The Prodigal
Fifty-four
DREW HAD SEEN ENOUGH of Amy’s Roller Derby bouts that he’d changed from calling her ‘Pretty’ to calling her ‘Amalia Want’. On his other arm he escorted Bree. Damon held Allison and Whitney by the hand. Sandra was with Walt and he lent his other arm to Erika. Of course, my parents were there because this was also commencement weekend. Lexi was determined to help us move and to be present at the birth of our child late in June.
Melody’s fashion show at the gala was later in the evening this year. Senior projects were presented after nine o’clock, so when the fourteen of us stepped out of our limo, we were relaxed and ready to party.
Kate and I had little to show at the gala. Our year’s work was in a church several blocks away. Clarice resolved the technical issues and Doc Henredon cleared the way for a slide show between the fashion show and the dance recital. It included our work and Jerome’s crucifix.
“I’ve got a great idea, guys,” Kate said when we were standing on the sidewalk. “How about a gala with no drama?” We all laughed.
And we got our wish. Melody and Lissa received a standing ovation when Lissa took the catwalk and modeled the new line of maternity sportswear and the new fabrics Melody designed this year. Melody had a beautiful tapestry on display in the main exhibit area, too.
“We made it!” Rio exclaimed when she showed up with Matt.
“What took so long?” I asked.
“I… uh… had trouble with my dress,” she said.
“What kind of trouble?” Kate asked. It was an innocent question.
“I couldn’t put it on while I was tied to the bed.” It would have passed had not Wendy leaned over Rio’s shoulder and bit her ear.
“Grrr rawr rawr,” Wendy growled at her.
“Oh!” I swear we all saw Rio’s nipples pop straight out against her dress like they were spring loaded. She leaned against Matt.
“I understand you could show me a few tricks, Miss… uh… Tiger,” he said. We laughed and got food from the buffet.
“Tony,” Matt said standing beside me. “I’ve got what you need.”
“That’s great, Matt.”
“That vicar-guy is going down. I’m not sitting around while that predator is on the loose.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I found pictures of him with boys—some as young as Damon. They weren’t portraits.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ!” I swore.
“I already acted. I sent them to the Archbishop with a message that I’d release them to the police in twenty-four hours. If he doesn’t turn the vicar in, he’ll have committed a crime, and have violated a pact among American bishops that could end his prospects of advancement.”
“What happened?”
“We’ll know tomorrow. I’ll tell you more later.”
We met more friends, talked to more people, and called it a night.
“I’ll see you later, Tony,” a quiet voice said from behind me. I turned to see the most stunning raven-haired beauty I’d ever met. If I hadn’t seen her nude a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Some of her hair hung down in her face and some stuck almost straight out. I’d only seen that hairstyle in anime. The dress she wore—or was it a nightgown?—left little to the imagination. Her nipples were clearly visible through the semi-transparent black top. The hemline of her skirt was almost high enough to see the gates of heaven. Garters stuck from beneath it to hold up leaf patterned stockings that looked like they were tattoos on her legs. Her four-inch heels put her eyes almost at my eye-level. I exhaled, suddenly realizing I’d been holding my breath.
“Wow, Morgan. You’re kind of blowing your cover tonight, aren’t you? Now everyone will know you’re a stone-cold fox.”
“Are you kidding? Three guys I have class with tried to have an intimate conversation with me and not one of them recognized me.”
“I can imagine they’d want to be intimate. You aren’t leaving much to the imagination.”
“My father would be scandalized.”
“Did you say he was Tulalip?”
“No. That’s my mother. Dad’s a stuffy professor over at SCU.”
“Oh, my! Not Dr. Dennis!”
“Yeah. You know him?”
“Not well enough to report what you’re wearing,” I laughed. My Anatomy and Human Physiology professor was my newest model’s father. My, my.
“My debut as a nude model was rudely interrupted by some old priest,” she laughed. “I’m hoping to convince the artist for an encore.”
