Sex. Murder. Mystery(46)

He went to the office one Thursday, not really sure why he was trying so hard to consummate an affair when, at least physically, it wasn’t working right.

“I’d like to be with you,” he said one day, “but I don’t have any money.”

“That’s okay,” Sharon replied, getting her purse and fishing through it for some bills. “You paid last time.”

“I don’t feel right about taking your money.”

She handed him thirty dollars. “That’s fine.”

But again, under the sheets of a motel bed, nothing worked.

Sharon didn’t act as though she minded much. She nuzzled with Gary and tried like an Olympian to get him aroused.

“Perry doesn’t hug me or kiss me like you do. We don’t have sex.”

* * *

Gary Adams lost his wet noodle on a plateau above Trinidad Lake one unseasonably warm afternoon in the spring of 1983. Finally. After several attempts at intercourse with the beguiling woman of his dreams, Sharon’s mountain man finally rose to the occasion. The two had spread out an Indian blanket out of view, in the midst of some of the country’s most spectacular scenery, and closed their eyes to make love. They came to the lake for that singular purpose. They came for a singular reason: there were no motel fees to be paid; they could have sex for free. And it worked.

Sort of.

“I didn’t please you,” Gary said, rolling off of her. Even though he had finally maintained an erection, he felt like a failure. Gary was certain Sharon had not experienced an orgasm. She had not moaned, groaned or writhed in the kind of ecstasy that he had hoped she would when his mission was finally accomplished.

“Oh yes, you did,” Sharon said. “Just hold me. Perry doesn’t even touch me anymore.”

Gary put his arms around her, and despite the fact he had done his best, he felt utter shame. He had cheated on his wife only once before. He had been a virgin when he married Nancy. He had wanted the kind of sex he had seen in pornographic movies. He’d wanted it so badly that when it finally came, and Sharon hadn’t, it hurt his pride. It made him want her more.

Over time, he discovered what it took for his lover to be satisfied. He shared his information with a friend.

“A lot of times,” Gary explained matter-of-factly, “she has to grab a man’s dick and actually move it herself and position it and move it and rub it the way she wants it. And once I found that out, I was able to do it real easy with her. She had to be in control, I guess.”

When Sharon finally climaxed she would let out a scream that Gary Adams was sure carried across the mirrored surface of the lake. She’d stiffen her body, and pull him in tightly against her torso. She was frozen as if she could hold the moment longer.

Gary also craved oral sex with Sharon.

“She tasted so good,” he told a friend, “I always called it her ‘special sauce’. She’d get real wet and it was almost like an addicting drug. Once I had it [oral sex] with her, I just had to have it.”

Sometimes they’d arrange to meet in the timber between their homes at a place where Gary had stashed a couple of sleeping bags to make Sharon more comfortable when they made love outdoors. She was a real lady, and she needed to be treated just so. No screwing in the brush like a couple of dogs in heat.

Whenever they met, wherever they met, it was always about sex. By a lake at a ski area near Raton, at a motel in Trinidad, at Round House when Perry was gone; it was always about sex.

“Perry’s getting suspicious about us,” Sharon said as Gary slid down past her ample breasts. “If he catches us, he’ll kill me. I swear he will.”

Gary tried to allay his lover’s concerns. They had been very careful. No one knew they had been sleeping together. Perry would never know for sure.

The days turned into weeks; weeks into months. The yellow deck lamp that was Sharon’s signal down to the Dude Ranch that the coast was clear for a tryst flickered like a strobe light whenever struggling Perry was working late or on a trumped-up errand for his wife.

For Sharon and Gary, it was sex and promises—the kind that only leads to trouble. Some would say the subject was inevitable. Sharon wanted out of her marriage, but she didn’t want to be penniless. She was entitled to the Good Life, a big juicy slab of the American Dream. The fact she was unhappy with her doctor husband had not been her fault. If he had amassed the kind of fortune she had expected, she might have felt differently. Some thought so, anyway. But as the affair with Gary increased in intensity, their talks took a darker turn. Sharon told Gary how Perry had slapped her and was abusive to the children. She even showed a bruise that she insisted Perry had left on her during one of his drunken inquisitions.