The grass is greener

by Dominique Defforest

  “Stress,” I scoffed. “To help with her social life.”

  “She’s a popular girl,” Bron said, turning away from me as she reached for the zipper at the top of her one piece dress.

  “She has her mother’s eyes. Green and mysterious. Like a cat’s.”

  The dress fell to the floor and she kicked it aside. I admired the white flesh of her back, and the still slender waist. After she had taken off her ear rings and necklace, she reached for the bra. Her breasts were not large, but I never felt as though I was missing something. She wore black panties, with the sandy pubic hair visible at the top and at the bikini line. I sometimes teased her about it. Bron lifted the covers and slipped into the bed alongside me.

  “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “Biography. On The Stones. It's their fiftieth-anniversary this year. I’m going to do a piece on it for one of the music mags.”

  She didn't answer. She had never liked the Rolling Stones. I had their full catalogue on my iPhone and often played it through, at high volume, when she was at work at the hospital, and I was laboring away at home on the next freelance piece.

  “But,” I said decisively, suggestively. “I’m finding this book hard work. Especially with a half-naked blonde in the bed next me.”

  “I’m old and fat.”

  “You're young and gorgeous.”

  I reached for her, to caress her, but she had turned aside.

  “Good night Brian.”

  She had said it gently, but firmly, decisively. I returned to the book on the Stones and opened it with a sigh.

  Of course, I didn’t really need to. The reason I gave was lame, so lame I was sure Bron would see right through it, but she didn't. And she didn’t seem to care.

  “Shit,” I had cried, in mock exasperation. “I’ve gotta get this stuff over to Tara now or we'll miss the deadline.”

  Bron just nodded. She didn’t ask – why don't you email it? Or, Why now, at eight o’clock on a Friday night? She just accepted it with an uncaring nod. It wasn’t that she was slow, far from it. Her mind was sharp and agile. She was a senior theatre nurse. Having started out as a young mother, going back to school in her early twenties, she had risen through the ranks on the ward to a well paid position. She had done well.

  “Will you be home?” I asked as I prepared to leave.

  “Yeah.”

  She was still in her uniform. I had asked because I knew she had an invitation from some girlfriends to see a movie. It didn't look like she was going. I left without saying anything further to Bron, and drove the short distance across our town to where Tara lived. When I got there, I stopped outside her house and turned the engine off. I didn’t get out the car straight away, chiefly because I knew this was stupid, irrational. Bordering on psychotic. I also knew that her husband was overseas, on business. And I knew it was risky. No, I told myself, this is not risky, it's crazy! I got out the car, tucking the sheaf of documents that were the supposed reason for this nocturnal call, and walked to the front door. A light came on automatically as I approached. I stood there, for some time, in the doorway, underneath the yellow light, panicking. She would be amazed. Incredulous. She would be suspicious, angry. She would tell me to “fuck off”! I would be humiliated. I pressed the door bell anyway.

  “Hi Brian, come in.”

  I followed her through a passageway that opened out into a generous sitting room. A gas fire was burning in the imitation fireplace. She had been watching something, and the TV or video was now paused. It was very quiet,

  “Just brought over these front pages. I can't… I just couldn't get things… get it… out of my mind… You know how it is with us writers, when you're onto something, you’ve got to see it through… Now.”

  I looked at her helplessly.

  “Sure. I’m exactly the same designing something,” she said enthusiastically. “Went through to the early hours last night. 2am. Taking advantage of Mark being away, and the kids being down at my mothers for the next few days.”

  “Sorry to call like this…” I began.

  “It’s okay.”

  She moved toward me, to take the papers from my trembling grasp. A sort of heaviness seemed to pass over me, but some things, some facts, were becoming clear in my mind, as though emerging from an impossibly thick fog – she seemed quite okay that I had called at this hour, pleased even… Her husband was overseas on business…. Her kids were at her mothers… She was alone in the house… She was inches from me, close enough to reach out and touch…

  “Good luck with the design Tara,” I said, really awkwardly this time, cursing myself as I said it. “Hope these help.”

  I dropped the sheath of documents on to the coffee table and turned toward the passageway from which I had come.

  “No problem Brian. Thanks so much,” she answered, walking to the door alongside me.

  “I think this is going to be a great initiative, if we can get it off the ground,” I was saying, trying to sound natural, normal. My pulse was racing.

  “By locals, for locals,” she said in a sing-song voice.

  “Good night Tara.”

  “Night Brian.”

  It was polite, and matter-of-fact, that last exchange. But the unspoken tension was such that, when the door closed behind me and I was standing again in the night air on her porch, I felt giddy, and my legs trembled so much that I almost lost my balance as I made my way back across the bitumen road to my car.

