by Eva Mazza
Lee placed both hands on her shoulders. “On the contrary, darling, I’m very much in the mood. I’m a very happy man.”
“Ah,” Frankie purred. “I love a happy man.” Maybe he had scored another million-dollar deal. Who knew? “Care to tell me why you’re so happy?”
“I will, in time. But in the meantime, Frankie,” she felt his hands move down her body and she had to control her impulse to reject him, “do what you do best.”
Frankie knew exactly what her husband meant, and so she remained straddled as she pretended to want him as much as he wanted her. I’m really tired and I’ve just had sex with your best friend. It felt wrong. His eyes were closed, and he had a gratified smirk on his face as his hands squeezed her buttocks while she guided him into her. Frankie thought of being with John, and the almost violent intensity of their sex aroused her. She moved more passionately, more vigorously now, but there still seemed to be no connection between them, so she leaned over to kiss him. As she did, he jerked her head backwards by her hair, away from his face.
“Let’s just stick to basics, okay?”
She wondered if it was his intention to make her feel like a whore, but she daren’t stop. She knew the rules and how to play by them. It felt like forever for her husband to climax and when he did, she climbed off him and picked up her clothes from the floor before padding to the bathroom to shower. He had humiliated her. He’d been almost cruel, and she couldn’t help but feel hurt. She had hoped he would be asleep when she got back into bed, but he had rolled onto his side, head propped up against his hand.
“So?” he asked. “How’s Jen doing?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Did you speak to her?”
Why is he asking again?
“I told you I had, love. She seems fine. It looks as if she’s considering leaving John. She told me that she had met someone who is dating a very good divorce lawyer. Apparently, he’s done some high-profile cases.”
Lee seemed interested. He had sat up now. She wished he would go to sleep.
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. Leonard, I think. I didn’t ask for details. She didn’t seem too keen to chat.” I’m not too keen to chat. He seemed to know this, but he kept on regardless.
“It must be Leonard Mazwai. If it is, she’s going to need a lot of money for him to represent her.”
Frankie’s tone changed. She sounded aggressive. She was sick of talking about Jen. I did warn her. It’s not as if she hadn’t been warned! Frankie pulled the duvet over her naked body. “Well, I told her that I thought divorce is a bad idea. Really, over some floozy. And it’s not like I didn’t warn her about Patty. But Jen, she’s so trusting, stupid even. I could see Patty was a whore from the moment I laid eyes on her!”
Lee smiled as if he had been waiting to hear these very words. “I guess it takes one to know one,” Lee said, rolling over to sip the last of his scotch.
Frankie wasn’t sure at first whether she had heard him properly. When she realised she had, she suppressed the panic that welled up inside her. She wasn’t going to let it show. Instead she turned victim. “Lee! That’s mean! You know my past. I’ve never hidden it from you.”
Lee put his glass back down on his bedside table. He looked at his wife straight in the eyes. “I’m familiar with your past and I know your recent past and I’m very aware of your present.”
Frankie battled to breathe. “Wh… What do you mean?”
He held her chin, his eyes softening. “Why don’t you try figure it out?” Then he kissed her on the lips. She tried to pull away, but he had a firm grip on her. “I’m going to sleep. I’m absolutely knackered and I need to be in the city tomorrow.” He glanced at the clock beside his bed. “Well, today, I guess. I’ll only be back Tuesday, so don’t expect me home tonight.”
He gave her another peck, this time on the cheek, and then rolled over onto his side, his back to her, and switched off his bedside lamp. It was as if sleep was immediate for him.
Not so for Frankie; she lay in the dark in a cold sweat listening to her husband snore. She wasn’t exactly sure what Lee had meant, but tonight’s mood was an indication that something was brewing. This was typical of him: he would let her agonise over issues until he was ready to confront them. There were many things that could compromise her marriage. Has he found out about them, or am I just being paranoid?
