Circle Foolery

“I’m surprised you aren’t handling the job yourself,” I said. This was what Walter Gardner’s wife, Marian, did herself. There were three major artists in the mid-Atlantic region painting murals on walls in the league being discussed here—Kurt Hedley, from Williamsburg, and Marian Gardner and me in the Washington, D.C., area. The Gardners of the Gardner Hotel group lived here in Richmond. The immediate job under discussion was a wall of a room in the Gardner’s Richmond house, but this would lead to one in their coastal South Carolina house near Beaufort. But Marian was just now telling me that that was connected to even more work. The chain was going international.

“You haven’t heard that definitively yourself, Hon,” my wife, Ava. who was standing with us on New Year’s Eve on the ballroom of the Gardner Hotel Richmond, said. “It’s a big secret until April.”

Marian, standing next to my wife, said, “The larger job is more than I want to devote time to. It will extend to new hotels being built internationally. I have all I can handle—or want to handle in the Washington area”—and here she turned her eyes to my wife, who worked for a major lobbyist in the nation’s capital, “in D.C. So, Walt is putting the job out on bids.”

“On bids? I thought you said he wanted to keep it in the region. If so there are really only the two of us,” I said.

“Three. You’re forgetting Kurt Hedley,” she said, a look of amusement in her eyes. At fifty-two, Marian Gardner was still a beautiful woman. She stacked up well in fitness and youth appearance to my wife, Ava, at twenty-five, and me, at twenty-six. Of course, I well knew how she kept fit. She had an excellent, and quite hunky physical trainer in Steve Baylor. That’s how Ava knew Marian and how we’d come to be here, in the Gardner Hotel Richmond ballroom on New Year’s Eve at the invitation of the Gardners. They shared a personal trainer. Although Marian and I were in the same business in the Washington area, we competed for clients, so we hadn’t become the bosom buddies Ava and she had. Baylor was as sexy as any of us and there were rumors of Marian and Steve being lovers. I knew that wasn’t true, though—and I knew the reason it wasn’t.

“I’m happy to forget Kurt Hedley,” I said. “And I’m very pleased not to see him here tonight.”

Marian’s laugh was of the tinkling variety. “Nonetheless Kurt is being considered for the job too. I can lead Walt to you, but you have to sell yourself to him. Kurt couldn’t make it here this evening. That gives you an opportunity to steal a march, love. Do make the most of it.”

“I don’t know why you are being so kind to me on this,” I said.

“This is a big job, most of it abroad now, it appears. It will keep you out of my hair in Washington.”

Later I was to reflect on this and saw the truthfulness in it if not exactly in the way I was understanding it here and now.

“If you are going to make headway in this, you will have to speak with Walt tonight. I’ll leave you now and steer him back to you at some point.” After she said this, Marian gave Ava a smile and wandered off.

Left alone with Ava, which we rarely allowed to happen, she hissed, “This would be a huge contract, Jaime. We need this. Don’t screw this up. Give the man whatever he wants to get him to choose you.” And, with that, she was off as well.

My relationship with my wife was mostly a mutual camouflage one. She liked men and women alike and I mostly liked men. We were both in businesses where a straight marriage was advantageous, and putting our two incomes together made it a very sweet business arrangement marriage. Ava’s income with the lobbyist was more assured than mine was. She didn’t really have to tell me how important this contract was. We were friendly enough with each other—when there were no financial uncertainties running. We both wanted to keep it that way. We had driven down to Richmond separately for this party. We wanted to show a unified front here, but she only had time to dip in and out, she said. She’d leave for Washington in her own car before the ball dropped at midnight.

When she left, I received a shock, when an extremely handsome and fit twenty-eight-year old slid in beside him by the potted palms at the edge of the ballroom’s dance floor.

“Can I have this dance?” Steve Baylor, my wife’s physical trainer, asked. “You seem to be free of the birds now.”

