Seeds of Fear

THE WATCHER Rex Miller and Jeff Gelb

For many years George Winters had fantasized about the same basic scene: two women, one of them his wife, making love, with himself as coach, director, onlooker, and commentator. "Pull the hair away from her face," he would say, having seen his share of hard core.

His wife, Karen, was a statuesque natural redhead, heavily freckled over her upper torso, with a long, slim neck, a chest that other women envied, and a little hint of tummy. Karen had kept most of her figure. At forty-one she still looked like a woman in her early thirties, and was just beginning to fight the battle of the middle-aged bulge. Her long legs were as fine as they'd been when George had first seen her, in the lobby of First Financial, where he was the junior lending officer in the mortgage department. That had been nearly twenty years before, and the sizzle had long since died between them. They still had sex, but it had become infrequent and routine. He thought that intercourse with Karen had become like masturbation with legs and a vagina. He could admire her aesthetically, still, but for the last few years he did not eye his wife with lust in his heart. unless he thought of her with another woman. Then — BOING! That was all it took. His fantasies, the way he looked at it, were saving their marriage.

When the spark had sputtered, George began spending more time reading the out-of-town newspapers he collected, much to Karen's chagrin. She claimed to be allergic to newsprint and paper pulp, but these days it seemed she was allergic to almost everything. He felt maybe she was really just allergic to him.

To ease the frustration of a marriage that seemed directionless, and over which he appeared to have lost complete control. George started writing. He plowed the darkest depths of his mind to come up with a pseudonymous self-help revenge book called How to F — Somebody Over. No one was more surprised than George when the book was actually picked up by a small company called Landfill Press, which sold it both in-store and by direct mail. One of the big chains picked it up. It became a publishing freak, a word-of-mouth success, even reaching the New York Times best-seller list. George made a ton of money.

When the sequel, How to F — Somebody Up, went into its second hardcover printing literally before the Landfill sales department finished the initial solicitation, he quit his mortgage-lending gig and started writing full-time. He'd been tremendously successful, and could indulge himself. That meant outcall ladies. Scenes.

One of these scenes had brought him Gayle, a lovely, smiling, bimboesque girl of twenty-two who was obviously selling her body as much for the taboo kick as for the dough. She was slim, small-boobed, with a great face, super ass, and a hot way about her that instantly turned him on. He made her model sexy lingerie for him while he beat off, and then she sucked him while he thought about how crazy it would get him to watch her go down on Karen.

That night he popped the question — for maybe the fiftieth time — to his bride of nineteen and a half years.

"I've found somebody for us. I know you'll go nuts when you see her," he told his wife, describing Gayle, the beaming bimbo, in minute detail while leaving out the precise details of their money-for-sex encounter. Karen's response floored him.

"She sounds quite fuckable, actually," she said in her soft, cultured tones. For the first time she agreed to participate in a three-way. A two-way, technically, as his thing was watching from the sidelines, as it were.

George asked why she was willing this time; what had finally made the difference? She said she was tired of fighting him, and besides, she said she'd been doing some fantasizing herself lately, and his constant harping about another woman had started her thinking along those lines.

"Most of all," she'd said, "I'm afraid of getting too old to try something new."

The big scene was arranged. Gayle lived some twenty miles away, so there would be an extra hundred to cover the «travel» both ways, which would, with her basic fee, buy her for the entire night. Camcorder loaded, wife primed and waiting nervously in the next room, he sat — vodka collins in hand — ready for company.

The doorbell went through him like a direct current of electricity. He couldn't recall being so up for a scene, both literally and figuratively, and he opened the door on Gayle's big, sexy smile. She had one of those MTM mouths with about a thousand white Chiclet teeth in it, full lips that were so youthfully pretty she didn't bother with lipstick, and a tongue she couldn't keep out of sight. She was always smiling, or holding her mouth open as she listened, or licking those thick lips, or pouting, or laughing or chewing on a finger — something. Very busy, that ripe mouth of hers. He couldn't wait to see her with Karen.

