The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 12 —AUU— “…the fabric of life.”

Like a child exploring the scar left behind by a bandage, Christopher McCutcheon traced his finger along the nearly invisible crack on the back of his ancient Martin steel-string. The luthier had lovingly healed the wound in the century-old rosewood dreadnought. McCutcheon strummed a chord, and the mellow-voiced guitar sang as sweetly as always.

The club audiences preferred the bright sound of his Mitsei electronic, which was just fine with Christopher. The Mitsei had a versatile effects kit, could go six- or twelve-string at a touch, and still looked more or less traditional. Most important, unlike the Martin, it could easily be replaced should anything happen. Christopher did not want to expose the fragile antique to the rigors and risks faced by a working instrument, much less violate it by having a performance port installed.

But there were certain songs and certain times that demanded a softer, richer voice. And when he played for pleasure, more often than not it was the supple-actioned D-42 that came out of its case. The luthier had asserted that a wooden instrument held all the music that had ever been played on it, and said that Christopher’s Martin had been played well. He was not inclined to argue.

Almost of their own volition, his fingers found the opening chords of “Caravan to Antares.”

“Look at me, I’m flying free, living in the stars,” he sang, head down, eyes closed. “Signed my name and set my sights on a destination far—”

Sometime between the first verse and the last, Loi came to his room. He opened his eyes to discover her leaning lightly against the wall near the doorway, folded hands pinned behind her, listening. Though it was barely eight, she was wearing a short black nightdress which showed much leg and shoulder and clung slinkily to the rest.

“Haven’t seen that for a while,” he said. She had bought the nightdress for herself on an early dinner-and-shopping date in the Embarcadero, then proceeded to take him home and show him that no visual aids were necessary. As play wear went, the nightdress was demure, but the associated memories were still potent.

“Are you busy?” she asked in her thoroughly direct and un-coquettish way.

“I was planning to be for a while,” he said, gesturing at the guitar. “I just got Claudia back.”

“Too busy to help a friend in need?”

A crooked smile. “Is that a proposition?”

“Of sorts. I think Jessie could really use both our attention. Unless you think Claudia will be jealous.”

Christopher frowned, hugged the guitar to his chest. “I don’t think Jess wants my attentions.”

“I think she’s been missing them.”

He squinted uncertainly. “Did she say that?”

“If I had to wait for her to speak her mind plainly to know what she’s feeling, this family would be in serious trouble,” Loi said with a smile. “But you don’t have to, if you’re uncomfortable. I’d rather you didn’t if you’re uncomfortable, if you’ve still got business to work out with her.”

“I just don’t want to make her say no.”

“I don’t think she will,” Loi said. “She needs what you can give her, Chris.” She smiled affectionately. “I don’t think you realize how much good you can do.”

Her words were processed through a filter of self-image that removed most of the compliment, but left intact the hope of being worthy of it. “Sure,” he said finally, setting the guitar aside. “Let’s see if we can’t put a smile on Jessie’s face.”

She came toward him. “Hug me first,” she said. “Let me find you. Then we can go out there and remind her what she’s part of.”

It was hard to say what each of them brought to that joining that made it so special. But it was the best they’d ever been together, intense and intimate, loving and sharing. It was like they’d never shared a bed before; it was like they’d always been lovers. Everything was new, a discovery. Everything was familiar, seamlessly easy.

There was little said. Hunger and healing, doubt and reassurance, all were given purely physical expression. Eyes and smiles and mingling energies did the work of words.

Christopher let Loi take the lead. Smiling mischievously, the older woman settled beside Jessie on the couch and purposefully began to undress her. Christopher joined in the task from the other side, determinedly plucking at buttons and tugging at sleeves.

Though their movements were unhurried, their focus and intensity gave them an urgency flavored with inevitability. Together, Loi and Christopher wrapped Jessie in a timeless, dreamlike experience of sensuality. Any surprise, any resistance, boiled away in the growing sexual heat.