“Steve,” I exclaimed in surprise—and not fully in pleasure. I hardly needed the dimension he represented just now, while I was absorbing what exactly my wife was conveying to me. What did she think I’d have to do to win Walter Gardner over on this painting contract? Steve was just another troublesome wrinkle at the moment. “I’m surprised to see you at this party?”

“Why? Because this is a party for the high flyers and I’m just a house slave?”

“Something like that,” I said, both of us knowing that Steve wasn’t just a house slave.

“I’m down here in Richmond for a couple of months. Walter Gardner wants some toning up too, and Marian knows who’s paying the bills, so she’s released me for a while. Gardner invited me to the party. I think he’s still seeing me as a ticket out and wants to be on my good side. He’s certainly paying me enough.”

“His ticket out?”

“You didn’t hear it from me, but I think he’s tired of Marian. There’s a prenup and he can only get out of it by being able to show that someone else is in bed with her.”

“You?” I asked. The tone of my voice indicated how preposterous that was. But to the world, I suppose it didn’t seem all that preposterous. “Because of the rumors of you and Marian?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. But you know how unlikely that is. I understand you’ll be coming down to Richmond for several days to do a wall at the Gardner’s house.”

“Maybe,” I said. “There’s a possibility of a large contract and that would be part of the testing for the contract. Nothing’s been set in motion on that, though.”

“I’ll put in a good word for you on that,” he said. “It would be good to have you here in Richmond for old time’s sake.”

Old time’s sake. He couldn’t have been any more direct than that. I should have taken that as good reason not to show interest in a Gardner Hotel project. But the project was just too important not to go after. And I was weak in other aspects as well.

“Ah, it looks like Marian has W in tow now and is bringing him this way. I’d best fade into the potted plants.” And with that, he did just that.

Walter Gardner was a “too big for life” character. He was, in fact, towering and large of frame—a commanding presence in any group completely beyond being a “not-to-be-ignored” hotel magnate. At fifty-five he was a lion of a man—full maned, six-and-a-half feet tall, and hefty, if not exactly obese. He was rugged-featured handsome and wore a tuxedo well while exuding the aura that he would be just as impressive looking in hunting gear or on a construction site. He was definitely a hunter, and, although we hadn’t met before, I immediately understood that I was prey to him.

He was a touchy-feely sort of man, touching me here and there, drawing me close to chat, after Marian did introductions and wafted off.

He didn’t waste time or mince words. We quickly got into discussions on what a painting contract with him would entail.

“In February, there would be a test. There’s a room in my Richmond house where bidders would each cover a wall with a mural. You’d be expected to live in when you do it. Marian has already painted one wall. The others would be done to coordinate with that one. Whoever wins the bigger bid would do a wall at my South Carolina house too to mark the deal and before a party I’ll be having there on April 1st to announce going international. The Doha hotel is already under construction. The party would announce that and the artist would then go off to Doha to do the public-area murals there. You would, of course, have to be free to travel internationally. A signature of the hotels would be murals by a single artist.”

Foreign travel. Murals at multiple foreign high-end hotels. My mind was aswirl with images of extended travel abroad and dollar signs.

“Is that it? All of what would be required in the selection process?” I asked.

“No, Mr. Stuart. Jaime,” he said, putting a hand on my forearm and bringing his face in close, penning me under his control with his steel-gray eyes. “No, that isn’t the only test to winning this contract.”

* * * *

The presidential suite at the Gardner Hotel Richmond was very nice, with views from the living room windows of Capitol Hill straight out and of the entrance court of the hotel straight down some twelve floors. There were more than twelve floors in the hotel, but some floor names were made up to avoid there being a thirteenth floor.

Gardner excused himself and went into the adjoining bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “Take off your jacket and tie—and anything else you want.” He laughed and disappeared.

When he reappeared, he’d taken what he said seriously. He was wearing a white, silk robe and nothing else. He’d been gone ten minutes. I thought of the time, because I noticed him growing and hardening under the robe. I didn’t know how long it took Viagra to harden a man up. Maybe I’d get some idea of that. He opened the hotel refrigerator and took out a bottle of Champagne.

