“Wait,” I said. “Wait, wait, wait. I'm confused.”
Tennile looked at me sharply. She sniffed. Then it began to dawn on her that I did not know what was going on.
“Why?” she said quietly. “What did you think was happening?”
“That you were having an affair with Shane!” I practically yelled, my hands open.
Duh.
Her face changed drastically. First it froze, then it melted into a look of horror, then confusion, then she looked down at her hands again and laughed. “Jesus,” she said.
Then she started shaking her head and crying again.
“Oh, fuck, Tennile,” I said. 'What the fuck is going on here?”
She gave a sobbing, hysterical laugh again. “You know what? No. This is good. It's... it was all going to come out anyway. This is good.”
I stared at her.
She took a deep breath and sighed. “So you haven't seen the tape?”
I was getting a really, really bad feeling.
There was a long pause while my head reeled and Tennile gave another laugh, the kind of laugh one makes at ironic situations. She composed herself a little, wiping a tear from her eye.
“What tape?” I whispered.
She rested her hand on the glass again and looked off to the side, tisking. “What exactly did Shane tell you?”
“Nothing,” My voice was hoarse. “I saw you with him. Tonight. I followed you to the motel.”
Tennile's eyes went watery again. She pressed her hand to her forehead.
“I have...” she said, and her chest seemed to choke out her words. “I have something I have to tell you. It's not – I'm not fucking Shane, just so you know. It's...” she squeezed her temples. “It's worse than that.”
And there it was. That flare-up of pain, delicious excitement, and cold foreboding.
A cocktail that, I won't lie, was fucking fantastic. Not fucking Shane – a plummet down.
Much worse than that – strangely, a soaring high.
I waited. I wanted to get the answer out of her as fast as I could, but she seemed like she was ready to confess everything, whatever it was, and she just needed time. As she wrestled with it in her own mind, and tried to pull the features of her face together, the anticipation of what she was about to say took me on a wild ride.
She took a deep breath. She opened her mouth.
“So you know how – I need a glass of wine for this.” She interrupted herself and walked over to the wine rack. Without looking or thinking, she selected one and poured two enormous glasses. She set the second one down for me and walked to the other side of the counter to sit down.
She gulped about half of the wine, and I followed suit by taking a few good sips of my own.
Then she set the glass down and played with the stem with her fingers.
“Before I tell you any of this,” she said quietly, “I want you to know that anything I did to... deceive you... was just because I was trying to save our marriage, and I never would have... I never would have done anything... now, nothing like this now. I was looking for a way to get out of it, I promise.”
I felt another stab of cold fear go through me.
I nodded.
She took another breath. Looking at her fingers she said: “You know that Shane is from my old... job. And what I told you about him being a, well, boyfriend, is pretty much true.”
She let out an almost hysterical-sounding sigh. Her eyes closed and a tear was squeezed out of one of them and trailed down her cheek. Her lovely, pearly white teeth sank into her plump lip.
“The thing is, I uh... so I started out as a cocktail waitress there, you know? That's all I was going to do. It was just so much more money than any other kind of job. And then one thing led to another and I was stripping. And that was so much more money. And I was going to get school paid for. That's what I always thought... but....”
She made another strange noise, started to shake her head. And I got a very, very bad feeling.
“I got caught up in things,” she said. She lifted her eyes so they were level, staring at the refrigerator. As she recounted the rest of the story she was even-toned, almost like she was reading from a paper.
“I started out just stripping, strictly professionally. Only on stage, no lap dances. You can imagine how that turned out. I started spending a lot of money on things like... drinks. Other things. Coke was everywhere. I got irresponsible with my money, not with coke or anything, but... I got a nice apartment, I wanted a car, I wanted nice clothes.”
I was following along with her, trying to remember the details of when we first started dating. She had had a nice car; she told me her dad bought it for her. From there, I just assumed she was rich. Her clothes had been nice, her apartment had been nice. After she confessed to stripping I'd assumed she just made a lot of money doing it.
Well, I'll be honest. I hadn't thought about it all that much. I'd thought plenty about her stripping, and not so much what she did with the money.
“So, some of the girls eventually told me about... another way to make more money. Obscene money.”
She stopped talking and looked back down at her wine glass.
Her words took a long time to make their way around in my head.
Another way to make money.
Obscene.
I shook my head, my jaw open.
There was no way my wife was telling me what she was telling me.
“It wasn't like some trashy thing, like at, I don't know, the HoeDown.” Tennile was referring to another, aptly named, strip club in the area that was well-known for... well, what the name suggested.
“I only did it three times. And it was basically like... like going to a private dance, which a lot of girls did, legit, for parties and stuff. Just... at the end, you know.” She looked up at me, and her eyes welled over with tears. “It was more than dancing.”
So there I was, looking at my wife. My wife, the lawyer, her long black hair in a professional up-do, her make-up flawless as always, her eyes big and wet. She was telling me that she had been a prostitute.
A dirty, filthy prostitute.
And my reaction?
My cock got so hard I felt like I was going to fall over as all the blood drained away from the rest of my body.
