about.

I pointed back to the den where we were playing, a quick motion to be quiet. We were sitting at the table playing when Martha came back out a few minutes later, skirting our area and using the patio door to get out to the pool. I watched her switch on the baby monitor, savoring the sleekness of her body as she balanced on the diving board and kicked off.

"Okay, now what the fuck was that?" Tommy intoned with a lecherous grin, leaning halfway across the table. Mike was all ears too, eyes bright behind his glasses. I glanced out there to the pool. Martha was cutting the water gracefully, her hair loosened, billowing as she surged through the water.

"Come on," Mike added, agitated as all hell to hear about what Tommy and I had heard cooking up in the back.

"Well..."

I looked out there at her swimming, concentrating on how graceful she was as I started to tell them, barely smiling to myself as they hooted in unison to the juicier details.

"Let's teach her how to fucking play."

The words had been Tommy's, his dark eyes piercing me with as he spoke, studying for my reaction. It was a sensible subject to ponder, as here he was proposing toying with my son's wife, amusing himself with her, seducing her, there was nothing else implied in what he was saying.

I didn't answer immediately. I'd just kept watching the way she swam; her neat, meticulous laps.

"Hey, if we're out of line," Mike said softly.

"No," I said, shaking my head. " ... Lets teach her how to play. See where it goes."

Twice more that week I hosted a card game, too frequent for our tastes, but we weren't really the purists we'd been before.

At that first game, Martha had made her appearance a little earlier than usual. We'd just buried one hand and she was out there, neat in a bright flowery sundress, the flush to her cheeks the same as that first day.

"Come on, honey. Let us teach you how to play," Mike spoke up. "Then we can play in pairs instead of this cut throat stuff."

"Or you can play your father-in-law here two-hand and take all his money," Tommy laughed.

"Come on, Martha," I said with a smile, again drawing a chair over for her, patting the seat to encourage her.

She sat down and for the next two hours we took her through the rudiments. She picked up on some of it surprisingly well, though her mind was clearly wandering. Again I looped a thumb along the inside of her wrists and found her pulse drumming hard, a thin sheen of perspiration along her throat despite the AC being cranked.

We played through with her taking a few hands solo, more and more distracted until she finally disengaged, thanking us, nodding when Mike asked her to join in the game we were having the day after next. That afternoon I walked Mike down the hallway, shuffling our feet as we came up to the bedroom door. Nothing, and then Mike smiled broadly. The sound was different, a humming edge to it, focused, the moans climbing into a husked crescendo.

I tugged his sleeve, did it a second time as he clearly wanted to listen in. He winked at Tommy as we came back to the table.

"Two more of these games and we'll have her dancin' on our laps," he chuckled, then a nervous glance towards me to see if I was struck wrong by the phrasing of it.

I held up two fingers, waggled 'em. " ... Two more, tops."

The next day's game was the same as before, though Anthony was acting up and Martha had to get up to settle him back into his nap twice while we played. She was doing her own hand now, with me watching over her shoulder.

Again, nickel and dime stuff as always, a small vein along the side of her neck quivered noticeably as she'd counter their bids.

Tommy was winning hand after hand, not really giving slack on any of it, sliding the meager pot to him with aplomb each time.

"Well, at least I'm not playing for my clothes," Martha joked as the game winded down, my heart taking a leap, knowing that she'd bit.

"Hey, we could arrange that," Mike teased, his voice shakier than he'd have liked.

"Yeah, but we'd have to bring our wagers up accordingly though," Tommy said with a casualness that was amazing, as if this banter was the most innocent of musings.

Then he smiled warmly at Martha, pulling out the heavy wad of cash he always carried and held it up for emphasis. "Honey you look so beautiful in that dress that this wouldn't be enough for even one hand ... just jokin' and all, but it's true."

We all laughed, Martha blushing brightly, averting her eyes, clearly taking it as a compliment, an embarrassed sidelong look at me as if just realizing that I was there.

"True, true," Mike added, raising his empty highball glass in a mock salute.

And thus ended our second game—Mike and Tommy both eliciting a promise from her to join us once again, one more lesson and she'd better believe they'd have her playing like a champ.

"I'm sorry if I embarrassed you the other day," Martha said late the next day, busying herself with the coffee pot.

"Embarrassed me how?"

She stiffened her shoulders, her head sagging, back still to me.

"What I joked about with your friends ... playing for my dress. I'm sorry that I did that like that, I was just teasing with..."