“The sofa, I think,” he said. It did look like the most comfortable place. The chairs looked like they were made more for style than comfortable. One sleek Italian chaise-like chair looked like you could sleep in it, though. It was curvy, fitting close to the body in repose in its back and leg support. There was a fireplace facing the sofa, with a white sheepskin rug between sofa and that. A wall TV hung above the fireplace.

He knew how to use the remotes, and, in one prolonged motion had the gas logs in the fireplace going, the TV on a New Year’s Eve program but with the volume off, smooth jazz background music, and atmospheric lighting.

We’d left the party by 11:15. He was the host, but it didn’t seem like anyone was going to miss him. They certainly weren’t going to miss me. Ava already was gone. I didn’t see Marian anywhere. Steve was standing by the potted plants giving me an amused look while I was talking with Walter Gardner and the big man was telling me what was what.

“Give him whatever he wants,” was what was ringing in my ears from what my wife had said before she drifted off. If that wasn’t license to roam, I don’t know what was.

With less than half a glass each left of the champagne, we toasted the coming in of the New Year on the sofa with a deep kiss. I was reclined against one of the sofa arms, and Gardner was on top of me, his silk robe gaping open and his flag up at full staff. A half hour. It hadn’t taken more than that for the Viagra or whatever to give him a full erection.

My tux shirt was on the floor by the sofa, no mean feat, as it was an old-style shirt, with studs rather than buttons and cufflinks. He seemed to enjoy ridding me of those. My suspenders lay on top of the bunched-up shirt. My trousers were on the floor at the other end of the sofa. His lips went from the kiss to my nipples to my navel, into my pubes, covering my cock, and then to my balls and hole.

At 12:10 we were fucking, Gardner on top of me on the sofa. The fucking moved to the rug in front of the fireplace, using the missionary position, when him knelt between my thighs, my knees hooked on his hips, and him hovering over me, palming my pecs and thrusting, thrusting, thrusting.

His fucking me continued for another half hour but moved to that stylish Italian chaise, being used in a different way than I had imagined. I found it could be used belly down. In following the curves this way, my chest was bowed back, when I raised my arms toward the top edges of the chair, I found there were grips on the edges to hold, and there was a curve that hit my lower belly and jutted my buttocks up in the air. At the middle top of that rise there even was an opening for my cock and balls to dangle below the chair.

This chair was built for the stretched-out doggy fuck. Gardner obviously knew it was and used it that way. The last nearly twenty minutes of the fuck was me stretched out on my belly on the curves of the chair and Gardner crouched over and above me, achieving maximum depth with a hard, enhanced cock.

He was done not long after 1:00 a.m. on the first day of the new year. He padded off for a shower and I assumed we were down here and the first test for qualifying to paint mural on his hotels all across the world had been finished.

I was wrong, though. Yes, he wanted to fuck me, but he wanted to be fucked too—and he wanted a bed companion for the night. When he was finished in the shower, he had me take on too. Then he had me lay on my back on the bed and he climbed on my hips, saddled himself up, descended his ass on my erection, which he’d worked up with his hand and mouth, and rode me into the new day.

I woke with him in the bathroom and room service delivering coffee and croissants to the small dining table in the living room. I poured a cup of coffee and went to one of the living room windows, a full-height one, and watched the sun rising above the Roman roof of the State Capitol building. I was too late to catch the sunrise on the horizon and all of the colors it would have brought on this first day of the year.

Looking down I saw a small, navy-blue Mercedes SUV at the hotel entrance that looked like the one my wife, Ava, drove. I then was surprised to find out it was Ava’s car. She came out of the hotel, got in the SUV, and drove off. She had told me she was returning to Washington the previous night. Why was she only leaving now?

Shortly after I recognized the physical trainer, Steve Baylor, come out of the hotel and walk toward the government district. Then a Lexus convertible drove up and Marian Gardner got in and drove off. That was another surprise. The Gardners lived here, in the exclusive Windsor Farm area south along the James River. But I guess it made sense after a New Year’s Eve party in a hotel you owned just to spend the night there. It was what Walter Gardner had done.

