Trespass (8 page)

Chapter 17

S
ondra Jackson sat up in bed so thirsty she was even dreaming about an ice-cold Diet Coke. Keith Fink, the man lying next to her, snored softly and farted into the covers. Sondra wrinkled her nose and left the bed to find something to drink. She descended the stairs to the kitchen without bothering to cover her nudity, and when she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped. She heard voices whispering in the guest room; someone else was in the house. Had Craig brought Debra Fink back here? She would be super pissed if he had. The exchange with the other couple tonight had been her idea, although Craig had admitted he found Debra attractive and would enjoy the opportunity to get her into bed.

Crap.
The sounds she heard were definitely sex sounds and they were coming from the guestroom. Her asshole husband must have come here with Debra after all; what was he hoping for, an orgy? It couldn’t be. No way the other couple was ready for anything like that. She moved quietly to the guest room, ready to peek in and catch them at it. Sondra, grateful the house was in nearly total darkness and that she remembered the floor plan from the night they had played bridge here with Debra and Keith, poked her head around the doorframe and looked into the room.

What the hell?
There were three people in the room,
two
women and a man. All three were nude. The man was mounting one of the women while the other woman straddled her face. They all wore masks.

Debra must be into some really kinky shit, Sondra thought, and wondered who the other woman could be. Without taking time to ponder how Craig had managed to arrange a threesome without her knowledge, Sondra’s anger flared and she stepped into the doorway. She wanted to scream at them, but she became distracted by the tingling of her nipples and the heat stirring between her legs as she watched. The scene was hot; she couldn’t take her gaze off the sweaty, writhing bodies on the bed.

The woman on her knees saw her. Was it Debra? It was hard to tell. She wore a feathered Mardi Gras mask. Sondra couldn’t move, totally fascinated as they all made eye contact. The couple stopped what they were doing. The man pulled out of his partner and stepped out of the bed. He wore a Darth Vader mask, and once Sondra’s gaze left it, her eyes traveled down his body, and she watched his huge cock slowly begin to shrink. Sondra couldn’t believe it. She had never seen one that size except in porno flicks. She stared at it, her breathing quickening. This man was definitely not her husband Craig.

The instant he noticed where her gaze lingered he swelled to full erection, his penis pointing to her, inviting her to come nearer.

Sondra walked forward.

Chapter 18

A
t the beginning of our session today, Lisa asked me why I was so passionate about my work. In order to explain it, I had to tell her about my father’s jewelry store.

“I was fascinated with my father’s jewelry store when I was a child. The minute I turned sixteen, I begged to be allowed to work in it. My sister Goldie had no interest in the business other than how much jewelry our father was willing to adorn her with. When she turned sixteen, she rushed to get her driver’s license in order to keep her social life moving at the frantic pace she was so crazy about.

“I loved working in the store, arranging the glittering displays of jewelry, deciding which pieces to promote, and craftily steering a customer toward the perfect selection before he thought about shopping around. The pursuits of most high school students held little interest for me.”

“Your interest in the business must have made you and your father close,” Lisa commented.

“You’d think so, but despite my dedication to the business, my father rejected any of my suggestions for improvement. Everything he did with the store was rooted in decades of past practices. Even my sales record, which surpassed that of his best employee, didn’t persuade him to listen. He believed in the status quo and was suspicious of anything he perceived as trendy. Doing something different might have a negative impact on what he felt was a proven method of running the business. It supported our family, after all, and I should be happy with that.”

“How did you feel about that?” Lisa asked.

“I had to bury a lot of my resentment for fear he would tell me I couldn’t work there anymore. So I did as I was told. My big opportunity came when my father had to have knee surgery and would have to be off his feet for several weeks. He was in a car accident that happened just a few blocks from the store. It was March, and since that time of year isn’t a big jewelry-sales month, he didn’t think we needed any of the part-time employees to fill in. That left Julia, his only full-time employee, and me, to keep things going.”

“Then you were able to try different sales techniques?”

“That’s what I’d hoped, but I had to work around Julia.” Julia, a tall, dark-haired woman, wore clothes more fitting for a secretary on a construction site than a saleswoman in a jewelry store. And worse, she disapproved of the boss’s daughter working in the store.

