[The mini-series “Mount Bliss” continues from “Pink Grapefruit“]

Saturday morning and Lola woke up in the large bed, but Collin was gone.  She slipped into a robe she found and then surreptitiously snuck barefoot through the house to the guest bedroom where she and Lily had been staying.  Though Collin had said it was fine with Suzanne that Lo and he slept together, she didn’t want to find out through a confrontation that he was lying or mistaken.

Lola found Lily sitting in bed, reading a book.  Lily looked up, “Morning,” she said, as if nothing had transpired the previous night.

“Hi,” said Lo, a little shy after returning from sleeping with Lily’s uncle.  It was a novel situation.

“Have a good night?” asked Lily.

Lo couldn’t wait to ask a thousand questions of her and this provided the opening for it.

“Why didn’t you tell me about your uncle’s horse accident?”

“What was I supposed to say, ‘A horse stepped on my uncle and now he can’t get his wee-wee up’?”

“Well, no, but you could have. . .”  Lo thought for a moment.  She sat on the bed next to Lily.  “So you knew all along?”

“Knew what?”

Lo didn’t want to come across as accusatory.  She pondered how to phrase her questions.

Lily already anticipated what she was going to ask and saved her the trouble.

“I was around six or seven when he had the accident.  I remember it vividly.  Uncle Collin was always my favorite and he was always strong and vibrant and, well, just like he is now.  It was terrible to see him in pain and struggling to get around in a wheelchair.  But he has incredible determination and inner strength.  He resolved to do everything he could to bounce back from that injury even stronger than before.  I watched him, over many years, make incremental progress until he was walking, even running again.”

“It’s amazing,” said Lo.  “I never would have known that he was once confined to a wheelchair.”

“A miracle.  But as I watched him improve physically, as I grew older, I also observed his relationship with Suzanne grow estranged.  They were married about a year when the accident happened.  Since then, she hasn’t left him, but she also hasn’t been there for him.”

“Why don’t they get divorced?”

“You see all this?” responded Lily, looking around the room, “And the other house, and everything else Collin has worked his life to achieve?  She would get half of everything.”

“Oh,” said Lo.

“They don’t dislike each other.  I think they actually are good to and for each other.  But they have worked out an arrangement.  She knows that Collin is impotent.  She knows all-too-well.  So what does she care if he’s around sexy young women?”

“You mean, this happens often?”

Lily let out a little laugh at Lo’s innocent question.  “You mean me bringing sexy friends here for Uncle Collin to seduce?  There hasn’t been one yet who was able to resist his charms.  You were just the most eager.”

Lo felt a pang of confusion and betrayal.  She had been used by both Lily and Uncle Collin.  She had been played as a dupe.  It was all a front.  And not only that, she was just one in a long line of similarly situated seeming seductresses.

If Lily noticed Lo’s crushed feelings, she didn’t let on that she saw or cared.  She just continued with her story.  “I told you that my family vacations in the south of France.  As soon as I hit puberty, I noticed how I got the attention of Uncle Collin.  He never, ever was inappropriate with me, but he liked watching me.  And pretty soon, any and every girlfriend I brought home fell madly in love with him.  He is devilishly handsome, I’ll grant him that.  But he also knows exactly what to say, what to do, and how to charm the pants off people, literally.  I mean, if he wasn’t my uncle. . . ,” Lily trailed off before adding, “Well, don’t think that I haven’t fantasized about it more than once when he was in the bedroom with one of my friends.”

“But nothing happened,” protested Lo, feeling like she had to exonerate herself.

“Of course nothing happened and nothing could happen.  He can’t get it up.  When I was a little older, he told me.  He came up to me and, in his charismatic way, he asked me to bring a friend over for his ‘company.’  He was so suave and subtle about it, that I wasn’t even clear what he was asking until I had already agreed.  But then I realized, he was asking me to pimp out my girlfriends for his pleasure.”

Now Lily had put it exactly as it felt to Lo.  That was the heart of the betrayal.

“And I’m just one of your tricks?”

“Lo,” said Lily, pleading for her sympathy, “All I did was invite you here.  Everything else – letting Collin put his hand on your knee in the truck, letting him feel your breast, letting him look up your skirt in the orchard, tanning naked in front of him, jerking that guy off for Collin’s pleasure, and going to bed with him – all of that was you and your choice.”

Lo reflected for a moment, stunned.  “But,” she thought, “I might not have done all those things if you weren’t right there with me getting naked in front of your uncle.”  She didn’t say that, because she believed in personal responsibility and she wasn’t going to blame Lily for her own behavior.

“But you knew.  You knew all along.  You knew what he wanted.  Even when you called to invite me here, you knew.  You were scheming.  You were a coconspirator,” Lo blurted out, giving vent to the emotions bubbling up in her.

“Yes, I knew all along.  I even told Uncle Collin that he would like you more than any of the others.  That he better watch out that he doesn’t fall in love.  He laughed.  But he was curious.  I’m sure that’s why he showed up at the mountain resort unexpectedly.  He just couldn’t wait to meet you and see you with his own eyes.”

“You mean, even before he met me, you were pushing me on him?”  Lo felt violated.

“Lo,” said Lily, “you’re in a half-open a relationship, you’re a proud hotwife, you take delight in flirting with and seducing married men, and you love showing off your body.  In my mind, you two were made for each other.  Tell the truth.  After you met Collin, were you not eager to see him again?  You sounded pretty thrilled to be invited here, and not just to get the fresh country air.”

Lo knew she was right, but something was not sitting well with her.

“What about Suzanne?” asked Lo.  “She doesn’t get jealous?”

“I told you,” she said, “they have an arrangement.”

Lo knew that Suzanne was not interested in women.  She definitely got that sense.  But what was this ‘arrangement’?

She asked, “You keep saying that, but what’s that mean?”

Lily took a deep breath and let out a long sigh.  “Lo, the world is weird all over and stranger the deeper you delve.”