Designed for seamless transitions from slumber into wakefulness, the Zen alarm clock chimed pleasantly on cue at 5:30 a.m., awakening Marcos. He turned over to shut it off. Still groggy from the short night's sleep, he mumbled, "You awake?"
"Just barely," she muttered into her pillow.
He snuggled against Maria's back, put his right arm around her waist and slid his hand beneath her forearm so it rested against her bare breasts. She pressed her buttocks into him.
"What should I make you for lunch today, Babe?"
"Bacon, cheese, and avocado on wheat," came her reply.
They lay together quietly, Marcos listening to her breathing, fighting the urge to retrieve the events of the night before. He extracted his hand from its cozy warmth to run his fingers through his wife's dense black hair, finding himself unable to keep his brain from making the comparison with Cassie's.
"Mmmm," Maria exhaled.
"Me gusta eso," Cassie had affirmed last evening.
Marcos looked over his shoulder at the clock. "Time to get going," he reminded her, as he kissed the tangled hair and rolled himself to a seated position, his enlarged phallus staring up at him, having swelled from the close contact as well as his intruding recollections. He dressed in his jogging sweats and went downstairs to fill Maria's lunch order.
Marcos put two slices of whole wheat bread into the toaster and three strips of bacon into the microwave. With the sound of the shower running, he let himself drift back to the previous night. Cassie's eyelids tightly closed, her cheeks flushed, lips parted, panting, "Sรญ Seรฑor. Sรญ. Sรญ. Sรญ." He loved how a woman entirely of English stock could lapse into Spanish when she got so aroused.
A clunk sounded and the cascading of water abruptly stopped. He hefted a ripe avocado. "Tara's shape," he appraised under his breath, and continued silently, was she ever sensational last night. Without her help--why did she ever agree in the first place?--it wouldn't have been possible! Did it really happen? Did I only dream that it did?
As he cut open the soft avocado, and drew his knife in long slices through the yellow-green flesh, he recalled the conversation he had had with his modeling comrade, Tara, on a day a couple of months ago, when she had posed for him. She was a lesbian and a trustworthy confidante who listened to his marital problems and endured his wistful fantasies of love affairs without the conflicts of being a potential lover herself. To have some fun with Cassie, they had laughingly concocted an elaborate modeling ruse, paused, looked at each other, and then laughed again, with the realization that it was, just possibly, absurd enough to work.
So Marcos had started the events in motion the next time he modeled for Cassie's drawing group by suggesting that they consider sketching a pair of models during one of their upcoming sessions. Tara and he would do it, he had offered, and to make sure they had interesting poses for everyone to draw (and that the group was thoroughly satisfied and would want them back again and again), they had enlisted Cassie's "help" with critiquing their practice poses prior to going live.
He chuckled out loud to recall it: their staged clumsiness during rehearsal last night that provoked Cassie into shedding her robe and "demonstrating" the poses she wanted for them. Oh, Cassie! His heart lifted up higher into his chest, with the weightlessness of new love. But with the clomping of clogs on the stair treads, his stomach twisted with guilt.
Maria ate her cereal. Marcos packed her lunch. They kissed goodbye. She exited through the back door, got into her Subaru, and departed the driveway on her way to the hospital for her 7:00 a.m. shift as head nurse in the ICU.