“Good morning,” Cassy mumbled incoherently. It sounded more like a grunt of disdain to Melvin.
He grunted back refusing to lift his eyes from the twilight of steaming liquid in his mug.
‘What’s the point?’
The couple had been married thirty years to the day, and there hadn’t been a shared moment of tenderness in the last fifteen years. The lust that had drawn them together into a typhoon of maddening sexual exploits – lust that would have seen Cassy sprawled face down on the table as he planted his root deep within her as her cushy ass pressed seductively against his midsection – had long been absent. He didn’t know whether the desire had vanished overnight or simply faded into oblivion over a prolonged period, and as far as he was concerned it no longer mattered. Today, with the pungency of freshly brewed Arabian beans lingering, it was obsolete.
“Happy anniversary,” she congratulated, sleep weighing her words down into a low, soft murmur. Having poured herself a cup of coffee, she crossed the kitchen. Shea-butter and vanilla, the identifying characteristics of her age-defying, anti-aging face cream, followed her casually. She planted a thin, rigid, dry kiss on Melvin’s forehead.
‘She’s mocking me.’
He’d become conscientious of his hairline receding as of late.
“Happy anniversary?” he responded, looking up from his cup-of-Joe for the first time. The steam was rolling off the top, and he downed the liquid in one gulp before the temperature could reach the intolerably cool degree of their marriage.
‘Finish her!’
He grinned devilishly.
‘Hashtag, Mortal Combat.’
He was certain his use of hashtag was correct.
“Wow,” he continued the act. “How long has it been now?” he pondered aloud, waiting on her exhausted response to his inquiry. He knew his act of ignorance placated her.
“Thirty years! Can you believe it??” She did her best to fake excitement for him. She knew the dance Melvin was engaging in. Though she still found it slightly adorable, she found it difficult to credit this man – a vile, verbally abusive, masochistic, sexually sadistic, emotional vagabond. His ability to terrify her, intrigue her, and sometimes make her blush instantly, was a strange phenomenon.
She dipped a spoon into her caramel colored coffee.A clinkety-clink chime sounded as she stirred the sweet mocha mix to her liking.
“Thirty years,” he remarked in disbelief with traces of subsequent admiration in his voice. Nostalgia danced in his sea-green eyes. “What anniversary is that?” Sarcasm crept in. “Coal?”
“Suicide,” she cosigned with sardonic glee.
They joined in hearty laughter. Neither remembered the last time they’d laughed together.
“How should we celebrate?” Despite the remaining chuckle in his voice, the question hung between the couple with discomfort and peculiarity. They’d long stopped celebrating and buying gifts for occasions over a decade ago. Neither knew when or why specifically. It was probably an unspoken sign of underappreciation revealed, first, as reciprocation, and then morphing into a tradition held as freedom from the superficial fulfillment that most love requires. The subject was never debated. Neither found it worth the trouble. Their debates always devolved into arguments, and their arguments were venomous, exhausting, unproductive, and often scary for both parties – knives were pulled, threats leveled, and psyches irreversibly damaged.
“I… I…”
“You know what’s been on my mind lately?” Melvin quickly shifted the conversation.
‘Good, change the subject.’
Melvin cringed as the question left his lips. It sounded odd to him.
‘Do we even know each other?’
“Eugene,” she answered instinctively, immediately regretting her response. Melvin’s face turned scarlet, his brows furrowed, and she swore she could hear his anger searing him from within. Certain his coffee covered morning breath would be saturated by the infernal stench of sulfur with his next words, her mouth fell agape. Her palms went clammy, and she felt the queasy white lifelessness wash the color from her face. He turned his eyes to her. Their intensity burned. She expected for their green tides to turn fierce, threatening to swallow her in a monsoon of detest, but the storm never came. Rather, a smile creased his face – maniacal in its implementation, but sincere and warm. He was blushing.
“Yeah…”
The single word response throttled Cassy. She felt like a fool.
‘Do we even know each other?’
This sentiment was shared between them.
She watched cautiously as her husband thumbed the brim of his coffee mug in shy disarray before crossing to the coffee pot for a refill. She remained silent. She was unsure how incendiary this subject may become. Eugene’s death was difficult on both of them.
‘When in doubt, remain silent.’