The sun had just come up when Lee left for Cape Town. He had made an early start to miss the Monday morning mayhem on the roads. And, as much as he had business to take care of, avoiding Frankie was his main priority. He had said too much, and it was becoming more difficult to remain mute, let alone stay passive.
He had bumped into their helper Faith on his way out. She had his coffee ready and was about to start his breakfast. He gulped down his espresso. “No breakfast for me this morning, Faith,” he instructed.
“Is Boss Lee going to work on an empty stomach?”
Lee smiled. He never could stop her from preceding his name with ‘boss’ and had given up trying years ago.
“I am, Faith. Too much to do, and I want to miss the traffic.”
“Madam Frankie says it’s bad for your sugar. You must have breakfast.”
Lee laughed. “Madam Frankie,” he teased, “is not a doctor. You can give her my breakfast. I’ll see you Tuesday, Faith. Lots of work to do.”
The traffic became heavier as he neared the harbour. He hated driving bumper to bumper, so he weaved in and out of the lanes, knowing that this did very little to shorten the time it took him to get to his destination.
He was a little more stressed than usual. It seemed everything was coming to a head, and he told himself that he had to stay calm for things to pan out as they should.
After stopping at his favourite coffee shop for a quick takeaway cappuccino, Lee parked in the basement in one of his allocated bays and took the lift to the penthouse, coffee in hand. He took a sip of his coffee in the elevator. Some days he would take the stairs, but today he felt sluggish. He had drunk too much over the weekend.
The lift opened to reveal the morning skyline. Seldom did he take the sight for granted. The club, on the other hand, was a very different space when it was not being used for sex, drugs and debauchery. A sad place, ironically, Lee thought, sipping the last of his cappuccino. He was a big fan of irony. I should have been involved in the theatre. He sat at his desk and pulled the newspaper towards him. The front-page headline read PROF SUSPENDED FOR SEX WITH STUDENTS. He smiled.
Also on the table were four neatly stacked brown envelopes. Lee picked up the top one. It was an A4 size and thick. He tore it open and reached in to pull out a wad of photographs. He drew out a random picture and studied it. His phone rang, and he answered without checking who it was.
“Ya, I’m here. Found them on the table.” He swivelled his chair around. “Have you left already? I was hoping to have a meeting with you this morning.”
He listened to the reply then laughed. “I’m looking at them now. Have you got copies for Mazwai?” He continued to study the wad of photographs as he spoke. “Jesus. This is enough to incriminate… You need to get to the lawyer’s office. Today. Okay, okay! You’re onto it. Thank you.” There was a long pause as he listened intently, then spoke. “After the potential fuck up, it couldn’t have gone any better. Okay, meet at four this afternoon. Thanks again.” Lee’s mouth turned up into a half smile. He crumpled the paper cup in his left hand and lobbed it against the corner wall. It bounced into the dustbin.
“Bam!” he said with a self-satisfied smirk. The cup had TRUTH printed on it – the name of the coffee shop. The irony was not lost on him.
Fifteen
Much to her relief, Frankie found Lee gone when she awoke. It was Monday. Zumba class! She reached for her cellphone at the side of her bed. Faith knocked gently on her door and came in with a tray of orange juice and coffee.
“Morning, Madam Frankie,” she said as Frankie was about to se
nd a voice message. Frankie lifted her hand: a gesture to stop Faith from speaking.
“Hi, Shelley, it’s me. I’m not doing Zumba today so don’t miss me too much. Love you. Mean it.”
Faith had already placed the tray at the foot of her bed and was halfway out the door when her employer acknowledged her.
“Thank you, Faith. You’re my sunshine.” Faith turned and smiled. Frankie broke into song. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine you make me happy when skies are grey.”
Faith laughed at her. “Haai, Madam Frankie! That song you used to sing to Clive when he was a baby.”
Frankie laughed as she reached for her juice. “And now I’m singing it to you! You’ll never know dear, how much I lo-o-ve you, please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Faith closed the door gently behind her. Frankie gulped down her orange juice and drank her coffee – black, no sugar – as she did most mornings. She flung off her duvet and climbed out of bed, grabbing her silk gown from the hook in the bathroom.
