Russell Twyce

I Live In My Scuba Gear – Chapter Three

Warning: This story contains some fairly explicit sexual depictions

Click Here for the Secrets of Same Night Lays

For the next few days, Belinda stayed over. One day they drove to her apartment to collect fresh clothes and toiletries. She called her folks to assure them that aliens hadn’t abducted her but that rather she was on a special freelance assignment.

The interview sessions took place during the days and evenings, punctuated with frequent sex breaks and various outings. He hadn’t dropped any more conversation bombs like the admission of his having murdered his adoptive father. Rather, the talk was on whatever topic struck a moment’s fancy or detailing the exotic places he had been to and dwelled at. The bulk of his work experience had, not surprisingly, been related to scuba diving, scuba gear, diving equipment and/or swimming.

The two settled into a domestic routine that Belinda found to be surprisingly comfy. It was almost like they were newlyweds and the intercourse that went on without prophylactics or even usage of the Catholic rhythm method made cohabitation feel as if they were a church-wedded couple.

To be completely honest, Belinda quite enjoyed the unprotected sex. When he dived into her naked like that, it felt like she was swimming in the nude. When he came, there was a warm and gooey feeling inside her that made sex with a condom seem clinical in contrast. There was also the background fact that she could conceivably conceive and that bit of life drama turned their sex acts into reproduction events.

“Let’s go to the beach today.” Scott offered. “I’ll teach you how to scuba dive.”

Along the way he stopped off at a specialty sporting goods store for the appropriate scuba diving equipment.

“Can’t we just rent my scuba gear package?” Belinda cringed at the hit to her credit card that a full set of diving equipment might cost.

“We could,” he ushered her to the scuba gear section, “but I’ve seen the way rental diving gear is handled at a dive charter outfit. Most, but not all companies give their stuff a thorough maintenance but I’ve seen scuba gear abused worse than I was.”

He picked out diving gear items and got her to try them on. And a pile of equipment that met his approval grew steadily larger. There were scuba fins, a diving mask, snorkel, a scuba BC vest, regulator and a weight belt. The final selection was a sexy looking scuba diving wetsuit with short sleeves and the leggings ending at her mid thigh. But there her meager finances rebelled.

“I don’t think I’ll need the scuba wetsuit: it’s such a nice warm day.”

“Try telling me that after we’ve been down to about 10 meters or so.” He grabbed the bundle and headed for the store’s checkout. “The warm sunshine isn’t quite as toasty in deeper water.

Belinda’s worst fear, an embarrassing transaction declined message, didn’t materialize though, as he flipped his credit card onto the counter. They wheeled the purchases out to his SUV and loaded them in the back beside his equipment bag.

“What if it turns out that I don’t enjoy scuba diving?” Belinda asked.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to offer it all to the next hot female reporter who wants me to grant her an interview.”

She could tell from his expression that he wasn’t being serious, so she punched him on the shoulder. Her hit was fairly hard: it was stronger than she had intended.

“I barely even felt that.” Scott laughed and scoffed. “Luther’s right hook was a like a freight train coming around a tight corner.”

[private_Chevron]Belinda forced a smile at the quip but his frequent references to the abusive man always stirred up different emotions than humor. As she circled to her side of the car, she wiped away a tear of empathy. Her childhood had been so secure, loving and supportive that she would be ashamed to describe it for him.

“Don’t I have to get a certificate before I can do this?” She asked after they got to the place where he wanted her to learn. It was a tiny beach flanked by outcroppings of rock. It didn’t have sand but rather small smooth pebbles. The main reason he used this place was the gently sloping bottom that was easy to find the ideal depth for training purposes. He promised that it also had interesting sea life along the rocks.

“I’m a fully qualified scuba instructor and a licensed scuba guide.”

“I mean,” she started but didn’t want to spark a talk on bureaucratic requirements, “never mind. I’ll bet you were an amazing scuba guide.”

“Truthfully, I was crappy at it. I found it difficult to suppress my underwater speed to match the jellyfish’s pace of my customers.”

The next few hours were enjoyably spent in his teaching her to use the scuba gear. She practiced with it and then as a final exam he took her to a depth of 10 meters where they could watch the fish playing around the rocks. After about half an hour they returned to the level where she could stand up.

“I see what you mean. You swim faster some motor boats go.” Belinda put her dive mask up onto her forehead. “Would you do something for me?” She’d experienced a sudden inspiration. “I want to fully understand the difference between your famous kick, so many people rave about, and the way the other Olympic swimmers do it?”

“Certainly.” Scott first removed his weight belt and he strapped it around her waist. “Now you’ll sink to be able to sit on the bottom.” He explained. “You can shoot an mpeg of my swimming by from underwater.” He handed her a waterproof digital camera from a pocket of his Scuba BC device. “I’ll go by you several times and if you can’t spot the differences, I’ll explain them to you later.”

Belinda gave him the thumbs up signal when she was positioned with her head and the camera about a half a meter under the surface. And he began the first pass of several runs, swimming the physically demanding butterfly stroke. Although she was filming it, she also watched his movements as closely as she could. The reporter did notice that the one method he used produced a visibly faster result.

“You bend your knees further forward than the others did.” She guessed when they were finished and back standing.

“The medical terminology is hyper extension, as opposed to the hyper flexion that would mean knees completely bent. But I’m doing much more than just that.” He played one of her video clips of his signature style. “In the normal butterfly kick, the power comes from rapidly bringing the knees from a partial flexion position, to a nearly full extension.”

“Your kick does that.” She noted. “Just as the other swimmers do.”

“Yes, but then the action of recoiling the knees again is passive. Yet the muscles on the human calf that bend the knees and the back thigh are about as strong as the ones those on the shins and in the front of the thighs that straighten the legs. My way improves on the kick, but still keep it within the rules, by not wasting all of the flexion movement by just passively recoiling my legs. By hyper-extending my knees at the kick’s end, I can use part of the flexion to deliver some extra forward thrust and I’m using muscles that would be otherwise largely untaxed.”

“Your competitive edge is in the bit from the hyper-extension and the less than full extension of the other swimmers?”

“Basically yes but there are also some other subtle differences.”

“What made you think of doing it that way?”

“I spent countless hours in minutely scrutinizing the way fish use their tails and trying to imagine how I could employ my legs in a similar fashion. In a regular butterfly stroke, the swimmer relies on the paddle shape of his/her feet to be the mechanism of producing forward thrust. I also develop a water flow along the whole length of my legs.”

So your kick does exactly what the other style does, but it additionally nets you extra gains from your modifications. That’s why you broke all the records.”

“Again, that’s only part and the rest is my heart.”

“That’s poetic,” she smiled, “and it requires an explanation.”[/private_Chevron]

“Fully understand one concept before we move onto the next.” Scott grasped her scuba mask and he kicked his flippers: he towed her like that out to deeper water, laughing all the way. Then he stopped kicking and relaxed his grip. Her scuba mask settled onto her face but it was a bit cockeyed. “Let’s go back down to the reef and watch the fish swimming again. This time pay careful attention of how they use their tails and play back the video clips to compare that with my unique kick.”

…

“You’ll not likely finish so far ahead of the rest in the next Olympic games.” Belinda had sat in the truck quietly thinking, before uttering the pronouncement. “Others will have copied Fosbury’s flop.”

“A flop?” His attention was diverted from his driving. “And who is this Fosbury?”

“All high jumpers used to drape their bodies over the bar with their bellies facing down. Then in the 1968 Mexico City Olympic games, a high jumper named Richard Fosbury stunned the world and captured the gold by employing a different style. He went over the bar with his chest facing up instead and it became known as the Fosbury Flop.”

“A ‘flop’ described his odd looking drape over the bar?” Scott correctly guessed.

“Then in the following 1972 Munich games,” she continued, “more than half of the high jumpers employed his technique.”

“Whether or not others emulate my style doesn’t concern me whatsoever. For one thing, in order to beat me, other swimmers would have to overcome my final edge.

“And that is?” The sports reporter asked.

“A coach wants his athletes to follow his game plan. He gets them to start fast and then coast from there, or perhaps he’ll order them to start slowly to conserve the best strength for a powerful finish. My game plan begins with expending maximum effort and then to keep accelerating with all I have, to the end.”

“That would be your poetic heart.” She concluded it for him.

“And secondly,” his resuming caught her off guard because she had forgotten that his previous, ‘for one thing’, had hinted of another reason, “I’ll not be competing in the Olympics again. My times might be later bested, but I won’t be beaten.” Then in a muted tone he added. “I had more than my fill of that during my childhood years.”

Belinda Lyle went quiet. No matter how many times Scott casually remarked about Luther’s abuse, the thought still affected her as strongly each time. She just didn’t like to think about how it had been for the boy to endure it.

…

“Why won’t you do it again?” She asked later that evening, when they were in bed.

“I could gamely try my best,” Scott accurately guessed what she was referring to but an intentional was more fun, “but I think it’s too soon after our last for a reasonable hope of physiological success.”

“You know what I was asking.” Belinda’s fingers tweaked a tender place under the sheets. “So answer that intent or I’ll demand that you go for the second.”

“Decisions, decisions.” The athlete mocked a pause of thought. Then his demeanor became serious. “The reason I won’t compete in the Olympics again is closely linked to my motivation for entering the last games and to the driving force that spurred me to win my events. I wanted to find a strong voice.”

“Fanning water into an open mouth doesn’t grow gills and it hasn’t been shown to augment the development of vocal cords either.” In truth, Belinda had surmised the reason but she felt that some misconstrued turnabout would be fair play.

“Oh never mind.” He sighed. “I have an idea of how I can demonstrate it for you tomorrow.”

“That brings us back to the other meaning.” Her hand walked on her fingers like a crab and it headed straight for his male sex package. “Look on this experiment as a purely scientific study into the physique facts of your stamina and recovery times.”

…

“How old do you suppose she is?” Scott asked as a young streetwalker strolled by.
Instead of driving his truck, they took a taxi to the inner city and got dropped off at a coffee shop with an outdoor seating area. The view from their table was somewhat less than spectacular, as it only looked out over some rush hour traffic amid a light drizzling rain.

“Not very.” Belinda answered. She watched the teenager looking into car windows in hopes of finding a man who had left work horny.

“Yet according to the documentaries one sees on television, underage prostitution only seems to occur in poverty stricken parts of the third world.”

“People here don’t want to see it here.” She replied.

“He especially doesn’t seem to want to see it.” The Olympic swimmer nodded over at a crossing street where a police cruiser was stopped at the curb. “Do you suppose that her apparent age would be discernable from his current location? And does it appear that she’s trying to mask what she’s obviously attempting from him?”

“Easily to the first,” the reporter replied, “not in the slightest to the other. Instead, she’s overacting her intent and physically leaning towards each car to ensure the men inside are able to plainly see that she’s not just an innocent girl on the street.”

“So one could guess that even though the cop is currently looking at a clipboard, a could look in her direction has already shown him precisely what she is up to.”

“That is reasonable to assume.”

Scott then abruptly dropped the topic and he took a drink of his coffee.

“Your point?’ Belinda urged.