When he spoke again, he did so with his back to his wife. “There’s a place… a place he and I would go to spend time together. I think we should go.” His entire body was on fire. The words, spoken, could never be unspoken – not that he wanted to take them back. Endorphins burst through the dam that secured them and into his blood stream like a swarm of hornets. Cassy thought he may be crying by the way his body was trembling, but when he turned, she smiled at the sight. He looked to be transformed somehow. Young. Vibrant. Happy.
“I think so too.”
2
“Run away with me,” Eugene whispered sensually into Cassy’s ear – his lips a fraction from contacting her lobe. She squirmed at the feel of his breath on her flesh and gave a small motion in the direction of Melvin a few feet away in the kitchen. “I need you,” he continued, “all of you.” He ran his strong hand up her thigh to the edge of her denim shorts and traced the seam around her leg gently. Shivers trickled up her spine and a shudder passed through her body as his tongue flicked her lobe.
“What are you two doing in there?” Melvin asked playfully when she let out a giggle.
“He...” she began breathlessly, “nibbling my… ear.” The word ear escaped on a long sigh causing it to sound like eeeeyah.
Melvin watched his two lovers with intent. A bulge developed in his pants, and he touched it through the zipper of his jeans. Eugene’s hand had slipped up Cassy’s body to her breasts now exposed beneath her lifted shirt, and he continued nibbling her ear delicately.
“Ge… get over here,” she begged Melvin as she reached for him.
Melvin took his place on Cassy’s other side. He began by tonguing her ear, then slid his lips to her neck to feel the blood pump through her veins as he unbuttoned her shorts. She loved the attention – attention she’d soon miss.
~
The three were young when they met. “The age of know,” Melvin’s father would always say. But, what did they know? They were teens on the precipice of adulthood, in search of any and every pleasure known to man, and with sex, booze, and drugs readily available, they had the prescription to know – to know the feelings, the power, and the euphoria.
They needed to taste it all, and they saw no need to be conservative when relishing in such decadence.
Melvin, Cassy, and Eugene were inseparable in their youth before death, marriage, and responsibility – each equally tragic – devastated their hedonistic utopia. They’d all dropped out of high school to feed their immoral cravings. They went to work. Melvin roofed houses, Eugene rebuilt transmissions at his uncle’s shop, and Cassy worked a stripper pole for the visual pleasure of coal miners and railroad workers of eastern Kentucky. Soon they had saved enough money to make the deposit on a one-bedroom apartment they could share. There was little to no privacy in such close quarters, but there was no need for such things in their world.
~
“Promise me things will never change,” Cassy sighed as the three nude bodies laid still entangled from their lustful exploits.
“I really can’t imagine life any different,” Melvin stated. His eyes were glazed over, and his voice was taut from having expelled so much energy over the last few hours.
Eugene remained silent, staring at the ceiling imagining shapes and faces in the texture.
Cassy suddenly jerked straight up out of bed as if she’d just remembered something she very urgently needed to do. “I know!”
“Whoa,” both guys exclaimed in unison.
“Let’s get married!”
“Who?” Eugene asked.
“All of us?” Melvin asked.
“Yes,” she was nearly shouting in excitement. Her face was pulled in a wide smile, and her crystalline blue eyes were shimmering in the mild light.
“Wouldn’t that, by definition, change things?” Eugene jabbed playfully.
Melvin piped up. “Yes, honeys, this shit we got right here is so good, we gotta get the government in on this shit…! Who is Doug Stanhope, Alex?” He yelped with laughter.
“Shut up,” Cassy said as she laughed and swatted her two men.
~
Life seemed so perfect – perfect, that is, until tragedy struck.
The police determined it was a drug deal gone bad, but Cassy and Melvin weren’t convinced. It wasn’t like Eugene to deal with strangers, and none of the usual deplorables the three dealt with had heard from him in days.
He’d been stabbed over thirty-nine times. Or at least they had quit counting at thirty-nine. The autopsy revealed an impressive cocktail of methamphetamine, barbiturates, opiates, marijuana, and alcohol in his system. The assumption was the drugs were used to debilitate the large framed Eugene. It appeared, at his six-foot one inch, two hundred ten pounds, that despite the variety of intoxicants in his blood, he was still able to fight back, but there was no doubt the cosmopolitan had limited his resistance, making his slaying much easier.
