Chapter Three:

It would eventually become necessary for me to come up with a plan to blackmail Mrs. Kentise into surrendering. In the same manner as she had done it to me. That was after I had gotten hooked on Libby. Some of her very own tools-of-the-trade would come in very handy in bringing that about, too, tools such as the camera and the sound recorder. Voice recording apps, too, on the phone. It was long after it had become clear to me that: the only thing she was going to be doing with the evidence she had gathered on me being in her house screwing around with her helper was to use it to try and blackmail me into doing the same sort of thing for her, and to her.

After deciding to make this: her little shenanigans and sexual rendezvous, public knowledge. And shaming her would yield far greater results in getting her to quit than any legal pursuit would. I was able to wiggle my way out and break free from her dragnet.

?

She started soliciting action from me mere days after she first contacted me. That was the following day after she'd confronted Mira on the issue. Gosh, she smelled of breast milk for crying out loud. I thought we were bathing in the stuff. A pretty little thing she was, and still is. I can easily see how she became Mrs. Kentise, so young and all. If pretty looks were everything. Then the man who had married her, Bob Kentise, would surely have gotten everything that the world has to offer the day he married her. But other than that? She's a dumbass nutcase and a freak.

To be fair to her, though, I can't help but think that she's got some real potential here, because for her to have gone and put together a scheme like that after finding out about her helper and me. And then use it to get some action back into her own partly retired sex life. After her husband had divorced her and remarried, was borderline, genius. I believe someone sold her short, somewhere along the way, her parents probably did. She called me up the following evening after Mira gave her my contact information. Said it was important that I come to see her and get some things straightened out before she goes to see her lawyer.

Mira had already alerted me to what was up, so I was not the least bit surprised. I hopped into my car and trekked over at the time appointed. Never did make much of the fact that Mira was not on the job there at the time. Mere coincidence? Or was it a result of careful planning? Anyway, I got there to find her home with her two children. The elder boy was home from school. Just like Mira had relayed to me about how it happened when she was called upstairs to meet with the mistress, it was (basically) the same setting.

The laptop was there on the kitchen table, active and ready to go. On the screen, though, unlike how things were said to be in her rendition of the story. The screen wasn't facing the front, where I could see it. I was bending my neck somewhat to try and sneak a peek whenever she wasn't looking my way, but I still couldn't see anything.

"So," she said, "as it turned out, this is not the first time you've been in this house, is it?"

"As a matter of fact, ma'am, it isn't, and I'm sorry for my indiscretions and trespassing, ma'am."

"So you're sorry? So you're sorry now? What makes you so sorry all of a sudden? Because you now find that you are facing some charges like trespassing on private property, perhaps? Breaking and, and?"

"Like I said, ma'am, I really am sorry, I meant no harm or disrespect. It was just a situation where?"

"A situation eh, that's what it was? A situation? So what can you say to me to make me not call the police right this minute and have you arrested?"

"I, I really don't know. I don't have anything to say other than to ask for your pardon, ma'am, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me for this. I'm not a bad person, or some evil person who has set out to do you, or anybody else, harm. I just made a stupid mistake. It was a miscalculation of gigantic proportions on my part."

"A mistake, eh? Is that what this is? A mistake? Tell you what, let me think about it for a while, maybe run it by my lawyer and see what he thinks about the whole thing. Then we will decide where we go from there."

"I know I'm pushing my luck here, ma'am, but could you leave the lawyer part out for me? Please."

"No, you don't get to tell me what to do, or not to do here, mister. I'll do the telling around here. You should be thanking your lucky stars right now, as it is. That you have found me in a good mood, or you would be negotiating with the cops by now."

By then, the baby could be heard whining, and the boy, her brother, was a mama, mama-calling from the playroom next door. Her full attention was surely needed elsewhere. "You may go now, mister, but expect to hear from me again soon," she said.

"Thank you, ma'am, and have a good evening."

"Go, go."

So, I did just that, I got up and left.

?

Friday evening, almost exactly a week after that first meeting with Mrs. Kentise. As soon as I signed off from work at about five-thirty. The phone rang. It was the madam, for sure.

"I've got a proposal for you, Mister Manley," she said. "You need to get here as soon as possible." I point my nose in that direction. One can't afford to irritate this person any further on whom so much of one's future and freedom may depend, can he? She opened up the door for me, so I walked in.

"Have a seat," she said. As she turned the corner and went out of sight. I didn't sit, I could not. Instead, I scanned the room, just because? I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I was just uncomfortable. She came walking back into the living room, "Sit, sit, sit down," she said. She spoke emphatically but rather calmly and coolly. I sat down in the very first chair that my hand could reach at the table. She pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table and sat down in front of me.

"Look," she said, "I've been thinking about a lot of things. I've concluded that you are who you say you are. Just someone who had made a stupid mistake and is sorry for it. So?" She paused, pushed back the chair, and got up.

"I'm going to cut you some slack here," she said over her shoulder as she again turned the corner and went back in the direction of the room where she had gone before.

Again, I snuck another peek around. Leaning towards the door that was slightly ajar, which led into the children's playroom. It had come to my attention that I hadn't seen or heard anything of the children since I'd arrived there. Mrs. Kentise came back carrying the laptop. Or maybe it was another laptop in her hands. I can't say for sure which, but it was a laptop. She placed it on the table and hit the power button. With her right hand still on the backrest of the chair, she was about to pull out further. As she was about to sit back down, she paused in the middle of the act, leaning across the table at me.

"I think today is your lucky day," she said, and then continued to complete the act of sitting down.

After sitting back down and shaking herself comfortably in the chair. She began to manipulate the keys on the laptop. Progressively slowing down the act, "hmm, hmm," she squeezed out several sounds of satisfaction. Of some sort of satisfying discovery, I think. Or something closely akin to it. For several minutes, she was at it, leaving me there to wonder what she was up to.

She must have found what it was that she was searching for because she shot me a lingering stare over the top of the angled-up computer screen. Then, she sat back in the chair and stared at me again. Slowly, her eyes narrowed, her lips parted as a thin grin began to birth itself out on her face.

"How about you give me some?" She asked as the grin widened on her face.

"Huh! What?" I reacted in puzzlement. The already wide grin she was wearing got bigger. As she slowly turned the screen towards me and?

Whoa. There I was, looking at me, myself, and I. Right there on the screen, in the nude, with Mira. While standing there, in the presence of another woman, a strange woman. The one with whom I was not there at that time, in that state, to do anything. Yet.

To be continued.

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WritingElk.