When Sarah Screamed

Love in the Ruins-3

Or maybe just a long walk off a short pier.

Dispiritedly, she went to get dressed, which she would do slowly, using it as yet another excuse to kill time while Henry had his oh-so politically correct breakfast of wheat toast, all natural peanut butter, an apple (which he ate core, seeds, stem and all) and a small glass of orange juice. She couldn’t stand the smug satisfaction on his face while he contemplated one of those meals. The peanut butter came in small plastic tubs and was too expensive for her to eat, but she kept a container there for his infrequent visits, carefully mixing the separated oil back in so that it would be creamy. Otherwise, he complained like a school girl.

Fists jammed onto naked hips, Sarah looked at her bedroom and grimaced. The place was a disaster. She’d been meaning to sort out her closets and drawers, separating the things that were too dated or worn out to wear. But, but the more she looked at the mess, the more fearful she became that if she ever did clean up, then there wouldn’t be anything left of her at all.

However, in spite of her dread, something would have to happen pretty soon, or she’d end up buried forever in her own junk. Not that anyone would miss her. With the children off at college, Sarah was left alone in the house, and couldn’t bring herself to get off her butt long enough to do anything for herself anymore. It just didn’t seem to matter.

Rummaging through her underwear drawer, she discovered a wad of black nylon. Frowning, she plucked it out, and realized that it was an old pair of fishnets stockings, still attached to a grimy, sweat stained garter belt that had once been snowy white cotton broadcloth. They had to have been there for at least a decade, hidden way in the back underneath everything else, out of sight, where no one would find them.

There were other things in there, too, and she reminded herself that she really needed to get rid of that stuff; the s*x toys, old vibrators, bits of rope and lace, the dreadful glass tube full of especially sharpened hat pins, leather lined handcuffs, a riding crop; things she never used anymore, and could hardly believe she had ever used, or had used on her. The handcuffs were engraved with her name, for f**k’s sake. Worse yet were the two shoe boxes full of dirty pictures and videos that her first husband had taken through their years together—the same guy who’d sharpened the hat pins and bought almost all the rest of the stuff in that drawer.

What would the kids think if they saw that? Or her mother, come to think of it. The very idea that someone else might see those things, much less family, made her faintly ill. She was always finding remnants of her first marriage, the days when she had been married to Fletcher Bolt, what she called her B-life. Lately, every time she stumbled across something that reminded her of him, it seemed like a slap in the face.

Trying to ignore the tug of memory on her emotional heart strings, Sarah wadded the nylons impatiently in one hand and threw them toward the overflowing trash can. And, of course, the stockings unrolled, fluttering, and draped across the floor as if the woman in them had been teleported to the star ship Enterprise, leaving her underwear behind. Sarah waved a dismissive hand and turned back to the drawer. Damn it, wasn’t there even one pair of clean panties left?

Finally, she found a plastic bag with some cheesy bedroom lingerie and a coil of rough sisal rope wadded inside. She dumped it out in the drawer and found more stockings, and, to her horror, the gold chain g-string that Fletcher used to make her wear in his more devilish moments. Looking at the sad little pile in consternation, Sarah wondered what on earth had possessed her to keep those things for so long.

She set the little wad of chain on top of the bureau, and her eyes kept drifting back to it as she tried to find something else to wear. She hadn’t touched that damnable thing since Fletcher moved out, had quite forgotten about it, in fact. But there it was, after all that time, just as evil and enticing as it had ever been, and the memories flooded back. She had worn it once to the Army Division Annual Ball in Germany, underneath a Dior knock-off of the perfect little black dress—the chain and nothing else. She had even danced with the Commanding General that night.

She wasn’t going to wear that thing ever again, period. She wadded it all back into her hand and retrieved the bag she’d found them in. There was a small tear of paper inside that she hadn’t noticed, and she pulled it out. It was a note from Fletcher written God-knew when: GC, You were wonderful last night. Love, F. Sarah shoved it back into the bag along with all the other things, refusing to think about it.

Instead, she made a face and went looking for jeans, which was what she wore most of the time when she wasn’t at work. The only ones that actually fit her were things that Henry disapproved of—too tight, or too low in the waist, or tattered at the knees and seat—unfit, in a word, for public viewing. All those clothes were folded into bags and stuffed under the bed.

What remained were two possibles that were even remotely suitable—or one pair, anyway, and a maybe. There were the loose ones that she called, disparagingly, her mom jeans, high waisted and shapeless, and a pair of tan stretch cotton gauchos cut so low she’d never had the nerve to wear them; that and one denim mini that barely covered her hips and wouldn’t stay legal if she sat down. Fletcher had always loved that one, of course. Henry, to no one’s surprise, hated it.

She held the low-riders against herself, scowling into the mirror. With a crop top, they’d show off her re-emergent hipbones. She sighed, wishing that her waist was narrower. And besides, she’d have to shave her pubic hair way down, just for starters, and then the goddamned tattoo might show, and besides, who wanted to shave anymore, anyway? Worse yet, Henry would have a heart attack if he saw her dressed like that. Reluctantly, she put them aside, vowing to get out and buy some decent clothes.

