s*x Magick

Chapter 2

In the year 2009, six years after Amber savagely murdered Linsey, Halloween fell on a Saturday. There is nothing significant of Halloween being held on a Saturday. It is only mentioned so that you can use it as reference. But this particular Saturday morning in 2009 was exactly one week before the holiday, and exactly one week since Mary had the small party in the family mausoleum while her husband, Daren, was away on business.

Married just over one year, both Mary and Daren lived in the large, historic Trivelli house which is one of the oldest homes in Mapleview. The home had been passed down in Mary"s family throughout the generations since the early 1830s. The residence sits on a private section of forest near the Hidden Lake Forest Preserve. One must travel uphill on a half-block driveway to get to the historical house. The house overlooks the actual lake that is in Hidden Lake Forest Preserve, and has become an icon to residents of Mapleview who gaze up to the old house on the hill.

Mary started off her Saturday morning in 2009 by brewing a fresh pot of coffee. With Daren still sleeping upstairs, she sat before the computer in search of an awesome fajita recipe that was seen earlier in the week. Muffin the Yorkshire terrier rolled around on the floor near Mary"s feet.

But what was this? Every time Mary pressed the Internet Explorer icon, the unfriendly message, “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage.” appeared. Mary is certainly no expert with matters pertaining to computers. She knows how to get around—browse sites, compose emails and create simple documents if needed. But the frustrating message indicated a problem. It even included a link that said, “More information”. When clicked, it was more of a list of problems to check, sort of a troubleshooting guide. But the only two items that Mary could recognize were loss of internet connectivity and the website being unavailable. To isolate the problem, she manually typed in the address for Yahoo and f*******: just to verify the problem wasn"t limited to her homepage. And to Mary"s dismay, the unfriendly message, “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage.” appeared.

How unfortunate! Mary hoped to locate the fajita marinade recipe online and mix the ingredients so the chicken could absorb the flavors throughout the day. Hopefully the problem would be resolved in an hour.

After pouring a cup of coffee, Mary sat down on the sofa before the TV. But what was this? Upon pressing the power button on the remote, the TV displayed an unfriendly message. “No signal available. Check antenna.”

Mary"s Internet and Cable were both provided by the Mapleview Cable Company. With TV and Internet down, it certainly didn"t require a technology guru to determine that the cable company was having problems. Hopefully it would be resolved in an hour or so.

Autumn comes early in Mapleview which means that a morning in October can be quite chilly. There was no way Mary would sit outside on the deck to enjoy her morning cup of coffee. With events not in her favor, she opted to go back upstairs for her morning shower.

A half hour later, Mary completed her shower and entered the master bedroom where Daren stirred awake. She greeted, “Good morning.”

“Hey, good morning.”

Then she informed her husband, “The cable is out.”

Daren stretched before sitting up. “What?”

“We have no Internet and no TV.”

Seeing his wife wrapped up in nothing but a large towel, Daren wasn"t the least bit worried about cable. “Well that"s okay. Why don"t you come back to bed? I need a little help getting rid of something—if you know what I mean. Besides, we can work on that baby some more.” Married just over a year, they had yet to conceive a child. How Mary wished for that exciting moment of learning that she was pregnant.

But there was busy work to be done on that Saturday. “No, not this morning. We"ve got to clean the cellar, remember?”

Sorting through old boxes, tools and junk wasn"t exactly Daren"s favorite Saturday activity. But he agreed to help Mary earlier that week. “Oh yeah, that"s right. I guess I"ll get up. I"ll call the cable company, first.”

It would be three hours later when a service technician finally arrived to the Trivelli house. As far as Mary"s plans for awesome fajitas, she had a backup. Sunday was to be slow-cooked meatballs and Italian sausage. Mary simply reversed the meals for the weekend by making Sunday"s meal for Saturday. She rolled out the meatballs, soon to be browned and then added to the large crock pot. And it was probably best that meatballs and sausage were made. As Mary would later discover that afternoon, marinating meat in bowl on that particular day would have been a very, bad idea!

* * *

Traveling northbound on Mapleview Road, Ivan Trovskov (Jim) crossed the border from downtown Mapleview into the older, historic section in his Mapleview Cable bucket truck. Ivan Trovskov was en route to the legendary Trivelli house; owner called that morning because of loss of service. Now only a couple blocks from the inclined driveway to the historic Trivelli house, Ivan pulled out his outdated palm-pilot-styled phone with an alert to a text message.

The text message was from Amber. “Hello? Were you ever going to get back to me?”

Such is the cost of having a mistress. Many times a mistress seems to forget that a man must rank his family members in order of importance to keep his priorities straight. The wife is on top of the pyramid, followed by the kids, followed by the mistress. Jim was a family man with a demanding career. He didn"t mean to leave Amber out in the distance throughout the week. But what did she expect? Amber was a mistress! From her behavior, it could have easily been concluded that she expected Jim to leave his wife and kids to come live with her—maybe even marry her!

