We played a game of strip poker on the bed that night. Clara was down to only her tiny t-shirt. Unable to resist any longer, we threw our cards aside as she laid back on the bed. Then, as we groped her with all of our hands, one of us ripped her shirt. A small tear that stretched northward from the bottom hem, but it gave such a clear suggestion of her breasts beneath that another one of us seized the shirt and finished the job. Lying back so suddenly exposed, Clara panted and looked at each of us. “I think I’m ready,” she said.
She stood up, letting the remains of her shirt hang from her shoulders. She thought for a moment as the three of us lay sprawled naked across the bed.
“I want it,” she said. “I want all of you. I want all of you inside me at once.”
I stood up as well, prepared to take her in my arms. Ready to bend her over the bed. Ready to lie her facedown against the sheepskin rug. Anything she wanted for this first time, this first time in her round ass.
But with her hand gently on my chest, Clara sat me down on the edge of the bed. She straddled my lap. “My Harry,” she whispered.
She looked at my first double and, understanding, he stood on the bed behind me.
She then took the hand of my second double, pulling him to his feet. She steadied her breathing and ran a finger down the front of his neck, down the center of his chest, down across his navel. They smiled at each other, they nodded, and as he took position behind my wife, I hated him even more.
***
I locked myself in the lab with the Harrys. I put my first double to work analyzing cranial transistor prototypes under a microscope. He had a mind for it. I gave my second double a ruler and a saw and had him cut a hole in the door. A small opening where we’d receive our meals. They’d sleep in their baths and I on a cot, and we wouldn’t emerge until I had an operational interface. We’d emerge as one or we wouldn’t emerge at all.
We lived an entire week this way and for once I felt we were making progress. We identified the specific protein that carried the transistor electrical signal to the muscles. We found a way to boost the wireless receptor so I’d be able to manipulate each body from a greater distance. We even spent an evening washing the dye from their hair.
Clara delivered breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a tray through the opening, but she also slipped dirty pictures beneath the plates. Expertly staged pinup shots, really. Clara leaning over the dishwasher, her ass peeking from beneath the airy dress of a housewife. Clara cleaning the bathroom, a long mop handle held innocently between her breasts. Clara ironing a white button-up shirt in only a black garter belt and stockings.We hid these in our pockets like soldiers, snuck peaks behind the banana crates. When I caught one of the doubles fondling her through the hole in the door, I covered the opening with a small door of its own and hid away the key.
After three long weeks, our minds fogged by boredom and desire, a surprising breakthrough. We were running tests one morning, trying to activate each double’s transistor, when the potassium alarm began to sound.
“Goddamnit,” I said. “Eat a banana, the both of you.” And as I reached for the fruit, I had a thought. I pulled up the diagnostics, compared a few numbers, and there it was, staring me in the face the whole time. The potassium levels weren’t dipping. They were being forced down when the interface was running. There was too much. Too much potassium, and it was interfering with the transistor.
“Take a break, Harrys!” I shouted, and they snuck away to ogle their pictures.
***
I found Clara napping in the sunroom. A camera sat on a tripod and she’d fallen asleep in a pile of pillows near the window. She wore that same short, black robe. I knelt down next to her and gently brushed a hair behind her ear.
“My Harry,” she smiled, slowly coming to.
“My Clara,” I whispered back.
I untied the belt of her robe as she stretched and rubbed her eyes. I let the silk fall to her sides, the morning shadows of leaves falling across her bare skin.
“I’ve missed you,” she said. She rested her head against a pillow and rubbed her hand along my arm.
I leaned down to kiss her and she slipped her arms around my neck. Her lips soft and familiar, lips that tasted slightly of orange. We kissed with the sun against our necks, the trill of birds in the garden. We kissed as footsteps approached, the room warm and the ferns green.
Clara looked up at me. She looked at the bodies on either side of me. I kissed the side of her neck, the side of her breast, and the inside of her thigh all at once.