Naked, Jessie surrendered, releasing all Mind, embracing Moment. Four knowing hands caressed her soft cool skin and silken folds. Two hungry mouths tattooed gentle bites along a shoulder, sought crinkled nipples to tease. She opened to their touch, their energies. She took a kiss from Loi, long and hungry, and passed it in turn to Christopher, warm and forgiving.

In barely noticed pauses, Loi shed her nightdress with a shrug, and Christopher his shirt. Skin to skin to skin they embraced, dry tinder for the fire that ran through them.

Sometime in that span, Christopher let go of calculation and plan, centering in the immediate—the rich scent of Jessie’s excitement, the soft sounds of pleasure, the warm touch of a hand, his own pounding blood.

A three-way kiss dissolved as the two women’s mouths sought his nipples, their hands working in partnership to free him from his jeans and briefs. Loi went to her knees and briefly took his arching erection into an embrace of soft lips and swirling tongue. Then she sat back on her heels and pulled both Jessie and him down to the floor with her, seeking a larger canvas for what she was creating.

Without ever seeming to give direction, Loi orchestrated the rising crescendo. Sitting cross-legged with her back to the couch, Loi cradled Jessie’s head in her lap while Christopher lay between Jessie’s thighs, happily tasting her sweet slickness. From above, Loi caressed Jessie’s full breasts, tugged and teased her nipples, stroked her hair and her cheeks, bent forward to cap a moan of pleasure with a kiss.

But when Jessie reached up for Loi’s body, Loi captured her hands and forced them down, pinning them to the carpet. A gasp escaped Jessie’s lips, and her eyes closed. His mouth melded to Jessie’s sensitive center, Christopher rode with her on the rising curve, answering her excitement with a feverish intensity.

Then, as Jessie writhed and mewled under their combined attentions, Loi called Christopher forward with her eyes. He rose up and crawled toward her, their mouths meeting in a fragrant kiss as his cock entered Jessie. She moaned, a deep guttural animal sound, her body drawing him in, hips rising to meet his thrusts.

Finally, Loi, too, surrendered to no-mind, rocking forward to her knees and lowering her sparsely furred patch over Jessie’s eager tongue. The trio soared together, reaching, the energy spinning through them, Jessie to Loi to Christopher to Jessie and around the other way as well. They flew faster and faster, pushing against the barrier, then suddenly broke through, one after another.

Jessie was first, her body seized by a fierce, twisting orgasm that triggered Christopher’s own furious release. Not long after, the double charge and Jessie’s flicking tongue lifted Loi to her own arching, blissful break. Christopher’s body tingled, jangled, in sympathy.

They fell apart like toppled rag dolls, drained, bodies limp. In their breathless haze, they shared smiles of shy delight, of childlike giddy joy. They held hands, laughed, questioned each other with eyes that asked amazedly, needlessly, Did you feel that?

And as breath and strength returned, they began to look at each other with hope and hunger, for the pleasure, the moment, had been so exquisite that they could not help but try to touch it again. They adjourned gleefully to Loi’s big bed and soon began again.

It was long after midnight before the edge of longing at last gave way to happy fatigue, and they fell asleep entangled in each other’s arms.

For a long time, Christopher was unable to name the warm feeling that he woke with that next morning. It was as though there were a happy little spark lighting him from within. He didn’t mind being the only one of the three who was expected elsewhere early. He kissed them good-bye as though they were sleepy children and found himself smiling as he went out the door.

Neither the police checklane on the U.S. 75 en route to Allied nor the endless section conference once he got there tested Christopher’s patience that day. The smile came back at intervals, and with it crystal-clear sense-rich memories.

But he was scarcely aware of his own state until lunch, when one of the other archaeolibrarians wryly announced to the whole table, “I don’t know what stack Christopher’s been working in lately, but I wish he’d stop grinning like a contented idiot over it. I’m starting to feel left out.”

That was the word. That was the feeling—contented. “Sorry, Angela,” he said, the smile embarrassed this time. “Didn’t know I was broadcasting.”

“That’s all right,” she said with a wink. “It’s good to see you happy.”