“It’s not such a nice day today.” Wagner remarked. The sky had a low overcast and the air was thick with moisture in the form of a fine drizzle.

“One constant thing about the weather, is that it’s always the weather.” Belinda said dryly in frustration over his obvious stalling tactic. “And another is that regardless of what we think of the weather, it will be exactly what it is until it changes into the form it will be next – of its own accord.”

“I see she’s found a mark.” Scott observed. A late model American car had stopped at the very young girl’s position. The man inside leaned over to roll down a window on the passenger’s side.

The streetwalker approached and bent over to discuss the terms. Behind the halted car, several other commuters honked their horns. “And the music of the tooting must’ve sparked the policeman to look over at least briefly.”

They watched as the girl climbed into the car. The vehicle moved forward again, to rejoin with the slow flow of traffic.

“I’m just a layman,” he continued, “but I should think that the crime of ‘soliciting a minor for the purpose of sex’ has already occurred here. Our faithful law upholder is just now jotting something in his pad, if it were the vehicle’s license number and he tagged along behind at a slight a distance, I can surmise that some other offenses could be fairly easily spotted. But obviously, the cop was oblivious to the scene. His cruiser has remained stationary.”

“He really might have legitimately missed it.” Belinda defended. “There may really be something riveting on his clipboard.”

“Your reciprocal blindness has just placed an imaginary fog to cloud what you know to be the real truth.” Scott took another sip of coffee. “But let’s wait a moment to see if this scenario will present us with more information. I’ve been here for coffee more than just this once, so I’ll give you this reality opera’s libretto. In a minute or so, the officer’s cell phone will ring. He’ll answer, listen without speaking and he’ll write something else on his notepad: I suspect it’s an address or a location.”

They watched for a few moments and events unfolded exactly as Scott predicted.

“I’ll attempt to put down my white cane for long enough for you to enlighten me.”

“The first thing the policeman wrote in his pad was the car’s tag number because he was well aware of what was going on. The phone call was from the girl, telling him where she could be found if her john turned into a bad trick. The police come down much harder on pimps, than they do on prostitutes—because pimping is the ideal moonlight job for police officers and they don’t want the competition. The overly young girl has to pay off his pretended blindness and his emergency protection with the coin of gratuitous sexual services and/or a commission of her received fee, with a dividend of insider street information. Should she refuse to cooperate, she would be arrested on a charge of prostitution and locked up in a juvenile offenders home—where her only customers would be the non-paying guards.”

Belinda was tempted to again remark on his omnipresent cynicism but she had just seen it as he did. The scenario as he described it was the most likely explanation.

“Now take the final exam.” Scott continued after a few seconds of her reverie. “Who would God think committed the worst sin here?”

“You’re the only one at this table who has had a death experience to go by.”

“That only qualifies me to grade your answer. You are as capable as anyone is of fathoming God’s mind.”

“Me.” Belinda Lyle answered after a pregnant pause. “And you, and the motorists behind who only honked their frustration over the minor traffic inconvenience.”

“That’s a perfect score. If we had done what we should’ve done, what blindness lets avoid doing, then that girl wouldn’t have her body exploited at such a tender age.”

“This has been your demonstration?”

“No.” Scott chuckled wryly. “I haven’t started that yet. This was only some gravy. Take some photos and videos of what you see here.” He set his digital camera on the table. “You should interview some of the participants.”

“I don’t really see anything going on.” Belinda looked around to confirm that only commonplace things were happening. The heavy traffic was stop and go. Several homeless men were walking between the lanes and using their squeegees to clean motorist’s windows. Because of the drizzling rain, the commuters were less than willing to pay for the cleaning of windows that would be dirtied again so quickly.

“You will.” Scott Wagner stood and removed his shirt. [private_Chevron]He walked to the nearest homeless windshield washer and with a few words, he relieved him of his tool. The famous swimmer then began to squeegee some windows.

The ‘I live In My Scuba Gear’ tattoo was instantly recognizable and the vehicle flow immediately went from heavy to a virtual traffic jam. Drivers whistled for service, and to beg for autographs.

Each was eager to hand cash to Scott’s financial assistant, whereas in the moments before the Olympic swimming star’s appearance, they had pretended to not even notice that their windows had been cleaned. The squeegee’s prior operator made more money in minutes, than he had in the previous month. Belinda Lyle shot video, still photos and she inquired of both names and comments.

After a while, Scott handed back the squeegee and put his shirt back on. After a few autographs for the homeless, he and Belinda returned to their now stone cold coffee.

“That will earn you some instant revenue.” Scott grinned. “Do up a human interest piece for the television and local papers: you’ll be able to sell them by tonight.”

“They don’t mean much though.” She observed.

“They are of no value at all but that won’t stop the media from buying your work. But it isn’t finished until you’ve interviewed me on camera.” Scott called over the man whose squeegee he had used. He got him to hold the camera so that both he and Belinda could be in the same frame.
“I’m speaking with Scott Wagner. What prompted you to engage in this seemingly impromptu event?”

Scott didn’t say anything. He just shrugged.

“There you have it folks.” Belinda giggled. “Directly from the camera shy Olympic sensation, being the man of very few public words—as we’ve all come to expect.”

“This was the demonstration you planned to graphically explain your motives.”

“Exactly so. By my being a celebrity, I can make a statement about a problem like homelessness without even saying a word. The people in the cars were just driving by a serious social ill, without a thought or notice. Now for at least one day, those who have to wash windows to get their next meal will be in the public’s focus.”

“If Scott Wagner, the unknown victim of abuse spoke out, none would pay much attention.” Belinda guessed. “But when an Olympic gold medal winner says the same thing, the statement will be loudly heard.”

“Precisely. So get to work on preparing the print and video articles and I’ll wager it’ll be on the TV by tonight.”

“No.” Belinda said firmly.

“What do you mean no?”

“N-o. A two letter word indicating a negative, as in ‘no, that’s not going to happen’.”

“This is good material.” Scott protested and he tapped the camera with his finger.

“I’m not suggesting that it isn’t. But we’re still not going to release it now, and we’ll probably never use it.”

“Why not?

“Because homeless window washers and underage hookers are not issues that Scott Wagner is passionate about. We aren’t going to weaken his thunder with something that means practically nothing. Nor are we going to feed you piecemeal to the media sharks until we’ve lured the public onto your team.”

“How do we do that?”

“By playing your persona and reputation to the nines,” Belinda grinned, “but also by showing the folk at home that you’re not as different from them as they’ve believed.”

“You’re not a publicist.”

“We find that out soon enough because you need one but you don’t see a candidate lurking in the wings. I suspect my education and skill in journalism will give me an equal edge at being a half decent publicist, as your raw swimming ability would’ve helped you to enjoy at least a modest success, as a water polo player.[/private_Chevron]

…

“What are you planning to do with those?” That evening after making love, Belinda’s eyes fell onto his four medals hanging on the bedpost. During her time with Scott, he hadn’t touched them or even seemed to notice they were there.

“At first I thought I’d use the gold to replace some lead in my weight belt. But having them there might lead to the theft of some treasured scuba gear. Lately though, I’ve been contemplating whether they would net more on Ebay if I sold them singly or as a complete set.” He crawled to the foot of the bed and grasped all four. “Offer me a good price.” Scott Wagner placed the Olympic medals around the girl’s neck. “And maybe you can take them before the bidding opens.”

“None of those are going to happen.” Belinda sternly warned. She had seen him on the computer earlier: he was drafting a message to someone. She hadn’t encroached on his privacy by trying to read it, but had noticed he was messaging from an Ebay account. “Those are the material emblems of your Olympic glory and your publicist absolutely requires you to have them physically available whenever she feels they need to be seen, either in the background or around your stiff neck.”

“I’ve already struck a tentative deal with a power seller.”

“You’ll immediately back down from it. Pay him off with some cash to unruffled his feathers if needs be or give him something else of yours to sell instead. The medals are now utterly OFF the auction block. Am I crystal clear on that?”

“Yes madam.” He acquiesced in the same meek tone of voice that a schoolboy might employ when telling the teacher that he wouldn’t throw rocks again.

…

[private_Chevron]“This is putting my audience to sleep.” Belinda tossed her pad aside, and her pencil followed next. Her body was draped over an inline bench in the bedroom he had outfitted as a home gym. “It’s making me nod off periodically too.”

“What is?” Scott paused in his push-up set. “My working out?”

“No. This boring crap that you’ve been reciting into my notepad over the passed ten days.” Belinda shrugged. “Sorry, I couldn’t think of a less insulting way to say so.”

“I thought you wanted the all my life’s details.” His voice sounded wounded.

“A journalist only really wants the exciting, controversial and the unique parts. We do have to listen to the other dross though, to sluice out the goodies.”

“Pardon me for wasting my breath by prattling off worthlessness.”

“It’s not really completely useless.” She consoled. “A biographer needs this kind of filler to expand your memoirs into the size of a book, as opposed to the pamphlet a journalist would compile on you.”

“You’re hired for that too.”

“Good lord!” Belinda stood and fired a towel at him. “I’m your reporter, playmate, and publicist all rolled together. I laundered a basket of your smelly socks, t-shirts and underwear yesterday. And now I’m to pen your biography as well. Are there any other positions around here that I’m qualified for?”

“Yes.” He answered quickly. He saw Belinda look quizzically under her eyebrows at that snap retort but he didn’t elaborate. “Why didn’t you say something nine and a half days ago? We could’ve used the time more valuably.”

“I could copy down that bland stuff without thinking about it,” Belinda brightened, “and my mind was free to plan out something else. Truthfully, the exercise kept you from unduly interfering with my background project.”

“Oh that makes my ego feel loads better.” Scott’s voice oozed with sarcasm.

“You won’t be moping after you see what we’re going to accomplish tomorrow.

…

“Thanks for your help today.” Belinda escorted her older brother down from Scott’s apartment.

“Are you kidding me?” Martin’s laugh exploded from his belly. He shook his photo under his sister’s nose. “I’ll have to have it laminated for protection: everyone at the firm will be drooling all over this treasure.”

“Thanks anyways.” Belinda didn’t have to look. It was one she took and printed today that had Scott’s arm draped over Martin’s shoulder. The Olympic star had signed it: ‘to my pal Martin Lyle.’

“I’m glad you walked me down alone because I’ve something private to say to you.” Martin stopped with her in the lobby. “I’m not completely stupid, so I know there is more going on in that apartment, than just interviews. But you can trust me not to blab anything to Mom and Dad. Say whatever you will to them on your own time.”

“We have too much mutual blackmail on each other for it to be any other way.” She giggled a bit on recalling some. “We should consider sharing some with them, while their hearts are still young enough to take the shocks.”

“I noticed something when I was videotaping you and it stayed with me all day. I have never seen you looking so good.” Martin smiled as his sister blushed. “I don’t mean there’s ever been anything wrong with your looks. Radiant is the description that leaps to mind. Whether that guy upstairs put that on your face, or if it’s there from the work you’re doing is for you to decide, but sis,” his fist pushed her shoulder like a friendly slow motion punch, “it really works for you.”

