“And then there’s us.” Melanie took my cup of coffee from my hand and she placed both of our cups on the table and she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my lips down to meet hers and we kissed a second time.

I broke off the kiss once again, “And then there’s the matter of your profession.” I thought myself so clever for bringing up this point.

“You don’t approve?” she smiled a drunken smile, as if this pleased her, “You’re the jealous type. Well I wouldn’t have thought that since you’ve been sleeping with a woman who still sleeps with her husband.” She raised her eyebrows accusingly.

“That’s different. It is what it is. I knew what I was getting into when I started and I can’t very well complain about it afterwards.” “Well then I’ll just have to give up my profession.” She tried her best to sound seductive with the way she elongated the pronunciation of the word profession but she slurred her S’s badly.

“You can’t afford to do that.”

“I’ve made a lot of money and I’ve saved it. I can get a regular job somewhere too.” She said confidently.

“Also, Amber’s coming over tonight.” “What a perfect time to break the news to her.” The alcohol made her brave, but I knew that in her gut she was dreading the confrontation that would ensue.

“I’m not sure that I have news to break. I think we need to give this some more time.”

Melanie dropped her hands to her hips and drooped her head as she closed her eyes as if holding back tears. She may have been freshened-up, but she was still feeling the effects of the alcohol. Perhaps she had counted on the alcohol to build her courage to come and see me and to say what she said. Perhaps she wanted to come early before the effects of the alcohol wore off and weakened her resolve. In any event I couldn’t let her cry so I pulled her to me and I loosely hugged her,

“I just mean that this all happened so suddenly and we need to handle things delicately. You’re right. Amber will never leave her husband. And you’re right; I do want more than she can offer me.” I felt as though I were playing a dramatic role in a bad movie, “And last night was wonderful, it really was. But we need to take it slow.” Melanie buried her head into my shoulder,

“We’re both still drunk. It’s not good to make decisions when you’re drunk. Why don’t we take a few days and think about this?”

“You’re right, of course.” She slid from my grasp and just stood in front of me covering her face with her hands. After an awkward minute of silence she turned and walked toward the door sniffling and staring at the floor.

But I wasn’t right. And I knew that I wasn’t right. Melanie was right. To Amber I was a piece of meat. Maybe that wasn’t the case at first…but our relationship had devolved into nothing more than a series of arranged physical encounters whereas I had really grown to care for Melanie deeply. She had taken us in, Sarah and I, no questions asked. She had cooked for us; she had behaved like a matron to Sarah and helped to fill the motherly void that the loss of Catherine had left; she had comforted me on many occasions, perhaps unknowingly, when Amber having forsaken my bed after completing the act had left me feeling sad and lonely; it was Melanie that I called and she who kept me company either by phone or by stopping by after her late evening engagements. Melanie had become the meaningful half of my affair with Amber. They, Amber and Melanie, had become two parts of the same relationship: Amber my lover and Melanie everything else. No wonder Melanie wanted the whole package.

And as Melanie opened the door to leave I knew that if I let her walk out, that I might not get another chance with her…that she might not feel the same way about me if I hesitated with her…much like the time I had fought Tony Artino; if I had chickened out on that fight we would probably never have been wed. As I saw it this fight was no different. I just needed to be brave.

“Wait, don’t go.”

Melanie turned and lilted her head and looked at me through tear moistened eyes.

“You’re right. I do want more.” I winced, holding back the gathering well in my eyes, “I want…you.”

Melanie turned and staggered back toward me and almost fell into my arms as though her legs had grown weary. She sniffled and leaned backwards and smiled at me, “Do you want to fool around again?” her eyes grinned up at me mischievously, and then she dabbed her little pink nose on a tissue and looked toward the bedroom.

“That could be a problem.” I led Melanie by the hand into the living room where we drank our coffee and talked until we were both too tired to keep our heads up. When

Melanie started to lilt I covered her with a blanket and I went to bed to try to get some rest. But of course all I could do was to contemplate the probable outcomes of the mess I had made. I never would have thought that

Melanie could have been so smitten with me after one brief physical encounter. But of course there was far more to our relationship than that. We had become close friends first, and we had played flirtatiously with one another during our veiled courtship.

