Kelly's Garden

By S. Bonvissuto

* * *

Kelly's garden is dying.

Like all the projects in her life Kelly had started this one with the best of intentions. Back in winter she had been struck by a vision of a 10x20 plot in the corner of the back lawn which would keep their summer patio table covered in salads and overflowing fruit bowls. So she had bought gardening books, hand tools, the stiff work gloves and, oh yeah, the seeds and spent most of May tilling and seeding, weeding and water. Back then the soil was still a rich brown - you could have easily imagined a magical vine springing up from such a fertile earth and climbing the sky.

Not today, though. Today the dirt's pale and cracking, its yield questionable at best. The cukes, corn, and carrots have all sprouted up small while the tips of the leaves of the nearby lettuce have blackened beneath the harsh mid-summer sun. Even from where she stands she can see her spinach has bolted in search of moisture. No way to tell the condition of any of the root vegetables since neither the potatoes nor peppers have bothered to surface. The summer squash has, and, having been forgotten, rotted. So did all the tomatoes and eggplant, their skins mushy to touch. And the watermelon whose juice was going to paint her chin pink? Eaten right off the vine by invisible yet apparently tenacious scavengers who knew just where to attack the overripe fruit, goddamn them.

Standing there with dripping garden hose in hand, Kelly just when did this happen? Ah, but she knows - somewhere between the cool spring and today (the thirty-sixth straight day without rain), or, more specifically, between the job and the food shopping, the laundry and the bills, the weekend barbecues and the wedding bridal showers, baby showers, christenings and First Holy Communions. God, how many times did she come home from work with barely enough energy to take off her work clothes or make dinner and tell herself Tomorrow, I'll water and Tomorrow, I'll weed and Tomorrow, I'll straighten the damn stakes?

Freshly-squeezed tears tumbling down her cheeks. The hose dribbles onto the cracked earth, making miniature craters in the soil. She presses her trembly lips together and thinks savagely she ought to simply pull the metal trigger and blow all the vegetables right out of their arid beds Well, why the hell not? she thinks. I plan, I work hard at something but then other things happen and I forgot and look, look! it always happens like this, alwaysÉ

Behind her the porch's glass doors slide open, slam shut. She turns, surprised - Ben has come home early. He wanders across the dull green shag, still in his three-piece suit, although somewhere between the garage and the back yard he's traded in the attachŽ for a Scotch and soda on the rocks sans tonic and ice. Not a good sign. He only ever drinks whiskey when he's spent a day "bleeding in the trenches."

Kelly quickly dries her eyes. "Hi. You're home early. How was your day?"

He snorts, gazing over her garden and seeing nothing. "My day? My day was for shit, thank you very much. Couldn't do anything right for anyone, especially Tyler, who keeps haunting me with the last quarterlies like it was my fault no one could reach their quotas. What was I supposed to do, hold all the managers' hands? I held the team meetings every Tuesday, I followed-through with every regional divisionÉ"

Sniffling, Kelly nods at all the right breaks. It's an old trick she guesses a lot of wives (and husbands, too) must learn early on. Know when to bob your head, throw in a couple of 'ooh's' and 'ahh's' and you could string along the dreariest of soliloquies.

Like this one, for instance.

"Éand then that jerk Fitzpatrick, remember him, the smarmy bastard from the Christmas party who couldn't stop undressing you with his eyes? just takes over from me in the middle of the divisional meeting as if it's he who has all the answers, as if it was he who stayed up late every night last month trying to make the numbers workÉ"

Kelly nods and nods and for variety, nods some more. Behind her swollen eyes, though, she recalls a time when, three months shy from graduating with a major in business accounting, Ben swore he'd never wear a striped monkey suit or do hard time in a cubicle, swore he'd never let work keep him from her. What happened to those promises? she suddenly wants to interrupt. Just what happened to all those dinners we were going to share making, eating? all those evening walks we were going to take? all those weekends it was just going to be you and me? Did they dry up, turn to dust and blow away?

