RUTH Z. DEMING - INDISCRETION

​Ruth Z. Deming has had her work published in lit mags including Literary Yard, Blood and Thunder, Pure Slush, O-Dark-Thirty, and Your One Phone Call. A psychotherapist, she lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. She's always proud to be published in Scarlet Leaf Review. ​​

INDISCRETION ​

​I told him to come at two in the afternoon. I could barely remember him. Adam something. My husband, Roy, was on a hunting trip with his buddies in the Pocono Mountains. Our downstairs freezer holds hearts of geese, goose liver, and venison, meats I refuse to eat. I do not like to think of all the grown-up Bambis he shot with his bow and arrow.
Roy and I have as happy a marriage as most of my friends. I do tell my best girlfriend, Heidi, what really goes on. Roy would rather spend time with his buddies than with me.  They play hockey at the indoor hockey ring, play ping-pong, poker, Scrabble, and Rummy Cubes. Did he ever think of asking his wife? 
The other night, as Roy and I were watching Action News, I posed a question.
“Would you like to kiss any other lips than mine?” I asked.
“Don’t be silly,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I asked, searching his blue eyes.
“Of course not!” he said and rolled over.
What a beautiful body he had! I gently rubbed my hand over the tattoos on his back and kissed them.
About a month earlier I received a typed-up letter from my former fiancé. I could barely remember him. Adam-something.
It was one-thirty in the afternoon. Adam would be here in half an hour. How many times had I looked in the mirror, trying on this skirt or that outfit, and blow-drying my thick grey hair?
Praise the Lord, I am still a beautiful woman at 63. Even my husband would tell me that. He was proud of me when he showed me off to his friends, like at his father’s funeral.
His father was a miserable S.O.B. and I was unfazed when he died.
“That’s it,” I said to myself, giving my hair a final plumping up in front of the bright bathroom mirror. My black silken dress was filled with birds on it, as if they would fly off to Guatemala or San Francisco.
Sitting demurely on my flowered couch, reading “Becoming” by Michelle Obama, I peeked out the huge front window and waited for what’s his name’s car.
His stationery was from a company in Newark, Delaware, where he was head of the Human Resources Department. Newark was only an hour’s drive from our three-bedroom split level. Our children, of course, were long gone.
A long black Mercedes pulled up. It looked like an undertaker’s car.
This was the man I was supposed to fall in love with? Or maybe not.
I quickly sat up and Michelle Obama fell to the floor. I kissed the book and threw her back on the couch.
Opening up the door, I waited for Adam to emerge from his car.
Fear sprung through my bones. Was he crippled? Would he walk with a walker, a cane, did he look like Quasimodo, or Bradley Cooper?
With my hands over my mouth, I waited for him to emerge.
What was taking him so long?
I walked up to his car and peeked inside.
He was jotting notes on a yellow pad.
I knocked on the window.
He put up a finger, meaning, “Wait a moment.”
“Sorry, Lori,” he said, as he came out of the car.
“I was figuring out the mileage it took to get here.”
I snorted.
“You wanna come in?” I asked.
“Please,” he said.
I saw what he looked like.
He was tall, wearing a black suit and striped tie, as befits a business man, and he was strikingly handsome.
I looked stealthily to see if any neighbors were watching. The Myers’ dog, Rainier, was howling at the arrival of a stranger, as he always did.
“Shut up!” I whispered, as I led Adam up the sidewalk.
Even though it was early March, my white snow drops had poked their heads from the ground. I also noticed for the first time the green stems of the crocus.
I held the door open and Adam entered.
“Ah, you’re a creative woman,” he said, looking around.
“I’m an artist,” I said as I motioned him to sit down on my purple swivel chair, piled with magazines.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I forgot they were there.”
He yawned and asked where the bedroom was. I pointed upstairs.
“Go up and look,” I said. “I’ll wait down here.”
“What an asshole,” I thought.
He explained that he was extremely tired from the trip and wanted to know a good place to take a nap.
“Just crawl into my bed,” I said.
After twenty minutes I heard him snoring away.
I started wringing my hands downstairs. How come things never turn out the way we’ve planned?
Pacing the room, I finally walked upstairs into my bedroom and took a good look at this Adam O’Riley.
I climbed in bed beside him to see what would happen.
How odd it felt being in bed with someone other than my Roy.
How I missed my husband.
After a moment, Adam spoke.
“Lori,” said Adam. “You’re more beautiful than when we were going together years ago.”
He began touching me and peeling off my clothes.
I was unbelievably turned on the way Roy and I were at our honeymoon in The Bahamas.
We made love over and over again.
What rapture, what ecstasy I felt.
I heard the door opening downstairs.
It was Roy. I heard him taking off his muddy boots.
“Babe?” he called.
I said not a word.
Taking two steps at a time, he entered the bedroom, where Adam and I were naked in bed.
I held the white down comforter over our bodies.
“And who might this be, sleeping in Papa’s bed?” he asked.
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Adam got out of bed, changed into his suit and tie, and ran down the stairs.
Naked, I walked him to the door, kissed him goodbye, and said, “Man oh man, what a great time we had.”
I walked naked into the bedroom.
“Okay,” I said, “call me names. Tell me you’re gonna shoot Adam, tell me what a mistake you made to marry me in the first place.”
“Best choice I ever made, darling,” said Roy, taking me into his arms and pushing me onto the white feather comforter.
We made passionate love for over an hour.
“Roy, I’ve never loved a man the way I love you.”
“Your body feels so good next to mine,” he said. 


I rubbed my body on all those tattoos on his back and arms.
He was my man and I was his woman.