There was a long silence. Tennile's eyes fell back to her fingers playing with the stem of the wine glass, and she pressed her lips together in this way that she does when she's said everything she can about a topic and wants to wait for the reaction.
She felt bad. I could see it in her jaw, tense and pushing up into her upper lip. Like she was a child. Only the hum of the light over the stove gave a faint, high-pitched hum that penetrated the thick silence between us. My heart throbbed.
Tape.
Have you seen the tape?
I was pasting together a collage in my mind, trying to connect all the things I'd heard and seen. The tape, the “more than just dancing,” the motel, the lying, the things Tennile had said when I came through door.
The fact that my wife had been a whore.
The fact that I found that more exciting than depressing.
“You said there's a tape?” I said, finally, and the words left my mouth as a bit of a surprise to myself. I was thinking about thousands of things, and that just happened to be the one I clutched to at that particular moment. The tape.
Tennile brought her hands to her face and covered it. She nodded behind them, and I heard that same muffled wail of desperation.
“What's on the tape?”
“It's a video,” Tennile said, pedantically at the strangest moment. “It's... explicit.”
My cock throbbed in my pants. Truthfully, I just wanted to see that tape.
But a hundred other things were hanging in the air.
“And so you're not having an affair with Shane,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Are you having sex with him?”
She put her hands down. “N
o,” she said emphatically. “That's what I'm trying to tell you. I would never do that... that's why, that's why tonight I...” she shook her head. “It's such a mess.”
I crossed my arms. “Is he blackmailing you then, or what?”
Tennile set her hands down again and wrung them. She nodded, looking down. “That's how it started. He said he just wanted some legal help, and I... tried to blow him off. You know, send him on to someone else. And he, uh... that's when he made this kind of threat. 'It would be a real shame if your husband found out about you.' And I figured he meant stripping, I told him you already knew, and wouldn't believe him if he tried to tell you that... if he said... you know.”
Her voice had gone whispery again.
“But then he gave it to me. And.. it seemed like he really did just want legal help, from someone he could trust. He has a, um, business going on with...” she put her hands up to her face. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think he's actually discovered a shipwreck. He even has all these... these emeralds.”
She laughed, a short, scary chortle. “It's all so fucking weird. And all I needed to do was just... write these contracts, some investment thing. And that would be that.”
My jaw was open.
“Tennile, what the fuck are you talking about?” I said.
Now it just sounded... ridiculous.
Tennile shook her head. “I... I don't even know how to explain it. The thing is, it all seems really legit. He's got this site he found, out in the ocean, and he says it's a shipwreck.” She looked at me, and I'm sure my face must have been the height of incredulity. She frowned. “People do this – you know that. In Key West, all over the place. There are legitimate shipwrecks out there and people are making money on them.”
This was true, and I did know that. But I also knew that the whole thing was as likely to be legitimate as mining for gold or a pyramid scheme.
Tennile shook her head and sighed. “And they... so he has this 'site,' he tells me, and he has this video of himself pulling all these emeralds out of the ocean. Right? He showed them to me, he says the site is top-secret, he needs investors to help him reclaim it, he's got proof it's some kind of famous wreck from a Spanish fleet in 1712 -”
“Is it?”
Tennile looked at me. “Well, I don't fucking know. And if it is, it belongs to someone else in all likelihood. And that's where the whole thing gets... I don't know. Highly shady. Illegal. The reason he's coming to me is that he wants everything to look... you know, legal.”
At this point, she must have seen the utter disbelief on my face. I was shaking my head, and to tell the truth, I was getting angry. This now just sounded absurd, it didn't make any sense, and it wasn't helping to explain anything I cared about.
Also, I was still lost about three minutes back in the conversation when she admitted to being a whore, not a stripper, and then lying about it.
“I know,” Tennile said, to my expression. She sounded tired, her voice deflating suddenly. “This is... it's just too crazy. So, what he wanted was for me to draw up the contracts, and he... God, he's such a con artist,. I told him he couldn't just... claim treasure. Even I know that. And I couldn't get involved in this whole thing.”
She bit her fingernails. “But he threatened to give you this... tape.” She shook her head and rubbed her face. “And then he was like, look, no one will find out, I'm only dealing with people I can trust, and you're just there to make things sound legal and give people assurances...”
I was giving myself a headache by furrowing my brow so tightly. Squinting, to see if that would somehow clarify for me what I was hearing.
“I don't understand,” I said finally. “He just wanted you to... what? Draw up some kooky maritime contract? Or he would give me the tape and ruin your marriage?”
Tennile looked up at the ceiling, leaning her head back. She slid the pin holding her hair up out of her up-do and her long hair fell around her shoulders. She massaged the back of her head, where it got sore because her hair was so thick. “It started like that,” she said quietly. “And I thought... okay. I... I really didn't want you to find out. About the... just about that. And... I figured maybe he could be right, he'd just get the treasure, his investors would get their share, and no one would be the wiser. This wreck is like... out in the middle of nowhere, no one would have to know.”