Drinks. Introductions. He was about to explode in his blue bikini briefs, which is all he wore under the black and red silk kimono. The women took to each other immediately. It was all he could do not to touch himself, he was already so hot with the anticipation of the event. They put their partially finished libations down and headed for the master bedroom.

George triggered the camera, surreptitiously, and took a seat near the bed, preparing to begin instructions and suggestions, but they were miles ahead of him. Karen pulled Gayle on top of her and they jumped into the sack like two schoolgirls, kissing with a kind of heat he found totally alien to Karen. This wasn't Karen at all — this was some sex-mad twat fiend who'd been released from dormancy. His wife ran every change imaginable on the more than willing Gayle, and it was unlike any scene to which he had ever been a voyeur. It was so exciting, he forgot to jack off!

They kissed as if they were writing a book on the art. Karen would open her mouth and sort of begin eating Gayle's lips, and then Gayle would imitate the same type of kiss, then Karen would try a face-sucking corner gobble, and Gayle would duplicate that, and then they each began innovating, working their way up and down and over and around. Karen was on those little breasts with a mad devouring passion that was amazing to behold, and then down on the shaved patch of snatch in the heart of Gayle's unsuntanned love triangle, going at it lickety-split. Then it was Gayle on Karen, then each of them after the other's asshole, just fucking incredible. The videocassette ran out. He went to the bathroom. He got tired of watching.

After Gayle's first visit, everything between Karen and George improved. Sex, naturally, warmed up; they lived off the event for weeks, but their attitude toward one another changed. Karen no longer treated him like a necessary evil in her life, she seemed to suddenly care about him again. There were other changes as well. She became a better housekeeper almost overnight. Now she was cooking the meals he liked again, and her constant criticizing had abated. In turn, he treated her with more respect, not being so critical of her every decision, allowing her more freedom. She loved to take hours and hours shopping, and now he let her shop till she dropped, and never threw it up to her when she came home. He even made sure she had plenty of extra money in her checking account, something he'd never bothered to do in the past.

George was so pleased with the way things had changed for them, he was stunned when he suggested a possible menage a trois with Gayle, whom they hadn't seen in some weeks, and she nearly jumped down his throat.

"Just leave Gayle the fuck out of our fucking lives, all right?" she'd shouted.

"Sorry," he said, meekly.

Karen became instantly contrite, and that night she made his favorite meal and served it to him as if it were going to be the last food she'd ever cook for him. The next morning he found out why. The phone rang. He happened to pick it up just a beat after Karen did.

"Hm-um," he heard his wife whisper into the phone, "can't right now."

"Ten OK?" Gayle's voice, he was certain.

"Yeah, gotta go."

"Love you," Gayle said.

"Me too," he heard Karen whisper. The two words ice-picked him in the heart. He fucking knew it all in that instant.

The next few weeks played themselves out in slow motion. He owed Karen something, and he was a man who paid his debts, always. With interest. He owed her nineteen and a half good years; she'd done a million things for him, held his head while he puked — back in his heavy-boozing days — loved his family as if they'd been hers, a zillion things he owed her for. He would pay her back with loyalty and friendship, he decided. Kill her with kindness, so to speak. It was the only decent thing to do.

He said nothing, never let on, just made his plans. Each day was one day closer to divorce — there was never a question in his mind. He knew Karen well, and he knew he was watching someone in love. Jesus, it was really pretty funny. The thing he wanted most finally happens, but it's so good, it destroys him. Very fucking funny. If he'd written it, no one would have believed him. Life was a certifiable bitch. And in this case, he'd brought the bitch home. He couldn't complain.

Karen? In love with another bitching woman? Nah. Yeah. Might as well face it, stud, he told himself, it would be bad enough to lose her to another man, but you lost your wife to a fucking cunt, you no-dick loser piece of shit. Then he was able to look at his twisted goofiness, immaturity, sexist pigitude, and the whole nine yards of torn cloth that let him fuck his own nice marriage into the ground, and he stepped back, laughed at himself, and took a vow of reasonableness. George would be a mensch and let this play itself out.

