Mrs. Vaughn and the One That Got Away
Last week she asked to be called Martha. Four days ago, she picked the name Sally. Because her fat husband slept with her two days earlier, she must pick a new name. Kelley.
“Jacob, where do you work?” Kelley asked the man standing in the door of the bathroom.
“The Hellfire.” Jacob wiped his chest with a white hotel towel.
She opened her small, pink notebook and scanned for a page. She wrote his name, her name, and the date, each in a different column. “Bartending?”
“Right, plus extra customer service on the side. Bartending doesn’t pay much.”
Kelley knew all of that. The friend who gave Jacob’s contact number gave her a little information about him. But still, small talks were inevitable. The ice needed to be broken.
Jacob put the towel on a chair and walked to the bed. Square face. Big eyes. Full lips. Lean with a well-defined six pack. Nicely trimmed pubes. Average-sized dick. A grower, Kelley thought. Some other chicks would entertain Jacob inside their pussies if they bumped into him on the street. But not her. Not Kelley.
While drop-dead gorgeous, he still had to take a shower. They all had to take a shower. Kelley’s rules, not theirs.
“Are you really married?” Jacob hopped in bed and crawled on top of Kelley, who put her notebook and pen under the pillow. He pulled the blanket concealing Kelley’s body, only to find her in a black bra and panties instead of naked. Still, his erection grew.
She touched the gold ring on her finger. “Do you think this is fake?”
Jacob landed his body on top of hers and grinded his pelvis. “That’s not what I meant,” he whispered. He rubbed his face on her stomach, smelling her. “It’s just very unusual for me to have married clients unless they’re men.”
“You’ve never had a married woman before?” Kelley pulled Jacob’s hands to the clip of her bra.
“Never.” He undid her bra and threw it on the floor. “You’re beautiful. You look young. A small part of me still can’t believe it.” He pulled down her panties and threw them on the floor too.
She wrapped one leg around his hip. “Do you want me to remove my ring before we continue?”
Jacob glanced at the ring on her finger before returning his gaze to her face. He plunged his tongue into her mouth. “No. Keep it on.” They began.
He serviced her the traditional way, him on top. First, with no blanket. Second, under the blanket. Third, with no blanket again. Last, under the blanket once more. She let him take the lead, his mouth and tongue entwined with hers all throughout, breathing into her and sucking her. He gripped her arms, shoulders, and waist. He caressed and molested her breasts. He filled the bright room with his angry moans each time he came.
After the fourth time, he plopped next to her, went for a cuddle, and planted a kiss on her lips. “It feels like a dream.”
“What feels like a dream?” Kelley asked.
“This. You. Me.”
She pinched his left nipple. “It’s not a dream, Jacob. I’m real.”
They cuddled for ten minutes, Kelley tracing her finger on his chest to his tummy. Then she took her notebook and pen from under the pillow and started dressing.
“The dream is over,” Jacob said, not getting up.
She picked her copper shoulder bag from the dresser, pulled a white envelope from it, and loaded it with cash. “I loved it.” She handed the envelope to him. He opened it and counted the money. “That’s why I’m being generous.”
He put the envelope next to him in bed. “Thank you. I’m glad you’re satisfied. I had a great time too. Hope you’ll call me again if you need me.”
“Sure,” Kelley said, knowing that wouldn’t happen. Ever.
It’s not that the sex wasn’t good. He made her come a lot without exhibiting other sexual positions. Most guys, especially her husband, fucked her missionary style but never hit the spot. Either they had to try it doggy style or she had to fake her moans. Jacob knew how to use his tool well. If her only intention was cheating on her husband, she’d make Jacob her illicit lover.
But his clock had begun. In two months. A month. Two weeks. Or a week if he got really unlucky.
He’d die after their sex, like all the men before him sans her husband.
“It’s not necessary to save your money. Goodbye, Jacob.” She stepped out of the room, avoiding the four condoms on the floor, and closed the door.
She went to bed early that night to avoid talking to her husband. The next day, he caught up with her in their bathroom while she was washing her face.
“Why does my wife get younger looking every week?” He put his arms around her waist, planting a kiss on her neck.
“I have an excellent beauty regime,” she responded.
“Everybody’s going to envy Mrs. Miguel Vaughn again.” Her husband gave another kiss.
She released herself from her husband’s arms and returned to their bedroom. “I’m going to Feliciano’s school this afternoon.” Feliciano was their son.
“To meet the counselor?” His voice was muffled from the bathroom.