“Today you will do what you should have done ages ago,” she spoke out loud to herself. “Delete any incriminating photos, emails or texts, you stupid woman.”
She couldn’t believe how much she had been prepared to risk – how much was at stake if Lee ever found out.
She had more to lose than John; maybe that’s why he could be less careful. She wasn’t from Stellenbosch and she certainly hadn’t had an easy childhood. She had come a long way from being Moorreesburg’s mattress. She couldn’t tolerate losing the windfall of landing Lee as a husband by means of sexual savvy. Which could well be her downfall if she didn’t rein herself in. Her mother had always said that Frankie would either be somebody or nobody, but that her inability to control her impulses would probably ruin her eventually.
Or save her.
At ten, her uncle, referred to by her siblings as Creepy Craig, had lured her into a bedroom at a Christmas party. The adults had been too drunk to notice the two were missing, and her mom had been too distracted by her new boyfriend to care. Once he and Frankie were in the bedroom, he gave her a toffee. She put it into her mouth and began to chew. He warned her she would break her teeth, and he popped one into his own fat, jowly mouth, showing her how to suck on it. “That way, my darling, you learn to draw the juice from it.”
Frankie knew something wasn’t quite right and began to ask for her mother.
“Your mommy’s busy with her new boyfriend. She said I must look after you,” he had said. “Let’s play a game.”
“I don’t want to play a game,” she whined.
Her uncle wasn’t listening. He had held up his fingers. Ten little pork sausages. To this day, she still couldn’t abide the sight of a pork sausage. He had put his stubby, fat index finger in his mouth and sucked on it. She watched him, revolted.
“Sis! What are you doing?” she asked. He ignored her question. Instead, he held the very same finger up to her mouth.
“Now you suck it.”
“What? Your finger?” her mouth had pulled up in disgust.
She could see she was irritating him. “Yes. Like I was doing.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because we’re playing a game.”
“Well I don’t want to play your stupid game,” she’d said as she got up to leave the room. He grabbed her arm to stop her.
With hindsight, he was probably grooming her for other things, but she would never know, because when he grabbed her, she had kicked him on the shin, hard. Creepy Craig howled in pain. She remembered that he had tried to smack her, but he was too fat to be quick. The thought made her smile. She had learnt from her brothers that the groin was the most vulnerable and promising place for a girl to strike, so she had kicked him again, this time between his thighs. The adults had heard his screams and they stopped what they were doing to investigate.
Creepy Craig was never seen again, and although Frankie didn’t really understand at the time what her uncle was trying to get her to do, on a subliminal level she knew there was something deviant in his behaviour.
She flicked through the cellphone pics she had sent to John. Most of them were sexy pouts and poses, but there were other, more illicit photos that could get her into deep trouble should they ever be found.
She remembered stumbling across her brothers’ collection of porn magazines when she was a young girl and showing them to her mother only after viewing every disgusting page. “Where did you find these?” her mother had shrieked. She had explained that she had found them under her siblings’ beds.
“What were you doing snooping in their bedroom?”
Her mother had admonished her and not her brothers. “Boys will be boys,” she had said after she scolded her daughter for being a snoop.
The phone was ringing. It was Clive.
“What you up to?” he asked.
“Shouldn’t you be at lectures? It’s Monday.”
“Thanks for reminding me what day it is. I only start at ten. Can’t a son phone his mother to say hello?” Frankie laughed, knowing that Clive never phoned to just say hello.
“I’m terribly flattered, but I’m also not stupid. What’s up, Clive?”
She walked towards the mirror and looked at her reflection, not really seeing anything.
“I’m sorry I missed Uncle John’s birthday. Is Dad pissed off?” Frankie straightened up and turned around trying to assess the size of her ass. She did have a beautiful butt.
