Where Clay and Mr. Grey Suit were was dim and secret and, while not quite private, was a long way from being public. But Mr. Grey Suit must have gotten a case of the nerves for he sped up and pounded into Clay and gripped Clay’s shoulders almost painfully when he came. Then, like a gentleman, he withdrew his cock slowly. Unlike a gentleman, as Clay turned to face Mr. Grey Suit, he took the condom he’d pulled off his cock and tossed it in the alley.
Clay didn’t say anything, but he wanted to.
“Good?” asked Mr. Grey Suit.
At the end of the alley, bathed in the streetlights, were Mr. Grey Suit’s friends from the bar. They must have all known each other well enough to clock Mr. Grey Suit to the minute as to how long it would take him to suck and then fuck a stranger.
“Yeah,” said Clay as he tucked himself away and straightened his clothes back into their proper places. “Thanks.”
With a chin-jerk of farewell, Mr. Grey Suit turned and walked down the alley toward his friends. Leaving Clay, his body still singing with the effects of their encounter. Ripples of pleasure still moving in his belly, sparks of reaction racing down the backs of his legs.
And from somewhere, from that place he could never find and maybe didn’t want to, came that slender spider web-thin bit of sadness. It might have been nice had he and Mr. Grey Suit gone back into the Rusty Nail to share that beer and have a laugh or two. Maybe compare notes about the sizes of their respective cocks, and whether Mr. Grey Suit fully groomed himself, like all suit-wearing men seemed to do.
But it was not to be, so Clay went alone back into the swell of noise and movement and light that was the Rusty Nail on a Saturday night. He’d have another beer to drink and after that maybe a whiskey all his own, which he would ask Eddie not to water down.
2
Austin
The moving truck had just picked up the single metal pod that Austin had packed with all the things he was keeping from his marriage, including his grandmother’s hand-built wedding chest that Mona, his now ex-wife, had hated from the first moment she’d laid eyes on it. The remainder of the pod contained the rest of whatever he’d collected in his life from before he’d met Mona and married her.
Everything else, all that they’d acquired together during their ten years of married life, Mona got in the divorce. This included the house, which had more rooms than two adults and a child needed, along with the Mercedes Benz Mona had talked him into buying brand new, and all of their friends—none of which he’d had the desire to fight for after discovering Mona’s betrayal.
Their marriage and everything that had come with it had been a lie, after all, and everything to do with Mona was now toxic. It was best to make a clean break, so he had, even to the point of quitting the accounting job he discovered he’d always loathed. At least since Mona received the majority of their combined assets, his alimony payments to her were reduced.
The only thing he’d wanted was shared custody of their daughter Beatrice, Bea for short, and this he received, with Mona receiving full child support from him. Visitation rights seemed to be in the control of Mona and her lawyer, Mr. Bledsoe, but Austin didn’t have the energy to get that arrangement to a more balanced state, so he’d just have to leave it, at least for now.
He would not miss the house. It was three thousand square feet of middle class with aspirations, done in what Mona considered classy golds and beiges, wood trim, marble kitchen counters, stainless steel everything. To him it had been cold, but because Mona had so enjoyed the decorating of it, he left it to her. Now, as he stood in the driveway with his two suitcases and his backpack, he felt as though he was leaving behind an ice cold cave full of plumbless depths of unfeeling interactions.
Well, that was one way to describe it. When he and Mona had over-borrowed to purchase the home shortly after they got married, it had been a structure full of promises, of hopes and dreams. But now, even if the house wasn’t exactly hell, it was a place he was glad to be leaving, to be moving on from, to be moving out of.
His gut churned with uncertainty as he looked at Mona and Bea standing on the top step. Mona had her arms around Bea’s shoulders, and whether it was to comfort Bea or hold her in place so she didn’t run to her dad, he couldn’t be certain. Probably it was both.
