Her husband Jack looked out from the kitchen where he was putting away some groceries. “What’s up?”
“Rain! It’s going to rain on Saturday!” She brandished her phone at him, as if personally offended by it. “They’re giving a”– She looked back at the phone again to check–“sixty-seven percent chance of rain–Heavy rain! Oh, for crying out loud!” She raised her arms and eyes to the uncaring heavens. “Is our life not already shit enough as it is? Do you have to add extra irony?”
Jack, who worked in the building trade, was a practical person at heart. Give him a problem, and he’d try to solve it. “I’m not having this,” he muttered to himself; his eyes glanced left and right and his hands clenched and unclenched reflexively as he worked the issue. He grabbed his car keys. “I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
Emma watched him close the front door behind him in unbelieving silence, her mouth an ‘O’ of surprise, arms still raised theatrically. What was he going to do? This was weather. It’s not like it would do any good to drive over to the nearest church, march up to the altar, and demand to speak to the manager.
To the casual observer, it might seem that Emma and Jack were over-reacting to a little rain. Yes, their planned afternoon barbecue with friends Rebecca and Dan might have to be rescheduled, but that was no big deal, surely?
Except this was the first weekend after the government had announced an easing of pandemic restrictions. Finally, they were allowed to meet other households socially in private gardens (but not inside residences yet). As soon as the changes were announced, Emma had suggested the barbecue to Jack and he’d readily agreed. Jack wouldn’t admit it, but she knew he missed going to the pub with his mates. (Okay, that bit was a lie; barely a week would go by before Jack would randomly and loudly exclaim “God, I miss going to the pub with me mates!”) She knew he longed for the opportunity to sink a pint with another bloke who understood the deep and meaningful significance of, well, sinking a pint.
And while Emma had had various Zoom calls with friends — including some quite memorable ones with Rebecca about which Jack knew nothing at all (and Emma was keen to keep it that way) — there was something off about video calls which meant they couldn’t replace the real in-person thing. Hence their outrage at their first opportunity being potentially ruined by rain.
Plus, Emma had an ulterior motive: SEX.
***
She’d discussed it with Rebecca on a call earlier in the week, when she’d invited them to the barbecue.
“So, what have you told him so far?” Rebecca asked her.
“Well, I haven’t actually told him anything yet,” Emma said wretchedly. “Certainly nothing about your game, or its rules.” Rebecca and Dan played a sex game which motivated them to get housework done; Rebecca had revealed this fact to Emma during a particularly boozy girls’ night in at Rebecca’s place, in the pre-pandemic days, and a resulting demonstration by Rebecca and Dan had gone further than anyone had expected. Something else Emma was keen not to tell Jack about.
“Thing is,” Emma explained, “if I go into any details, Jack might wonder where I’m getting this information from, and that could lead to questions I really don’t want to answer, and I’m not going to lie to him about this — he doesn’t deserve that.”
Yet Rebecca knew that Emma had been trying to engage Jack’s interest in trying their game. “So what have you said?”
“I’ve just suggested that maybe we could try some role-playing, or some scenarios, but he just shuts down immediately, and says he can’t be doing with any of that nonsense.”
Rebecca looked thoughtful. “Okay, so let me summarise the situation as I understand it. Jack thinks you’re inviting us both round so that we can all have some long-overdue food and drink in an honest-to-God face-to-face environment, but really, you’re inviting us so that we can convince your husband that he’s being a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, and that he should play some nasty sex games with his filthy, perverted tart of a wife?”
Emma was crestfallen. “I suppose, yeah, when you put it like that, it is a lot to ask–”
“Challenge accepted!” Rebecca said with a wicked grin.
***
The plan was actually quite simple, as Rebecca explained when she called Emma back a few minutes later.
“The whole subject first came up when you asked how we kept the place so clean, so let’s use that. You’ll be doing some cleaning and tidying before we come round, right?”
Emma nodded. “Obviously.”
“Right. So we’ll use that. Stick to the truth. You comment on the cleaning you’ve done, and compare it to your recollection of our place.”
“And that’s when you can explain!” Emma said, with a smile.
“Nope. That’s when we avoid or deflect the question.”
Emma was confused. “Sorry?”
“We avoid answering, and you let it go,” Rebecca told her. “But give it an hour or so, and then raise it again. Once more, we deflect. Do that a few times, and eventually Jack is going to notice, and he is going to want to know what we’re hiding, so he will ask.”