“You know that Bob Bowers claims that Tony makes love to all his models?” Kate whispered. She’d edged closer, not to me, but to Morgan.
“Oh, I hope so,” Morgan breathed. “I mean… not for anything more than that, Kate. I wouldn’t try to get between you.”
“There’s a chance you could get between us—while we carefully take what remains of your clothing off with our teeth.” Kate kept getting closer and closer to Morgan until she moved the last couple inches to press her lips to my assistant’s. That deepened until I noticed people watching and reminded them it was time to go to the after-party.
“Like I said; see you later, Tony,” Morgan said.
“Not tonight, love,” Kate whispered to me as I watched Morgan’s ass. “We have a different commitment tonight.”
“Really?”
“Although, maybe we should get the blonde Native American in the same bed as the raven Native American,” Kate said thoughtfully.
I had a feeling it could be a long night.
“Mom?” I said when we came through the door. The lights were ablaze. I was ready to rush in with our cohort and get ready for the after-party. Everything was already set out and waiting. “What are you doing here? I thought you and Dad were at Jack and Lexi’s for the night.”
“Oh, we’re all here,” Lexi said as she came from the kitchen.
“What a way to greet your mother!” Mom said at the same time.
“Did you bring the boys back, too?”
“Molly’s with the boys,” Jack said as he and Dad came out with a big tray of shrimp and bottles of champagne. I poked my head into the dining room and saw a bigger spread than I purchased at Costco.
“Whoa! Look at all the food!”
“It’s your graduation party, Tony. And Melody’s.”
“Wendy and I worked it out with Lissa,” Kate said. “The parents wanted to make the party special.”
“And you kept it a secret from us!” Melody exclaimed. “I hope you’re ready for an art party.” The doorbell rang and the party was on.
And everyone came. I think that if we’d met a person in the past four years, that person showed up at the party. A few people had moved away when they graduated a year ago, but so many others were there. We spent the evening accepting congratulations. Father Andrew even showed up. He’d proven to be a real supporter, even though he couldn’t do anything about the archbishop. The archbishop would shit when he saw the book. I hoped it was a hard one.
Amy had a new girlfriend—at least I assumed it was a girl. They were roller derby teammates and, in this relationship, Amy was the fem and Glo was the butch. Glo wore leathers and glared at me every time she was near. Amy’s little sister, Trudi, was there, too.
“What are your plans, Tony?” Noelle James asked me.
“Well, we’re moving at the end of the month. Kate and I are getting married in July, and by that time Lissa should have our girl.”
“Not to mention that you’ve been distracted from painting long enough,” Clarice said. “You and Kate have gallery openings soon.”
“I’ve been working all year, Clarice,” I whined. We’d talked about this enough times to have our call and response worked out.
“You need paintings people can hang on their walls, not have to go to church to see.”
It was almost three a.m. by the time we got cleaned up after the party. I was surprised to see Bree, Whitney, and Allison leave. I’d expected them to stick around. Melody and Lissa headed to bed and Erika went to the downstairs guest room. I hopped in the shower with Wendy and Kate and we lovingly cleaned each other without going overboard. When we left the bathroom, Wendy shoved Kate and me out the door.
“Little private time for us tonight, Tiger?”
“No. I’m staying up here. I have to give Melody her graduation present.” I’m sure I heard a low growl. Or maybe that was a purr. “Kate has your present,” Wendy finished, kissing me.
Kate led me into the downstairs guest room. We weren’t wearing anything and when we entered Erika’s room, neither was she. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at us we walked in.
“Do you know how hard it is to just sit and wait for y’all?” Erika drawled. “I ’bout broke ranks and ran upstairs to get you.”
“You know,” I said, “every Native American I’ve seen naked is drop-dead gorgeous. Why is that, Miss Redhawk?”