Mona loved being a mom. At least that’s what she said. She probably loved Bea, in her own way, but Austin privately thought Mona mostly loved the status that came with having a daughter.
To Mona, having battle scars that needed to be exercised away, moisturized away, bragged about, made her one of a very special band of mama bears. It had been her dream since high school to be a mom, to have a family, and she’d chosen Austin to help her with that.
In his senior year in high school, Austin had been planning on a quiet career in accounting with the aim of becoming a CPA. He’d had no thought in his head for girls at all. Had never attended the dances, had never asked anyone out on a date. Pleasure came with close male friends and Friday night pizza, b-ball on a Sunday morning, and the occasional camping trip to the Sand Hills in Nebraska when the weather was warm.
That all ended when Mona had, evidently, sized him up and determined he was the answer to her prayers. She wanted out from the confines of her little life in podunk Sterling, Colorado, and as none of her football boyfriends were currently in the running for college careers, but instead were looking at local stockyards, feedyards, and the sugar beet factory for jobs, Austin had become her next best option.
Of course, this awareness in retrospect had been gleaned from ten years, fourteen years if he included the years they’d dated during college, of listening to her chatter with her girlfriends, and listening politely to her parents at Thanksgiving. Listening to ex-boyfriends who were so drunk they probably didn’t realize they were giving away all of Mona’s secrets.
Austin had prospects, a future. Mona wanted out. That Bea was born nine months to the day after their wedding, or even that the wedding had been all about Mona, hadn’t bothered Austin as much as the fact that she bragged to everyone there about how they were moving closer to Denver, to Thornton, so Austin could advance his accounting career more quickly. Like it was a done deal, though Mona had not consulted with Austin. But to keep her happy, he went along with it.
He’d not wanted to leave Sterling, not really. He enjoyed the slower pace of small town life, and didn’t mind that the grocery store only had three brands of peanut butter. Didn’t care that there was only one movie theater. Didn’t mind that there wasn’t a Starbucks and that the old-timers hogged the one good coffee bar on Sunday mornings, filling up the space with their low chatter and worn, time-seamed faces. Didn’t even mind that the bars all served Coors and Budweiser beer.
At one time, he would have wanted to sketch those faces, to capture the weary exhaustion, the camaraderie among them. He wasn’t good enough with pencil to capture that and watercolor seemed too obnoxious, as he couldn’t imagine being that obvious about it, bringing even a small watercolor kit to the coffee shop. In the end, he never drew them, and anyway, Mona disliked him fooling around with anything that wasn’t her. Didn’t like him to focus on anything other than work, family, and home. Which is what he’d done, losing all of his friends in the bargain.
Now he was alone. Truly alone as he stood in the driveway, two suitcases at his feet, backpack over one shoulder. Briefly, he checked his phone. A taxi was coming to take him to the Motel Six along the highway, and after that, he wasn’t sure. A few interviews via Zoom, and then dinner at the nearby Denny’s.
“Mr. Bledsoe will be calling you about visiting Bea,” said Mona. Her grip on Bea got tighter. Bea was only nine and, as far as Austin could tell, was overwhelmed and scared by what was going on. Only Mona had never seemed to talk with Bea about the divorce, at least she hadn’t during Austin’s last week in the house. “Maybe once a month?”
“C’mon, Mona,” said Austin, keeping his voice level, even as rage beat in his heart. “It’s got to be more than that. Be fair.”
Mona’s mouth was a firm line and, even from this distance, Austin could see she wasn’t giving in. Oh, the stories she was probably telling to her mama bear clan about how awful Austin was. The details she would share about them, about their marital relations, were absolutely going to be less than flattering. What she would leave out was the fact that one—Roger Colchet—had been coming to all the backyard parties for the neighborhood Mona liked to throw. And the fact that when Austin had been out of town for a CPA conference, Roger had spent the night withBeain the house.
That’s when Austin put his foot down. That’s when Mona had asked for a divorce.