“He didn’t say anything to me. I’m not sure he even noticed, but it is bad manners, Clive, and you know it. Where were you?”
Clive explained that he had meant to come after his digs mate’s twenty-first, but he had drunk too much.
“Well, I guess boys will be boys,” she said, echoing her mother.
Mom had not felt the same way about girls being girls. Especially when she had been called to the office because her fifteen-year-old daughter had been giving blowjobs behind the school tuckshop. At sixteen she had formally broken her virginity with the head boy.
Her mother did not put it down to her being a girl when she was suspended for a month in her final year at school. She remembered her storming into their house after meeting with the principal and Frankie’s teacher.
“You are such a slut!” she had yelled at her daughter. “It’s bad enough I’ve had to deal with your shenanigans with other boys. But now, the teacher! And such a nice young man. He says you have been coming on to him from his first day at school! Have you no shame?”
Slut shaming at its best, Frankie thought; although it was true. She had to admit that she had pursued the poor young teacher relentlessly. When she eventually had Mr Samuels alone in the classroom for extra maths, he had explained at the meeting that “There was nothing I could have done to avoid her advances. I’m not a monk and I wasn’t trained how to avoid such situations at college. I’m really, really sorry.”
By the time she had left school, her pass was as bad as her reputation. She knew that if she wanted to get anywhere in life, she couldn’t rely on her academic record, or on any of the boys in her town, for that matter. No one would forgive a girl for just being a girl.
It was by fluke that she had walked into the bar of the local hotel on a cold Friday night with Jay, her newly acquired and only girl friend. A group of men was seated in front of the bar’s television watching the rugby game. Her future husband had turned around to find a waitress and he had locked eyes with Frankie. Although he had seemed a lot older than her, she knew how to lure men, and Lee would be no exception.
They began to chat. She asked him what the hell he was doing in “this dead-end place”. He had laughed that beguiling laugh and said that he was just passing through.
“I would love to hitch a ride out of this town and never come back. Maybe you’re my knight in shining armour?” she had flirted.
It was never Frankie’s style to feign innocence. She told Lee she had been through just about all the men in her town and, if it must be k
nown, “None of them are worth the dicks they’re carrying between their thighs.”
Before the night was over, Lee had missed the entire rugby game and had taken Frankie up to his hotel bedroom where he proved to her he deserved the organ that defined him as a man. Lee had thought she would be a one-night stand. She hadn’t been offended; she knew that her type was born to be one-night stands.
“I don’t know why,” he had said after three weeks of dating her, “but I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Frankie had laughed at him as she punched him gently on the chest. “Is that such a bad thing, Lee? What’s so wrong with falling for me?”
“Well, you know…” Ever the gentleman, he had tried hard not to hurt her feelings. “You must meet my folks,” he had said, determined. “Once they know you, I know they’ll like you.”
Frankie was finally introduced to Lee’s family. She knew he came from an advantaged background, but she had never imagined just how advantaged it was. Despite her sketchy upbringing and his parents’ reservations, they were warm and kind to her, believing Lee would eventually tire of her.
When he asked Frankie to marry him, there was no hesitation, and no expense spared on their wedding.
Lee’s friends were ambivalent about the new girl. The girls saw her as a threat because their men found her tantalising. The only girl who was welcoming was Jen. She too wasn’t quite part of the group, and the two of them became close. Two people more different from each other you couldn’t find, but they shared a bond in that their husbands were best friends, and both were wine farmers.
“You’re a stupid, stupid woman, Frankie!” she said, looking at her reflection in the mirror. “You have been so lucky and yet you’re hell-bent on destroying everything: your marriage, Clive’s happiness, friendships, everything. You phone John right now and you tell him you agree, it’s over.”
She dialled his number, and, after two rings, she ended the call. She knew the rules: If John were free, he would call her back. If he didn’t, she knew it wasn’t safe for them to speak. She ran in her bath, waiting for him to return her missed call. He never did, so she sent him a cursory, “We need to cool things between us.”