It did soon enough. Karen was just back from the grocery store, and he'd helped her put groceries away, and had asked her to help him wash and wax the Regal. She had on short shorts and a halter top and looked so suddenly sexy to him, he was irritated with his weirdness. Here he was rubbing the same spot with a chamois cloth, trying to look down his old lady's top at those nice, hard nipples he'd become so bored with. What was sex, and in fact marriage, but a nutty head game? The car shiny, chrome agleam, they emptied their buckets, wrung out their sponges, and went inside to cool off with some drinks.

She brought him a special treat, Hires in a frosty mug that had been icing down in the freezer. He took a sip of root beer and she told him, matter-of-factly, that she was leaving.

"You know this is over. I still care about you, but I can't go on like this anymore. I've found someone else. I'm moving in the morning." She began an itemized list of what she was taking and what she was leaving. He tried to keep an even keel, but it was difficult.

"I've withdrawn half the money — exactly to the dime," she said, with almost a hint of pride in her voice, "and I'll take the car. You can always buy another set of wheels, but I like the Buick and feel safe in it. You can keep the house," she said. That was big of her.

"You and Gayle setting up housekeeping?" he asked, keeping his face and tone neutral. She looked at him sharply.

"Yes." No how did you know? No hint of surprise. Letting him know with her equally flat gaze and tone that she didn't care what he knew or for how long. "Neither of us meant this to happen, you know."

They discussed the affair at some length, but Karen was not willing to divulge much. He could tell she'd slammed a door on any intimacy between them. He played to that, saying that he hoped they'd be very happy together. She relaxed a bit.

"I guess I owe you," she said, "since we'd never have gotten together if you hadn't insisted I meet her."

"That's true," George said with a chuckle. "Maybe I should become a matchmaker. You two are obviously in love. I could tell from watching you together how good it was for you."

"We're pretty gushy, I guess," his wife said, in that self-deprecatory way she had that drove him up the wall. They discussed the details of her move and he decided to follow through on his plan to be a real friend.

"I'm going to help you move," he said.

"No, I don't want you to do that."

"I insist," he said, and began producing suitable boxes, helping her call an appropriate moving company, and busying himself with the details of her immediate exit.

They worked most of the night packing boxes, and when the moving men arrived he was still in a sleepy fog, but somehow he got through the day, and by evening she came to kiss him good-bye.

"I'm just a few miles away," she said, gently, "and we'll still see each other a lot. I always want to be your friend."

"I'll always be here for you, Karen." They kissed and she left for the apartment where her new wife was waiting. Or was it husband? It didn't matter to him at the moment. He was crushed. Demolished. The house was screamingly empty without her. Nearly twenty years had just been flushed down the tubes. It was like a death. Worse, because the loved one was still around. Terrible. Devastating. All the cliches rang true. He was alone. Fucked.

Many tears later, many curses and prayers later, but only a month on the calendar, things were beginning to sort themselves out. It was true, those hackneyed phrases, like "one door closes but another opens." It was the beginning of a new life. And George was prosperous and healthy — being alone wasn't such a sentence after all. He would be able to rationalize his way back to some semblance of what passed for normalcy inside his head, in time. He'd work at it. He was strong.

Oddly, for a man who — for decades — had thought of nothing but another woman balling his old lady, he never thought of Gayle and Karen making it together. He didn't try to picture them, and he never asked Karen how they were getting along. What he did was try to help her so that she could be free from the details of life, free from the daily pressures, as much as possible.

He helped her with her investment program, even added money to the half she'd taken in order to buy her a mutual fund he thought had great promise; he paid for the $204 extra each month on her car insurance, "so you won't have to dig into your principle so much," he'd said. He suggested courses where she might sign up to learn a possible career, if she found herself, at forty-one, immersed in the strange waters of the workplace again. Housewife work was tough, he was learning, but it didn't prepare a person for becoming an independent breadwinner. He deposited money in their joint money market account, and would pay her taxes at least for another year, he promised.