Sure, like I can afford that!

For the first time in years she actually looked for the black lettering under her pubic hair—the tattoo that she had spent a third of her life regretting—two words that haunted her—Bolt Hole, written in elaborate Gothic script right across her big, fat p***y bump. Next to those words was a red, thumbnail sized valentine heart, just in case anyone failed to understand that the wearer absolutely loved being reduced from an actual human female to nothing more than an empty cavity waiting for her man to fill.

Ye, Gods! Bolt Hole?

She could no longer even tell the difference between the humiliation of wearing such a declaration and the clear memory of lying on a cold bench in that ratty London tattoo parlor across from Victoria Station, with her skirt pulled up and a stranger handling her with something notably less than clinical detachment. She’d been excited at the time, considerably aroused and absolutely terrified, which had been a big part of the experience. Looking back, she wondered what had possessed her.

There were reasons for that tattoo, to be sure, although they had long since faded to irrelevance. She had been a lot more adventurous in those days, prone to brief hemlines and unbuttoned blouses. And she had been wild for her man; wild in the sense that she would do anything to please him, anything to keep his attention and his love. Even to the point of letting another man see her clean shaven mound and the thick, pouting lips of her cunt.

That bulging pubic mound of hers was the worst. It was huge, as if mother nature had taken one off a giant and stuck it on Sarah as a practical joke. She had always considered it a sort of birth defect, like half a grapefruit grafted onto her body. Well, maybe not a grapefruit, but big enough so that in the wrong clothes, it looked like she had a sock stuffed down her pants, or a cod piece. And she didn’t even want to think about her pink parts, thick and meaty as they were. It was just gross.

Who are you kidding? Her little voice was downright smug. He called it your Guerilla Cunt, and you just loved that, didn’t you? Remember, how he used to kiss it, how he used to…

“Cut it out,” Sarah said aloud, remembering too well. When her inner voice said he in that tone, she knew that it was about her first husband, rather than Henry, who was her second. And she wasn’t going to start thinking about being Mrs. Fletcher Bolt Hole, either, damn it. She just wasn’t!

Her tattoo was from way in the past, and she had long since decided that living it down simply wasn’t in the cards, even though having it done had seemed like such a good idea at the time. She’d been ridiculously pleased with herself about giving her old man the one thing he didn’t have, a girl of his very own. It had just seemed so damned clever, so utterly original; a sign that she was grown-up enough to make her own decisions, her own commitments, convention be damned.

She had been all of twenty-one at the time, with five year old twins to care for and a lot of years left in her life to wonder just how stupid she could be. The very idea of it still made her shudder with humiliation. She stepped into her mom jeans and zipped them up quickly to hide the evidence.

Nasty, nasty, nasty, her little voice whispered. What if Henry catches you without panties on?

Sarah, who secretly rather liked the idea of defying Henry Finnegan, smiled at the idea of prancing into the kitchen with her zipper down or something, just to see the expression on his face. He’d s**t, and it would serve him right.

You’re a very weird b***h, her inner voice said. We like that about us, don’t we?

“Who is we?” Sarah grumbled aloud, and then clapped her hand over her mouth, afraid that Henry might have heard.

The phone rang, saving her from further pointless internal recriminations. She said, “Damn!” It would be her ex-husband, the very man to whom the tattoo was dedicated. She had promised to meet him at eightish. The alarm clock on her bureau said eight-ten. “Oh, s**t,” she said, reaching for the receiver, suddenly breathless with frustration. “I’m late, aren’t I?”

“Maybe both our clocks are wrong,” he said without a trace of irony. “I wouldn’t have called, Sarah, but I’ve got to go out on a job at eleven and…”

“Ten minutes,” she said. “I promise, Fletch. Ten minutes.” She flapped her hand despairingly, wondering what else she could wear.

He laughed. “It’ll take half an hour just to get your make-up on, Sarah.”

She gritted her teeth, feeling the deep rumble of his voice right down to her toes, and not liking it one little bit. How did the bastard manage to turn every negative into a positive, and make her feel guilty, all at the same time?

“All right, all ready,” she said impatiently. “Give me half an hour then.”

“I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee,” he replied, and rang off.

Fletcher was self-employed and Sarah knew that he set his own schedules. It was hard to pin down exactly what he did, other than to group everything under the umbrella of Mr. Fix-It. That’s what he did, fix things. Boats, cars, motorcycles, bulldozers, sea walls, leaky roofs, bicycles; anything, in fact, that needed fixing. He owned his own business; several, in fact…part of a music store, a dojo, his repair shop and probably others that she didn’t even know about.

The bitter fact was that Fletcher Bolt seemed able to do just about anything he set his mind to. He was gifted in so many ways; naturally athletic, a martial artist, a talented guitarist, and not a bad little dancer—with lots of things in between, from surfing to scuba diving to roller boarding and wind surfing with the kids or goddamned golfing, or whatever the hell else he felt like doing. It used to drive her crazy, because he never settled on any one thing.