Back upstairs at Scott’s flat, Belinda set to work, with her video editing software hooked up by a firewire cable to her video camera. She smiled when she linked in the portion of Scott they had shot on the balcony. They had done the segment five times before the perfectionist reporter had thought she had the perfect take.

“If I came with you tomorrow,” Scott stepped up behind her. He had just finished his assigned job of disassembling and packing up a professional lighting system Belinda had rented for the day, “they would be certain to let you in the door.”

“I’m not letting you even close to another news person yet.” She shot back.

…

“We have freelance reporter Belinda Lyle here today.” Charlene Biggs was the top sports desk anchorwoman at a major channel. She smiled at her guest seated adjacent on a sofa. “You just strolled in here today and presented us with a video segment. But you knew that we’d buy it.”

Belinda just smiled sweetly and recalled the advice they had offered in the green room. ‘When Charlene wants your response, she’ll pose a question.’ Until then, Belinda’s job was merely to look good.

“I previewed this piece.” Charlene spoke to the camera. “I was amazed and you all will be too.”
The successful woman then turned to her guest. “Do you know that I once tried to interview him?”

“I’d love to view that clip.” Belinda said.

“No way.” Charlene laughed. “Especially not when we now have yours to compare it to. Let’s not tease the folks anymore. Run the video.” She then reached over and put a hand on Belinda’s knee in a friendly manner and whispered. “I hadn’t planned on posing that as a question, but your answer made it great.”

“I’m in the Olympic gold medalist Scott Wagner’s tastefully appointed apartment.” Belinda said on the video, while the camera followed her across the living room. “Surprisingly, he doesn’t live in an aquatic cave, littered with half-gnawed sports reporter bones. Mr. Wagner?” She spoke a bit louder as the camera cut to him.

“Scott.” He said curtly. He was semi-reclined on a deck chair, wearing only a pair of snug gym shorts. His bare chest glistened with baby oil.

“Certainly.” Belinda was heard but the view remained on Scott. He sat up slightly: the movement caused his abdominal muscles to tighten and become sharply defined as a sexy six-pack. He then swiveled at the waist to collect a t-shirt that was draped over the back of a chair. That motion brought his ‘I Live In My Scuba Gear’ tattoo into full sight. In the opening few seconds, Belinda had probably cause 80 percent of the female viewing audience to gasp, and then had made certain that all instantly recognized him.

“Scott.” She hesitantly tested the word, as shyly as a mouse would be careful of a gift of cheese mysteriously sitting on an odd looking contraption. “Up until now, you’ve been less than forthcoming with the press.”

“You’ll notice that the phrase ‘up until now’,” his voice terse but not hostile, “still resides in the present tense.”

“You did agree to the stipulation of my limbs remaining attached to my torso.”

“Grudgingly.” Scott mumbled. He had put on the slightly too small black t-shirt that accentuated the lean musculature of his well-proportioned body.

“When one doesn’t speak up for himself,” Belinda’s on camera countenance had grown a little bolder, “he has to be content with what others say about him.”

“Mmmm.” His noise was nasal based, like a hum to denote thinking, but it was closer to his famous throaty growls, than in appreciation of a tasty aroma. Belinda had needed a few takes before Scott had achieved the exact tone she wanted.

“Why don’t you tell us something of your life prior to the Olympics?” The camera angle had begun with showing the two people seated corner-on the table: they were in profile as they had been facing each other. But as Belinda spoke the line from her script, Martin’s cue was to walk the camera’s perspective to almost behind her. I’ve read that you were a scuba diving instructor.”

“I have my instructor ratings,” he corrected, “but I mostly worked as a guide.”

“I’m guessing that you were amazing at it.” Belinda slowly leaned over towards him. She seemed as a lion tamer brazenly walking up to a wild beast. Martin’s job was to zoom the lens in slightly faster than her movement. In this way, a viewer might feel he or she was participating just as fearlessly.

“If that’s your final answer,” Scott chuckled slightly as he stole a line from the game show, “then you’ve blown your shot at the big-money round. I was lousy at it.”

“How so?” Belinda set her elbow on the table and she rested a chin on her knuckles. That was the last posture the audience would see her in, because the zooming lens continued until Scott’s face was in close-up.

“I found it extremely difficult to swim slowly enough for clients not to feel rushed.”

Belinda’s voice could be heard occasionally from off screen, as with sparing use of her own words, she gently nudged him to converse genially with the viewers. The effect was homey and casual. Scott described several anecdotes that summed up his life in the diving industry.

“While you were earning your living in the water,” the reporter gently steered the subject matter, “you were also effectively beginning your own Olympic training?”

“I suppose so.”

Martin Lyle’s prearranged camera instructions had him swinging the shot again. The new position brought both the interview participants back into the frame.

“You didn’t receive financial assistance from the nation’s sport program either?”

“I have my own money.” He said: then as her expression seemed to ask for more, he added. “I’m not wealthy. I’ve just been frugal with my modest inheritance.”

“I just wish we had more time to explore that thought further.” Belinda glanced at her wristwatch. She normally used her cell phone’s time display and had bought a pricey looking one as just a production prop for this moment. “I’ve heard some say that you shirked an obligation by not swimming the four by one-hundred relay but by your being at the games on your own dime, as it were, you had a right to decide.”

“I fully concur that we haven’t the time to go into that.” He paused for a breath and a very brief span of thought before going on. “Maybe I should tell you of it later.”

“I’m sure the people watching would want that too.” She turned her head to look at the camera’s lens, while Martin panned back slightly. “Thank you Scott Wagner for an interview without any snarls.”

“Rrrrrr.” In the background he was smiling and the rumble resembled a very large cat’s loud friendly purr.

“Make that with only one growl.” She corrected. “For ASN, I’m Belinda Lyle.” She had made a dozen endings similar to this, each corresponding to the networks she planned pitching the interview to.

“Brilliantly done.” Back in the seemingly live action, but the show was being taped, Charlene Biggs congratulated her. “And especially so, given that until you managed it, I thought that interviewing the Olympic mystery man was an impossibility.”

“How would you coax a turtle’s head from its shell?” Belinda audaciously asked, when her input hadn’t been invited with a question.

“With food maybe.” Charlene ventured. She could always have the snippet chopped later, if it didn’t make her look good. “Or perhaps with a hot looking lady turtle.”

“But neither would work. The harder you tried and the closer you shoved in a lure, the more determinedly he would remain safely inside.”

“That’s a good analogy. How would you do it?”

“By not trying to. The only way is to patiently wait until the turtle pokes a head out. Then you show him by respecting his space, that the outside is a nice place to be.”

“Those are words of wisdom that we media people often tend to forget. Thank you Belinda, for sharing your presence and your wonderful video article with us.”

“You are more than welcome.”

“I suspect the name of Belinda Lyle is one that will be heard more and more.” The seasoned television commentator said after the director called for a cut. “I’ll go butt kick my agent to ensure that my contract is locked in.” Her quip was lighthearted.

“You needn’t worry.” Belinda giggled. “I’m elbows deep in my freelance project.”

“Yes.” Charlene stroked the affirmative out deliciously. “And until you had Scott sit up with that well-oiled belly, I’d forgotten what a hunk he is.” She fanned her face as if feeling sharply elevated sexual heat. “I’d swap you jobs in a nanosecond.”

Belinda wasn’t prepared for that and she blushed.

“When you’ve worked up a piece on the 4×100, I want it. This network will outbid any other offers for it. If an editor balks at the price, tell them to come talk to me.”

…

“That’s what you have a publicist for.” Belinda remarked with justified pride as they finished watching the segment air. She glowed further on a thought of her parents sitting as close together as she and Scott were, while they viewed the same channel. She had phoned to tell them when and where their daughter would be on TV.

“Not to mention what a script-writer, producer, scene decorator, make up artist, key grip, prop manager, and video editor do too.”

“Your credit roll has left out the caterer.”[/private_Chevron]

I Live In My Scuba Gear – Chapter Two

Warning: This story contains some fairly explicit sexual depictions

She watched his scuba gear tattoo as Scott preceded her down the hall to his bedroom. As they wended their way, Belinda Lyle reflected on the past hour.

Belinda had walked behind him from the cab to his building, while admiring both his grace and his form. She couldn’t imagine Scott Wagner having to resort to this ruse, just to get laid. His fame, coupled with his handsomely chiseled features and exceptionally fine physique would have the females in any nightclub fighting for the opportunity of squirming wantonly in his muscular arms.

‘Why me?’ As Wagner had keyed the outer knob, she had asked. His answer had been, ‘that is the last question you should ask.’ His inflection had left her unsure of whether he meant it was an answer she might regret hearing or if the answer to it would terminate their deal.

To his credit, Scott hadn’t simply ushered her to a bed and ordered her to strip as a common strumpet might’ve been. Instead, he lit candles in the living room and put on some mellow music. They had sat on the sofa necking and engaging in foreplay. Their bodies were now both piqued for the consummating event and as they moved to the bedroom, they were already in a state of partial undress.

She stopped on entry and looked around. The paraphernalia and sport photos one should expect to find in a world class athlete’s home were as absent here as they had been missing from the rest of the suite. The only signs of his swimming career were his four Olympic gold medals hanging haphazardly on his bedpost—as if he had just tossed them there like an unlaundered t-shirt. The pictures on the walls were of tropical reef scenes and a there were framed advertiser’s posters with various items of scuba gear. A full set of scuba gear was hung reverently in the half-open closet. Belinda was so engrossed in viewing his private domain that she barely felt him tenderly removing the rest of her clothing, or noticed his stripping off his own.

“Do you have protection?” She asked as he lowered her nude body onto the sheets.

“I only wear a wet suit when swimming in cold water.”

“What about in an unfamiliar ocean?”

“Immersion in water gives me a sense of security, regardless of where it’s pooled. And where might a man feel more at home, than in his own comfortable bed?”

Belinda balked only briefly and then relented. If Scott’s past had been hedonistic, it would’ve already been splashed in newspapers. If anything, his lifestyle was devoid of any reported sex partners. His failure to stock prophylactics actually lent her a convoluted impression of safety. It implied that he wasn’t a weirdo with a scripted scenario that was complete with all the props emplaced. At least she allowed her mind to trust in that because the only other option was calling for an immediate cease and desist. In ordering a halt, she would be tossing away a possession she’d already purchased by agreeing to mortgage her genitals to finance her ambitions.

“Just be prepared to pull out,” Belinda spread her thighs apart as an open threshold for his hips, “because I’m not on any birth control.”

[private_Chevron]Scott’s gender sought her pubic triangle like it was a welcome mat. He found the moisture in the folds then entered her as smoothly and powerfully as if diving into a tepid pool. He plumbed to the extreme range of his depth finding equipment and on finding the wet sleeve was a pleasurable locale, he energetically frolicked in it.

Her hands caressed his shoulders and she felt that her fingertips could almost read the tattoo emblazoned there as if it were brail bumps on his flesh. ‘I live in my scuba gear’. The motion in his legs was fluidic as he pumped and Belinda locked her heels around his thighs to better appreciate the sensational friction. She felt as if riding a merman or a dolphin as in the act of sex, he employed the unique kick that made his butterfly stroke so amazingly fast.

