Couples of South Pointe Lake

22. Bella after Midnight

Neither Steve nor Angie had time to see who it was behind the wheel of the sedan that blew past them hours ago while they were strolling toward their home.  They wouldn’t have recognized the man either, as he wasn’t a figure known to them.  But they would have known his passenger, that was Bella Van Houten.  She was bent over the driver’s crotch at the time, sucking his c**k, hence the reason for his crazed swerving.  

His name was Harold Bevins, 33yrs old.  He worked as a security shift for a food packaging company in Cumberland.  One night he had stopped by the restaurant where Bella worked for an evening meal.  He was a regular there, and the people were familiar with him.  That night, a rowdy customer had been dissatisfied with the service and was making a scene of things.  Harold, usually a quiet fellow, couldn’t stand it when the man singled his rage on the woman that served him, who turned out to be Bella.  Harold had blocked the man’s path and politely suggested that he calm down and take his problem elsewhere.  Things would have gone on fined if only the man swallowed his pride and left.  Instead, he switched his aggression at Harold and made his action worst when he called Harold the N-word while jabbing a finger at his chest.  Harold didn’t hold back his rage when he rammed a fist into the man’s gut, followed by a swift roundhouse aimed at the man’s chin.  He ended up cracking the bastard’s nose while someone called the cops.  Everyone in the restaurant corroborated with Harold’s action, and he returned to his table after the cops dragged the disgruntled customer away.  Bella brought him his meal and told him it was on the house.  Something compelled Harold to stick around and see about giving her a lift home, suggesting in case the rowdy fellow returned to start some more s**t.  That incident occurred two months ago.  Since then, Harold had occasionally driven Bella to South Pointe, though careful to keep well out of sight of her home.  They spent their favorite moments in his apartment, where they regularly consummated their intimacy in his bed.  

It was in the comfort of his bedroom that Bella deliberately poured out her love and pain to him.  She described the loathing she felt being married to the insufferable asshole that was her husband.  Every night, it was a struggle for her not to smother him in bed while he slept.  If she could get away with murder, she would have attempted it months ago.  Her desire, however, was not to purposely harm him, but what sweet joy it would be if something terrible were to ever befall on him.  Something to incapacitate the motherfucker so she could live the sort of life she wanted.

“And what sort of life would that be?” Harold asked as they lay naked in his bed one afternoon, having listened to her latest rant concerning another day in the life while married to Bobby ‘Red’ Van Houten.

“I don’t know,” she admitted while they passed a piece of jumbo spliff back and forth.  Harold played with her t**s while she puffed smoke.  “I’d love to take a day off and clean up that house for damn sure.  Get rid of anything that reeks of him.  Then maybe down the road, I’d quit that restaurant and find something new.”

“Anything than coming home to Red?”

“Yeah.  Anything but returning home that f*****g pig.”  She dragged on the weed and blew out its smoke, then broke into a girlish chuckle as it got her aroused.  “Oh, but f**k him.  Come here, gimme some of that big black dick.”

Harold rescued the weed from her hand and took a puff from it before stubbing it out on an ashtray beside his bed. 

“Some big back d**k coming right up, ma’am,” he grinned.

Bella was all laughs as he rolled on top of her.  He squeezed her t**s with both hands and pressing his lips to them.  Bella flung the covers off him while he lifted her huge thigh over his backside.

As much as Bella detested her husband, she was careful not to give away any indication of procuring an adulterous life behind his back.  So far, she had been lucky in that regard.  Bobby spent more time complaining about money or his stash of weed than give a fart about whatever she did with herself.  Their s*x life was nonexistent; as much as he admired her feature like he did the other day, he knew quite well that he wasn’t getting into her pants without putting up a fight.  Such a fight would likely leave him with a bust lip and a knee to the groin.  Bella wouldn’t mess her dignity by so much as granting him a hand-job even if it was to save his life.  Why the f**k bother when she’s found a real man in Harold, who knew exactly how to play with her body.  She should have quit Bobby years ago and moved on with her life.  There had been nights when she contemplated her life’s journey, struggling to figure at what point in her marriage when she should have called it quits.  What could have sweet-talked her into sticking with his wretched ass all these years?  She inevitably got to wondering if, by some miraculous chance, Harold was the right man to assist her with finalizing that decision?  He was twelve years younger than her; her body was far from that of a nubile hottie; she bore excess baby-fat in her limbs, including a sagging gut and droopy set of t**s.  Streaks of greyness were starting to become prominent in her hair.  Then there were the prominent stretch marks etched across her huge butt and down her thighs that her numerous tattoos barely hid.  Whatever would make someone like Harold be attracted to her was confounding to her imagination.  But she considered it serendipitous providence that she had him in her life; finding another like him would be like wishing on a rainbow.  The fact that he had sought her out after that skirmish with the angry customer ought to count for something.

As she did her best to be careful regarding her clandestine relationship, there were times when Bella didn’t give a damn.  But not before she got a good f*****g from Harold, like the one he gave her before dropping her near her home.  