At every turn he acted as her friend, confidant, and adviser. He even took her car in for servicing, their car but hers now. He referred to it as "my wife's Regal" when he left it at the shop. He kept up his insurance premiums so that if anything happened to him, Karen would still be beneficiary of a fairly tidy sum.

"I have to tell you," she said on a visit, "you've really surprised me. I never thought you'd be so good about everything. It's made something that would be difficult at best so much easier and more pleasant for all of us involved. Gayle is bowled over about the way you've behaved. She never thought you were such a good guy, even though I told her you were."

He fought to hold his temper. "Well, you've had nearly twenty years to know me. Gayle and I don't really know each other." He kept his voice modulated and calm, but inside he was picturing the blond bimbo bitch with her boyish tits and shaved pussy; he could imagine her talking her baby-talk bullshit to his ex-wife.

The day after the papers came from the lawyer, announcing it was an uncontested divorce and that they were no longer man and wife, Karen began to

have problems. The first thing was the car. She was driving down Main and tapped the brakes at a stop light, went right through and smacked a produce truck hard on the bumper, crushing the Buick's front grille.

"I don't know what happened!" she told the investigating officer. "I didn't have any brakes at all. My God, if a child or somebody had been crossing the street, I would have hit them!"

A couple of weeks later the insurance company informed a startled Karen that she hadn't been covered with comprehensive when the mishap had occurred.

"According to our records, you let your car insurance lapse two months ago." Karen phoned her ex-husband, who was shocked and chagrined.

"Jesus, honey, I'm sorry. I don't know how it happened." He checked their stubs and the master file under Auto Insurance. Sure enough — somehow — a few weeks ago he'd managed to make out the check and all, but he'd apparently misplaced the envelope. Yes, sad to say, it seems he had let their insurance run out.

Then there was the Turkish rug. George had bought it for Gayle and Karen at a local flea market, saying he hoped it would brighten up their apartment, which was still sparsely furnished. The women were thrilled by his kindness, but within hours of setting it up in their living room, Karen's eyes started watering profusely and her breathing became labored.

"Jesus, Karen, what's wrong?" Gayle had asked, rushing to her lover's side. By that time, Karen was gasping for air and pointing at the rug. "Allergic. reaction. something in the rug."

Gayle called 911 and the ambulance workers fed Karen oxygen as they rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with an acute allergic reaction to chemicals in the rug. Somehow, at some point, someone had dumped a shitload of cleaning solvent on the rug, and Karen's allergies had kicked in mightily, nearly fatally.

George removed the rug and later told the women he had cut it into small pieces and burned them in his backyard barbecue. Again he apologized profusely, and again his former wife forgave him. After all, she said, it was hardly his fault if some jerk had done that to a beautiful rug. How, she asked, was he to know?

After Karen was released from the hospital, George encouraged her and Gayle to stay at his house until the last of the rug's smell had dissipated. Besides, he reminded them, he was going out of town for a few days for a regional book-signing tour. They accepted his offer gratefully, which appeared to make him extremely relieved after his rug faux pas.

But tragedy struck again. Later they recounted to George how, during the second night they were house- sitting, they had thrown popcorn into the air popper and had let it warm up, while they warmed up each other with a double-headed dildo — a part of the story with which they delighted in torturing George. They explained how the smell and sound of popping corn had fueled their passions so that they had initially failed to notice the cord to the air popper sparking, then starting a kitchen fire that quickly raged out of control among the piles of George's old newspapers. Worse still, the windows were all stuck shut because George had painted the exterior of the house days before, and was none too fussy about where the paint stopped and the windows began. The house went up like a matchstick in a volcano, and by the time the women were aware of the blaze, their path to the front door was already blocked by hellish flames. Karen doubled over in cough spasms while Gayle, just short of panicking, picked up George's favorite lamp and threw it through a side window, then pushed Karen through and followed, tumbling to the ground outside just as the house blew itself up, a noise that shattered windows for blocks around.

