Chapter Ten #6
“No, no, my dear. Margaret is far too valuable to me. She has been involved for years with my other interests. I shall give you Celia, who works at the desk across from Margaret’s.
Edna will remain, moving up to Celia’s position, and I shall give you another girl as well.
You and Celia will be in constant touch during the day. ”
“Wouldn’t Celia be a good administrator for The Channel?” Nora ventured. “After all, she knows all about it, and how it operates. I don’t.”
“Celia would never aspire to such a position,” Mr. Nicholas said. “Besides, she doesn’t have your intellect, or depth of duplicity.”
“You make it sound as if I am evil,” Nora cried.
“All humanity has the ability to be evil, dear Nora,” Mr. Nicholas told her.
“How many of you can really turn the other cheek? A few, but not the majority. Could you really have stood by and said ‘So be it’ if Jeff had taken your home, left you penniless, and destroyed your children’s future?
That is part of what being good is, but most people can’t do it. ”
“Does everyone who is lured into The Channel end up damned?” Nora asked him sadly.
“No,” he said. “Most people live their foolish fantasies for a time, and then grow bored with it and go away. Very few can be entrapped in this manner. And fewer yet with your potential. Don’t look so distressed, my dear Nora.
Being bad is far more fun than being good.
Look what being good, being dutiful, got you. ”
“Then I have no choice,” she said softly.
“You made your choice,” Mr. Nicholas said quietly.
“What if I say no, I won’t do it?” she asked him.
“It shall be as it was back just before J. J.’s graduation last June,” he told her.
“Of course you will remember all of this, and you will not be able to convince yourself it was your imagination, my dear. You shall know that you willfully threw this opportunity away. You shall lose your beloved house. Jill will not be able to finish law school for at least six years. She will have to work in order to pay her tuition, and of course she has no skills other than waitressing and temping as office help. As for J. J., he will give up his scholarship to help you survive. You see, Nora, you really do have a choice,” Mr. Nicholas said.
“If you take the path I have laid out for you, you will be a very wealthy woman in your reality. You will inherit everything that Jeff has amassed. Heidi will accept repayment with interest for the moneys she has expended on the bridge loan. Be generous with her. She cannot afford to retain possession of the co-op. Even if it is in her name, she will be glad to get her small investment back, and leave selling it to you. Surprisingly she feels guilt about the children’s college funds.
And of course she has other goals in mind now, which I will see she attains in return for her cooperation.
Brad will make certain she understands, and does what she is told.
“By the way, do get Rick to have Raoul Kramer negotiate the sale of your husband’s partnership in Buckley, Coutts and Wickham. The senior partners will attempt to cheat you. And do invest the moneys conservatively.”
Nora shuddered. It was like being on the other side of the looking glass.
It was surreal. She was getting investment advice from the Devil.
But how could she live with herself knowing what she had done to her children by refusing him?
And she would remember, Mr. Nicholas said.
Nora believed him. Everything he had promised her had come true.
Why would any woman in her right mind give up all of this, all of what she could have, out of a sense of right and wrong?
She looked at Kyle. His face was expressionless as if he didn’t want to influence her.
They would be together every day in his antique shop, and every night here within The Channel.
“How long must I repay this debt I owe you?” she asked Mr. Nicholas.
“Does it really matter, my dear Nora?” he asked her with a small smile.
“No,” she said with a deep sigh. “It doesn’t.”
“Then we are agreed, my dear? You will accept my offer?”
“Yes,” Nora told Mr. Nicholas, “I will. How clever you are, sir, to seek out a weakness and use it to your own advantage.”
“You will learn how to do that in time, my dear,” he promised her.
“Will I learn all of your little tricks?” she queried him.
Mr. Nicholas laughed. “No,” he said, “but you will learn enough over the coming years to be quite valuable to me, my dear Nora. Oh, one small thing more, dear girl, employee. The Kyle who will exist in your reality, your world, will not know you other than as his employee. Only in The Channel will he be the man you have come to love, and who loves you. His memory of you in your reality will not exist. You must, after all, suffer some small punishment for your sins. Even I am not allowed to put the universe out of balance.” He stood up.
“I will leave you and Kyle to your private pleasures now.” And with a neat little bow he departed the bathroom.
They heard the elevator doors closing behind him as he went.
“Do you want to know?” Kyle asked her.
“I know what I need to know for now, I suppose,” Nora answered him.
“I was never privy to what he intended to do with you,” Kyle said.
“No, you wouldn’t have been,” she replied, lying back on the table, and unfolding the sheet that had covered her so that she was naked once again.
“I never lied to you when I said I loved you,” Kyle told her.
“I know that too,” Nora agreed.
“Are you angry?” he asked her.
Nora thought a moment. “No,” she said. “Just sad.”
He began to massage her again, and when he had finished they went into the bedroom, where they climbed into the king-sized bed and began to make passionate love to each other.
And in his jail cell bunk Jeff Buckley dreamed that his wife, Nora, was screwing another man.
He saw her plainly. Beautiful. Young. And far more passionate than he had ever seen her before.
The horny little bitch, he thought, and he tossed restlessly.
And then he heard her cries of pleasure as the dark-haired man used her mercilessly over and over again.
He could feel his own heart beating violently in his chest as he watched them.
How could she betray him like that? She was having a really hot fucking party with the guy, who behaved as if she belonged to him and it wasn’t the first time he’d had his big cock up her wet pussy.
He was going to kill the bitch when he got out of here.
And all the while she had played the proper suburban matron.
She sure as hell wasn’t behaving properly now. How long had it been going on?
And then Nora’s lover turned her over onto her stomach.
She knelt with her deliciously round bottom toward him.
Leaning forward, she balanced herself on her folded arms. The guy had the biggest dick Jeff had ever seen, and he slowly slid it into Nora’s asshole.
Jesus! She’d never done it for him that way.
He’d never even suspected she was that hot.
A respectable man’s wife wasn’t supposed to be like that.
Jeff could see Nora’s face. It was alight with her pleasure.
A look he had never seen. The guy was reaching beneath her to get at her clit.
Jeff’s heart beat faster. He heard Nora’s voice as plain as if she had been in the room with him.
“Do it!” she begged. “Do it to me, Kyle!” And then she looked directly at him. “Good-bye, Jeff,” she said, laughing.
Jeff Buckley’s heart felt as if it were being squeezed by a large hand, and then it stopped entirely. There was a white light ahead, and a well-dressed man came forward smiling at him.
“Hello, Jeff,” the man said to him. “I’m Mr. Nicholas. I’ve been waiting quite a long time for you.”