‘I could use a description of this sex experience as a comparative article on his swimming style,’ Belinda thought, ‘if I could find a magazine that would publish sports erotica.’

Previously, she had only ever achieved an orgasm during masturbation. This time, she climaxed twice as the tempo of their lovemaking crested towards a grand finale and had an even stronger one when she felt his legs quiver and the searing gushes of his finishing spasms inside her.[/private_Chevron]

“You were supposed to pull out!” In mock frustration, she slapped both his biceps. Retrospectively, neither one of them could’ve interrupted the inevitable end of such an intensely passionate session.

“I can slip out now.”

“It’s too late so don’t bother.” In the afterglow of her orgasms, even this didn’t seem crucial enough to panic her. There was not much she could do about it now either. “If your sperms swim anywhere near as fast as you do, they’ve already mapped out and conquered the most remote regions of my egg realm.”

“That reminds me of a life defining element of my childhood,” he pushed up from between her legs and rolled to a position beside her, “and you’ve now definitely earned the right to hear it.”

Belinda wished that he hadn’t cheapened the wonderful moment with a reminder of their pact but she rapt her attention onto the lips she had so recently been kissing.

“My mother understood my love for swimming and she gave me my first set of scuba gear: actually it consisted of only mask, snorkel and fins. We lived near a small lake and I explored it completely.”

“The limited confines of our childhood play areas seemed much larger to us them.”

“That is true. But I knew this lake more intricately than anyone else alive. I went to nearly every part and knew almost everything about it. I circled its perimeter.” His hand found the curve of her waist and explored over her flat abdomen to her other hip in demonstration. “Even without scuba gear tanks, I dived to its depths.” His fingers disappeared down under the blanket. “I saw where garbage was dumped.” He plucked playfully at her pubic hairs. “I found the small streams that fed water in and the river that was its outlet.” His knuckles returned to view and traced a meandering path to her chest. “I knew the homes, structures and interesting features along its shoreline.” His palm cupped over each of her breasts in turn. “I found out where it was shallowest and where it was deep.” The first was illustrated with a flat hand on her stomach and the second with a finger in her naval.

“I get the picture.” She giggled and extracted his fingertip from her ticklish belly button. “The intriguing portions were ‘nearly every part’ and ‘almost everything’.”

“You are perceptive because those are the two pivotal phrases. I hadn’t thoroughly examined an abandoned industrial complex that had two rickety piers and a number of rusty old hulks littering the waterline. It was deserted, spooky and I had avoided it. And one thing I didn’t know was that my best friend the lake, would turn into a killer to drown my mother.”

“That’s terrible!” Belinda reacted. She had known from her research that both his parents were deceased but she was unready for that subject to so suddenly arise in this after sex chatting. She then thought for a pause. “I should think something like that would turn me right off swimming but for you it seemingly did the reverse.”

“Neither my mother nor her death ever factored into my relationship with water. We can talk more on that later. After her death, I resolved to either conquer the lake or to let it kill me, as it did her. I braved the part that I had previously shunned and at the side of one of the old piers, I made a startling discovery. My mom was not the only one my lake had killed. I found a fully dressed skeleton with its feet in buckets of concrete. A wallet was in a pocket and the name on the ID matched with a certain teamster union boss who mysteriously disappeared and was never found.”

“Oh!” Belinda Lyle scrunched up her nose and slapped his chest. “I suckered along right up to just then. Let’s sleep now and start our truthful interviews tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Scott switched off the light. He put an arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. Then he whispered softly in her ear. “Why would I vehemently profess lofty morals in any selection between truth and vanity while in a taxi cab, but then prove my character as utterly the reverse, when given the first practical opportunity?”

Men tend to nod off easily after sex and soon, Belinda knew he was asleep. Slumber for her took longer as her mind was alternately recriminating on the consummated arrangement, rejoicing the career vistas his willing cooperation could open, and the occasional remembrance of his Jimmy Hoffa fable with a pang of worry over how a believed lie from him, could ruin her. Exhausted, sexually well satisfied and having the lingering effects of the wine she’d consumed, Belinda finally slept and soundly.

…

She awoke to the aroma of coffee mingled with toast and a hint of mint toothpaste. Scott Wagner had a silver tray on the bed beside her and was gently blowing the smells towards her nose. The breakfast included orange juice, a stack of toast, a pot of coffee with the fixings and strawberry jam. The platter held a cardboard jeweler’s box of about the size to contain a scuba gear watch and her eyes occasionally drifted to it while they ate.

“I told you in the restaurant that I always speak the truth and that is now especially so with you.” His eyes held hers but his fingers found the box lid and he opened it. The billfold inside was badly weathered and the stitched seams appeared to have at least once suffered from bloating. A plastic laminated driver license clearly showed Hoffa’s name. “I won’t be able to back up everything I tell you with physical proof, so we will need you to try trusting in my honesty.”

“You really do know where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is?”

“It does seem so. It’s true that haven’t been back there in years, but I’m fairly certain his skeletal remains are where I found them and where I left them.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? Or did you report it to someone? Your father maybe?”

“You are the first person I’ve ever told and my father is the last one I would’ve told. If he were still alive, I wouldn’t have let it slip to you now lest he could learn about it. I would’ve taken the
knowledge of Hoffa’s final resting place, to my grave.”

“You really hated him?”

“Let’s not talk about that ass-wipe yet.” He ran a hand up her thigh and flirted with his eyebrows. “I have another scintillating idea of what we could be doing.”

The reminder of the exquisite pleasure she had enjoyed in this bed last night swiftly put her into the same randy frame of mind as his. A condom was again absent from their fun and it was almost as good in the morning as it has been at night. He didn’t pull out this time either.

‘An unwanted pregnancy wasn’t part of our deal.’ Belinda Lyle formed the sentence in her mind while they snuggled afterwards but she didn’t utter it. Her reporter’s second sense advised her not to broach that topic. He hadn’t given her the personal information she wanted and needed yet. ‘I can always have an abortion if needs be.’ Her female instinct supplied a niggling premonition that for him, her being pregnant might not be totally ‘unwanted’. Scott seemed to have no qualms in blasting his seed into her conception zone. ‘But maybe he’s had a operation that I’m not aware of?’

…

Belinda joined Wagner in a long hot shower. He turned around so she could scrub his scuba gear tattoo. Then they went to his kitchen for a second round of coffees.

“Do you mind if I use this now?” She had brought along her notebook and a pencil. Her digital recorder’s battery was flat-line deceased in her handbag.

“Feel free.”

“Can we talk about your father now?” She began by flipping to the page after her notes on his scuba gear tattoo and comments. “He was a policeman, right?”

“He was that.” Scott frowned. “In fact the word ‘policeman’ defines his entire life because he was nothing but one. Actually, I want to strongly stress that he wasn’t my true biological dad. I don’t share any of his features or family traits and his marriage to my mother was only about four months before my birth.”

“He gave a girl in trouble some respectability.” Belinda winced slightly at the words she was speaking, as they were poignant to her own possible future situation.

“The man you refer to as my father was scum and he never did anything for a noble purpose. He was ignorant white trash who found a vocation in policing that meshed with his vile nature. Instead of saying ‘father’ let’s refer to him Luther Wagner.”

“Luther and your mother were young when they married but they didn’t have any children.” Belinda remarked. “Did your mother have a problem birthing you?”

“I was too young to remember that event clearly.” He chuckled and it lightened the somber cast of the past moments. “I don’t believe she did though. I like to think my mother had a way to prevent herself from conceiving again. She would’ve already known that Luther’s genus was descended from the Suidae family and wouldn’t want his Sus-domesticus chromosomes polluting her Homo-sapiens DNA. Or it might’ve been that Luther was sterile, just as a mule cross-bred from horses and donkeys are typically incapable of reproducing.”

“Was he abusive?” Belinda surmised from his litany of derogatory terms.

“Physically, mentally, sexually, conceptually, spiritually and even my memory of him tortures me to this very second.”

“I’ve never heard of the term conceptual abuse. How would you define it?”

“Luther’s views of how society operates soured my taste for the world because I can’t intellectually refute his opinions, or find real examples to the contrary. Some suggest our society is Democratic Capitalism but Luther showed that it’s really an RBR system. Reciprocally Blind Rectalism is where shortsighted assholes rule and everyone pretends they don’t see anything wrong. The press fully supports the RBR by insuring that nobody gets to see the crappy stuff the assholes are really up to.”

“This seems like philosophy and I’ll be the first to admit that isn’t my strong suit.”

“Instead of in the abstract then,” Scott took a long drink of his coffee, “I’ll explain it in concrete form with an anecdotal description of why swimming became such a vital aspect in my life.”

“I’m ready.” Belinda flipped to a fresh notebook page: she had used the last jotting down the RBR description.

[private_Chevron]“Laws and rules were the entire structure in Luther’s existence. Non-police had to obey or be punished but officers were free to transgress to facilitate their perverse pleasures. The lawyers, lawmakers and judges were also able to break the laws but they did so only by invoking or enacting the mystical power of a technicality.”

“Did Luther break the laws he was sworn to protect?”

“Continuously. He smoked confiscated weed and drove after drinking seized liquor. He stole valuables collected in evidence. He abused prisoners and molested victims. Luther would speed and blow through red lights on his way to a coffee shop. He was involved in at least two vehicular homicides that the official record later deemed as single car incidents. I suspect he killed my biological father to usurp a hot knocked-up girlfriend. He likely murdered my mom but the cause of her death was attributed to suicide because no signs of foul play were entered into the police investigation.”

“His official dossier has been perused and found spotless.”

“Nobody polices the police and none govern the government either.”

“That’s touted as the media’s sacred duty.”

“The scared duty uses the same letters to describe a more appropriate adjective but if we continue that vein, we’ll not get to the rest.” Scott Wagner laced his fingers and rested his palms on his muscle-rippled abs. “My life was comprised of Luther’s laws and I was subjected to assorted penalties for breaking them, whether I did it or not. My home’s justice wasn’t constitutional but rather, it was on police jurisprudence. That functions on the premise of policemen knowing much more about the bad guys than the courts do: a competent cop must therefore dish out excruciating corporal punishment before the too-liberal court gives the offender a overly light sentence.”

“Slow down a tad.” Belinda’s pencil raced squiggle tracks on the paper.[/private_Chevron]

“Luther beat me morning, noon and evenings. Sometimes he would wake from sleep to hammer me for something I did in his dream. I was in my first elementary school years when I observed that Luther only punished me when he was breathing. That suggested to me that I was safe where he couldn’t breath and that was underwater.”

“You would’ve been 7 or 9 years old?”

“About in that age bracket somewhere.” He confirmed. “It was before Luther went from exclusively using his hands to his adding implements like belts, bats, whips and a car’s radio aerial to his repertoire: that started in my fourth grade and water was already offering me some respite by then.”

“Luther hit you with a bat when you were only 10?”

“Your question’s ambiguous phrasing could lead a reader to wrongly assume we are referring to only one event when in actuality, it was in the multi-multiples of times.”