“It’s almost certain,” Detective Stevens attempted to deliver the details as sympathetically as he could.‘What does it matter? One less addict on the street. Makes my job easier,’ he thought to himself, unable to understand why such a beautiful woman would be caught up with such trash.“He was as good as gone before he mustered the discernment to fight back.”
When the detective got an opportunity to speak to Melvin alone, it was a much different story.“Where were you on the night in question?”
The fear of being questioned in such a manner made Melvin very uncomfortable. He did his best to keep his composure, but it was extremely difficult. His lover and friend were no longer a part of the land of the living.
“I was…” His alibi was simple, but the words wouldn’t come. “I was at home. Sleeping…. I had to pick Cassy up from the club that night. He wasn’t supposed to be there!”At this point Melvin broke down into a hysteric fit. He was enraged and devastated.
‘Oh, Eugene!!!’
Detective Stevens remained cool and even tempered throughout the exchange. His eyes were level and his voice unwavering. “Where was he supposed to be?”
“I… oh... I d-d-d-don’t kn-kn..ooow.”
“Your act isn’t impressing me. I should lock you up as a public service. We lifted a print from the knife.” They hadn’t, of course. “I’m sure it’ll come back a match, aren’t you?”
“W-why wou...ld it?”
“Where was he supposed to be, Melvin?” the detective leveled the question accusingly.
No response beyond sobbing and blubbering.
“Where’d you get that fat lip? The black eye?”
“I..I … I t-told you… A f-f-fight p-p-p...icking up C-C-Ca...ssy.”
“I’m going to level with you. We know. We know you staged that fight. And we know you killed your boyfriend.” Disgust clung to the last word.
Melvin’s eyes never raised from the table between them. He just stared and cried. Every exchange was the same. There was no use pretending – he couldn’t handle the interrogations.
And so, this continued each time the two were alone on three separate occasions. Stevens was sure of Melvin’s guilt, prepared to incarcerate the young man for no other reason than being a societal eyesore and Melvin weeping like a child feeling the hot sting of a belt across their backside for the first time.
“You’re obviously not gonna admit to this,” Stevens confronted the weeping suspect at the end of their final meeting, “but I promise you this will not be the last time you hear from me.”For the first time duringan interrogation session with the detective Melvin lifted his eyes.
‘Dry...’
More convinced than ever Detective Stevens said, “We have blood and hair – not Eugene’s - we removed from the scene.” Melvin didn’t give even the slightest reaction. “Eventually science will catch up, and we’ll have the necessary technology to catch whoever did this. When that day comes...”
“Let me know,”Melvin interrupted.
He never saw Detective Stevens again.
~
Eugene’s death brought a wide array of changes for Melvin and Cassy. They were suddenly forced to realize that they were mortal. They couldn’t keep up this type of lifestyle – not that they’d consider replacing Eugene immediately after his funeral – but it went beyond that.
“We need to talk,”Melvin announced one night after their lover’s funeral when picking Cassy up from Teddies, the club she’d worked at for the last three years.
“What’s wrong, baby?” she asked genuinely. She could tell he was serious.
“We… I can’t keep doing this, Cassy,” he was pleading. “We… I have to make some changes… I’m scared...” Tears were slowly slipping down his cheeks.
“We,” she corrected placing her hand comfortingly on his thigh. “Let’s get home, and we’ll talk. I promise.”
3
The white plastic name tag pinned to the chest of his emerald green polo read ‘SAMPSON’. He was a beautiful specimen - tall, muscular, and young. He looked like Eugene with his dark chocolate eyes – tender in their display beneath an arching brow – full pink lips, and unblemished, silken cocoa skin.
“Will that be all for you, sir?” Sampson asked as he scanned the last of the groceries Melvin had removed from the shopping cart.
‘He sounds like him too.’
“Yes, sir. For the moment, I guess it will do me,” Melvin smiled and checked the display for the total. “I think the wife and I are going camping for our anniversary,” he informed Sampson with a curious enthusiasm. He hadn’t told Cassy of his plans, but he was planning appropriately.
‘You should join us.’
He removed his bank card from his wallet and handed it to the clerk intentionally allowing his fingers to caress Sampson’s, careful it was construed as incidental.
“Happy anniversary!” Sampson congratulated the customer as he contemplated the sick feeling in his loins from the touch of the man’s hand – maybe an accident, but an unsettling one. “How long have you been married?”
‘Just leave, please.’