“Ah,” Emma said, understanding, “and that is went you explain.”
“Maybe.”
“Huh?”
“It depends on how pissed he is. We want him to have a few beers inside him first,” Rebecca said. “That way, he’ll be more relaxed and more open to talking about salacious topics. And it’ll be Dan doing the explaining — Dan speaks fluent Bloke, and can translate. You and I will want to wander off around the garden for a bit of girlie talk now and then, which will give Jack a chance to talk to Dan about something that he’d be embarrassed to ask about in front of us ladies, but we want all four of us together before Dan first fills Jack in, because that way, you can legitimately assert that you heard about this, from us, at the same time as Jack. Understand?”
Emma was leaning back in her chair, her mouth open in surprise. “Jesus Christ, girl!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know whether to be more impressed or more appalled. Have you considered world domination? I think you’ve got a great career ahead of you as an evil genius.”
Rebecca laughed. “Why would I sit in my chair and stroke my pussy, when I have a servant to do it for me?”
***
Saturday dawned grey and overcast, but at least the promised deluge was holding off. The forecast had improved, to “light rain 30%”, but still Jack erected the camping gazebos he had rushed off to buy from the garden store upon Emma’s wailing. After that, he got the barbecue lit, so that it was ready to use by the time their guests arrived.
Jack was eager to sit, drink, eat and chill; Emma was positively giddy with excitement. Intellectually, she knew that they were just going to be chatting, and that maybe Dan could get Jack to start thinking more positively about his bedroom activities, but emotionally, Emma felt like this was the day when a whole, new exciting sex life opened up to her and her husband, and she spent much of the day feeling unaccountably horny as she tidied up, thinking about how Jack could be taking advantage of her as she did — she could definitely see the appeal in Rebecca and Dan’s game.
Their guests arrived on time, ringing the front door bed, and waving through the living room window from the driveway. Emma waved back, and pointed to indicate that they should come straight round to the garden through the garden gate and down the side of the house. They all congregated in the garden awkwardly — no-one could hug, or even shake hands, so once more they waved, without glass between them.
Rebecca and Dan were a gorgeous couple. They were lovely people, which certainly didn’t hurt, and Rebecca was Emma’s best friend, so naturally Emma was biased, but they did look good. Like Emma, Rebecca normally had shortish hair (but they’d both let it grow somewhat during lockdown), but where Emma’s hair was blonde, Rebecca’s was dark. Like Emma and Jack, Rebecca and Dan were relatively young, but while Emma and Jack were not bad to look at, Rebecca and Dan were both officially Attractive. Dan’s reddish hair didn’t detract from his chiselled looks or his toned body. Dan obviously worked out and kept fit. Jack didn’t do any of that — but nor did he need to: his regular work was physically demanding, and Jack was solid — his muscles weren’t the result of body sculpting, but of regular, hard graft. Constant physical exertions all day, every day kept his weight down, so that his strength was clearly visible when his usual, scruffy work clothing had been discarded and he’d showered off. Emma’s contemplation of her husband drifted towards potential futures where she could spent a lot more time ogling that muscular frame. Rawr.
Emma considered herself to be somewhat eclipsed by Rebecca; Emma was honest enough to know that she was pretty, and she had a pleasingly trim (but not skinny) figure on top of a naturally thin body type, but she didn’t have Rebecca’s striking looks or Rebecca’s more pronounced chest. But she hoped that she was attractive enough to keep Jack happy and interested.
Emma did the greeting, welcoming and seating. Jack sorted out drinks for all. They settled into suitably distant chairs arranged on either side of the barbecue. And the afternoon got under way.
Predictably, much of the initial conversation was about COVID, and how terrible it was, and how badly people were responding, and the government and, oh, everything. Jack had been affected the most — while Rebecca, Dan and Emma all had jobs they could do from home, Jack’s work had halted while he couldn’t be inside other people’s houses, so he was scrambling around for other means to bring in income: he’d put round flyers, and had been cleaning gutters, cleaning windows, painting fences and garden sheds, and had taken to collecting free-cycled furniture and doing it up for resale. Whatever kept the food on the table and the roof over their heads.
After a while, though, Rebecca called for a change of subject. “Can we not talk about bloody COVID for one afternoon?” she said. “Or politics. Let’s talk about something lovely for a change, while we’re all together.” She turned to Emma. “The garden looks lovely — and so does the house.”