[ Dear Readers:
If you prefer to read episodes of this series without their predecessors, that's fine and I hope you enjoy them that way. Just a heads-up, though: It's not meant to be an anthology. All the episodes (except the first) build on those before them, so you'll probably conclude some things differently from what was intended.
Some of our readers' public and private comments touch on unmentioned matters, just a few of which are safe sex, STDs and common real-world consequences of things and events in the story.
Two chief rules in theatre are, first, everything on stage must have a reason to be there, second, everything that the action requires must be present, whether explicitly or implicitly. It's not much different in written fiction. By the second rule, if a story does not get into some particular issue explicitly or implicitly (for example, indirectly through consequences) then it is irrelevant because the author deems it so and asks the reader to consider that issue adequately handled without mention. Sometimes action may be simplified a little from what is actually meant for the sake of smoothness and avoiding distracting details unnecessary for understanding the scene. A good author has respect for the reader's intelligence and imagination and does not feel compelled to paint every scene in photographic detail.
In short, if it ain't there, it don't matter. Please remember that this is a story, not a case study or the news.]
*
Sunset had come, and with it the imminence of a night of sleeplessness and torment. I thought back on another night,
that
other night which you may recall, that night of inner torture that seemed now merely the precursor to this one.
The irony was crushing. How I had silently railed against my dear Fred for having allowed our son to watch his mother in illicit sex with Janine through a system of lenses and mirrors and photograph us! How I had expressly denounced him for accepting the incestuous element of Jason's voyeurism! The names I had called him, the labels I had thrown at him in the debating-hall of my mind, all returned. They were bitter, accusatory, unyielding, unforgiving. I had only grudgingly conceded the one point against me, the impropriety of our sex, and even then had intermittently indulged the belief that my wrong was negligible in comparison to his.
And now I found within myself, not mere tolerance of a passively incestuous interest, but rather a desire so nearly compelling in its strength that I doubted my ability to resist it should the temptation confront me. This was active and driving desire, the desire to press beyond incest of sight and mind, beyond that to the incest of flesh. It was the desire to attract my son, to seduce him, using all the power of my body to excite him beyond his power to resist, to thus compel him to press his young, strong body against mine—and into mine. It was the desire to feel the touch of his hand upon the white-hot point of my aching clitoris, that then yielding to tongue, that, in turn, yielding in time to the ultimate prize, the eminence of his manhood, given to him by Nature to pleasure woman, now pleasuring
this
woman, immersing its totality into the very realm in which the physical beginning of it and the man who owns it had begun.
How shallow and insignificant Fred's transgressions now seemed in comparison, and how unjust had been my vitriolic attacks. I had then wished for the right time to lash out at him and was now was so grateful that no such time had ever come to pass.
Fred. The man whose love I counted on, the man for whose happiness I would sacrifice anything and everything, the man whom I loved no less at that moment than I ever had, was now being scorned by my unwilling passion. Oh God, how I wished for some cosmic shift able to reconcile these two conflicting loves! How I was forced to watch, helpless, as my own mind engaged in a futile search through every account of human history it could to find some excuse to justify a love of both husband and son in the flesh. Even the Biblical account of Lot's daughters was consulted, but it would take the mightiest of self-deceptions to corrupt that into the rationalization I was looking for.
That damned clock again. Two-thirty, it read. No, two-thirty-one. Time, the measurement of which was the reason for its existence, I had then depended upon to heal my torment, and it had not failed me. Would it heal again? I had not questioned its efficacy the last time; I had only chafed at the slowness of the healing. This time I feared to trust it to heal at all, ever.
This is hell, I thought. Torment without the possibility of parole. Agony without end, timeless time, minutes devoid of purpose marching lemminglike to death.
Two-thirty-eight. Whoopie.
Twelve eternities later my half-full coffee cup steamed on the back-patio table while the caffeine I had already ingested fought a losing battle against a brown haze of strain and sleeplessness. Janine studied my face quizzically. This time she had no reason to expect this state of mind and it puzzled her.
"Linda, don't you think one trip through hell is enough for one lifetime? Or, at least, one month?" Her question was light and cheerful and it helped a little.
"Jannie, this is worse. It is far, far worse than last time," I said in a hoarse mumble. Jannie had probably read the news already, as she so often does, but if she did at all, this time she realized that she must wait for me to find my own time. Meanwhile, she sat and sipped her coffee in silence, speaking to me only with the compassion written in her features. More patiently than any friend has any right to expect of a friend she waited until I was ready to speak.
"Jannie, I am so torn. I cannot believe what I am thinking and feeling. It feels like every ounce of virtue I have ever dared to claim as my own has been stripped from me. I have been betrayed. I have become the victim of the worst of infidelities, an adultery too painful to admit because the victim and the adulterer are one and the same."
Jannie needed a little time to decipher all that, but she did not begrudge it. Within the time she processed the message the wellsprings of my eyes suddenly erupted, gushing forth with hurricane force.
"It's the incest thing, isn't it?" she asked, softly. "Oh, Linda, I never thought that our story about it could hurt you like this! I had no idea, I promise."
"I know, Jannie, I know," I sobbed. "I wouldn't have thought it either. The truth is, what you said didn't cause this pain; it only uncovered what was already there. Perhaps I should be grateful; now I can at least see the enemy."
Jannie looked into my eyes, engaged them with her own, looked away toward Jason's apartment, nodded and then turned her eyes back to mine.