Melvin watched the clerk’s lips as he spoke. He felt a slight stirring.
‘Viagra not required.’
He smirked hard, until he felt the corner of his mouth crack.
‘He’s got me so hot.’
“Thirty years,” he replied, wetting his lips with a slow, pleasing swipe of his tongue. He took a deep breath and waited an awkward moment for his heart to settle before adding, “It’s going to be a very special weekend.” His voice cracked like a pubescent boy hitting on the prom queen.
Careful to avoid contact, Sampson handed the card back to the customer. When the man showed no response to the avoided touch, he regarded the entire incident as imagined, but that didn’t stop him from harboring a deep awareness that there was something wrong with this patron. “Wow! Congratulations, salutations, and proclamations,” he exclaimed through a forced smile.
Melvin felt giddy when Sampson smiled and revealed his white teeth that contrasted with his plush lips and exotic skin. Butterflies whipped into a frenzy in his guts, and goosebumps rose with the feel of spidery legs walking the terrain of his body. “Thanks.”
‘Cassy, my dear, we’re going to have a wonderful weekend.’
He approached the exit, but before stepping out into the cool October air, he submitted to his desires and took a longing glance back over his shoulder.
Sampson felt the impulse to vomit as Melvin traipsed away gleefully. The interaction would surely linger in his mind for at least the remainder of the day.
‘I need a shower.’
~
“Where did it all go wrong?” Cassy wondered out loud. She sat at the kitchen table studying a display of pictures from the couple’s youth. Eugene was featured in a few, and these were the photos she’d moved aside to study at length. She wasn’t concerned with Melvin’s return. He had a job he had to survey out of town. He’d not be back until tomorrow afternoon at best.
‘So much for the trip.’
“Oh, Eugene, I wish you were here.” She picked up a picture of Eugene and her at the lake. He was shirtless, his muscles rippling beneath the gleaming perspiration that covered him. She clung to his waste affectionately as they stared into each other’s eyes. “You had such beautiful eyes – so kind.”
She closed her eyes tight, trying to relive the moment. She couldn’t remember this trip. They’d been to the lake several times, but she remembered owning a yellow and blue striped bikini. In this picture she was wearing a red bikini. She knew she’d been there – there were pictures – but she couldn’t recall.
‘Why can’t I remember?’
Had her marriage to Melvin been so traumatic she lost memories?
‘Drugs.’ She smiled. ‘The good ole days.’
“But where did it all go wrong, Cassy?”
Tears streamed down her face. She couldn’t take it.She missed those days. She felt complete. She wanted to know where it all went wrong. Eugene’s murder was where it all went wrong. He had asked her over and over to run away with him, but she wouldn’t. It’s not that she didn’t love him, but she loved Melvin too. She loved both equally. No, not equally, similarly.
“Oh, Eugene. Eugene. Eugene,” she called for him desperately. She needed his reassurance, his touch, his care. For the first time in many years she’d opened herself up, not to Melvin or anyone else, but to herself. She was angry. She was sad. She was miserable, and only Eugene would suffice. She lashed out at the photos before her, throwing them to the floor. “NO!!” she cried. She collapsed into the wreckage, screaming and begging for mercy from her hell until sleep took her to another world, a world in which she could be reunited with Eugene, if only for a moment.
~
Cassy entered the family room where Melvin waited. “Drink?” she offered.
“Sure.”
Something was obviously bothering him. She returned a few moments later handing him one of two beers she’d taken from the refrigerator. She took a seat next to him, tucking her feet on the couch behind her. He took a long swig of his beer before settling in, resting his arms on his knees, and allowing his head to hang as he thumbed the brim of the beer bottle nervously.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, leaning in with the question.
“I…. I’ve been thinking.”
‘Out with it.’
She was embarrassed by this thought.
“I can’t do this anymore – not without…” When he looked back at her, his eyes were glassy and distant, and his voice soon followed, dull and lifeless. “Marry me?”
She wasn’t sure if this was a question or a command. Apparently, he was hurting, as was she. They’d lost a very important part of their life, but… “Really?” She was immediately taken aback at how excited and emotion filled her voice sounded.
‘Is this what I want?’
‘OF COURSE, IT IS, YOU DOPE! DON’T BE A FOOL! YOU WERE THERE LAST WEEK WHEN YOU BROUGHT IT UP!’