“Yes. Are you coming?”
“I can’t. It’s going to be a busy day. I may have to work very late tonight.”
“Do you want me to send dinner for you?”
“No. Don’t bother. I’ll eat at Dency’s tonight.”
After her husband went to work, she dialed a number on her phone. The other party picked up after two rings.
“Mrs. Vaughn,” said the voice from the other line.
“Henrietta,” Mrs. Vaughn spoke. “My husband had sex with me three nights ago. I thought you were keeping him busy.”
The younger voice shook a little. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Vaughn. I tried seducing him that night but after three nights in a row he wants nothing to do with me.”
“He’ll be working late in the office tonight. Make yourself be seen but don’t be available for fuck’s sake. I want him to crave you again and away from me as long as you can.”
“Yes, Mrs. Vaughn.”
“Make sure there’s no other woman involved.” She ended the call.
Her mother-in-law insisted she take a driver with her in the afternoon, but she went to Feliciano’s school alone. She picked her seven year-old son up from his class and walked with him to the guidance counselor’s office. A mother and a daughter had arrived earlier and kept the counselor busy. They waited in the lobby.
“Kids today are getting rowdy and undisciplined,” a man in the lobby said to her. A boy sat next to him, eyes transfixed on the tablet in his hands. “Do you think it’s time to upgrade the curriculum?”
She eyed him. Blue eyes. Sharp nose. Freshly shaved face. A bit of a pot belly. Hair that receded. Five years ago, he’d be drop-dead gorgeous. Sitting on a bench across from them, he still had it. He didn’t wear any ring on his finger.
“I don’t think so. It’s the teachers who need an upgrade in their teaching methods and style,” she said.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong.”
She looked at Feliciano who had a comic book in his hands. “Maybe,” she said.
The man gave her a smile. She recognized it. She could always recognize it. The eyes gave them away.
“Where’s his mother?” she asked.
“We’re divorced. One year ago.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. We were incompatible anyway.”
“Is it okay for your son to hear that?”
“He doesn’t like her.”
The door of the counselor’s office opened, the mother and the daughter walking out. A skinny man wearing thick eyeglasses appeared in the door and read from an index card. “Feliciano Vaughn.” She and Feliciano left the bench and followed him inside the room.
Mrs. Vaughn let the counselor speak for five minutes without interrupting before taking the stage.
“Mister Levy, your employee reprimanded my child for making scribbles on his textbook. First, I paid for my son’s textbooks. This is not a public school where pupils only borrow textbooks and return it at the end of each school year, in which I can understand writing on textbooks may not be allowed. Second, I am not going to let anyone hinder the growth of my child’s imagination and curiosity. Nobody can tell my son to stop scribbling. Feliciano may be the world’s next Van Gogh. Or da Vinci. Or Michaelangelo. Or even Steve Jobs? But he’ll never become like them if you let his creativity get stifled. You don’t want to destroy the children’s futures with the questionable actions of your faculty, do you?” Mrs. Vaugh stared at the counselor.
Feliciano stared at his mother with mouth wide open.
The counselor gulped and arranged his spectacles on his ears. “Yes, Mrs. Vaughn. You made good and valid points. I’ll instruct our teachers not to be critical on their students. As long as they do their homework on it, it’s okay to write and draw anything else on their textbooks.”
She smiled at the counselor and fluttered her eyelashes. He ushered them out of his office, his hand lingering on her back on the way out.
“Julian Cross,” the counselor read from his index card. The father and the son got up from their bench. “Follow me inside please.” The counselor disappeared in the room.
Mrs. Vaughn and Feliciano were six steps from the door when the father grabbed her arm. “Call me when you need help with parenting,” he told her, handing a small card. Julian Cross, Sr. Real Estate Agent. 194 Dapperling Drive. She took it, thanked him, and walked away.
She went to an Italian restaurant with Feliciano and her other son Fernando for dinner. It was her paradise, only the three of them, no Miguel and no parents-in-law. A third son Federico would’ve been with them if only she didn’t miscarry.
No more pregnancies, she had told Miguel. Too much heartbreak, she told the rest of the Vaughn family. Lies, to hide the ugly truth.
While she loved Feliciano, Fernando, and Federico, she didn’t love the time she carried them in her womb. Sleeping with her husband made her ugly and carrying his spawn transformed her into something hideous. During her days of pregnancy, she wailed every time she saw herself in the mirror. Her friends told her it was normal but she didn’t believe them. After becoming Mrs. Miguel Vaughn, her beauty fell into a slow descent of deterioration. With each pregnancy she went through, her fate became more obvious to her.