Both women ended up back in the hospital, suffering second-degree burns along with multitudes of cuts from flying glass and wooden shards.

George soon arrived, in near hysteria, at the hospital, where he kept vigil in the waiting room to the Burn Unit. When she could talk, Karen apologized for the loss of his — once their — house.

"I just don't understand it," George said. "I just bought that air popper less than a month ago." He clucked his tongue and shook his head. "You just can't buy quality anymore." He smiled at her bandaged face. "I'm just glad you're alive." As an afterthought, he added, "Oh, and Gayle too, of course."

He relocated to a tiny condo on the other side of town, and saw less of Karen and Gayle while they healed. One day he noticed he was more glum than usual, and realized it was because it was the anniversary of their divorce. One year ago, she'd left him for that brainless bimbo bitch, God knows why. What he'd ever seen in Gayle, he could no longer recall.

Just then the phone rang. "George?" It was her, he realized, his stomach turning. "Karen and I were just talking about how it's a special day for all of us — you know what I mean. And we wondered whether you might want to spend it together."

Before he could spit the word «no» down the phone line, Karen got on the phone. In the same cultured tone she'd used when she'd first agreed to meet Gayle, she said, "George, Gayle and I have been thinking. It's been a strange year for us all and, well, we were wondering if it's not too late to take you up on your offer."

"What offer?"

"Well, we were just reminiscing, and I remembered how mad I got that time you wanted to do a menage a trois with me and Gayle. And, well, I know you haven't been seeing anyone, and, oh, George, I feel so bad about the house, and the divorce, and everything. How'd you like to.. have us both for dinner to night?"

She laughed at her own joke when George considered the offer. No fucking way would he — but wait a minute. Yes. This could work nicely after all. "Sure," he answered, putting as big a smile in his voice as he could fake. "Come on over at seven. I'll make your favorite meal: blackened redfish."

As he marinated the fish with poison, he reflected on what a lousy year it had been. All of his acts of revenge had failed to achieve their common goal: to pay back Karen for her betrayal of their marriage. Slitting the brake lines, adding the chemicals to the rug, even fraying all the wiring around the house in hopes they would start a fatal fire in his absence. It was a bit desperate, he admitted, but no less than both of them deserved. The sluts.

Well, tonight's plan was foolproof. True, he'd prob ably have to leave town before their bodies were discovered, but with Karen out of his life, there was nothing for him here anyway. He'd take the royalties he'd made off his books and live well in Mexico, or South America, or one of those places he never tired of reading about in the travel sections of the newspapers he loved.

Yes, he nodded to the empty room, he'd teach these twats a final lesson and then skip town. He was ready for a big change.

He answered the doorbell and was momentarily stunned by Karen and Gayle, who were dressed to thrill, Karen in a skintight minidress that showed off her lean legs to best advantage, and Gayle in even less than Karen. She wore jeans that were cut off so that the bottom of her rump was displayed, and a sleeve less T-shirt that showed much more of her breasts than it concealed. George felt his dick stiffen involuntarily as they both kissed him on opposite cheeks, giggling as they let themselves in.

"This will be fun," Karen whispered as she brushed her hand against the bulge in his pants.

"I have wine," Gayle said cheerily. "Want some now?"

"Sure." He shrugged. No reason he had to rush things. He had to admit, he'd had no initial desire to touch either one of them. But their scars had healed nicely — the visible ones, anyway — and he was undeniably horny after a year without sex. After his experience with Gayle, the idea of paying for sex had been abhorrent to him.

Karen handed him a glass of Cabernet and asked, "Honey, where's that video you shot of me and Gayle? Let's all watch it. It'll put us in the mood." To accentuate her point, she grabbed at his crotch, giving it a healthy squeeze. "I can see you're in the mood already!"

