Read Online Drifter's Blues (Erotic Noir) by P.J. Tallis - Free Book Online Page A

get the fuck out again before the security guys arrived with their Armalites and their Kevlar vests. And if the nagging voice of his conscience turned to a screaming storm in his ear… well, he’d tune it out. He’d suck it up. And after that, maybe a year later, a year of waiting in the shadows as a kind of exile, he’d meet up with Donna somewhere, maybe on an island, almost certainly in another country, and they’d live off the money from the painting and spend all day, all night, naked in one another’s arms, shutting out the world.
    Was it all bullshit? Part of Kyle knew it might be, but he was surprised to find he didn’t care. Because he wanted it to be true, and if there was the remotest possibility that it might be, he was willing to hold on to that.
    After Kyle had been walking for an hour and the thoughts and the turmoil were still churning in his mind, more tumultuous than ever, he decided there was only one way to shut it all down even temporarily.
    He went into the nearest bar and proceeded to get mortally, but enjoyably, shitfaced.

Five
     
    Donna was in the living room leafing through a catalog, listlessly choosing drapes for one of the rooms in what she increasingly viewed as Blair’s home, not hers, when her husband came downstairs. It was Saturday afternoon and he was spending a rare weekend day at home.
    She glanced up. Blair was in a pair of swimming trunks and nothing else, a towel draped over his arm. He’d gotten paunchier even in the last couple of weeks, it seemed to Donna, and his belly overhung the elastic waistband of his trunks like an English muffin in its cup.
    He grinned at her, for the first time in months, Donna thought.
    ‘You’re in a good mood,’ she said flatly.
    ‘Had a good week, babe.’ He whistled some tune or other. Sinatra’s “Fly Me To The Moon”, it sounded like.
    I’ll bet you had a good week , Donna thought. He’d been with Madison the night before. She’d smelled the girl’s perfume on his clothes this morning when she’d gotten the laundry together. Well, enjoy it, pal. Because in one week from now, your smug little world is going to be knocked a degree off its axis.
    ‘Coming for a swim?’ he said cheerfully. Donna shook her head and turned back to her catalog.
    ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘The water’s sure nice and clean these days, though.’
    Donna stared after Blair’s back as he went out the French windows and across the lawn to the pool.
    Just what exactly had he meant by that? It was a throwaway remark, except Blair never made those. Nothing he said was without calculation.
    She rose from the couch and peered through the window. Blair had dropped his towel by the edge and was sauntering round to the diving board at the deep end. He leaped into the water with abandon, causing a huge splash.
    Did he suspect something was going on between her and Kyle? If so, how? Kyle was a good-looking young guy, something Blair couldn’t have failed to notice, so maybe he was having a jibe at Donna just because of that, knowing she must have noticed the pool guy’s looks herself. She certainly didn’t think she’d been ogling Kyle in front of Blair. But she’d hired him, and Blair wouldn’t have forgotten that.
    Blair was hardly in a position to get on his moral high horse when it came to unfaithfulness. He’d been screwing around on her for at least the last couple of years, and for all she knew longer than that. But he was a man, and the sort of man who held very strongly to a double standard regarding fidelity. According to his world view and that of the circles he moved in, guys fucked around. It was what they did, a part of their nature. Whereas a woman who put out for other men was a slut. It was sexist, it was disgusting... but it was the way Blair’s mind worked. And if he ever suspected Donna of playing away from home, he’d be pissed. Pissed not so much by the behavior itself, but because of what it represented. Disobedience. A pissed