“I don’t know how many of us you’ve seen, but I’ve heard a girl in heat is always attractive to a man. I think I need to take you two down to Oklahoma this summer to see the heart of the Cherokee Nation.”
“Kitten, I think we’ve been propositioned,” I laughed. Kate didn’t answer. She pulled Erika to her for a kiss that got a quick rise out of me. I’d probably drunk too much champagne tonight, but watching Kate make out with Erika made the tiredness and alcohol drop away. Someplace in the back of my mind I thought about questioning what we were doing. That place was so far away, though, that it was easy to disconnect from it and just fall into the rhythms created by my wife-to-be and this beautiful, short, German/Cherokee nymph.
We didn’t get much sleep. When I awoke Saturday morning, Kate’s luscious pussy was hovering over my mouth as Erika’s slippery love-canal engulfed my cock. I lifted my tongue to the treat before it.
PCAD graduation was at Benaroya Hall. We’re an art school. There were no gowns and mortarboards. We dressed however we wanted to—or in my case, however my wives wanted to dress me. Yeah. Black leather pants… You get the picture.
If you are within six credits of graduation, you can attend commencement. There was some question about my credits, but Dr. Watts stepped in and said that all my work was finished except the jurying and that there was nothing stopping us from declaring my program finished at PCAD. It didn’t make a difference. We received empty folders for our diplomas during commencement. The actual diplomas would be mailed out in mid-June. We gathered in the auditorium and applauded each other. We listened to speeches, the musical compositions, and watched the dances. An acting student gave one of the speeches, so it was dramatic and filled with tears.
Two-and-a-half hours after we walked into the hall, we met our families for refreshments at the reception.
The only sadness to the day was that Kate was not presented a diploma. She sat with the family, and our guests. She’d made her choice.
Erika flew back to Georgia on Monday. Mom and Dad flew back to Nebraska. They’d all be back for the dedication of the chapel on the eighth of June. It was great to have Lexi with us. She was over every day to help pack for the move. At least that was her stated intention. She spent more time hovering over Lissa than anything else. If Liss groaned, Lexi was there to get her a glass of water, rub her back, or encourage her to rest. I don’t think Lexi could have been more invested in her first grandchild if Melody had been bearing it instead of Lissa.
But Lexi wasn’t so focused on Lissa that she couldn’t sit with Kate for a while each day to talk about wedding plans. She and Jack were planning to go meet with Kate’s family at the commune. I could hardly wait for the results of that meeting! Of course, Kate and I wouldn’t be there because we had to fly to Georgia.
We were busy all week reading every word of the book galley with the “for position only” or FPO images in it to be absolutely sure there were no errors in either the text or the matching of photos. Doctor Bychkova even sat at the dining room table with us to look over the galleys. Whitney and Rio volunteered to take time away from their studies to help proofread and caught a ton more errors. I couldn’t believe it.
“Ah won’t swear we got ev’r’ mistake,” Whitney drawled. “But there are 137 fewer now.”
After we’d taken one more trip through the printout, we handed it over to Clarice, and on Sunday, Kate and I flew to Georgia.
Erika convinced us to stay at a suites motel instead of the Doubletree. The room was just as nice, but there was no restaurant in the hotel and no room service. It had a coffeepot. That was fine with us since we intended to spend our evenings with Erika and figured we’d be going out for dinner. Erika was waiting for us at the airport and checked into our room with us. I fell asleep right after dinner while Kate and Erika renewed their friendship—sometimes noisily.
My job was straight-forward. I approved prints that Gerhardt and Erika had pulled. There wasn’t an original that we could compare them with, since the originals were all painted on walls in Seattle. I had to look at the colors generated from Erika’s careful photography and simply decide if they were right or not. I’ve got a good color memory, so saying that an entire print-run was too red was easy until I watched close to 300 finished prints go into the shredder. Gerhardt agreed that what we got on the next print-run was much better.