"Éhow could she forget the damn slides? I mean, do you have any idea what it's like standing there with my dick in my hand, everyone's looking at me and you know, I mean, you just know Fitz is cracking a smileÉ"

The thing is, Kelly doesn't want to be nodding her life away for her husband's benefit. She looks at her husband and cocks her head in curious fashion. Blame it on the sultry ninety degrees that's making her shirt cling to her back and rivulets run from the bottom of her boobs; blame it on the sad haze settling in over her brain, cutting her visibility to near-zero. She brings the hose up and shoots Ben in the middle of his chest.

It's a short cold burst that stops him in mid-sentence as sure as if he'd been hit in the face by a clown-thrown lemon meringue pie. "WhatÉ"

She shoots him again, smiling.

"Excuse me?" Ben asks with a raised eyebrow.

Kelly answers him by triggering the hose a third time, working the stream up and down and side to side. By the time she's done his jacket and pants are sopped and his glass nearly full again. Naturally, she's laughing. It's the sound of sheer summer folly, those spry giggles you get running through a sprinkler or landing a perfect cannonball off the diving board.

For the briefest of moments dark clouds slide over her husband's face but then a new expression breaks through, a grin whose motive for being she can't quite place. Ben salutes her with his glass and tosses it back. This only makes Kelly laugh harder. He's laughs, too, waving for the hose.

She shakes her head - Oh no, Benjamin James! - but he's insistent and in the end she finally relinquishes the cold brass handle. At first he brandishes it a-la Bond, James Bond which makes her howl. Then he shoots her at point-blank range. She tries to turn away but he follows, saying in a perfectly witchy voice, Oh no, my precious, you and your little dog Toto, too! getting her in the face and hair and arms and legs.

Catching her breath she says, "You forgot my ass. How could you miss my ass?"

"Are you kidding? I miss it every day," he confesses, and then proceeds to hose it thoroughly down.

She jumps, squeals, dances. By the time he lets up on the trigger there's not an inch of clothing that isn't clinging to her curves. She catches her breath, very aware of just how her shorts are hanging off her hips and her shirt is clinging off the swell of her breasts, of how her large dark nipples (which she is irrationally vain about) are poking through the fabric. She swipes some stringy strands from her eyes and catches Ben looking back at her. There's something in his gaze, a glow she hasn't seen in the longest time, not even when they do go through the motions of fucking somewhere between the weather report and David Letterman's monologue. What's more, the spark in his stare touches off something in her own belly, a slow burn that makes her legs weak.

A cool wind blows through. Somewhere nearby a thunderhead makes itself known but neither of them seem to want to go find any shelter just yet. Perhaps they've been taking refuge long enough. Or at least that's what she's thinking when she peels off her shirt, unclasps her bra and walks straight up to her husband.

The hose and glass fall to the grass. Kelly does not hesitate taking him into her mouth. At first she can feel him pull back, the businessman wanting to go find a towel, but she holds him firm, kissing him through the awkward moment. She has to smile when his hands fall to her hips and then drop down to her ass. Ah, the things he used to do to it before they domesticated themselves in the name of marriage.

Her fingers find his nipples through the dripping shirt. She tries working the buttons and has to wonder just who the bastard was who thought them up? Fuck it, she thinks, and pulls the shirt open. They both laugh as his shirt joins hers on the ground. Then he scoops her up off the ground and like a newlywed husband walks her to the bed of earth before them. A knight of old could not have laid a maiden down more gently than he does her. She shrugged out of her shorts and panties, kicking them aside, and he added his own pants and boxers to the heap.

Then it was just them - naked, scary, but beautiful beyond that. Despite a crackling Type-A personality Ben always approached foreplay with an altar boy's wonder (and Kelly hopes he'll never lose his awe for her.) Today is no exception. With veneration he kisses her mouth, her chin and neck, begins suckling her nipples. There's a moment or two of tension as his right hand runs down her belly - she's put on ten pounds since the day they were married and feels every one of them at that moment. But Ben doesn't seem to notice or care, his palm circling her navel until she's warmed within.