“Multi-multiples?”

“Numerous sessions of bat beatings, comprising several bat strikes per.” He paused to allow time for her pencil to catch up and then continued. “I was only truly safe when I was underwater, in my lake or a public pool. I dreamed of living aquatically like a fish. In the local swimming pool, I would blow out enough of my air to sink. I would sit on the bottom fanning water into my open mouth and trying to grow gills. Then one time I stayed under too long and I blacked out. Nobody really knows how long I was out for but a lifeguard saw me stretched out on the bottom. I was rescued and revived. Fortunately, my mother was there alone when they called my home. If Luther had learned of it, I’m certain the incident would’ve broken numerous laws ranging from breathing water without a license and not wearing scuba gear while drowning to failing at a suicide attempt.”

“Only your mother ever knew?” Belinda asked but she also jotted and underlined the word ‘blackout’ in her pad’s margin.

“Mom collected me at from hospital where I was breathing from an oxygen bottle. She bought me some scuba gear; a mask, snorkel and swim fins on the way home. I think getting me the snorkel was her first priority so that I wouldn’t drown again. She told Luther the stuff had been on sale so waiting for my birthday would’ve made the scuba gear expensive.”

“Did you see anything in your blackout?” She asked and stroked out her reminder.

“Yes. I had a vivid and prolonged death experience. It was wonderful and up until last night, I’ve had nothing in my life to compare it to. That also happened in water so it positively reinforced my already strong affinity for water.”

“Is there more on your experience in death?”

“That query is also an unfocused one.” He chastised light-heartedly with a smile. “It leaves me to choose between expanding the description of my first DE, or going into the circumstances of the following ones.”

“You had more of them?” She narrowed the inquisition’s beam but it wasn’t done by her will to go there: it was her exclamation of surprise at there being more NDE and a slight lilt in her voice at the end turned it into a question.

“Sometimes Luther would be feeling his sadistic oats extra keenly and his beatings would intensify dramatically. My mother’s present of scuba equipment had given me increased ability in the water and I found that eternity’s gift let me swim from my body when the pain was the most unbearable. I could float up to the ceiling and watch Luther pummel me but while feeling nothing. Unfortunately, I always had to return to my physical body and acquaint myself with its fresh hurts and bruises.”

“Did Luther hurt you worse than your mother?”

“What is worse? Is the intensely localized pain of a fractured clavicle worse? Or is the all over agony of internal bruising worse? Is living an abuse free life until you suddenly find you’re shackled in matrimony to a sadist worse? Or is experiencing hurting that predates earliest memories worse?” Scott paused after his barrage of rhetorical questions. “Mom shouldered the lioness’s share of the sexual cruelty.”

“But you got some of that too?”

[private_Chevron]“Buggering a minor is a serious crime. As such, Luther’s sacred duty to the police department meant he had to experience enough of it first hand, to be better able to deal heavy handedly with the deviants suspected of having committed that crime.”

“Your book’s sub-title could be – ‘For an illustration of the word ‘cynical’ read on’.”

“The RBR world is a place of abject cynicism. I know it as such and I tell the truth.”[/private_Chevron]

“No one ever became aware of Luther’s nefarious actions?”

“Nearly everyone knew of it.” Scott’s words were upbeat and he even gave a small chuckle. “That’s the sublime beauty of Reciprocally Blind Rectalism in operation. A town doctor realizes that a lad of twelve, who has suffered 4 fractured ribs, a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder and a crushed cheekbone during one year, is not merely ‘accident-prone’. However, this physician occasionally takes his Mercedes into the seedy part of town looking for drug-addicted teenaged girls as a prescription for his flaccid dick syndrome. The doctor wants the police to be blind so he needs to show good faith in his being reciprocally blind. My next-door neighbors knew of it, but they were also aware of both the doctor’s periodic indiscretions and the policeman neighbor’s hyper-violent nature. They required health care sometimes and would prefer not being on Luther’s bad side. Those are two leading causes of blindness.”

“The scornful plot descends even further into the dark alleys of cynicism.”

“That statement hinted at your wishful blindness.” Scott confronted. “I’m telling of my horrendous childhood and I’m surmising your natural human empathy gives you some mental pain from it. A defense mechanism offered by RBR enables you to limit your bad feelings to just me. By grasping at straws that offer a remote possibility of folk being innocently unaware of my real situation, you’re enabling a slim chance of my case being an isolated occurrence where the system failed. But that slim chance is enough: then you don’t have to accept the true fact of the precious system failing far more often than it succeeds and you can spare yourself from having to empathize with the suffering of the many other children subjected to similar maltreatment.”

“This isn’t about me.” Belinda said in a meek voice.

“It doubly involves you. First, you’re human and you should share a 1/x-trillionth percent responsibility for the problems experienced in the world shared by other humans living on earth—but you willingly allow yourself to be nudged into blissful blindness. Secondly, you’ve chosen a career path into journalism. In the hard news, a media person makes the event story finite. Harsh action is on the television screen but surrounding the appliance, the pastel-painted walls and soothing décor lets a viewer be blind to the fact that beyond the camera’s frame, comparable things are likely happening in an expanding ripple effect, that tomorrow may be pounding as surf on his very door. A talented newscaster will point out how authority has the situation well in hand, when in truth, it wasn’t in control when the victims had their lives sundered, and it won’t be in check tomorrow, because not one damn thing is being done today—but the authority gets the thrill of looking officious on TV.”

“I’m in sports.”

“You’re in the blindness support squad. You divert the viewer’s attention from the real problems, to a fantasy realm where life is beautiful all the time. Imagine what would’ve happened if on emerging from the Olympic pool, I had spoken the truth. Producers would’ve suddenly cut to a live feed from the track-and-field venue. They know that people want to be blind and they eagerly facilitate it.”

“Then why,” she almost said ‘why me’ but managed to snip it in time, “are we here?”

“Because you’re paying me with your supremely enjoyable sexual services.”

“Uh.” Reversing the payee-payer but with a sidebar of her possessing a courtesan’s flair was to Belinda like a hard slap in the face with a hand gloved in gossamer. “I wanted to ask you how escaping from your body compared to being underwater?”

“That was by a wide measure,” Scott Wagner reached out his left hand and gently grasped her lower jaw. He used his grip to slightly reposition her chin so that her eyes were directly on him. Were it not for the nearly infinite tenderness of his odd gesture’s performance and his benevolent, almost to the point of angelic smile, it might’ve seemed that his left hand was holding her face steady to receive a solid punch from his right fist, “the most deftly accomplished segue from a touchy topic that I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness.”

“Thank you.” She wasn’t entirely sure if he meant it as a compliment or as sarcasm.

“And as to the question currently on the table,” Scott stood, “in my pre-Lyle period of media relations, a likely answer might’ve been ‘same, same, but different’—and that pretty much sums it up well enough today too.” Wagner walked out the apartment door without any explanation of where he was going or when he might be back.

…

“Where did you go?” She asked on his return.

“Can’t you sleuth it out?”

“Your wet hair and damp clothing suggests a swimming pool was involved.”

“I ran about a third of a marathon to blow off steam. Then I skinny dipped in the building’s pool to cool down.”

“Had a bike been handy, you could’ve done a full iron man event.”

“I like cycling. If the triathlon becomes an Olympic sport, I’ll win another gold.”

“I made you angry.” Belinda dropped the banter and cut to the juice.

“Yes, you did. But while running, I realized that it was entirely my fault. Then I swam lengths trying to think of ways to make you understand.”

“That’s where my being a reporter comes in handy. I can read back in my notes and try to understand your words differently than my first comprehension.”

“Did you do that?”

“Of course and the next time we touch that area, I’ll be a different person than I was. I won’t guarantee to follow as you want then either, but that will be another chance for me to reread and recalibrate myself.”

“I’ve never thought of that possibility.” Scott smooched her on the lips, scooped her into his arms and waltzed around the room, with her feet barely brushing the floor.

“You swam naked in the building pool?”

“Sure.” He set her down. “I’ve done it loads of times. People casually entering the area probably don’t even notice because I’m always swimming fast lengths. Security likely knows because they have video surveillance but they’ve never mentioned it.”

“The guards are probably selling the videos of a nude celebrity.”

“Who is the cynic now?”

“Do you see what a notebook review can accomplish?”

Scott Wagner just smiled.

“It’s early enough to get back at it before supper.” Belinda suggested. “We might talk about Luther’s death.”

“That’s a scrumptious idea.” His voice was seductively low. “We get back at it now.” His eyes flicked towards the bedroom. “Then we go out for dinner, where I speak about Luther’s death – on empty testicles and while gaining a full stomach.”

“You reviewed your notes.” Belinda’s voice was sultry. “That’s precisely what I said and exactly as I hoped it would be understood.” She giggled and wiggled to the bed.

…

“The years following your mother’s death must’ve been.” Belinda paused and tried to find the right word. “I’m sorry, but even ‘hellish’ doesn’t seem strong enough.”

“Bizarre as it might seem, my situation actually improved in a number of ways. For one thing I didn’t have to see her beaten anymore. But Luther’s assaults on me were on the decrease as well. Over a span of several years, my beatings went from nearly continuous, to frequently, to occasionally, and finally they leveled off at rarely. Of course Luther spent increasingly more time away from the house too.”

“Perhaps a late-blooming conscience?”

“I can speculate on reasons but to have any likelihood of one being truth, it would need to be either utterly self-serving on his part, or related to policing somehow.”

“I’ll note that you’re not attesting certainty, but could we explore possible ones?”

“I will ponder while we order.” Scott only mouthed the words for her to lip read as the waiter had arrived with his notepad.

‘Of course he is has to be the same man as before.’ Belinda said silently to her mind. They had taken another taxi to the very same quay restaurant as their first date. In the corner of her eye, she caught movements: it was kitchen staff poking their faces up into the window and then ducking away after satisfying their curiosity.

“And madam would like?” The waiter turned his attention to her.

“You order for me.” Belinda feigned an interest in her notes. “I’ll enjoy whatever you select.” She rummaged back several pages as if verifying a sudden idea. ‘What must they think of me?’ she wondered. The clothes she was wearing was a pale pink silk blouse with a scarf, and a knee length skirt that hugged her hips and tapered down her thighs. They’ve now seen my look go from teenybopper to a young skank and today I might appear today as either a secretary or with my hair tucked into a prim bun, I could be seen as a teacher or worse, a librarian.’

“Do you mind again?” The waiter blushed. “The staff wants more autographs.”

“Uh,” Scott looked over at her and shrugged quizzically, “I guess so.”

The kitchen door opened and the tiny throng raced out with their books, napkins, and whatever they planned on getting endorsed by a celebrity. Then the weirdness happened. Scott’s wasn’t the signature they were after. They were shoving their stuff at Belinda Lyle and getting her to sign, with an Olympic gold medalist neglected in the periphery. But they already had his scribble in their collections.

“What was that all about?” Belinda asked when her fans had left. ‘This place could be renamed ‘the warped perception’ for the bizarre way things get skewed up here.’ “I’m certainly not a celebrity.”