Bella was consumed with pleasuring his c**k that she barely noticed the car had slowed to a stop.    

“Babe, we’re here,” said Harold.

“Hmmm.  Where’s here, babe?” 

“Close to your place,” Harold replied.  

“Mmm.  You see any truck in the driveway?”

“Yep, your man’s home.”

“f**k,” she hissed.  That was all Bella needed to hear to spoil her night.  She raised her head and looked out the window, and sure enough, Red’s truck was parked facing the front of the house.  “I so f*****g wish I’d come home and not find him around,” she groaned with bitterness.

“He don’t ever travel out of state?”

“It’s been weeks since the last time he did.”

Bella sat upright to adjust her clothes, while Harold did the same with his pants.  She wiped her face with her handkerchief and wrapped her hair with a rubber band. 

“Maybe next time we can take the back road,” Bella said.  “I know of someplace private close to the lake that will be better for us.”

“We’ll do that next time.  I’ll see you the day after, right?”

“Sure,” she checked herself in his mirror before turning to him.  “Maybe sooner.  I’ll call you.”

She gave him a quick kiss, then changed her mind and followed it with a longer one before picking her handbag and getting down from his car.  Harold waved goodbye to her, then reversed his car and drove off the same way he had come.  Bella smiled as he drove away before turning to walked the short distance toward her driveway.  The screen door was closed, but the front door stood open.  She heard what sounded like noise pouring from the TV as she entered her home.

The living room was dark.  The only light came from the TV; the light illuminated the cans of beer that formed several skyscrapers on a coffee table near her husband’s feet.  Bobby sat in his skivvies and undershirt, cradling a beer in his hand while watching a UFC fight on the tube.  His hair looked tousled like he had sleep-walked himself to where he was.  He didn’t bother looking in her direction even as she stumped her foot on the floor mat to get rid of whatever ounce of sand stuck to the bottom of her shoes. 

“Hey,” she announced as she took her handbag from her shoulder and unbuttoned her jacket.

“You done taken yourself a long time to get home,” he muttered.

“What you talking about?”

He lifted his watch to his face, still not looking at her.  “It’s going on 11:47 now.  Thought you’d have closed hours ago.”

“I had to stay behind to clean up,” Bella took off her jacket and draped it on her arm.  “Monica couldn’t make it today, so I had to work double-shift.”

“Is that right,” Red drank his beer then uttered a belch with his eyes still glued to the TV.  “Funny thing is that ain’t what your boss, Carl, told me.  Yeah, I did stop by the restaurant at about 9:40 this evening.  What he told me was that you’d split hours ago, but didn’t say where.  I didn’t want to believe it, so I sat there and waited for a while, and still, your ass was a no-show.”  It was then that Red turned to look at her.  The light from the TV gave his face a sinister outlook that momentarily frightened Bella.  

“Where have you been gone, Bell?”

“I’ve been where I said I’d be, Red.  This what you been doing now?  Is this your new f*****g hobby—snooping on me ‘cos you feel like it?”

“I ain’t out there snooping, Bel.  Curious is what I am.  Who was it that dropped you off, anyway?  Was it a cabbie, or the guy you happen to be f*****g?”

“Did you see me get out a car while you were peeping out the window?”

“You still ain’t answered none of my questions, Bel.”  Bobby rose from his chair and advanced toward her menacingly.  If he expected his walk to intimidate her into weakening, he was a bit let down by that.  Bella was afraid, but she stood her ground and stared back unflinchingly at him.  

“How long have you been f*****g this guy, whoever the f**k he is, behind my back, Bell?”  His voice remained calm with a sliver of coldness about it.  “You owe me that answer.  I’m your f*****g husband, so I ought to know.”

“Well, ain’t you the real man,” she sneered as he drew closer to her.  “Puffing out your chest, acting like you wanna do something when we both know you ain’t.  Go ahead, smack me.  That’s what you want to do, ain’t it?  Go ahead and do it.”

“I want to know who you’ve been f*****g, Bella.  I demand to know who he is, how long this s**t has been going on.  I wanna know where he lives so I can get my shotgun out and go over and shove it up his ass—”

“And blow his brains out?” Bella stuck her chin at him in defiance.  “That what you’re gonna say, right?  First, you threaten to want to smack me, now you want to go out there and kill somebody that don’t exist.  How convenient that would look.”

“One last time, Bell, who is he?”

“There’s no f*****g he, Red,” Bella snapped.  “There ain’t no he, and I don’t know what the f**k you’re talking about.  If you’re going to hit me, then you might as well go ahead and do it.  Either do that or let me be.  I’m tired, and right now, I want to go to bed than stand here any longer staring at your stupid ass.”

Bella attempted to walk past him, but Bobby Red grabbed her arm and hurled her back.  Bella was about to say something, and it took a brief moment for her to observe his palm swinging toward her face seconds before it connected with her cheek.  Bella’s head rocked to the side, and she stumbled and hit her head against a hanging photograph on the wall.  The photograph’s glass cracked, then it fell to the floor and shattered.  Bella yelled aloud from the contact and might have fallen on her feet had Bobby not grabbed hold of her arm.  

