Chapter 7

“Akimbo”

by James Prudden

Stacy serves as the central hub of a wheel whose spokes are entirely male. She controls three men (maybe more; stay tuned), each with a different role to play. One is of course her husband Henry, who is aware that their marriage is faltering, but who would prefer to stick it out. Nonetheless, the stench of divorce wafts in the air. The most important bond they now share is their son Finn. That glue will hold, at least for a while.

Another is Reid, who has always been interested in Stacy, going all the way back to Darien High, and those years of unrequited interest had only compounded her allure. He knows her well enough not to trust her, but sooner or later, if he gets the chance to pick that fruit, it will be picked, and there will be one slobbery mess eating it up.

And then there is Cavanaugh, a rough-hewn import with an endearing accent but a curious paucity of morals. His squash over the years had kept him in fine shape, which worked well when he and Stacy were busy doing the horizontal rumba, but in the afterglow of love the pillow talk between the two would devolve into schemes. Morals were never a big concern with Stacy either; indeed, the lack thereof was a bit of a turn-on.

Having driven Finn off to a friend’s house after his squash lesson, she suddenly felt a wave of sexual friskiness overtake her, and texted Cavanaugh to see if he could get away for a little extracurricular exercise. Henry was off somewhere desultorily going about his business, distractedly attending to matters of the wallet while continuing to avoid the trouble in his heart.

Which meant the house was free….

Stacy knew Cavanaugh had a long-term habit of sleeping with pretty much whoever he fancied, and so knew that their time together was not really important to him. That was okay with Stacy. A friend-with-benefits arrangement fit her life perfectly, and one of the benefits that they had between them was the ability to scheme big, such as in the suit against Henry. Again, that morals thing was never an issue between Cavanaugh and Stacy.

First on the to-do list was an energetic romp in which both Stacy and Cavanaugh took their athletic selves to calorically intense levels of excitation. Arms and legs akimbo, upside down and over and out, they had practiced their individual preferences enough with one another that they now had developed an efficient sexual choreography that in the end, just half an hour later, left both satisfied and a little spent. Calm ensued for a time.

“You’re the only Kiwi I’ve done it with, Cav; do they all do it like that down there?”

“Yis, my sweetie, yis they do, and we learnt it from the flightless bird itself, cuz kiwis are known as energetic little bastards, and that’s what we are.”

“You are more a lion than a bird, you dog you.”

“I find your metaphors a tad confusing, sweetie. Now, let me ask, when is Sir Silverman coming home; I think I best be on my way, eh?”

“No worries for a while yet. He had a meeting with a house flipper down in Long Beach, so another couple hours I would think,” Stacy said. She smiled, “Listen, I haven’t told you yet, but our little expansion plan is now entering a new phase because I just received word that we are in for a big new order. So, again, here’s the deal: you get your lawyer to hurry up with the suit against Harry, and when things are going your way, propose accepting the property next to the drone company. Henry isn’t stupid, nor is his lawyer: they’d accept title transfer of a dry plot of land out near the desert over a multimillion dollar settlement.”

“And you are saying the land gets written over to me, eh? What if I take all the profits from the sale of my new-found property to Drones R Us, or whatever it’s called, and screw you out of the deal?”

“You wouldn’t do that, you Kiwi bastard. The only screwing you’ll be doing is what we just did. Because you will be the listed partner in a limited partnership, with me in the background, silent. It’ll be a 51%-49% split, with you reaping a 2% reward just for being you. How’s that for a plan?”

“Hey, that’s not what we agreed, though, sweetie. I thought it was all me and you were taking me on faith?”

“Fat chance. I’ve taken you in a lot of ways, but faith ain’t one of them. You’ll make plenty, and for nothing. Trust me, this’ll work, otherwise I’ll have your balls. Plus, you get continued access to this,” she said, flinging off the sheet to expose her still-naked body.

“Yis, I seem to remimba this part, that I do,” he said, burrowing his head into the nape of her neck. But before things got restarted, he stopped. “I sense I have to get out of here,” he said, and got up, flung on his clothes and hopped into his car, a practiced extraction that took all of 2 minutes from start to finish.

And a good thing too, because Henry’s meeting down in Long Beach had been called off before he even got there, and so he had turned around and headed for home. They say rats can sometimes sense danger before it happens, and Cavanaugh was like that.

The cuckold Henry pulled into his driveway not 5 minutes after Cavanaugh had gone, and remained clueless.

Hearing Henry’s car Stacy jumped up and put on her clothes, with plenty of time to spare. She had been thinking about the suit and realized she would have to get Henry to act quickly on it, not let it hang around for months and years, like a bad case of foot fungus. Get him to act on it fast before lawyer bills pile up, and fast enough to take advantage of the adjacent property.

The scheme was perfect, but timing was a big flaw. This had to go fast. She realized that she was in the best position to get Henry to attend to the problem.

She heard a whump downstairs as Henry hurled his briefcase on the kitchen table, as was his practice, and then the clink of his keys, similarly hurled.

“Hello Henry, you’re home early,” Stacy called out as she went downstairs.

“Yes, meeting called off. Where’s Finn?”

“At his friend Jethro’s. He’s having dinner over there. Had a good squash lesson today. You know, Henry, I’ve been thinking about this suit and I’m growing more concerned every day. I think you need to make this go away. Do you realize all the lawyer bills that are going to come your way? This is going to be death by a thousand cuts; this is going to hurt us both, damn it. What is your plan?”

“I have no plan. My plan is to listen to my goddamn lawyer, that’s my plan.”

“Yes, you’ll listen to him at $400 an hour, over and over again, and as far as I’m concerned that’s a shitty plan. We need action, not dithering.”

“I have an appointment tomorrow, I’ll see what he says. I agree, time is important, but we haven’t heard any proposal from the other side, so what am I supposed to do?”

“Tell him to find out what’s on Cavanaugh’s lawyer’s mind. We need to at least know what the starting number is. How much are we gonna lose because of that imbecilic thing you did?”

“That something like that has gone to a lawsuit is the thing that’s so fucking imbecilic. In the old days if someone dissed someone then they had it out: a good argument, maybe a couple of loose teeth. Only thing that happens nowadays is lawyers getting richer. It’s a goddamn crisis.”

“That’s why I say circumvent the damn lawyers and pay him off with something. Anything. I know Cavanaugh, I’m going to ask him next time I see him at the club. He teaches Finn again on Thursday. I’m going to find out what will zip his lip and get him to put away the suit.”

“Well, good luck then. But I’m also going to the lawyer tomorrow. We’ll cover it from both angles. Now, if you don’t mind, a glass of pinot is necessary.”

Stacy smiled. She really is a nasty little bitch, isn’t she, she thought.