And, speaking of which, he was behind me, just in his silken robe again. And his erection was protruding from the garment again. The Viagra wouldn’t have lasted from the previous night, but he was Viagra hard and enhanced again and he was breathing hard on my throat, his hands, after taking the coffee cup from my hands and placing it on a side table, unsnapping the snap on my sleeping shorts, which fell to the carpet, and one palming my belly while the other glided up to find and tease a nipple.

I was on my back on the rug in front of the fireplace, my ankles on his shoulders, his robe gaping completely open to expose his hirsute, muscular, slightly paunched torso, and him on his knees between my thighs. I arched my back and extended my arms out in a sacrificial position as he entered, entered, entered me and began to plow.

Nothing like a morning fuck after a night of fucking.

How long did a Viagra hard last, I wondered. I’d heard at least four hours. Oh MY GOD!

“Oh, shit. Oh, FUCK. Shit, you’re big!”

Give him what he wants.

Happy New Year.

* * * *

Mid-February and I could almost see all the way down to the James River through the defoliated trees from the parking pad off the Gardners’ circular drive of their Windsor Farm mansion west of downtown Richmond. I hadn’t seen either of the Gardners since New Year’s. I’d hardly seen my wife, Ava, in that time either. We’d both been very busy, and she was traveling in Europe at the moment.

I had received a note from Walter Gardner’s office that I was in the running for the hotel murals contract so that I should so ahead with the testing for that. I had past Gardner’s first test. I had endured his sexual mastery in his Richmond hotel suite on New Year’s Eve going into New Years day. I hadn’t heard from the man himself since then, and, although he’d fucked me at great length, he hadn’t salivated for me enough to call on me for follow up.

If he had summoned me again, would I have gone to him? I don’t know. He was all consuming. I didn’t know if I wanted to be owned that exclusively. I can’t say that he didn’t satisfy me sexually, though.

I didn’t know now whether I really wanted his international hotel project for the same reason. It quite possibly could destroy my Washington business. It would be all-consuming. I’d depend on Walter Gardner for my income. Perhaps his wife was wiser not to have included herself in the running. Maybe she’d be taking over all of my Washington area clients and I’d be left with not just pleasing Gardner with my artistic work but continuing to please him in bed—and on sofas and on the floor—sexually.

It was inertia and, perhaps, my wife’s admonishment ringing in my ear to go for the fortune Gardner’s project represented that kept me in the hunt. Regardless, mid-February and I was here to paint a wall in the Gardner’s upstairs foyer to compete for the prize.

My mood was immediately soured as I pulled into the parking apron. I recognized the white Cadillac Escalade already parked there. My competition, Kurt Hedley from Williamsburg, was still here. He was supposed to have finished painting his wall mural and to have left before I did.

Another surprise came as I rang the doorbell. “Steve,” I exclaimed as the door opened. Marian’s physical trainer—my wife’s as well—Steve Baylor had answered the door. He had told me that he’d be spending some time in Richmond helping to get Gardner back in shape while Marian was on an idea-gathering trip to Italy, But that had slipped my mind.

It wasn’t Steve I was thinking about at the moment, either. “Kurt Hedley appears still to be here,” I said.

“He couldn’t help it,” Steve answered. “He’s finished all but the cleanup, but he got the call.”

“The call?” I asked.

Steve just smiled at me and said, “Come with me. I’ll show you the room and wall you need to paint. Then we can go amuse ourselves until Hedley leaves, if you like.”

I knew what he meant by amusing ourselves. He and I had had it on for a couple of months before he started working with Marian and Ava. I wasn’t pleased when he started working with them, but I liked to think that it was all over between Steve and me by then. Steve wasn’t the kind to give up on his history, though. He’d been at me to let him cover me again ever since. I was afraid he might tell Ava about our prior affair if I cold cocked him, so I’d been stringing him along on possibilities. The more I did so, though, the more I realized how much I had liked him and how he did me better than anyone else had, ever. So it wasn’t all stringing him along. I was getting closer to “let’s do it all again.”