“I couldn’t quote a specific dictionary’s definition of ‘celebrity’, but an elucidation that seems to fit would be ‘one whom common people deem as important or distinctive enough to ask for an autograph’. And that would apply to you tonight.”

“This was just too ‘off-the-wall’ to even think about right now.” She flipped to the most recent page of her notebook and readied her pencil. “Where were we before that strangeness all began?”

“I was thinking of reasons for Luther’s relenting and two have come to mind.”

Belinda looked at him, pencil poised in her fingers, and then she had an inspiration too. ‘Scott said something about me—while I was in the restroom.’ That was the only way to make sense of the kitchen staff’s oddness. ‘Did he say I was the current Heidi Fleiss?’ If they had thought she was a notorious ‘prostitute to the stars’, as Ms. Fleiss, then her librarian look fit right in today, but then she could come dressed as a cheerleader or a nurse without raising any eyebrows either.

“You’re not writing.” His voice brought her back to the here and now.

“I wasn’t listening either.” She adjusted her bottom in on the seat. “My mind went wandering back to my fans. I wish I could read the captions or notations they’ve put next to my signature.”

“That might be deemed privacy invasive.”

“I wasn’t suggesting I get a court order to view them.” Belinda snipped. His words had given her the confirmation that he knew those notations would incriminate him. “But never mind. What were you saying whilst I was wool gathering?”

“My mother’s death might’ve made Luther’s footing in the department tenuous. I’m told prison inmates use the term ‘skinners’ for people incarcerated for sex crimes and those have to be kept segregated, lest the rest attack them. I seem to think that those who convicted of crimes against their own families, are similarly protected.”

“And?”

“Police and criminals are closely akin. The police regularly commit crimes but they rationalize it as sacrificing their honor for the law’s benefit. It stands to reason that their unspoken code-of-conduct could also be comparable to a prisoners morals. By his wife’s dying, Luther’s standing in the subtle, unspoken, and reciprocally blind way might have dropped because she was both of the other sex and his family.”

“Meaning that he had to be more careful of his outward appearances?” She scanned back a page in her notes. “I’m thinking this thread isn’t really all that helpful.”

“Good. Let’s drop it. I’ve never wasted much time dwelling on why Luther was of swine kind. I thought it no more productive than a farmer musing on a pig’s mind.”

“We’ll talk about his death.” Belinda said. She noticed the waiter had materialized at their table with a carafe of wine and two goblets

“I’ll drink to that.” Scott took up his wine.

“You don’t need to get me blotto and pour me into your bed.”

“Tonight, I’ll share this with you.” He clinked her glass in toast. “To Luther’s killer.” Scott Wagner drank about a quarter of his glass.

“Had he not been killed while resisting questioning,” Belinda recalled from her prior research, “I expect you would’ve been his most frequent visitor in the prison and his most ardent admirer.”

“That unfortunate sod had nothing to do with Luther’s murder.” Scott sipped his glass down to half, but one drop of red wine escaped from the corner of his lips and it fell silently onto his shirt’s front. “He was just someone that one or more of the cops held a grudge against.” The gold medalist set his glass aside. “They had no real proofs to convict the true sniper and even trying to truthfully solve the cop killing would’ve been counterproductive to their best interests. So the police found and slaughtered a handy scapegoat.”

“You barely touched that stuff the other night.” His matter-of-fact statement was the obvious beginning of a riveting discussion. So while reading her mind for strenuous exercise, she garnered a few seconds with a minor observation.

“That’s because I have a drinking problem.”

“Then don’t!” Belinda quickly shot out her hand to stop his, as he was reaching for his goblet again.

“My problem isn’t of the sort that sprang to your mind.” He chuckled. “I tend to be sloppy.” He pointed to the red spot on his off-white linen shirt. “But as you’ve said, I don’t need to weaken your chaste resolve with alcohol anymore, and I don’t have to impress your willingness with my crisply perfect appearance either. I can savor my wine, despite my ‘problem’, because even if my chest ends up looking like a messy baby’s bib, it just doesn’t matter and I’ll still get laid.”

“Here’s to you,” Belinda toasted her drink, “comfortably being your slovenly self.”

“I feel so special.” Scott’s expression was enigmatic while he watched her finish the toast by taking a sip. “You’re the second one who’s offered me a salute me tonight.”

“Apparently I missed the other one.” A wrinkled forehead betrayed her puzzlement.

“I don’t know how it could’ve slipped by. Your full attention appeared to be on me when I toasted myself.” Scott set his elbows on the table and he leaned close to her. Then he said in a conspiratorial voice, “I shot Officer Luther Wagner.”

Belinda Lyle’s pencil nib broke on the paper.

[private_Chevron]“Luther’s downfall was a result his stupidly failing to realize that the boy he’d spent a lifetime beating up, had become fully cognizant of RBR’s many tenets and facets. The cockroach was even thoughtful enough to provide the instrument of his own demise, in a high-powered hunting rifle with a precision scope, that he stole while exercising a search warrant for something else.”
Belinda’s pencil tip moved pointlessly, as her mind grappled with his admission.

“My mother’s death presented Luther with a big problem that he doubtlessly hadn’t thought of before recklessly killing her. During the following few years, the boy he’d buggered, would mature to adulthood and when I came of age, he would no longer have me under his thumb. Had my mother been alive, my love for her would’ve made her a hostage against my keeping his dirty secrets locked in a homo-closet.”

The aspiring sports reporter kept up her rapid scribbling in her scratch pad, even though the writing instrument lacked lead.

“My dying before the age of eighteen would’ve been a problem solver, but a second suspicious death in his family could’ve strained the bounds of reciprocal blindness. An alternate strategy could explain the diminishing abuse: Luther was methodically distancing himself from me. A subtle change in the words from his snout gave an indication: instead of grunting hackneyed phrases like ‘this hurts me more than it does you’ or ‘I’m doing this for your own good’, his pithy remarks became resigned oinks like ‘why do I even try, when you just stem from bad seed’.”

“I’ve solidly grasped the fact of your harboring distain for both Luther and police officers in general, as a subset of lower humanity. You needn’t search for even more obscure comparisons to swine, nor even observe how referring to cops as pigs may be construed as insulting to hogs.”

“I’ll attempt to curb that mannerism but please forgive me if I occasionally slip back into my habitual pattern.” Scott saw she’d noticed her defunct pencil and stopped writing: he attributed her slightly agitated outburst to her frustration on not being able to jot anything down. “I envisioned how the day after my eighteenth birthday, would’ve begun my adult life of incarceration for one trumped up conviction after another. Luther’s police reputation was likely strong enough to endure the shame of having his stepson turning out wrongly, despite every fatherly attempt to raise his wife’s bastard to be law abiding. In jail, I would be ever muzzled because making an accusation of homosexual molestation would be an engraved invitation for plenty more of the same thing within the barred walls. If I wanted a more enticing future than the one Luther had charted out for me, I would have to grasp it with my own hands—and I did.”

“How did you do it?”

“I was in an ideal situation to be fully aware of Luther’s routine. His official business often required him to stop in at a house near ours, where the attractive young wife of a prison inmate lived. He needed to ensure that she wasn’t baking files into cakes. During prior preparation, I’d already target practiced to proficiency and constructed a natural looking hunter’s blind in the optimal position. I settled in to patiently wait for Luther Wagner arrival. When he showed up almost on perfect schedule, I aimed carefully and then squeezed the trigger. His black spirit was already in purgatory when his corpse hit the lawn, dead from the bullet that I planted right between his unsuspecting eyebrows.”

In her silence of absorbing his words, Belinda studied her pencil’s broken end.

“You should change to a fresh one.”

“I’m pretty sure I can remember this part and I’m even glad don’t have it on paper.”

“You should write it down. I’ll date it and affix my signature as a freely given and non-coerced confession. On trial, my defense will be that I’m not guilty of murder because my action was alike to an abattoir worker’s slaughtering of – cattle.”

Belinda extracted another pencil from her handbag and complied with his request. During the few minutes that it took her to write it from her fresh memory, their food arrived. True to his word, Scott snatched the pad when she was done: he both dated and endorsed it before handing it back. Then seemingly unconcerned with having given her ammunition for either blackmail or jail-time, he chowed into the meal.

Belinda took up her fork but only used it for idly rearranging the food on her plate. ‘How very different this repast is from our last time here.’ Then, she’d been eagerly trying to elicit his words and failing miserably at it. Just the one article on the 4×100 relay he’d verbally composed in the taxi away from here, exceeded the expectations Belinda had during the cab ride to this restaurant. Her career goals were affixed on sports reporting niche partially because a likelihood of her getting into full-fledged news reporting had seemed unattainable. But from using her female equipment just as Heidi Fleiss did, Belinda’s notebooks contained stuff enough to ensconce her in an anchorperson’s chair if she so wished. In the one respect it had been far more than worth it so far but how was it in the more important element of her self-respect? She performed a quick internal scan. ‘My self-esteem doesn’t feel overly tarnished.’ That could mean either that she really didn’t mind being a paid slut, or that she just didn’t actually feel she was in the pay-4-play skin trade. Only perspective counted.

“Are you going to eat that?” Scott pointed his fork at her whole-wheat dinner bun. His had vanished from view, along with nearly everything else on his plate.

“I’m not certain yet.” On the outside, she smiled but internally, she laughed. It made her think of her taking his wine to ensure that she derived the maximum value from her expense. “But go ahead and start on it. I’ll scream ‘stop’ if I experience a sudden uncontrollable yen for it.”

“You’ve barely eaten anything.” He observed while buttering up the bun.

“I’m alright.” She returned to her mental musing. ‘If he said something derogatory about me to the staff, it was before he knew if I’d accept the deal. And short of the odd quip that seem of harmless humor, he’s never once made me feel as a ho.’ “if I get to feeling puckish later, I can load up on sausage.” She snapped her teeth at him.

As soon as he correctly guessed what she had just implied, Scott grabbed his groin defensively with one hand and laughed. Then Belinda reached a hand across the table and captured his remaining free: her fingers caressed his knuckles.

“Why?” He expanded on his solo word question by gazing at their entwined hands.

“Because you have a spot of red wine as bold as a bleeding bullet hole on your shirt.” The true sentiments behind the gesture, was that Belinda was no longer his doxie, as if she had ever actually been that. She had crossed another step in deciding that she enjoyed staying with this quirky swimmer. ‘But just saying so would be too easy.’

“And with your being female, while I’m male, I’ll never have a clue of your motives.”

“It seems to me that you understand that perfectly.”

“I wonder if I would’ve been better off holding out for a gay male sports reporter.”

…

“Shall we stay on for specialty coffee,” Scott asked, “or find another place to go.” The meal dishes had been cleared away and the deserts had come and gone too.

“We’re already here and comfortable.” Belinda opened her pad again. “How did you manage to keep the police from finding out?”

“That’s the dividing line between garden variety law breaking and criminal genius. I got away with it because I didn’t hide my crime from the police: I skillfully employed the tried-and-true principles of reciprocal blindness. I effectively told them I did it, without quite actually coming out and saying that it. It worked out like magic.”

