Marlee’s Christmas Gift

I reached into the pocket of my jacket and transferred the velvet gift box to the pocket of the robe, and, not taking any more time to do more than that, walked slowly to the kitchen, wondering if there would be some sort of confrontation this morning for what I’d done—what I’d let Lars do—the previous night. The only excuse I could give was that I was drunk. It was the same excuse I’d given twenty years earlier when I had fumble fucked Marlee, so she should be able to accept it. I knew that Sally should be the one I was worried about. But she’d left me with Lars to have sex with the woman I’d brought to the party. I wasn’t the most guilty person in this swap—not by a long shot. Still I couldn’t tell them I had been seduced by photographs. They certainly couldn’t understand the effect that those Jeff Palmer photographs had on me. Well, Marlee might. She was brilliant that way.

But there was no confrontation. There also was no Lars. What there was was a kitchen that looked like a hurricane had gone through and emptied everything out of the cupboards and onto the counter. I quickly remembered, though, that the maid had been shooed out the previous night before cleanup. What there also was were two women—both only in bathrobes and slippers as far as I could see—with smiles on their faces and purrs on their lips that brought to mind kittens falling into the bowl of cream.

“He’s gone,” Sally said in terse answer to my question. But she was smiling and there was no tension in her voice, so I didn’t think she was angry—or particularly surprised at what might have happened. I couldn’t believe that she had the imagination that would be able to grasp what actually happened. I wasn’t sure I could grasp what had happened. Why and how? All I knew was that I would do it again in a flash, given the opportunity.