Triptych
Four
MELODY WAS IN THE KITCHEN. Sitting on the floor. Crying.
There was a half-chopped zucchini and a pile of minced onion sitting on the counter. One burner was lit on the stove, but fortunately there was nothing on it—just the blue flame dancing in the air. I turned that off and Lissa and I sank to either side of our lover.
“What is it Little One?” Lissa asked softly. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re here, Meddy,” I added. “Tell us what has you upset, love.”
There was a lot of sniffling. When she raised her hand to wipe her eyes, I gently took the knife and set it back on the counter.
“I’m fat and I’m ugly and I have cramps and I’m a bitch and you all hate me.”
“The only thing I heard that might have a shred of truth is that you have cramps,” Lissa said. “Is it that time?”
“I’m all PMSy and I can’t stop crying and I’m sorry.”
She buried her head against my shoulder and sobbed as Lissa reached to rub her tummy.
“Don’t worry, Little One,” she said. “I know a cure for pre-menstrual cramps. I used to have them all the time.”
“Used to? You don’t have cramps anymore? I hate you!” Melody sobbed more furiously.
“I stopped having cramps after I got pregnant.”
Melody sniffed and pulled away from me to turn toward Lissa.
“I don’t really hate you. I love you,” she moaned. “I’m just so miserable. And you both stink.”
“We can cure that, too,” I suggested. “Come on. Let’s head for the shower.”
Lissa filled the tub while I adjusted the temperature of the shower, undressed both Melody and myself, and got us under the soothing water. As soon as we got the sweat and stink rinsed off our bodies, we led Melody to the spa and sank into the luxurious hot water. I’d been looking forward to this ever since we walked off the court.
We kept Melody sandwiched between us, letting the jets work their magic, and constantly stroking and soothing our sweetheart. Melody finally settled down and her cramps began to subside.
“Is this the cure?” Melody asked. “It feels better.”
“Oh, this is just stage one,” Lissa said as she kissed Melody. “Next, Tony is going to sit up on the edge of the tub and you’ll get on his lap so he can hold you with his hands rubbing your tummy.”
I sat up on the edge of the marble spa and leaned back against the wall. It was great having a tub that was big enough for all three of us—and a guest or two—and had a ledge around it wide enough to serve dinner on. Melody crawled up in my lap facing Lissa. Lissa gently parted her knees and pressed her face against our lover’s pussy. I couldn’t tell exactly what Lissa was doing, but Melody started to relax against me and let out little moans. As she squirmed against me, my rigid cock became wedged between her ass cheeks.
The first time she came, she stiffened up and pressed back against me so hard I was flattened against the wall. The second time she raised up off my lap until she was almost standing in the tub and I held her so her feet wouldn’t slide out from under her.
I felt Lissa’s hand on my cock and when Melody relaxed and began to sink back down on my lap, Lissa guided me into her.
“Oh,” Melody moaned. “That is so wonderful. I like this cure.”
“It’s not over yet,” Lissa smiled.
Soon her face was back between our legs and I could feel her tongue taking long strokes from beneath my balls, up across the base of my cock, and lingering on Melody’s clit. I played with Mel’s nipples as Lissa continued to bring us both higher and higher. When Melody came, the intensity of her gripping my cock and bouncing brought me off, too, and we howled at the ceiling as we hit our peak. I was still shuddering inside Melody when Lissa brought her to yet another peak.
I slid down into the water and with our faces even with Lissa’s we began a kiss-fest that ended with us giggling.
A much mellower girlfriend emerged from the bath to sit and eat at the counter.
“I was going to have dinner all ready for you when you came home from practice,” Melody said as she slurped up the spaghetti I’d made while Lissa was pampering her. “Then all of a sudden it seemed like such a big job, I’d never get it done.”
“Does your period always affect you like this?” Lissa asked.
“Sometimes it’s worse than others. Not usually this bad,” Melody said. “But I feel so much better now.”
“That was still only stage two,” Lissa said. “Dinner is stage three.”
“There’s more?”
“Just you wait.”