But he was my wife’s physical trainer. That was awkward.

He was right about Hedley being finished all but the cleanup. The Windsor Farm house was English Tudor. It had, in fact, like a few other houses in the neighborhood, like the nearby Agecroft Hall, been made up of a medieval manor house dismantled in England and transported to the States for reassembly. The upper hall was a good-sized room from which wings went off into the bedroom areas. The master bedroom was entered directly from the hall.

The set theme for the wall the entrants were to paint in competition had been set by Marian Gardner. She’d picked a dreamy rendition of the Lorelei cliffs of legend on the Rhine River. It was clear to me that she was a master muralists and my imagination started to run on a painting on the adjoining wall assigned to me that would contrast and complement hers well. I certainly could do better than Hedley had done, I thought. His work was inferior to hers and, even though I wasn’t sure now that I wanted this contract, I was a competitive artist. My rendering would be superior to his and as little inferior to Marian’s as I could manage.

Hedley indeed, was finished painting, although I could see there were areas of paint that hadn’t completely dried yet. I resisted the urge to smudge the wet paint. This was going to be an honest competition. All that was left was the drop cloth plus several closed cans of paint. It just needed to be picked up and hauled away.

So, where was Hedley then, I thought.

Becoming aware of sounds coming from the master bedroom suite, I realized what Steve had meant about Hedley having been made to answer the call before he left.

I was drawn to the door into the master bedroom, which was open enough that I could see the bed. What I saw was the familiar figure of Walter Gardner, in his white silk robe, which had fallen off his left shoulder and was just bunched up on his right side to show that he was naked under it. He was on his knees, but leaning back, his beefy buttocks almost touching the backs of his calves. It was clear there was a man whose buttocks rested in the tops of Gardner’s thighs. His legs were raised and spread, held out by Gardner’s grips under his knees. I could tell Gardner was fucking him hard and deep by the clutching and release of the dominator’s buttocks cheeks.

Kurt Hedley was making sounds that indicated he was been royally fucked. I saw that I wasn’t the only one who was being subjected to cock play as part of the testing for this contract. And I well knew that Walter Gardner was capable of delivering a royal fuck.

I would have turned away, but Steve came up close behind me. One hand went to my throat, cupping my chin as he buried his lips in the hollow of my neck. The other hand palmed my belly, but as we stood there, continuing to watch Gardner fucking Hedley, Steve’s hand went down to unzipping me, pulling my cock out, and stroking it.

“Come away with me,” Steve whispered in my ear. “Hedley will be gone in a bit and you can start your work on the wall then. For now, let it be us. It’s been too long since it was us.”

He was right. It had been too long since it was us.

I went with him to his bedroom, where we undressed each other, stood and rocked against each other as he reached between us and frotted our cocks while he was kissing me from the lips, down to the hollow of my throat, and down to my nipples.

He was a physical trainer. He had a magnificent body. He fucked me bent over his bed, mounted on me from above and behind. He turned me on my back, held my legs raised and spread, and fucked me in a missionary position. He lay on his back, with me stretched out on top of him, looking up at the ceiling, and being fucked in the crab position.

Two hours later, I returned to the upper foyer where I was to paint a wall. The drop cloth and cans of paint at Hedley’s wall were gone. I looked out a window. Hedley’s Escalade was gone as well.

I went to my van and pulled out what I needed to start sketching on the wall. The image of what I wanted to paint—extending the Rhine River bank beyond Marian’s mural, to include a fairy castle on a hill overlooking a village at the water’s edge, with a toll tower on an island in the center of the river—was already in my mind.

I brought my supplies up to the room and started to sketch on the wall.

I heard him call from his bedroom. He was the master. I had to answer the call, just as Kurt Hedley had had to do—which had made him late in finishing and leaving.

Gardner’s white silk robe had fluttered to the floor below the bed. He was naked. Steve’s work with him had reaped benefits. He was trimmer, more in shape. I could say he wasn’t desirable. He was a forceful cocksman.

