Lovers and Liars by Brenda Joyce

impossible. He turned on the radio. Maybe she’d met someone else. That thought filled him with panic.
    He pictured Belinda naked and wet with sweat on a bed amid rumpled sheets, awaiting some faceless lover. Her own face was glazed with lust. Her breasts, full but high, had hard, erect nipples. Her legs, strong, powerful, curved, were spread and waiting. The flesh between her thighs was pink and swollen and slick.
    Vince hit the brakes hard and managed to avoid bumping the car in front of him as the traffic slowed. He was going to have an accident. Every day, five days a week, he drove home and thought about Belinda until he had a hard-on, until he was miserable, because most of the time he couldn’t have her. He turned up the station. How long could he go on like this?
    He parked in the driveway of his two-bedroom house in Costa Mesa, next to Mary’s Volkswagen Beetle. The lawn would need cutting this weekend, he thought. The petunias he had planted were wilting from lack of water. Cursing, he went to the hose, turned it on, and dragged it over to water them. You would think she could at least water the goddamn petunias. He strode into the house.
    Mary sat at the kitchen table with another woman, her friend Beth. There was a half gallon of wine between them, almost empty. There was also a sliver of mirror, a vial of coke, mostly empty, as well as a razor and straw. The twowomen had been talking animatedly, laughter punctuating their conversation, and now they stopped completely.
    “Hi, Vince.” Mary smiled. She was drunk. She had long, straight dark hair, a roundish face with nice features, big brown eyes. She wore a tank top and jeans. She was about fifteen pounds overweight.
    “Mary.” He nodded at Beth, who was tall, plain, and slender. He curbed his annoyance at the fact that Mary was high again. “I’m going to take a shower,” He paused before leaving. “What’s for dinner?”
    Mary looked guilty. “I was hoping we could grab a bite somewhere, just a burger.”
    Vince felt anger rising in him, and it burst forth. “Dammit! I’m fucking starved! I work my tail off all day while you’re sitting around on your ass getting fucked up! I’m tired—and hungry.”
    “Fuck you, Vince,” Mary said coolly. She pulled the mirror over and dumped some of the vial’s contents out. She started to cut lines.
    Vince strode over. “Do you know the fucking flowers out there are dying? Do you even care? And just where the hell did you get the money for that?”
    “It’s Beth’s,” Mary said, and Vince wondered if she was lying. Ignoring him, she evened out four lines.
    “I can’t deal with this,” Vince exploded, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. “Look at you! You’re a fucking mess! Look at this fucking house! It’s a fucking pigsty! I spend a hundred and fifty thousand fucking dollars on a house for my wife, and she treats it like a slum.”
    “Let go,” Mary cried, her voice breaking and tears welling in her wide brown eyes.
    “Oh, shit,” Vince said, releasing her. He strode into the bathroom. As he turned on the shower he heard Beth say something, then heard Mary’s trembling reply. Maybe he had come down too hard on her, but Christ, this was out of hand. How the fuck could he get her to get a job? In the beginning he hadn’t wanted her to work. Stupid. Italian macho shit. Now he would give anything if he could just get her out of the house, get her to do something worthwhile.
    There had been a time when he had thought she was beautiful. He probably would never forget the day he had first seen her. He’d been building an addition onto a Bel Air mansion that belonged to Mary’s stepfather (number two). He had a crew that existed of two. They were still in the framing stages. The wing jutted out from the rest of the house and was only a hop and a skip away from a free-form pool. Mrs. Crandall—Mary’s mother—was lying out, as usual, a completely straight woman in an almost