I cleared away the dishes and loaded the dishwasher while Lissa led Melody back to the bedroom. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’d enjoyed curing Melody’s cramps so far. I’d go with whatever Lissa had planned. I wasn’t expecting what I saw when I entered the bedroom.
The girls were lying side by side on their stomachs. Their heads were turned toward each other and they were talking quietly. Occasionally they would kiss, but they just lay there waiting for me. It didn’t take long to see why. Next to Lissa was a bottle of oil and a towel.
“Sweetheart, Melody needs a little back-rub. I thought as long as you were at it, maybe you could rub my back, too,” Lissa said when she saw me approach. “I’m so sore after our workout.”
It was only a matter of logistics, not willingness. To them, it was sweet soothing relaxation for their tired muscles and cramps. For me… I had my left knee wedged between Melody’s legs and my right knee between Lissa’s, both nestled far enough in to feel their heat on my thighs. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d work this, but I decided to split my attention equally between the two. I warmed cedar-scented oil between my palms and then ran my hands up their spines to their necks where I began stroking and rubbing. My hands worked as mirror images rubbing their necks and their shoulders.
Melody is shorter than Lissa, but their torsos are surprisingly similar in length. Lissa has longer legs, but Melody doesn’t lose much in length above her waist. I marveled at the feel of their skin. Lissa’s muscles were much tighter than Melody’s, but there was a sensual flexibility in Melody that said she could curl up in a ball in your lap and feel like she didn’t have a bone in her body. Both were silky, especially beneath well-oiled hands.
I didn’t want to move from my position lodged between their legs, but I did slip back farther and farther as I worked on their butts, thighs, calves. Finally, I worked their feet, one at a time. Each girl’s left foot, then each girl’s right foot. I ended by kissing twenty toes and then crawling up next to Melody.
“That was so dreamy,” Melody sighed. She rolled to her right side facing me and Lissa spooned behind her. I pulled a sheet over us so we wouldn’t get chilled in the night.
“You’re all slippery,” Lissa said to her. “I want to rub my tits all over your back.”
“Mmm. Do whatever makes you happy,” Melody said as Lissa kissed her ear. “It makes me happy to be with you.”
She pulled me closer and kissed me. My right arm lay across my lovers as we drifted off to sleep.
About four in the morning, I woke to find I’d been pushed onto my back. Melody was astride me and my cock was slipping in and out of her. Her eyes were closed and her head was thrown back, lost in her own world of pleasure. I’d gone to sleep hard, so it was no burden to me to be the source of her ecstasy. As tempting as it was to take control and thrust up into her, she was so beautiful that I lay mostly still and let her set the pace.
Lissa scooted closer so she could kiss me and then we both lay there watching our lover as she rose to her climax. It was blissful. I felt the long slow build-up of pressure in my balls, but held myself back from pushing toward release. When Melody came, that brought me to a climax as well. I felt the release deep inside—feeling like it had been drawn from me instead of ejaculated.
Melody relaxed, gradually becoming aware that Lissa and I were watching her. She lay on top of me, with Lissa partially supporting her weight. We kissed.
“I woke up feeling crampy, again,” Melody whispered as we drifted back to sleep with me still inside her. “Thank you.”
“Anytime my love,” I said softly. “Anytime at all.”
When Lissa and I got home from Saturday morning Pilates, Kate was over talking to Melody.
“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” I asked, kissing Melody.
“Much better.”
“Were you sick?” Kate asked.
“Just cramps. These two have the best cure,” Melody said after she kissed Lissa. In spite of what she said, she was clutching a heating pad to her stomach under the pillow as she and Kate talked on the sofa.
“I have a tea for that.”
“Oh, this is so much better than tea.”
“Really? Maybe I should try it next time.”
“Oh, we’d love to help you out,” Melody said, giggling. Both Lissa and I rolled our eyes.
“Better get the details before you agree, Kitten,” I said. “When I’m not around,” I added.
“Melody called yesterday and said you have an agent and we have an offer for the whole Rhapsody Suite,” Kate said. “I thought I’d drop by this morning and see what was up.”
“That’s sort of true,” Melody said. “I convinced her to come over and went and picked her up. It’s so nice to have two cars.”