"I've been reading your stories," I blurted—it wasn't what I'd wanted to say, the words shaky and weak.

"What stor..."

I let the silence hang there for a long moment, seeing the tension creep up her spine. "The stories that crashed out my computer—the one about Abby and the poker game."

Martha froze there; beyond mortified as she finally turned to face me, her delicate features flushed deep to a dark crimson, a hand sealed over her mouth.

"I'm..." Tears sprang at the corners of her eyes. She edged back, Anthony fussing noisily in his basinet.

"It's okay."

" ... I'm sorry," came her voice, trembling with humiliation, sick with fear. "I'm ... please don't tell Jack. I never did anything like..."

"It's okay, I said its okay."

"Oh, God, I'm..."

"I'm not telling anybody, okay. It's forgotten. Forgotten!"

"I'm so sorry, Dad. I just started playing with the internet one day and I was bored and..."

"You don't have to explain yourself, it's a non-issue."

"I'll never do it again. I swear..."

"You read what you want, whenever you want. My house is yours ... and so is the computer."

Martha sniffled, wiped the wetness from her cheeks. Her relief was evident; she was utterly oblivious to what was coming.

"So do you want to maybe lose your dress for real?"

"I..."

The realization of what I'd just proposed seemed to hit her like a cold slap in the face, a moment of choking revulsion. Panic in those bright eyes.

"Look, just if you want to, okay?" I spoke up soothingly. "Nothing bad'll happen, I can promise you of that. Just if you're reading this stuff over and over, I thought you'd maybe be best to..."

"I'm sorry I used your computer..."

Anthony gave a loud shriek, probably somehow reading his mother's welter of emotions; she reached down into the basinet and clutched him to her tightly, the tears breaking over her cheeks again.

" ... I sorry, I shouldn't have done that ... and I shouldn't be looking at this ... I don't know how I..."

I shushed her into silence, a finger pressed to my lips.

"Just said if you were playing with it in your mind like that, you could do it right here. No consequences ... where it would be safe and ... you know, just tease 'em a bit. You're beautiful enough, I'll tell you that. No stories'll come out of here ... Just if you want to play with it, that's all."

Martha had backed away several more steps, she was biting down on her lip, the kid squirming and fussing in her arms. " ... I'm married to your son for Christ's sake!"

I held out my hands. "That's why I'm saying it like this. I don't want you fixing on something reckless or dangerous ... I love you like my own daughter, kid.

"Do you tell Kim or Anne to strip in front of your stupid friends?"

"No, no I don't."

"But you tell me..."

"I'm not telling you to do anything. Just that if you wanted to ... if you wanted to tease 'em with it, there would be no consequences. Jack wouldn't know. Nobody would know."

She sniffled, her tone still harsh: "Oh, God, do they know about the stories?"

"No, absolutely not," I lied with a straight-face.

"Please tell me the truth?"

"I just did. I didn't tell them anything."

She shook her head and left the room, I heard her bedroom door slam shut. This time I didn't go to check on the sound effects.

"There she is," Mike hailed as Martha entered the room the next afternoon, after we'd been playing for almost a half hour. "The next Cincinnati Kid."

"Are you playing with us or going out on the town?" Tommy intoned, eyeing her as she came up to the table. I hadn't known if she'd do it, if she'd even sit in for the game or anything. In point of fact she hadn't said three words to me since our last conversation. But here she was, her long hair bunched up elegantly atop her head, a classy black cocktail dress hemmed just above the knees, the neckline swept down to reveal a bit of lightly freckled cleavage. A string of pearls choked to her throat, a thin diamond tennis bracelet that I knew Jackie had given her for their fifth anniversary.

"Martha," I whispered in a mild fugue.

"Just thought that since I was learning to play, I might as well pretend I'm in Monte Carlo."

"Honey, I've been to Monte Carlo, and there ain't many ladies more gorgeous than you," Tommy said with sincere admiration, waving her towards the chair we had waiting.

"Thank you."

Martha looked down at me for the first time, a tight smile as she'd curtsied to the compliment. She slid up to the table—I glanced down expecting three inch black stilettos but saw that she was just wearing plain black flats.

"Sit," I offered, half in awe of her.

"So stakes are the same?" Tommy said as he picked up the deck.

"I don't know," Martha spoke up, an almost indiscernible quaver in her voice. " ... I didn't bring any money with me."

"Well, we can let it..."

"I recall you offering to let me play for my clothes."