I lay, shoulder blades and cheek to bed, my butt resting on his thighs, Gardner grasping my legs under my knees, holding my legs spread and raised, as he rocked forward, mining my passage deep, fucking me, fucking me.

My gaze went to the door into the room from the hall I was painting. Steve was standing there, cock out, stroking it, watching me being fucked.

This job was going to take longer than I had estimated it would.

Before I finished up the wall at Windsor Farms, though, I had made a decision that, although I’d continue bidding on this contract, I wouldn’t commit to foreign trips to work on international hotels or continue to warm Gardner’s bed and go under his sway. This was prompted by Steve and I rekindling what we’d once had. I pledged that I’d leave Ava and when he could separate himself from working for her and Marian Gardner, he’d move in with me in Washington, D.C., and we’d try to make a go of it as a committed couple.

My life was starting to come together. I already felt free of Ava, realizing how hard our life as a lie had weighed on me.

If I won the bid, I’d be painting another wall at the Gardner’s South Carolina house where it would coordinate with his announcement at a party there on April 1st of the hotel chain’s expansion abroad. It would be a fortuitous date. Even if I won the contract, I would make it an April Fool’s joke on him that he thought he could bring me entirely under his sway. I would waltz away from him with Steve.

* * * *

Gardner was on his back, with me stretched out top of him, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom in the South Carolina house on Spanish Point, in Beaufort, facing the Beaufort River. He put me in a full Nelson, his arms snaking under my pits and his fists locked behind my neck, so I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. His dick was up my passage, providing another point of having me locked down. The face of Phillip Matheson, Gardner’s neighbor, a buzz-cut, squared away man in his early fifties who looked like a Marine colonel because that was exactly what he was—chief of training at the nearby Parris Island Marine training base—loomed in sight above me. He knelt between Gardner’s and my spread legs.

Matheson gave me a smile, ran his hands up my inner thighs, coaxing them more open. I complied, and he took up each leg, one after the other, kissing the inner thighs and hooking my ankles on his shoulders. He hovered over me. I squirmed in Gardner’s embrace, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I whimpered as the Marine officer positioned his cock head at my hole, above where Gardner’s shaft already was rooted.

And then I cried out and writhed and panted hard as the colonel slowly forced his way inside, until he was as buried as Gardner was. He grasped my waist between his hands, and, as Garner held inside me, Matheson fucked me.

Afterward, the two rolled off to either side of me in Gardner’s king-sized bed and snored off to sleep. Neither stirred as I climbed over Gardner and went to the bathroom to clean up, shower, and pull myself together. It wasn’t the first time they’d doubled me—or that each had fucked me solo—since I’d been in Beaufort to paint that wall for Gardner.

I’d won the contract, so I was painting the wall mural for his party on April 1st to announce the expansion of his hotel chain abroad. I’d decided to either limit the contract or give it up. I’d been e-mailing Steve on my plans to leave Ava and for him to move in with me. He’d answered occasionally. He wasn’t much for communications.

The next day was April 1st. I’d just managed to complete the wall mural in the entrance room to the Gardner house party room off the back of his house, with windows on three sides overlooking the Beaufort River. He kept telling people that the mural I was painting was of what they could see if the wall of the house behind it was gone. But that wasn’t what I was painting at all. Marian Gardner had given me a photo of what to paint. It was the view from house, but not one in this climate, and it was of the ocean, not a river. She’d told me to leave it blank in the bottom right corner—that she had some special to paint there for later.

I tried to tell Gardner that the mural wasn’t going to be what he thought it was, but he was so busy with other things, including the party arrangements, that he hadn’t listened to me. I didn’t think he’d even taken a look at what I was painting.

While I was up in the night, I noticed the sensor lights in the auto court outside and had come on. I looked out to see that Marian Gardner’s Lexus convertible was there. I hadn’t realized she was coming down for the party, and I hoped she didn’t come into the master bedroom to find the three of us in the bed. To ensure that didn’t include me, I went to my room rather than back to the bed. When I came into the bedroom, I found the colonel dressing.

