“That was different. You were protecting a lady in distress not attacking a lady.”

“I only wish I could remember it. I still think you made it up to spare me.”

“You really were wonderful. By looking at you I wouldn’t have thought you would have had that kind of strength or ability.”

“I’ve really only been in one fight all my life before that one, and I never even struck a single blow in that fight.”

“Well you must have a switch that you flip when you need to be tough because you were my hero that night.”

With her story of my heroics Melanie made me feel like a courageous man, although with my secret phobia it was hard for me to feel gallant. The truth was that I had a hard time believing that I could have done something so brave and heroic as she claimed and not have remembered it. I was all but convinced that she had made the whole story up to make me feel better. I mean if I had fired a gun wouldn’t there have been police? Wouldn’t the cops have showed up at her front door? Her story was suspect, but I liked to hear her tell it anyway. She made me feel like a man. But the truth was probably that I had been conked on the head and knocked unconscious and she had managed to get us both out without further incident, probably with the threat of crying rape or something.

Sarah and I settled into a comfortable routine and despite my continued espousement I stopped having those horrible disturbing dreams of having sex with her. I wondered if they might not have been inspired by the combination of the fact that she was not actually my daughter by blood and that I loved her more than anyone could love another human being. No doubt my espousement of her also played a role, and that her reference to me on rare occasions as lover contributed as well, but I had never had such dreams before Catherine died. I was just glad to have those dreams behind me. And Sarah had resigned herself to sleeping in her own bed at night and rarely crept into my bed in the mornings anymore.

One Friday evening, after Sarah had gone to sleep, Amber and I were in my bedroom with the door closed in the middle of a heated session with Amber on top of me, bouncing like a clown on a pogo stick, and I thought I heard my bedroom door creak open so I grabbed Amber by the waist and stopped her in mid thrust.

“What’s the matter? What are you doing? I was so close?” Amber’s eyes were green with anger and her tone was demeaning, as though she were scolding a subordinate.

“I heard something.” I said defensively. “What was it?”

I craned my neck and noticed that the door was slightly ajar, “I think it was Sarah.”

Amber got up and opened the door but there was no one there. “You’re being paranoid.” She said. She crept out of the bedroom and checked on Sarah and then came back into the room and scowled at me.

“Don’t ever pull that shit with me again.” She seethed.

I sat slack-jawed and dumbfounded. I wondered what I had done that was so inappropriate. I was at a loss for words.

I thought little more of the incident. My imagination must have gotten the best of me, I thought, as regarded Sarah looking into the bedroom while we made love. I worried so that Sarah would spy me making love to Amber and that it would somehow injure her psyche. She was obviously already damaged goods if she had, as I suspected, killed her mother, and I didn’t want her to be corrupted in any other way. I didn’t want her to have any animosity towards Amber because of our physical relationship. I didn’t want her to confuse her role as daughter with that of lover, or to be jealous again, as she obviously was of Catherine.

And my paranoia that Sarah might have been spying on me was quickly assuaged when the next day she woke me to a breakfast in bed with a tray of bacon and rye toast and orange juice and a thick three-egg mushroom omelet that I ate while she gushed about how wonderful she thought Amber was.

“Why can’t she come over more often?” she asked.

I carved a hunk of my omelet and raised it to my mouth, “She’s a busy lady.” I said relieved that Sarah was so receptive to the company of another woman, and then I shoveled the gob of egg into my gullet.

“Maybe you should ask her daddy to let her sleep over next week so that we can play games all night long.”

“Maybe I’ll do that.” I promised as I forked a glob of mushroom and cheese into my mouth.

And every day that week Sarah packed me the usual wonderful lunch with a note reminding me of how much she loved me.

On Friday evening after work I stopped by Melanie’s house, still wearing my soiled work clothes. It had been a particularly hard work day as the weather had turned unusually cold and I had spent most of the day crawling around a frigid dirty attic on my knees drilling holes. By the time I was done, given the cold temperature outside and more importantly in the attic, I was frozen to the bone. I would have liked to have grabbed a blood-warming glass of bourbon with Tony after work, but of course he thought that I was a raging alcoholic so I couldn’t very well ask him to stop off for a drink. So I stopped by to see Melanie in the hopes of pouring just a little hard liquor into my system to chase the chill from my blood.

Melanie, as it turned out, had no stripping engagements, and we sat and shared a half a bottle of whiskey mixed with cola and ice. We talked and we laughed and we grew drunk and foolish and I completely forgot about the little obligation waiting for me at home. I hadn’t truly indulged myself since the last night I spent with Catherine and I did like a drink from time to time.

Even drunk, though, I knew that what we were doing was wrong when Melanie and I found ourselves entangled in a long passionate kiss on her sofa, and then we felt and fondled one-another, both our hands exploring territory that should have remained unfamiliar. We were violating our friendship to Amber, like Judas with his silver only we traded on lust, by touching each other, caressing the tender parts, tickling the sensitive curves and tasting each other’s fruits. But ever since I had first seen the voluptuous curves of Melanie’s naked body undulating in front of so many men I had wondered how her supple body would taste and feel. But she had been the forbidden fruit and I blocked her sensuality from my consciousness. I kept my eyes from wondering; wandering. But uninhibited by the taint of liquor my judgment was clouded and once I had tasted Melanie’s lips it followed that her shoulder would be just as sweet and tender and her arms, by extension, and her smallish round breasts and her navel and her thighs just as tasty. And we were naked on her living room floor in the time it took to exhale a heated breath, and the alcohol deluded my brain into misguided rationalizations that seem absurd upon sober reconsideration. By the time we had finished we were so drunk that we fumbled to her bedroom and made clumsy guilt-soaked love before contrition got the best of me and I dressed hurriedly and stumbled remorsefully from her chamber and thoughtlessly and fearlessly (the whiskey having erased my apprehension) into the night and out to my car and ultimately home.

When I walked through my kitchen door Sarah was holding a large kitchen knife in her hand and I could tell from her expression that she was pissed. She was like an angry midget housewife, standing on a milk-crate in the kitchen with her tiny apron wrapped about her waist, one hand on her hip and the other pointing the gleaming knife at me.

“I made a special dinner tonight. Where were you?”

“I’m sorry,” I slurred, “I stopped by to see Melanie honey. I didn’t know you made a special dinner.”

Sarah stepped off of the milk-crate and stormed toward me and dropped the knife onto the kitchen table and sulked out of the room with tears streaming down her face, “You don’t love me! You love Melanie and Amber, but you don’t love me.”