'That woman is the fucking limit,' screamed Sonia as she stormed into the living room where her husband Jack was pretending to read a newspaper.
'Do you know what she's complaining about this time?'
Jack couldn't know yet, because no one had told him. He was going to say so, but he thought better of it. Sarcasm did not seem like a good idea. He settled for
'What is it this time?'
'The shoes I wear when I walk on the stairs down to the front door of the building make too much noise.'
Even by the standards she had set herself since she had moved in a month before, this was a bit much; even for Jack.
'What will it be next?' he asked; 'we breathe too loudly?'
Sonia raised her eyebrows. Jack wanted to make her laugh. It was the best way he knew of to calm her down. She had a quick temper, but he had learned how to sooth her. Jack was easy going and had an ironic sense of humour. He was an amateur psychologist too.
Sonia smiled and Jack said
'She's crazy, she complains about everything. We should make a lot of noise one of these nights; that would really set her going.'
'Do you think that would send her running to Mrs Robins like she does about everything else?' Sonia was laughing as she said it.
'No. She is too much of a hypocrite. She's the type that pretends that sex doesn't exist.'
This was Jack's explanation of the woman downstairs. He had not explained to Sonia what he really thought, though. He had a theory about why she was the type that pretended that sex doesn't exist. He had not told Sonia about his theory about the woman downstairs and that he thought that she was having some sort of mid-life crisis, and he had stayed away from mentioning that she was quite clearly suffering from a very bad case of sexual frustration. His joke had alluded in that direction, but that was as far as he went. He did not want Sonia to think that he had been thinking about this woman's sex life, or lack of one.
Jack had only seen the woman downstairs a couple of times. He only knew the little about her that Sonia had told him. Sonia got that from the landlady and a few bits and pieces of gossip from another neighbour. It was enough, taken with the way she complained all the time. Jack had her worked out.
The woman downstairs was called Christine. By Jack's estimation Christine was probably in her late forties. She was not bad looking, but she dressed and behaved as though she was a lot younger than she clearly was. This was Jack's first clue. She was not happy with getting older and she was not coping with it very well. She was not good looking enough, nor young looking enough, to get away with it. Common sense should have told her that; or a quick look in the mirror.
Jack did the sums; she spent the last twenty odd years raising a couple of kids, but they had flown the nest now, so she no longer had mother duties to deal with every day. She had a husband, who looked like he was a good fifteen years older than she was.
She wanted more and she hadn't got it. All the things she had done were finished, yet she was not yet old and she did not know what to do with herself anymore.
Sonia would never have suspected the possibility that Christine could be a bored middle aged housewife who Jack might get an itch for. However, that was what had happened. Jack, although he did not like Christine, found her attractive. Jack wanted to fuck Christine. He wanted to fuck her for a number of reasons. Number one, he fancied her; number two he had never had an older woman; number three he thought she needed it; number four, he thought she needed teaching a lesson; number five, he wanted the apartment block to be peaceful again.
So, in more ways than one, Christine's moving into the block had caused disturbance. Thinking about all of this made Jack realise how much he desired Christine and how much he disliked her, and these contradictory feelings in him about her, brought together thus, led him to fantasies about her that were rather sadistic. He had never had such thoughts before. Jack did not want to start bringing sadism into his sexual relationship with his wife, but he could not get rid of the thoughts that had come to him. He did not know what to do.
A few days later Jack was coming up the street and Christine was outside putting some bags of rubbish in the big dustbin outside the block. It was one of those rare moments when ambition and opportunity arrive at the same time. She saw him and pretended that she hadn't. Jack got to the door to the block and unlocked it and let himself in. He was going to close it again, but then he decided not to. Although Jack could not see her, he had guessed that the reason she had not come behind him was because she wanted to avoid him. She had lingered by the dustbins, but when she saw that he was leaving the door open she came and followed him in.
'Thank you' she said curtly.
'That's ok,' he said, 'just wanted you to see that I'm not a nasty neighbour.'
His directness disarmed her, as he had intended. Then he said
'I'm a nice neighbour, a very nice neighbour,' and he gave her a look.
There was an awkward silence and Jack could see that Christine was lost for words and was not going to be the one who put a stop to the silence, even though she was the one who was suffering by it. But there was enough curiosity and hope in her eyes to tell him that he could get away with going on, so Jack said
'Don't worry, I was only joking. It happens, it's life.'
Christine looked relieved and smiled, though she looked like she didn't want to smile. But Jack had a winning way when he wanted to.
'Why don't you invite me in for coffee?' he said; 'we can solve all the neighbourhood problems. It will give us something to do.'
Christine hesitated for a moment and then she said 'Ok, come in.'
Jack had known that her hesitation was an act. She just did not want to look too eager, but the chance of the revenge of having coffee with Sonia's husband was too good an opportunity to miss.
He followed her into her apartment, looking around to make sure that no one had seen him. He checked his watch. It was one. He had more than four hours. He could take time over it. He had already decided that he was not going to go for a long seduction scene. He would be direct. This was a scene that was going to be directed by anger and envy and the desire for revenge and he was going to use those feelings to make sue it was rough and dirty. He was one hundred per cent sure that she would go for it when he propositioned her.
He followed her to the kitchen and sat at the table and watched her as she made coffee; reaching up to the high cupboard, making the tight material of her jeans stretch over her arse. It was a nice arse, small and tight, but shapely. Jack wondered if it had ever been fucked and the thought of how much he would like to have that arse excited him, and he wondered if she wondered what he was thinking about. He thought that she had made as much as she could have, displaying her arse to him. She suggested they went through to the living room. They sat opposite each other; her on the sofa, him in an armchair. He had the feeling that if he had sat next to her on the sofa, she would not have objected.
They started to chat and she told him all of the things about herself that he had already heard from Sonia, who had heard them from the landlady and the other neighbours, and he had not believed them. He did not believe them this time either. She just did not ring true. There was a shrillness about her, but despite that, his desire for her was growing, and the destructive feelings that had brought him there begun to become complicated by more tender ones. There was even a little pity in his feelings for her, and feelings of pity allowed him to see himself as a knight in shining armour, come to rescue her from her plight.
Even though he did not believe her stories about herself, he could understand now why she told them. She could have been who she wanted to be; someone who was something, if her life had turned out differently, or if she had made different decisions. It was not too late though. This was what he needed to show how, and he knew how he was going to show her.
They were getting along nicely. The conversation had flowed after a hesitant start and Jack had a full hard on in his shorts. He had kept it hidden so far, but he was waiting for the opportune moment to let her see it. That moment needed to be contrived, and he was getting to work on it.
She looked good in her outfit of black sweater and black jeans; tight and hugging. Her hair was dyed a nice shade of bold red too. Her brown eyes had a quizzical and eager look in them that revealed more of her than she might have liked. They showed a hunger in her.
He wanted to draw her out a little, so he told her something personal about himself. He told her that he and Sonia had been married for a few years now and he wondered what happened to married couples as the years went by and everything was just repetition of what had been before. He wanted to appeal to her experience, as a way of showing her that experience and age are good things; and he also wanted to suggest the possibility that he saw that there was more to sex than just one other person, even if that one other person was one's spouse.
Christine understood his meaning, but at first she feigned coyness.
It was time to be bold.
'We're getting along nicely, Jack said, 'you can tell me. It's just between us.'
'Well,' she said, 'it can happen.'
'What; you mean people get bored and want something different?'