“You’re going home?” I whispered.

“Yeah. And Walter tells me he’s leaving right after the party. If you need someplace to stay before you leave, you’re more than welcome to come over to my place.”

“Thanks,” I answered. I knew that would involved party time. I didn’t care. He was a hunk and a half. “Be careful leaving. Mrs. Gardner’s car is outside. I don’t know if Mr. Gardner knew she’d be coming in tonight.”

“Shit,” he said. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go down the back stairs.”

Luckily it was a big old house. It had servants’ stairs at the back.

Garner slept through our conversation. I went to my room and tried to sleep, but couldn’t. A couple of hours later I got up and went to my bathroom, which also overlooked the auto court. I looked out and saw that Marian’s Lexus was gone now.

That was peculiar. The house wasn’t exactly on the beaten path from anywhere to anywhere else that Marian might be going. Anyway, Gardner was expecting to find me in his bed when he woke up and Marian was gone, so I returned to the master bedroom.

When Gardner woke, he obviously did expect me to be there. I was sleeping on my stomach. He rolled toward me and ran his hand over my body. The hand eventually went between my thighs and I spread them for him so that he could pull my cock through and stroke that and play with my balls until I came for him. Then he climbed on top of me and rode my ass to a morning release. He did like his morning sex.

I overheard him in the bathroom practicing a speech he was going to make at the party. There was the announcement part of the hotel chain expanding, but he went on to get personal. I don’t know if he was still working on the speech for the party or one he planned to give his wife separately, but that didn’t reduce the shock value of what he had to say. He said he was using this occasion to tell Marian he had the goods on her and was divorcing her. He named sex partners he had proof she had been enjoying and, shockingly, that these included my wife, Ava. He said he was off to supervise the final construction of the new hotel in Doha, and he gloated that he was taking Marian’s physical trainer, Steve Baylor, with him. He didn’t mention me.

That was a double whammy, and it sent me out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the ground floor. I needed to get out of the house to process what he’d said.

I only got as far as the reception room to the party venue. I saw it as soon as I entered the room, and I knew now what Marian had come and gone in the night. She had filled out the painting I’d done on the wall. In the lower-right quadrant a summer house now appeared. There were three figures in the structure, a three-way fuck scene. Marian and Ava both straddling Steve Baylor. Marian was an expert, swift painter. There was no question who the figures were—or that she knew exactly what they looked like naked, including not only Ava but Steve as well.

Marian had left papers on a nearby table and I lifted and scanned through them with trembling hands. Marian had known Walter was gathering evidence to dump her. She’d stolen a march on him. She had evidence of Walter with men, as well—including me. She’d counter any dirt he came up with. In the meantime, he was to enjoy the mural she had me paint. It wasn’t, of course of the Beaufort house. It was of the one she’d bought on Cape Cod and already partied in with Ava and Steve. They were a threesome, Marian said. They’d live and operate from Cape Cod now.

Well, shit, I thought, as I went upstairs to my room and packed. I’d take up Phillip Matheson’s offer and go to his place. I wouldn’t face off with Gardner. Let him find the wall mural and Marian’s papers himself.

Fuck Walter. Fuck Marian. Fuck Ava. And fuck . . .

Steve. It all revolved around Steve. It had already turned to April 1st. April Fool’s Day. There were more than one—or two, probably—April fools here. It all revolved around Steve. He was being tagged as going in three different directions. There was only one way he could go now, though. The rest of us knew he had been playing the others off. I didn’t even want him anymore.

Of course I was one of the April fools here. I realized and accepted that. Who else, though? Or maybe all of us. I hadn’t heard from him for a couple of weeks. Maybe he’d made fools of us all and had gone in another direction entirely.

But I wouldn’t think of that now. Colonel Matheson had offered me hospitality and he was one hunk of a man. I’d lick my wounds and recover at his house—in his bed. Fuck all of the others.