But what was I thinking? Of course I wasn’t thinking at all or I never would have slept with Melanie. She was a mere child compared to me. And I was older and I was supposed to be more practical and level headed. What Melanie wanted was obviously out of the question. I certainly didn’t want to hurt her but I also knew that our timing was way off. And love; was that what she was immodestly professing? Did I love her? Platonically surely; but romantically? Was that what it was? I hadn’t really felt that way about anyone ever before, save Catherine. Was I capable of feeling romantic love for her so soon after Catherine’s death, I wondered? And now Melanie was willing to toss her best friend over the gangplank to be with the man she thought she loved. And I was left with no choice but to fight for my freedom with a foe fiercer in many ways than Tony Artino.

Amber was not a mere mortal. She was a lioness; a cat of prey. She had nails and sharp eye-teeth like the fangs of a feline. Her nature was possessive and her movements catlike. I could almost hear her hiss threateningly in defense of her kill. Only I was both the kill and the threat.

10

Be careful what you wish for goes the oft abused cliché. Where once I had the perfect arrangement, wild habitual sex with a Beautiful tabby who didn’t want to spend the night and did not want a long term commitment, and I was too foolish to realize how good I had had it; I now had a swooning child-lover with moonbeams in her eyes. Melanie was a sweetheart, don’t get me wrong, and I missed Catherine’s warm body in my bed in the mornings and the prospect of finding Melanie next to me every morning to fill that void would not have been the worst curse that could have been bestowed upon me, but I had, with the drunken poke of my prick, single-handedly created a love triangle with the only two people on the planet who could string me up by my testicles.

If Amber took offense at my having slept with her ‘best friend’ then I would be packing for destinations unknown before the next morning. If Melanie felt that I had misled her then she might twist my tits and I’d be in the same boat. I was trapped. Checkmate! The alcohol finally and mercifully dragged me from consciousness to the darkness of sleep. And I may have slept peacefully for a time but as is the case in the worst of times my dreams arrived on queue to rescue me from my tranquility.

I dreamt that I was running for my life in the dark of night down my old street, Erie road. The street looked the same as it had the night I ran home from the police station. The ground was coated with dead leaves. The trees were all but barren. At first I didn’t know what I was running from but I knew that I was scared. It may have been the usual demons that lurked in the dark, but then I looked behind me and I saw Catherine, her face worm eaten from being in the ground for so many months, chasing me with a bottle of antifreeze in her hand, “What the fuck is this, huh Mathew?” she screamed at me. Then I realized that Amber was chasing me too, only she scampered toward me like a leopard seeking to pounce, “You fucked my sister!” she said, “It wasn’t your sister…it was Melanie.” “I knew that! I just tricked you into telling me.” And then Melanie joined the hunt. She was wearing her leather S & M outfit from one of her stripping engagements and she was cracking her whip which made a thunderous pop just behind my ear, like that of a pistol being fired, “You just wanted to fuck me. You didn’t really love me.” And then Sarah joined the fray and she was carrying the knife from the kitchen, “I love you daddy. I won’t kill you if you’ll fuck me.” I kept running, but then, sensing that I was alone in my sprint, I looked back and I saw that they had all stopped chasing me and they had dropped their weapons and they were all naked on a bed together. I cautiously walked up to them and looked at them, but then they dropped their intimate engagements and simultaneously their eyes turned red and they all turned into demonic creatures, as though they had been lying in wait for me to take their bait, and they bolted towards me and started to chase me again down Erie road, and I ran until I reached the pier, which I had thought lay in the opposite direction, way at the north end of my old street, and the cold waves of lake Erie came crashing down on my head, but I climbed over the red metal railing anyway and I held on as I leaned over the raging water, “I’ll jump.” I threatened, but they kept coming for me, but walking now, in a slow and measured march, so I jumped into the white-capped waters of Lake Erie and I was under water and I was swimming and then I got caught in the current of a giant waterfall and I started to fall until I woke up, having crashed into the bottom of the falls—my bedroom floor—breathing heavily and covered in sweat.