“She tried to convince my father I shouldn’t be left alone in the store, but that time he stood up for me and insisted I was ready. I made sure of it. I did everything I could to have my schoolwork done ahead of time and talked to all my teachers, who were nice enough to help me plan for the days I would be spending at the store. As usual, Julia would cover days, and I would join her whenever my classes allowed. I would work alone between five-thirty and seven, when we closed, and also on Saturdays.”

Lisa, intent on my story, asked, “How did it go?”

“I was bursting with ideas, and I couldn’t wait for my first night alone in the store. Unfortunately, I underestimated Julia’s control over things and been too naïve not to realize my father had given her explicit instructions on exactly what my role would be while he was away. She thwarted any of my new ideas for marketing. I felt crushed, but I made the most of it. Whenever I could, I used all the techniques I’d read about and never dared to use when my father was around. My sales soared.

“Another sales technique my father resisted was developing online sales. I was enthralled with eBay and quickly became addicted to the auctions that took place for antique jewelry. It was necessary to have a credit card in order to buy or sell on eBay. Unknown to my father, I had signed up for one as a store employee and made sure to pay every bill early. Unless I defaulted, he would never have to know. I lied about my birthday, but as I expected, they didn’t check it out. Through the auctions I acquired an impressive collection of less pricey pieces and wore them whenever I worked.

“My father had boxes of jewelry in the safe, filled with pieces that hadn’t sold, along with dozens of things people had returned or failed to pay for on their payment plans. It wasn’t easy to turn around ‘used’ jewelry, and he stubbornly refused my pleas to advertise them on eBay. When I asked him what good they were sitting in the safe, his answer was always, ‘Someday.’ Someday he would reset them, someday he would put them on a special sale, or someday he would sell them for the gold. Someday, someday. I got frustrated, listening to him go on about it.”

I realized I was rambling on and on about the past, but Lisa didn’t appear bored with my dialogue.

“Now someday had come. I arranged an eBay account for an online store and listed ten items from the safe, pricing them high enough for profit, but low enough to be enticing. I had studied copywriting, and I knew that what you said about your product was as important as the product itself. Using all the tips I collected from the experts, I described each piece in a tantalizing manner and included photos of them from flattering angles. I arranged eBay auctions for the most unique pieces, often starting the bidding myself using one of my Gmail addresses.

“By the time my father came back to the store six weeks later, I had significantly reduced the number of ‘stale’ pieces that had been stored in the vault. The sales added thousands of dollars to our profit during his absence.

“I don’t know what I expected, but when I showed him the figures, his silence hurt me like nothing else he could have done. He didn’t praise me, he didn’t ask how I had done it, and even worse, he said, ‘Well, that’s done, isn’t it?’ and never spoke of it again. In that moment I knew my father would never support me, and never use my ideas. The next day I turned in my resignation and started taking a bus to the Southridge Mall after school, where a national jewelry store chain hired me the same day I applied.”

I wrapped up my dialogue about the past and asked Lisa how much time we had left in our session. My story seemed to have lasted forever, but we still had thirty minutes left.

“I’m glad you told me about all of that; it explains a lot about your devotion to your work and your feelings for your father.”

“I’ve gone to the sleep support group two times now,” I added, bringing us back to the present. I had told her all I wanted to about my father.

“How’s it going?’

“It’s hard to say. One of the members believes in out-of-body experiences, and he thinks I’ve had them.”

“Have you had more than the one you told me about?”

I described the latest incident, how I had felt my body rising from the floor. “It scared me more than anything else has; I was afraid I was dying.”

Lisa tented her fingers. “You’re aware there are two schools of thought on out-of-body experiences, aren’t you?”

“Yes, mavens of the paranormal believe they’re real, yet modern science can explain them away. I imagine you’re one of the second group.”

Lisa grinned. “You’re wrong about that. I would love them to be real; anything to do with the occult fascinates me. I’m just trying to make sure you understand that nothing about them is certain. Do you want to believe they’re real?”

I flushed as I admitted, “I’m trying to test them, actually. I’ve designed numbered posters that I’m placing in my rooms at night. It’s kind of tricky to position them without being tempted to look at the numbers. And I have to rearrange them differently every night.”