“It’s not pregnancy. It’s not motherhood. I’m sure of that,” she had told her reflection in the mirror.
Four months after her miscarriage, the Vaughns replaced their retired family driver with the young, lean, and baby-faced Maxim. He drove her and the children to school everyday.
“You remind me of someone, Maxim.” She sat in the front and put one hand on his lap while he drove. They had dropped off the boys at school and were headed home.
Maxim briefly looked at the hand on his lap and squirmed in his seat. “Who would that be, Mrs. Vaughn?”
“The one that got away,” she said.
“I don’t understand, ma’am,” he said without taking his eyes off the road.
“I haven’t seen him in years. You remind me a lot of him when we were younger.”
“Where is he now, ma’am?”
She lifted her hand from his lap and pointed a finger to her chest. “In my heart where he’ll forever remain.”
He gave her a brief, intent look, a dead giveaway. She ordered him to abandon their usual route and go someplace instead. As soon as they arrived in their motel room, she undressed herself and helped him take off his clothes.
“Mrs. Vaughn…” the young man breathed deeply.
“I don’t know what you see in me, Maxim, as I’m past my best looking phase, but I want you too.” She pushed him to the bed, went on top of him, and kissed his lips. “It’s going to be a secret between you and me.”
They made their first love in that drive-in motel that afternoon, her telling him where to touch her, to kiss her, to grope her, and to caress her. He obliged all the way, grateful for the good fortune that fell his way. They both came.
“You’re beautiful.” Maxim kissed her during their post-coital cuddle.
“You’re beautiful too.” She kissed him back.
The next day, after taking the children to school, she ordered him to drive to the motel again.
“I want you to do something different for me this time, Maxim,” she told him.
“Wasn’t I good yesterday, ma’am?”
“No. You were good, very good.” She squeezed his hands. “I want you to call me by a different name whenever we make love.”
“What name would that be, ma’am?”
“Scarlet.” She squeezed his hands tighter. “Call me Scarlet.”
Maxim stepped closer to kiss her, but she pushed him back.
“I want you to take a shower first,” she told him.
“Do I smell bad?”
“No. Let’s call it a form of christening. After you shower, you’re a new man. I’ll be calling you by a name.”
The young man obeyed. After drying his body with a towel, he pushed her into bed, his christening giving him some newfound bravado. He climbed the bed. They made love. They made love again. He whispered the name Scarlet in her ears multiple times while she held tight to him, calling him by his new name Francisco.
The following day they went at it again. Every time they dropped off the boys at school, they’d drive to their secret paradise. When they returned home, they ignored each other, a temporary distance they’d make up for during their episodes of escape. Two weeks into their illicit affair, she finally believed what Maxim had been telling her every time they finished making love.
“You’re back to your beautiful self again,” her mother-in-law, who seldom said good words to her, told her one day during lunch. “Just like the way you were before you married my son.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “Getting over a miscarriage took a while.”
Miguel also noticed her returned beauty and cornered her into having sex with him, their first since her miscarriage.
The following morning, her mother-in-law quipped during breakfast. “You looked prettier yesterday. What happened?”
Miguel happened. After two weeks of sex with Maxim in the afternoon and Miguel in the evening, she figured it out. Then she hired Yolanda, the first woman before Henrietta.
“Sleep with him often and make him so tired that he’ll no longer have the desire to lie with me,” she told Yolanda.
It worked. She continued her affair with Maxim every afternoon. By evening, Miguel would either come home late or make his way directly to bed to sleep and snore. Her path toward the restoration of her beauty turned obstacle-free.
Then Maxim caught it, a disease, two months into their secret affair. He died soon. She couldn’t even mourn him in public. They replaced him with another driver, an old man she’d never imagine sleeping with.
Miguel made her sleep with him frequently again. All the youth she and Maxim created began eroding. Her mother-in-law never failed to remind her. “You’re looking stressed again. What happened? You were looking better.”
She fired Yolanda and hired another woman. It only kept Miguel busy for a while before he came to her again asking for sex. She broke their bathroom mirror with a bottle of perfume one morning, upset that Maxim seemed to die for nothing.
One day, she overheard the mother of one of Fernando’s classmates make a remark about her face to another mother. She instructed Maxim’s replacement to go a different route. “Garcia, let’s make a quick detour.”