“Well, I would have taken the bus,” Kate admitted. “I want to hear all about it.”
“Right. Well, here’s the thing. Clarice thinks we could get a lot more for the paintings if we wait six months, but I’m not going to hold up the sale if any of the four of you need money for school. We could walk off with a couple thousand each now, but twice that in six months.”
“What happens in six months?”
“Our show.”
“Our show?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Here’s the thing. Clarice thinks she could get me a show with a dozen pieces. That’s a lot of painting to be done before February. I could include a couple of sketches as well, but the big dollars will be in the paintings. So, we thought that maybe you would be interested in showing at the same time. I know your portfolio of charcoals is incredible.”
“Tony?” Kate said, slowing me down. “Us?”
“Um… I know you should have a show of your own, Kate, but I just thought that maybe…”
“It’s a nice idea, but what about Melody? And Amy and Sandra?”
“All three of us are in areas of applied arts and design,” Melody spoke up. “You don’t want graphic prints or textiles or advertising art in a fine art show. This would really have to be you and Tony. You have really different but complementary styles. Mixing it with something else would mess it up. Except for the Suite. Since Bob Bowers reviewed it as a single piece, everybody would benefit by keeping it together.”
“Is this real?” she asked. I handed her the letter with the offer for the Suite.
“Our lawyer is going over the contract for Clarice to represent me. Clarice wants to meet with us on Thursday at noon,” I said.
“Wait,” Kate said. She was scowling. “What are you trying to pull?”
“Kitten, I’m not trying to pull anything. What’s wrong?” What the hell? I was so excited, but maybe I missed something. Did Kate feel like she was being railroaded?
“You said a couple thousand a piece. That’s not what this letter is offering. The letter says $5,000 for your piece and another $5,000 for the other four pieces. I’m not dumb. I can add, subtract, multiply, and divide. That comes out to $5,000 for you and $1,250 each for the rest of us.”
“But the Suite has five artists,” I said. “That’s $2,000 each to sell the whole thing.”
“You can’t do that, Tony. You’d lose $3,000 on the deal. I won’t do it. Melody, get Sandra and Amy on the phone,” Kate demanded. “The deal for the Suite has to be fifty percent for Tony and fifty percent to split among the rest of us. None of us would have an offer at all if it wasn’t for his central piece.”
Kate was adamant. I’d never seen her so steadfast before. Once Amy and Sandra were on the phone, Kate took over and laid out the facts as she saw them—including the benefit of waiting six months, I was happy to note—and Amy and Sandra were on her side immediately.
“Don’t be a dipshit, Tony,” Amy said. “I’ve got customers here and I’ve got to get moving. But in my opinion, it should be your painting for fifty percent, Kate’s for thirty percent and the other three of us splitting twenty percent. It’s you two that are going to get the price up. You should benefit most from it. Gotta roll. ’Bye.”
After the whirlwind phone discussion, we determined that we would wait until February and the split would be fifty percent for me, twenty percent for Kate, and ten percent each for Sandra, Amy, and Melody. Everybody seemed happy with that except me.
“Tony? Would you give me a hand with the grill?” Lissa called from the kitchen.
She’d let the five of us hash things out for ourselves, but it was clear she had a few things to say to me. I kissed her as I walked into the kitchen and she wrapped me in her arms and led me to the deck, closing the sliding door behind us.
“I love you, Tony,” Lissa said, kissing me again. “Part of what I love is how generous and giving you are. But they’re right and you know it.”
“It seems so unfair for me to benefit so much from their work,” I said.
“Not so,” Lissa reminded me. “That offer was clear. The same amount if you sold your piece with or without their work. You don’t get any benefit from bringing them along.”
“But…”
“Be honest, Tony. Leaving Kate’s picture out of the equation for a minute, which of those other three paintings and drawings would ever sell for $1,000? Let alone, the possibility that when you and Kate exhibit this winter it is the talent of the two of you that will drag the price of the other three up. Don’t insult them, darling. You are doing a wonderful thing for your friends. They’d all feel terrible if they thought you were giving them all money to be charitable to them. Now grill us some hamburgers and let the women in your life boss you around.”
