Gail nudged Sam's body off her stomach and to the side. He was lost to the world. She had about ten minutes she figured before he started to snore and she'd be forced to get up and go to the guest room. The mention of "guest room" got her off on the cryptic e-mail message she'd gotten from her cousin, Faye, earlier in the day: "Landed in PBurg. Docking soon if find no casinos. Bringing Brazilian tongue."
Faye was such a ditz. Apparently this meant she was going to visit. She hadn't done that since the Hutchinsons had moved down to Rockville, Maryland, in the D.C. suburbs from New York City. She always shook things up.
They could use some shaking up, Gail thought, as Sam snorted as a prelude to snoring. She nudged him again. That sometimes worked for a few minutes. It did tonight, as well. This had been "the night" for this week. They used to get such a thrill out of fucking. Now it seemed so routine and the "after the event" cuddle that Gail had liked so much when she'd stopped getting explosions from the act itself didn't happen anymore. Sam would just roll over and go to sleep.
It wasn't like he wasn't a hunk anymore. And God knew she kept herself in trim. Maybe it bothered her because they were both just thirty-nine. Maybe it was going over that forty hump and the thought then that this was as good as it got. It once was great. In fact they once were a good way beyond very naughty—honest-to-god swingers. Was it because they'd had Steve—and that they still had Steve? She was reminded of Steve, their live-at-home son while he attended Montgomery College, the local community college, and majored in who knows what this week. What had brought Steve to mind was that he was snoring up a storm in his room. And now Sam had started up. She was getting it in stereo.
She looked at the clock. She was surprised to see that it was after 5:00 a.m. already. She must have slept after Sam had slipped out of her. They couldn't have been at it that long. Not long at all, dammit. She struggled out of bed and reached for her robe. She paused in the hallway outside of Steve's room. Sissy, Steve's girlfriend, had still been here, in his room, when Gail had gone to bed. Gail had peeked into the room, wondering—actually, hoping—to find them in his bed, screwing. Steve was twenty. There was nothing wrong with him other than that computer his fingers were glued to.
At twenty, Gail and Sam had already had Steve. He was a handsome boy—a hunk like his father. And Sissy had made clear that she was ready for it. Was it a sin for a mother to want her son to get on with humping his girlfriend like any normal college guy would be doing? But there they'd been, Steve at the computer on one side of the room, facing away from Sissy, and Sissy, a bit forlorn, curled up on the bed, eyes glued to her smart phone.
Well, she wasn't in his room now. Steve was stretched out on his back on his bed. He clearly was having a wet dream, and he was well endowed, like his father. Gail felt a little surge go through her body. If only she and Sam were still that age. They fucked like bunnies then. Why wasn't her son doing that now?
She continued on down the hall to the kitchen and put the coffee on. As she began sipping her second cup, she heard Steve get up and go down the hall to the bathroom. Sam wouldn't get up for work today. He'd taken Thanksgiving week off. It was Tuesday. Gail hadn't shopped for Thanksgiving dinner yet. She hadn't decided between a turkey and a honey ham yet, and the men were no help in deciding. They'd just shrugged when asked to vote. That's what she felt to do to Thanksgiving and the rest of life too—just shrug. She wasn't getting enough of it—and she'd always wanted to have a lot of it.
She looked up at the kitchen clock. It was after 6:00 a.m. She rose and pushed off from the kitchen table and padded out to the foyer and then out to the front walk to the curb to pick up the paper. Sissy was getting out of her car to come into the house. No school this week, either, so she and Steve apparently were doing a study marathon. Both Gail and Sam had hoped that Steve would get it into his head to make it another sort of marathon. Sissy was looking like that's what she'd hoped too and that her hopes had been dashed.
Sissy stopped where Gail was bent over for the paper.
"Good morning, Mrs. Hutchinson," she said. "Am I too early?"