But the spark was blown out almost the moment he got home. He found Loi and Jessie in the family room, and it was obvious at once that they had been talking about something serious, and equally obvious that they were waiting for him.

“Hi,” he said tentatively. “What’s up?”

“Jessie and I have been talking about the family,” Loi said. “About what we want and where we’re going. We were hoping you’d join us.”

“Can I hit the bathroom first?”

“Of course.”

Scrubbing his face, Christopher scrambled for emotionally secure ground, trying to anticipate the blow before it came. What could be wrong? What could have happened since last night? Jessie had been crying, and Loi was in her mother-therapist mode. He did not want to rejoin them scared, but scared he was. There was a tremor of change in their faces, and change was the enemy of the contentment he had enjoyed all day.

But he could not hide. Summoning a calm he did not feel, he rejoined them, settling by himself in a chair across the pit from them. “That feels better,” he said with a false smile. “Who’s going to bring me up to speed?”

Loi looked expectantly at Jessie, who ducked her head, frowned uncomfortably, then looked up into Christopher’s eyes. “We were talking about what rights I have here.”

Surprise registered on Christopher’s face. “The same as any of us.”

“I mean, how far does it go?”

Oh, God, she’s talking about the baby. “How far do you want it to go? It isn’t just rights for any of us. It’s rights and responsibilities.”

“Don’t lecture, Christopher,” Loi said quietly. “Listen.”

I’m waiting for her to say what she means,” Christopher said edgily.

“I have the privacy you promised, and the freedom,” Jessie said. “I like making a home for you two. You’ve been more than generous with my family share—I feel guilty sometimes because I don’t think I give enough back to deserve it.”

“You do,” Christopher said.

“But you’re both so busy. I’m here alone more than not.” She smiled shyly. “Last night was wonderful. But it made me sad, too, because it made me realize what I was missing.”

Christopher silently waited for her to continue. He could not make himself ask the polite question.

“I just feel like I need somebody for me,” she said.

“Don’t you feel like Christopher is yours?” asked Loi.

“Oh, I don’t mean you don’t share him, like last night. But when you’re here, he belongs to you. He only ever wants me when you’re away.”

“That’s not true,” Christopher said reflexively.

“Look at the way you got jealous about Loi and me making love,” Jessie answered. “You got angry at her for being with me. You didn’t get angry at me for being with her.”

“That’s not what that was about.”

“It’s okay,” Jessie said. “I understand. You two have the most history together. It’s natural. And I’m not saying I don’t think you both love me. But I need more if I’m going to be happy. I need someone who belongs to me the way you two belong to each other.”

“I spend a lot of time with you,” he protested. “This last month I know I’ve seen you more than I’ve seen Loi. I even think we’ve made love more often than Loi and I have.”

“When it suits you,” Jessie said with a sudden chill. “When it suits you, you’re more than ready.”

“Be fair, Jessie—”

“There’s a perspective problem,” Loi was saying. “Christopher, you have a full-time job and a time-consuming hobby. You spend a lot of what’s left over with Jessie. But that’s a much smaller part of her life than it is of yours.”

“Am I supposed to not work?” he asked indignantly. “Are you saying you feel neglected, too?”

“Jessie and I have different needs,” Loi said. “You know that I’ve never expected you to fill all of mine. I don’t feel neglected. You’ve always been just what I wanted you to be. But I’m not the one who’s unhappy.”

Christopher could not keep his expression from souring as he looked to Jessie. “I think this is really low, for you to lobby Loi behind my back. We talked about this once already.”

“No, we didn’t.”

He snapped, “We did, too, when Loi was in Geneva. Did she tell you about that?” The last was aimed at Loi.

“This is a different subject,” Jessie said.

“What?”

She looked down. “You were right about the baby. I wasn’t being fair to you that night.”

“Well—” Christopher was nonplussed. “Then what are we talking about?”

“I want to know if I can propose a new addition to the family.”

Christopher felt a sudden wave of panic, which he made a noble effort to suppress. “I don’t understand something. Is this a theoretical discussion? Or are we talking about someone specific?”

“Don’t be dense, Christopher,” said Loi. “Jessie would like to ask John Fields over Saturday for dinner and a discussion.”

“The cyclist? From the club?”

“Yes. He was here once—you met him.”

“Are you fucking him?” he asked, incredulous.

“Not yet. He wants all of us to talk before we get involved. He’s very principled.”

The door to Christopher’s sympathies, which had been weakly propped open, suddenly slammed shut. “No,” he said harshly, jumping to his feet.

“Chris—” Loi began warningly.

“No dinner, no discussion, no John Fields. We’re just learning how to be three. We’re not bringing someone else in.”

“Chris, if Jessie is unhappy, we may lose her,” Loi said. “Is that what you want?”

“What does she have to be unhappy about? She’s had everything handed to her. She said it herself—she’s got freedom, privacy, a comfortable home, money—our money. She’s got time enough to go cycling every day, to watch every damn crier made in the last century, to go looking for sparking buddies in every neighborhood inside the loop—”

“Christopher,” Loi said sharply.

“I thought you liked John,” Jessie said meekly.

“I like John all right for somebody I spent ten minutes talking to once,” Christopher said. “But that’s a long way from saying, ‘Sure, come on, move in, by the way, Jessie likes it hard.’ ”

“I didn’t ask—”

“You’d better figure out what’s wrong with you. You’re grabbing for people like zoners grab for pills. First Loi, then a baby, now John—people aren’t teddy bears, goddammit, you can’t start a fucking collection. Does John know what you’re going to want from him? Does he know that six months from now you’re going to whisper, ‘Guess what, I’m fertile,’ just as he’s about to come?”

Christopher was shouting at the end, but barely aware of it. The room was suddenly chaos—Jessie crying, cringing, Loi shouting and trying to drag him away from her. He shook off her grip and turned on her, his angry words a snarl. Loi grabbed at his wrist again, and only then did he realize that he had been shaking a clenched fist at her, at Jessie, that his body was coiled and charged to strike at them, to smash them down.

In horror and shock, he backed away, dropping awkwardly into the chair where he’d been sitting. Jessie took that moment to escape, running up the stairway and disappearing into her room.

“Jesus,” Christopher whispered, covering his mouth with his hands and staring at the carpet.

“Where did that come from?” Loi asked, her voice hard and unsympathetic.

“I don’t know,” Christopher said. “You know I’ve never done that before—”

“Once is enough.” She frowned unhappily. “I never thought I’d see you come on like lord and master of a feudal castle. What in the world is going on with you?”

“I—I just got a little too wound up. The way Jessie’s been—”

“You can’t blame this on her.”

“Everything I said is true,” he insisted. “I just—didn’t say it very well.”

Loi shook her head dismissively. “I don’t think you said one word about what you really feel.”

“We’ve got what we need right here,” he said, looking up at her with a plaintive expression. “If we have to make some adjustments, all right, we’ll make them. But bringing someone else in is crazy. That’s going to change everything.”

“Don’t you realize that you just changed everything? You lost control at just the idea of talking about expanding the family. You went so blood-crazy that you were ready to hurt us to have your way. That isn’t healthy, and you know it.”

“I don’t have to do this and I’m not going to,” he said stubbornly. “You can’t guilt me into saying yes.”

She shook her head. “I’ll tell what you have to do,” she said softly but firmly. “If you want to stay part of this family, you’re going to have to go to an R.T. and start working on this.”

Christopher was numbly silent for a long time. “This scares me, Loi. I don’t know if I want to know what’s inside me that could make me do something like this.”

“You scared us.”

“I know,” he said.

Loi studied him. “I’m going upstairs to be with Jessie,” she said finally. “Let me know what you decide.”

“I think she needs to go, too,” he said as she started away.

“You’re not in any position to set conditions,” Loi said pointedly.

“I wasn’t—”

“You were. Get your own house in order, Christopher. Then maybe your opinions on Jessie will matter to me again.”