Red was smiling inward as he assumed the slap had given him the upper hand.  He was wrong.  The smile left his face when Bella launched herself at him like a feral tiger let loose from a cage.  She screeched and clawed at his face, and Red was utterly unprepared to fend her off.  Together they tumbled over the sofa, scattering beer cans across the floor.  

Neither of them heard the blaring arrival police sirens in front of their house.  They were locked in their fight even as people began banging on their door, inquiring about whatever was going on.  The door suddenly flew open, and a group of people rushed inside.  Bella felt a strong pair of hands grab her arms, with voices yelling at her while struggling to wrench her away from Red.  She looked semi-demented, spattering curse words and drooling spit as the pair of hands doubled to pull her away.  The voices didn’t cease talking to her, fighting to persuade her to let go as they finally pulled her to her feet.  

Bella was still entrapped in her manic anger even as the voices continued to calm her down.  The whole time she was taking deep breaths, she recognized few faces in the room as those of her next-door neighbors.  She remained apprehensive, caught up in frantic confusion as her eyes darted about the room at the multitude of faces that occupied her living room.  The faces appeared blurry before her eyes.  It took a moment before her sight began to focus, then she realized it wasn’t only her neighbors that were there, but cops, too.  Apparently, one of her neighbors was passing by when she overheard the yelling and feared something was wrong.  A nearby patrolling squad car then promptly arrived and now had Bobby Red pinned to the floor.  One of them applied handcuffs to his wrists behind his back while his partner attended to Bella. 

“Oh my God, Bella.  You’re bleeding.”

Bella was still in a daze as her neighbors fawned over her bloodied face.  She managed to push them aside to see the two cops yank Bobby off the floor then forcefully led him toward the door.  More neighbors were gathered at the doorway, peering past the screen door.  One of the cops barked at them to clear off as they pushed past the screen door into the yard.  

Bella finally got a better hold on herself and gestured at her neighbors while she approached the screen door.  The cops had led Bobby Red to their vehicle and shoved him into the backseat, then gotten inside their vehicle and drove out of Canyon Drive with their klaxon lights on, but without the siren noise.  The street returned to its former quiet mode, with everyone mumbling and congregating before dispersing back to their homes.  Bella thanked her neighbors that had come to her aid before ushering them out the door.  She appraised her front yard before shutting the door and turned the key in the lock.

The night’s exciting episode finally over.  Bella held a hand to her hurt cheek as she then surveyed the disarray that was the living room.  The TV was still on; it was the central item in the room still standing.  The center table lay crushed on the floor, surrounded by spilled cans of beer with cigarette ash from an ashtray that previously occupied the upturned coffee table.  Bella went into the kitchen and returned with a dustpan and long broom and proceeded to clean up the mess.  The cleaning up helped with settling her shaking nerves.  She discarded the beer cans into the kitchen trash bin, then emptied and washed the ashtray in the sink.  The broken furniture remains ended up in the back porch; she would wait till morning before getting rid of them.  Bella assumed that the cops would take Bobby Red’s statement, after which they would let him off, and he would return home to finish what he had begun.  It drove a wedge of panic into her heart that got her rushing to the living room to peer out the window.  She stood watching for a couple of minutes until, feeling satisfied, returned to put the living room back in order.  She swept up the broken glass from the hanging portrait before deciding to call it a night.  She switched off the TV, then picked her handbag and jacket, and then trundled toward the bedroom.

Bella stripped out of her clothes, throwing each item on the bed, then went into the bathroom to look at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror.  She was aghast at what she saw.  There was a two-inch gash on her right cheek, a result from her slamming into the portrait glass.  It was a good thing that the wound wasn’t bleeding any more.  Her right eye had nearly swollen shut.  She bore a scratch on her lower cheek that was starting to swell.  There was throbbing ache coming from her shoulders.  Bobby might as well have flung her into a meat grinder, and this was the result.  Bella returned to the kitchen to heat some water, which she then filled a basin with, then carried it to the bathroom.  She mixed some measure of iodine solution, and then she gingerly cleaned her wounds with the aid of cotton wool and a hand towel; taking a shower was out of the question, not with the state she was in.  Bella emptied the basin water, then downed several pills from an aspirin capsule out of the medicine cabinet.  She craved sleep, but her mind remained sharp and suspicious of the night.  She desired a cigarette, something to help put the night’s event in perspective.

A light bulb instantly lit up in her head, and it ignited a belly roll of laughter that was short-lived as she felt the hurt coming from her jaw.  How she wished she’d had time to go and grab a knife to stick it into the bastard’s gut; f**k whatever awaited her after that.  

Bella lifted the toilet’s ceramic lid and fished out the doggie-bag that was Bobby Red’s leftover stash of weed.  There was plenty to carry her through the remainder of the night.  Tonight was one night she planned on sleeping like a fish; no way was she going to work in the morning with this swollen face of hers.

 “You won’t be needing this stash where you’re at tonight, you limp d**k f*****g bastard,” she flicked off the light switch and shut the bathroom door behind her.