"No, of course not. Come on in. I think Steve's up, but maybe you'd like a cup of coffee with me in the kitchen before we both launch into the day, such as it is. Turkey or honey ham?"
"Turkey. But why do you ask?"
"You're coming for Thanksgiving, I hope. And I can't get the men to make a choice. You're the coin flip."
"Oh, Thanksgiving. Thank you. I'd love to come."
Sissy didn't have family here. She lived alone in the basement of someone's house over near the college. Gail had actually hoped that Steve would move in with her and she'd have been willing to help with the rent. Sam wasn't so sure. Sissy worked as a stripper part time at a club in Hyattsville called Fuego. That didn't faze Gail. She'd done much the same thing before she's gone on stage with the Rockettes in New York. Sissy was a sweet girl and, if she should become pregnant, that too wasn't something that Gail and Sam hadn't faced. It might be just the thing to get Steve's nose out of his computer. Well, as long as the baby was Steve's, which wasn't looking very promising yet. They had those ways of checking now. They hadn't had them when Gail was pregnant and she and Sam had had to go on faith. Good thing Steve had grown up the spitting image of the handsome Sam.
When they reentered the house, Sissy was already in the kitchen when Gail saw Steve stumbling back to his room from the bathroom in a dazed stupor. He was only wearing droopy pajama bottoms and was scratching at where his balls would be behind the material. Lucky Sissy, Gail thought, if she could ever get a fire lit under the young man. Maybe it would have been better for Sissy to find him asleep on his bed with a woody on.
He was out in the kitchen, dressed, and looking for coffee before Gail and Sissy were finished with their cup. Sissy followed him back to his bedroom, leaving Gail to sigh and to open the newspaper in hopes she'd find really gruesome stories that would make her feel thankful this Thanksgiving week. Just another . . . but then she remembered the e-mail she's gotten from her cousin, Faye. What in the hell was a Brazilian tongue? Faye always stirred things up, even when she wasn't here. But her note suggested that she might show up for Thanksgiving. Would she choose turkey or ham? Probably steak, Gail thought—and laughed.
* * * *
She sat, drinking coffee at the kitchen table again, all alone, making up a shopping list for the Thanksgiving meal. Steve was off, meeting Sissy at the college library, he said. Sam had been called in to the Kennedy Center on some sort of stage lighting problem or other. That was Sam's world now, inheriting his family's stage lighting business and moving it from New York, where the competition had been stiff, to D.C. That's what Sam did now. He'd been trying to work himself to a mainline act when she'd first met him, a long-haired, gloriously blond drummer in a band. When he went into the family business was when he started to cool down into mediocrity. And she'd descended that spiral with him, hadn't she? Ever since she'd had Steve to worry about, as well.
Was it just the four of them for Thanksgiving, or would Faye and Harry be here too? Had Faye mentioned "I" or "we" in her e-mail? Gail couldn't remember and felt too torpid to go for her phone to check it out. Would Harry be traveling this far at all? Wouldn't he be busy putting together his big Christmas shows for Vegas this time of year? Her thoughts went to Harry—bigger than life; loud, boisterous, bawdy. Boy, could that man fuck. It was funny—her being with Harry first and her cousin, Faye, with Sam. And then there was that swingers party at that producer's house in the Hamptons and everything got switched around. Harry was good—really good—but Sam had been better. Had been.
He'd been better then, but what about now? Where had the spark gone? She thought back to Harry, him on top of her, doing his favorite, anal, and she started to feel tingly all over. It wasn't a sensation she'd had for some time. She lay back in her chair, let her hand descend to her center, fingering herself under the robe through a leg hole in her panties. She let the fingers trail through her pussy folds and then to latch onto her clit, rubbing herself there, transporting herself back to the earlier, carefree, free-love era of her life.
She was jerking through small explosions—good, not great, but good; better than she'd achieved with Sam the night before—when, as the highest pleasure she was going to get washed over her, she was drawn back into the world by the sound of a car horn close by.
Very close by, like in their driveway.
