Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (44 page)

Scarsdale already presumed his friend was headed for a second divorce. Without kids and a family to hold his union together, what else was there for a young woman to hold on to?

“And you may want to start dating older women, who have less of a reason to flake out on you,” he added.

Antonio looked amused. “You sound as if you believe my marriage is already over with.”

James shrugged again. “Well, when the writing’s on the wall…what are you gonna do about it?”

Only Professor Greene wasn’t as certain that his second marriage was over with yet. He smiled and said, “Before you put the final nail in Dracula’s coffin, let me at least see if we can make it back to daylight a few more times.”

James grinned back at him. “Why, of course.”

Back on the southwest side of Boston in Roxbury, Suzanne was butt naked with her legs bent over backward on Big Ray’s bed, while he pounced into her wet, sweet spot like a jackhammer, disturbing the neighbors below him with the pulsating bed pressure against the noisy apartment floors.

“Oohh, oohh, oohh,
ooooohh.
” she moaned while he pounded into her.

Big Ray closed his eyes, feeling his fast nut mounting. Due to a new building site that was ahead of schedule, he worked a half-day and decided to call up Suzanne to see if she wanted to sneak by for an afternoon quickie. And the lawyer jumped at the chance, taking a long, late lunch hour after two.

“Aww, baby, here it
cuuums!
” Ray squealed as he let it all out to her.

Suzanne squirmed her body into the hot nut as it filled up her tank. Then she pulled her legs down around him and breathed easy to relax.

“That’s the best lunch hour I ever had.”

Big Ray chuckled into his pillow. “Shit. Ditto for me.”

Then Suzanne’s cell phone went off from her purse. She moved to answer it immediately, to see if it was the office. She grabbed her phone and read the number.

She recognized it and paused. It was her husband. She frowned and wondered,
What is he doing calling me this time of day?
Not that Tony never called her during her work hours, but it was usually involving something specific when he did. She had told him a while ago that she didn’t need the everyday, “Honey, how’s your day going?” or “I love you” calls. She decided to answer his mid-day call on an emergency basis.

“Okay, it’s him, so I’ll be off in a few minutes,” she warned Raymond.

“Mmm-hmm,” he mumbled. He was curious to hear her conversation with her weak husband himself.

“Hey, Antonio. Is anything wrong?”

“No, I just had a thought. Now bear with me a minute,” Antonio explained before she could cut him off with talk about her work. It was all her regular M.O.

“Okay, but I only have a second,” she countered.

“I want us to go out for dinner tonight and have a real face-to-face talk about where we are as a couple, be honest about what we mean to each other, and discuss where we would both like to go.”

Suzanne heard him out and considered it.
He’s been talking to his friends at Harvard about us again,
she presumed. Suzanne knew Tony’s M.O. as well. He would always seek an opinion before trying a new direction.

This could be it,
she told herself.
Do I tell him the truth, that I’m ready to move on? Or bullshit by talking about trying to work something out?

She exhaled and responded, “Okay. Well, is the plan for right after work, or do we go home and get dressed first?”

“Let’s make it right after work,” he told her. “We’re both professional people. So let’s meet at John Cabot’s Steakhouse downtown and go from there. I’ll make reservations for seven.”

John Cabot’s was a top-of-the-line restaurant. That made Suzanne look forward to the idea. She could already taste her darkened, peppercorn steak, medium broiled. She could taste the fine, dark wine, the baked potato, and enjoy the decor of an elegant dinner at a social hub, where she would feel ten times more comfortable with Dr. Antonio Greene than she ever would with Raymond “Big Ray” Cumming. In the arena of John Cabot’s Steakhouse, Big Ray was not in competition.

“All right, I’ll see you then,” she told her husband.

As soon as she hung up, Ray asked her, “So, you’re going to a fancy dinner to talk it all out, hunh?” Antonio’s voice had been loud enough to carry so Raymond could hear both sides of their conversation.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Well, have fun,” Raymond told her with a grin. It didn’t matter to him. If he never saw the woman again in his life, she had already given him a hell of an experience with plenty of stories to tell. But he was certain that she would be back again.

Suzanne walked into John Cabot’s dark, pine-wood steakhouse, right off the Boston Harbor, and gave her name. It was slightly after seven o’clock.

“Oh, yes, right this way,” a male host addressed her. He led her to a table at the back of the restaurant, with a perfect view of the Boston Harbor. Professor Greene sat in the chair to the left of the table. He rose as his wife arrived with the host and pulled out her chair on the right. He’d already asked their waiter to pour her favorite red wine into her glass.

“Hey, Sweetie,” he greeted her with a kiss.

Suzanne nodded to him and smiled, impressed with everything.

“Take a few minutes to look over the menu and your server will be over,” the host stated.