“What the fuck Tennile?!” I yelled, my anger erupting without warning. “I don't give a shit about this shipwreck!” It sounded so ridiculous it almost made me laugh in spite of myself. “I'm talking about you being a... being a... hooker. Jesus!”
Tennile looked at me. “I didn't think... I thought it could be something you just never needed to know. You know? I told you about that, in a way... I put these guys in the number of people I slept with. I just... omitted -”
“A very important fucking detail!” I snarled.
Anger was making my heart beat wildly.
But I was also hard, I was also turned on as hell. I was also ready to throw her on the table and fuck her while she told me the rest of this story.
I wanted the rest of this story.
Tennile wiped a tear form her eye. “I'm sorry. You know I'm sorry. I... I thought it could be something I put behind me. And I just... I was maybe going to tell you, someday, when it was, I don't know. Too late to get divorced. But then time went by and I thought, what difference does it make?”
I was silent.
“Then this,” Tennile said. “And then... so I went there, you know, to see.”
I felt the bad feeling come on again. I had no choice but to simply be lead around by her now, to wherever this story was taking us.
“Where?”
“To Key West,” Tennile said.
“Huh? When did this happen?”
She leaned on the counter and looked at the marble as she confessed in a small voice. “Two weeks ago, I was home really late.”
“It's five hours away.”
Tennile closed her eyes. “I took a charter plane,” she said quietly.
“A charter...? Without telling me? You went there? To Key West and didn't say a word?” I was angry again, but also part of me was floating away. This story was getting so preposterous I couldn't even take it seriously.
Tennile's mouth fell open a little. “Listen,” she said. “Please, just listen to the story. There's more.”
My heart didn't feel like it could take any more.
Tennile pointed her finger at the counter. “I get down there, and... because my reaction was like yours. All this treasure shit, yeah right. Right? And so he says, come down, I'll take you to it. And so I went.”
I was shaking my head. “Out on a boat. With Shane. In Key West. On what... on a fucking Tuesday?”
“Wednesday,” Tennile said quietly. “I went again. But please listen to the story -”
“Oh, again, she says. 'I went again,' like it's nothing! Tennile, what the fuck are you doing? This is... this-”
“Please, Rich. Please. I want to get it all out. You have to know, then you can... we can talk about whatever. But I have to... I have to tell you the rest. Please.”
I fell silent, my arms crossed defensively over my chest.
Yeah, okay Tennile. Let's hear the rest of the cockamamie story.
She looked down at the wineglass she was stroking – rather sexually – and started again. “I went out there, and he made me..” she laughed a little. “He made me wear a blindfold and leave my phone on shore and all this stuff. Because at that point I wasn't officially anything. And I know you're thinking, what the hell was I thinking, but the thing about Shane is... well, it actually lent credibility to his story, for one. And he's not dangerous, he's just an asshole. Anyway... we get out there and he sends his buddy down, that fat guy from the restaurant, Ri? And I am not shitting you, he comes back with a bunch of stuff. Emeralds, some shit that looks like a shipwreck.”
“Emeralds,” I said.
Tennile shrugged. “I mean, this i
s what they looked like. Raw, uncut, emeralds. And some gold, and some other stuff. So, I'm like, okay... you showed me this, he says, you can go down and see for yourself if you want.”
“Did you?”
Tennile nodded. “I did.” Her face was getting a glow now, a peculiar thing I hadn't ever seen on her. I had to admit, the excitement was infectious. Aside from the terrible and terribly arousing news about her having been a whore, now there were riches and boats in the water and dangerous Shane alone with her on a boat.
I waited, watching Tennile's face, watching her excitement. Her eyes were getting shiny and dark, like they did when we had sex.
“And it was there. You know... it was murky and muddy but there was a piece of a boat and all these emeralds in the mud. Really.”
My jaw was open and I was shaking my head without realizing it. Tennile's very real-feeling excitement was making my cock hard and my heart beat wildly, but in the back of my mind I was dazed by the utter ridiculousness of this story.
“So that's what you're doing? Writing treasure-island-contract law, in a motel, with Shane? You expect me to believe that?”
Tennile shook her head. “No.” She almost laughed. “But basically, that's what happened.”
I stared at her.
“I don't understand,” I said slowly, turning the conversation around and around in my mind, “what the problem is here. You said there was some kind of problem.”
Tennile played with her wine glass again. “The problem is that... it's theft. Big, big-time theft. If this really is a shipwreck from a Spanish fleet, then someone, somewhere has a claim on it. What Shane is trying to do... he's trying to basically find unscrupulous investors to help him get the treasure. Or, that's how he put it to me. I think he's actually looking for suckers – suckers in the sense, they think they can actually just claim a treasure.”
“And what is your role in this?”
I wasn't even sure I wanted to know.
Tennile tapped her wine glass with her fingernail, and a clear, high-pitched ring filled the silence for a moment. “That's the thing,” she said quietly. “I'm writing up illegal contracts.”
There was a silence while I let this sink in.
Nila's Long Con: A Hotwife Adventure Page 9