  “You’re like a fucking love-sick schoolboy,” I chided myself.

  When I got back home Bron was already asleep, curled up in the bed, in fetal position. I wasn't surprised. She had seemed tired, and drained, when she had got home from work. I usually kissed her, lightly, on the forehead, or the back of her neck, as I climbed into bed next to her, even if she was asleep. I didn't that night. I lay awake thinking of Tara.

  It was over by the end of the next day. The night, when it came, was unseasonably warm. The sun was settling over the ranges in the distance. It was dark, but not yet completely, for the day was refusing still to surrender, and was lingering it seemed, like an eerie red phantom somewhere in the clouds. I had just poured my first glass of wine and set the bottle down when I heard her voice asking brightly:

  “Got one for me?”

  “Sure.”

  I poured it out. A good shiraz. From a local vineyard of course. She joined me on the two-seater that looked out over the neatly mowed yard, across the town, and to the mountains, the trees bare, having shed their leaves as winter closed in. The smell of the wood fires, burning inside the older houses, rose to greet us. Only the newer homes, built in the expansion of the past few years, had natural gas connected. The locals continued to burn redgum logs in open fireplaces, for warmth. We sipped the wine, in silence. In front of us a brazier burned. I always lit a fire here, on the balcony at the back of the house, on Saturday nights. It was something of a ritual. It was always accompanied by wine, and the Rolling Stones playing somewhere in the background.

  “Brian, I wanted to …”

  As she began to speak I rose my hand in front of her face, gently smothering the sound of her voice. The words, whatever they were going to be, were left unspoken. My lips moved toward hers. I was conscious that she was putting the glass of wine aside as we embraced, and as our lips moved towards each others and our tongues caressed through our open mouths. I undid the top two buttons of the white shirt she wore. She reclined her head and sighed with pleasure as I moved my mouth over her neck, and over the exposed shoulders, gently and deliberately. The darkness had settled in now, banishing the ghostly sun that had lingered for so long on the horizon. The light shed by the fire danced over her white flesh as I undid the buttons, one by one, and pushed the material aside. My mouth moved her stomach, and along her sides. I knew the flesh was scarred with stretch-marks, they had never bothered me. She had put on weight, especially lately. It worried her, but not me. I was seeing now her as she had been then, dancing in
a white bikini on the beach as a fire blazed between us and as Duran Duran sang “”Hungry like the wolf” from a portable cassette player that would run out of batteries before too long. And yet, at the same time, I was seeing her as she was right now, on the balcony in the firelight, in her forties, a wife, and a mother. She tried to protest when I reached around her and began working at the clips holding up her bra, but it was a weak protest, easily dismissed, more about the fear of someone seeing than wanting it to stop. I was soon swiveling my tongue over her breasts, now exposed to the night air, and letting my mouth rest, warm and wet, over her nipples, as they hardened in the cold. I felt her reaching for my jeans, and struggling at the buttons, and then the zipper. She began to tug at them. I felt the palm of her hand pushing underneath the denim. My erection was warm in her hand as her palm closed around the shaft beneath my boxers. I stood, to lift my woolen V-neck and the shirt underneath it, over my shoulders, and as I did so she pulled the boxers down. My hard-on bounded out, somewhat comically, in her hand. She guided it, purposefully, toward her mouth, and I felt her lips closing around the crown.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed as she took the length of it, almost to the base, into her mouth. It occurred to me, then, as her head bobbed about in front of me, moving up and down slowly and deliberately, and as I caressed her hair, that I was standing all but naked on the balcony at the back of my house, with my bare arse pointing directly to where I knew the neighbours homes to be, whilst my wife was sitting topless on the outdoor setting in front of me with my penis in her mouth. But she shouldn't be, I told myself suddenly. I knew she felt like she needed to do it, because I asked for it, pleaded for it, so often. I knew she didn’t like doing it much. Never had. It was one of the disappointments about our life together that had hovered about in my psyche for years. I withdrew. She looked up, surprised, her eyes green and round.