She sealed her lecture with another kiss and it was several minutes before I got the grill as hot as I was feeling.
For the next several days, time collapsed. Monday, Lissa’s former employer called her and asked her to come back. They said that the people who ragged on her last Wednesday were out of line and had been disciplined. They were considering expanding the fashion acquisition department and opening an office in New York. They would like to consider Lissa for the job of managing it.
Lissa thanked them and consulted with her attorney. He suggested they were trying to cover themselves against a possible harassment suit and asked Lissa if she’d like him to pursue that course of action. She declined, but the company still gave her a full severance package that may have included more paid vacation time than she actually had coming to her.
We practiced two hours every afternoon. I had never worked so hard at racquetball. Lissa and I were growing more and more evenly matched. Coaching each other was working, but I stopped at the club’s management office on Tuesday to see if they could do some research on other top players in the area. We needed to sharpen our edge by facing more strong competitors.
“You’ve done a good job as far as making a schedule work,” Mr. Randolph said, “but it’s not really what we have in mind for the Dual Degree Program.”
Aw shit. My first meeting with the program advisor and the schedule I worked so hard on is shot to hell. This was such a mistake. I should never have agreed to the stupid program anyway. I was going to be a working artist. Why did I think I needed a BA in English, too? I should have… what? Quit school? Take the transfer back to UNeb and leave Lissa and Melody? What the hell am I moaning about?
“No one has really explained the program to me, I guess,” I said. I was trying not to be offensive.
“Well, let’s learn it together and make things work out best for you, Tony. Believe it or not, I only started on this job the fifth. So, I’ll tell you what the powers that be told me and then we can figure out what works best for you, okay?” I thought I might like him after all.
“Okay, Mr. Randolph.”
“Tony, if all goes well, we’re going to be working with each other for the next four years. Call me Cary. Now, here’s how they designed the program.”
It took nearly an hour just to explain what the program meant. If anyone had explained it when they offered it to me I probably would have run for my life. I thought I was going to be attending each school about half time and was going crazy balancing a school that was on semesters with a school that was on quarters. It turned out that they expected students to rotate with a year at one school and a year at the other, then the fifth year would be focused on the studio project that would be supervised by faculty from both schools and had to relate to both degrees. But that would mean…
“Wait. You mean that I wouldn’t be going to PCAD at all this year? That’s where all my friends are.”
“Like I said, Tony, that’s the way the program was designed. Now we’re going to figure out how it works. There’s logic to the system. With the two schools on different schedules, you’ve already seen what a pain it will be when breaks aren’t same, classes run on different schedules, and finals come five times a year. But let’s say that one school is your main focus for the year and the other you just keep your foot in the door. How many classes would it take to make you continue to feel connected to your friends and your first campus while still having your focus at Seattle Cascades?”
I have to admit, after we were finished, my schedule looked a lot more manageable and it was clear that I was an English major with an emphasis in Art and Literary Criticism. I’d be taking a full load at SCU with just a studio class at PCAD. Mmm. Doc was gonna shit.
“Now we’ve still got details to work out for funding.”
“They said I was getting a full ride.”
“Right. Now, housing. Dormitory or Fraternity?”
“I live off-campus.”
“You are technically a freshman with sophomore standing at SCU. Dormitory, private room. We’ll make it a full athletic meal plan. Health insurance. Football. Athletic fees and uniforms. And the rest of the application fees, student union membership, and travel allowance.”
“Wait! I don’t want any of that. I play racquetball, not football. I live off-campus and I don’t need campus meals.” I was getting railroaded and I was pissed.
“That’s right,” Cary said. “That’s why on the first day of classes, you go to the bursar and get a refund for all the things you paid for that you aren’t using. Then you take the check they give you and give it to your landlord to pay your rent for the year. What’s left over, you put in your food budget. It does mean that you’ll probably have to pay for court time out of that, but it’s a lot cheaper than football equipment. And this gives you a budget to travel to competitions.”
I looked at him with my mouth hanging wide open.
“I’m on your side, Tony,” he said with a grin.
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