Then his fingers skate down into her pubic hair where they pay homage to her clit with butterfly caresses. Kelly opens her legs and, having extended this invitation, waits breathlessly on his reply. When Ben raises his head she sees the hardened exec is gone and in his stead is a beautiful young man gazing upon his naked teenage girlfriend for the first time.

She rolls up onto her side. "Come hereÉ"

"Don't youÉ?"

Kelly knows what he's about to ask: Don't you want to missionary? and shakes her head. The very thought of stopping to run inside and check to see if this would be one of those opportune fertilization moments was absurd. Like property values and pooper-scoopers, it's someone else's quality-of-life issue.

"I'd rather you fucked my ass." And to show she means business she gets up on all fours, proudly raising her cheeks.

Behind her Ben is penitent, genuflecting to massage each cheek, kiss them, part them gently. Kelly sucks in air through clenched teeth as his tongue dances across her bud. Then he buries his face in, probing, pushing. From that point-of-contact sparks tumble, setting small fires alit inside of her.

Kelly rocks back against him, opening up as much as she can. Then without any warning his mouth disappears. For a tripping second she thinks that's it, oh my god, that's it! Sensible Ben has returned and declared fun-time over, why don't they get inside before they are drenched?

Then his cock begins raking her ass, gently working its way in deeper with every pass. When it finally announces itself at her back door she panics, stiffens - it's been too long, it won't work! Then she remembers her yoga tapes and breathes deeply, opening up. Ben is gentle and goes in slow. First there's the familiar pressure followed by that flaming pain that in turn touches off small fires inside of her.

They start saw against each other, with each other, more sparks flying from the friction. Kelly cranes her head back, the first fat raindrops kissing her freckled cheeks. As if to protect her Ben cloaks her back, his breath a hot wind in her ear. That's when the heavens gift them with a wild wind-swept torrent. He fucks gamely on, she squeezing every stroke out of him, laughing with the thunder, screaming along with the wind. Lightning sears the sky. Will they be struck down here right in the middle garden? she wonders, only to be found by neighbors with his cock still inside her, her mouth frozen in a charred groan?

She can accept that.

Ben's grunts go breathless and suddenly he's seeding her in hot jets. Kelly contracts muscles and coaxes his insides out, that's right honey, c'mon baby, don't you stop, don't you dare fucking stop! And he doesn't, grinding away until he's reduced to soft cries and kisses. But even when he's done he's not; as soon as his cock slides out of her he's gently laying her back, parting her legs and dewy lips with his own. At first Kelly holds back, keenly aware that she is laying in the middle of her garden with a thunderstorm raging overhead while her husband licks her pussy. Then she thinks, fuck yeah, my husband's eating my pussy! and wraps her legs around his neck. It hasn't been so long that she's forgotten how adept Ben's tongue can be - like a skilled magician it can pull giggles from behind your ear, coos from the side of you neck, or, as in right now, snake inside to find all your pink secrets.

Static jolts her, crackling throughout her body. Kelly grabs her tits - when she's like this they were her beautiful voluptuous tits, none of that polite "breasts" shit - and squeezes, tweaks, pulls. She arches up to the darkening sky and falls back down hard on the earth. (Thank god for her padded butt!) It doesn't take long; she's already cruising in fourth so what's topping out in overdrive? In minutes? seconds? she's bucking bad, tossing out pink-wrapped epithets. Then it's her turn to ride the wet rushing winds. Ben is relentless, not letting a single drop spill. She screams into the hoary sky and it replies in turn.

At some spent point Kelly collapses into a shuddering heap, laughing as her ass slips back into mud. Ben falls on top of her, kissing her mouth, chin, neck and chest. She holds him close, stroking his wet hair and blinking away the rain that has finally broken the drought, wondering just what she'll find growing here tomorrow.

end