  “What's wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said with conviction, as I reached for her, firmly, but gently. She fell back onto the cushions. She had already kicked off her shoes. Now the stockings were joining them on the decking. All of the nurses wore the same uniform at the hospital Bron worked in. White shirts, buttoned, with their name tags pinned to the left breast pocket and the hospital insignia on the other side. Sometimes a jacket or pullover, but not often, the temperature was always the same on the ward. The skirts were black, knee length, although some of the women wore black trousers. Bron never did. I lifted the skirt over her thighs, pushing it back with the outstretched palms of my hands as she arranged herself, a little awkwardly at first, on the two-seater. My tongue emerged from my mouth, erect, and commenced its journey, along the inside of her left thigh, over the black panties (a squeal), and then down the inside right thigh, and back up to the panties, dwelling there. I kissed her through the material, inhaling her warmth and moisture, and the musky scent. She moved her legs apart. Her breath was coming fast, in the night air, somewhere above me. I peeled her panties aside with my fingers and tasted her with my outstretched tongue, probing into her wetness.

  “You haven’t done this for ages.”

  I moved her panties aside a little more. Her labia peeled open before me. I found the place and let my mouth dwell there, tongue swiveling about between my lips, flicking over her swollen clit. And then I licked her out. Long, slow, deliberate licks of my flat tongue, starting almost inside her as her pussy gaped open in front of me, working up to the bulging clit and dwelling there. Then repeating it.

  “God I’ve missed this,” she purred.

  When I came up for air she pulled my face toward her, frantically. I drew away from her, instinctively, but she willed me with a firm grasp, and I found myself kissing her open mouth, tentatively at first.

  “Oh God,” she said with a little cry of surprise. “I can taste myself.”

  “I’ve had my tongue inside your pussy,” I explained unnecessarily.

  “I don't care.”

  We kissed passionately, and eagerly, tongues entwined and lips moving over each others mouths, and over the flesh around our mouths, the saliva and the thick mucus mingling together.

  “Brian,” Bron breathed as I entered her, peeling her panties aside again with an outstretched finger. “Brian, I love you.”

  “I know,” I answered.

  Our faces were inches apart. I could see her in the weakening light shed by the fire as it began to die out in the brazier. Her eyes were open, looking directly into mine.

  “I love you too,” I told her. “I just needed to fall in love with you all over again tonight, that’s all.”

  I felt her fingernails on my back, and did my best to maneuver my body so that I was entering her right at the top of her vulva, where I knew she liked it, so she could feel it on her clit. I held it there, letting her control the pace and the motion, and began to think dreamily of something else as I waited for her. She came, still looking directly into my eyes, with muffled little cries of pleasure, and tears trickling down the side of her face.

  When Bron had gone inside to “clean up,” I fed the now smoldering fire with fresh kindle, and poured myself another glass of wine. As I waited for her to emerge from the bathroom, and to rejoin me on the balcony for the usual post coitus drink, I cast my mind back to that afternoon. To just a few hours earlier that day. To when Tara had stood before me in the doorway. To me kicking the door shut. To the light embrace. And the kiss. To the strength and the power of the attraction, almost tangible, compelling, exactly as I had felt and experienced it in the café over the coffee and the scrambled eggs. It was intensely passionate and sensual, but at the same time somewhat childish. It was powerful and real, but at the same irrational. It was thrilling and exciting, but at the same time it couldn't be. I replayed that moment in my mind:

  “So… What happens now?” she was asking.

  I had paused before answering, but not for long. Conviction came quickly. And then the words. I spoke almost mechanically, as if another were dictating and I merely vocalizing. Something within me didn't want to speak those words, even as they formed on my lips. I felt myself screaming and raging against them. But another part of me knew that I had to speak them. And the latter part won that momentary battle.

  “What happens now is this. I apologize for being so forward and so adolescent. You accept my apology. We both know this is not right. So you leave, in your hot car. We forget about this moment, pretend it never happened. And we never say a word about it again. Not to each other. Not to Mark. Not to Bron. Okay?”

  She was already nodding, unwillingly. She had been studying the floor as I spoke.

  “Tara,” I said softly, my voice all but a hoarse whisper. She looked at me now, with those chestnut eyes. “Another time. Another place. It might have been. Not now.”

  She simply nodded, said nothing, and left, clutching the book I had given her. I watched her climb back into the car, and then she was speeding off down the road, turning sharply into the corner at the end of our street, the tyres squealing on the bitumen. I patted the door shut. Even as I did so I knew that it had ebbed away. In that moment, as I spoke those words. It had flared for just under a week. The flame had almost been lit, but I had quenched it, just in time. I remembered then, on the balcony, glass of wine in hand, waiting for Bron to rejoin me on the two-seater where we had just made love – I remembered how I had turned back into the house, back from the brink of the affair, and how I had looked then over all that Bron and I had built here, the neatly furnished rooms, the photographs of the kids, and of last year’s holiday on the beach. And I remembered, too, how I had been greeted by the sound of The Stones, bursting out from the iPod dock in the living room, singing: