A Question of Will Read online

  It had ever been thus, was in fact one of the few traditions that held sway in the face of the hectic juggling act that comprised the Kelly family’s daily lives. Fast food and microwave might rule six days a week, but Sunday was still a sit-down deal, and he always looked forward to it.

  Paul entered. The kitchen was warm and spacious, with broad exposed hardwood floors and unexpectedly urban forties-style brushed steel cabinets refinished in gloss black lacquer. The window over the sink was filled with plants and crystals; a Felix-the-cat clock hung on the opposite wall, sly plastic cartoon eyes sweeping back and forth in perfect syncopation with its curved, swishing tail, a sardonic little grin on its molded face, as though it were perpetually privy to some particularly juicy secret.

  The counter next to the fridge was the familial dump zone, stuffed with mail and papers, car keys, magazines and bills. A police scanner sat atop the fridge, the volume tuned low, neat little rows of LEDs sweeping the audio horizon for danger. Taped to the freezer door was a list of relevant call monitor frequencies, and numbers for every engine or ladder company in Glendon, as well as Paul’s beeper code. A clunky but comfortable butcher block table dominated the far end of the room, next to the bay window that looked out on the back yard.

  "Hey, babe," he said, kicking his boots off and hanging the bag on a hook by the door. As he did, a gangly black Doberman came loping in, grinning a big doggie grin. The dog jammed his nose into Paul’s crotch without further ado. "Spock," Paul said, "give it a rest, already." Spock’s stumpy tail waggled cheerfully; Paul scratched the dog’s clipped and pointy ears, then turned and opened the door. "Go, go."

  The dog bounded out into the yard. Paul shook his head and entered the kitchen.

  "Good timing." Julie looked up, and smiled. "Wash up. You’re just in time to make the salad."

  "Yes, ma’am," Paul replied, and exited. He came back a moment later, scrubbed and ready, pulling on a clean sweatshirt. Julie had already pulled the ingredients from the fridge and laid them on the counter; Paul grabbed a beer, then pulled a chef’s knife from the butcher block and set about slicing and dicing. As he worked, Julie glanced at him.

  "Saw you on TV."

  "What? Oh, yeah," he said, remembering Lenkersham. "Scumbag."

  She kissed him on the forehead. "I don’t know whether I’m pissed you didn’t tell me, or glad you spared me the gory details."

  "Thanks," he said, hand brushing the small of her back. "Did they say, was it a boy or a girl?"

  "A girl, I think," she replied. "They said she’s in stable condition."

  Paul nodded, changed the subject. "I see someone didn’t do their chores today," he said ominously. "There’s more leaves in the gutters than in the damn trees." Julie said nothing. Paul looked around. "Speaking of which, aren’t we missing someone?"

  Julie paused. "Um, she’s staying over at Jennifer’s tonight."

  Paul stopped chopping. "Say what?"

  "Well," Julie explained, "they had to work on the float for the Halloween pageant, and I said it was okay..."

  "Tonight?" Paul blurted, annoyed. "It’s Sunday… it’s a school night…"

  "Yeah, well, this is the night they’re doing it." Julie donned a pair of mismatched oven mitts -- one a lobster, the other a great white shark -- and pulled a steaming tray of lasagna from the oven. "Don’t worry, she took a change of clothes, and Loren promised me they’d get to bed at a decent hour. They’ll be fine."

  "Yeah, well this is also the only night this week that we get a chance to be together, you know?"

  "So, instead we’ll have a romantic dinner for the two of us." Julie, smiled, ever the effortless mediator, smoothing troubled waters. She slipped past him, heading for the table, and as she did she cocked her hip into his, playfully butting him.

  But Paul didn’t want to let it go. He glanced at the fridge, where a color yearbook proof of Kyra hung suspended from a little Keith Haring magnet. She was a beautiful girl, fine-boned and delicate, with Julie’s features and Paul’s eyes, her face framed by thick, curly hair; her smile was simultaneously wholesome and sly. Her eyes were winsome and bright, radiating both intelligence and soul in abundance. A good kid.

  Paul resumed chopping, the blade slicing at a head of lettuce. "I mean, what is it with her these days?" he bitched. "She used to help out around here. We used to do all kinds of stuff together. Now it’s like trying to get an audience with the Queen..."

  Julie paused in gathering the plates and silverware, grabbed ahold of Paul’s hand. "Hmmm," she murmured, inspecting his knuckles.

  "What?" Paul asked.

  "Interesting," she said, deadpan. "I just thought they’d be whiter, from holding on so tight."

  She let go of his hand, continued on. Paul watched. "Very funny," he said.

  "Relax," she told him. "It’s not a plot."

  "What is it, then?"

  "It’s called being sixteen," Julie interjected, setting two places at the table. "And it’ll pass."

  "Yeah, and become seventeen," Paul muttered. "Then eighteen, and nineteen..."

  "Life is a bitch," Julie replied, then came up behind him with glass of wine, and patted him on the butt. "I think that’s done now," she said drolly, gesturing to the pile of butchered veggies. "Unless maybe you’re torturing them for information."

  Paul put down the knife. "Sorry," he said, then began scooping the greens into a big wooden bowl.

  "What’s with you?" Julie said, eyeing him. "This isn’t about missing dinner..."

  "I don’t know," Paul paused, then muttered, "Halloween, I guess." He sighed. "I don’t know…"

  Julie nodded. She did. And suddenly it was perfectly clear.

  Another Kelly family tradition, almost as big a deal as Sunday dinner sit-downs. Halloween had always been one of Paul’s favorite holidays, outstripping Thanksgiving and Easter cold, even giving Christmas a run for its money. And his appreciation had evolved over time, from a simple handing out of trick-or-treat goodies with a bedsheet over his head and a flashlight under his chin, to a full-scale production of gothically Spielbergian proportions.

  Every year, Paul’s basement workshop would become a beehive of sinister, clandestine activity. Noxious fumes and the whine of power tools would seep through the floorboards until the wee hours. And by All Hallows Eve, the Kelly home would be transformed into a macabre wonderland: blood-colored lights in the windows, Styrofoam tombstones on the lawn and leering gargoyles on the roof, rustling skeletons hanging from the trees or clawing themselves free from their ersatz graves.

  But the piece de resistance was the big front porch: its normal shady comfort magically mutating into a grand, spook-house style maze. Trick-or-treaters would ascend suburban front steps only to find themselves plunged into a makeshift Dantean underworld. Ghastly sound effects would emanate from hidden loudspeakers; rubber bats and spiders would bob before shrieking faces, suspended on elastic tethers. A life-sized corpse would tumble from its upright coffin in the creped-out living room window, plastic head thudding against the cobwebbed glass, LEDs glowing in its empty eye sockets.And at the end of the line, there would be Kyra: presiding over a full-size bubbling dry-ice cauldron and handing out the treats, as Paul played a doting Igor, the hunchbacked assistant, or a towering Frankenstein’s monster, or a slavering Lawrence Talbot, complete with dog collar and make-believe lycanthropic fleas. Or a pale and blood-lusting vampire. Or one of the shambling undead, hungering for child-sized human flesh.

  As time went on -- and the all-too real dangers of freelance trick-or-treating had driven most parents into voting on curfews or hauling their kids to shopping malls for watered-down fun -- other members of the fire department had gotten in on the action; supplying construction skills or dressing up themselves, to aid and abet the thrills. After year five, the Fire Department had more or less officially recognized it for the great community relations tool that is was, and voted Paul a small budget.

  But at the heart of it, always, was Paul and Kyr
a’s annual father-daughter conspiracy. At one time or another, they had worked their way through virtually the entire Universal Studios monster repertoire -- with the possible exception of the Creature from the Black Lagoon -- and quite a few others in the lexicon of modern horrors. This year, he had planned on dressing up as Pinhead from the Hellraiser films, adding a little Cenobite action to liven things up.

  Kelly’s Hell-House had practically become a local legend. They occasionally got local TV coverage, and it was de riguer for some reporter or another to do a piece to list in the THINGS TO DO section of the Glendon Herald. They had alternately delighted and/or scared the living shit out of every kid in Glendon for most of the last decade, and had earned the unique honor of being one of the few households in Glendon that never woke up on November 1st to find its car windows soaped, or its landscaping wearing a mile or two of sagging Charmin garland.

  As for Kyra, she had been in on the act since was she was old enough to say boo: going from curly-haired toddler-goblin to the Head Witch herself, grande teen-diva of the undead, a vibrant, integral part of a time-honored ritual.

  And now, suddenly, it was stupid.

  "Those were her exact words," Paul lamented. "‘It’s stupid.’" He sighed. "This really sucks."

  "I know." Julie shook her head sympathetically. She knew how much Paul enjoyed it all, and the thought that their daughter was not only no longer interested in the familial festivities but off doing something similar with strangers was doubly damning.

  "Let’s face it, hon’," she offered, somewhat philosophically, "She’s growing up. Every kid eventually reaches a point where they’d rather be with their peers than their parents."

  "I hate it when that happens," Paul mumbled, knowing full well that she was right. Still… "How’d we suddenly get demoted to geek patrol?"

  She just looked at him. She didn’t even have to say it.

  "I know, I know," Paul said resignedly. He’d studied psych in school, and knew enough handy headshrinking buzzwords like individuation and establishing boundaries. "But we’re still gonna have some rules around here," he added, waxing paternal. "From now on, no skipping out on Sunday night dinners."

  "Yessir," Julie said, smiling.

  "And no work-ee, no mon-ey." Paul added.

  "Okay, Dad," she replied, underscoring the ‘D’ word with just a hint of sarcasm.

  "I like this," he said, puffing his chest out majesterially.

  "Don’t push your luck," she warned. Julie grabbed the lasagna, gestured to the salad and dressing. "C’mon," she said. "Let’s eat. If you’re really good, I’ll give you something special for dessert."

  "Like what?" he asked.

  Julie just smiled, and headed for the dining room.

  Paul grinned. He grabbed the salad bowl and made to follow her, when the phone suddenly rang. Paul reached for it; Julie’s voice called out from the other room. "Let the machine get it!"

  Too late - besides, it might be Kyra. Paul picked up.

  "Hello, Kelly’s," he said. From the other end, nothing. Paul spoke again, louder. "Hello?"

  Silence. He could hear the presence of the caller on the other end, the dim wash of background street noise.

  "Goodbye!" Paul called out, then hung up. "Asshole," he muttered.

  Julie’s head popped around the corner. "Who was it?"

  Paul shrugged. "No one," he said.

  SIX

  The room was dark, moon high and full through dormer windows, bathing the interior an ethereal, lunar blue. The house was still and silent. A low squeak sounded from the big brass bed.

  Paul moaned as Julie moved on top of him, angling her hips into a long-practiced and wonderfully familiar position. Her bare skin was hot, laced with the cool sheen of exertion; hers, and his. Her hair hung sweat-flecked in a thick dark spill of loosely coiled curls, momentarily obscuring her features. She reached up and brushed it back, biting her lower lip provocatively. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, as if looking inward, searching. They fluttered, showing white. Julie smiled, still searching, then gave a dirty little laugh. Found it.

  Paul moaned again and slid into place, getting into the groove. If one of the trade-offs of age was the sheer frequency of passion, one of its overwhelming benefits was its nuance, and he and Julie had long since learned to parlay their intimate energy into a deeper kind of dialogue. With time and guidance Paul had found exactly how to coax her into a state of freefall abandon, peeling away inhibition layer by mental layer, like onion-skin, until she was stripped to her pulsating core. And Julie, in turn, knew the rise and fall of Paul’s inner rhythms, how to get him hard and keep him that way, how to sustain and forestall the ultimate release through speed and intensity, until it was fleeting, transcendent perfection.

  Over the years Paul and Julie had refined their lovemaking to an artform, a timeless duet of touch and taste, sound and sight and motion. At the moment, they were locked in a slow, steady rhythm, Paul’s orgasm a distant, retreating concept, ever slipping over the horizon. He gazed up at the sight of his wife riding him and felt time slow, go liquid, stop altogether, as the years and layers evaporated: teacher, mother, wife, mate, friend, all fading away and distilling down to essence, until she became a fecund vision, an eternal force of feminine fury and power. Paul felt himself adrift, cut loose from his own moorings, rooted only at the point of ultimate union. He felt carnally transcendent, like he could go on like this forever.

  But Julie had other plans. She was fully astride him now, his hardness buried deep inside her. Her breasts were swollen, the nipples achingly hard, the soft rise of her belly taut as his cock merged with her, inches beneath its surface. Her features were fierce, languid, feral. His cock felt like a lightning rod driven into the molten core of the earth, Julie’s body the roiling storm that billowed around it.

  Then she shuddered, as thunderous climax rumbled up like an earthquake shearing a secret fissure, became tsunami piling into an unsuspecting coast. She gasped, arched her back and thrust three times in short, staccato repetition, then three more, instantly and unconsciously snapping Paul back into the heat of the moment. Julie uttered a hoarse, guttural cry and fell forward, instantly smothering him in heat and sweat and soft, musky woman scent. She kept the rhythm, arms wrapped around him, teeth grazing his neck as she cried out, breath hot on his skin, hips furiously pumping, flesh slapping rhythmically against his straining thighs. His own hands hovered momentarily, tracing the contours of her round and glorious ass...

  ... then he, too, felt the sensation boiling up like lava inside. She knew instinctively and exactly how to make him come, and she was doing it now, as no one else ever had or ever could, taking him inexorably with her over the edge of her own wanton release. Paul’s mind dissembled into a blinding wash of wordless love and formless pleasure as bodies bedroom and world unraveled, became only engorged wet on thrumming hard, again and again and again...

  ...and then his own climax surged up, enveloped and absorbed by hers, a bucking syncopated merger of flesh and heart, mind and soul. Paul and Julie emptied themselves into each other, felt the waves of pleasure tumble and wash them together, leave them spent and sweating on a distant, placid shore. As the inner tide pulled out Paul did, too, and they lay, breath ragged, hearts pounding, enmeshed and entwined.

  Two seconds later, a car door slammed outside, and Paul and Julie froze.

  Busted.

  In less than a heartbeat identity, responsibility and parenthood slammed back into place, as one thought simultaneously pierced both their brains -- Kyra -- and Julie instantly grabbed for the bedcovers, pulling them up protectively as Paul’s ears tuned to the sound outside, waited for the slap of footsteps on the porch, the click of house keys hitting tumblers.

  "I thought you said..." Paul began.

  "Shhhh," Julie hissed, and buried her face in his shoulder, embarrassed. She suddenly wondered if the whole neighborhood had heard them.

  They waited. Nothing. A second later, a car engine turn
ed over, and they heard the crunch of wheels pulling away from the curb, rolling away. Paul and Julie let out a collective sigh of relief, then Julie rolled off him, automatically slid her fingers between her legs.

  "Shit," she said, reaching for the Kleenex box on the bedside table. Empty. "Shit shit shit." She groaned again and stood, legs unsteady, hand awkwardly stanching the post-coital seminal flow, as she duck-walked over to the bathroom. Paul watched, chuckling ruefully.

  "Bite me," she sneered. "You try doing this."

  "No thanks," he said, slumping back onto the pillow. "Oh, well," he sighed. "It was fun while it lasted."

  ~ * ~

  Afterwards, they lay warm and quiet and sated, Julie nestling into him, one lithe leg curling over his thighs, her fingers tracing little patterns in the hairs on his chest. Paul stared up the ceiling, thinking.

  "We need to get away," he said softly.

  "Away from what?" she asked.

  "Everything," he replied. "Take a weekend, run away somewhere, just the two of us. We could get really wasted and make love like crazed weasels."

  "What do you call what we just did?" she asked.

  "Mmm, I don’t know," he replied cagily. Julie dug her nails into his chest. "Ow!" Paul cried. "Okay, I give, it was great!" She relented, pleased. Paul continued. "I’m just saying… I was thinking maybe New Hope…"

  "New Hope…" Julie sighed in lewd nostalgia. New Hope, PA, was a quaint little berg on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a picturesque getaway some two hours east, nestled in the deep piney woods of Bucks County, on the banks of the Delaware River. They’d spent their tenth anniversary there, a romantic weekend far from the hectic urban hive. By day they’d hiked and ridden horses and strolled through art galleries and shops, then spent their nights staring up at the stars through a luscious haze of champagne bubbles and hot tub steam, making love with homegrown Kama Sutra glee. They’d always sworn they’d go back. But somehow, life had always intervened. "I wish…" she said.