"Hi Sarah, how did the meeting go. He what? You have got to be joking. What about the rate? No! Oh my God! Forward me to his line, please." Janet paced in fury as the phone connected. "Cliff! What happened in that meeting? Fine? You call those terms 'fine?' What did I tell you yesterday? No -- what did I tell you yesterday? I spelled this all out for you, Cliff. I told you to accept nothing but the original agreement! Cliff, they always try this crap! They always have an emergency in shipping or a dead relative in Idaho or a flood or something! I told you not to take any of their bullshit! What? You want to make this my fault? What do I pay you for Cliff?"
As this tirade raged, I sat across the dining room table from Janet, quietly eating my oatmeal and flipping through the morning paper. I wondered if Cliff would feel any less fucked if he could see her at that point, wrapped in her thin silk robe with severe bed-hair and her giant yellow Tweety Bird slippers on her feet. My sister-in-law didn't look especially intimidating to me but I knew this Cliff guy must have been shitting himself.
"This was idiot simple, Cliff! I told you exactly what to do and exactly what to look for and you failed. How can you not see this as a failure? They screwed us, Cliff! You signed off on a deal that lets them out of their contract! I don't want to hear it! You folded at the first sign of pressure. You folded! Cliff? Cliff!" The phone fell from her ear and she fixed me with an incredulous look. "He hung up on me. That dumb fuck hung up on me!"
"Kinda fucked up, didn't he?"
"You better believe it." She punched a few numbers into the phone, still pacing. A few moments later she spoke. "Carl. I need termination paperwork on Cliff Harding. Hell yes I've got reason."
As she paced and barked Cliff's professional demise into the phone, her robe had begun to loosen a bit. Glimpses of her well tanned skin flashed every time she reached the right side of her pacing track, and on the last few passes I had been able to see a flash of her nipple in the shadow cast by the morning sun. This had been happening quite a bit recently; flashes of skin, robes hanging dangerously wide open, 'accidental' glimpses of her in a state of undress, bathroom doors left ajar. When she finished, she sat down across from me, dropping the phone on the table.
"That guy is a class 'A' fuck-up and I'm tired of it. He is outta there." She picked up a spoonful of her thoroughly soggy corn flakes and let it fall back into the bowl with a distasteful look on her long features.
"You are so hot when you are angry. I bet Cliff fucked up just to fantasize about you." We had been flirting long before I married her sister 3 years ago, but since I had taken up temporary residence in her place a new facet of the relationship seemed to be growing. "I bet he's got a giant hard on right now, eyes mashed shut and whacking off like a hyperactive monkey, dreaming of you screaming at him, naked except for the Tweety slippers. Hot stuff..."
"You're not right." She pushed the bowl away and turned to her left, crossing her legs to the side of the table and 'accidentally' offering me the view into her gaping bathrobe. She picked up part of the paper and started acting like she was reading it, but I watched her eyes and I could tell. She was checking to see if I was looking at her intentional exposure. I was having a hard time not looking but I had to be sure of what I suspected. She made it obvious enough, though. I decided to let her catch me and I let my eyes linger on her left breast, my mind buzzing with excitement and fear. I finished my oatmeal and pushed away the bowl.
"I wanted to thank you again for putting me up while I look for a job in Atlanta. It's been tough with Karen down there these last 3 months and it really helps to not have the expense of an apartment since we sold the house."
"Don't worry about it. You put me up between my apartment and my house, remember? I owed you." I remembered, all right. I remembered watching the sisters sunbathing on my back deck in the summer, a buffet of inviting flesh before my hungry eyes. My wife apparently inherited her mother's stature, short and curvy, while Janet more resembled her father's physiology, tall and slender. Janet had always been fairly cavalier about her body. She didn't mind who saw her half-naked and it was nothing to do yard work in shorts (and she liked SHORT shorts) and a bikini top. She was hot and she liked to prove it. Still, these slips were more than usual and they had been happening more and more over the last few weeks since I moved in.
"I didn't realize you were taking the day off. Shame you don't get to fire that jerk in person. He'd probably jizz his boxers right there in front of you."
"Shut up. I just decided last night. I've got a couple of meetings but I can handle that over the phone. What time is your phone interview?"
"2:00. Do we have a conflict on the phone?"
"Nope. I remembered your interview correctly so there is no conflict." She dropped the paper on the desk and rose, and then leaned over the table to pick up my empty bowl. The view thus offered was just short of scandalous. She made sure I saw, and for an instant our eyes met with the full knowledge of what had just transpired. Then she rose and went into the kitchen.
"Who gets the shower first?" I called after her. I was thinking that perhaps mine needed to be a cold one.
"I'll take it. You always take too long." True enough. I love a long, hot shower. Almost as much as I love a long, hot blonde. I tried to shake that thought from my head as I returned my attention to the sports section.
It didn't work.
I knew she was turning up the heat to see what I would do, and I wasn't sure what I would do. I love my wife but sometimes the baser urges can be awfully strong. I found myself headed for the guest room, knowing full well I was just giving her an excuse to have another "accident." I could have resisted that urge. I think.
As I reached the hallway to the guest room I cast a quick glance down to Janet's room, and sure enough she had planned something special for me. She was just taking off her bathrobe in her room with the door wide open. She had her back to me but I'm sure she could feel my eyes roaming her long back, slender legs and heart-shaped ass. As I forced myself to turn away and go into my room the image of that ass stayed with me, like the after-image burned on your eyes after seeing a bright light.