‘How did it go with your Mum and Dad, anyway?’ ‘Not good,’ Alice responded for me once they’d left, pushing the door closed behind them. ‘...Which is why she’s taking the afternoon off.’ ‘Alice!’ ‘Good idea,’ Roxy agreed. ‘Get your packing finished.’ ‘I haven’t got much packing to do!’ Neither of them seemed to be listening. It was a conspiracy, I realised. The decision to send me home had clearly been made in my absence and there didn’t seem to be a thing I could say to change their minds. ‘Still. I was still processing the fact I’d just given my wife of twenty years to three black guys and watched them all fuck her for the last hour. And that I’d just closed the door and left the three black guys with Claire for the rest of the night, to do whatever they wanted with her. I corrected myself. It wouldn’t be a one-way street in there for the rest of the night. Claire was an eager participant, this is what she wanted and she’d also be doing whatever she wanted with her three black. Past her calves. Until the dress fell at her ankles. And Lilly stepped out of the dress. One pink-toenailed foot. At a time. She lay it over one of the chairs. Lilly looked over her shoulder at Matt. She slowly turned around. She grabbed another chocolate-covered strawberry. She stepped toward him.“So whaddya think?” Lilly asked, teasing. She could see very well in Matt’s eyes what he thought. And it made her feel good. Sexy. Confident.“I’m speechless,” Matt answered. “And that doesn’t happen.. The rains began again as they always do in the warm summer afternoons of Southeast Texas. I was nestled deep with in the cities tunnel ways and skyscrapers. ‘Its hailing cats and dogs out there,’ a customer had come into the Cantina dripping wet. Shaking the water from his umbrella and placing it at the bars edge. ‘There’s even a dog at your front door to prove it.’ My ears perked up while everyone else thought it was a joke. ‘What kind of dog?’ I asked. ‘A Big Black Lab laying under the eve.