As Gerhardt and I worked on my prints, Erika and Kate worked on photographing the last of the Kate’s original oil pastels. Their patented screening technique imitated the density and size difference of the tiles in Kate’s mosaic to the next order of magnitude. It was amazing to watch the first print come off the press—three droplets of water from the fingers of Pilate—and see the level of detail in the droplets fade off to general colors of a towel and hands at the edges. It was a stunning effect. We worked through most of two weeks, photographing, printing, proofing, and signing. This would be a large edition compared to The Bacchanalia Suite. That had had only twenty paintings and eighty-five of each. The Parables Suite was forty paintings and 150 copies of each. Our mystery investor had put up fifty thousand dollars for numbers one and two of the complete edition.
Kate’s fourteen paintings were to be released in a slightly smaller edition. It dawned on me that I had to produce four times as much work to make as much as Kate did from her paintings—if everything sold. Damn, I was proud of her.
“Hi, Tiger. What’s up?” I asked when I answered the phone. I saw Kate stop in the act of dressing for our Saturday night dinner and grin at me when she heard I was talking to Wendy. I popped it on speakerphone. Erika slipped up behind Kate and began stroking her torso from panty-line to neckline.
“I miss you, master,” came the shaky voice.
“I miss you, too, Tiger,” I answered.
“Really, Tony? I’m sorry. I… worry…”
“My Tiger. Are you doubting how much I love you? Are you doubting that you will always be mine?”
“No, master. Not… maybe. Please forgive… Come back to me.”
I quickly realized what was going on. Wendy was afraid that Kate and I had thrown her off to play with Erika. Kate looked horrified and pushed Erika away as she came to me. Before she could say anything, I held my finger to my lips.
“Wendy, I will be here another week. This is important. You couldn’t come because you have classes. Are you attending your classes?”
“Yes, master.”
“Are you attentive at work?”
“Yes, master.”
“Do you love me, Wendy?”
“Oh, yes, master.”
“This week, you must trust my love for you. No one is taking your place. Sometimes I need to be gone and Kate may need to be elsewhere. We might even sleep with others. But you must trust us to come back to you and be strong while we are gone. Do you understand?”
“Yes, master. I feel so foolish. I spent the night alone downstairs and I was frightened.”
“Did Melody and Lissa send you away?”
“No, master. I thought they needed a little time with each other.”
“That was thoughtful of you, Tiger. You are always so concerned about others. I’m so proud of you. But you will not be abandoned. We will come back to you. Remember what I told you last Memorial Day?”
“To have faith, master.”
“Now I’m telling you again, Tiger. Have faith—in me and in Kate and our love for you. Would you like to talk to her?”
“Yes, thank you, master.”
I handed the phone to Kate and she switched it off speaker phone. In a couple of minutes, she was giggling into the phone with nonsensical noises and protestations of “I love you more,” as the two talked. It was a different relationship than mine, yet perhaps not so different.
When the call had ended Kate crushed me to her.
“That girl is so in love with the two of you,” Erika sighed.
“Make no mistake, Erika Strauss Redhawk,” I answered before I thought about it. “We love her every bit as much and will move mountains to care for and protect her.”
“Yessir,” Erika whispered.
“You don’t have to be subservient to Tony, Erika,” Kate said. “But if you truly are, he won’t turn his back on you.”
“I just had never seen or heard that side of him before,” she said. “It’s kinda awesome.”
“Yes,” Kate agreed. “Tony gives Wendy something that no matter how much I love her, I can’t give. And he is so caring and careful that sometimes I fantasize about being his… odalisque… too.”
“We need to do something,” I said.
Kate and I talked for over an hour while Erika listened. When we’d agreed on the course of action, we turned to Erika.
“Do not breathe a word to anyone about this,” I said, staring at her.
“Yessir,” she answered.
For the rest of the night I found myself buried between the naked bodies of my gypsy girl and my Cherokee. We never made it to dinner.
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