Lori was wearing a tiny bikini in white satin, setting off her long blond hair. As she came closer, the high heels of the gold leather sandals clicked on the stones.
“Feel hungry?”
After glancing around over her shoulder to make sure both the girls were safely preoccupied, Lori had come very close to him. She squatted down, deliberately spreading her perfect thighs inches from his face.
“Very hungry,” Jim replied. “Got all my juices starting to run.”
There was a tiny golden fuzz, like that of a fresh-picked peach, around the edges of her bikini pants, tantalizing him. The material was so tight and sheer that he could see the shape of her pubic mound and even distinguish the pouting lips beneath.
“Better tuck into this first, lover,” she said. “Before it gets cold.”
“Wouldn’t want it getting cold,” he replied, moving one dripping hand from the water, toward her.
“Hey, what about little eyes,” she cautioned, gesturing to the twins. “Later is better. Wish you may, wish you might?”
Lori put the tray down, and Jim saw the big plate brimming with delicious food.
Five thick rashers of Canadian bacon, pink and crisp edged. A splash of ketchup, like clotted blood, at their center. A cloudburst of scrambled eggs, cooked to perfection, dusted with salt and pepper. Two tomatoes, sliced in half, and a heap of lightly fried mushrooms. A portion of veal, tender and just a little underdone, with a mist of pink clinging to its edges. Some link sausages, jostling a Matterhorn of hash browns.
There were some baked beans, surrounding an island of green chili. Jim was disappointed not to see any of his favorite bloodied chilies there, as well. A steak sat in one corner of the plate, with a haunch of sea bass next to it. A pile of shell pasta was sprinkled with grated basil. Huevos rancheros sat waiting for him in the middle of the platter, nudging a whole lobster.
“Good,” he said.
“Not too much?”
“Never have too much,” he said with a grin. “You coming in the pool? Or do you want to come somewhere else?”
Lori shook her head, the blond hair tumbling across her bronzed shoulders like waves of Kansas wheat. “You and your dirty mouth quite disgust me, James Hilton.” But her smile contradicted her words.
“So, everyone is blowing Bubbles!” exclaimed Heather.
It was the punchline to their sketch for the school and was totally incomprehensible to their parents.
Lori Hilton slipped into the crystal water, hardly disturbing the placid surface, moving in a few languid strokes to the far, deep end.
“Come over here,” said Jim, beckoning to his wife. There was a frosted pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice, along with a decanter of cranberry juice, tart on the tongue, its colour rich as fresh-spilled blood.
As she started to swim slowly toward him the sun was veiled and a cold wind rattled the storm shutters. Jim shuddered, hunching his shoulders. The sparkle went off the surface of the pool, and it became clouded and dull.
“What’s happening?” he whispered tentatively.
The screen door slammed shut, and both the girls had disappeared from the garden. The water in the swimming pool had assumed the color of pewter. Jim knew that there was a delicate whorling pattern in scarlet-and-crimson mosaics at the bottom, but it had become invisible.
Lori had stopped swimming and stood up, barely in her depth, the surface of the gray liquid only a couple of inches below her chin. Her blue eyes were wide and frightened. “Jim, dearest… help me….”
Jim glanced at the tray. Though only a few seconds had passed, the food had rotted. Everything had turned into a disgusting sludge of green-gray putrescence, covered in thin white worms and fat, leprous maggots.
He turned toward her again, and his jaw dropped. “Lori…”
His wife had vanished. Jim nearly went under himself as the depth of water in the pool seemed to increase dramatically. Now it was as if he were swimming in the middle of the sea, with a thousand feet of sullen ocean below him.
He gasped as he felt something immeasurably huge move by, only a few yards beneath his feet.