“Talk slowly enough for me to copy your words verbatim.” Belinda advised. “I think I may have to read this part through a number of times.”

“My opening ploy was when the detachment commander came over to inform me of the tragedy. I was ready for him. I had smeared Tabasco sauce on my fingers, but then mostly wiped off the red stains. I was dry eyed and seeming bewildered when he first arrived. Then he delivered the news. I turned away, seemingly in grief and I covered my face with my hands. Surreptitiously, fingered my nostrils and eyelids. My tears flowed and my nose started running like a twin-barreled leaky faucet.”

“And he was fooled.”

“No. I didn’t want to hoodwink him completely. I intended him to see the sudden change as slightly too fast to be natural. If he were to detect a hint of Tabasco smell, it would be even better. In that moment, I told the detachment commander that he would have to look no further for Luther’s killer but I only gave subjective proof that even an inept lawyer could shred in a courtroom.”

“The police chief must’ve watched you closely after that.”

“He was like a hawk but to his surprise, it was far easier than he expected because I wasn’t making the slightest attempt to slink away, or hide. I eagerly embraced the other police officers, like they were my only replacement for a father who had been suddenly taken away from me. I played up to the distorted vision that police like to believe of themselves—even when they know that it’s utterly false.”

“Surely with your being a ‘person-of-interest’, the chief was investigating you.”

“Doubtlessly,” Scott grinned like a tomcat with bird on his breath, “and I’m sure he made subtle overtures to his men that they should advise him if I acted strangely—so they became aware of my probable guilt too. But to my assistance, they all knew what Luther was really like. They had been reciprocally blind but well aware of how Luther Wagner had abused my mother and I. Perhaps they were also cognizant, on a level beneath their persona of blindness, of Luther having murdered my mom.”

“They were still cops, as Luther was a cop, and they were dealing with a cop-killer.”

“True. But they are also extremely violent people and those who haven’t yet had the opportunity to kill, are envious of, and somewhat in awe of, those who have killed. I asked an officer if he would teach me to shoot a revolver. He took me to a gun range and while there I also got a chance to clearly demonstrate rifle proficiency rifle. I can guess the police chief had his troops searching local sand pits for any slugs to match the one forensically extracted from Luther’s brainpan. But I’d long since dug those up and disposed of those physical proofs: my rifle had been carefully tucked away in a very safe place since the day that it was used.”

“Honestly Scott,” Belinda looked up from her writing, “while on the one hand what you’re saying sounds like it may theoretically work, I just can’t see any reality in it.”

“That’s because you’re still clinging to an untruthfully optimistic state-of-mind your reciprocal blindness has instilled. I was psychologically targeting the deeper truth that’s hidden underneath a policeman’s outward persona. I purposely let slip more hints of my guilt, but was scrupulously careful to limit clue to one-per-office and to ensure that in a court, they would each be pitifully vulnerable to cross-examination.”

“Please detail that more.”

“So you believe you smelled a hint of Tabasco sauce when he began crying.” Scott mimicked the questions a defense attorney might ask. “Did you check to see if he had recently eaten any hot chicken wings? My subtle tactics were not intended to scoff the officers, or to assert my superior to them, as you may be supposing. I was begging them to take me in, despite my foibles, as they’d accepted Luther with his.”

“It worked?”

“Consider the only options I’d provided. To try me for Luther Wagner’s murder, they would each have to take the stand and offer only unsubstantiated opinions. Without any actual evidence, the case would be shaky so the only way to swing the jury to a conviction would be to supply a strong enough motive. The only one they had was the horrific family violence I had endured and to use that one, they would have to besmirch the memory of their slain comrade, as well as to confess they had suspected Luther of being an abuser but were negligent. Arresting, or even openly suspecting me would hurt them just as much or more than it harmed me.”

“I can’t envision investigators proudly racing into the prosecutors office to present that case file.”

“Another option was to brutally handle the matter internally. I could’ve committed suicide like my mother did, died of some accidental fluke or simply disappeared like Jimmy Hoffa. That last one would’ve been the worst for them because each time my picture was featured on a milk carton, it would be a shameful reminder of how they took the cowardly way out.”

“It sounds like a lose or lose situation—for both sides.”

“Fortunately, reciprocal blindness provided a solution that favored almost everyone. I had done my utmost to foster strong bonds with both the individual officers and the department as a unit. For one thing, I performed my murder only a few months after my seventeenth birthday, at a time when I was socially vulnerable. I couldn’t collect the insurance money yet, because I was underage, but I was somewhat too old any realistic foster care. I casually commented on my difficult financial situation and the whole department galvanized and they turned out like troopers for me.”

“How so?”

“Some guys helped me with yard sales to liquidate my old scuba gear and Luther’s pilfered merchandise. The officers who actually worked me with the sales got the rest and their families to be my customers and the junk disappeared like magician’s rabbits. I faked some pensiveness over a few items like my scuba mask, fins and scuba equipment as if these held sentimental value and complete scuba package went to the very best of new homes. The detachment itself helped me through the rough time with grants from a pool of collected graft called the benevolent fund.”

“Something is still missing.” Belinda remarked. “But I can’t put a finger on it.”

“Comradeship.” Scott supplied the key element. “In my talking with the guys, each walked away with the impression that my life’s calling was to be one of them. Then they started empathizing with my predicament with Luther, not through his eyes, but along with mine. The overall thought that circulated in the locker-room was that I was bravely trying to maintain the department’s untarnished image, despite what I was forced to do in order to survive. They realized that someone like Luther would not have willingly passed the torch of next generation policing to me: I had to take it from his dead fingers. Then when Mr. Han D. Scapegoat conveniently showed up and had the murder’s tail pinned to his donkey rump, I knew I was in the clear.”

“That ending isn’t enough.” The reporter reviewed the end section of her notes. “It needs to finish with a human element of some kind.”

“The last words the detachment commander said might fit well.” Scott mused. “I had turned eighteen and finally received the insurance money. I was eager to go away but I needed a plausible excuse. I intimated to the Chief that I was thinking of trying out for competitive swimming.”

“What did he say? Give it to me word for word.”

“Son,” Scott even dropped his voice an octave to impersonate the older man, “after you’ve grabbed your fistful of Olympic gold, your job will be waiting. When I retire, I expect to find your scrawny butt parked in my vacated chair.”

“Fabulous!” Belinda cheered. “A twisted murder plot where the wrong guy takes the blame, all the characters know it and still it has a heartwarming ending.”

“The house sold soon afterward and I bought a one-way bus ticket to the sea, where I signed up for scuba training and invested in a complete scuba gear package.”[/private_Chevron]

I Live In My Scuba Gear – Chapter One

Warning: This story contains some fairly explicit sexual depictions

“You won gold in the back stroke, breast stroke, freestyle and the butterfly,” Belinda Lyle asked, “but you didn’t compete in the four by one hundred relay.  Why not?  That could’ve given you a fifth gold.”

“Just because.”  Scott Wagner answered offhandedly.  He was more interested in toweling off after a recreational session that had included all of his four swimming disciplines.

“Some of your teammates have expressed displeasure at your refusal swim with them.”  Belinda trailed along as he walked towards the showers.  “They feel that with your speed in anchor, they would’ve placed first instead of sixth.”

“They should’ve just swum faster.”  The Olympic star went into the locker room.

“May we talk afterwards?”  Her request bounced off his back unanswered and she watched him disappear into the men’s change room.  The last thing she saw was the sentence ‘I live in my scuba gear’, tattooed across his shoulders.

“I should’ve mentioned that his time in the four by one hundred distance I just saw might’ve been gold if he had performed the relay alone.”  She muttered aloud after consulting her stopwatch.

The reporter strolled around to the pool lobby entrance to the men’s change room door.  She jotted down the three sentences the sport star has uttered and then she looked at them.

“I can’t use these in a story.”  She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and jotted down his tattooed sentence.  ‘I live in my scuba gear.’   Her eyes lost focus on the page as she mentally reviewed the reasons that brought her here.

Scott Wagner was a swimming sensation.  He had suddenly appeared at an Olympic qualifying swim meet and had vastly outstripped his competition to win a berth.  At the world games, he had left all the other swimmers in his wake on the way to gold in each event he had entered.  Sports reporters from around the globe clambered to speak with him but he shrugged them all off.

“Getting him to talk with me would give my reporting career the boost that I need.”  She crossed her knees and adjusted the material of her knee length plaid skirt.  That with a white shirt and her auburn hair arranged in pigtails gave her the appearance of a schoolgirl doing a homework assignment.  Other female sports journalists had tried almost every variety of looks to try to entice an interview with this elusive star.

“You’re still here?”  Scott emerged suddenly and saw her touching up her makeup.

“Of course I am.”  Belinda tucked away her compact.  “I want to speak with you.”

“For the record no doubt.  But now is not a very good time because I’m hungry.”

“I’ll buy you dinner,” she blurted, “and we can chat informally.”

The Olympic swimming sensation stopped and scrutinized her.  He wasn’t drawn to her teen costume but it did lend an air of desperation, as if she would do anything.

“Can you keep your notebook in your bag while we eat?”

“Certainly!”  Belinda almost swallowed her bubblegum.  She would just make sure that she could find a sly moment to switch on her digital voice recorder.

…

“This is nice.”  Belinda glanced around the upscale restaurant set on a seaside quay.  Internally she cringed at a thought of how much the bill would amount to.  So far she had not gotten anything from him.  In the taxi, he had been quiet as a Greek statue—as well as his classic physique being as sexually appealing as one too.”

“I like the sea.”  His gaze was on the sun setting into the aquatic horizon.  The yellow orb was already half submerged and with the golden reflection pointing directly at them, it looked like a comet from the earth streaking back into space.  “I wish I could be underwater at the exact place where the sun is splashing down.”

“That would be rather warm for my tastes.”  Her cheeks reddened as if flash burnt by the reflected ray because it suddenly seemed to Belinda that her perspective was off center.  Normally the spear of sunlight on the water should’ve aimed directly at her eyes but this one was slightly off and it was pointing towards the Olympic star.

“I suppose so.”  Scott smiled for the first time since their meeting.

“You like scuba diving?”  She found his smile enigmatic and yearned to find out what was behind his standoffish nature.  “Your life in scuba gear tattoo was a clue.”

“Scuba gives me the gills that I can’t find otherwise.”

“Then your tattoo means—.”  Belinda had to break off her sentence because a waiter had hustled over with menus.  She silently growled at the man’s efficiency at such an inopportune moment when she seemed to have found a juicy topic to explore.

“What would you like to drink?”  The waiter asked.

“Just water for me.”  Scott said.

“I’ll take a glass of red wine.”  Belinda had briefly considered having only the same as him but since she had a tough job ahead in cracking his nut, she felt that a small bracer was needed.

“Actually,” Scott handed his liquor menu back to the waiter, “red wine sounds good.”

“Let’s make it a shared carafe then.”  Belinda smirked.  A little social lubricant might oil up his tongue.  She regretted not ordering tequila shooters instead.