‘But that was when Eugene...’
‘SHUT UP!!’
“Yes… Of course...”
His voice was still flat. She was receiving mixed signals, but maybe that was the dialogue in her head overriding the man sitting here in front of her.
“Yesterday we buried Eugene, and I realized while we drove off, I don’t want to bury you too. I can’t live without both of you. That’s why...” his voice trailed off.
“Why what?”
“Nothing. I just…” He took a long calming deep breath.
‘Any calmer and you’ll be joining Eugene.’
‘HE’S SERIOUS, YOU BITCH!’
Cassy smiled maniacally.
“I just know that I love you, Cassy.” His voice was gaining strength. “I love being with you, and the way you make me feel. If I lost you too, it’d kill me. I want us to get married.” He took another drink of liquid courage. “And I want us to sober up – no more hard drugs.”
‘There, I said it.’
“Yes...” she was beginning to cry, but she was afraid as to why. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Mel. I’ll marry you, and we’ll get clean and sober so we can live a long and happy life together.”
‘Run away with me,’ Eugene’s voice echoed in her head.
~
Married life started off wonderfully for Melvin and Cassy. They seemed to have dedicated their entire future together to the memory of Eugene. They talked about him every day - his laugh, his voice, his body, and his sense of humor. He was missed, loved, and remembered, but like every married couple joined only for the sake of children – they had none – the tie that binds soon slipped into a noose awaiting its victim.
Cassy recognized the regression two years into their marriage, but she’d eventually look back to realize the changes began immediately after the death of their shared lover. As time ticked by, layers of Melvin flaked away like the scales of a serpent peeling back to reveal the underside that avoided exposure – a nasty temper and controlling persona. Bit by bit, this chipped away at her independence, dignity, and dreams. She was to be his wife, homemaker, and lover – no perversity withheld – and she was no longer allowed to dance at Teddies. Not that she wanted to, she merely wanted to come to that decision on her own.
Not every part of their life was bad. Sobriety proved to be quite profitable for Melvin. He transformed his knowledge of roofing and contracting into a career building custom homes for the wealthiest people in the state of Kentucky. Sometimes his profession called for him to be gone for weeks at a time – weeks Cassy would daydream of what could have been had Melvin died rather than Eugene. Despite her dissatisfaction with life conceptually, she found an addiction suitable to her new life that proved to be just as successful a reliever of stress - shopping. Melvin’s hard work and meticulous attention to detail ensured their household an abundance of money that came in faster than Cassy could give it away. Her true love became Albatross, a store specializing in ceramic, stone, and wood sculptures of birds. With each purchase, you received a pamphlet that told you the species, habitat, and characteristics of the bird you had purchased, and their home was full of these sculpted creatures as she strived to collect every bird on the planet.
When agreeing to marry Melvin, Cassy had no clueshe’d wind up being a prisoner in her own home and to her own husband. She understood compromise as a vital part of marriage, but she’d compromised her entire being to Melvin’s every desire in order to collect bird figurines for the rest of her days. The tradeoff seemed lopsided at best. On the occasion she thought airing her grievances wise, she would soon see her husband’s massive form and recall the time she wielded a knife to ward off the powerful man that shared her bed.
The argument was petty, or so she thought. It started one morning when Melvin was going out of town for a three-week job. Cassy was feeling vulnerable and lonely. She wanted some attention, and he had none to give. This is when she reminded him that this was not a concern when Eugene was alive. They bickered over who was more insensitive, but when she reminded her husband that his mother had run out on their family, leaving he and his father to fend for themselves, it turned into a cage match.
“I wonder if your father was as much of an asshole as you, you son of a bitch!!”
No response.
“Huh? Or did your mom bolt because you are such a douche?! You fucking cunt!”
‘OH, FUCK!!!!’
Melvin came at her with such speed she nearly lost control of her bowels before her hands found a kitchen knife that she could threaten to use if he advanced any further. He smiled a beguiling scowl of pure evil, put his hands up, and left with three words for her to hang onto.“I don’t forget.”
That was the last time she brought Eugene up in conversation - the last time until the morning of their anniversary. Until then, she’d spent the majority of her married life hopeless and depressed, but since then she wondered if they, as a couple, had reached the enlightenment. No longer captive to past exploits or promises of fidelity, but on the threshold of a new plane of existence.
To Be Continued…