Russell Twyce

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]