It was probably time for a new mistress. A married one would be a better option. But Jim had yet to receive the ultimate prize in bed. It would have killed him to know that he broke up with Amber just before she fully surrendered!

Now only a hundred feet away from the driveway of the historic Trivelli house, Jim completed his text message, “Sorry… busy morning… let me finish this service call & get back to you.”

On this Saturday, one week before Halloween, Jim had been acting out this unusual persona of Ivan Trovskov for nearly three weeks. Amber never took much notice of it. I suppose she was so blind in love with the man that she overlooked his sudden, unusual appearance. And Really, Ivan Trovskov was not a polock as Kimberly suggested. Ivan originated from some ambiguous location in northern Europe, maybe Scandinavia or perhaps even Russia. It all depended on how Jim felt for the day.

By 11:30, a bucket truck with the words, Mapleview Cable pulled into the Trivelli driveway. Daren immediately went out to greet the service technician.

One peculiar habit of Daren"s is to walk around with a ridiculously-enormous wad of money in his front pocket. There are many occasions in which he pulls this wad out and flashes it before a stranger"s face while pretending to count the money. A few 100s, a couple dozen 20s, a dozen 10s and a handful of 5s and 1s certainly looks impressive. Although not bad-looking with a nice physique, Daren often flashes money in front of beautiful women, believing it makes him all-the-more-desirable.

Pulling out his enormous wad of cash and counting it while approaching the cable man surely delivered a subconscious message. For you see, although the service technician was older than Daren with only a shaven, brown, receding patch of hair; he had a large, muscular physique with handsome, rugged face. Jim was a working man, and Daren felt that Jim might have appeared more desirable to Mary. Insecurities made it necessary for Daren to establish the relationship with the cable man. Flashing the wad of cash said, “Okay; I"m the one with money, and I"m the one who has beautiful Mary as my wife.”

Jim was the one who spoke first, “Hi, Mapleview Cable. I understand your Internet and TV are out?”

Finally close to the cable man and turning his attention away from the wad of money, Daren had a chance to take note of the peculiar style of clothing worn by the representative of Mapleview Cable. The temperature for the day had gotten warmer in Mapleview as it was approaching noon. As a result Ivan left his double-breasted, wool coat in the truck so that he wore only a pair of checkered-violet, baggy, wool pants that had been tucked into his black, shiny boots; and a white, Fruit-of-the-Loom undershirt with suspenders strapped over his shoulders.

Was this the sort of people that Mapleview Cable sent to customers" homes? The cable man dressed like an overgrown elf on drugs, or perhaps an immigrant who hadn"t been educated on American style of clothing. Daren was quick to reply, nearly demanding an explanation. “Yeah, my wife says the cable is out! What"s going on? You people have an outage or something?”

Ivan Trovskov only smiled to himself. He already resolved the problem and quickly answered, “Yeah, there was a blown amp up the road. I replaced it about ten minutes ago. You should be fine. Go in the house and see if your cable and Internet are back.”

Receiving orders from the cable man didn"t sit well with Daren. He was about to ask if personally checking the customer"s TV and Internet was part of the job. But then that would have invited a possibility of the lowlife cable man checking out beautiful Mary. How Daren despised it when other men gawked at his wife. And what if Mary liked the cable man?

Reluctantly, Daren walked into the house and yelled out, “Mary? Mary!”

Muffin the Yorkshire terrier began to bark.

Mary was in the kitchen and called out, “What?”

“Go see if the TV and Internet are working. And hurry up!”

Mary was in the middle of flipping the Italian sausage in the frying pan. This was a bit of an inconvenience. She called out, “Is there any reason why you can"t do it?”

This only added to Daren"s stress. “Just do what I tell you!” It was imperative that someone obeyed him at that moment!

Poor Mary scampered over to the TV with Muffin excitedly barking behind her. She pressed the power button on the remote. Sure enough, cable had been restored. Then she dashed over to the computer and clicked the Internet Explorer icon. The familiar homepage opened on the screen. “It works!”

At least Daren could get rid of the strange cable man who saw it fit to order the customer around. Satisfied that all was well, Daren stepped out and remained near the house. “Okay, everything is fine now! Thanks!”

“You"re good-to-go, now?”

“Yup!”

Ivan Trovskov extended a friendly wave and farewell. “Alright! Now you"ll be all set for tomorrow"s game! Have a great weekend!”

And that was the moment when two unrelated paths had crossed. It was the moment when imaginary hands of a clock might have reached 12:00am. The seconds began ticking away, counting down another mysterious disappearance in the town of Mapleview.