As the host moved away, Suzanne asked her husband, “How did you manage to do this?” referring to the hard-to-get, window-view seats.

Antonio grinned. “I can still pull a few strings when I need to.”

“Is that right?” She took a sip of her dark wine and continued to smile. She even liked his striking red tie that evening.

“That’s a presidential red?” she stated. “A Barack Obama tie.”

The thought of presidential authority turned her on. She was quickly reminded why she had married the man. Professor Greene had a little bit of style and pizzazz when he wanted to show it. And he appeared to want to that evening.

“Yeah, you didn’t see me put it on this morning. You were still in bed.”

She nodded and grinned. “Yeah, it’s a very strong statement on you.”

“So, how was your day today?” he asked her.

Suzanne shrugged. “Same as it ever was. I do my part and leave.”

Antonio grimaced. “You know, you used to have a lot more passion for your work. Don’t you think? That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about tonight.”

He sounded like a rejuvenated man, and he was putting his agenda right out on the table for her to swallow. That was pretty direct of him.

Suzanne sat back in her chair and thought,
Shit! Who gave him his Wheaties this morning?

Tony even ordered their steaks with swagger, forcing Suzanne to ask him, “What’s gotten into you today?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you really seem…on top of things today.”

Antonio took a breath. “Well, I figure I have to allow us both a chance to express ourselves in this relationship, because lately, we’ve both been going through the motions.”

Suzanne paused and remained speechless. She didn’t want to tip her hand too early in the conversation.

“What do you want to talk about first?” she asked him.

She realized they had a long list of issues to address.

“Well, first of all; are you still happy?” her husband asked. He was starting the conversation with a hand grenade.

Suzanne composed herself and wondered if she should tell him the truth.

Well, since we’re being up front about it,
she mused. So she shook her head and answered, “I haven’t been too excited about things lately. No.”

Antonio kept his poise. “Well, is it the
job,
is it
me,
or is it something else you’re going through right now?”

Suzanne saw a flash of Big Ray, naked in his apartment hallway, with his big, dark dick in hand. She then shook off her thoughts.

“I mean, it’s a little bit of everything. I don’t know. Maybe we need to go on a great vacation somewhere.”

“At the end of the semester?”

“Yeah.”

“To Trinidad and Tobago?” he suggested.

“Anywhere warm where I can really unwind.”

Antonio nodded. “Okay. We can do that. Now what else is bothering you? Are you still thinking about raising kids?”

It was a question he
had
to ask.

Suzanne forced herself to stop and pause again before she answered. The truth was, she only thought about kids sparingly now, and mainly after eyeing someone else’s kids.

“Well, I
am
getting older, Tony. But now that you ask me, I don’t think enough about children for it to really be a major issue for me anymore,” she admitted.

“Then again, you could be feeling bad about a number of things now because you were not able to fulfill that one goal,” Tony countered. “You could be experiencing emotional diffusion.”

Suzanne hadn’t thought of that. She just figured she was getting her mid-life freak on. “I don’t know about all of that,” she told him.

Both of their steak meals arrived and halted their conversation.

“Thank you. It looks and smells fabulous,” Antonio told their server.

Suzanne looked across the table and asked herself,
Who is this new man? And how long will he possess my husband?

They tore into their meals, while watching the Boston Harbor waters beside them.

“This is a really beautiful view,” Suzanne commented.

Antonio stared across the table at her longingly. He had the look in his eyes of pleasantry and pride.

“So is the view of you,” he responded.

Suzanne’s cold, damaged heart seemed to open up again. Or at least it tried to.

“Thank you.” Nevertheless, she became a bit skeptical. “So, why all
this,
all of a sudden?” she questioned in reference to the restaurant and his zestful demeanor.

Antonio viewed it as either the beginning of a new day, or the ending of an old one. He was doing his best acting job to stay upbeat. James Scarsdale had strongly advised him to: “Who wants to stick it out with a begging and defeated man? You have to act as if you’re the best thing since sliced bread to your wife. You know, flaunt who you are a little bit. I find that women, even married ones, like a man to be who he really is every once in a while. It’s patriarchal liberation,” he called it with a laugh.

Antonio answered, “We just needed to
do it.
Because it seems as if we’re moving apart. So I wanted to stop our drift in opposing directions, and pull our boats back together to discuss what’s going on.”

Then he looked into her deep, dark eyes. “And I still love you, Suzanne.
Dearly.
”

She looked at his neatly, low-cut head, smoothly shaved face, innocent eyes, unblemished skin, and his look of sincerity, and she melted.

Awwww, he’s so adorable,
she thought to herself with a smile. She even reached out and touched his face.

“I still love you, too, honey. And I’m sorry if I’ve been…a little
distant
lately.”

She thought,
Maybe I could…I don’t know, turn him into the man I need for him to be. And this is a good start.
She inspired to at least try it.