“You only feel your life is complete when you’re in the water?”  She tried to bring the talk back to the interrupted topic.  “So you’re living in your scuba gear.”

“I guess so.”  Scott’s words were noncommittal and a slightly perplexed face showed that his thoughts had traveled away from the sunset discussion.

“When did you first aspire to be a competitive swimmer?”  She tried another tack.

“Well,” he paused while taking a tiny sip of wine, “I never aspired to that.”

“As a child,” Belinda took a gulp of her drink, “did you spend much time swimming?”

“Actually,” he seemed to be thinking of a good response, “yes.”

‘Damn you to Hell!’  Belinda internally cursed him and was tempted to up and slap him as well.  Wagner was cruelly teasing her with his hesitations, only to squash her attempts with non-expanded answers.

“Did your father coach you?”

“No.”

Belinda took another big swallow of wine and then topped her glass back up.  With her spending ten words to elicit only one from him, this wasn’t turning out to be much of an interview.  After a few more questions that gained only an affirmative or a negative, she stopped trying.  She sat in silence, trying to think of a way to breach his walls and finished her second glass of wine while waiting for the main course.

“Excuse me,” the waiter had returned unexpectedly empty handed, “but some of the kitchen staff were wondering if they could get your autograph.”

“Send them out.”  Scott offered and the waiter scurried off.

“I’ll use the washroom while you’re busy.”  The young woman rose from her seat.

“Please comb out your pigtails so it looks like I’m dining with an adult.  I don’t want the scandal rags saying that I’m going out with underage girls.”

…

Belinda Lyle found her way to the ladies room through moisture welling up in her liquid brown eyes.  When there, she examined her face and watched a big tear trace a black mascara trail down her left cheek.

“Why did I think I could pry open his mental oyster shell when nobody else could?”  She asked her reflection but it didn’t reply.  She didn’t see her image as the raving beauty that some of the other girl reporters were but she felt she had a pleasant look.  She took a tissue and daubed at the dark smear on her freckle-strewn cheek.  Belinda then pulled out the elastic bands from her hair and combed her mid-back length hair.  ‘I look frumpy now.’  She thought.  Without the pigtails, her schoolgirl look had lost its charm and her one shirttail was untucked.

“This misadventure has just cost me money that I don’t have.”  She recalled the taxi fare being larger than she expected and the bill for the meal would be another pricey hit with nothing to show for it.  She could imagine her successful accountant brother saying ‘it can be written off as a legitimate business expense.’  “Against what?”  She retorted to the fleeting thought.  “I need a work related income to deduct it from.”

Belinda wanted to fix her face but realized that she had left her handbag at the table.  She made do by cleaning the mascara smear and sponging up the tear’s remains.  The aspiring columnist modified her clothing’s impression from ‘schoolgirl’ to ‘tart’ by tying her shirttails to display her midriff and tugging the skirt down to ride low on her hips.  She practiced her bravest smile before leaving the mirror and returning to the disappointing ordeal.

…

The people surrounding him looked at her oddly: then they skittered away.

“I’m not sure if that’s better,” Scott smiled again when commenting on her adjusted look, “or worse for my reputation.”

“Are you planning,” Belinda didn’t know him well enough to accurately read his face, so she equated his expression to smugness, “to repeat your amazing performance at the next Olympics?” 

Internally, she vowed to somehow shove that condescending look right back down his throat: Belinda Lyle would do whatever it took to wrest what she wanted from him.

“No.”

“Why are you so reticent with the media?”  She had noted that the dishwashers and cooks had been beaming, indicating that the swimming star had been genial.

“Because I only tell the truth, and that’s not what the sports writers want to hear.  It’s also not what they seem to believe their insipid readers are interested in either.”

“And you haven’t memorized your handbook of ‘win one for the Gipper’ platitudes.”  The verbal exchange had happened so unexpectedly that Belinda didn’t realize that this was actually something she could use, until it was finished.  But then, she was stuck for a way to prolong the full sentence conversation.

“Nor will I.”  Scott effectively terminated the verbal thread.

The meal arrived and the talk was confined to bland remarks on the food’s flavor and requests to ‘pass the salt’.  Belinda finished several more glasses of wine.  She finished the whole beaker by herself because the swimmer hadn’t touched his glass after that one first sip.

“If you’re not going to drink that,” the girl reporter indicated his glass with a glance, “may I have it?”  This nearly valueless meal was costing her plenty and she resolved to at least get a glow from it.  She was already feeling somewhat tipsy.

Scott Wagner wiped the corners of his mouth while she drank his wine.  Then he set his napkin on his plate and watched her savor the final drops.

“Will we,” he set his both elbows on the table and leaned towards her, “have sex?”

“Why—?”  Stunned by the query, Belinda couldn’t quickly compose an appropriately indignant reply, so the lonely word was left hanging as a blunt question.

“Because that will be the price of the insightful interview you’re so anxious for.”

Belinda Lyle’s head spun with the effects of the alcohol and from a conflicting swirl of her thoughts and emotions.  The swimmer’s expressionless eyes were those of Satan as he waited for her to sign away her immortal soul.  The inner demon of her ambition and the angel of her conscience scratched, bit and eye gouged one another.  The internal fight’s non-impartial referee seemed to be her body—that suddenly gave a favorable gush of hormones in response to her admiration of his physique.  Then in the midst of her turmoil, the host presented the check on a silver platter and she fumbled out her credit card.

“Yes.”  After a very long pause the girl scrawled her blood ink onto Lucifer’s contract.  The sales slip arrived and she signed it without noticing the amount.  Scott took her by the elbow and guided her wordlessly outside to catch a cab.

…

“Have you propositioned any of the other female media?”  Belinda whispered when they were nestled together in the taxi’s back seat.

“You already know the answer to that one.”  He intoned.  “And from here forward, all I expect to hear from you are intelligent and purposeful questions.”

“Agreed.”  Belinda thought for a spell.  ‘Yes, it would’ve quickly become public news if this were his normal pickup routine.’  “I do have a question that other journalists have continually asked without receiving a satisfactory reply from you.  Why didn’t you compete in the four-by-one hundred relay event?”

“I’m not a team player.”  Scott spoke softly with his lips next to her ear, to keep the driver from overhearing.  The warm breath of his words fluttered her shimmering hair slightly and he felt her quiver from the pleasurable vibrations on the nape her neck.  “Water polo is a team sport and that’s why I don’t play it, even though I swim well enough to excel at that game.”

“You were accepted onto a nation’s Olympic t-e-a-m,” she stretched the word out, “and that gave you an obligation that you didn’t meet.”

“I won a berth on an Olympic squad on the basis of my having swum qualifying heats faster than anyone else the nation could field and I then proved my merit by taking first place in every event that I entered.  Had I considered swimming a team sport, I wouldn’t have tried out, for the same reason that I don’t go out for water polo.”

“What’s wrong with team sports?”  The taxi driver asked over his shoulder.

“If one enjoys playing in or watching a team sport, then nothing is wrong with them. But I prefer individual sports where my own performance is all I need to rely on.  The relay event bastardizes the solo pursuit of competitive swimming to create a mockery of a team endeavor.  The end product is a farce that returns false results.”

“Four swimmers each race one quarter of the total distance and the combined time is measured against the other teams.”  She said.  “How could that be a false result?”

“Your mind’s speculation suggested to you that the a relay is not entirely valid but instead of listening to your own reasoned evaluation, you allow a politically correct view to take prominence in your altered opinion.  So you are defending an untruth that your inner psyche knows is complete and utter bullshit.”

“Competitive mind-reading isn’t an Olympic event yet.”  Belinda scoffed.  “So forget about trying to win gold in it.”

“For no other reason than my own enjoyment, I individually swam the equivalent of a 4X100 relay in the pool today.”  Scott reminded.  “When I finished that, I displayed no signs of having employed my maximum exertion.  To all casual observers, I was just engaging in a recreational swim.  But you weren’t just that passive witness.”

“Your aura-reading nonsense is the only bullshit here and it’s fast getting old.”

“The absurd suggestion of my employing paranormal means to hit so closely to the true mark was your suggestion, not mine.  Like our chauffeur, I’m not deaf.  Through the open change room door, I heard you musing whether my time was sufficiently fast to have won Olympic gold by competing as a one-swimmer team.  And you were correct.  I have done the same distance as the four by 100 relay all by myself—and closely challenged the Olympic winning times.”

“You hear me say that but you’ve obviously misinterpreted my reason for saying so.  You erased the previous records in each of your four events by a wide margin but to do the relay alone, you’d need to swim four tenths of a kilometer in the four strokes at Olympic pace PLUS make up the time that three of those swimmers save in their power starts.  I didn’t actually think you could do it: I was just searching for a pick-up-line to get an interview with you.”

“And in that event, you’ve won your gold.”

Belinda Lyle sucked on her lips to keep from responding.  She felt far worse than a whore.  Prostitution wasn’t an Olympic event because a bed shouldn’t be a spectator venue.  But each publically read column she now produced would be a result of her having taken his shaft in barter for his words, and people could view it as so too.

“Okay.”  Scott noted her tight mouth and smiled.  “Whether you believe I could do it is moot.  News editors aren’t going to purchase an article outlining a reporter’s view.  What I suppose to be true comprises the marketable story, regardless of whether my belief is intrinsically sound or not.”

“I do concur with that assessment.”

“Then let’s finish this line of discussion for a Pulitzer caliber capstone on Belinda Lyle’s first piece on the previously evasive, but recently acquired, Scott Wagner.”

“Let’s do.”  Belinda made a deliberate show of taking out her notepad and pencil.

“While Scott Wagner has an unshakable faith in his ability to competitively swim the 4X100 relay all by himself,” he spoke as if reading her prose, “then he can staunchly assert that three lesser teammates would’ve only served to slow down his finish.  He can further envision how his excellent individual performance would be harnessed to elevate inferior swimmers to gold medal stature they were incapable of attaining on their own personal merits.  To support his position, Scott Wagner has delivered a statement.  ‘My would-be teammates may carp about how they might’ve taken first if I had joined them but without me, they only placed sixth.  In baseball, a pitcher is not able to throw a ball, and then run down and catch it too.  He needs a teammate and even if the catcher is not as talented as the pitcher, together they are a battery.  A relay in any athletic discipline is not a team event.  It is just a number of athletes lumped unnaturally together, who really should be prevailing or failing according to their own personal abilities – and drive.’  Period, and end of story.”

“The decision on where to place the punctuation is mine alone.”

“Granted.”

“And do you realize how conceited that article makes you sound?”  In the confines of her mind, Belinda became conscious of a demarcation line she had just stepped over.  It was too late for her to change her mind.  She had just accepted his first payment in currency they had agreed was cash and her body now owed him sexual gratification.

“So be it.”  Scott shrugged.  “In any adventure requiring a choice between looking good or being loyal to my perception of truth, I will always opt for the latter.”

“Then in our team,” Belinda found herself saying, “my part is pitching the questions and your job is to bat back the answers, with as much spin and relish as you care to put on them.  I’ll either field them and play them back to you, or allow them to float from the ballpark—at my discretion.”