“And? Have you ‘seen’ them during your astral projections?”

I didn’t comment on her use of the term, astral projection. I had seen it in my studies of the topic and knew it was a professional’s term for OBEs. “Not yet,” I had to admit. “I’ve only been doing it for a few nights now.”

“If you do see one of your signs in an out-of-body experience and the number is accurate, then what?”

Her question washed over me like a pail of cold water. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought beyond wanting to prove to myself if they’re real.”

“There have been many studies on the subject; have you read any of them?”

“Some. But those aren’t real to me. I think part of me hopes that if I can prove to myself they aren’t real, then the episodes will be less frightening.”

“Gemma, I want you to try thinking about why you’re having these experiences. You told me you haven’t had sleep paralysis all your life. At least, the kind you’ve been having lately. Often when it comes on suddenly, it’s caused by a major life change and the stress that change imposes on you. It is definitely exacerbated by the insomnia that stress produces. I still believe your paralysis experiences represent a link to your past and that part of your past is painful to talk about. Any thoughts on that?”

I had thought about it more than once. And whenever I did, it led me to dwell on how badly I have screwed up my life. I was thirty-seven, with no children, no husband, no job at the moment, and just lost my best friend. At least the last one hadn’t been my fault.

“Maybe you should tell me how things ended with Taylor,” Lisa said after a few moments had passed.

Taylor. Thinking about him always brought about conflicting feelings. Remembering how it ended still stabbed at my heart like an ice pick in spite of the warmth of remembering how much I loved him.

“There isn’t a lot to tell,” I said. I still couldn’t talk about it without reliving the pain of our last day together. “We spent a lot of weekends together that summer and not all of them were through the escort service. Toward the end of summer, none of them were. It felt like we were a couple, even though I knew it couldn’t last. Taylor’s fiancée was coming home after Labor Day.”

“Were you hoping he’d changed his mind about her?” Lisa asked.

“I knew from the beginning Taylor’s life, even his marriage, had been mapped out for him by his parents. Unfortunately for me, his ambition held him prisoner in their plans for him. I didn’t want to admit to myself he might have genuine feelings for his fiancée. I was so in love with him that I couldn’t help but hope he’d give it all up and stay with me, yet I didn’t want to hold him back. It was terribly painful.”

“How did you leave things?”

I shrugged. “I did what I had to do. I said good-bye.”

“That must have been difficult.”

Difficult didn’t begin to describe the pain I felt that last evening, how I barely managed to smile at him without crying. The worst of the tears came later and lasted for weeks. I quit the escort service and immersed myself in school that semester, staying too busy to think, too busy to feel sorry for myself.

“It was the most painful thing I’ve ever had to do,” I whispered.

“And you never heard from him after that?”

“Not really.”

Lisa raised her brows.

“I graduated from college the following June. I even finished summa cum laude. Not only that, I landed a job on the ground floor of the best advertising agency in town, Cityscapes, Inc. The month of June made my successes bittersweet—it had been a year before that I’d met Taylor—even the similarity of the weather brought all the memories back.

“I managed to set them aside and enjoy my graduation, the ceremonies, and the people who came to help me celebrate. The next day, a deliveryman showed up at my door with a package. It was a graduation gift, a gift with no card and no signature. After I saw what it was, I knew, of course, who sent it.”

“What was it?” Lisa asked.

I reached inside the light cotton sweater I wore and lifted out a slim gold chain to show her the pendant suspended from it. She leaned closer and held it in her fingertips, moving it to reflect the light from the magnificent yellow stone.

“It’s beautiful. Did you have any idea how valuable the stone was?”

Of course, I did. I was the jeweler’s daughter. I hadn’t needed a loupe to prove it was a yellow diamond and not a citrine or a yellow topaz.

“I did,” I answered. “And Taylor was the only person I knew who could afford such a thing. I didn’t start wearing it for years, not until I was making enough money to explain owning such a treasure.”

“And you’ve heard nothing from him since?”

“No.” My throat was thick with emotion. Lisa had said more than once my sleep problems could be linked to something in my past. Was it my refusal to give up on a hopeless love that made my evenings hell?