“What are we doing here, ma’am?” Garcia asked, looking up at the motel sign.
“You’ll soon find out,” she said.
She urged Garcia into the usual room where she undressed herself in front of him.
“Ma’am!” He tried to look away.
“This is just between us, Garcia,” she told him. “My husband doesn’t have to know.”
“I — “
“Don’t you want me?”
Garcia shook his head but the bulge in his pants said otherwise.
She ordered him to take a shower before they went to bed. She asked him to call her Jenny while they made love. The older Garcia couldn’t compete with Maxim’s youth but he at least didn’t remind her of Miguel. He had muscles underneath some fat unlike her husband who was a total blob.
That night, as she gazed into the mirror, she saw some of her beauty restored. She asked Garcia to fuck her for the rest of the week. They did it for another week more, she in it for her beauty and Garcia in it for pure primal reasons. But then he got killed in a car accident. The Vaughns replaced him with a new driver, older than Maxim but younger than Garcia. She didn’t want to risk another driver of theirs dying again. She had to restore her beauty from somewhere else.
She bought a small, pink notebook and made four columns on the first page. In the first column, she wrote Maxim’s and Garcia’s names. In the second column, she wrote Scarlet and Jenny. She wrote the dates of her first sexual encounters with Maxim and Garcia in the third column and the causes of their deaths in the last.
Gilbert and Melanie. He died from drowning in a lake. Marco and Beth. He died from a lung disease. Connor and Daisy. He got killed in a plane crash. Quinn and Penny. He died of food poisoning. Romeo and Zoe. He died from another disease. Esteban and Alessandra. He was stabbed to death by his brother.
There were more names, of boys and also of girls, none of which were repeated, and more deaths, some factual and some wild guesses. At the last row, there was Jacob and Kelley, his cause of death still pending. More names would be added, for she must maintain her beauty until the day of reunion with the one that got away, the only one who had the right to utter her real name — Lorraine Ysabel.
“You’re still awake. It’s very late in the evening.” Miguel entered their bedroom.
“Have you had dinner already?” She put her notebook under her pillow.
“At Dency’s, as usual. I give big tips. They love having me there.” He unbuttoned his shirt from the neck downward.
“Stressful day?”
“It was.” He changed into his pajamas and climbed into their bed.
He made love with her the traditional way. She faked her moans. He fell asleep during their post-coital cuddle, his wild snores filling their room. She made a mental note to fire Henrietta before joining Miguel to sleep.
The following day, after taking Fernando and Feliciano to school herself, she diverged from the usual route home. She found herself knocking at the door of Julian Cross, Sr.’s house. He peered behind the door, wearing a white, sleeveless shirt. She smelled the scent of his hairy underarms.
“I’m glad you came, Mrs. Vaughn.” He let her in.
“Not yet but that depends on you and how good you are,” she told him.
He led her to his living room and asked her to sit on the sofa.
“I thought you wouldn’t visit.” He sat across from her.
“What made you think that?” she asked.
“The last time we met, you had a ring on your finger.”
“But you still gave me your calling card.”
“I wanted to tell myself I tried and you’re still wearing a ring on your finger.”
“Do you want me to remove it?”
“Whatever suits you.” He smiled. “I didn’t get a chance to ask your name. Forgive me.”
“Abby. Please call me Abby.”
Abby asked Julian to take a shower before they got down to business. She saw a news report of an accident at The Hellfire that burned the entire place down along with its employees and customers. She then undressed herself and waited for Julian on the sofa naked.
He returned from the shower with a towel on his waist. Upon seeing her already ready, he threw the towel on the floor and sat next to her. “We have a lot of hours to waste before we pick up our sons at school.”
“I got something special planned to keep us busy until then.”
He leaned closer and locked their lips in a kiss. “What convinced you to come here?” he asked.
“You remind me of someone special, the one that got away. He’d look like you if he was your age.”
“Too bad he’s gone, but I’m here now. I’m not going away.”
“What if I tell you I’m a cursed woman? Sleeping with me will afflict you of my curse too.” She licked his lips.
“Curse? The only curse I see you have is unbelievable beauty. I want you to be mine from here on out.”
“I’m yours then.” She grabbed his chin and devoured him with a kiss.
Mrs. Vaughn and the One That Got Away is part of the collection Walden and Hyde (and Other Short Stories), also a spinoff/prequel of the upcoming novel I Killed My Friends and It Thrilled Me.