He laughed and downed the wine. He was touched that Karen remembered that Cabernet was his favorite choice. He pulled the tape out of a bookshelf case and popped it into the VCR. He hadn't watched this tape in over a year; it pained him too much to view it.

In moments he was riveted. He'd forgotten how erotic it was to watch the two of them together, especially through his own eyes, as seen through his camcorder angles. He was especially fond of close-up shots of the most private parts of their bodies, he noted with mild embarrassment.

"You like to watch, don't you?" Karen said as she poured him more wine. He shrugged and guzzled it down, waving the real-life Karen aside so he could better see her image on the twenty-seven-inch monitor. But the picture seemed out-of-focus, fuzzy around the edges. Cursing, he stood up to fiddle with the TV controls and fell flat on his face on the condo's threadbare carpeting.

He grunted, tried to raise himself up and failed, hitting his cheek on something sharp. It was the metal toe of Gayle's cowboy boot, resting next to his face. He was momentarily angry at Gayle and then at himself for his failure to hold his liquor.

Karen crouched next to him, lifting one of his eyelids. "You won't be able to watch much longer, I'm afraid." He tried to speak and spittle drooled out the corner of his mouth.

"No, don't bother talking. Just watch and listen." Karen poured the rest of the wine over his body. "It's poison, of course. Hopefully it won't hurt too much; I understand it deadens the nerves as it destroys them." She turned to Gayle. "Better get the videotape."

George blinked; even through the drugged haze, he was beginning to comprehend what was happening.

"I know you think I'm a bimbo," Gayle addressed his prostrate form. "Karen told me so. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that you were trying to kill us. Although why you would burn down your own house to do it, I can't understand. You are one sick piece of shit, George. And by the way, all those times you paid me to sleep with you? I never thought you were sexy in the slightest, you fat fucking pig." She used her metal heel to kick him in the balls, but he merely blinked faster for a moment, feeling no pain any longer. Feeling not much of anything, for that matter.

Karen moved in closer to see whether George was still conscious, since his loud breathing was becoming noticeably slower. "Can you hear me, George? After the house burned down, Gayle had her suspicions — I must admit I still thought you were innocent, gullible me — so we hired a private eye."

Gayle chimed in: "From money you'd paid me to fuck you."

Karen ignored the interruption. "He found out you hadn't gone out of town the night the house burned down. You weren't on any book-signing tour, George. You were at the same hotel you used to meet Gayle at, until you heard the TV newscast about the fire." She shuddered. "Gayle's right, you are a sick fuck, George. And we're not going to let you try to ruin our lives anymore — or anyone else's, with those sick books of yours."

She bent lower still and whispered in his ear. "No one saw us come in, George. We made certain of that. After you die, we'll wipe off all our fingerprints. Your death is going to make all the papers, George." She laughed. "Finally, George makes the headlines and he won't be around to read them!"

On impulse, she rose, reached for a newspaper, crumpled the front page, and stuffed it in his mouth. "Read that, George." She got up, looked around. "We'd better clean up and get out of here."

Gayle shook her head. "That wouldn't be polite. Eating and running, that is. Speaking of eating. " She glanced over at the oven, opened the door, and sniffed inside. "Mmm. Your husband is — was — quite a good cook." She looked at the food, then at Karen. "Shall we?"

Karen hesitated. George was definitely having trouble breathing now, between the poison and the newspaper stuffed down his throat. She shuddered and turned away. Gayle came to her side. "Don't pity him. He deserves all this and more. Just think of how many times he tried to kill us."

Karen shook a bit in her lover's arms. "You're right," she said, her voice low. She turned away from George and toward the kitchen. "Oh hell, why not? I always loved George's blackened redfish."

George's vision focused one last time as he watched them take their first bites of fish. He smiled as best he could, shuddered, and expired.

"Did you see that?" Gayle asked as she stuffed more of the fish into her mouth. "It almost looked like he smiled for a second there." She shrugged. "This is delicious."

"Mmm," Karen agreed. "Pass the water, will you? This is very good, but it's even spicier than usual."