The M.I.L.F. Man

The Fourth Musketeer...

Clemence was 'way past drunk.

Chas had to actually drag her from the elevator to the loft because she'd slid down the wall and couldn't get her legs to work right.

And when we got to the loft she just fell backwards, smiled up at him from the floor, yelled, "Congratulations," and burst into a fit of slightly psychotic laughter.

I just said, "Coffee," and headed for the kitchen.

And she cooed, "What a good little wifey she is! And how pregnant are we? We're all in this together, you know. The parents are predictably ecstatic!"

Chas sat down next to her on the floor. "You're in a mood."

She poked his nose. "And you're glowing, of course. You always glow. You're my little glow worm, you are—look at those beautiful eyes! I hope the baby has those eyes—don't you hope the baby has those eyes, darling Cielo? Although you have beautiful eyes, too, don't you? My eyes are desperately dull..."

When I took the coffee over her hand trembled so much that Chas had to hold the cup for her while she took tiny sips. She looked like some of our shelter women looked after a week or two sleeping on the street. Hair matted. Clothes rumpled. One shoe unbuckled for some reason—or actually the strap had gotten ripped off one side somehow.

I sat down behind her when she started sniveling and rubbing eye makeup all over her face with the back of a hand. Face looked like a Picasso painting almost, after.

And she squinted over at Chas and whined, "You've only been married for ten minutes!"

"Been together for almost two years, though, Clemmie." Smiled at me, then. "Feels like we've known each other all our lives as the cliché goes."

She leaned back so she could glare at me. "How old are you, even?"

"A year older than your brother. We think."

We'd laughed about that when we finally got my "official" birth certificate. Babies were mostly born at home in our village so they used the date from a baptismal record that didn't match my name exactly. Chas calls me his "older woman" but we'll never know for sure.

Didn't impress Clemmie dearest, though. "You're still so young, though! There's so much more you could do—a whole world out there!"

"Which I've traveled rather extensively as you bloody well know," Chas said. "And she's been on a rather arduous journey herself. Quite ready to settle down, the both of us."

I was about to second that when the "ding-dong" bell by the door startled us all. Chas frowned and hopped right up to see who'd got past the code console downstairs.

Brother Piers came barging in, "unfrowning" just long enough to give me a little, "'lo, love," before bellowing, "All right, let's go! Now," at his sister.

Who whipped that no longer very hot coffee all over his legs and hissed, "Who the hell sent you?"

"You called me, you silly bitch! Bawling like a madwoman—have you called the police?" He turned to us again, then. "Someone's nicked her purse. Seduced and abandoned, apparently."

"I was not seduced," Clemmie snapped (I liked their name for her). "Which is why I was abandoned—God, I hate men!"

Piers waved her off and turned to me smiling as if he hadn't just called his sister a silly bitch. "Well done you, by the way. 'Uncle Piers' has a rather nice ring to it I must say."